The Democratic Leadership Council’s new initiative, which was partially unveiled Monday by Sen. Hillary Clinton, aims to help Democrats recapture Congress by recapturing middle class voters. The agenda includes providing additional support for college costs, creating a refundable tax credit to help provide the down payment on housing, and providing universal health care for children. The DLC would help offset the cost of these programs, The Washington Post reported, by eliminating corporate subsidies in the tax code, cutting federal contractors, and making a more aggressive effort to collect taxes.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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33 Comments
Are all these good ideas part of the “no ideas” the right keeps saying Dems don’t have??
Yep. You-betcha’. No plan. None.Wafflers without direction.(Repeat often and click heels three times)
HAD ENOUGH YET?
God forbid we try for a little equality instead of the division of classes.
Religious Left Gears Up to Face Right Counterpart
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072606Z.shtml
RD,
You could be a hinchman for Stalin himself!
We will take and give…
Untill what? Oh yeah thats right… untill there is nothing to take and everyone is driving a volvo.
The equality the government issues happens to be the cheapest for all which in turn means lower quality and less choice.
What does that mean? No freedom.
Of course all you “big brother” and “the government should take care of me” and “I can’t wipe my own butt without government assistance types” will buy into it.
Tax give-aways to the wealthy, legislation by and for corporations, corruption and thievery at all levels of republican government.
What does that mean? No freedom for the middle class.
I suspect that even the most brain-dead of the middle class conservatives will start waking up.
DD,
Simple question:
Who pays what percentages of the taxes in this country?
The dems are too far gone and ideologically rigid to change. The dems have to pray that felons and illegals get the right to vote because they offer no real alternative.
July 31, 2006 IssueCopyright © 2006 The American Conservative
What’s Wrong With the Democrats?
The identity-politics party doesn’t know how to appeal to middle Americans.
by Steve Sailer
Why have the Democrats proven so inept at electorally exploiting the growing evidence of the current Republican Party’s incompetence at governing? The Democrats certainly have a chance of doing well in the November elections, but why is this merely a possibility?
In 1980, just half a dozen years after the GOP’s Watergate humiliation, voters responded to the Carter administration’s failures by electing a Republican president and Senate and scaring enough House Democrats that Ronald Reagan was able to pass much of his agenda. After five-and-a-half years of George W. Bush’s presidency, it’s reasonably clear that he wasn’t qualified for the job and hasn’t exactly grown in office. The GOP establishment, which anointed Bush in 1999 even though many had personal experience of his unsuitability for the highest office, deserves punishment for negligence. Yet no Democrat—with the longshot exception of Virginia senatorial candidate James Webb—has emerged to offer the galvanizing change in direction and tone that Reagan once brought to the Republicans.
The satirical Onion headline earlier this year said it all: “Democrats Vow Not To Give Up Hopelessness.” If the voters turn to the Democrats this fall, it will only be as the lesser of two evils. America needs a less self-destructive Democratic Party, if just to keep Republican officeholders on their toes.
So, what’s wrong with the Democrats?
I’m going to speak more frankly than Democrats are used to hearing, but political correctness hurts them by shielding them from how the electorate really thinks. Although many Democrats would prefer to keep on losing, a few might want to know what ails them.
For 40 years, progressives have toiled tirelessly to replace interest-group politics with identity-group politics. But taking pride in one’s race is unseemly to the white majority, so partisan passions have become a sort of identity politics by other means for white people. Baby Boomers who once defined themselves by arguing over the Beatles vs. the Stones or George Lucas vs. Stanley Kubrick now express their self-conceptions by bickering over the Republicans vs. the Democrats.
The moment’s issues are less important than they often seem. In 2000, George W. Bush ran on a “humble” foreign policy and in 2004 on an arrogant one, yet the distribution of his votes by state and by demographic group barely flickered from one election to the next.
Still, some past Democratic failures were so egregious that—even though the media hardly mention them anymore (because the press shared the Democrats’ ill-chosen prejudices)—they continue to dog the electorate’s perception of the Democrats. Although we are constantly assured today that America was unified throughout the Cold War in opposition to the Soviet Union, the public at least vaguely recalls that during the Reagan years much of the Democratic Party wanted to beg the Soviets for mercy, almost up to the day the evil empire collapsed.
The Democrats’ other mark of Cain is the horrific 1964-1996 crime wave unleashed by the Great Society. After almost a quarter of a million excess murders and the reduction of great American cities like Detroit to wastelands, it was finally quelled by the old conservative nostrums of cutting welfare and locking crooks up and throwing away the key.
