Herman Cain, Republican Savior?

An old friend, a conservative, recently emailed me to ask me my thoughts on a Weekly Standard piece by Jay Cost about Herman Cain and his potential for allowing the GOP to make inroads with African Americans. It turns out I have a lot of thoughts:

In general, I think there is a lot that is right about the article, a few things I am unsure about, and a few things I think are off base.

Though the article doesn't go into this, the subtext is there: if the GOP continues to represent the interests of exclusively white males, they will quickly become a minority party again, as they were from 1930-1960. Primarily because of Latino birthrates, and somewhat due to continued immigration policies, the demographic trends are quickly getting worse and worse for the GOP. In the next 20 years, Texas will be in play. If everything else stays the same (which of course it wont), that alone is deadly to R's. Unlike when Cali went blue, this time there is no South on the verge of going red to balance it out. But of course along with Texas, other states will shift: NM, Iowa, Nevada, and Colorado will likely be as "solidly" blue as states like Washington, blue except in huge wave-election years on par with 1980, 1994, and 2010. A number of other states (Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Virginia, NC, Florida) are seeing are going to shift a point or two, making these states shift from Strong R to Lean R or Lean R to tossup. Rough times are ahead without R's making inroads into one of three groups: AAs, Latinos, or women. As the article points out, R's don't need to win these groups, they just need to be able to peel off about 20% (basically make women or latinos a tossup, or shift the AA vote to about 70-30). How much of this will require actually changing stances on issues, as opposed to better marketing (which seems to be what the article is advocating as the biggest problem for the GOP with minority voters) is of course an open question.

So on that question, i think there are three subquestions:

1. Is the current stigma that the GOP faces with these groups legitimate and based on problems with policies, or is it simply bad PR (or, from the Dem point of view, good PR)?


2. If you believe the problem is bad GOP PR, how critical would it be to get a high profile candidate be towards shifting this?


3. Is Herman Cain that candidate?

I would actually address these in the reverse order.

Herman Cain?
Assuming you believe it's a PR problem and that an individual can solve it, is Herman Cain the man? If you're shooting for the AA vote, I think he's pretty good. He's articulate and passionate. He (with a few notable exceptions, noted at the end) seems to believe what he is saying, rather than just saying things because it's what he thinks the base wants to hear. Now, sometimes that's bad, if what he believes is wrong. I still want to throw things at the TV when he and other conservatives outright lie about Obamacare. That law is perfectly critique-able on its merits using the truth; making up (or repeating) lies about "Washington bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor", when the law does no such thing, is really frustrating when I would actually like to see a genuine debate over what I believe to be one of the biggest threats to America's prosperity (i.e. rising health care costs as a percentage of GDP). But setting that aside, he doesnt seem to be a one-trick pony (Alan Keyes), outside the conservative mainstream (Colin Powell), or stupid (Michael Steele). If you believe a high-profile minority candidate will be a big deal, then I think he’s a pretty good bet. I think the only other better pick, if I were pursuing this strategy, would be to be going all in on Latinos and Marco Rubio. But I have strong hesitations about whether an individual will be of much help.

Do Individuals Matter?
If the problem is PR, is an individual high-profile candidate the way to go? I think the answer to this depends. Assuming you believe that R policies on women, latinos, and AAs are either correct (even if this leads to the disagreement of many people within that group, which I would imagine is how you feel about most conservative parties regarding women, family, etc., and seems to be how many R's feel about Latino immigration and all minorities on crime and discrimination) or that R policies are good, but poorly sold or misrepresented, you have to wonder how much an individual candidate can do about that. In either case, that candidate has to be able to do one of two things: 1) direct attention away from those issues onto others, or 2) convince members of their own group that the R position is correct or better for them. I think that in the case of all three of these groups, that's going to be very tough for any one individual to do.

I am sort of a skeptic on the "big man" theories of history, and more convinced by the "big trends" theories. Civil rights was enormously helped by MLK Jr., but it was inevitable with or without him. Ditto many or most trends in religion, science, economics, and politics. Even the exceptional people who made big changes were already “on the right side of history”. Of course, you don’t have Christianity without Christ. But since I am imagining myself trying to persuade a religious conservative on these issues, they ought to be the last person I need to convince that His message was correct, even had it not been Him who delivered it. And other great people who have moved history either just sped up or slowed down the inevitable. I am a liberal who will give Reagan credit for accelerating communism’s demise. But even conservatives, in principle, have to agree that, regardless of individuals, communism would have collapsed under its own weight eventually. I could write pages about this point. Marx was right about the inevitability of history; he just happened to be wrong about what that inevitable history was.

