# James Webb, Scots-Irish political culture, Democrats, and gun control **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 10, 2006, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885 "2006-11-10T17:11:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/21 "2006-11-11T04:42:37Z")
[QUOTE=ExTank] **SteveMB** answered admirably. I can only add that, since Clintonian Democrats never met a gun control law they didn’t like, no matter how nonsensical it was, the threat was real (if unspoken) that, left to their own devices, we would have England-style gun control as soon as they could swing the votes to pass the legislation. [/QUOTE] **ExTank** , that’s just not so. There were way too many Southern Democrats in the Clinton coalition for anything like that to happen. Besides which, we do have the Second Amendment, you know. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/22 "2006-11-11T07:18:33Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] And I certainly agree with Webb that, to win over this group, Democrats need to focus their emphasis on _economic_ issues. Economic populism is the way to go. [/QUOTE] Except that according to Webb, that isn’t enough: > [@](#): > > Its members are values-based rather than economics-based: they often vote on emotional issues rather than their pocket books. Because of their heritage of “kinship,” they’re strangely unenvious of wealth, and measure leaders by their personal strength and values rather than economic position. \*That \*is the central problem for the dems. Economic populism (alone) isn’t enough for the people he’s writing about. The dems would also have to broaden their tent on cultural matters. They did in this election, running people like Webb and Casey; the question is whether they can continue to do that without disaffecting the Harvard and Berkely crowds. ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/23 "2006-11-11T10:39:50Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] **ExTank** , that’s just not so. There were way too many Southern Democrats in the Clinton coalition for anything like that to happen. Besides which, we do have the Second Amendment, you know. [/QUOTE] According to many Democrats, all that means is that you can join the National Guard. In Maryland, every whack-job proposal for additional gun control laws, and we have some bad ones, has had strong Democratic support. It’s the death of a thousand cuts for gun owners. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/24 "2006-11-11T12:53:57Z")
[QUOTE=furt] The dems would also have to broaden their tent on cultural matters. They did in this election, running people like Webb and Casey; the question is whether they can continue to do that without disaffecting the Harvard and Berkely crowds. [/QUOTE] Sweetie, broad-based political alignments are always going to involve some of us holding our noses to vote in our pragmatic political interests. In countries with parliamentary systems, they have lots of parties forming coalitions to achieve this end. Here we jam most of our varied political tendencies into only two parties. Where they have parliamentary coalitions, they don’t have to hold their noses as much since the choices are a little more fine-grained. Here the citizens have to accept getting along with very different fellow citizens if they want to have a competitive major party. And frankly I feel perfectly delighted to see people like Webb deserting the Republican Party for the Democrats, it makes the Republicans look bad, they can’t keep principled people, driving them into the arms of the Democrats. Why do you suppose Webb switched parties? What if he really is smart and foresaw the way Virginia is going… i.e. the Democrats have a future in Virginia, which Salon has just called a new “[bellwether](http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/11/10/virginia/index.html)” for America. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/25 "2006-11-11T13:07:16Z")
Oh dear, speaking of Senator-elect [Claire McCaskill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_McCaskill) (D-Mo.), I found this oddly ironic factoid: “Claire has received an F rating from the NRA for her stance on gun issues.” And she’s an Ozark gal born and bred. Hmm… Bill Moser’s article on AlterNet says about her win – from a Southern point of view, which includes the Ozarks – > [@](#): > > Despite forty years of steady economic growth in the region, the South still has more poor, struggling and badly educated Americans – black and white – than anywhere else in the country. > > Those were the people who won Missouri and Virginia for the Democrats this year. Not because they finally woke up and realized where their true economic interests lay. McCaskill and Webb won because they took their campaigns directly into the Republicans’ working-class strongholds. In the Bible Belt Ozarks of Southern Missouri, McCaskill campaigned hard, emphasizing her blue-collar message without running away from her pro-stem cell, pro-choice, anti-war message. It paid off in the biggest Republican county in the state, Greene, where early polls showed Republican Jim Talent winning a mere 53 percent of the vote – a huge change from recent elections. Moser had nothing to say about guns, except that Democrat Harold Ford ran a pro-gun campaign in Tennessee and lost. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/26 "2006-11-11T14:57:27Z")
