Wednesday, February 20, 2008
How about that unity?
Like a moth flying into a candle, Liberal pundits love few things more than writing obituaries for the "fragile coalition" of social conservatives, small-government libertarians, and defense hawks that comprises the post-WWII GOP. Every great realignment of the body politic--Watergate, the end of the Cold War, Bill Clinton's third-way politics, Iraq--is the harbinger of a decisive shattering of the coalition Frank Meyer named "fusionism." And yet every time they gather for the wake, the casket is opened and found to be empty.
Meanwhile, the Democratic party has been shattered and splintered routinely since 1968. I was always optimistic about Hillary's weakness in the general election, but I am warming more and more to an Obama candidacy with each passing day. Why? Ask Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists:
A generation earlier, these people wanted their kids to go on to four-year colleges because that was the best ticket to membership in the financially-successful class of the US. Not anymore. College today is as much a cultural institution as a financial one. If you want your kid to make six figures in a steady job, he or she is better off learning to weld aluminum and become an auto-body technician than getting a law degree from any but the top 10% or so of schools. Then again, if you want your daughter to meet the sort of boy you'd be flattered to call your son-in-law, you probably want her to go to a 4-year college rather than Wyotech. It's about class, old boy, not money.
Now, John McCain, who no doubt would have joined his father and grandfather before him in the long line of admirals named McCain had he not married the money that got him into the Senate, is hardly an average working stiff. The argument can be made that Michelle Obama is the most self-made person (not) in this race. But to a machinist from Peoria, which one of them appears more "posh," as the British call their class superiors? The military in the US is an exceptional institution that exists more wholly outside the class system than any other. Annapolis is arguably harder to get into (in most every sense) than Harvard or Yale, but aside from the occasional chief petty officer, no one in the US sneers at graduates of the service academies the way they do at Ivy Leaguers. Likewise, surveys routinely find that US military officers are the most universally-respected professionals in the public eye. They may learn to read Virgil in the original Latin, but they are not latte-sipping, sandal-clad elitists.
We have seen the real John McCain for aroudn twenty years. He is often nasty, imperious, egotistical, and self-righteous. No one who isn't gets as far as he has, and that includes Barack Ghandi Boddhisatva Christ Hope Obama, whose soaring message of "you're not f---ed now that I'm here" is wearing thin even now. If pushed to name a top-tier Republican who can draw the votes of machinists who grumble about management pricks like Mitt Romney and hippie fags in the same breath, John McCain is quite simply the best name since Reagan.
Therefore I am going to put my money where my mouth is and say that if Obama is the nominee, that McCain will carry Maine, New Hampshire, and come within 5 points of winning Massachusetts, which is just now getting hit with the spins after drinking too much of the hope-aid. ¶ 10:25 AM
Like a moth flying into a candle, Liberal pundits love few things more than writing obituaries for the "fragile coalition" of social conservatives, small-government libertarians, and defense hawks that comprises the post-WWII GOP. Every great realignment of the body politic--Watergate, the end of the Cold War, Bill Clinton's third-way politics, Iraq--is the harbinger of a decisive shattering of the coalition Frank Meyer named "fusionism." And yet every time they gather for the wake, the casket is opened and found to be empty.
Meanwhile, the Democratic party has been shattered and splintered routinely since 1968. I was always optimistic about Hillary's weakness in the general election, but I am warming more and more to an Obama candidacy with each passing day. Why? Ask Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists:
Call him a Clinton shill if you want. But forget that Obama spent time as a community organizer in the minority neighborhoods of Chicago, because those are as far away from Waukesha and Pittsburgh as Harvard Law is from the University of Phoenix. Culturally, the Obamas are card-carrying members of the new meritocracy, the professional overclass that supplies not just private-equity robber barons like Mitt Romney, but college professors and elected officials as well. These days you are probably as likely to find a self-made millionaire in a roomful of machinists as in a gathering of Harvard classmates of equal age. But the machine-shop owner is a lot less likely to know who Frank Rich or Christo are, and less likely still to give a shit.“Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius- driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine. He's a poet, not a fighter.”
A generation earlier, these people wanted their kids to go on to four-year colleges because that was the best ticket to membership in the financially-successful class of the US. Not anymore. College today is as much a cultural institution as a financial one. If you want your kid to make six figures in a steady job, he or she is better off learning to weld aluminum and become an auto-body technician than getting a law degree from any but the top 10% or so of schools. Then again, if you want your daughter to meet the sort of boy you'd be flattered to call your son-in-law, you probably want her to go to a 4-year college rather than Wyotech. It's about class, old boy, not money.
Now, John McCain, who no doubt would have joined his father and grandfather before him in the long line of admirals named McCain had he not married the money that got him into the Senate, is hardly an average working stiff. The argument can be made that Michelle Obama is the most self-made person (not) in this race. But to a machinist from Peoria, which one of them appears more "posh," as the British call their class superiors? The military in the US is an exceptional institution that exists more wholly outside the class system than any other. Annapolis is arguably harder to get into (in most every sense) than Harvard or Yale, but aside from the occasional chief petty officer, no one in the US sneers at graduates of the service academies the way they do at Ivy Leaguers. Likewise, surveys routinely find that US military officers are the most universally-respected professionals in the public eye. They may learn to read Virgil in the original Latin, but they are not latte-sipping, sandal-clad elitists.
We have seen the real John McCain for aroudn twenty years. He is often nasty, imperious, egotistical, and self-righteous. No one who isn't gets as far as he has, and that includes Barack Ghandi Boddhisatva Christ Hope Obama, whose soaring message of "you're not f---ed now that I'm here" is wearing thin even now. If pushed to name a top-tier Republican who can draw the votes of machinists who grumble about management pricks like Mitt Romney and hippie fags in the same breath, John McCain is quite simply the best name since Reagan.
Therefore I am going to put my money where my mouth is and say that if Obama is the nominee, that McCain will carry Maine, New Hampshire, and come within 5 points of winning Massachusetts, which is just now getting hit with the spins after drinking too much of the hope-aid. ¶ 10:25 AM
