This Is All Very Disturbing

Before the election I wrote that Obama was prepared to re-make America in a socialist, collectivist bent. Larry Kudlow has similar fears:

An old friend e-mailed me this week about how to characterize Obama’s economic interventions into the banking and auto sectors (with health care next on the list). He says it’s not really socialism. Nor is it fascism. He suggests it’s state capitalism. But I think of it more as corporate capitalism. Or even crony capitalism, as Cato’s Dan Mitchell puts it.

It’s not socialism because the government won’t actually own the means of production. It’s not fascism because America is a democracy, not a dictatorship, and Obama’s program doesn’t reach way down through all the sectors, but merely seeks to control certain troubled areas. And in the Obama model, it would appear there’s virtually no room for business failure. So the state props up distressed segments of the economy in some sort of 21st-century copy-cat version of Western Europe’s old social-market economy.

So call it corporate capitalism or state capitalism or government-directed capitalism. But it still represents a huge change from the American economic tradition. It’s a far cry from the free-market principles that governed the three-decade-long Reagan expansion, which now seems in jeopardy. And with cap-and-trade looming, this corporate capitalism will only grow more intense.

This is all very disturbing.

Indeed.

Obama Remaking America?

From another note I sent to Kay (we do talk, by the way - it’s just that I get the need to rant when I’m reading the internet; I’ve been fairly restrained in sending stuff to her for most of our marriage, but this election is worrying me). Again, not tons of time to research, but this is up for a sample of my thoughts:

Remember the claim I made that Obama would try to change America fundamentally? This quotation, though edited for length by someone else (and I’ve not checked the original source yet) seems to support what I’m saying. The poll numbers have been narrowing again (though possibly not enough), because Americans don’t like explicit re-distribution [and Obama has been more open about his tendencies in that direction]. What Obama sees as a “fundamental flaw” most of us see as its glory - we don’t have others who think they know better than us telling us what to do with the fruits of our labor. When the Church says, “give to the poor,” they don’t back it up with an army and force it upon us, but the government does. When the Church says, “give to the poor,” they don’t get more votes from those they’ve benefitted with someone else’s confiscated monies, but the politicians do. (That’s the benefit of the Church being a dictatorship of sorts.) The debate between socialists like Obama and the rest of us is not to do with greed vs. generosity, but liberty vs. freedom. When the Church says, “give to the poor,” they mean that I have to, [but] morally. When the government says, “give to the poor,” they mean that I have to, or else, and that, in addition, they’ll decide who the poor are and how, whether, and how much they deserve the largesse from my pocket. What else is a confiscation of my monies for another but a chance for the powerful to buy popularity at little cost to themselves?

Here’s the quote, indirect source below:

“But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. … And one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was — because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. … The Constitution reflected an enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day. … The Framers had that same blind spot … the fundamental flaw of this country.”

http://www.creators.com/opinion/tony-blankley.html

I wasn’t going to originally post that, but it seemed to connect to a really effective post by John Hood, over at The Corner. I want to just post the whole thing, but I’ll simply summarize and post part of it. Then go and read it. Hood riffs on Obama’s line that McCain would call him a Communist if he were to share his toys in kindergarten, explaining that Obama’s gag shows he doesn’t even understand what Communism is. Hood’s points have been stated many times, but Hood states them clearly and with elegance, using Obama’s inadvertently-provided analogy to great effect. Here is Hood’s explanation of collectivism:

Collectivism in all its forms is about taking away your choice. Whether you wish to or not, the government compels you to surrender the toy, which it then redistributes to someone that government officials deem to be a more worthy owner. It won’t even be someone you could ever know, in most cases. That’s what makes the political philosophy unjust (by stripping you of control over yourself and the fruits of your labor) as well as counterproductive (by failing to give the recipient sufficient incentive to learn and work hard so he can earn his own toys in the future).

Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun. Obama either doesn’t understand this, or doesn’t want voters to understand it.

Nicely said. Looks like my poor wife is going to get another e-mail.