The GOP position on women and minorities
So really, the answer to whether or not you can shift minorities' perception of the GOP via an individual really depends on whether the GOP is on the right or wrong side of this in the first place. If they are, then Herman Cain can speed it up if they are, just as Michael Steele could slow it down. But is the R position actually better for women, AAs, or Latinos? As much as R’s want to believe otherwise, I think they face an insurmountable obstacle in two of these cases (women and AAs). Latinos is another story.

Latinos
I won't have too much to say about this except to say that I think the GOP has the best chance to make inroad amongst Latinos. This takes the demographic trends and neutralizes them, or even makes them work in the GOPs favor. If Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, and New Mexico are out of reach for Republicans, they have to sweep the Gore states (including Florida...) every time. That's almost impossible. Latino's religiosity and social conservatism is an obvious opening, if they can get Latinos to focus on those issues rather than explicitly Latino issues like immigration. Right now, the Republican party seems to want to defy all logic and economic research and go after immigration. It seems crazy to me, and there seems to be no reason it couldn't turn around. Long term D strategists take a deep sigh of relief every time they watch the GOP move further and further to anti-immigrant positions (documented or undocumented).

Women
I think the current conservative position is going to be inherently at odds with women to an extent to guarantee that D's will always tend to get 60% or more of that vote. I really don't think a conservative woman will make ground here. Certainly not Palin or Bachmann. Professional women hate these two, more than anyone. I think someone like Condi Rice could move the needle (on both women and AAs), but of course her politics would be an apostasy in the current GOP. I think the (religious) conservative position or mindset on issues related to women (abortion, birth control, child care, gender roles, enforcement of rape crimes in ways that tend to blame the victim for promiscuity, policies and belief systems that encourage women leaving the workforce, marrying early and having kids early and often) are going to ensure that a large chunk of women are going to have trouble taking a Republican candidate seriously unless they shift on many of these positions. And since these positions are pretty central to the religious conservative worldview, it’s hard to see that shift happening. In the current world, seeking more R votes amongst women seems to be a dead end without first shifting women’s position on the issues listed above.

African Americans
Contrary to the article you linked to, I think the task is just as uphill with African Americans. There are a few policies where the current Republican position is arguably better for African Americans. School choice, if implemented correctly rather than just as a case of government-endorsed crony capitalism, has the opportunity to be one of those. There are plenty of D's (myself included) who would support school choice under the right circumstances. Good drug and crime policies (not to be confused with the toughest policies, just the smartest ones) would obviously be beneficial to all people in low SES conditions, and AAs and Latinos would hugely benefit from safer and more stable home environments. And since a great many of minorities’ issues are either directly or indirectly related to poverty, to the extent that Republican policies actually improve the economy (or can be sold as doing so), this should be a big reason for minorities to vote for R's. I of course won’t go into how ridiculous I think current R arguments are the economy. We can save that argument for another day…

But all these reasons to be optimistic about R’s possibilities with AAs stacks up against plenty of reasons why I think it continues to be the case that AAs can look at R's and think that are being less than authentic. The first is that there is plenty of evidence of continued discrimination against blacks, from a political point of view. Right now, AAs vote D. One thing to do about this is what we have been talking about. Change that dynamic. Another option, the one R’s more often take, is to figure out ways to suppress the AA vote. Sending out fliers in AA neighborhoods advertising the wrong election date; adding requirements for voting (such as not being a felon; I have no idea why people think having made a mistake in your past means you no longer deserve representation. We can forgive to allow into heaven, but not the voting booth?), making it harder to vote because of "voter fraud" even when neutral investigators show that cases of these are rare and not influential on outcomes; going after groups like ACORN and the Black Panthers. Look, I wont defend the goals or methods of most groups like this (mostly because I dont know that much about them). they probably deserve at least some of the attention they get, to the extent that these groups do break laws or advocate violence. But there are few groups that are explicitly advocating for the interests of AAs, and targeting these groups explicitly, and doing the other stuff described above, is broadcasting to the AA community that the GOP doesn’t really care about AAs, beyond how they influence elections. It sends the message that if the GOP cannot get AAs to join them, then they must be (politically) destroyed. But if that is how it looks, its going to completely kill the GOP's ability to convince AAs on the merits, and so all the arguments about stuff like school choice and how R policies might help minority small businesses, are going to fall on deaf ears.

Likewise, the current conservative mantra about how there is no such thing as racism anymore (except of course, reverse racism) is ridiculous. Every time R commentators say this, they continue to guarantee that they wont get AA votes. Find me black republicans who say racism doesn’t still exist. Find me one! You wont. You'll find plenty that say the best solutions to this are not government ones. Great. Push that message (though it’s a loser message if not paired with what we can do about racism as an alternative to the current approach). But drop the "their is no racism" shtick, because while that may make the white male base feel better, it is a killer roadblock to inroads with minorities.

