Posted on 02/18/2004 8:43:52 AM PST by SierraWasp
This story is taken from Opinion at sacbee.com.
Peter Schrag: Gay marriage: Gavin Newsom's gift to Bush
By Peter Schrag - (Published February 18, 2004) Pollster Stanley Greenberg was in Berkeley the other day flogging his new book, "The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It." Greenberg, political adviser to President Clinton and a list of other political leaders on the liberal side of the spectrum - from Al Gore to Tony Blair, Nelson Mandela and Gerhard Schroeder - believes that the sharp and nearly even political split in America reflects, more than anything else, a deep cultural divide.
Within that divide, the major parties represent two "cultural blocs" clustered around deep splits about faith, family and moral values.
On the Republican side: Christian evangelicals; "privileged men," the "f-you boys," blue-collar men without a college education; exurbia and rural voters.
On the Democratic side: "black power" and, to a lesser degree, Latinos; "super-educated women"; "secular warriors," people who don't go to church and don't own guns; the unions; and, more generally, the "cosmopolitan states" (including California and most of the Northeast) with high concentrations of college-educated voters, environmentalists and minorities.
Because of the sharp and nearly even national divisions - in voting, in Congress, in the states - between these two party blocs, Greenberg says, each has concentrated its electoral strategy in getting out its base and only marginally in broadening its appeal.
And so for more than a generation, neither party has offered the kind of vision for the country that, for example, gave the New Deal its dominance and ability to control the national agenda through five elections. Ditto, to a much smaller degree, for the short-lived Reagan revolution that, in Greenberg's view, still "lives vividly in the consciousness of today's modern conservatives."
Greenberg, who hopes his Democrats can break the deadlock, thinks they could win the 2004 election with their re-energized base alone. So far, he said, they've avoided the symbolic internal cultural fights that badly damaged them in the past.
In general, while the Republican states are gaining population, the demographic trends favor his party. The declining number of "f-you boys" now represents just 6 percent of the electorate, the rural vote is shrinking and the percentage of the population with at least a college degree is growing.
With mounting doubts, moreover, about the costs of the Iraq war and the distorted intelligence used to justify it, the jobless recovery, the ballooning deficit, the endemic favoritism for corporations and their executives, the festering White House embarrassment about the president's National Guard service, President Bush's own base is not as imposing as it seemed a year ago.
But Greenberg wants something broader and policy-rich than another swing of the pendulum, and he thinks his party could do it - as he unsuccessfully urged Gore to do in 2000 - by coupling its attacks on corporate favoritism with a much more positive and encompassing "opportunity" vision.
The notion of equal opportunity, he says, is losing the racial cast it's had since the 1960s. Clinton sold the idea of diversity as a source of national strength, and equal rights are more accepted.
According to Greenberg's polls and surveys, "People are hungry for a view of America as a place of opportunity." The opportunity vision cuts across the cultural divide.
Greenberg also understands that there's risk in a no-risk, just-bring-out-the-base strategy, in part because unforeseeable events could confound it, and in part because Republicans control all three branches of government in Washington - and because of that huge advantages in campaign funds - and thus have enormous power to manipulate the political agenda.
One unforeseeable event - the gay marriage issue - is already in play, thanks in part to the Massachusetts Supreme Court and thanks in part to Gavin Newsom, the new mayor of San Francisco, who in one of his first major acts (of monumental political stupidity), successfully urged city officials to grant licenses for the gay unions that Californians had voted overwhelmingly to forbid.
That measure, Proposition 22, the gay marriage initiative passed by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin four years ago, was itself a nasty volley in the culture wars and a foray into religious wedge politics where, aside from the property and custodial laws relating to civil unions, the state ought to have no business at all.
Polls show that while Americans oppose gay marriage, they also worry about the federal government's meddling with the sort of constitutional gay marriage ban that Bush has been toying with. But just when Bush's support and his poll standings are shrinking, here come San Francisco's city-county sanctioned gay marriages - almost certain to be declared invalid anyway - to rouse Bush's base.
Clinton learned painfully that wading into the gay front of the culture wars in his first days in office is not a good way to begin. Maybe Newsom has no wider political ambitions. But just as Bush, fearing a weakening political base, is working overtime to inflame the cultural right, couldn't Newsom have done his fellow Democrats a favor and waited a year before adding fuel to the fire?
Some wonder if then it will be okay to marry ones young child, pet, etc. Surely polygamy would be next.
BTW, an anthropologist pointed out that Newsome's prosecutor wife, now an anchor on Court TV, has a masculine forehead and mouth. Could she be a transsexual?
On the Democratic side: "black power" and, to a lesser degree, Latinos; "super-educated women"; "secular warriors," people who don't go to church and don't own guns; the unions; and, more generally, the "cosmopolitan states" (including California and most of the Northeast) with high concentrations of college-educated voters, environmentalists and minorities.
I hope this comes across better in his book, because, no matter how clever he thinks his cutesy terms are (the "f-you boys"?), on its face this is a poor characterization of the cultural blocks in the parties.
Where are the greens among the Democrats? The libertarians among Republicans? Those cultural themes are so strong they spawn splinter parties and candidates almost every election cycle, and increasingly at every level of government.
And where'e the split between married and single? That's another strong cultural theme that divides the parties.
Here is the GLARING kernal of TRUTH in this diatribe!!!
Trouble is... Everyone, including Demonicrats and Repellicans are mis-interpreting this fact and searching for ways to bend the "hunger" to their own biased agenda!!!
It's high time for another Reagan to appear and totally capitalize on this economic "HUNGER!" (especially in CA)
Guess Karl Rove didn't get Greenberg's memo...
Firstly, who are the "f-you boys"? The only f-you boy in politics I know of is John effin Kerry. And of course they toss in their elitist insinuation that once people get college degrees they'll vote dimocrat. That's just a delusion of the left...most far leftists I've seen post here and elsewhere clearly are not intelligent enough to have earned a degree...well, unless it's in Frisbee throwing or something of the sort.
Another Wasp stinger.
That's exactly what happened with one of my co-workers. He's a Republican, but hates Bush, and has been saying for months he'd vote for anyone but him. But as soon as MA legalized gay marriages, he decided there was no way he could vote for Kerry, and reluctantly decided he'd have to vote for Bush. Kerry, by the way, was one of only 13 or 14 senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act signed by President Clinton. That should tell you everything you need to know about his position on the issue.
I think he means us. ;)
I think he means us. ;)
Humm...well, ok, but I never use language like that...although it's a regular feature of the at the DUmmie board.
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