Democrats make the same mistake every single time - they value the opinions of others way too much.

A party that started an illegal war that murdered over a million people needs to sit down and shut up.

A party that bankrupted the wealthiest nation that the world has ever seen in eight freaking years needs to sit down and shut up.

I can’t believe anyone in any position of authority is giving this party any credibility on anything until they have totally cleansed themselves from the Bush era.

People’s underlying skepticism about President Obama’s health care plan is directly linked to the underlying worry about a weak economy. Fix the latter and only the right wing bozos will be screaming about socialismblackpenisbirthcertificateobamacarehickmulletedwayoflifeheilhitler.

I wouldn’t say it’s valuing their opinions, necessarily.  I’d say it’s more that the Blue Dogs are willing to use the Republicans as cover for what they want to do, which is kill health care reform.

Which is, of course, all the more reason to be honest about how racist the right wing opposition is, and shame anyone who associates with them.

Mr. Wise makes the point that the Constitution, as originally written before we amended it past the Bill of Rights, was a formal institution of white supremacy. I would go further and say that it was an institution of wealthy, male white supremacy.

Of the four people in my immediate family—me, my brother, my mom, and my dad—under the Constitution as originally ratified, only my dad would get a vote because he’s a white male landowner.

When we get members of the Out groups under this design saying they want to go back to the way things were when our Fathers founded it, the first thing I want to say to them is, “Okay, then give up your vote, because under that system you won’t have it!” which is probably more aggressive than I really need to be.

Aside from Hitler, I hear a lot of wingnuts bringing up Robert Mugabe now. If that isn’t overtly racial, nothing is.

Falconer—

The original Constitution said nothing about voting. The state Constitutions dealt with that. Land owning white women could vote in New Jersey from the 1780s until 1808 for example.And several states before the women’s sufferage amendment allowed women to vote.  Non-land owning white males always had the right to vote in western states, long before they did in eastern states.

There STILL isn’t a right to vote in the Constitution, only prohibitions on states banning on account of color, gender, age (if an adult) etc.

Damn, Tim Wise really hit it out of the park here!

Wow, solid.  More of that please.

I realize this is a bit of a thread jack, especially since I don’t comment here often, but I was hoping somebody could help me understand this: I went to the town hall meeting in Albuquerque (a very diverse town) and I couldn’t help but notice that over 99% of the folks gathered there were white.

It didn’t make any sense to me at all.

You’re spot-on about the overt racism of the “socialist” slur. I happened to be working in Leesville, LA, (south of Shreveport, and just across the state line from Jasper, TX) in ‘91 when David Duke swung through town trying to mount his unsuccessful campaign for the Rethug. presidential nomination. I was a flaming liberal even at the time so I decided to go and check out for myself if he was as nutso as people said. It was a sad little rally of a couple dozen or so people scattered throughout the small conference room at the local Holiday Inn, but what I still remember was that he almost literally said (and I’m paraphrasing only slightly, from memory): “The federal government is taking your hard-earned tax dollars so that they can give it to those n****rs in New Orleans to buy drugs with!” And the crowd just ate it up, nodding their heads and cheering him on. It was an eye-opening experience, and a side of Rethug politics that most of the Congressional Democrats seem to have no concept of.

I love Tim Wise. He nails it.

Geocrackr—I recently got into a discussion about the John Birch society with people who didn’t really know what the JBS was. “Officially,” the society is just an ultra-rightwing group that is against communism, socialism, immigration, and pro-Christian-USA… which, sadly, isn’t that “extreme” of a POV to have. Trying to explain that the John Birch Society was the public/political face of the KKK was a little bit difficult given their stated mission. What you and Amanda have described will definitely help me in any future efforts to explain why being rabidly anti-socialist/communist is actually coded language for being racist.

“You’re spot-on about the overt racism of the “socialist” slur. “

So is having a philosophical opposition to socialism in itself racist, or just using it as a slur in the context of American politics?  What about in the non-U.S. context?

PeterZeroOne, since I don’t think the majority of teabaggers screaming about socialism could even define it properly, I’m going to go with slur in that context.  No one begrudges you your opposition to socialism, but it’s utterly absurd to call Barack Obama a socialist.

