The awful truth, and the better future
Hi everyone – great to be here on TPM.
I thought, for this introductory post (filed, of course, from a convenient Starbucks), that I’d focus on one of the key themes in The Conscience of a Liberal – the central role of race in understanding both what happened to America over the past 30 years, and its implications for the future.
Basically, the book is an attempt to understand two puzzles about what happened to the America I grew up – the broadly middle-class society of the postwar generation.
The first puzzle is economic: what happened to the middle class. I argue in the book that a large part of the rise in inequality is political in origin, having to do with the rise of movement conservatism, the cohesive set of people and institutions that has taken over the Republican Party. Maybe we’ll talk more about that in later conversation.
The other puzzle is why rising inequality, far from provoking a populist political backlash, has been accompanied by a move to the right: politicians who wanted to cut taxes on the rich and create bigger holes in the social safety net have more elections than not. There have been setbacks: neither Reagan nor Bush succeeded in their efforts to gut Social Security, Newt Gingrich’s assault on Medicare was repulsed with heavy losses, and so on. But the drift has clearly been to the right.
Now one explanation might be that the right won the argument in the popular mind, that supply-side economics really did resonate with the public. But there’s very little evidence of that. Instead, conservatives have run on other issues – weapons of mass distraction, as I call them in Conscience of a Liberal.
Obviously national security is one of those issues, as are “moral values.” Bush won in 2004 as the nation’s defender against gay married terrorists.
But what I learned when doing research was that the most consistent source of the rightward drift of American politics in the face of growing inequality is race. In fact, the simplicity of the story is almost embarrassing: American politics changed because Southern whites started voting Republican after the civil rights movement.
To give you a sense of just how little there is to be explained once you take this shift into account, here’s a statistic from Larry Bartels, my Princeton colleague. Everyone knows that white men have left the Democratic Party. But what everyone knows isn’t true, if you exclude the South. In 1952, 40 percent of non-Southern white males voted Democratic; in 2004, that was down to, um, 39 percent. (And no, the choice of years doesn’t matter – a fitted trend line tells the same story.)
Now, you could argue that the distinctiveness of the Southern vote isn’t about race. But during the rise of movement conservatism, conservative politicians clearly campaigned on race – that is, they behaved as if they thought that was what it was all about. Ronald Reagan – the real RR, not the latter-day saint – was best known in the 70s for his tales of welfare queens driving Cadillacs. He began his 1980 campaign with the infamous states’ rights speech at Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights workers were murdered.
And the distinctiveness remains even now. In last year’s election, Southern whites were basically the only large demographic group that favored Republicans by a large margin.
But I argue in COAL that the Southern strategy is now in its last throes – and not in the Cheney sense. For one thing, we’re a less white country, with growing Latino and Asian shares in the electorate. And Latinos in particular can’t be brought into the conservative coalition – the base won’t have them. Anti-immigrant feeling is similar to anti-black feeling, and comes from the same people.
A more uplifting change is that we are, genuinely, a less racist country than we used to be. You can see this on polls asking people about such things as interracial marriage: as late as 1978 a majority disapproved, but now 77 percent approve. You can see it in popular entertainment. And I think the change is real.
I believe that Macaca was the defining moment of last year’s campaign. Racist remarks – against a child of immigrants, by the way, so the incident also demonstrates the changing ethnic balance -- aren’t new. What’s new is the unwillingness of Americans, including the people of Virginia, to accept such remarks.
In other words, I think that the game is up. Race, the original sin of America, is losing its sting. And we’re heading toward becoming a normal advanced country, far more open to progressive policies than we were in the past.
The first puzzle is economic: what happened to the middle class.
They got richer, but more insecure. Which is why people with three relatively new cars, 55" flat screens and a fat 401k insist that the middle class is disappearing.
The other puzzle is why rising inequality, far from provoking a populist political backlash, has been accompanied by a move to the right
Because they got richer, and the abstraction of inequality will always matter less than the concrete reality of personal opportunity and achievement.
So in light of your thesis about race, how about that Bobby Jindal?
