I have noted this in this venue before, but it bears repeating.

Harold Ford Jr. lost his Senate bid in Tennessee in 2006, largely because he is black, but also because he tried to court the votes of people who weren't going to vote for him no matter what, while ignoring the very people who might have voted for him.

All you have to do is look at the number of votes Democrat Phil Bredesen received running for governor on the same ballot. If Ford had received every Democratic vote that Bredesen got, he would have trounced Corker. But almost a half million Tennessee Democrats either didn't cast a vote in the Senate race or voted for the Republican. That's a huge number, not to be ignored.

Ford alienated progressive Democrats while courting white male Republicans who were never going to vote for him, for the very reasons you state.

That southern whites shifted in large measure to the Republican party is not controversial, nor is the idea that there was a backlash to the civil rights movement. But the argument that the backlash was and remains the decisive factor in explaining the changed voting pattern is not entirely convincing.

It's not that it isn't true-- yes, Republicans did capture the latently racist vote in the South and other parts of the country.

But Krugman's idea that it stops there, and that the rest of the country has been majority Democratic all along, is just nutty. When there's a Republican president and a Republican majority Congress at the same time, and 30 of 50 governors are Republican, as was true for a good stretch there, what exactly makes the Democrats a majority party? McGovern, Carter (1980), Mondale, and Dukakis didn't lose because they couldn't win the South-- they lost because they got blown out in the South, the West, the union midwest, everywhere but the northeast. In elections with over 2000 electoral votes at stake, between them they got less than 200 (most of those Dukakis').

Democrats are turning to racism as the all-purpose explanation because it enables them to avoid having to deal with other causes for failure. There was the law and order issue (which, of course, dovetails with racism to no small extent, but it's not illegitimate just for that reason). There was Reagan's robust anti-Communism versus Carter's malaise and the blame-America-first attitude which filtered in from academia. There was a legitimate desire for lower taxes, less regulation, a culture of responsibility rather than dependency, a more Friedmanesque economy. And it's pretty hard to see that the Republicans weren't vindicated by history to some extent on all three.

Having said that, I think we're in a moment of big change. The Democrats may finally be competitive as a national party, not a northeastern urban party, again, as they really haven't been for decades. The Republicans have run aground on corruption, overseas adventurism and general complacency, and could use a little creative destruction (the best thing that ever happened to them, of course, being the shellacking they got in '64). And of course the environment in which everyone runs is changing radically with all that Internet stuff.

But all that just makes it more important for Democrats not to tell themselves self-flattering fantasies about why the last few decades played out the way they did (if Bush won in 2004 opposing "gay married terrorists," as Krugman snarks, who precisely was the pro-gay marriage candidate in the race?), but to honestly confront the lessons of that time and put them to work in charting a successful and broadly appealing course for this new time.

It is high time progressives stopped acting like spoiled brats and acting in ways which elect rethugs because the dem isn't perfect.

You are exactly right Professor and it is abundantly clear that you are right.

Nixon's southern strategy worked quite well for the Republican Party these past 40 years, but the consequences of the tightening of the Republican grip on America's neck are prying it's fingers loose. People have finally gotten a clue and decided maybe the Republicans have really screwed up everything.

I agree also that both the changing demographics of the nation and the decline of racism are the primary factors that spell the death knell of the Republican Party and it's electoral dominance as we have come to know it during that time.

You can go back and look, beginning with Nixon, at how the Republican Presidential candidates have been using race to scare the bejeezus out of whites nationwide through their near fetish about crime, order, etc... in their tv ads. You can also see the evidence in the tv spots for Senators, Representatives and Governors over the years. Outside the south, they held their base with racism that meant they didn't have to worry about them fleeing the party and they gladly stood in the abandoned place of the segregationist Democrats in the south solely to win elections and empower them to serve the wealthy special interests they truly represent. All the Republican luminaries of the south converted from being segregationist Democrats to Republicans. Nixon, Ford, Reagan and both Bush the first and second have used racism to achieve their ends and benefited from the use of racist electoral appeals to great effect. Now that they've mutilated our economy, our government and the social fabric of the nation to the point where we wonder what happened to America, people are finally beginning to wake up.

The problem it seems to me is that the Republican-Lite/DLC Democrats present a real obstacle to returning America to a nation where the gap between rich and poor is not so severe and where we can once again begin to address our real problems instead of looking for boogeymen under the bed all the time. Hillary Clinton is the most prominent of that sort of Democrat, but there are plenty of them in the Congress and elsewhere.

Thanks professor for having continued to be one of the few voices of sanity allowed such a prominent platform in the media as that which you've had! It would have been a much easier thing to follow the herd of bleating boot lickers like most other columnists. Keep fighting em!

Huh?

"What are the other ways the GOP exploited latent southern racism?"
Willie Horton.

