Perhaps. It’s probably too soon to tell for sure. Still, bear with me while I explain.
We’ve talked before about the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, so I won’t bore you with details. But, just in case you don’t feel like clicking the link, I’ll refresh your memory: in 1854, Congress granted Kansas and Nebraska territorial status and placed them on a fast track to statehood. The territories’ citizens would decide the fate of slavery in each, “popular sovereignty” said Stephen Douglas, the act’s sponsor.
So what does this have to do with Richard Mellon Scaife? That’s a fair question. For the past few days, I’ve been fiddling around with a post titled, “D.W. Griffith Democrats.” The gist of which was that Hillary Clinton and her proxies, by refusing to stop beating the Jeremiah Wright drum (see here, here, and here), run the risk of alienating African-Americans, the Democratic Party’s most loyal voting bloc. I was going to suggest that the Clinton campaign has looked a bit like it’s being run by, and pandering to, people like the filmmaker D.W. Griffith: progressive in some cases, but, in the end, paralyzed by racial anxiety. Or, more accurately, willing to trade in what used to be called, in polite circles, Negrophobia to make a sale.
But then I thought better of what I was writing. There were at least three main reasons why. First, I decided that I was wrong. Or at least not right enough, because the Clinton campaign hadn’t been so overtly racist that allegations like the ones I was considering making in my post were warranted. Second, Senator Obama’s recent speech, prompted by Reverend Wright’s comments, suggested that Democrats should lower the temperature of the current debate about race in the context of the primary campaign. And third, given that I have no idea how Hillary Clinton actually feels about black people, it probably makes more sense to assume, as some people have done lately, that this is just how campaigns operate: they play to win. They use whatever tactics they think will achieve that goal, even if those tactics aren’t pretty.
So that was that. Or so I thought. Then Josh Marshall put up this post last night. In it, he unpacks Senator Clinton’s disingenuous deflection of a question about why she, herself, began raising the Wright issue, rather than leaving the smears to her lieutenants. Her reply, that she had been answering a query from a journalist, would have been a stretch under any circumstances. She’s a professional politician, after all, trained to choose her words carefully when speaking to a reporter. Beyond that, she’s a Clinton, someone with firsthand experience with the press’s appetite for scandal.
But in this case, the answer really strained credulity. She was talking to an editor from a Scaife paper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. And the man himself, Richard Mellon Scaife, was sitting at the table with Senator Clinton and the editor. If you don’t know anything about Scaife, it’s worth taking a minute to go here or here or here or here. Or, if you prefer vivid images and concise prose, here’s Josh Marshall:
This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary’s having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Those of us who spent years defending the Clintons from all that malarkey learned this point on day one.
Now, this is where things get somewhat personal and a bit muddled for me. I traveled to see Bill Clinton’s inauguration — though I didn’t get to go to any balls — in 1992. That day came on the heels of twelve years of Republican misrule, of course. And I had worked hard for Clinton during the campaign. I was thrilled by his promise, by the sense of a new day dawning. Somewhat later, I was one of those people Josh mentions in his post who spent a decent chunk of the 90s defending the Clintons. I watched, outraged, as the so-called Vast Right Wing Conspiracy dragged Bill and Hillary through the mud. The spectacle disgusted me. I learned to loathe people like Richard Mellon Scaife, movement conservatives who poisoned the national discourse and seemed hell-bent on ruining this country with their bad acts.
All of that said, I’ve been a fan of Barack Obama’s for a long time. He was always my first choice for the nomination — as anyone who reads this blog well knows. And, because of Senator Clinton’s Iraq vote, John Edwards was my second choice. But I was not a Clinton hater. Slowly, though, throughout the primary season, my opinion of both President and Senator Clinton has changed. You can trace the devolution on this blog (if you have too much time on your hands). It started with what I perceived to be race-baiting preceding the South Carolina primary. It continued as the Clinton camp floated discussions of seating the Florida and Michigan delegates. Things got really bad in the run-up to the Texas and Ohio primaries; I still can’t believe that Senator Clinton said that John McCain would make a better Commander in Chief than Barack Obama. What was she thinking?
But, after Texas and Ohio, something shifted for me. I could, for the first time, step outside of my Obama advocacy. I could understand the Clinton argument. Both Clinton and Obama needed the superdelegates to win the nomination, so why should Clinton leave the race before Pennsylvania? What if she ran the table in the remaining primaries? What if the wheels fell off the Obama campaign? What if?
Then the Reverend Wright story broke. Rather than stepping up and defending their fellow Democrat, Senator Clinton’s partisans fanned the flames of scandal. I was surprised. But I wasn’t shocked. Again, as I noted above, this is what campaigns do; they have their own internal logic; they are calibrated for victory. Okay, fair enough, the fight was getting ugly. It even began to seem possible to me that the Clinton camp was hoping to damage Obama so badly in a protracted primary that, should he finally win the nomination, he would lose the general election. That loss would, in turn, set Senator Clinton up to run as the I-told-you-so candidate in 2012. Because of that nagging suspicion, I didn’t think I’d be able to recapture my lost love for the Clintons. Still, I hoped to forgive tactics that were, in the end, perhaps just tactics.
Until, that is, Hillary Clinton had a meeting with Richard Mellon Scaife and handed one of his employees a quote intended to prolong the vacuous and noxious discussion of Barack Obama’s minister. That moment threatens to change forever things that have long seemed, for me at least, immutable. It now seems possible to me that the Democratic nominee may not deserve my support in the coming presidential election.
And now I’ll ask you to step into our Wayback Machine and return to 1854. At that time, the Kansas-Nebraska Act exploded the two-party system. Northern, or “Conscience,” Whigs refused to vote to allow slavery to move west. Southern, or “Cotton,” Whigs, crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats. The Whig Party never recovered from the fight. Out of its ashes emerged free soilers, among others, and, finally, the Republican Party. Northern Democrats in the Senate, meanwhile, in service of party unity, voted in numbers for the bill. The same was true, but with only a bare majority, in the House. Regardless, the Democratic Party sold its soul in 1854. Truth be told, it had already done so, four years earlier, when Stephen Douglas had whipped votes for the Compromise of 1850, which included the notorious Fugitive Slave Act. In both instances, 1850 and 1854, national Democrats signaled their obeisance to the Slaveocracy, clearly choosing power over principle.
It took more than three-quarters of a century before the Democratic Party began regaining, in fits and starts, its moral standing on the issue of race: first during the New Deal, when FDR’s efforts to lift up the South improved the lives of African Americans, if only incidentally and somewhat incrementally; next, when Harry Truman desegregated the Armed Forces in 1948; and finally, when Lyndon Johnson stumped for and then signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, fracturing, in the process, the Democrats’ stranglehold on the Solid South.
