I haven't encountered him before, but first, he nails the Obama campaign's (and most likely administration's) ignore-the-progressives strategy, and explains why it will likely succeed (h/t to amberglow on the It's the Reality, Stupid thread):
The Obama administration will not pay a great political price in abandoning the pretense of moving the country in a progressive direction for two primary reasons. First, for Senator Obama’s political base the symbolism of his election is the change they were seeking and not an idea or program based on a set of policies. The second reason is the political weakness of what passes for the left in the United States.
Then he goes on to lay out the first analysis to tag the real dangers of Sarah Palin I've read (hint: it's not her shoes):
... When conservatism makes its comeback, it is likely to look and sound a lot like Sarah Palin.
Within the hierarchies of the old right, Sarah Palin's style of pseudo working class conservatism was reserved for the proverbial back of the bus. Her type was not to speak, but to be spoken to; they were assigned to work as the foot soldiers in campaigns and be ignored until the next election.
But as social divisions widen and opportunity declines, there will be an ever-decreasing market for the type of homely business conservatism dished along with breakfast at the local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club. The style of conservatism that Sarah Palin represents will be the only one that has a majoritarian future in today's America. The populist conservatism will be openly hateful, paranoid, anti-intellectual, belligerently militaristic and most significantly ideologically inconsistent and opportunistic.
....
Sarah Palin was never chosen for her strengths, but in fact for her weaknesses. For electoral purposes these were her strengths. She was chosen to be savaged because in order to savage her you would need to savage the realities, the life styles and thinking of the largest segment (though not a majority) of American electorate. Her ignorance of the world, her religious practices, her out of wedlock pregnant daughter represented far more true pictures of the realities of American life than the cosmopolitanism of Barack Obama.
...What they were trying to say to American voters was the following: Barack Obama might be the mask you want to put on in this hour of need, but you know in your heart of hearts it is Sarah Palin that is the more truthful nature of your profile.
Her selection was an attempt to make the election about the culture wars, and it nearly worked. Absent the timely melt down in Wall Street it would have likely led to a John McCain victory.
For any one who doubts the transformative nature of what Palinism signifies for the conservative movement, one needs to look no further than the negative reaction of so many prominent conservatives to the Palin nomination. From Peggy Noonan to Andrew Sullivan to many of the propagandist scribes of the National Review, her appointment was savaged as symbolizing the death of a certain kind of conservatism, which in fact was very much true.
If the Democrats can't get the economy turned around, all the smug Village mockery of Palin's education, clothes, and family in the world isn't going to save them.
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another great one --
Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus -- http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/08/mo...
"... what "Moving to the Center," means is: moving towards power and money.
"Moving to the Center" is not a move to where the center of public opinion is, but it is a move to the center of where elite consensus is. Once the boundaries of that elite consensus are understood, then we can comprehend the limits of our public choices and more importantly what will be allowed within the confines of our electoral system.
It is important to understand that elite consensus itself is not static and can shift in moderate degrees, but it has definitive boundaries of which you can not cross and still be a viable player within the electoral system. These boundaries exist to the left and right within that consensus, but the institutional bias of the system is much harsher towards any moves to the left. This is because in its essence elite opinion is anti-populist and primarily concerned with protecting the fundamentals of the established economic order.
..."
Thanks for that, Valhalla.
Really, I couldn 't agree more with Bageant's take, especially the take on the Palin nomination, and more particularly the part about the reaction to her by the Peggy Noonan's of the right, the whole "how dare she be promoted without our (The Village's) approval" critique of her. It was obvious from the get-go that the cover for this seething disdain was the "she wasn't vetted" argument. Not only was she a women, she was a woman not native to their village. Really, there'd be no need for the post-election rumor and innuendo dump if the conservative elites weren't worried, and the worrying doesn't have anything to do with Obama, anymore.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
Anyone who thinks Palin wasn't a net positive for...
McCain's campaign is FITH. Before her nomination, you had to hold a mirror up to the McCandidacy to see if it was still alive.
Before the financial meltdown, they drew even in a can't win year.
Somehow acknowledging facts such of this is too painful or complicated for our media and blogosphere elites. They can't get through a day without manufactured narratives, can they?
Three minute hate....
Its nice to see that we are keeping up with the progressives tradition of the three minute hate -- this time by demonizing cultural conservatives.
Sarah Palin represented nothing -- just as Barack Obama represented nothing. Just as Obama was embraced by African Americans solely because of the color of his skin -- and without regard to his record or proposals, so to was Palin embraced by religious conservatives because she was "one of them". The big difference is that the Village declared that Obama was "one of us" and thus to be praised and promoted, while Palin was the antithesis of the Village, and had to be demonized as a result.
