alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

April 15, 2008

LtBW*

by AltHippo @ 4:58 pm. Filed under 2008 Elections

*Left the Building Watch (TiNAD**)
** Tuesday is New Acronym Day

CorrenteWire, like Elvis, has left the building:

According to Lind, Obama and his supporters are “Greater New England” types. But he thinks this is not a good thing:

“The question, then, is not why Greater New England progressives would vote for Obama. He presses all their age-old buttons: opposition to war, nonpartisan reform. The question is why anyone would assume that such a candidate would appeal to other Democratic constituencies, other than blacks (voting in this case for the favorite-son candidate).

Indeed, the Greater New England moralist culture has been rejected by practically every other substantial subculture in the United States: Irish-Americans in Northeastern cities, Appalachian white Baptists and now, evidently, Mexican-Americans. And this has always been the case.”

What Lind is describing is what we have seen in electoral politics for generations. When the Democratic party nominates a GNE liberal, we lose. We lose because they fail to connect to blue-collar, rural and small town voters. They fail to connect because they just don’t get it.

When I see idiotic statements like this, I like to learn something about the author: “Michael Lind (born in 1962) is an American journalist and historian, currently the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. Ideologically, he has gone from liberal (in his college years) to neoconservative (in graduate school and directly afterward) to radical centrist (through the early 2000s), and back to a liberal (present).”

That’s a quite a set of ideologies! At least he doesn’t have to worry about a fixed set of values weighing him down. I realize what a hobgoblin foolish consistency can be, it’s just that foolish inconsistency isn’t any better.

Here, Lind just makes up a demographic, Greater New England, demonizes it, and state that this proves that despite his lead in the popular vote and delegates, Harvard Class of ‘91 is too elitist to get elected. Meanwhile, Yale class of ‘73 is salt-of-the-earth, and that saltiness makes the working class wanna go drinking with her, except for blacks, who in Lind’s analysis don’t really count.

The only thing worse than being Michael Lind is quoting from him approvingly.

I was at the DC for Democracy meeting where it was decided who to support in the Dem primary. In that group of mixed gender, race, and state of origin, economically middle class, Obama was a clear favorite. IIRC, Edwards was the second place favorite. If you had accused the folks at that meeting of being GNE moralist elitists (I hate to dignify fictional demographics, but for the purpose of conversation and ridicule) they’d kick your ass. Or laugh you out of the room.

I don’t really understand what CorrenteWire is trying to accomplish these days. If the idea is to create a club where Hillary can be praised, and Obama (and his supporters) can have mud slung at them, I guess there’s no law against that. The idea as I understand it, however, is that democratic debate is struggle without destruction. It supposes that each participant in the process will respect the views held by the others. That’s why the Democratic Party, despite their manifold flaws are still the good guys. That’s why the Republican Party is not.

And now for the punishment: 5 shots of Crown Royal with a guy named “Dad.”

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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