Dr. Frank's What's-it

Bubble Boys

If you haven't checked out Jonathon "I Hate Bush" Chait's Dean-o-phobe blog, you probably should. I appreciate the unusual combination of apoplexy and articulateness, which continues to develop as time goes on. But here's a more temperate quote from early on:

The Dean Bubble: One of the most disturbing things about Dean and his hard-core supporters is that they give the impression that they know nothing at all of why President Bush is successful, and therefore what it takes to beat him. Read the pro-Dean blogs, and the you come away with the view that Bush is strong because he's ruthless and has lots of money, and therefore if the Democrats are also ruthless and raise lots of money, they can beat him. This ignorance is compounded by the fact that many Deanies seem to exist in a isolated cultural milieu in which everybody is secular, socially liberal, and antiwar. They can't fathom why those things might hurt Dean in a general election because they don't ever talk to or read anybody who thinks differently. Dean's Internet networking--which has had lots of positive effects on American politics--has probably intensified this cloistering, by creating intellectual ghettos on the web where true believers can interact, undisturbed by those who don't share their faith.

In other words, they're bringing a touch of that old San Francisco magic to the four corners of the internet. Essentially, Chait's Dean Bubble is the San Francisco bubble writ large. Chait leaves out an important element, though: the self-congratulatory, precious assumption on the part of the Bubble People that their political attitudes spring from an inherent moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority, and that anyone who disagrees on any point is inarguably and by definition a blind idiot and/or a knave. (Hence the disdainful neologism "sheeple," which I first encountered on the Democratic Underground message board, a conflation of "sheep" and "people" meaning The Idiot Half of the Country. As is so often the case with new vocabulary words, I then started hearing it everywhere, in the Starbucks, at the Safeway, on the Avenue, on BART, and on KPFA. How'd I miss it before? As I noted at the time, it doesn't seem like the best rhetoric to use if your goal is to capture a portion of the Moron Vote. Just a suggestion, folks.)

The cleverer Bubble People-- or the more polite ones-- realize that the first step towards "progressive" electability is keeping this snobbery to yourself, and distancing yourself from those who can't or won't. That often appears to be easier said than done. Thus far, the Dean people don't seem to be doing too well on that score, even though Dean's actual positions on many matters are said to be far more moderate than his reputation suggests. But politics per se is only part of the issue: even if he were to balance things out by changing emphasis and pandering to those holding vague right-ish fantasies rather than or along with those clinging to left-ish ones (as he will presumably try to do in some fashion in the general election), he'd still find it hard to shake the cultural problem. Andrew Sullivan recently wrote that the Dean campaign is all about "blue state upper middle class anger," a nasty, perhaps unfair, line-- it's not the whole story, by any means. And maybe living in the loopiest end of the loopy loop has warped my own perception just a bit (in other words, maybe the Dean Bubble is in fact more inclusive of normal people and ultimately less alienating than the San Francisco Bubble with which I'm most familiar.) Nonetheless, the formulation does capture something of the true character of the cultural-political challenges facing the Dean campaign. There is in the end no silent majority of Frasier Cranes, and certainly not enough closet San Franciscans to replace all those who stand to be alienated. "Likeability" plays a big role in electoral politics, and the Bubble People, whatever their virtues, are handicapped by their long-standing tradition of collective self-adulation: they are taught and conditioned to overestimate just how lovable they and their cherished pretensions are outside the bubble. Perhaps, as I say, the analogy between the two bubbles isn't perfect or exact, but at minimum both groups seem similarly ill-suited to perceive their own weaknesses.

Is there a similar "echo chamber" effect, an approximately equivalent current of self-satisfaction, a sense of being Precious Special People, and a disdain for all supporters of every opponent among Republican partisans? Sure there is. Partisan Republicans are as insular and nasty as they come. But they're not currently the ones with the electability problem. You can complain all you want about Tom Delay, Fox News, Ann Coulter, et al., but for some reason they don't seem to be alienating their own voters. Because they're all morons, right? Keep saying it if or until it makes you feel better...

Unlike Chait, I don't hate Dean. He'd probably be a decent enough president, in the unlikely event that he ends up with the opportunity to give it a shot. I enjoy the prickly persona and the feistiness for its own sake, just because I like that sort of thing. (I enjoyed Alan Keyes's candidacy in much the same spirit last time around.) I don't think it's realistic to discuss the particulars of the agenda at this stage, as I'm sure they're all going to change (be "clarified") once he's nominated, but I imagine I'll agree with a fair few of them in the end. If he somehow were to manage to transform himself into a convincing fiscally responsible, tough-on-Saudis, religious faith-respecting, competent anti-terrorism strategist, JFK-like liberal hawk, he might even have a shot, in fact, given Bush's weaknesses. He'd get my attention, anyway. Yet as to persona and "likeability" and cultural politics: in theory, being a more convincing "regular guy" than GWB shouldn't be too difficult. Yet, all else being equal, if it's going to be Niles vs. Martin, Marty wins, and broadly speaking there's not much doubt about who looks more like Niles as things currently stand. That's pretty funny, and a caricature, to be sure, but elections often, maybe even always, turn on caricatures. Anything can happen, of course, but at this point it looks like Niles is going to win the nomination and lose the general election in consecutive landslides, the second of which the Bubble People will find utterly mystifying. Yet again.

(btw, here's a Chait-o-phobe blog.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at December 26, 2003 08:27 PM | TrackBack