Monday, January 25, 2010
Pissing off Conservatives
So far, this is definitely the best argument I've seen for why Democrats should pass the healthcare bill.
Remarks of a Heretic
If I currently get happy whenever I see the Dow fall, does that make me a bad person? (I think if it dipped under 9,000 I'd probably stop feeling that way).
Saturday, January 23, 2010
What David Plouffe Has to Say
Plouffe is out with an Op-Ed in the Post about how Democrats can still win in November. Seems like a pretty good plan to me. This passage in particular caught my eye:
While it's easy to paint ARRA as ineffective on the macro-level (the unemployment rate is still at 10%, right?) I think it's going to be a lot harder for Republicans to stigmatize individual democratic congressman on their vote for ARRA come November. If Democrats are smart they will only briefly focus on hard-to-picture abstractions ("the stimulus pulled our economy back from the brink") and instead localize the results of ARRA. Every time they mention it should be simultaneously linked in voter's minds with faces of people from their communities whose jobs were saved. I think this will be very effective.
One final thought: a lot of the things that Plouffe mentions aren't that hard to figure out. Doing them is really a question of putting in the time and energy. For example, the way to run a strong p.r. campaign behind ARRA is fairly obvious, but if you think about the logistics it's actually pretty complex. You'd need deep roots into local communities to find out specifically how they were helped, and you'd need to local communities to organize and get constituents who were helped to come forward and lend their voices to your campaign. All of this is simple as a solution. Putting it into practice, however, requires a great deal more patience and energy. If Democrats don't believe in what they are doing come November, it doesn't matter how obvious the solution is. There won't be the drive to get the necessary work done.
Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy. Rarely does a congressional vote or issue lend itself to this kind of powerful localization. If GOP challengers want to run ads criticizing the recovery act as wasteful, Democratic candidates should lift up the police officers, teachers and construction workers in their state or district, those who are protecting our communities, teaching our children and repairing our roads thanks to the Democrats' leadership. Highlight the small-business owners who have kept their doors open through projects funded by the act.
While it's easy to paint ARRA as ineffective on the macro-level (the unemployment rate is still at 10%, right?) I think it's going to be a lot harder for Republicans to stigmatize individual democratic congressman on their vote for ARRA come November. If Democrats are smart they will only briefly focus on hard-to-picture abstractions ("the stimulus pulled our economy back from the brink") and instead localize the results of ARRA. Every time they mention it should be simultaneously linked in voter's minds with faces of people from their communities whose jobs were saved. I think this will be very effective.
One final thought: a lot of the things that Plouffe mentions aren't that hard to figure out. Doing them is really a question of putting in the time and energy. For example, the way to run a strong p.r. campaign behind ARRA is fairly obvious, but if you think about the logistics it's actually pretty complex. You'd need deep roots into local communities to find out specifically how they were helped, and you'd need to local communities to organize and get constituents who were helped to come forward and lend their voices to your campaign. All of this is simple as a solution. Putting it into practice, however, requires a great deal more patience and energy. If Democrats don't believe in what they are doing come November, it doesn't matter how obvious the solution is. There won't be the drive to get the necessary work done.
Why Obama Fears Telling a Story.
