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Why Do Poor White Voters Reject the Democrats? |
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Saturday, 26 May 2012 15:24 |
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Younge writes: "So white people who are struggling financially are going to vote Republican. And not by a narrow margin."
The late author, Joe Bageant, who wrote a book on how Democrats have lost the political support of poor rural whites and how the Republican Party has convinced these individuals to vote against their own economic self-interest. (photo: Joe Bageant.com)
Why Do Poor White Voters Reject the Democrats?
By Gary Younge, Guardian UK
27 May 12
The white working class is said to 'vote against its own interests'. This only exposes the patronising assumptions of their accusers.
 o white people who are struggling financially are going to vote Republican. And not by a narrow margin. Asked in a recent Washington Post poll which candidate would do more to advance their families' economic interests, middle-class white voters who said they were struggling to maintain their financial positions chose Mitt Romney. And not by a small margin. In this category he beats Barack Obama by 58% to 32%.
Such news is generally greeted on the left by a mixture of despair and ridicule. Here is a group of people, it seems, who simply do not understand what's good for them. Whites without college degrees, as reasonable if flawed an indicator of "class" in this country as exists, backed John McCain by 58 to 40 in 2008 and George W Bush in 2004 and 2000 by similar amounts. Failing to sense the liberation the Democrats have in store for them, they have been seized by a collective bout of false consciousness and are once again set to vote against their own interests. Having thus infantilised them as ostensible adults in need of protection against themselves, progressives will then wonder why this particular group of people do not flock to them at the polls.
There are several problems with this response - not least the condescension towards a group that too many liberals feel too comfortable disparaging - but for now let's just concentrate on two.
First, it interprets interests too narrowly. As a well-paid journalist, I vote against my economic interests when I support parties that favour wealth redistribution. That's because my own economic interests are not the only things that interest me when I vote. I have a vision of a society that I'd like to live in that goes beyond my own bank account.
It's patronising in the extreme to assume that poorer white people don't understand that. I may disagree with their decisions to vote on issues like abortion and gay marriage, but it's a different thing entirely to suggest that when they prioritise those things it's because they don't know what's best for them. Paradoxically, given that this argument comes from liberals, it is underpinned by an insistence not that they be less selfish, but more.
Secondly, if they were voting on economic issues alone, that might be a reason not to vote Republican but it's not necessarily a reason to vote Democrat. With unemployment still about 8%, many of the benefits of healthcare reform still to kick in and bankers still running amok, it's not like Democrats are offering much that would support the economic interests of the poor, regardless of their race. It was Bill Clinton who cut welfare, introduced the North American Free Trade Agreement and repealed the Glass-Steagall Act - which helped make the recent crisis possible. If you were going to trade your religious beliefs for economic gain, you could be forgiven for demanding a better deal than that.
Indeed, the people most likely to have voted Democrat four years ago - the young, the black and Latinos - are among the groups that have fared worse under Obama. And all the polls suggest they're about to do it again, albeit in lesser numbers. One could just as easily argue that they are the dupes. Democrats have no god-given right to the votes of the poor of any race and for the past 30 years can hardly claim to have earned them.
In a country where class politics and class organisations are weak, it's too easy to dump on the white working class as a bunch of know-nothings when the problem is a political class that is a bunch of do-nothings. That doesn't mean there isn't a problem here. When asked which candidate is most likely to advance the economic interests of you or your family, white people backed Romney 50 to 37 while non-whites backed Obama 71 to 22. That kind of discrepancy cannot just be put down to white people being better off.
Since the mid-60s Republicans have seen an electoral opportunity in appealing to the basest, racist sentiments of a section of the white electorate. What became known as the "Nixon strategy" aimed to use the dog whistle of racial symbolism - like "Welfare Queens" and "Willie Horton" - to draw white southerners into the Republican fold and peel off disaffected whites in the north too. It worked. Since the second world war, Democrats have won the presidency with the white vote alone only once - in 1964. One of the appeals for some whites of voting Republican is a desire to maintain whatever limited racial privileges they have acquired over the years combined with a fear that what little they have will be taken away by feckless non-whites and undocumented migrants. While in Nevada in 2010 I asked a white Republican without health insurance why she wouldn't support a candidate who might give it to her. "I never really got into that Obamacare insurance stuff," she said. "My mind is focusing 250% on this illegal immigration."
None of this means all Republican supporters are racist. But it does suggest they make their appeal on racial grounds and, as the poll shows, it is effective. But it won't be for ever. Whites will be a minority in the US in about 30 years. Republicans' appeal to Latinos is already pitifully low and has made several western states, including Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, extremely competitive.
Nonetheless, time and again during the Republican primaries Republicans evoked racial themes in the whitest places. "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money," said Rick Santorum in Sioux City. "I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."
"Right," said one audience member, as another woman nodded.
"And provide for themselves and their families," Santorum added.