Eric and I walked to get smoothies at lunch today. On the way to the smoothieteria, I mentioned that I was working on this post. (No, silly, I haven’t been at it all day. But thanks for the concern.) I allowed that I might have reached the point where I won’t vote for Clinton should she get the nomination. I then mentioned this recent post by Josh Marshall, in which Josh excoriates any Democrat who would consider not supporting whichever candidate represents the party in November. Josh makes many thoughtful points about the campaign before concluding his post on this note:
But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one’s ego-investment in one’s candidate far outstrips one’s interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one’s position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.
We (Eric and I) wondered if there’s anything that Clinton or Obama could do to lose Josh’s vote. Authorize war with Iran? Suggest that anti-choice justices would be okay on the Supreme Court? In light of the full text of Josh’s post, I’m sure that either of those positions, among others, would cause him to rethink backing the Democratic nominee. So, I asked, “What about Richard Mellon Scaife? Is making common cause with Scaife enough to cost Senator Clinton Josh’s support?” Really, though, I was asking if this latest gambit is enough to cost her my vote. Honestly, I didn’t know.
So here’s another question: is movement conservatism now as horrible a blight on this nation’s political culture as slavery was before the Civil War? I don’t think so. But I’m not entirely sure. I’m not a philosopher. I can’t fathom how to measure the relative impact of two such extraordinary evils. I don’t have the methods at my disposal. I am, however, certain of this: Scaife is a hatemonger, and the circles in which he travels are, by some measures at least, the latter-day equivalent of the Slave Power, a cancer poisoning the body politic. And while people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are also hatemongers, they’re performers, blow-dried blowhards, hired guns paid for doing wet work. Scaife, by contrast, is one of the people bankrolling the hits. I think this makes him far more culpable in the violence.
The Clinton campaign has chosen, in recent weeks, to lie down with this beast. Senator Clinton’s comments about Barack Obama’s unfitness to serve as Commander in Chief were right out of the GOP playbook. Bill Clinton’s decision to go on Rush Limbaugh’s show was telling and tragic in something like equal measure. And Senator Clinton’s recent willingness to work with Scaife, the author of the conspiracy she once reviled, in order to breathe new life into the Wright controversy, smacks of desperation and hypocrisy. In each of these cases, the Clintons have legitimated a bankrupt movement. Their actions suggest that the most extreme elements of the fringe right are mainstream. We will all suffer for their hubris.
And make no mistake, as we choose a Democratic nominee for the presidential election, we also very likely are choosing a leader of the party. We have to ask ourselves, will we allow the Clintons to continue to dominate the Democratic Party? They have, for years, steered it to the center. Recently, they seem to be veering further to the right. And if that’s the direction they’ve chosen in the primary, what can we expect during what promises to be a difficult general election campaign?
So, is it time to draw a line in the sand? To risk Josh Marshall’s ire? To become that which I abhor: a naive absolutist who’ll sit out an election that John McCain might win? Probably not. I’ll likely vote for Clinton should she get the nomination. I’ll walk into the voting booth holding my nose, chanting a mantra about the symbolism of electing a woman president, the sanctity of reproductive rights, and the importance of the Supreme Court. Again, though, I’m nowhere near as sure of that today as I was two days ago. Why? Because the Democratic Party can no more unsell its soul now than it could in 1850 or 1854. And buying it back, after the fact, will take more time than any of us have. I worry that Richard Mellon Scaife understands this too.
72 comments
March 26, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Richard Mellon Scaife: As Bad as the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Or the …
[…] vjolly wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptIt now seems possible to me that the Democratic nominee may not deserve my support in the coming presidential election. And now I’ll ask you to step into our Wayback Machine and return to 1854. At that time, the Kansas-Nebraska Act … […]
March 27, 2008 at 12:46 am
Josh
Not to offer a defense of anybody’s actions, but:
Remember that Richard Mellon Scaife owns the third-largest newspaper in Pennsylvania. While newspaper endorsements ain’t what they used to be, the Tribune-Review’s endorsement isn’t completely inconsequential, either.
I’d be willing to bet John Kerry and Al Gore met with its editorial board too, and that Scaife sat in on those meetings — as publisher/owners usually do at big candidate meetings at newspapers. And I’d bet Obama will meet with them/has met with them too – he’s given interviews to the Tribune-Review’s reporters, at least.
So while it would be understandable for Hillary, given her past experiences with Scaife, to refuse to meet with his newspaper, you could also chalk that up to the internal-logic-of-campaigns you mentioned — she wants to win.
March 27, 2008 at 12:59 am
Ben Alpers
A few quick thoughts on this very interesting post….
1) I dutifully defended the Clintons in the 1990s, too. I signed Sean Wilentz’s historians’ petition against impeachment. I wrote letters to the Republican leadership in Congress against impeachment. I’m still glad I did. Impeaching Clinton over lying about a blow job made a mockery of the Constitution. But in 1996, a couple years before the whole Lewinsky thing broke, I had left the Democratic Party, largely because I hated what had happened to it, in large measure thanks to Bill Clinton’s policies and political style. I’m still glad I did that, too.
2) If we’re going to imagine a mid-19th century-style disaster befalling the 21st-century Democratic Party, might the better parallel not be the Whigs? I just can’t see a Democratic Party that builds its electoral strategy on racism winning national elections anymore. The party may have taken three-quarters of a century to recover its moral standing after the 1850s, but it had a ready made electoral coalition to support it during those years however morally compromised it was. Or is it simply impossible for a major party to fall apart today?
3) You vote in California, Ari. Thanks to the electoral college, like most U.S. voters, your vote will have only a symbolic significance in November, as your state is solidly in the camp of one of the two major parties. Any pragmatic consideration of the effect of your vote that doesn’t take our actual system of electing presidents, and your state’s status as a battleground or non-battleground state, into account isn’t a pragmatic consideration at all.
4) I’ve never understood the “this is just how campaigns operate: they play to win” argument. If it’s not a license to do absolutely anything–a statement that the ends always justify the means–it’s just hot air. And do any of us really want to support a candidate or a party who believe that the ends always justify the means? And do we really believe that how a candidate wins doesn’t affect his or her ability to govern?
March 27, 2008 at 1:16 am
ari
Josh and Ben, I’ve just added another paragraph, about the future of the Democratic Party. As to your specific points, I’m not sure what to say Josh, other than this: sitting in a room with Scaife, and feeding him that quote, is inexcusable. Yes, it’s politics. Yes, that’s how it goes. But, as Ben says, and as my post implies, we’re all culpable in these decisions if we don’t demand better from our leaders.
And Ben, I wrestled with the Whigs versus Democrats analogy. In the end, I’m not sure that either works all that well. The point, it seems to me, is that we may have arrived at a moment of reckoning, once again prompted by the issue of race.
March 27, 2008 at 3:11 am
drip
This is a great post. It raises all sorts of issues for which there are no right answers , at least for now. I lack your investment in supporting the Clintons. She strikes me as a very conservative figure who is struggling to maintain her position in a party that is moving leftward. She is smart, tough, ambitious and many other things that I admire in a political candidate, but she is wrong on almost every issue I deem very important. I doubt very much that Obama has the wherewithal to beat McCain, but it is clear to me that he will be the nominee. Although I find his positions somewhat more palatable, he is far from ideal, as far as I can tell.