Which brings us to Niggerhead Ranch... Look up that word and it’s etymology, it means a lot of stuff, but most often it is used to mean terrible stuff like "hard as a rock, just like a nigger's head". And it is still used a lot. Limit a google search to 2000-2010, and you get 3.5 million entries. My job right now is to do a lot of language analysis. I can tell you that term is still in use in the south, and still used in colloquially racist ways. Now, Rick Perry himself may not have had much to do with the ranch. But here's the thing. If MY family owned such a place, even a distant family member, the second I knew about it I would either (if I was courageous) argue with them to change it or (more likely, passive-aggressively) never go back. To the AA community, whether an individual fights or passively abides casual racism like this is meanful. It speaks to character. And it speaks to how deeply and how seriously a person takes issues related to race, discrimination, and the treatment of minorities. Explicit terrible racism such as lynchings or laws against what AAs can do, may be mostly a relic of the past. But casual implicit racism still has consequences. Using words like that that define a person or group of people entirely in terms of their groups and negative attributes about their group leads to having lower expectations for those individuals and to treating them poorly, rather than treating them as individuals and judging them on their merits. It’s very well documented in every branch of social science that has set out to study it, including my own social and cognitive psychology. And casually "looking the other way" as many people do in situations like this is part of what allows racism to persist. So is Rick Perry a racist? Probably not. But should the fact that he comes from a family that was so callously disinterested in their inconsiderateness towards AAs be a factor for AAs when they consider voting for him? You have to really be drinking the koolaid to think that’s not a valid piece of evidence when evaluating a candidate and how likely they are to take the interests of your and your group seriously. If a candidate’s family had a history of bad-mouthing evangelical Christianity, wouldn’t an evangelical be a legitimately worried that this could lead consequences for how this candidate thought about your issues? That would be fair game. Just like Obama’s church and pastor was fair game. Not a deal-breaker, but a legitimate fact that should be weighed when judging how much you trust a candidate.

And so now we can come full circle, to Cain’s initial response to the n-head ranch issue, and to the conservative’s response to him, which I think exemplifies many of the points I am trying to make. Cain, being an African American who has no doubt experience racism, instantly called it for what it was: inconsiderate at best, and a factor that should bear on Perry's character. But other than Cain, how conservatives respond to this? By blaming Cain!

You might have anticipated that Perry would face a firestorm for being associated with the property, but it's Cain whose remarks are drawing the most criticism from the right. At RedState, Erick Erickson concluded, "It also seems to be a slander Herman Cain is picking up and running with as a way to get into second place." Glenn Reynolds remarked that until now, Cain's "big appeal is that he's not just another black race-card-playing politician." Over at the Daily Caller, Matt Lewis called Cain's remarks "a cheap shot, and, perhaps a signal that Cain is willing to play the race card against a fellow Republican when it benefits him."

The key phrase here is "fellow Republican." Because, you see, no one thought Cain was "playing the race card" when he said in the same program that black people are "brainwashed" into voting for Democrats and suggested that black people who vote Republican are "thinking for themselves." Cain wasn't rebuked by conservatives when he previously suggested President Barack Obama was not "a strong black man," implied liberals were out to commit genocide against blacks through support for abortion rights, and said he wouldn't appoint a Muslim to his cabinet.

None of that, in the eyes of the conservatives who cheered him for those remarks, constituted "playing the race card." But when a man who is old enough to recall living under American apartheid gets a little emotional over a piece of land called "Niggerhead," that's where the right draws the line. Not just because Cain is attacking a fellow Republican, but because he stepped out of the proper role of a black conservative, which is to reassure Republicans that their political problems with race are the inventions of a liberal conspiracy. Cain just ran head first into the brick wall of conservative anti-anti-racism, the attitude on the right that accusations of racism directed at white people are of far greater consequence than any lingering vestiges of institutional racism nonwhites might face.

This incident to me sums up the difficulty that the GOP will ever have making inroads with the AA community. For the GOP to make progress with AAs, they need to see the AA community as something more than a strategic token to be used to win elections. They will need to radically rethink and reframe how they deal with issues related to the AA community. Candidates like Herman Cain will need to be free to address AA issues now and then. As with many other issues on the table right now, if conservatives want to make progress, they will need to compromise. It's understandable why they wont compromise on some issues (like abortion, or socialized medicine), given their belief systems. But on race, the only thing that seems to be at stake is pride, and "being right" on issues like the existence of racism. Until they can move past that, they wont move at all.

one vs. two spaces after periods

I never had strong feelings on this issue. I was taught two. At some point in high school I remember seeing my friend Josh type with one, and just thought it was crazy. "How can you break such a principle rule?" But he was taught a different principle rule. That was perhaps one of my first early exposure to the idea that grammatical rules were perhaps not all they had been made out to be. At some point I taught myself to type with one, but whatever, let people do what they want.