So glad to see you here. Welcome. 

Some scientist was recently speculating we may be in the process of generating two sub-species of human, with a smart and rich elite, and the rest. Eliminating the middle class would help ensure that process will continue.

If we want to remain one people we should be promoting the middle class. Before agriculture and civilzation there was very little difference between the average hunter and the big cheese. Now there is precious little hope of ever achieving the rarified heights of the Forbes 400. My children will never meet their children in school or at a party, and certainly not at work. Speciation in progress.

I agree with you Ellen and offer this piece of evidence as confirmation that your point is true for a much longer period of time than even that you identify. The south was racist for a very specific and identifiable reason from the start which was to maintain slavery.  Racism justified the institution.  Despite their best efforts, the power of the slavery interests that controlled the south prior to the civil war lost the war and slavery was abolished, but the grip that same group had on political power remained strong and is the heritage of the anti-progressive south even today.  In the irony of ironies it is now the legacy of the Republican Party.  Until such time as the anti-progressive domination of the south is finally ended we will continue to find the nation held back as it has been essentially forever due to the south.  Since the founding of the Republic except for  brief periods the Congress, and thus national policy, has been effectively controlled by the south.  That region has also had disproportionate numbers of Presidents as well.  Anyway, back to the evidence of the long established anti-progressive heritage of the south.

The following comes from the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, a man I consider to be one of the greatest Americans who ever lived and also who was one of the greatest Presidents ever to serve (though I know that is not what the popular impression is of the man). In any event, as someone who was around at the time, I consider his observations very, very valid.  This is from a section of the book about the time leading up to the Civil War and describes the situation regarding the powers that be in the south at the time:

"There is little doubt in my mind now that the prevailing sentiment of the South would have been opposed to secession in 1860 and 1861, if there had been a fair and calm expression of opinion, unbiased by threats, and if the ballot of one legal voter had counted for as much as that of any other. But there was no calm discussion of the question. Demagogues who were too old to enter the army if there should be a war, others who entertained so high an opinion of their own ability that they did not believe they could be spared from the direction of the affairs of state in such an event declaimed vehemently and unceasingly against the North, against its aggressions upon the South; its interference with Southern rights, etc., etc. They denounced the Northerners as cowards, poltroons, Negro-worshippers; claimed that one Southern man was equal to five Northern men in battle; that if the South would stand up for its rights the North would back down. Mr. Jefferson Davis said in a speech, delivered at La Grange, Mississippi, before the secession of that State, that he would agree to drink all the blood spilled south of Mason and Dixon's line if there should be a war. The young men who would have the fighting to do in case of war, believed all these statements both in regard to the aggressiveness of the North and its cowardice. They, too, cried out for a separation from such people. The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation. Under the old regime they were looked down upon by those who controlled all the affairs in the interest of slave owners, as poor white trash who were allowed the ballot so long as they cast it according to direction.

"I am aware that this last statement may be disputed and individual testimony perhaps adduced to show that in ante-bellum days the ballot was as untrammelled in the South as in any section of the country; but in the face of any such contradiction I reassert the statement. The shot-gun was not resorted to. Masked men did not ride over the country at night intimidating voters; but there was a firm feeling that a class existed in every State with a sort of divine right to control public affairs. If they could not get this control by one means they must by another. The end justified the means. The coercion, if mild, was complete.

"There were two political parties, it is true, in all the States, both strong in numbers and respectability, but both equally loyal to the institution which stood paramount in Southern eyes to all other institutions in state or nation. The slave-owners were the minority, but governed both parties. Had politics ever divided the slave-holders and the nonslave-holders, the majority would have been obliged to yield, or internecine war would have been the consequence. I do not know that the Southern people were to blame for this condition of affairs. There was a time when slavery was not profitable, and the discussion of the merits of the institution was confined almost exclusively to the territory where it existed. The States of Virginia and Kentucky came near abolishing slavery by their own acts, one State defeating the measure by a tie vote and the other only lacking one. But when the institution became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased where it existed; and naturally, as human nature is constituted, arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much to do with the justification of slavery."

"It would have been a much easier thing to follow the herd of bleating boot lickers like most other columnists."

At the New York Times?

This is a widely repeated claim (originally made by Republicans) but it is incorrect.

Gore did ask Dukakis a question in a debate about the weekend furlough program. But he never mentioned Willie Horton's name, his race, or the races of any other furloughed prisoners, and he didn't run ads on the issue.

Tim Noah of Slate did a detailed analysis. It seems to me that Lee Atwater deserves the "credit".

Prof. Krugman,

Welcome to TPM! You are one of the few people who speak clearly and unequivocally on the major economic and political issues of our times. Most of the Democrats appear to have lost their courage and continue to allow the Republicans to frame the debate.

