The wave may be bluer than they think

The blue wave may be bluer than the prognosticators who study the election polls, ads, and cash flows think. I’ve studied some of their on-going accounts during the last few weeks and months. The election is not just about which party’s “base” is more “energized” and likely to turn out. Here is what the predictions may not have taken into account.

Certain polls have already found an uptick in the likely voter count among millennials, which includes first-time voters. Though not as a rule highly politicized, young people are nevertheless a somewhat bluer constituency. If the uptick is being undercounted, the actual vote will add to the blue wave.

The same applies to non-white voters. If the likely vote in these blue constituencies was undercounted or proved harder to count in the polls, the actual vote at the polls will be bluer than predicted. This, I suspect, may be especially true of the Native American vote.

Assume for a moment the polls took tally of a just proportion of female voters. Are they more likely, regardless of party, to vote for a female candidate? especially at this point in cultural time? If so, more blue votes, just because there are more female Democratic candidates. A lot more.

Normally, in a given race, undecided independent votes tend to fall to either party in the same proportion as the overall vote. Thus they cancel each other out; it’s as if they had not voted at all, and left the election to the committed partisan voters. Will they really happen this year? Which party will the non-partisan voter find less toxic? If non-partisan voters just want a change, other things being equal, a blue vote is the clearer path.

If all these things are true – about the young vote, the non-white vote, the female vote, and the independent vote – then I say the blue wave in the House will be more than 40 seats. And the Democrats will hold all the toss-up seats in the Senate. And take Texas, or Tennessee, or maybe even North Dakota, giving them a majority in the Senate. Even if only some of these things are true, the blue wave may still be bluer than the pundits think.

The Self-Styled Republican “Party”

We in Wisconsin have seen any number of assaults by the Republican Party on people and organizations opposed to their political aims, indeed on the fundamental rights of those people. Not satisfied with the passage of constitutionally infirm legislation requiring the poor, the feeble, the old to present official pictures of themselves in order to be permitted to vote, they’d like to relieve a merely fanciful burden on poll workers by outlawing same-day registration. Apparently they consider this worth the money it would cost to implement, but the Governor does not. It just shows who is willing to pay what to disenfranchise poor folks and young folks who move around a lot and tend to vote democratic. And without the law the Governor would have had one fewer vote last fall, that of his son.

But that’s old news. Late news is that the Democrats had 53% of the legislative vote in that election, but won only 39% of the seats. Thanks to a really ingenious (it must be admitted) plan of redistricting that Republicans paid their lawyers handsomely to devise in secret.

It’s been a theme, really the main argument, of this blog to show why most of the people who vote Republican do so against their own objective economic interests, to try to understand why they do it, and to give them reasons to stop doing it. Just as the class analysis indicates the Republicans ought to be a minority based on the class interests it endeavors to protect and the number of people who actually belong to those classes, so it is a minority party by every measure except the occupancy of the seats of power. At least in Wisconsin. I assume without knowing that similar stories could be told about at least some of the majority of states where the Republicans control the legislatures.

So they just don’t represent that many people. Then how do they get so many votes? They can’t do it solely and only by making it harder for their opponents to vote. They can’t do it solely and only by frightening people about their class interests and fooling them about which class they belong with. They have to give people who don’t share, or who merely imagine they share, the class interests they represent some other kind of reason to vote for them.

That’s how the Republication party became the home of a bizarre collection of minority beliefs collectively labeled “social conservatism,” but the whole of which virtually no Republication – no one living citizen – accepts.

What’s in the collection? In no particular order:

·         That the Founding Fathers meant this to be a Xian nation.

·         That the mainstream media are part of a liberal conspiracy to deceive the public about etc., etc.

·         That abstinence is the only morally acceptable form of sex education and birth control.

·         That the moral obloquy of fetal stem cell research outweighs its benefits for medical science and the sufferers of disease, and the entire legislative agenda of NRLC.

·         That the planet is not getting warmer and that the scientists who say so are part of the liberal conspiracy.

·         That good people with guns is the only constitutional answer to bad people with guns.

·         That any and all advocates of gun control really just want to take away “my guns,” and the entire legislative agenda of the NRA.

