By James M. Jasper, March 31st, 2011 
The Democrats are right to be concerned over the consequences of anger. Look at Jared Loughner. Is it possible to direct anger against individuals, organizations, and groups without having that anger develop into hatred, contempt, and disgust – affective commitments that would aim to exclude the objects of anger from a role in politics or even (sometimes) from being recognized as human? Anger is a normal part of democracy, exclusion is not. The difference may lie in short- versus long-run feelings. Blame for particular outcomes need not become demands for permanent exclusion, anger need not build into hatred.
If permanent demonization is morally undesirable, can we avoid it without giving up powerful mobilizing tools? Short-run blame and anger can be used to demand structural reforms. But can the demonization let up then, when popular mobilization seems less needed? Or do we need it in order to remain watchful and suspicious, since we know that all laws can be gradually undermined by vigilant opponents?
The difference between the short-run and the long, or between specific actions and general villains, is like that between guilt and shame. People feel guilty over specific things they have done. They feel shame when they see their entire beings as unworthy. Shame can become an ongoing status of being morally unworthy. Can we focus our indignation on actions rather than on actors, by trying to attach guilt to actions instead of shame to actors? This will be easier if we are upset by a particular event than if we are reacting to an ongoing stream of activities. The financial meltdown of 2007-2008 was that kind of event, and – promisingly from an ethical viewpoint – had a number of potential villains rather than a single central villain.
Villains are powerful and malevolent. We try to portray opponents as villains to emphasize the threat they pose. (Weak opponents are clowns, objects for ridicule not fear.) Villains are more frightening, pose more of a . . .
Read more: Anger, Hate, Demonization, Villains, and Politics
By Gary Alan Fine, January 19th, 2011
 What baggage becomes a politician most? In a democracy, voters are condemned to decide between imperfect men and women, each of whom presents a platform, listing left or inclining right. Should one select the platform or the politician who stands upon it? What is a simple voter to do? Put another way, should personal morality – or at least our judgments of that morality – trump those goals that we hope for a political to achieve. This is fundamentally the tension between having a politician serve as our representative in a Burkean sense or as our messenger of our immediate desires. Do we wish a deliberative democracy or a direct democracy in which we vote for a politician who will enact our policy preferences. Each model has appeal. The former suggests that we should focus on character and deliberative ability; the latter suggests that we examine ideology and policy most carefully.
While the battle between beliefs and character is not new, the choice is etched starkly at moments of national stress and ideological warfare – at those moments in which decisions really matter and in which we citizens are engaged. As Chantal Mouffe emphasizes a critically engaged electorate – one that accepts the reality and the virtue of conflict – can be good medicine in a democracy. At times we have the luxury of voting for virtue, but when the battle is joined, policy must trump person. Failed humans can still be fine leaders.
Perhaps, as Mark Twain averred, the Congress is our only native criminal class, but we have managed to thrive under the leadership of these rascals. We have little choice. Our lives are shaped by votes, more than by mischief. Perhaps we would like to find leaders who can persuade others and who can compromise – as Edmund Burke would have it – but most often politicians are tied to their beliefs and ours, and we voters find comfort in that.
We saw the stark choices in the recent election. When a party feels that they  are in touch with the mood of the . . .
Read more: The Conundrum of Their Character
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 7th, 2010
 On the left, there has been great disappointment with President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress. The compromise on tax cuts and unemployment benefits announced yesterday underscores this. Nonetheless, I think it is important to remember that this should provoke not only criticism and analysis but also practical action, and that the action should be predicated upon a recognition of accomplishment along with critique.
Many of Obama’s critics from the left, including Martin Plot I’m sure, do recognize the accomplishments of Obama and the Democrats. But they are understandably frustrated with how things are going. While I think we got a much better stimulus package under Obama than we would have under Republican leadership, that’s not saying much.
A significant effort to address structural problems with the economy, including its escalating inequalities, was not forcefully presented and defended as being economically wise and socially just. The attack on the human rights abuses of the Bush era was too quiet at best, nonexistent at worst. Given Martin’s experience with the Argentine dictatorship this is a particularly important point for him. I understand and respect this.