Examples: The Democrats claim that they do not have enough votes to override the President's veto; nevertheless, the Republicans, who are in the minority, are having considerable success in getting their agenda through. The Kyl-Lieberman amendment passed with considerable Democratic support; the Republican resolution to condemn MoveOn.org for exercising their first amendment rights was supported by many Democrats. etc. The Democrats caved in to Bush on continued funding of the Iraq war last Spring, and are now faced with the same issue all over again. The carnage goes on in Iraq, and the Democrats continue to lose credibility.

By continually caving in to the Republicans, the Democrats send two messages to the voters: 1. the Republicans are right; 2. the Democrats are weak.

Hillary Clinton's "health care plan" relies on the use of "private insurance companies". Why should health care be run on a "for-profit" basis? And why should insurance companies make large sums of money by rejecting claims? Michael Moore's "Sicko" makes a clear case against such a policy. Yet the Democrats seem to shun Michael Moore because he is "controversial".

The Democrats should be using such policy differences with the Republicans to MAKE a case for their election. By continually ducking the issues, and running away from the fight, they give the Republicans credibility and hurt their own.

Many Democrats blame Ralph Nader for their loss in 2000; but if Al Gore had had the gumption and determination of Nader, he would be in the White House today. And Kerry simply did not stand up to the issues being thrown at him in the 2004 election. By trying to dodge them, he ended up stepping in every cowpie in the pasture. That is why he lost.

Until the Democrats, as a Party, decide to stick to their social and economic principles and explain them to the public, they will continue to lose, and the fortunes of the country will continue to decline. What the Democrats need are more candidates standing on principle, such as Senators Dodd, Edwards, and Gravel, and Congressman Kucinich.

"In any event, as someone who was around at the time, I consider his observations very, very valid."

I hope that's a mis-placed modifier, oleeb. Surely you don't mean to imply that *you* were around when Grant was President. ;-)

-- ARG

The second time it happens, it'll stop being single, anecdotal or anomalous, won't it?

http://tpmcafe.com/blog/mgmax/2007/oct/21/the_actual_incredible_significance_of_jindals_win

Professor, thanks for joining us, and I have a question. You've made a good statistical as well as intuitive case for race as the determining factor. And indeed others have increasingly disparaged the "values" explanations ever since early exit polls in 2004 seemed to make it key.

However, let me ask about a possibility. Suppose we're underestimating the effect of the religion card because such issues as abortion and gay marriage are used not so much to alter affiliations and preferences as to alter last-minute voter turnout. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Tim Noah exonerates Dem, excoriates GOP! There's a headline.

Noah very carefully fudges the timeline to evade the salient fact: Gore mentioned the furlough program in a debate after the Lawrence Eagle Tribune ran dozens of stories in 1987-8 on the furlough program, Willie Horton front and center as the prime example of its problems, and won a Pulitzer Prize for them.

So when Gore mentioned the furlough program, everyone from that area knew who he was talking about (and who the newspapers would write about when they talked about it the next day). He was simply subtler than Atwater in his race-baiting.

I would agree that racism has driven the Southern Strategy. I also believe that there is still a hard core of Southern whites who not only remain racist, but who also remain stubbornly anti-Northern. During the late 1970s, all my business calling was in the South, and I still recall some comments from the old-line southerners, such as "Mr. Lincoln's war of aggression" to refer to the Civil War. There may be some improvement in border states, or in states that have assimilated an influx of northerners, but I don't believe that those born in the South have truly changed their core beliefs. Their absolute numbers relative to the entire southern population may have declined, but, remember, the George Allen/Jim Webb race was still a very close one. There was no overwhelming repudiation of racism, as far as I could see.

The new wedge issue, IMO, is immigration, and this is far more serious because it is not an issue that is geographically limited. Nor, do I believe, as some do, that it is primarily a race-driven issue. There was never any question that black Americans were native citizens who were being denied their rights. The immigrant issue, however, has more to do with economics--and not just with jobs. The cost of providing social services to individuals who are not legally U.S. citizens is a concern that cuts across geographic and political party lines, and one in which both parties will need to develop a solution that a majority of American taxpayers can favor. Right now, with many middle class families strugggling economically, immigration could be the new "welfare queen" rallying cry for the Republicans.

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To get back to my point the GOP exploited latent Southern racism in the Willie Horton ad.

I think there are a couple factors with Jindal:

1) In LA after Katrina it is very much open season on incumbants.

2) Indians are among the "good minorties" especially socially conservative Catholic ones. Indians and Asians in general have almost achieved white status, the racism Krugman is talking about here is really anti Black and to some degree Hispanic.

And Latinos in particular can’t be brought into the conservative coalition – the base won’t have them. Anti-immigrant feeling is similar to anti-black feeling, and comes from the same people.

