I said, “many liberals consider conservative beliefs to be inherently racist.”
I don’t know if the opposition to the ACA specifically is widely perceived as racist, but the racial dimension was constantly injected into articles on the ACA repeal. (As if Republicans would want to repeal a big new entitlement only because the President who enacted it was Black?) More generally, it’s injected into pretty much every policy debate in the press outlets (Politico, Vox, etc.—which I consider pretty good news sources). Apparently run-off elections are racist. (Somebody should tell almost every country with an elected President.)
I try to filter out stuff I read on tweets, because I think you’re correct that Twitter is highly unrepresentative, but it turns out that those blue check marks on Twitter are also writing on a lot off the outlets that cover policy issues.
As I said, it’s a self-consistent world view, so it’s gaining purchase. It does, however, make policy debate almost impossible. It’s used to attack basic American tenants. Opposing DC statehood, for example, is deemed racist. Forget the deep American tradition of skepticism about the capital, or the increasingly Hunger Games-esque ascension of DC. I strongly suspect most Republicans are more mad about the white bureaucrats working in the federal government getting two Senators on top of running the unelected fourth branch, than anything to do with the (shrinking) Black population. But it’s an effective rhetorical tactic for sure. The Senate is racist. Opposition to public unions is racist. Support for limited government, guns, individualism, free speech, etc. (These are just the real conversations I’ve had with real people.)
I strongly suspect that conservatives aren’t just going to give up on the idea of limited government, or opposing centralized bureaucracy in DC. They’ll just grow a thicker skin with respect to accusations of racism, which is probably a bad thing for everyone.
You keep citing things that aren't the ACA that someone at Vox or Politico reported someone said was racist. But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that. Clearly, there are people who believe everything is racist, but you set a higher bar for that, and I don't think you can clear it.
For what it's worth: I don't want conservatives to give up on the idea of limited government; I think Republicans are right about some things, Democrats about others, and we need both perspectives.
> But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that.
Who is a normal person? The Forbes article I posted is from a Duke MD. The article appears to be based on Senator Jay Rockefeller’s contemporaneous claim that opposition to the ACA was because Obama was the “wrong color.” It looks like no other Congressional Democrat backed that idea, so you’re right in that respect.
> One of the greatest triumphs of liberal politics over the past 50 years has been to completely stigmatize open racial discrimination in public life, a lesson that has been driven home over decades by everybody from Jimmy the Greek to Paula Deen. This achievement has run headlong into an increasing liberal tendency to define conservatism as a form of covert racial discrimination. If conservatism is inextricably entangled with racism, and racism must be extinguished, then the scope for legitimate opposition to Obama shrinks to an uncomfortably small space.
Though in the same piece he writes:
> America’s unique brand of ideological anti-statism is historically inseparable (as I recently argued) from the legacy of slavery.
Chait, at least six years ago, correctly observed that these arguments are fallacious:
> And yet—as vital as this revelation may be for understanding conservatism, it still should not be used to dismiss the beliefs of individual conservatives. Individual arguments need and deserve to be assessed on their own terms, not as the visible tip of a submerged agenda; ideas can’t be defined solely by their past associations and uses.
More recently, however, Chait has embraced the trend he was skeptical of in the above passage.
A few months later he writes, without a hint of irony:
> Why Are Conservatives So Angry Biden Denounced White Supremacy?
Now maybe I read too much Jonathan Chait. But I truly find his rhetoric truly perplexing, for someone I perceive as being maybe solidly left wing, but within the Overton Window. I thought that anti-statism was something the left and right broadly agreed on. (During the Obama era, polls showed that even half of Democrats listed “big government” as the “biggest threat to America.”)
I like Chait. I also don't think any of these people are wrong about the culture war issue you're talking about, and if that had been all you said, we wouldn't be 2000 words deep into this thread. But that's not what you said.
The article you posted is from a health policy "take machine" (check his Twitter, he's like a JV Ezra Klein) who concludes that opposition to the ACA is mostly not racist, and is using the idea as a framing device for a post summarizing a journal article about racial disparities in health care, which are obvious and real. The use of the word "racist" to describe the status quo ante of the ACA is counterproductive and stupid (see: "takes"), but it's also not part of the mainstream conversation.
You suggested otherwise. I suggest you concede the point, because, again: we're being held hostage by stupid things people say. Even smart people will say some stupid things, and we can let whole debates be defined by stupidity.
(We have another big health policy debate coming up, and as a liberal Democrat who opposes single-payer, I'm dreading the amount of stupidity we're all going to have to wade through to get to any kind of engagement with the real issues).
I don’t know if the opposition to the ACA specifically is widely perceived as racist, but the racial dimension was constantly injected into articles on the ACA repeal. (As if Republicans would want to repeal a big new entitlement only because the President who enacted it was Black?) More generally, it’s injected into pretty much every policy debate in the press outlets (Politico, Vox, etc.—which I consider pretty good news sources). Apparently run-off elections are racist. (Somebody should tell almost every country with an elected President.)
I try to filter out stuff I read on tweets, because I think you’re correct that Twitter is highly unrepresentative, but it turns out that those blue check marks on Twitter are also writing on a lot off the outlets that cover policy issues.
As I said, it’s a self-consistent world view, so it’s gaining purchase. It does, however, make policy debate almost impossible. It’s used to attack basic American tenants. Opposing DC statehood, for example, is deemed racist. Forget the deep American tradition of skepticism about the capital, or the increasingly Hunger Games-esque ascension of DC. I strongly suspect most Republicans are more mad about the white bureaucrats working in the federal government getting two Senators on top of running the unelected fourth branch, than anything to do with the (shrinking) Black population. But it’s an effective rhetorical tactic for sure. The Senate is racist. Opposition to public unions is racist. Support for limited government, guns, individualism, free speech, etc. (These are just the real conversations I’ve had with real people.)
I strongly suspect that conservatives aren’t just going to give up on the idea of limited government, or opposing centralized bureaucracy in DC. They’ll just grow a thicker skin with respect to accusations of racism, which is probably a bad thing for everyone.