Barack Obama was no more ready to be President the week after he announced his candidacy than Palin was the week after she was chosen as McCain's VP pick. But while the media praised Obama to high heaven, and completely ignored his past and his lack of substantive knowledged of the issues, the same media set out to destroy Palin.
In essence, Obama was the recipient of the Village's "Affirmative Action" policies (an inherently racist policy that doesn't promote the most talented African Americans, but the most "presentable" ones), and Palin the victim of the misogyny and sexism that exists in the village.
Trying to demonize Palin and the cultural conservatives who embraced her candidacy is the equivalent of demonizing Jesse Jackson's black support in 1988....
Not Bageant
FYI,
The author of those posts is not Joe Bageant, but an anonymous political consultant who goes by the screen name "John Brown" and who is a friend of Bageant's.
Anglachel
What Sarah Palin represented...
...was exactly what John Brown pointed out: the soccer mom who's "just like us", who doesn't care much about history or geography, who (it was hoped) would be the repository of hope and hatred: hope for a continuation of the status quo, hatred of east cost liberal elites (and black wannabes) and all their fancy-schmanzty ideas. Brown is right about that. In another time, in another place, it might just have worked.
And as far as Joe Bageant goes, he's a treat to read, and this stuff is his bread and butter. He looks at the culture wars in a unique way, as someone who has lived on both sides of the redneck divide, not merely as a do-gooder liberal (if you'll excuse the terminology).
Check this out, fellow Correntians, if you want a rather random sample of Bageant, from a post entitled "In the Reign of the one-nutted King" :
"America has a long record of stifling dissent exactly when dissent is most needed. Democracy American style means we get free speech for trivial matters but not for life-and-death issues. When an election is stolen, the very party from whom it was stolen refuses to protest the theft because well, "Nobody likes sour grapes, do they? thereby assuring future electoral thefts. When America supplies Israel with cluster bombs to kill Palestinian children and grandmothers, you don't see rallies against Israel or American arms cartels. You see yet another exercise of free speech on behalf those things the politicians and corporations could care less about, and thus grant us permission to "dissent" upon. Issues such as gender and identity, or just about anything related to sexual freedom: "Go ahead, parade and rant about your own penises and vulvas. Just don't challenge the banks, the war machine or the fraudulent democratic process by which we manage the people. Remember, fucking with these things is called terrorism. So stick to your own narrow "issues" like sexual freedom and nobody will get hurt. Got it punk?"
It's like Pynchon said, in his "Proverbs for Paranoids":
3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
downstreamer
downstreamer
Jonathan Rabin on Sarah Palin
There's also this brilliant piece on Sarah Palin, by Jonathan Raban, in the LRB. If you want the definitive version of just how Sarah Palin managed to go so far on so little, read it:
"She belongs to no elite. After drifting through five colleges in six years, she eventually secured a degree in journalism at the University of Idaho, less ivy than sagebrush league. Short of majoring in chiropractic, she could hardly have had a higher education less offensive to the Limbaughites. As Obama stands tarred in their eyes by his Columbia and Harvard connections, so Palin represents the healthy values of the church and the outdoors against those of the deeply suspect East Coast universities."
downstreamer
downstreamer
Ouch.
The second reason is the political weakness of what passes for the left in the United States.
How sad it is that the Left can't get more people onboard, people who actually want/need some of the very same things continually being proposed.
The weakness is primarily poor salesmanship and rhetoric.
What to do?
Is it really weakness of being corporately owned?
I honestly don't believe for a second Democratic politicians, leaders have largely fucked up because of stupidity or cowardice. They fucked up because that's what they were hired to do. They're bought goods. They do what they're told by their corporate owners. Edwards was right about one thing: the problem with Washington is the corporate stranglehold on our democracy.
I don't know
if I really mean politicians as much as the whole movement, the whole philosophy , but I certainly don't have much faith in democratic pols right now.
And yes, corporate influence is strangling us.
Obama is our Palin: a cultural icon void of hard substance
Obama is almost the perfect icon for how the so-called "left" sees itself (Yes, a deep sense of misogyny is part of that). I never thought about comparing Palin to Obama before, but I always knew with Obama he's a cultural rather than political figure. FDR was both.
With regards to being void of substance: Both relied on biography rather than policies to make their mark, but unlike Obama, Palin actually has core principles that she would fight for. For the life of me, I don't know what Obama believes in (exception: Faith-based measures?).
Thanks for the correction, anglachel
I missed the true author in my excitement over the discovery of the analysis.