And disappointment goes further: there was no climate change legislation, no immigration reform, and no labor law, making it easier to organize (The Employee Free Choice Act). The Republicans succeeded in blocking numerous legislative actions and now they have control of the House and have the Senate under control, even more than before in the age of the ubiquitous filibuster.
So Plot’s critique is important. Does this prove that the power in the United States is stacked against progressive change? That power is not an empty space as Martin chooses to put it? That the space, where power is exercised, is permanently occupied by corporate power and Republican interests? I think not, primarily because it is easy to imagine things developing differently if the Democrats play their game better, and crucially if Obama had succeeds in (what I take to be his central political project) changing the nature of the center of American politics. Further, I am far from sure that continued failure is on the horizon. Things can turn around.
. . .
Read more: For Disappointed Democrats, Action is the Answer
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 7th, 2010 
The Tea Party reminds me of political movements I have been involved with and studied in the past. The development of this movement well illustrates my conception of “the politics of small things,” a very real and powerful element of political life.
Jimmy Stewart in Frank Capra's 1939 political drama "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (Columbia Pictures)
When people meet each other and speak and act in each others presence based on shared principles about common concerns, and develop a capacity to act in concert, they create political power, a kind of power highlighted by my favorite political thinker, Hannah Arendt in Between Past and Future. I saw this in the alternative cultural movement in Poland, and later in the democratic opposition in Poland and around the old Soviet bloc in the 1970s and 1980s.
People on their own, many my friends, reinvented their political culture, and the unimaginable and the hopelessly naïve became the realistic and the practical. Solidarnosc was born. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Empire imploded. These opposition figures changed commonsense. They presented an alternative to newspeak as a public language. The unimaginable became the real. I wrote of many of these issues in my book, Beyond Glasnost.
In the anti-war movement, the Dean campaign and the Obama campaign, the same power was evident. In the aftermath of the patriotic wave and mass support for the policies of the Bush administration, those who dissented started talking to each other, meeting, talking and developing a capacity to act in concert. At first, this was accomplished by utilizing meetup.com and supported by Moveon.org. A dense network of conversation and common action was developed. The man naming himself as the candidate from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, changed the discussion among Democrats. They lost the election, but then won big, in 2008, very much propelled by the social support that was generated by the politics of small things.
Their great success, I should say our great success, was viewed very skeptically by a significant portion of the population. After all, while Obama won decisively, 45% of voters chose . . .
Read more: The Tea Party Goes to Washington: Now What?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 5th, 2010
In my state, New York, thanks to the Tea Party favorite, Carl Paladino, Andrew Cuomo’s election as Governor was never in doubt. In Delaware, thanks to Christine O’Donnell, Chris Coons easily became Senator, when it seemed that he was likely to lose against a mainstream Republican. In Nevada, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who started and finished with low approval ratings, managed to be reelected, thanks to the Tea Party candidate, Sharron Angle. On the other hand, Marco Rubio in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Rand Paul in Kentucky each impressively were elected to the Senate, assuring that there will be a discernable taste of tea in that great deliberative body.
As Paul put it,
“They say that the U.S. Senate is the world’s most deliberative body. Well, I’m going to ask them, respectfully, to deliberate upon this. Eleven percent of the people approve of what’s going on in Congress. But tonight there is a Tea Party tidal wave and we’re sending a message to ’em.
It’s a message that I will carry with them on Day One. It’s a message of fiscal sanity It’s a message of limited, limited constitutional government and balanced budgets.” (link)
The language is ugly, but clear. The political discourse of the Senate is about to be challenged, and this is the body where the Republicans are in the minority. It will be even louder and clearer in the House, which I admit I find pretty depressing, both from the political and the aesthetic point of view. It’s going to be harder to actually deal with our pressing problems, and it’s not going to be pretty.
Indeed, it is in spheres of aesthetics and discourse that the Tea Party has been most successful. It’s not a matter actually of how many races Tea Party politicians won or lost. They won some and lost some, but from the beginning the Tea Party’s great success has been how it changed the public discussion about the pressing issues of the day. In my next post, I will discuss this more fully, comparing the Tea Party with the Solidarity Movement in Poland, . . .