So what do I do? I want civil liberties protected absolutely. I want a progressive tax structure that redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor and not the other way. I want national economic stimulus to take the form of public works and not militarization. I want national health care immediately and for everyone. I want to rejoin the community of nations on nuclear disarmament, global warming, war crimes prosecutions and other issues. Finally, I want out of Iraq immediately.
I do not feel that these are extravagant goals and I understand that many stand opposed to all of them, but many agree that they are all valid and most of those people are democrats. There is no candidate from either party for whom I could vote, if I hold firm to any one of those ideals. And this is why the democrats have such a problem. They stand for nothing but power and their motto seems to be “better than Bush” but McCain makes the same point, sub silento so far.
This makes the situation very different from the anti-slavery debates where a major issue dominated the debate and overwhelmed the other issues that existed, but suffocated until sometime after 1870.
I am not going to vote for McCain (although I notice he now wants to talk to friends abroad and other moderate stands in preparation for the general election.) But I am not going to vote for Clinton, who is not very different on the issues I care about. And Obama seems unlikely to get my vote, as he will move rapidly to the right of McCain on some issues I care about.
In the meantime, as unhappy as this makes people, Ralph Nader was right. There is not as much of a difference between the parties to make a difference and falling into the trap the right wing set by proclaiming “at least we can have abortions”, doesn’t cut it any more. The incredible amount of money (in February 88 million by the dems) is proof enough of that. All that money from little donors goes right into the hands of large TV and radio stations in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania and ultimately to Scaife and his ilk.
So will I feel bad if John McCain wins? Yes, but I cannot see that as a reason to vote for someone that is wrong on almost every issue I care about. I am not the 21st century version of a free soiler, or a soft money man or whatever, and there are many of democrats just like me. I want reproductive freedom too, but that would follow from the reinstatement of individual liberty, national health and economic justice. It will not follow from the election of Clinton or Obama. Will I hold my nose and vote for them? Who knows, but kissing Scaife’s ass didn’t help.
All of which is to say that the reason that this isn’t like 1854 is that there are so many issues, each of which seem important and none of which dominate. But please try to find some historical guidance. I, for one could use some help.
March 27, 2008 at 3:37 am
John Emerson
And third, given that I have no idea how Hillary Clinton actually feels about black people….
Well, she was married to the first black President, and he cheated on her on national TV. How would you feel about black people in that case?
I will vote for Hillary. My three guiding principles in American politics are “Beggars can’t be choosers”, “The American people disagree with me about most things”, and “Maybe I should take up my Canadian brother’s offer of sponsorship”.
Latent in your post: the American system enforces the two party-system, and the only third party that ever took office was the Republican Party. But it was really a fourth party, and the country has fallen apart and was headed toward civil war. It would seem that unless both parties split, a new party can only be a wrecker, but if both parties do split, the country’s in serious trouble.
I’m always happy to cheer people up.
March 27, 2008 at 3:53 am
John Emerson
I just looked at the 1860 election wiki. The Southern Democrats only got 18% of the vote, carrying most of the South plus Delaware and Maryland (but not Virginia, Kentucky, or Tennessee. Two compromising parties got 42%, and the Republicans got 40%. The moderates only carried 4.5 states.
Never underestimate the power of a determined minority.
March 27, 2008 at 5:00 am
Dan Boor
Is speaking to the enemy unwise? I do not see it as “stooping” — merely politically prudent. Not engaging the enemy has been the cornerstone of this administration’s failed foreign policy.
Kansas-Nebraska Act aside, reaching across the aisle is what Hillary does best. I would expect Obama to do the same if he wants to win the nomination.
March 27, 2008 at 5:01 am
eric
it had a ready made electoral coalition to support it during those years however morally compromised it was
This isn’t, technically, true—that coalition wasn’t ready made, the Democrats made it, beginning in 1889-1890, when they became the party of disfranchisement and Jim Crow. Could they do such a thing again? I can’t imagine it, but then, there are a lot of things I can’t imagine that turn out to happen.
March 27, 2008 at 5:44 am
Ben Alpers
Good point, Eric…both as regards the Democrats’ active forging of their electoral coalition and the fact that one should never say never in politics.
For most of the first half of the twentieth century, the idea that one day the keystone of the Republican Party would be the votes of Southern whites would have seemed completely ludicrous.
When I teach the Nashville Agrarians, I call my students attention to John Crowe Ransom’s dream of an electoral coalition between his “unreconstructed” Southerners, Western farmers, and other “persons and even communities who are thoroughly tired of progressivism and its spurious benefits.” Although some of the details of Ransom’s vision are somewhat different, it bears a pretty striking resemblance to the post-1968 Republican coalition. However Ransom, writing in 1930, simply assumes that the Democratic Party would be the vehicle for his new, conservative movement.
March 27, 2008 at 7:04 am
Q
Well said. You nailed my own slow but sure move away from Clinton. I’m pretty annoyed by this as well, although it’s beginning to look like just another drop in the ocean:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/26/clinton.delegates/index.html
March 27, 2008 at 7:10 am
ari
However Ransom, writing in 1930, simply assumes that the Democratic Party would be the vehicle for his new, conservative movement.
And isn’t it possible that people like Murdoch and Scaife are doing the same today? Or at least that they’re hedging their bets, much as many big-money donors give to both parties, regardless of personal ideology? It’s an investment in one possible future, in other words.
March 27, 2008 at 7:45 am
John B.
Really great post. Very thought provoking and mirrors some of what I have experienced too.
Great reply by John Emerson as well.
This is a great ‘blog…thanks.
March 27, 2008 at 7:48 am
John Emerson
I don’t actually follow the topic here, which is why I went off-topic. The bigot niche is already filled by Republicans and will stay filled. Is it the idea that Hillary will try to peel off some bigot votes on her way to a majority, while letting the black voters sink are swim? That will jsut mean two bigot parties rather than one, and maybe a smaller voting population as black voters opt out. Sounds like a loser.
When you factor out class and geography there aren’t very many specifically black issues, anyway. Affirmative action and some resegregation issues. For the average black voter the job-labor-war-medical care issues are all more important.
March 27, 2008 at 8:28 am
Defending Myself to Clinton Supporters « The Academy’s Bench Warmer
[…] supporter. I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain why I’m rooting for Obama. This post by Ari Kelman over at The Edge of the American West is a pretty damn good start, especially this […]
March 27, 2008 at 8:35 am
David Carlton
Just a minor correction: The Free-Soil Party had arisen in the late 1840s over the Wilmot Proviso issue, but was effectively dead by 1854. The *immediate* consequence of the Kansas-Nebraska Act [besides the final collapse of the Whigs] was the creation of the Republican Party on an explicit anti-Nebraska platform. I might add that the Democrats didn’t “sell their souls” in either 1850 or 1854; prior to 1854 both major parties were beholden to their slaveholding wings. What was new coming out of Nebraska was a major *antislavery* party–a major step in disentangling the nation from the institution.
