“GOP’s Post-Obama Problem”: Why They’re Lost Without Him — And With The Electorate He Helped Create
With the 2014 congressional primary season almost behind us, the conventional wisdom has hardened: The Republican establishment has vanquished its Tea Party tormentors. The progressive response to that narrative — that the establishment only “won” by capitulating to the Tea Party — is hardening, too. I want to challenge that a little.
When North Carolina State Sen. Thom Tillis won the GOP Senate nomination in early May, it seemed ridiculous to claim the Tea Party had been defeated, though he technically had a Tea Party rival: Tillis was as extreme as his opponent, supporting personhood legislation and tax cuts for the wealthy, opposing immigration reform and boasting that he’d personally stopped the state’s Medicaid expansion. I argued at the time that the story was not the Tea Party’s defeat, but its victory: the extent to which it had taken over the Republican establishment.
That didn’t seem true in the wake of Tuesday night’s election results, particularly in Kentucky. Credit where it’s due: Mitch McConnell crushed Matt Bevin. Sure, he did it by courting his Tea Party junior Sen. Rand Paul and by sliming and outspending Bevin. And sure, he won by a smaller margin than any incumbent GOP senator who’d faced a primary in the last 80 years.
But he won, even after making a deal with Harry Reid to reopen the government that was supposed to be his undoing. So did Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, a Boehner ally with a Tea Party rival, while in Georgia, the three candidates tied to the Tea Party lost, to two more polished and mainstream conservatives, Rep. Jack Kingston and businessman David Perdue, who face a July run-off. And looking ahead, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Kansas’s Pat Roberts and Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander look likely to beat back Tea Party challengers. In 2010, when even conservative incumbents like Utah’s Bob Bennett and South Carolina’s Bob Inglis lost their seats in Congress, all of those races likely would have turned out differently.
Something’s changed, and liberals can’t ignore it. Democrats won’t be running against neophytes or crackpots likely to self-destruct before November. Yet the GOP establishment’s short-term wins mask a long-term nightmare: The party has no real plan for American politics once Barack Obama goes off to enjoy a long retirement, or for the electorate he’s helped create.
“Mean Mike”: How Can “The Base” Fully Get On The Bandwagon Of Anyone Smiled Upon By The Godless Liberal Media?
An examination of the rather different tone associating Mike Huckabee’s proto-candidacy for 2016 was inevitable, and it’s been served up usefully by David Freedlander at The Daily Beast. In 2008, he observes, Huck had quite the reputation for being sunny:
Frank Rich, in The New York Times, wrote that Huckabee was the Republican Obama. Rich attributed Huckabee’s rise in the polls to “his message,” which “is simply more uplifting—and, in the ethical rather than theological sense, more Christian—than that of rivals, whose main calling cards of fear, torture and nativism have become more strident with every debate. The fresh-faced politics of joy may be trumping the five-o’clock-shadow of Nixonian gloom and paranoia.”
It was an idea that ricocheted around liberal blogs and talk radio outlets. Sure, Huckabee’s views on social issues were a bit out of right field, but they weren’t appreciably different from those of the rest of the GOP field. And the rest of his policy ideas, even when right-leaning, were bathed in a soft, summer camp biblical glow. People of faith, he said in one memorable speech, need to show that they “are not just angry folks mad about some things we don’t like, but people who have joy in our hearts. People who want to help those without housing to find it, those without drinking water to drink it, to help people who are hungry at night to know what it is to have food.”
Contrast that with today’s Angry Huck:
This new Huckabee told the New Hampshire Freedom Summit, “I’m beginning to think that there’s more freedom in North Korea than there is in the United States.” It’s the Huckabee who said Democrats want the women of America to “believe that they are helpless with Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.” Gone is the talk of evangelicals approaching the political sphere “with joy in our hearts.” Instead, Huckabee now wonders, “Why is it that Christians stand back and take it in the teeth time and time and time again?” It is this Huckabee who defended the Duck Dynasty reality star’s comments on gay marriage and civil rights in the South but accused those who criticize Chick-fil-A’s corporate anti-gay marriage stance of engaging in “vicious hate speech.”
