There’s an article in the Boston Globe that ought to be required reading for all progressive activists. The reporter, Sarah Schweitzer, spent time with some New Hampshire residents who are poor, losing homes and jobs, going without health insurance, and will probably vote Republican next year.

I say we need to read this, because this is why progressives remain powerless. If the very people who are most hurt by Republican policies continue to vote for Republicans, what hope is there for changing anything? Or persuading Democrats that they should be more supportive of progressive policies?

One uninsured couple with thousands of dollars in medical bills explained why they don’t have insurance:

They’d like health insurance. But it’s too expensive. President Obama’s plan for subsidized health care is an abstraction, something they’ve heard about, but not banked on. They voted for Obama in 2008. Not next year.

“Health care is not the anxiety,’’ Darlene said. “Basic needs are.’’

And I’m thinking, health care is not a basic need? But of course, she meant they have to first keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. When you’re living that close to the edge, health care is a luxury.

The health care reform law hasn’t made any difference to them, although it might after 2014, when most of it finally goes into effect. However, it appears the New Hampshire residents don’t know much about the law (and, judging by the continued incessant whining about the individual mandate, I’d say lots of progressives don’t understand it, either). Nor do they have any idea why their lives are so hard. They just know they voted for a Democrat in 2008 and nothing seems to be much better, so they’ll vote for a Republican now.

And then there’s this:

Peters has no health insurance. He could, perhaps. His business has done well, his children are grown, and he owns a home, along with several properties in town.

But like many around here, he’s a do-it-yourselfer. He built his house, and he prefers to pay his own way on health care.

“It is a gamble, but just shoot me,’’ he said. “I am not going to pay $2,000 just for health care.’’

He’d rather patch himself.

He bent at the waist and pointed to his pate. A tender scar runs down a third of its length. A few weeks earlier, he had gashed open his head reaching for a key hidden at the house where he was doing work. “If I had insurance, I’d have run to the hospital and had 20 stitches and it would have cost $1,000. Instead, I got some tape and pulled hard and really tight and closed it up. And well, it’s healed.’’

Of course, if he hadn’t healed, he would have finally sought medical help rather than die of sepsis. And if the bills were higher than he could pay, the rest of us would absorb his bills, and the cost of health care would go up a little more. This guy is very proud of his “independence,” but he’s really a moocher. And whenever healthy people make an economic choice not to join the health insurance risk pool, they become a factor in the steadily rising cost of health care that threatens to strangle the U.S. economy eventually.

And then there’s this, about the lady who runs the local food pantry:

Cross, a social worker and 40-year-resident of Ashland, gladly offers the help. But charity, from a steely Yankee’s perch, should be a local affair. Obama’s plan for national health insurance makes her nose involuntarily wrinkle.

“It’s an entitlement and it takes away ingenuity,’’ she said. “I don’t think I can be open-minded because I am so against the philosophy.’’

Getting more people affordable health care is an “entitlement” that “takes away ingenuity”? Whichever right-wing propagandist taught his fellow travelers to call federal benefits “entitlements” (which connotes people demanding things they haven’t worked for and don’t deserve) was a genius, you have to admit. Evil, but a genius.

Anyway — the people in the article certainly have internalized right-wing talking points about the evils of a big federal government. They also cling to a view of themselves as ruggedly independent and resourceful, even when they are really moochers. They are not well informed and have no idea what federal policies are actually doing to their lives. Thus, they are easily duped into voting for candidates who are going to make their lives worse.

Back in the day, New Deal Democrats would have been going to these people and explaining to them what’s really going on and how the federal government really can do something about it. Back in the day, people would have listened without the knee-jerk antipathy to “big gubmint” that years of right-wing propaganda have drummed into their heads.

Now, we can complain all day long about these people being idiots, but probably they’ve lived all their lives without ever having heard progressive/liberal arguments for government policies.

Over the past several years, time and time again progressives find themselves discussing how to reach people like this to educate them. No one ever comes up with a workable idea. Certainly, many are brainwashed beyond hope, but not everyone.

As I tried to explain to a commenter yesterday — years of voting and opinion poll patterns show that right-wing ideology is firmly entrenched in about 25 to 30 percent of the population. This seems to be a floor at which popularity for bad right-wing ideas or politicians does not go below, no matter what. There is no point even trying to talk to that group.

But the percentage of voters who self-identity as liberals or progressives is even smaller; maybe 20 percent. That leaves roughly half of U.S. voters who are not married to any particular ideology, although they may lean one way or another at times. And, certainly, many have been well trained to respond to the usual right-wing dog whistles and talking points. And they mostly self-identify as “conservatives.” But I’m sure you’ve also seen polls over the years that show many of these people support specific liberal ideas when they are not labeled “liberal.”

In all the discussion about what OWS should do next, I’m not seeing any consideration of this primordial problem. The OWSers may talk about representing the 99 percent and “everyday people,” but polls show a majority of Americans do not feel connected to OWS or the Tea Party, either.

Near identical majorities say neither movement represents their values — 57 percent for the Tea Party, and 56 percent for Occupy Wall Street.

