Obama’s coalition is held together only by his personal mythography.
Political analysts still are arguing over why the Democratic party was washed away in the midterm election. Since 2008, ascendant progressives had been crowing over a fresh mosaic of energized minorities, newly franchised immigrants, single young urban women, greens, gays, and — less often mentioned — upscale professionals and the 1-percenter super-wealthy.
These groups were united by their support for the expansion of entitlements, higher taxes, neo-isolationism, amnesty, opposition to any restrictions on abortion, curbs on carbon-energy development, and gay marriage. But what really held them together was Barack Obama. His exotic name, his racial background, his leftwing ideology, and his Ivy League training appealed to each of these diverse groups. Without him on the ballot — as in 2010 and 2014 — most of these identity groups apparently were not energized enough to turn out in sufficient numbers to make up for middle-class voters turned off by progressive rhetoric and the by-any-means-necessary distortions to achieve its ends.
Indeed, a cynic would sum up the unlikely liberal coalition as a bridge over the middle class. Wealthy, influential progressives had enough capital and income to support new efforts at government redistribution, higher taxes, and the sort of green projects that, at least in the short term, would slow the economy and cost blue-collar jobs — but not really affect the 1 percenters’ own livelihoods much.
At the other end, the underclass welcomed expansions of federal entitlement programs and the idea of an activist state guaranteeing an equality of result for the less-well-off, with the taxes to pay for it all falling on someone else.
Note that the new progressive coalition was largely abstract. In their own personal lives, the upscale denizens of Santa Monica, Chevy Chase, and the Upper West Side did not put their children in diverse public schools, much less live among undocumented immigrants or give up their Mercedeses and Volvo SUVs for fleets of Priuses. None promised to take two fewer trips by jet each year.
Ideally from its point of view, the new progressive partnership would end up with America looking something like California. Sky-high income, sales, and gas taxes and soaring electric rates, coupled with prohibitive housing costs along the state’s 700-mile-long coastal corridor, have turned the once golden state into two cultures strangely united by a common Democratic party.
The coastal elites champion wind and solar mandates, transgender restrooms in the public schools, gay marriage, and high-speed rail. In the interior, rarely visited by the elites or the journalists friendly to them, the preponderance of poorer and minority residents largely explains why of all the states California has the largest number of welfare recipients and the highest percentage of the population below the poverty line, and why it is nearly dead last in public-school performance.
For liberals for whom power is the true goal, California is seen as a success because there are no more conservatives like Ronald Reagan or Pete Wilson in statewide office. Over the last 30 years, unchecked illegal immigration, an influx of high-income urban liberal professionals to the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, and a steady exodus of the white middle and working classes explain why this liberal blue state has the largest number of both poor and wealthy people in the nation — and a shrinking conservative percentage of the electorate.
But is the California progressive future applicable throughout the United States? This month’s election suggests maybe not, and for reasons that transcend the fact that Californians can bail out of their state in a way that Americans cannot their country.
In our vast nation of 320 million people, there are still millions of mostly middle-class voters, along with the proverbial white working class, who are ignored by Democrats. They feel desperately squeezed by the higher taxes necessary to fulfill the dreams of progressive elites. And they feel they are not on the receiving end of government entitlements the way the underclass is, while being a regular target of cheap progressive rhetoric, from “clingers” to “stupid.”
But more importantly, the middle class resents wealthy progressives who lecture them about their supposed illiberality although they do not experience in their own lives the consequences of their ideology, whether that involves unchecked illegal immigration or job-killing regulations. Those who live in gated communities or mansions with heavy security talk down to those who don’t about their Neanderthal gun-owning. Wind and solar power seems to be supported by those who do not commute long distances in second-hand cars and who have enough money to care little about gas prices. If foreign nationals were swarming into the U.S. illegally from Europe to find jobs as journalists, government workers, and lawyers, the progressive elites might worry about their own employment and be less utopian about open borders.
There is also a psychological component to the 2014 backlash vote. Progressives seem to be tone deaf to the effects of their loud rhetoric on others.
When President Obama promised to all but end the use of coal and to send electric rates soaring, would his own friends and associates be affected? What if a candidate from an Appalachian state had argued there that were too many lawyers like Obama and that it was well past time to stop all state and federal subsidies to universities that keep turning out redundant subsidized graduates? Or if he had argued that affirmative action should be based on class rather than racial considerations?
