Posted on 05/06/2005 5:26:24 AM PDT by Tolik
When will the Dems start winning again? When they start living and speaking like normal folks.
We are in unsure times amid a controversial war. Yet the American people are not swayed by the universities, the major networks, the New York Times, Hollywood, the major foundations, and NPR. All these bastions of doctrinaire liberal thinking have done their best to convince America that George W. Bush, captive to right-wing nuts and Christian fanatics, is leading the country into an abyss. In fact, a close look at a map of red/blue counties nationwide suggests that the Democrats are in deepening trouble.
Why? In a word, Democratic ideology and rhetoric have not evolved from the 1960s, although the vast majority of Americans has — and an astute Republican leadership knows it.
Today entitlement is far more complicated. Poverty is not so much absolute as relative: "I have a nice Kia, but he has a Mercedes," or "I have a student loan to go to Stanislaus State, but her parents sent her to Yale." Unfortunately for the Democrats, Kias and going to Stanislaus State aren't too bad, especially compared to the alternatives in the 1950s.
A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, or Al Gore looks — no, acts — like he either came out of a hairstylist's salon or got off a Gulfstream. Those who show up at a Moveon.org rally and belong to ANSWER don't seem to have spent much time in Bakersfield or Logan, but lots in Seattle and Westwood. When most Americans have the semblance of wealth — televisions, cell phones, cars, laptops, and iPods as well as benefits on the job — it is hard to keep saying that "children are starving." Obesity not emaciation is the great plague of the poorer.
So the Democrats need a little more humility, a notion that the country is not so much an us/them dichotomy, but rather all of us together under siege to maintain our privileges in a tough global world — and at least one spokesman who either didn't go to prep school or isn't a lawyer.
The country is also no longer white and black, but brown, yellow, black, white, and mixed. When a liberal UC Berkeley chancellor remonstrates about "diversity" and "multiculturalism," lamenting that his merit-based entrance requirements have sadly resulted in too few "Hispanics" and "African-Americans" (he ignores that whites at Berkeley also enroll in numbers less than their percentages in the state population), what he really means — but won't say — is that there are apparently too many Asians, about 45 percent enrolled in Berkeley versus about 12 percent in the state population.
What will he do? Praise a hard-working minority that overcame historic prejudice against them? Hardly. We suspect instead the typical liberal solution is on the horizon: some clever, but secretive administrative fix that contravenes Proposition 209, and then denies that compensatory action is aimed against the Asians it is aimed at.
In short, race-based thinking beyond protection of equal opportunity is fraught with public suspicion, especially when so many loud spokesmen for minorities — Jesse Jackson or Kweisi Mfume — either are elites themselves or do not practice the morality they preach. An Alberto Gonzales or Condoleezza Rice comes across as proud, competent, and an expert rather than a tribalist, while those in the Black Caucus or La Raza industry appear often the opposite. Would you want a sober Colin Powell or an often unhinged Harry Belafonte and surly Julian Bond in your party? Did Condoleezza Rice, answering acerbic senators without notes, or Barbara Boxer, droning off a prepared script, appear the more impressive in recent confirmation hearings? A Democratic "minority" appointment to a cabinet post at education or housing is one thing; a Republican belief that the best candidates for secretary of state, national security advisor, and attorney general are incidentally minorities is quite another.
George Bush is appealing to a new group that really is threatened — the under-35's who cannot afford a house, have student loans, high car and health insurance, and are concerned that their poor therapeutic education will leave them impoverished as China and the rest of Asia race ahead.
Would Al Gore have invaded Afghanistan less than a month after 9/11? If John Kerry were President and China invaded Taiwan, what would he do?
What would an administration advised by Madeline Albright, Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, Jamie Rubin, Nancy Pelosi, or Jimmy Carter do if Iran sent a nuke into Israel, or North Korea fired a series of missiles over the top of Japan?
Or, if al Qaeda, operating from a sanctuary in Iran or Syria, took out the Sears Tower, how would a Kennedy, Kerry, or Gore respond? Six cruise missiles? A police matter? Proper work for the DA? Better "intelligence"? Let's work with our allies? Get the U.N. involved?
Whatever we think of George Bush, we know he would do something real — and just what that something might be frightens into hesitation — and yes, fear — many of those who would otherwise like to try something pretty awful.
Philosophically, two grand themes explain the Democratic dilemma. One, the United States does not suffer from the sort of oppression, poverty, or Vietnam nightmares of the 1950s and 1960s that created the present Democratic ideology. Thus calcified solutions of big government entitlements, race-based largess, and knee-jerk suspicion of U.S. power abroad come off as either impractical or hysterical.
Second, there is the widening gulf between word and deed — and Americans hate hypocrites most of all. When you meet a guy from the Chamber of Commerce or insurance association, you pretty much know that what you see is what you get: comfort with American culture and values, an upscale lifestyle that reflects his ideology and work, and no apologies for success or excuses for lack of same.