These were not fluke mistakes. Instead, they explain the unpopularity of the Democrats. Their common denominator was the Democrats’ tendency to sympathize more with foreign enemies and domestic delinquents than with their own country and their fellow citizens.
The Democrats’ fundamental weakness is that even after four decades of their strenuously celebrating the moral supremacy of every organized minority, our political system remains, more or less, one of majority rule. It’s hard to win a majority if you don’t personally want to be part of the majority because your ego centers around visualizing yourself as better than the average American. If you don’t like the American majority, either in principle or in person, the majority won’t like you.
The GOP, in contrast, presents itself as the party of normal American voters, whose demographic transformation lags decades behind the raw population totals. Because the median voter is in his late forties, non-Hispanic whites cast 79 percent of the votes in 2004, according to the Census Bureau, even though they comprise only 68 percent of the total population and just 57 percent of those under age five.
One-third of Kerry voters were racial minorities compared to only one-tenth of Bush’s. The president carried 58 percent of the white vote, and, perhaps most importantly, 66 percent of married white men and 61 percent of married white women. (The celebrated gender gap, by the way, is no more than half as large as the less mentioned marriage gap. Bush won just 53 percent of single white males and 44 percent of single white females.)
Crucially, the Democrats garner the votes of merely one out of three of America’s wedded white guys—the demographic segment that, to a fair if impolitic approximation, not only runs the country but also keeps the country running. Because Democrats have increasingly alienated the group that, more than any other, gets things done in America, it’s become implausible for Democrats to portray themselves as the natural governing party. Thus they have become dependent upon Republican miscues, which, luckily for the Democrats (although not for the country), have been abundant.
This relegates the Democrats to trying to lash together unwieldy coalitions of minorities united mainly in their alienation from majority attitudes. This is possible, but it’s harder than the GOP’s task of mobilizing a fairly cohesive body of supporters. The Democrats resemble the ramshackle multi-tribe army of the Persian Empire and the Republicans the cohesive Greek phalanxes of Alexander.
In truth, there are sizable schisms within the GOP, such as the increasingly yawning one between the pro-cheap labor globalist plutocrats and the working stiffs, which has finally surfaced over immigration. Yet it has taken a betrayal of the base as flagrant as Bush’s amnesty plan to outrage Republicans.Why? Because far more than Democrats, the typical Republican is a team player, the kind of fellow who won’t let you forget that he played a little ball in school and, when the annual sales convention rolls around, is proud, deeply proud that he’s helped make this the best damn sales force in the industry! [Applause.] Equally masculine AFL-CIO rank-and-filers long helped the Democrats excel at the blocking and tackling of organizing winning campaigns, but they’re getting old and losing a step at the ground game. Most of the Democrats’ other white constituencies—feminists, gays, movie stars, New Agers, hipsters, and intellectuals—are too self-absorbed to build effective organizations.
Worse, many elements within the Democratic Party can’t actually stand each other. The white “lifestyle” liberals welcome minorities as allies because they believe being on the same side as African-Americans against the white majority validates their feelings of self-worth. Yet to be frank—not that they would ever say it in so many words—they also regard blacks and Hispanics as scandalously reactionary on such crucial issues (to them) as gay marriage.
Meanwhile, the racial minorities are heavily Democratic both for newfangled identity reasons and for old-fashioned ethnic clout purposes that St. Tammany himself would have understood, but they are also more culturally conservative and view their white allies as smug, out-of-touch, and patronizing.
Moreover, although this is kept out of the press except when the occasional Jesse Jackson “Hymietown” outburst breaks through, more than a few minority Democrats disdain the lifestyle Democrats as Jews or perverts or Jewish perverts.
Less crudely, important white liberal constituencies such as the antiwar movement, the wealthy but fading mainline Protestant denominations, and the environmentalists are quietly becoming annoyed by the Jews who provide about half of the party’s campaign contributions. For example, in 2000 the Arab-American Ralph Nader carried 2.7 percent of the national vote, but only 2 percent of the Jewish vote on the Green Party ticket. In the past, it would have been unthinkable for a far Left organization to get a higher proportion of gentile than Jewish support, but the times they are a-changin’.
Finally, although black and Hispanic politicians swear eternal amity, in the high schools and prisons of trendsetting Southern California, as Roger McGrath has documented, the burgeoning Latino population is violently challenging blacks for mastery.
Fortunately, both the lifestylers and the minorities share a mutual distaste for the white union members, who are the one Democratic constituency proud to consider themselves average Americans. Unfortunately, the Democrats are still heavily dependent on blue-collar labor’s money and get-out-the-vote elbow grease. And the aging guys in windbreakers know exactly how the other Democrats feel about them and return the sentiment with interest.
