We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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A chilling note This observation by Big Trunk at Powerline certainly took the shine off of my morning:
When the electorate rejected George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984, it did so on each occasion by a margin of roughly 20 percent. The McGovern/Mondale/Kerry view of the United States has made enormous inroads in the past twenty years. It is less than three percent short of a majority and the trendline seems to be moving in its favor. Shouldn’t we be asking what we need to do to roll it back before it crosses over to majority status?
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As I commented previously, your smug and intellectually barren posturings – as exemplified in your risible social responsibility statement – is the past, not the future. You meatheads don’t get it do you? It’s over, friends. Schadenfreude provides consolation only to the weak. The selfish and shortsighted will crumble and pale like last year’s batshit. You are political guano – make a bomb out of yourselves and go bang.
Sincerely
Martin Hazard
Robert, keep in mind the demographic shifts of urban blue state folks cashing in their home equity and moving to more rural red states as documented in the book “Life 2.0”. I moved from CA to TX a few years ago and underwent the liberal mugged by reality transformation to conservative kinda guy. Once removed from the pervasive liberal meme dominant on the left coast, I discovered how much more I had in common with the repubs here in the TX hill country. Higher birth rates of repubs vs dems and the abortion factor (more potential dems get aborted than repubs) should serve to temper the concerns you express in your post.
I respectfully disagree with Powerline on this one. I think that the trendline is moving in the opposite direction (Fifty five senators? Control of the house?). If anything, McGovern and co have lost ground as they now have to hide their agenda in order to be considered “electable”.
Howard Dean is a good example. Dean is “The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party”. A socialist/class warfare-ist openly proud of the fact. Kerry, all through his campaign, tried to hide behind the language of the other side going so far as to stage that farsical “Hunt” in Ohio among other things.
The failure of more people to see this has to do with President Bush and his… “Communication” style. If Bush had Reaganesque Charisma or if Kerry had made the same mistakes as Dukakis this election would have had FAR wider margins.
Dear Martin,
To quote yourself:
“Your politics are intellectually decadent, your posturing that of someone masturbating in front of a mirror.”
I thought that effort was funnier than your latest effort, although “make a bomb out of yourselves and go bang” is a fair attempt. I think the previous sentence could use a little more work to liven it up a little though. And strictly speaking wouldn’t schadenfreude (pleasure from watching misfortune) be a pleasure that the more fortunate are more likley to partake in? You really should have thought that through a little more.
Consider Peter Cuthbertson’s essay on getting the ratchet effect working for us.
Eliminate the MSM.
En mass.
The fact Bush has done so well in the House and the Senate is probably more important than a higher margin over his presidential opponent.
Not only did they get the exit polls wrong in the Presidential race, these same people were predicting that the Dems would take the Senate. Overall it was unlike the predictions of most of the MSM and the pollsters it was a truly horrid night for the Democrats.
I don’t think there is a McGovern/Mondale/Kerry view of the United States. Kerry did his best to portray himself as more George Bush than George Bush and only succeeded in confusing everyone that he stood for anything at all.
In the days of McGovern and Mondale, everyone pretty much knew the platform of the Democratic Party. You could agree or disagree, but it was an argument. Now, it’s a laundry list of issues and causes, all of which they deny on camera to avoid alarming the red states.
Dearest Mike,
Ah I see, so you think crushing the free press the next goose step on Bush’s march to “freedom”? Are you suggesting that the organizations just be shut down or that the people concerned be liquidated?
P.S.
In case people were wondering (MSM=main stream media).
Good. I’m glad you’re bringing this issue to light. In the past few days I’ve seen too many conservative blogs, media personalities, etc seemingly forget the anxiety we all felt Tuesday afternoon.
The GOP is not King Kong, and they are not unstoppable. Electorates can and do change, and the easiest way to start flipping red states blue is to be too busy slapping ourselves on the back and getting into a self-congratulatory circle jerk.
It’s apparent we’ve got the rural areas sewn up. We need to focus now on decreasing even further the DNC’s advantage with minorities. Blacks voted slightly higher for Bush than they did for Gore. Great, but it still wasn’t a striking increase. We need to emphasize to them that the Democratic party has taken them for granted, treated them like victims, and is keeping them down.
