Actually, no; with all due respect, this is the dumbest take I've read yet on the topic. Very few blacks vote Republican; for most of them, the choice is between voting Dem and staying home. So Kerry's remark:
We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.
I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people who were in a marriage because they were living a sort of convention, and they struggled with it.
And I've met wives who are supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally sort of broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them.
I think we have to respect that.
is supposed to goad apathetic black homophobes into turning out for him? Needless to say, neither Kaus nor Crank are specific on the mechanics of this.
Not surprising to see Kaus and Pat Caddell (on Fox News) flogging this line; both men deeply resent the role of blacks within the Democratic coalition, and have the lowest opinion imaginable of the motivations of black voters.
I apply the same rules to Mickey Kaus that I apply to Charles Johnson. Whatever they say, I assume the polar opposite is God's own truth. So far, the strategy hasn't let me down.
i second what sun volt said. Why did he need to "pander" to blacks on this issue in the first place? The logic makes no sense -- and as good evidence of the lack of sense, consider that this is the fourth or fifth explanation Kaus has given for Kerry's comment, all of them uncharitable. As Roger Ailes pointed put a while ago, this is a common Kaus schtick: to read th emind of some democrat -- that's what Ailes says, I would say anyone Kaus disagrees with, since he has done it with Andrew Sulivan, too -- and declaim that the only possible motivation was unseemly. Kaus has yet to even entertain the notion that this could be reasonable, indeed, is the simplest explanation is that the remark was reasonable. And that's his other schitck, to show politically savvy he is by suggesting hidden logic (of the jujitsu, banking three times before it finds the whole species), and, again, it is always to suggest that democrats are somehow evil, yet without the burden of actually reporting facts or, as Sun Volt says, mechanics.
Specific mechanics is bit much to ask for, isn't it? Kerry is a Democrat, and so can count on a large percentage of the black vote. But he doesn't have much of a connection or rapport with the black community, and can't count on large turnout (remember the flap about the fact that none of his senior people are black? Blacks do.) Insofar as blacks are more anti-gay than the rest of population, it's not stupid to think that Kerry informing them that Cheney's daugher is gay would make Kerry seem less worse than Bush on the issue, and take away one hurdle to getting blacks to turn out. It's hardly what you'd call a tight causal chain, but it's about as plausible as any other analysis of issue-->vote.
And I know I'm supposed to hate Kaus, I know it, but I can't help myself; I still like reading the guy.
This article (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/election2004/9916641.htm?1c) has anecdotal evidence to support your point that Kerry is not connecting with blacks. But, still, there's this --
A poll by Black Entertainment Television and CBS in July showed African-American support for Kerry at 79 percent, compared with 10 percent for Bush. However, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed black support had slipped to 73 percent for Kerry and increased to 12 percent for Bush.
-- and I'm not sure that even slipping a few percentage points is entirely worrying when connected with stories like this (http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=23224a104437401c9c4a4fdc8f0c0b15):
New voters are swelling the rolls and threatening to upset the assumptions of corporate pundits and polling organizations. Although Republicans are vigorously signing up white voters in the suburbs and exurbs, it appears the GOP is being out-organized by Democrat-led drives in Black and Brown precincts across the nation.
According to a New York Times analysis, Democrat-affiliated groups "have added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states." A review of county-by-county data shows "new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas."
Massive voter sign-ups have overloaded registrars in many localities. The Associated Press national desk reports: "Clerks have hired extra workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. Philadelphia borrowed employees from other city agencies and started working overtime two months earlier than the usual post-Labor Day push."
In Georgia, Atlanta registrars say they are "working overtime, six days a week right now." According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "African-Americans, who generally support Democrats, are registering in high numbers. About 32 percent of newly registered voters through June are African-American. Overall, 26 percent of Georgia's registered voters are black."
So, you're right that we will never know exactly why Kerry said it until someone in his campaign admits something (and even then, the jury is still out), but we do have circumstantial evidence, and the circumstantial evidence here, I think, wieghs aainst Kaus. Kerry's slipping a little (perhaps) in polls of black voters, which he counters by playing to their homophobia. And how does he play to their homophobia? By saying that the Cheneys have an out lesbian duaghter in a speech that also affirms that gays are God's children, do not choose their sexual orientation (and therefore cannot be said to sin in any meaningful way), and who comes out against a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage and the incidents therof.
If Kerry's really worried about not connecting with black voters, isn't that a bit too subtle?
And, if so, isn't that a thin reed upon which to base an argument. Aren't other explanantions simpler, and also less devious? I think to beleive this argument, you already have to share Kaus's assumption that Kerry is -- ot use Lynne Cheney's phrase -- not a good man.
"Specific on the mechanics" is an awkward phrasing; what I meant was some idea of how Kerry's words would play out in the mind of a hypothetical homophobic black person who was not committed to voting for Kerry. Consider this:
I usually vote Democrat, but dayum, they sure do bend over backwards for queers. Bush is against the queers, but I've never even thought about voting Republican. So I guess I'll just stay home. What's that you say? Cheney got a queer daughter? Aw, they ain't really against the gays at all, guess there's nothing left for me to do but vote for Mistah Kerry!
