Throughout August and September, we have seen pictures of angry protesters in town meetings and, most recently, in the streets of Washington. As judged by their pictures, they are predominately older, white, male, born-again Christians. Their signs point to a mix of frustrations: what could happen to the health care they have, the future of the free market, big government and its spending, bailing out the banks and auto industry, death panels, socialism, Barack Obama.
Clearly, they feel deep down that something has gone wrong, that the country they have known and loved for years is slipping away. Disfranchised and outraged, they identify with the woman who shouted during one of the town hall meetings “I want my country back!” Driven by fear and fury, and certainly not by any singularly framed argument, they latch on to one or another scapegoat, prodded by the incessant and inflammatory voices of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others on both television and radio.
But what has come to a head in the recent public displays is not altogether unexpected. Pollsters back in the spring examining the “First 100 Days” of the Obama presidency picked up on the beginnings of a potentially more widespread discontent. In a national survey conducted by Zogby International for the Walter H. Capps Center at UCSB in late April, for example, over three thousand Americans were asked, “How confident are you that President Obama is moving the country in the right direction?” More than a third (39 percent) responded in the extreme negative, saying they were “not at all confident.”
Who are these extremely discontented Americans? By and large, they fit a profile we might expect; yet there are some surprises.
In keeping with previous trends, they are more likely to attend religious services. The “God gap” between Democrats and Republicans, as it came to be known during the Bush years, persists: over half of those attending services more than once a week and 48 percent of those attending weekly said they were not at all confident about the direction the president was moving the country. Not surprisingly, too, more than half were born-again Christians.
Unsurprisingly, whites (especially those with less education) register the highest levels of discontent with Obama. But it’s also important to recognize that 55 percent of Asians, a third of Hispanics, and half of all other immigrants were not at all confident. The faces of these latter constituencies show up less in the media coverage of angry protesters, but their presence should not be overlooked.
And there is one expectation we ought to dispel. Ever since the Scopes Trial in 1925, the less-educated, racist South has been singled out as the biggest cheerleader of right-wing populist movements, but this is overblown. Today we observe a nationally-based resistance movement to Obama sustained by political and religious networks and led by conservative activists. The April poll suggested there was actually less confidence in Obama among people in the Midwest and West than in the South.
So what new do we learn? Two observations in particular are worth noting. One is the age breakdown. Lack of confidence in the president was greatest among those 25-34 years old, those now moving into jobs and careers, many forming families; and for seniors over 70 who are already retired or hope to be. Both constituencies are hard hit by the recession: the young worry about their future employment, the old about whether they will have sufficient savings for retirement.
A second has to do with income. Not surprisingly, concerns about Obama’s possible tax increases and government spending are greater for those in higher income categories. But this worry is most acute not for those at the very highest income level, but within the $75,000-$100,000 category. Frustration and anger bubble up among those especially who are relatively well off, but fear their financial security is uncertain and might erode. This is a pattern long observed in right-wing populist movements, arising among those caught up in the fear of loss.
Interesting too, but not shown here, is that the Zogby poll asked respondents to indicate how they preferred to identify where they lived: in their own town or city, in America, or on planet Earth. Fifty-five percent among those expressing no confidence in the president say they are from America, most of them actually dwelling in small towns and rural areas. Forty-eight percent are NASCAR fans and 53 percent report weekly trips to Wal-Mart, adding to the profile of a constituency vulnerable to conservative activists who often play to class and cultural resentment.
The politics of health care is currently the occasion for this rancor. The “values voters” are enjoying a new spurt of energy, intensified in their concerns about big government and control. But we have to see the values voters in relation to the financial squeeze people find themselves in, one made worse by the continuing uncertainty about the pace of recovery and, of course, whether such recovery will include them. Economic insecurity, combined with symbolic loss of identity and privilege as an older Anglo-Protestant culture, helps to explain what is going on. And then add the appeals to traditional faith and morality and you have a very explosive mix. What lies behind the lady’s shout at the town hall meeting, perhaps her greatest fear, is that she can’t get her country back.
Tags: healthcare, obama, protests, town hall meetings
Well the writer tried very hard to hide his odor, but perfume goes only so far. Nascar, Wal-Mart, white, religious, all indicators that foster the left's sterotypes and validates their disdain of our country's real problem. Enough strawmen. Just perhaps, wanting your country back is saying you want our form of government back, we are supposed to be a representative republic not a socailist democracy. People do care about the pervasive threat to individual liberty found in an ever increasing oppressive gov't. The phrase "for your own good" has a hollow and sinister ring to it.
People do care about the pervasive threat to individual liberty found in an ever increasing oppressive gov't.
Your point? The Obama Administration is significantly less oppressive than the Bush Administration, which fostered totalitarian-style domestic eavesdropping, imprisonment without trial, overruling of Congress votes, the widespread ideological corruption of science, an astonishing level of secrecy, etc., etc., etc. Did you protest any of this?
My Point, the left screams about eavesdropping but cannot point to one instance of this passive means resulting in a denied right. However I can point to the left's busybody desire to tell every American what to eat, what to wear, what to drive, what temperature to set your own thermostadt, and how I can access my own healthcare and even use coercive means to enforce this for my own good restriction. Individual liberty is indeed in danger, admit it if you could you would also tell me who I could worship, perferrably nobody. Funny, you sow the seeds of your own bondages.
Wade Clark Roof says nothing helpful in this piece apart from the observation that 55% of Asians are deeply concerned about the drift of the country. It may be a bit of a cliche to link dissatisfaction with our first black president to southern racism; unfortunately, this conclusion is easily substantiated. True, concern among Westerners and Mid-westerners may be a tad higher than concern among "Southerners", but black Southerners and white Southerners are poles apart on this issue, and there are far more African Americans in the South than in the West or Mid-west. If Roof had compared apples to apples (southern whites to whites in the other regions) he would have made the proper comparison.
Ideologically, born again types in the West and Mid-west take their marching orders from the heartland of conservative evangelicalism--the Old South. The Southern Strategy, which has driven conservative politics for two generations was (as the name suggests) shaped around white hot Southern racism.
Sure, these sentiments have cooled considerably over the past forty years, but not half as much as nice people like Wade Clark Roof suppose. When it comes to comfort with black leadership, folks in the rural South are far closer to 1963 than they are to 2008. Obama's support among Mississippi whites was 10%.
Sure, a shaky and unpredictable economy coupled with high levels of government spending play into current anxieties, and this likely explains the current uneasiness among Asians. But does anyone really believe that the folks at the town hall meetings would be shouting themselves hoarse over the bailout if George W. Bush was still in the White House? Bush, like Reagan, spent the nation into the poor house and nobody on the Right seemed to mind. Nor would they mind today if the spending was tied to a popular war.
Nothing Obama touches will be acceptable to the folks Roof describes in this piece because Obama is unacceptable. His color is only part of the problem (these folks would be going after Hillary Clinton almost as vociferously had she been elected), but the lunatic intensity of the current protest cannot be understood unless you factor in a strong element of vestigial racism.
This isn't strictly a Southern phenomenon and never was; but it is strongest in the South and is that region's biggest ideological export. If Mr. Roof wants to understand the deep level of resentment among small town and rural white folks he needs to spend some time in East Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Alan Bean
Thankfully, despite the imbalances of the electoral college and of Senate representation, the majority gets to run the country every so often.
Roof provides an excellent demographic analysis of the social discontent that Rush Limbaugh and other gas bags - as well as Karl Rove-like politically conservative strategists - exploit, that is those opposed to making the substantive changes in our way of life in order to heed the warnings of respected researchers regarding global warming and to the necessary changes we need to make to enact meaningful national health care legislation.
It is easy to assume that those discontented with Obama are "values voters" who see him as a "socialist", "communist", muslim or whatever the rightwing wants to portray him as at the moment.
HOWEVER. While the polls show that people think he is moving the country in the wrong direction, they don't specify which direction that is. I think he is moving in the wrong direction, too, but I think he is moving way too far right! I am sixtyish, but how many of those young people are not necessarily concerned about jobs for themselves, but about the broken promises of hope and change? Unless the polls break it down further, you canNOT make assumptions about what people perceive Obama is doing wrong. At this point, the left wing is just as unhappy as the right wing is - we just don't do tea parties.
Having lived in Europe for a good many years, I think a bit of social democracy is exactly what we DO need, and a bit less of the untrammeled market.
And, that's what all the screaming is about. They know it.
Next up. CIT Group Inc. The hard rain has yet to fall. But, it's coming. Change the "D" in the White House to an "R" and it is still going to fall. We all know the seeds of this day were sown years ago.
There are no surprises here. We can all count. Smart folks figured a solution years ago. And, it wasn't a ten pound can of peanut butter and a shot gun across their lap with some fool sticker about prying it from their cold dead hand.
You got your country back in the last election, when we threw out the Administration that used warantless wiretaps, invented evidence to start a phony war and used the Justice Dept. for political purposes. The anger on the right is misdirected - the people they should be angry at are the corporations that put profits and shareholders ahead of workers and families. The politicians who aided and abetted these companies were largely from the right, although we had plenty of Dems in on that one as well. People need to educate themselves, and they won't learn anything from Glen Beck and Fake News.
You have voted for Obama! Now, you wanted him out? *sigh*
bed frame
cedar chest
baby nursery crib
furniture baby
baby cribs
dining furniture
What is wrong with a socialistic democracy? Who says I ought not vote for such a system? What makes socialism unAmerican?
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