When Justice Sonya Sotomayor talked of a “wise Latina,” it may have sounded chic to those who believe in identity politics, but for millions of Americans it raised disturbing questions. If there were “wise Latinas,” were there logically also “wise white people” or “unwise Latinas”? When Eric Holder talked of “my people,” was the logical corollary that other Americans for Holder were not “my people”? Are we now a nation of my people, by your people, and for their people?
Once one goes down the road of racial chauvinism, the contradictions of prejudice only magnify. Al Sharpton may have his own cable news show and be courted by politicians, but many forgotten Americans remember that he is a serial tax cheat and a veritable racist. When Dinesh D’Souza is convicted and sentenced for an improper campaign donation, how exactly did Sharpton with impunity refuse for decades to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back state and federal taxes? Why was he never indicted? When Sharpton charges America with racism, the forgotten Americans instead remember Sharpton’s own history of gay-baiting, anti-Semitism, and cheap anti-white demagoguery — and wonder how he weaseled his way into being an Obama adviser.
Fairly or not, the Democratic party is now associated with European-style redistribution. It is seen as being opposed to the creation of blue-collar jobs in industries like mining, oil and gas production, timber, and irrigated agriculture, being shrill on issues like abortion and gay marriage, and being more worried about undocumented immigrants than about Americans who pay the additional costs or foreigners who play by the immigration-law rules. Any one or two of these issues might have been massaged or downplayed, but in toto they send a message to the middle class and working class that they are irrelevant or, worse, despised rather than just ignored. Their livelihoods are seen as unimportant while their culture is written off; they do not receive the empathy accorded the poor or the deference shown the refined tastes of the wealthy.
For six years, the Democratic party had boasted openly about its new constituency in contrast to a played-out, old, white, male — and shrinking — Republican electorate. Herein it committed two terrible blunders well beyond the serial and gratuitous smears. One, its coalition was predicated on the landmark candidacy of Barack Obama and his unprecedented personal popularity among minority groups and young singles. These groups were interested in Obama as the first black president, and not so much because of his liberal social agenda. So, when he is on the ballot, young people and minorities turn out to vote for the iconic, cool person, but they are not necessarily as enamored of his policies. When Obama is not on the ballot, his new base of identity-politics voters stays home, and the ballyhooed coalition dissipates.
Second, each time the progressive coalition panders to an identity group and uses the rhetoric of “my people” or “punish our enemies,” it turns off one voter for each one it energizes. Few have written of the astounding ability of Obamites — Joe Biden, John Brennan, Steven Chu, James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Jonathan Gruber, Lisa Jackson, Van Jones, Lois Lerner, Susan Rice, Kathleen Sebelius, and a host of others — to insult the intelligence of Americans on grounds of their supposed naïveté or illiberality or both.
In crude terms, the percentage of white and middle-class voters who support progressive Democrats is shrinking at a rapid clip at the very time when astronomical rates of participation by new minority and young voters are needed — groups that thus far show no predictable record of maintaining their historic turnouts when Obama is not on the ballot. Hope and change was about Barack Hussein Obama’s youth, charisma, rhetorical skills, race, nontraditional background, and multicultural-sounding tripartite name, but not about an otherwise reactionary liberal agenda.
So the progressives won small and lost big: They got Obama elected twice and have nearly ruined his party in the process.
The Democrats under Obama are a cult of personality, and it turns out he didn’t actually have one.
The Obamite politics are extremely damaging in that it is precisely the spurned centre who do America’s heavy lifting – win its wars, develop its resources, man its factories, and innovate, innovate, innovate! Kill off the middle class and working class and all else withers.
It is precisely the energy and resourcefulness of that middle and lower middle class where American exceptionalism lies. As Obama finds that so deeply offensive, it means that he is pitted against the very best part of America.
I would feel better about the progressives’ current problems if the loyal opposition had a deeper philosophical grasp of the principles of liberty, the rule of law, and free markets — along with the ability to communicate those principles to the electorate — than they have displayed since Reagan.
