Q: How might conservatives win the minority vote from progressives?
A: If progressives continue to pull stunts as phenomenally stupid as this:
ProgressKentucky is a progressive group that first made headlines by announcing its intention to fund a tea party candidate to run against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) in the 2014 primary. On Tuesday, the group’s leadership tried to defend itself after a series of tweets this month referencing the ethnicity of McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and her father’s business ties to China…
In a Feb. 14 Twitter message, Progress says: “This woman has the ear of (Sen. McConnell)—she’s his wife. May explain why your job moved to China!”The Tweet links to a website run by conspiracy theorist and radio host Jeff Rense, alleging Chao, who was born in Taiwan, discriminated against American workers during her tenure.
Other messages from Progress’s social networking account about Chao have run for the past several days, saying her “Chinese (money)” is buying state elections. According to campaign finance records, members of Chao’s family donated $80,000 to the Kentucky GOP last year.
If this were a conservative Tea Party group talking about the non-white wife of a Democrat, liberal bloggers’ heads would explode – and rightly so. To make matters worse, a spokesperson for ProgressKentucky blew off potential Asian-American concerns, saying ““It’s not an official statement. It’s a Tweet.” (It was, in fact, many tweets.)
My guess (which I hope is wrong) is that liberals’ initial reaction will be defensive, and worse transgressions by the right will be pointed out. And while they will be right about things not being equal, they will be doing themselves no favors by hanging their hat there. As I noted last November after the elections, a great deal of the GOP’s national electability problems stem from their refusal to police their own in these cases:
I maintain that both racism and sexism exist on all sides of the aisle(s). But at the moment, the GOP has a huge PR and electability issue that is theirs alone. Because even if Republicans are correct in their constant claims that their team has far fewer bigots than their counterparts (a big “if”), they’re still the party that seems to take frat-boy glee in flaunting their own side’s transgressions. It’s as if the desire to be seen as non-PC trumps everything else, including both losing non-white male votes and – in some cases – defending actual racism and sexism out of spite.
The long and hard way for the GOP to become a viable party for minorities is for them to commit to years of policy revival, outreach, and (in the case of their most visible media bad boys) behavior modification. The quick and easy way for them to win minority votes is for liberals to sit on their hands rather than nip stuff like this in the bud.
(h/t: TPM)
Update: Wow, that was fast. Literally hours after the story broke nationally, the Kentucky Democratic Party condemned ProgressKentucky, calling their actions “deplorable.” Republican operatives looking to retake the White House in 2016 should take note.
I first caught wind of this by a posting on FB from ThinkProgress. They quickly called ProgressKentucky on the carpet for it, as did practically all the liberal commenters on the site.
There really is a difference between the two sides.Report
Should have linked to the article.Report
as did practically all the liberal commenters on the site.
There’s been a number of comments on the site since you posted this.Report
Still, not much comparison to the NRO threads after they let Derb go.Report
That difference you noticed exists because there are large numbers of minorities on the left- more than a third of the party is non-White. Tod’s guess that liberals would be defensive and deflect criticism back towards the right missed this I guess.
If the Democratic party was made up of nothing but White people like the Republican party, then sure, they might react that way. Hell, they might not even notice the racism.
But when a third of the party is non-White? When a third of the party feels personally attacked by things like this and aren’t just White people abstractly debating the ethics of it or angling for political advantage?
Racism like this always going to be far more likely to provoke condemnation by the left than the right, and no amount of chiding the racists in the GOP to better or faster will change the fact that they don’t really have a personal stake in it the way the Democratic party’s minority members do.Report
“Tod’s guess that liberals would be defensive and deflect criticism back towards the right missed this I guess.”
Yeah, I gotta say I was pretty spectacularly wrong about that.Report
And I bet the crow tastes delicious!Report
Presumably I think Tod is the happiest to be wrong about his assumption.Report
It does, actually.
Here’s to me having to eat more crow whenever I get too cynical!Report
I don’t think it’ll take long for them to be brought to the mat for their stupidity.
Judd was quick to condemn them, and all the coverage I’ve read so far has been negative rather than defensive.Report
Kudos to the Kentucky Democratic Party. If we’ve learned anything of value from the GOP of late, it’s not to give in to the crazy. When sitting members of Congress continued to waffel on Obama’s citizenship, they showed complete lack of leadership and respect for both the office and the voters.
As to the broader question: For conservatives to win over minorities, they’ll have to actually start talking conservative policy that’s both conservative in a sense of ‘conserving,’ and respectful. Minorities have a vested interest in conserving their heritage and preserving their right to participate in the political and economic life of the nation. Until conservatives recognize that; until they realize this nation is diverse, and until the recognize that urban Americans are Americans, they will continue to dissuade minorities.