In a recent blog post for the New Yorker, Junot Diaz writes:
The whole post is worth reading in full. However, Junot seems baffled as to why Obama has not told a story. Indeed, I think many American writers were ecstatic at the possibility of an Obama presidency precisely because he was a real writer, a real storyteller. And in the case of the last eight years leading up to the financial collapse, the narrative for Obama to tell is so unbelievably obvious that for him to be unaware of it is simply impossible. So why hasn't he told one? Because any good story--by it's very nature, is ideological. Any good story uses its characters and their actions to tell us something about human nature, and by extension, about morality. It involves framing a character's actions so that the reader perceives the consequences as either good or bad, productive or destructive, right or wrong. By extension this involves casting particular characters as heroes and villains. Clearly, we of the so-called literary class value stories that blur these binaries, which reveal things that we like to refer to as "the grey area," "paradox," "ambiguity," and so on. But such stories have little value in a political context. Stories that move massive numbers of people to action have traditionally been rather black and white. Their brilliance comes not from burrowing into a small slice of the world and revealing its complexity, but by taking the sprawling series of events over a period of years and streamlining them into a simple, emotionally charged narrative. For Obama to tell convincing story would require him to cast various political actors as heroes and villains. And this is conflicts with something fundamental (and I believe, detrimental) to his presidency: his sincere desire for bipartisanship. He genuinely wants to work with Republicans even as he moves the country left. The problem is that in order to move the country left he needs to cast Republicans in the role of the villain. He needs to state unequivocally that Republican's vision for America has, for the last 25 years, caused median incomes to stagnate while the wealth at the top has exploded. Such rhetoric is, quite rightly, viewed as partisan. One could not blame Republicans--many of whom sincerely believe in their conservative vision for society--to view Obama as an existential threat, a man who enters their land to proclaim that conservatives believe in a false God. You don't negotiate with a man who publicly pronounces your ideology morally bankrupt and fundamentally dysfunctional. None of us would negotiate with a man like that, unless--perhaps--our very survival depended on it. Obama--being the gifted empathizer that he is--certainly knows this. And so what does he do? He presents policies which do move the country in a more progressive direction, but fails to defend them with a narrative that explains why such a direction is necessary. Because the other thing he definitely wants to do--however naive many of us think it--is to bring opposing sides together around a common cause. In other words, he wants to mediate the partisan divide. Well, any mediator will tell you that not villainizing either side is a pre-requisite to successful mediation. If you cast someone as a villain they will behave as a villain. But this is already happening. Republicans already perceive Obama as a threat to their existential survival. They already have no problem dissembling and obstructing. And this--I believe is where Obama may actually be naive: he doesn't want to believe that moving the country leftward will inescapably terrify the conservative movement, that they will perceive HIM as a villain no matter what and will tell a story to the public in which he and the democratic majority are taking the country down a radical path. Obama hasn't done the same thing because he knows the destructiveness of such a narrative, that once you cast your opposition in that light it cements the conflict and destroys any chance of compromise. But the problem is that Obama is also telling a story about his presidency bringing transformational change to the country, and the basic goals of this change are liberal ones: a more equal society, stronger labor laws, higher wages for lower income folks, and a larger role for government to enact these changes. This is an existential threat to conservatism and if Obama wants to make these changes he needs to tell a story with heroes and villains, with good and evil, a story that strikes the majority of Americans at their own existential core and gives them a story they can tell themselves about why Obama is doing what he is doing, why certain people hate it, and why those people who hate it are fundamentally wrong.
A President can have all the vision in the world, be an extraordinary orator and a superb politician, have courage and foresight and a willingness to make painful choices, have a bold progressive plan for his nation—but none of these things will matter a wit if the President cannot couch his vision, his policies, his courage, his will, his plan in the idiom of story. It is hard to feel invested in a terrible story or a confused story or, in the case of the current Administration, no story at all. Obama needs to craft a strong story, and fast, if he expects to be able to accomplish anything in the three years that remain. His opponents are hard at work smithing their stories, and Obama soon might find himself surrounded on all sides by crude powerful tales that no amount of ratiocination will be able to dispel. The President needs to remember his post’s true vocation: that of the Storyteller-in-Chief.
