Here's a thought (Updated)

There’s some chatter this morning about Republican pickups at the State level and how this is a Very Good Thing because we’ve got redistricting for House of Representative seats coming up next year. The assumption seems to be that the Republicans can thus gerrymander the redistricting to make as may seats as possible Safe For Republicans - which would presumably leave the remaining seats Safe For Democrats since herding Republicans into some districts will herd Democrats into others.

Here’s a thought. How about if the Republicans instead do non-political redistricting? One way to do this is to split a State up along logical lines - paying attention to city and county lines, for example. I believe this is what California is going to attempt to do (for State-level districts, not Federal elections) with its Citizens Redistricting Commission. The results will be interesting to watch. I’d consider it a success if the resulting districts don’t have ludicrously lopsided election results.

Another way to do this is mechanically. Start in the upper left (northwest) corner of a State and move south and north until you’ve encompassed enough people. Then move east from there until you’ve got another chunk of people the right size. If you hit the eastern State line, start at the southernmost point and move west and south, mirroring the way you started the whole process.

I’d like to see Republicans lead the way on this. Maybe it would be suicidal but maybe it would indicate that they’re serious about making government more responsive.

UPDATE: I’m behind the curve here. Take a look at “Two Big Losers: Obama and Gerrymandering“ over at Contentions.

Poughkeepsie

It did not, in fact, rain in Poughkeepsie yesterday.

The cat in the machine

[Strong language warning.]

On the talk shows yesterday I heard various talking heads opining about how many seats the Republicans would take in the House and Senate. The same opining is going on across the blogosphere. In general, those who lean Right - both officials and pundits - are predicting big Republican gains; actual Democratic officials are predicting smaller Republican gains (what else can they do?); and non-officials who lean Left are attempting to explain that big Republican gains would not be so very big in context or explain that big gains would not really be a result of general unhappiness with the direction of the current Administration and Congress.

Whatever.

I listen to all these predictions and I think that anyone trying to predict tomorrow’s outcome is nuts. I have this sense of a large mass of people who are unhappy with everyone in government. Not unhappy in a “poor me, I’m so put upon” way; unhappy in a “what the heck has happened around here” way. Trying to predict which way that cat will jump seems fraught with peril.

Take me, for instance. I’m going to vote straight Republican tomorrow. But what I really want is a Big Red Button ( hereinafter “BRB”) that says, “I’m voting for Republicans but I’m not really voting Republican, mostly because I have no clue what you guys are going to do if you get elected and, frankly, I don’t have much faith you’ll do anything I approve of.” I’m still voting Republican, though, because to me what’s important is getting the party in power out of power tomorrow - and doing it again in two years if the Republicans don’t get the message. If there are a lot of people who’d like that same BRB and think the way I do then maybe the huge Republican wave is even bigger than anticipated.

Or maybe a lot of BRB people decide what’s important is not getting rid of the party in power but getting rid of the people in power and so vote against incumbents regardless of their party. That would still mean a Republican gain but not such a big one.

On the other hand, maybe there are people who want that same BRB, hear about the huge Republican wave, and decide to stay home or vote for a third party candidate or even vote Democratic so the Republicans don’t get the idea we actually want them in office. We just want the other guys out. So maybe some of the BRB people decide to make the Republican wave smaller lest the Republicans get delusions of grandeur - or even grudging acceptance.

The sentiment underlying the desire for a BRB was expressed quite forcefully in the comments to a post at the Confluence. Blue Lyon reproduced it on her site and I reproduce it here:

Whatever anyone says about “concern” that the public is merely “lashing out” and “aren’t thinking this through” is just so much noise. The public is indeed thinking. They are thinking that we can’t even DISCUSS policy direction until we yank our politicians up by the shorthairs enough that they get it through their thick entitled heads that it isn’t about them, or about parties, or which one gets the next turn to grab the keys and go joyriding with their lobbyist buddies. It’s about US.