“but it’s utterly absurd to call Barack Obama a socialist. “

As long as he supports a role for free enterprise in the economy, then he’s not a socialist, so I agree with you.  Some of his policies do have socialist elements to them, however. 

Dan, you misunderstood my question, and the commenter below you understood it, but I’ll try to clarify.  Are Amanda and Geocrackr saying that yelling out “Socialist!” at a town hall meeting is in fact coded racism?  There’s a case to be made there, sure.

Or, is the statement more broad?  That all opposition to socialism and expanding social programs is in itself racist?

I’m sure that you get kicked out of the Real America® club for shunning the fanny pack at this point.

You fashion snobs and your dog whistles.

I was thinking about this post and I think it’s a good point about the distinction between the Real American identity and the use of the socialism canard.  Definitely the Real Americans are more exclusionary.  You have to be white to be RA lots of white people are excluded.  OTOH, even if you are shunned by flags-n-fannypacks club because you like sushi or whatever, you can still paint yourself as a fiscal conservative and oppose “socialistic” public spending.

“As long as he supports a role for free enterprise in the economy, then he’s not a socialist, so I agree with you.  Some of his policies do have socialist elements to them, however.”

Depending on how broadly you want to define “socialism” (which in my experience has been drained almost completely of meaning anyway), I’m sure a close examination of George Washington’s policies would reveal items that could be considered “socialist”.

Such an examination and determination would be absurd, of course.

Government, implying at least some minimal level of cooperation among citizens, will always have elements that reactionaries will label “socialist”.  By the same token, some elements can probably be said to be “fascist” too. 

It’s only in the totality that these things can be determined.

In the case of Obama, it’s pretty clear that he would be considered a moderate Republican in any normal stretch of American history unpoisoned by toxic by-products of the Southern Strategy and aggressively anti-intellectual Reaganism…

The question you’re asking is in bad faith, Peter.  You know and I know the people screaming “socialist!” a) are not interesting in a “discussion” and b) couldn’t define socialism accurately on a dare.

Anti-socialism, once drained of its racist, classist underpinnings, is a meaningless stance. I’ve rarely met a so-called anti-socialist or libertarian who doesn’t support social spending that goes to them, such as investment in roads, courts, and fire departments. They just object to anything they think goes to someone they disapprove of.

There isn’t a “philosophical” discussion at the heart of or to the side of this.  There are interesting discussions to be had about how much of our economy should be in private and public hands, but that discussion is confined, at this point in time, almost entirely to people who vote for Democrats as Republicans devolve into the white supremacist patriarchy party.

Er, interested in a discussion.

They’re not interesting in a discussion either.

Yeah, it’s a weird question, given the current political situation.

Communism has been a classic racial slur. Read newspapers of his day and you’ll find that mainstream whites were accusing MLK of the same at every opportunity. Socialism, once it became a negative term (which took some time and some doing), became the equivalent of communist—and was more useful because commist accusations sound cartoony and absurd now, with Russia having given up its Evil Empire status, much to the Republican chagrin. Of course, communism and socialism work as bullshit accusations in non-racial contexts, too, muddying the waters. The thing about the racist use of these terms that makes them distinctive is that a black person doesn’t actually have to do anything to earn the moniker “socialist.” If a Medicare recipient protests an Obama health care plan that does nothing for the U.S. public and enriches private interests, the protestor can call Obama “socialist” in a racist fury, completely oblivious to the nature of his beloved (by him) Medicare.

As long as he supports a role for free enterprise in the economy, then he’s not a socialist, so I agree with you.  Some of his policies do have socialist elements to them, however. 

Every U.S. politician with anything resembling a serious agenda that offers an iota of benefit to the public has “policies do have socialist elements to them.” It’s impossible to avoid: socialism is pretty much inherent in any policy whereby taxes are pooled to create an advantage for persons that don’t have much money. Obvious example: Medicare, again. Plenty of hard-core, irresponsibly enthusiastic privatizers in the Republican column would eat live eels before even trying to take down Medicare. Then there’s the matter of police, firefighters, the electrical grid, etc. Socialism is pretty much a matter of degree.

