In Michigan: “people switch sides”
Part of the lively discussion recently on this thread and then this one centered on the plight of Michigan Democrats who are disillusioned with what their party’s done for them lately, and who are thinking of switching to (gasp!) the Republican side in 2010.
Are they just shallow opportunists who are selling their votes to the highest bidder, as some contend? Or are they in the process of a more fundamental change, or at least the beginning of that process? Or perhaps a little bit of both?
For some it may be the first explanation, for others the second, and I have no way of knowing the proportions of voters who belong to each group. But the phenomenon seems very real, and if the following video is any indication, it’s becoming more widespread—even among African-American voters in the depressed Michigan towns suffering from 40% unemployment these days:
[Hat tip: Hot Air.]
Aren’t most people just that shallow? Willing to vote for which ever side gives them the most? Is this news?
Ah that wonderful appointment with the hangman, it so concentrates the mind.
I just don’t understand how anyone in Detroit could think of abandoning the party that’s brought them great roads, good government, super schools and low unemployment. Ingrates? Question is, can the Republicans do any better? I think Detroit is a classic failed polity. F
I was born and grew up in the Detroit area. While cleaning up my parent’s house, I came across a Detroit News magazine that explained the 1968 Summer Olympic bid by Detroit – what would be built, where all the sports venues would be, the economic impact.
Detroit did not get the bid – Mexico City did – but I wonder if Detroit would have been spared the ’67 riots if there was lots of job creation, building and pre-Olympic excitement during the early 60’s?
Oh… there is going to be a police/crime tv series that covers Detroit – I saw some of the promos and it makes Detroit look awful.
http://abc.go.com/shows/detroit-1-8-7?cid=abc_ss2_det
It’s not going to help the city.
I thought the last bit was weird, how the woman clarified that she had always been a Democrat, was a Democrat “in her heart” (?) but that she just was not voting because they had not fulfilled their promises. She had to qualify her unbelief in other words. Kind of like saying “We are still together but just taking some time off”.
“This former health care administrator” is now working towards an Associate’s degree at a local community college. She’s been unemployed for 3 years. Looks like she’s still getting more than enough to eat, and isn’t living in a hovel.
There you have it in a nutshell. She’ll always have her hand out. Looking for work, indeed.
“even among African-American voters in the depressed Michigan towns suffering from 40% unemployment these days”
Bob of V has it right, that 40% unemployment rate is what is concentrating the Mich. voters minds.
F is right when pointing out that switching their votes to Republicans will offer little immediate help.
Michigan is a failed ‘polity’ but the core reason for that situation is not mainly entitlements or even excessive union demands.
This situation has been building since the early 70’s and is the direct result of the US dollar being disconnected from any real, actual measure of value. That led to an explosion of credit, which directly led to the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs from the US.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to address the core financial issue of a dollar that has NO guarantee of value beyond the “good faith and credit” of the US.
The Democrats need dependent, entitlement base voters and the Republicans need the business contributions that result from robust business expansion, which easy credit and consumers living beyond their means create. It’s in the vested interests of both parties to maintain the status quo because both parties put their survival ahead of the overall good of the country. So they keep kicking the can down the line, only we’re about out of rails, headed for a cliff and the voters in Mich. are the ones at the head of the train…
But don’t entirely blame the politicians, yes they gave their core base supporters what they wanted but they also gave the public what they wanted.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money” Alexis de Tocqueville
But eventually, even the public runs out of money. For the voters in Mich. ‘eventually’ has arrived. We’re next.
The problem is that it doesn’t matter who you vote for – in the end it is just a matter of degree, not a real choice. It isn’t even a US issue but a world wide one.
Instapundit is linking to an article where China is having trouble with some of the Keynesian economic solutions they have implemented and it isn’t working.
Do we have *anywhere* that isn’t looking to Keynesian economics now? I guess we have a great deal of the little countries having dictator ships that have the Theftian systems (where the dictator gets all the money) but I am not counting them (and some of them are oil rich enough that it “works” for now).
I do not want a Keynesian economic system. It *sounds* good on paper and I think it has some decent ideas, but it has been a massive failure. The single most successful period of any country and the world has been why running under a mostly Adam Smith laissez-faire system.