It’s a very simple message, actually. The message is “We can yank those keys out of your damn hand anytime we please. We can give them to a hairdresser, or a certified loon, or Sam the not-so-bright yard guy. And we will if you keep this shit up. So both parties need to STOP FUCKING WITH US.”

In my conversations with people all across the political spectrum, once you cut through the static, most are viewing this election as a “Who’s in charge here – you or us?” to both parties. The various issues, whether left or right, do need to be discussed and debated. The differences are real. But it seems that the people want to have both sides of that debate come from US, not be shaped and molded and controlled by THEM.

I can argue my liberal point of view with my conservative or moderate neighbor, as they can with me. There’s no arguing with a machine, whether it has a D or an R stamped on it. Yes, there are scary ideologues involved this year. But I think they are misjudging as much as the sell-out Dems are. This is in large part rage against the machine, and it ain’t over in 2010.

Vote tomorrow. And in the absence of a Big Red Button, don’t forget your monkey wrench.

Fortune, fear, and reading comprehension

From Grim’s, I got to this article about Europe’s sense of being helpless in the face of the forces that control our destiny. Among other things - it’s well worth reading the entire article - the author says:

One of the most important ways in which today’s sense of diminished subjectivity is experienced is through the feeling that individuals are being manipulated and influenced by hidden powerful forces. [snip]

The crisis of causality means that the most important events are now seen as being shaped and determined by a hidden agenda. [snip]

In previous times, that kind of attitude was mainly held by right-wing populist movements, which saw the hand of a Jewish or a Masonic or a Communist conspiracy behind all major world events. Today, conspiracy theory has gone mainstream, and many of its most vociferous promoters can be found in radical protest movements and amongst the cultural left. Increasingly, important events are viewed as the products of a cover-up, as the search for the ‘hidden hand’ manipulating a particular story comes to dominate public life. [snip]

Some time later I was reading Anglachel. She was talking about what she refers to as David Broder’s “proposal” that President Obama use confrontation with Iran to come storming back in time for 2012.* Among other things, Anglachel says:

David Broder has put into words what is on the Collectively Wise Mind of the Very Serious People in DC [snip]

And Broder's proposal is being taken seriously by at least some people in the White House or it wouldn't have seen the light of day. [snip]

I find it all too plausible that the Very Serious People are in greater accord on this idea than we'd like to think.

I dunno. I’m pretty sure writers come out with all kinds of ideas no one in power takes seriously. After all, Paul Krugman complains endlessly that no one in power takes his ideas seriously.

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*Just for the record, characterizing Broder’s column as containing a “proposal” - that is, as calling for Obama to escalate tensions with Iran in order to win in 2012 - is a mischaracterization. Broder is not urging Obama to start a war with Iran or to cynically escalate tensions with Iran to pump up his chance of re-election. Rather Broder is convinced that over the course of the next two years the United States will have to “confront this threat and contain Iran's nuclear ambitions” because “Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century”. If Obama can “confront” and “contain” Iran then, says Broder:

he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.

In the process of doing this, Obama will bolster his own popularity both directly and, through the economic impact, indirectly. In other words, the situation with Iran gives Obama an opportunity to do well politically by doing the right thing substantively, an opportunity that will not be available to any of Obama’s opponents. Broder is being descriptive rather than prescriptive. Not necessarily correct - after all, Broder also says flatly that Obama “is much smarter than his challengers in either party” - but hardly urging war as a continuation of electoral politics by other means.

Raindrops on roses

[Just for the record: I object strongly to using the word “suck” as an epithet. But you play the hand you’re dealt.]

I read Reclusive Leftist for the first time in a while and found a new post, the first since September 30 and the first substantive one since September 7. Entitled “I hate the world”, it begins:

When you’re off in a vortex of writing, totally disconnected from the real world, it’s easy to forget just how godawful the world really is. God, it just sucks.