That's my unfair and unbalanced portrayal of the thought process that would be required for the Crank hypothesis to be true. Anyone who agrees with Crank is free to try to improve on it. The important thing is that Kaus et al want people to believe, not merely that significant numbers of black folks are likely to think this way, but that Kerry's words (quoted in post #1) induced that chain of thought in them.
I think it was just last month we were all reading Menand's article about how people decide who to vote for, and now we're requiring a coherent train of thought before we'll believe that someone can be swayed by a pander? If you're anti-gay, Mary Cheney makes Kerry seem less bad, relatively. Or not. I have no idea, but it's not crazy or stupid to think it's possible.
Since, as you noted, no one _really_ knows the purpose of the remark, we're reduced to judging the relative merits of various explanations. Of course, we can all be wring, because the thinking behind the comment could have been spurious. But, assuming that it wasn't, I still can't see Kaus's argument, because it relies on treating Kerry's naming Mary Cheney without any context. The immediate context of the remark was Kerry saying that gays are God's children, that their lifestyle is not their choice, and that he doesn't want to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage. So, Kaus' putative Africa-American voter would have to say, I was not going to vote at all (as Sun Volt notes), and I am going to vote for Kerry, even though he has not offered the same anti-gay rhetoric as the President, even though he has said he supports civil unions for gays, and even though he does not think that homosexuality is a sin, only because the Cheneys have a lesbian daughter. These same putative voters could not have been moved by the economy -- especially bad for African-Americans -- or the war -- especially hard on African-American families since there are a large humber of blacks in the military -- and they could not have been moved by Bush's rather cavalier disregard of many civil rights insitituions, such as the NAACP -- or else there was no reason to target them.
This would seem to be an insanely small group of voters: to wit, they don't care that much about the economy, the war, or candidates who visit the NAACP. They are anti-gay, but the kind of anti-gay voter who does not care about the FMA or anti-gay rhetoric, only that one of the vice presidential candidates has a lesbian daughter.
Could the political calculus really have been to go after this small group of voters?
We don't know. Maybe. And if this really _was_ the Kerry campaign's thinking, wel, then, maybe they do deserve to lose. Because it does seem very near crazy.
Actually, no; with all due respect, this is the dumbest take I've read yet on the topic. Very few blacks vote Republican; for most of them, the choice is between voting Dem and staying home. So Kerry's remark:
is supposed to goad apathetic black homophobes into turning out for him? Needless to say, neither Kaus nor Crank are specific on the mechanics of this.
Not surprising to see Kaus and Pat Caddell (on Fox News) flogging this line; both men deeply resent the role of blacks within the Democratic coalition, and have the lowest opinion imaginable of the motivations of black voters.
Posted by son volt | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 3:49 PM
I apply the same rules to Mickey Kaus that I apply to Charles Johnson. Whatever they say, I assume the polar opposite is God's own truth. So far, the strategy hasn't let me down.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 3:58 PM
i second what sun volt said. Why did he need to "pander" to blacks on this issue in the first place? The logic makes no sense -- and as good evidence of the lack of sense, consider that this is the fourth or fifth explanation Kaus has given for Kerry's comment, all of them uncharitable. As Roger Ailes pointed put a while ago, this is a common Kaus schtick: to read th emind of some democrat -- that's what Ailes says, I would say anyone Kaus disagrees with, since he has done it with Andrew Sulivan, too -- and declaim that the only possible motivation was unseemly. Kaus has yet to even entertain the notion that this could be reasonable, indeed, is the simplest explanation is that the remark was reasonable. And that's his other schitck, to show politically savvy he is by suggesting hidden logic (of the jujitsu, banking three times before it finds the whole species), and, again, it is always to suggest that democrats are somehow evil, yet without the burden of actually reporting facts or, as Sun Volt says, mechanics.
Posted by me | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 4:38 PM
Specific mechanics is bit much to ask for, isn't it? Kerry is a Democrat, and so can count on a large percentage of the black vote. But he doesn't have much of a connection or rapport with the black community, and can't count on large turnout (remember the flap about the fact that none of his senior people are black? Blacks do.) Insofar as blacks are more anti-gay than the rest of population, it's not stupid to think that Kerry informing them that Cheney's daugher is gay would make Kerry seem less worse than Bush on the issue, and take away one hurdle to getting blacks to turn out. It's hardly what you'd call a tight causal chain, but it's about as plausible as any other analysis of issue-->vote.
And I know I'm supposed to hate Kaus, I know it, but I can't help myself; I still like reading the guy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 4:50 PM
This article (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/election2004/9916641.htm?1c) has anecdotal evidence to support your point that Kerry is not connecting with blacks. But, still, there's this --
A poll by Black Entertainment Television and CBS in July showed African-American support for Kerry at 79 percent, compared with 10 percent for Bush. However, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed black support had slipped to 73 percent for Kerry and increased to 12 percent for Bush.