October 29, 2007 8:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have noted this in this venue before, but it bears repeating.
Harold Ford Jr. lost his Senate bid in Tennessee in 2006, largely because he is black, but also because he tried to court the votes of people who weren't going to vote for him no matter what, while ignoring the very people who might have voted for him.
All you have to do is look at the number of votes Democrat Phil Bredesen received running for governor on the same ballot. If Ford had received every Democratic vote that Bredesen got, he would have trounced Corker. But almost a half million Tennessee Democrats either didn't cast a vote in the Senate race or voted for the Republican. That's a huge number, not to be ignored.
Ford alienated progressive Democrats while courting white male Republicans who were never going to vote for him, for the very reasons you state.
October 29, 2007 8:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
First of all, Reagan was not "best known" for the welfare queen stories. Perhaps liberals focused on that, but most people thought he was best known for anti-communism.
That southern whites shifted in large measure to the Republican party is not controversial, nor is the idea that there was a backlash to the civil rights movement. But the argument that the backlash was and remains the decisive factor in explaining the changed voting pattern is not entirely convincing. For one thing, the civil rights movement was 40 years ago. Are we really to believe that southern whites are still simmering in large measure over this and that this is why they are voting the way they do?
The argument needs to answer a couple of key questions, which perhaps are addressed in Prof. Krugman's book (which I will read, but haven't yet):
As I said, perhaps this has been covered. But I think there's more to the story than simple racism.
October 29, 2007 9:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
That southern whites shifted in large measure to the Republican party is not controversial, nor is the idea that there was a backlash to the civil rights movement. But the argument that the backlash was and remains the decisive factor in explaining the changed voting pattern is not entirely convincing.
It's not that it isn't true-- yes, Republicans did capture the latently racist vote in the South and other parts of the country.
But Krugman's idea that it stops there, and that the rest of the country has been majority Democratic all along, is just nutty. When there's a Republican president and a Republican majority Congress at the same time, and 30 of 50 governors are Republican, as was true for a good stretch there, what exactly makes the Democrats a majority party? McGovern, Carter (1980), Mondale, and Dukakis didn't lose because they couldn't win the South-- they lost because they got blown out in the South, the West, the union midwest, everywhere but the northeast. In elections with over 2000 electoral votes at stake, between them they got less than 200 (most of those Dukakis').
Democrats are turning to racism as the all-purpose explanation because it enables them to avoid having to deal with other causes for failure. There was the law and order issue (which, of course, dovetails with racism to no small extent, but it's not illegitimate just for that reason). There was Reagan's robust anti-Communism versus Carter's malaise and the blame-America-first attitude which filtered in from academia. There was a legitimate desire for lower taxes, less regulation, a culture of responsibility rather than dependency, a more Friedmanesque economy. And it's pretty hard to see that the Republicans weren't vindicated by history to some extent on all three.
Having said that, I think we're in a moment of big change. The Democrats may finally be competitive as a national party, not a northeastern urban party, again, as they really haven't been for decades. The Republicans have run aground on corruption, overseas adventurism and general complacency, and could use a little creative destruction (the best thing that ever happened to them, of course, being the shellacking they got in '64). And of course the environment in which everyone runs is changing radically with all that Internet stuff.
But all that just makes it more important for Democrats not to tell themselves self-flattering fantasies about why the last few decades played out the way they did (if Bush won in 2004 opposing "gay married terrorists," as Krugman snarks, who precisely was the pro-gay marriage candidate in the race?), but to honestly confront the lessons of that time and put them to work in charting a successful and broadly appealing course for this new time.
October 29, 2007 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
The South hasn't been simply racist. It's been anti-Progressive ever since Hector was a pup -- think Scopes and then, think the Great Textile Strike of 1934. I've never seen the figures but would be interested in knowing how many Southern Congressmen elected before 1932 voted for the Wagner Act.
Except in the most unusual of circumstances -- the Great Depression for example -- any party compelled to rely on the South for its majority will be anti-Progressive.