The Democrats can seldom appeal to one of their blocs without offending another, so the main message they can all agree upon is how much they hate George W. Bush. The problem with that strategy is that, yes, admittedly, the president is a national disgrace, but that also reflects badly on the nation that twice elected him, so a large fraction of patriotic Americans don’t want to hear it.
While Democrats esteem themselves as more socially prestigious than Republicans, their electoral prospects are undermined by the faint whiff of failure that many Democratic voters exude, the impression that they resent their country and compatriots because they haven’t quite fulfilled their own potential.
Surveys going back to 1972 have consistently found that more Republicans than Democrats consider themselves “very happy.” In a 2005 poll, the Pew Research Center discovered that 50 percent more Republicans than Democrats rate themselves “very happy” and that “if one controls for household income, Republicans still hold a significant edge.” Indeed, Pew reported that their multiple regression analysis of what makes people content showed “the most robust correlations of all those described in this report are health, income, church attendance, being married and, yes, being a Republican. Indeed, being a Republican is associated not only with happiness, it is also associated with every other trait in this cluster.”
While it may (or may not) be admirable of liberals to want to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” it’s also hardly unreasonable for voters to assume that the party whose members, on the whole, better manage their own lives could better manage the government.
Many white Democrats these days derive their sense of status, of identity, from their feelings of superiority, moral and intellectual, over the average white American. Democrats you see, are both more admirable because they believe everyone is equal and more intelligent because they have higher IQs. What? You didn’t know that? Well, it has been scientifically proven, according to the thousands of liberal websites that display a blue and red table showing that Democratic-voting states have vastly higher average IQs than Republican-voting states. For example, to choose two mostly white states, the average IQ in liberal Connecticut is 113 vs. 87 in conservative Utah, which means the median person in Connecticut would suddenly move up to the 96th percentile if transported to Utah.
In reality, this chart is an utter hoax, but it remains an unkillable fraud because it bolsters Democrats’ self-image as members of an oppressed elite. The two parties’ supporters actually appear to be cognitively on par. The 2004 exit poll showed that Kerry voters boasted about six weeks more schooling than Bush voters. Yet in the long-lost 2002 exit poll, supporters of Republican House candidates enjoyed the advantage in education, and in 2000, Bush and Gore voters tied.
Among whites, Democrats have received a little more education than Republicans but earn less money than their credentials would predict. That skew might be a key to the resentment of Middle America that is such a pervasive feature of Democratic psychology.
Even bigger than the income gap is the standard of living chasm. Democrats tend to live in places with much higher costs of living. Although they aren’t particularly rich themselves—Kerry won all three income categories under $50,000 and lost all five above that— Democrats do like to live near the rich. For example, according to ACCRA, an organization that tabulates regional costs for corporations relocating employees, the cost of living in the biggest blue state, California, is 40 percent above the national average. In contrast, life in the largest red state, Texas, is 11 percent cheaper than the American mean.
Housing differs sharply in price between red and blue America. Bush carried the 20 states with the cheapest housing costs, while Kerry won the nine states with the most expensive. And the mortgage gap has been growing. Bush was victorious in the 26 states with the least home price inflation since 1980. Kerry triumphed in the 14 states with the most.
Imagine two cousins, one with a graduate degree making $50,000 per year in a creative industry, living alone in a small apartment in a “vibrant” (i.e., dangerous and expensive) metropolis. The other with a bachelor’s degree earns the same income in an unglamorous business and lives with a spouse and children in a home on a quarter acre lot in a “boring” (i.e., safe and moderately-priced) suburb. Which one is more likely to vote Democratic?
Of course, Republicans can be hostile too, but their resentments tend to be directed outward toward foreigners, such as the French, who don’t get to vote, and upward toward America’s “cultural elites,” who are, by definition, limited in electoral strength.
And white Democrats are starting to die out slowly due to low fertility. In blue states, white people are less likely to marry and have children than in red states, where there’s more affordable family formation. Bush carried 25 of the top 26 states in white total fertility (number of babies per white woman), while Kerry was victorious in the bottom 16. In Utah, where Bush won 71 percent of the vote, white women average 2.45 babies. In the ultra-liberal District of Columbia, however, white women average only 1.11 babies and in Kerry’s Massachusetts 1.60. This disparity is no doubt even greater within states, with Utah Republicans averaging even more babies than their state’s average and Massachusetts Democrats even fewer.
