Donkey Turkeys

Via-WSJ

They explain the election: You're stupid and Obama's right-wing!.

By JAMES TARANTO
So why did Republicans win big in the midterm elections? Occam's razor suggests that voters were unhappy with Democrats for enacting massively unpopular and intrusive legislation while failing to deal effectively with real problems. But some people avoid Occam's razor for fear of cutting themselves, so we end up with some very elaborate, if not downright crazy, explanations. They are also highly entertaining, which is something to be thankful for.

Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, attributes the election outcome to "general anti-Obama rage . . . this being America, there's an attendant hatred for Obama that has more to do with race than anything else . . . angry right-wing extremists tend to carry guns . . . the wiggy mood of the nation [is like] a hormonal teenager . . . an electorate that seems prone to acting out irrationally, is full of inchoate rage, and is constantly throwing fits and tantrums . . . deranged Tea Party . . . the Angry Majority . . . seething blogosphere . . . Fox News marshaling forces . . . the fringe . . . anti-immigrant sentiment."

Carter concludes: "America, you have it pretty damned good. Smile." Or at least laugh.

Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania's lame-duck governor, says more or less the same thing, albeit less colorfully, CNSNews.com reports:

CNSNews.com asked Rendell, "Since many of these issues are likely to come up in the next Congress, I'm interested to hear why you think so many key races in the House and Senate were lost by Pennsylvania Democrats this past election?"

Rendell responded, "Well, because people don't always vote on logical reasons. Emotion drives voters particularly when they have reason to be angry and frustrated. If you lost your job or lost your house or lost your 401k, you had every reason to be angry and frustrated and when you are, you have a tendency to blame the people who are in office and that's true whether it's a Republican incumbent or a Democratic incumbent."

This is the old "bitter clingers" (or "What's the Matter With Kansas?") argument reduced to utter incoherence. Rendell is attempting to explain away voters' choices by characterizing them as irrational, based merely on angry "emotion." But if, as he also says twice, "you have every reason to be angry," then there is no conflict between reason and emotion--and the effort to portray voters as unthinking and irrational is inaccurate as well as insulting.

Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, got himself caught in a similar contradiction at a Society of Professional Journalists panel, reports Isthmus, a Madison alternative weekly:

Franklin admitted that emotions sometimes play a larger role in political elections than facts and logic.

"I'm not endorsing the American voter," said Franklin. "They're pretty damn stupid." . . .
Franklin said emotions ran visibly high in the November midterm elections, where anger against Democratic incumbents in general resulted in a Republican sweep of several offices both statewide and nationwide.

One casualty of the conservative wave was longtime Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, who lost his seat to Republican newcomer Ron Johnson. Franklin said despite Feingold's independent voting record in the Senate, he remains quite liberal as compared to Johnson's fiscally conservative platform'

"If he acts the way he did on the campaign trail, Johnson is going to be far more willing to vote for cuts in federal spending than Feingold," Franklin said. "You can argue about whether they're smart or really stupid cuts, but there are going to be cuts

As an aside, that "despite Feingold's independent voting record" is a Butterfieldian touch. Feingold's "independence" consisted precisely in voting to the left of his party. When a Republican is said to have an "independent" voting record, that also means he votes to the left of his party.

Franklin's comments about stupid voters caused a bit of a kerfuffle after blogress Ann Althouse (a law professor at Wisconsin) highlighted them, the Washington Examiner's Byron York picked them up, and Rush Limbaugh called Franklin "a scourge on the whole profession of political science." Althouse notes that Franklin offered an explanation in a comment to her blog:

The point I was making, which I've made numerous times before, was that voters embraced Ron Johnson before they knew much about him. . . . The race wasn't about specific details of Johnson vs Feingold, it was a rejection of Democrats more or less regardless of what voters knew about the GOP candidate.

That was the context in which I said voters are "pretty damn stupid". Too hyperbolic indeed, but I said it and have no complaint that it was quoted when I knew I was speaking to journalists.

But I wish what I said next had also been quoted. I went on to say that despite not knowing the details of Johnson's policy positions, the voters did NOT make a mistake in choosing Johnson as the more conservative candidate and certain to be more favorable to cutting government. That was indeed the correct connection by an angry electorate, even if the details were quite vague.

In other words, the electorate was smart. So why did Franklin call them stupid? There are only two possible answers: It was a gratuitous insult or Franklin wanted to get attention. If the latter, mission accomplished!

New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg went overseas to bash the electorate, the New York Post reported:

Bloomberg--visiting Hong Kong for a global conference--blasted Congress members and blame-happy Americans . . ., accusing them of looking to pin their problems on China.
American lawmakers know bupkis about the Asian giant--and could set off a trade war, Bloomberg ranted.