Read more: Rand Paul and the Tea Party go to Washington
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 4th, 2010 
 For the Republicans, the election returns indicate a clear mandate, the repudiation of the policies of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress. This was boldly expressed in the joint press conference of Representative John Boehner, Senator Mitch McConnell and Governor Haley Barbour. For the Democrats, the results of the election are humbling, indicating the need for bi-partisanship, as the President spoke about yesterday in his press conference. Was this just opposing tactical responses to the returns? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe that it is the President who is responding to the change the voters believe in, while the Republicans are misreading the election results.
The Republicans were combative:
Senator Mitch McConnell:
We’ll work with the administration when they agree with the people and confront them when they don’t. Choosing — I think what our friends on the other side learned is that choosing the president over your constituents is not a good strategy. There are two opportunities for that change to occur. Our friends on the other side can change now and work with us to address the issues that are important to the American people, that we all understood. Or further change, obviously, can happen in 2012.
Governor Haley Barbour:
On behalf of the Republican governors, while governor’s races may be thought of as being separate or very different from what’s going on in Washington, in this case, even in governor’s races, this election was a referendum on Obama’s policies. And the policies of the Obama administration, the Pelosi-Reid Congress were repudiated by the voters.
Representative John Boehner:
Listen, I believe that the health care bill that was enacted by the current Congress will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country. That means that we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill and replace it with commonsense reforms that’ll bring down the cost of health insurance.
The President was conciliatory:
Over the last two years, we’ve made progress. But, clearly, too many Americans haven’t felt that progress yet, and they told us that yesterday. And . . .
Read more: Voters have Demanded a Change, Again
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 3rd, 2010
The Republicans won. The Democrats lost. Obama faces a significant challenge to his leadership. The Tea Party has come to town. Politics in the Capital are about to become very interesting. The political scene has changed. Now we must deliberately consider: what the play will look like, who the actors will be, what will be their roles, how will they play them, and are we in for a comedy or tragedy. Some initial food for thought using Alexis de Tocqueville as our guide.
Tocqueville in the 1830s described two types of political parties, great political parties and small political parties. He explained:
“What I call great political parties are those that are attached more to principles than to their consequences; to generalities and not to particular cases; to ideas and not to men. These parties generally have nobler features, more generous passions, more real convictions, a franker and bolder aspect than others. Particular interests, which always plays the greatest role in political passions, hides more skillfully here under the veil of public interest…
Small parties, on the contrary, are generally without political faith. As they do not feel themselves elevated and sustained by great objects, their character is stamped with a selfishness that shows openly in each of their acts. They always become heated in a cool way; their language is violent but their course is timid and uncertain. The means that they employ are miserable, as is the very goal they propose for themselves. Hence it is that when a time of calm follows a violent revolution, great men seem to disappear all at once and souls withdraw into themselves.
Americans have had great parties; today they no longer exist: it has gained much in happiness, but not in morality.” (link)
Tocqueville thought that the fundamental principles of American political life were established in the great debates between the Democratic – Republicans and the Federalists, between Jefferson, Hamilton, et.al, and that once the order was set, politics would be of a more mundane sort about dividing the spoils and . . .
Read more: The Results Were Expected
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 2nd, 2010 
 Nothing is decided yet. This is Election Day and what people do now will determine the results. We’ll soon know for sure, perhaps already when you read this. But it, nonetheless, seems likely that today’s election will be a good one for the Republicans, bad for the Democrats. The polls, the pundits and public expectations are all in agreement. The Democrats will lose the House and probably keep the Senate with a much diminished majority. With this general prognostication, we start the debate now.
What Happened?
There will be all sorts of explanations to account for the election outcome, most of them connected to the limitations of Obama as a political actor, most of them, also, not really serious. In the past two elections, the Democrats gained a large number of seats in traditionally Republican districts, and thus they were not particularly solid, and when times are tough, as they are now, it is not good for incumbents in marginal districts. I have nothing particularly to add to this. I recommend an excellent, realistic election preview of the likely post election storytelling by Bendan Nyhan, which I think gets it right.
