Every once in a while, I worry that voters in Mississippi will grow up, maybe read something other than the bible, and join the 21st Century. That would be really bad for Indiana, since in so many categories, Mississippi is all that stands between Hoosiers and utter ignominy.
Silly me–I shouldn’t have worried.
Here’s an upcoming ballot initiative from the Magnolia state:
The State of Mississippi hereby acknowledges the fact of her identity as a principally Christian and quintessentially Southern state, in terms of the majority of her population, character, culture, history, and heritage, from 1817 to the present; accordingly, the Holy Bible is acknowledged as a foremost source of her founding principles, inspiration, and virtues; and, accordingly, prayer is acknowledged as a respected, meaningful, and valuable custom of her citizens. The acknowledgments hereby secured shall not be construed to transgress either the national or the state Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Um–hate to tell you this, Mississippi voters, but saying this language shouldn’t be “construed” as violating the Bill of Rights would be a lot like saying that if I fatally shoot you, that shouldn’t be “construed” as murder.
“Principally Christian and quintessentially Southern….”
Too many Hoosier lawmakers would feel right at home.
A post-election article from the Houston Chronicle begins with a provocative projection that will comfort people depressed about the midterms:
Few things are as dangerous to a long term strategy as a short-term victory. Republicans this week scored the kind of win that sets one up for spectacular, catastrophic failure and no one is talking about it.
What emerges from the numbers is the continuation of a trend that has been in place for almost two decades. Once again, Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level across the most heavily populated sections of the country while intensifying their hold on a declining electoral bloc of aging, white, rural voters. The 2014 election not only continued that doomed pattern, it doubled down on it. As a result, it became apparent from the numbers last week that no Republican candidate has a credible shot at the White House in 2016, and the chance of the GOP holding the Senate for longer than two years is precisely zero.(emphasis mine)
The article follows this declaration with a matter-of-fact rundown of the electoral college votes–where they are and what a winner will need. His bottom line:
The next Presidential election, and all subsequent ones until a future party realignment, will be decided in the Democratic primary. Only by sweeping all nine of the states that remain in contention AND also flipping one impossibly Democratic state can a Republican candidate win the White House. What are the odds that a Republican candidate capable of passing muster with 2016 GOP primary voters can accomplish that feat? You do the math.
The key to understanding that paragraph (not to mention our toxic political environment), is “What are the odds that a Republican candidate capable of passing muster with GOP primary voters”….
As the article convincingly demonstrates, the crazies who appeal to the GOP’s current base are winning in bright red, frequently gerrymandered, mostly rural districts. The problem is, those crazies have now become the (embarrassing) face of the Republican party nationally–making it impossible for the party to win national elections.
We ought not take too much comfort from that.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again–this country needs two adult, sane political parties. Right now, the GOP is controlled by a base that is neither adult nor sane. Unless the remaining Republican grown-ups (whose ranks are thinning) can reassert control, there will be no rational “loyal opposition” to keep Democrats focused and honest, no healthy competition to ensure that all ideas get thoroughly vetted, and no place to go–no alternative to vote for– for the disaffected.
America needs a rational GOP. We had one once, and I miss it.
I know, I know….this blog has become a venue for breast-beating and hand-wringing and other elements of my increasingly curmudgeonly analysis of our collective civic IQ. (Ironically, if the people who comment here are representative of those who read my rants, they don’t need the lectures. I guess it’s the ultimate “preaching to the choir.”)
Still.
A reader sent me a link to an NPR story that makes a really important point about the content of civic knowledge.
According to the National Council for Social Studies, the goal of social studies is to promote civic competence, or the knowledge and intellectual skills to be active participants in public life. Yet, engaging with the most complex public issues of our time—biodiversity, climate change, water scarcity, obesity, energy, and HIV/AIDS—also requires a deep understanding of the scientific process.
I’d settle for a cursory understanding of what science is. And isn’t.
Turn on your television, or even worse, read the letters to the editor in your local paper, and you will encounter–ad nauseum–mindless repetition of the “evolution is just a theory” meme, displaying total ignorance of how the use of the term by scientists differs from its use in everyday language. Ask students what falsification means, and you will get blank stares.
Ignorance of the most basic definition/methodology of science may not have been problematic back when most Americans were still on the farm, and the policy issues we faced did not require a working understanding of things like net neutrality, climate change, the human genome, etc. It is more than problematic now.
And scientifically illiterate voters have just empowered a bunch of aggressively scientific illiterate politicians to decide those policies and make those decisions.
Increasingly, the most trenchant commentary on what passes for a political landscape these days comes from avowed comedians–especially satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. (Satire is really hard these days, what with walking self-satirists like Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, et. al. I find myself looking at headlines and saying “Surely that’s from the Onion…)
When Bill Clinton ran for President, James Carville famously posted a large sign in the campaign’s “war room.” The sign read: “It’s the economy, stupid!” Carville wanted to remind his candidate and those working for him to keep their focus where he felt it belonged– on the economy.
Fast forward to the escalating debates over American inequality, the diminishing numbers of people who can be categorized as middle class, and the widening gap between wealthy Americans and everyone else. As Ryan Cooper noted in a recent article in The Week, progressives arguing for measures to reduce that gap have forgotten Carville’s lesson, and in the process have neglected the most potent argument for those measures.
That argument is the economy.
As Cooper notes,
“A growing body of evidence suggests that inequality isn’t just an issue of fairness, but is actually hampering general prosperity. And that, in turn, ought to have enormous knock-on political effects.
Modern economic systems depend upon consumption. Many of us are less than enthusiastic about that undeniable fact, and there is certainly much to criticize in consumer culture. But in the system we inhabit, consumer demand is a critical element of economic health. When millions of people are making poverty wages, demand suffers.
When the great majority of people have very little disposable income, there is no mass market. No matter how entrepreneurial a given individual may be, s/he is unlikely to start a business—or get financing to start a business—if the success of that business will be dependent upon mass sales.
It’s not just new business starts, either; when consumers aren’t spending, existing businesses aren’t likely to invest and grow, and they are equally unlikely to be “job creators” hiring more workers.
When debates about growing inequality are framed as issues of fairness (compelling as some of us may find such arguments), we fail to deploy the most effective weapon at our disposal—the fact that the current policies intended to privilege supposed “makers” aren’t just harming those who are scorned as “takers.” They are actually harming us all, “makers” included, by depressing demand and retarding economic growth.
When I was in law school, by far the most valuable lesson I learned was “he who frames the issue wins the debate.”
Take the current debate over raising the minimum wage.
When we argue for raising the minimum wage only on fairness grounds, the typical response is that higher wages will depress job creation. Even though available evidence convincingly rebuts this, it is a widely accepted meme because it seems so self-evident; indeed, it would be true if all else were equal. (In real economic life, it turns out that all else isn’t equal–who knew?) If, however, we frame the argument for a higher minimum wage as an argument for a more robust economy benefitting everyone—an argument that has the added merit of being demonstrably true—we win.
As James Carville reminded us: It’s the economy, stupid!
