McCain is in for a terrible shock if he wins
Reihan Salam says that most Republicans have no idea how much the American social landscape has changed. They should learn from Obama’s Google-like appeal
Britain’s Conservatives might be plotting a triumphant return to power but America’s Republicans are in a state of utter collapse. And it’s not just because the tide is turning after two terms of George W. Bush. For better or for worse, the Cameron Conservatives have adapted to a more culturally liberal, urban, diverse society. They have reconciled themselves to the welfare state in a way that Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher never did. Republicans, in contrast, are labouring under the illusion that America remains the yeoman democracy of yesteryear, full of plucky individualists. Slowly but surely, American politics is catching up with the country’s demographic transformation. American exceptionalism — the many quirks of geography and culture that conspire to make US society something of an anomaly among advanced market democracies — is all but dead.
Consider that few of America’s 300 million people live in wide-open spaces. Most are, like Europeans, crowded into vast conurbations that slink up and down the coasts and along a handful of interstate highways. Thanks to robust population growth, this urban America is getting denser all the time. It’s true that America is multiracial. But then again, so is Europe. And America’s minorities tend to see government as a benevolent force, which is why they tilt towards the social democratic Left. The explosive growth of higher education and the concomitant emergence of a mass upper middle class has given America a large and growing constituency of ‘postmaterialist’ voters who care less about taxes and more about expressing their liberal values.
But isn’t the American welfare state smaller? Not if you factor in the invisible welfare state of tax subsidies. The main difference is that our welfare state channels money through private firms, and it is more generous to the middle class than to the poor. Polling evidence suggests that American voters are increasingly receptive to making our welfare state more like European welfare states, complete with some form of universal healthcare. The idea that Americans are instinctively laissez-faire is appealing to American conservatives, but it is mostly bunk. Had Ted Kennedy been elected president in 1980, we’d likely be talking about how America has always been dirigiste, as demonstrated by Hamilton, Lincoln and Henry Clay. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and Ronald Reagan helped usher in a golden age of entrepreneurship and innovation.
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Ray
June 5th, 2008 10:47amThe reason the Republican Party is in such dire straits is precisely because it is no longer a 'conservative' party.
Under Bush, it has dabbled in big government, ruinous foreign wars, open-doors immigration, precipitous trade deficits and grievious assaults upon the civil liberties of its citizens. No wonder many disillusioned Republicans are seriously pondering whether an Obama presidency could really make things any worse.
Kiffa
June 5th, 2008 2:42pmGreat article, more from this writer please.
His remark that the Cameroons have reconciled themselves to the welfare state confirms depressingly an answer George Osborne gave me about the need for radical Charles Murray type reform. I was hoping his was a cautious reply during a position of weakness. How depressing. THE STATE IS NOT THE SOLUTION. Never has been, never will be.
Tina
June 5th, 2008 4:25pmObama has a hardcore of support based on spin, rhetoric and sentiment - his 'halo' as you put it - but he's a long way off pulling the wool over everyone's eyes with his sweet talking snake oil salesman patter.
Even Newsnight last night said it tried to find someone in the Obama camp to talk about his foreign policy to them but no one would.
The mood music won't fool everyone.
cuffleyburgers
June 5th, 2008 4:48pmIf true a depressing article.
Is there nowhere to hide from the socialists?
No beacon of hope?
Alexander
June 5th, 2008 5:55pmWhile Obama is certainly the media darling, he hardly has "Google-like appeal". It's been at least a month and a half since we knew that he was going to be the Democratic nominee, but he still couldn't carry states that he was supposed to, like Indiana or South Dakota. He lost the democratic primaries in critical swing states like WV, Ohio, and Florida. He did not carry the Democratic heartland of the Northeast. His victory rests on liberal electorates in states that will go Republican in November, super delegates and the undemocratic allocation of more delegates to him as loser of the Texas primary than to Clinton as the victor.
While I agree that the House and Senate are going to have larger Democratic majorities, I remain dubious that Obama can win, even in this most Democratic of all years.
Christopher Chantrill
June 5th, 2008 6:53pmThe comparison with the Tories in 1997 is palpable.
But remember, after eleven years of New Labour, the voters decided they had been had. And what is metro/green/moderate David Cameron proposing?
Education choice, welfare reform, and crime control. Can you spell c-o-n-s-e-r-v-a-t-i-v-e?
Peter Collins
June 6th, 2008 7:59amMr. Salam,
I'll get right to the point.
You're not an American. You have no feel for this country. Apparently you think that Ipod-wearing, latte-sipping, Prius-driving twits are now a majority. Get a clue, dude. Next time you visit, go somewhere besides New York, Washington, LA and their suburbs.
You're full of crap.
Cheers,
Peter Collins
Norfolk, Virginia
David Lindsay
June 8th, 2008 12:33amOf course, they can always join up with the disaffected Clintonites, as a rump party of neoliberal economic policy, just plain liberal social policy, and neoconservative foreign policy. No change there, for either of them. But mercifully never in office again.
Jack Heismann
June 8th, 2008 3:08amQuite amusing, actually.
If Mr. Salam is correct, and that the American landscape has so dramatically changed as he claims, then it would be rather impossible for Mr. McCain to win, wouldn't it.
But even more to the point, if Mr. McCain should win the election, it would be rather conclusive that Mr. Salam was, well, quite the fool.
In reality, his title contradicts his premise to the point that he either lacks good common sense that every writer should have before putting a pen to paper, or more likely, it is just that his editor simply doesn't like him.
Not surprising given his content.
Jack Heismann
David Lindsay
June 8th, 2008 8:22pmThe first black President of the United States will have neither a Civil Rights background nor even a slave ancestry.
He will win as a Democrat with so many paleocon votes that it will not matter that the Israel Lobby was against him.
The first woman President of the United States will not now be a member of the feminist generation.
And no one who fought in Vietnam will ever now be President of the United States.
Funny Old World.
And Brave New World.
rightwingprof
June 9th, 2008 11:07amWishful thinking. The landscape hasn't changed that much, and the Pew poll asked the wrong question. Battleground polls which ask people to rate themselves as somewhat/very liberal v. somewhat/very conservative still show that conservatism is dominant in the United States.
You don't really want us to put on our diapers like all of you, do you? Who would change yours?
David Lindsay
June 10th, 2008 5:31pmBarack Obama: Conservative Republican
Yes, you read aright.
Obama is an isolationist in all but name, and a protectionist even in name.
Obama's links to the black churches give him a vast morally and socially conservative hinterland, in marked contrast to the other side's purely rhetorical relationship with such concerns over long decades.
Obama's black base has no time whatever, either for the mass immigration favoured by McCain, or for the consequent diminishment of English in American society and public life (long indulged by the Bushes).
Obama has already beaten Hillary Clinton.
And, whereas the Republican Party is now as ludicrously misnamed as our own Conservative and Labour Parties, Obama really does believe in the 'res publica' that his opponents actively want to destroy.
What's not to like?
Jo-jo
June 11th, 2008 8:09pmMany conservatives still think it is the 1980s much the way liberals in the 1980s acted like it was still 1964. Tens of millions of voters are under the age of 35 or are immigrants. They have no recollection of either Jimmy Carter's or Ronald Reagan's presidency. They do remmeber the good times under Bill Clinton and the awful times we are experiencing today. To those tens of millions of voters, liberal isnt a dirty word, conservative is.