Young People Support Civil Rights in Michigan

Listen to the people, they say. As they reelected Democrat Governor Granholm and Senator Stabenow Michiganders also passed Proposition 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, by an overwhelming margin of 58% to 42%.

That’s remarkable when you realize that MCRI supporters were outspent 4 to 1 in the campaign and that all the great and the good had lined up against it.

It is another victory in the lonely campaign of Ward Connerly to return the nation to the civil rights principles that it committed to in the 1960s.

It has to have been the brightest moment in the election.

Writes Henry Payne of the victory party on Tuesday night:

At Prop 2’s victory party Tuesday night, Connerly, 67, marveled at the crowd of young people cheering the initiative’s victory. They represent a new generation that has felt the sting of discrimination at the hand of universities like Michigan.

Yes. Young people. Civil Rights. What a concept. Young people today have every right to resent the cruel discrimination wielded by their elders in the name of “diversity.” Here’s University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman:

I will not stand by while the very heart and soul of this great university is threatened.

To which we humbly reply: “It’s the law, Madam President.” It’s the law and your job as top bureaucrat in the University of Michigan is to obey the law and to be seen to obey the law.

About Those Tough-guy Freshman Democrats

What happens when all those freshman Democrats get to Washington. You know, the ones like Brad Ellsworth, whose campaign commercials talked about stuff like this, according to Terence P. Jeffrey:

A lifetime of Hoosier values, a southwest Indiana native, Brad Ellsworth knows faith and family comes first.

...

Opposes abortion, and supports traditional marriage... a hunter who supports the Second Amendment, who will fight to protect our kids from violence and filth on TV and the Internet -- because, for a local sheriff like Brad, it's always about listening and putting families like yours first.

It’s an interesting question isn’t it. Are these tough guy Democrats going to vote against amnesty for illegal immigrants? Are they going to vote for a federal marriage amendment?

Or are they going to disappear into the woodwork as the liberal barons return to power and attempt to pick up where they left off twelve years ago?

And what about those tough-guy Democratic Senators, men like Tester and Webb? Are they going to vote against liberal filibusters of conservative Supreme Court nominees?

Seriously though, does the conservative cast of the freshman class of Democrats mean that the leaders of the Democratic Party believe in a right turn, back towards the center and the beliefs of heartland America?

The straight answer is that we don’t know. And frankly, I’d guess, neither do they.

Build An Agenda of Hope

Some Republicans are out blaming President Bush, Congressional Republicans, immigration policies, an unpopular war, and big government conservatism as they look at defeat on the morning after.

But others are saying: Look, we gave the election our best shot and the American people told us to get lost. So let us accept their decision and move on.

Unlike Democrats over the past years, Republicans should be philosophical about defeat. The American people decided what they wanted, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If we can’t persuade the American people in a fair elecion then we have a problem. So let us begin right now building a new Agenda of Hope.

1. The Democrats have not been doing any thinking in their years in the wilderness. It is still 1933 and time for New Deal policies like raising the minimum wage. This is a huge advantage for Republicans.
   
2. The welfare state isn’t going anywhere except downhill, with its overpaid functionaries doing less and less to deliver social services.
   
3. Resurgent Islam isn’t going anywhere. Democrats are going to have to decide just what it is that they think the War on Terror is all about. Maybe some time about 2011 we can get to a national consensus on the war.
   
4. The Democrats cold-cocked us on education reform in 2001 and Social Security reform in 2005. The time to start thinking the deep thoughts on how to do these reforms is now, while Republicans and conservatives are in the political wilderness. These problems will continue to fester because Democrats aren’t interested in a solution. They like the support of monopoly-wage teachers and dependent Social Security recipients. Why would they change?
   
5. Democrats are going to spend money on global warming with a vast menu of mega-projects and subsidies for their pet schemes, and it is going to hurt the economy.
   

So let us be in good heart and start to build again. There will come a time when the American people will turn to us again, and we should prepare ourselves to deserve that honor.

The Day After

With at least a gain of 30 seats in the House of Representatives and a gain of 4 to 6 seats in the United States Senate the Democrats have earned a famous victory. It seems to be about average for a second-term off-year election.

I have felt for some time that it was time to Democrats to be back in power. They need to be in power to connect with reality in the post 9/11 world, and the American people need to see them at it. So it is probably best if the Democrats win the presidency in 2008.

Right now the Democrats say that it is all Bush’s fault. They experience the War on Terror as a continuation of a cycle of violence, not a clash of civilizations. Very well. Let us put the question to the proof.

That was, after all, the question in the mid to late 1970s. Was the Cold War a fight against a cruel and brutal Soviet Union, or was it an “inordinate fear of Communism,” as President Carter put it. The question was put to the American people, they elected Ronald Reagan as president, and the rest is history.

