I finally got a chance to read the great book What's the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank. It is an interesting analysis, especially so since it was written before the 2004 election, and so accurately called it. While everyone, myself included, were stunned by "values" voters who turned out in huge numberes for Bush, this was predicted exactly by Frank.
He describes the "backlash" movement, a movement against all-powerful liberals on the East Coast and in Hollywood. The backlash's belives that liberals are the cause of moral decay, instead of capitalism - that is, market forces. In Kansas, the backlash is a product of the poorest counties, who churn out incredibly hard-working activists to elect Christian Republicans. The Republicans then go ahead and help out the richest in Kansas, and of course nothing is ever done about values. Nothing can be done about them, abortion is not about to go away, and neither is "moral decay". And that's the beautiful thing, as far as the Republican effort is concerned. Since nothing will be done about it, the candidates always have an indefeatable, amorphous enemy to stir up anger against, and the anger is what keeps getting them elected.
In Kansas, the battle is lost between Democrats and Republicans, there are pretty much only Republicans. There are only moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans, differentiated by their stances on abortion and other social issues.
One thing Frank only briefly touches on is anti-semitism, which seems to me an obvious force in all this. I mean, in the campaign trail you saw clip after clip of Bush going to small towns in "the Heartland", and saying that the people there "are the real Americans", not those people in Hollywood and the East Coast. Combining that with the backlash's hatred of "liberals", "East-Coast elites", Hollywood, and "intellectuals", I'm wondering if all how all things that Bush and the backlash decry are things associated with us Jews. Or perhaps it is just coincidence?
At any rate, it is interesting to see this take on things. The diagnosis seems obviously right, since it has proven predictive power. Looking at things in this way, would the best candidate for the Democrats last election have been Gephardt? The solution, for Democrats to talk much more about class differences, and to be less business-oriented, however, may not be correct. Did the Democrats become more pro-business because of the money, as Frank implies, or because the new-Deal approach is discredited? It is an interesting discussion, and one that should seriously happen.
Posted by ahyatt at December 7, 2004 08:27 AM