Barone rightly reveals how the Democrats constituency has shifted over the past 40 years--but this is not a new finding. But his assertion that the Dems are comprised of "transnational secularists" is as much of a misleading stereotype as claiming that all evangelicals are snake-handling zealots. Barone knows his stuff but his distaste for Ned Lamont has clouded his judgement in this case.
That stereotype might fit a significant number of academics in humanities departments across the country but it hardly describes the folks who turned out in the Connecticut primary.
I'm a bit perplexed by Barone's assertion and by Tom's embrace of it. he bases his argument on exactly one piece of evidence, a poll from 2004. Traditionally, Big tent tends to be hostile to polls. Most reasonable people are especially skeptical of one-off polls done around election time. After all, most of the time the party in opposition is going to be, well, oppositional. So what we have set up is a bizarre loitmus test -- support the war, and support it in the way that this administration wants it supported, or in the way that Liebarman supports it, or the intimation is that you dom not love your country, as though being critical of the place you live automatically disqualifies you from loving it. Yes, your Democratic friends won't like the argument, probably because it smacks of an opportunistic argument lacking in the rudiments of sound evidence and critical analysis. And all of this driven by the turnout in a party primary in Connecticut in an off-election year. What, were there no tea leaves in Barone's office the morning he wrote this claptrap? I have no idea what secularism has to do with ones Americanness, nor do I understand how one cannot have a transnational mindset but also love one's country all the more. I have a secular and transnational mindset, which has no probitive value for my belief in the values of our country. There is neither correlation nor causality.
2 comments:
Barone rightly reveals how the Democrats constituency has shifted over the past 40 years--but this is not a new finding. But his assertion that the Dems are comprised of "transnational secularists" is as much of a misleading stereotype as claiming that all evangelicals are snake-handling zealots. Barone knows his stuff but his distaste for Ned Lamont has clouded his judgement in this case.
That stereotype might fit a significant number of academics in humanities departments across the country but it hardly describes the folks who turned out in the Connecticut primary.
I'm a bit perplexed by Barone's assertion and by Tom's embrace of it. he bases his argument on exactly one piece of evidence, a poll from 2004. Traditionally, Big tent tends to be hostile to polls. Most reasonable people are especially skeptical of one-off polls done around election time. After all, most of the time the party in opposition is going to be, well, oppositional.
So what we have set up is a bizarre loitmus test -- support the war, and support it in the way that this administration wants it supported, or in the way that Liebarman supports it, or the intimation is that you dom not love your country, as though being critical of the place you live automatically disqualifies you from loving it.
Yes, your Democratic friends won't like the argument, probably because it smacks of an opportunistic argument lacking in the rudiments of sound evidence and critical analysis. And all of this driven by the turnout in a party primary in Connecticut in an off-election year. What, were there no tea leaves in Barone's office the morning he wrote this claptrap?
I have no idea what secularism has to do with ones Americanness, nor do I understand how one cannot have a transnational mindset but also love one's country all the more. I have a secular and transnational mindset, which has no probitive value for my belief in the values of our country. There is neither correlation nor causality.
dcat
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