700 US Election: Culture War fails Democrats

US Election: Culture War fails Democrats

Newsletter published on 7 November 2014

(1) US Election: Culture War fails Democrats
(2) The abandoned poor and Working Class turn to Radical Christian right

(1) US Election: Culture War fails Democrats

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-democrats-are-running-on-empty/16156

The Democrats are running on empty

Sean Collins
US Correspondent

The US midterms exposed the Obama administration's utter exhaustion.

7 November 2014

The Republican Party won a sweeping victory in Tuesday's midterm
elections in the US. Most notably, the Republicans wrested control of
the Senate from the Democrats, giving them majorities in both Houses of
Congress.

In the colour scheme of American politics, the Republicans are red and
the Democrats are blue, and after the midterms the political map looks
like a sea of red. The Republicans extended their majority in the House
of Representatives, and now have their highest number of seats since
1929. At the level of state government, the Republicans have 31 of 50
governors and control 69 of 99 state legislatures.

For sure, the Republican Party did have the wind at its back going into
the midterms. Historically, voters have used the midterms to express
displeasure with the president's party. Turnout is highest among older
voters during midterm elections, and the Republicans do better with
older voters. And many of the states up for the Senate were ones that
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won in 2012.

But few expected these favorable conditions to translate into such a
landslide. The typical midterm sees the opposition pick up three Senate
seats; this year the Republicans are likely to gain nine. The
Republicans expanded the map to win in traditionally blue states
(governors in Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland) and purple states
(senators in Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina). Clearly, these results
expressed something more than a traditional turn to the opposition party.

For a start, the latest polls represented a negative verdict on
President Obama and his administration. Republicans 'nationalised' the
election, and pounded a consistent message: a vote for us is a vote
against Obama. At the same time, Democratic candidates distanced
themselves from Obama, telling the White House to stay away (the
Democratic candidate for the Senate in Kentucky wouldn't even admit she
voted for Obama in 2012). The Republicans ran more advertisements
against Obama's signature health reform - Obamacare - than on any other
issue, while Democrats barely defended it. Must-reads from the past week

With an approval rating at a low 42 per cent, Obama's standing in the
eyes of the public has fallen mightily since his promise of 'hope and
change' at the 2008 presidential election. The political scientist David
Leege captured Obama's change in fortunes well: 'The immediate aftermath
of 2008 was that Americans had finally conquered their racial aversions.
The election of Obama was a victory both for renewed national hope and
long-awaited democracy. Obama was big, a star, a voice to be reckoned
with, a mind to be taken seriously. By 2014 Obama was small, a punching
bag, easily bullied, the one to whom small politicians could talk tough,
abusively, the one whose ideas were ignored, the one whom his fellow
partisans would avoid at all cost. How could this happen in six short
years?'

The midterms revealed Obama and the Democrats looking exhausted. Not
only did their ground campaign look unenergetic, and their whiz-bang
data-mining operation seem non-existent, their ideas also appeared to be
past their sell-by date.

The economy has improved, but voters are unimpressed: exit polls found
nearly 70 per cent have negative feelings about the economy.
Unemployment has fallen, but in large part because many workers are no
longer searching for jobs. GDP is growing, but slowly (two per cent a
year). Democrats lack a sense of urgency to address economic growth,
perhaps because they believe slow growth is more 'sustainable'. Their
main economic policies - an increase in the minimum wage, green energy
and infrastructure spending - are old and uninspiring.

Over the past year, the Obama administration's lack of forward momentum
has led to a series of mini-scandals and screw-ups that have raised
questions about its competence. The wheels started to fall off the bus
with the disastrous roll-out of Obamacare in autumn 2013. From then on,
it seemed there was a new flare-up every week: domestic-surveillance
revelations; scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs;
unaccompanied children crossing the border with Mexico; intruders
entering the White House; panic over ebola. And from Syria and Ukraine
to ISIS and Iraq, the world appeared more out of control, with the White
House flailing in response.

While the midterms have brought the Democrats' exhaustion into greater
relief, there were already signs of it in Obama's re-election run in
2012. Having no ambitious and unifying program to present, the Obama
campaign sought to build a multicultural coalition of certain groups
(blacks, Latinos, single women), and appeal to them by promoting
socially liberal issues (what's known as the Culture Wars). In the
event, they were able to eke out a victory with 51 per cent of the vote.