I *do* agree that a great deal of the oppression that was during that period was bad – work hours, work/living conditions, and a number of things truly needed unions and we would have been better off with a slower expansion without those issues. For one thing we wouldn’t be in the “laissez-faire” or “Keynesian” dichotomy that we are today. There is no reason why we can’t have a primarily Smith type economy with some protections in it, but the idea of one or the other is so predominate that isn’t really an option.
The few Keynesian (and mostly socialistic) countries are living on borrowed time today. They were able to thrive because as long as the money was flowing so could all those nice entitlements. California is a *great* example of that – a day is coming where they are going to have to live with it (and many have already been forced). The European countries are going to face it too – they work well when other places are ultimately paying for what they have chosen, not so much when they have to pay for their own.
Sadly it is going to take a full and total collapse for this to be realized for so many. As long as one or two hold out there is going to be the hope that we will too. Sadly those cases are going to drag us down. 50 years from now I think that Keynes will be greatly discredited (and I think that is a shame as he had some decent ideas).
The article linked to below explains much. Basically we can forget a recovery until Obama is out and why. The article is really worth reading.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7080/pub_detail.asp
strcpy:
It’s no mystery to me why statists of all stripes prefer Keynesianism to the free market: It gives the government more power and control over the economy.
A free market empowers not only business owners, but workers and consumers to make their own choices. Politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators would become much less important, and they can’t have that.
Once change starts even by a little bit, it assumes a momentum. The reasons can be many (as you have ably written), but once begun it will not stop.
As if on cue the local university President chimes in like a typical progressive politician with “We have to reinvent Michigan”. And who is this “we”? People like herself of course. People with zero experience at ever successfully selling goods or ideas in the public marketplace. People who are so cocksure of their control freakish social engineering concepts they can’t even fathom 300 million people let loose and simply looking out for their own self interest.
Surely some of these folks have to wake up some nights in a cold sweat with the epiphany of just how unneccessary and really destructive their roles and careers actually are.
The Great Lakes industrial states have been circling the bowl for decades. It was a system that paid high wages and benefits to unskilled workers who were represented by powerful unions and compliant Democrat politicians. Meanwhile the foreign auto countries and many industrial companies have been building modern plants in right-to-work southern states.
Were it not for a massive federal bail out, GM and Chrysler would have crashed last year. Obama and the Dems are keeping the unions on life support, but the party is over. Companies don’t move to Michigan.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I am a Michigan resident who was once not only a nominal Democrat but an activist–precinct delegate, county committee, chaired a state platform subcommittee, etc. I am no longer a Democrat.
I’m not a Republican, either, for much the same reason I’m no longer a Democrat. Both parties have in effect been Europeanized, become ideological groupings. If the Democrats still had room for the Scoop Jacksons or Joe Liebermans I’d likely still be a Democrat.
And if the Republicans had room for the William Scrantons, Nelson Rockefellers, or Michigan’s own William Milliken, I might consider being a Republican. So this year I will likely vote Republican for governor, Democratic for congress, and so on.
Detroit–city and area–would not be in good shape in any event for reasons that go beyond partisan politics, but it is not possible to look at the situation with clear eyes and see that the Democrats have helped much.
Few things would help the country more than having a substantial fraction of the black vote up for grabs–among other things, it would lessen the ability of extreme leftist black politicians to become entrenched, a la Maxine Waters or John Conyers, and it would exert a pressure towards moderation across the board. I don’t see it happening soon, though, not if black approval rates of the president tell us anything.
Dream on, Alex, with your fantasies re “moderate” Repubs of a generation ago a la Rockefeller. Nelson was a big gov’t man par excellence, spending billions to remake Albany with big gov’t bldgs.
I lived in Western NY for a bit while Nelson governed. My father made about $10K as a research medical school full prof the year Nelson said at a press conference, “Take the average New York (State, not city) family; they earn about $50K/yr.”
Perhaps you really like Jay Rockefeller. Seems pretty moderate, no? About as moderate as Lieberman, who is a flaming, likeable Leftist save for Israel.
Tom:
To someone as rich as Rockefeller, the difference between $10K and $50K is just a rounding error.