The black population of Sioux City is 2.9%. In Woodbury County, in which Sioux City sits, 13% of the people are on food stamps, an increase of 26% since 2007, with nine times as many whites as blacks using them.
Just a few days later, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich said: "I will go to the NAACP convention and explain to the African-American community why they should demand paychecks [instead of] food stamps." African-Americans make up 0.8% of Plymouth's population. Food stamp use in Grafton County is 6% - a 48% increase since 2007.
Those who are struggling and believe Romney will improve their economic lot are wrong, regardless of their race. Eight years of George W Bush proved that. But it does not follow automatically from that that their home should be supporting Democrats under whom things have gotten less bad less quickly. True, those are the only two choices on offer. But if you're poor they are not great choices. What they need is a party that represents their interests. In a country where corporate money chooses the candidates and therefore shapes the debate that will demand a change in politics, not just politicians.
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Plantations, Prisons and Profits |
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Saturday, 26 May 2012 09:42 |
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Blow writes: "...the state's largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it."
(illustration: Raw Story)
Plantations, Prisons and Profits
By Charles M. Blow, The New York Times
26 May 12
"Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its US counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's."
That paragraph opens a devastating eight-part series published this month by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about how the state's largely private prison system profits from high incarceration rates and tough sentencing, and how many with the power to curtail the system actually have a financial incentive to perpetuate it.
The picture that emerges is one of convicts as chattel and a legal system essentially based on human commodification.
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Arizona: Government by Crackpots |
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Friday, 25 May 2012 15:49 |
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Egan writes: "We interrupt reality to bring you Arizona, once known as the Grand Canyon state. So glorious, this home to sublime cacti and ugly javelina, an outdoor stage for the high histrionics of geologic time, but so very, very crazy. Even a spate of recent temperatures in the 105-degree range cannot explain the latest doings of government by crackpots."
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (photo: AP)
Arizona: Government by Crackpots
By Timothy Egan, The New York Times
25 May 12
 e interrupt reality to bring you Arizona, once known as the Grand Canyon state. So glorious, this home to sublime cacti and ugly javelina, an outdoor stage for the high histrionics of geologic time, but so very, very crazy. Even a spate of recent temperatures in the 105-degree range cannot explain the latest doings of government by crackpots.
Let’s start with the secretary of state, a wide-eyed fellow named Ken Bennett. He is Arizona’s chief elections officer. He is a Republican. He is also co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s campaign in Arizona. Recently, a few hundred people who probably spend their lives searching the Internet looking for proof that the moon landing was fake asked Mr. Secretary of State to investigate the birth certificate of the president of the United States.
Bennett got right on it. He put the full force of his office to work on a nonissue that was resolved for all but the looniest of tunes months ago. And, at the height of his “investigation,” just last week, he threatened to keep Obama off the ballot if his questions were not answered to his satisfaction.
In response, more than 17,000 people this week put their names on an online petition asking the secretary of state to investigate whether Mitt Romney is a unicorn. Surprisingly, Bennett has not been sniffing around rainbows, nor recruiting maidens with expertise in medieval folklore to crack the unicorn question.
By midweek, Bennett had folded the circus tent, after Hawaiian officials pointed him to the same public documents proving the president’s American birth that have been around since baby Barack took his first step. “If I embarrassed the state, I apologize,” Bennett said Tuesday night.
A headline in the Arizona Republic - “Once Again, Arizona is the Nation’s Laughingstock” - was too kind. A reader, Steve Lagin of Phoenix, commenting on Bennett’s foray, said he planned to order his new personalized Arizona license plates: “The Dumb and Dumber State.”
Dumber is another duly elected official, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. You know Sheriff Joe - he’s on Fox News constantly, providing a balance to the conspiracy theorists who don’t have a badge. He is Maricopa County’s top law enforcement officer.
Arpaio is now spending taxpayer money doing what a small group of Tea Party birthers have asked him to do. The sheriff sent a deputy, along with his volunteer “posse,” to Hawaii to look into what he believes is a conspiracy to dupe the American people into believing that their president is an American. The sheriff knows better.
“We feel that document is a forgery,” he said of Obama’s long-form birth certificate, in an interview with the Republic. “We’re trying to figure out who did it. That’s good police work.”
Good police work and Sheriff Joe Arpaio do not go hand in hand. For years, his office has been flooded with complaints about terrible response time by deputies and his mediocre record at solving major crimes. He is also under investigation by the Justice Department for targeting Latinos and those who speak out against his extracurricular crusades.
Arpaio was Bennett’s inspiration. Bennett wants to be governor in the worst way, and for that he can look at the top of the electoral pyramid in Arizona to Jan Brewer. She once blanked out in dead-air silence when asked during a televised debate what she would do for the people of Arizona. They rewarded her with the governor’s office. Brewer was last seen on an airport tarmac wagging her finger at the commander in chief.
