In some of the conversations I have had this week as well as some of the blog posts I have read, one explanation for the inexcusable actions of Congress in approving the terrorism detainee bill is that the American people get what they deserve. This has been a thread throughout the Bush years, especially among the limousine liberals who read the right books, go to the right movies, wear the right clothes and send their children to the right colleges. According to their line of reasoning, we have had to suffer Bush, Cheney and Rummy because unlike more enlightened types, the American people are too stupid to see what idiots are running the administration. Actually the reason America got the vote it did is not because of some failing in the American people. Democrats got the vote they earned. They couldn’t even get a significant number of their own people to vote against the bill!

Whenever I hear about the ignorance of the American people my first impulse is to ask those who proclaim that if, in fact, a majority of the citizens in their community are misguided because they watch Fox News or hang around the wrong people, what have the enlightened done to change things? The Wine and Cheese Democrats like to spend all their time with like-minded people, drinking the best pinot and eating Brie while they together bemoan the sad state of the average American’s intelligence.

These people earned that vote because how many were out there doing something? Writing a check is the easy answer; soothing one’s conscience with a contribution has always been popular among those who have money. What if for every dollar contributed to progressive causes people also contributed ten minutes of their time to go door knocking for their candidate or cause? What if insteading of sipping wine and complaining they manned a phone bank for an evening? Or licked envelopes instead of Brie?

Two weeks ago I attended a gathering sponsored by America Votes and Wellstone Action for people in my county who wanted to make a difference for progressive candidates. In an evening we were trained, for free, in using analytical tools like the message square and practiced door knocking with each other. By the end of the evening all of us felt energized and better prepared to go out and campaign for our candidates. What was interesting about the evening was that I would say at least a third of those present wore union jackets or shirts.

Democrats earned this week’s vote because of the disinterest the Party seems to have in reaching out to all Americans. Last week in two different posts I wrote about one blogger who said the poor would vote Democratic anyway and in another post castigated the Lamont campaign for not doing a better job of connecting with blue collar voters and people of color.

In fact what has happened is that as Winona LaDuke and Ruy Texeira have pointed out, a majority of Americans don’t vote at all. They see nothing in either party. The 2004 CNN exit poll showed that one third of those who voted had a household income of over $75,000! Perhaps the most fascinating finding is that in 2004 the suburbs accounted for almost half the total presidential vote–45%! Those with a post graduate education made up 16% of all voters while only a quarter had a high school education or less.

Add to this some of the Counterrevolution’s tilting of Liberal America’s cornerstones and it becomes easier to see why Congress voted the way it did. The GOP has waged an aggressive campaign to make it more difficult for the poor, the elderly and people of color to vote. At the same time they have pushed electronic voting machines manufactured by GOP-leaning companies. The GOP has encouraged the media to become more politicized and manipulative with Swift Boating becoming commonplace. They have cut back education so much that some inner city schools lack even the most basic learning supplies. As for social and economic justice we all know about the infamous tax cuts, but looming in the background is a possible housing crisis signified by an increasing number of mortgage foreclosures. That some Democrats and a fair number of left-leaning blogs have done little to publicize these conditions or worked to change them, helps to explain why the majority no longer votes.

So in the end that vote over detainees was made because most Americans did not have a say in it, just as they have not had a say in Iraq or other administration actions. When those people do find their voice, it should prove interesting. Meanwhile we need to remember that if we lose faith in the American people then we lose faith in our nation and ourselves.

Technorati Tags: limousine liberals, 2004 CNN Poll, Republican, Detainee Bill, Wellstone Action, Lamont, nonvoters, four cornerstones, voting rights, housing crisis, Amercan People, education

Four days ago the Rasmussen Reports announced the latest Lieberman-Lamont poll. It showed Lieberman with a 45%-43% lead–a statistical dead heat. Rasmussen notes this situation is virtually unchanged since immediately after the Democratic primary when Lieberman had a five-point edge of 46% to 41%. The poll breakdown, not unexpectedly, shows Lieberman enjoys the support of 62% of Republicans. After a review of the issues, Rasmussen concludes, “Iraq alone probably won’t have as much impact on the general election as it did on the contentious Democratic primary. But Connecticut voters also tend to trust Democrats more than Republicans when it comes to the economy, immigration, and taxes.”

A month ago, a Quinnipiac University poll had Lieberman 49% to 38%, a bit larger margin than the Rasmussen figures. Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, pointed out, “Ned Lamont’s Democratic primary win was based on a very small percentage of voters statewide. He must expand beyond this base if he is going to beat Lieberman.”