What a depressing sentiment. The difference between sensible people and, well, Democrats is the verb in your second sentence. Sensible people look askance at anyone (including themselves) “given” anything, between anything “given” to one person necessarily was “taken” from another. Sensible people realize that government “taking” slows the economy by providing a disincentive to the productivity that increases everyone’s wealth.
Even Democrats know and believe this. Don’t think so? Look at the Democrats’ plans to save us from “global warming.” They propose to tax carbon usage. Why? To discourage it. Yet raise taxes on productive people and businesses and are surprised to find productivity and employment dropping (“unexpectedly!”). They (except for hard-core leftists who want the economy to collapse, so they can build socialism) don’t see the inconsistency of their views.
Wonder no longer. It wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference. The problems are deeper — much deeper — than a one-off shot in the arm could possibly fix. Poverty isn’t the cause; it’s the symptom.
Want to locate your business in a corrupt, tax- and regulation-crazy crime-ridden region that views your business as something to be plundered and ground under foot, and where you can count on a poorly educated workforce seething with a sense of entitlement?
You don’t? Well, neither does anyone else. Ergo — unemployment.
How ever did they pull off that sleight of hand?
Oh, yes, Occam, the local establishment’s reaction to the tv show showing Detroit’s seamy side basically was that it would hurt Detroit’s image, etc. I don’t think anyone actually claimed that the picture of the city the show seems to have was false.
This was the same week one of our local excuses for a newspaper had a major story about how things can turn around if we just “have faith in Detroit.” And if you clap your hands three times and say “I believe in fairies,” Tinkerbell will live.
About the only photos of Detroit that would NOT hurt Detroit’s image would be photos taken outside the Detroit city limits.
[Yes, I exaggerate, but
http://www.forgottendetroit.com/ not
http://detroityes.com/home.htm by much]
I still have problems with the people in this report. They take it as a given that government is there to do something for them; to help them.
It’s not.
That they assume so is why we have so many problems with government and with freedm and prosperity.
When govenerment does its job in the USA, it is supposed to make sure laws are constitutional, crime is prevented, borders are secure, and business is fair.
In the United States, we are supposed to govern ourselves after that. If we can’t (And it seems we can’t) then we don’t have the good ol’ USA any more but something else more sinsiter, cheap, and mean.
Not only doesn’t liberal government help much, it can actually cause unemployment. Things like minimum wage, the Davis-Bacon Act, and extended unemployment benefits can make things worse.
I live in Michigan and I have been watching the smokestack industries for several decades.
Among other things, they’re not all shutting down. They’re moving, some to overseas, some to Ohio, or Oklahoma, or Texas.
There’s a reason Saturn was built in Tennesee.
An insurance company I know of moved their admin office from Chicago to Nashville for reasons having to do with crime, petty regulations, better employees, taxes and commuting.
Problem with the smokestack industries is that the Great Lakes had them due to several monopolies or near-monopolies. The basin has coal and iron ore and lakes on which to ship it.
The basin had the factories and capital to build them elsewhere was not as easy come by as several decades ago. We had pounded several potential competitors flat in WW II.
We had unions.
With all that, we charged the rest of the nation, and the world, (surcharged, actually) to maintain a blue-collar lifestyle beyond the dreams of most high-school grads.
My wife and I went through a small town in Utah once. The band had just finished a concert in the park, the downtown was neat, clean, there were no empty storefronts. the school looked nice, the homes were exceedingly well kept, the library was large.
Almost all of the homes we passed seemed to be about 1500 square feet, built on a slab.
In auto country, that’s one step up from a trailer park.
We took their money.
Thing is, we don’t have the monopoly any longer.
BTW, for current gov Granholm, reinventing means net-loss green jobs.
Hurt Detroit’s image? Is that even possible?
Time was that the truth was a total defense. Attack a report as untrue, or accept that it is true, and do something to make it no longer true.
Wait, are you saying that umpires aren’t there to help me hit?
That explains a lot.
Exactly Occam. The players are complaining that the Umps aren’t doing enough for their averages. It’s all so unfair!
These stilted adults are simply larger versions of the kids who all get to be All Stars, who all get a trophy. Only worse. The ones who deserve the trophy have it taken from them so that the ingrates in this report can be haggled over.
We need to end the whole thing. America needs a 2nd American Revolution today like it has never needed one before.
