There's an ugly but resonant line usually attributed to Joseph Goebbels, but apparently written by the Nazi playwright Hanns Johst, which goes, "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my revolver." And ugly as it is, I am tempted to say that when I hear Democratic consultants, who made millions spinning and strategizing and rainmaking over the last decade, opining about Red State culture and the need for Democrats to break bread at Applebee's to commune with the zeitgeist I'm overcome with a similar feeling.
There is no end of Democrats in Washington and certainly in every state across this country who often eat at Applebee's or Bennigan's or Coco's, and not simply for research purposes.
Nor did they need election disappointment to put them on the case.
And perhaps this is an element of the problem. It's just time for some of these folks to go -- not because they're bad people (though more than a few are opportunists and backstabbers) or they lack expertise but because the party needs some new blood. The lessons of the 70s and 80s or even the 90s are not directly relevant to today.
If you've lived in Washington for any length of time you know it's laughable to imagine that the Republican operators are any less well-heeled or disconnected from lives of most Americans than their Democratic peers. Indeed, increasingly over the last decade, the big torrents of easy money flow into Republican hands. (With Congress under GOP management, business has much less need to hedge its bets.)
But the Democrats do have an aristocracy of operatives --- and the ‘a’ word is appropriate on a number of levels. Some have been around for decades, a few of the best came up with Clinton in 1992, and others came in during the '90s when the getting was good and mistook the power of incumbency for their own skill.
More than anyone or anything else they are the Democratic party. With organized labor as diminished as it is and party organizations at every level less institutions than conduits for political money, these folks are the power-brokers, the institutional memory, most of everything that persists over time, cycle after cycle, long after the race horses (i.e., the candidates) are put out to pasture.
So for all these reasons there is something rich and precious about hearing some of these folks sagely noting how the leadership of 'the party' is out of touch with the Red States when they are the party, when they're the folks who've been in the drivers' seat for years. If there’s a problem and especially if it revolves around being out of touch with the lives of ordinary Americans, then by all means the first place to start is for some of these folks to say a collective, my bad, my time has passed and depart the scene --- especially if their proposed remedies are as clichéd and pathetic as the ones many of them are offering.
The problem for Democrats is not that they don't cite scripture enough or that they don't live for NASCAR, though they do need to be able to appeal to both. Democrats who just tack a few gospel references on to their standard speeches will simply compound losing an election by losing their dignity. That's not a disparagement of religion; it's a recognition that mere pandering will achieve nothing politically and invite deserved ridicule.
Those aren’t the heart of the problem. The difficulty for Democrats today is that they excel at the libretto of politics but have little feel for the score.
Democrats frequently console or rally themselves with the fact that most voters agree with them on individual issues. And then they're mystified when they don't win elections. Sometimes it seems, or people convince themselves, that it's because one candidate is more likable than the other. Some people think that's the case with this just completed presidential election. And perhaps it is to some degree. But the bigger difference is that Democrats don't do anywhere near as good a job at telling a story with their politics.
If you want an example think of a movie with great acting and set-design but no discernible plot.
Yes, you're for this and that policy and you have this, that and the other plan. But what story or picture does it all amount to? What things does it say are important and which things less important? What does it all amount to in terms of who we are as Americans and who we want to be?
I think I can tell you what the Republicans are for and without referencing hardly any policy specifics. They're for lowering taxes in exchange for giving up whatever it is the government pretends to do for us, (at a minimum) riding the brakes on the on-going transformation of American culture, and kicking ass abroad.
That’s a clear message and a fairly coherent one, whatever you think of the content --- it’s about self-reliance and suspicion of change. And Democrats have a hard time competing at that level of message clarity.
What's the Dems' message, boiled down to as few words, and framed in terms simple imperatives and aspirations, rather than policy? And which are the do-or-die issues, and which are expendable?
Nor would it be a simple matter for Dems to compete on the terrain of traditionalism and religiosity. For years I’ve joked about Republicans who find themselves saying, wittingly or not, “Well, we’ve locked up the white racist vote. Now, if we could just get the blacks too, then we’d be cooking with gas!.” As I wrote in an article in the late 90s, “The GOP's problem with minorities isn't incidental; it's fundamental. Any genuine effort to aid minorities or the poor would instantly alienate a substantial portion of the Republican base. It's an electoral bind, inexorable and fixed. The Republicans can't be the party of both black opportunity and anti-black resentment, no matter how big the tent. The Democrats tried it; it didn't work.”
A similar logic applies to the urban vs. rural, modern vs. traditional cleavage that is so apparent in our politics today. I believe as fervently as anyone that the Democrats can’t allow themselves to be seen as the party of irreligion. And Democrats must at least be competitive throughout the Midwest and Southwest, if not necessarily in the core states of the old Confederacy. But let’s not be like the Jack Kemps of the GOP and forget the intensely dynamic nature of coalitional politics.
The Dems did not get 48% of the popular vote for nothing. They got it because of what they were clearly for and clearly against. 48% isn’t enough for the White House or enough to be the country’s majority party. But it’s nothing to sneeze at either. And many changes that would gain Democrats votes in the Red States would lose them votes or unity in the Blue ones.