Not to mention that from my view, Obama’s enacted most of the good ideas that conservatives have put on the table in a long while; and in being the party of not-Obama and falling back on social conservatism, all they’ve done is turn into a joke. Perhaps, by voting Democratic, minorities are voting conservative. I know I think I am.Report
TPM has had two stories up about this for a couple of hours. One is a response from the DSCC calling this out as wrong and their own story noting the criticism. Yeah some chumps on the liberal side have been defensive or not gotten it, but plenty have and quickly called those dufuses on it. D’s not great or even always good or better then meh, but still better.Report
but still better
Settin’ a high standard, there, aren’t you? 😉Report
I’m a realist with no talent for building slogans.Report
Liberals can be racist, too. And anti-Asian racism is probably spread pretty equally amongst voters of all persuasions.
But it’s a matter of degree.
Give me a call when
a.) Mother Jones spends a decade arguing that Japanese internment camps were a good idea and maybe we should go back to an era where they existed
b) DailyKos and other liberal websites call for Buddhist shrines and various Asian cultural centers not to be built too close to Hawaii or Pearl Harbor or various other sites.
c.) The Democratic party comes up with dog whistles that signal awful anti-Asian stereotypes that are used by the majority of successful candidates for the D-nomination for POTUS.
etc.Report
Also, is it just me or are the hyperbolic worries about China “ownz all our moneyz and they might cash in their debtz” and “China will be the wealthiest and most powerfulz and fights us”
a.) Symptoms of anti-Asian racism
b.) Partial causes of anti-Asian racism
c.) Both a.) and b.)
d.) The mystery doorReport
It’s nothing new, really.
It’s a, and it’s just like the Japan panic that gripped the US in the 80s.
See: Rising Sun.Report
Japan ownz our moneyz? That’s unpossible.Report
I think it’s C. They reinforce each other.Report
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Kentucky
Explain, exactly, what qualifies them as a “progressive group” aside from the name?Report
Um… It’s how they self identify, they raise money for progressive causes, they fund ads looking to elect more progressive candidates, and progressive news sites are calling the m progressive?Report
It’s how they self-identify you say?
http://www.progresskentucky.com/index.php/about-us
Nothing there about being”Progressive.”
“Progressive news sites” are calling them progressive?
https://www.google.com/search?q=progress+kentucky+progressive
Seems to me it’s the right wing conspiracy theorists at The Blaze, Daily Caller, TPM doing the calling, not “progressive news sites.”Report
M.A., you should probably look at who started and now heads the group.Report
TPM is not progressive? Think Progress is not progressive?
Are we defining “progressive” as “not having called ProgresKentucky progressive?”Report
A quick look around the block — I don’t see anything Progressive about their agenda. It’s a strictly anti-Mitch McConnell operation.Report
Would political action committees started to defeat Obama have therefore been unrelated to conservatives?Report
It’s a group started by a Democratic Party operative with the express purpose of defeating McConnell. Their plan, apparently, is to primary him from the right, and then run against him in the general election from the left. There might be nothing progressive about defeating McConnell, but they are at the very least a Democratic group. Perhaps in the OP Tod should have predicted that Democrats would try to disown the group, rather than try to say Republicans are worse.Report
Tod-Tod fully admits he was wrong about how liberals might respond.
Evil-Tod still wants to point out you’re making this point in a thread where liberals are saying of course it’s a conservative conspiracy.Report
Tod, sorry, I didn’t mean to pile on. I was trying to say that you were right that (at least some) Democrats would try to deflect, even if you had the particular method wrong. I just didn’t express it very well.
My immediate reactions when I read M.A.’s comments were, a.) dude, it took me like 20 seconds to figure out who was behind this group, b.) this is not any better than what Tod thought liberals would do, and c.) I’m not surprised that it came from M.A.Report
Oh I didn’t take as piling on! I just like pulling out an Evil-Tod line every now and then.Report
It’s only okay when Democrats do it?Report
I think Chris was not giving approval when he said hey are at least a Dem group. I think he was saying they aren’t a conservative-funded group being misreported as being left-wing.Report
Heh, my target was unclear. I was riffing off Chris and inverting the “it’s only okay if Republicans do it” line that I see so often from liberal bloggers. It wasn’t directed toward Chris.Report
Tod’s right, I’m saying that contrary to M.A. and his half-assed attempt at saying the group is not reallyprogressive, the group is at least Democratic, if not full-blown progressive (whatever that label means these days).Report
The phrase “Tea Party” in the singular betrays the ignorance of all who use it. It’s plural. They’re all over the map, politically. They are little populist groups here and there, intent upon dragging down the Washington Establishment. So what, the Democrats are trying to get some populists on board to cast votes against McConnell. The Democrats have made a good many populist noises over the years, going back to the foundation of their party.