Trouble is, we are in a winner-take-all battle with the left and the odds are strongly in theor favor.
They should declare as Independents. I know in some states that leaves you out of the nominating procedures, but I see no other way to get them to court you – whether by telling the truth or by lying, but you have to work that back yourself.
AVI,
I think you are looking at it backwards. We’ve all got it upside down.
We are not things to ‘court’. That already presumes a political class distinct from us. We sit there and watch as they offer different goodies to us, and then we pick one lover and jilt the other one. If we play hard to get, we can get more stuff.
It is not that that game is a loser (it is). It is that that game is immoral.
We (so we say but act as if we do not believe) hold these truth to be self-evident – that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights….you know the rest.
Period.
When what is inalienable is routinely alientated from us by ‘senators’, and ‘congressites’ and ‘presidents’, then we have a choice – to fight for what we say we believe, or to admit we don’t believe a word of it and take the consequences of that.
Cut her some slack. It will take time. At least she is coming to the realization that the Demos don’t deliver the goodies.It will take time to realize the problem is a party that delivers goodies instead of working for a society that rewards working for the goodies and those who risk their capital to produce the goodies.
Alex Bensky says, “So this year I will likely vote Republican for governor, Democratic for congress, and so on.” Whoa! Anyone who votes Democrat for Congress is voting to continue the crap. A vote for sending a Democrat to Congress is a vote for Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid to retain power. It’s a vote to continue the carnage being wrought on our country. Any given Democrat candidate may try to run as a conservative, but once they get to Washington, they all get swallowed up by the national Democrat party establishment. I’ve long wondered, if any congressional candidate is actually a conservative, why in the world would he run as a Democrat? It’s one of the oldest bait-and-switch games in the political book, and you can see the results coming at you from a mile away. Don’t fall for it.
“”I’ve long wondered, if any congressional candidate is actually a conservative, why in the world would he run as a Democrat?””
Betsybounds
Well because that gets the 50 to 80 white folks demographic who watch network news and aren’t yet convinced racism against whites is a good thing but are thoroughly convinced evil republicans will take their benefits away.
UNIONS have destroyed innovation and employment in America. Unions have forced whole industries overseas.
Unions destroyed the steel industry first and it all went down hill from there. Don’t believe me? Sit back and watch. Our economy will not recover until Union/Democrat power is held in check and Americans take-back their country and their right to a non-union /non-government job.
When democrats rail against “corporations” – that’s code speak for “private enterprise”. Democrats HATE private non-union enterprise. They want to destroy it.
Instead, we will get “card check” which will force the union toxin into every corner of American life, and it will turn America into a sink hole.
Detroit in Ruins – Special thanks to one party-rule for that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhJ_49leBw&feature=player_embedded
Historically blacks voted Republican/Democrat in about equal numbers until about the 60s. Perhaps, with his display of fiscal incompetance, Obama will help rebalance the equation back to historic norms.
Count me as another lifelong, Rust Belt Democrat who was shallow enough to switch to the GOP a few months back (the health care bill debacle was the final straw for me).
I may even pull the straight GOP lever for the foreseeable future until some checks and balances are restored in the House and Senate.
At this point, I don’t think it’s temporary, although my former party could surprise me. But I doubt it.
Welcome CV.
I woke up in 1991.
Unfortunately for a LOT of us like myself – the Republican party is Democrat light – just a little less socialism….
We can drive the train faster to the cliff or slower to the cliff.
Free Markets strangled by this massive government is basically fascism – winners in the marketplace are chosen by government.
When tired of voting for the lesser of two evils…
Yes, people do switch sides..
This day in history August 23, 2010
1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow. This cleared the way for Hitler to attack Poland and start World War II without initial Soviet response.
In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations. 🙁
as well as:
1944 — World War II King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of General Antonescu, who is arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies.
other interesting things in history….
1839 — The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
1866 — Austro-Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague.
1914 — World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.
1927 — Sacco and Vanzetti are executed.
1929 — Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
1942 — World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.
1943 — World War II: Kharkov liberated.
1944 — World War II: Marseille liberated.
1948 — World Council of Churches is formed (a soviet organization)
1958 — Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins with the People’s Liberation Army’s bombardment of Quemoy.
1979 — Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defects to the United States.