The Latin vote is looking even better. We need to stop playing the “illegal alien” card. The fact of the matter is that the US can’t sustain itself demographically, and we need hispanic immigration. Furthermore, these are good immigrants to have. They’re extremely hard working, family oriented, and religious. All values that the GOP owns wholesale. We gained 10% on the hispanic vote from 2000 and 44% of California (worth 55 EVs). We work on the hispanic vote hard and we can turn California red; that, my friends, would be the nail in the DNC coffin.
Complacency would be our biggest downfall. The conservative movement is now at the apex of a 40 year revolution, but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that we are indeed challengeable. Always play like you’re behind.
The Democrats are no longer perceived to be near the center by broad portions of the public. Most Democrats are fine, decent people who care about our country. Their party has let them down.
Even though the US is a rich country, most of us are not personally wealthy and would presumably be better off economically governed by the party representing the ordinary working person, the Democrats. So why do so many vote Republican, not once, but over and over? They vote out of fear.
They fear that their guns are going to be taken away. They fear that additional huge tracts of the West are going to be locked up in the form of National Monuments or National Parks. They fear that unchecked immigration is going to alter America’s culture beyond recognition. They fear that their tax dollars are going to be spent on wacko social experiments. They fear that their religious beliefs will be mocked and marginalized.
Hello DNC! You have to broaden your appeal. You lucked out with WJ Clinton, but a charismatic leader like that appears only once in every few generations. You need to become, once again, the party that you were in the time of JFK and Hubert Humphrey. You need to be the party of the average American, not the party of the looney left. The people ain’t going to come to you – you are going to have to go to the people.
Martin Hazard, bravo! keep entertaining us. Sometimes I miss the loons we kicked off the blog, they could liven up the dullest November afternoon.
Whoops. Meant to say “blacks voted slightly higher for Bush than they did in 2000”.
The democratic party really does need to change.
Generally, the right can reduce their core beliefs down to a few sentences. The left would need to take a poll before they could do that.
Having said that, I actually hope GWB is able to severly thwart terror during his next term so that I actually CAN vote for a democrat… I think the optimum pattern if you care about all kinds of freedom (ie, not just financial freedom, as great as that is) must occasionally include a democrat to undue things like gay marriage bans, and stem cell research…
Good heavens! Where to start, Tom?
Speaking in my capacity as ordinary working person, I long ago figured out that for every $1,000 dollars government takes from me, it gives me $500 in benefits — mostly things I could buy myself if I had my $1,000 back. There’s little ordinary people need government for, beyond installing stoplights and national defense. Like many not-rich folks, I resent the idea that I’m less than self sufficient and need politicians “fighting” for me all the time (who are they fighting, anyhow?).
I’m a cubicle monkey in a corporation. Whenever I hear that the Republicans are for tax cuts for corporations, I think “Yippee! Christmas bonus this year.” And maybe a new hire to help me out. See? I worked out where jobs come from, too.
The Democrats had many years in power without having to make a case for themselves, largely because of the phenomenon of the “solid South.” They’ve pissed that away on social experiments, most of which the populace at large were willing to give a try. Now we’ve worked out that most of the experiments didn’t work, what are the Democrats going to be all about?
Don’t worry Johnathan, Martin is wonderful! I have no intention of banning him. He brightened up my day just imagining his spittle flecked monitor 🙂
RCDean: Sorry but I cannot see how the election of George Bush, a big government right-statist, shows that the the so-called ‘right’ differs that much from the McGovern/Mondale/Kerry view in reality. Fetishizing the differences between the two, which is particularly strange when viewed from overseas, does not change the fact the underpinning meta-contexts are pretty similar indeed. How many government departments is Bush going to simply wind up? The argument between the two parties is how much to turn the ratchet of the state’s encroachment into civil society, not whether or not to actually turn the ratchet around to face the other way.
Economic and technological reality will eventually break the regulatory statism of both left and right: party politicos will follow, not lead that process, but please, just keep in mind the only real good thing about Dubya winning is that we get to give the likes of Martin Hazard an aneurism, which whilst taunting the collectivist left because the collectivist right won is indeed great fun, is little more that a minor blood sport that will soon lose its appeal… the defeat of the ghastly Kerry by the ever so slightly less ghastly Bush was hardly the victory of the forces of light over darkness.
Hank, the only reason the US or any other Western country “can’t sustain itself demographically” is the need to prop up the ponzi scheme that is Social Security. An economic model that depends on constant population growth is clearly finite.
