Hillary's conservative populism

Jonathan Chait:

The dying days of the Hillary Clinton campaign have brought the breathtaking spectacle of a candidate lashing out at every element of public life that has nourished her career. The über-wonk has disparaged economists and expertise. The staunch ally of black America has attacked her opponent for lacking support of "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans." People who thought they knew Hillary Clinton have gazed in astonishment: What has she become? The answer is, a conservative populist.

Conservative populism and liberal populism are entirely different things. Liberal populism posits that the rich wield disproportionate influence over the government and push for policies often at odds with most people's interest. Conservative populism, by contrast, dismisses any inference that the rich and the non-rich might have opposing interests as "class warfare." Conservative populism prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better than average Americans.

Consider this analysis recently offered by Bill Clinton in Clarksburg, West Virginia: "The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules." This is precisely the dynamic that allows multimillionaires like George W. Bush and Bill O'Reilly to present themselves as being on the side of the little guy. A more classic expression of conservative populism cannot be found.

Historically, the conservative populist's social divide ran along racial and ethnic lines. In recent years, overt racism has all but disappeared from mainstream political life, and even racial hot button appeals like the 1988 Willie Horton ad have grown rare. What remains is a residue of nostalgia about small towns--whose residents are said to have stronger values and work harder than other Americans, and who also happen to be overwhelmingly white. In 2004, after John Kerry declared that some entertainers supporting him represented "the heart and soul of America," George W. Bush embarked upon a national tour of small- and mid-sized cities, where he would say, "I believe the heart and soul of America is found in places like Duluth, Minnesota," or other such places.

Likewise, Bill Clinton recently declared, "The people in small towns in rural America, who do the work for America, and represent the backbone and the values of this country, they are the people that are carrying her through in this nomination." The corollary--that strong values and hard work is in shorter supply among ethnically heterogeneous urban residents--is left unstated. Hillary Clinton's statement about "hard-working Americans, white Americans" simply made explicit a theme that conservative populists usually keep implicit.

Read the whole thing.

Comments

[Angrier and Angrier]

Deep down inside she is still a Goldwater Girl. If I wanted a Republican for President, I would vote for McCain.

[Andrew]

Chait's logic is sound, but not his conclusion. Take some cultural anthropology or sociology classes and you'll come to find that in just about every culture, the rural and/or the mountains retain a sort of mystical "Eden" quality. In Japan, one of the most densely populated of the major economies, the ideal of the farm or village fisherman is overtly powerful culturally. This is true as well in Arab culture with the Bedouin heritage, and throughout areas of Europe and Asia with advanced economies. City folk tend to be viewed as corrupted and vulgar, with their constant interactions with foreigners violating their purity of ethnicity, culture, and religion. Even your lovely Irish songs memorialize the rural farmland Celtic heritage impeded on by the imperialist Brits -- not the gritty conditions of factory or mercantile life in the city.

HRC's "conservative populism", then, may be interpreted by black audiences as an appeal to lily-white small-town life. But this supposed racial element is largely absent from the rural audience's conscience -- their heartstrings are vulnerable to these appeals the same as in just about every other culture on the planet. The only reason Chait can manage to misinterpret HRC or Dubya's message as covertly racist is because America is one of the very few places in this world where there "the other" is so clearly and historically identifiable as a specific race, thus imputing racism into this very common and natural cultural condition. But racism isn't the cause of this cultural condition, it's an effect, and the same process produces similar negative effects in every other culture. For instance, in Asian cultures, it plays out as an ethnic purity issue, with the concept of the "good stock" Asian. In Latin America, these subconscious social battles play out over skin tone and Indian vs. cosmopolitan features. In Northern Ireland or the Balkans, it's a religious hatred.

The point is, the yearning for Eden is a common phenomenon in every culture, and demagogues can channel that yearning into a variety of positive and negative implications. In Billary's case, I don't think their populist rhetoric is intended to stoke racist reactions so much as it is to tap into anti-intellectualist sentiments. You might think it's ugly either way, but every kind of populism has an ugly underbelly -- liberal or conservative (and this is true for elitism as well).

[JD]

Conservative populist?

Mike Huckabee would like to have his schtick back, please.