March 27, 2008 at 8:43 am
ari
Sorry, David, you’re right of course. I originally had the Free Soil party in caps. I then changed it over, upon re-reading, to Free Soilers. But I left the caps. I’ll make the change now. Thanks.
March 27, 2008 at 9:14 am
PorJ
I think we all would have been better off if Mike Huckabee had beaten McCain, or at least stayed in the race.. That’s what’s missing from your post (unless I missed it). McCain is moving to the center (or he’s there by Republican standards already) – along with Clinton & Obama. There’s just not enough room for all three, leading to personal attacks and outrageous gambits. I see the 1850s as the period in which exactly the opposite happened; the center could not hold with the parties pulling apart. And it was not just slavery; the 1850s were a time of incredible polarization: anti-Catholicism & the Know Nothings; the economic crisis of 1857 & the impact of the rise of cotton prices (some residual tariff stuff, etc.). Made the 1960s look like a tea party. John Brown lit a fuse, and Lincoln consecrated the cause, but we’ve should remember the tinder-keg of the 1850s was significantly more explosive than today’s environment.
So let’s not get too crazy here. The Democratic party will not fall apart, even if it blows the greatest opportunity in a generation.
March 27, 2008 at 9:32 am
John Emerson
Yes, the world order may not survive, the Constitution may not survive, and we may not survive — but the Democratic party will endure!
March 27, 2008 at 9:58 am
RLaing
As long as the voters are willing to sell their souls (with or without holding their noses), it is either naive or stupid, take you pick, to expect that politicians will refrain from selling theirs.
March 27, 2008 at 10:01 am
ari
Yes, RLaing, my post is lament, not really a call to arms.
March 27, 2008 at 11:16 am
Seth
Nice post, Ari. Count me in as someone who gave several years of him life in the service of the Clintons but is thoroughly disgusted by their behavior of late. It’s not so much that they’re trying to move the party rightward — moderation is certainly a defensible strategy in a competitive election. It’s that they’re willing to align themselves with the enemies of everything they claim to stand for in order to win.
Winning is important, obviously. HRC has some good policy proposals and can’t enact them if she doesn’t get into office. But right now her approach seems more like, “If I can’t be president, no one can.” I get the impression she’d run an attack ad on Chelsea if she thought it would win her a few superdelegates.
March 27, 2008 at 11:24 am
Dan
You write: “is movement conservatism now as horrible a blight on this nation’s political culture as slavery was before the Civil War?” Although you choose not to answer in this post, I believe that a historian could have a lot to offer on to this question.
The political history of the U.S. from c. 1960 to the present shows a number of examples of conservative politicians choosing to address race politics using new language. The conservative rhetoric about “law and order” in the late 1960’s and 1970’s has been widely interpreted as having been aimed at white voters who were concerned about racially-motivated urban riots during that era. Ronald Reagan chose to announce his first presidential campaign at a site associated with white violence against blacks. Many more examples of this kind of political rhetoric have been documented in the era in question.
This political rhetoric appears to correlate in an interesting way with a decline in many measures of life quality for blacks. African American health, access to education, access to equal paying jobs, and many other measures decline starting about 1980. In other words, if the political rhetoric in question starts heating up c.1965, we start seeing possible effects from it c.1980.
Admittedly, my argument is pretty sketchy — I’m no historian, I don’t have a good grasp on the necessary historical facts, I’m not prepared to adequately interpret the facts. However, I’d love to see a historian address this issue in more depth, with an explicit comparison to U.S. politics in the mid-19th C. And I would expect that a historian could find metrics that allowed us to compare how big a blight movement conservatism has been in the past few decades, as compared with the political culture before the Civil War.
March 27, 2008 at 11:24 am
BP
A question for drip.
On which of the issues that you list as being very important to you do you anticipate that Obama is likely to move to McCain’s right in general election mode? Honestly, I don’t see any of those issues as ones where Obama is close to McCain, much less on his right, even when appealing to independents and Republicans, so your comment confuses me, and I’d be interested to hear your reasoning.
March 27, 2008 at 11:25 am
KRK
Thanks for the post, ari. Very interesting and on the money, lament and all.
A commenter above comes to Clinton’s defense on the Scaife meeting, suggesting that this was ordinary reaching across the aisle. What that comment misses is that the Clinton’s offense wasn’t just sitting down with Scaife, it was choosing that meeting with that person to feed the flames of the already-dying-down Wright issue when she had deflected such questions for more than a week. She has since been justifiably mocked for the obviousness of the attempt to divert attention from her Tuzla problem (look, shiny!), but that would be the case wherever the comment was made. Feeding the comments to Scaife was another level of ugly.
Looking back to 2004, don’t forget that it was a Scaife stooge whom Teresa Heinz-Kerry told to “shove it.” Rather than harming Kerry, maybe people just wanted more of that. People were thrilled that the Democratic candidates refused to debate on Fox.
March 27, 2008 at 11:29 am
KRK
“Shove-It-Gate”
March 27, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Matt W
A commenter above comes to Clinton’s defense on the Scaife meeting, suggesting that this was ordinary reaching across the aisle. What that comment misses is that the Clinton’s offense wasn’t just sitting down with Scaife, it was choosing that meeting with that person to feed the flames of the already-dying-down Wright issue when she had deflected such questions for more than a week.
Indeed. Josh’s defense, that politicians meet with newspaper editorial boards, might be workable. (Though, the Trib is distinctly the second-run newspaper in the Pittsburgh area, and I’d guess that its editorial page is read only by people who want a right-wing view. If the candidates can stay off FOX, they should stay away from Scaife.)
But there’s no excuse at all for distributing an American Spectator hit piece on Tony McPeak. No Democratic voters in Pennsylvania read the American Spectator.
March 27, 2008 at 3:39 pm
urbino
Yes, the world order may not survive, the Constitution may not survive, and we may not survive — but the Democratic party will endure!
Not unlike roaches.
March 27, 2008 at 3:42 pm
eric
Not unlike roaches.
Mythbusters dispute you.
March 27, 2008 at 5:31 pm
silbey
For those of you contemplating not voting for the Democratic nominee, whoever it is, out of disgust with tactics, I give you the following facts:
Justice John Paul Stevens: 87 years old.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 75 years old.
Justice Steven Breyer: 68 years old.
March 27, 2008 at 7:30 pm
MC
Great post, thank you for the mid-1890’s context and I love the blog.
