Richard Bennett

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a big advocate of two robust political parties, because it’s been my experience that the worst laws pass with little or no debate. Since Schiavo, it’s also become increasingly apparent that the Republicans aren’t using their power in Washington as it should be used, even though their stand on Iraq and the larger war on terror is substantially correct. So we’re on the lookout for signs of a Democratic rebirth for all it could mean for the country.

So I eyeballed the recent critiques of Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? with great interest. These are The Politics of Polarization and What’s the Matter with What’s the Matter with Kansas?, analyzed by Mark Schmitt and Kevin Drum.

Frank argues that the US electorate, especially the lower middle class, has shifted to the right in recent years because the Right has placed wedge issues like Gay Marriage in the center of the debate. This viewpoint is compelling to the Moveon.org/Air Hysteria/Michael Moore crowd because it reinforces a couple of ideas that are very important to them: the myth that the Left is more tolerant and diverse, and the myth that the average voter is easily confused by the political masterminds of the Right, a Machiavellian crowd with unmatched powers of persuasion.

This was all fine until somebody went to the trouble of analyzing voting patterns to see if the theory was correct. That’s what Bartels did, and this is what he found:

• Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party? No. White voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more reliably Democratic in presidential elections over the past half-century, while middle- and upper-income white voters have trended Republican. Low-income whites have become less Democratic in their partisan identifications, but at a slower rate than more affluent whites – and that trend is entirely confined to the South, where Democratic identification was artificially inflated by the one-party system of the Jim Crow era.

• Has the white working class become more conservative? No. The average views of low-income whites have remained virtually unchanged over the past 30 years. (A pro-choice shift on abortion in the 1970s and ‘80s has been partially reversed since the early 1990s.) Their positions relative to more affluent white voters – generally less liberal on social issues and less conservative on economic issues – have also remained virtually unchanged.

• Do working class “moral values” trump economics? No. Social issues (including abortion) are less strongly related to party identification and presidential votes than economic issues are, and that is even more true for whites in the bottom third of the income distribution than for more affluent whites. Moreover, while social issue preferences have become more strongly related to presidential votes among middle- and high-income whites, there is no evidence of a corresponding trend among low-income whites.

• Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No. The partisan attachments and presidential votes of frequent church-goers and people who say religion provides “a great deal” of guidance in their lives are much more strongly related to their views about economic issues than to their views about social issues. For church-goers as for non-church-goers, partisanship and voting behavior are primarily shaped by economic issues, not cultural issues.

So why has the Democratic Party lost the ability to win Congressional and national elections? The white middle class has become increasingly close to the Republican Party:

On the other hand, if the idea is to appeal to a large class of white voters who have become noticeably less Democratic over the past half-century, the place to find them is in the middle and upper reaches of the income distribution. These affluent whites are more liberal on social issues than working-class whites are, and if anything they have become increasingly liberal on social issues over the past 30 years. Moreover, their views about social issues are more closely connected to partisanship and voting behavior than those of working-class whites – and they have become much more closely connected since the 1980s. Those facts suggest that “recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues” may not be such a “criminally stupid strategy” on the part of Democratic leaders (Frank 2004, 243). Indeed, it may be a testament to the success of that strategy that affluent white voters have not become even more markedly Republican, despite the fact that they (still) attach at least as much weight to economic issues as to social issues.

And to this I would add that the traditional base of the Democratic Party, industrial workers, is an increasingly small group in the US, and the tactic of replacing them with teachers’ unions aggravates the Democrats’ problem with the middle class.

In The Politics of Polarization, Galston & Kamarck argue that voters are more partisan that in the past:

It is not news that our political elites are more polarized than they were a generation ago. Less well known is a dramatic new development—a Great Sorting-Out of the electorate—that has occurred along many dimensions. Self-described liberals are much more likely to vote Democratic, and self-described conservatives for Republicans, than in the past. Party affiliation is a far greater predictor of voting behavior, as is religious observance. Blue states are bluer, red states redder, and swing states fewer than in previous cycles. Even individual counties have become increasingly polar, with far more conferring a vote of 60 percent or greater for a presidential candidate than in the past.