Obama is a rightwinger, if one takes a view of U.S. history beyond the last thirty years, or a mildly-conservative “moderate” if one looks only at the last twenty—and tends to buy a MSM framing.

Obama is a rightwinger, if one takes a view of U.S. history beyond the last thirty years, or a mildly-conservative “moderate” if one looks only at the last twenty—and tends to buy a MSM framing.

I agree with the characterization of Obama being far more right-leaning than he is typically characterized by the so-called “liberal media”, but if we’re creating an ideological scale for all of our presidents over the past thirty years, who exactly is to his left?

Again, that isn’t to suggest that he’s a leftist - which he clearly isn’t - but it’s hard to categorize him as being a “rightwinger” in comparison to:

George W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George H.W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Gerald Ford
Richard Nixon
Dwight Eisenhower

I could possibly see a sound argument for him being more right leaning than Carter, LBJ, or JFK, but there isn’t much evidence that he’s more right leaning than our last Democratic president or our last six Republican presidents.  Maybe Eisenhower, or perhaps Ford, who were probably the most centrist-leaning GOP presidents in the past 50 years, but absolutely he isn’t more right-leaning than either of the Bushes, Reagan, or Nixon.

DTG,
Our country doesn’t even have a viable liberal party.  Republicans are far-right, and the Democratic party is centrist on average, with some center-right and some center-left members.  Obama is certainly left of the Bushes, etc., and even McCain, but it’s really easy to be left of people who are so far to the right.

Obama is not more right than Carter.  Jeesh!  Yeah, you could make an argument, but you’d wind up losing pretty darned fast.

DTG,
Our country doesn’t even have a viable liberal party.  Republicans are far-right, and the Democratic party is centrist on average, with some center-right and some center-left members.  Obama is certainly left of the Bushes, etc., and even McCain, but it’s really easy to be left of people who are so far to the right.

Agree completely.

My only point was that while it’s fair to argue that Obama really isn’t a leftist in a long-term historical context or ina current global context, he’s clearly more left leaning than any Republican POTUS we’ve had in the past several decades.

But you’re right, we don’t have a true liberal or progressive party in America.  We have the Reichwing Party which extols extreme reactionary ideology, and the Neoliberal Centrist Party, which is more socially liberal, but generally fiscally conservative (though less so than the GOP), with a tiny handful of progressives in its ranks (ie Dennis Kucinich).

If Obama can pull off decent healthcare reform (which necessarily requires at least a public option to be decent), a forward-looking energy policy, and can have us mostly (90%) disengaged from our two current wars by the end of his presidency, he may go down as the best Republican president we’ve had in 50 years.

Oh yeah, Obama is much better than McCain (who, in turn, is much better than almost any Republican).  I certainly wasn’t suggesting that we shouldn’t have elected Obama.  I just think we shouldn’t be surprised when Obama doesn’t follow through on all the progressive causes we care about.

“Anti-socialism, once drained of its racist, classist underpinnings, is a meaningless stance. I’ve rarely met a so-called anti-socialist or libertarian who doesn’t support social spending that goes to them, such as investment in roads, courts, and fire departments. They just object to anything they think goes to someone they disapprove of. “

This deserves a better response than I can come up with, but I’ll try.  For one, in my experience the most extreme anti-socialists are those who come from backgrounds where socialism has hurt them or their families in some significant way.  Tens of millions of persons were once the victims of Soviet imperialism; now they’ve developed an allergy to any degree of socialism.  They tend to be reflexively oppose any additional social programs and government intervention.  These people don’t necessarily have racist or classist motives.

Some libertarians are very hardcore even in the examples that you describe.  They proscribe toll roads, free or subsidized court costs, and want volunteer fire departments.  Many libertarians vehemently opposed the bank bailouts, even under Bush. 

