"So Long Marianne" - Leonard Cohen and Friends
(This song just popped into my head for some reason.)
- As I alluded to in comments, this David Brooks piece was really too much. I was particularly taken by his notion of multi-generational grittiness, a kind of immigrant DNA that is evidently handed down to the right kind of people -- people like Mitt Romney, who is just a step removed from hearty pioneers and immigrant coal miners. (As someone who has spent a small chunk of his career trying to deal with sons who have driven their fathers' construction companies into the ground, I nearly spit my coffee out at this notion -- the name Paris Hilton also immediately jumped to mind.) The only thing that matters about Romney is that he has shown the work ethic and persistence of the salt of the earth working man types of which Brooks has heard tell.
His wealth is, according to Brooks, a sideshow. No one cares that he pays a 15% tax rate on his eight figure income or that he has up to $100 million in his freakin' IRA (really??!!), or that he is off-shoring some part of his considerable fortune in the Cayman Islands. No, this hard working white man, this starched-shirt striver, is just what the zeitgeist demands.
To which I say, keep telling yourself that story David.
Evidently, the people of South Carolina -- the most beautiful people in the world -- are not buying what Romney is selling. According to Nate, Gingrich has an 87% chance of winning there. We really can't be that lucky, can we?
We got an inch of snow last night and it's a little bit icy, so an excellent day to hang around and see what's going on in South Carolina.
Whats doing with you?
A little liveblogging update: MSNBC has already called it for Gingrich, CNN just showed exit polls with Gingrich up by 9%, and Fox News has also called it for Gingrich. This is surely good news for John McCain.
David Gergen just referred to Newt Gingrich as an "alpha male." Only in the odd world of Republican politics. In my world, he would have been the guy whose lunch money would have been up for grabs on a daily basis.
There have been some questions about whether there would be a gender gap in Gingrich's results given his dubious record in matters marital. My previous research on gender gaps in voting showed very little historical difference between southern white women and men. (And the South Carolina Republican primary is virtually all white.) This is not the case in the northeast or northwest where white men and women often diverge by a good 10-15% in their voting (by which I mean, for example [from memory] 67% of white women in Rhode Island voted for Obama, while only 50% of the white men there did]. There is a slight gender gap between black men and women, with men voting about 90% Democratic and women about 95%.
Gingrich's victory strikes me as a triumph of his ability to tap into the southern Republican Id-- a place where the "food stamps president" line is deemed a virtue. And once again this seems to stem from a fantasy that in a debate Gingrich will give Obama the ass-kicking that the fraudulent teleprompter addict deserves.
A couple of more things: First, on MSNBC they were discussing the exit polls that showed Gingrich beating Romney on the question of electability by ten points. This is a nightmare for Romney -- electability is his strongest argument in many respects. (It also indicates how delusional South Carolinian Republicans are -- at least in my estimation.) Second, they are noting, contra Brooks, how much the tax issue may have hurt Romney. I am guessing it did , even with this constituency.
Mitt is speaking and basically ignoring the result, making a perfunctory nod to Gingrich, and then launching into the identical anti-Obama speech that he gave when he won in New Hampshire. Strange. And it really is replete with lie upon lie. He is a contemptible sonofabitch. Oh wait, he has added a CODA attacking the idea of a candidate who has never run a business or a state. And now he is condeming the frontal assault on the free enterprise system by his Republican opponents. "We celebrate success in this party." "Those who pick up the weapons of the left today will find them turned against them tomorrow." You flatter us Mitt. He accuses Gingrich (not by name) of demonizing success and disparaging the free market. He cannot be too happy though. A week ago he looked to have this thing sewn up -- now he will need to spend more money and take more hits. I still think it will be him, but how long this thing will go on remains to be seen.
This is a huge loss for Romney. He got trounced and is bleeding from every orfice. If Gingrich can somehow take Florida, there is going to be panic all over the GOP establishment.
AND STILL MORE:
So a 14 point win for Gingrich and Romney stuck at 27% -- numbers that are really chilling for those in the Republican Party who understand just how toxic Gingrich would be in a general election. The question is whether Gingrich can get enough people to open their wallets for him. If he can, God help Mitt, who I suspect is going to be writing checks to make sure that Santorum stays in the race a bit longer. If Santorum drops out, this thing is wide open again.
Speaking of which, I remain baffled by the decision of the religous right groups attempting to rally around Santorum. Why would you take a chance on a fairly marginal campaign at this moment -- in the process exposing your weakness and inability to actually deliver your vote.
A couple of other things. This was the first race in which it appears that Romney's Mormonism seemed to hurt him. I'm not sure if this will prove an isolated event or will prove to be an issue in other southern states. If so, it's pretty fascinating. Basically, there's a group of evangelical voters who would prefer a thrice married, Catholic convert who is a serial adulterer to a solid family man who is also a Mormon.
One wrinkle in the Florida campaign is that there has been considerable early voting. This will almost certainly help Romney, although to what degree is difficult to say.
Romney had been making noises about skipping a debate next week in Florida. I am guessing that that isn't going to happen now.
And he is most certainly going to have to release his taxes soon. The issue is not going to go away and I think Gingrich will be more than willing to slap him around on this if he doesn't cough them up -- which will also mean that he can't wait until his 2011 taxes are filed. He will have to come up with an earlier and no doubt less carefully prepared return for public consumption.
Sir C: I've been posting local updates on the previous thread that I will continue here. Summing up: Voting is very heavy, with some precincts reporting 75%+ of the 2008 Republican totals. All the polls show a massive Gingrich surge and possibly a ten-point win. The weather, though, gives a slight boost to Romney, since i is raining -- with the threat of tornadoes -- in the more Conservative parts of the state.
I linked to the major newspaper, The State in the last thread, where I'm getting the info from.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 12:15 PM
Thanks Jim.
I just updated with Nate Silver's prediction of a Gingrich victory. He puts his chances at 82%. And when Nate speaks, we all should listen.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 12:19 PM
here is the state, based in columbia, the state capital. and here is the post and courier , in charleston.
S.C. has an open primary -- so it is possible that democrats and independents are also voting. i haven't seen any discussion of the wild card potential if non-GOP are turning out in numbers.
this is a state with a modest population. whatever the percentages when the votes are counted, it's still only going to be a tiny fraction of voters nationally. (this is why the republican primary is being held so early in S.C. -- so it's voice will have a greater impact, since everybody pays so much attention to the early primaries.)
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 12:37 PM
The key to Romney's saving face might turn out to be the 'open primary' factor. He'll claim the Gingrich surge was caused by Democratic cross-overs, and that he won the 'real Republicans.' Somehow I doubt that exit polls will agree, but when has Reality and Romney made a compatible couple?
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 12:45 PM
if newt wins, he will make the mistake of gloating about it and believing he has been anointed. but i could very easily see democrats pulling the lever for newt, counting on his record and personal attributes to push things in obama's favor come fall.
exit polls are unlikely to reveal the extent to which protest voting is happening.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 01:11 PM
I wrpte my comment before seeing yours. Sure there will be some Democratic mischief-making. But the main votes against Romney will be from Republicans -- later, after a nap, I'll be quoting a long but brilliant letter in the P&C on a very average person's view of Romney -- and the DNC should look into quoting it.
One last look around before the nap:
Nothing major new. I expect a record turnout, Gingrich at 40% and the other three bunched so that no more than 5% separates 2-4. I don't expect even #2 to pass 20%, because of the Cain votes and others for dropped out candidates -- and not just from Dems. As always hard to judge Paul's support from the paper because Paulistas are crazy but literate and talkative. My uess he comes in 4th, and that Santorum just squeezes past Romney.