This doesn’t mean Dems should just stand-pat or be satisfied with what they have. They shouldn’t; indeed, they can’t. It is only to say that there are real limits to how many positions and rhetorical styles Dems can ape to good effect. And it means having a little more respect for themselves, their voters and what they claim to believe in than to collapse into a puddle of self-doubt just because this election didn’t go their way.
--Josh Marshall
Any hired-gun who worked for John Kerry and is now publicly -- subtly or not so subtly -- slipping a shiv in his back: that's someone the Democratic party can do without. Clear the decks.
--Josh Marshall
Spare a moment for this.
It's a page on the Washington Post website. I hate to use a word as banal or cheap as 'interactive'. But it's an interactive page, searchable by dates or name, of every American soldier, sailor, airmen or marine who's been killed in Iraq over the last twenty months or so. Every one. The picture, the name, their age, service, where they were from; how they died.
--Josh Marshall
Radical Cleric, aka Mullah, aka Grand Inquisitor (yes, let's make it that) Grand Inquisitor James Dobson.
Michael Crowley, in Slate, explains for us how the good Dr. Dobson acceded to his new new office, thus becoming headman of all Dobsonists, Dobsonites and even sundry Dobsonians.
--Josh Marshall
Radical cleric Bob Jones' letter to President Bush ...
Dear Mr. <$NoAd$>President:The media tells us that you have received the largest number of popular votes of any president in America's history. Congratulations!
In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.
Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.
Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years—a brief time only—to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God.
Christ said, “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my father honour” (John 12:26).
The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you—that you would do right and honor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.
Best wishes.
Sincerely your friend,
Bob Jones III
President
I guess "let it boil" is the falangist version of "burn, baby, burn."
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for pointing it out.
--Josh Marshall
Like many who share my politics I think there are more than a few reasons to oppose Alberto Gonzales's appointment as Attorney General: his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal being the chief among them.
Having said that, there is less than no chance that he won't be approved. And presidents deserve much more latitude with cabinet appointments than appointments to the bench.
But with all the discussion of why the president chose him and why he may or may not be qualified, I'm surprised one issue seems to go largely unmentioned.
Despite the fact they weren't resolved before the election, high level administration officials are still the targets of or implicated in a number of potentially damaging criminal investigations.
Whether or not he's conservative enough, tolerant or intolerant enough of torture, or anything else, Mr. Gonzales is one thing for President Bush: reliable.
Democrats won't be able to prevent his appointment. But they should take the opportunity of his confirmation hearings to put him on the record about how he will handle these various on-going investigations, at least one of which directly involves the White House and thus also involves him.
--Josh Marshall
Many of you will already have noticed the article in Friday's Post about Robert D. Blackwill, President Bush's recently resigned Iraq policy director at the NSC. The article discusses new allegations that Blackwill berated and manhandled a female staffer from the US Embassy in Kuwait over a ticketing mix-up at Kuwait International Airport last September.
The description of the incident contained in the article speaks for itself; and the piece seems revealingly ambiguous about whether the dust-up played a role in Blackwill's decision to resign his post as Iraq point-man three months before the critical elections in the country scheduled next January.
Something else in the piece caught my eye, however -- a point the authors mention only in passing.
Blackwill has taken a job with the lobbying firm of Barbour Griffith & Rogers.
As you'll recall from our reporting on this matter from September of last year, this is an excellent fit, since BG&R has spent the last couple years making a specialty of the Iraq contracting and logrolling racket.
Last year when President Bush's right-hand-man Joe Allbaugh resigned as FEMA chief and wanted to get into the Iraq business, he went to BG&R, where his wife then worked. They set Allbaugh up as New Bridge Strategies ("your bridge to success in Iraq").
In reality, New Bridge is just the Iraqi money-chase subdivision of BG&R.
New Bridge has four directors -- Allbaugh, John Howland, Ed Rogers and Lanny Griffith. The latter two are Chairman and CEO of BG&R, respectively. When Allbaugh put out the New Bridge shingle, it happened to be at the same address at BG&R, etc., etc.
If you go down the list of principals at New Bridge you'll find most of them work at BG&R.
Admittedly, not all of them: Jamal Daniel is Neil Bush's business partner.
Whatever misunderstanding there was back in Kuwait, I'm sure Blackwill will be in good hands.
--Josh Marshall
Veterans <$NoAd$>Day (from the AP)...
Marine Cpl. David Antonio Garcia stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier Thursday and was sworn in as an American citizen - after already serving under the U.S. flag in Iraq.The native of Mexico was among 80 sailors and Marines from 25 countries - from Canada to Syria - who became citizens in a Veterans Day ceremony aboard the USS Midway, a reward for putting their lives on the line for their adopted country.
The ceremony, watched by more than 100 cheering relatives, came as the nation observed Veterans Day with about 160,000 troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan - some of them locked in fierce house-to-house fighting in Fallujah.
"I wouldn't want to compare myself to World War veterans or Vietnam veterans," said Garcia, 21, who was with combat engineers who cleared the path for tanks to roll into Iraq. "But I feel some of what they must feel today. I know what it's like to leave loved ones and not to know if you will come back."
--Josh Marshall
And more from Mullah Dobson,<$NoAd$> from The Daily Oklahoman, Oct. 23rd, 2004 ...