Not entirely, perhaps.  But there are segments of the Hispanic community in my own neck of the woods who remain eager to fall in line.  For example, the Hispanic-owned landscaping companies proudly displaying X-tra Large campaign signs for the Republican anti-alien congressional candidate, while employing small armies of illigal aliens who they have provided with bogus social security numbers so their wages maintain a veneer of legality and are taxed appropriately.  Of course, the workers never see the refunds that those of us that work legitimately in the system take for granted.

Who was it that coined the term "identity politics," anyway?  Populist movement conservatives never seem to have much use for identity politics unless and until that identity is comfortably white.

Ah, the "future possibilities which prove my present statements" defense.

Yes, that will show the Princeton Professor of Economics.

Hard core, yes.

But there is a significant number of soft racists, people who don't consider themselves racist, but who are in their actions and choices racist. They live in both parties, though they are more visible as Republicans. But Republican or Democrat, given a choice between a black or white candidate will choose the white candidate in nearly every circumstance.

Paul,

You are correct on both counts regarding the rise of Republicans to power and how racism and the right's "cohesive institutions" played a huge role in this rise. However, I think the nationalistic aspects of the story are missing: namely, the nationalist backlash to losing Vietnam.

I think this is often overlooked by US historians because "nationalism" tends to be seen as something that happens in other, mostly European countries, and not something that happens in this country. Yet, if one looks at the political language of the right since 1975 (and especially since 2001) it has echoes of other nationalist movements: continual denial that Vietnam was lost, paradoxically blaming an internal enemy for that loss: e.g. "Liberals" (see: J. Kerry and swiftboating), the morphing of the internal enemy "liberals" with external enemies "terrorists," and the list goes on. Ironically, instead of seeing 'Nam as a war that should never have been fought, it was Republican Nationalists conviction that Vietnam could have been won "if only..." that led them right into Iraq.

But the point remains that the rightwing movement's inspiration and strength has come also from the outcome of Vietnam in addition to race and class issues. And since the post-'Nam generation didn't live through that war the nationalist message just doesn't resonate with them.

In fairness, I haven't read your book yet (though I now plan on reading it in the near future) so you might mention Vietnam and apologies if you do.

Mgmax,

stop whining.

I guess it depends on the meaning of the word 'mention.'

In the south the parties are so segregated that I have heard people that when they wish to make a racist remark where one would not be politic refer to blacks as 'Democrats'. It has become the new N word. When I first heard the word used this way it took me quite a while to figure out what the bigots were talking about.

heh heh heh :-)

Tom Wright,

1- John Doe, American citizen since birth, works in Widget Factory for $15.00 per hour
plus benefits; health care, pension, vacations, etc.

2- Influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, flood the market with labor.

3- Jose enters picture. Applies for job in United States Widget Mfg. Co. Application asks for salary range being applied for. Jose enters $9.00 per hour. Employer tells Jose they have an opening for a job that pays $9.00 per hour but no benefits.

4- Jose accepts job, John Doe gets laid off.

5- 6 months pass.

6- Juan enters picture. Applies for job at U S Widget. Enters $7.00 per hour on line asking about salary required.

7- Juan gets hired for $7.00 per hour, no benefits. Jose gets laid off.

8- American citizen, John Doe, goes to Unemployment Office. Offered a job at U S Widget for $6.50 per hour, no benefits.

9- John Doe declines.

10- George Bush appears on television and says we need immigrants to do the "work Americans won't do."

Yup.

It wasn't just southern racists. I grew up in 1960's Milwaukee in a working class family. My grandfather and uncles worked in the heavy industry that dominated the southeastern Wisconsin economy. They were racists -- they hated black people -- and when the civil rights movement happened, and then the anti-war movement and hippies came onto the scene, these white men -- who had always in the past voted Democratic because of the New Deal and their support for unions -- became adept decoders of Nixon's and Reagan's dog whistle politics.

These were the Reagan Democrats.

Their change in voting was based partly on race and partly on culture. It wasn't based on economics. They hated their bosses just like any rational worker does. They had zero tolerance for the white-shoe wearing, golf playing, martini sipping, prep school and private-college-for-their-kids, country club members that people in management (and union leaders) tended to hang out with.

And they didn't really get all that heated up about environmental regulations or inheritance taxes. Many of them were hunters and fishermen and saw clearly that they didn't want their access to game or fish to be cut off.

My white working class relatives (of that generation) hated what they called hippies, niggers and New York jews: the people they thought had come to the University of Wisconsin and made trouble with their kids, impregnated their daughters, and/or turned them on to drugs.

That generation has mostly died off, at least in Milwaukee. I loved many of them dearly, but I'm not sad to see them pass from the (political) scene.

tlees2,

It's maybe just a bit more exploitative than psychodramatic in this example.  The landscaping companies have such a good thing going, dollarwise, so moral pretense isn't even necessary.

