Friday, September 03, 2004

In Plain Freedomish

Apparently, London is sending signals that they wouldn’t mind seeing the incumbent lose in November. Which means, as Attaturk over at Rising Hegemon says, get ready to rename more stuff:

OK that will become:
Freedom Muffin
Freedom Toffee
Freedom Language (ooh, that's a good one)
Freedom Leather (or nothing at all!)
Freedom Pub

And Kos has a take:

That does it! Time for Republicans in Congress to adopt the metric system! We'll eat Freedom Muffins. And we'll rename our language "Freedomish".

I almost spit out my Freedom Breakfast Tea. I look forward to watching silly Republicans pouring Guinness and Bass down the drain.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

McCain: Able For An '08 Run?

Many of us have wondered how McCain can be so cozy with the man who dishonorably slandered him during the 2000 GOP primary campaign in South Carolina. We've watched McCain take courageous stands against the vermin who lie so odiously about Kerry's military service. Then we're flummoxed to see him hug the man responsible for the slimiest politics in modern American political history.

McCain, I believe, has great political instincts. He knows he must toe the line and support the GOP candidate or the religous right will fund a fundie to run against him in the Arizona Senate primaries.

But more importantly, and more likely, McCain still harbors presidential ambition; his ambition of 2000 has never left him. If it had, he would have likely retired, just as Dole did after the '96 election. McCain believed 2000 wasn't his last chance to run for president. To run again in '08, he desperately needs the party apparatus, donors and infrastructure -- and that party would never forgive him if he were ever to become a member of a Democratic administration.

I believe McCain is skillfully positioning himself for an '08 run. If Bush wins, he was a good soldier and will be rewarded for his compliance. If Kerry wins, who else but McCain would become the virtual leader of the Republican party? Add the fact that Kerry is quick to mention how well the two can work together, and McCain's profile is bound to improve.

And so, by the way, does Kerry's.
Rockin' the Vote?

The Washington Post presents this interesting information:

In the latest Post-ABC News poll, taken immediately after the Democratic National Convention, Kerry led Bush 2 to 1 among registered voters younger than 30. Among older voters, the race was virtually tied. About 1 in 6 voters in 2000 was between 18 and 29 years old.

(snip)

Dole lost to President Bill Clinton by 53 percent to 34 percent among 18-to-29-year-olds. Bush's father split the young vote in 1988 and lost to Clinton by nine points in 1992. The Reagan era marked the recent high-water mark for the GOP with younger voters, who gave the Gipper his biggest victory margin of any age group in 1984.

Chris at MyDD tells us excitedly,

...even though turnout was low among this group in 2000, it was still 17% of the vote!
Granted, it’s a volatile demographic, but I just can’t see this swinging the other way. I believe the youth are sensing that this is an election in which they can make a significant statement, meaning turnout will almost certainly be higher than the 17 percent in 2000.

Let’s keep talking about the future while the other side celebrates the repeated image of a bullhorn amid rubble. Acting like grumpy old men (good one, Joe Lockhart) during the GOP convention didn’t help their cause.

Spite the Vote

Digby pointed me to this piece by Mark Ames in which he argues that those who vote Republican in spite of their own interests do so out of…well, spite.

It's a thoughtful column. There’s an awful lot of truth here. Spite taps into why some southerners – and I am a lifelong southerner – vote Republican. Nixon’s southern strategy capitalized on the division many in this region feel about the North and history itself. It’s a way of fulfilling the “South Will Rise Again” false-populist prophecies.

It’s also a reason why racism and bigotry exists to the degree that it does in the South. I don’t believe there are many white southerners who feel visceral hatred toward all African-Americans (and I doubt they’d vote much, anyway). The majority of southerner voters – i.e., Republicans – are, after all, Christian and they do tend to judge individuals by long-standing benchmarks of character. At the same time, many of these southerners practice a more covert form of racism against African-Americans as a group by voting Republican which – for them – is to spit in the face of northern defeat.

There’s a long, long history in the South of a wealthy aristocracy dividing and conquering the black and white working classes. It happened to disastrous effect when southern tenant farmers tried to organize. Landowners colluded to play race against race. Lost was perhaps a monumental movement that may have gone a long way toward prematurely eradicating the conditions the Civil Rights movement would struggle 30 years later to end.

The Republicans picked up the Dixiecrat banner the Democrats threw off in self disgust. It is obvious the Republicans play Dixiecrats by embracing the Confederate battle flag. The largest voting element of the southern population does not necessarily associate the flag with racism; rather, they feel that blacks have appropriated the flag for their own ideological cause. To them, blacks have brought shame to a symbol of the region that they believe should be celebrated because their ancestors fought and died for it.

But the viler ways of human nature require some other group, a different group – to become the oppressor. Even though it defies logic, many southerners will blame African-Americans for many of their own and America’s ills. To them, African-Americans have become a power significantly disproportional to their minority status.

This is why such a large demographic of the white male population will not see their wealthy landlords and employers as oppressors. They see them as fellow Republicans, united for a singular cause. Economics is not a consideration.

The Republicans certainly know the emotions to exploit. They are rooted in the stubbornness unique to a population that refuses to let go a lost cause. And they knew to legitimize them through the tacit endorsement of the fundamentalist Christian church, which by necessity must always seek a bigger pulpit.

The majority of southerners vote Republican to spite history and the North. And in spite of their own economic interests and values.

Bias Badges

I know that reporters and editors – and, by extension, newscasters and television journalists – wear accusations of bias as a badge of honor and success. This is largely because no matter what kind of coverage one runs, someone – and large groups of someones – will always, always complain.

Consequently, members of the media, and especially members of the media that cover politics, don’t measure their objectivity by which side complains. To some extent, they measure the success of their coverage by the complaints they receive. After all, it means people are watching or reading the coverage.

The standard of objectivity becomes not which side complains, but whether both sides complain.