Freedlander bats around several possible explanations for this new, more saturnine Huckabee, from the most obvious (the mood of “the base”) to the more personal (Huck’s furious at himself that he didn’t run for president in 2012). My favorite is the claim from an old rival in Arkansas who says it’s the Happy Huck that was a pose:
“He might have been a Baptist preacher, but he had a mean streak a mile wide,” said Jimmy Jeffress, a former Arkansas lawmaker who served in the statehouse during Huckabee’s tenure.
I’m guessing Jeffress isn’t a Baptist, since he seems to be unaware that meanness is a prized quality in some ministers of that faith community. I once saw a cap on sale at a convenience store in South Georgia with a message that expressed the approach perfectly: “Read the Bible daily. It will scare the Hell out of you.”
In any event, it will be interesting to see if the new Mean Mike persona cuts into the relatively good press Huck is used to getting from people who don’t actually agree with him on much of anything. Indeed, that could be part of the idea: How can “the base” fully get on the bandwagon of anyone smiled upon by the godless liberal media? If that doesn’t work, maybe Huckabee will have to put away the bass guitar.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 6, 2014
“Dear Privileged-At-Princeton”: You. Are. Privileged. And Meritocracy Is A Myth.
When I read The Princeton Tory cover story “Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege,” written by my classmate Tal Fortgang, I realized that I had just witnessed an attempt at checking privilege that was so unsuccessful it was borderline satirical. Fortgang, a fellow Princeton freshman, complained about the overuse and misuse of the phrase “check your privilege,” and asserted that the phrase was “toeing the line” of reverse racism. To prove this, he detailed his family’s history of persecution under the Holocaust, their journey to America and their ultimate rise to entrepreneurial success. He claims that the only privilege he has is that his ancestors made it to America, were hard-working and passed down wonderful values such as faith and education.
This so-called “privilege check” would have had a much better start had the author first Googled the meaning of privilege, because he holds a fundamental misconception about what it actually is. Privilege is not an idea aimed at muting opinion or understating the worth of accomplishments. It is not a stab at personal character, nor is it something for which one needs to apologize. But it is also not a myth. Privilege refers to the very real benefits that society affords certain groups over others, and it is manifested in many ways. This country has a history of overall preference for white males, and Fortgang even complains that people prompt him to feel “personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.”
While Fortgang is not responsible for white male dominance in society, he should at least recognize that this social hierarchy is not a mere coincidence, nor is it a testament to the power of hard work. Such a micro-level explanation, when applied to our country’s current state, would imply that white males have by and large outworked most women and minorities in the many fields in which they dominate.
The reality is as follows: White men are the only ones who have been afforded political and social rights since the founding of this country. In a sense, this constitutes a head start, or a privilege. Women and minorities, on the other hand, have had to fight for equal status. Moreover, that fight still rages today. Women earn only 77% of what men are paid, and it’s worse for women of color. There’s also unconscious bias, which undoubtedly affects behavior, but is more difficult to address due to its subtlety. For instance, a recent report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school found that white males are more likely to receive a response from professors than minorities and women report. If Fortgang can’t accept that his gender and race are beneficial to him, then he should at least concede that they are not a hindrance, which is more than can be said for women and minorities.
Fortgang’s privilege is evident in his erroneous assertion that America is “a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.” Such a statement fails to acknowledge that an equal protection clause in the law is not enough to effect equal treatment, nor does the law even promise that every violation will be properly handled. People of color know all too well what it means to be neglected and abused by the justice system, rather than protected by it. With racism becoming more covert, there is declining protection against it. The I, Too, Am Princeton Tumblr is a response by Fortgang’s own classmates who feel they are victims of mistreatment and micro-aggressions because of their race. Fortgang’s privilege is, in essence, the inability to not see these things as problematic because it doesn’t affect him.
The real myth here is meritocracy. Fortgang’s major issue with being told to check his privilege is that it “diminish[es] everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive.” How about this: No one is saying Fortgang did not sow seeds, but checking his privilege is just acknowledging that the ground he tilled was more fertile than the ground others tilled. They could have spent the same amount of time in the hot sun, watering these seeds, but Fortgang might still reap better results because of certain advantages. For example, he says his value of education is a privilege, and it might be. However, his African American counterpart in an underfunded, under-sourced school with the same value of education and work ethic may not be afforded the same opportunities at the end of his high school career. Ultimately, success is when hard work meets opportunity.