Prof. Krugman,

Thanks for diagnosing the housing bubble in your N.Y. Times column. You've saved a lot of people a lot of money and heartache.

I have a big question for you. If you read this and choose to respond, please answer with as bold and broad strokes as feel comfortable.

I've been following your analyses for about a decade now, and you have helped me to understand that our currency and economy are perched on the edge of true crisis. In fact, it seems to me that you are saying that barring some new, fortuitous (for the U.S.) event, crisis is inevitable.

And yet, when you discuss the Social Security issue you seem to be saying that the program is simply a large bond, and that the government can meet its obligations if it will only decide to do so. This argument makes perfect sense, assuming a continuation of the status quo. But, won't the (probable) coming financial collapse negate any possiblity (in the near future, at least) of any kind of social (or financial) guarantees?

Even as low as it's sinking, my guess is that our currency is the biggest bubble of all.

Isn't it?

Are these the end times for the U.S.A.?

I am almost afraid to ask this, and yet: Might that end be a good thing for the people living here?

Your presence in the mainstream media has meant a great deal to me in these culturally bleak times. Keep fighting the good fight!

Matt Emmons

Go read my blog post. Jindal won because white Protestants (aka crackers) who wouldn't vote for him last time because he wasn't one of them, voted for him this time because he seems smart and competent. (In the face of a racist, anti-Catholic campaign by the Democratic machine.) That's big news-- including for a certain presidential candidate.

DM2000, you rated the above post a 1. As noted above, 0 or 1 ratings

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Before I report you for misuse of the karma system, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt by allowing you the opportunity to explain which of those categories you believe my post falls into.

Well, it has generally struck me that the Right, for its general stupidity, has been in some ways far more able to think ahead about things liberals have avoided thinking clearly about.

I learned a fair amount from Pat Buchanan's widely ignored "The Death of the West"- that in fact the Right has thought through, to a significant extent, what the slow de-Europeanization of the country and racial fusion via Latinos means. Buchanan is mentally the archetype of person you can still meet in rural European villages, and he realizes quite precisely that medieval European feudal/colonial economics, medieval European religion (Christianity highly syncretic with prior European paganisms), and the social rules and political order of medieval European society are going to fade away in the U.S.

The ironic thing is that the isolation of the American "Heartland" has been a far better refuge for medieval European religion, thought, and social purity than Europe has been in the past century. Europe has accepted Modernity as its fate, as preferable to continuing the selfdestruction and irrelevance of staying stuck in medievalisms, which in turn are residues of the ancient paganisms and social forms.

About the ascendence and decline of the American middle class...well, the key year is obviously 1968. Before that we had governance and a "liberal" consensus (of sorts), and the historically significant legislation and jurisprudence of the 1940s to 1968 is all about slow extension of 14th Amendment Section 1 rights of Equal Protection and Due Process and Immunities And Privileges (all amounting in spirit to the same thing: fairness) to more Americans. This may seem to be only social rights, but social rights/fairness are something of an umbrella for economic rights/fairness. In 1968 there was a choice made that the extension had gone far enough. The Right worked hard to prevent further expansion- we get "strict constructionism". And we had stagnation and a some rollback of 14th Amendment protections for the next 30+ years. (Roe v Wade was the one late 14th Amendment extension verdict that got through, and it's been the Right's bête noir since.)

Moderate Republicans- Sandra Day O'Connor would be the epitome and figurehead- kept us at the state of 1968 in social rights and economic inequalities for a very long time. But in the political arena we have had an alternation of ascendence and collapse/burnout of factions in mostly four year cycles since the Sixties except for a period in the mid-Eighties. In the early Nineties we had moderate Republican politicians burn out in the '90 and '92 elections, then their conservative Democratic successors get undone in '94 and '96, then the conservate Gingrich Republicans in '98 and '00. The last credible moderate (i.e. center-Right compliant) faction left and ascendent were the moderate Democrats of 1998-2001, and they were the definition- and proud of it- of carrying on the status quo that pointed back at 1968, in my view. And until 2001, I believe the economic status quo going back to 1968 was in fact held in a rough way though you'll dispute this, perhaps.

But in 2002 the moderate Democrats were replaced as the controlling faction; the classical Right faction of the Republican Party ascended. There was no unexpended moderate faction left in the system. There was no other credible faction of Republicans left, and their only credible opposition faction were the liberal Democrats. We went from three viable factions in government to two, as Matthew Dowd and Karl Rove and also Democratic consultants recognized in advance in a narrow way from the 2000 election results, in which the moderate Democrats were already on thinnest ice and past their zenith with the electorate. (See how Gore's support collapsed 5% right after Election day, to 43% willing to vote for him again, and 55% wanted Bush to prevail. And remember how difficult Democrats found it to motivate themselves to fight for Gore. 55% support is 5 out of 9 people, and remarkably that's how the decision- I refuse to call it a verdict- in Bush v Gore turned out too.)