The whole post is worth reading in full. However, Junot seems baffled as to why Obama has not told a story. Indeed, I think many American writers were ecstatic at the possibility of an Obama presidency precisely because he was a real writer, a real storyteller. And in the case of the last eight years leading up to the financial collapse, the narrative for Obama to tell is so unbelievably obvious that for him to be unaware of it is simply impossible. So why hasn't he told one? Because any good story--by it's very nature, is ideological. Any good story uses its characters and their actions to tell us something about human nature, and by extension, about morality. It involves framing a character's actions so that the reader perceives the consequences as either good or bad, productive or destructive, right or wrong. By extension this involves casting particular characters as heroes and villains. Clearly, we of the so-called literary class value stories that blur these binaries, which reveal things that we like to refer to as "the grey area," "paradox," "ambiguity," and so on. But such stories have little value in a political context. Stories that move massive numbers of people to action have traditionally been rather black and white. Their brilliance comes not from burrowing into a small slice of the world and revealing its complexity, but by taking the sprawling series of events over a period of years and streamlining them into a simple, emotionally charged narrative. For Obama to tell convincing story would require him to cast various political actors as heroes and villains. And this is conflicts with something fundamental (and I believe, detrimental) to his presidency: his sincere desire for bipartisanship. He genuinely wants to work with Republicans even as he moves the country left. The problem is that in order to move the country left he needs to cast Republicans in the role of the villain. He needs to state unequivocally that Republican's vision for America has, for the last 25 years, caused median incomes to stagnate while the wealth at the top has exploded. Such rhetoric is, quite rightly, viewed as partisan. One could not blame Republicans--many of whom sincerely believe in their conservative vision for society--to view Obama as an existential threat, a man who enters their land to proclaim that conservatives believe in a false God. You don't negotiate with a man who publicly pronounces your ideology morally bankrupt and fundamentally dysfunctional. None of us would negotiate with a man like that, unless--perhaps--our very survival depended on it. Obama--being the gifted empathizer that he is--certainly knows this. And so what does he do? He presents policies which do move the country in a more progressive direction, but fails to defend them with a narrative that explains why such a direction is necessary. Because the other thing he definitely wants to do--however naive many of us think it--is to bring opposing sides together around a common cause. In other words, he wants to mediate the partisan divide. Well, any mediator will tell you that not villainizing either side is a pre-requisite to successful mediation. If you cast someone as a villain they will behave as a villain. But this is already happening. Republicans already perceive Obama as a threat to their existential survival. They already have no problem dissembling and obstructing. And this--I believe is where Obama may actually be naive: he doesn't want to believe that moving the country leftward will inescapably terrify the conservative movement, that they will perceive HIM as a villain no matter what and will tell a story to the public in which he and the democratic majority are taking the country down a radical path. Obama hasn't done the same thing because he knows the destructiveness of such a narrative, that once you cast your opposition in that light it cements the conflict and destroys any chance of compromise. But the problem is that Obama is also telling a story about his presidency bringing transformational change to the country, and the basic goals of this change are liberal ones: a more equal society, stronger labor laws, higher wages for lower income folks, and a larger role for government to enact these changes. This is an existential threat to conservatism and if Obama wants to make these changes he needs to tell a story with heroes and villains, with good and evil, a story that strikes the majority of Americans at their own existential core and gives them a story they can tell themselves about why Obama is doing what he is doing, why certain people hate it, and why those people who hate it are fundamentally wrong.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Some Thoughts Post-Election
I'm still on something of a high from Tuesday night. We elected a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. Here are some thoughts that I take away from this, both as an American and a liberal.
We are the Cool Kid of the World Stage Again: I just got an email from a friend of mine in Italy. He told me that he listened to Obama's acceptance speech and cried. In Italy! "You have no idea how much the world loves this man," He wrote. We have all heard this before. Andrew Sullivan has not talked about much else in the last two years. Indeed, if Obama has a mandate with his electoral victory, it seems to me that it is a mandate for a more nuanced, diplomatic approach to foreign relations. This was a candidate emphasized early on was that he would talk to our enemies, and again, whose name was Barack Hussein Obama. Who was raised for part of his life in Indonesia. Whose father a Kenyan. Obama made his internationalism part of his platform in the democratic party, and while de-emphasizing it in the general election, Obama never backed away from his claim that he would talk to our enemies. I am very hopeful about all of this.