“There are interesting discussions to be had about how much of our economy should be in private and public hands, but that discussion is confined, at this point in time, almost entirely to people who vote for Democrats “

If that’s true, then accusing people who oppose “socialism”, if they use it as shorthand for a greater role for government in the economy vs. a lesser role,  of racism isn’t very fair.  To be accused of racism is serious business in US politics; it can be used to bully people into accepting positions they otherwise wouldn’t.

Thank you for this post, Amanda.

It’s time we stop playing nice with the Republicans. We know they’re racists. That’s why they joined the party. We need to stop arguing the merits of the policy—that has been rehashed to death and besides they don’t argue honestly anyway. Debate just serves to weaken our side. We need to start shutting down debate entirely, put this thing to a type of “cloture vote,” and nothing shuts down debate faster than calling the other person a racist.

This important blog post is full of useful ideas. Not only can we silence opponents of public health care, but we can even paint anyone using the word “socialism” as a racist. I like this argument. Not only can we use it here, but also anytime some reich-winger starts complaining about progressive taxes. They just need to STFU. No more playing nice! The racism charge is our most powerful tool and it’s time we start employing it with gusto.

Incidentally, the original post drops the r-bomb no fewer than 14 times. This is how it’s done!

*blink*

*blink*

TCB, if you’re not a deliberate troll - one much more subtly sarcastic than we usually get around here - I beseech you to stop helping.

Comment #27: DTG in STL  on  08/25  at  01:49 PM
I could possibly see a sound argument for him being more right leaning than Carter, LBJ, or JFK, but there isn’t much evidence that he’s more right leaning than our last Democratic president or our last six Republican presidents.

Bill Clinton didn’t maintain a publicly-known torture program.

Obama does.

QED.

Comment #29: shah8  on  08/25  at  02:18 PM
Obama is not more right than Carter.  Jeesh!  Yeah, you could make an argument, but you’d wind up losing pretty darned fast.

Does it really matter? Pol Pot murdered more people than Manson. Do we therefore conclude that Manson would be a better political leader? Without many of Carter’s rightwing policies, he wouldn’t have failed to hold his office from Reagan. Does that make him “more” rightwing than Obama since he helped set the descent into deepining rightwing politics in motion?

Being rightwing is like having someone spit in your soup. If it’s only a little spit, is the soup still good? What if there’s a huge amount of spit? A little leaven leaveneth the whole lot.

“There are interesting discussions to be had about how much of our economy should be in private and public hands, but that discussion is confined, at this point in time, almost entirely to people who vote for Democrats “
Comment #32: PeterZeroOne  on  08/25  at  02:55 PM—
If that’s true, then accusing people who oppose “socialism”, if they use it as shorthand for a greater role for government in the economy vs. a lesser role, of racism isn’t very fair. . .

WTF? I thought it was pretty obvious that the people involved are NOT using socialism as a “shorthand for a greater role for government in the economy.” They are only concerned about government influence upon the economy when they don’t like the governmental actor of the moment. In other words:

Government influcence on the economy from whitey: good.
Government influcence on the economy from darkies: bad.

The only relevant issue for their analysis is the skin color of the person proposing the policy. That makes them bigots. Since they intend to create a public policy based on that bigotry and that bigotry fits in with a pattern of government-mediated bigotry going back several centuries, that makes them racist, by definition. Hard to make it simpler than that.

To be accused of racism is serious business in US politics; it can be used to bully people into accepting positions they otherwise wouldn’t.

. . . which is why a bunch of racists on the right are accusing blacks of being racists even when such racism is by definition impossible. I honestly don’t know what Peter’s point was supposed to be here.

Comment #33: TCB  on  08/25  at  03:22 PM
. . .nothing shuts down debate faster than calling the other person a racist. . .

Another WTF statement. There is no debate to shut down. The rightwing doesn’t maintain or want a debate, so how can pointing out acts of bigotry from rightwingers shut a debate down?

And in my experience, pointing out that someone is racist doesn’t do a damn thing to “shut anyone up.” I’ve actually pointed out, in public, that a KKK supporter present in the room was racist, but the person in question didn’t feel the need to be silent. (Or repudiate the KKK.) I have no idea where TCB’s erroneous notion comes from.