The initial reaction to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina vividly illustrates this new politics of polarization. Under normal circumstances, a natural disaster brings people together. Not this time. According to a Washington Post poll released September 7, 2005, 74 percent of Republicans but only 17 percent of Democrats approved of President Bush’s handling of the crisis; about two in three Republicans rated the federal government’s response as good or excellent, compared to only one in three Democrats. (Independents were more evenly divided.)

What is equally striking about the politics of polarization is that a strong plurality of Americans continue to associate themselves with the moderate center of the political spectrum. In fact, the politics of polarization is occurring against a backdrop of sustained ideological stability. In 2004, the electorate was 21 percent liberal, 34 percent conservative and 45 percent moderate. That is practically a carbon copy of the average over the past thirty years — 20 percent liberal, 33 percent conservative, and
47 percent moderate—with remarkably little variation from election to election.

And they also point out that liberal Democrats are vastly outnumbered:

With three conservatives for every two liberals, the sheer arithmetic truth is that in a polarized electorate effectively mobilized by both major parties, Democratic candidates must capture upwards of 60 percent of the moderate vote — a target only Bill Clinton has reached in recent times — to win a national election.

So why is it that the leadership of the Democratic Party wants to react to these dynamics (a shrinking Democratic base and an increasingly polarized electorate) by retreating ever more deeply into an ideological ghetto that’s hostile to the interests of the average voter?

Why indeed? We’ll address that tomorrow.

It turns out the dude the Guardian reported murdered before their very eyes is, uh, still alive:

Lu Banglie, the Chinese democracy activist who was savagely beaten at the weekend, has been found injured but alive.

They haven’t corrected their original story, of course.

Ht: Jody

This is how China deals with dissent:

The men outside shouted among themselves and those in uniform suddenly left. Those remaining started pushing on the car, screaming at us to get out. They pointed flashlights at us, and when the light hit Mr Lu’s face, it was as if a bomb had gone off. They completely lost it. They pulled him out and bashed him to the ground, kicked him, pulverised him, stomped on his head over and over again. The beating was loud, like the crack of a wooden board, and he was unconscious within 30 seconds.

They continued for 10 minutes. The body of this skinny little man turned to putty between the kicking legs of the rancorous men. This was not about teaching a man a lesson, about scaring me, about preventing access to the village; this was about vengeance – retribution for teaching villagers their legal rights, for agitating, for daring to hide.

There’s no hiding the fact that China is still run by savages.

The Miers nomination indicates that President Bush is doing his best to alienate the nation, but his approval rating is going up. Perhaps this crazy stuff is the reason why: World Can’t Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime!

Brought to you by Air Hysteria.

Bill Bennett’s drawn a lot of criticism as a hypocrite since the revelations that our Morality Czar likes the slot machines and our former Drug Czar used to smoke cigarettes. While there’s no doubt a case to be made for this, it strikes me that Bennett’s hypocrisy, such as it is, affects nobody but himself. He gambles, but his family doesn’t go hungry, and his role as enforcer of federal drug laws didn’t have anything to do with policy-making. So none of that excites me a whole lot.

Among the Bennett critics who’ve tried to mint political capital from the current abortion-and-crime flap there is one who stands out from the crowd as a shining, radiant example of the kind of shameless hypocrisy that we haven’t seen in this country for years, and man who sets a new standard for hypocrisy that will seldom be matched for generations to come.

I am referring, of course, to Detroit congressman John Conyers.