Later, all.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 01:53 PM
SC, just got around to that brooks piece. how utterly preposterous.
one of the convenient things about extraordinary wealth is that it makes everything so much easier. a person can really shine if they do not have to spend most of their time trying to feed and house their families; if they do not have to deal with all those tiresome tasks that can otherwise be done by the help; if they have both the time and the money to pursue a fine education; if they have the cash to "invest" in cash-making enterprises. all the better if they do not have to pay anything like the taxes paid by their employees!
it's also pretty darned weird to credit romney with tenacity, but offer as examples the challenges faced by ancestors he never knew.
brooks's praise is a slap at every family that struggles to survive despite obstacles. all over the country are families with parents working hard to earn little, then going home to cook and clean and do homework with the kids; who worry someone will get sick, because they can't afford the time off and/or can't afford the medical care; who try to raise their kids right; who also worry about their elders, and other family members. who worry about job security; who worry about their kids' educations, and then about them finding jobs at all.
some of these families face even stronger challenges: medical catastrophe; unemployment; lack of transportation; abandonment; abuse; dangerous neighborhoods; not enough money for food. on and on.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 03:55 PM
I mentioned this earlier. It was a letter posted to the CHARLESTON POST AND COURIER this morning, and it is perfect a description of the personal -- not the political, the writer could be from almost anywhere on the spectrum -- response Romney creates. It's long, but I didn't want to excerpt it, but most of all, while it's not eloquent, it so so intensely real that if Mittens survives the disasters coming and holds on to win, the DNC should consider using it -- if they can get permission -- in ads:
[sic -- including typos and misnumbering]
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 04:12 PM
And y'know, I know absolutely nothing about Paul Lee McClatchy but his name, but I think I'd trust his reactions to things far more than I would David Brooks' or most blimp-riders, including a few on our side.
Expect to be busy a while, but will check back at least once before polls close and then afterwards.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 04:19 PM
One more thing -- picked up from The State and originally by the APs Hispanic Affairs Writer -- is that Romney's hardest line stance on immigration -- including promising to veto the DREAM Act is beginning to hurt him in Florida among Hispanic Republicans.
But he'll win anyway. Sure he will.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 04:34 PM
Oops, that letter by McClatchy was in THE POST AND COURIER not THE STATE and thanks, kathy, for turning my eyes to it.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 04:49 PM
de nada. i always liked the charleston paper better than the state.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 05:17 PM
Last check in before the polls close, but one thing I predicted seems to be true. The Lowcountry area -- Romney territory -- has had relatively normal turnout through the day -- with no threatening weather. But in the Upcountry people rushed to get their votes in before the potential heavy storms. The reports were of long lines -- and it was unclear, but they seemed to be talking about solidly Republican-Conservative areas -- in the same areas voting was light in mainly Democratic precints. Again, my assumption was people would struggle harder and bear more discomfort to vote against Romney than for him -- the 'enthusiasm gap' -- and so far it's lookimg good, though we'll need the actual results to know for sure.
I'll try and get back in an hour when some results should be in.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 06:30 PM
I'm actually watching Fox News right now to see if I can get an inkling of the results.
My sense from what they are saying is that Gingrich won, but no one wants to say this directly before the polls close. It will be interesting to see if they can call it right away at 7:00.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 06:40 PM
news: super-PACs give wealthy loud voices.
scalia: if you don't like it, turn off the TV.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 06:50 PM
Apparently all the networks are calling it for Newt. 38% is what I'm hearing. But has anyone heard how the last three slots are going? And one thing to watch is the specific delegate breakdown -- since they give 11 votes to the state winner and 2 for each district carried. Wonder how that will work out? I'll keep an eye on things through the evening.
(And one fascinating thing will be to see if the non-candidates and Gary Johnson, the forgotten candidates get any percentage. Cain will, thanks, Stephen, but I think there might be a few for the others, particularly Huntsman and Perry.)
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 07:16 PM
Called at 7 on ABC. And they claimed the main reason for Newt's showing was those appalling debate performances.
kathy, the fallacy in Scalia's "reasoning" is that the 'protected' nature of political 'speech' has allowed the most outrageous lying to become just 'pitchman's puffery' and opinion.
I still think all political contributions over $100 should be taxed at a 60% rate, and go to public funding of elections..
Posted by: MR Bill | January 21, 2012 at 07:19 PM
Boy, they really, really don't like Mittens. And do like adulterers that metaphorically slap uppity blacks around....
Re the Brooks piece: You all must, must go to Charles' Pierce's website and read his evisceration of Brooks. It is LOL hilarious, not to mention true!
Posted by: beckya57 | January 21, 2012 at 07:20 PM
becky,
Did "Moral Hazard" make an appearance?
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 07:22 PM
David Brooks is a 'Duke of Moral Hazard', but who else?
Posted by: MR Bill | January 21, 2012 at 07:30 PM
these are news projections. right now, the actual vote counts put mitt ahead, 38% to newt's 34%.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 07:30 PM
here's a link to becky's reference, and excuse me, i have to go breathe now because i seem to be snorting and laughing too hard.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 07:40 PM
MR Bill,
In Pierce's continuing series on Brooks, Brooks has an Irish Setter named Moral Hazard (who has the good taste to despise his owner). I have only quarreled with breed choice -- I think a Golden Retriever would be a more likely choice.
Oh my God, Charles Krauthammer will be appearing soon on Fox News. I am guessing the Cabbage Mallet is not going to be pleased.
kathy,
I don't think the raw vote matters much. Both Fox and MSNBC are predicting the vote to be about 38% for Newt and 29% for Mitt.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 07:44 PM
MR Bill,
Brooks is also always requesting another brandy please on Pierce's page.
becky and kathy,
Oh my God -- read the comments. The ones about Moral Hazard are screamingly funny.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 07:49 PM
One thing I wonder if tv is mentioning. This is looking to be the highest turnout by far, well into 600K -- the record was 533K for Bush-McCain. Desite the whole state -- and particularly the non-Romney areas -- being under a tornado watch.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 08:06 PM
well, i can't watch the live updates on the vote count; newt's up to 41%, romney is 28%, and we're still only at about 50,000 voters. maybe 12-15% of precincts reporting, i'm too disgusted to do the math for real.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 08:11 PM
Here's the Post and Courier results page. Just refresh it, and it is easier to deal with, and is ahead of The State.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 08:21 PM
not a particularly rhetorical question: is brooks even vaguely aware of the achingly, howlingly funny and permanently accessible humor which rests on his oeuvre? or is someone employed to be the filterer-in-chief so that the poor guy can get up each morning? dare we check in with driftglass? i thought not.
Posted by: nancy | January 21, 2012 at 08:22 PM
Strange.
No - classic Romney.
There's a reason he makes plastic look like fresh produce.
Posted by: oddjob | January 21, 2012 at 08:31 PM
nancy,
I have a friend who is quite close with Brooks and I keep praying for the day when the two of us are invited to the same event.
Alas, she knows me too well and is likely far too smart to ever let that happen. Still, a man could hope. (I assume my wife would come armed with a tranquilizer gun.)
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 08:37 PM
nancy,
The driftglass piece is excellent.
All I could think of was how often at Brandeis my compadres would talk about the Exodus and its impact on them, while at the same time noting the eery affinity they felt for Mormons.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 08:43 PM
oddjob: LOL!!
Thanks for posting the link to Pierce, kathy, someday I need to learn how to do that. As you all saw Moral Hazard was indeed featured.
Sir C, I really don't think your wife should allow you to go to an event where Brooks would be present. ;-)
The barbarous nature of the SC GOP is truly amazing--not to mention appalling. The behavior by the audiences at some of the GOP debates has been nothing short of frightening. Stop me before I break Godwin's Law.
