Politics of You, Me and Us

My 12-year-old precocious son asked me about last night’s election results, just before he went off to school today.

In particular, he asked about my party affiliation.  When I was 18, I said, I registered with the Democrats but soon, thereafter, realized that was a mistake. 

“Because you thought they were a little nutty,” he asked.

“Maybe,” I replied. “But it didn’t make me run into the arms of the Republican Party either.”

Then I said I’m with the Democrats when they talk about civil and human rights but I’m with the Republicans when they talk about money.

“So, really, I’m more Libertarian,” I said.  

What I didn’t tell him – because time was running short – was that I also support same-gender marriage and women’s reproductive rights. 

Elections are pictures of a moment in time.  People vote for whom they vote for many reasons.

Part of it might be because they read up on the issues, deciding one candidate fits their views better than another.  Some of it, as Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Joseph Epstein[i] suggests, might be due to circumstances few consider – family, parents, siblings, how they were brought up, where they live, what they do, the education they received.

So we might consider – outrageous as it might seem – that we’re all brainwashed or, if you prefer in this digital age, hardwired, for certain beliefs long before we leave the confines of where we grew up.

Matt Miller, a columnist I once syndicated, and a candidate himself recently for U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman’s seat, taught me one of the best lessons about why one politician is elected over another:  It’s all in the looks.

Turn down the television’s volume when they’re debating or when their ads appear, he said, and it’ll allow you to better study their facial features and expressions, telling you whether they’re happy or angry.

As I recall, he said, the happy ones tend to hold an advantage.  Not always, of course.  But often.

So perhaps it was Martha Coakley’s face that led to her second significant defeat in a statewide contest.  It’s narrow and constricted, not warm enough to win. 

And while you might think that’s sexist, Coakley’s facial disadvantage was the same one that hindered Charlie Baker four years ago when he tried to unseat Gov. Deval Patrick. 

I hope the politicians assembling in Washington and the country’s state capitals in January follow the lesson my mother taught me:  Hold any political view you want, but, remember, life’s solutions are found in the middle.

As for Matt Miller, unfortunately, he didn’t secure his party’s nomination for Waxman’s seat.

I came to know Matt during my time at Tribune Media Services and always found him to be one of the smartest commentators we syndicated.  He’s a centrist Democrat, a former Clinton White House staffer and would have been a solid operator not only for his party but also when it came to working with Republicans. 

His defeat sheds light on the kind of politics those elected must hold.  It illuminates us.

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[i] http://online.wsj.com/articles/joseph-epstein-after-the-midterms-virtucrats-still-rule-1415145309

Kindred Spirits: Immigration and Slavery?

Anyone supporting unlimited immigration into the United States might review the history of the antebellum South of the 19^th Century.

While there’s no doubt that slavery was perverse, causing incredible harm against African Americans, it had another victim that few likely know – lower class, independent, white, businessmen, sometimes poor, sometimes middle class.

They were the service providers, fixing fences or performing odd jobs around an owner’s plantation.

William H. Freehling, a retired history professor at the University of Kentucky, writes in his two-volume series detailing Southern life, politics and economics prior to the U.S. Civil War, entitled The Road to Disunion, small white businessmen were often at a disadvantage because they were competing against either free blacks or slave labor. 

Often it was easier and cheaper, Freehling writes, for a plantation owner to turn to his slaves when work needed to be done around his estate that didn’t include planting or tending to the crops.

History repeating itself?

Nearly 150 years since the end of the Civil War, yesterday’s New York Times reports (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/us/suit-cites-race-bias-in-farms-use-of-immigrants.html?pagewanted=2&src=twrhp) a similar issue exists today.

Only it’s not about lower class whites being at a competitive disadvantage.  It’s mostly about lower class African Americans, The Times reports, unable to secure work on a farm, Southern Valley, in Georgia.

Their competition?  Immigrant labor but with a new twist:  It’s not about pay, say the owners and operators of Southern Valley, it’s about attitude. 

Southern Valley’s Director of Operations Jon Schwalls compared Mexican and guest workers to Americans this way:

“When Jose gets on the bus to come here from Mexico he is committed to the work.  It’s like going into the military. He leaves his family at home. The work is hard, but he’s ready. A domestic wants to know: What’s the pay? What are the conditions? In these communities, I am sorry to say, there are no fathers at home, no role models for hard work. They want rewards without input.”

The story reports a lawsuit was recently settled by some of the workers and it included, The Times said, Southern Valley agreeing “to make certain changes,” which were left unclear in the article.

Lawyers for the American workers, The Times reports, say the guest worker program, which allows foreign laborers to work for limited periods of time in the United States, “is rigged to favor low-cost foreign labor because, given the conditions and the pay, no one else will do it.”

In U.S. politics, the Democratic Party’s constituency is often voters on the lower end of the economic spectrum.  If Democrats can’t help low-skill laborers, like the ones formerly employed by Southern Valley, are there other constituents they can’t help?  Are these workers the Democratic Party’s sacrificial lambs because they’re in a Red State?