I rather doubt that changing philosophy on gun control is going to win the Democrats many more votes. Look at the Cuban exiles in Florida. Both Democrats and Republicans have been kissing their butts for a generation. Yet only the Republicans benefit from it. If the Democrats all of a sudden ignored the first half of the Second Amendment and pledged love everlasting for the Second Half of the Second Amendment, the NRA types still wouldn’t jump over in significant numbers. Sometimes facts don’t matter- like how one candidate volunteered, went to war, face enemy fire and got wounded while another used influence to get into the National Guard and then skipped out on even that obligation. Yet Bush is revered by some military types and Kerry despised because- well because they are that’s all. Kissing butts only makes sense if you get something out of it, so why should the Democrats change? ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/27 "2006-11-11T15:20:57Z")
[QUOTE=ExTank] **SteveMB** answered admirably. I can only add that, since Clintonian Democrats never met a gun control law they didn’t like, no matter how nonsensical it was, the threat was real (if unspoken) that, left to their own devices, we would have England-style gun control as soon as they could swing the votes to pass the legislation. [/QUOTE] And then we can have articles like [this](http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/walthamforest/walthamforestnews/display.var.1013959.0.bullet_found_in_doorway.php) running in our newspapers. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/28 "2006-11-11T15:24:55Z")
[QUOTE=asterion] And then we can have articles like [this](http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/walthamforest/walthamforestnews/display.var.1013959.0.bullet_found_in_doorway.php) running in our newspapers. [/QUOTE] Farker, huh? This is an article from a small local paper, and it’s probably a bit more exciting than their usual fare of “Mrs Miggens loses purse”. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/29 "2006-11-11T15:33:16Z")
[QUOTE=BobLibDem] I rather doubt that changing philosophy on gun control is going to win the Democrats many more votes. [/QUOTE] I think it would. I’m a Liberal, and I shoot. I think it’s more important to focus on National Health Care for every U.S. citizen, higher education for everyone who wants it, protection of women’s right to choose, development of alternative energies, emphasis on more efficient vehicles, expansion of telecommuting options, working toward becoming a good ‘world citizen’, and other things than trying to pass ‘do-nothing’ gun control legislation that primarily affects people who are not part of the problem anyway. Granted, most Conservatives are opposed to many of the things that I favour; but gun control is one wedge issue the Democrats can do without. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/30 "2006-11-11T15:39:25Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] Sweetie, broad-based political alignments are always going to involve some of us holding our noses to vote in our pragmatic political interests. [/QUOTE] Sweetie, not everyone in the Democratic party _wants_ a “broad-based political alignment.” We are only a few years removed from Nader supporters “costing” Gore the election. We are only a few months removed from seeing enormous amounts of support given to an effort to oust a sitting Senator. We are only days removed from some dems wanting Dean removed after the election. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/31 "2006-11-11T15:55:35Z")
**furt** , it depends on how you define “values.” You can have Christian “values” without spewing hatred. In fact, spewing hatred is the very antithesis of Christian values, and bold Democrats in the South ought to start pointing that out. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/32 "2006-11-11T16:02:46Z")
[QUOTE=BobLibDem] Kissing butts only makes sense if you get something out of it, so why should the Democrats change? [/QUOTE] It wouldn’t be a change for Southern Democrats and Western Democrats, who have tended to support gun rights all along. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/33 "2006-11-11T16:30:18Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] **furt** , it depends on how you define “values.” You can have Christian “values” without spewing hatred. In fact, spewing hatred is the very antithesis of Christian values, and bold Democrats in the South ought to start pointing that out. [/QUOTE] :rolleyes: And this boilerplate connects to anything I said, because … ? ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/34 "2006-11-11T17:05:54Z")
