The return of Hands Ad politics

by | Jul 24, 2017 | Politics | 15 comments

David Lewis does not like to be criticized. Annoy him online and he’ll accuse you of scatological sympathies. Call his policies racist and he “deeply resents” it. Those who critique his Voter ID amendment will encounter the same wounded howls of umbrage. But this isn’t just a David Lewis story. It’s a Phil Berger story, and a Justin Burr story–and a Jesse Helms story.

Republicans face a grim midterm. Trump is “historically unpopular,” which should intensify the backlash that always faces first-term presidents. Congressional Republicans are pushing a toxic health bill, liberal passions are aroused like never in the last four decades, and swing voters are fed up. All this suggests Republicans will suffer a significant turnout deficit.

Southern conservatives know what to do–inflame racial passions. Humanity are a tragically tribal lot, and Dixie reactionaries have never had any qualms with activating these dark impulses. Today’s NCGOPers plan to do exactly that by rallying white people to disenfranchise minorities (Lewis’s Voter ID amendment) permanently restrict fiscal policies that seem to benefit African-Americans (a TABOR amendment), and stoking fear of a third Other, labor unions (Burr’s RTW amendment). Lewis and Burr, with the near-certain blessing of Berger’s Senate, plan to heighten and exploit black-white tension. Because otherwise they will lose the election.

We have seen this many times before, never more infamously than in Jesse Helms’s scandalous “Hands” ad. Optimists felt that the Republicans had left those tactics behind them. But that was naive. The virulent politics of Jesse Helms is inscribed in the DNA of the North Carolina Republican Party. There’s a reason counties have replaced Lincoln Dinners with Helms Days. And twenty years those same Hands are back to strangle our social unity.

This means that 2018 will be a significant moral test for the state. Racial demagoguery saved Helms’ career in a midterm long ago. We will see whether the same tactics save a new generation of reactionaries.

15 Comments

  1. Ebrun

    Seems that the far left in NC hasn’t signed on to the DNC ‘s new ‘Better Deal’ national strategy that stresses economic issues of concern to working class Americans.. Apparently, those who regularly post and comment here just can’t reject the lure of identify politics that are dependent on resorting to the race card. Such demagoguery didn’t play well in 2016 and wiser heads are advising Democrats to adopt a different tact for 2018.

    • A.D. Reed

      Sorry, Ebrun.

      The fact that the national Democratic Party is focusing on a campaign theme for upcoming elections doesn’t mean that NC democrats and liberal independents are incapable of recognizing, pointing out, and responding to the racist policies of state GOP members.

      A platform covers many issues, ranging from financial equity to healthcare to education to environmental concerns to social equality to religious freedom to criminal and civil and social justice … and many other topics. Many people recognize the interrelationships between various issues, and many of us work hard on several areas of concern. For example, environmentalism, racial justice, and business law, and tax fairness all overlap where corporate polluters destroy water and air resources in poor black communities across Louisiana. That means that environmentalists and legal activists and anti-bigotry leaders will work together on these issues.

      Just because the GOP believes that all issues can and should be put in monetary terms doesn’t mean that thinking people agree. We do not put a monetary framework around the value of education, other than to point out that educated people bring a multitude of benefits to themselves, their communities, and the culture as a whole — but that besides those benefits, education is an end in itself. I.e., being educated makes for better, more knowledgeable people, REGARDLESS of what it does to their earnings potential.

      Framing a 2018 campaign doesn’t preclude our addressing all those other issues. We are able to talk and chew gum at the same time.

      • Ebrun

        No need to be “sorry”, A.D. Those of us on the political right are delighted with the far left’s stubborn devotion to incendiary racial politics epitomized by the antics of Rev. Berber and his cadre of malcontents.

        And in regard to the economic issues that are of primary concern to middle and working class Americans, check out this reporter’s description of the President’s recent rally in Youngstown:

        http://nypost.com/2017/07/25/why-the-rust-belt-just-gave-donald-trump-a-heros-welcome/

        No talk in this crowd of transgender bathroom access, gerrymandering or opposition to Voter ID laws. Apparently,the far left doesn’t realize that the American working class is not a white monolith, but includes a substantial portion of blacks, women, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities. When Democrats resort to identify politics and racial animus instead of supporting middle class values and aspirations, they alienate a good portion of their potential base. This is what happened last year and may well happen again if the agenda of the far left becomes the Party’s primary focus.