Fast forward to the 2014 midterms, and once again the Democrats sought
to utilise the Culture Wars for electoral advantage, but this time it
didn't work. Democrat candidates once again charged the Republicans with
waging a 'war on women', but it didn't stick. In Texas, abortion-choice
campaigner and media darling Wendy Davis lost her bid for governor by a
big margin. In Colorado, Democrat Senator Mark Udall talked about
contraception and nothing else in the hope of putting his Republican
challenger on the defensive. This backfired: the Denver Post accused him
of running 'an obnoxious one-issue campaign' and he lost, too.

Democrats called for easing immigration restrictions, but Republicans
increased their share of the Hispanic vote. The party's supporters tried
to use the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, to motivate black turnout,
but it never caught on. Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, an
environmentalist and former hedge-fund manager, spent $74million in
donations to the Democrats in an effort to get politicians who share his
views on climate change into office, but to little effect.

There were a number of factors that led to the Culture Wars losing their
magic. For one, Democrats like Udall overplayed their hand; many now see
through attempts to deploy Culture War issues for narrow political
purposes. Furthermore, in promoting right-on social causes, liberals
claim to be supporting disadvantaged groups, but they can simultaneously
appear to be looking down on those in 'middle America' who don't share
their values. When Bruce Braley, the Democratic candidate for the Senate
from Iowa, was caught disparaging farmers in a closed-door meeting with
lawyers, it was seen by many as revealing an elitist outlook among
liberals (similar to the reaction when Obama spoke dismissively of
people who 'cling to guns or religion' on the 2008 campaign trail).

But probably the most important reason why the Culture Wars approach
didn't work in this election is because Republican candidates largely
avoided getting sucked in - even if it meant conceding the issue at
hand. In Colorado, the Republican challenger Cory Gardner trumped Udall
by calling for legalising the sale of over-the-counter oral
contraceptives. He also downplayed his previous stances on abortion and
immigration. In Wisconsin, Republican governor Scott Walker came out in
favour of women's equal-pay legislation. The Republicans' image was also
helped by prominent women candidates, including Joni Ernst, the new
Senator from Iowa, and Mia Love, the party's first black female
representative, who was elected to Congress in Utah.

As one commentator noted: 'On social issues, Republicans are mumbling,
cringing, and ducking. They don't want the election to be about these
issues, even in red states.' This approach did not seem to turn off
conservatives, who still came to the polls to vote Republican.

The midterm election results are an indication of dissatisfaction with
Obama and the Democrats. But on the flip side, the vote does not signal
a ringing endorsement of the Republicans. Making the election a
referendum on Obama meant that the Republicans got something of a free
pass. Their inability to offer a coherent set of policies means that we
can't really talk about a Republican mandate for change. By all means,
it would be great if the Keystone XL oil pipeline was finally built, as
the Republicans promise to do, but that one proposal does not constitute
an economic-growth agenda.

Washington politics is widely referred to as dysfunctional, best
symbolised by the shutdown of the government for a period in 2013.
Approval ratings for congress are at an abysmally low 14 per cent (even
more unpopular than Obama). It is hard to see how the outcome of the
midterm elections will change this situation. If anything, there is a
risk that each party will continue to labour under certain delusions:
giddy Republicans may believe that they are suddenly popular, while the
Democrats may sit tight in the hope that Hillary will excite the
electorate in 2016. Both parties seem so consumed by the electoral
process, by who 'wins' or 'loses', that they forget that what really
matters is what is accomplished in office. It remains to be seen whether
the American political class can fully appreciate the depth of its
legitimacy crisis and do something about it.

Sean Collins is a writer based in New York. Visit his blog, The American
Situation.

(2) The abandoned poor and Working Class turn to Radical Christian right

    Gary G. Kohls<gkohls@cpinternet.com> 8 November 2014 03:33

The Radical Christian right and the War on Government

By Chris Hedges

Posted on Oct 6, 2013

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_radical_christian_right_and_the_war_on_government_20131006/

There is a desire felt by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a
diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, to destroy
the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment, radically
diminish the role of government to create a theocratic state based on
“biblical law,” and force a recalcitrant world to bend to the will of an
imperial and “Christian” America. Its public face is on display in the
House of Representatives. This ideology, which is the driving force
behind the shutdown of the government, calls for the eradication of
social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual
orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness,
contaminating the American family and the country.

Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims,
liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented
workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal
Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar
interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The
“deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant”
schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed
or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled.
“Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be
propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be
handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced
with relentless indoctrination.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing
Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International
ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom
orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology
known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls
on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the
goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government
to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the
protection of property rights.

It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of
American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of
corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the
ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the
contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small
government and a large military, as if the military is not part of
government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and
fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.

The cult of masculinity, as in all fascist movements, pervades the
ideology of the Christian right. The movement uses religion to sanctify
military and heroic “virtues,” glorify blind obedience and order over
reason and conscience, and pander to the euphoria of collective
emotions. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered
the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the
Christian right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the
Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and ultimately slaying nonbelievers.

This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is
appealing to the powerless. It stokes the anger of many Americans,
mostly white and economically disadvantaged, and encourages them to lash
back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia
about the outside world is fostered by bizarre conspiracy theories, many
of which are prominent in the rhetoric of those leading the government
shutdown. Believers, especially now, are called to a perpetual state of
war with the “secular humanist” state. The march, they believe, is
irreversible. Global war, even nuclear war, is the joyful harbinger of
the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent
Messiah who dooms billions of apostates to death.

Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the
forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They
feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their
destruction. They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone
know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center
of the ideology. It leaves them sputtering inanities about Barack Obama,
his corporate-sponsored health care reform bill, his alleged mandated
suicide counseling or “death panels” for seniors under the bill, his
supposed secret alliance with radical Muslims, and “creeping socialism.”
They see the government bureaucracy as being controlled by “secular
humanists” who want to destroy the family and make war against the
purity of their belief system. They seek total cultural and political
domination.

All ideological, theological and political debates with the radical
Christian right are useless. It cares nothing for rational thought and
discussion. Its adherents are using the space within the open society to
destroy the open society itself. Our naive attempts to placate a
movement bent on our destruction, to prove to it that we too have
“values,” only strengthen its supposed legitimacy and increase our own
weakness.

Dominionists have to operate, for now, in what they see as the
contaminated environment of the secular, liberal state. They work with
the rest of us only because they must. Given enough power—and they are
working hard to get it—any such cooperation will vanish. They are no
different from the vanguard described by Lenin or the Islamic terrorists
who shaved off their beards, adopted Western dress and watched
pay-for-view pornography in their hotel rooms the night before hijacking
a plane for a suicide attack. The elect alone, like the Grand
Inquisitor, are sanctioned to know the truth. And in the pursuit of
their truth they have no moral constraints.

I spent two years inside the Christian right in writing my book
“American Fascists: The Christian right and the War on America.” I
attended services at megachurches across the country, went to numerous
lectures and talks, sat in on creationist seminars, attended classes on
religious proselytizing and conversion, spent weekends at
“right-to-life” retreats and interviewed dozens of followers and leaders
of the movement. Though I was sympathetic to the financial dislocation,
the struggles with addictions, the pain of domestic and sexual violence,
and the deep despair that drew people to the movement, I was also
acutely aware of the dangerous ideology these people embraced. Fascist
movements begin as champions of civic improvement, communal ideals,
moral purity, strength, national greatness and family values. These
movements attract, as has the radical Christian right, those who are
disillusioned by the collapse of liberal democracy. And our liberal
democracy has collapsed.

We have abandoned our poor and working class. We have created a
government monster that sucks the marrow out of our bones to enrich and
empower the oligarchic and corporate elite. The protection of criminals,
whether in war or on Wall Street, is part of our mirage of law and
order. We have betrayed the vast and growing underclass. Most believers
within the Christian right are struggling to survive in a hostile world.
We have failed them. Their very real despair is being manipulated and
used by Christian fascists such as the Texas senator. Give to the
working poor a living wage, benefits and job security and the reach of
this movement will diminish. Refuse to ameliorate the suffering of the
poor and working class and you ensure the ascendancy of a Christian fascism.

The Christian right needs only a spark to set it ablaze. Another
catastrophic act of domestic terrorism, hyperinflation, a series of
devastating droughts, floods, hurricanes or massive wildfires or another
financial meltdown will be the trigger. Then what is left of our anemic
open society will disintegrate. The rise of Christian fascism is aided
by our complacency. The longer we fail to openly denounce and defy
bankrupt liberalism, the longer we permit corporate power to plunder the
nation and destroy the ecosystem, the longer we stand slack-jawed before
the open gates of the city waiting meekly for the barbarians, the more
we ensure their arrival.