As any of you who remember my posts may have guessed, I hate the New Republic. I think the people who write there are self-worshipping elitist airheads who actually know nothing but like to pretend that they're qualified to analyze the doings of us proles.
I could, of course, list the ridicularities from the magazine's past, like, oh, supporting appeasement and touchy-feelyness with the Soviet Union, suggesting that some races are smarter than others, publishing Stephen Glass, and, of course, having Andrew Sullivan as their editor. But I won't. I will, however, pillory Jonathan Chait for pretending to speak about Bush hatred, and then undermining every effort to defeat him.
Now Chait has a new article on the website. It's called "Rebel Yelp." This is what it says:
-------------------------
.... The notion that the Southern economic elite try to divide the populace along racial rather than economic lines goes back around 400 years. Even though most southern whites didn't own slaves, a majority of them supported the institution. This analysis is familiar to anybody with a high school-level understanding of American history--or, failing that, anybody who's ever heard the 1964 Bob Dylan song, "Only a Pawn in Their Game":
A South politician preaches to the poor white man,
"You got more than the blacks, don't complain.
You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain.
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.
As it turns out, forging that economic coalition is a good deal more difficult than it sounds. The only success liberals have enjoyed has come when they've found candidates like Bill Clinton, who distanced himself from cultural liberalism (on issues like crime and welfare, for instance) to convince Southern whites that he was more conservative than the national Democratic Party.
It would be a massive understatement to say that Dean is not ideally positioned to replicate this strategy. His aggressive secularism, association with civil unions, and antiwar stance all make him culturally anathema in the South. This is one of the many, many reasons Dean would be squashed like a bug in the general election if nominated: Bush could take the South for granted, and concentrate all his resources on battleground states like Pennsylvania. Thus Dean's bold assertion that he would win the South because he would concentrate on economic issues, as if liberals haven't been trying that for decades.
What's alarming here is not that Dean wants to win votes from guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. It's that he thinks he actually can.
----------------------
Criticisms:
- The colon goes inside the quotation marks. I should be your editor, you stupid moron.
- Now, I assume that when it becomes clear that Dean has won the nomination, you will recant and declare yourself a convert? No, of course you won't. That's because you've been prophesying doom for months now, and you will continue to do so to the point that after the election, you can claim I told you so. Or, if Dean wins, no one will care enough to fire you. The only difference with this piece is that now you're really desperate, so you've resorted to mudslinging.
- All the candidates support civil unions. There's a reason for that: it's the right thing to do. And why does Dean display "aggressive secularism?" I don't know what that means, but all the Dean events I've attended have felt like revival meetings. Read Garance Franke-Ruta in the American Prospect from several weeks ago. Oh no, I guess not, Jonathan; that would actually mean doing your job.
Okay, Jonathan, since Noam Scheiber or whoever edits you obviously isn't doing their job, I will. Shut up. Write articles with brilliant new ideas about how Democrats can win in the South. Otherwise, this inane repetition of DLC talking points puts you firmly in the Fuddocratic Wing of the Democratic Party.