We’ve heard a lot in recent days from assorted manosphere dudes about how the “slut vote” – and the endless hunger of our nation’s “sluts” for free contraception – helped to bring about a humiliating end to Romney’s presidential hopes. The sluts went for Obama, we heard, because he promised them (and women in general) what they supposedly want most: “free stuff without ever having to work.”
Minus the word “slut,” this was the basic argument we’ve heard over the past week from a lot of right-wingers as well, including such big names as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, who’ve been loudly complaining that Obama won over women – and minorities – by promising to give them “stuff.”
Well, today, a new voice joined this chorus: Mitt Romney himself. In a conference call today with some of his big donors – no doubt a fairly dispirited bunch – Romney offered this explanation for his defeat:
The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people. … In each case they were very generous in what they gave to those groups.
Never mind, as the Los Angeles Times points out, that Romney lost in some key states that have a minimal minority population, or that Romney’s promised tax cuts could be considered gigantic gifts to the rich.
While Romney talked less about gender than he did about race and enthnicity, he did single out one group that he said Obama had been especially generous to: young women. And you all know the easiest way to bribe a young female voter. As Romney put it:
Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women.
Apparently the government has been shipping out birth control pills along with those Obama Phones.
Autospelling phail… it’s supposed to say @drst
Did someone mention George Clooney?
Sorry if someone already posted — I’m doing lots of hit-and-run reading these days.
That’s how Dems get votes, by giving stuff away.
Before I go further, I’d like to state that I grew up in a small town (approx. 3,000 people) in central New York, and now live in New York City, so I’ve seen the rural/urban divide from both sides. Having given my bona fides, I’d like to say that this bothers me on three levels:
1) Having seen firsthand the sheer contempt that conservative rural whites have for the soft, weak, unmanly, bleeding-heart liberal pansies of the cities, I have a very hard time sympathizing with their hurt feelings. Doesn’t excuse classist language from liberals…I guess (“I can feel your hate flow through you, young Seraph. Give in!”)…but let’s not pretend that this is one-sided or even equal.
Having said all that, I’m all for taking voters away from Republicans, so if I thought it was workable, I would reluctantly agree. But that leads us to the next problem:
2) Can you see Obama shooting a squirrel? Kerry? Gore? Dukakis? Hillary Clinton? Bill Clinton was and is great at this stuff, but for every one of him, there’s a dozen city-slicking geeks who’d just look foolish and fake. Tribal markers are specifically designed to exclude outsiders. But even if we got another Bill Clinton, who was up to the task, that would still leave us with the biggest problem:
3) The GOP has been flattering conservative rural whites, especially Southern ones, since Nixon. Whether the appeal is racial, religious, or cultural, these people have been told – and are now convinced – that they are the only Real Americans. That shock and horror that we’ve seen since Election day is conservative rural white Christians realizing that they’re no longer the kingmaking demographic. Winning them from the GOP would mean more than just trying to meet them where they are, it would mean reassuring them that they’re still the only Real Americans. Democrats can’t – and shouldn’t – do that nearly as convincingly as Republicans. In one party, conservative rural white Christians are the center of attention, in the other they’d have to play nice with others. Which would you pick?
But, as Republicans have learned, it doesn’t work. Acting that way just defines a big part of the populace that shouldn’t bother to listen to what you have to say because you’ve already written them off.
@Falconer – hey, that image (Obama holding out Clooney) works for me! 🙂
@Cloudiah – it prolly doesn’t hurt that Springsteen’s an Obama man too.
Nice trio, come to think of it … Obama, Clooney, Springsteen … happy sigh.
And on the other side, the Romneyrichbot. Gag!
Thurston Howell III would have made a FAR better candidate than Romney. Come to that he’d have made a far better President than Romney, even without being a real person.
Only among the more extreme Libertarian sections of the party. Most accept those things as functions of government out of sheer habit. Which is part of the reason that the Republicans fought the ACA so hard – they wanted to prevent the idea that the government had any business in health care from gaining any foothold.
I think the difference – horrible as it sounds – is that fire and crime are things that conservatives can easily see happening to themselves (indeed, a large part of conservative psychology is paranoia that if they will be victimized if they ever drop their guard against “them”). Besides, fire and crime are things that spread if not controlled.