Then I read a post by Megan McArdle entitled “Explaining The Anger That Consumes Debate on the Web”. McArdle cites the recent Scientific American article on sacred values versus secular values and says:

For me, this resonates with my growing disgust at the level of anger in the blogosphere. I don't mean irritation, pointed jibes, or even spirited discussion; I mean an aggressive revelling in rage.

According to McArdle, it’s the Hell’s brew of sacred values and money that explains weblogs wallowing in wrath:

we're fighting over a lot of taboo trade-offs, in a context where we can't help but bring money into it. The result is the rage of people who cannot bear to see their sacred ideals profaned--and worse, to see the profaners walking around apparently happy. Only a primal scream of outrage will do.

I disagree with McArdle. (End of world to follow soon.) I think people just like being angry. Not justifiably angry - that’s tiresome and burdensome and requires, like, you know, morality and thought and maybe even - gasp - action. No, justifiably angry is a drag. Self-righteously angry on the other hand? That’s a blast. Self-righteous anger feeds and is fed by so many other delightful demons: arrogance; moral superiority; selective blindness; bonding with the group against The Other; intellectual snobbery; dehumanization, even demonization, of the “enemy”; a little data drop out; a lot of data drop out; that nasty little tickle in the gut when a point - however cheap, however cruel, however dishonest - is scored and that even nastier little glow when a cheap, cruel, dishonest point is applauded and linked!

Self-righteous anger is fun, it’s invigorating, it gets people out of bed in the morning. Self-righteous anger drives blog hits, sells cable shows, makes sweeping claims without the trouble of investigating those claims or backing up those claims and - even better - without the need for context or introspection or, Heaven forfend, balance. It constantly ups the ante: everyone who lives on and for self-righteous anger has to be angrier than he or she was yesterday and angrier than anyone else who is self-righteously angry: This sucks, that sucks, the whole world sucks.

And it’s all your, his, hers, their fault.

Sacred values? To someone who lives on and for self-righteous anger, the only sacred value is whatever he or she is angry about today.

Comments are open

Comments are open. Some recent posts may not allow comments because comments weren't allowed when they were written. I attempted to reconfigure those but may have missed some.

Let's talk self-interest

It’s an oft-repeated belief on the Left that white* working-class voters who support Republicans are voting against their own economic interests. After all, Democrats will take money away from the fat cats and spread it around to everyone who isn’t a fat cat. Therefore, white working-class Republicans must be ill-informed or led astray by conservative rhetoric (or conservative lies) or stupid or all of the above. For those on the Left to say so is simply being truthful.

I don’t think so. What Democrats represent is the redistribution of wealth from those who have more to those who have less. Democratic rhetoric claims this redistribution flows from those few who have a lot to the masses who don’t have a lot. But that’s not what the white working class sees. The white working class sees that people who are poor get stuff for free - housing, food, medical care - while those who work have to pay for this stuff themselves. The white working class sees that people who are very rich somehow manage to stay very rich and even get richer: the working class guy who lost his job, lost his medical insurance, and lost his house is looking at the Wall Street guy who got buckets of money because letting his firm fail would destroy the economy. White working class guy has got to be wondering exactly whose economy has been saved from destruction; it certainly isn’t the economy he lives in.

I suspect the white working class is asking themselves exactly whose money has been taken to give to the poor and - since more redistribution is on the horizon as more of ObamaCare kicks in and if some variant of cap-and-trade gets through and as the effects of financial regulation begin to be felt - they must also be asking themselves whose money is going to be taken in the future. It can’t be people who are poorer than the white working class - they don’t have money to redistribute. So far it doesn’t look like it’s going to be people who are rich - even if their taxes go up there’s no reason to think their special relationship with the government will disappear. That would seem to leave the working class.** Their money will be taken if not through higher income taxes then through a VAT; cap-and-trade; inflation; having to pay bank fees; tighter and/or more expensive credit; forced purchase of particular forms of health insurance; more job loss; or simply by piling a incomprehensibly huge national debt on the backs of their children and their children’s children.