Why?
But beyond the outcome is its meaning. Although Nyhan and other election realists are surely on target when they underscore that the old slogan “it’s the economy stupid” goes a long way in explaining the results, the results’ meaning will be less clear and more important as we proceed.
While I’ve suggested in my most recent posts that the power and limitations of Obama’s speech-making will be revealed by the voting, I don’t think that this is of crucial importance in understanding the meaning of the elections. That was how the battle looked on the ground, as Obama tried to maximize his and the Democrats’ advantage. Now there is the question of where the country is at this moment and where it’s going. The Republican victory does reveal Democratic failures, which need examination, which I hope we discuss here at DC in the coming days and weeks.
I think that the primary issue is commonsense. I have long maintained that Obama, and the Democratic . . .
Read more: Today is a Good Day for the Republicans
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 2nd, 2010
As we go to the polls today, there is the likely outcome, a significant Republican victory, and there is the possibility of the surprise finish, more muted Republican gains. Times are tough, and people are thus looking for changes in their political representation, but despite this, indeed, because of it, to the end, Obama fought against the apparently inevitable. In the climax of his fight, he explained his position:
“Around the country I’ve been trying to describe it this way. Imagine the American economy as a car. And the Republicans were at the wheel and they drove it into a ditch. And it’s a steep ditch, it’s a deep ditch. And somehow they walked away.
But we had to go down there. So me and all the Democrats, we put on our boots and we repelled down into the ditch. (Laughter.) And it was muddy down there and hot. We’re sweating, pushing on the car. Feet are slipping. Bugs are swarming.
We look up and the Republicans are up there, and we call them down, but they say, no, we’re not going to help. They’re just sipping on a Slurpee — (laughter) — fanning themselves. They’re saying, you’re not pushing hard enough, you’re not pushing the right way. But they won’t come down to help. In fact, they’re kind of kicking dirt down into us, down into the ditch. (Laughter.)
But that’s okay. We know what our job is, and we kept on pushing, we kept on pushing, we kept on pushing until finally we’ve got that car on level ground. (Applause.) Finally we got the car back on the road. (Applause.) Finally we got that car pointing in the right direction. (Applause.)
And suddenly we have this tap on our shoulder, and we look back and who is it?
AUDIENCE: Republicans.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s the Republicans. And they’re saying, excuse me, we’d like the keys back.
AUDIENCE: No! (link)
D.C. reader, Eric Friedman, reported in a reply to my last post that his son heard these words on the Midway at the University of Chicago and found . . .
Read more: After Sipping on a Slurpee, Republican Victory Still Likely
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 31st, 2010
Barack Obama, Storyteller in Chief, has been going around the country making clear what he thinks the choice is in the upcoming election: the Republican position that government is the problem not the solution versus the Democratic position that good governance can matter. As I examined in my last post, he is telling his version of the American story, supporting specific candidates and promoting specific policies, but also giving his account of the recent past and his imaginative understanding of what the alternatives are in the near future. The specifics are interesting.
In Boston, supporting Governor Deval Patrick, the emphasis was on the economy and the kinds of tax cuts and public support that would benefit working people, the emphasis of all his speeches, but then a group in the audience called out: “Fight global AIDS! Fight global AIDS!” And the President improvised around his central theme:
And if they [the Republicans] win in Congress, they will cut AIDS funding right here in the United States of America and all across the world. (Applause.) You know, one of the great things about being a Democrat is we like arguing with each other. (Laughter.) But I would suggest to the folks who are concerned about AIDS funding, take a look at what the Republican leadership has to say about AIDS funding. (Applause.) Because we increased AIDS funding.
He was highlighting a distinctive position that Democrats share in contrast to their Republican opponents, public investment can contribute to the common good, especially in difficult times. And he makes his basic argument by citing the greatest of Republican authorities. (link)
But in the words of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, we also believe that government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves. (Applause.) We believe in a country that rewards hard work. We believe in a country that encourages responsibility. We believe in a country where we look after one another; where we say I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper. That’s the America we know. That’s the choice . . .
Read more: Obama Hits the Stump for 2010 Candidates
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