A Better Question

Dodd Harris asks a better question on Ipse Dixit:

Howard Dean is already doing everything in his power to prove that his Chairmanship of the DNC will be an even greater gift to the Republican Party than the tenure of Terry “GOP Mole” McAuliffe’s was:

“You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? Only if they had the hotel staff in here.” – Howard Dean, speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus, 11 February 2004

Here’s a better question: Do you think a Republican could suggest in any public forum, much less in front of the Congressional Black Caucus, that the “hired help” tend to be black and get away with it?

But then, neither could a Republican say, as Chairman Howard did in November 2003, that “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”

Say What? (14)

  1. actus February 20, 2005 at 8:41 pm | | Reply

    ‘Here’s a better question: Do you think a Republican could suggest in any public forum, much less in front of the Congressional Black Caucus, that the “hired help” tend to be black and get away with it?’

    Deans’ comment also works if the hired help is representative of the working class. Or just america.

  2. superdestroyer February 21, 2005 at 6:35 am | | Reply

    Actus,

    The daughters of the last three Democrat presidental candidates went to high school at Sidwell Friends, National Cathedral, and Phillips Andover Academy. Claiming that Democrats care about the working classes is not only bigoted it is also wrong.

    Read the essay by David Brooks on American in Red and Blue. If the children of the loca bank president and the children of the janitor of the bank attend the same schools, it is almost 100% in a Red County in the US.

    So, if you want people who are about working people who have a weak argument that the people whose kids went to film school are the ones who are going to do it.

  3. Stephen February 21, 2005 at 7:13 am | | Reply

    actus, your language is so antique. It’s priceless. Constant repetition of the dead and buried Marxist mumbo-jumbo. Don’t you know that nonsense went the way of Nazism?

    You just can’t get your hands around the fact that that “working class” crap died a long time ago.

    Marxism is dead. Ding Dong the wicked witch is dead. Nobody cares. Try updating your language by about 50 years and you almost might be close to contemporary. What a completely out of touch dinosaur you are!

    Been reading your Wade Churchill? Got posters of the Black Panthers on the wall? How quaint!

  4. Gabriel Rossman February 21, 2005 at 8:44 am | | Reply

    Stephen,

    Lighten up. Using the term “working class” doesn’t imply that the speaker is a Marxist or anything close to it. For instance, I found 20 pages using the term (none of them in scare quotes) on the Claremont institute’s website.

  5. actus February 21, 2005 at 8:47 am | | Reply

    ‘Claiming that Democrats care about the working classes is not only bigoted it is also wrong.’

    Who said that? and what does that have to do with where your daughters go to school? Jimmy Carter sent his kids to DC public schools. Is he a better man for that?

    ‘You just can’t get your hands around the fact that that “working class” crap died a long time ago.’

    And yet people still have to work. What are they?

  6. Stephen February 21, 2005 at 9:14 am | | Reply

    actus,

    It’s a fun, wealthy world. The kids are mostly struggling to decide whether to buy the $200 or the $500 iPod.

    Just down at Disney in Orlando. It’s packed. Turning them away.

    You are just silly. And, so is the Democratic Party. Get a grip, actus, there ain’t nobody in this world for you to rescue. The most serious health problem in this country is obesity.

    This rescue mentality is kinda sick. Get rid of it and you’ll be a much happier camper. You’re just making a nuisance out of yourself with the Wade Churchill, Marxist outlook. It’s over. Wake up, Rip Van Winkle! The problem is that you just don’t know how to join the party.

  7. actus February 21, 2005 at 9:24 am | | Reply

    ‘The most serious health problem in this country is obesity.’

    I’d say its lack of health care coverage. But you really think its obesity? thats interesting. How does obesity correlate with social class? I’m sure we’ve reached a level of development where people aren’t starving, but i’m not so sure we’ve reached one where everyone can afford to eat nutriciously.

    ‘This rescue mentality is kinda sick. ‘

    I think you’re chasing a ghost. A specter. Something not there but in your head. Who’s in the rescue here?

