United By Opposition

I'm still intrigued by a post by my co-blogger Simon over at Stubborn Facts, about a David Brooks piece on McCain's new negative campaigning being a response to Obama's media coverage. I left a comment there that I think captures my view on this quite well, but this led me back to something I've been pondering for a while, that is the unifying force behind the conservative support for McCain. McCain has, and always will have dedicated support from moderate Republicans, independents, and even many moderate Democrats. I respect McCain a great deal, and I've said so before. Amongst the right-wing base of the GOP, the story has been different. The rifts betwen McCain and the GOP base are recent and well-known. Remember that it was only mere months ago that McCain appeared before the CPAC, to "heal the wounds," as it were.

Things have changed, however. I've no doubt that the right-wing distaste for McCain is still there, as a close reading of righty blogs will reveal, but for the most part, the conservative leadership has lined up behind McCain. Despite the rants of the likes of John Hawkins and Ann Coulter, most righties have decided on McCain, or rather they've settled for him. You see, that's the thing, while most of Obama's core supporters have enthusiatically embraced him (a few of them taking it to unseemly levels of hero-worship), most righties have merely settled on McCain. For many, if they had their druthers, would've chosen someone else.

If you check out most righty blogs nowadays, you'll notice that you see a whole lot of anti-Obama posts and ads, and less pro-McCain stuff. The reason why is simple: The right-wing base is full of zeal, but it's not in support for McCain, rather it's in total opposition to Obama. They hate his guts, and are willing to put aside their issues with McCain (well, most of them) to see Obama defeated. The right is unified by opposition to Obama.

Now to be fair, most righties are pretty upfront about this, and the Left is hardly different with regards to Bush, but a lot of Democrats really like Obama, and Obama has an easier time getting money from his supporters than McCain does.

Brooks' article mentions that McCain's numbers have gone up as he's gone negative against Obama, and a good reason for this is that McCain has helped to unify righties against Obama. Conservatives seem to think it's a a bad thing for McCain to have good relations with Democrats, so the fact that he's in full attack mode helps him among his base, although it might hurt him among moderates.

In 2004, a lot of Democrats had the mindset of Anybody But Bush, and now the GOP has the mindset of Anybody But Obama. They are unified by opposition.

“Why do you think you didn’t give a speech like this in, say, May or June of 2004?”

Asks E.J Dionne, in response to these recent comments by John Kerry on abortion, and the Democratic Party's position on life issues:


I think we have been guilty in the party and individually at times of being overly pro-choice and this is the way it is and we’re not going to do x, y or z, without honoring the deeply held beliefs that are legitimate that go to the question of the killing of a human being, depending on what you believe. And I understand it depends on what you believe. But if you believe it, I think you do have an obligation to say so in terms of wanting fewer abortions, of trying to say abortion is not good, it’s not a good alternative, and what we need to do is make sure people have other alternatives and other options. That’s where you can find a lot of common ground because there are 1.3 million abortions in this country, and I don’t think anybody would disagree that that is too many.

As Bill Clinton framed it, I thought so effectively, in 1992, it ought to be rare, legal and safe. Rare has been missing from the debate. I think we need to figure out how we’re going to do that, and do it in a more effective way.

I still remember vividly that third debate between Kerry and Bush, when he answered that question on abortion. It was like watching an animal being tortured. I felt literal pain watching that. This is still somewhat nuanced and clunky, but a quantum leap from the fall of 2004. It's much too late at this point (which was Dionne's point), but he does get a lot closer to full coherence this time.

UPDATE: I should mention that for all intents and purposes I am a pro-life Democrat, so I still have some issues with this position, but I still think it is a big step compared to his last statement on the issue.

A Question of Values

As all of us must surely know by now, things didn’t exactly turn out well for the Democrats this past election. We can debate the size and scope of Bush’s victory, and we can agree that Bush’s “mandate,” is an overblown exaggeration. Regardless of how we slice it however, us Democrats took a hit last November. In the days and weeks following, the self-appointed experts of the political sphere made it their duty to inform us of why we lost. The Democratic leadership went back to the beginning, after having a sort of political “dark night of the soul.” “Did we move too far left?” Did we move too far to the center?” Did we pick the wrong candidate in John Kerry?” These are the questions we asked of ourselves, and others in the media asked. The right-wingers, in-between their fits of gloating and complaining (they’ve won, and they’re STILL complaining!), made up their minds that Bush’s victory was a rebuke of “blue state values, Michael Moore, the Clintons, the ‘anti-Bush Hollywood Left,’ and the so-called liberal media. According to the prevailing political wisdom, the Democrats lost on values. A question must be asked: What on earth does that mean?