·         That homosexuality is a curable moral condition.

·         That marijuana is dangerous because it leads users to become addicted to even more dangerous drugs.

·         That tithing is a religious duty.

·         That the world was created with the fossils already in it.

·         That homo sapiens is not a primate by origin, and the entire biblical account of creation.

·         That marriage must always and only be a union between a male and a female.

·         Ditto sex acts.

Social conservatives believe something obnoxious about conception too, but it’s difficult to express in a way that makes what is obnoxious about it transparent.

See how many moral judgments they make in order to defeat their political enemies? It’s not even nearly a complete list. Mind you, I’m not even trying to include in the list beliefs that range from covertly to unconsciously openly racist, etc., etc.

The point is, then, even if only two or three percent of the people feel strongly enough about any one item on the list to let it decide their vote – I’ll do the math. Ten items at 3% per item is 30% of the vote. What percent of the people are self-described social conservatives? What proportion of them shares the class interests of the electorate Republicanism serves, that is, the Few? Almost all the social conservatives are additive because the real Republications are, let’s just say for the sake of argument, better educated than that. They learned tolerance in college and money afterwards.

Or to do the math again: embracing social conservatism alone is still not enough to win elections because all the positions are minority positions. But take the 3% who may be expected based on objective economic interests to be and vote Republican, and add the 15-20% whom they’re frightened or fooled into voting with them on policy grounds. And then you add 30% more who are equally frightened or fooled, and who also happen to hold one or more of those noxious minority beliefs. How far have they gotten? To return to the original argument, the Republicans have to game the elections and the laws regulating the right to and manner of voting. If that effectively subtracts or neutralizes 2-5% of the vote, and social conservatism adds 30%, the 15-20% of the people who normally vote Republican might elect their candidates.

So it’s not about the 47% who happen to be entitled o something from the government. It’s about the 47% who happen to have been collected together around a set of minority beliefs and, secondarily, class interests. Reagan didn’t proceed entirely this way because he didn’t have to. The last honest Republican president was Eisenhower, who could have chosen to become the Democratic candidate instead, but decided, let’s say again for the sake of the argument, that the best way he could help his soldiers build a middle class life was to run under Republican principles as they then existed.

Now, Romney, to get the nomination, had to pretend to share most of these beliefs, and then, to win the election, to turn his back on most of them.

Is this the situation of a viable political entity? A bizarre set of ideological minorities that can only be kept together by a consummate liar? Could it now be possible to get rid of the Republican Party and replace it with….? I’m not sure what that new thing would look like so I can’t say what would make it possible. I can say the Republican Party looks about dead to me. If it hadn’t had real principles (A. Lincoln, T. Roosevelt) in its distant past, it would be. 

Class Myth: “We’re taking back this country…!”

…from whom? the old? the sick? the poor?

I could be blunter, but that would be politically incorrect even as a form of criticism. Is that really the subtext of this expression? Or in the language of punditry rather than academe, who are the We that the “dog whistle” is calling? to taking what from whom?

I don’t know that the country was ever owned by anyone other than a group of folks who are mostly white and mostly male. So are We wanting to take it back from Ourselves?

Maybe, if We already own it, We’re wanting to take back something else. There isn’t much to take back from the sick, the poor, the old; all they have is pitiful remnants of entitlements left over when the people who really own the country are done taking what they can get. And even then they (the true owners) make the middle class pay for most of it.

Maybe We ought to take back the country from them. But that would involve raising somebody’s taxes. And that is one of the things they’re afraid of.

Then again, maybe all We want is to take back control of the country. That looks to be a close run thing, doesn’t it? But if We’re wanting to take back control from the poor, the old, the sick, what will We do with it? disadvantage them? Again, it’s slim pickins’. And as I’ve argued before, We – at least some of Us, the ones to whom this slogan is designed to appeal – are only going to be robbing Ourselves.

Maybe the goal is to take back the country from them, so they can’t tax Us so much, because We’re “taxed enough already.” Well, same answer: the other “them” are the true owners. There’s little or nothing to be had from the old, the sick, the poor. If you don’t consider the remnants “pitiful,” try living on them, and them alone. Not everybody gets poor. But only the lucky never get sick. And everybody gets old.