October 29, 2007 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is high time progressives stopped acting like spoiled brats and acting in ways which elect rethugs because the dem isn't perfect.
October 29, 2007 10:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is high time that progressives stopped acting like spoiled brats and stopped taking actions which elect rethugs because the dem isn't perfect.
The aim is to move the government closer to your positions rather than using politicians as a mirror where you vote for the politician who is more like you whether or not that changes anything in the government. Mirror, Mirror on the wall who's most like me of them all? is self-defeating when it elects the opposite.
October 29, 2007 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are exactly right Professor and it is abundantly clear that you are right.
Nixon's southern strategy worked quite well for the Republican Party these past 40 years, but the consequences of the tightening of the Republican grip on America's neck are prying it's fingers loose. People have finally gotten a clue and decided maybe the Republicans have really screwed up everything.
I agree also that both the changing demographics of the nation and the decline of racism are the primary factors that spell the death knell of the Republican Party and it's electoral dominance as we have come to know it during that time.
You can go back and look, beginning with Nixon, at how the Republican Presidential candidates have been using race to scare the bejeezus out of whites nationwide through their near fetish about crime, order, etc... in their tv ads. You can also see the evidence in the tv spots for Senators, Representatives and Governors over the years. Outside the south, they held their base with racism that meant they didn't have to worry about them fleeing the party and they gladly stood in the abandoned place of the segregationist Democrats in the south solely to win elections and empower them to serve the wealthy special interests they truly represent. All the Republican luminaries of the south converted from being segregationist Democrats to Republicans. Nixon, Ford, Reagan and both Bush the first and second have used racism to achieve their ends and benefited from the use of racist electoral appeals to great effect. Now that they've mutilated our economy, our government and the social fabric of the nation to the point where we wonder what happened to America, people are finally beginning to wake up.
The problem it seems to me is that the Republican-Lite/DLC Democrats present a real obstacle to returning America to a nation where the gap between rich and poor is not so severe and where we can once again begin to address our real problems instead of looking for boogeymen under the bed all the time. Hillary Clinton is the most prominent of that sort of Democrat, but there are plenty of them in the Congress and elsewhere.
Thanks professor for having continued to be one of the few voices of sanity allowed such a prominent platform in the media as that which you've had! It would have been a much easier thing to follow the herd of bleating boot lickers like most other columnists. Keep fighting em!
October 29, 2007 10:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, is the short answer. A longer one has to do with the durability of political affiliation in general once an individual commits to a change. A historical observation would be that southern political culture is especially 'loyalist' in its affiliations and cultural significance associated with political choices - this is the legacy of the civil war and the anti-reconstruction. Political affiliation is identity in the deep south rather than a simple rational choice over the best argument. We see this in many countries outside of America but are reluctant to apply it to the USA because it refutes some of Americas founding myths. Tribalism was supposed to have been slain on March 4 1789. It was not, the Civil War proved it and that wound has never completely healed. Only now are we beginning to imagine a future where it doesn't define American political choices.
October 29, 2007 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Huh?
October 29, 2007 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, but the demographics of the South will change.
October 29, 2007 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
"What are the other ways the GOP exploited latent southern racism?"
Willie Horton.
October 29, 2007 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
"...(if Bush won in 2004 opposing "gay married terrorists," as Krugman snarks, who precisely was the pro-gay marriage candidate in the race?)"...
Those latte sipping Volvo driving Democrats that one ad I remember spoke of. The message was subliminal (or W would say "subliminable").
October 29, 2007 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
So glad to see you here. Welcome.
Some scientist was recently speculating we may be in the process of generating two sub-species of human, with a smart and rich elite, and the rest. Eliminating the middle class would help ensure that process will continue.
If we want to remain one people we should be promoting the middle class. Before agriculture and civilzation there was very little difference between the average hunter and the big cheese. Now there is precious little hope of ever achieving the rarified heights of the Forbes 400. My children will never meet their children in school or at a party, and certainly not at work. Speciation in progress.
October 29, 2007 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Graven in New Haven"
www.ilovepoetry.com/viewpoem.asp?id=93660
Terrible speculation and even worse past?
