In the wake of their “thumping”, GOP and conservative talking heads, apart from wringing hands and pointing fingers, have been outdoing each other on the preposterous nature of their explanations. For instance, there was Michael Savage on talk radio with the mind-numbing analysis that George Bush, the liberal, intentionally threw the GOP under the bus in 2006 (I presume by invading Iraq and botching it).

Now we have Ramesh Ponnuru (who was left spluttering on the Jon Stewart show), a later entrant to the brown-noser hall of fame (home to such luminaries as Dinesh D’Souza, Bobby Jindal), with this beauty in the New York Times:

The real message of the last few elections is that, for the most part, social issues help the Republicans and economic ones the Democrats.

To understand what Ponnuru means by economic issues (during an election cycle where the GOP, among the usual techniques of hate-mongering and so on, ran on the economy) you have to read through the dicing and slicing of 2006 election results data that he offers in the article.

A look at the issues polls, exit polls and the election results suggests the voters chose, in essence, a reality-based world, in opposition to GOP and Bush policies and activities. While the numbers (and the pronouncements by the pundits) are rosy on the economy, the public voted (mostly) for reality on minimum wage (and a Nov 9 Newsweek poll finds increasing minimum wage a top priority for 68% of the population — more on the findings of this poll in a separate post) and health care. Abortion and stem cell? Only about 5% and 3% respectively considered this the most important issue that contributed to their choice. This despite polls (Time, Nov 1) showing that voters favour Republicans on “moral values”.

Distracting and rallying the public using fear and social issues as tactics help the Republicans and a return to reality helps the Democrats.

(Which is not to say that the Democrats are a great hope for mankind!)

The big idea in Democratic circles is the 50 state strategy, attributed to Howard Dean and a few others. This is the idea espoused by Dean during the 2004 Democratic primaries, in characteristic bluster, that he wanted to appeal to the southern guy in the pickup truck with the confederate flag. This idea, running counter to the seemingly patent loss of the South, has been picked up by online liberal bloggers (who use the word “netroots” to refer to their activism) who provide their version of the 50 state strategy, along with the reasoning behind their prescription.

I believe that as in most such things, the reasoning behind these two positions is not contradictory. Here is Thomas Schaller, from AlterNet on winning without the South:

How Democrats Can Win Without the South

[...]

Whatever the magnitude of the coming changes, two things are certain: The Democrats are going to gain seats in the 2006 midterms, and those gains will come from outside the South.

[...]

Republicans won every southern state in the past two presidential elections and now have 18 of the region’s 22 senators and two-thirds of its House seats. In 2004, despite Bush’s two-and-a-half-point defeat of John Kerry, outside the South the Democrats actually gained congressional seats in both chambers. That’s right: If the five House seats produced by the re-redistricting of Texas orchestrated by former majority leader Tom DeLay and the five Senate pickups made possible by those southern Democratic retirements are held aside, the Democrats won the 2004 congressional elections.

Rather than a 50-state strategy, he suggests we whistle past Dixie with this approach:

To forge a House majority, the Democrats will need to convert the purple Midwest states to blue, make the blue states of the Northeast bluer, and snag the odd seat here and there in the interior West. The Washington Post’s Dan Balz and David Broder confirm that top Republican strategists, speaking off-the-record about their party’s prospects, are predicting doom: “Republicans face potential losses in every section of the country, but the area that concerns strategists most is the arc of states running from the Northeast across the Midwest.”

The netroots bloggers justify their approach by pointing out that it is the 50-state strategy that yields unexpected pick-up opportunities, such as the seat vacated by congressperson Mark Foley. While that may be true, we cannot premise our planning (and use of limited resources) on the unexpected, nor can we hope for the monumental level of blunders (to put it mildly) perpetrated by the Bush administration before the South starts questioning its faith-based loyalty. They are at best foul-weather friends as Schaller’s data suggest. The netroots are right in forging a message that is national and putting up candidates in all regions at all levels, where possible. However, Democrats interested in winning control of Congress and the White House (short of righting the undemocratic electoral system — a bigger pipe dream) are better off ignoring the South in their arithmetic.

This from The Observer:

Low IQs are Africa’s curse, says lecturer | The Observer

The London School of Economics is embroiled in a row over academic freedom after one of its lecturers published a paper alleging that African states were poor and suffered chronic ill-health because their populations were less intelligent than people in richer countries.

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, is now accused of reviving the politics of eugenics by publishing the research which concludes that low IQ levels, rather than poverty and disease, are the reason why life expectancy is low and infant mortality high. His paper, published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, compares IQ scores with indicators of ill health in 126 countries and claims that nations at the top of the ill health league also have the lowest intelligence ratings.

[...]

Having examined the effects of economic development and income inequality on health, he was ‘surprised’ to find that IQ had a much more important impact, he said. ‘Poverty, lack of sanitation, clean water, education and healthcare do not increase health and longevity, and nor does economic development.’

[...]

Assuming for a second that his data are correct, and that IQ measures something significant (what we generally understand by the term “intelligence”), the above seems to suffer from that old precaution about correlation and causality. There is no reason provided (at least stated in the article — I guess I have to hold down the gag reflex and go read the full paper) to justify the use of the results of a particular test (IQ) as a cause, rather than as an effect.

Two things, in my opinion, define the post-socialist, post-communal turn (1980 onwards) more than others: 1) Competition and 2) Reductionism. They are the result of an unholy combination of scientism and capitalism (hyper-individualism). The former (hyper-competition) pits us against each other relentlessly, both by pushing to the extremes the effects of success and failure, and emphasising competition over co-operation in theoretical frameworks (social darwinism and so on). Reductionism and scientism disfavour holistic approaches and understanding, limiting knowledge (and the action arising from it) to the immediately quantifiable. The following bit of news is a small demonstration of the pitfalls of such an approach:

Childhood ends earlier as parents pressure children, says survey | Guardian

[...]

[A] report released from the Institute for Public Policy Research supported the notion that pushing children too hard at a young age can backfire.

Academic results themselves do not ensure a higher income, and too much focus on them can inhibit social development and confidence, it said.

With apologies for the editorialising ;-).

[ Link ]

If you have been beset by deep philosophical misgivings on the meaning of the abstract concept that we label ‘freedom’, a piece of good news for you. A definition has been found! Here is Andrew Sullivan on PBS’ NOW:

I believe in a free country people can spend money as they want on advancing their own point of view. That’s what freedom means.

Freedom is the ability to advance your point of view by spending your money. But I bet you already knew the converse of that!