Dobson warned those attending the Friday afternoon rally at Oklahoma Christian University that the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman must be protected.He cited examples of countries such as Norway that have allowed same-sex couples to marry as proof that fewer men and women get married. Dobson said 80 percent of children are born out of wedlock in Norway.
“Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage,” Dobson said.
“It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”
Dobson urged rally attendees to reach out to homosexuals and “bring them to Jesus.”
He also urged supporters in attendance to fast and pray on the Thursday and weekend before the Nov. 2 election and to go to the polls to elect Coburn to the Senate.
Dobson said a vote for Carson, “even if you think he’s right,” would be a vote for U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.
“Patrick Leahy is a ‘God’s people’ hater,” Dobson said.
“I don’t know if he hates God, but he hates God’s people.”
Dobson said Coburn was exactly the kind of senator Oklahoma needs.
“I am passionate in my support of Dr. Tom Coburn,” Dobson said.
“This man absolutely has to be sent back to Washington.”
Also on hand to support Coburn, U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Warr Acres, said more lawmakers who believe in “the divine origins of the country” are needed.
Mullah James Dobson, as Andrew Sullivan described him, "the social policy director of the Bush administration."
And as for this 'mullah' issue, most folks who wrote in didn't seem to catch that I had already tipped my hand when I wrote that I was "mulling" the question. But everyone who wrote in seemed to agree that it wasn't a problem. One interesting suggestion though was that we might prefer the more precise and non-sectarian phrases sometimes used in the media to describe the sundry Dobsonites and Dobsonians of the Middle East.
So for instance, we might say "radical cleric James Dobson." Or since, Dobson is not himself a man of the cloth, we might say 'radical cleric Pat Robertson.'
--Josh Marshall
"It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely ... Two or three stinging strokes on the legs or buttocks with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, 'You must obey me.'" -- Mullah (James) Dobson, from Dare to Discipline and The Strong-Willed Child.
I know not everyone who reads these pages will find those words troubling. And I also realize that social mores on this question have changed greatly over the last half-century.
But -- and this isn't a criticism so much as a point of genuine curiosity -- I would be very curious to know the correlation between Blue/Red voting patterns and those who do or do not find those sorts of attitudes towards corporal punishment of children troubling or acceptable.
I suspect the correlation is pronounced.
--Josh Marshall
Recently I suggested that the key strength for the Republicans (and weakness for the Dems) is the elasticity of their coalition. By that I meant the GOP's ability to field winning candidates in the Blue states, notwithstanding the unpopularity of Republicans from other parts of the country. The same doesn't seem true for Democrats, as the very poor results for a series of Red State Senate candidates last Tuesday showed.
But perhaps I haven't looked at the roll call enough recently.
Of the ten biggest states in the country, 6 are Blue (California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey). Four are Red, but two of those are the main swing states (Texas, Florida, Ohio and Georgia).
Of the twelve senators from those six states, only two are Republicans (Specter and Santorum). And that makes a certain amount of sense since Pennsylvania is the most contested Blue State on that list.
This would seem to suggest that the North, or rather the Blue States, are going through a similar process to what we're seeing in the South.
But there are two problems in this for the Dems. Actually, more than two. But let's focus on two.
All through its history, the South has tended towards one-party-dom. So I doubt senate seats in the Blue states will ever be as free of contest as some are in the South.
Secondly, that list above dramatizes an important problem for the Democrats. Of the ten largest states, five are clearly Blue, three are Purple swing states, and only two are clearly Red. And one of those two Red states, Georgia, is number ten. In other words, if Blue and Red states vote to form in Senate races, that's not good news for Dems, since the Blue states tend to be larger* than the Red ones.
* [ed.note: Here we are using 'larger' in the secular, Blue State sense of the word to refer to people rather than acres.]
--Josh Marshall
From the mailbag ...
Subject: Mullah DobsonWhy is it so acceptable to use Muslim religious titles and institutions as a slur against religious conservatives? This clearly conveys an anti-Islamic message as well as an anti-Dobson one.
I'm mulling it.
[ed. note: At Brian U.'s ex post facto request, I've linked his name to his blog.]
--Josh Marshall
A Specter is haunting the 'Wingerdom ...
Actually, speaking of Sen. Specter, I want to make one point clear. Nothing I've written here should give anyone the impression that I feel any particular sympathy or concern for him in this brouhaha. He's very much made his bed. And I'm happy to see him sleep in it or, as the case may be, lose the privilege of sleeping in it, seniority notwithstanding.
I would even say that I would prefer to see him removed from his (entitled) post as Judiciary Committee Chair rather than see him accede to it.
Allow me to explain why.
First, this is not a case where I'm hoping for things to get worse ("heighten the contradictions", so to speak) so that they can get better. Not at all.
If I thought he would provide any moderating influence over the choice of Judicial Nominees in the next two or four years I would very much want him there. But everything that has happened over the last week (his public round of begging to be allowed to keep his post) suggests that he has been so thoroughly gelded that he will be a push-over for any and all nominees the White House might send up.
(If the White House is smart -- as I suspect they are but hope they're not -- they'll keep him right where he is since they have him right where they want him.)
