Yglesias points to Freedman, who gives good evidence that the contribution of the 'values' issue to our electoral defeat is being overestimated on the left.
There's a good psychological explanation for why people like us would make exactly this mistake. According to the 'values' theory, the agents of our defeat are precisely those people whom we're the most opposed to -- religious nuts who hate gay people. In making our defeat the fault of our worst enemies, it attracts more credence than one would be justified in giving it.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
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8 comments:
While I'm perfectly prepared to believe that the whole bad-ballot-initiative thing didn't sway the election, the argument about moral issues and their import isn't. I've been talking to some red-staters of my acquaintance, and my take on their take notwithstanding, it's still a problem for us that 22% of people voted on things we took no position on, and more of a problem that they won't listen to us at all until we do. In short, like a good Lakoff disciple, I think we need to learn to talk morals. In particular we need to add some philosophy about the morals of society into our platform. Maybe some more about this on my blog shortly...
I'm definitely in favor of the 'use moral rhetoric' point. It's one of the reasons why Edwards' ability to cast economic issues in moral terms appeals to me.
It's more than that though; I'll probably expand on this at my own blog, but we can't just talk about morality, we need to articulate one, public and private.
I really like your point about irrational epistemic pressure.
A lot of factors probably conspired to give this flimsy meme such currency. Most of the "values" hype is emanating from the religious right itself. Naked self-interest explains a lot. The RR wants to make sure they get maximum credit from the Bush administration. The Bush administration is nodding back to the base. This dynamic is largely political theater for media consumption. No doubt we liberals also interpret the information through our psychological filters.
Mm. Yeah. Just to expand on the political theater point, I am not blind to the appeal of the media narrative that pits cosmopolitan New York liberals against Bible Belt fundamentalists. The media is not blind to it either.
I don't disagree with what you say Neil, but I suspect it actually might work out well for Democrats that this be viewed as the value election. First, it's something Democrats can fix with largely cosmetic changes -- that is, changes which don't involve selling out their base. Second, to whatever extent the Bush-mandate meme catches hold, it's useful that it be viewed as a values-mandate rather than a mandate for something else. It sure as hell wasn't an Iraq mandate. It's telling, I think that a lot of the conservatives who aren't part of the religious wing of the party have been very keen to argue that this really wasn't about values (e.g., William Kristal swears that the values stuff is overrated and what the election really reflected is our approval of Iraq). Third, and maybe I'm dangerously wrong about this, but it seems like there's not that much real potential for damage that Republicans can do on the values front. Of those fights Republicans can realistically win, many of them strike me as comparatively minor. The bigger fights seem to me to favor Democrats. For instance, despite the state votes this election, I can't realistically imagine a constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage, and I think any debate about it hurts Republicans (who are divided on it) more than Democrats (who aren't). But, if there's no movement for an ammendment, then the religious right can legitimately complain that they've been sold out by the Republicans. And I think abortion is another Democrat winner -- a winner in many ways, in fact. For instance, one argument that Dems can make in upcoming elections is that pro-choice voters in moderate and liberal states should be very hesitant to vote for pro-choice Republicans for the House and Senate. Pro-choice Republicans end up getting Spectored there by the pro-lifers. There may be room for pro-choice Republican governors and mayors (see Schwarzenneger and Giuliani) but there simply appears to be no room for pro-choice Republicans at a federal level.
Another nice thing about it -- the religious right was credited with delivering the election early on, and they'll be less likely to accept the recent debunking of that view than anyone else in their party. So they'll see themselves as deserving lots of goodies, even if the people handing out the goodies are doubtful. There is potential for conflict in this scenario.
It also helps Democrats that religious right leaders are stepping forward, trying to play a more vocal role in party leadership right now instead of hiding in a back room as they did during the convention. For whatever reason, a lot of these leaders have a hard time going a month without saying something batshit insane.
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