The waning Southern strategy

The NYT had a great front-page item today following up on what I wrote a few days ago about the (sad) role of Applachia in the election.

Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

They accompanied the analysis with a great graphic too:

Basically I would just say that I hope the party continues its slide into irrelevance and ignorance. Let the GOP be the party of the uneducated religious zealot, the bigoted redneck and the gun-crazed nutjob. According to Beliefnet, 52% of the anti-intellectual elements of the party (namely Evangelicals) apparently believed that Obama was a Muslim. Yet they still believe the media is ridiculously liberal, despite the media's inability to inform them of the basic fact of the President-elect's religion. Sad.

Anti-intellectualism and conservatism

Analyzing the fall of the GOP in the past two elections has induced a cottage industry, so I may as well join in. After reading a neat piece on the anti-intellectual base of the GOP, I see dark days ahead for the party, and I'm not alone. David Brooks thinks that the GOP is heading for major reforms:

Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.

The WSJ published a really insightful piece along the same lines:

It's a sad tale that began in the '80s, when leading conservatives frustrated with the left-leaning press and university establishment began to speak of an "adversary culture of intellectuals." ... The die was cast. Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them. [...]

Writing recently in the New York Times, David Brooks noted correctly (if belatedly) that conservatives' "disdain for liberal intellectuals" had slipped into "disdain for the educated class as a whole," and worried that the Republican Party was alienating educated voters. I couldn't care less about the future of the Republican Party, but I do care about the quality of political thinking and judgment in the country as a whole. There was a time when conservative intellectuals raised the level of American public debate and helped to keep it sober. Those days are gone. As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a possible world leader speaks for itself. The Republican Party and the political right will survive, but the conservative intellectual tradition is already dead.

And the WaPo says:

Tuesday's Republican debacle was, as the social scientists say, "over-determined." It had many causes. Was it brought on by congressional corruption, Bush administration incompetence, intellectual exhaustion or John McCain's failings as a candidate? All of the above -- and then some.

They go on to dissect three of those four causes, but not intellectual exhaustion.

I mentioned the other day a study that contradicted one of the favorite myths of the GOP and the Religious Right: that going to college will lead you to either Socialism or hell. My question is -- do you go to college to get told what to think, or shown how to think by asking questions and looking at all the angles? It's church where you're told what you must believe and are started from a very early age with songs and verse-memorization to try to mold you in the direction of religion. The Red Scare converges well with the Religious Right, in my humble opinion, because they are reminded of what the Soviets and Chinese did to churches: they shut them down.

The fact is, conservatives have been dissing intellectuals for decades, and I don't know if it's because academia is thoroughly leftist or because the true power base of conservatism is the Religious Right. I'm convinced that there is a link between religiosity and conservatism that extends beyond the trite, "if you love Jesus, vote Republican." I think it is part of the nature of religiosity to tend towards anti-intellectualism: why study philosophy if the Bible has all the answers?

Religious conservatives are, in my humble opinion, to blame for the death of the conservative intellectual force. These people are devoted to a farcical worldview that does not reconcile easily with assault weapons or laissez-faire capitalism to begin with, so they twist and contort social issues in order to ascend within the GOP and use demagoguery in place of reason. Some people may think that this period will result in a "purging" of these godbots from the Republican Party, but I am willing to put down money that they will only make the GOP even further right, at least in the near term. And then, hopefully, a true multi-party system may emerge in the US, which I think will bring more health to our political system.

It seems that it's an intrinsic part of conservatism (by definition) to preserve the social order and resist progress. It seems that it's an intrinsic part of liberalism (by definition) to question and challenge the status quo and the institutions of power and push for social reforms. If your philosophy is innately resistant to change, then as the world slowly changes around you, your philosophy becomes irrelevant. This is what's happened with religion to a large degree: the thriving churches are thoroughly modern and provide huge social outlets and social supports for members. The danger of liberalism is change for change's sake, if the net result does not better prosper or secure our nation. Liberals can believe too much in government spending to solve all ills and not enough in the power of free markets.

I would love to see a smart, lean and mean progressive coalition that enacted real reforms, cut the budget in all the right places, and increased it where it counts. And I think the only way to get there is to depend upon evidence and study in knowing what to do and how to do it, rather than relying upon party dogma.

Kristof talks about intellectualism in his column Sunday:

An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.

I really think that Americans were so sick of our Idiot-in-Chief that listening to Barack refuse to oversimplify answers and pontificate was actually refreshing. We understood that it was time for a leader who was goddamned razor-sharp and willing to consider arguments from all perspectives. Republicans had some ideas for this election, but their ideas lacked the force of power that Democrats' did, precisely because Republicans have a sort of dogma that resists challenge.

The gods are smiling on me

They must be:

My healthy little boy is getting cuter and chubbier every day.

My candidate won the election. Change is coming.


My Gators won the SEC East. They should be ranked #3 today, and will likely be in the BCS Championship Game when they beat Alabama in the SEC Conference Championship. (Certainly so if Texas Tech loses to Oklahoma in two weeks.)