A few days ago, Brewer vetoed a bill aimed at promoting community service by high school students. This proposal would have allowed kids who do more than 200 hours of good deeds to receive an official commendation on their transcripts - a way to boost their chances of getting into college, supporters said. Brewer does not think government should be rewarding students this way, but she does think government should be able to stop people and ask them to prove their citizenship.
She’s gone to France now, on a taxpayer-funded mission to convince Europeans that Arizona is a good place to relocate. Brewer thinks that going to Paris on the public’s dime is something that government should do, especially when it’s 110 degrees in Phoenix.
There’s no mystery what a nation run by the Tea Party and talk-radio zealots who’ve taken over the G.O.P. would look like. It would be Arizona. This state used to have a very popular governor, Jan Napolitano, who held back the wackos. But once she left to become secretary of homeland security, the statehouse was left without a stronghold of sanity.
The voters occasionally say they’ve had enough. Russell Pearce, the man behind the show-your-papers immigration law, was ousted in a recall last November. That election was an anomaly. The people who now control the state are proof of the old saying that in a democracy, voters get what they deserve.
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The Numbers in Massachusetts Don't Lie |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Thursday, 24 May 2012 15:30 |
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Pierce writes: "In a poll released late Wednesday, we learn what we all knew - that the race is virtually a tie, as it always has been, and that this is going to be a whopper of an election right down to November. Brown leads Warren by a point, 48-47."
Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. (photo: AP)
The Numbers in Massachusetts Don't Lie
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
24 May 12
 he problem with serving people a big nothingburger day after day is that, sooner or later, they get hungry and wonder why there's only a blob of ketchup there on the plate in front of them.
Coverage of the Senate race here in the Commonwealth (God save it!) between prospective Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren and Republican incumbent Scott Brown has been dominated in recent weeks by an absurd "controversy" regarding whether or not Warren is 1/32nd Cherokee, as her family legend apparently had it, and as the various institutions at which she has been employed have touted. This thing was primarily kept aloft by the Boston Herald, my plucky little alma mater which last week actually ran a story pondering the terrible fix the Democrats were in because of this "scandal." Bang on that tin drum, kids. Blow that bugle 'til you drop.
Thanks to the good folks at Suffolk University, we learn now that the whole silly business is, at best, a sideshow and, at worst, a distraction from what's really going on. In a poll released late Wednesday, we learn what we all knew — that the race is virtually a tie, as it always has been, and that this is going to be a whopper of an election right down to November. Brown leads Warren by a point, 48-47. Incumbents do not like to be under 50 percent and, while the election has closed since a February poll that showed Warren leading by nine, which contained a significant bounce because she was still fairly new, there were 11 percent undecided in that poll, and Warren has picked up enough of them to hold Brown under 50, a barrier he's yet to crack in a head-to-head poll against her, and guarantee a super-PAC armageddon throughout the summer.
Now, as to the Last Indian War, 72 percent of the people polled had heard something about the "controversy," which is hardly a surprise. (The people unaware of it are primarily people in the far western part of the state who are outside the Boston media markets.) There's good news for Warren in that 49 percent of the people aware of the story think she's telling the truth about it, even though her public response has been a little incoherent. Better for her is the fact that 69 percent of the people polled think it's not a "significant" story. This means that better than two-thirds of the people polled have the analytical skills of a handball. You laugh, but this is not always the case.
Elsewhere, the poll shows that neither candidate has been able to define the other in the way they want to, and that both candidates have to this point defined themselves in the way they've sought to define themselves. Senator McDreamy's ads have touted him as an independent voice, not even mentioning the fact that he is a Republican, and 58 percent of the people in the poll believe that it's better to have one senator from both parties, which is rather a loaded question to my mind and makes me wonder if I should take that thing about the handball back. There is no sign in these numbers that Warren's contention that Brown is a tool of Wall Street has yet to have much effect. He also remains extremely well-liked; his 28 percent unfavorability rating remains at 28 percent, while Warren's favorability and unfavorability both ticked up slightly.
Meanwhile, Warren, who has hammered home her image as a fighter for the middle class, has a substantial 49-33 edge on the question of who most has the interests of the middle class at heart. She's also within the margin of error as to whether she or Brown will be the more "independent" senator — which, after all, has been Brown's entire pitch so far. So what we may have shaping up is a multimillion dollar, seven-month brawl over five percent of the electorate. The wild card remains the popularity of the president in the Commonwealth, who leads former one-term governor Willard Romney by 25 points, and the fact that, according to this poll, 60 percent of the people polled think the state's on the right track, a statement of support for both the president and his close friend, Governor Deval Patrick. Warren's first major ad buy was a commercial tying herself to the president. If she can capitalize on his popularity, it might just be enough to pull her across the line. Or not. I do not have enough other hands to figure that part out.
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ne consistent set of characters on the Tim and Eric Awesome Show are the characters 