Posted by: beckya57 | January 21, 2012 at 09:07 PM
Sir C, I just went back and read the comments on the Pierce piece. Ohmigod, they're hilarious! I especially liked the one about MH refusing to do his business on the NYT op-ed page because it would be "redundant."
Posted by: beckya57 | January 21, 2012 at 09:14 PM
"Those who pick up the weapons of the left today will find them turned against them tomorrow."
For some reason, I had images of hammers and sickles, and hefty guys on tractors, and some bald dude with a goatee..
Posted by: MR Bill | January 21, 2012 at 09:22 PM
I usually ignore Twitter's existence, but I came across this one on a comment thread at Steve Benen's. It was from Jesse Taylor @ pandagon and was too good to resist:
And then there was the ad Romney ran a few days ago about "South Carolina elects a President on Saturday."
There he goes again, trying to get that silver toe out of his ear -- he aims for the mouth but keeps missing.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 21, 2012 at 09:43 PM
becky,
That was my favorite of the many sparkling comments.
I think Pierce should commission a Moral Hazard cartoon.
Pierce and I played on the same bar trivia team when netroots was in Pittsburgh. We had a screamingly funny time.
My wife would not let me get within the same zip code as Brooks without her being present. she knows I am capable of very bad behavior -- especially with a few drinks in the system.
MR Bill,
I like the image.
Jim,
I'm not a twitter guy either, but I saw that quote somewhere and loved it.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 10:03 PM
Quel clusterfuck this primary season is turning out to be, no? I just figure the more money/time/resources the Republicans spend battling each other, the better it'll be for all decent peoples everywhere. I was really rooting for a Herman Cain/Stephen Colbert victory, but am not unhappy with the results we actually got. Happy two-thirds-of-the-way-through-January, y'all!
Posted by: Voice O' Reason | January 21, 2012 at 10:10 PM
ok, so everyone has called it for the newton.
here's a little something from EotAW on the gringrich's road from "history professor" to better things. one of the comments cites a 1995 vanity fair piece about ze newt -- which i have not finished reading, but i can tell already it is worth finishing.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 10:19 PM
Hey VOR,
I am pretty happy with the way the Republican primary season is going. And it might get better. I'm tempted to stroke a check to Gingrich myself right now.
kathy,
The EotAW post is quite fun. I like that one year into his job, Newt was looking to run the university. He's always been a modest man.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 21, 2012 at 11:00 PM
the vanity fair thing is long, but -- same guy, same MO. maybe a little heavy on the psychology, but a lot of contemporaneous things worth recalling.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 21, 2012 at 11:19 PM
Kathy A -- I love those two articles. Particularly that the Vanity Fair piece talks about how his second marriage is already a marriage in name only, and one of his favorite new admirers and "breakfast companions" is named Callista.
Chuck! I don't think you'll have to send money to Gingrich. There are plenty of idiots who seem willing to do it for you.
Posted by: Voice O' Reason | January 21, 2012 at 11:20 PM
i cannot be as sanguine as some. i worry that there could be a lehman-like disaster in september or october and that a vote for the out party could give us president newt. miserable as mitt is i prefer him as the catastrophe
Posted by: big bad wolf | January 21, 2012 at 11:52 PM
bbw. me too. very very large shudder.
Posted by: nancy | January 22, 2012 at 12:05 AM
I just can't imagine a scenario in which this asshole could get elected.
And I subscribe to the view that if he is, we need to undergo a large cleansing fire.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 22, 2012 at 12:09 AM
hush your mouth, bbw. (i'm saying that in a southern lady voice.)
i hear you about mitt being the better of all possible catastrophes, because newt is unthinkable. but sheesh, we're most of the year out from the actual election. it is just stunning that the GOP is in such disarray that newt is, as they say, "surging." don't expect that party's nomination to be be wrapped up anytime soon -- on with the clown car! bring on the superPAC bloodbath -- but i'll be surprised if gingrich ends up the nominee.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 22, 2012 at 12:15 AM
i do not disagree that a newt presidency is unlikely, but it is not impossible, which is why the insanity and disorganization of the repubs is frightening, not simply funny.
SC, i am not so much an optimist as you, as i have remarked before. we may in fact be deserving of a fire. we have to act as if we aren't and in the belief that things can and will get better, but . . . .
on the optimistic side there is this . on the downside, edwards is now with working with and dating the endlessly boring and self-pleased bon iver guy
Posted by: big bad wolf | January 22, 2012 at 12:26 AM
bbw,
I actually agree that the state of the GOP is not really funny. In a two party system, sooner or later these guys are going to be in charge again and it is clear that they are completely unfit to govern.
But I think the only way that they will change is if they sustain a devastating enough defeat. So maybe a Gingrich nomination, followed by a crushing Obama victory would be a best case scenario.
Have you seen "The Promise" documentary? I haven't -- which seems a shocking omission.
I am very found of Kathleen Edwards, but like you really dislike the Bon Iver dude. Almost as much as I hate Radiohead. I'm surprised she'd be with such a wanker. Maybe she heard I was taken and just gave up.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 22, 2012 at 12:38 AM
go get some sleep, SC. hug your sweetie.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 22, 2012 at 12:52 AM
we have to be able to look the worst in its face, and still move along. i think it helps to find some humor; molly ruined me that way for life. from that standpoint, the newster is a goldmine. still some workable material in mittens, as well.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 22, 2012 at 01:07 AM
kathy,
I'm just about to turn off the old lap top -- it's late here. I've just got to slide Stanley over a bit -- he's taking up some of all important leg room.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 22, 2012 at 01:17 AM
I still am pretty sure there'll be a brokered convention and a true dark horse candidate. It seems unavoidable, especially if Santorum wins Florida -- which I am begining to think is likely, or at least strongly possible. He's much more appealing to specifically Republican Floridians, particularly the sort who start out anti-Romney to begin with, than is Gingrich.
Florida strikes me as the least likely of the Southern states to appreciate Nasty Newt, and if the stories of major anti-Romney feelings springing up in the Hispanic community over his anti-immigrant position. (Gee, whoodathunkit? Running against someone's bigotry actually hurts him in the Hispanic ciommunity -- and, I'd guess among Hispanics that are scattered through every district in the country. Y'd've thunk a Democrat or two might have thought to try that in 2010.)
Santorum's problem -- once he became one of the Last Men Standing -- was money, but I read a quote to the effect of 'Newt's got his funding lined up, but my type of backing takes longer to arrange.' Which I translate to 'There are all these preachers who want to give me money to beat Mitt, but only if they can be convinced he can be beaten.' Okay, so now he can reach the people he needs to, the type who will like the Perpetual Altar Boy.
I haven't a clue how the Western caucuses will turn out, haven't heard any buzz yet, but I think CO is a primary, and may be Romney's Last Chance for viability. If he can get a plurality there -- I still doubt a majority anywhere -- in a state of religious right preachers and skiers with fancy chalets -- he'll still be in the race. No, and then we see the fun.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 22, 2012 at 02:39 AM
Romney will still win the nomination, tho. It's proportional delegates this year.
Posted by: Crissa | January 22, 2012 at 06:45 AM
1. Santorum will stay in the race through March 6 at least, and Paul will go the distance, but both will see gradually declining support. Santorum more so than Paul, because more of Santorum's supporters actually care about who the GOP nominee is, if it isn't going to be their guy.
2. This is because the shape of the race, after all the craziness of the past few months, is finally settled: Newt's won the anti-Mitt mantle. If you're a Republican who really doesn't want Mitt as the nominee, Newt's the only game in town anymore.
3. The thing that will likely win it for Willard is when March rolls around and multiple states have their primaries/caucuses every week. Newt himself can't be everywhere at once, but Mitt's TV ads slamming Newt will be.