If you look at what the Democrats say they’re going to do then, yes, when the white working class votes Republican you can argue it’s voting against its own economic interests.*** But when you look at what the Democrats have actually done, I’d say the white working class figures - quite rationally - that it’s better to hold onto what little they have rather than risk being the people on the wrong end of the continuing redistribution. This doesn’t mean they think the Republicans are going to help them or, for that matter, hurt the wealthy. It simply means the working class hopes the Republicans will allow them to keep what they earn. They entertain no such hopes about the Democrats.

*****

* I write here of the white (presumably non-Hispanic) working class because that’s the contingent that swings between Democrat and Republican. I think the same economic factors apply to the non-white and Hispanic working class but they are more solidly Democratic.

** I’m leaving aside the middle class. I don’t think the working class is stupid enough to think anyone is going to take money from the middle class and give it to the working class. Nor do I think the working class is stupid enough to think taking money from just the middle class is going to be enough to accomplish the myraid forms of redistribution either underway or in the works.

*** Yes, we could have another whole discussion about whether even if the working class was on the receiving end of redistribution they would support it and want it (there are interests that are not economic) and yet another one about whether the Democrats’ program would be in the working class’ best economic interests in the long term. What I doing here, though, is ruminating on why the Left’s “voting against their own economic interest” claim is weak even in the very short term.

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Reading:

News Flash: Inflation Is on the Way - Kevin D. Williamson at Exchequer on the new issue of TIPS.

Trouble with the humans - The Economist article that jarred this post loose

Of Reds, Racists and Rubes - Anglachel. My favorite snippet (but read the whole thing): People are motivated by rational self-interest, especially in times of need.

Capital Expenditure - Anglachel again. This is one of her posts where our world views are so different I struggle to understand her and quoting Bob Somersby makes her even more opaque while quoting Paul Krugman makes her even less accessible to me. However, if I understand her correctly what she’s saying is that Barack Obama did not and does not have a unifying ideological view of how the world works or how the world should work and this has handicapped him. This combines with - or possibly causes - Obama to be timid in going after what he wants and even in arguing for his desired outcomes.

I agree - this is my view of Obama. He lacks a coherent view of what he wants to have happen, how to get there, and - most important - how all the pieces have to fit together to get him there; in addition, he appears unable or unwilling to take the heat for what he believes in perhaps because he doesn’t believe strongly in anything except himself. The result is the kind of half-hearted, piecemeal legislation we see in ObamaCare. It is neither a huge overhaul that has a chance of working nor a modest, step by step fix with few unintended consequences. Instead it’s Frankenstein’s monster; almost any other outcome - including doing nothing and moving to a Canadian system - would be better than what Obama’s combination of ideological laziness, political ineptitude, intellectual shallowness, and general incompetence have given us.

What Happened to Change We Can Believe In? - Frank Rich:

But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.

An astonishing piece since Rich spends much of it chastising the Obama Administration for its failure to “unstack” the economic order but winds up by concluding that much of the blame rests with the GOP, its deep pockets backers, and the mean old Supreme Court. (As an aside, blaming the last makes me incredibly weary. I’m sick of hearing that when the Supreme Court does something a commentator agrees with , it’s rightfully the ultimate arbiter of our fates and perfectly justified in riding roughshod over elected officials and the wishes of the voters but when it does something that same commentator disagrees with, it’s a captured and corrupt political cesspool. Pick one.)

Obama the snob - Michael Gerson.

The Psychology of the Taboo Trade-Off - Scientific American on sacred values versus secular ones - especially monetary ones.

Tea Party to the Rescue - Peggy Noonan. Of particular note is Maureen Turner’s explanation of how she ended up supporting the Tea Party: I have voted Democrat all my life, until I started listening to what Obama was promising and started wondering how the hell will this utopian dream be paid for?"