        • TY Thompson

          I rather think the Reps will take a beating next year but for reasons that will not be understood by Dems. Rep voters expected Obamacare repeal and got cheated and will stay home in droves. Dems, however, will misinterpret the reason for their victories which will lead to setbacks in 2020 because they misinterpreted the reason for their 2018 success.

        • A.D. Reed

          Ebrun:

          You on the right will never, ever understand what motivates liberals (and the founders): the belief that all people should have equal opportunities to thrive. It’s not “identity politics”; it’s a politics in which people of widely diverse backgrounds are invited and welcomed and listened to.

          We on the left recognize, acknowledge, and point out that certain people have never had equal opportunities to thrive in our country. Because those people fall into certain demographic categories — dark-skinned people, people with breasts and vaginas, people with same-sex attractions, etc. — it is incumbent on those who work for economic growth, freedom, and justice to try to ensure that those people DO have equal opportunities.

          We on the left have always been the champions of the middle class. In the late 1890s to 1910s it was one liberal Republican who was a trustbuster, and Democrats who were supporters of unions. In the 1930s and ’40s, and again in the ’60s, the policies of FDR, HST, and LBJ created the most prosperous, numerous, successful middle class in the history of the world.

          More recently one party — yours — has deliberately and efficiently targeted people who have vaginas and dark skin as unworthy of equal opportunity to join the middle class. You have gerrymandered, destroyed unions, purged voter rolls of hundreds of thousands of black voters across the South and Midwest, rejected the Equal Rights Amendment, resegregated public schools, banned gays from the military and transgendered people from any service …

          So while you might or might not want the same outcome — to restrengthen the middle class in defiance of the GOP trend of the past 36 years (they have created the greatest income inequality since 1929 and the smallest number of Americans IN the middle class), we on the left want those benefits to be available to ALL Americans, while you on the right still want it to be available ONLY to white men.

          The difference can easily be seen in descriptions or photos of who’s at the table making decisions: in the GOP, 13 white men, all over 50, in a room with the door locked, trying to write a new wealth care law; in the Democratic party, women and men, gay and straight, black, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, atheist, old, young, and middle-aged, working class, highly degreed, from blue-collar and white-collar and silk-stocking backgrounds, all sitting together, inviting everyone to the table to share their ideas and opinions.

          So, Ebrun, I am sorry — for you and the characteristics you apparently share with the “deplorable” Trump voters: misogynistic, racist, anti-diversity, anti-Muslim, anti-everything that isn’t white and penised.

          But I’m not sorry that my party believes that a strong, broad, middle class is what made the 1900s “The American Century,” and that the more people of every hue and sex and background comprise that middle class is what will bring our nation back from the depths it has been brought since the Republican ascendancy began in 1981 — with the specific, stated goal of repealing and removing all vestiges of the New Deal and the Great Society and the programs brought about by FDR and LBJ to make that middle class thrive.

          • EBRUN

            A.D., your self-righteous sermonizing epitomizes the arrogance of the political left today. The longer liberals continue to engage in such self-indulgent pandering, the harder it will be for Democrats to win back support from the middle and working class.

            And, BTW, the data I’ve seen suggest that “income inequality” in the U.S. surged more during the Obama years than at any other period in recent times. Somehow those evil Republicans have managed to undermine all those “progressive” initiatives that Obama was able to implement by executive actions, right?

            Or could it be that the left’s infatuation with redistributive schemes and anti-growth policies are simply ineffective in affecting today’s dynamic economic forces?.

    • Alex Jones

      I’ve missed you Ebrun!

      • Ebrun

        Gee, did you really, Alex? Then you should know that I have been sitting back and enjoying all the hysteria, despair, intolerance and paranoia being expressed by liberals who blog and comment here. And while I can’t say that all the vitriolic rants and invective directed here at Republicans and conservatives are enjoyable, it is instructive (though not unexpected) to observe the depths to which the radical left will go to malign those who do not share their political ideology.

      • Walt de Vries, Ph.D.

        Alex: I, too, missed Ebrun.
        But, I think I know why he is less vocal these days and has not written in for weeks. Ebrun has been trying to figure out how to praise, defend, and live with Donald Trump. Thus, the long absence from these pages. Like most Trump supporters, each day becomes a nightmare of what to say, how to rationalize, indeed, how to avoid being publicly known as one of those, i.e., an unrepentant Trump voter. Sad.
        Indeed, now, Ebrun has to defend Trump as he has become the Republican party, conservative movement, the alt-right, the nationalists, the anti-LBGT, the health deniers and countless others. Gasp.
        At least, he has not joined what is called the Trump Administration.. Or, have you, Ebrun?
        Peace.