4. Really the only thing that could change that is if Newt beats Mitt like a drum in the primaries and caucuses between now and Feb. 7. In which case he might actually get the money to run a campaign in March and April. It's unlikely, but this could be another year like 1964, when a candidate wins despite the party establishment throwing the kitchen sink at him.
5. If Romney's unlikability starts losing the day for him, it's hard to see where the party establishment will come up with an anti-anti-Romney in a hurry. There are plenty of them around, but you can't really fire up a Presidential campaign overnight.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 22, 2012 at 07:18 AM
Not having a good day and it's not nine a.m. yet.. and this was made worse by Looking at the WaPO and seeing their Ombudsman (read 'weaseling corporate apologist') Patrick Pexton's piece on the Opinion Page reading "Hit Obama Harder".. All about the yelling of the right that you aren't going after the man..
grrr.
After Mitt's serial lies and the Second coming of the Georgia Amphibian?
Posted by: MR Bill | January 22, 2012 at 08:51 AM
[aaaarrrrggggh. This started out as a simple reply to l-tc, and mushroomed into a personal history of politics during my lifetime. I'm leaving the original opening and am going to finish the history -- which may take several posts -- before I go back to it. It's long, and I know how many of you have had enough practice at scrolling past my rants, but I really think some of you -- particularly Our Noble Leader -- would profit from reading it. It's reaally hard for someone born in 1960 to realize how much the world changed in the Sixties -- something I and Paula lived through -- and in Paula's case, helped along in a positive way. Paul, if anyone can show me where I went wrong, it's you, so I am looking forward to -- and begging for -- your criticism.]
Ooookay, let's start with a direct response to l-tc, who still seems to see even the existence of a "Republican Establishment." There used to be one -- in fact, one powerful enough to accept losing an election to 'slap the revolt down' which is a better description of what happened with Goldwater. (Again, see the Democrats and Alton B. Parker sixty years earlier.) They knew no one would beat Johnson, and that their own candidate, Rockefeller, was young enough to still be around in 1968 -- and nobody on either side expected Vietnam to blow up in the way it did.
I also doubt that that establishment expected, or welcomed, the idea of the Southern segregationists joining the party. That establishment had been the winners in the Taft-Dirksen struggle of 1952, the Dirksen side. (Eisenhower was their candidate, but not really one of them -- when he was nominated, the Democrats had also been considering him as a candidate until he decalred his own Republicanism.)
I don't want to 'prettify' them too much. There was a lot wrong with them -- hey, Nixon was originally part of hem, though on the fringe -- but they really were a
loyal opposition' agreeing, for the most part, with the Democrats on the direction of society, just trying to hold them back, maybe carve out some favors for their friends. I could argue that they were slightly to the left of where the Democratic Party has been since 1976, but it is unnecessary.
The "Goldwater gambit" was to be a suicidal decision for that establishment. Goldwater lost, but he pulled most of the establishment down with him, and he started the party-switching of the segregationists. (I personally believe he regretted that all his life, that he never was, in the slightest, a segregationist, but that his -- misguided -- principles caused him to oppose the 1964 Civil Rights Act and his ambition allowed him -- oh, the nomination he'd sought for so long, the electoral triumph for Conservativism he'd been sure of were so close -- to allow his supporters to hint the opposite.)
So the new Republican establishment had some pieces of the old, but they wre drowned in the Southern wave and the influx of 'fervent youth.' (That year's version of the 'younger generation coming to save the world and to kick the oldsters off to the side' was radically Conservative, not radically Liberal -- there's always such a generation visible on one side or the other -- sometimes on both.)
The old establishment and the 'balance of power' might have stayed the same -- but Vietnam exploded. And don't make any mistake about it-- it was our war, we liberals supported it. Some Conservatives joined us, but actually more of them were opposed to it on economic grounds -- and nobody on that side was pushing it as strongly as were the Liberal Democrats. (We forget that the people who we later think of as strong anti-war people all were converts who had originally supported the war strongly, like Fulbright, and Bobby Kennedy -- who didn't publicly announce his opposition until after LBJ dropped out. The only political figures who were consistent in their opposition were the eccentric Alaskan Gruening and the 'party unto himself' Wayne Morse.)
This created yet another 'younger generation that will change everything' -- this time on the Left. And, like all 'y.g.t.w.c.e.'s, they hated the 'establishment on their side' even more than they hated the other side. It was them, not the conservatives, that cemented some of the Conservative memes in the American consciousness, that the media was 'liberal' -- they never used that word as a compliment -- that 'liberal = weak conciliator with no guts or principles,' that 'both sides are equally corrupt and equally under the control of Big Business.'
(Oh yeah, and for some of the group -- maybe those who might have remained more sane and more in control -- William Proxmire's anti-intellectual anti-science crusade and the tendency of radical left survivors to retreat into a mystical 'self-improvement' fixation -- everything from EST to 'what's your sign' -- drove them into politcal silence. And it was Proxmire who invented the snarky style McCain used in the last election -- as inappropriately. It was one of his targets that won both a "Golden Fleece" Award and another, more prestigious one, a Nobel Prize.)
The Democratic Liberal Establishment had run the country for 36 years -- even under Eisenhower -- and it had gotten fat, sloppy and complacent -- and in some cases, corrupt. And the Goldwater challenge had, seemingly, assured their remaining in power for decades more. They proved an easy target for the new 'y.g.t.w.c.e.' (Let's just call them RIs -- for Romantic Idealists because that is what every radical reform movement is constructed of at first. The 'ideals' may be as good as 'peace and freedom' or as warped as 'Aryan supremacy' but the attitude is similar -- and the Idealists always work first to overthrow their own -- 'weak, conciliatory, coopted' -- establishment first, so they can fight the 'real enemy' unfettered by their fussy insistence on the virtues of the past. In 1931 Germany there were vast differences in the goals of the youth movements of the Communists and the Nazis, but they shared the same revolutionary fervor. And I'm sorry, but today, there is little difference, in attitude, between the Greenwalds and Hamsters and the Tea Party.
I think this is enough for one comment, and TP may insist on its being two. Let's end it here and start some domestic stuff, and come back a little later for the next part. And wtf, I'll give my originally planned answer to l-tc first, without this explanation.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 22, 2012 at 12:08 PM
quick, back to l-tc before all of you need shots of adrenaline to stay awake.
1) Paul will stay in the race until the end because of who he is -- and because he's setting the stage for a Rand run in 16 or 20. Santorum will stay as well, because of the religious right support that will grow much stronger. And for large portions of both factions -- they don't care if the Republican wins -- if it's Romney -- since they see him as not enough better than Obama to matter.
2) Florida will prove the 'anti-Mitt mantle' is shared, again because of the pressure from the religious -- and from Hispanics who don't see Little Ricky as a threat as they see Romney and Gingrich.
3) Unless Romeny wins a majority in Florida -- and he won't -- his candidacy will be reeling, and his support will be dropping. Then CO will kill it -- because again, if he can't get enough support from the combination of the rich and the religious that run that state -- many of the rich being liberal rich -- he's so visibly dead even the blimp will notice. But he'll still keep on to the Convention as well.
4) Since there is no Republican Establishment -- the point of my 'history lesson' when I finish it -- but a number of competing power centers and no central leadership -- or Romney never would have gotten this far -- there will be some movement towards finding his replacement, but no agreement.
5) March does not play out that way because while Newt can't be everywhere, his ads can be. Santorum will be out there as well -- and be getting a lot of free advertising in 'non-political' sermons from the Religious Right. Romney will pick up a little as a response to Newt's nastiness -- I think people will continue to underrate Little Ricky -- but just enough to ensure nobody has a majority -- even of the non-Paul supporters.