In contrast, health problems only happen to people who make bad choices about their health, and lack of insurance only happens to people who make bad choices about their careers. And if people die because of those bad choices…well, preserving Our Freedom is more important.
Yes. Yes, it does.
American conservative Christianity is its own creature. Combine authoritarianism, patriarchy, Prosperity Gospel, Just World Fallacy, and way too much involvement in politics, mix into a toxic stew and serve.
My apologies, Mistress Cloudiah, I thought someone here had brought up Clooney before, but I must have seen the accusation that Wimminz vote with their VaJayJays and their VaJayJays told ’em to vote for the guy that Unf-licious Clooney dreamboat
(Mrs. Falconer Clooney)was standing next to somewhere else. If you follow me.Oh and but also, I’m sorry, Ed Brayton, but the city of Wichita, Kansas, clearly voted 60-40 to reject the flouridation of their water. Scaremongering about fluoridation’s just silly. (“You ever see a Mangina drink water? No, sparkling raspberry wine coolers, that’s what they drink.”)
Oh I agree that this goes both ways. It’s just that Republicans don’t want to be an inclusive party. They are upfront about only caring about rich white people but can sometimes pretend to be folksy. The Democrats really do have policies that can benefit all working class people, but don’t always get that message across.
And when some of the rhetoric coming from a few classist liberals is alienating to even other liberals, then I think it is a problem. And it’s not just directed at the rural south, like when they call Joplin, a large midwestern city, FEMA trash, or accuse all people in the red states of being inbred yokels. I don’t think it’s pandering to say that stuff like that is rude and counterproductive.
Definitely the second option, that they should play nice with others and understand not being the center of attention. It doesn’t hurt to sell the message, though, that progressive, socialist policies help everyone in the working class, and that the divide and conquer Southern strategy is being used to dupe them into voting against their own self interests.
@ cloudiah
The moment someone says the word “God” during a political speech I just can’t take them seriously any more. Separation of church and state, assholes – your own founding fathers insisted on it.
This is one of the things that makes it hard to run for office as a Democrat-how do you explain something that is so basic in a way that never gives the impression you think their voting for something like this is stupid.
So, I agree with both sides of this argument – there are a lot of liberals who are snotty about rural people, and there are a lot of rural people who talk about liberals like we’re the Anti-Christ split into a million different bodies. The obvious solution to me isn’t for very urban people to pretend to be more rural in culture, because that’s not going to work and they’re going to look like condescending dumbasses if they try. The solution is a. for liberals to drop the snotty language and b. for them to realize that the enemy isn’t poor white rural people, or everyone in the interior and the south of the country – it’s the not at all poor or rural, ultra-privileged people who actually run the Republican party. Less sniping at the dietary preferences of rural people and/or their ancestry, more pointing out that Bain is pure concentrated capitalist evil, and that many Republican policies are specifically designed to take from the poor and give to the rich.
How do you boil this down to a quick memorable soundbite? That despite what the Republicans say, the other they are constantly harping on is actually not other and is someone just like you-a family member who wants the best for their families?
@princessbonbon: About twelve years ago I saw a pickup truck whose owner had plastered the tailgate and rear bumper with all these anti-UN stickers, and a couple identifying him as a member of the John Birch Society. Silly me, I thought they’d died out with the Johnson administration. But no, Agenda 21! Agenda 21! Squiggly light bulbs! Obama is going to let the UN tax us! O NOEZ!!
It does work. It worked for them for thirty years, and it’s going to work for us now that they’ve alienated everyone except that one shrinking demographic. That’s beside the point, as is my personal resentment. What about points 2 and 3, where I lay out why it won’t work?
I… don’t even understand what that PVP is trying to say? I thought “white knighting” referred to men inserting themselves into conflicts to stand up for women, so isn’t the Spiderman/The Tick-looking guy who beats up the mugger the “white knight” in this scenario? Whereas the guy depicted as the white knight would be more like one of those guys who call others white knights. I don’t get it.
But the thing is though Falconer, that guy who has a hateon for the UN still needs to have a good job that lets him put food on the table for his children, quality schools for those kids, access to health care and the chance for retirement. And by telling him “good lord that is a dumb thing to think about Agenda 21. Are you stupid?” it makes it really hard for you to get the policies in place that do help him because he will not vote for anyone you support.