        • Ebrun

          Wow, Walt, are you sharp! Looks like you’ve outed me on this blog. I guess I’ll have to admit—Ebrun is really a pseudonym for an influential Trump advisor. I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure who that might me. LOL

          • Walt de Vries, Ph.D.

            Wow, yourself, Ebrun.
            Now, you wouldn’t be The Mooch? Sessions? Conway? Manafort? Stone?
            No, for your level of articulation and political sophistication– with unlimited
            access to GOP talking points– you are Reince Priebus and a closet Libertarian
            outed by the new COS.
            But, now you have a book in you about the last six months. So, write away.
            You still love Donald Trump?

  2. A.D. Reed

    Well said, Alex. And I agree with Walt deVries.

    Just pondering something: the NC GOP has replaced Lincoln Day dinners with Helms Day dinners. So my initial thought is, We as Democrats should appropriate Lincoln, our greatest president, since the Republicans don’t want him anymore. But then I realized, the GOP does continue to call itself “the party of Lincoln” whenever they want to celebrate (pretend) their undying “patriotism”; but in the same breath repudiate him when their southern racist supporters call him a tyrant who began the “war between the states” to destroy state’s rights, to which they responded with a deliberate, collective act of treason. Some patriots!

    Hence, if the Democrats tried to claim his mantle of holding the nation together, they would use the latter tactic out of one side of their collective mouth, and praise him as the greatest president with the other. Simultaneously.

    How does a Democratic party that — nominally, if not always in practice — relies on honest debate, and progressive legislation, and the overall liberal concept of incremental improvement in our lives as we gain knowledge and insight, and trust in the wisdom of the voters, possibly contend with a party that is so cynical, so dishonest, so reactionary, and that depends on the ignorance and bigotry of ITS voters?

    • Walt de Vries, Ph.D.

      A.D.: Your last paragraph has stated about as clearly as any what today’s politics is all about. You best summarize the current Democratic philosophy: ” …the overall liberal concept of incremental improvement in our lives as we gain knowledge and insight, and trust in the wisdom of the voters…”
      There was a time in the 1950’s, l960’s and 1970’s– up until Reagan, Helms turned the GOP against rational, democratic goals– when that vision was those of a good chunk of the Republican party and its progressive leaders (e.g., Rockefeller, Romney, Hatfield, Milliken, et al).
      So, what we have now is, as you say, a Republican party “that is so cynical, so dishonest, so reactionary, and that depends on the ignorance and bigotry of ITS voters.” Well said. But it does not have to be that way, nor will it last.
      Political parties cannot survive if there is only one wing flapping and so that ungainly bird can only circle in on itself and beat itself to death.. Witness what Trump and the GOP are doing to the national government with GOP legislators in North Carolina not far behind.
      Over time, It happens to Democrats and Republicans. And, in July, 2017, we once again have a clear choice.

      • Andrew D Reed

        You’re absolutely right, Walt, both that “it doesn’t have to be that way” and that it will change. I, too, remember decent, moderate, even progressive Republicans like those you mentioned, along with Jake Javits and Edward Brooke — and I remember unreconstructed southern racist Democrats in their era, too: John Stennis comes to mind!

        So, yes, the pendulum is swinging; let’s make sure we take advantage of it.

  3. Walt de Vries, Ph.D.

    Alex: I think, if anything, you have understated the problem. The temptation for the North Carolina GOP to bring race into the 2018 mid-term elections for Congress and the State Legislature will simply overwhelm and seduce their strategists and candidates. This may be born out of sheer desperation to find a strategy they believed worked in the 2016 election with Trump as the cheerleader then and again be reprised in 2018. Add to that the belief that North Carolina’s voters will still respond to Jesse Helms-like campaigns–often unspoken or whispered by political gurus–if done subtly and with deftness. Republican candidates will not be able to handle the major issues of 2018–health care, jobs and, of course, Trump himself. So, where else can they go? And, Trump will lead the charge.
    For me, that we have to deal with the divisiveness of racial politics is depressing. But the efforts to suppress voting and deny rights to minorities and the poor are specifically targeted at our 2018 elections. We would be stupid not to see this coming and do something about it. Your warning is on the mark.

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