This post made me think, for the first time this political season, what I would do if Hillary won the nomination by the means she has been using lately. Yikes! So I bucked up and recalled two things:
If one withholds a vote that results in a Republican being elected, one is guilty of ends-justifies-the-means thinking (which enables all evil in the world), and
I voted – for the first time at age 24 – for Hubert Humphrey, in the middle of the Vietnam War, having been against the war since I first heard it spoken of, while living in Berkeley.
Because — who would I be teaching a lesson to, if I stayed home that day? Of course the rest is history, as they say, but I did the right thing.
March 27, 2008 at 7:32 pm
urbino
Mythbusters dispute you.
Pedant. Mythbusters rawks, but still.
March 27, 2008 at 7:47 pm
urbino
I hear you, Silbey, but sometimes one just has to say, “Enough.” Hillary is counting on Dem voters looking at the Supreme Court and voting for her, even if she did screw the party into the ground during the primaries. She’s counting on African-Americans voting for her despite her campaign’s racebaiting, because where else are they going to go? The GOP?
If we’re going to vote for the Dem nominee even if s/he makes invidious use of race in the primaries, how are we different from the Dem voters who supported generations of Jim Crow politicians? How are we different from the GOP voters who have responded to the Southern Strategy for the past 40 years?
Our hearts might be in the right place, but they only count votes on election day. MLK said that given a choice between people who do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and people who do the right thing for the wrong reasons, he’d take the latter every time. ISTM a vote for Hillary on the calculus you describe would make us the people doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
March 27, 2008 at 8:19 pm
silbey
but sometimes one just has to say, “Enough.
I personally said “enough” on 20 March 2003. Wait, I also said “enough” during the Terri Schiavo case. Hang on, I also said “enough” during Katrina. I definitely said “enough” when the Abu Ghraib news broke.
I’ve said “enough” a lot during the last eight years, and the next time I say “enough”, I’d like it to result in a Democratic President.
If we’re going to vote for the Dem nominee even if s/he makes invidious use of race in the primaries, how are we different from the Dem voters who supported generations of Jim Crow politicians?
We’re different because we fight within the party to stop things like that from working. But let me put it another way: is it possible to win an election without allying with some set of unpleasant people?
March 27, 2008 at 8:35 pm
ari
is it possible to win an election without allying with some set of unpleasant people?
No, it isn’t possible. But again, Scaife and his ilk aren’t “some set of unpleasant people.” They’re the worst of the worst. They’re dead-set on ruining this country. I truly believe that. And so, if the party has to form alliances with such people, it’s not a party worth supporting. That said, I’ll still vote for her. I think.
Like I said, the post is a lament, not a call to arms. The whole situation, including my culpability in its development, makes me a bit sick to my stomach.
March 27, 2008 at 8:56 pm
urbino
the next time I say “enough”, I’d like it to result in a Democratic President
The next time I say it, I’d like it to result in a president who actually stands for something, and one of those things should be an immovable refusal to appeal to racism for any purpose. If we, as Democrats, are willing to let our candidates slip backward on that, honestly, why bother?
Set aside the appeals to racism, and just look at the divisiveness of the rest of her campaign. That alone is almost reason enough to not vote for her. It would be different if she were scorching the earth in an effort to implement a strongly progressive agenda. She’s only just left of center now; in the general, she’d move further right; in office, she’d move right again. She’s just not, as a candidate, worth the trouble she’s causing.
is it possible to win an election without allying with some set of unpleasant people?
No, but one at least gets to pick one’s poison. Picking the racists is not a choice I can support. GOP candidates can ally with racists; I’m not a Republican, so I have no say in how they campaign. I do have some small say in what happens in the Democratic Party, and I’m just not going to support a Democrat who allies with racists. I can’t.
March 27, 2008 at 8:59 pm
urbino
The more I think about Hillary playing ball with Scaife, Ari, the less it surprises me, quite honestly.
March 27, 2008 at 10:45 pm
rikyrah
I am Black.
I will NEVER vote for Hillary Clinton.
Out of my 12 Member Immediate Family..
Only 2 will vote for Hillary.
I am a Black Democrat.
Not
A Democrat who happens to be Black.
There is a difference.
For Hillary Clinton to win this, she will have to STEAL it from Barack Obama.
And the foundation upon which this thievery will happen is going to be Dogwhistle Racial Politics, going back, to a State Senator in South Carolina, named Ford, and was picked up in earnest with Billy Shaheen in New Hampshire.
There is a ClintonAttacksObama Wiki Incident Page that is now up to 45 incidents….some others haven’t been entered as of yet.
So, if Clinton ‘wins’, it will be because of Dogwhistle Racial Politics.
Dogwhistle Racial Politics used against a Black candidate by a FELLOW DEMOCRAT.
NOT a Republican
But, a Democrat.
And, if I vote for Hillary Clinton, that would mean that I would be setting into stone, the blueprint by which all FUTURE Black politicians, with ambitions above a gerrymandered Congressional Seat will be eliminated.
I will NOT be a complict accomplice in saying that what she did was Ok.
I will not hurt future Black politicians that way.
Plus, if I vote for her, that will mean that the Democratic Party will forever see Black folks as only suitable for ‘ The Back Of the Bus’, because voting for her after she so blatantly disrespected the Black Community the way that she has would mean that I had no self respect.
And, I have to ask this seriously…
If this were ANY other ethnic group..
Would you SERIOUSLY believe that they would be asked to vote for a candidate like Hillary Clinton?
If this were a bunch of Jewish voters…
And, a Jewish candidate was running…
And the opposition took out the Jewish candidate by appealing to anti-semitic sentiments in the general electorate..
Would you even THINK about asking the Jews to vote for the candidate that they believe used Anti-Semitism to take out another Jew?
Be honest.
And, if the answer to that question is NO..
Then why should Black people, who believe the Clintons have race-baited Obama for MONTHS…
Turn around and vote for her?
I’ve written about the depth of the offense of the Wright Controversy, and Hillary Clinton’s latest disrespect of the Black Community through disrespecting the Black Church HERE.
Please don’t say, ‘ But the GOP would do worse’.
The GOP never pretended to be Black Folks’ friends.
If you can’t see why what the Clintons have done is different and more foul on many levels….you don’t want to see.
March 28, 2008 at 12:49 am
PTCruiser
“We’re different because we fight within the party to stop things like that from working.”
This is a distinction without a bit of difference especially to those of us who are black.
“But let me put it another way: is it possible to win an election without allying with some set of unpleasant people?”
Racists and people who use racist symbols and coded language to make racist appeals represent something more than just being unpleasant. There are plenty of people who may be unpleasant but who are not racists. In any case, black voters are not a fungible commodity that can be traded or purchased to benefit the narrow desires of the Clinton campaign or well intentioned, but misguided and confused, folks who abhor Republicans.
The black electorate doesn’t need to fatten any more frogs for snakes.
March 28, 2008 at 5:49 am
John B.
Great post and logic PT cruiser…agreed.
