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

[c b]

Alan Rudy
Your argument can't explain California or Massachusetts or New York in
this election, nor Michigan electing Granholm either time as governor
- when she was elected in 2000, the state had surplus which means the
state shoulda stuck with Republicans and in 2004 the state was in deep
trouble (and the Rep's ran a conservative west michigan businessman
against her) which means she should have lost. Furthermore, you want
to generalize about minority participation to secure victories for
Dems in three of the most concentrated minority cities in the US...?
Second, I'm guess at this point neither one of us knows what
determined turn-out in those cities, whether it was more or less than
in 2006, etc.

^^^^^^^^

CB:  The 2010 gubernatorial election in Michigan found the Democrat
running very left - announcing he would put a moratorium on
foreclosures, take money out of banks that didn't participate in the
mortgage relief program, lots of rhetoric like an old liberal Democrat
. The Dem lost in a landslide. The Republicans won in all top offices
and majority in both houses of the legislature. This is some empirical
evidence that the electorate was not voting against Dems because Obama
didn't ( somehow; who knows how) "force" the Congress to carryout a
big Keynesian stimulus and a whole left program.

Of course a civilian Keynesian social spending program would be the
best for the working class. But that doesn't mean that we are in a
political ear when that is a winnable and popular action. That's the
main thing that you and Marv ignore. The political reality of this
concrete situation. It _should_ be popular with masses of the working
class, but it is in fact not. Your blaming Obama for not achieving it
is therefore not sensible.

^^^^^^^

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> As far as I can tell, there was enough minority participation to secure
> Democratic victories in places like DC, Baltimore, or Detroit. If you look
> at the electoral map http://www.politico.com/2010/maps/ at sub-state
> level,
> you will see that places with heavy minority concentration went heavily
> democratic. It is the ex-urban or rural areas that went republican.
>
> So from that point of view, I do not see much evidence of the supposed
> dissatisfaction of liberals who voted for Obama. Some were dissatisfied,
> to
> be sure, but I do not think it made enough difference on the national level
> to sway the election results.
>
> Most people do not adhere to any coherent political philosophy or ideology,
> their understanding of the macroeconomics, market forces, and the role of
> government in the economy is practically nil. They tend to attribute the
> state economy to the political party in power, a view that is reinforced by
> the political discourse and partisan propaganda. So if things go right,
> they vote for the party in power, if things go wrong - they vote for
> challengers.
>
> In other words, if they face bad luck, they sacrifice a chicken, and if
> that
> does not "work" they sacrifice a goat, and their luck still does not
> change,
> they start sacrificing some of their own. It s not the purpose rationality
> that Weber described, by the magic rationality described by Bronislaw
> Malinowski. According to Malinowski, if people do not understand causal
> mechanisms behind phenomena (such as weather change), they turn into magic
> to gain symbolic "control" over something beyond their factual knowledge.
> That is, they are using rituals to get peace of mind in situations they
> cannot control or understand. Voting is one of such rituals and it is as
> "rational" as sacrificing a chicken to avert bad luck.
>
> I am reasonably certain that had the economy visibly improved, democrats
> would have maintained their majorities, Mr. Obama notwithstanding.
>
> Wojtek
>
> On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On the one hand, its been three days so most of us are speculating.
> > On the other hand, the material Marv's pointed to represents some
> empirical
> > evidence w/r/t youth as does the desperate efforts Dems made to bring out
> > their usual blocs - seein' as how it was pretty clear they weren't gonna
> > come out. Like Marv, I'd be surprised if - like the reduced
> participation
> > of youth who lean Dem who voted for the excitement of Obama - there was
> > also
> > reduced participation from historically oppressed minorities.
> > It is surely possible that some voters, perhaps swing independents and
> some
> > union members most specifically, sought to punish the party in power but
> it
> > strikes me a weird that anyone excited or hopeful about Obama would see
> > anything in Reps, much less TPers... but then again I'm not a member of
> > these groups.
> > I can say, anecdotally, that reading the comments pages on HuffPo,
> MoveOn,
> > the NYT and beyond - as well as exchanging notes with mainstream Dems I
> > grew
> > up with and went to college and grad school with - mainstream Dems are
> not