'Bunker Mentality'

From Anglachel's Journal here. (Read the whole thing.)

Big Tent Democrat of TalkLeft posted this morning a not entirely rhetorical question asking if the A-list Blogger Boyz (poster child – Josh Marshall of TPM) hate Hillary Clinton so much that they would destroy the party to guarantee her defeat. Well, duh, of course they would. It’s what they are doing right now. Then they will deploy the excuse used by domestic abusers around the world – you made me treat you like this - to justify the violence done to both.

But this is not an interesting question. I have written for years (since before the 2006 elections) that the “netroots” is not that liberal nor is it a trustworthy political partner to Democrats, so I am 100% unsurprised by what I’m seeing now. If you had been reading my blog all along, you would have known this as well. These guys are easy to explain. They are made up of the demographic most likely to support Obama (young, white, male, college educated, usually with some graduate school, and with enormous upper-middle class earnings/earning potential). These are people for whom political choices rarely have immediate life altering consequences for them. In the case of the Blogger Boyz, they have hitched their wagons to Obama’s star in a very public way. If he fails, he takes them and their credibility with him. Their problems with powerful women I have discussed in greater depth elsewhere. . . .

Onto the scene came Bill Clinton, equal parts Bubba and Rhodes Scholar, the walking, talking embodiment of where the South, as geography, as history, as cultural imagination, could go. He was the New South. He had the Elvis. He liked fried food and NASCAR and wonkish policy papers in German. He made being “Bubba” OK, even something to be proud of, in a way that called upon culture constructively. I’m not talking about Clinton’s policy accomplishments, as they are a mixed bag, though more good than not, as much as the psychological effect he had on working class America. More than anything, Bill Clinton was an immediate and powerful threat to the power elites of both major parties because he made the South an unapologetic player in Democratic Party politics again.

This scrambled a lot of socio-political narratives, not to mention upsetting various power-broker apple carts. The opposition to him within the party, it always seemed to me, came more from his effect on the balance of power than any policy or even any scandal he brought about. It is important that political cartoonists who hate Clinton, especially those on the left, emphasize him being a Bubba – a hillbilly, a hick, an untutored rube, someone who can’t speak good English, who dresses in overalls, chews on grass stems, and eats varmints for food. Oh, yeah, and he fucks a lot. Can’t forget that. Hillary becomes the foil, an uptight shrew who hates the slob she married and throws things at him. These two brilliant, educated, well-traveled, scary-smart people denigrated as Southerners. Pundits who write critically about the Clintons have no compunction against speaking of them as coming from a lower class than the deserving DC politicos. “Bubba” is used derogatorily, just as the Obama campaign dismissed Ohio voters as “Archie Bunkers.” My point here is not to promote the Clintons (though I think they deserve it), but to emphasize the way in which they are demonized by their own party. They become the embodiment of the old South, the unrepentant, segregationist South, just as northern blue collar voters who challenge the party orthodoxy are labeled Archie Bunkers. Working class Democrats know that those terms are meant as put-downs, shorthand code for “stupid racist we have to cajole through Election Day and can then ignore.” . . .