...Back in the Sixties and Seventies, Democratic Party leaders decided to turn their backs on the working-class voters who until then had been the partys central constituency, and to try to find a new constituency in groups like college students, environmentalists, and so on. They called this the New Politics, and it was a terrible mistake...''
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Blah, blah, blah. I don't buy it.
I was immediately struck by the fact that race was never mentioned in this article---not once. In my view the core to understanding the US rightwing appeal to `backlash' is racism, pure and simple. Calling it `populist conservatism' is a Democratic Party white wash.
Let's get the history straight first. Nixon pulled a significant part of white blue collar vote away from George Wallace and into the Republican party by using race as the subtext, as in `they' are stealing all your opportunities, your jobs, your women, your neighborhoods, your schools, turning your kids into drug addicts, criminals, and whores etc, etc, etc. Stop all that now, vote for Dick. And they did. With the Dixiecrats gone, the Democrats had to mobilize as much of the minority vote as possible, along with white liberals and this was just not enough to win nation wide elections. So, the Demos concentrated on moving some tiny fraction of the white center in their direction. As that brain-dead white center continuously move right so did the Demos, knowing full well their minority and liberal base had no place else to go. Meanwhile the Demos dropped most of the rhetoric about race and started coding it all to appeal to this white center while ratting out every institutional reform that backed up civil rights---so only those who wanted to see `progress', could. Those who didn't want to hear it or see it, didn't have to.
This race subtext has been turned into a virtual universe of rightwing codes that pit the white slightly advanced working class against the black, hispanic, and immigrant working class as a divide and conquer tactic for the bottom. Meanwhile it works the same racist magic at the white mid-management (suburban) level where it is even more important that work, housing, neighborhoods and schools remain as un-integrated and status conscious as possible. Here the message changes a little to emphasize tax cutting, pushing privatization of public services to divert the public coffers to business, dropping any all government regulatory systems (partly code for anti-affirmative action and anti-immigrant laws) and to hand over whatever is left of public trough as soon as possible.
In this code for working and lower middle class whites, Liberal elites means: integration, `quotas', affirmative action, bussing, welfare, soft on crime, unions. For the mid-manager-suburbanite crowd, Liberal means high taxes, government regulation, and so forth and so. If race is not the first sublevel of the subtext then it is second using some vague innuendo that means `privilaging' those who don't deserve it, i.e. the same un-mentioned dark hordes out there somewhere in the night... all death penalty cases waiting to happen...
What is communicated isn't words. It's the apparence and look of the rightwing and their Democratic wanna-bees who mumble something vague about America or since 9/11, blah, blah, blah... Nobody is listening to that. They are looking at the comic book caricature of a White guy, a very White guy. The only question is, how white is he? Really white, or really really white? What Reagan communicated was that he was White, really, really white and that's about all he communicated. So the right has been following that success story ever since.
These really, really whitewing guys all look the same. They have that funny looking 1962 haircut glued on top of their manly brow. They always wear suits. They have perfect white teeth and steel rim glasses. They pretend to never swear. They go to church, believe in God, and look like some old lady's nice middle aged nephew. They have two perfect children perfectly spaced and perfectly groomed who stand next to their perfect and adorable wife. They believe in small business, family farms, giant cars and trucks, football, country western music---they're down with the masses. They kiss babies. They are as phony as a three dollar bill and everybody knows it.
For the bottom they promise one thing: we will not let `you know who', starts with an `n' in your place, period. For the mid-level suburbanite, more of the same, plus tax cuts and some `free enterprise' scheme to milk the public cow---get in on the take while you can. Everybody knows this too. So the assholes get elected, regular as clock work. And absolutely nobody who votes for them will say a word---it is just understood.
The key that unlocks all the mysteries (including what's wrong with Kansas) to the rightwing political success is no mystery. It's just been coded and re-coded until any direct reference has virtually disappeared from the printed and spoken word---which ironically is typified by this article in its glaring omission.
The last question in the posted interview was,
`How was the food in Kansas?'', with the answer
`Fantastic.'
Now, this answer is completely ridiculous.....until you remember one minor regional detail---the only food in Kansas worth eating is BBQ, and guess who usually does that best?
What to do? I suppose honesty about what is going on might be a start.
CG