March 28, 2008 at 6:06 am
American politics, parties, and Ralph fucking Nader… « Blurred Productions
[…] Posted in History, Politics by Smith Michaels on March 27th, 2008 So I was read this very long and very thoughtful post by Ari over at Edge of the American West and it really got me thinking about things. About this election, […]
March 28, 2008 at 7:22 am
silbey
“The next time I say it, I’d like it to result in a president who actually stands for something”
So would I. Unfortunately, that may not be an option. Given that, I’d like a President who doesn’t stand for the last eight years, like John “Hundred Years in Iraq” McCain.
“Would you even THINK about asking the Jews to vote for the candidate that they believe used Anti-Semitism to take out another Jew?”
Yep (and I say that as a Jew myself)
Look, none of this is pleasant, and I don’t enjoy making this argument, but ari’s original post is a cry to activism within the party, not for voting for someone else/not voting. We need to remake the Democratic Party so that none of this is possible. More than that, we need to remake the electorate so that none of this is possible. Obviously the latter is a much longer-term project than the former.
But the results of losing the 2008 elections are going to essentially be two-fold:
1. McCain becomes President for eight years and solidifies Republican control of the upper tiers of the judiciary and executive branch even further, and
2. The Democratic Party concludes that it has to push even further to the right to attract “independent” voters.
I live in a state where I had to vote for an anti-abortion Senate candidate because the alternative was Rick Santorum, and I’d rather not see the process in #2 occur further, never mind #1.
March 28, 2008 at 8:28 am
Caged Lion
Silbey, let me change the question.
Have you ever been in a position to vote a for a Dem candidate who had directly appealed to anti-semetic sentiments? Or had used anti-semitism to take out another Jew?
It’s all well and good to take your position on a hypothetical, but as a black voter, I am confronting this question right now….and it doesn’t look good for Hillary.
March 28, 2008 at 8:35 am
silbey
Have you ever been in a position to vote a for a Dem candidate who had directly appealed to anti-semetic sentiments? Or had used anti-semitism to take out another Jew?
Not really, no. I’ve voted for candidates who have been accused of anti-Semitism, largely for perceived insufficient support of Israel, but I didn’t agree with that evaluation.
It’s all well and good to take your position on a hypothetica
Uh, you asked me a hypothetical and I answered it.
March 28, 2008 at 8:41 am
Caged Lion
I didn’t ask you the hypothetical, that was rikyrah.
Thanks for your answer.
March 28, 2008 at 9:21 am
silbey
I didn’t ask you the hypothetical, that was rikyrah.
Oops. Sorry for the misattribution.
March 28, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Ben Alpers
But the results of losing the 2008 elections are going to essentially be two-fold:
1. McCain becomes President for eight years and solidifies Republican control of the upper tiers of the judiciary and executive branch even further, and
2. The Democratic Party concludes that it has to push even further to the right to attract “independent” voters.
Whether or not one believes that Nader cost Gore the 2000 election, leading Democrats believed that he cost Gore the election, yet they did not move the party to the left to try to capture the Nader vote.
So I agree with silbey: a Democratic loss will result in the party moving even further to the right.
I’ve come to believe that while things might in fact have to get worse before they get better, they may need to get worse under a Democratic President and Congress. This might be the only way to make progressive Democrats consider remaking their party in the present, rather than in some ill-defined future that’s always beyond the next election.
I should add that I am entirely sympathetic with Caged Lion and rikyrah’s position on the Clinton campaign’s racism. I think Clinton’s tactics are entirely unacceptable. I will not vote for her in the fall (though, please note, I’m an Oklahoma voter, so my vote for president is entirely symbolic). I think that I would respond the same way to a candidate who exploited antisemitism (I’m Jewish, fwiw), but I’m also painfully aware that antisemitism in 21st-century America is infinitely less threatening to me than racism is to most African Americans, so it’s an imperfect analogy at best.
March 28, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Galvinji
I live in a state where I had to vote for an anti-abortion Senate candidate because the alternative was Rick Santorum
And the sad part is, given the politics of the 2006 election, PA Democrats didn’t really need him; if Ohio elected Sherrod Brown, it’s plausible that someone like Joe Hoeffel might have beaten Santorum (though probably not by Casey’s enormous margin), and Casey could have been saved to run against Arlen Specter. On the other hand, Casey has a reputation of being fairly progressive on economic issues.
All of the important PA Democrats, interestingly enough, seem to be endorsing against their political base (Rendell and Nutter endorsed Clinton).
Josh’s defense, that politicians meet with newspaper editorial boards, might be workable. (Though, the Trib is distinctly the second-run newspaper in the Pittsburgh area, and I’d guess that its editorial page is read only by people who want a right-wing view. If the candidates can stay off FOX, they should stay away from Scaife.)
Back to the topic at hand, this is precisely why that is no defense. The Trib is at best the fourth-largest newspaper in Pennsylvania, and I can’t imagine that it is a particularly useful medium through which to reach Democratic voters. I am a believer in Occam’s Razor, which suggests to me that Senator Clinton knew exactly what she was doing. I am not anxious to see a McCain Administration, but I agree that were this sort of race-baiting to be successful in a Democratic primary, it would be disastrous both for the party and for the nation. One hopes the batdelegates will recognize this.
March 28, 2008 at 7:44 pm
urbino
The Democratic Party concludes that it has to push even further to the right to attract “independent” voters.
I’m open to being convinced of that, but, just on the face of it, it doesn’t strike me as particularly likely. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, she will be the standard-bearer for the DLC sect of the party that has driven this constant, rightward sidling motion for the past 20-ish years. She will, I believe, campaign in the general to the right of where of she is now (which is a not-very-far-left starting position). If she loses, it will be a loss by the embodiment of the very strategy you mention.
Obviously, the DLC types will argue otherwise; that the problem was that she didn’t get far enough to the right. But I think, though I may be wrong, that’s going to be an extremely difficult argument to win with. It seems to me that a general-election loss by Hillary is more likely to nudge the party leftward than rightward.
Whether or not one believes that Nader cost Gore the 2000 election, leading Democrats believed that he cost Gore the election, yet they did not move the party to the left to try to capture the Nader vote.
But when we lost again in 2004, there was some leftward movement. Howard Dean’s new role at the head of the DNC is Exhibit A. Now, certainly the DLC folks have fought him, but at least he’s there; it puts the party noticeably left of where it was under Terry McAuliffe.
March 28, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Josh
The Tribune-Review is the third-largest paper in Pennsylvania. It (158,000 daily circulation) is actually larger than the Philadelphia Daily News (123,000). I can promise you that both Obama and Clinton will meet with the editorial boards of papers much smaller than that. Again, that’s not to excuse whatever is said once such a meeting begins — it just helps explain why such a meeting would take place.
March 28, 2008 at 10:51 pm
The Constructivist
I’m in NY, so my actual vote is purely academic if Clinton gets the nomination, which is why I have watched the Obama v. Clinton theatrics with some critical distance from both sides. I want Obama to win this thing more and more badly as it goes on, for similar reasons as Ari lays out, but there’s no way I’m sitting out this election or giving my vote to Nader this time.
