Once more into the breach. (My last Reagan/Obama post) [View All]

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Assuming that Senator Obama was referring only to Reagan's political ability to build a winning coalition, then Obama is not endorsing the malignancy that was Reagan. If that is the case, however, then Senator Obama is utterly clueless about American political history.

The thing is, "Reagan coalition" is an oxymoron. A coalition has more than one group in it. The pre-Reagan Democratic party was an actual coalition, made up of whites. blacks and other folks. Reagan broke a lot of white Democrats out of the Democratic party by ginning up resentment toward blacks... convincing some white Democrats that their interests were more aligned with race than party, and that he stood for white people. (This was the standard Republican lie we all know and love. In actuality, Reagan stood for rich people, and used working class whites like political draft horses.)

It is IMPOSSIBLE to employ Reagan's political methods to accomplish any good end because Reagan's only political method was division. He destroyed bonds between disparate groups and never unified anything, except in the bluntest mathematical sense.

Here is how you unify all Americans: Draw a line through the country and tell everyone to pick a side. Then see which side is larger, and announce that the people on the minority side are not "real Americans." You have now unified all "Americans."

It's a simple matter to demonstrate that Reagan's majority was not unified by hope or optimism. Black people like hope and optimism, yet they were nowhere to be found in the coalition. Were black people just a bunch of Debbie Downers, or was the Reagan "coalition" a racially homogeneous mass unified by nurtured paranoia toward and resentment of everyone outside the coalition?

During the Reagan era anglo whites were a HUGE majority, so it was possible to craft a large majority simply by scape-goating black people. By 1980 white America was pretty burned out on generosity of spirit toward the formerly excluded and, in terrible economic times, ready for a scapegoat to explain their failings and frustrations. Economic anxiety is the great driver of racism--as with Mexicans today--and the environment was right for white Americans to lapse into self-pity, thinking, "haven't we done enough for those people. How about me?"

The Reagan coalition was no more impressive, nor deserving of emulation, than the gerrymandered perpetual white majorities in 60-40 white/black southern states that were the rough draft of Reagan's national strategy.

Using wedge issues to unify an ethnic majority against ethnic minorities is not novel, clever, smart, or hopeful. And it has no implications for governing a pluralistic 21st century nation. So Senator Obama is just off base.

(I have a theory as to how an intelligent man like Barack could form such a weird, distorted useless idea of the Reagan era. Barack is a charming man, and he knows it. He knows it like Brad Pitt knows he's good looking. So it is in his interest to over-estimate the power of charm. Reagan was the most successful politician of Barack's lifetime, and it was said Reagan accomplished miracles through charm. He didn't, but if I were preternaturally charming, maybe I'd want to believe that Reagan worked miracles through charm, rather than fomenting nightmares through ugly division.)