A large swath of the Washington punditocracy have pushed the meme of bi-partisanship. The new Obama administration often seems aligned with this effort. But in passing the stimulus bill “bipartisanship” has too often meant compromising with right-wingers for no reciprocal benefit. It seems to be revealed hollow when the votes are counted. What is this really about?
I think Obama–perhaps unconsciously–sees “bipartisanship” in much the way Lincoln did. In his 1862 message to Congress, paving the way for the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln memorably said, “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” The idea that we are in thrall to issues and ideas and we must find ways to escape this is the highest and best concept of “bipartisanship.” Of course while these lofty words were spoken, one million Americans were dying in civil war.
Contrast this with FDR’s approach. In the 1936 election he repeatedly drew the lines: attacking the “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking. Never before have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.” No bi-partisanship here! And this got results in the heartland. As one worker put it in 1936, Roosevelt “is the first man in the White House to understand that my boss is a son of a bitch.”
The key challenge for Obama is not to make compacts and compromises with the Washington elite, but to forge an electoral realignment in the country. For this goal, his rhetoric of “bipartisanship” is superficial in Washington and, outside of Washington, actually works against him. What’s needed isn’t less partisanship, but more. For decades the Republicans have manipulated millions into voting against their basic economic interests while accusing their opponents of “partisanship.” Obama has an excellent opportunity to bring this to an end.
In the aggregate people don’t vote against their economic interests
Can you give an example of this?
The most famous proponent of it is Thomas Frank, who makes the case in his book “What’s the Matter with Kansas”. Basically the idea is the the Republican Party has successfully used cultural wedge issues, such as abortion and gay marriage to slice off populist voters who are economically more liberal.
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p>Personally I think the social issues cut both ways. I know plenty of people who are fiscally conservative who nevertheless vote Democratic because they feel that their ability to live freely and/or practice their chosen faith (or lack their of) is threatened by the Republican Party. It’s equally wrong to say that these people have been “manipulated into voting against their basic economic interests” as it is of the Kansans. Ted Rall address this point some in his 2005 column “What’s the Matter with Manhattan?“. In short, Liberals are just as likely to vote on social issues over economic ones as Conservatives and we shouldn’t look down on people who consider their cultural values to be more important than their pocketbook.
OK thanks for the reply Marcus. ON the issue of gay marriage, and gay rights in general, I think I can argue that poor people are economically right to restrict gay rights in their community. For most of human history, heterosexual marriage was vital to the economic survival of your society. Men were motivated to get sex by making money. This made them work hard which made more food and money for their children and made their society survive.
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p>If you introduce into this society a way to get sex without doing work or reproducing, then you have thrown a wrench into the system.
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p>Like most liberal social policies, the sexual revolution is pretty good for you if you can actually pay for it. There is a level of income however below which the sexual revolution will destroy your society. I’d say that the poor people who vote Republican probably see more destruction from the sexual revolution than they see from the rich-favoring policies of the Republican party.
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p>However if you think gays are great for everybody, then you’ll say “what’s the matter with Kansas” and think voters are dumb. Which is a dumb position for somebody seeking an electoral realignment!
This is bizarre bullshit. A prejudice in search of a rationalization.
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p>There is no evidence that marriage equality has increased poverty in the countries in Europe where it has been practiced.
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p>I suspect it hangs on because of a rather inaccurate story about the collapse of the Roman Empire that is probably taught in too many Sunday Schools.
The sexual society of poor people in Massachusetts is completely haywire.
As usual when David is stumped he wants charts and graphs.
Poor Seascraper. No one believes her absurd sweeping generalizations.
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p>We call this place “reality-based” for a reason.
… what you have is a hunch. Your hunch looks bigoted. You’re hunch is appropriately dismissible until you can show it’s more than a hunch. By all means, keep silent and dismissed.
So Obama should just say you Republican voters, unless you vote the way I believe you should, you are bigoted. That’ll work.
The topic of conversation was what you asserted. Your evasion is telling.
I believe this idea about sexuality has been kicking around the right blogosphere for a while. You may be under the false impression that “everyone knows this” as a result. The idea has not been kicking around the left blogosphere, so I’m afraid it might need much more substantiation in these quarters.
… of the noble savage. The poor are like idiot children, unable to think or judge for themselves, but pure and subject to corruption by our decadent civilization.
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p>I suppose it’s better than JohnD and demolisher’s view of the poor as lazy thieves.
Or let me put it differently.
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p>In the Middle Ages, large parts of Christian Europe thought God would punish them for permitting the presence of unconverted Jews. Jews were seen as magnets for God’s wrath.