The confusions over the actual interests at stake in American political and economic life are so rich that it’s impossible to believe the big bourgeoisie really conceived, bought, and paid for them all. With some, all they had to do was amplify the emotional content of beliefs that were already very much, if by accident, in their interests.

We the dogs hear the whistle abundantly well. But wait…now I can hear it too. The We aren’t taking the country back from them, they’re taking it back from him!

Now I understand. Completely.

Do you hear it too?

Just How Much…

…cash is on the books of the Fortune 500? The S&P 500? Any 500 of them you might care to name?

Is it anywhere near the $800 billion the American people spent trying to revive the economy? Half that much? Two-thirds? I bet you could find a bunch without hardly trying.

That money was supposed to be spent, respent, and spent again. It was supposed to circulate, creating what is called the multiplier effect – creating economic demand and therefore jobs.

But if it’s accumulating on the corporate books, it’s not doing any of those things.

Whose decision was that? The question answers itself. Those people are supposed to be “Job Creators.”

To be sure, it wasn’t the President’s decision. And so he can’t be blamed for much of anything, it seems to me, except expecting the economy to work the way it is supposed to work.

Lots of people say the stimulus didn’t work. Never mind that the recession could have been, and probably would have been, a lot worse without it. The President has a measure of control over the spending of the United States government, but little or none over the decisions of the CEOs and boards of the companies I am talking about. If what I suspect is in fact the case, it is because those people preferred to perform their duties to their shareholders, and not their patriotic and social duties.

Surely the President can’t be blamed for that.

Off with their heads!

Those who think having to face a recall election is too stiff a penalty for political crimes against the people of Wisconsin should reflect that, in some societies, some political crimes are or were capital. Now I don’t want to resurrect Joe Stalin and run him for governor, but I do want to re-emphasize the kinds of outlawry as such certain people are being held to account for in these elections.

One and all these are crimes of fraud and manipulation in favor of narrow, partisan, and merely political interests, and against public interest and good. It was possible to commit them because an anomaly gave Republicans complete control of the legislative process. After that: no amity, no consensus, no compromise…nor even consideration nor communication. Finding no other worthy interests, they consulted only their own. There’s the crime.

Most of these arguments have already been made, some by people in an official capacity. My purpose is to shed a different light both on the arguments and the actions themselves.

Here are the several counts in the indictment, in rough order of notoriety and abuse.

Collective Bargaining: The right of unions to exist was paid for in blood, even on the streets of Milwaukee. Predicated on that right, the rights to bargain and to strike make a double-edged sword. The Republicans blunted the one edge – without cause or need, ignoring offers of compromise on the point essential to the public good, which was the budget. It was pretence: the obliteration of rights was unnecessary to the stated purpose of the scheme of legislation. So: notorious abuse of the first order.

Voter Identification: Again, in some countries offenses against fundamental law are or were capital in nature. The courts, more than one of them, have found this legislation so offensive they granted a preliminary injunction, without a full hearing of the case, against its enforcement. For purely partisan reasons, to prevent a wrong merely imagined to exist, the Republicans placed an unconstitutional burden on a fundamental right – a poll tax, notoriously unconstitutional since the days of Jim Crow.

If the right to vote is sacred, what kind of outlawry is this?

Secret Redistricting: …was also roundly criticized by the courts – the federal courts – both the secrecy and the result. So far were the Republicans from an attitude of political amity that they refused to correct their error, and left it to the court to restore the voting rights their redistricting plan had infringed.

For people who may not understand what they did that was wrong, let me explain a bit. When they moved the Senate district lines, some people, hundreds of thousands of them, lost their votes in the next Senate elections. They were put in districts where the vote does not take place until the following cycle, and they have to wait until then to cast them: four years instead of two. So their votes were taken away, delayed, solely to advantage Republican candidates by giving them more Republican voters in the some of the affected districts.

Politics always obtrudes on the redistricting process, but in this case the abuse was egregious and ran afoul of constitutional law.

Again, if the right to vote is sacred…?