"If you look at the US, you look at who we're electing to Congress, to the Senate--they can't read," he said.

"I'll bet you a bunch of these people don't have passports. We're about to start a trade war with China if we're not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is."

Bloomberg may have a point about China-bashing, but it's hard to see how his America-bashing in China can do any good. Fox News's Stuart Varney gave Rep.-elect Kristi Noem of South Dakota a chance to respond to Bloomberg's insults, and she showed herself to be considerably classier than the mayor:

Noem: It's a pretty broad statement to make, but I can only speak on my behalf. I haven't met everybody who is newly elected to Congress, but certainly well-educated people, people that have the support of their areas and their districts, that are going to come there and help make some tough decisions that the previous Congress didn't make. So we're looking forward to getting to work.

Varney: You know, Congresswoman, I don't want to be harsh, but, you know, Congresswoman, that was a flat-out insult from the elites of New York City. Don't you take it like that?

Noem: Well, you know, I got a lot of those during my campaign as well. And we can pick up offenses every day if we want to, but what we really need is people to sit down at a table and get to work and start having adult conversations. We can't afford to focus on those kind of comments. We've got too much work to do and too many things to accomplish.

Said Bloomberg: "We've got to stop blaming the Chinese and blaming everybody else, and take a look at ourselves." Don't hold your breath waiting for the mayor to follow his own advice.

A new, even funnier theme has emerged over the past few days. It turns out Barack Obama is too far to the right. So says former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who complains that the president recently slighted Franklin D. Roosevelt, vindicating Krugman's three-year-old claim that Obama is "a captive of right-wing mythology."

In a Puffington Host post titled "Saving Progressivism From Obama," Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect frets about how "to restore progressivism" absent "the active collaboration of a Democratic president who is fast becoming more albatross than ally":

Our task is to step into the leadership vacuum that Obama has left, and fashion a compelling narrative about who and what are destroying America. Our movement needs the passion and single mindedness of the Tea Party movement, and it helps that we have reality on our side. If we do our jobs, we can move public opinion, discredit the right, and elect progressives to office. Even Barack Obama might embrace us, if only as a last resort.

Paul Bedard of U.S. News & World Report quotes a hilarious MoveOn.org email, which we received also:

Remember Barack Obama in 2008? The guy who refused to go along with a "dumb war" and said, "In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."
I miss that guy. Imagine if someone told you in 2008 that Barack Obama was actually thinking about signing legislation to extend the Bush tax giveaways for the rich. I wouldn't have believed it.

Now more than ever, we need the Barack Obama we elected in 2008--the smart, tough, hopeful progressive champion who inspired millions of us--to stand up and say "no" to a millionaire bailout.

Right now, with the change we all fought for hanging in the balance, President Obama needs to hear from those of us who supported him the most.

So we're asking MoveOn members nationwide to record a video message from the heart to tell President Obama to go to the mat to stop any extension of the millionaire tax giveaways--and to bring back the progressive fighter we all knew and supported in 2008.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the latest Zogby poll gives Obama a 39% approval rating, the first major survey to rate him below 40%. We've been hearing for months that the problem is that the World's Greatest Orator lacks communication skills. But now it turns out, per Krugman, Kuttner and Mo.o, that the problem is Obama is a right-winger. He does seem to have moved the electorate to the right, which we guess means he can communicate after all.

Isn't it possible, though, that the voters are simply put off by "progressivism"? We had this crazy thought when we read a piece by one Peter Gabel of Tikkun, who describes encountering "many folks" who are "depressed" since the election (quoting verbatim):

There have been times when I've carried my longing to the polling place like a great burden on my back, knowing that although I was going to put it out there when I cast my ballot out into the universe, my gesture would almost certainly not be reciprocated by enough others to make the national declare an announcement of the opening of our hearts. There have also been times, a few, when I had a spring in my step because I had a sense that due to a happy confluence of historical forces, people were ready to take the risk of making themselves vulnerable to their longing for . . . each other.

Such a moment occurred when we came out into public and elected Barack Obama in 2008, but that moment . . . call it a "we-moment," a moment when we decided through the act of voting to announce ourselves and so to come into existence as an idealistic, hopeful, potentially loving community . . . that moment has been slip-slidin' away ever since. Why? Not because we one by one ran back into our withdrawn private worlds, but because Barack decided not to reciprocate our vote by remaining out here/there with us, because he was afraid of the vulnerability himself and the risk of some catastrophic negation of his essence if, as he feared, we were not here/there after all.

To our mind, this passage captures the essence of left-wing "progressives." Their personal fulfillment depends on the exercise of political power to control the lives of others. That's why Americans find today's Democratic Party creepy and repellent--why they voted it out of power at the earliest opportunity.