Things fell apart in 2002/2003- we had two viable political factions left, one controlled all levels of federal government. We got "polarization", we got the social, economic, and political status quo deliberately smashed. We got the ideological Republican policies installed and put to the test.

In 2004 John Kerry then had to campaign on an argument for a restoration of the status quo, and Bush for a completion of its breaking up. Republicans were at that point disproven with the center of the electorate on the tax cuts=prosperity economic policy dogma. (Both big 2003 tax cuts were follow 3 months later by a loss of a political bloc's faith in the outcome and the dogma.) But they weren't disproven on the elections=democracy foreign policy dogma at stake in Iraq yet, or on the terminating vegetative life=intolerable social policy dogma. Those were disproven by the January 2005 elections in Iraq and the Schiavo affair in March/April 2005, which centrists discarded the credibility of the policy and dogma over (proven by polling). (There's a lot of other detail, but that's the broad strokes to me.)

But as a country we broke the roughly 30 year old economic, social, and political status quo agreement somewhere between 2000 and 2003. And that's where the bottom falls out for the middle class, financially and politically and socially. But it voted for Bush in 2004 in the strangest, most indefensibly delusional, election in a lifetime, to break up some remaining bits of that old status quo. It voted to fully break up the pious moderate compromises in social policy and 'fighting terrorism'. The People voted for Kerry on economic policy, though, saying Republicans had gone too far with that already.

We all know how far Bush and the Republican Congress and their Supreme Court tried to extend the 2004 election. Instead, what they did backfired mostly and politically exposed them. As a country we hit the limits in all policy areas. All the status quo was broken, in every policy area, and we hit the point of least status safety.

The 2006 elections to me are two things. One, The People has decided to crush the second-to-last faction still standing, views it as expended, and that leaves a Republican Party coalition without a single credible faction. It must do what the Democratic Party did in 1967-72: fail in the 2008 election, fall apart, and reassemble as a new coalition. In their case, simplify back to an economic party and push out the obsolete Religious Right wing.

The Liberal Democratic faction is ascendent, though that is not as pretty or happy a story and time in control as hoped. Its candidate is Hillary Clinton. Before her and the liberal faction lies a mess of a country and its status quo is broken, there is no unity and much misery and opportunism amid the disorder. But the lack of a credible opposition means Democrats can- and will- sweep across the former status quo lines in the opposite direction.

It's sort of predictable that liberals will also run out out of favor with The People in the 2010 elections, having cleaned up the mess and set some new lines for the next generation or generation and a half. Then we'll have a renewed Left pulling the liberals down, promising to build the institutions for which liberals have laid the foundations, and fighting reorganized Republicans retrenched mostly to a new and smarter set of economic policies and theories. Those will probably not be basically Feudal Era, as the simpleminded tax cut ones are now (with taxes perceived to be the equivalent of medieval tolls extracted by evil overlords), but Mercantilist or Colonial Era.

(sorry this got so long!)

Professor Krugman, you are a guiding light.  Like a beacon in the storms.  It has been uplifting in the midst of the trials of this administration to read your lucid writing in the Times.  I admit it - I am a great fan of yours!  I can't promise to read your book, but I've read some reviews and I'll watch for your posts at the cafe this week.

Thank you for your solid standing for truth and fairness and sanity in our times.

Southern churches are not my thing, but I would really like to see some hard evidence that when Southerners go to church on Sundsay they sit around and indulge in racist ranting.

It's more subtle than racist ranting. Southerners have "values" haven't you heard? "Family values". They are "religious". They are "Christians". They have wrapped themselves in sanctimony and they have convinced themselves and the MSM that their "superior moral values" makes them immune from racism. I can't be a bigot, I'm a Christian don't you know. I don't support segregated schools, I support Christian schools, because of my values.

Re: Jose accepts job, John Doe gets laid off.

It doesn't really happen that way. Rather, there's a recession, and the factory lays off a bunch of workers. Then, a year or two later, when the economy rebounds, they hire cheaper labor.

You obviously don't have any relatives living in the deep South.

He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin

That last comment was not directed at Mr. Krugman, I thought I was replying to BradTheDad.

I want to imply that racism is the driving force in Southern culture over the last 40 years of my experience with it. Not all white male southerners are racist, but racism was, and in the deep south still is, socially approved behavior. He that hath a trade, hath an estate - from Poor Richards Almanac - Benjamin Franklin

It would be a lot more interesting if the percentage of comments by the author were less. Shows a high degree of insecurity, don't you think?

I believe unproductive aptly describes this post, you may have had a legitimate complaint about the down rating on the first post. Back in my usenet days I learned it was best to not respond to things that bug you. Just let it go~~~~~

jack

Deleted by author.