Is America a Center-Right Country, or Was Obama's Victory a Mandate for Progressivism?: As Dave Sirota, Bill Scher, Matt Yglesias and a number of others have shown, the Beltway insiders, cable news folks, and the like, are warning Democrats not to over-reach, NO! That is America is a center-right nation and will always, always, always, be a center right nation. It seems pretty clear that this claim is, frankly, retarded. Rick Perlstein titles his book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the Liberal Consensus, for a reason. From 1929 to 1964 there was a liberal consensus in America. It was caused by something called The Great Depression and series of policies known as The New Deal. Following WWII, this country experienced the greatest economic boom of its history until 1964, and indeed of any country's history, and the idea of an active government was so obviously right that when Barry Goldwater ran in 1964 he was called a kook. So we have a precedent in this century, of almost three decades, of America as a nation of the center or center-left.
A lot of the Netroots are chomping at the bit for major progresssive change now, now, now! They see the current election, the democratic congressional majority, and the economic collapse as a temporary window which must be taken advantage of for real progressive change. Otherwise it will close, people will "snap out of it" and just want to keep the Fed out of their lives. They also argue that Obama's win really did constitute a progressive mandate because McCain and Palin called him every epithet for a left-winger in the Republican playbook and lost by seven million votes. "Voters knew exactly what they were getting when they elected Obama," the netroots says, "They knew he was liberal, they knew his voting record, they believed that he would raise their taxes and they still supported him anyway." True. But they also knew that Obama was emphasizing a tax cut for the middle class. That policy advisors were largely members of the Clinton administration and the Washington establishment. His candidacy was, for these very reasons, met with approval from the MSM. And this too, was a reason why voters supported him. The logic of the Netroots is a bit desperate here. They want to push Obama to the left so they are saying that his victory represented a victory for progressive policies. And it did, in certain ways. Obama ran on a platform of Universal Healthcare (although his plan wasn't really universal, his rhetoric was pretty liberal in this area). He ran on a platform of transforming the nation's infrastructure with new, green technology. This too was a bold, liberal idea. But there was a reason why voters didn't think Obama was a "scary liberal." He didn't reach out to the Netroots, for starters. This, perhaps, would have been the best indication that Obama was committed to using his election as a mandate for progressive policies. Yet he did not.
So am I saying that Obama is not really committed to a progressive administration? Not exactly. I think he understands something about his election, and about the current moment in our history, that many of the Netroots would like to ignore. The truth is that for almost the last thirty years, since 1980, we have been a center-right nation. The constant refrain that one hears from the media on this point is not so much out of any ideological bent, as it is based on the effectiveness that conservatives have had controlling the political discourse in this country for the last thirty years. It is a kind of Ministry-of-information-logic: we are currently a center-right nation, therefore we have always been a center-right nation and will always be a center-right nation. But again, there is a reason for this, it is not just a media creation. For the last thirty years the Right has managed to trash the idea of government as a positive agent of social change. The logic was stunning in its tautology. By fucking up government and running huge deficits conservatives then claimed their own ineptitude as a governing party was proof that Government Was the Problem. Part of this was the Democrats fault too. By the late 1970's, they had become bad at governing too. And Bill Clinton, while governing effectively, managed to nevertheless trigger widespread disgust in government from his inability to keep his dick in his pants. And now we have the legacy of the Bush years, possibly the most inept and corrupt administration in American history. It has led to unnecessary war, botched crisis operations of Katrina, and now a global (!) financial collapse, bringing America to the brink of depression.