“To be accused of racism is serious business in US politics; it can be used to bully people into accepting positions they otherwise wouldn’t.

. . . which is why a bunch of racists on the right are accusing blacks of being racists even when such racism is by definition impossible. I honestly don’t know what Peter’s point was supposed to be here.

“

Imaginary Fox News Headline: “Democrats accuse all who oppose public option of being racists.”

People don’t like being bullied or guilted.  The imaginary headline above is almost a reductio ad absurdum proof in itself; it makes the accusers look worse than the accused.  Playing the race card over health care is not a good idea, because it could backfire, badly. 

As it has for those crazies at the town hall meetings, who accused Obama of being Hitler and called that Jewish person a Nazi.  Yes, their viewpoint is completely off the deep end, and yours has some intellectual basis.  But in the court of public opinion, it won’t matter.

How do you think labelling as racists all those who oppose the Public Option for health care will go over?  Maybe some people who currently support a public option were ambivalent about the whole health care reform to begin with, and their reaction to this kind of meme will be: “Accuse me of racism, will you?  Well screw you, you can’t tell me what to think!  Screw this health care reform shit!”

“How do you think labelling as racists all those who oppose the Public Option for health care will go over?”

Good question.  How do you think pretending that there hasn’t been any racism in America since the 1960’s would go over, especially when it comes to government expenditures of any kind, and especially with those who experience racism every day?

“Maybe some people who currently support a public option were ambivalent about the whole health care reform to begin with, and their reaction to this kind of meme will be: “Accuse me of racism, will you?  Well screw you, you can’t tell me what to think!  Screw this health care reform shit!””

The “arguments” from the teabaggers and the Republicans all seem to be in the form of “_____? Well, screw this health care reform shit!”

They’re are not making an argument, they’re throwing a tantrum.  The racism/classism underlying all too much of it is just the rancid cherry on top of a shit sundae…

Comment #27: DTG in STL on 08/25 at 01:49 PM
I could possibly see a sound argument for him being more right leaning than Carter, LBJ, or JFK, but there isn’t much evidence that he’s more right leaning than our last Democratic president or our last six Republican presidents.

Bill Clinton didn’t maintain a publicly-known torture program.

Obama does.

QED.

True, Bill Clinton didn’t maintain a publicly-known torture program that was in place when he came into office.

He started one from scratch.

QED

Comment #38: PeterZeroOne  on  08/25  at  06:24 PM
Playing the race card over health care is not a good idea, because it could backfire, badly.

No it won’t backfire badly. I won’t even bother with an argument as to why it could because a) Peter’s provided no argument as to why it could—merely an assumption and a claim and b) it hasn’t backfired and hasn’t backfired in the past. Peter may has well have claimed (without argument) that the moon could have fallen out of the sky and crashed into the Earth in 1857. Well, it didn’t, so both claims are inane things to say.

But in the court of public opinion, it won’t matter.

This is another wtf moment. I have no idea what Peter means—well, actually I do, but it seems obviously wrong, so I suspect there’s some significant miscommunication. The “court of public opinion”—whatever the hell that is—is completely irrelevant. When bigots accuse Obama of racism (e.g., of being Hitler) they:

a) Galvinize the rightwing, which is to their benefit and is their goal;
b) Disgust everyone else in earshot (a vast majority of humanity called the “left” in the same bizarre way a cultist in a 50-person church would call the other 6.5 billion people on earth the “unenlightened.”)

Thus, there’s no loss for the rightwing bigot in this context. There is no unified “public opinion” to risk or lose.

How do you think labelling as racists all those who oppose the Public Option for health care will go over?

How do you think accusing others of willy-nilly accusing gigantic groups of racism will go over? You have implied, twice now, in either bad faith or in a collosal oversight, that there ISN’T racism by the particular group of people we’re pointing out are being racist—many of whom are white and call black people nigger. So you seem to be defending people that our society declares racist by definition. That is, if these people aren’t bigots, bigotry literally doesn’t exist in the U.S. The bigotry of these people isn’t in doubt, so making the assumption that it IS in doubt and then being critical of pointing out said racism (not “accusing” as you put it—I don’t “accuse” Manson of murder, it’s been proven) is in bad faith.