SPHealey, I know you know that rating the above comment 0 is an inappropriate use of the rating system:

Readers trying to participate in discussions in good faith should never be given ratings of 1s or 0s. Those ratings are reserved for clearly inappropriate behavior or content -- obscene or offensive language, ethnic slurs, spam, disruptive behavior, extreme ad hominem attacks. This isn't an exhaustive list. But the key point is that you do not give a 1 or 0 to someone's comment just because you think their comment is stupid or because you strongly disagree.

Unless you can justify placing my post in one of the above categories, you should immediately change that rating to one in line with the rules of the site.

This is not a whine, as some generous soul above suggested; rating legitimate posts 0 as spam means that some people will not be able to see them at all. It is abuse of the rating system, and contrary to every democratic thing people here pay lip service to, to use it to silence alternative points of view.

simply being a conservative or having viewpoints not shared by the majority of people at this site does not make someone a troll. It's no secret that this is a progressive site and that the great majority of people who spend time here identify in one fashion or another as Democrats. But this is also a place for open debate, where all ideas are open to challenge and where all opinions are welcome.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/what_is_this_rating_system_all_about

That's perfectly correct; I don't see Christianity per se vanishing.

What I believe is going to happen, and needs to happen for their survival, is that the various churches and denominations will have to purge themselves of quite a few elements and dogmas that are probably neither Christian nor Biblically well based. They are ultimately always defended as "traditional", i.e. they can't be proven to be Biblical.

Abortion, for example, is permitted by Judaism- and you cannot get an answer from Christian Right theologians for the disparity of interpretation. In the Middle East infanticide, under a set of justifications reflecting the harshness and problems of desert nomadic life in small mutually abusive groups, is traditionally permitted. Numbers 5:11-29 in fact probably describes the permitted use of abortifacients. The New Testament contains no prohibitions of any relevant kind. But abortion is abhorred (yet practiced) by peoples worldwide who are traditionally agrarian. They tend to engage in or remember suppressed plant fertility cultisms, in which fertilized plant seeds are the fetishized premier and ideal formless forms of life both plant and animal.

Homosexuality and gay marriage are also in fact Biblically a lot more problematic to justify a "Christian" policy and theology against than the Religious Right lets on. Lesbian sex and lesbianism doesn't exist, or just isn't worth a comment, in the whole of the Bible. Ostensibly celibate male companionship is no problem at all, from the descriptions of David and Jonathan, and Jesus and Simon Peter. The proscriptions start generally with promiscuity and orgiastic behavior and various known Canaanite forms of Ancient World prostitution and their practices, which were associated some of their deities. When you get to the core, male anal sex is declared "an abomination". Which is mostly to say, declared grotesque and not in the image of God common to the understanding. I'm not remembering everything right now, but as far as I can recall, homosexuality is not viewed as inherently evil anywhere in the Bible. It is considered a degrading secondary aspect of sexual behavior already held in full contempt (drunken orgies, temple prostitution, pedophilia), evidently, but not itself evil.

The imputation of evil goes, I suspect, back to Nature deity religion, with 'laws of Nature' whose breaking offends deities a people cannot afford to offend. Thus the condemnation of homosexual acts as "unnatural" echoes a time in which people had to be killed to prevent their further offending nature deities. Extremists come up with demonic possession theories of homosexuality. When you can walk people away from those two notions, there don't seem to be coherent reasons why homosexuality is wrong other than that heterosexual people don't find it attractive, logical, or intelligible behavior.

So basically, I'm sure Christianity can prune out a lot of ultimately unBiblical residua like that. A lot of Christians already have, despite no sophisticated theological education- they sense that the Bible isn't clearcut, that theologians are mostly employed to buttress sectarian or political ideas whose basis is fundamentally flimsy. They believe that the basic message of doing good and proceeding by love and helping the downtrodden isn't itself flawed, and that the details will work themselves out.

Please stop using that old lie. In a primary debate, Gore mentioned the home release program that he said was not protecting the voters. At no time did he mention Willie Horton, nor figure out a way to plaster his face all over television. But your lies are clever, no doubt: vintage Floyd Brown and Hannity, I'd say. In fact, the right introduced the topic of race to what was a plainly valid issue.

Somebody mentioned Rove's name. Why has no enterprising reporter found out what's up with Uncle Karl?

Sure would be nice to enter a contempt citation against him, or get him to answer some serious questions.

AH RELY ON MAH BIBUL AN I DONT WUNT ANY LIBRULS ATELLIN ME OTHERWISE!

Mgmax said:

Gore brought up the furlough program without mentioning Horton by name.

That's quite different from your original charge.

I rest my case.

I find that an inadequate after-the-fact justification. Reminding people that Enron did not kill like other scandals have is hardly trolling. No, you'll have to do better than that in expaining away obvious abuse of the system for partisan purposes.