But if you listen to Dr. Dean and his class venom, it hardly seems comparable with how he lives or how he was brought up. John Kerry's super power boat, Teresa Kerry's numerous mansions, Arianna Huffington's gated estate, George Soros's jet, Ted Turner's ranches, Sean Penn's digs — all this and more, whether fairly or unfairly, suggest hypocrisy and insincerity: Something like, "High taxes, government regulation, racial quotas, and more entitlements won't hurt me since I have so much money at my own disposal anyway, but will at least make me feel good that we are transferring capital to the less fortunate."
Worse yet, such easy largess and the cost of caring often translate into contempt for the small businessman, entrepreneur, and salesperson who is supposedly illiberal because he worries that he has less disposable income and is less secure. And when you add in cracks about Wal-Mart, McDonald's, and the "Christian Right" — all the things the more cultured avoid — then the architects of a supposedly populist party seem to be ignorant of their own constituencies.
When will Democrats return to power? Three of the most influential legislators in the Democrat party — Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi — reside in and came out of the San Francisco Bay area, which for all its undeniable beauty has created a culture still at odds with most of America. John and Teresa Kerry would have been the nation's first billionaire presidential couple. The head of the Democratic party is a New England condescending liberal, with a vicious tongue, who ran and lost on a platform far to the left of an unsuccessful liberal.
In contrast the only two men elected president from the Democratic party in 30 years were southerners, hammed up their rural and common-man roots — the son of a single mother in Arkansas and a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia — and were narrowly elected largely due to national scandals like Watergate or third-party conservative populists like Ross Perot. The aristocratic media — CSB News, the New York Times, NPR — is often liberal and yet talks of its degrees and pedigree; the firebrand populist bloggers, cable news pros, and talk-radio pundits are mostly conservative and survive on proven merit rather than image.
When we see Democrats speaking and living like normal folks — expressing worry that the United States must return to basic education and values to ensure its shaky preeminence in a cutthroat world, talking of one multiracial society united by a rare exceptional culture of the West rather than a salad bowl of competing races and tribes, and apprising the world that we are principled abroad in our support of democratic nations and quite dangerous when attacked — they will be competitive again.
Since they will not do that, they will keep losing — no matter how much the economy worries, the war frightens, and the elite media scares the American people.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.
My bet is Rush will refer to this article today on his program.
Lotta truth to that. This is the time to press home the advantage. Carefully, to be sure, but steadily, unapologetically, and over the whining objections of the has-been Left.
Thank you Internet.....just think if the Liberals STILL had control of the media and what we were fed. Great article. Yes the truth always wins out...actions over words....people know it and understand it and WANT it.
It is simply IMPOSSIBLE for this to occur.
Capitalism is their enemy and buying votes by dividing us into groups is their only hope for power, therefore none of the above is possible, IMHO.
He left out the generalized insulting of non-coastal regions, particularly the south. Now they have Howard Dean trying to talk about Jesus in Tennessee. I just hope he figured out that the Book of Job is in the Old Testament.
"High taxes, government regulation, racial quotas, and more entitlements won't hurt me since I have so much money at my own disposal anyway, but will at least make me feel good that we are transferring capital to the less fortunate."
I have always felt that this is why the ultra-wealthy are often liberals. If you take a percentage of infinite wealth, you basically still have infinite wealth. Simply put, they don't want us to work our way up to their level and have us barge in on the Country Club.
BRAVO!!!!
I want in.
I agree with you. Under their current conditions regarding their financial and reliable political base, they simply cannot conduct effective outreach to the Red Regions. The commentariat and indeed the party officials themselves have fashioned their shtick almost exclusively around lambasting and making cruel humor out of the folks in the Heartland.
It isn't just the anti-capitalism that offends folks in "Flyover Country". Much of what is written in their affiliate columns and is broadcast over the airwaves is very insulting and demeaning from a personal standpoint. Not everyone will have the facts on socialism versus capitalism as we do on FR because not everyone follows news 24/7. They absolutely WILL remember when they get referred to as a bunch of dumb hicks, however. Because of this alone, even if the Dems were on their best behavior starting today, they will have to wait an entire generation. Honor is not a lightly traded copmmodity.
Of course, they have not been on their best behavior. Even when Dean tries to get ahead by doing Jesus talk, the folks see it as disingenuous, and you still have all those "brain-dead" and "low-brow" quotes from the election. Bill Maher was out doing this just a few days ago. Actually, I would say since the election that the heat has been turned up on the inhabitants of the red regions, which will unquestionably cause an even greater backlash the next time around.
Cowboy you nailed it! Exactly. Liberals are nothing really other than benovolent( in fact, malevolent) plantation slave owners.
That would be commodity, of course.
The Democrats will start winning again in 2006 'cause the 'Pubbies are spending like Democrats, won't tackle important issues like immigration and don't yet seem to have found their spines.
And if the Republicans don't find a decent candidate, we can look forward to Hillary! for President in 2009.