Mr. Conyers pretends that Bennett’s truthful and accurate observation that blacks commit crimes a a higher rate than the general population is so heinous that Bennett must immediately be jerked off the air. Toward that end Conyers has written a letter to Bennett’s employer replete with crocodile tears:

It is difficult for us to understand how an individual granted a show on your network could utter such a statement in 21st century America. While we all support First Amendment Rights, we simply cannot countenance statements and shows that are replete with racism, stereotyping, and profiling. Mr. Bennett’s statement is insulting to all of us and has no place on the nation’s public air waves.

Exactly that is Mr. Conyers saying here? He doesn’t dispute the accuracy of the linkage of race and crime, he simply accuses Bennett of stereotyping and profiling, some really horrible offenses, to be sure. We wouldn’t want to use stereotyping and profiling in the pursuit of crime prevention, because to do so would violate our civil rights and diminish as a nation.

And indeed, Conyers has been a champion and a leader of the movement to prevent profiling by law enforcement in America:

WASHINGTON — For the third time since 1998, Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, introduced legislation to stop policing efforts that target people based on race.

The End Racial Profiling Act of 2001, unveiled Wednesday at a bipartisan news conference, would require police agencies to tally the race of persons detained in traffic stops. It also would provide federal grants for other means to end racial profiling, including cultural awareness training and equipment such as video cameras.

“Since I first introduced this kind of legislation … the pervasive nature of racial profiling has gone from anecdote and theory to established and documented fact,” Conyers said. He cited data from nine states that show blacks and Latinos are disproportionately pulled over for traffic stops at a much higher rate than whites.

Now that’s excellent; even though data from Conyers’ own state show that white people are pulled over by police disproportionately, his heart must be in the right place.

Or is it? What if it turned out that the most high-profile piece of legislation that Conyers has ever sponsored was replete with stereotyping and profiling, to such an extent that it contained nothing but stereotyping and profiling, and if you took out the stereotyping and profiling it contains, there would be nothing left? Surely that would damn Conyers’ to the circle of hell reserved for con-artists, hypocrites, and shameless hucksters, wouldn’t it?

Satan, prepare a place for the congressman: Conyers is principal co-sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act:

In 1994, Congress passed VAWA to address the nationwide problem of domestic violence and sexual assault. VAWA provided funding to combat the violence that is visited upon almost 900,000 women each year by their current or former spouse or boyfriend. In addition, VAWA made changes to our civil and criminal laws to address domestic violence and sexual assault…

That is where H.R. 1248 comes in. The bill continues funding for VAWA programs such as law enforcement and prosecution grants to combat violence against women, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, battered women’s shelters and services, education and training for judges and court personnel, pro-arrest policies, rural domestic violence and child abuse enforcement, stalker reduction, and others.

Importantly, this bill takes preliminary steps to address dating violence, an area which was left out of the previous VAWA — with serious consequences. Young women between the ages of 16 and 24 experience the highest rates of violence by current or former intimate partners. And 40% of teenage girls between the ages of 14 and 17 report knowing someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.

Now this is pretty clear: Conyers says women are victims, male spouses and boyfriends are perpetrators of intimate violence. There is no dispute about this, no admission that women may actually send a little violence back the other way or down to the kids, right? Because we all know that where domestic violence is concerned, women are good and men are bad. That’s the sexist stereotype and profile.

Bill Bennett’s hypothetical scenario (mass abortion of black babies) isn’t going to happen; he’s just a talk show host and he wasn’t arguing for it in any case. But Conyers’ law was passed, funded to the tune of billions of dollars, and operative in tens of thousands of arrests and custody battles throughout the country. It’s been effective in helping to continue the breakdown of the black family, and to ensure that most black children in America grow up without their father in the house. And that, of course, leads directly to high rates of school dropout, high rates of drug abuse, and to the high rates of crime that Bennett had the nerve to acknowledge.

No wonder Conyers is offended: if we start talking about race and crime we’ll eventually get around to the stooging that black leaders like Conyers, Jesse Jackson, and Wade Henderson have been doing for the enemies of their community, and we can’t have that, can we? Even though true, it would be stereotyping and profiling, the cardinal sin in the hands of sexists as well as racists.