The End of the Road for the Repugnant coalition?

[kennetha]

I am really happy today, not just because Obama won, but also because I really think it's the end of the road for the Republican coalition as a national governing force in American politics.

What does their coalition consists in? At the top, it consists of a slice of laissez-faire capitalists (with a dollop of social libertarians thrown in), who are content to let globalization grind down the middle and working classes, while they live high. In the middle, a collection of racists and xenophobes who despise the other and want their ethnically less diverse country back. And at the bottom a bunch of southern and rural white fundamentalists who missed the enlightenment, reject secular rationality, and want to use the state to impose their religious views on the population at large. It was all along a strange and incoherent coalition, held together mainly by the power of Republican elites to manipulate and stoke the base, without really giving them what they want. The basic trick was to make the racists, xenophobes, and fundamentalists believe that by somehow tearing down the welfare state, they would basically be attacking only the interests of the underserving "other" -- the blacks, the hispanics, the white slackers, etc -- plus combatting the "white guilt" of the educated liberal elite who were determined to be soft on these undeserving folk.

Of course, it was all along a con game. Because thanks to globalization, the racists and xenophobes and white fundamentalists were and are mostly in the same economic boat with the despised others. Old hatreds die hard, of course. And I do not think that the hatreds that fuel the Republican coalition will soon fade. Witness the intensity with which the Repugnants attacked Obama as the very embodiment of alien otherness -- a muslim, communist, atheist, black guy. But demography is destiny. It turns out that there just aren't enough of them any more to win national elections. They've been beaten pretty handily twice in a row, by essentially the same coalition. And our coalition is just going to get stronger, while theirs gets weaker and weaker.

It's still a long slog. Gerrymandered districts, for example, saved their asses in this year's House elections. But the day will eventually come when even that will not protect them.

What a good day to be a Democrat, no?

[Skittles]

1. they seriously need to rethink their "suppress the vote" tactics

when they push that shit it's a flat-out admission their ideas, their policies SUCK

[kennetha]

2. Well I think they are so convinced

of the rightness of their policies, that they adopt a win at all cost approach. They don't think they can directly sell the tough medicine they think is required to the people at large. That's why their campaigns are so dishonest and manipulative.

Voter suppression is just another tool in the bag of tricks.