I agree Jeff; I mostly find the professor’s sour pronouncements on the USA deeply unaware, but this post does hint at something that you focused on; not having voted for the President in either 08 or 12, I was never captured by his magical message….Neither though was I captured, impressed or engaged by anything the other party was saying. I voted for McCain out of personal respect for his record and integrity, and did not cast a vote for President in 2012. While I am somewhat more impressed with the collection of would be candidates for the GOP in 16; I remain unconvinced that they will create, commit to and articulate a compelling message that really addresses the critical issues that Professor Hansen’s middle class are waiting for, and not just promote lower taxes for their corporate and hedge fund backers.
so now we understand how hitler hoodwinked the germans.
He had it coming. Popular TV series “Homeland” scrubbed Obama’s face in the opening sequence.
This was the sequence where you saw him upside-down and then the image flips. Does this mean that even if he does what he says, or flip, does the opposite of what he says, he is the wrong guy either way? Now we see H.Clinton and Kerry.
TV is all about ratings. “Homeland” concluded Obama would reduce the show’s popularity. As the TV audience goes, so goes the nation.
Not sure at all that the dems are on way to ruin. The two party system has failed and until the repubs are able to galvanize as a serious alternative to business as usual which is the continuing growth of government then both parties will trade off. The question really is whether Obama has/will be able to institutionalize his executive orders. The regulatory spider web will surely kill off America faster than anything else. When you want to start a business or maintain a going concern then nothing like onerous regulation will stop it more effectively. I too long for the days of good food- good whiskey- good gamble as Benny Binion said but those days are gone. Everything is more expensive because government is getting bigger and bigger every year and both parties are to blame. There will be less and less places to go to avoid the heavy hand of federal intrusion.
Very nice.
being a conservative, I feel the best person we could choose to lead our movement would be dr. Ben Carson.he is brilliant ,down to earth, and has a proven record of leadership. his a solutions to our country’s needs are honest and are presented in an easy to understand common sense manner[and it will be a lot of fun ,to finally turn the tables and call anyone who speaks against him racist,as we often are accused of]
Carson has no political experience at all. The President should have some experience. This in itself makes him unqualified to be President. There is a big overlap between law, and economics and politics, not so much medicine. A medical background is not even most useful on the issue of healthcare, economics is. Carson also has literalist view of the bible; in response to being asked if he would run for President, to paraphrase him, he said he would basically he god directed him to do so…. such self-aggrandizement, as if he is a vessel to channel god’s will. Breathtaking hubris. At least he has some reverence for Greenspan and the market-economy so I’m not saying he’s all bad but there are plenty of better alternatives for President like Newt Gingrich. All the best Ray.
You’re on a conservative site and say there are better alternatives like Newt? In what world would we want to elect another Republican establishment hack.
As much as I respect Dr. Hanson’s opinion, I find myself not quite agreeing with him this time. The progressives did not win small. They have effected long-lasting, truly damaging changes within our domestic and foreign policies that will have long-lasting deleterious effects on our country for decades. These are not small victories, but huge victories.
They have won the argument that health care is a right and that people have the right to have someone else pay for it. They have successfully vilified banks and the wealthy and made financial inequality the centerpiece of any economic thinking. They have successfully won the immigration battle by linking any sound border policy to racism. The litany can go on. These are not small victories, but enormous victories that have degraded our communities, coarsened our discourse, and made us small-minded people with no tolerance for disagreement.
I tend to agree with you on the victories of progressives being understated but, healthcare notwithstanding, I don’t agree with which issues were victories. There is no evidence that shows income inequality as being an issue a majority of people cared about or bought into and the immigration issue is an even larger non-victory. A large majority of Americans disagree with progressives on immigration. Where I believe the left has lasting victories is in building a constituency of government employees and in getting a radical, unqualified justice appointed to the Supreme Court.
