by Mark Silva
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take the oath of office, most people worry that the nation is losing ground on an array of problems.
The one front on which a majority of Americans believe the nation actually is making progress: Minority discrimination. 53 percent see progress there.
That's a notable exception in a long list of concerns on which most Americans see the nation as losing ground, according to a survey run by the Pew Research Center.
With a federal budget deficit now projected at $1.2 trillion this year, it's little surprise that the greatest majority of those surveyed see the country as losing ground on the deficit: 79 percent.
With unemployment soaring, a similar attitude prevails about job availability: 72 percent say we're losing ground.
Sixty-percent say we're losing ground on the cost of living, 59 percent on the gap between the rich and poor, 56 percent in lowering moral standards, 56 percent in health care, 52 percent in poverty and homelessness, 50 percent in education.
"Notably, the only issue where most people see progress being achieved is no doubt related to Obama's historic election: 53 percent say the country is making progress on discrimination against minorities, compared with just 15 percent who say the country is losing ground, and 28 percent who see little change,'' Pew reports. "During the mid-1990s, far fewer people said progress was being achieved reducing discrimination (40 percent in 1995, 38 percent in 1994).
The survey was conducted Dec. 3-7 among 1,489 adults and carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus three percent - which always makes it possible that a majority of people don't really think we are making progress on that one front (but we'll err on the side of optimism here in the Swamp.)
Comments
Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision...
"Government is not the solution to our problem," declared Ronald Reagan. "Government is the problem." So why worry about governing well?
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s "Southern strategy," which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: "You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites." In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to "Those People".
The GOP's worst nightmare: the possibility that a majority of Americans might vote for an African-American for President.. And not just vote for one, but get used to one has come true. Americans will become accustomed to the idea of an African-American family living in the White House, and being its public face to the world. That in the process, Americans might actually make leaps and bounds forward on the issue of race and thereby remove the most effective wedge in the Republican toolbox for decades.
All Republicans have left is their deeply unpopular drive to abolish the New Deal. It will, in short, spell utter doom for the Republicans outside of the deep South and certain pockets of the Midwest.
Nor will it be an easy wedge to replicate...
And that is why this election terrified the GOP. In just one election cycle, an entire agenda and electoral strategy spanning over three decades has been dashed on the rocks, with no credible replacement. Milton Friedman's privatization agenda is dead in the water, without hope of rescue barring military coup. Republicans in this situation are like a desperate, dangerous cornered animal. Today, Republicans have gained almost all those Southern white votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.
Posted by: Dyslin Allardice | January 7, 2009 4:28 PM
I have no way of knowing whether we are making progress on discrimination. Only a level headed, emotionally well balanced person from a discriminated group could in fact know. I would say that the question or questions on discrimination could have been left out of the questionnaire and would have improved the information given by the report.
Posted by: Ron M | January 7, 2009 4:34 PM
Excellent article, Mark. Appears a little off on education and moral standards...maybe too many liberals in the sampling pool.
Posted by: Bubba Porter | January 7, 2009 4:39 PM
This must upset the Republican base greatly. They don't want to see progress on discrimination. On the contrary they want to roll back progress. Look at how they've screamed about the Community Reinvestment Act lately. They want to make it perfectly legal for banks to discriminate against qualified lenders in minority neighborhoods, as was the case prior to the CRA. The Republicans are the enemy of progress in race relations. maybe that's why they are the lilly white party, without a single African American in elected national or statewide office anywhere in the nation.
Posted by: UNCF | January 7, 2009 5:21 PM
Or put another way, UNCF, they were happy to blame CRA and minorities for the economic crisis, which was so factually incorrect as to be ridiculous. But in a presidential campaign, hey, they play the race card.
Posted by: rupert | January 7, 2009 6:14 PM