I did not intend to blog today, since all the pundits you could check out have made their own analysis of what led to the gigantic Scott Brown victory last night. But having read many articles and analysis, I want to point the way for PJM readers to a few of what I consider the very best and the most insightful.
First, at TNR.com (Jennifer Rubin also links to this on Commentary’s Contentions website) is John B. Judis’ absolutely brilliant and essential analysis. Judis makes this point about the still important white working-class vote:
Since the 1960s, when the Democratic Party split over race, and later over cultural issues as well, the white working class has been a key vote in elections. Their departure from the Democrats in the South helped account for the transformation of the Deep South from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican. And in the Northern states, and particularly in Midwestern states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, they have been the swing vote in state and presidential elections. It’s a fair measure to say that if a Democrat can get about 45 percent of the white working-class vote, he or she can carry Ohio–Obama got about 44 percent in 2008. But if he gets only 40 percent or less in these states, he will lose those states and lose national elections. The white working-class vote may not be as important in five or ten years, as the demography of America shifts, but it remains so now—an enduring legacy of the politics of the late ’60s.
He then makes the following point:
These two groups of voters have not viewed Obama’s presidency in a fundamentally different way from many other voters, but they, and particularly working-class whites, have been the prime source of a populist anger against the Obama administration. They have perceived Obama as robbing Peter to pay Paul–or more concretely, taking benefits from and imposing higher taxes on them in order to provide greater income and benefits to others. And we are talking here about perceptions.
He notes that what Obama has created is almost the impossible: his policies have united both right-wing and left-wing populists, because, as he writes, the opposition to health-care “derived in part from the plan to tax ‘Cadillac’ health care plans (which are sometimes held by unionized middle class workers), penalize workers who don’t buy insurance, and cut future Medicare spending, while providing new subscribers and profits for the insurance companies.”
Also at TNR.com is the analysis of Thomas B. Edsall, who throughout his career, has been always cognizant of the intersecting ways in which race and class effect the electorate. Noting the anxiety of voters who fear that the health-care reform is based on the fear that “many voters consider the health care bill a multibillion-dollar transfer of taxpayer money to the uninsured, a population disproportionately, although by no means exclusively, made up of the poor, African Americans, Latinos, single parents, and the long-term unemployed,” Edsall writes that the white working-class “view themselves as only marginally better off than those they perceive as the recipients of new government benefits. They look at health care reform and worry that they have little or nothing to gain and much to lose. In the end, Democrats failed to tailor their salesmanship of health care reform to allay the qualms of these voters, of the white working class.”
Republicans did not initially convert the blue-collar Bubbas of the south. These individuals instead gravitated to George Wallace and other racially tinged populist politicians. The GOP first attracted the better-educated indigenous Southerners who were more open to racial progress. Thomas B. Edsall has long championed the slander that the only reason whites might reject big government programs is due to their alleged racism. I have read many of his writings and own perhaps two of his books—and I remain unimpressed. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not save capitalism. His foolish Herbert Hoover on steroids economic policies only deepened the depression. Elites favor Keynesian economics because they are thinking backwards. Big government economic programs are utterly wonderful to the graduates of our “better schools.” These folks are able to land well paying jobs immediately after graduation. They will also gain the ability to slap around the small to middle size business people. The power will go to their head. The economic doctrines of Ludwig von Mises and Frederick Hayek are the only way to go. We must allow individuals as much economic freedom as possible. Politicians and government bureaucrats should mostly stay out of the way. But this is the last thing the elites want to hear. What’s in it for them? Why shouldn’t they be able to rig the system in their favor?
My, my, my how the worm has turned.
Didn’t Zuckerman have a clue that dirty Chicago politics transferred to the White House was not going to bode well for America? HELLO????????
“Didn’t Zuckerman have a clue that dirty Chicago politics transferred to the White House was not going to bode well for America? HELLO????????”
Mort Zuckerman is likely a guilt tripped white dude. The number one thing that he saw in Barack Obama was the opportunity to seek redemption for past racial sins. Zuckerman wanted to prove that he wasn’t a racist. Obama offered forgiveness and a sort of secular salvation. Zuckerman would have never been played for such a fool if Obama were not a so-called man of color. Of course, the same holds true for most American voters in 2008. They blipped off their personal radar screen the overwhelming evidence that Obama was just another race hustler like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Jr. He constantly employed the race card regarding the Clintons and others during the presidential campaign. Why would anyone think this nonsense would stop once Obama entered the White House?
Yes, David Thomson! There was definitely a disconnect with reality when it came to seeing Barry for the White-Middle-Class-America hating person he was because surely being half-white, he couldn’t hate whitey, so he seemed a ‘safe’ bet (unless you dared to scratch the hope-n-change surface rhetoric).
The regressive, clueless ‘progressives’ want a poverty ‘cleansed’ society. Part of the ‘progressive’ movement has been to eliminate poor blacks/browns/whites via abortion/Margaret Sanger/Planned Parenthood and even forced sterilization. Then you have the Marxists who want ‘equality’ via a PRO brown/black and anti-white anti middle-class society where reverse racism is OK and even encouraged. How the Progressives and Marxists line up on the same team is baffling to me though.
Meanwhile there is Haiti…
Where Black Rules White
“How the Progressives and Marxists line up on the same team is baffling to me though.”
I don’t even find it slightly mysterious. Both groups perceive themselves as elites. They are supposedly the best educated and incredibly virtuous—and therefore should be running things. After all, they are doing so for our own benefit. Only a scumbag reactionary could possibly disagree. The true difference between the Marxists and the Progressives may merely be a matter of degree. Also, the latter don’t like using violence. They prefer to follow Cass Sunstein’s advice and “nudge” us along toward the great utopian future.
There is something robotic about the big statist push of the current administration. The determination to push ahead against public sentiment reflects a fanatic disposition inside the White House, and to a lesser degree in the congress.
Can the robots get a software update, and redirect themselves along a more pragmatic trajectory? If anything could trigger such a response, the Massachusetts earthquake would be it.
But if the Obama coalition persists in its subversive ways, more of us will come to realize the prevalence of its sinister side. Remember: charm is an attribute of evil.
The Lessons of the Brown Victory: Will Obama Learn Them?
Early indications are not promising, Obama claiming today that the dissatisfaction obvious in yesterday’s Massachusetts vote is the same kind of dog as dissatisfaction under 8 years of his predecessor.
(did the WH spin machine stay up ’til 2 a.m. to concoct that one ?)
Mort Zuckerman’s mournful cry…
Mort Zuckerman was passionate & outraged on today’s Cavuto, including a point about what’s up with Obama’s (inane & insane) dissing of the business community ?
Despite copious hints during the campaign, the Michelle comments, the Rev. Wright assn., the “bitter clingers yuk it up” with some wealthy San Franciscans, dissing Grandma, I didn’t really catch the complete wave of Barry’s contempt for America or his race baiting tendencies until he had taken office and set about speaking on sundry Apology Tours* and the Gates incident.
He has no particular right to speak for this country or its history.
Progressives and Marxists are essentially the same thing in my book.
*(some 160 junkets on Air Force One since taking office, 1 year ago today. Now that’s a lotta emissions, carbon & otherwise)
“And we are talking here about perceptions.”
No, we’re talking about reality. It’s income redistribution–socialism. No mystery at all. Everyone with eyes can see.
Progressivism is the term the wolf uses in order to pass a a sheep, but they’re rotten little marxists all the same. They’re not liberals, let’s stop calling them liberals. They’re marxists or neo-marxists or Leftists.
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