On August 21, 1979, while on a tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York City, Godunov contacted authorities and asked for political asylum. After discovering his absence, the KGB responded by putting his wife, Lyudmila Vlasova, a soloist with the company, on a plane to Moscow, but the flight was stopped before take-off while the State Department tried to determine whether she was leaving voluntarily.
1985 — Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.
1989 — Hungary: the last communist government opens the Iron curtain and causes the exodus of thousands of Eastern Germans to West Germany via Hungary (September 11).
1989 — Singing Revolution: two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands (Baltic Way).
1990 — West Germany and East Germany announce that they will unite on October 3.
1944 Allied troops capture Marseilles, France
1953 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test
1957 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1952 Arab League security pact goes into effect
1961 East Germany imposed new curbs on travel between West and East Berlin
1968 Ringo quits Beatles over a disagreement, temporarily
1975 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya U.S.S.R.
1974 John Lennon reports seeing a UFO in New York City
1975 Communists take over Laos
1975 Ethiopian junta under Mengistu Haile
-=-=-=-
I wonder if we will notice any of them?
I’m not sure how ‘switching sides’ equals not voting at all.
Also, the two year unemployed health care worker in the news report says she has a 15-year-old son and has to be strong and show him what being a fighter is. How is not voting help in that lesson?
Hong makes an important point above. When Obama’s black support numbers reach a realistic level, and not just support because Obama’s (half) black, then things will begin to turn around. After all, with Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month, how many kids are taught that King was a Republican? How many are taught the reasons for such a heresy? How many kids are taught the party of slavery was the Democrat party? How many kids are taught the KKK was founded by a Democrat? How many kids are taught the party of segregation was the Democrat Party? How many are taught the military was re-segregated by a Democrat President, Wilson? How many are taught that Planned Parenthood was created by a racist, Margaret Sanger, who used abortion as a means to help society relieve itself of undesirable blacks?
The Gramascian march through our educational institutions has paid many dividends, just not any dividends FOR America.
Used to live and work there. My impression was that the union workers and their white collar counterparts the company org charts were cut from the same cloth. Life was too good; everybody got too comfortable.
Another personality trait that has worked against Michiganders is their impatience. Everything must happen now!, instantly! Things that take time, that lack immediate pay off or usefulness get short shrift. Things that would be considered in New England as old but still serviceable, say a favorite old coat, go out in the trash. (I think this inability to appreciate lasting things infected the car companies, which is why they built the tinselly crap that they did for so many years, but that’s a little off the subject.)
So it’s good if they are switching, but I’m skeptical they have the wisdom or patience to stick with the cure, which will take many years.
from another person:
Many people hit a proverbial wall on this issue because they simply cannot fathom that certain groups of men (globalists and central bankers) view money and economy in completely different terms than they do. The average American lives within a tiny box when it comes to the mechanics and motivations of finance. They think that their monetary desires and drives are exactly the same as a globalist’s. But, what they don’t realize is that the box they think in was BUILT by globalists. This is why the actions of big banks and the decisions of our mostly corporate establishment run government seem so insane in the face of common sense. We try to rationalize their behavior as “idiocy”, but the reality is that their goals are highly deliberate and so far outside what we have been taught to expect that some of us lack a point of reference. If you cannot see the endgame, you will not understand the steps taken to reach it until it is too late.
Elites destroy cultures to make way for new philosophies; their philosophies. Its not so much “conspiracy theory” as it is a widely admitted methodology. Corporate globalists believe in global government on their terms and they barely try to hide it. If someone thinks this sounds “fantastical” then they haven’t been paying the slightest attention. When one understands how Elites view economy, and realizes their primary motivations, the fact that they purposely triggered a collapse is perfectly logical. Nothing besides all out war inspires more fear and desperation in a society than a financial upheaval. Such elements on a mass scale allow changes in our collective psychology that were never possible before. Most people tend to falter under such an overwhelming threat and turn towards any authority (or fake authority) to save them from harm. Some people scoff at this idea, but it is likely they have never actually been in the wake of a real national catastrophe before. Men, especially those who know little of themselves, can change quickly in the face of calamity. The Elites recognize this, engineer tragedy, then waltz into the aftermath to merrily lord over the rubble.