Comment #41: DTG in STL  on  08/25  at  08:51 PM
True, Bill Clinton didn’t maintain a publicly-known torture program that was in place when he came into office.
He started one from scratch.

I acknowledge the point. And I could point out that Obama’s giveaway to the insurance companies is far more selfishly ambitious than Clintons machinations on the issue—but the back-and-forth would be unproductive. My original point remains: rightwing policies are manifestations of selfishness on a grand scale, beyond what we usually consider assholism, and any rightwing tendency makes you a pretty awful person since, by definition, you’re saying “fuck several million people and gimmie a bribe.” But I acknowledge the point.

Noone, Dan

I’m not American, so I’ll have to defer to your point of view in many ways, because you understand your own culture better than I do.

But this just came out an hour ago:
“
Two-thirds of Americans don’t support the “public option” insurance plan in national health care reform proposals now before Congress, or they think it’s something different than what it actually proposes.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/08/24/daily29.html

So, here’s my argument:

Some persons who oppose the public option may do so for racist reasons, consciously.  LIke Amanda said a few days ago, they don’t want to be in the same emergency room with THEM.  I agree.  Some have racist reasons, but they’re subconscious - they don’t want to admit to themselves that they’re being racist, because being racist is bad.  Some, i would argue, do so for classist reasons, they don’t want the dirty white trash freeloading off their taxes.  These last two groups overlap somewhat with the libertarians, who oppose it because it is against their ideology.  And finally, there are fiscal conservatives, who may even support some form of socialized medicine, but realize that the United States cannot afford it right now, because the debt will exceed GPD in ten years even without this program added to the list.
.
So, what happens when you tell the people of the United States that to oppose a public option is racist?  The first, consciously racist, group of people chuckle under their breath, and say, “huh huh, yeah…”  The other groups could seriously get offended. 

Again, you understand your country better than I do, but one of the reasons I think many white people voted for Obama was that they could feel better about their country.  They wanted the race struggles to be over, or at least soothed by his election.  The Republicans have partly succeeded in labelling the various health reform plans “Obamacare”.  So if the Democrats accuse any who oppose Obamacare of racism, then people will understand that to mean that to disagree with the black President is to be a racist.  And they’ll hate him for it.

So, what happens when you tell the people of the United States that to oppose a public option is racist?

You might. I, and the posters here, wouldn’t, because we’ve never said that every single person who hates the “public option” is racist. We’ve said THESE guys we’re talking about are racist. Everything else in Peter’s post is nonsensical. I’m tired of this; Peter’s making claims about false accusations no one here has made. Peter, take your own advice and don’t accuse anyone of racism; no one here has made any false accusations thereof, but you seem obsessed with the notion. Jesus.

PeterZeroOne:

I don’t think very many white people (outside of the most vacuous and naive) who voted for Obama had any expectations that his election would in any way soothe our “race struggles.”  On the contrary, we voted for him knowing full well that it would inflame them, for better or worse.  Getting it out in the open and thus giving the right wing a chance to reveal its dark side, an effect predicted by more than a few folks here, is a good thing in my opinion.  Besides, the alternative was fucking McCain/Palin, remember?

Also, it’s true that people don’t appreciate being bullied and bullying as a political tactic is likely to backfire.  I think that your comment about political bullying should probably be addressed to the side of the health insurance debate whose adherents are, or are advocating, carrying weapons to political events and whose leaders have instructed them to shout down any opposition in order to prevent debate from occurring at all. 

That would be other side, the one opposing public health insurance.  Your side, presumably.  Have you let the good folks at FreeRepublic know that people don’t appreciate being bullied or that bullying tactics may backfire against them?

Oh, and you know, for someone who didn’t intend to threadjack, you’ve done a damned good job of distracting from the actual issue at hand- the use of accusations of socialism as a racist dogwhistle in the context of contemporary American politics- by engaging a pointless argument about the unfairness of an accusation nobody made.

Thanks for your concern and for not threadjacking.