The most interesting poll results came immediately after the primary when a CBS-New York Times poll probed the demographics of each candidates’ supporters. Here are those figures:

The contrast between this exit poll and the CNN one taken at the end of the 2004 election showing the Connecticut support for John Kerry against George W. Bush is especially fascinating and is shown in the third column. The stars mark aggregated data for men and women which is the way the CBS poll reported its data. The CNN poll had no data on voters by education. Since the Kerry income figures used different ranges I add them here as follows: $15-30,00: 65%, 30-50,00: 61%, 50-75,000: 56%, 75-100,00: 47%, 100-150,000: 68%.

There are some surprising numbers in these polls. The first, and perhaps most troubling is that Lamont managed to poll only 55% of the votes of African Americans, considerably less than Kerry and not much more than those of Lieberman. In fact if one uses the usual political polling margin of error Lieberman and Lamont are virtually even when it comes to the votes of African Americans. The Lamont web site does not inspire confidence in his ability to inspire people of color. A section titled, “On the Campaign Trail” has only white faces! “Campaign Trail, Part Two,” has one person of color. In other words out of 25 pictures of Lamont campaigning only ONE shows a person of color. That this should occur in 2006 with a candidate who supposedly styles himself as a progressive leaves me shaking my head. Either Lamont or his staff have a rather large blind spot. From Lamont’s pictures one would think there were no people of color in Connecticut!

The other interesting demographic concerns income. Kerry had percentages of 65% for those making under $30,000 and 65%, for those in the $30-50,000 range. Lamont actually lost these low income voters to Lieberman! Then we move on to the union voters. As a one time Democratic candidate who caucuses with organized labor I am appalled that the Lamont web site has no photos of people in union jackets or wearing union pins or in front of factories. Lamont lost a fair amount of the organized labor endorsements to Lieberman in the primary so one would think his strategists would make an attempt to woo back this bedrock of the Democratic Party. His issues page does not help, making no mention that I could find of support for raising the minimum wage or for what have come to be called Wal-Mart bills that penalize corporations who do not provide health insurance.

Lamont’s position pages remind me of those of so many other Democratic candidates in that they present the usual laundry list of issues without any controlling principles or even a metaphor to link them all. It is not quite as bad as the 100 plus pages of the infamous Kerry Plan for America, but appears sired from the same parentage. It reminds me of an incident I discussed in the Strange Death where I joined a friend at a local Democrat’s fund raiser and we asked her what she was for. “Why I’m for jobs, education, and the environment, or course,” answered the candidate.

In the end, the Lamont polling data and the Lamont campaign site offer a troubling picture for Liberal Americans. The math is not hard to do. By selling out to the GOP, Lieberman has brought a large number of Republican voters into his column. If Lamont hopes to win he needs to not only rally his base but also make sure he can count on traditional Democratic constituencies such as people of color, low income and blue collar voters. I will predict right now that if he does not, he will lose. This leaves Benedict Lieberman in an interesting position that probably requires another post.

But there is a larger issue on the table here and that is the one that has plagued the Democratic Party for at least two decades: what does the Party stand for? Lamont built his candidacy on the Iraq War. But beyond that he seems to offer only the usual laundry list. To me, Liberal America’s prime value is that government exists to keep the playing field level. If we ignore people of color, if we ignore low income voters and if we ignore union voters, then what faith do these people have that we will keep the playing field level? The script is so shopworn it is all but falling apart: take people of color and organized labor for granted. Who else do they have to vote for? The reality is that many times they just don’t vote at all. I am on record as saying that ignoring the Latino vote cost John Kerry the presidency. I hope Lamont does not make the same mistake.

As some of you know the title of this post is a play on the title of my book. Those who have read the book know I do not believe Liberal America is dead. Neither do I believe Ned Lamont is dead. But he is in critical condition. A few key moves might bring him back.

Why? Because he has to win. It does not take a genius to figure out if Lieberman wins he will have a debt to pay when the devil comes to call. As we all know, pacts with the devil do not have happy endings.

You can follow the path of today�s Republican Party�which many in the media believe represents an eight-lane superhighway to power�and, if you follow the routes that flow into it long enough and far enough eventually you will find yourself on a dusty dirt road somewhere in the rural South. As your tires grate in the dirt, the dust rises and hangs in the humid air, ghostlike, until you make out the specter of one James Strom Thurmond.