I've heard it suggested that all he needs to do is get the gavel in his hand and then he can start to exert his own more moderate judicial philosophy, given that it would be much harder to strip a chairman of his post than deny it to him in the first instance. But little in Specter's background suggests to me that that is likely. And, to be frank, the current Bush-Frist axis doesn't seem like a team that is particularly hung up on procedure. Since they're already threatening to end the filibuster rules, I don't see why they would hesitate to strip Specter of the gavel the first time he tried to derail a particularly right-wing nominee.
In other words, I think Specter has already lost the job, whether he takes up the position nominally or not. If he becomes Chairman he'll hold the post at the sufferance of Mullah Dobson and the rest of the shura.
Given all that, better to have him stripped of the position since it would send a clear signal to the rest of the GOP moderates that their own power is equally contingent and their own status equally endangered.
--Josh Marshall
I've always been a rather staunch small-'c' conservative when it comes to the federal constitution. The fact that we now have a 27th amendment covering the weighty and statecraft-worthy issue of how congress can raise its salary strikes me as close to a secular sacrilege. But I'm starting to warm to the idea of abolishing the electoral college.
My problem with it isn't that it's undemocratic, at least not in the sense that the winner of the popular vote can lose the election. That's a very big problem, certainly; but I think it will continue to be a relatively rare occurrence. The problem is that it makes the votes of too many Americans into an irrelevancy or a mere exercise in symbolism.
Folks in DC experience this reality more than anyone. But if you're living in Texas or New York or California or Alabama, national elections are really just a spectator sport. It's all about a half dozen or so swing-states and recently it all comes down to Florida and Ohio. If you really want to get involved you travel to a swing state to knock on the doors of those privileged few whose votes actually matter.
That's a bad state of affairs for all sorts of reasons. So maybe it's time to change it.
I know arguments for the electoral college. And though I'm constitutionally averse to mucking around with the pillars and cross-beams of the state, they don't seem to amount to much in comparison to its shortcomings.
The antique rationale of giving added weight to the votes of Americans who live in tiny states seems wholly unjustifiable today -- especially since the ratio of population difference between the largest and the smallest states is vastly greater than it was when the system was created. Besides, isn't it enough that they're already so overrpresented in the Senate?
The best contemporary argument for maintaining the EC is that it forces a lot of retail politicking and compels candidates to mount campaigns that do justice to the country's state and regional particularism. Without the EC, there'd never be any reason to go to the smaller states or even get out and do any barnstorming at all. National elections could become a vaster version of elections in California (my home state) where campaigns are waged entirely by 30 second ad.
The small state argument is obviously defunct since most of the small states aren't swing states and no candidates ever go to them. Did you see the candidates a lot in Wyoming? Idaho? Were you at that big rally in Alaska? I didn't think so.
New Hampshire is the exception. But no one goes there because it's small. They go there because it's teetering on the edge of Blue-state-dom. And as it continues to trend Blue, as I believe it will, candidates won't show up there anymore either.
The other argument -- that it forces candidates to focus in on individual political communities like South Florida or Wisconsin or Western Pennsylvania -- doesn't really hold up either, I don't think. Why do they get all the attention? What about California and Chicago or Upstate New York? Why do they get cut out of the action?
Had this last election been a truly national election, both candidates would have spent a good deal of their time trying to churn up enthusiasm and turnout in their core regions, not just begging and pleading in regions where their support is marginal.
Why is it, for instance, that Bush supporters in Upstate New York or Southern Illinois can't make their voices heard? Or Kerry supporters in New Orleans or South Texas?
I'm not doctrinaire on this issue. In fact, I'd say I've only recently come to this position. So I'd be eager to hear what others think and perhaps I'll change my mind. I'm sure there would be various unimagined consequences to the change, for good or ill, that are difficult to foresee. So I'm putting this out less in the mode of advocacy than to generate a discussion.
But for the moment why should there not be a movement to place the electoral college on the ballot in states that allow referenda? This couldn't be done directly, of course. But in most states that allow initiatives and referenda there could at least be ballot measures instructing their state legislatures to go on the record endorsing the abolition of the electoral college.
It would have no direct effect. An amendment to the constitution must first be approved by two-thirds majorities in the both the House and the Senate before states can ratify the amendment and write it into the constitution. But it would put states on record, informally at least, as supporting the change. And doing so would inject the question into the national political debate.
--Josh Marshall
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."
That and other delicious morsels from John Ashcroft's handwritten letter of resignation.
Why handwritten? "I have handwritten this letter so its confidentiality can be maintained until the appropriate arrangements mentioned above can be made."
I guess things haven't gone so well since Richard Clarke left the cybersecurity post ...
--Josh Marshall
From the mailbag ...
What makes me uncomfortable in all this red state/blue state talk is that people like me who happen to be liberal in a red state just don't seem to count. We get written off because we're surrounded by conservatives.I live in Kentucky. Kentucky went 60/40 for Bush. But 40% is a fairly
sizable minority.My family, my husband's too, have lived here in Kentucky since the early
19th century. We have very deep roots. Is our only hope to pull up and
move to Massachusetts?I was raised a Southern Baptist but so were Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al
Gore.Most of my family are old-time Roosevelt Democrats but I have two brothers
and some young nephews who voted for Bush. They can be pretty patronizing
but they're not evil.I don't know. I worry that this red/blue dichotomy is as oversimplifying
as the black/white one.Sherry C.
More responses on this <$NoAd$>topic later.