And the remarkable thing is that they keep breeding generation after generation of mental deficients, many quite educated, who fit this description perfectly:
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Incompetence is bliss, say researchers
BY ERICA GOODE
New York Times
There are many incompetent people in the world. But a Cornell University study has shown that most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
People who do things badly, according to David A. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence. The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, the researchers -- Dunning and Justin Kruger, then a graduate student -- suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
``Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,´´ wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.
This deficiency in ``self-monitoring skills,´´ the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and of the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.
Some college students, Dunning said, evince a similar blindness: After doing badly on a test, they spend hours in his office, explaining why the answers he suggests for the test questions are wrong. In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning tested their theory of incompetence. They found that subjects who scored in the lowest quartile on tests of logic, English grammar and humor were also the most likely to ``grossly overestimate´´ how well they had performed.
In all three tests, subjects' ratings of their ability were positively linked to their actual scores. But the lowest-ranked participants showed much greater distortions in their self-estimates.
Aiming high -- real high
Asked to evaluate their performance on the test of logical reasoning, for example, subjects who scored in only the 12th percentile guessed that they had scored in the 62nd percentile and deemed their overall skill at logical reasoning to be at the 68th percentile.
Similarly, subjects who scored at the 10th percentile on the grammar test ranked themselves at the 67th percentile in the ability to ``identify grammatically correct standard English´´ and estimated their test scores to be at the 61st percentile.
On the humor test, in which participants were asked to rate jokes according to their funniness (subjects' ratings were matched against those of an ``expert´´ panel of professional comedians), low-scoring subjects were also more apt to have an inflated perception of their skill. But because humor is idiosyncratically defined, the researchers said, the results were less conclusive.
Unlike their unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Kruger and Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their own competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were -- a phenomenon psychologists term the ``false consensus effect.´´ When high-scoring subjects were asked to ``grade´´ the grammar tests of their peers, however, they quickly revised their evaluations of their own performance. In contrast, the self-assessments of those who scored badly themselves were unaffected by the experience of grading others; some subjects even further inflated their estimates of their own abilities.
``Incompetent individuals were less able to recognize competence in others,´´ the researchers concluded. In a final experiment, Dunning and Kruger set out to discover if training would help modify the exaggerated self-perceptions of incapable subjects. In fact, a short training session in logical reasoning did improve the ability of low-scoring subjects to assess their performance realistically, they found.
The findings, the psychologists said, support Thomas Jefferson's assertion that ``he who knows best knows how little he knows.´´
Such studies are not without critics. David C. Funder, a psychology professor at the University of California-Riverside, for example, said he suspected that most lay people had only a vague idea of the meaning of ``average´´ in statistical terms. But Dunning said his current research and past studies indicated that there were many reasons why people would tend to overestimate their competency and not be aware of it.
Concrete clues
In some cases, Dunning pointed out, an awareness of one's own inability is inevitable: ``In a golf game, when your ball is heading into the woods, you know you´re incompetent,´´ he said.
But in other situations, feedback is absent, or at least more ambiguous; even a humorless joke, for example, is likely to be met with polite laughter. And social norms prevent most people, when faced with incompetence, from blurting out, ``You stink!´´ -- truthful though this assessment may be.
Hmmm, paraphrasing a bit; -- Those who score in the lowest quarter in logic, grammar & humor tests THINK they are way 'above average' in those categories..
Explains a lot of the flaming going on around here, doesn't it?
1 Posted on 01/18/2000 10:52:41 PST by tpaineExcellent article! Yet another luminary from the Hoover Institution.
He'll be in MA on the 14th at the state Dem convention. Seems the state Dems want gay-marriage in their platform. Yesterday, he made an official statement honoring Cinco de Mayo! Other than that, he's been down south preaching communism to empty auditoriums.
Great article.
If you read the above article in a more open mind than your obsession with the immigration issue, you know why the Democrats with their current left wing ideology and leadership will never win again.
He left out the generalized insulting of non-coastal regions, particularly the south.
Have you ever noticed (on TV or in a movie) our hero pulls into a small town you just KNOW the town is a hotbed of (take your choice 1 racism, 2 corruption 3 murder..etc) and the only one who is fighting this is (usually) a single mother who's working as a waitress (for below minimum wage of course) and going to night school to learn to be a lawyer. The town sheriff is obviously corrupt, the pastor of the local church is 1 a pedophile 2 beats his wife 3 a closet nazi, and if not one of these he's a wilber milktoast.
Good! I hope they keep digging that big old hole and stay in there for a LONG time!
Not doom and gloom. I remember the American Spectator crying about the end of the Right with the election of the Clintons. It sounded plausible and I actually bought it at the time. This reads the same to me... but I ain't buyin' this time, if only because relying on the mistakes of our enemies is foolish.
If the Republicans and the Right want to keep winning, they have to keep earning it. Right now, they are not doin' so well...
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