6) A brokered convention -- which in itself might help the Republicans by producing a candidate with less 'baggage' like a McDonnell or even a Boehner -- can't you see Cantor's glee in nominating him. BUT -- and this is why there's a happy ending if the Democrats show even minimal smarts -- the delegates who are there will also write a platform. And even if there were a Republican establishment who wanted to keep them under control -- these guys ain't listening to no RINOs. And if they don't give the Democrats a weapon that would protect them against even a 'new Lehman' thats because the Democrats are too dumb to see it. It will be devastating, and will swing all sorts of votes our way.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 22, 2012 at 12:36 PM
An important point off my last comment. We Democrats have fallen into a lot of traps because we've let the Republicans 'control the discourse.' (One point of the 'History Lesson.')
One of the subtlest and most dangerous is our falling for the myth that 'minorities roost together -- like pigeons.' Okay, 'ghettos,' 'barrios,' 'gentrified neighborhoods' DO exist. But they aren't the only places to find blacks, Hispanics, gays. Hell, there are 7,000 blacks and 12,000 Hispanics among North Dakota's 600,000 people. Gays are everywhere. And Muslims are, as well. Even the 'furrin-born' type tend to group less into neighborhoods, and there are literally millions of "white al-American' Muslim converts as well, and they are anywhere. (And one reason for the Democrat's failure with pro-choice women is that they've never had their own 'roost.')
We 'play to the roosts' and identify them, and run minority-based candidates in them. And we win, and think we've reached the whole community. But we ignore the minorities in every district in the country, because we think they are too small to matter, and that the rest of the district probably would hate them if they knew of their existence. (Another myth from "Republican discourse control.")
(We also forget -- and this could make a whole other rant on another day -- that people have many 'identities' that may be economic, ethnic, racial, religious, orientational, or something else entirely, like music or detective story fans. Which identity 'matters' in a given decision is not always easy to predict, but we just love to think we decide for people which one matters. We can talk money better than God, so we think a Christian union member who votes Republican is going against his interests -- but he may argue that his 'eternal interests' are far more important than his 'financial ones.'
(Related to that, we forget sometimes we have to push a person towards making one interest important. A gay businessman may vote as a businessman -- unless we appeal to his gayness. A pro-choice mother might respond to a Republican 'protect the children' campaign -- if no one is directly talkin to her pro-choice side. And something tells me that if someone wanted to wipe everything I've written from the archives, these last two paragraphs are the only ones I'd plead to remain.)
If we move positively towards the whole group, and do it unashamedly, and if we make it plain that we share their hatred of the bigots who would crush them or force them back into the shadows -- we aren't going to lose many votes we wouldn't have lost already. Damnit, the American people as a whole do hate bigotry more than we realize. They have, since Brown been much more favorable to equality and opposed to blatant bogotry than the reverse.
But we'll reach, and quite possibly turn around, the gay businessman in Alpine who votes as a businessman, not as a gay, the Hispanic-ancestry First Baseman whose family has been here for three generations, the black lawyer in Missoula, the pro-choice mother in Scotch Plains.
We have to learn to 'push the right buttons' but we act as if this was either unnecessary, dangerous, or 'beneath us.' (We act as if we believe appeals to emotion are always, by necessity, false and unworthy -- forgetting the emotional appeal of the union movemnet, the civil rights struggle. We have fallen for the false equivalency 'calling Gohmert a homophobe = calling Obama a Kenyan Muslim' forgetting that Gohmert IS a homophobe, and Obama's a Hawaiian Christian.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 22, 2012 at 01:48 PM
Prup - I have to question part of your history. I was born in 1954, and remember the Goldwater year quite well: my parents were supporters of his, and I got caught up in the excitement.
I'm not sure it really harms your argument, but just saying:
The Republican establishment of that time didn't go with any 'Goldwater gambit'; they did not accept losing an election to 'slap the revolt down' - they fought him all the way to the convention.
I can't remember if they were behind the Henry Cabot Lodge write-in win in the New Hampshire primary, but it's hard to believe otherwise from this remove. Their main candidate that they threw up against Goldwater was Rocky, of course, but when Goldwater came from behind to beat Rocky in California by a fraction of a percentage point, Rocky got benched in favor of PA Gov. William Scranton, who received all the anti-Goldwater votes at the convention.
The GOP establishment was, of course, only too willing to take advantage of the opening to the South that Goldwater created for them.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 22, 2012 at 03:21 PM
I think some of the things we disagree about will be resolved in a fairly short time. At this point, I don't see much point in arguing, we'll just wait and see who's right.
1) If Santorum stays in the race to the end, he will be an afterthought by April, averaging 5% or less in the primaries that month. But I doubt he'll still be in the race on April 1.
2) Santorum won't do any better in FL than he did in SC. He'll be doing well to duplicate that 17%.
3) Nobody's expecting Mitt (or Newt, or anyone) to win a majority in Florida. In a four-man race, 50% wouldn't be just a win; it would be a rout. If Romney can win with room to spare - even by 4-5% - his candidacy will be back on track, even if he doesn't break 40%, let alone 50%.
4) What you say about the Republican establishment of today may be true, but just about all of those competing power centers are lining up against Newt. Hell, even Rush Limbaugh is, which shows you how complete it is: these guys were brothers in arms in the mid-1990s, and appeal to the exact same audience today. You can't tell me there's a lot of enthusiasm for Romney among Rush's listeners, but he's gone over to the dark side.
In this primary season, we're talking a distinction without a difference. If there isn't a GOP Establishment, there is something acting like one, and quite effectively so.
5) Even by March, Santorum will be a minor player. He'll average single digits on Super Tuesday, and will go downhill from there.
6) No brokered convention this year. One thing I guarantee won't happen is that Santorum and Paul win enough delegates to keep the overall winner of the primary season from winning outright.
Obviously, #4 isn't resolvable by the passage of time, and #6 will likely be mooted. But we can just wait and see about the others.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 22, 2012 at 03:47 PM
Jim,
Not to blow my own horn, but I would suggest that I know as much about the Sixties as just about anyone you would ever meet. I've studied it extensively and although I was a kid, I did live through it.
As someone who watched his cop father head out to various civil disturbances on a very regular basis I would suggest I have a pretty good understanding of the white backlash mentality -- indeed I've felt those emotions myself more than a few times. (As a twelve year old I confess to favoring Nixon over McGovern for what I think were obvious reasons.) I watched the New Deal Democratic hold on working class whites erode even in a place like Massachusetts due in part to racial reasons -- I watched forced busing in Boston unfold from a front row seat via my father while in my mid-teens -- and in part to broader cultural issues. I am intimately familiar with what the disorder of the Sixties -- often carried out by society's most privileged members did to the Democratic coalition. The devolution into economic decline and the soaring crime rates in the Seventies brought about an end to all that had worked for the Democrats politically.
I will be shocked if Santorum gets more than 15% of the vote in Florida. I think he will hang in there for a while in the hopes that Gingrich falls apart. But I think Gingrich has figured out the tone that will work with the anti-Romney crowd. If he has enough money to fight back (as he was unable to do in Iowa) against Romney he will make him quite uncomfortable. I think the right wingers have found their anti-Romney -- the question is whether they have enough of a death wish to nominate Newt.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 22, 2012 at 04:29 PM
Whoa, the Patriots with a most unimpressive victory over the Ravens.
We'll take it, but Christ was that ugly down the stretch. That second pick by Brady was just inexcusable.
But a win's a win I guess.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 22, 2012 at 06:13 PM
First. You guys hate Radiohead. I'm crushed.
