CJR Daily: Interview with Laurie Garrett, late of Newsday:
I have no idea, other that what appears in this article, who Laurie Garrett is, but she said some interesting things in the linked interview.
"A colleague of mine that used to be at Newsday and is now at Time magazine described this by saying that she had grown up in a working-class Irish-American family in Brooklyn. All of her brothers and sisters were either cops or firefighters or nurses. And she was the one that they all thought was an oddball because she was a writer. She said there came a day in the newsroom when a little light bulb went off in her head and she suddenly understood why fundamentally she was always disagreeing with other reporters and editors and had a different instinct about where to go with a specific story. And it was because one of them said in the newsroom, 'How could anybody be a working stiff and a Republican?' And she realized that she had certainly grown up around working-stiff Republicans and here was a newsroom full of people who absolutely couldn't comprehend how any one individual could put those two ways of thinking together. Which meant that, of course, they couldn't understand who elected George Bush."
I don't understand it, either. At least not entirely. I have a sister, who won't admit she votes Republican, and a neice, who will admit it. And, basically, the reason is that they are repulsed by the people they see at the Supermarket, using food stamps. My sister's attitude is that she and her family have worked hard, and been responsible, and those "other people" have not. What bugged my sister about liberal democratic programs, at least liberal democratic programs post-LBJ, is that those programs were never there to help her and her family.
I know a lot of urban, liberal democrats regard this whole attitude as racist, and they are not entirely wrong. Racism figures in here, but not in a single, simple way. The poor people my sister sees at the Supermarket are just as white as she is, and most of the few people of mixed race she knows are middle-class relatives of people she grew up with (i.e., within the scope of her mental map of people like herself, as opposed to the poor people at the Supermarket, she looks down on). And, no that's not class-ism, either. (Is class-ism a word?) In rural and small-town Michigan, there is severe and persistent economic stratification, but still little in the way of social class. The whole "affirmative action" debate was enormously damaging to the reputation of the Democratic Party, with people like my sister, though, because it reinforced the idea that the Democrats were not interested in people like her.
Laurie Garrett, quoted above, concluded her musing, with this: "They couldn't understand how the Republican Party fundamentally transformed itself. And it was part-and-parcel of not having grown up among people who were hard-working stiffs but might have ideas and ways of looking at the world that you disagreed with." In other words, her liberal, upper middle-class, suburban colleagues could not understand the transformation of the Republican Party, because they could not understand the Republican working stiff. If this were 1992, I would agree with Laurie. The Republican Party's successes of the 1990's were built on the alienation of the working class from the liberalism of the Democratic Party. But, hey, Laurie, it is 2005, and the Republican Party is treating the broad American middle-class as old growth forest, ripe for clear-cutting to benefit giant corporations and the very, very wealthy.
To put it more bluntly, the liberalism of the Democratic Party is based on the empathy and altruism of white, well-educated, mostly prosperous folks. These people are concerned, in a certain way, with political ideals and with the environment and with the social climate. They want government to be fair and to help poor people, etc. And, guess what? The less prosperous also want government to be fair and to help the common people; the only difference is that they don't want government help to exclude themselves or be focused on "other" people, particularly "other" people, who are not struggling to work hard and take care of themselves.
For people, who are struggling, there's a wedge available in their political psychology; its called resentment. They resent others, whose economic circumstances are quite different from their own. Potentially, I suppose, they resent the very rich. But, in modern American politics, they also resent those, who, apparently, are not trying. For liberals, the "poor" are oppressed and suffering. But, for many Americans the "poor" are undisciplined, very fat people, who live in unkempt neighborhoods, and have a lot of the same junk appliances and cheap cotton clothing, which they, themselves do, but don't mow their lawns and and don't raise their kids right. The self-disciplined, hard-working, aspiring mass of middle America really, really resents it, when you threaten their sense of achievement, efficacy and self-reliance.
Democrats in the 1970's and 1980's were mostly tone-deaf. Bill Clinton got it, but many Democrats did not. That's why you heard Bill talk about making sure average people, who "worked hard and played by the rules," should be protected and rewarded. Unfortunately, Bill O'Reilly also got it, but put his insight to less admirable use.
But, here's the rub: now it is 2005. And, the Republicans really are attacking the achievements, efficacy and self-reliance of the middle class. Not their "sense of" of same, but the actual goods. And, I am wondering when, if ever, they are going to wake up.
It is, by no means, assured that the American middle class will wake up. A large part of the white South has been voting its stupid-ass resentments for 150 years, and is now the solid base of the Republican Party, apparently ignorant of or indifferent to, the extent that they are being used and abused by BushCo.