Occasionally, events like Virginia Senator George Allen�s infamous �macaca� remark, the GOP’s opposition to renewing the Voting Rights Act (see previous post), or Louisiana Senator Trent Lott�s �Thurmond was right� remark lift the veil on a dirty little secret about today�s Republican Party: its roots lie squarely in the racist, Dixiecrat ideology of segregationists like Strom Thurmond. Doug Marquardt at All Things Democrat lists some of these ties between Southern Republicans and the old Confederacy.

If you remember your history, Thurmond and the Dixiecrats split from the Democratic Party in 1948 over the Democrats� insistence on what Hubert Humphrey called in a famous speech that precipitated a delegate walkout lead by Thurmond, walking �out of the shadow of states’ rights and.. forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.� Running for president on the States Rights Party ticket, Thurmond managed to capture most of the old Confederate states.

In 1964, Thurmond split with the Democrats for good, announcing he would support Barry Goldwater against Lyndon Johnson. “If the American people permit the Democratic Party to return to power,” Thurmond said, �Freedom as we have known it in this country is doomed, and individuals will be destined to lives of regulation, control, coercion, intimidation and subservience to a power elite who shall rule from Washington.”

If someone today were to read that statement, but not tell you who said it, you might guess any number of prominent contemporary GOP politicians, including George W. Bush as well as Allen and Lott. For Thurmond�s words in essence became the foundation of today�s Republican Party. For all the revival of Barry Goldwater it is important to note that the only states he carried in Johnson�s 1964 landslide win were the former Dixiecrat states plus his own Arizona.

In 1968, Richard Nixon, no slouch at adding up votes, capitalized on Thurmond�s defection as well as those of some of his colleagues and created what was called the Southern Strategy, which some historians credit to Thurmond and later White House aide Harry Dent. But the person who most realized what Thurmond had bequeathed him was none other than Ronald Reagan, who clothed the segregationist �states� rights� in respectable clothes, morphing it into opposition to �big government.� That has been the Republican mantra ever since.

Lately a new generation of Southern historians has been tracking the path from the Dixiecrats to today�s GOP. In The Rise of Southern Republicans, Earl and Merle Black make a convincing case, backed by a daunting number of charts and tables, that it was Reagan who truly solidified the South for the GOP. In her fascinating study of the Dixiecrat rebellion, historian Kari Frederickson writes, �Thurmond and the Dixiecrats represented a reaction to the modern welfare state that over time would reach a broader audience frightened by school desegregation decisions, fair housing laws, and race riots and eventually give rise to the backlash led by George Wallace and to the growth of the Republican Party in the South.�

For many Democrats and Liberals, the gospel of the moment is preached by George Lakoff, who has done wonderful work in pointing out the importance of framing. Yet, Allen and others remind us that without the perspective of history we have little understanding of the roots of our current dilemma. I have written much more on this past in The Strange Death of Liberal America, tracing it back into the 19th century, but all you have to do is open an almanac to find the ghost of Strom Thurmond. Southern states typically rank near or at the bottom of surveys on education and health care�two areas where government must play a role–whether in measures such as student performance or infant mortality.

As it has remade America, the Republican Party borrowed this template, cutting back spending on education, health care, and welfare with a zeal that would have pleased the Confederate apologists. Today, GOP budgets for social programs both federally and locally seem to be trying to emulate those of Mississippi and Alabama. The question all Americans need to ask is, do we want our entire country to follow this path?

Fannie Lou Hamer

In a town that lives on connections, it seems strange that just before a crucial election no one has linked two events: the Supreme Court decision on the Texas redistricting fiasco and the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. Together they tell us a great deal about the weakening of the Liberal American cornerstone of voting rights. Fannie Lou Hamer would have seen the connections, but then she always had a talent for putting two and two together. Her comment might have echoed the words written on her tombstone, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

When President Bush signed the Voting Rights Act renewal on the White House lawn with members of Hamer’s family looking on, it had the appearance of a lovefest celebrating that finally this country–after over two centuries of finding various excuses not to allow certain races, classes and genders of citizens to step up the ballot box–had finally learned its lesson. It took the old warrior John Lewis to remind us of what that first Voting Rights Act cost, graphically painting a picture of events less than half a century old. For those who think we have some inherent democratic genes that make us somehow superior to those warring factions in Iraq or Lebanon, Lewis’ words provided a sober tallying of the costs of democracy.

We cannot separate the debate today from our history and the past we have traveled. When we marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, it was dangerous. It was a matter of life and death. I was beaten, I had a concussion at the bridge. I almost died. I gave blood, but some of my colleagues gave their very lives.