Second, Prup. I find that the whole notion there was 'a' liberal response to the sixties one I'm ready to retire. Locale, situation, age, inclination, temperament as well as gender, color and class had so much more to do with the picture. That picture is still so over-simplified as to be cartoonish and plays into the hands of the right to this day.
Thus-ly (:-) I decline to dignify its reverberating/repetitious/boring critique any longer. So that we may move on to more important business. (Didja know Bill Ayers wrote President Obama's book? Bernadine must have arranged the book deal.) I mean this stuff will never go away as long as it isn't derided for the childish playground taunt it is. Remember the Swiftboaters? Best to remember that. They regroup as we speak.
Posted by: nancy | January 22, 2012 at 10:14 PM
nancy,
The Radiohead thing is my peculiar taste, although I think bbw may share it. Most everyone else seems to esteem them very highly. They've just never really connected with me.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 22, 2012 at 10:36 PM
I am intimately familiar with what the disorder of the Sixties -- often carried out by society's most privileged members did to the Democratic coalition.
Sorry, SC, but I can't let this pass. Police were already using their nightsticks on antiwar protesters when you were in kindergarten; Chicago was simply the first time it happened on a national stage.
Hell, remember the Hard Hat Riot of 1970? I realize that the unions had been cowed into being pro-war by decades' worth of accusations that they were on the side of the Communists, but you'd think some of the older generation of union leaders might've had the recollection to say to the leaders of the antiwar protests in the wake of Kent State that, 'hey, we disagree with you on the war, but we remember when we were getting killed for trying to organize unions, and their calling out the National Guard to shoot at you is just as wrong now as when they did that to us.'
Instead, two days after Kent State, a bunch of longshoremen beat the shit out of people protesting the Kent State shootings. (Probably wasn't the first time for that, either.) Won the longshoremen a visit to the White House, courtesy of Richard Nixon.
The 'disorder of the Sixties' didn't start with antiwar protesters, privileged or not, unless one regards a protest march as inherently disorderly.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 22, 2012 at 11:12 PM
certainly SirC. taste. not forgettin' your mutual appreciations for Lesley Gore. :))
confession. i liked disco. oh my what was i thinking? . burn baby burn. disco inferno. i guess it was 'let's dance'. cause it was saturday night.
which of course doesn't belong on 'we belong to no organized political blog'. although i was happy to see that amanda argued in my favor several weeks ago. ain't musical experience and response fascinating?
Posted by: nancy | January 22, 2012 at 11:29 PM
l-t c,
I was in kindergarten in 1964 -- I don't think that the anti-war movement was facing a violent response until much later. (Unlike the civil rights movement.)
I was not suggesting that the anti-war movement was the prime source of the nation's disorder. However, elements of the anti-war movement -- the weather underground and the progressive labor party types who effectively took over SDS in the late 60s were violent and did grave harm to the movement -- and to liberal politics.
Of course the national guard shooting kids was wrong as was the hard hats beating up protesters. I think you missed my point though about the white backlash moment and the things which prompted it. And I think the notion that unions had been cowed into being pro-war is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the politics of the cold war and the culture of the building trades.
My ultimate point to Jim is that I am acutely aware of the tumult of the Sixties and the crack up of the New Deal coalition on a very visceral level.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 22, 2012 at 11:57 PM
Sir Charles and Nancy: Sorry I haven't had the chance to get back to yu. A nap, a shopping trip, the cat box, and an unexpected logjam-breaking on the library thing (oh, okay, and the last minute and a half of regulation and the overtime of a football game that seemed to be of some kind of importance) all robbed me of spare time. Hopefully I can reply at length tomorrow. Nancy, I'm sure I didn't mean what you thought I meant and will try and straighten it out. If others have used the terms, it's not been, I'm sure, in the same context or the same way I meant it. (Oh, God, how long will that explanation be.)
As for Sir Charles, I very much appreciate it, and believe that our experiences are very similar with mine dealing with the earlier period of the McCarthy era. (I do believe, and will explain more, that you may be reacting too viscerally, and that you may not realize that Boston was somewhat different from most Northern cities at the time in the amount and importance of their racial problems.)
But for both of you, it seems like you are using the Sixties to mean SanFrancisco '67 to the election of Nixon. I am using it to refer to the whole decade, well, precisely from the "Pleasantville" moment of the election of JFK (the analogy is usually seen as a sexual one, but it also showed the tone change caused by the election) up to Altamont, when it call came crashing down, finally.
And it was an incredible decade, in every way. The tone shift started it, but every area of American life was changed, considerably, from the political, technological, social, sexual, and inclusiveness/equality revolutions. It was almost as complete a change as the effect on all life in Europe from World War One and its aftermath. And the changes were moving and interconnecting, and affecting different parts of society so much that the overall impact wasn't realized.
More tomorrow, work is calling.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 23, 2012 at 12:56 AM
One quick addition to my comment to Sir Charles. Remember I lived in Frank Rizzzo's Philadelphia for years, as an adult, and as someone who, for a large number of reasons, was a potential target of his minions' wrath. But it still wasn't like Boston. For a lot of reasons, other cities had only minor backlashes -- sometimes because so many changes were cascading down and ideas were being challenged that they didn't have time to react to the racial changes.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 23, 2012 at 12:58 AM
I can throw in, from personal experience, that Oakland, CA cops decided as early as the fall of 1966 that people protesting the Vietnam war were not entitled to unfettered speech and violently prevented our assembling.
I thought about this a lot when I in the crowd at the Oakland General Strike in November in support of the brutalized Occupy encampment. Some location; felt remarkably similar. In '66 I was peddling CORE pamphlets; this year I was collecting signatures to put the death penalty on the ballot.
The huge difference was that the country labor council endorsed the contemporary action ...
Posted by: janinsanfran | January 23, 2012 at 02:16 AM
> I just can't imagine a scenario in which this asshole could get elected.
I remember thinking that about Nixon.
And Reagan.
By the time W came around, I knew better than to think that my perceptions were shared by a majority of the American electorate.
Posted by: joel hanes | January 23, 2012 at 02:28 AM
I remember the 60s:Kennedy's assassination is the first memory I can really put a date on: was in the first grade. I was a nerdy kid who watched the '68 and '72 conventions, and was the kind of rural kid who took to the 'weird hippies' who were moving into the hills, mostly drawn by the John C. Campbell Folk School...
Bad storms, and I gotta take Tim (who still hasn't heard about his SSI) to his doctor. I've got rehearsal and I'm recording the voices of German Soldiers ("Raus, Juden!") for the Children's theater production of 'Anne Frank and Me'..
And for weirdness on a wild Monday AM, here's Newt's old college debate coach:
"I no longer fear Newt will explode."
Posted by: MR Bill | January 23, 2012 at 08:14 AM
nancy, don't be crushed; we're all too old and have listened to too much stuff to agree on it all.
prup, don't use pleasantville. it upsets me. one of the worst movies i have ever seen. thuddingly obvious and yet very pleased with its own belief in its, shall we say, grandiose cleverness.
Posted by: big bad wolf | January 23, 2012 at 09:50 AM
Thanks for that link, MR Bill.
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 09:55 AM
joel,
Although I was only twenty, I could feel the Reagan landslide in my bones. I was spending a semester down here in DC and for the first time in my life met a slew of young Republicans. It was chilling and instructive.
Interestingly, with W we have to keep in mind that he lost in 2000 and scraped together a not very impressive win in 2004. So you and I were a lot closer to the bulk of our citizenry then than back in the 80s.
Jim,
Frank Rizzo is a perfect representative of backlash America. I tend to think Boston and Philly might have had a similar level of backlash but for the forced busing decision, which really could not have been better calibrated to create a state of war between the city's black and white working class neighborhoods. I think that in retrospect while offered in good faith, it was an enormous mistake -- although I am not sure anyone gave the judge any decent alternatives.