Peggy Noonan, at Zenith of Profession

I love Peggy Noonan. Not because she’s still beautiful at 58 (though she is), but because she’s the best I’ve ever read at tiptoeing along the line of sentimentality without tipping over into the slop. I’ve never read a columnist who can sympathize with the strategies and opinions of her intellectual opponents without in any way giving into them. I’ve not been a big fan of some of the big government triangulations of Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism.” What I like best about it is what comes out in virtually every column Noonan has ever written: an honest attachment to her own values and an appreciation for tough politics that does not preclude her from seeing the best in the ideas and strategies of her opponents. A longish excerpt from her latest on Obama will show what I am getting at:

What Mr. Obama has been doing, and this started before
the European trip and continued throughout, is making
people see him as president. He's doing this when he
ambles back to the back of the plane and leans over the
reporters, in his shirtsleeves, speaking affably into their
held-up mics and recorders, at the end of the victorious
tour. That's what presidents do. He speaks to rapturous
crowds in foreign capitals. That's what presidents do.

He isn't doing this to show he's inevitable and invincible.
He's doing it to give voters the impression that they've
already seen President Obama. That he's kind of already
been president, he's done and can do all the things
presidents do, to the point that by the middle of October
a certain portion of the country is going to think he
already is president.

And he needs to give them this impression because he's
a young black man from nowhere who's been well-known
for less than a year. And he knows one of his biggest
problems with older white voters is they just can't
imagine a young black man from nowhere as president.
He's helping them imagine.

It's not vanity, it's strategy.

I read that and thought, she’s probably right. I don’t know how she does it: is a section such as this the result of good reporting – i.e., she’s talked to those who know, and those who know have told her, “this is our strategy”? Or does she have the moral imagination of the great novelist, that enables her to get inside others, to divine the motives, to sympathize, to empathize, to understand that most people do what they do because they believe – they’ve somehow convinced themselves – that what they’re doing is right? Perhaps this is what allowed her to be such a good speech writer for Reagan (I say this taking their reputation on faith, because I am sadly unfamiliar with the speeches beyond the famous soundbites, not being into politics then). Either way, we’re lucky to have her watching us and writing about us, and though I have no use for those who whinge about negative politics, we’d probably be better off if more had her ability to understand the good motives of others. (And here’s my partisan sign-off: I think Krauthammer’s Law, enunciated in 2002, still is dead on the mark: “Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”)

P.S.

By the way, I don’t mean to make the black vote for Obama seem sinister in my post below. Tribal voting is not inherently sinful and can be relatively innocuous – certainly the feeling of solidarity with those like one is natural enough, and harmless when its limitations and dangers are understood. But remember that the politician who knows that his skin color, ethnic last name, or genitalia is enough to garner your vote is unlikely to feel compelled to do anything else to earn it.

Racists? Sexists?

If you’ve read last earlier post, you’d know I shouldn’t be taking time to post anything, but here I go. Consider this merely a snapshot, an impression, for a number of reasons, the three most important being that I spent about fifteen minutes on it, I know almost nothing about the immense variables of polling, and there are only two polls represented by one company, of whose reputation I know little. That said, I’ve read what Jim Geraghty and Byron York have had to say about the racial fissures along which the Democratic race is dividing. James Taranto, who’s been reading the same stuff, has been predicting that if Obama loses the primary, Dems could lose black votes for the first time since the New Deal, and if he loses the general, Republicans will again be sealed off from black votes, for who knows how many more years, by their supposed racism in voting against a black man for president. This seems to me to be unsurprising; it’s de rigueur to hear that whites, especially conservative whites, are the racists, the big meanies who want to see anyone not of their tribe go down, apparently just for the sheer joy of it. But, if Quinnipiac University Polls from April 2 and March 27 of this year are any indication, it’s not the whites who are the racists, or the men who are the sexists.

The first I have listed shows which members of which races (self-identified, I assume) would vote for which Democratic candidate (here is a link to the source page for the first, and here for the second – both are near the bottom of their respective pages, and both have been formatted into tables for (relative) ease of posting). A plurality, but not quite a majority, of all voters would vote for Clinton: 50%. Of whites, 59% of them would vote for Clinton, with only 34% of them voting for Obama. Given the trouble the two have had distinguishing their platforms from each other’s, that argues that there is some race identification in the aggregate white vote. But the black vote is a staggering 73% for Obama, with only 11% of likely Democratic primary voters planning to vote for Clinton, arguing a much greater race identification in the aggregate black vote. Similarly, in the sex divide, men are more likely, by 12%, to vote for the member of the opposite sex (auguring no sex identification at all), whereas women are more likely to vote for their own sex by 34%.