Appalachia

This morning I saw Krugman's cut on Zell Miller and wanted to find the source of his map (funny how some blogs are horrible about linking to important source material). I found it shortly thereafter at the NYT. (And this interactive one.)

What the map shows is what I feared months ago after the primaries: that the Appalachian region would solidly vote against Obama. Amazingly, only 22% of the counties of the entire USA voted more Republican this election than the last one. Guess where they are heavily concentrated?

Tazewell County is my home! The poorest, least educated, most religious parts of the country, of course! And it went 2:1 for McCain.

Charles Blow has more depth on the same topic.

Michael Crichton dies at 66

Although I recently knocked him for his loony tripe about global warming, I grew up reading Crichton before most people knew who he was, and it is a sad day for fans of his writing.

Celebrate good times, come on!

The reason for celebration, of course, is that voters got to decide on whether or not to allow beer and wine sales from retailers on Sunday here in the unincorporated areas of Richland County.

They decided YES! By almost two to one margins! In the heart of Jesusland! Die blue laws, Die!

Oh yeah, and we will be seeing President Obama on Jan 20 too, and that was nice ;-)

Jan 25, 2007 was a long long time ago, and I often wondered if he could win, but my support for him has been pretty unwavering. McCain's concession was as classy as his campaign wasn't. What will I do now with all the time I used to spend following the election?

Oh yeah...


Can you fuc*ing believe that Alaskans re-elected a convicted felon? Jesus Christ.

A myth destroyed

The idea that liberal professors indoctrinate students is a favorite canard of the anti-intellectual right that I've commented on before. It's mainly the fear of the Religious Right that college = atheism, despite contradictory evidence. New research pulls the rug out from under this claim.

Columbia real estate

The last time I mentioned home price information in the greater Columbia area, I was fairly pessimistic in assessing the April '08 MLS data:

Prices
Apr 07 - 08 change in real estate prices: +5%
2007YTD - 2008YTD (as of 4/08) change: +1.4%
Sales
Apr 07 - 08 change in real estate sales (units sold): -16%
2007YTD - 2008YTD (as of 4/08) change in units sold: -12.9%

Wow, how the times have changed:

Prices
Sep 07 - 08 change in real estate prices: -8.8%
3Q 2007 - 3Q 2008 change: -3.4%
2007YTD - 2008YTD (as of 9/08) change: +0.0%
Sales
Sep 07 - 08 change in real estate sales (units sold): -8.4%
3Q 2007 - 3Q 2008 change: -17.4%
2007YTD - 2008YTD (as of 9/08) change: -17.1%

Quite a change in the rate (deceleration) from April.

Inflation during the period 9/07 - 9/08 was +4.94% so subtract that further from prices.

CNN reports that the national avg drop of 4.8% in comparing year over year prices is the worst in history. Columbia is obviously a little above that.

Given the economic indicators, things don't look good for a reduction in lending rates and the recession will put a serious crimp in people's plans to upgrade or buy for the first time. Short full nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, the housing market will continue to deteriorate for the next 6 months for sure. Call me a bear, but I wouldn't be in the market for a home for at least a year.

So much for that rumor

When even the WingNutDaily affirmed the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, other conspiracy-theory-minded nuts should've moved on (or back) to the Muslim Manchurian idea.

Now it's a little difficult to support this one.

State declares Obama birth certificate genuine

1 day ago

HONOLULU (AP) — State officials say there's no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said Friday she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.

Fukino says that no state official, including Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama's certificate be handled differently.

She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.

Some Obama critics claim he was not born in the US.

Earlier Friday, a southwest Ohio magistrate rejected a challenge to Obama's citizenship. Judges in Seattle and Philadelphia recently dismissed similar suits.

Another smear bites the dust.

Democrats v. Republicans on the economy

Title sounds familiar for a reason (9/19).

I just wanted to catalog a few useful links that I have found to be integral to arguing with conservatives about economics.

update: 12/18

Although federal income taxes are progressive (get larger as income gets higher), all taxes do not, and as a share of one's income, the overall amount of taxes paid is fairly flat across all incomes. It literally comes down to a few points difference in total tax burden for people in the 2nd-5th quintiles of income.

Ezra Klein on the changes over time in overall tax burden (graph 1 source, graph 2 source)
Chart showing overall tax burden (CSM)
State and local tax burdens (NSN)
Washington Monthly on overall tax burden
NYT graph on overall tax burden (NYT article)
NYT graph on tax code changes and beneficiaries (NYT article)

11/1

Income inequality under Dems v. GOP (Bartels)
Income inequality under Dems v. GOP (chart, Krugman)
Income inequality under Dems v. GOP (Rolling Stone, Krugman)
Explanation of the causes of the financial crisis (Stiglitz)
The $3T War (Stiglitz)
Overall economic comparison of Dems v. GOP (Slate)
Overall economic comparison of Dems v. GOP (NYT, Alan Blinder)
How the GOP went from a $5.6T surplus to a $3.8T deficit (CBO)