I am not disparaging the Sixties in the way that the right routinely does -- merely pointing out that the political-cultural fallout from the period and obviously the racial divide that ensued had enormous consequences for progressive politics. The distance traveled from 1964-65, in many respects the high water mark of liberal-left politics in the country's history to the disaster of 1968 and on is a remarkable and discouraging one. It's worthy of study even if it was sui generis, because it is where our downfall occurred.
janinsanfran,
Oakland was a pretty polarized place and one where violence became attractive to both the police and the left -- both the Black Panthers and the loony left associated with Ramparts magazine -- run by now lunatic right winger David Horowitz -- were emblematic of this trend.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 23, 2012 at 09:57 AM
The most recent FL polling (it's post-SC) has Gingrich up by 9%.
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 10:01 AM
and scraped together a not very impressive win in 2004
There's a case to be made that if a truly impartial look was taken at the voting irregularities in Ohio by some set of people with the teeth to do something about the votes that Shrub would have lost Ohio and thus that election, too.
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 10:04 AM
I think that in retrospect while offered in good faith, it was an enormous mistake -- although I am not sure anyone gave the judge any decent alternatives.
Some years ago (I think he's since died) I read an article in the Boston Globe regarding an interview they'd had with the federal judge who ordered the busing. He hadn't changed his mind about his decision.
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 10:06 AM
(Which wasn't meant as a disagreement with you, Sir C., but rather to offer info. I thought you might find interesting. For myself, I remember being bewildered by the uproar in Boston about it all, but I was a teenager living on the edge of the edge of the Philadelphia suburbs, in a place where I could count the number of black classmates on one hand (out of a class of about 200).)
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 10:09 AM
Frank Rizzo is a perfect representative of backlash America.
IIRC in one of his mayoral campaigns (forget what year, exactly) he promised "to make Attila the Hun look like a faggot". He also switched to the Republican Party in the early 1970's (while in office as mayor, IIRC).
The distance traveled from 1964-65, in many respects the high water mark of liberal-left politics in the country's history to the disaster of 1968 and on is a remarkable and discouraging one.
IIRC (for the 3rd time in this post), the racial tension in Philadelphia was very real, but while it was strong & ugly in the Philadelphia area the worst racial violence didn't happen in Philadelphia, but instead in neighboring (much smaller) satellite cities such as Chester, PA (to Philadelphia's immediate south) and Camden, NJ (across the Delaware River to Philadelphia's immediate southeast).
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 10:15 AM
oddjob,
Judge Garrity was an exceedingly nice and decent man. I met him on a couple of occasions. My father testified in his courtroom a couple of times and always thought highly of him.
But he was a guy from Wellesley with no real feel for the communities involved in this battle. If the Boston School Committee had had some halfway decent white people on it, I think the results could have been different. But they were intransigent racist demagogues who could not be counted on to act in good faith. Had they been willing to work with the judge I think they could have found more gradual solutions to the issue that would have avoided the Southie-Roxbury confrontation that followed. Instead, they just wanted to drag their feet or spark confrontation.
Chester and Camden are remarkable for the degree to which they remain totally down in the dumps. There is a nearly third-world quality to them.
(My wife went to high school in the Paoli-Berwyn area and we used to spend a fair amount of time in the Philly area in the 90s.)
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 23, 2012 at 10:28 AM
Ask her if she's ever been to Chadds Ford. :)
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 10:43 AM
There is a nearly third-world quality to them.
Not unlike Detroit's.
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 10:45 AM
SC - anti-war marchers were getting beaten up by the cops in 1965 and 1966. It was actually easier to get away with shit like that early in the game, because there wasn't much of an antiwar movement yet, the general view was being antiwar was being unAmerican, and so it was widely regarded as OK to beat up the protesters.
I'd have to say that what broke up the New Deal coalition was (a) the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the rest of the civil rights legislation of the era, which took the South out of the coaltion; and (b) the Vietnam war itself, which put parts of the coalition on opposing sides of what became the burning issue of the era.
Sure, the SDS/Weathermen added fire to the backlash, but it was in progress already by that time.
I'm in agreement with you that that forced busing drove a lot of working-class whites out of the coalition. That's a tragedy, really, because it's hard to see what the alternative was. Brown had killed off the possibility of any 'separate but equal' solution, after all. There weren't any good guys or bad guys in that fight, IMHO, just an inevitable train wreck.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 23, 2012 at 12:57 PM
oddjob has linked to the Insider Advantage poll that shows Newt up by 9 in Florida; it's corroborated by Rasmussen, which shows Newt up by 9 also. Both polls taken yesterday.
With apologies to Dylan:
Big Mitt was no one's fool, he owned the town's only diamond mine
He made his usual entrance, looking so dandy and so fine
With his bodyguards and silver cane, and every hair in place
He took whatever he wanted to, and he laid it all to waste
But his bodyguards and silver cane were no match for the Newt of 'Grich.
I'm starting to think Mitt's millions may not win him this battle.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 23, 2012 at 01:12 PM
...Moreover, the big problem with Mitt Romney’s “Romneyness” is that he seems like a manager rather than a leader. To put it very crudely, he just doesn’t seem like an alpha male....
Hat tip, Sully.
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 01:18 PM
On this date in 1932 New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt announced his candidacy for president.
Now the candidates have to announce one full year earlier in that election cycle.....
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 01:20 PM
To add (self-inflicted) insult to injury, it looks like Romney's about to step in it again:
Romney to bombard Gingrich with scorched earth attacks: The big news this morning is that the Romney campaign — stung by Newt Gingrich’s big South Carolina win — is prepared to unleash a white-hot series of assaults on the (again) surging challenger. One of these, apparently, will be a continued demand that Gingrich release the ethics probe that got him bounced from Congress — even though the probe has already been released.
On Friday, in an apparent effort to distract from calls that he release his tax returns, Romney first tested out this line, insisting: “I wouldn’t release things piecemeal. Do it all at once.”
But as CNN reported, the report Romney wants Gingrich to “release” is already on the Web sites of the Library of Congress and the House Ethics Committee.
Now the New York Times reports that Romney will escalate its attacks on Gingrich over this:
...
It’s still hard to understand what the Romney camp means by this. ... The Times account treats this as a he-said-she-said argument, noting that Gingrich “said” the report is online already. But it is online already. Why is this a matter for debate?
If Romney's camp does this they're just going to look incompetent (& the New York Times may look so, too). Hardly a perception that will help Mr. "I'm so competent I saved the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics". All he'll do is remind us of why we don't need a president who "knows how to create jobs because he's had a job", if that means electing Mittens to the Oval Office.
Posted by: oddjob | January 23, 2012 at 01:50 PM
Maybe Romney can follow that up with a demand that Obama release his long-form birth certificate. :D
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | January 23, 2012 at 02:10 PM
Words fail.
Posted by: nancy | January 23, 2012 at 05:34 PM
Great conversation going on here - wish I had more time to comment, but lurking will have to suffice.
Thought I'd share a couple of finds:
If you haven't seen this yet, who hasn't wanted to sing along with JT? (I only wish I would sound this good)
And this:
Posted by: jeanne marie | January 23, 2012 at 05:50 PM
On a more serious and thoughtful note, tnc gives ron paul a history lesson
Posted by: jeanne marie | January 23, 2012 at 05:54 PM
Nancy, how awful!