That said, I’m struck by the difference between this post and the “Clinton can’t win” one from last week. Any thoughts on the shift? You really think this guilt by association strategy can bring down Obama’s campaign?
March 28, 2008 at 10:56 pm
ari
No, I still think that last week was the tipping point. But I also think that her tactics increasingly make me wonder at what point one says: I can’t be a member of this party anymore. It’s like the They Might Be Giants song, “Your Racist Friend.”
March 29, 2008 at 3:07 am
Ben Alpers
…if Ohio elected Sherrod Brown, it’s plausible that someone like Joe Hoeffel might have beaten Santorum…
Let’s not overpraise Sherrod Brown. It’s important to remember that he voted for the Military Commissions Act as a Congressman in the fall of 2006. That makes him a war criminal in my book, whatever the rest of his record looks like. In a just world, he’d be facing a trial in the Hague.
March 29, 2008 at 4:58 am
Matt Weiner
Neil Sinhabubu was reminded of the same TMBG song.
I also think that her tactics increasingly make me wonder at what point one says: I can’t be a member of this party anymore.
But, like the Constructivist, I think this is a little odd, because it seems very likely that these tactics aren’t going to win the nomination. It disturbs me that a prominent Democrat is making up to the right-wing noise machine, but it also seems to me that the party as a whole is rejecting those tactics.
March 29, 2008 at 6:31 am
silbey
But when we lost again in 2004, there was some leftward movement.
Of the new Democratic Representatives in the 2006 House, a sizable majority were on the right wing of the Democratic party. See: http://voteview.ucsd.edu/hou110.htm
New Senators were scattered along the spectrum: http://voteview.ucsd.edu/sen110.htm
March 29, 2008 at 7:00 am
ari
Matt, I completely agree. And I really find the drop in her numbers/Casey’s endorsement/your senator’s good sense very heartening. But none of that had happened when I wrote the post.
Honestly, if it turns out that this latest gambit costs her the nomination (which, by any rational measure, had likely already been lost some time ago), that will be wonderful news. Really, though, I think her tanking numbers are a byproduct of the Tuzla lies. I think people like us* are the only ones paying close attention to the Scaife story, which has, again, been largely drowned out by Tuzla. In other words, I’m afraid that historians will, at best, have a hard time disentangling the effects of the two. And, at worst, party leaders won’t learn precisely the lesson that I’d like them to: racist appeals are now and forever off the table for the Democratic Party; to ignore that injunction is to sell one’s soul and, ever scarier for professional politicians, to lose.
* I don’t even know what I mean by this. But I hope you do.
March 29, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Bruce Baugh
Throughout this election cycle, I’ve taken the appointments argument very seriously. It really matters who fills all those offices the chief executive has authority over.
The problem is, I feel less and less reason to believe that Clinton’s nominees would differ much from McCain’s. She’s willing to get cozy with the man who set about spreading the story that she colluded in the murder of one of her closest friends, who actually committed suicide in the midst of depression exacerbated by the lies and abuse that man sponsored. How likely does it seem right now that she’ll pick as the next Supreme Court justice someone who annoys the powerhouses of movement conservatism?
Likewise, she can’t manage a campaign that uses its money responsibly or maintains a satisfied and productive staff, and after all, her campaign manager supervises union-busting and incredibly bogus stat-mongering in the service of corporate interests. Am I very sure that she would reliably give us better than “heck of a job, Brownie?”
The answers for me at the moment are “not very” and “no”, and I hate that. I’m really, really hoping that I won’t have to revisit that in the general election. I thought (and still do) that the Nader argument was wildly wrong in 2000 and 2004, but Clinton would go a long way toward validating it for 2008.
March 29, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Matt W
Of the new Democratic Representatives in the 2006 House, a sizable majority were on the right wing of the Democratic party.
But this is because the most liberal Democrats tend to come from solid Democratic districts — the ones from districts that used to vote Republican are less liberal. The eight most liberal new Representatives on that chart are from solid Democratic districts, replacing other Democrats. Which is to say that it’s entirely possible that the Democrats who were already there moved leftward while picking up some more conservative members in swing districts. I share urbino’s sense of this.
Bruce, at a minimum Clinton would nominate pro-choice judges, and as for “heckuva job, Brownie” it was Bill C. who rescued FEMA from being a dumping ground for cronies, before W. turned it back into one. And at this point if she wins, someone on her campaign staff will have turned out to be a miracle worker. Not that Clinton is my dream candidate, but she’s no McCain. (Also, McCain is a truly lunatic warmonger who doesn’t care about policy at all. Phil Gramm is his economic advisor! Gramm!)
March 30, 2008 at 1:48 am
Bruce Baugh
Matt W: I agree that McCain is worse in every way, both himself and the folks he’s surrounded himself with. If the question is just “who’s worse”, that’s easy.
It’s when the question is “who, if anyone, will be good for the rule of law and competent government” that I find Clinton coming up short. Her husband had a talent for identifying good people and turning them loose, but she’s never shown either quality. She over-manages herself and she doesn’t get good people, and these are bad signs. And…her record on women’s rights issues is good. I wish I could believe it would stay that way. She’s tossed overboard the principles of diplomacy and justification for war, and is obviously comfortable or at least willing to toss over black Democrats and every kind of Democrat that doesn’t support her enough. I find it way too easy to imagine circumstances in which she’d do the same with abortion, for the sake of some real or imagined gain from the conservative crowd she’s embracing more and more.
March 30, 2008 at 6:47 am
silbey
Which is to say that it’s entirely possible that the Democrats who were already there moved leftward while picking up some more conservative members in swing districts. I share urbino’s sense of this.
It’s possible, but I’d need to see some evidence of this. But in any case, I’m not sure it’s relevant. In the aftermath of 2004, the Democrats started recruiting candidates on the right wing of the Democratic spectrum to contest those swing districts. It worked well, but it pushed the party rightward, and will continue to do so.
Bruce, at a minimum Clinton would nominate pro-choice judges, and as for “heckuva job, Brownie” it was Bill C. who rescued FEMA from being a dumping ground for cronies, before W. turned it back into one. And at this point if she wins, someone on her campaign staff will have turned out to be a miracle worker. Not that Clinton is my dream candidate, but she’s no McCain. (Also, McCain is a truly lunatic warmonger who doesn’t care about policy at all. Phil Gramm is his economic advisor! Gramm!)
Agreed.
March 30, 2008 at 9:25 am
matt w
In the aftermath of 2004, the Democrats started recruiting candidates on the right wing of the Democratic spectrum to contest those swing districts.
I’d thought they always recruited candidates on the right wing of the spectrum, but those candidates had lost. Take Brad Carson, for instance.