In one of the most important and eloquent speeches given in the House this year–and one that deserves far greater attention than it received in the media– Lewis made the past live again. My son, who was interning in DC, heard the entire speech including Lewis� fiery exchange with a Georgia representative who stupidly sought to twist the Old Warrior’s words along with his convictions. I quote Lewis at length because we need to never forget the passions and convictions that inspired the courageous acts of an Era whose promise still remains unfulfilled:

Before the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, all across the American South very few African Americans were registered to vote. Men and women of color stood in unmovable lines. In Lowndes County, Alabama, between Selma and Montgomery, more than 80 percent of that county was African American, but not a single African American was registered to vote. Many people were harassed, jailed, beaten, and some were even shot and killed. I cannot forget that in 1964, three young men that I knew, James Cheney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andy Goodman, two were white, one was black, they went out to investigate the burning of a church, a church that was to be used to prepare people to pass the so-called literacy test. These three young men were arrested, jailed, they were taken from the jail by the sheriff and his deputy, beaten, shot, and killed. They were killed for trying to help people become participants in the democratic process.

During that dark period in our recent past, black men and women who were teachers in public schools, colleges and university professors were told that they could not read well enough and they failed their so-called literacy test. On one occasion a would-be voter was asked to name the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. On another occasion, a person was asked to count the number of jelly beans in a jar. Yes, we have made some progress. We have come a distance. We are no longer met with bullwhips, fire hoses, and violence when we attempt to register and vote. But the sad fact is, the sad truth is discrimination still exists, and that is why we still need the Voting Rights Act. And we must not go back to the dark path.

Yet those who inhabit that dark path once again emerged from the shadows, emboldened by a party and an administration that had fed their unnatural wants since the days of the Southern Strategy. All the so-called bipartisan goodwill exhibited on the White House lawn at the final signing of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act ignored the tortuous and tangled path the GOP forced Voting Rights renewal to navigate. Should anyone doubt what the Counterrevolution plans or the values it holds, take a walk in the land of shadows that hover like wraiths above both the renewal of the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s Texas redistricting decision.

For anyone who has studied the 1960s, the sheer thought that anyone would still be opposed to the Voting Rights Act seems anachronistic, so when the time came for renewal, most of us assumed that it would sail through without much trouble. However, a sizeable number of Republicans had other ideas. In a closed-door meeting of the Counterrevolutionary caucus, those from the dark side essentially forced their colleagues to delay and perhaps even scuttle or emasculate the renewal. That this strategy should occur a full forty years after the passage of the original bill and come from the party of Abraham Lincoln only adds to the unreal atmosphere of our times. The Washington Post called it a rebellion, which is the way the GOP tried to spin it, but the party and the White House could have put a stop to it had they been so inclined, as many media pundits recognized.

Two basic objections to renewal emerged from the infighting. The first sought throw a bone to what had now become the Republican South, a makeover detailed in The Strange Death of Liberal America and other books. The strategy was to either remove the Southern states identified in the original Act altogether or to shorten the time of the Act’s enforcement provisions. The second objection shows just how little has changed since 1965. Led by Iowa representative Steve King, 80 Republicans signed a letter that asked that the provision for foreign language ballots be removed. King’s key role gave the lie to the press interpretation that this was a “Southern conservative” uprising. Blaming Dixie seemed almost quaint, but it quickly became an explanation that either did not understand what was going on or refused to acknowledge the broad, GOP support that favored emasculating the bill. As the renewal worked its way through the Congressional process, the Rules Committee–which could have put a stop to the entire sordid mess– agreed to allow both objections to be brought to the floor in the form of amendments. The amendments strategy represents a very clever ploy for it allowed the GOP to claim it sill supported voting rights–if only for some people. It reminds me of the old farmer who kept a wrecked car in his back forty and insisted it was still a car even thought it no longer had an engine or much else beyond a faded and rusting body.

The arguments of amendment supporters have eerie echoes with the defenses used by segregationists in the 1960s. Here is King, “I simply want to lift the mandate. I want to allow localities to make the decision on whether they need to provide foreign language ballots,not the Federal Government.” As one who spent a great deal of time studying the story of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), that statement sent chills down my spine, for it recalls the infamous states’ rights arguments used by generations of Southern politicians. It is a mark of how the Counterrevolution has transformed this country that an Iowa congressman could sound like Strom Thurmond and no one bat an eye.

Other comments made by King remind you of the kind of arguments people like Theodore Bilbo used to make in favor of segregation. “If you go places today, and follow the English language wherever the English language is, you will find freedom, also”� lectured King. King’s remarks offer yet another piece of evidence for the argument I made in The Strange Death of Liberal America that Thurmond’s 1956 Southern Manifesto has become the blueprint for the modern Republican Counterrevolution.