This has led to a curious paradox, I think, within the American public consciousness, and one that Obama is acutely aware of going forward. On the one hand, people are scared. Big things are happening that threaten to run over them, to leave them unemployed, uninsured and bankrupt. The housing market is tanking, public pensions are tanking, the stock market is tanking, and in the last two months 500,000 American jobs were lost (almost equal all of what we lost in the previous eight months of this year). People are scared, and they don't know who else to turn to at this moment of crisis except government. On the other hand, I think that it is naive of the Netroots to think that this is the equivalent of a vote of confidence in government to socialize healthcare, for example. If anything, I think the last thirty years have left American more distrustful of government than ever, but they are willing to suspend that belief because they have no place else to turn. And so, it is for this reason that I am distrustful of this first-100-day-is-everything meme. At this point it appears that democrats have been given an opportunity to regain public trust by rebuilding the economy. And it can go either way. Democrats have not shown much of an ability to pass legislation, not in the Bush administration or in the Clinton administration. If it turns out that this bailout comes back a year later, and billions of dollars of taxpayer money has been wasted, the tide could easily swing back to the Republicans. But lets assume that an Obama administration does rescue the economy from collapse ushers in a revitalized economy through a series of smart stimulus packages and infrastructure projects. The mid-terms come in 2010, and it seems to me that this is the real mandate for progressive change. Everyone in the media seems to assume that this is a repeat of 1992-94. A democrat comes into the presidency with large congressional majorities, only to completely lose Congress two years later. I think it is pretty clear that this moment is not a repeat of 1992. But continued dominance of Congress by the democrats in 2010 will prove it. And that, in my opinion will be the moment to push for universal healthcare. Its what would be the 'long view.' But I think that it is this long view that Obama is thinking about when he takes office.
We are the Cool Kid of the World Stage Again: I just got an email from a friend of mine in Italy. He told me that he listened to Obama's acceptance speech and cried. In Italy! "You have no idea how much the world loves this man," He wrote. We have all heard this before. Andrew Sullivan has not talked about much else in the last two years. Indeed, if Obama has a mandate with his electoral victory, it seems to me that it is a mandate for a more nuanced, diplomatic approach to foreign relations. This was a candidate emphasized early on was that he would talk to our enemies, and again, whose name was Barack Hussein Obama. Who was raised for part of his life in Indonesia. Whose father a Kenyan. Obama made his internationalism part of his platform in the democratic party, and while de-emphasizing it in the general election, Obama never backed away from his claim that he would talk to our enemies. I am very hopeful about all of this.
Is America a Center-Right Country, or Was Obama's Victory a Mandate for Progressivism?: As Dave Sirota, Bill Scher, Matt Yglesias and a number of others have shown, the Beltway insiders, cable news folks, and the like, are warning Democrats not to over-reach, NO! That is America is a center-right nation and will always, always, always, be a center right nation. It seems pretty clear that this claim is, frankly, retarded. Rick Perlstein titles his book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the Liberal Consensus, for a reason. From 1929 to 1964 there was a liberal consensus in America. It was caused by something called The Great Depression and series of policies known as The New Deal. Following WWII, this country experienced the greatest economic boom of its history until 1964, and indeed of any country's history, and the idea of an active government was so obviously right that when Barry Goldwater ran in 1964 he was called a kook. So we have a precedent in this century, of almost three decades, of America as a nation of the center or center-left.
A lot of the Netroots are chomping at the bit for major progresssive change now, now, now! They see the current election, the democratic congressional majority, and the economic collapse as a temporary window which must be taken advantage of for real progressive change. Otherwise it will close, people will "snap out of it" and just want to keep the Fed out of their lives. They also argue that Obama's win really did constitute a progressive mandate because McCain and Palin called him every epithet for a left-winger in the Republican playbook and lost by seven million votes. "Voters knew exactly what they were getting when they elected Obama," the netroots says, "They knew he was liberal, they knew his voting record, they believed that he would raise their taxes and they still supported him anyway." True. But they also knew that Obama was emphasizing a tax cut for the middle class. That policy advisors were largely members of the Clinton administration and the Washington establishment. His candidacy was, for these very reasons, met with approval from the MSM. And this too, was a reason why voters supported him. The logic of the Netroots is a bit desperate here. They want to push Obama to the left so they are saying that his victory represented a victory for progressive policies. And it did, in certain ways. Obama ran on a platform of Universal Healthcare (although his plan wasn't really universal, his rhetoric was pretty liberal in this area). He ran on a platform of transforming the nation's infrastructure with new, green technology. This too was a bold, liberal idea. But there was a reason why voters didn't think Obama was a "scary liberal." He didn't reach out to the Netroots, for starters. This, perhaps, would have been the best indication that Obama was committed to using his election as a mandate for progressive policies. Yet he did not.