Or at the very least, you could show when you've given similar ratings to people who said similar off-topic and exaggerated things about, say, George W. Bush.

It's also quite different from my post, though selective quoting for the purpose of distortion is not inappropriate in a thread started by a colleague of Maureen Dowd.

Ah, how brave he is to stand up for his ideas against the crushing conservative dominance of... Frank Rich and Bob Herbert!

Or David Brooks.

Ole Fair and Balanced JohnW1141.

Not to really disagree with your post but I would have said that Reagan's real appeal was his optimism about America. Carter sold malaise, hostages and a nation of limits. Reagan promised "morning in America." While no fan of Reagan there is no doubt he captured better the general tone of American politicans than did Carter.

Part of today's politics is the "war" between those who believe that government should get out of the way to allow the unleashing the independent American spirit versus those who embrace the elevation of victimhood and defeatism. Both sides are really characteratures of the real world.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Reagan was a marketers dream. He knew how to act and how to sell a role and sell a message. He played politics very very well and like Clinton can be considered a rare 'natural'

Part of today's politics is the "war" between those who believe that government should get out of the way to allow the unleashing the independent American spirit versus those who embrace the elevation of victimhood and defeatism. Both sides are really characteratures of the real world.

Hummmmmm. The weird thing with the current republican party is that it embraces victimhood and negativity with regards to America's place in the world. It's all dark dark shadows and unending conflict. We will be at war for the next 100 year!
And the tax cut = free American Spirit equivalency is starting to break down. Americans are becoming keenly aware that you can't tax cut your way to sunshine in America. There is no free lunch. Ya get what you pay for. If anything the sunshine party is the Democratic Party, the Republicans are Dick Cheney's party now. Dark, depressing and doing favors for themselves at your expense.

There ARE zeroes elsewhere in the thread, and at least one vote that was raised to a 1 after I called the rater out, but I appreciate your statement of support for intellectual diversity here.

I think that's excellent advice, particularly when that thinking is done following a review of the rules for assigning 0's and 1's on this site, and my contention that they're being grossly abused as an attempt to silence alternative points of view in the most thuggish, illiberal manner.

Entirely tongue-in-cheek:

If Americans want universal health care, we need George Bush to lead us into a disastrous war with Iran.

If Bush quietly leaves office with no more disasters, movement conservatives will remain discredited for twenty years. If he leads us into a war with Iran, they will be in the political wilderness for forty years.

Well put.

Krugman's idea that it stops there, and that the rest of the country has been majority Democratic all along, is just nutty.
So what's your point, apart from redefining dissent as mental illness like Brezhnev-era Russia?

What it really shows is selective interest.

Dear Prof. Krugman:

An invitation to advise which Presidential campaign would excite you the most?

(I'm not asking whom you endorse, rather with which campaign do you have the most emotional resonance?)

Best,
-Arun

Prof. Krugman,

Yesterday Josh Marshall posted a nice column: "Stop Saving Social Security" ending with

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
--Josh Marshall

Today TPM published a link to an article on McClatchy News -- We Have "Fiscal Cancer" -- that paints a horrific picture of our tremendous national debt, and then proceeds to lay the blame on Social Security and Medicare -- not on the misguided fiscal policies of the last 27 years, beginning with Ronald Reagan, of deficit spending, and, more recently, outsourcing much of our production to overseas plants in order to exploit cheap labor.

Why no mention of the huge waste of money, much of it "off-budget", of our war in Iraq? Why no mention of our huge military budget, for an aggressive militaristic policy that is largely self-defeating?

The point raised by Josh Marshall is a good one, and implications such as that in the McClatchy News article that the problem is Social Security and Medicare need to be rebutted. Isn't the cause of our tremendous national debt misguided fiscal policies in Washington that favor powerful, wealthy interests, at the expense of the vast majority of the American public?

Would you please run a column addressing the deceptions in the McClatchey article?

Oh, boohoo. Krugman is so popular my comments will be overshadowed!

I just want to say, Prof Krugman, that I grew up in a racial transition zone and saw white flight (and the resultant economic devastation) up close and personal. I find your analysis completely in accordance with my years of experience. (This was the south side of Chicago in the 60's and 70's).

I think the (white) Republican elites used racial polarization and fear (just as they are now using 'Islamofacism' to create 'Islamophobia'!) as a lever to push the white middle and working classes into their political camp. The necessary perquisite was of course racism on the part of white voters.

Naturally the very same leaders who used racism to win elections were hardly trustworthy guardians of the social welfare of white voters of modest means - to the contrary, they have purposefully chased the devastation of those same folks.

They don't rant. It's more like standing around in the fellowship hall before and after church telling racist jokes.

Reminds me of the first Zorg scene in The Fifth Element.

"Excuse me sir, the council is worried about the economy heating up. They wondered if it would be possible to fire 500,000..."

"Fire a million."