Fake Candidates: …were nominated by the Republicans to run fraudulently as Democrats, in their own words, to “level the playing field.” A notorious case of advertising a weak point! The real intent is to give their Senate candidates the advantage of Walker’s coattails in the general election. This isn’t spin: it’s an open lie. It might be higher on the list, but the public cost of this particular abuse is hard to measure and may not be particularly much.

Mining Legislation: …is last on the list, but only because it was an attempted abuse. See my post at the time the legislation failed.

Now Mr. Walker wants to revive the legislation on a “bipartisan” basis. But this only proves my point: up to now, in none of these instances were anything other than partisan interests ever considered.

I’ve already characterized The Outlaw for what he is. Too bad his Senate seat is secure. At the very least, the recall election will make him attempt to justify, if not answer for, his crimes. In fact, he’s the chief conspirator, isn’t he? I’ve permitted myself to wonder what leadership role Mr. Walker himself played, if any, but from here it’s impossible to tell. I don’t know what he’s telling his big bourgeoisie friends either. I do know Ms. Kleefisch made a phone call or two; she says so on television. That is enough to implicate her in the conspiracy.

And so the verdict, and the sentence, mild as it must be, lie in the hands of Wisconsin voters.

Fortunately not in the hands of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The grounds for their endorsement of Mr. Walker are disingenuous. The question is not whether Mr. Walker deserves to face the recall – that is, it’s not about whether the paper’s editorial position on that point was correct. Now it’s about who should be governor of Wisconsin.

Class Math: Voting for “the man…”

…and not the party. I’m happy to say I’ve never done that. I’ve been terribly impressed with Mr. Clinton’s genius for policy sometimes, and with Mr. Obama’s wisdom. I had great hopes for Mr. Carter. I even forgave Mr. Reagan a little for the regressive things he did when I saw that he had been able to end the Cold War favorably to us as a people and to the world as a whole. Even though that was a relief, it doesn’t mean I would change my votes against him.

I regret that my party hadn’t better candidates than the ones who lost, but that didn’t make me think twice about whether to vote for them.

So I have to wonder about people who let considerations merely personal to the candidates involved decide their votes. For one thing, people are better judges of their interests than of character – more precisely, they are less easily deceived about the former than about the latter (though to be sure, it’s not impossible to deceive people about their interests).

The principles of the Democratic party have not changed since the days of Jefferson and Jackson: we are the party of the many. The principles of the Republican party, on the contrary, have changed since the days of Lincoln, maybe since the days of Eisenhower: at some point they became the party of the Few, or at best simply their willing accomplice.

Do your interests change from one election to the next? Maybe you got a job. Is that enough reason to vote Republican? Maybe you earned enough to begin to hope that some day you might become one of the Few. Maybe you actually became one of the Few. That last might be a good reason from the standpoint of class interest to switch parties. But that doesn’t happen to many of us; by definition it only happens to a few. So why would you vote for a democrat in one cycle, and a republican in the next, and then back again? Does your life, do your interests, really change that much?

While the principles of an individual might be more or less nuanced, while they might be unique – not to say peculiar – to that unique individual, while they might be formed by accident of birth or any number of other accidents, the principles of party are by comparison simple, straightforward, well known, generally shared, and formed under the experience of history. A party is like a culture that, being formed by a common set of influences, shares a common set of attitudes – which by the way is the original meaning of common sense.

This is the math part. What really happens is that the Few buy enough impressions to put in front of the public so that voters begin to think they constitute a form of truth about the candidate. They think they are voting for “the man,” when they are really voting for the impressions of the man that someone else could afford to put before them. Or, worse yet, voting against impressions of the other man or woman that were also bought and paid for.

Yes, it’s true, there have been great presidents and there have been, it’s not unfair to say, disastrous ones. Can you tell the difference? in advance? It’s by far a surer thing to vote for party. Even the failings and mistakes of an individual can be carried forward by the commitment to progress the Democratic party represents and by the party as a whole. Progress would be better and surer without party rancor, just because conflicting interests would be more likely to reach salutary adjustment. Who can change this if the voters do not select individuals, of either party, more moderate at least in their forms of expression?

So by all means, vote for that if you cannot bring yourself to vote for a democrat.