Few in the media pointed out the sordid history of the GOP�s attempts to deter the poor, people of color, and the elderly from voting. How soon we forget the conclusions issued about the 2000 Florida vote count by the Civil Rights Commission:

Restrictive statutory provisions, wide-ranging errors and inadequate and unequal resources in the election process denied countless Floridians the right to vote. The disenfranchisement of Florida’s voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of African Americans. Statewide, based upon county-level statistical estimates, African American voters were nearly ten times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in Florida.

The Commission went on to point out the Governor Jeb Bush and elections supervisor Katherine Harris bore particular responsibility for what happened. Neither Bush nor Harris has been brought before Congress, investigated by the Justice Department nor spent so much as one minute in court answering these charges based on extensive investigations and the testimony of hundreds of witnesses. That Harris is now a candidate for the United States Senate illustrates how crazy things have become in this Era of Bad Feelings.

As we know, things did not get much better in 2004. There were voting irregularities across the country as the Counterrevolutionaries sought to intimidate potential Democratic voters. The Tom Paine web site has an extensive list of these in a post titled “Best Of 2004: Election Irregularities.” The site summed up the multiple techniques the Counterrevolution has used to keep voters from the polls, “Redistricting, electronic voting machines, voter suppression campaigns, provisional ballots. If your vote doesn’t count, neither does our democracy.”

When it came time to vote on the Voting Rights Act “amendments,” the margin of victory turned out to be a lot narrower than that lovefest on the White House lawn suggested. King’s amendment went down 238 to 185 with 9 abstentions. As progressives and liberals rally their troops for the coming elections the names of those 185 ought to be broadcast throughout the country, for they represent an organized attempt to weaken one of democracy’s most important cornerstones. Supporters of the King amendment included three Republicans from my home state of Minnesota: Kennedy, Gutknecht and Kline, all of whom are in contested reelection contests.

For those keeping score here is the roll of infamy straight from the pages of the Congressional Record. Mark these names well, for this fall they should have a large target on their backs representing their willingness to undermine one of this country’s most important cornerstones. As we shall see, Latino voters should be especially concerned:

That the language argument should figure so strongly so strongly in the Voting Rights debate, should come as no surprise to those who followed League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) v. Perry, the Supreme Court case focusing on the infamous Texas redistricting fiasco. The apocryphal story of Tom DeLay redrawing the Texas congressional map on a napkin may or may not be true, but the results certainly looked like they had been sketched by someone who had more than three martinis. The prime victims, of course, were Latinos, which is why LULAC filed their suit, stating that the redistricting involved a violation of�guess what�the Voting Rights Act. The Texas NAACP also joined the case arguing that a similar violation of the Act had occurred in the Fort Worth area where DeLay and his henchmen tried to dilute the power of African-American voters.

The decision, like too many recent ones from this court, resembled a phrase someone once used to describe a platypus�an animal drawn by a committee. This current Supreme Court seems to have two irritating habits: first, issuing multiple opinions that force the rest of us to figure out the exact nuances of “the law of the land” and second, a tendency to give with one hand while it takes away with the other. In LULAC v. Perry six justices wrote opinions. The opinion summary stated in blunt, plain English the 132 pages representing the current nature of this Court:

KENNEDY, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts II�A and III, in which STEVENS, SOUTER,GINSBURG, AND BREYER ,JJ., joined, an opinion with respect to Parts I and IV, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and ALITO, J., joined, an opinion with respect to Parts II�B and II�C, and an opinion withrespect to Part II�D, in which SOUTER and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. STEVENS,J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which BREYER, J., joined as to Parts I and II. SOUTER, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which GINSBURG, J., joined. BREYER, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. ROBERTS, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in part, concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part, in which ALITO, J., joined. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, in which THOMAS, J., joined, and in which ROBERTS, C. J., and ALITO, J., joined as to Part III.

Anyone who can figure all that out deserves a JD just for the effort. Trying to keep score, the media read the tea leaves follows: DeLay�s napkin play was legal, even though the plaintiffs argued that it was done to blatantly increase the political power of his party and departed from precedent by ordering a mid-decade redistricting. However, LULAC prevailed in the case of one particularly bizarre-looking district which the Court ruled violated the Voting Rights Act by systematically discriminating against Latino voters. Unfortunately the NAACP did not. Justice Kennedy delivered the majority opinion, noting “changes to District 23 served the dual goals of increasing Republican seats and protecting the incumbent Republican against an increasingly powerful Latino population that threatened to oust him.” Were someone like Molly Ivins or her Texas colleague Jim Hightower to describe this they would say, “The minions of the Hammer and the Shrub decided to pull the equivalent of a bad land deal, swindling Latino voters by giving them a piece of desert full of tumbleweeds.”