But then I read this, from a "two space" defender:

Manjoo’s argument about beauty [of using a single space], like all such arguments, is easy enough to dismiss: I disagree. I find it easier to read paragraphs that are composed of sentences separated by two spaces. Perhaps this is because I, like most technologists, spend most of my time working with (quite lovely!) fixed-width fonts for practical reasons. But there’s also a deeper beauty to the two space rule — a sort of mathematical beauty. Let me explain.

Consider the typical structure of writing. Letters are assembled into words, which turn into phrases, which are arranged into sentences — at the same time being assigned to speakers, a neat trick — which are then combined into paragraphs.

It’s a chemical process, a perfect and infinitely flexible hierarchical system that should command our admiration. Being able to rationally examine, disassemble and interrogate the final product is a mark of the system’s beauty. Anything less is settling for a sort of holistic mysticism.

It’s disrespectful to let writing’s constituent elements bleed into one another through imprecise demarcations.

So using two spaces does actually mean something: the reification of sentences as THE fundamental unit of language. Seeing it defended from a very linguisticky point of view is firming up my desire to take the "single space" side. Sometimes you want the sentences to bleed together, because they mean more as a functional unit than as two separate ones. Other times you dont. But I guess what I am really arguing for is a more "rule-less" approach: you shouldn't always use just one space, or always use two. You should choose the number of spaces you use as a signal of exactly how unitized two sentences are. I bet there are all kinds of correlates of that in spoken language; it would be interesting to try to mirror it in written language.

Also, it was sort of weird that this guy wrote this long defense of using two spaces between periods, while appearing to only use one space between the periods in the actual exposition...

Behaviorism and the treatment of animals

In Peter Singer's (1975) book Animal Liberation, he discusses a lot of the terrible treatment of animals in laboratory settings. I am very sympathetic with Singer's goals in the book and even in this chapter; though I would probably differ with him quite a bit on where the costs and benefits of the utilitarian calculus leads us, vis-a-vis the justifiability of a lot of medical and scientific research.

But one thing I want to take issue with (which I was reminded of while reading Benjamin J. Baars's book (1984) The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology, is that Singer lays a lot of the blame for this at the feet of the behaviorist metatheory in psychology. Singer argued that behaviorism was bad because its metatheoretical perspective was that there was no such thing as mind, consciousness, or anything like that, and that this belief system was used to justify a lot of pretty cruel treatment of animals, like torturing, wire-mother-monkeys (Harlow & Suomi, 1970, where infant monkeys were trained to treat a wire monkey as a caretaker, and then the wire monkey would start to stab, shock, and otherwise injure the infant in order to see what it took to break the bonds of attachment).

But here's the thing: behaviorism doesn't just deny the theoretical value of mind and conscious experience for animals; it denies the relevance of those constructs for humans as well! Because of this, I think it would be pretty plausible to argue that behaviorism is the psychological metatheory that is most compatible with those arguing for better treatment of animals. Behaviorism doesn't widen the human-animal gap, it closes it. What counts as suffering? Observable behavior by the organism such that the organism is doing things that lower the probability of a future, painful event. End of story. And that's in principle as observable in animals as it is in humans. And its almost always the case in practice that animals do actually try to avoid painful events if they can help it. Surprise surprise... And if you're a behaviorist, you cannot use excuses like "they don't really feel it, they're just automatons." Behavior is the measure of man, and of animals too.

Now, it may be the case that behaviorists in the past were being illogical and inconsistent in applying their scientific belief system to their personal values. But that's not a problem with the scientific theory. That's a moral failing we all make all the time by not behaving consistently with regard to facts we believe to be true and the values that we claim to hold. But laying that at the feet of the behavioristic world-view shirks the real problem and lets us people off the hook for their moral failings - rather than taking advantage of behaviorists purported belief system as an argument for why they are being immoral in the first place.

Murder, not terrorism

Ok, so this response to a Nigerian man with firecrackers on a plane is really annoying. As a member of academia, I talk to and read plenty of militant leftists on this issue. And being in Nebraska right now, I am reminded or (or beaten over the head with) the typical conservative response to these issues. But I think there is a really obvious and sensible path to follow here.

