{"id":273,"date":"2003-12-05T05:03:02","date_gmt":"2003-12-05T05:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:25","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:25","slug":"gridlock_explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=273","title":{"rendered":"Gridlock, Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Yglesias raises<\/a> the interesting notion of political deadlock and wonders about the roots and consequences.<\/p>\n

It would appear that all the pandering in the world is not capable of convincing anti-Bush Americans that Bush cares about them, while all Democratic efforts to sell the good-government message utterly fail to convince pro-Bush Americans (even those quite disappointed with his unscrupulous actions) that the Dems would actually perform any better in practice. It’s basically a politics of pure ressentiment with both sides more motivated by the perceived evils of the alternative than convinced of the merits of their team.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s puzzled by it.<\/p>\n

I’m less puzzled by it, because I have a theory. (…a theory which is mine<\/a>, for you Monty Python fans out there).Bush ought to be losing on domestic issues, much as his father did<\/b>.<\/p>\n

From the left, a substantial minority of the electorate are opposed to much of what he’s doing on principle. <\/p>\n

From the right, a growing number are opposed to much of his domestic and fiscal<\/a> policy <\/a>in principle. They ought to abandon him, leaving him with the corporate-welfare queens<\/a> and those National Enquirer-reading voters who base their votes purely on the number of brand impressions<\/a> that have been bought.<\/p>\n

But there’re two problems with that.<\/p>\n

One is domestic, and I’ve pretty much beaten it into the ground. The cosmopolitan left has become the engine of the Democratic Party, and for them, love of country is essentially subsumed to a broader vision of interest-group alliance and worldwide bureaucratic order. The average American, who ought to be for the Democrats if voting a paycheck, can’t bridge the social gap, and isn’t buying the international vision.<\/p>\n

The other is foreign, and is simply this: “How do we respond to 9\/11, and ensure that there won’t be another one?” I hope this doesn’t require any explanation.<\/p>\n

The Democrats are beginning understand that they need to form a coherent vision, but I believe that it gets stuck in two areas – the assumption of easy multilateralism, and overreliance on law-enforcement models.<\/p>\n

So we wind up with a bunch of potential voters who ought to be in play, but aren’t because they have two top-level issues (values and defense) that the Democrats haven’t yet been able to neutralize.<\/p>\n

Will I support Bush? It depends. I don’t want to. But I think that the damage he can do in his effed-up domestic policy is less than the damage that can be done by an effed-up foreign policy. I’ll take a large national debt and a looming class war over a real nuclear war any day of the week. And while I’m a coastal cosmopolitan, I still cringe when my wealthy fellow Angelinos get together, raise millions, and try and explain how, because they make television shows or manage pension funds, they know so much more about the world than “guys with Confederate flags on their trucks.”<\/p>\n

So I’m waiting and watching, and I doubt that I’m alone.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/b> Yglesias responds<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Yglesias sees a U.S. politics of pure ressentiment with both sides more motivated by the perceived evils of the alternative than convinced of the merits of their team. He’s puzzled by it. A.L. is less puzzled by it, because he has a theory…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}