White Christian America versus Everybody Else

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



White Christian America versus Everybody Else
By Sara Robinson

September 4th, 2008 - 1:46pm ET


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In the current issue of The Nation (which also featured a cover story co-authored by our own Bob Borosage), Chris Bowers pointed out a structural truth that lies at the heart of both American political parties. In the Age of Reagan, it came to pass that the GOP consolidated itself as the party of people who are white and Christian. Everybody else—black, brown, women, gays, immigrants, urban dwellers, non-Christians, you name it— found themselves on the receiving end of conservative scapegoating so often that they eventually decamped and aggregated in the other party. At this point, it's statistically true that If you are either not white or not Christian, then you are (with varying degrees of certainty, depending on what you identify as) far more likely to be a Democrat.

This has left us in an interesting situation where the vast bulk of the country's swing voters are white Christians with progressive tendencies, who can be induced to vote either way depending on what values you can activate in them. This gives them political power far beyond their actual numbers, because winning a presidential election is largely reduced to being able to find and work the political, cultural, and religious sweet spots of this one group.

It's also given the GOP a real advantage where group solidarity is concerned. Their shared grounding in white Christian conservationism gives the GOP its notoriously unshakable consensus on worldview and goals—a unity that has consistently proven to be its strongest political advantage. On the other hand, the polyglot Democrats have become a motley crew of Everybody Else Trying To Get Along, in spite of widely varying worldviews and often irreconcilable goals. Without that same kind of coherent vision of what we hope to achieve, the progressive side is damned fragile. And conservative strategists know this.

People have made endless fun of Obama's "happy talk," but all his talk about visions and values is a direct attempt to counter the GOP's narrative advantage. He know that all those progressive factions can't hope to win the White House until we learn to look past our differences and get focused on the things we have in common. We won't succeed until we have something approximating that same kind of deep consensus. Keeping a relentless focus on our common goals and shared future is his only hope in hell of pulling this off. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008093604/white-christian-america-versus-everybody-else

[2Design]

1. just missing their sheets n/t