[lbo-talk] Tea Party: less than meets the eye

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Fri Nov 5 11:27:37 PDT 2010


I remember repeated polls in early 2009 that indicated upwards of 60% of the public wanted a public option, with upwards of 35% in favor of national health care, I remember incredibly high frustration with government secrecy, phone and internet data mining, renditions, Guantanamo, and insurance companies. I remember upwards of 65% support for cutting taxes for those making less than $250,000 and returning the tax rate for those making more to 1999 levels, I remember great support for a return to competence and science-based policy at the EPA and FEMA, I remember great support for strong re-regulation of Wall Street. I remember swing voters looking at Sarah Palin - proto-TPer - in disbelief.

There is absolutely no question that the press had been preoccupied with all sorts of racist stuff about Obama, its true. And it is also true that the country is way more racist, both personally and structurally, than the vast majority of white people think... but you're definition of racism has to move beyond personal racism to make this work to its greatest effect.

At the same time, if the Obama Administration had pushed the programs associated with the polling I remember (and I'm pretty sure you do to), if they had dropped that crazy commitment to bipartisan collaboration with inherently obstructionist Repugs - and publicly and repeatedly called the Repugs on it - then large numbers of the mainstream white folks 1) who in 2009 didn't see the public option as unAmerican or anti-capitalist (don't you remember upwards of 40-50% of people supporting "socialism" in late 2008?), just anti-insurance companies, who voted Democratic in 2008 to end secrecy, domestic spying, terminate extraordinary renditions, and close Guantanamo, who wanted FEMA to finally address New Orleans (which it hardly has) and who expected far greater emphasis on climate change, pollution control and regulating things like deep sea oil drilling (much less accurately evaluating spills rather than collaborating with BP to dupe the public) a few things would have happened - I think.

First, the right would have gone even more ballistic than they have. Second, the democrats - so long as they fought for their liberal/competent neoliberalism as intensely as Obama did in his campaign, would have held on to a far greater percentage of swing voters AND energized lay democrats. Third, they'd have put the Blue Dogs in their place.

I never implied that the American public's as left as this list. I simply saw, in 2008/2009 a great deal of support for rational neoliberal reform when it was positively and intelligently present by a black man.

Additionally, if you're gonna stress the role of racism, which I am not saying is unimportant AND I am not saying is not central to a great deal of the Tea Party energy, you better be willing to say about Obama the same things Jesse Jackson did when Obama dissed black fathers without a shred of sociological consciousness - something no black woman Democratic politician could get away with, AND see the inherently classist and racist politics of the education politicies in Race to the Top. It's not sexist to - as Obama does - buy into an argument rooted in the falacious idea that the problem with the black family, community and culture is that black women are too strong, emasculate their men, generate disdain among boys for education, hard work, traditional values as well as being responsible for the children they rampantly and repeatedly sire? Its not sexist to buy into and double down on an education policy that argues that primary and seconday school teachers - overwhelmingly women because of the low status and low pay - need to be held accountable for destroying the minds of their youthful charges and therefore making us less competitive (masculine value) as a nation? And that, furthermore, it is imperative to break the power of the unions teachers formed because they defend these poor performing and unqualitified chicks? But not only that, encourage a view that local community educational democracy has furthered the parochial and underperforming character of American schools... when the vast majority of the people in PTAs are women and the vast majority of school volunteers are women?

Hell, TPers veil their classism, racism and sexism in libertarianism and Obama and the DLC's neoconservatism veils its classism, racism and sexism in what Joe Feagin calls the soft white racial frame - see Wingfield and Feagin, Yes We Can? White Racial Framing and the 2008 Presidential Campaign - and Michael Brown, Troy Duster, David Wellman and two other Berkeley and Santa Cruz scholars call - in White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society - contemporary "racial realism" - and tie directly to the work of Dinesh D'Souza, Shelby Steele, and Bill Cosby.

Was their any sympathy for the UAW in the Obama's treatment of GM and Chrysler? Were there any provisions for an end to the two-tier wage rates when the companies returned to profitability, as they have? Was there any prospect that a return to profitability might bleed even a little back into the retiree health insurance or pensions? No.

Your account of the Michigan Governor's race is also very foreign to my experience. Bernero had effectively zero name recognition at the start of the race and he spent all of his money - and he had far far far less the Snyder - by the middle of October, no big push at the end at all. Furthermore, the Republican Senate had stymied everything Granholm had tried to do over the last eight years so, even if her policies would have worked, effectively none were implements and SHE, like her good friend Obama, never called the Republicans on the carpet for damaging Michigan or for publicly lying about her proposals... I've seen more clear prevarications and lies in the last eight years published without Democratic responses in the LSJ and Freepo than I can count. Add to that the tenor of the times, the fact that Snyder's a businessman, that he's not a TPer, that he refused to debate Virg (why should he, he was up >20 points from the start), and the fact that other leading Dems in the state felt luke warm at best about Bernero, plus the whole arch conservative west side of the lower peninsula and the deep libertarian and cultural conservatism of the upper lower peninsula and the whole UP (except, perhaps, for Marquette) and you've got a guaranteed loss... and I haven't even mentioned the constant negative adds on TV and in newspapers funded by non-party groups. Furthermore, Virg's populism only came out late and, as a result, sounded desperate to many.

I believe that the US public is as knee-jerk conservative as it is at least as much because the Dems haven't fought it worth a darn as because Republicans have swung to the right and, largely run the country - with three interludes by neoliberal Democrats - since 1978. Obviously, I have few if any historical counterfactuals because of the relative capitulation of the Democrats to the Republican program.

Thanks for pushing me, friend.



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