The great issues of the next decade will be the conflict with Islam, the failure of the welfare state, the refinement of the global economy, and the question of life. Notice how the two political parties in the United States line up.

For the Democrats the War on Terror is a Republican trick, the welfare state is a source of jobs and power, the global economy is something to hide from, and life is a choice.

For the Republicans the War on Terror is a clash of civilizations, the welfare state is a tragic mistake that has cratered the poor and the dependent, the global economy is a challenge to be embraced, and life is a sacred gift.

And that completely avoids the question of global warming.

Which side would you rather be on?

Disaffected Reagan Democrats Call The Tune

Remember the old Clinton campaign song? “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.”

Actually, it should have been: Don’t Stop Thinking About the Reagan Democrats. It was forgetting about them that was the undoing of the New Deal coalition. And it is forgetting about them that is returning the Democrats to power today, according to James Pinkerton.

Reagan Democrats are the key swing voting bloc... Democrats by ancestry, but have voted Republican more recently.

That’s because they are social conservatives and economic liberals, meaning that they don’t like abortion and gay marriage and they do like Social Security and Medicare.

The Reagan Democrats are looking for a party that takes seriously their concerns about immigration, homeland security, multiculturalism, immorality and de-industrialization, combined with a prudently hawkish foreign policy. Whichever party gets there first in addressing those problems, and then stays there to solve them - that party will be in the majority for a long time.

Wait a minute! What’s the problem? If you look at most of the issues above, you can say that the parties are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to water down the agenda of their base in order to make it acceptable to the Reagan Democrats. At the very least they are kicking up dust to try and seem closer to the Reagan Democrat position than they really are.

So why would the Reagan Democrats need a party to belong to?

Oh sure, they don’t get everything they want, but they get a lot. In fact, maybe the worst thing that could happen to them is to become the base of one of the parties, for then both parties could ignore them.

The Reagan Democrats are doing just fine right where they are.

On Election Day

It’s Election Day and pundit John Podhoretz admits that “nobody knows anything.”

All the polling and prognosticating ends up being what it says it is, polling and prognosticaing.

What really matters is what the polls find so hard to measure: intensity and commitment.

Meanwhile, Iowa Electronic Markets is pretty clear about the outcome. Today’s prices show about a 70% chance that the Republicans keep the Senate and 80% chance that the Democrats take the House.

You can see the graph of historical prices for the House here. It shows about a 50-50 split until early October when a clear trend for a Democratic win started emerging. The market has stabilized at 80% chance of Democratic takeover for about a week.

The graph of historical prices for the Senate is here. It shows about a 75% chance of Republicans holding the upper house, tightening to about 70% in the last month.

So now all we need to do is go out and vote. And wait for the results.

Until Conservatives Can Influence Upper-Middle Class Opinion...

During the Vietnam War, relates James Q. Wilson, the sea-change in public opinion from support for the war in 1964 to opposition in 1968 occurred mainly among upper-middle class readers of news and opinion.

Strikingly, opinion did not shift much among working-class voters, no matter whether they read these press accounts or not. Affluent people who read the press apparently have more changeable opinions than ordinary folks. Public opinion may not have changed much, but elite opinion changed greatly.

This finding came from a study by sociologist James D. Wright. It is important because Wilson did a similar study of opinion during the Iraq War.

Using 2004 poll data, I found a similar effect: Americans who rarely watched television news about the 2004 political campaign were much more supportive of the war in Iraq than were those who watched a great deal of TV news. And the falloff in support was greatest for those with a college education.

Wilson’s findings point up the central political problem for conservatives and Republicans. During the period between election times we do not get enough access to elite minds. That means that at election time we are always playing catch-up with voters who are well-disposed towards us, because we have to use paid media to get our interpretation of events and ideas out to them

An example of this is shown in the internals(pdf) of the current Pew Center poll on the mid-term election. It shows that in the month since early October “whites” have flipped from 44% Republican/leaning Republican and 49% Democrat/leaning Democrat to 48% to 43%. Let’s put that in a table to make it clear.

“White” Voters Rep/lean Rep Dem/lean Dem Early October 2006 44% 49% Early November 2006 48% 43%

Over roughly the same period President Bush’s approval rating among independents has risen from 27% to 35%

It is obvious why this is so. Up until a month ago, all that most Americans heard or read about politics came from the mainstream media. In the last month paid media has flipped the biggest democraphic in the nation.

It is intolerable for conservatives and Republicans to be operating at such a disadvantage. It is just not good enough.

And the big problem is public opinion among upper-middle class Americans, for they are the people whose opinions are easily swayed. Another way of saying this is that they are the Americans who are rated “proficient” in literacy, and able to divine the meaning of an editorial or opinion piece.

Let that be our goal. To reach the minds of the literate, opinion forming upper-middle class, so we don’t have to spend good money playing catch-up at election time.