-- and I'm not sure that even slipping a few percentage points is entirely worrying when connected with stories like this (http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=23224a104437401c9c4a4fdc8f0c0b15):
New voters are swelling the rolls and threatening to upset the assumptions of corporate pundits and polling organizations. Although Republicans are vigorously signing up white voters in the suburbs and exurbs, it appears the GOP is being out-organized by Democrat-led drives in Black and Brown precincts across the nation.
According to a New York Times analysis, Democrat-affiliated groups "have added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states." A review of county-by-county data shows "new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas."
Massive voter sign-ups have overloaded registrars in many localities. The Associated Press national desk reports: "Clerks have hired extra workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. Philadelphia borrowed employees from other city agencies and started working overtime two months earlier than the usual post-Labor Day push."
In Georgia, Atlanta registrars say they are "working overtime, six days a week right now." According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "African-Americans, who generally support Democrats, are registering in high numbers. About 32 percent of newly registered voters through June are African-American. Overall, 26 percent of Georgia's registered voters are black."
So, you're right that we will never know exactly why Kerry said it until someone in his campaign admits something (and even then, the jury is still out), but we do have circumstantial evidence, and the circumstantial evidence here, I think, wieghs aainst Kaus. Kerry's slipping a little (perhaps) in polls of black voters, which he counters by playing to their homophobia. And how does he play to their homophobia? By saying that the Cheneys have an out lesbian duaghter in a speech that also affirms that gays are God's children, do not choose their sexual orientation (and therefore cannot be said to sin in any meaningful way), and who comes out against a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage and the incidents therof.
If Kerry's really worried about not connecting with black voters, isn't that a bit too subtle?
And, if so, isn't that a thin reed upon which to base an argument. Aren't other explanantions simpler, and also less devious? I think to beleive this argument, you already have to share Kaus's assumption that Kerry is -- ot use Lynne Cheney's phrase -- not a good man.
Posted by me | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 5:53 PM
"Specific on the mechanics" is an awkward phrasing; what I meant was some idea of how Kerry's words would play out in the mind of a hypothetical homophobic black person who was not committed to voting for Kerry. Consider this:
I usually vote Democrat, but dayum, they sure do bend over backwards for queers. Bush is against the queers, but I've never even thought about voting Republican. So I guess I'll just stay home. What's that you say? Cheney got a queer daughter? Aw, they ain't really against the gays at all, guess there's nothing left for me to do but vote for Mistah Kerry!
That's my unfair and unbalanced portrayal of the thought process that would be required for the Crank hypothesis to be true. Anyone who agrees with Crank is free to try to improve on it. The important thing is that Kaus et al want people to believe, not merely that significant numbers of black folks are likely to think this way, but that Kerry's words (quoted in post #1) induced that chain of thought in them.
Posted by son volt | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 6:24 PM
I think it was just last month we were all reading Menand's article about how people decide who to vote for, and now we're requiring a coherent train of thought before we'll believe that someone can be swayed by a pander? If you're anti-gay, Mary Cheney makes Kerry seem less bad, relatively. Or not. I have no idea, but it's not crazy or stupid to think it's possible.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 9:39 PM
Since, as you noted, no one _really_ knows the purpose of the remark, we're reduced to judging the relative merits of various explanations. Of course, we can all be wring, because the thinking behind the comment could have been spurious. But, assuming that it wasn't, I still can't see Kaus's argument, because it relies on treating Kerry's naming Mary Cheney without any context. The immediate context of the remark was Kerry saying that gays are God's children, that their lifestyle is not their choice, and that he doesn't want to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage. So, Kaus' putative Africa-American voter would have to say, I was not going to vote at all (as Sun Volt notes), and I am going to vote for Kerry, even though he has not offered the same anti-gay rhetoric as the President, even though he has said he supports civil unions for gays, and even though he does not think that homosexuality is a sin, only because the Cheneys have a lesbian daughter. These same putative voters could not have been moved by the economy -- especially bad for African-Americans -- or the war -- especially hard on African-American families since there are a large humber of blacks in the military -- and they could not have been moved by Bush's rather cavalier disregard of many civil rights insitituions, such as the NAACP -- or else there was no reason to target them.
This would seem to be an insanely small group of voters: to wit, they don't care that much about the economy, the war, or candidates who visit the NAACP. They are anti-gay, but the kind of anti-gay voter who does not care about the FMA or anti-gay rhetoric, only that one of the vice presidential candidates has a lesbian daughter.
Could the political calculus really have been to go after this small group of voters?
We don't know. Maybe. And if this really _was_ the Kerry campaign's thinking, wel, then, maybe they do deserve to lose. Because it does seem very near crazy.
Posted by me | Link to this comment | 10-16-04 11:02 PM