--Josh Marshall
Apropos of the previous post, take a look, if you can bear it, at this example of a fringe-right spasm of hatred committed to print at Human Events Online.
[ed.note: Courtesy of a link from Atrios, though I'm not sure whether to thank him or hold it against him.]
--Josh Marshall
A few years ago, before the 2000 election, I did a lot of research for what I thought might be a long article or a book on the cultural and social distinctiveness of what we now call Blue and Red America. One motivating interest of mine at the time was a widespread perception in at least a segment of elite public opinion that the Red States were the source of the country’s moral ballast.
‘Elite’ has many meanings. But here I was thinking of the talking heads on the Sunday shows, the best-read newspaper columnists, authors of well-read books and so forth. It was certainly the self-perception of the political voices of Red State America (Remember Newt Gingrich’s claim that Susan Smith, who murdered her two young sons in South Carolina and then tried to pin the blame on a black man, was a product of the Great Society.) But what struck me even more was that it was a perception shared by many --- at least many of the elite opinion-makers of the sort I discussed above --- in Blue America.
It was a window into an odd sort of self-loathing or self-critique that interested me greatly.
The oddity of this Red State moralism argument emerges most clearly when you look at statistics for virtually every form of quantifiable social dysfunction. Divorce, out-of-wedlock birth, poverty, murder, incidence of preventable disease --- go down the list and you’ll see that they are all highest in the reddest states and lowest in the bluest.
There are exceptions certainly --- the Prairie states being the key examples. But the pattern is striking and consistent.
The issue that interested me most were the statistics on murder, in part because they seemed to have the most interesting historical roots. Murder rates are also least affected by cultural bias. For instance, non-reporting of rape varies widely from country to country and region to region. The same can be true of assault. Murder, on the other hand, tends to get reported, regardless of the cultural context.
Thankfully, murder rates in the United States have dropped rapidly over the last decade. But the regional patterns remain. Broadly speaking, New England and the parts of the country originally settled by New Englanders have low murder rates --- some only a fraction of the national averages. The South on the other hand, and the parts of the country originally settled by Southerners, have higher murder rates. (The highest homicide rates are in the Old Southwest --- Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.)
The regional patterns get even more interesting when you drill down deeper into them.
Commonsense would probably tell most of us that big cities have higher murder rates than suburbs and small towns. And that’s true. But not everywhere. In the North and in much of Blue State America, for instance, big cities have higher rates of homicide. But in the South the pattern is turned on its head. The murder rate is highest in the small towns and rural areas.
Digging deeper still we find another difference --- though here the evidence becomes a bit murkier and less definitive. In the North, where murder rates are higher in urban centers, they tend to track with the commission of felonies.
In other words, people get killed by people who are in the process of committing felonies --- whether those be drug sales, muggings, robberies gone bad, organized crime, or something else. But in the Southern states, where murder rates are higher in small towns and rural areas, this isn’t the case. Rather than happening in the process of committing other crimes, these murders tend to be rooted in what are best described as violations of honor, personal slights that escalate into violence or in the simplest sense, rage.
The role of honor, or rather status and respect, caught my attention because it dovetailed with issues I’d dealt with in my academic research in graduate school --- comparisons between how the early northern and southern colonies were organized in the 17th and 18th centuries, really obscure stuff like how violence was used to organize society and discipline labor.
In any case, with the regional political cleavages so marked now and apparently even more entrenched than before, it got me to thinking over these issues again, about the historical roots of the cultural cleavages we now see before us.
I want to return to that point. But let me finish this post on a slightly different, but related, note.
Coming out of this election we hear again and again that folks in the Blue states have to give up their attitude of condescension toward those in the Red. The story comes in different flavors and intensities, ranging from admonitions to ‘reach out’ to folks in the Red states to more acidy claims that folks in the Blue states need to get over their alleged hatred of religion and Red state culture.
At some level, something like this is certainly necessary. I can do the math as well as anyone. And what these last two elections have shown (particularly this last one) is that if the country is divided more or less evenly, that ‘more or less’ isn’t working in our (i.e., the Blue states) favor. We’re in the minority for the moment, even if it’s a close run thing. And Democrats can’t keep going into elections in which so many states are simply out of play. As I wrote a couple days ago, Democrats need to find a way to put a good half dozen more states into play in every election.
Yet, the immediate political question isn’t the only one to discuss.
The talking point about Red State ‘culture’ is often bandied about as though the Red States were the only ones which had one --- as though the Blue States were living in some deracinated post-cultural secular-dom. But at the risk of stating the obvious the Blue states --- to the extent we can talk in such broad brush strokes --- have one too.
You can define it in a variety of ways. I’d say it’s based in modernity and tolerance. But once you see it in that light, is it simply a matter of the Blue States having an attitude of condescension toward the Red ones? The country has become sufficiently divided that there is a good deal of mistrust and animosity on both sides. And I think it is fair to say that that ill-will on the part of the Blue state America does sometimes express itself as condescension.
But the bad feeling of Red State America toward the Blue is just as often expressed as contempt, moral denunciation or simple rage. To the extent that one hears Blue Staters dissing Red Staters as holy-rolling trailer park denizens, the Red staters routinely portray their fellow countrymen as corrupt, deviant, rootless perverts who express their flipflopper-dom by oscillating between being limp-wristed whiners on the one hand and signing up to work for Osama bin Laden as terrorist fifth-columnists on the other.
