January 21, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Where is the Republican Ralph Nader?
Timothy Noah wants Democrats to find a Republican Ralph Nader who will siphon enough votes away from George Bush to make room for a Democrat in the Oval Office. But I think Noah is confusing cause with effect.
Third party candidates break away from their parties when the party is moving away from them, which is usually because the electorate is moving towards the other party. Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Ralph Nader were all members of a formerly fairly powerful group that was falling out of favour with the American public. Like most of us who are losing power, they decided that the fault lay not with themselves, but with the party that was ignoring their righteous claims. They tried to tug the party back their way by costing them the election. (Possibly, some of them even believed that their platform was actually popular enough to win, only in some special, secret way that didn't show up in polls or anything).
The American electorate is currently moving rightward. Maybe we're at the apex of a realignment, which fits with the theory that America alternates between sixty year periods of domination by each party; perhaps its nothing so organized, but merely the fallout from 9-11. Whatever it is, Focus on the Family (James Dobson is Timothy Noah's preferred candidate for the role of metaphorical Brutus) doesn't need to run a candidate, because George Bush hasn't yet abandoned their policy agenda to appeal to swing voters, the way that Bill Clinton did with NAFTA or welfare reform. The Democrats, on the other hand, have valid fears that if they nominate Kerry or even Edwards, Ralph Nader will once again rear his ugly head.
Where does Perot fit into this theory? Not sure, though I get the sense, from the polls of prior voting habits, that he was the creature of the Reagan Democrats, populist pragmatists with no easily categorized ideological leanings who felt ignored by both the patrician in the White House, and the Rhodes Scholar running against him. But that's just my opinion.
If you ask me (and no one did), the Democrats need to stop searching for gimmicks such as a third party savior, or hoping for demographic salvation (a la Teixera and Judis), and start looking for some new ideas with which to pull the American electorate back towards them. So far, the big ideas on which the Democrats have staked their future this election cycle have been:
1) Maybe the economy will continue to suck!
2) Maybe the American public will decide that the war in Iraq is as rotten as we said it would be, except when we voted for it.
3) George Bush is running a huge budget deficit, which is awful, and that's why I'm going to increase it.
If you ask me, this is 10% inspiration, 90% desperation. Of course, suggestions like that are probably why no one asks me.
Posted by Jane Galt at January 21, 2004 12:34 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksActually not the Republicans but the Democrats may have a problem again this election. It's likely that Dean will be a third party candidate if he doesn't win the nomination. He represents the far left anti-war wing of the party which feels that it has been abandoned by the candidates that voted to authorize the war against Iraq.
Actually not the Republicans but the Democrats may have a problem again this election. It's likely that Dean will be a third party candidate if he doesn't win the nomination. He represents the far left anti-war wing of the party which feels that it has been abandoned by the candidates that voted to authorize the war against Iraq.
Democrats need to reconnect with the voters if they want to gain power again. The most important issues today are education, jobs, health care, and national security. Polls show voters prefer Republicans on defense issues, so this is a loser for the Democrats. Education, health care, and jobs are issues where the Democrats could make inroads, but they'll have to come up with a positive agenda. Simply bashing Bush for not spending enough on schools or accusing him of trying to destroy Medicare won't be effective.
I've posted on this before and I'll echo James.
Where is the evidence that the country is moving to the right?
On social issues I can't think of a single thing where the country hasn't moved to the left in the last few decades.
Abortion? There is some tinkering on the sidelines with the PBA ban but meaningless in the overall scheme of things. Abortion is now considered a right. Yes, we can debate how far that right should go but the basic issue has been settled and won by liberals.
Gay rights? Same thing. Gay marriage is just a question of time. Acceptance of the 'gay lifestyle' has reached the point where not even conservatives care that Cheney has an openly gay daughter, something unthinkable in the past.
On fiscal issues? The big debate of the 20th century, on the size and role of government, is over. Liberals won. And voters have made clear that they may like tax cuts but have ZERO interest in any meaningful spending cuts. A GOP Congress and a GOP president last year signed into law the biggest expansion of medicare since it was created, a program they once opposed. Anyone remember the GOP talking of eliminating the Dept of Education?
SS? Even if full privatization is ever accomplished the debate has moved to the left. Originally the debate was whether govt should be in the business of forcing people to save for their old age. No more. That debate was won by liberals. Now the only debate is what's the best way to force the saving.
About the only area I can think of that there has been a move to the right is in deregulation. But it's not clear to me that deregulation is necessarily a left/right issue.
