Keep thinking that way and you will make progressive politicians very happy.

Your friend,

Kettle

But, again, thanks for reading and responding. You should tell all your conservative friends to tune in also.

The “progressive” movement is not about policies nor ideas. It’s about power, politicial division based on demographic grudges and divisive emotional arguements.

Buddy, you have to give it a rest. I did not say Atwater formulated this plan to limit the electoral opportunities for white Democrats in the South and to maximize the electoral opportunities for white Republicans and black Democrats, Atwater did. Whatever anyone thinks of the man, and I admire him in many ways, he was not sneaky. He would tell you what he was going to do and dare you to stop him. Only rarely did anyone manage to stop him.

I assure you my article was not intended to sneak anything by you or to brainwash anybody bothering to read it. The article is intended to say that demographic, cultural, political and economic factors make it possible to use redistricting in Southern states to the great, long term advantage of progressive politicians.

I did not get into what I thought a resurgent Democratic/Progressive party might do. I did not for two reasons. One it wasn’t the point of the article. Two, I simply do not know what such a resurgence would yield.

You should not be surprised at this. You have said several times that the former Republican majority in the Congress and the last Bush administration did not uphold sound conservative principles as they claimed they would. Who would have thought the only fiscally responsible administration in the last fifty years would have been Bill Clinton’s. In short, who the hell knows what a resurgent progressive majority in Southern legislatures might do should they come about? Nobody, that’s who.

I could be wrong in my analysis. I stated clearly that the Democratic Party is perfectly capable of screwing everything up even if I have correctly diagnosed the factors at work. However, your over the top, totally irrelevant protests would seem to indicate you do not think so. Your hysterical response leads me to believe that you are either completely Pavlovian in your response to everything or you are dedicating yourself to misdirection. Either way, I applaud your passion and appreciate your tuning in.

Your friend,

Kettle

Since the 1980′s Democrats have won and lost in state legislatures, governors, Congress, the Presidency and then — gasp! — just elected a black guy for President. But you set this in bigoted conspiratorial terms to cast aspersion. As to the other contentions, two points: these so-called safely black districts occur not only in the South — but in all major metropolitan areas in the U.S. Second, the southern legislatures co-incident with the growth of these safely-black Southern districts were Democrat controlled. Why would they deliberately undertake redistricting policies to deny their representation in Congress? Widespread GOP control of legislatures, certainly in Georgia, is a very recent phenomenon. This census will be the first where an entirely GOP gov’t holds sway over the redistricting process in Georgia.

My principal contention is that you deliberately choose not to write about “the provision of social security for our citizens” because the underlying policies are arbitrary and meaningless to you. The goal is foment false grudges among the demographic groups you describe, drive emotional issues and then propose cathartic, emotional solutions to take control.

But if you want to wax conspiratorial, I contend the reason these safely black districts were created, by Democrats, was to establish a stranglehold over the pipeline of Washington largesse that cities naturally receive by dint of their size. Democrats foment paranoid bigoted straw men based upon race to ensure that the money received from Washington passes directly through Democrat-controlled bureaucracies at from the federal to local level. When an outsider cries foul, you bleat “racist!” in an effort to cow the opposition and keep the cash flowing within the party (see Clinton, Bill; and Campell, Bill).

Your observation that “given the abundance of natural resources, the nation has always been able to accommodate a population of freeloaders” prompts me to reply that this super-abundance of natural resources is what allowed America (the USA) to become the great and powerful country that it is. However, Americans have spent all the interest accumulated over millennia and are now eating into the capital reserves.

Frank

Just a point of clarification, the importance of racial identification in redistricting is because the Supreme Court and the Voting Rights Act make it so.

Of course, the law aside, there are historic voting patterns associated with a group’s racial identification and politicians exploit those everyday. It should not be surprising or offensive to realize the same will be true during redistricting.

Mike

Again, thanks for writing in.