So am I saying that Obama is not really committed to a progressive administration? Not exactly. I think he understands something about his election, and about the current moment in our history, that many of the Netroots would like to ignore. The truth is that for almost the last thirty years, since 1980, we have been a center-right nation. The constant refrain that one hears from the media on this point is not so much out of any ideological bent, as it is based on the effectiveness that conservatives have had controlling the political discourse in this country for the last thirty years. It is a kind of Ministry-of-information-logic: we are currently a center-right nation, therefore we have always been a center-right nation and will always be a center-right nation. But again, there is a reason for this, it is not just a media creation. For the last thirty years the Right has managed to trash the idea of government as a positive agent of social change. The logic was stunning in its tautology. By fucking up government and running huge deficits conservatives then claimed their own ineptitude as a governing party was proof that Government Was the Problem. Part of this was the Democrats fault too. By the late 1970's, they had become bad at governing too. And Bill Clinton, while governing effectively, managed to nevertheless trigger widespread disgust in government from his inability to keep his dick in his pants. And now we have the legacy of the Bush years, possibly the most inept and corrupt administration in American history. It has led to unnecessary war, botched crisis operations of Katrina, and now a global (!) financial collapse, bringing America to the brink of depression.
This has led to a curious paradox, I think, within the American public consciousness, and one that Obama is acutely aware of going forward. On the one hand, people are scared. Big things are happening that threaten to run over them, to leave them unemployed, uninsured and bankrupt. The housing market is tanking, public pensions are tanking, the stock market is tanking, and in the last two months 500,000 American jobs were lost (almost equal all of what we lost in the previous eight months of this year). People are scared, and they don't know who else to turn to at this moment of crisis except government. On the other hand, I think that it is naive of the Netroots to think that this is the equivalent of a vote of confidence in government to socialize healthcare, for example. If anything, I think the last thirty years have left American more distrustful of government than ever, but they are willing to suspend that belief because they have no place else to turn. And so, it is for this reason that I am distrustful of this first-100-day-is-everything meme. At this point it appears that democrats have been given an opportunity to regain public trust by rebuilding the economy. And it can go either way. Democrats have not shown much of an ability to pass legislation, not in the Bush administration or in the Clinton administration. If it turns out that this bailout comes back a year later, and billions of dollars of taxpayer money has been wasted, the tide could easily swing back to the Republicans. But lets assume that an Obama administration does rescue the economy from collapse ushers in a revitalized economy through a series of smart stimulus packages and infrastructure projects. The mid-terms come in 2010, and it seems to me that this is the real mandate for progressive change. Everyone in the media seems to assume that this is a repeat of 1992-94. A democrat comes into the presidency with large congressional majorities, only to completely lose Congress two years later. I think it is pretty clear that this moment is not a repeat of 1992. But continued dominance of Congress by the democrats in 2010 will prove it. And that, in my opinion will be the moment to push for universal healthcare. Its what would be the 'long view.' But I think that it is this long view that Obama is thinking about when he takes office.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Mainstream and not.
This is pretty interesting.
One of the things that is most interesting about these polls is that they illustrate how liberal the American public is on certain social issues. It's encouraging to read that 90% of Americans favor sex-education programs and that just 15% favor abstinence only. There's a pragmatism there that is refreshing. (Quick note: the Christian Right is usually about 15% of the electorate, so thats probably where it comes from). Nate makes the argument that democrats should use social issues against republicans where Republican philosophy is outside the mainstream. I think that sex-education is probably the most promising, of the issues that Nate brings up, for this approach.