Speaking of hard work, let me now address this touching story Fortgang presented about the hard work of his ancestors. For one, white privilege contributed to their ability to build a legacy for him. Standards for citizenship have been historically discriminatory, with U.S. naturalization originally limited to “free white persons.” Just because the “American Dream is attainable even for a penniless Jewish immigrant” doesn’t mean it’s equally attainable for all other groups in America. Additionally, Fortgang’s ancestors’ past struggle in no way negates the existence of his societal privilege today. He doesn’t have to fear racial profiling or employment discrimination. The closest thing to racism that he cites is someone calling him privileged.
Calling a white male “privileged” in a country with such a clear history and continuing pattern of preference for white males is about as wrong as calling a rich person “advantaged” in a capitalist society. The word privilege isn’t a negative judgment about Fortgang or his character, but simply a recognition that our society’s institutionalized racism and sexism isn’t aimed at white males. And for that Fortgang is privileged.
Is that clear? You. Are. Privileged. It is OK to admit that. You will not be struck down by lightning, I promise. You will not be forced to repent for your “patron saint of white maleness” or for accepting your state of whiteness and maleness.
Common sentiment on campus is a sincere desire that Fortgang open his eyes to reality, not only his own but that of the people around him. This lack of touch with reality was probably evident in the comments he made about welfare that prompted one of our classmates to suggest that he check his privilege in the first place. If he did, maybe then would he understand that there are people on welfare who work just as hard as he does but don’t have the same opportunities. Maybe if he were keen to the realities of racial profiling and discrepancies in convictions of homicides that shift depending on the race of the victims and defendants, he wouldn’t want to punch people angry over the Zimmerman verdict in their “idiot faces.” Fortgang’s understanding of so many issues and people would increase if he took the first step towards recognizing his own privilege. Even as a black woman, whose race and sex has posed unique and difficult challenges, I have done a privilege check. I am privileged to come from an upper middle class family, to belong to the religious majority and to have both my parents in the home. I acknowledge this because it allows me to empathize more with others and remain humble and grateful. Fortgang can do the same, and I highly recommend that he does. If he takes the time to really check his privilege, people will be able to tell, and maybe he won’t be instructed to do so again.
By: Briana Payton, a Princeton freshman studying sociology and pursuing certificates in African American Studies and American Studies; Published, Time, May 6, 2014
“The Return To The Roaring 20’s”: The Typical Member Of The 1 Percent Is An Old White Man
The rich are not like you and I.
It’s no secret that income inequality has been growing rapidly, with most the gains in earnings accruing to just the top one percent of Americans. But who are they? A new paper from Lisa A. Keister at Duke University looks at this question and finds that “members of the one percent are disproportionately male, white, and married.” The typical one percenter is 55, compared to about 50 for the bottom 90 percent. The one percent is about 91 percent white — just 1.8 percent of these households are Hispanic and merely 0.2 percent are black. More than half are married, versus about 30 percent for the bottom 90 percent. They are also much more likely to have a graduate degree: about 62 percent have one, compared to less than 10 percent of the bottom 90 percent.
Gender is a little harder to tease out, because the data looks at heads of households and classifies a family with a husband and wife where the husband is the head as male, so the fact that the one percent show up as about 98 percent male doesn’t mean that some rich women aren’t included. But it’s clear that few single mothers or female breadwinners are making it into this group. And we can also look at the job characteristics of the top earners to get a better sense of gender. As Mike Konczal has pointed out, the top one percent is mostly made up of executives, people who work on Wall Street, and managers. Women make up less than 15 percent of executives, while they represent 35 percent of investment banking employees and 40 percent of employees in the broader “Securities, Commodity Contracts and Other Financial Investments” category.