All joking aside, I don't think either side in the Blue-State/Red-State face off has a monopoly on unkind views of the other, though given the 51%-48% it is a more pressing concern for those on the Blue parts of the map.
--Josh Marshall
In our continuing effort to bring you examples of the sort of wing-nuts and fanatics who now sit in the councils of power in Washington, note this exchange yesterday between George Stephanopoulos and James Dobson on This Week, shortly before Dobson and a hand full of his followers dragged George out to Desales Street and burned him at the stake ...
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Dr. Dobson, you also have a problem with the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy. I want to show something that was reported in "The Daily Oklahoman" during the campaign. In the "Daily Oklahoman," it quoted you saying, "Patrick Leahy is a God's people hater. I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people." Now, Dr. Dobson, that doesn't sound like a particularly Christian thing to say. Do you think you owe Senator Leahy an apology?DR JAMES DOBSON: George, you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about? You know, I think -I think I'll stand by the things I have said. Patrick Leahy has been in opposition to most of the things that I believe. He is the one that took the reference to God out of the oath.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: But Dr. Dobson, excuse me for a second. You use the word hate. You said that he's a "God's people hater." How do you back that up?
DR JAMES DOBSON: Well, there's been an awful lot of hate expressed in this election. And most of it has been aimed at those who hold to conservative Christian views. He is certainly not the only one to take a position like that. But
I think that that is -that's where he's coming from. He has certainly
opposed most of the things that conservative Christians stand for.GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apology?
DR JAMES DOBSON: No apology.
Okay, admittedly, I do not have any conclusive evidence that <$NoAd$>George was burned at the stake.
But have you seen George since Sunday's show?
I didn't think so ...
--Josh Marshall
Another measure of the Bush landslide.
President Bush won reelection last Tuesday with 286 electoral votes (over Kerry's 252).
That is the second lowest electoral margin for the winning candidate since 1916 when Woodrow Wilson beat Charles Evans Hughes by a margin of 277 to 254.
(ed. note: Between 1900 and 1912, the size of the electoral college went from 447 to 531 -- only seven fewer than there are today. So comparisons to elections more than one hundred years ago don't work unless the electoral spread is judged in percentage terms.)
And what was the lowest margin? President Bush four years ago with 271.
Now, having said this, I don't want to give people the impression that I'm ignoring the reality of the Republican victory. I'm not. To me, the most troublesome sign about last week's results for the Democrats was less the presidency than the losses in the Senate. And the issue there is what I would call the continuing geographical elasticity of the Republican coalition and the relative inelasticity of the Democrats'. (Ed Kilgore has a good discussion of the reasons for hope and worry in this post at his NewDonkey site today.)
We'll be talking more about that. But what I mean by that clunky phrasing is that Republican senators can still often run and win in blue states despite the unpopularity of the national Republican party in those states. But Democrats have a far harder time doing the same thing -- as Daschle, Bowles, Tenenbaum, Castor and Knowles found out to their dismay.
This is not simply a matter of bad candidates or poorly waged campaigns. It's a pattern that Democrats need to grapple with -- and, unfortunately, it's one that echoes into national and House elections as well.
That aside, Republicans are pushing this decisive victory meme to create a climate of presidential entitlement, an atmosphere in which President Bush not only won the presidency but with it an effective right to dictate the terms of major legislation because of the scope and breadth of his victory.
Given that fact, it seems worth pointing out that this election, rather than being a decisive win or a "landslide", was actually, by every objective measure, one of the half dozen or so closest presidential contests in modern American history, along with 1876, 1916, 1960, 1968 and 1976.
--Josh Marshall
A good run-down of the day's events from the summary section of today's Nelson Report ...
SUMMARY: is there an object lesson for North Korea and the 6 Party talks as Iran seems ready to make a deal on at least freezing its nuclear program? A combination of hard work by European diplomats, the results of the US presidential election, and a convergence of US/Euro negotiating positions seems to have resulted in solid progress in defusing the Iranian nuclear weapons crisis. Previously skeptical US observers report optimism that a “realistic” European position has narrowed the differences which kept the Bush Administration at arms’ length, just last month. So the US is now more active than before, not just letting the Euros do it all. Big question remains...what can Iran “really say ‘yes’ to?” Secretary of State Powell will meet the Iranians Nov. 22-23, and is expected to offer to lift some important bilateral sanctions, in return for Iran’s announcement it’s ready to suspend uranium enrichment “indefinitely”. Bush not likely to OK complete lifting of ILSA sanctions, but a quiet deal not to enforce it against European companies may be enough to move to the next level. In any event, a Powell deal on the 23d would head off an immediate sanctions vote crisis if the IAEA had to refer all this to the UN Security Council. Longer run, some observers warn Iran is not really giving up its nuclear weapons ambitions, but is trading temporary concessions for badly needed aircraft parts, investment money, etc. So at worst (for Iranian bomb supporters) Teheran has brought some time, and potentially opened a big rift between Europe and the US if things fall through because of a tough US line which neither China nor Russia would support, in any event.Gossip: nothing solid yet, but business community sources are buzzing that every Republican’s favorite free trade Democrat, Rep. Cal Dooley, of California, is a good bet to succeed Bob Zoellick at USTR. Dooley would not appease House Dems, who consider themselves international human rights victims, at this point. But the press and public certainly could be expected to see the symbolism of President Bush putting into practice his promise, last week, of a more sincerely bipartisan approach for his second term. Where is Zoellick going? Some say he’s hoping to land a private sector CEO’s position, and will keep his eye on future hopes at Treasury.
Supreme Court...the Drudge Report’s Sunday item that Bush is seriously thinking of Clarence Thomas for Chief Justice is not taken seriously...and if advanced, would stiffen the backbone of every Democrat, and not a few Republicans. Smart money remains on Justice O’Connor for Chief. In meantime, it’s still not clear if Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter has talked himself out of the Judiciary Committee chairmanship by daring to warn about not overturning Roe v. Wade, then backtracking, frantically.
Frantically, <$NoAd$>indeed.
--Josh Marshall
I keep returning again and again to this issue of the comical overstatement of the Republican victory last Tuesday. But let me just hit at least once on two of the silliest talking points of those pushing this argument.
First is the argument, voiced by Mr Cheney and others, that President Bush won with more popular votes than any president in history. A truly silly point. Yes, the president got more popular votes than any other candidate in history. He is followed by John Kerry. And Kerry is followed by Ronald Reagan and Al Gore, in that order.
The fact that the president got more popular votes than anybody in the past isn't a measure of the margin of his victory. It's a measure of population growth, which (unless he's more of a bounder than we know) he is not responsible for, and a high-turnout election, for which his unpopularity is as responsible as his popularity.
And please, no more of this nonsense about how the president's crushing victory is plainly shown by just how much red there is on the map.
As in this flourish from Robert J. Caldwell in the San Diego Union-Tribune ...
From California's border to the Atlantic coast and from Canada to Mexico, the political map of the United States is awash in Republican red. A once dominant Democratic Party is now largely confined to three enclaves: the Northeast, a thin fringe along the Pacific coast and the upper Midwest (where shrinking majorities put the Democrats' hold there increasingly at risk). Almost everything else is Republican.
I'm tempted to say that this hearkens back to that age-old debate between 'one man, one vote' and 'one acre, one vote', but I'll spare us all the agony because, as it happens, there actually was such a debate. Presumably it does not require mentioning that the relative absence of blue on the electoral maps for an election in which the blue-state candidate won 48% of the vote points to the fact that the blue areas are so heavily populated.
(Here is a map, for instance, in which geography is weighted to population size.)
Pointing out the foolishness of this mandate talk is important and has a purpose, just as those advancing it do so with a very specific goal.
I've been making the point mainly with derision and humor. But if you'd like to read a more serious-minded take on the subject, check out this instructive new piece on this topic by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson in The New Republic.
--Josh Marshall
Maybe the most telling shot across the bow of Arlen Specter came yesterday from a man who hasn't even been sworn in yet as a senator: Sen-elect John Thune, the man who will succeed Tom Daschle.
Here are Thune's comments from yesterday on This Week, as reprinted in the Frontrunner, when asked if he would support Specter for the Judiciary Committee Chairmanship ...
I think all that's going to be decided...next week when we get in for orientation and as the leadership begins to make committee assignments. There's some proposals about changing the rules to give the leaders more latitude when it comes to making those types of assignments. The seniority system in the Senate is something that's worked for a long time, but I do -- I am troubled by what Senator Specter said. And I think he quickly, as you noticed, came back and said that he had misspoke. ... My assumption is that, if he's going to be the person that's going to be set forward by the leadership, that we'll all support him. ... But I think it's going to depend upon an understanding from many of us, particularly new members, the freshmen who are coming in, who are concerned about the things that he said and were, many of us, elected, you know, because we spoke about the importance of judges and having judges on the bench who are going to be judges who interpret and apply the Constitution, the laws of the United States. So I suspect there's going to be -- there will be some questions asked by those of us who are coming in as freshmen who ran our campaigns and built around that very central theme that we need to have good judges on the bench.
The question now, I think, is less whether Specter will keep his chairmanship through this process as whether he'll hold on to any of his remaining <$NoAd$>dignity.
And it doesn't look too promising.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a story that pulls together a slew of questions we'll be watching closely over the next weeks and months.
Remember that just after his reelection, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) suggested that President Bush should be cautious in nominating doctrinaire pro-life judges after he becomes Judiciary Committee Chair next year. Specter is outspokenly pro-choice.
Soon after, however, Specter was volubly protesting his fealty to the president and insisting he'd give the go-ahead to more or less anybody the president nominated to the bench.
Evidently, in the interim, Specter got a call letting him know that if he wanted the Judiciary Committee Chairmanship, he'd better recant. And quickly. And so he did.
At this point, to use judicial jargon, the White House had already forced Specter to enter into a non-custodial relationship with his testicles. But now the ante is being upped.
James Dobson, one of the most powerful leaders of the religious right, now says he doesn't want Specter as Chairman no matter what. "He is a problem," said Dobson, "and he must be derailed."
I have a hard time believing that Specter will actually be turned aside while he is so loudly protesting his willingness to toe the party line. But it puts even more pressure on Specter to be a down-the-line supporter of every judicial nominee the president sends up to the Hill.