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p>Modern “arguments” about gay civil rights often have a similar flavor. If you recall, a number of fundamentalists think that God will punish the U.S. for its sexual permissiveness. Inventors of sociological truths see something similar if more secular. Homosexual marriage will unravel Something Important that will cause the society itself to unravel.
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p>It is very sad that some Americans wish to recap the same thinking that cost so many medieval Jews their lives.
I read today that 40% of Americans don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of Evolution. Why should “anything” we do surprise any of us?
who claimed Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment of New Orleans for its sin? Oh yes, it was Jerry Falwell.
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p>But he’s not alone – There’s a raft of them!
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p>http://www.beliefnet.com/News/…
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p>http://www.nola.com/news/index…
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p>http://www.salon.com/politics/…
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p>http://www.articlearchives.com…
First of all, there’s zero evidence that what you said is true. People have all sorts of motivations for working hard. Plenty of brilliant productive people never have children and many many others do have children, but still do not support them adequately.
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p>More to the point, that’s not why people vote on social issues. The arguments that people have to do with morality or custom, not economic interest. Occasionally you do hear economic arguments (ie. legal abortion is causing a shortage of low skilled workers) but those are few and far between and much more likely an after the fact justification for a belief held for other social reasons.
OK but Marcus, the point is, if people systematically made irrational political decisions, humanity would have been extinct many thousands of years ago. Human beings are a social animal, that is we survive and advance as a society, not simply as individuals.
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p>I’m telling you one theory on how to explain the matter-of-fact results because as a person interested in politics and power, I believe that voters will make the best decision of those available to them. Maybe not the right decision but certainly the least-wrong.
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p>However if you believe that voters can be duped to make the wrong decision, then there is no use in finding the truth and communicating that. In your world it all comes down to slick advertising and contempt for people.
Man, please be empirical. Please.
Human beings are certainly irrational. We survive and prosper nevertheless. Life would be very dull indeed if everyone behaved perfectly rationally.
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p>Voters certainly can be duped, not everyone and not all the time, of course. Even voters who follow politics closely frequently lack all the information to make a fully informed decision. However, I agree that voters do get it right most of the time.
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p>Democracy is not a perfect system. This is why we have the various protections in our constitution. Tyranny of the majority can be a serious threat to liberty and we need to make sure that all people’s rights are protected, especially when this is unpopular.
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p>Voting for non-economic reasons is not inherently irrational. Reread my last two posts: I do not believe that people who vote one way because of social issues are being “duped”. I was explaining the argument, since you seemed unfamiliar with it, then criticizing it.
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p>There is a big difference being voting against your self-interest, ie. what KBusch was talking about, and voting irrationally. It is rational to do something you feel will benefit society as a whole, even if you will see no benefit yourself, possibly even see a loss. As you said, man is a social animal.
I haven’t read you on this site before, but I appreciate your replies. When looking at the behavior of something like the electorate, I’d put the different areas you talk about, the social and the economic, back together. Your exceptions are weak arguments. I’m talking about the average schlub. Why does he get married when he can get sex without it.
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p>I’m certainly not against gay marriage in a society like ours which wants to allow gays every other social equality. However we’re talking about poor people who may be living in a society that is much closer to the edge than we are. For you to persist in your argument, you have to believe that total sexual freedom is economically good for all societies at any level of economic development. I can tell you that the poor people in Boston are living in a collapse partly because there is no connection between sex and marriage and a job. The sexual freedom which is so good for you is really bad for them.
You’re talking about responsibility. This is an important distinction. Are you making a case that freedoms should be curtailed because of the irresponsible? This seems to me to possibly be a valid line of reasoning for an argument for gun control.
Guns good. Sex bad. See the difference?
The most valuable possession most poor women have is sex, and the sexual revolution encourages them to give it away without demanding the economic return which was standard in the past. I’m saying that marriage is integral to certain economies, perhaps of Kansas! and that’s why they vote the way they do.
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p>You guys tell me why the Kansans vote the way they do, if you have a better answer maybe I’ll believe it. But if you want to forge a political realignment, you better take them seriously and not call them bigots.
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p>If you want Kansans to like gays, it’s easy to do, just make them as rich as Massachusetts.
… its about sex’s value as a possession. Doesn’t that make my point even more clear. Call it freedom to leverdge one’s sex value. It’s still distinct from the problems that you point out, which don’t have to do with freedom, but rather consequences and responsibility.
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p>I’ve never pretended to understand Kansas, and I’ve read the book.
Have you ever been there?