Bush's combination of moving rightward and spending money on anything he can think of has given the Dems an opportunity to reclaim the center. As a more-or-less typical Libertarian Yuppie type who either votes Republican or semi-viable non-lefty protest candidate I'd actually vote for a Democrat if he were (or convincingly appeared to be) a centrist, and showed some sign of fiscal sanity.
Most people are (1) in the middle, and (2) don't pay nearly as much attention to politics as people who read blogs like this one. We forget this - with help from the media - all the time. If the Dems took the opportunity to seize the middle, they could afford to give Nader 2-3% of the vote. The Republicans are fortunate in that, as Jane alluded to, their "loony fringe" has been complacent for 20+ years. But that points out that as Bush II moves in that direction anyway, and loses some voters with his fiscal policy, a real opportunity is presented to the Democrats.
I agree that today, Dean seems like he might take a formidable chunk of voters away from the Dems. But November is a long way off, and a wingnut like Nader is less of a problem than missing the opportunity Bush/Rove is presenting.
Or another way to put it is to say that you need to have some historical perspective when looking at this.
Are atttitudes towards welfare to the 'right' compared to where they were 15 years ago? Sure. But they are to the 'left of where they were a couple of generations ago.
The whole debate moved left. Before the debate was whether govt should even have welfare programs. That debate is over. We are now debating how much is appropriate.
Imagine being able to measure along some liberal/conservative continuum. Suppose that the higher the number the more liberal. Then in the 1900s we may have been at 20, say. Over the years we moved to 80. In the last couple of decades we moved back (on some issues) to 70.
That's where I think jane and others make the mistake. They focus on that 10 point drop (in my example) and forget the previous 60 point jump.
For those above who argue that there hasn't been a move to the right -- what accounts for the tremendous increase in elected GOP politicians at the federal, state and local level?
In the last 10 years the Dems have lost the presidency, the Senate, and the House. They have lost a number of governorships and state legislatures. The number of state and federal elected politicians switching to the GOP from the Dems numbers in the hundreds. Few are switching to the Dems.
Why are more college kids identifying as Republicans than Democrats (see Kondracke today)?
You seem like a boxer trying to use his face to wear out his opponent's fist.
My goodness, Don P., not this discussion again.
You say that it's "plausible" that a fetus "is" a person. I think this statement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the question. Personhood is not a factual issue. Personhood is not an objective characteristic that we may somehow discover. It's an abstract characteristic that we choose to attribute to some things and not others. Science can inform our choice by describing physical and mental characteristics, but it cannot tell us whether, or to what degree, such a characteristic is constitutive of a person. That's not a scientific question; it's a philosophical or religious question, and different people are going to reach very different conclusions.
That reads like a case study in implementing chapter one of the Moral Relativist's Handbook. Unfortunately, such a way of looking at things, taken to the logical conclusions, is about one teflon brakeshoe short of nigh-unrestricted infanticide and euthanasia.
While religious individuals may find it "plausible" to attribute personhood to an entity that has no thoughts, no feelings, no perception, no sensation, no body, and no brain, a non-religious individual may consider such an attribution preposterous (I'm one of them).
Then evidently, sir, you are astonishingly ignorant of the known facts about prenatal development -- that is, you must be ignorant, else you wouldn't include a statement like that in a defense of unlimited convenience abortion. Here is just a sample of the available evidence:
"no thoughts" -- an uncertain claim since the fetus begins showing brainwaves in the first trimester.
"no feelings, no perception, no sensation" -- actually, fetal ultrasound images have shown the unborn child reacting to invading abortion tools by attempting to push away from them. The saline abortion technique causes such intense trauma to the fetus that it often writhes and thrashes (sometimes causing severe emotional trauma to the mother in the process, as she can feel the struggle). Advanced prenatal surgeries to correct fetal abnormalities in utero will typically administer anesthetic to the unborn child. I could also supply anecdotal evidence of a new mother I know indicating that during pregnancy, music with loud low-frequency effects caused her own child to become very active.
"no body" -- garbage. The physical shape of a human body begins to emerge very rapidly, and by ten weeks, though the fetus is yet very tiny, it has all of the major human physical attributes -- head, face, body, limbs, fingers, toes, basic organ systems.
"no brain" -- garbage^2. The head that is fully present at ten weeks has been filled with a brain in the process. As noted earlier, the fetus begins emitting brainwaves during the first trimester.
Incidentally, barring unusual circumstances, the mother's body does not determine when the unborn child shall become a born one -- the fetus does that by releasing an "I'm done" hormone, which stimulates the mother's body to release the hormones that then trigger the birthing process.
Summarily: If you really meant that thought the way it came out in your text, then you are waaaaaayyy out of your depth on this one.
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