Over the last couple of days I’ve been in Washington D.C. at a conference for health disparities. One of the speakers we listened to was Aranthan Jones, former health policy advisor to Rep. Christensen and current House Majority Whip James Clyburn’s Director of Policy. What he focused on was the magic number of 35. There are approximately 55 competitive house races this year, and of those races, the Democrats look to win 35 of them (at least). Losses in places like Mississippi have severely weakened the GOP brand. But what does this mean for us?
The 35 seats that Jones predicts victory in break down like this:
Keep these numbers in mind. I’ll come back to them.
Check out this video featuring Donna Brazile and Paul Begala:
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Buqry41EC8k[/youtube]
What Brazile and Begala are arguing about above is the future of the political strategy of focusing on the needs and desires of conservative white working class voters to the exclusion of blacks and liberal white voters–for Brazile this strategy has resulted in ignoring the core of the Democratic coalition, for Begala this strategy was what put Clinton over the top in 92 and 96.
(as an aside note that Begala ignores extra-DNC factors–the Perot vote in 92 and 96, the Supreme Court in 00).
For Brazile, Obama’s ability to attract racially moderate whites in places like Oregon, combined with increasing numbers of African Americans (and some Latinos), preclude the need to go after white voters in places like kentucky. Voters who appear to have a great deal of racial resentment. And for what it is worth I believe she is right. It will be difficult, but Obama can win without conservative white voters in the Appalachians, voters who don’t appear to understand their economic interests because of racism.
This isn’t just about the presidency though. Remember that magic number, and where the bulk of the new Democratic seats will come from. Inevitably the party will STILL be driven by the concerns of conservative whites. Which means that at some point we still have to work hard to convince white working class voters that their economic interests not only lie in voting for Democratic candidates, but in expanding the role of government to deal with their material needs. This is why I thought that Edwards was a better candidate than Obama or Clinton, and why I hope that Obama picks someone like Edwards to run as his VP candidate. But more importantly this is why people like Adolph Reed are right to argue that we need to organize a working IDEOLOGICAL majority that can lead to a working VOTING majority.
Workers organizing for their interest,sounds familiar i.e. the labor party maybe a coalition with libertarian too extract a viable third party from this new landscape
ah, so THIS was the insurgency you were up to when I saw you on the metro….
interesting post. Good to see you.
What is the gist of that proposed “working ideology”?
(or should that be “working” ideology?)
Tootsie, the “libertarian” brand has been badly infected and subverted by jarringly non-mutualist, non free-marketist interests.
If I could boil it down to three I’d say increased public transportation, public education, and public health.
So Les, are we talking about ideology here, or, are we talking about the re-engineering of the infrastructure that will be required for the U.S. to recover from being a deindustrialized economic basket case?
F’zample, we have a constipated light rail initiative underway in the greater metropolitan sprawl. It was enacted by referendum, and then derailed by mayoral and city council veto. Actually a quite shocking and yet jarringly controversial turn of events.
Most folks being pounded out in the far flung suburban rings remain opposed to light rail that would serve their economic interests, if that light rail also entails access by inner city folks to their far flung suburban flight refuges.
Second, KC is a legendary anomaly in the annals of public education.
As for the “public health” I’d need to mull that one over a bit further, but suffice it to say, private interests have plunged billions into the effort to make KC a biotechnology hub, only to be thwarted by rural Missouri and Kansas theoconservative nitwits seeking to legislate against science that doesn’t respect the “dignity and sanctity of life”……,
we are talking about an ideological shift that will hasten the re-engineering that you speak of, because at base this re-engineering will only occur if a significant amount of bodies and/or loot convinces local, regional, state, and federal governments to make the needed investments (and to raise the necessary taxes).
Lester,
It sure seems to me that $4/gallon gasoline is going to do more for getting people to support public transit than any amount of political organizing.
I wish I knew what would get people interested in fixing public education. As far as I can tell, the political importance of the schools’ role as a source of patronage and jobs trumps the importance of actually educating kids. And the role of school district boundaries in determining property values in the suburbs also trumps the importance of educating kids. It seems like any serious change is going to have to come from outside the two big parties and the existing political arrangements.
I’m not sure about public health.
$4/gallon will do SOMETHING. But it’ll take something a bit more given that those taxes have to come from somewhere, and folks no longer believe government is particularly good at solving public problems.
Webb has a new book out and while I don’t think he’s talking about changing existing arrangements–he is a Democrat after all–i BELIEVE he’s interested in trying to generate a new populist consensus. There’s a video over at Ta-Nehisi’s that I tried to find for my own purposes but could not. Webb is talking about the need for a coalition like what I talk about above.
The Political Magic Number http://t.co/OmTKC1po