The 1 percent are also different in how they get their money. For the bottom 90 percent, 70 percent of our incomes from wages or salaries. But for the top 1 percent, salary accounts for just half. On the other hand, more than 30 percent of their money comes from businesses, while just 6.1 percent of the money for the bottom 90 percent is from the same source. While the 1 percent holds most of its assets in businesses, for the rest of us our houses are the most commonly held asset. The 1 percent also dominates financial assets, owning nearly 44 percent of the total financial pie, while the bottom 90 percent gets 20 percent.
And while we know that the wealthiest have been gobbling up most of the country’s income — the top 5 percent got the biggest share of income ever recorded in 2012, and the top 1 percent saw a 278 percent increase in their incomes over the last three decades while the middle saw less than a 40 percent bump — wealth concentration may be even worse. Keister’s paper finds that the 1 percent in wealth has held more than one-third of total net worth since 2001 and by 2010 had 34 percent. The bottom 90 percent, on the other hand, is left with just over a quarter of wealth. Wealth inequality is now as bad as it was during the roaring 1920s.
By: Bryce Covert, Think Progress, May 2, 2014
“We Built This Country On Inequality”: The Wealth Gap Didn’t Spring Up From Policy Gone Awry, It Is The Policy
I admit to tuning out most conversations surrounding income and/or wealth inequality in the United States. It’s not because I don’t find these conversations important; they are vital. The problem is that I always hear the issue of inequality situated around what has happened in the last thirty or forty years, which ignores the fact this is a nation built on inequality. The wealth gap didn’t spring up from policy gone awry—it is the policy. This country was founded on the idea of concentrating wealth in the hands of a few white men. That that persists today isn’t a flaw in the design. Everything is working as the founders intended.
The source of that inequality has changed, as the past thirty/forty years have been dominated by the financial class and rampant executive corruption, but the American economy has always required inequality to function. Even times of great prosperity, where the wealth gap decreased, inequality was necessary. The post-WWII period is notable for the lowest levels of inequality in the modern era, but the drivers of that prosperity (the GI Bill, construction of the highway system, low-interest home loans) deliberately left black people out, and the moments of robust public investment that have benefited racial minorities and women have always been followed by a resurgence of concern over government spending and “state’s rights.”
Our job, then, if we’re serious about forming a society of true equality, is to interrogate and uproot the ideologies that created the original imbalance. In other words, we can’t deal with income/wealth inequality without also reckoning with white supremacy and patriarchy.
So far, we haven’t done a very good job of that. Bryce Covert writes eloquently about the gender gap, while Matt Bruenig writes about the failure to address economic disparity along racial lines. Over at Salon, he says:
Although the Civil Rights Act, the landmark legislation which just reached its 50th anniversary, made great strides in desegregating the economy, economic discrimination is still widespread, and anti-discrimination legislation alone can never rectify the economic damage inflicted upon blacks by slavery and our Jim Crow apartheid regime.
He’s right, though I’d quibble with some of the other points in this piece. Later on, he says, “Even if racism were wiped out tomorrow and equal treatment became the norm, it would never cease being the case that the average white person has more wealth than the average black person.” Except that is racism. The persistence of inequality along racial lines is racism. It may seem to be a minor point, but it’s important in constructing a truer definition of racism, in order that we know what we’re fighting against. It’s important to remember that slavery was chiefly an economic enterprise that created a racial caste system out of necessity. Karen and Barbara Fields chart this history in their book Racecraft.
The larger point still remains, as Bruenig concludes:
Thus, those actually serious about righting the wrongs of enslavement and Jim Crow apartheid must support more drastic leveling efforts. Beefed up anti-discrimination, which is both necessary and good, will not be enough. Ideally, we could work towards reparations in the form of redistributing wealth along racial lines. With that an unlikely possibility though, we can at least think about ways to redistribute wealth more generally from those with wealth to those without it, something that would have a similar, albeit more attenuated, effect as reparations given who the wealthy and non-wealthy happen to be.
I would more than welcome a renewed discussion about reparations. It is, however, as Bruenig notes, a long shot. But there are other avenues to explore that would have a similar impact to reparations, like a jobs guarantee and universal basic income. Perhaps this is an opportunity to revisit A. Philip Randolph’s “Freedom Budget for All Americans.” But any conversation about inequality absent one of white supremacy (and patriarchy) isn’t one worth engaging.
By: Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation, April 18, 2014
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