Now for my money, they hate Republicans as much as they hate Democrats. There are no friends in politics: there are only allies of convenience. This is a matter for Kentucky voters. If the Democratic Progressives want to ally themselves with the local populists as a strategy to evict an odious buzzard like Mitch McConnell and replace him with a fresh faced Ashley Judd sorta Democrat, it’s not like Progress Kentucky put the local equivalent of Michelle Bachmann on their much-ballyhoed poll of late.
The Progressives of this country are too stupid to live. The very idea, that they won’t reach out to populists and get them on board, acting like they’re too-good to touch these people. Let me tell you folks a little something to which I alluded a while back: my girlfriend backs populist principles and has attended “Tea Party” rallies in Wisconsin. Me, a big old liberal, her, a down to earth kid raised on a dairy farm. The Democrats and Progressives are entitled to scoff at morons like Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann. They are not entitled to scoff at the honest populists in the audience.Report
Indeed. I’ll go right on scoffing at the dishonest populists. They’re far more dangerous anyway.Report
There is an old logic parable called the Pilgrim to Jerusalem. At a fork in the road stand two brothers: one will always lie and the other will always tell the truth. The Pilgrim may only ask one question of one brother to find his way to Jerusalem. What is the question the Pilgrim must ask?
“Which fork in the road will your brother tell me to take?” is the question. When the questioned brother says “A”, the Pilgrim must take the “B” fork.
In like manner, Kim, you are a sovereign guide to which road not to take.Report
Can I just say here quickly, Blaise, that these moments when you take myths/folktales/archetypes and weave their meaning into current events, are one of my favorite things on this site?Report
“If I asked you which fork to take, what would you say?” also works. In that case, you do what’s suggested rather than its opposite. (Raymond Smullyan is the king of this kind of puzzle.)Report
Mike, how does that work? Since you don’t know whether he’s the liar or the truth-teller, you can’t know whether he tells you the actual path or the wrong path, can you?Report
Say the correct path is A. The truth-teller will correctly report that he would say A. The liar, who would say B, will lie and claim he would have said A. That is, asking what he would say rather than asking the question directly makes the liar lie about lying, which results in the truth.
If you like this kind of puzzle, Smullyan’s The Lady, of the Tiger has lots of them, and as a bonus works through an explanation of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem much less hand-wavy than the one in Godel, Escher, Bach.Report
Ah, I see what you’re saying. I misread the question you said you should ask.
I hadn’t thought about that answer though (this is a puzzle I remember from high school).Report
I prefer the Romney solution to the puzzle:
“You ask which fork you should start on, and if the person doesn’t say either salad or charcuterie fork then they are probably poor and you shouldn’t listen to them.”Report
“There are 47 percent of the pilgrims who will lie no matter what .”Report
Chris has pointed out my omission of that important aspect to the parable. You wouldn’t know who’s the liar.Report
The parable only works when the liar lies 100% of the time.
In real life, most liars only partially lie, they use enough truth to make the lies seem plausible.Report
That’s true, Zic. It’s just a gated logic problem containing a NOT. The only way to interrogate both gates is to have the first gate interrogate the second. Not knowing which gate will return NOT, you may rely on the NOT output returning intact and taking the other fork in the road.Report
Unfortunately, populists are not binary; their gates are often built on shifting sands.Report
Politics is nothing but shifting sands. Political parties do not espouse principles: they exist to win elections. Look at the misery of the GOP Establishment at present time: so completely out of touch with what America’s becoming as the nation’s skin tone gradually darkens into a pleasing café au lait. The GOP has a long history of connivance with griefers and bigots: look at how willingly they welcomed the Dixiecrats with open arms, look at their continued efforts to suppress voter turnout — Sarah Palin — Michelle Bachmann — has the GOP completely lost its mind? The country’s getting sick of the way the NRA has leaned the GOP over the desk and enjoyed carnal knowledge of their fundaments. It’s truly disgraceful.
Punk’d does not begin to describe the GOP’s collective debasement in the face of the continuing struggle for equality. Still feebly screaming and kicking, each vote for cloture further diminishing their authority and gravitas, they now get to watch Rand Paul mutter “Aye” when Chuck Hagel’s nomination vote came up.
Why should the GOP get the populists? Why can’t the Democrats run on populist issues, too? It’s not so far from their own positions. This isn’t the Party of FDR or LBJ any more. It’s the Party of Obama, a guy who came out of left field, quite literally, with the Clintons on his side, to reinvigorate a political party which had lost touch with America. The GOP chitters and squeals like so many squirrels run up so many trees. It’s time for the Democrats to scoop up the discouraged and enraged populists who never really liked the Republican Party anyway. The country’s still in big trouble: unemployment is still painfully high.