LULAC’s press release trumpeted these results, “Today’s decision by the US Supreme Court in the LULAC vs Perry Texas Redistricting Case has vindicated our position that the plan drawn up by the Texas legislature eroded minority voting strength in Texas and is therefore illegal and unconstitutional. We demand immediate relief based upon the Supreme Court�s findings and we call upon the lower court to adopt a plan that is fair for all Texans not just those favored by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.”

he rest of the opinion still has even seasoned legal scholars scratching their heads. The results resembled those pornography cases when the court would throw up its hands and say, “I know when I see it.” Justice Scalia went so far as to assert that the Court had no business considering any redistricting cases, which of course negates all of the important �one man; one vote� voting rights decisions of the past half-century, such as Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims. It was in the latter that Chief Justice Warren wrote,

Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political system. It could hardly be gainsaid that a constitutional claim had been asserted by an allegation that certain otherwise qualified voters had been entirely prohibited from voting for members of their state legislature. And, if a State should provide that the votes of citizens in one part of the State should be given two times, or five times, or ten times the weight of votes of citizens in another part of the State, it could hardly be contended that the right to vote of those residing in the disfavored areas had not been effectively diluted. Of course, the effect of state legislative districting schemes which give the same number of representatives to unequal numbers of constituents is identical. Weighting the votes of citizens differently, by any method or means, merely because of where they happen to reside, hardly seems justifiable.

Would that today’s justices could write so eloquently and clearly. That Scalia would have us abandon these principles and return us to the days when the Court refused to hear reapportionment cases, represents yet another example of why I call the current usurpers of the Republican Party Counterrevolutionaries, because they seek to return our country to the days before the New Deal and the Progressive Era when Liberal America�s bedrock principle of a level paying field found itself frozen out by those who felt that the rich and powerful knew what was best for us all.

Where Justice Scalia would take us back to the Nineteenth Century, Justice Stevens, who seems to be the most prescient member of the current Court, noted ominously the creation of an increasing number of “safe districts.” “Members of Congress elected from such safe districts,” says Stevens, “need not worry much about the possibility of shifting majorities, so they have little reason to be responsive to political minorities within their district.” He goes on to provide a cogent analysis of why the majority party today is the nonvoters, why we live in an Era of Bad Feelings in which elected officials feel little need to compromise or even behave civilly towards their colleague, “In addition, Democrats will surely have a more difficult time recruiting strong candidates, and mobilizing voters and resources, in these safe Republican districts.” While the full implications of this are a topic for another blog post, suffice it to say that Stevens brought attention to the increasing use of sophisticated techniques such as demographic cluster analysis that enable the creation of districts where everyone thinks alike. As The Strange Death of Liberal America pointed out, “Welcome to the Stepford congresswoman.”

The most bizarre and disruptive part of the decision lies in the majority’s view that states no longer need undertake redistricting after each census, but could change district boundaries virtually on a whim, any time a state could make a case for such a need. Instead of solving a problem, this Court has created one where none existed. This could cause restaurant napkins to become scarce commodities and lead to replays of the tragic-comic Texas soap opera that involved the Texas Rangers, The Department of Homeland Security and some highly irregular motel stays. Look for the plot to show up on the newest “reality” show or perhaps a game show featuring party members throwing darts at a map as well as each other.

So we have in the connections between a Supreme Court decision and a Congressional vote a clear picture of the world the Counterrevolution seeks to create for us. By undermining the cornerstone of voting rights, it would tilt the playing field even more severely. Had Representative King and his 184 collaborators in infamy prevailed, the Voting Rights Act on which LULAC depended�and which a majority of the Court supported�would have been gutted. Should Justice Scalia’s view that the Court should no longer serve as the final arbiter of reapportionment plans prevail, then we will return to the days when those who had power and money could freeze the rest of us out of the process.

For this reason Latinos have special cause to be worried about the Counterrevolutionary agenda. In many states, particularly red states located in the Southwest, the increasing numbers of Latino voters may soon make them a majority, putting the GOP in the position of the Dixiecrats in the 1940s and 50s. Meanwhile the Democrats wander in a fog. As I read over Congressional record reports of the Voting Rights renewal debate what most amazed me was how little reference was made to LULAV v Green. The LULAC suit threw a fat pitch across the middle of the plate–a pitch which offered the Democratic Party a chance to hit a hit run by standing with the Latino community�and the Democrats never lifted the bat off their shoulders. The blogs also largely remained silent. Maybe they should all read Jorge Ramos� The Latino Wave.