October 29, 2007 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you Ellen and offer this piece of evidence as confirmation that your point is true for a much longer period of time than even that you identify. The south was racist for a very specific and identifiable reason from the start which was to maintain slavery. Racism justified the institution. Despite their best efforts, the power of the slavery interests that controlled the south prior to the civil war lost the war and slavery was abolished, but the grip that same group had on political power remained strong and is the heritage of the anti-progressive south even today. In the irony of ironies it is now the legacy of the Republican Party. Until such time as the anti-progressive domination of the south is finally ended we will continue to find the nation held back as it has been essentially forever due to the south. Since the founding of the Republic except for brief periods the Congress, and thus national policy, has been effectively controlled by the south. That region has also had disproportionate numbers of Presidents as well. Anyway, back to the evidence of the long established anti-progressive heritage of the south.
The following comes from the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, a man I consider to be one of the greatest Americans who ever lived and also who was one of the greatest Presidents ever to serve (though I know that is not what the popular impression is of the man). In any event, as someone who was around at the time, I consider his observations very, very valid. This is from a section of the book about the time leading up to the Civil War and describes the situation regarding the powers that be in the south at the time:
"There is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of the South would have been opposed to secession in 1860 and 1861, if there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion, unbiased by threats, and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as that of any other. But there was no calm discussion of the question. Demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war, others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs of state in such an event declaimed vehemently and unceasingly against the North, against its aggressions upon the South; its interference with Southern rights, etc., etc. They denounced the Northerners as cowards, poltroons, Negro-worshippers; claimed that one Southern man was equal to five Northern men in battle; that if the South would stand up for its rights the North would back down. Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech, delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State, that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements both in regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too, cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it according to direction.
"I am aware that this last statement may be disputed and individual testimony perhaps adduced to show that in ante-bellum days the ballot was as untrammelled in the South as in any section of the country; but in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement. The shot-gun was not resorted to. Masked men did not ride over the country at night intimidating voters; but there was a firm feeling that a class existed in every State with a sort of divine right to control public affairs. If they could not get this control by one means they must by another. The end justified the means. The coercion, if mild, was complete.
"There were two political parties, it is true, in all the States, both strong in numbers and respectability, but both equally loyal to the institution which stood paramount in Southern eyes to all other institutions in state or nation. The slave-owners were the minority, but governed both parties. Had politics ever divided the slave-holders and the nonslave-holders, the majority would have been obliged to yield, or internecine war would have been the consequence. I do not know that the Southern people were to blame for this condition of affairs. There was a time when slavery was not profitable, and the discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost exclusively to the territory where it existed. The States of Virginia and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts, one State defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one. But when the institution became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased where it existed; and naturally, as human nature is constituted, arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much to do with the justification of slavery."
October 29, 2007 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Name the politician who first used Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis.
Hint: he just won an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.
Democrats keep trying to blame racism on the Republicans, only to run into the hard fact that their own history is not so snow-white (so to speak)....
October 29, 2007 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
"It would have been a much easier thing to follow the herd of bleating boot lickers like most other columnists."
At the New York Times?
October 29, 2007 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Paul, welcome. Glad to have you here, but don't get too excited. This is TPM Cafe not TPM. The difference is significant.
October 29, 2007 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is a widely repeated claim (originally made by Republicans) but it is incorrect.
Gore did ask Dukakis a question in a debate about the weekend furlough program. But he never mentioned Willie Horton's name, his race, or the races of any other furloughed prisoners, and he didn't run ads on the issue.
Tim Noah of Slate did a detailed analysis. It seems to me that Lee Atwater deserves the "credit".
October 29, 2007 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, and elsewhere.
October 29, 2007 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Prof. Krugman,
Welcome to TPM! You are one of the few people who speak clearly and unequivocally on the major economic and political issues of our times. Most of the Democrats appear to have lost their courage and continue to allow the Republicans to frame the debate.
