I think I come down in the middle between "they are an important movement" and "they are not a movement at all; nothing to see here." What they show me is a symptom of how deeply rattled a segment of the country was by the historic economic crisis that's taken place over the last two years. I've never fully bought the idea that they're just racists, the argument that asks why they weren't protesting the deficit-ballooning ways of George W. Bush and the Republican GOP.
One of the reasons, I think, is because there was a tremendous economic expansion for a big chunk of Bush's years in office, starting shortly before the 2004 election and ending in his last year. It's impossible to overstate how much has changed, but at the same time it's hard to see what those long-term effects will be. America is like a drunk who fell down a flight of stairs in an alcoholic stupor, and is now drinking black coffee and walking it off. There is a deceptive sense of returning to normal, but the drunk has internal injuries that are going to make themselves felt before long.
The tea party people are a sign of this. I'm guessing many of them had to push back retirement, or had adult children move in with them, or just saw the value of their investments disappear quicker than they ever gained value. These are people who grew up thinking of General Motors as if it were as eternal and symbolic of America as the Grand Canyon, and they've just seen GM nationalized to prevent it from going belly up.
These are real traumas, and their effects are going to be with us long after the 2010 elections that the entire political press (especially Politico) are obsessing over. To me, the fact that you have thousands of people who would normally be the staid middle class coming out to vent totally incoherent rage is a sign that bad things have happened, and are happening. I don't think it's as significant as Brownshirts shutting down Jewish department stores in 1932, but I also think it's a mistake for Politico to dismiss the movement because it's not producing primary winners.
This isn't about primaries. This isn't about politics as the press understands it. It's like the graffiti that started springing up in 1970s England - people dabbing gnomic slogans of disgust on the walls, sentiments boiled down simply to things like "We Hate." That was a fleeting but real sign of broader troubles, and that's what I think the Tea Party movement is: the writing on the wall.
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Date: 2010-04-23 12:40 am (UTC)One of the reasons, I think, is because there was a tremendous economic expansion for a big chunk of Bush's years in office, starting shortly before the 2004 election and ending in his last year. It's impossible to overstate how much has changed, but at the same time it's hard to see what those long-term effects will be. America is like a drunk who fell down a flight of stairs in an alcoholic stupor, and is now drinking black coffee and walking it off. There is a deceptive sense of returning to normal, but the drunk has internal injuries that are going to make themselves felt before long.
The tea party people are a sign of this. I'm guessing many of them had to push back retirement, or had adult children move in with them, or just saw the value of their investments disappear quicker than they ever gained value. These are people who grew up thinking of General Motors as if it were as eternal and symbolic of America as the Grand Canyon, and they've just seen GM nationalized to prevent it from going belly up.
These are real traumas, and their effects are going to be with us long after the 2010 elections that the entire political press (especially Politico) are obsessing over. To me, the fact that you have thousands of people who would normally be the staid middle class coming out to vent totally incoherent rage is a sign that bad things have happened, and are happening. I don't think it's as significant as Brownshirts shutting down Jewish department stores in 1932, but I also think it's a mistake for Politico to dismiss the movement because it's not producing primary winners.
This isn't about primaries. This isn't about politics as the press understands it. It's like the graffiti that started springing up in 1970s England - people dabbing gnomic slogans of disgust on the walls, sentiments boiled down simply to things like "We Hate." That was a fleeting but real sign of broader troubles, and that's what I think the Tea Party movement is: the writing on the wall.