Apparently, a lot of people in middle America were really upset that people had the audacity to question the policies of the President. The “liberal media” canard is an old straw man—the more things change, the more they stay the same. Conservatives have been at this for years, but the intensity has increased exponentially in the last few years. In the few months after 9-11, the country was for the most part, unified. One would think this would have lasted, but it seems that both sides are split like never before. In the realms of the lunatic fringe, it has always been like this, but even on the street, it can be brutal. Friends are lost, families are divided, and partisan division stalls those elected to do the people’s business. The debate over who is most responsible for the division could roll on ad infinitum, but it seems to me, that with a few notable exceptions, most of the criticism of Bush was policy-based, while most of the criticism of the opposition was personal, or based on distortion. Max Cleland was compared to Osama for questioning the President, Tom Daschle was compared to Saddam Hussein for opposing drilling in ANWR, and Democrats were labeled obstructionists for opposing Bush even an inch. Legitimate concerns about protecting civil liberties were dismissed as paranoia, and a whole host of pundits, activists, and Republican leaders attacked liberals and Democrats at every turn. Republicans cried about Michael Moore. Maybe sitting him next to Jimmy Carter was a bad idea. I’ll be honest, I have serious issues with Moore, but why does the Left have to rein in its extremists, and the Right gets a pass? Did Howard Dean ever accuse Bush of accusing Vietnam vets of war crimes? Did Al Franken ever accuse Bush of conspiring with the Vietcong? Need I even mention the decade of pure vitriol against Bill Clinton? What makes this even more absurd is that conservatives accuse the Left of being the haters.

After the election, conservatives complained about “anti-Bush hate,” and assailed the Left’s patriotism in the next breath. They gloated, arguing the Left’s supposed hatred of Bush sealed our fate. Consider this: How is it, that a handful of radicals can engage in real-live personal attacks (Bush is Hitler, Bush is a war criminal, etc), or even bash America, and the WHOLE group of liberals, Democrats, progressives gets blamed, but when practically every activist, pundit, and think tank scholar on the far-right engages in attacks, and they get a pass? O’Reilly says that Richard Mellon Scaife isn’t as far right, as George Soros is far-left. That really depends on one’s perspective, no? If Bill O’Reilly really were an independent, he would never utter such foolishness. Soros is certainly far to the Left, but Scaife is as equally far to the Right, and the only reason he doesn’t se it that way, is because he himself leans right.

Now, I’m sure you knew all that. The hypocrisy is well established in this situation. Conservatives didn’t consider what they said hate, because in their minds, it is all true. In the minds of the hard right, the Left really does hate America, and any criticism of Bush is seen as a treasonous attack against America, and American values. Now, perhaps I’m being too harsh. After all, most mainstream Republicans and conservatives don’t think this way. My best friends are Republicans. It is those elites, the pundits, the think-tankers, the activists, the ideologues, for them liberalism isn’t just different—it’s evil. That being said, it’s no wonder that conservatives get upset when Hollywood makes movies. They say they hate it when Hollywood gets involved in politics. The truth is, Hollywood’s always been political. What they hate is that it’s not their politics. When conservatives speak out in Hollywood, it’s cool. When liberals do it, it’s treason. Since Bush represents America in their minds, an attack on Bush is an attack on America. That explains why all those Dixie Chicks fans turned on them after Natalie Maines said she didn’t like Bush. “Dixie sluts!” was the outcry. Hollywood Dems who backed Bush (i.e. Ron Silver, James Woods) are seen as heroes and noble outcasts. Dennis Miller says he backs Bush because he’s a patriot. Backing the President no matter what doesn’t make you a patriot, it makes you a sheep. Never mind that none of this seemed to apply during Clinton’s term.

So, let us return to the initial question of values. I’m an evangelical Christian, and a moderate on a lot of issues, so I don’t think we should ignore the values issue. It does no one any good to label all Christians and people of faith, as “stupid, right-wing, bigots.” That behavior is just as bad as labeling blue staters “godless, commie, liberal, elites.” I do however, think it is past time for someone to stand up and draw the line between those sincere people who want sanity and balance in the debate on morality, and those self-important, un-elected, self-righteous, moralistic elites, who think it their duty to define morality for the nation, assault every work of art under the sun because it doesn’t openly endorse conservatism, and use wedge issues to divide and conquer. Christianity is not conservatism, and vice versa. We need to rise up and declare that the sum total of moral values is not simple opposition to gay marriage and abortion. The Taliban opposes gay marriage and abortion. Are we to follow their example? Strong families. A sound economy. Healthcare. Education. Equal rights. A sound and effective foreign policy. Fighting poverty. Protecting the environment. Civil rights and liberties. Free speech. Truth in government. These are all moral values too.

The Democrats don’t need to move to the Left, or to the Center. The Democratic Party is a Center-Left party. We need to stop trying to out-Republican the Republicans. We need to define issues. We need to move beyond simple opposition and take a stand. We’ve misunderstood red-state voters, while the Republicans have used them for their own political gain. Bush’ll be gone in four years. We’ll survive Bush. At the end of the day, the ideologues will fight each other, while the rest of us will take the Party back, and win this thing for America.