Left out in the cold.
I was surprised last year when both John Howard and George Bush were re-elected. I wanted to know why the intellectually superior left couldn't beat them and I think I do now.
The Left doesn't have any friends.
In theory, Left wing politics does not sympathise with the rich and the powerful- preferring to focus on the common man (Or common person- to be gender neutral.) The problem with this is that they don't seem to know how to deal with this common human when they find him/her.
In the 1996 federal election that saw Labor lose government, a woman by the name of Pauline Hanson won the Queensland seat of Oxley. Her controversial, and at times simplistic views on immigration made her an enemy of the left from day one. Pauline Hanson's views were simplistic and she didn't articulate them very well either. Much of what she said could be killed by logically picking at it on its merits.
This was not the strategy used by left wing commentators at the time. Instead they sneered at her for being a fish and chip shop owner. They made fun of her nervousness and slip ups in interviews. In one move they hurt and antagonised small business operators, factory workers and people who had not finished high school. She may have been expressing bigoted and incendiary sentiment, but she was expressing their bigoted and incendiary sentiment.
Anyone still in doubt about who Pauline Hanson represented should consider this: The CEO of Coles-Myer was not worried about Asians taking his job. Nor, for that matter were journalists and academics in fear of losing theirs. That fear was irrational, but there are people who had it and people who didn't. Those who had it weren't going to be won over by having their advocate dismissed as an idiot.
Leftists do need to be honest with themselves. They only like the common man when Marx is talking about him. They don't like him when he's at the Clipsal 500.
When he thinks Schapelle Corby is "Innosent", when he watches Big Brother and when he does burnouts in his Commodore he is considered a barely upright oaf. Which, of course he is.
The common man reciprocates this contempt. It's usually somebody from the Left stepping to him about his appetite for meat, or his racist jokes. It will be somebody from the Left who scoffs at his fear of crime and somebody from the Left who wants to fuck with the gender relations in his household.
By comparison he's got an instant talking point with George W. Bush- they both own firearms for a start.
Both the ALP and the US Democrats tailored their policies towards highly educated people who didn't have very much money. That's teachers, students and artists.
Not a wide demographic.
Others, like my father might have put Liberals last because the local Liberal candidate was a thieving harlot. The wonderful, non partisan morality that we shared on that occasion was not enough the lose Liberals the seat, let alone the election.
If the Left wants to get back into government in Australia and the US, it will have to bite its tongue.
It will have to advertise in magazines like New Idea, and it will have to subsidise SMS voting.
Above all, though it will have to remind itself who the commonfolk really are, and it will have to learn how to communicate its agenda without pissing them off.
If it doesn't learn how to make friends it will have to take its bat and ball and go home.
The Left doesn't have any friends.
In theory, Left wing politics does not sympathise with the rich and the powerful- preferring to focus on the common man (Or common person- to be gender neutral.) The problem with this is that they don't seem to know how to deal with this common human when they find him/her.
In the 1996 federal election that saw Labor lose government, a woman by the name of Pauline Hanson won the Queensland seat of Oxley. Her controversial, and at times simplistic views on immigration made her an enemy of the left from day one. Pauline Hanson's views were simplistic and she didn't articulate them very well either. Much of what she said could be killed by logically picking at it on its merits.
This was not the strategy used by left wing commentators at the time. Instead they sneered at her for being a fish and chip shop owner. They made fun of her nervousness and slip ups in interviews. In one move they hurt and antagonised small business operators, factory workers and people who had not finished high school. She may have been expressing bigoted and incendiary sentiment, but she was expressing their bigoted and incendiary sentiment.
Anyone still in doubt about who Pauline Hanson represented should consider this: The CEO of Coles-Myer was not worried about Asians taking his job. Nor, for that matter were journalists and academics in fear of losing theirs. That fear was irrational, but there are people who had it and people who didn't. Those who had it weren't going to be won over by having their advocate dismissed as an idiot.
Leftists do need to be honest with themselves. They only like the common man when Marx is talking about him. They don't like him when he's at the Clipsal 500.
When he thinks Schapelle Corby is "Innosent", when he watches Big Brother and when he does burnouts in his Commodore he is considered a barely upright oaf. Which, of course he is.
The common man reciprocates this contempt. It's usually somebody from the Left stepping to him about his appetite for meat, or his racist jokes. It will be somebody from the Left who scoffs at his fear of crime and somebody from the Left who wants to fuck with the gender relations in his household.
By comparison he's got an instant talking point with George W. Bush- they both own firearms for a start.
Both the ALP and the US Democrats tailored their policies towards highly educated people who didn't have very much money. That's teachers, students and artists.
Not a wide demographic.
Others, like my father might have put Liberals last because the local Liberal candidate was a thieving harlot. The wonderful, non partisan morality that we shared on that occasion was not enough the lose Liberals the seat, let alone the election.
If the Left wants to get back into government in Australia and the US, it will have to bite its tongue.
It will have to advertise in magazines like New Idea, and it will have to subsidise SMS voting.
Above all, though it will have to remind itself who the commonfolk really are, and it will have to learn how to communicate its agenda without pissing them off.
If it doesn't learn how to make friends it will have to take its bat and ball and go home.
posted by Mr Schrempp @ 5:46 pm
2 Comments:
At 9:13 am,
Gilganixon said…
And of course the left isn't usually friends with itself either. Aside from the that most centrist of leftish parties, Labor, the remainder of the left holds a bewildering array of obnoxious and usually mutually antagonistic opinions on how to fix the ills of society. While sometimes they can be dragged together for a cause, as soon as the cause is beaten (or more usually, as soon as the cause beats them), they quickly disband into a wretched assortment of squabbling hipsters, hippies, Marxists, Stalinists, Trots, Local Teens Against The Use Of Detergents, Vegan Anarchists and so on. The right usually stays centred around one issue - maintaining the status quo - and is therefore usually more able to maintain cohesion.
At 1:22 pm,
Mr Schrempp said…
The Right make plenty of changes of their own when they get to power, so it's hard to say they're just interested in maintaining the status quo.
While they seem to be more cohesive, there are still economic rationalists in the city at odds with their country cousins about things like farm subsidies and selling Telstra.
You'll see that Howard is talented in keeping it all together, which another conservative Prime Minister- like Costello- might not be.
While succeeding in bringing the right together, Howard is also quite good at busting the Left apart. Witness the Green left and Red left getting into an almighty brawl regarding the logging of old growth in Tasmania.
Green Left: "It's environmental rape"
Red Left: "Raping is a well paying occupation that supports many families. Rapists have a union."
Coming back to this idea of the common man. There is little he cares about more than his job, beyond that he is quite hard to draft into any kind of political activity.
The key to victory is to recognise that the balance of power in the Australian electorate rests with people who are (In a political sense)ignorant, self-centred and spineless.
If Labor wants to win back government federally it needs to take a leaf out of Mike Rann's book.
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