Here’s an article from the New Left Review, another post-mortem of the election featuring regurgitated musings from Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? Frank finds it odd that so many of the working poor in Kansas vote GOP when the GOP is royally screwing them.
It’s really not so strange, as I shall explain.
Here’s a pithy quote from the article (which is in turn quoting Frank):
Oh, balderdash. I’m a leftist, I think Bush is just about the crappiest president we could ever hope to have, but I’m also a pragmatist. And here’s the crux of the matter, summed up neatly:
The Dems claim to be for the working man, but blabbing about it doesn’t make it so. What great plans, what likely solutions to the problems that ordinary Americans face, do they have to offer? None, actually.*
Kerry was justly guffawed at for his “plan, plan, I have a plan” blather. He had no plan. The Dems never do.
Don’t bother bringing up Clinton. Clinton was about as liberal as Coolidge. A lot of his ideas were great, a lot of them worked, but very few were about helping the working poor. The one that comes to mind was HillaryCare. I grant them that fully; would that it had succeeded.
Obviously, I am simplifying and reducing here. If you add up the total of what Dems in Congress and at the local level have done for the working class, undoubtedly it would be marginally better than what the Republicans have done. How could it not be?
The point, however, is that the Dems are not rhetorically free to leverage their marginal superiority in this area to claim outright virtue. It’s like washing your hands after taking a piss when your friend doesn’t and acting like you’re a paragon of sanitation despite your nose-picking. Indeed, the Dems have a mighty poor pitch and are getting called on it in the worst way: it’s called losing elections bigtime.
Bush won because he and the GOP in general have a better, consistent pitch. They praise Jesus, harp on the glories of laissez-faire capitalism, nod vaguely in the direction of anti-abortion, and–well, that’s about it. The Dems (and that execrable mummy, Kerry) chirp about “nuance,” but their idea of nuance is beige. Not quite so exciting as the GOP’s Red, White, and Blue.
I voted for Kerry because Bush is a reckless disaster who’s done incalculabe damage to the country and who undoubtedly is fixin’ (as they say in Texas) to do more. But his marketing is strong, and his party will continue on victorious until the Dems get themselves a clue.
America is doing OK. It badly needs a safety-net overhaul (esp. medical care for all) and needs to reduce the burden it places on its individual citizens (get rid of all the tax forms and rigamorole that people have to go through). We need to curb the power of the ultra-rich and protect the environment better through intelligent regulation. The GOP, of course, will do none of this. The Dems, unfortunateley, while vaguely nodding in the direction of positive change, ring their hands about generalities. They need some real leaders.