Political Class Ignoring at Their Peril
- From: jose el fontanero <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:49:30 -0700 (PDT)
Political Class Ignoring at Their Peril
Salena Zito
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Two political dangers have emerged in recent months for Democrats,
Republicans, and the media that covers both. Those are the dismissal
of protests by all three, and the crude overuse of the race card.
It’s disturbing that Washington really doesn't “get” the rest of the
country that is beyond their bubble, says Villanova University
political scientist Lara Brown.
Last Saturday’s “Tea Party” protest, spreading out across Capitol
Hill, received little to no coverage; most news organizations wildly
underreported the crowd’s size.
Later, former president Jimmy Carter said racism is behind the
rhetoric of President Obama’s critics; New York Times columnist
Maureen Dowd opined similarly.
Here is the problem with that: Pull out the race card, and the
conversation ends. It does the president no good when anyone who
disagrees with him is accused of racism; it simply builds a resentment
that he did not foster.
Besides, most protests of and disagreements over policy have nothing
to do with race – and to say that only dilutes real racism.
“When it comes to race, it is unfortunate that the Democrats are
seeing everything through this analytical lens,” Brown said. “It
undermines those instances in which racism and discrimination are
truly important factors and are harming minorities.”
Bill Kalin of Portage, Ind., president of Union Local 6103, attended
last week’s AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh. He dismissed as
ridiculous most of the media depictions of Tea Party protesters. “No
one should make fun of people that demonstrate, or call them names,”
he said.
Since Democrats took power, the country has moved quickly from one
pole to another in its opinions of the president and his party.
A similar phenomenon occurred following George W. Bush’s 2004 re-
election by a decisive majority; by October 2005, his approval ratings
had fallen substantially.
“Obama has and is suffering a similar political trajectory to Bush in
2005,” Villanova’s Brown said.
Obama and fellow Democrats in Congress read way too much into their
victories in 2006 and 2008. They believed that a majority of the
country was voting for them, instead of voting against Bush and the
Republicans.
A huge emotional attachment is lost when you vote against, rather than
for, someone.
The Dems came out swinging in January, with massive legislative
reforms and policy demands that had been blocked in the previous eight
years. They passed some of those without noticing that, since
February, the tide has slowly been turning against them, starting with
widespread unhappiness with the stimulus package. When the public saw
how the stimulus was crafted and passed, and air began leaking from
the Obama balloon.
Much of that deflation involves independent voters who thought Obama
would at least try to live up to his promises of a different kind of
Washington (less partisanship, more dialogue, less corruption and
special-interest influence).
“It is no surprise to me how quickly the public, especially
disaffected Dems and independents, have turned,” Brown said. “They
learned from Bush and the Republicans that if you give politicians the
benefit of the doubt, they will take advantage of that good will.”
Main Street keeps trying to send a message to the political class with
their presidential votes, and the political class keeps reading these
votes as affirmations rather than negations.
People voted against Democrats in 2004 and against Republicans in 2008
– not for the other party.
Politicians’ inability to read those votes correctly may be
symptomatic of our narcissistic age, in which everyone thinks
everything is about them but no one is accountable for anything,
according to Brown.
The Tea Party phenomenon has moved Americans to mobilize and protest
as never before, which makes you wonder why the media and elected
officials downplay it so much.
As for racism, the majority of the electorate is white, and a majority
of it voted for Obama – and people are now demonstrating because they
think our country is going off a cliff, not because our president is
black.
As one Democrat strategist said: “I remember seeing a bumper sticker
when I was in college in the ’60s that said, ‘The majority is not
silent – the government is deaf.’ Well, that could not be more true
today.”
No wonder Thomas Jefferson once said he was all for revolutions every
so often.
Copyright © 2009 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
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