A "hate America" leftist might respond that America should disband its military empire; stop policing the world and stop protecting American political and economic interests abroad. But this is obviously not going to happen. Very few people agree with this point of view (except perhaps when Clinton was in office...). Its not really hard for me to justify "liberal internationalism" to myself, over the more leftist alternative, and I wont waste the time or space to do so here.

But a shocking number of conservatives, as well as all of the news networks, make an equally bad mistake. By shouting "terrorism" and "threat to our nation's very survival" and by creating all these overbearing rules, they let these extremists get exactly what they want: in addition to occasion murder of American citizens, the extremists achieve additional American suffering, in terms of lost liberties, convenience, and quality of life. By treating them as terrorists and warriors instead of simple criminals and murders, conservatives legitimize and even glorify their attacks. This is both wrong in principle, and wrong because its consequence is raising the likelihood of more attempted murder.

The correct action is to treat this as a simple criminal case, with no glory. Change American lifestyle the minimal necessary to prevent or limit the damage of future attacks. Make it boring and pointless, rather than glorifying, to be an attempted mass-murderer.

Health Care Reform and Abortion

So what's the deal with this Stupak amendment? Is it just political theater? Should it make pro-life people favor health care reform, as long as it includes Stupak language?

Assume that health care reform + public option + Stupak language passes. Therefore anyone who buys insurance through the exchanges, and gets a government subsidy to do so, is forbidden from buying a plan that covers abortion.

Some have argued this will reduce the abortion rate. Is this true? If so, how much? Here are some (potentially) relevant facts:

• According to a recent study on abortion demographics, 75% of abortions are obtained by women at or below 300% of the poverty line ($44,000), meaning that this group accounts for roughly 1 of the 1.3 million abortions that occur in America each year.
  
  
• This level of income is the roughly the same level that at which people will qualify for assistance in the reform plans that congress is considering
  
  
• According to census.gov, there are about 85 million women who make at or below $44,000 per year
  
  
• According to the CBO, around 6 million people (3 million women?) are likely to use federal assistance for health care
  
  
• Also accourding to the CBO another 12 million are likely to get health insurance through the exchanges, but not get federal assistance

Keeping those numbers in mind, I have heard some people arguing that by getting lower-income people into an exchange plan, you make them pay out of pocket for abortions instead of having it covered by insurance, and that this should make the abortion rate go way down amongst the group most likely to get abortions. Three million of the 85 million women (4%), a group whose rate accounts for 75% of abortions. So this group should account for about 1.3 million x 0.75 x 0.04 = 39,000 abortions. Not a trivial number of lives to save each year, if you hold the pro-life position. Now surely, some people would still pay out of pocket. But how many?

Actually, unless I am stupidly missing something, 100% of these people would be willing to pay out of pocket - because they already are! By definition, these lower-income people who will get insurance through the exchanges were without health insurance in the first place. So these people aren't losing abortion coverage...they never had it in the first place! So in terms of direct effects, Stupak would be unlikely to have any direct effect on the abortion rate.

But I can imagine several, more indirect ways in which Stupak langauge could have an effect on the abortion rate:

1. Insurance companies on the exchanges might find it laborious or inefficient to offer both types of plans (one that covers abortion, one that does not), and to enforce it such that the right people buy the right ones and don't cheat the plan. Since they MUST offer the no-abortion plan, they just decide to offer only no-abortion plans. As a consequence, now the vastly larger number of people who buy insurance through the exchanges can no longer buy coverage that includes abortion. That would make the pool of people paying out of pocket for abortion go up. But again, how many of these people would have had insurance covering abortion in the first place. Many of these people are also uninsured, or buying bare-bones plans which also do not cover abortion, due to the current high cost of being self-insured. So its debatable whether this, even if it did come to pass, would affect the abortion rate.
   
   
2. One issue which could decisively affect the abortion rate is: what will people do when they have a choice between the exchange an employer-based plan. Say they start off in the exchange, then get a job that offers them insurance, but for whatever reason elect to stay with their exchange-based plan. These are truly people who are opting for a plan that doesnt cover abortion over one that would. I doubt many would consciously factor this into their decision, but many would just decide to stay with the plan they know rather than switch.
   
   
3. Lastly, one conservative concern is that the the public option will become "popular" (due to unfair competition) and grow to become a bigger and bigger percentage of the market. Employers will stop offering insurance, insurance companies won't be able to compete and will go out of business, etc. To the extent that this is true, this will force people into plans that do not cover abortion. So in one sense, the small government advocate's nightmare (a gradual move toward a single payer system), could end up resulting in a case where everyone who wants an abortion must purchase it out of pocket. That would be an interesting case of "unintended consequences"...