Examples: The Democrats claim that they do not have enough votes to override the President's veto; nevertheless, the Republicans, who are in the minority, are having considerable success in getting their agenda through. The Kyl-Lieberman amendment passed with considerable Democratic support; the Republican resolution to condemn MoveOn.org for exercising their first amendment rights was supported by many Democrats. etc. The Democrats caved in to Bush on continued funding of the Iraq war last Spring, and are now faced with the same issue all over again. The carnage goes on in Iraq, and the Democrats continue to lose credibility.
By continually caving in to the Republicans, the Democrats send two messages to the voters: 1. the Republicans are right; 2. the Democrats are weak.
Hillary Clinton's "health care plan" relies on the use of "private insurance companies". Why should health care be run on a "for-profit" basis? And why should insurance companies make large sums of money by rejecting claims? Michael Moore's "Sicko" makes a clear case against such a policy. Yet the Democrats seem to shun Michael Moore because he is "controversial".
The Democrats should be using such policy differences with the Republicans to MAKE a case for their election. By continually ducking the issues, and running away from the fight, they give the Republicans credibility and hurt their own.
Many Democrats blame Ralph Nader for their loss in 2000; but if Al Gore had had the gumption and determination of Nader, he would be in the White House today. And Kerry simply did not stand up to the issues being thrown at him in the 2004 election. By trying to dodge them, he ended up stepping in every cowpie in the pasture. That is why he lost.
Until the Democrats, as a Party, decide to stick to their social and economic principles and explain them to the public, they will continue to lose, and the fortunes of the country will continue to decline. What the Democrats need are more candidates standing on principle, such as Senators Dodd, Edwards, and Gravel, and Congressman Kucinich.
October 29, 2007 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
So in light of your thesis about race, how about that Bobby Jindal?
Awesome. Challenging a Princeton Professor of Economics based on a single, anecdotal anomaly.
This is going to be good...
October 29, 2007 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
"In any event, as someone who was around at the time, I consider his observations very, very valid."
I hope that's a mis-placed modifier, oleeb. Surely you don't mean to imply that *you* were around when Grant was President. ;-)
-- ARG
October 29, 2007 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dr Krugman,
I look forward to picking up your book, not least to go through the voting data Larry Bartels has collated (his paper, "What's the matter with 'What's the Matter with Kansas'" is one of the most insightful pieces on voting patterns I have come across). Aside from the issue of race, I'll be interested to see if the "evangelical" vote explains part of the swing towards the Republicans over the last 30 years.
My gut feel (yep, I admit I haven't looked at the data anything like as closely as you have) is that the GOP successes have hinged significantly on the politicization of the Christian movement. My sense is the geographic concentration of the evangelical vote is in the South, and whilst I don't doubt that a Southern Strategy had a role in bringing white voters over to the Right, the Christian base provided the GOP with one awfully good grassroots network to do the business of building the GOP majority.
I guess my issue is that the Christian base is the stubborn rump of GOP support. The thought that the Evangelicals could run a 3rd party candidate if Giuliani gets the nomination would be the interesting electoral experiment - to see how the GOP vote would split if there was a third party fundie candidate.
My suspicion is that all the Southern Strategy in the world would not get the GOP out of this problem.
October 29, 2007 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
The second time it happens, it'll stop being single, anecdotal or anomalous, won't it?
http://tpmcafe.com/blog/mgmax/2007/oct/21/the_actual_incredible_significance_of_jindals_win
October 29, 2007 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, I don't believe he's saying that the South suddenly discovered how to be reactionary. I think the argument is that race changed the party alignments.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
October 29, 2007 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Professor, thanks for joining us, and I have a question. You've made a good statistical as well as intuitive case for race as the determining factor. And indeed others have increasingly disparaged the "values" explanations ever since early exit polls in 2004 seemed to make it key.
