For John, BLUF: The Democratic Party Apparatchiks don't get it. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Writing in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Columnist Salena Zito describes a DC centered Democratic Party that just doesn't get the "fly over" states.
It reminds one of the famous quip by New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael following Richard Nixon’s landslide 1972 victory: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.”Are we going to see a similar quote following Tuesday's Election? One of the jobs of political parties is to educate the electorate, but I have always wondered if the author of What's the Matter with Kansas? was too busy talking to be able to listen. Part of the job of the voters is to educate the Parties.
By the way, please vote on Tuesday. I would like you to vote my way, but more, I would like you to vote.
Hat tip to Dean.
Regards — Cliff
2 comments:
Gosh, for people who allegedly don't care about flyover states they sure do appropriate a lot of tax money to them. I'd actually submit that the 'revolt' of 2010 wasn't actually coherent enough to both 'listen and pander to' and 'get work done'
As far as Thomas Frank is concerned if you read the book it's obvious he's listening, he just can't believe what he's hearing. Now maybe that's symptomatic of being less attentive to what is said or it's symptomatic of being more attentive to what was said and the world about which what was said.
But it doesn't really matter because while Frank (who is writing about where he grew up - hard to imagine he's not listening) got it wrong anyway. He misread the data, as Bartels points out here: http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansas.pdf
Mr. Lynne, thanks for that link to Bartels. I'm a big fan of anything that turns conventional wisdom on its head, regardless of what portion of the spectrum it comes from (witness my recent post about hurricane frequency...has nothing to do with the reality of climate change...just the factual truth of whether hurricanes really are increasing).
Anyway, it was cool to see the way Bartels challenged Frank's data.
Unrelated to the data itself, I think it's obnoxious and often condescending when people make declarations about the curious way that certain people "vote against their own economic interest."
Not only would they not apply that same standard to the very wealthy left-wing types, they also forget that many of the economic policies espoused by Republicans are VERY MUCH in the interest of people who would stand to benefit from greater economic growth, lower unemployment, more equity investment, etc.
When I look at the fiscal mess that's been created by one-party legislatures in places like California, Illinois, and New York, I wonder whose interests those "stewards of the public trust" have really been serving for the past few decades.
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