This raises two issues. First, how much room will remain for the moderate GOP senators and how much freedom will they have to deviate from the White House line which, predictably, is now moving even more decisively to the right. Second, how much de facto control will the White House and the president have over the internal governance of the senate under Bill Frist? Who chairs what committees? What rules get or don't get changed, etc.?
--Josh Marshall
A couple days ago, I wrote that I believe "Hillary Clinton never should and probably (hopefully) never will run for president." And a number of you have asked, why?
I have two basic reasons, one principled, another pragmatic.
Before we get to those, however, I should note that I wrote close to the same thing almost four years ago in an article in Slate about why the Hillary for President idea was fanciful verging on ridiculous. And, on top of that, I'm a fan of hers. I don't buy into any of the Hillary-bashing myths.
(At first, I believed that only journalists and Republicans were fueling the Hillary for Prez line. But eventually I learned that there were actually some Clinton insiders who believed and wanted it to happen.)
But back to the two reasons.
First, I don't like the idea of the presidency becoming the private preserve of a few chosen families. It's bad for democracy, even if a given individual might have much to recommend him or her as a candidate.
Since many are now talking up the possibility of Jeb Bush running for president in 2008, that opens up at least the theoretical possibility that one family could hold the White House for most of a 28 year period (1989-2017). Whether you're a Republican or Democrat, Bush-lover or Bush-hater, that can't be good for republican government in the United States.
(Much is made of the father-and-son presidencies of John (1797-1801) and John Quincy Adams (1825-29). Much less is made of the fact that they were, in effect, members of different political parties.)
As big a fan as I am of Bill Clinton, I'd be against another Clinton family presidency even if there weren't a Bush family. But given that we're now two President Bushes and counting, it makes it all the more important for Democrats to be clear on the principle at issue. A (Hillary) Clinton v. (Jeb) Bush grudge match in 2008 would be a sign of all sorts of sclerotic tendencies in American politics.
Now, to the second reason, the one I focused most on in that Jan. 2000 article in Slate. And that would be, 'Are you kidding?'
Let's be honest, Hillary Clinton is a deeply divisive figure. And if there's one thing Democrats have learned in this and the previous election it is the danger of going into a national election with a candidate who cannot even get a real hearing over a large swath of the country.
As I wrote in that Slate article ...
Gore won virtually all the Northeast, all the West Coast, and nearly all the Industrial Midwest, but failed to win any other state except New Mexico. What did him in in the rest of the country was cultural liberalism—support for gun control, abortion rights, and gay rights. This handicap was particularly evident in Appalachia—West Virginia, Tennessee, western Pennsylvania, and southeastern Ohio. And who is more identified with cultural liberalism, Al Gore or Hillary Clinton?
Nothing about 2004 changes that calculus at all, I think. But I would add only this slight gloss on that point.
My point here is not that Democrats need to ditch support for any of those three positions. Nor do I think that the lesson of 2004 is that Democrats need to 'move to the right' or restrict the next nomination cycle to guys born beneath the Mason-Dixon line.
But the electoral fault line running through the country is now quite clear. And, for Democrats, if winning the presidency is to be anything other than the political equivalent drawing an inside straight, the party needs to put a good half dozen more states into play next time around.
(I should say that this would apply even if Kerry had won Ohio and the election.)
The point is that on Hillary Clinton, the cement is already dry. On the cultural fault-line that has played such a clear role in the last two elections, perceptions of her are already set.
Nominating Hillary would simply mean that Democrats would be going into the election with one hand tied -- no chained -- behind their back. And as we've seen, they need at least two hands.
--Josh Marshall
Also worth noting is this article in today's Post on Rove's strategy and victory. There's a lot in here that is simply the winning team's version of events -- clever gambits that would have seemed foolish had the result turned out differently. But they didn't turn out differently. And it's worth understanding why and how they believe they did it.
--Josh Marshall
Grant President Bush his due. He's the first president since his father to win the office with a majority of the popular vote. President Clinton, who ran twice in three-way races, came very close (49.2%) in 1996, but never did.
Yet I'm interested in collecting a list of the most ludicrous overstatements of the scope of the president's victory.
The president himself made a good start of it by calling his win a "broad nationwide victory."
So far the best I've come up with is from is from investment advice columnist Donald Luskin who says that President Bush won reelection in a "landslide."
Have any other good ones? Drop me a line and let me know.
--Josh Marshall
One small silver lining to last week's election result is that it will take away at least some of the election year paralysis over Iraq.
I think there was actually far less disagreement over the course of events in Iraq than election rhetoric would lead one to believe. Democrats grasped on to everything that was going wrong (and it wasn't hard to find things). And most Republicans did the opposite, since to criticize the conduct of the war, they felt, was to criticize the president on his way to a tight reelection contest.
I don't necessarily expect the administration's tune to change in any way. But I'll be watching congressional Republicans to see if and when they start changing their tunes and begin looking for ways to clean up the mess that's been created over there.
We'll probably also start to get a fuller and clearer accounting of various messes in the country that the White House managed to keep hushed up until after the election. Like this story in yesterday's Times about at least 4,000 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles from Iraq's pre-war arsenal that have apparently also gone missing.
--Josh Marshall