If I could remove any single person from Congress, it would be Harry Reid. He’s simply too old and too out of touch. He’s also crooked as a dog’s hind leg. If the Progressives can tolerate the likes of Harry Reid, why shouldn’t we leverage the populists to oust the single worst Republican in Congress? I wouldn’t care if they were all Satanists or Communists or Lady Gaga Fans, if they vote for a Democrat, I simply don’t care.Report
on squirrels.Report
Then, the road you’re taking is broad and well paved… and ends in chains.
I’ll take the third route, please.
[In case it’s not clear, this is meant far more in jest and considerably more tricksy than it appears.]Report
And see not ye that bonny road,
Which winds about the fernie brae?Report
Ah, someone else looking for Door #3.Report
There is no Third Route to the finish line of politics. Someone gets elected. He gets Da Po-wah. The furniture movers arrive, coming and going in the echoing halls of Congress in the wee hours of the morning, moving winners in and losers — out. Randall Jarrell:
Beginning: Once upon a time there was
A wolf that fed, a mouse that warned, a bear that rode
A boy. Us men, alas! wolves, mice, bears bore.
And yet wolves, mice, bears, children, gods and men
In slow perambulation up and down the shelves
Of the universe are seeking … who knows except themselves?
What some escape to, some escape: if we find Swann’s
Way better than our own, and trudge on at the back
Of the north wind to — to — somewhere east
Of the sun, west of the moon, it is because we live
By trading another’s sorrow for our own; another’s
Impossibilities, still unbelieved in, for our own …
“I am myself still?” For a little while, forget:
The world’s selves cure that short disease, myself,
And we see bending to us, dewy-eyed, the great
CHANGE, dear to all things not to themselves endeared.Report
Blaise, above you talk about Obama with the Clintons standing beside him.
But they weren’t; he ran against Hillary; the perceived front runner, the party insider. The only joined him after he defeated her in the primaries. He is a good example of a third way.Report
Both the Clintons are lawyers. Both the Obamas are lawyers. They all put up a tough and bruising fight. And as with all pugilistic pros, at the end of the fight, they gave each other a big hug, bleeding all over each other. Hillary became Secretary of State, Bill became an important advisor. That fight was good for the Democratic Party. Toughened everyone up.Report
Tell that to Bernie Sanders.
I think you’ve quite mistaken my position. It was merely that if you’re using me as an anti-guide for whom to support, you’re likely to wind up in chains. Not that you haven’t been in them already, from what you’ve said (which was a small portion of the joke above).
There are indeed false populists, people who would ride around on all the sound and the fury — dragonslayers who would become dragons themselves.Report
Kim, to put it bluntly, the Road to Serfdom has been pretty well described in a little book by that name. Though I find the Libertarian argument ab initio a tedious and fatuous bit of simplistic chicanery, hurl’d down upon us like so many Cardboard Thunderbolts from the Ivory Tower, the Democrats could do worse than to inoculate themselves with a bolus of the Populist and Libertarian argument.
The Democrats must stop their collective idiocy of looking at any of life’s problems and proposing a Legislative Solution for it.
That is all.Report
Blaise,
As always, we do agree as much as we squabble.
😉Report
Can’t we just give anarchy a chance?Report
Anarchy is always looking for a chance. No need to give it one: anarchy steps right up in the absence of anyone acting to repress it. Force of nature. Entropy.Report
True enough, but I suspect you and Citizen (if he’s at all serious and not just being tongue-in-cheek) are working off different operational definitions of “anarchy.”Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KECcfKViogReport
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvMeB4R-CcQReport
The basic problem of any society is to have a stable citizen base, basically a stable anarchy. Any long lasting superstructure depends on this. Any structure built upon an unstable citizen base will soon find the sands shifting beneath it.
If you find the fork in the road between a stable anarchy and an unstable one you start to realize how important the individual is. All for one and one for all. Without that we deserve the chaos we choose.Report
Stable enslavement, you mean. For that’s what it’s always been.Report
Yeah, I often wonder if we could live without the superstructure.Report
With enough technology, all things are possible, within reason.
[In short: get back to you on that. still working on it]Report
I try to be patient. Your solution is probably far better than the low tech one.
The shirt in the closet reads “It’s Time” on the back. The pitchfork in the shed is a little rusty but would suffice and the feet are itching for a walkabout to D.C.
Not a polite salt march but it would get the job done.Report
Anarchy begets order. Otherwise it isn’t anarchy but merely some kind of order.Report
Absence of rules and leaders is chaos. For some it is.Report