[lbo-talk] another TP poll: still whiter, righter, more

Marv Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Sat Apr 17 06:43:16 PDT 2010


On 2010-04-16, at 5:19 PM, brad bauerly wrote:


> Marv writes:
>> Brad and others, however, see trade unionists, women, blacks, and others who continue to support the Obama administration as dupes lacking any consciousness >of their political interests. He finds the angry tea party movement more appealing, despite its "contradictions", because he perceives it as incipiently hostile to the >system and therefore a more fertile recruiting ground for the left than hapless liberals and social democrats who remain committed to it despite their grievances. Brad >isn't the first and won't be the last on the left to suffer from this confusion.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Marv that is not at all what I think. In the quoted text that I
> wrote, which followed your unfounded claims, I clearly say that I am
> beginning to think that the 40% (of respondents to the poll who had no
> opinion about the TP) were a more fruitful place for leftists than the
> 27% (who claimed to be against them, which I figured was mostly made
> up of partisan Democrats). That is quite different from saying that
> the TP is more appealing and fertile recruiting ground for the left.
> Not quite sure why you would misrepresent what I said.

Well, sure, uncommitted "independents" are everyone's target, all across the political spectrum. But I don't think you'd have spent this much time and energy belabouring the obvious. We could debate whether you would be more likely to make inroads among Democrats who largely agree with you on the major issues, or the 40% of "no opinion" Americans who are either ambivalent or ignorant about them, but that is another matter and not I think where you began. I certainly understood you to be contrasting the very opinionated activists in the TP movement with the Democratic rank-and-file, and have now begun to retreat from that position under fire from your critics. You're laying claim to a more nuanced view, and that is good, but I don't think I've misrepresented where you have been coming from.


> I also in a
> subsequent post differentiated my position on liberals and social
> democrats, with the latter holding out possibilities while the former
> mostly clinging to the Dems and liberal ideology too tightly, IMO.
> Again, no sure why the intent to misrepresent my position.

NDP'ers in Canada come from the same social backgrounds and hold the same political views as liberal Democrats in the States, and in fact have historically identifed quite strongly with the DP, including with its leaders. If they were in the States, they'd be resolutely Democratic. The same is true of British and European social democrats. I don't know on what basis you think they are any more likely to break with the system than US Democrats. If anything, there's been more evident disaffection and motion within the DP than in these other parties because of the crises in US foreign and domestic policy and the failure of the Obama administration to meet the expectations of its liberal base.


> Let me be quite clear, I never viewed, nor expressed views, favorable
> of the TP or said that the left should reach out to the TP. I think
> the TP is interesting as a political development because as a new
> development it hasn't been forced into the normal two parties
> ideologies. It is interesting in a sociological sense to see how
> people react- usually they try to understand the TP as part of the
> Republicans (all the astro-turf talk), or they use the two party
> stand-in binaries: smart v. dumb, rural v. urban, white v.
> multi-racial, small business v. workers, anti-tax v. big government,
> rich v. poor... Rarely has anyone here or elsewhere actually tried to
> engage with the material driver of the TP, focusing instead on their
> ideological representation and assigning them a R or D. I truly
> believe that the left will never get anywhere if they don't attack the
> two party system and I think we need to begin by trying to breakdown
> all of the prescribed markers we use for understanding people with in
> the two party binary.
>
> Brad
>
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