Nate doesn't give much detail on abortion polls, but the divide in America over abortion is striking. More polls here and here. Most people believe Roe vs. Wade should be legal, but most people also believe that there should be more restrictions on abortions. This isn't surprising, considering the fact that American abortion laws are less restrictive than most countries in Europe.. As an otherwise conventional liberal, I can attest to the ambivalence I feel about certain abortion laws we have in this country; its not an issue where I feel myself to be on particularly firm moral ground, particularly once we start getting into the third trimester of a pregnancy and beyond. Anyway, the point is that the abortion issue also reflects a healthy pragmatism on the part of the American electorate; it is our abortion laws that are not particularly pragmatic--as opposed to those of western european countries, which are less dogmatically pro-choice.
I find the vast support for hate crime legislation rather fascinating, particularly given how unsympathetic mainstream America is to other features of discrimination and oppression (such as disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans in poverty and/or in jail). But I also don't think that most people will hold it against Sarah Palin for being against hate crime legislation. My guess is that if you asked most Americans how much they cared about hate crime legislation the response would be 'not very much'. Given that 70% of Americans will consider voting for someone who disagrees with their views on abortion (an extremely hot-button issue) its hard to believe that Obama could make much of an issue out of Palin's opposition to hate crime legislation.
Its not clear exactly what Palin's position on global warming is. I'm pretty sure the quote that Nate uses is in response to questions specifically about climate change in Alaska.. If it does turn out, however, that she is a straight-up denier of global warming--in the James Inhofe mold--that could be a huge problem. Nevertheless, I suspect that its not quite the case. As Nate's conclusion here illustrates, Palin's position on global warming is not really defined. That means she will almost certainly define it in a way that is passable on the national stage.
The rejection of evolution as an empirical, scientific theory, by the majority of Americans, is quite striking, except for the fact its not just Americans, half of the British population also share a similar disbelief. As cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom has points out repeatedly in his excellent book Descartes' Baby, the theory of evolution is, for whatever reason, profoundly counterrintuitive to the human brain. Children, are even when raised in secular households, are naturally predisposed towards a creationist view of the world. Another way of putting this is to say all of us are naturally predisposed towards creationism. This is not conditioning but, ironically, the way that evolution has wired our brains to think. In this sense, it makes sense that so many people reject evolution because they are predisposed to reject it unless they are conditioned to think counter-intuitively.
I'm going to try and post more about evolution and its conflict with human perception in the coming days. But for now, we can at least feel comforted to know that the majority of Americans reject evolution not because of some weird aspect of our culture that makes half the country ignorant. If its a cultural problem, as we sometimes think, then its a multi-cultural problem, one that across different countries and regions.
One of the things that is most interesting about these polls is that they illustrate how liberal the American public is on certain social issues. It's encouraging to read that 90% of Americans favor sex-education programs and that just 15% favor abstinence only. There's a pragmatism there that is refreshing. (Quick note: the Christian Right is usually about 15% of the electorate, so thats probably where it comes from). Nate makes the argument that democrats should use social issues against republicans where Republican philosophy is outside the mainstream. I think that sex-education is probably the most promising, of the issues that Nate brings up, for this approach.
Nate doesn't give much detail on abortion polls, but the divide in America over abortion is striking. More polls here and here. Most people believe Roe vs. Wade should be legal, but most people also believe that there should be more restrictions on abortions. This isn't surprising, considering the fact that American abortion laws are less restrictive than most countries in Europe.. As an otherwise conventional liberal, I can attest to the ambivalence I feel about certain abortion laws we have in this country; its not an issue where I feel myself to be on particularly firm moral ground, particularly once we start getting into the third trimester of a pregnancy and beyond. Anyway, the point is that the abortion issue also reflects a healthy pragmatism on the part of the American electorate; it is our abortion laws that are not particularly pragmatic--as opposed to those of western european countries, which are less dogmatically pro-choice.
I find the vast support for hate crime legislation rather fascinating, particularly given how unsympathetic mainstream America is to other features of discrimination and oppression (such as disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans in poverty and/or in jail). But I also don't think that most people will hold it against Sarah Palin for being against hate crime legislation. My guess is that if you asked most Americans how much they cared about hate crime legislation the response would be 'not very much'. Given that 70% of Americans will consider voting for someone who disagrees with their views on abortion (an extremely hot-button issue) its hard to believe that Obama could make much of an issue out of Palin's opposition to hate crime legislation.
