Obviously, it depends a lot on where you stand. Some folks think it's a wonderful, populist surge fueled by the Internet. To David Brooks, it looks like an abdication by the Democratic establishment. To me, it looks like Weimar Germany.
Toward the end of the Weimar era, the German center collapsed, and politics degenerated into a battle between Communists and Nazis. It was literally a street fight, with beatings overtaking ballot boxes.On the Internet, too, the center is relatively weak. Instead, the political Web sites that draw enthusiastic crowds include the left's MoveOn, whose name derives from the Clinton-era anti-impeachment mantra; and the right's Free Republic, once described by Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online as "knuckle-scrapers," suggesting a picture of ape-like creatures walking with one hand brushing the ground and the other holding up a political placard.
Weimar Germany? Wow, Arnold Kling is certainly in a funky mood. I am nowhere near this pessimistic. The opposite is actually the case. President Bush is being supported by people like Andrew Sullivan and Roger L. Simon---who previously never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle and reject extremism. The current crisis afflicting the Democrat Party is not indicative of the whole nation. The Howard Dean crazies represent the far left of center who determine that party’s presidential nominee. However, I don’t think that most Democrats are that weird. The centrist Bill Clinton of 1992 is more to their liking. Terry McAuliffe’s effort to front load the primaries has (perhaps inadvertently) resulted in handing over power to the left wing nutballs. This problem is likely only temporary and should be corrected before the election of 2008.
Camille Roy describes a South that I’m unfamiliar with. My guess is that this individual pays far too much attention to the New York Times. I live in Houston, Texas and the radical right does not dominate our state’s politics. God forbid, though, if even one ultraconservative says something stupid---because the liberal media will make sure that everyone in the United States will soon hear about it!
Posted by David Thomson on December 26, 2003 05:43 AM | Permalink to CommentI know it's painful to pop a bubbleworld, but I suggest you read a book by Michael Lind [himself a 5th generation Texan] called 'George W. Bush & the Southern Takeover of American Politics'.
Actually I don't suggest, I dare you to read this book.
The center is collapsing for two reasons: first, the takeover of the south by the Republicans, forming the core of an aggressively rightwing Republican party. This is a profoundly destabilizing shift, releasing political forces which have been bottled up (in the Dixiecrats) since the Civil War. The Southern Republicans aggressively spread the values of their region, which is the most exploitative, least educated, least entrepreneurial, more ogligarchical region in the country by far. The South has finally risen again.
Second, the middle class is slipping down the economic ladder. The ascendancy of the right means that the winners are winning big, increasing social alienation and discontent among everyone else.
Hold on tight, it will be a rough ride.
Posted by camille roy on December 23, 2003 03:36 PM | Permalink to Comment