Regruntled.com

Jonathan Haidt writes at The Edge:

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?

But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity”—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

“Cognitively inflexible” sounds better than “bitterly clinging to guns and religion”, I suppose.  There seems to be a cottage industry devoted to explaining Republicans, rather than appealing to them.  Condescension is not a viable strategy.

1. Hillary’s original narrative was Destiny; she was the historically inevitable first female President, and this was her moment.
2. Obama countered with Change.  His Destiny as the first black President canceled out Hillary’s Destiny as the first female President, and he had none of her baggage.
3. Hillary lurched from narrative to narrative.  She tried to jump on Change, but was too late; Obama already owned Change.  She tried Experience, and went down in a hail of imaginary sniper fire.  Finally she settled on Regular Folks, drinking beer with steelworkers and painting Obama as a latte-swilling, arugula-eating elitist intellectual.  Too late.
4. Meanwhile, McCain went after Obama with War Hero and Experience.  Obama conceded War Hero, but countered Experience with Judgment.
5. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate undercut Change but added some Experience.  With Hillary out of the picture, he regained Destiny.
6. McCain chose Sarah Palin for VP, diluting his own Experience and canceling out Obama’s Destiny again.  They’re offering Reform as an alternative to Change, and they still have War Hero and Regular Folks.  Palin is about as Regular Folks as you can get, being a non-bitter gun-toting, pro-life hockey mom.  (Has anyone else noticed how much she sounds like Principal Victoria on South Park?)

Where do we go from here?  I suppose it’s possible that the politicians could talk about the issues, but I suspect that things will settle down into two dueling narratives again.

Intrade changes the psychology of politics.  As a voter, I can participate twice, once in the primary and once in the general election.  I can show up at the prescribed time and place like a dog that comes when he’s called.  I can stand in line like a good little citizen, show my photo ID, and choose between the Red Team and the Blue Team.  It doesn’t matter who I vote for.  In a national election, I’m more likely to be run over by a bus on my way to vote than I am to tip the election one way or the other.

As an arbitrageur in a prediction market, I can participate early and often.  I can participate in both the Red and Blue primaries.  I can participate in the contests for Vice President.  I can participate whenever it is convenient for me.  I can participate sitting down, with a refreshing adult beverage by my side.  I can even participate in my sleep.  I woke up this morning and found that my short position in Rudy Giuliani got covered at a profit by a limit order.  So I shorted a few more Fred Thompson.

A voter sees an endless spectacle that tries to motivate him to vote for someone.  As an arbitrageur, I see more opportunities in taking positions against someone, simply because there are always more losers than winners.  I shorted 12 different VP candidates in all, including people I’ve never heard of.

It may not matter who I vote for, but it really does matter who I bet against.

Jonah Goldberg at USA Today argues that Obama is running a postmodern campaign.

The Obama campaign has a postmodern feel to it because more than anything else, it seems to be about itself. Its relationship to reality is almost theoretical. Sure, the campaign has policy proposals, but they are props to advance the narrative of a grand movement existing in order to be a movement galvanized around the singular ideal of movement-ness.

 

In Berlin two weeks ago, Obama’s speech was justified solely by the fact that he was giving it. He offered no policy and  —  not being a president  —  really had no reason to be there other than to tell people, essentially, “now is the moment.”

Postmodern or not, it seems to be working.  Obama draws crowds that want to see Obama.  McCain has to chase  crowds that exist for some other reason, like the Sturgis motorcycle rally.  People didn’t go to Sturgis to see McCain; McCain went to Sturgis to be seen.

Rob Dreher, writing in the Dallas Morning News about “Why the GOP is losing the working class“:

Mike Huckabee’s surprising success in the GOP primaries, to say nothing of Barack Obama’s skill in peeling away some conservatives by feinting rightward on culture and religion, suggests an emerging centrist constituency that’s culturally conservative but economically liberal.

If true, this is bad news for the Libertarians, who have long pinned their hopes on just the opposite constituency, people who are culturally liberal but economically conservative.  In the Nolan chart, the Ron Paul wackos (I guess they’re Bob Barr wackos now) are in the upper right quadrant, the latte-drinking elitest liberal Democrats are in the upper left, and the fat-cat, law-and-order Republicans are in the lower right.  Most Democrats and Republicans are somewhere near the dotted line.  Dreher’s new centrists are in the lower left, bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles.

Obama’s decision to renege on his promise to accept public financing seems to have triggered a number of editorials.  US News & World Report calls him a “serial flip-flopper” and notes:

Change we can believe in? No, change we can count on, because as soon as he takes a position, we can count on the fact he’s going to change it in front of the next audience.

It’s official.  Obama is just another weaselly politician.  He may be the most talented weaselly politician in a generation, but you still can’t believe anything he says.

See also:

• Lolobama

• Dubya took us to war over imaginary weapons of mass destruction.
• Hillary has experience dodging imaginary bullets.
• Conclusion: Hillary is qualified to take over as Commander in Chief on Day One.

It’s been interesting to watch the fuss over Rev. Jeremiah Wright after reading Shelby Steele’s book about Obama. On the one hand, we have the Obama who transcends race, (the “bargainer” in Steele’s terminology), a narrative pushed by the Obama campaign. On the other hand, we have Obama the black politician (Steele’s “challenger”), a narrative pushed by his opponents and supported by his own history.

I think the real Obama is a chameleon, who, as an ambitious young man, reinvented himself as a black politician in Chicago, and then, when he realized that he could step onto the national stage, reinvented himself again as the race-transcending Pope of Hope. The two narratives are mutually incompatible. If he repudiates the earlier narrative, he is an opportunist, a flip-flopper, just another politician. If his opponents can make the earlier narrative stick, he loses the white vote. If both narratives co-exist, the cognitive dissonance leads people to wonder whether there is any “there” there.

Dick Morris says:

Why did he stay in the church? Because he’s a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him.

Shelby Steele says:

The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn’t thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to “be black” despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity.

No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.

By the way, I use “chameleon” as a term of admiration. Dubya, Hillary, Al Gore, John Kerry, John McCain… weasels, all of them. And then there’s Barack Obama… he doesn’t even belong in the same category. He stands out like a normal person in the Special Olympics.

Tony Blankly says:

Make no mistake, this guy isn’t only good with inspirational rhetoric; when it comes to policy slipperiness, he makes Bill Clinton look slow-witted and honest.