That said, I think you miss the entire point. I did not say the Republican Party was racist. Certainly, the recognition that black people might want to go to the various legislatures and represent themselves was not a racist observation. It was a simple recognition of human nature. I don’t think this surprised anybody.

Mr. Atwater was not famous for sneaking up on people. He was famous for recognizing political opportunities and exploiting them. Some might say he ruthlessly exploited these “wedge issues.” However, had the issues not been ignored they wouldn’t be there. If anything, the people demonstrating the “Massa” mentality in the late 1970s and 1980s were white Democrats who had long been in power in the various legislatures and could not adjust to the new reality.

Another point I did not make, to which you take umbrage, is this notion I wrote in support of this or that social program. While I believe it is safe to say you and I disagree on the direction our nation should take regarding the provision of social security for our citizens, I did not write about any of that. I simply pointed out that I believe there are demographic, political, economic and cultural forces afoot that Democrats/progressives can exploit in the redistricting process. A narrow point that has nothing to do with any alleged Republican racism or vast social agenda.

You simply have to start reading what people write and quit reading into these essays things that aren’t there. Otherwise, you risk making yourself ridiculous.

Your friend,

Kettle

The first problem you face is that many people recoil in horror from the stupifyingly obtuse “progressive” political agenda of: socialized medicine, socialized finance, socialized environmental regulation and, well, socialism. If you are REALLY trying to make a political appeal, you would passionately defend and articulate these core policies and have a spirited debate against the people poking the holes in these very bad ideas. Nowhere in this appeal do you bother with such necessities.

Alas, that is not your true purpose, for those are just arbitrary pretenses to the political control you seek to obtain by lies and subterfuge. And that is why yet millions more further recoil in horror from your constant fomenting of binary polemic grudge mongering between brown and white; rich and poor; gay and straight; and secular and religious. Why is it necessary for you to constantly express political ideas in terms of zero-sum, us-v-them false conflicts?

I will answer that for you. You’re not really trying to solve social problems of health, wealth and education. The goal is to foment confusion and paranoia to force political arguments away from the rational, to the emotional. You can win the argument on emotional ground, because you — quite cynically and arbitrarily — set the terms by defining the classes into which the disputants **must** adhere. The way you’ve set the emotional terms of your argument, the “progressive” opposition **must** also oppose black/brown, gay, secular and poor. But this argument is purely emotional and utterly false and irrelevant.

Here’s your problem: “First, some progressive organization has to develop the capacity to do the legal and demographic work required to produce qualified plans that result in progressive majorities….The second step will require developing a good profile of who the progressive voters in a given state are and where do they live. Included in this is identification of exactly what the progressive issues are within a given state.”

The last statement, “identification of exactly what the progressive issues are within a given state,” gives the lie to the whole artifice. Here you explicitly state that you have no political agenda that could be set forth in rational, legal/policy terms. Instead, you merely seek any set of arbitrary — and likely, emotional — priorities (read: grudges) that could gain support to obtain a political majority. To the poor, you say “We’ll get the rich.” To the black, you say “We’ll get the whites.” To the secular, “We’ll get the religious.”

Thus you repeat the old chestnut, “GOP = KKK,” until your dying breath. It appeals to victim minorities and the sensibilities of educated, enlightened citizens. This is the longest plank in your political strategy to delegitimize your opposition on emotional terms.

To other posters who have taken the more direct approach of linking the tea party movement with a bigoted insurrection with the Republican party in response to the “Age of Obama,” I have mentioned that this course is cynical and dangerous. Fomenting paranoia for political gain sets neighbor against neighbor and could devolve into violence. The strategy reverses 30 years of voluntary, uncoerced improvements in racial relations for the sake of scoring a few political points. I would very much like you to “Move On” from this cynical strategy for the sake of our society, but abandoning this core strategy removes the longest pole in your political tent. Without crying wolf, er, “RACIST!”, the tent falls and you’ll actually have to revert to defending your socialist agenda — which you know most folks will reject.

You’re welcome!