In the long run the ominous stands on voting rights taken by Congress and the Court will have a larger impact on the future of our democracy than the outcome of Iraq. We could bring the troops home tomorrow but if they come home to a country that is run by the 21^st century equivalents of Boss Hogg, they will be coming home to a situation not that far from the one they left. It is now gospel that World War II, helped to propel the Civil Rights movement because people of color who had risked their lives to fight for their country were also willing to risk their lives to insure that country stand for what it had said about freedom during the war. Perhaps Iraq will have a similar impact, as troops coming home from trying to reform a corrupt and religiously-divided nation will seek to address similar issues in our own nation.

Photo: Emory University

This morning the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education issued its annual report on access and affordability for American college students. The report provides some sobering reading about what the Counterrevolution could cost this country–an entire generation. In summary, the nation that once was the envy of the world in higher education–so much that young people from all over the world dreamed of coming here to study–is rapidly falling behind.

In this morning’s press release Governor James B. Hunt Jr., chair of the National Center’s board of directors and former governor of North Carolina, gave the media soundbite, “The report card’s findings challenge the notion that the American higher education system is still the ‘best in the world, n such key areas as college access and completion, the U.S. has made little or no progress, while other countries have made substantial gains.” Hunt went on to say, “For most American families, college affordability has continued to deteriorate. The share of family income required to pay for a year of college has continued to escalate for all but the wealthiest families. And financial aid for qualified students who can’t afford college has not kept pace with tuition increases.” (my emphasis)

The statistics from the report should inspire a huge public outcry, but my guess is that they will languish in the back pages of newspaper, never make the networks, and most bloggers will continue to carp about Donald Rumsfeld. The numbers show that United States is continuing to fall behind other nations in both enrollment and completion rates. Why? It doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out–because they can’t afford it!

According to the report the United States ranks seventh in the proportion of adults aged 35-64 who have a college degree. Seventh! In rates of college completion, the U.S. ranks in the bottom half in the most recent international comparisons. That means we lag not only behind our European competitors–who we always like to castigate because of their supposedly elitist education systems–but behind a lot of nations we typically regard as “under-developed.”

Here are some more sobering statistics–in fact I got so angry as I started to post these I hit the wrong key and screwed up the post:

* The proportion of family income needed to pay net college costs (after accounting for all student financial aid) at public four-year colleges has grown from 28% to 42% in Ohio; from 24% to 37% in New Jersey; from 18% to 30% in Iowa; from 25% to 36% in Oregon; and from 20% to 31% in Washington.
* The likelihood of a 9th grader enrolling in college four years later is less than 40%; and that likelihood has decreased from 44% to 32% in Hawaii; from 46% to 35% in Vermont; and from 45% to 37% in New York.
* Gaps between ethnic groups in college enrollment rates persist. For example, enrollment rate for white 18-to-24 year-olds in Colorado are 40% and 17% for non-whites; in New Jersey, 47% for whites and 27% for non-whites; in Pennsylvania, 39% for whites and 21% for non-whites.

The press release is available at: http://www.highereducation.org/news/mup06-pr.shtml

But those of you with a child in college or who are currently enrolled in college don’t need a report to tell you what is going down. This summer, students and their parents were deluged with letters warning them to consolidate their loans because the rate was going up. In 2004, the first year my son had a Stafford Loan the rate was 2.77%, it then went up to 4.77%. Now for For Stafford Loans first disbursed between July 1, 1998 and June 30, 2006, the interest rate is variable (adjusted annually on July 1st) but will not exceed 8.25 percent. If you could not or did not consolidate this summer, that means that rate could go up 300%! For loans after July 1 of this year the rate is now 6.8%. The fine print also says you’ll pay a fee of up to 4 percent of the loan, deducted proportionately from each loan disbursement.

But the Counterrevolution does not propose to stop there. This July Congressional Republicans cut $12 BILLION in student aid, the largest single cut in student aid EVER. This includes the aforementioned Stafford Loan change along with changing the interest rate on PLUS loans to 8.5% and freezing Pell grants. President Bush is also proposing to eliminate the entire Perkins Loan program in the 2007 budget.