Therefore, the Democrats are reliant on immigration and higher minority birthrates to keep them in the game demographically. That’s why Democratic senators voted 38-4 in favor of the Senate’s plan to put illegal aliens on the “path to citizenship” (in other words, make them voters) and increase legal immigration, while Republican senators voted 32-23 against it, and House Republicans are adamantly opposed. (Why George W. Bush favors the Senate plan remains mysterious.)
The Republicans might well falter enough that Democrats win big this fall. Yet if the Democrats truly want to return to being the natural majority party in America, they need to do some soul-searching about their feelings toward the American majority.http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_07_31/cover.html
V.L.R.B!!
Ian’s off his meds again . . . sheesh, dude, get a grip!
Nathan, puleeze . . . give the “percentage of taxes paid by the rich” non-sequitur a rest. People have already debunked it a half a dozen times.
Rich people pay a lot of income tax because they have a lot of income. It’s as simple as that. If you lower the rates on the rich, they still pay a gigantic percentage, because they’re gigantically wealthy.
Duh.
It doesn’t matter if you tax them at a ten percent, twenty percent or ninety percent rate. Their percentage of income taxes is always going to be way higher than everybody else’s.
It’s going to be that way as long as the CEO makes more in two weeks than a floor worker makes IN HER ENTIRE LIFE.
Get it?
No, you probably still don’t.
As for this gem, “I can’t wipe my own butt without government assistance types”?
While it’s true that the gov’t doesn’t actually wipe your butt, they do give you the toilet paper to wipe it with.
The most socialist organization in American history is the US military. The government provides your housing, your food, your clothes, your medicine, your health care, benefits for spouse and children and even gives you a pension when you retire.
It’s cradle to grave socialism.
And btw, because it is so socialistic, we spend 50 percent of our tax dollars on the military.
Want to cut taxes?
You can’t do it without cutting the biggest single component, the military.
So…
What you are saying PP is that you already know that the rich pay almost all of the taxes.
As for the rest of it, The way the military accounts for the so called “socialism” you speak of is actually accounted for.
A Marine makes less money per year compared to a civilian counterpart. The Military compensates for this with medical benifits and all the other “socialism” you speak of. When it is added up it is the equivalent of a civilian counterpart.
It is not socialism. It is all accounted for, let me assure you.
It is no different than taking a lower salary job with benifits compared to a higher salary job with no benifits.
Nice try with your little socialism comparison. It doesn’t stick though.
On top of that, our food is deducted…everything.
When you get married or no longer live on base or no longer eat the food provided you are paid more money to compensate for that.
Right now I make a certain amount of money a month for housing becuase I am a reservist.
I make more money for food right now because the Marine Corps doesn’t provide it for me. When they do I sign a roster and it is deducted from my pay.
Right-on dudes. Good ideas every one. It’s about time the democrats started pressing the issues that could make a difference. Knock all the loopholes out of the corporate welfare system and make em pay.
Moving your manufacturing business overseas? Guess what, you are still going to pay the same tax you would be if you were on shore, except, your workers are getting paid way less, so your deductions for worker expenses goes, guess what, down. Still own the property where you used to produce in the states? Guess what, yep, still taxed like it was still producing. Make it so bad financially, that moving business overseas becomes unsound. Screw em; they could care less about the lower and middle class, so hit them where it hurts: the pocketbook.
I don’t want socialism in the business climate, but I sure as hell am tired of seeing the American people getting screwed by big oil, pharmaceuticals, and big business. It’s about time we put the WE back in congress, and take big business out.
Nathan,”Of course all you “big brother” and “the government should take care of me” and “I can’t wipe my own butt without government assistance types” will buy into it”
Comments like these are far from the truth for those who vote Democrat. I vote Democrat and I dont believe the govt. should take care of me. I vote Democrat because they believe in Fair economic policies for every one. NO RESPONSIBLE ADULT LIKES A FREELOADER!!!!
“Who pays what percentages of the taxes in this country?”
Yes maybe the rich do, because they obviously make more money. But we all contribute through sales tax, the property taxes, the taxes on cell phone bills, gas tax etc.
Nathan do you feel like it doesnt hurt us low income workers, to pay all these taxes? It hurts us more than the corporations, and high income earners.
Tell me what is so unreasonable about the DLCs plan? If you think about, you would probably benefit!!!
But no you would rather vote for assholes who keep secret industry meetings, vote themselves pay-raises every few years, take positions based on donations and kickbacks, and WHO START WARS to monetarily benefit their friends and in some instances themselves.
Spoken like someone who owns no shares in anything…. like a large percentage of all those Americans you claim are “getting screwed”
Nathan,
Spoken like a kid who never wanted for anything.
JR,
It is spoken like someone who looks at the facts of issues and not the hyped up class warfare crap the left pukes out.