Posted by: jeanne marie | January 23, 2012 at 05:57 PM
ugh. let's try this again
Colbert and JT
Posted by: jeanne marie | January 23, 2012 at 06:17 PM
jeanne marie -- both links go to ta-nehisi. who is on fire; great read. thanks.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 23, 2012 at 06:17 PM
JM! the song link is great!
i had a do-it-yourself wedding not long before we moved to charleston. in an extreme act of bravery and dedication to family, i allowed my sisters to put together music for the reception. so, well, you can guess the rest of the story.
Posted by: kathy a. | January 23, 2012 at 06:54 PM
Kathy - obviously I was having technical difficulties - thus the screwy links - but wrestled through because I thought both worth sharing.
I can only imagine your wedding music!
Posted by: jeanne marie | January 23, 2012 at 09:10 PM
[I actually started this this morning, when BBW (@9:50 AM) was the latest comment. I didn't finish it before my nap, and when I woke up, yesterday had caught up with me, and the strength I had needed to go towards today's necessities. I'd love to comment on some of the intervening remarks -- but not tonight, finishing this was hard enough.]
BBW: I use the "Pleasantville" comparison only for the 'gimmick.' I know I actually saw the movie, don't think I hated it that much, but can't remember a single character or actor from it. But the shift from black & white to color makes such a point that I can't help it.
Ironically, if you combine the written opening to the book from which the other most famous use of the gimmick comes with the gimmick, you get the effect, but most people haven't read the book. A brief reminder from the second through fifth paragraphs:
(The one question people always had about the book -- and to a lesser extent the movie -- was why Dorothy was so eager to get back to this Kansas.)
Now I have frequently defended President Eisenhower as well as Eisenhower Republicans -- and, politically, I still do. He was the right choice, the country needed a chance to look at what had become, Taft was awful, and Stevenson -- as sainted as he is, deservedly, in memory -- would have been helpless to block McCarthy. Only a Republican could have done that. (And imagine the response to Brown v Board of Ed from an administration that had a devout segregationist as Vice-President, (John Sparkman was Stevenson's running mate.)
But there was a tone in the country that was so much the grayness of the beginnings of both movies. (Ironically, Dorothy was about ten and lived in Kansas -- at least in 1900, when the book was published. Dwight Eisenhower was born in Kansas in 1890.) Eisenhower wasn't the cause of the tone, but he was helpless to change it.
Another irony, the Fifties were, by several measures, the most prosperous decade -- up and down the economic ladder -- in history. (I remember the minimum wage being raised by 250%, from $.40 to $1.00 and the country could easily afford the relatively unprotested change. The G.I. Bill was sending people to college and other education their families could never have dreamed of. And taxes were so high -- with plenty of 'loopholes' admittedly -- that there was much less inequality than we are now used to.) People were prosperous -- but they weren't happy.
People were depressed, oppressed by the cultural conformity that gets missed in the histories. Most of all, they were scared. It was the most fearful decade in American history.
First of all, of war. Poll after poll showed that the majority of americans thought there was a good likelihood of a Civiliazation- or humaity-destroying Atomic War in their lifetimes. And it wasn't just the religious endtime fanatics, or republican crackpots. If anything, liberals were more afraid, because the right just worried about what "Uncle Joe" and then "Kruschex" would do -- liberals were as worried about what we might do to trigger a war, accidentally or deliberately. (And there were a small but noisy contingent pushing for a 'preventitive war' so that we would 'hit them before they would have a chance to hit us.') The "Doomsday Clock" ran not on a small conservative magazine, but on the cover of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
It was as if the whole country was waiting for eight years for the return of a biopsy on a tumor, not knowing if it would be malignant and deadly or benign. You were making plenty of money, living better than your family ever had -- but you never knew if you'd be able to spend the money, if you'd have a future to plan for.
But that wasn't the only fear. Again irony, if you weren't afraid of an atomic war -- you were afraid that the lack of fear would get you considered a 'lefty,' a 'pinko,' a 'subversive' or the like. And while we laugh at those terms now, they were, frequently, as devastating to a person's reputation and relationships with his neighbors as being outed as gay would have been even in the pre-Stonewall Sixties.
(True story: my first post-college sexual relationship ended because I was a fan of the game Diplomacy in the postal version, and I'd wanted to enter her into a game, but it was only open to members of the baltimore SF Club. No big deal, no dues or anything, so I sent off a membership for her so we could play.
WHAM! "Don't you realize i am studying to be a scientist. Which means to get any kind of a job I need a security clearance -- and they will ask me about this group and what if there's a Communist among the members, I'd never get clearance or a job!" That was in the mid-Sixties, but the sad thing was i knew she was right -- even though the Baltimore club was probably the most conservative or non-political group of fans i knew, and besides, had a member that everyone knew was an agent of some organization keeping an eye on them.
A lot of people had youthful 'indiscretions' or simple curiosities about the perfectly legal and accepted Communist Left of the Thirties. Others had actions, from the past or present that they were afriad could and would be misinterpreted. (Signing a petition on anything, then, was viewed as being as dangerous as a woman leaving a drink unattended in a bar today. And that is not downplaying the reality of that danger.)
Above all was the pressure not to 'stand out,' not to be 'different,' to 'fit in.' It is almost impossible to imagine how strong this was -- expecially if we try to find an analogy in today;s world. (Compare the respect many Englismen have today for the Royal Family to the attitude of a firm believer in the Divine Right of Kings.) The Sixties so demolished this -- on the level I'm speaking of -- that it takes a specific episode to even make it believable.
In 1958 or 59, some New York businessmen began wearing very light-colored pastel shirts to work, instead of the customary white ones. They still wore suits and ties and cufflinks and tiepins, the shirts were solid color, with no decoration. And this occurrence was considered so newsworthy that LOOK -- iirc, it might have been LIFE -- ran a 4-page story, complete with pictures.
There were many other contributors to the sense of fear. The racial revolution was beginning, and while it was in fact welcomed by most in the North, no one knew the consequences. And in the South, the understandable fear of the segregationist of the retribution blacks wold wreak was, like the similar fear by slaveowners, real, deserved, even if unrealized.
Then there were the pressures of a changing society, with newly educated GIs taking jobs they might never have heard of, might never have considered they would be qualified when they grew up, new and complicated schools for their children compared to the one-roomers many of them had experienced. And the pressure to 'keep up with the Joneses.'
The conformity demanded following the 'old morality' and mobility, service experiences, and college time pushed towards a more human, humane, and reasonable attitude towards sex -- and the movies still demanded twin beds even for married couples. Fighting 'atheistic communism' meant a push towards religion -- at the same time the new levels of education were raising questions about it.
The time was tense, scared, depressed and gray. And then -- I'm sorry, no analogy fits the election of JFK and its aftermath than "Pleasantville." I know how much he has been 'de-mythologized' even 'debunked' but I lived through the change and felt it -- and it was as palpable and instantaneous as when you open a window in a house that has been shut tight for months. (And I hadn't been a supporter, like Sir Charles I have support for Nixon staining my past. But JFK didn't just change the mood, he got people interested in government again and made them simultaneously hopeful and patriotic -- emotions we too often now reserve for the naive and the Conservative. I began reading, and by that summer I knew I was, and always would be, a Democrat and a person somewhere on the Left.)
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | January 24, 2012 at 02:42 AM
Jim,
I understand exactly what you are saying about the cultural liberation engendered by the Sixties. And that's why I suggest that the period 1964-65 was the high point of the liberal-left in America. Because not only did we get Medicare, we got the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the war on poverty, and a massive immigration reform bill. (And an attempt to get rid of right to work laws and a President who met weekly with the head of the United Auto Workers.) It was inclusive liberalism that unlike the New Deal directly took on the injustices facing non-whites.
I am a fan of much of what happened, but not an uncritical one.
Posted by: Sir Charles | January 24, 2012 at 11:12 PM