The under-reported part of this unprecedented change is the huge debt carried by many of today’s students. Representative George Miller, who has mounted a full frontal assault on these changes, estimates the average student debt at $17,500. A recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics (1) shows that about 50% of recent
college graduate have student loans, with an average student loan debt of $10,000. In an online article on MSN Money, Liz Pulliam Weston reports, “The average college student is now more than $20,000 in debt at graduation. The average salary for a newly minted graduate, meanwhile, is $30,000.”

The situation gets worse the higher you go. It is not unusual for students graduating from law or medical school to have debts that range up to six figures. Two summers ago I sat and listened to a group of young law students at a backyard party tote up their debts, with the highest being $125,000. Several of them expressed an interest in going into public interest law but said that their debt meant they had to sell themselves to the highest bidder (insert analogy of your choice here).

At this point any idiot can connect the dots. For the very highest-scoring poor and minority students there are a few token free rides which amount to bones picked pretty clean by the rich and their Counterrevolutionary allies. For a poor student without stellar test scores a professional career is a wild pipe dream. As for the middle class, they may qualify for financial aid, but the Counterrevolution’s plans leave them and their parents with some difficult decisions, first about what college they can afford and second, about how to pay for it. If Weston’s figures are even close, it means that in essence a college education for many students has become this century’s equivalent of the indentured servitude that bedeviled so many colonial Americans.

Last spring I spent an enlightening evening with some of my son’s friends who had graduated in previous years. Over beers and margaritas, these students talked about how their undergraduate debt had precluded any options like law or medical school. One student who wanted to become a doctor was working as a handyman to pay off his debt. Is it any wonder that students are taking longer to get their degrees and partaking in the much-commented on custom of young adults living with their parents well into their 20s. Wonder where some of those Iraq troops are coming from? More than you think are former or would-be college students who have been sucked in by a recruiter’s pitch to help pay for their college education.

So who are our future doctors and lawyers–the sons and daughters of Ken Lay and Donald Trump. And you wonder why our health care and legal systems are such a mess. You wonder why employees who may be counting on their indentured servitude to pay their debts look the other way at management malfeasance.

For much of this country’s history, education served as the major ladder to help people climb to their ambitions, not matter how lofty the heights they set. In the Liberal American ideal of the level playing field equal access to education served as a prime means of keeping the playing field level. Now a Counterrevolution that believes inequality is the prime mover of society has moved yet another step closer to shutting out the rest of us.

Curiously, there is an ominous parallel between the National Center press release and one released at the height of the 2004 election by the American Political Science Association. Cited in the Katrina chapter of The Strange Death of Liberal America, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality stated, “”Our country’s ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government may be under growing threat in an era of persistent and rising inequalities. Disparities of income, wealth, and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than many other nations, and gaps between races and ethnic groups persist. Progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and in some areas reversed.”

Curious as to how many of our fellow liberal/progressive bloggers had anything to say about the report I did a Technorati search. As of 2:00 Eastern time only five blogs had posted on the National Center’s report–none of them the so-called major blogs (you know who you are). This raises a serious issue, perhaps for another post. Maybe it’s time we stopped fiddling about Donald Rumsfeld and turned our attention to a formerly level playing field that is burning to the ground.
Technorati Tags: higher education, american education, education, paying for college, college costs for middle class, Congressional budget cuts, education budget cuts, student debt, access to education, Katrina, college loans, college loans, Republicans, Republican Counterrevolution

Photo credit: Brenda Ann Kenneally, “Children of the Storm,” New York Times Magazine, 8/27/2006

Since the mainstream media and many blogs inundated us with Katrina retrospectives, I decided to hold off on a a Katrina piece until the networks and columnists had vented their opinions. All last week I looked at pictures of people who somehow survived Katrina and now live an existence that makes the Depression Era photographs of Walker Evans seem tame. What the mainstream media missed–the picture they often have trouble seeing with their eyes glued to the camera lens, their pre-written scripts, and their producer’s best judgment of the most visual photo op–asked about the larger meaning of Katrina, not just George W. Bush’s inexplicable ability to grasp and solve the crisis and FEMA’s ongoing bungling, but the inability of the administration to seemingly care about lives that had been lost or scarred forever.

On August 29 at 6:10 AM Katrina hit New Orleans. That date should become as ingrained in America’s memory as 9/11 or December 7, for like them it marks a major historical turning point. Pearl Harbor ended the lingering isolationism many historians today regard as a prime cause of World War II. 9/11 ended the hubris that our nation remained immune to terrors that had visited virtually every other nation on the globe. 8/29–as we should call it–also may signal the end of an era.