People own stock in corporations. All kinds of people, not just rich ones.
Most people have 401k plans in stocks.
All this evil big corporation stuff is crap.
The goods and services we have are provided for by those “big corporations” which are able to produce them as cheaply as they do because they are trying to make their business the most profitable.
This is all silly. It would take me a lifetime to explain the economics to you guys.
I am off to the field again, so see you whenever…
Nathan–
You work for the government and it pays all your bills.
If that isn’t socialism, I don’t know what the word means.
As for agreeing that the rich already pay a lot of taxes. Yes, they do, if you’re talking about INCOME taxes.
If you’re talking about payroll taxes like social security or sales taxes or even property taxes (through rents), the poor pay a much bigger percentage of their incomes than the rich do.
Which is the most important thing–not how much of the total tax does one group pay or not pay. The question is how much of the tax burden falls on the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy and how much should fall on these groups?
I believe that the poor pay too much and the rich pay too little.
And if you don’t believe it, look at the 8.5 trillion dollar national debt that grows by a billion and a half dollars A DAY.
And btw, Nathan, how many wealthy dudes are in your unit? How many people shipping out from gated communities and 6,000 square foot homes? How many Luke Tiahrts are on their way to Iraq, Nathan?
Let’s see – Hillary talking about the American Dream…
A dream like becoming a Sentaor of a State she visited less than 5 times?
JR–
If you haven’t already, go on-line and buy 100 dollars of a Vanguard no-load index fund.
Then you can tell Nathan that you are a stock-owning capitalist and his characterization of you as Joe Stalin is unfair.
All you want is more accountability and for corporations to pay their fair share like everybody else.
This is what ALL thinking people want.
We aren’t preaching class warfare. We’re preaching American unity–we’re all in this together.
LRB–She won.
Get over it.
“LRB–Bush won.
Get over it.”
Fixed.
PP,
The military “paying all my bills” is no different than any other company someone works for paying all their bills either.
You have no clue what you are talking about.
I though the Radical Left threw Hillary overboard like they are doing to Lieberman.
Nathan,
“Spoken like someone who owns no shares in anything…. like a large percentage of all those Americans you claim are “getting screwed”"
So even if I did own shares in stock, Im supposed to agree with the greedy conservative/Bush administration agendas?
Since most repubs claim to be christian.
Would Jesus agree with-secret industry meetings?-self imposed pay increases?-no increase in min. wage?-larger tax cut for the rich?-estate tax repeal-torture?-Fundrasing while cities drown?-manipulated wars for profit?
Yes there maybe some repubs who arent that devout in their religion, but they dont mind Jesus as a campaign partner when the time comes around.
Nathan,
The wealthy pay the most taxes and that is as it should be since they have benefited most from this country’s generosity. Surely, you don’t deny that the well off who have been blessed by this country, owe more, now do you?
I have to wonder why you chose the path that you did. I have a friend who has pretty much the same degree preparation that your dad said you have (he went to WSU, too). He lives in Colorado, works for H.P. and makes some serious money. A lot more than I make.
So, I am confused about what you are doing, and what you value. Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to finish your degrees and work for some good companies?
Instead, you re-enlist in the Marines and head to Iraq. Yet, you defend unto death — and that may be literally (God, please prevent that) what our government is doing?
I would sure like to talk to you in person about these things that kind of confuse me. Thanks for your sacrifices. We, as a country, owe you more than we could ever repay.
Steven
GaryC on your list. When did political policy have anything to do with religion. Using “Jesus” for the Democrat Agenda isn’t much better than what the religous right is doing.
Is this what you would call the Religous Left?
Would Jesus agree with-secret industry meetings?-self imposed pay increases?-no increase in min. wage?-larger tax cut for the rich?-estate tax repeal-torture?-Fundrasing while cities drown?-manipulated wars for profit?
Joe– you have expressed what the RIGHT WING does better than any left-leaner could do.
Well done!
Oh, this was Gary’s list . . . no wonder . . . good job, GARY!
Looks like LRB is “irony impaired.”
It was the Bushbots constant harping on “Bush won. Get over it.” that I was reminding HER of.
I can see why she didn’t last long at DemocraticUnderground, heh, the home of snark . . .
“When did political policy have anything to do with religion”
Gee I dont know Joe, maybe the ban on gay marriage, recent stem cell legislation, limited abortion rights.
I was basically referring to the downright hypocrisy of the Republican party that implements policies that basically go agaisnt the christian word. Most conservative Assholes like to claim to be christian, but really dont practice it when it comes to the economic policies they vot for.