  8. Stephen February 21, 2005 at 9:30 am | | Reply

    “How does obesity correlate with social class?”

    See what I mean? You need to stop thinking about this crap, actus. Nobody wants you to fix these things for them.

    The only thing you are succeeding in doing is making yourself miserable. The rest of us are wondering why you waste your time this way.

    In answer to the jist of the article, the Democratic party has become the party of racism. That’s obvious. It is obsessed with racial classification and “class.”

    I have a summer home in Woodstock, NY. Lots of people making a nuisance out of themselves like you do. Boy, are they miserable. And there are probably 2 black people in town. They like it that way, too.

  9. actus February 21, 2005 at 9:45 am | | Reply

    ‘See what I mean? You need to stop thinking about this crap, actus. Nobody wants you to fix these things for them.’

    How bout for me? And what’s the matter with asking if the biggest health problem in america (according to you) has a disparate impact across class?

    ‘I have a summer home in Woodstock, NY’

    For a taste of your own medicine, i’ll add: That explains quite a bit.

  10. Stephen February 21, 2005 at 10:01 am | | Reply

    Well, I live most of the time in Jersey City. My neighborhood is about equal parts black, Asian, hispanic and white. I was married for 16 years to a Filipina.

    I don’t apologize for doing well. That’s what you’re supposed to do in the good old U.S.A.

    Health care is astronomically expensive. Everybody wants to live to 90 on a ventilator. There are no easy fixes and nobody’s to blame.

  11. actus February 21, 2005 at 10:07 am | | Reply

    ‘There are no easy fixes and nobody’s to blame.’

    Some of us like challenges.

  12. John Rosenberg February 23, 2005 at 10:03 am | | Reply

    actus et. al. – Re “working class,” see today’s column by WaPo’s Democratic columnist, Harlod Meyerson, “Working Class Democrats.” Meyerson fears that the Democrats’ problem with these voters “may be deeper than even the most pessimistic Democrats fear it is.”

    The redoubtable and unpronounceable Ruy Teixeira, Democratic poll analyst par excellence, has been rooting around in the raw data newly released from the 2004 exit poll and has come up with one morsel that should cause Democrats everywhere to gag. It’s not just that John Kerry got clobbered by working-class whites, whom he lost to George W. Bush by a hefty 23 points. It’s not just that 66 percent of these voters trusted Bush to handle terrorism, compared with just 39 percent who trusted Kerry. It’s that 55 percent of white working-class voters trusted Bush to handle the economy, while only 39 percent trusted Kerry.

    Query: If the Democrats believe they are the party that is concerned for the working class, does that require them to believe that working class voters are dumb for not recognizing it?

  13. Cobra February 24, 2005 at 7:28 pm | | Reply

    John writes:

    >>>Query: If the Democrats believe they are the party that is concerned for the working class, does that require them to believe that working class voters are dumb for not recognizing it?”

    I simply believe the GOP has been far more effective at selling their ideas to that segment of society. I find it fascinating how multi-millionaire conservative talk show pundits proclaim populist, “I’m fighting for you” type strategies…and get away with it time and time again. I’m not saying they’re “bad people” for doing it. I’m just saying there’s a science to it, and Democrats are losing the public relations battle. Take for example, this talking points guide for the GOP authored by pollster Frank Luntz on the subject of Medical Lawsuit Reform.

    http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/healthcare/rp/rp004784.pdf.

    Pay particular attention in the guide to the “Six Principles of Reform” in the beginning, and the boxed “Words that Work” sections throughout the essay.

    There are similiar campaign strategies on virtually every policy platform, and it behooves the Democrats to embrace the tactics of the Republicans to return fire in the “Language Wars.”

    –Cobra

  14. actus February 27, 2005 at 3:11 pm | | Reply

    “Query: If the Democrats believe they are the party that is concerned for the working class, does that require them to believe that working class voters are dumb for not recognizing it?”

    I don’t think it requires gullibility or dumbness. I think it requires advertising.

Leave a Reply to Stephen Click here to cancel reply.