Thomas Schaller

I've been trying to get together a post on Thomas Schaller for some time. Have you ever gotten so pissed off or to the point of so thoroughly despising someone or the viewpoints that person espouses that you just find yourself sputtering in frustration and anger?

That's where I am with Thomas Schaller.

For a tiny bit of what I think, you can go to Word Up and see my comments. Schaller answered some questions for Ed Cone and his faithful. I got in late so no one will probably see what I had to say, but I got a bit off my chest anyway.

If you don't know who Thomas Schaller is, you'll have to find out for yourself. I've declared my own personal civil war on him and I'll be damned if I'll plug his misanthropic tripe in book form.

I wrote Schaller after the election but got no reply. I had planned to publish it when or if I did, but since he can't deign to reply, I'll go ahead and post it here. I was pissed. Still am. Still will be. There is so much wrong with his arguments, I'd have to OD on my Ritalin to pick one to focus on to refute.

Mr. Schaller,

I have been reading some of your articles recently and, with all due respect, I would like to ask you how you explain a few things as soon as you can find time to respond to one of the millions of irrelevant Democrats in the south, "the most belligerent region of the country", for which you hold such contempt, if you can forgive me my momentary belligerence. At least, being a polite southerner, I'm not telling you to "fuck off", despite how many times such a statement has been made to us in effect or in actuality.

I live in Greenville County, South Carolina, "the Palmetto State (which) has been defying, opposing, ignoring or rejecting every beneficent governmental change since before the Republic was founded". Greenville County is undoubtedly one of, if not the most, Republican county in the state, regrettably being home to Bob Jones University. Predictably, Democrats did lose the race for Governor. However, in this county, the Democratic candidate won 37,614 votes. The total number of non-white registered voters in the county is only 33,086. How do you explain this considering your statements to the effect that only black people vote Democratic in the south and all white people invariably vote Republican even though blacks and whites go to the same places, socialize and their children attend the same schools?

Do you suppose that every single non-white voter registered in the county voted, voted Democrat, and so there are only about 4,528 white Democrats here or they were just so stupid they meant to vote Republican and so illustrate our citizen's unworthiness of any encouragement or attention from the Party, in your well-publicized opinion?

There are 194,119 registered white voters in the county. Do you suppose that the remaining 190,591 would have all voted Republican had they all voted? Only 71,531 did. Do you think it possible that with a little encouragement from the Democratic Party, Moore may have obtained the needed votes from the 119,060 remaining uncast ballots? He only needed roughly a third, or 33,918. Do you think that the fact that Democrats in this county are disheartened, disillusioned, feel hopeless and abandoned by the Democratic Party and that their votes are irrelevant and unappreciated had anything at all to do with the turnout?

No? Perhaps you might like trying to explain that to every single solitary white person in my extended family, and to all our friends, who voted Democratic, even those who had never cast a vote for a Democrat in their lives? I'm sure you wouldn't have any trouble explaining to those who had been independents how they only voted Democratic because the candidates were centrists (that's conservative to you). I don't know what you'd say to the rest of us, especially the intellectuals, the gay, and the die-hard liberals who supposedly don't exist and yet thought we had voted for our centrist Democratic candidates anyway. And just what would you say to all those Democrats who just stayed hopeless and at home? That they didn't warant any Democratic Party funds for get out the vote, at minimum?

This state is notable in that the counties on the edges of the state ended up with a majority of Republican votes, while the entire middle of the state is solidly Democratic. You are right that those counties are more heavily populated by what we call the black folks down here when we are being polite, since we are all still "Confederate", former Dixiecrats, even those of us who weren't yet born in 1948, much less 1862 and our mind set has not changed since, at least, circa 1960.

Shhh! Please don't tell any of my elderly relatives who worshipped FDR, Truman, and Kennedy, highly respect Carter, love Clinton, and thought Thurmond was an ignorant bigot and one of the biggest asses of the 20th century, but it's okay that you publicize your views to this effect at Liberal Oasis. They are too old to find out from there and the rest of us are too illiterate to read it even if we knew what the Internets were. I suppose we could ask some of our gay and/or liberal acquaintances up north or out west, since you imply we don't have any down here. But, then, what does it matter? In your viewpoint, all southern Democrats hold exactly the same views of all conservative Republicans and there's not a breath of difference between us, which is why the Party would have to go so far to the right to win us over it would contaminate all of the pure liberals who really were the single reason the Democrats won the majority as you explain in your book and at The American Prospect. I suppose you know all about southerners from Chapel Hill. They are so backwards up there, and yet, still make the rest of us look like such idiotic Confederates.

Still, since Greenville is blighted by BJU, let's talk statewide. Statewide, the Democratic candidate won 44.79% of the vote. 486,398 total votes. Don't you think it's too bad all of the 702,182 registered non-whites didn't all vote and vote Democratic? Had they, they alone would have handily defeated Sanford with his total 598,663 votes. Do you think it may have had anything to do with the hopelessness they felt and the ignorance of the Democratic Party as alluded to above? Do you think that of the total 1,750,536 white registered voters, he would have been defeated if no additional minority voters had turned out and the Democratic Party had stirred up only 486,398 voters of the remaining 1,264,138 available who did not vote? Can you explain how making the attempt would have been ill-advised?

I won't ask you to explain why our Lt. Governor race, and the race for Superintendent of Education are still too close to call between the Democratic and Republican candidates. They only matter to our measly little lives and the lives of our children. Unfortunately, neither I nor anyone I know can explain why Bob Inglis was returned to the House, except that he is Bob Jones incarnate, so they must have bussed people in to vote for him. We're just grateful for Spratt and Clyburn.

I guess we'll never know, will we? I just wanted to see if you would answer any of these questions for me, if you can take time off from continuing to fight the War Between the States. I don't suppose you will, since any explanation would likely contradict your many assertions which I have tried to portray here as crystal clear as they appear to my predjudiced southern eyes, but which you may feel are mischaracterized and want to clarify. I understand you think that the only way to win over the south is to take the majority without it and show us how great the Democratic Party will be to us. When that happens, perhaps you'll publish a picture book to illustrate it to us, since we can neither read nor hope nor look to the future and interpret the past like the rest of the country.

Hopefully, you won't mind if I post this inquiry on my personal blog and the three others to which I contribute when I take a break from waving the battle flag and whipping my slaves. I promise that if you do deign to respond, your every word will be posted so that all of us ignorant, unworthy, Bible-thumping, snake-handling, intolerant, bigoted, ultra-conservative evangelical southerners will be duly enlightened to whatever extent we are capable of being. I'm sure you can educate even those of us who have wrong-headedly thought of ourselves as being progressive, open, unpredjudiced, educated, intelligent, and even gay or loving, supportive family members of those who are, all of whom must immediately move out west or up north, since they have no place down here in the Confederacy. At least, maybe all "the gays" will take the "black folk" with them, just to validate, in my opinion, your hitherto unfounded allegations and bolster the Democrats in the north, mid-west, and west where they really count. After all, the voters in those areas are never fickle and are much more dependable than the inconstant south, as your version of history no doubt illustrates.

Anyway, I really would appreciate a response, which I do promise I will post, or not, depending solely upon your preferences.