However,

A significant majority (eight in 10) believes the gap between rich and poor has widened during the past 20 years, a finding that held true across generational, religious and political lines. Nearly half of those polled believe the American Dream — the idea that if you work hard you’ll get ahead — once held true but no longer does. …

… A strong majority (69 percent) says increasing taxes on people who make at least $1 million a year is an appropriate way to decrease the budget deficit.

About the same proportion reject cutting federal money for social programs that help the poor (67 percent) or cutting federal funding for religious organizations that help the poor (66 percent).

OWSers would do well to spend some time reflecting on why their clever street theatrics have not mobilized more Americans, when a whopping majority of Americans appear to agree with OWS’s purpose.

A movement that could rally Americans behind economic justice issues would be a powerful thing. It could make a real difference. OWS is not going to do that unless it gives up its countercultural self-indulgences and gets serious about outreach. I’m not holding my breath.

Be sure to read Jonathan Chait’s “When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?” about how liberals began to dump President Obama even before he took office. But then after you’ve read that, read the Booman:

In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the liberal left was the intellectual soul of Democratic Party. It had to cobble together an uneasy coalition of socialists and Jim Crow Democrats and city bosses and ward heelers. But liberals were in charge of the big things, like implementing the New Deal, creating the United Nations, and setting up the Bretton Woods system. …

… But then came Vietnam. That stupid war destroyed the liberal consensus. It created a counterculture. And that counterculture is where liberal legitimacy went to die. You cannot be a governing philosophy at the same time that you are countercultural movement. A countercultural movement is set up to oppose power. It is a critique of a country, not a platform for governing a country. And that’s where the left has been stuck since about 1968. This is something distinct from Will Rogers’s old saw about “I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat!” This isn’t just about herding cats. It’s a fundamental flaw in the progressive predisposition.

Yes. Governing is about enacting what is possible. Franklin Roosevelt made very un-liberal deals with southern segregationists to get his legislation passed. Today’s Left went ballistic when Obama invited Evangelical pastor Rick Warren to speak at his inauguration.

I keep saying this, but President is the most progressive president since LBJ. What he’s enacted so far is much more liberal than anything the Clinton or Carter administrations even attempted. Chait documents this. Yet in liberal circles one is not allowed to point this out. It’s like everyone had an anti-Obama microchip planted in their brains.

Relating this to the OWS movement — one of my frustrations with the OWSers is that it is trying to be a popular-democratic movement and a counterculture at the same time, and I don’t think it can be both. I just read this on Salon:

The image of huge crowds of everyday people confronting legions of cops protecting the conclaves of the rich and powerful who run the world is more powerful than any words. It would draw the battle lines between the 99% and the 1% in the streets. And it is ultimately in the streets, not in meetings or conferences, where the political struggle will be played out as they have been from the French Revolution more than two centuries ago to the Egyptian Revolution today. Holding public space is key.

That’s fine, but I don’t think this lady, for example, is all that “everyday.”

You want the guy watching on television from Dubuque, Iowa, who is worried about his job and his debt load and doesn’t like his daughter’s boyfriend and goes to the Shiloh Baptist Church every Sunday to be able to relate to what you are doing. Maybe he has a lot of conservative social views, but he might still relate to economic injustice issues, if someone could make the effort to relate to him a little bit.

The counterculture should have been left in the 1960s.

Update: A writer in the Economist suggests that liberals are disappointed in Obama only because his campaign rhetoric set their expectations too high. That’s some of it, maybe, but it doesn’t account for the degree of Obama-hating on the Left. There is something much more pathological going on.

From what I’ve seen on television, there were significant demonstrations today. For different perspectives, see the SEIU BLog and the Talking Dog.

I’m going to be away from the computer Friday and Saturday and a part of Sunday, so you’ll have to manage without me for a couple of days. I have made arrangements with my technical team (my daughter, Erin) to check the moderation filter from time to time to be sure c u n d gulag’s posts get published, but you might have to wait a bit longer than usual.

I hope one of the things the OWSers have learned is that what gets reported or rumored or even becomes common knowledge is not necessarily what actually happened. Always — consider the source. Consider who benefits by manipulating public view. And most of all, don’t believe everything you hear, or read, because you want to believe it, or just because lots of people you know believe it. Lots of people are often wrong.

That said — Jonathan Bernstein, “Obama never secretly killed the public option. It’s a myth.” and “The NY Times Should Be Ashamed of Itself (Again).” See also Matt Glassman. Apparently all the hysteria about Obama killing the public option was along the same lines as much of what we saw in the New York Post about OWS.

Update: See also John Cole, “We’re Hopeless.” While the Left certainly is sometimes guilty of generating rumors and misinformation, that’s all the Right ever does.

Update: See the Booman.

There is a great deal of blather on the Web today about how the United States has entered into some new phase of political repression. It’s like no one could have predicted that OWS might be buried in a smear campaign and then dispersed by the Powers That Be with impunity.

Ahem.

Let’s go back in time just a bit. David Atkins writes about the Kent State shootings — “It’s hard to believe today, but at the time, the public overwhelmingly blamed the students for the Kent State Massacre.”

Yes, and it’s important to understand this. A few days ago on some Salon comment thread I ran into a guy who was advocating more confrontations with police; like this would always work in OWS’s favor. And then he claimed that the Kent State shootings had galvanized public opinion against the war.

And I said, no, it didn’t. I remember. Most people thought the shootings were justified. The guy refused to believe me. The fact is that by the time of the shootings a majority of the public had already developed serious misgivings about the war in Vietnam, but they hated the antiwar movement more than the war. So innocent college students could be shot in the back on their own campuses, and most of the public was fine with it. I doubt very much there was a measurable change in public opinion about the war, one way or another, because of Kent State.

“In a battle between police and public protesters, the majority of the nation will usually side with the police,” Atkins writes. Again, this is true, and let’s look at how this works with the Bigger Asshole rule.

If you are new here, the Bigger Asshole rule is an axiom of public demonstrations — the purpose of a public demonstration is to make your opposition look like a bigger asshole than you are. Because, whichever side gets the public’s sympathy, wins. And the bigger asshole loses.

The purpose of a public demonstration is to change public opinion. It is not about “expressing yourself” or, primarily, about “speaking truth to power,” even though you may be doing that. “Power” doesn’t care what you think, and your demonstrations don’t frighten them. What does frighten them is that perhaps the public at large will sympathize with you and begin to call for whatever reforms you are demonstrating about.

This is true because usually the only thing that will compel Power to change is overwhelming public pressure, preferably accompanied by popularly supported reform legislation.

However — and we’ve seen this time and time again in U.S. history — if the public gets a look at you and decides it doesn’t like you, the public will be perfectly OK with whatever the police or National Guard or others do to you. Because in most people’s minds, you will be the Bigger Asshole. And this is true even if the public more or less agrees with your position.

See how it works?

Complicating this is the fact that establishment news media will likely be complicit in any smear campaign Power wants to hit you with. Lies will be told, and believed. News stories will focus on the worst behavior of the demonstrators, even if that worst behavior is far from representative.

If, in a group of 10,000 people, one guy does something obnoxious or shocking, that’s all most people will hear about your demonstration — what that one guy did. And in most people’s minds, that one guy will be representative of all of you.

I saw this happen over and over again during the Vietnam antiwar demonstrations. All it took was one guy waving a North Vietnamese flag or screaming obscenities or throwing a rock at police, and the peaceful demonstrating of thousands of others would be ignored.

And, yes, probably sometimes these were provocateurs, but not always. Some of these hotheads will be on your side, and you may feel great reluctance to tell them to get lost. But you must. Because hotheads hurt your cause.

This is why demonstrators have to be very smart about media relations and very disciplined about how they present themselves to the public. Yes, lies will be told, but if there is no visible basis for the lies, not everyone will believe them.

Enough of the general public sided with Martin Luther King and his civil rights demonstrators to gain popular support for civil rights for racial minorities. That’s because MLK and his crew were very disciplined. I might add that MLK and his crew certainly were not taken by surprise by anything thrown at them by police. They’d spent their whole lives being oppressed by Power. They knew how to discipline themselves to not react, because in those days an African American who acted out tended to not live very long.

In our current situation, I’m willing to bet most of the hotheads are white, middle or upper class, and male. They’ve never had to discipline themselves to not react.

Keep in mind also that in most of the clashes between union organizers and Power in the 19th century, the general public sided with Power. The general public also was just fine with the Wounded Knee massacre and with the detention of Japanese Americans in World War II. If there had been television and the Internet back then, things might have been different, of course.

My point is that we’re not entering into some new age in which Power can take the law into its own hands and brush away opposition like so much dandruff. This is the way things have always been. If you are going to engage in public demonstrations, you have to be well prepared for it.

This morning I noted that a judge had issued an temporary injunction against Mayor Bloomberg to keep Zuccotti Park open for demonstrations. I still don’t know what’s going on with that. According to the Daily News,

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lucy Billings signed an early-morning order temporarily barring cops from keeping protesters and tents out of Zuccotti Park.

But within hours, she was off the case as court administrators chose a new judge — and excluded Billings’ name from the list of candidates.

Billings’ biography notes that before she became a judge in 1997, she spent three years as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and also worked work community legal services.

And I’m thinking, WTF? But if you keep reading, it says,

Court officials used a computer program to pick a new judge for an afternoon hearing on the restraining order — and Billings’ name was not included because she usually handles real estate cases, court officials said.

The judge assigned to the case is Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman, an elected civil court judge who has been appointed to serve in the higher court for years.

OK, but … citing the same article, Little Lulu informs her readers —

Update: Hmmmmm….ACLU-tied judge who assisted Occupiers is ordered off the case:

No, she was not “ordered off the case.” She was never “on the case.” And her past association with the ACLU is irrelevant. But — Godwin’s Law can go hang — Malkin and her ilk really are Nazis at heart, aren’t they?