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p>You’ve confused Kansas with East St. Louis, Illinois. But, I’ve shared too much….
Chapter Six of The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan (a libertarian economist by the way) takes up the Self-Interested Voter Hypothesis. Page 149 starts a large discussion of this:
In other words, not only do people “in the aggregate” vote against their interests. They do so frequently and systematically.
I don’t know what that is, but the voters are only allowed to choose between available options. If the SIVH was bad for them, then it’s likely that not having the SIVH was worse.
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p>Personally I would be very wary of anything coming out of academic economics, especially that which claims that voters are wrong but an academic economist can tell you what they should have done. That’s the attitude that has got us into so much trouble with the government economists deciding what we should and should not be producing and buying.
SIVH=Self-interested Voter Hypothesis. You are asserting it is true. The profession in charge of testing it has found it isn’t — with few exceptions. Smokers vote for smokers’ rights. That’s it.
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p>Altruism plays a huge role in how people vote.
It’s in the self-interest of many rich people to keep the poor from rioting, yes.
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p>It’s also in the self interest of people like John Kerry to have high taxes so somebody like Mark Cuban doesn’t get into Kerry’s social class.
Kerry’s money is 1) new and 2) mostly his wife’s. The Bushes on the other hand…
Bush manipulated the public into believing the economy was facing serious peril and then manipulated the public into supporting spending a bunch of money we didn’t have on improving the economy. He never said that one day our children would have to pay the money back.
Who the heck do you think the Reagan Democrats were?
You can show me charts and graphs about polls and surveys. Some jokes will come in about “letting facts get in the way…” but with the war and the economy in Obama’s (and Democrat’s) laps the right will rally the middle of the country again and to paraphrase Gen. MacArthur “we will return”. Do you really think the moderates of the country are watching this Stimulus package debate and siding with Pelosi and company? When the deaths begin to increase in Afghanistan do you think Americans will be happy? When the current crisis subsides and gas prices rocket and inflation causes every other thing you buy to be outrageously expensive, do you think independents will side with Barney Frank? People have very short attention spans and memories.
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p>It is just a matter of time…
I remember hearing something about that from the Whig National Committee which is now pursuing a 2 state strategy.
but don’t you think there is a very real chance of the Republicans coming back. The majority of the American public thought the Bush Presidency was a total disaster and the war/economy… fell on the shoulders of the incumbent party. The country went for Obama because of these monumental issues, not because they were becoming more democratic o liberal. Don’t you think there is the chance that people will blame the now incumbent President and Democratic House/Congress for the ails of our country in 1,2 or 4 years?
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p>Be honest.
according to polls of voter self-identification. This is especially true of younger voters.
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p>I do agree though. It is certainly possible for the GOP to make a comeback and the economic crisis does provide something of an opportunity, especially if it is severe and prolonged. People will eventually run out of patience with Obama and the Dems if progress is not made.
Right now, the Republican Party appears to be digging themselves in deeper. Look at this front page diary by The Angelic One next door.
The Republican counterproposal is something we’re not seeing much of nationally or locally. That is because, like the Bush White House, they have a political apparatus but not policy apparatus. That’s how Steele can say amazingly stupid things with practiced calm. The Reagan well has run dry. So it’s all stale talking points. If the Republican Party turns into the Party of Palin, it is doomed.
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p>That’s where it’s going right now.
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p>Honestly!
We are hopeless here. We’re trying but it is tough to gain any momentum. In fact, I guess what I’m referring to is the lean of the independents in the US. The Republicans will always be there but the middle leaned left this election and my remarks should have been more descriptive of the middle (independents) coming back right. Remember the red/blue county maps showing how people voted.
The national Republicans do not have a viable counter-proposal.
Let’s see how things look in 6,12,18 months…
There’s a joke about inexperienced tourists visiting France and encountering someone (a waiter maybe?) who understands no English. To make themselves understood, they speak very loudly almost shouting at the guy. Truth is they’re unconvinced the waiter doesn’t speak English. They’re sure his French is a ruse. Everyone speaks English. They congratulate themselves. They’re onto him.
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p>I find your appeals to “be honest” similar. You imagine that your perspective is obviously correct and incontrovertible, that I have to agree with its essentials. I’m just pretending to disagree — possibly for slimy partisan reasons.
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p>Maybe, JohnD, I am not pretending at all.
People “spin” so much when they defend the things they believe in that occasionally I feel compelled to ask them to be honest. Maybe you are not one of the people I’m referring to but it is refreshing when you hear somebody be critical of the people they like. How many times have I been asked to be “honest” about George Bush or other Republicans/Conservatives? Often times I continue the spin attempts and other times I say, “ya, they screwed “X” up badly…”.