However, let me ask about a possibility. Suppose we're underestimating the effect of the religion card because such issues as abortion and gay marriage are used not so much to alter affiliations and preferences as to alter last-minute voter turnout.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
October 29, 2007 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome, Prof. Krugman. Huge fan here; however, concerning that statistic from Larry Bartels: 1952 was a pretty good year for Repubs, given that they had a war hero to run interference for them.(*) How would the non-Southern white male vote in 2004 compare with a year -- say, 1960 -- when the popular vote was more evenly divided?
(*) Scenario for a better alternative history novel than The Plot Against America:
(1) Sen. Taft, not Ike, wins the 1952 nomination (as he almost did) . . .
(2) . . . and chooses Gen. MacArthur as his VP (as he promised he would), then . . .
(3) . . . wins the election (as he probably would have, though more narrowly than Ike) . . .
(3) . . . but dies of cancer in July 1953 (as he did) . . .
(4) . . . Presto! President MacArthur, smack in the middle of the McCarthy era.
Add 400 pages and simmer over a low flame . . .
October 29, 2007 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tim Noah exonerates Dem, excoriates GOP! There's a headline.
Noah very carefully fudges the timeline to evade the salient fact: Gore mentioned the furlough program in a debate after the Lawrence Eagle Tribune ran dozens of stories in 1987-8 on the furlough program, Willie Horton front and center as the prime example of its problems, and won a Pulitzer Prize for them.
So when Gore mentioned the furlough program, everyone from that area knew who he was talking about (and who the newspapers would write about when they talked about it the next day). He was simply subtler than Atwater in his race-baiting.
October 29, 2007 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
black evangelicals continue to vote for the democratic party in droves. It's the white (southern) evangelicals who switched party affiliation from Democratic to GOP.
D.
October 29, 2007 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would agree that racism has driven the Southern Strategy. I also believe that there is still a hard core of Southern whites who not only remain racist, but who also remain stubbornly anti-Northern. During the late 1970s, all my business calling was in the South, and I still recall some comments from the old-line southerners, such as "Mr. Lincoln's war of aggression" to refer to the Civil War. There may be some improvement in border states, or in states that have assimilated an influx of northerners, but I don't believe that those born in the South have truly changed their core beliefs. Their absolute numbers relative to the entire southern population may have declined, but, remember, the George Allen/Jim Webb race was still a very close one. There was no overwhelming repudiation of racism, as far as I could see.
The new wedge issue, IMO, is immigration, and this is far more serious because it is not an issue that is geographically limited. Nor, do I believe, as some do, that it is primarily a race-driven issue. There was never any question that black Americans were native citizens who were being denied their rights. The immigrant issue, however, has more to do with economics--and not just with jobs. The cost of providing social services to individuals who are not legally U.S. citizens is a concern that cuts across geographic and political party lines, and one in which both parties will need to develop a solution that a majority of American taxpayers can favor. Right now, with many middle class families strugggling economically, immigration could be the new "welfare queen" rallying cry for the Republicans.
October 29, 2007 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right now, with many middle class families strugggling economically, immigration could be the new "welfare queen" rallying cry for the Republicans.
And one that could be very successful at winning over both union whites and blacks, since they're the ones whose wages are being depressed by unfettered immigration (which is, of course, why Wall Street Republicans are all for open borders).
Again, an issue of "racism" that's not so simple as the Krugman "Dems nice, Republicans pointy hats and white sheets" narrative...
October 29, 2007 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
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October 29, 2007 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just finished Greenspan's book (yours is next on my list), which amounts to a fairly entertaining propaganda piece for status quo, laissez faire capitalism (his "remedy" for growing income inequality, for example, is to better educate the population, although he admits he has no idea how this should be done), and am wondering if you're going to deal with the consistent arguments he makes in his book. There is, simply put, nobody with more credibility on economic issues than he has in the country today, particularly among the investor class, which, along with southern whites, has been the most reliable prop to conservative dominance.
Crooked cops, crooked lawyers, crooked judges, crooked politicians, crooked doctors, crooked scientists, crooked clergymen -- but no crooked journalists. An amazing record for an amazing class of people.
October 29, 2007 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
To get back to my point the GOP exploited latent Southern racism in the Willie Horton ad.
October 29, 2007 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink