To the left, you see the New York Times’ estimates of the votes in last night’s Republican Presidential Primary. Now, we’re all focused on the Democratic results, and what it means for the party. I’m worried, and I hope that the Democratic leadership is, too. But if you look at the Republican results, 27.2% of Republican voters did not vote for their presumptive nominee. Now, going to the polls for a foregone conclusion is already an act of abnormal party loyalty, but going to the polls for a foregone conclusion to vote against said conclusion is an outright expression of protest. While the Democratic Party has yet to unify the troops, what we may be looking at here is the unwinding of the Christian-right backed, unstoppable Republican bloc.
Let’s consider this alongside record jumps in Democratic party growth in the Pennsylvania suburbs, which (although some of it may be chalked up to die-hard Republicans switching temporarily to game the system) bodes very well for the Democrats in November. Combined with the Democrats’ record fundraising, there’s every reason to think this switch is indicative of a larger trend. All we need to do now is unify the party, and kick the attack machine into gear, and…
Factual relativism – loosely defined as the idea that facts are subject to your “point of view” – is one of the gravest problems plaguing modern America. Stephen Colbert parodied this idea in his first show, remarking on America’s descent into “truthiness,” but really it’s no laughing matter – the conflation of opinion with objective fact signifies a deep problem in the nation’s political discourse. Neither political perspective nor religion can forgive the ignorance of one’s duty to act rationally and acknowledge facts in confronting public policy problems.
The cause of creationism – which has experienced an upsurge under Bush’s endorsement in recent years – is a symptom of this larger plague. It finds part of its genesis in the error of extending American anti-elitism (“justice for all”) to assume that the common man is equally skilled in expert matters (rather than equally entitled to aspire to that goal), and compounds this error with a cherry-picking of the factual record.
That explanation, in a nutshell, sums up my bizarre fascination with creationism, and in part justifies the below post, reprinted (with some modification) from an e-mail to a creationist with whom I’ve debated in the past. The e-mail replied to the assertion that “Darwinists” (is that even a word?) “expel” creationists, without cause, from the echelons of academia.
It’s been known to happen before, but I was wrong – Hillary held on to 5% more than I expected, and the press is actually being fairly responsible on this result. While noting her victory (at the Times and Fox News), the New York Times at least is sounding the alarm about what this means for the race as a whole – namely, that it’s going to go on, and on, and on. I’ve posted previously about the problem of scorched earth campaigning, and I have to say, now more than ever, we can’t afford to use tactics which weaken us any more than the mere fact of the race will continue to do.
I try to make this site focus a lot on strategy – my stated goal with this site is to highlight how politics have to change, and for politics to change, we need to win in November first – and this point is the most vital issue of strategy of all. We can’t afford to be divided for much longer. It’s time for the leadership to put the heat on the candidates as a whole: not on one of them to quit, but on both of them to reconcile and create a ticket. However that happens, it needs to happen now.