Starting to get angry with the false equivalence and those perpetuating it here. We have a few obnoxious loudmouths. They have country stars with millions of fans whose hit songs are all about how much better countryfolk are. And let’s not forget that their votes have the deliberate purpose of harming others – and they don’t care if they hurt themselves as long as they’re punishing the Welfare Queens.
Remember, I know these people.
But they’re the only real Americans? Why should things be taken away from them to give to the Illegals and the Welfare Queens?
@princessbonbon – If he had Bircher stickers, he’s beyond reach. You work around him, accept that he’s going to be fighting you every step of the way, and try to get him that good job, quality school, health care and retirement anyway, in the hopes that others will notice.
@Leeloo Dallas Multipass: The Spider-Man/Batman guy is LOLBat. I got no idea why White Knight is butting in, except that the “joke” is that White Knight is completely misinterpreting the situation (hence the “Her eyes are up here!” punchline when LOLBat is clearly not looking at the woman). That was yesterday’s strip. Today’s strip is basically, they’re in a bar in their costumes (why?) and WK butts into a conversation between a man and a woman and yells at the man for pressuring the woman (we’re not given any of their conversation) and the punchline is, WK is anxious around women. I don’t know either.
@princessbonbon: I’m sorry, I’ve read my comment about the Bircher truck and I can’t tell where I thought I was going with it, or how it follows on from your response to me. My mind craps out like that sometimes.
Some of these people, we’re never going to reach because they’ve made up their minds about us. I agree that we should probably make an effort rather than write everyone off altogether.
I think the problem comes down to this: We on the left value reason, and appreciate it when our leaders explain things to us. This is not to say we never give in to emotion, or that our leaders never use emotional appeals on us, that happens all the time. But when we see someone freaking out about Agenda 21, what’s our first response? I think that most of the time, if we decide to engage, we attempt to explain how they’ve gotten Agenda 21 wrong. And that takes too long, because by the time we’re well into that, their leaders have Gish Galloped through a dozen other bogeymen.
That’s where they have their advantage. It’s not that they don’t value reason or are incapable of reasoning, it’s that their leaders do practically nothing but attempt to scare them shitless (shut up spellcheck, it is too a word, and so’s spellcheck, go and oil your processor) and promise that the only protection from the Commie under their beds is to vote for the plutocrats. Callista Gingrich recorded a robo call that went out in some areas a couple days before the election, in which she was shilling for money for the Blow Job Afficianado by claiming that Librulz were going to chase Gawd out of peoples’ homes like they’d done at school, at work, and at church. These lies come at such a pace and in such a volume that it’s a life’s work to refute them all.
There’s also the truism that you can’t reason someone out of a position that they haven’t reasoned themselves into.
I think, if we want to reach out to this demographic (and hell, the Bush rump was 27% of the country, give or take, so it’s a big demo) we’ll have to work on our appeals to emotion, as well, even if it chokes us. The thing is, the emotion we’d have to appeal to is empathy, and I’m not sure it’s as strong as fear.
And when our country stars criticize their President, why, it’s time for a good old-fashioned CD-squashing and album-burning, just like when they burned their Beatles albums.
Okay…fair enough…haven’t heard nearly as many of these snotty liberals as I have Anti-Christ rurals, but anecdote is not data…
Exactly.
Fair enough. I actually do avoid it myself, because a) it’s wrong and b) other liberals catch the shrapnel. I still reserve the right to mock any state that boasts of its flag-waving, chest-beating patriotism during Republican administrations, then tries to secede during Democratic administrations.
*Looks back at “the Anti-Christ split into a million different bodies”. Waits for that to be addressed.*
As far as how to counter the “these people are ungodly!” stuff, I have no fucking idea, since I always hit a brick wall when I encounter the idea that people think that religion should be involved in conversations about politics.
I agree with this completely.
When people say things like that, they need to be called out on racism and classism. The problem comes from assuming that everyone in rural parts of red states think like that. People can enjoy hunting and country music without being like that.
I think the appeal to fear would work, too. Just remind people how things are with total laissez faire policies, during a depression, with someone like Herbert Hoover in charge. That’s scary.
Especially not now that the Right Wing Noise Machine has turned “empathy” into a cuss word almost as nasty as “liberal”.