Keep in mind the long term demographic shifts. The rust belt has been losing population for many years. The 2000 census showed the trends continue.
The internet exacerbates this because people needn’t live anywhere near a population center to make a living. Many still do, but the remote working percentage will just keep going up and up, so the urban populations, as a percent if nothing else, are going to keep sliding.
It will get even worse after the 2010 census, which actually won’t take affect until 2014. The long term drift is away from urban attitudes in the US. This is not a bad thing for Libertarians. Perry himself has told me the conservatives are a good recruiting ground. I am less skeptical now than I once was as I see the core left descending into incoherence and hatred. Not much you can do there except watch them burn themselves out like a hot beef stick (you have to know the UK commercials).
I can well understand the feelings of one person above who changed after leaving the urban scene. I regularly work in Manhattan and I expect the next trip over I will have to hide my own politics due the severe levels of intolerance for difference I see coming out of the tiny blue enclaves. (You have to look at a county by county map to see how tiny the areas really are).
The present day Democrat party is toast. The moonbats are at the wheel. When a party throws out Ed Koch, Zell Miller, Roger L. Simon, Richard Gephardt, Joe Lieberman and designates Michael Moore, P. Ditty, Terry McAwful, Kos, Paul Begala, George Soros, and Whoopie Goldberg to build and deliver the message, they are toast for as many years as the eye can see.!
This is the high-water mark for the current brand of Democrat politics.
Kerry=RFK
Bush=JFK
Goldwater=Dead
Right individualism is not winning, it’s losing. The bell curve has shifted Left and/or Statist.
2008 will be the final showdown. It will be Queen Hillary directing all of the factions of the left against some little-known Republican who will be doing his or her best to look like a populist.
Question is, what will we be doing?
I see two positive trends. First, the “mainstream media” is losing market share and credibility to the internet, so there is more opportunity for us to affect the currents of political philosophy with reasoned arguments.
Second, it will become more apparent to internet-oriented young people over the next four years that the baby boomers intend to stick them with a large bill (I’m 50 and lean in favor of the kids), so it will be easier to make the case to them that big government solutions eventually don’t work.
Hillary Clinton will never, ever become President of the United States. I pray that she runs so I can bet heavily on her inevitable defeat.
Actually I don’t feel the trend is to the left. What happened in the US and here in Australia is that the left made its greatest effort ever to defeat both Howard and Bush. They did so by the most sustained negative canpaign I can ever remember. They basically hid there agenda behind hatred of Bush / Howard and gathered up every single group that has benefited from government largesse and sectional pandering. If ever the left had a chance to win this was it .. and they not only didn’t win .. they went backwards in both countries. A losing team often makes a final effort (remember the Battle of the Bulge) and it sometimes appears that they are turning the tide .. but like the Germans in 1944 the tide is running against them. This tide is not for turning.
2008 will be the final showdown. It will be Queen Hillary directing all of the factions of the left against some little-known Republican who will be doing his or her best to look like a populist.
Whoever runs from the Democratic side, I have trouble believing anyone could fail to see what’s coming from the Republican side.
Here’s a hint:
2008 Bush
2012 Bush
2016 Bush
2020 Bush
2024 Bush
2028 Bush
[etc.]
The Latin vote is looking even better.
I don’t know what country Hank is from, but no one calls it the “Latin vote.”
We need to stop playing the “illegal alien” card. The fact of the matter is that the US can’t sustain itself demographically, and we need hispanic immigration.
Don’t worry, Bush has not and will not “play the illegal alien card.” He fully supports illegal immigration, despite 75% of Americans opposing it.
And, there are downsides to illegal immigration, specifically that from Mexico, that most people are ignorant of. See my comments here.
[the GOP presidential candidate could win California]
Yeah, and I’m going to [censored] Janeane Garofalo live on Air America.
Powerline has it wrong. Since Clinton’s regime the Dems have lost power at all levels of government. They have lost the senate, the congress, governorships and legislatures. Its moving in their direction? I don’t think so.
Hubris is always a problem at the point of victory. I think the Illinois race matching Keyes/Obama is indicative of the Republican future. If it is going to have one. Keyes got 27% Bush got 45%.
If the Republicans try to push the Keyes agenda they are going to lose support. Maybe not 18 points like Illinois, but in most cases it only takes a 5 point shift to alter elections.
I discuss it some here:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2004/11/jack-ryan-republicans.html