This is not a comment for the blog but a request for permission to quote Mr. Hanson in my upcoming book with title “Ray Man, A Sharecropper’s Memoir.” The following is extracted from the manuscript:
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War is an interesting manifestation of human psychology. I’ve always wondered why people can’t settle their differences without resorting to violence. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that diplomats are not the ones that fight the wars. In his article, War — past, present and future[1], Historian Victor Davis Hanson made the following statements about war:
ZZZZZ
“What ends wars? Not the League of Nations or the United Nations. Unfortunately, war is a sort of cruel laboratory experiment whose bloodletting determines which party, in fact, was the stronger all along. Once that fact is again recognized, peace usually follows. It took 50 million deaths to remind the appeased Axis that Germany, Italy and Japan in 1941 were all along far weaker than the Allies of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. The Falklands War ended when Argentines recognized that boasting about beating the British was not the same as beating the British. Each time Hamas builds more tunnels and gets more rockets, it believes this time around it can beat Israel. Its wars end only when Hamas recognizes it can’t. … [A]fter centuries of civilized life, we still have no better way of preventing Neanderthal wars than by reminding Neanderthals that we have the far bigger club—and will use it if provoked.”
ZZZZZ-end
I believe that most wars, like all other evils in this world, are a result of selfishness on the part of one side or the other. Since human nature will not change, war will always be inevitable; therefore, we must always have a strong military to demonstrate that, if diplomatic negotiations don’t work, we can resort to violence. In most cases, just the knowledge that one country is stronger than the other allows diplomatic negotiations to work. Because humans are basically selfish, and that will never change, I believe in the concept of peace through strength; to believe otherwise is foolish and illogical.
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May I quote Mr. Hanson as shown in the text above?
Thank you,
Dr. Andy Motes
Please e-mail this request to jheyne@victorhanson.com
The GOP needs to get back to its roots and stop imitating the Dems with spending. They are well positioned to carry the ball on jobs and the dismantling of Progressive legislation and regulations. This should begin immediately in January. Chuck Schumer’s recent reversal on Obamacare, though purely self serving, is a signal that the massive overreach of the Obama administration is sinking Liberal ideology.
Today’s modern democrat party is the Communist Party of the 50’s.
2013 inaugural address ( On you-tube), Obama’s hand on bible , with supreme court Roberts swearing him in ? Like his 2009 speech, He delivers it with a preachers voice (Jeremiah Wright). On his right is Michelle, the Michelle of bruce bailey—eat fried chicken fame. In his speech, “” The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a King, with the privileges of a few, or the rule of a mob— A government of and by and for the people.”” Scratching out the government for the people line and with emphasis on tyranny, Barack foreshadowed his second term in office.
The Democrat party is now and for a long period to come the party of color and will shape our political thought for many years to come. Their end will come when the taxpaying productive members of our country cannot support the tax receiving members of our country
“Fairly or not”? The Left “is seen as” taking these stances because it does take these stances. “Fair” doesn’t come into it, it is observable fact.
Sir, I enjoy reading your perspective on issues, and have since I first started reading Carnage and Culture. My condolences for your lost, and thank you for your conservative perspective.
Little surprise that the ‘something for nothing’ groups traveled the Obama road, but seeing so many intellectuals on the same highway emphasizes the often ignored distance between higher education and wisdom.
“”putin to push trade in Turkey” from reuters
I think history ‘in the streets’ will remember Obama as a punk. A 2 bit, smooth talking, liar. He offers nothing new or consistent with liberty, working only toward the destruction…excuse me the ‘fundamental transformaaaaaaation’ of our ideals.
Its apparent that so far he’s succeeded beyond his dreams but it will end. I hope our beloved nation is waking up not too late.
I’m glad you said “mythography” and not actual accomplishments or even actual qualities. His reputed rhetorical skills leave me cold: the metromic left-teleprompter, right-teleprompter, the endless “I” and “me” (except when there’s blame to be handed out — then it’s “those folks”, or, at best, a grudging “we”), and the neo-Demosthenean “I’m gonna”……
This is a very interesting point that Obama has hurt the Democratic Party. We saw through the likes of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi just how skewed the party is toward socialist ideals. To say Obama has alienated his base by going to far would be a mistake I believe, if anything most of the drones that call in to radio stations think he hasn’t done enough. This leaves how the party appeals to the so called “Independents”. In my view independents are supposed to stand in-between where the two party’s currently place themselves. We have all seen how far left the Republican party has moved, becoming a pseudo Democrat party in a lot of respects. This places Independents pretty much at about a Clinton ideology I think. Can Obama alienate a Clinton Democrat enough to vote Republican…?