Posted on 11/04/2004 10:36:52 PM PST by neverdem
GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Washington
The first thing Democrats must try to grasp as they cast their eyes over the smoking ruins of the election is the continuing power of the culture wars. Thirty-six years ago, President Richard Nixon championed a noble "silent majority" while his vice president, Spiro Agnew, accused liberals of twisting the news. In nearly every election since, liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation. This year voters claimed to rank "values" as a more important issue than the economy and even the war in Iraq.
And yet, Democrats still have no coherent framework for confronting this chronic complaint, much less understanding it. Instead, they "triangulate," they accommodate, they declare themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market, they sign off on Nafta and welfare reform, they try to be more hawkish than the Republican militarists. And they lose. And they lose again. Meanwhile, out in Red America, the right-wing populist revolt continues apace, its fury at the "liberal elite" undiminished by the Democrats' conciliatory gestures or the passage of time.
Like many such movements, this long-running conservative revolt is rife with contradictions. It is an uprising of the common people whose long-term economic effect has been to shower riches upon the already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very people who are rising up. It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses to call into question the basic institutions of corporate America that make mass culture what it is. It is a revolution that plans to overthrow the aristocrats by cutting their taxes.
Still, the power of the conservative rebellion is undeniable. It presents a way of talking about life in which we are all victims of a haughty overclass - "liberals" - that makes our movies, publishes our newspapers, teaches our children, and hands down judgments from the bench. These liberals generally tell us how to go about our lives, without any consideration for our values or traditions.
The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.
Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started.
Worse: While conservatives were sharpening their sense of class victimization, Democrats had all but abandoned the field. For some time, the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington has been enamored of the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and embrace the "professional" class. During the 2004 campaign these new, business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory. They imagined themselves the "metro" party of cool billionaires engaged in some kind of cosmic combat with the square billionaires of the "retro" Republican Party.
Yet this would have been a perfect year to give the Republicans a Trumanesque spanking for the many corporate scandals that they have countenanced and, in some ways, enabled. Taking such a stand would also have provided Democrats with a way to address and maybe even defeat the angry populism that informs the "values" issues while simultaneously mobilizing their base.
To short-circuit the Republican appeals to blue-collar constituents, Democrats must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues with genuine economic populism. They must dust off their own majoritarian militancy instead of suppressing it; sharpen the distinctions between the parties instead of minimizing them; emphasize the contradictions of culture-war populism instead of ignoring them; and speak forthrightly about who gains and who loses from conservative economic policy.
What is more likely, of course, is that Democratic officialdom will simply see this week's disaster as a reason to redouble their efforts to move to the right. They will give in on, say, Social Security privatization or income tax "reform" and will continue to dream their happy dreams about becoming the party of the enlightened corporate class. And they will be surprised all over again two or four years from now when the conservative populists of the Red America, poorer and angrier than ever, deal the "party of the people" yet another stunning blow.
Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America."
Yes, what a wonderful sight it is.
Yeh..... so where's the beef?
Republicans just wish everyone to start at the same line, but there shall be no guarantee that everyone finish together.
This guy is actually pretty funny.
A lefty accusing the right of claiming "class victimization", that's rich... they sure don't get it...
"poorer and angrier than ever" -- The writer wishes............
More liberal BULL!
And they still are! LOL
*In nearly every election since, liberalism has been vilified as a flag-burning, treason-coddling, upper-class affectation.
Sounds about right.
*This year voters claimed to rank "values" as a more important issue than the economy and even the war in Iraq.
Liberals just don't get it. Personal values are an integral part of all issues, including the economy and the War in Iraq.
This is absurd. I've seen a lot of articles like this today. They're worried sick that the Democrats might abandon their fringe liberal views and start looking into what's right for America.
when asked by aaron brown of CNN who would carry this "faith message" for the democrats, Gov Ed Rendell (D-PA) said that "hillary clinton has grown as a political personality and a real leader"...again i about fell over...LOL
all of a sudden after decades of standing for the lefty lunatics and ANYTHING BUT TRUE FAITH VALUES, now these phonies are going to morph into church deacons. THIS WILL BE TOO FUNNY TO WATCH.....unreal
I am envisioning a Jonestown type scenario among the liberal writers at the NY Slimes.
Yet that very observation also applies to him as he proves in this article.
I'm with you on this one, neverdem.
The opening papargraph was good. But Mr. Frank falls quickly into the party-line Kultursmog of the Liberal Fever Swamps. He doesn't see, and doesn't want to see the forest through the trees!
No wonder is book isn't selling all that well.
Jack.
Conciliatory gestures!?!?!? WTF, Over! I couldn't read past this point and I usually pride myself in being able to slog through the worst demonrat dreck.
Conciliatory? Where has this idiot been? Pluto? It's clearly hopeless, they are simply too stupid to breathe.
...the Democrats' conciliatory gestures...
The writer probably forgot the filibustered judges, the accusations of Bush being a Hitler, a Nazi, a liar, blood for oil...
It's always fun to see the NY Times, who is one of the reasons the Libs lost, write articles about what went wrong without ever mentioning anything the NY Times did in that same list.
Excactly, right on the money. Moderate Dems aren't staying, they're moving the GOP. The liberal media and liberal politicians are caught in a spiraling death grip down the drain of irrelevancy.
Articles like this show that Liberals are still in denial (maybe they just don't have the courage to face a core reversal of that magnitude) and intend to fight to the death for their fantasy.
I used to agree with you. It must be denial. But I have changed my mind after listening to them hand wring for the last two days. They aren't in denial, they aren't smart enough to be in denial. Even denial presumes higher order mental functioning.
They spent so long smuggly refusing to judge so much that they are now incapable of coherent thought at all, and the only reason their delusion has lasted as long as it has was that there were enough of them to clump together and masturbate each other in the dark.
Why in the world would any compassionate nation strive to have a "welfare state?" This is cruel and inhumane treatment. Our goal needs to be ZERO people on the government dole. The Democrats are afraid that all of these prisoners to welfare will be weaned off an become members in the ownership society rendering the Democratic party unnecessary.
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