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p>You can still support something strongly but honestly critique something and that is all I was asking for. If it doesn’t apply to you then maybe you are better than most.
“…it is refreshing when you hear somebody be critical of the people they like.”
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p>In my travels I find this is much more likely to occur among the left than the right. Many of us, for example, liked Clinton but criticize the DLC behind which he was the major force.
Throughout the Clinton years, the sharpest criticisms I read of the President were in The Nation. I’ve already expressed some disappointment with the Obama Administration — and not, by the way, on its choice of preachers.
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p>I’m guessing you did not review the comment to which I was replying. You were not inviting me to criticize a Democrat. You were inviting me to reaffirm Pendulum Theory: Democratic dominance will always give way to Republican dominance and conversely. I don’t honestly know that that will happen again.
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p>You’ll also find I say “I don’t know” a lot.
Going forward we will be presented with choices, many choices. And I believe these choices will be very difficult with a split of good and bad. I am hoping that both your party and my party will evaluate these choices (be it “bad Bank”, healthcare, immigration, terrorism…) and vote for the good of the American people. When these choices are presented to us I would suggest we all remove the D’s and R’s from our pedigree and support/oppose for meritorious reasons and not partisanship. The recent Stimulus bill was described on MSNBC as showing Republican “obstructionism” and Democratic “unity”. Both have to stop. And maybe for starters we can request that our lawmakers read “ANY” bill they are about to sign. This clearly could not happen when the 1,000+ page bill is released at midnight with voting scheduled for 8:00AM. My advice to any politician on any side would be to vote NO on any bill they have not read.
of tax cuts that made it into the stimulus bill and compared to the way the vote went down, what should be obvious is that one side did make a good faith effort to stop and one side didn’t.
… the content of the bill was obviously a compromise. That democrats unified behind a compromise and that the GOP unified against it should tell you something.
The compromise was between the Democratic “unity” and three Republicans, not the Republican party. The GOP was against the bill and even with the changes they still feel the bill was a giant waste of money and will burden our kids for decades and I agree. This was a great chance to put something together with a unified political purpose. What we got was a majority bill with tweaks to pull a few moderates over. And unlike Senator Charles E. Schumer, I think the American public does care about “pork” no matter how uncaring he is.
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p>Now it’s time for the government bureaucracy, at the Federal, State and local levels to gorge themselves on spending. To waste money with “Big Dig” projects on every corner and set everyone up for the giant loss of Stimulus money in a year or 2 o 3 when the projects are over. What proportion of GDP will government grow to?
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p>Am I missing something or has the news on where the money will come from to pay for this Stimulus bill been reported? Who is paying and how? What do even the holiest of holy economic brains like Paul Krugman (he’s not partisan at all) say about the effects of printing a trillion dollars of US currency and spending it will be on he dollar? Surely he’s made some malicious comments in the past concerning George Bush and deficit spending/national debt that he’ll suddenly defend as a wonderful thing. What will milk cost on 2-4 years when inflation hits us like a tsunami? What additional ginormous deficit spending is still in our short term future?
… had nothing to do with the bill’s alleged effectiveness or ineffectiveness. I only point out that it looks the way it does because of efforts to please Republicans. With those republican-pleasing, compromise-demonstrating elements ensconced within, the Dems voted for it and the GOP didn’t.
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p>The fact that the Dem’s voted for it and the GOP didn’t is not evidence that there was no compromise. The content of the bill is.
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p>Ignoring this basic set of facts is to misunderstand who was willing to compromise and who was not.
with some Republicans and maybe due to word from Obama that there was too much “shit” in the bill they change it. Now the bill only sucks badly… the Republicans should have voted for it. How stupid do they think we are? I’ve negotiated with people my whole life and have never agreed when the other party went from absurdly unrealistic to just plain unrealistic.
… in the bill were not enough for them to vote for it, then that necessarily shows that they were less willing to compromise than the other side.
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p>That’s all I’m saying. You want to talk about the notion of removing Ds and Rs and compromise and bi-partisanship, then that discussion is better served with a clear understanding of exactly how those things manifested in the bill.
You want to talk about the notion of removing Ds and Rs and compromise and bi-partisanship, then that discussion is better served with a clear understanding of exactly how those things manifested in the bill.
Several polls suggest support for the Obama plan. Let’s see what 2010 brings and certainly not declare failure of a piece of legislation that hasn’t even been signed into law yet!