Now, I’m sure there are many, many problems with my analysis. Let’s see if I can count the ways:

1. Tribe-identification doesn’t necessarily require tribalism (racism, sexism,
etc.).
2. I’ve ignored the convict gap: because a much greater proportion of black men than white men are current or ex-felons who would be voting at a 73% clip for Obama, the male vote for Clinton may be skewed higher than it should be; that might also imply that the Black sentiment for Obama is not accurately represented, as at least 73% of all current and ex-felons who are black are statistically likely to be Obama supporters, if they follow the pattern of their fellow race-members. That said, how many former convicts are “likely primary voters”?
3. I’ve ignored the Bradley Effect and the Reverse Bradley Effect – they essentially posit that those who answer exit polls tend to answer dishonestly in the direction of social pressure, with the result, for instance, that whites who would never vote for any black candidate would also never admit that to anyone, including the taker of an anonymous exit poll

But in favor of my analysis:

1. a lack of tribal-identification in voting implies a lack of tribalism, as
tribalism would prevent those voting patterns (though it wouldn’t necessarily
prevent the Bradley Effect)

The second poll is interesting as well, as it assesses the opinions of registered Democrats in Connecticut (as of March 27, 2008) regarding the so-called Dream Ticket, the black man/white woman or white woman/black man ticket. But therein is felt the friction of the rub: who goes first? One would suppose that, statistically, the question would be a wash, that Obama voters would want Obama at the head of the ticket about as often as Clinton voters would want Clinton at the head of the ticket, and that they would be about equal in their willingness to see a divided ticket. But that is not what we see:

Conn Registered Democrats (March 27, 2008):
42.(If registered Democrat) Some people have suggested that Senator Obama and Senator Clinton should run together in the general election for President in November. It could be a Clinton-Obama ticket, with Clinton running for President and Obama for Vice-President, OR It could be an Obama-Clinton ticket, with Obama running for President and Clinton for Vice-President. Which would you rather see - A Clinton-Obama ticket or an Obama-Clinton ticket, or would you rather they not run together?

As we might have expected, the totals break down evenly: just under a third of all registered Democrats in Connecticut reportedly want a Clinton-Obama ticket; just under a third want an Obama-Clinton ticket; just over a third do not want them to run together. Well, that last was unexpected, for me, until I looked at the columns to the right. As we find, Clinton voters are slightly more favorable to a ticket headed by Obama than Obama voters are to the opposite. That difference of two percent is probably within the margin of error. (The only surprise here is that these numbers aren't both zero.) What isn’t likely to be in the margin of error is that 20% fewer Obama voters want to see Obama on a ticket with Clinton, because 42% of them don’t want him joining her at all, in any combination! Only 19% of Clinton voters feel this way. Why would Obama voters be so antipathetic to having Clinton anywhere on the ticket?

Do they dislike her politically or personally?
Are they paranoid about her politically or personally?
Do they dislike her because she is white?
Do they desire the black candidate to score a thorough victory over his white primary opponent (with another candidate of his choosing, white or black, being an acceptable running mate) ?
Are they sexist?

The third and fourth questions assume the black-heavy nature of Obama’s support, though the other ones do not.

There is ultimately no real way to answer these questions, certainly not without extensive studies, and even then perhaps not if the Bradley and similar Effects have any validity. I am not the one to undertake those, as it is about this point of quickly multiplying theories and counter-theories that my head begins to spin. But the first poll somewhat directly, and the second poll somewhat obliquely, seem to give credence to what we’ve seen in the Rev. Wright’s speech and much of the black response to it: that black anger towards and disdain for whites is widespread and encouraged, certainly far more so than white anger and disdain are with regard to blacks. I heard the claim when I was younger that blacks could not be racist, that it was a purely white phenomenon. But we all know, whether we want to admit it or not, that sin is a universal human phenomenon; and racism certainly falls under that rubric.