Ivan Toledo, Florida resident and voter, is looking to the Republican Party to resuscitate the economy and rescue him personally from looming disaster, according to an article by Krissah Williams in the Washington Post for Sunday, 27 January 2008. When you read about Mr. Toledo's unhappy situation, his falling out of the middle class into insolvency, foreclosure, and permanent unemployment, he sounds like a poster child for Why I No Longer Believe in the Republicans and Am Going to Vote Democratic.
Indeed, Toledo, 38 years old, who moved to Tampa, Florida, four years ago from Chicago, used to be a Democrat, but somewhere along his path from Chicago to Tampa to unemployment he apparently became convinced that only the Republican Party and its candidates have the business sense to run the economy. He is voting in the Republican primary and his only problem is, for which candidate? Since this is the same economy which the Republicans and their philosophy have been running for over a generation, the same economy which has ground down Toledo and his wife, which is about to slap him with foreclosure because he cannot pay his ever-rising monthly mortgage payments, and which denies him health insurance for his family---- one must ask Why?
Ivan and Evelyn Toledo have no illusions about the economy. He says, "This country is in a bad hole, and we need someone to help us get out of it." In his opinion, President Bush should have done something when the economy started going bad. (As I recall, Bush until recently kept telling us the economy was basically sound, so of course he did nothing, but Toledo ignores this fact). The Toledos' suburb is almost a microcosm of America's economic and housing slumps: housing prices are down over 11 percent 2006 to 2007, foreclosures are booming, job layoffs continue to rise as does the unemployment rate which is now pushing above 4.7 percent (national rate is 5 percent, but Florida is getting there). Toledo says "Falling into this situation can happen to anyone. There's no such thing as job security."
What we have here is an example of two things: First, the complete success of the Republican Party's framing of the You're On Your Own, or yoyo economy, as being the completely natural, correct economic-political philosophy which gives all power to an elite global business class that is dominated by short-term profit motives in all things, and the primacy of (pseudo) free market enterprise; and Second, the utter failure of the Democratic Party to highlight the current failure of this approach, and to offer a convincing alternative progressive economic-political philosophy of the common good and social justice based on responsible entrepreneurship and the primacy of a fair market system.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt swept into power during the Great Depression, he brought with him a brain trust of innovative financial, economic, labor, and social thinkers. He offered Change which included regulation of the out-of-control avarice and manipulations of the economic oligarchs of that time, who had created not only numerous financial panics and the Great Depression but also such stupidities as Prohibition and, some say, the arms race which led to the Great War itself. Roosevelt was regarded as a traitor to his class (much as Soros, for example, is today); others consider that he saved capitalism from itself at a time when panicky capitalists were backing fascists as a counter to the rapid rise of Soviet Communism.
Where is the brain trust of professionals today who can offer us a (more or less) organized, consistent series of programs based on a progressive philosophy which will grab the attention of voters like Ivan Toledo, and expose the hollow claims and sleazy outcomes of the Republican yoyo philosophy? When are the Democrats going to explain that the numerous difficulties facing America, as well as the social and economic disasters of indivdual Americans are the natural result of applied Republican philosophy, and are not normal much less inevitable? Time is short and running out, and the Toledos are exactly the voters the Democrats can help the most, but only if they convince them the Democrats are the Party of the future who can run the economy better because they have a better, different vision? That, in other words, Democrats "get it."
Beverly Newsome, a teacher from North Charleston, South Carolina, and an Obama supporter, also quoted elsewhere in the Sunday Post, perhaps expressed it best, "We all collectively as a society have to hold onto our hope together. How else are we going to make it if we don't join together to create a better society for everyone?"
However innaccurate the assessment about the Democrats on security issues (I personally think the Dems have a better understanding of national security than they were given credit for), few people who rank the economy high on their list of concerns would turn to the Republicans.
This poor kid - and I genuiely feel sorry for him - really believes that if you give more tax cuts to large corporations and to the wealthy, it will trickle down to him. I don't know where he's been this past ten years but I think he's atypical.
I agree that Mr. Toledo doesn't sound very bright, but despite polls I also think his attitude is rather typical of his demographic, the so-called Reagan-Democrats--- the angry white male upset with all the changes (social and economic) which have avalanched down on him over past few years.
Somehow, the Republicans have convinced this demographic that it is the "liberals" as personified by the Democrats who are responsible for all those nasty changes, and are unpatriotic to boot. Therefore, when Romney, Giuliani, or McCain make noises about fixing the economy, people like Toledo are inclined to give them undeserved credence, polls be damned. Why? Because they have bought into the whole macho yoyo, free market globalisation theory. As have many national Democrats like the DLC, too.
An interesting sidelight on the South Carolina Democratic vote: I have heard that John Edwards captured more of that white male vote than did Clinton, which makes for an interesting question about expectations for the Super Tuesday voting.
The Neglected Voter
Has anyone else noticed how the Republican narrative today is trying to feminize Obama, for example, referring to his slenderness and long fingers, and so on, as well as attack Clinton for her cackle and shrillness? And how the media emphasize the turnout of female voters for Clinton and her emphasis on capturing the female vote? Goes along with Giuliani's macho posturing and everyone's friend, George W. Bush posing in his flight suit (one Republican Senator smirked that that picture alone caused every 'female' in America to vote for Bush when they saw his sex prominently displayed by the flightsuit). Sure did.
Yeah, it does look like genderwarfare is going to be on the menu for this election.