[QUOTE=furt] :rolleyes: And this boilerplate connects to anything I said, because … ? [/QUOTE] :rolleyes: right back at you. Your prior post mistinterprets (willfully?) what Webb is saying about “values.” Republicans use “values” to mean abortion-outlawing and fag-hating. That’s not what Webb is talking about. Here’s what he said: > [@](#): > > Because of their heritage of “kinship,” they’re strangely unenvious of wealth, and measure leaders by their personal strength and values rather than economic position. Webb is talking about the candidate’s personal character (and the voters’ sense of that), not about where the candidate stands on some artificial set of litmus tests of the type that Republicans use as electoral weapons. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/35 "2006-11-11T17:19:11Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] Your prior post mistinterprets (willfully?) what Webb is saying about “values.” [/QUOTE] Horseshit. Neither you nor I is completely sure what Web means by values in that passage, as he doesn’t say. I made no assumptions whatsoever about what those values are – only you have done that. What he DOES say is that they do not vote based on their pocketbooks, and that they are values-based (whatever those values are), directly contradicting your assertions that “Democrats need to focus their emphasis on economic issues. Economic populism is the way to go.” To repeat: According to Webb, economic populism, by itself, is not enough. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/36 "2006-11-11T17:43:01Z")
[QUOTE=furt] To repeat: According to Webb, economic populism, by itself, is not enough. [/QUOTE] Are you suggesting that Webb wants Democrats to pander to Christian conservatives with an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, let’s-get-evolution-out-of-textbooks platform? If not, what _are_ you saying? Please spell it out. What _would_ be “enough?” Because I don’t think that’s what Webb is saying at all. My reading is that Webb is decrying that sort of politics. Webb says: > [@](#): > > The GOP strategy is heavily directed toward keeping peace with this culture, which every four years is seduced by the siren song of guns, God, flag, opposition to abortion and success in war. It doesn’t sound to me like he wants Democrats to emulate this strategy. Rather, it sounds to me like he (correctly) sees that Republicans are distracting voters from their true interests with these memes, and leading them to harm. (You do know what a siren is, yes?) ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/37 "2006-11-11T17:50:18Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] Are you suggesting that Webb wants Democrats to pander to Christian conservatives with an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, let’s-get-evolution-out-of-textbooks platform? [/QUOTE] No. That’s purely _your_ imagination. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/38 "2006-11-11T17:56:13Z")
So then, what **are** you saying when you say “economic populism, by itself, is not enough?” What _would_ be enough, do you suppose? ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/39 "2006-11-11T18:28:01Z")
[QUOTE=BobLibDem] I rather doubt that changing philosophy on gun control is going to win the Democrats many more votes. Look at the Cuban exiles in Florida. Both Democrats and Republicans have been kissing their butts for a generation. Yet only the Republicans benefit from it. If the Democrats all of a sudden ignored the first half of the Second Amendment and pledged love everlasting for the Second Half of the Second Amendment, the NRA types still wouldn’t jump over in significant numbers. [/QUOTE] If the Republicans simultaneously turned wobbly on gun rights, I think they would. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885/40 "2006-11-11T18:43:25Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] So then, what **are** you saying when you say “economic populism, by itself, is not enough?” What _would_ be enough, do you suppose? [/QUOTE] The issue isn’t so much what I suppose, it’s what Webb supposes, and I don’t know. If you’re asking _me_ to interpret, I’d say that I’m pretty sure it’s NOT about being “right” on X number of issues, but about convincing them you are of a certain kind of person. (And, this being a political discussion, _perception_ is what matters). To these people, Jim Webb (and Jon Tester, for another) look, sound and act like men you could look square in the eye and take at their word, while John Kerry looks like a snooty rich guy who thinks he’s better than you. Webb is a man who takes ideas like honor so seriously that he was writing [angry op-eds](http://www.jameswebb.com/articles/wallstjrnl/insultofcartersmasspardon.htm) about Carter’s pardoning of Vietnam vets twenty-five years after the fact. Even if people disagree on the specific issue at hand, the character counts. Take that FWIW. My perception may well be colored by the fact that I would more-or-less identify as one of the people he’s talking about, that I like Webb (and Tester, and Casey, and Harold Ford, from what I know of them) and that I hope he and those like him come to be the heart of the Democratic party. The main point I was making was that simply saying “you’ll get more money under us” is NOT the way to the hearts of the people he’s describing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/james-webb-scots-irish-political-culture-democrats-and-gun-control/379885.md?page=3)