Leaving that aside, I don’t know what the evidence is that this has pushed the party rightward. VoteView just doesn’t let you make left-right comparisons across time; and the House Democrats have been more effectively liberal than the Senate Democrats. For instance, it’s the House that has been beating back telecom immunity while the Senate tries to put it through. That doesn’t square with the idea that the new candidates pulled the House Democrats and not the Senate Democrats rightward. Part of this may be the institutional setup (and narrower majority) of the Senate, part of it may be that the House leadership is more liberal than the Senate leadership — but then that just reinforces the point that what matters is less the ideology of the junior representatives than the ideology of the Speaker and committee chairs.
Besides Dean, another point of comparison is the presidential candidates — on Iraq and health care their stated positions are both well to the left of Kerry’s. (Admittedly this is partly because there’s been four more years of Iraq and no more success.)
Anyway, how do you think the Democrats are to the right of where they were in 2004?
March 30, 2008 at 11:32 am
Ben Alpers
From the Department of Strange Bedfellows: Richard Mellon Scaife just wrote an editorial praising Hillary Clinton (via JMM at TPM, to which I won’t link ’cause I don’t want to get moderated).
And, fwiw, Brad Carson lost his race for the US Senate in 2004 not 2006.
March 30, 2008 at 12:17 pm
silbey
VoteView just doesn’t let you make left-right comparisons across time; and the House Democrats have been more effectively liberal than the Senate Democrats.
Those kind of comparative statements are difficult to make authoritatively because of the different set-ups of the House and Senate. The need for a super-majority in the Senate to get anything done tends to make it much more difficult for one party to get things through effectively.
In the larger case, though, my original point was the relatively narrow one that the Democrats took the election of 2004 as a lesson to move to the right. That’s not the same thing as whether the Democrats have moved left or right in the ensuing years. The lesson the party took, I think, was that they had to continue moving right if they wanted to win elections. The main way they did that was by continuing to recruit more conservative candidates: Casey (and others) at the Senate level (replacing Joe Hoeffel) and a whole range of candidates at the House level. Those candidates were more conservative specifically on the hot-button issues of gun control and abortion.
After the election, a few things came together and enabled the Democrats to draw a few lines in the sand. Iraq imploded even further, allowing some resistance to the war (though practically speaking, nothing substantive) and the mishandling of Social Security privatization by Rove/Bush/Darth V…Cheney gave the Democrats a victory. That shifted the debate quite a bit as did the Bush administration’s utter fecklessness. But that’s not the same thing as what lessons the Democrats took from the 2004 election or what they would take from a loss in 2008.
The only comparison over time that I can find is the Americans for Democratic Action ratings, and they are inconclusive. In 2005, the House of Representatives ratings for Democrats went from 85% to 90% (ie House Democrats voted the right way according to the ADA 90% of the time), but then dropped to 83% in 2006. Post 2006 election, the ratings jumped from 83% to 92% for the House. But I didn’t read the ADA’s methodology on this, so I don’t know how reliable it it.
March 30, 2008 at 4:10 pm
PTCruiser
Bruce Baugh –
This is not a challenge. Would you explain what you mean by this phrase “…her campaign manager supervises union-busting and incredibly bogus stat-mongering in the service of corporate interests.”
Please elaborate.
March 30, 2008 at 8:29 pm
PTCruiser
Bruce Baugh –
Don’t bother. It took me a little while to realize that you were referring to Mark Penn, not Margaret Ann Williams.
March 31, 2008 at 10:17 am
matt w
Brad Carson lost his race for the US Senate in 2004 not 2006.
My point — it’s not like the Dems were running more conservative people in right-wing places 2006 than in 2004, it’s that they were winning more races. So the more conservative people were getting elected.
silbey, I’m still not really seeing the evidence there. I’m not even convinced that Casey counts — it might be more apples-to-apples to compare Casey to the previous guy to run against Santorum (Ron Klink), and Casey is arguably more liberal — in both cases the Democrats matched the Republican opponent on their abortion views.* You could also compare McCaskill to Jean Carnahan, Tester to Baucus, Brown with, uh, Fingerhut? (don’t know how that compares), Whitehouse with Reed — it’s not obvious to me that the Democratic candidates in 2006 were as a group to the right of those in previous years.
This isn’t to say that I think Democrats would take a loss in 2008 as incentive to move right — I think it would probably be blamed on a leftward shift.
*Though I think what happened is that the DSCC drew the lesson from 2000 that they needed to unite behind a candidate in the primary, so as not to nominate a nonentity like Klink again.
March 31, 2008 at 11:08 am
silbey
to me that the Democratic candidates in 2006 were as a group to the right of those in previous years.
Shouldn’t the comparison with Casey be Joe Hoeffel, who the Democrats ran against Specter in 2004? Hoeffel tried to run for the nomination in 2006 against Santorum and was soundly squashed by the powers that be in PA Democratic circles.
In any case, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
Having said that, that still leaves us with my other point about “I’m not going to vote for Hillary if she gets nominated” result:
1. McCain becomes President for eight years and solidifies Republican control of the upper tiers of the judiciary and executive branch even further.
March 31, 2008 at 1:23 pm
matt w
Oh, I am definitely not trying to argue against voting for Hillary in a hypothetical and increasingly unlikely matchup against McCain. In fact, I see that I missed a negative in my previous comment — what I meant was, if Dems lose in 2008, I think they’ll say “We lost because we shifted left, let’s shift back right.”
I hadn’t known about Hoeffel trying for the nomination in 2006, but my guess is that even if we compare Casey to him, the 2006 candidates aren’t much more conservative than the 2004 candidates, adjusting for district and sacrificial lamb status. But as you say, we’ll have to agree to disagree.
March 31, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Ben Alpers
Having said that, that still leaves us with my other point about “I’m not going to vote for Hillary if she gets nominated” result:
1. McCain becomes President for eight years and solidifies Republican control of the upper tiers of the judiciary and executive branch even further.
Again, it all depends on what state you vote in.
Oklahoma’s electoral votes are going to McCain no matter what potential Democratic presidential voters do. So it’s hard for me to think that my decision about whether to vote for Clinton or to leave my ballot blank (we have incredibly restrictive ballot access laws and no write-ins) would somehow get McCain elected…or prevent him from getting elected.
Consequentialist arguments about one’s electoral choices have to be based on the actual consequences of one’s electoral choices.
March 31, 2008 at 5:21 pm
silbey
Consequentialist arguments about one’s electoral choices have to be based on the actual consequences of one’s electoral choices.
Actually, they can be based on *predictions* about the actual consequences–as we are both doing–and I think I’ll stick with my predictions, thanks.
March 31, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Bruce Baugh
PTCruiser, I apologize for any sloppiness in my terminology. Allergies are bad this week.
April 7, 2008 at 3:38 am
The Great Whatsit » Vast conspiracies, old and new
[…] many erstwhile Clinton defenders, including Ari over at The Edge of the American West, my jaw hit the floor a couple weeks ago when Hillary showed up in Pittsburgh alongside the […]