Its not clear exactly what Palin's position on global warming is. I'm pretty sure the quote that Nate uses is in response to questions specifically about climate change in Alaska.. If it does turn out, however, that she is a straight-up denier of global warming--in the James Inhofe mold--that could be a huge problem. Nevertheless, I suspect that its not quite the case. As Nate's conclusion here illustrates, Palin's position on global warming is not really defined. That means she will almost certainly define it in a way that is passable on the national stage.
The rejection of evolution as an empirical, scientific theory, by the majority of Americans, is quite striking, except for the fact its not just Americans, half of the British population also share a similar disbelief. As cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom has points out repeatedly in his excellent book Descartes' Baby, the theory of evolution is, for whatever reason, profoundly counterrintuitive to the human brain. Children, are even when raised in secular households, are naturally predisposed towards a creationist view of the world. Another way of putting this is to say all of us are naturally predisposed towards creationism. This is not conditioning but, ironically, the way that evolution has wired our brains to think. In this sense, it makes sense that so many people reject evolution because they are predisposed to reject it unless they are conditioned to think counter-intuitively.
I'm going to try and post more about evolution and its conflict with human perception in the coming days. But for now, we can at least feel comforted to know that the majority of Americans reject evolution not because of some weird aspect of our culture that makes half the country ignorant. If its a cultural problem, as we sometimes think, then its a multi-cultural problem, one that across different countries and regions.
Obama's Speech: The Partisan Divide
I had been saying for weeks that Obama needed to pivot towards a more traditional democratic platform during the convention and away from the post-partisan stance that he often struck throughout the primaries because he was running against Hillary Clinton and--by definition--Bill Clinton's administration. Obama's speech did that. Here's how you know. After his speech, commentators did something that they don't usually do when commenting on an Obama speech: the split down partisan lines in their reviews. Progressive commentators loved the speech (as did I). Most of the 'nuetral' pundits such as John Dickerson, Mark Halperin, Marc Ambinder etc. also found it very effective. No surprises so far. Obama gives a good speech, we all know that. But the conservative reaction was mostly negative. This was particularly striking among more sophisticated conservatives like Ross Douthat, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks, who have been demonstrated quite a bit of attraction to Obama throughout this election. Ross captures conservative frustration pretty well.
It will be interesting to see how McCain responds at the Republican convention. Assuming that it happens in anything other than a procedural sense because of Gustav.
But from where I sit, to the right of the political center, Obama the generic Democrat is a big disappointment. He started this campaign with two promises: That he'd tell us what we needed to hear, rather than what we wanted to heart, and that he wouldn't be captive to the old left-right divide in American politics. But there were no tough choices presented in last night's speech, no hard truths told. There was just the promise that we can have it all: Energy independence (within ten years, no less!), universal health care, an army of new teachers, tax cuts for the middle class, the working class, and the upper-middle class, zero capital gains taxes on small business owners, a perpetually solvent safety net, plus a dose of protectionism - and all of it paid for by (unspecified) spending cuts, and tax hikes on just five percent of America. Meanwhile, the speech's concessions to conservatism were largely pro forma - an acknowledgment that fathers matter, that programs can't solve every problem, and that government "can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework" - and its proposals for common ground (reduce unwanted pregnancies, keep AK-47s out of the hands of gang members, etc.) were equally thin.
Again, if you're a liberal, none of this is going to sour you on Obama's speech, or on the candidate: Why should he concede anything to the Right, you might say, given the disasters of Bushism, and given that the political wind is finally blowing liberalism's way? Which is fair enough. But for those who aren't liberals, but who have been drawn, in varying ways, to Obama's transformational promise anyway, his claim to stand for "new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time" looks a lot more hollow today than it did a year ago.
It will be interesting to see how McCain responds at the Republican convention. Assuming that it happens in anything other than a procedural sense because of Gustav.
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