Why America is Exceptional

In a New York Times op-ed criticizing president Obama's past attempt to gain support for an invasion of Syria, the Russian president Vladimir Putin assailed an idea close to many Americans as part of a larger criticism of American foreign policy, particularly towards intervention in the Middle East. He directly blamed the idea of American exceptionalism as a reason why the United States is so willing to intervene in the affairs of countries who have not threatened it. American exceptionalism as told by Putin is the idea that America is unique among nations for being responsible to spread freedom around the world. Since we are the oldest continuous democratic government in the world, our freedoms are ingrained in our institutions like nowhere else. His use of the phrase came as a shock to most Americans who today hear it from those on the pseudo-nationalist right like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. They too share the definition of American exceptionalism to mean America has, or a at least believes so, a responsibility to spread freedom around the world due to its exceptional history as a democratic nation.

But this is not what American exceptionalism really is, or at least was originally meant. The exact origins of that phrase date to Putin`s country of origin, Russia, and to its most legendary leader in recent centuries, Joseph Stalin. The phrase originates from a 1929 conversation American Communist leader Jay Lovestone had with the General Secretary. In Moscow Lovestone argued that socialism wouldn´t happen in America because the proletariat who would benefit the most from socialism are not interested in revolutionary change. America had a uniquely individualistic culture without the class antagonism of a feudal/monarchical past. Growing imperialist ventures opened up foreign markets to bring more riches to buy off the working class and shift the worst exploitation overseas. Stalin during this conversation demanded Lovestone end this ¨heresy of American exceptionalism¨ and the phrase was born. Stalin used the phrase a a term of derision for the blinding of the proletarians from their true class interests. The phrase stayed within leftist circles and faded away as the American Communist movement lost its thunder after the New Deal erected a great compromise between labor and capital by use of the state and the economy rose to new highs after World War 2. It gained its current connotation after the 1980´s where its meaning was transmuted into a positive affirmation of Americas inherent faith in individualism and the role it had in spreading those values throughout the world. At that time, America´s economy hit the worst recession since the Depression and lost its first war in Vietnam. Confidence in Americas optimistic individualism was challenged further by Socialist insurrections in Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan during the 1970´s.

What makes America exceptional is the fact that no socialist movement has ever been viable on a national scale. The most common definition today of what makes America exceptional fails to explain what continues to make America unique today as democracy has become established in more and more countries since the 19th century, and as formerly monarchical Europe has become far more left-wing than the United States on just about every major issue. Russia itself has a representative government and a similar federal system to the United States. These countries are more left-wing because they have organized and successful socialist movements. one of France´s major parties is the Socialist Party who in 2012 won control of the presidency and the National Assembly. Germany´s Social Democratic Party is one of two major parties, which is actually the first Marxist political party in the entire world. Even Great Britain which is much closer to the United States in its political-economy has the Labour Party as one of its three major parties, a party which describes itself today as Democratic-Socialist. Our neighbor to the south Mexico has the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) which is aligned with the Socialist International and is one of three major parties. Americans scoff at Socialism by associating it with poor despotic countries like the Cuba or North Korea and claim Marx was dead wrong when he claimed that the wealthy capitalist countries would soon see revolution, but this is myopic since each advanced capitalist economy has developed a welfare state, and most have a socialist movement based historically around labor unions. The lack of successful socialist parties makes Americans think that Socialism can only succeed by violent revolutionary means and makes it even harder for left-wing movements to gain ground.

The failure of socialist organizing explains itself. A movement doesn´t succeed without prior successes. The fact that from the beginning no serious challenge to liberal capitalism has succeeded in open opposition suggests that there is something inherent in American society itself that prohibits that kind of criticism. Socialism is defined in opposition to capitalism and as a larger critique of Classical Liberalism which unlike in Europe forms the basis of Americas values. Left-wing politics developed as an anti-thesis to the class structure and had a decidedly more radical character in Europe. In America there didn´t develop a feudal class system to ingrain a dislike of wealth in itself, and its association with political oppression.

The larger problem that prevents socialists from gaining ground is that our system isn´t friendly to outsider ideologies period. This has its advantages for the even the most dedicated leftist because it means the far-right doesn´t succeed either. They do affect the political system but never from within and are usually co-opted. This sacrifice is what has allowed the United States democracy to last so long. A basic consensus that liberal democracy is the best system of government can over power what problems afflict the application of those principles. In this way by accepting liberalism carte blanche we have been able to approach issues on a pragmatic basis accepting socialist solutions for some and laissez-faire for others. America is exceptional in the modern era because it doesn´t have a strong socialist movement, but it is exceptional against human history because it has a strong devotion to liberal ideals.

The Latino Vote: Historical Considerations

The 1960 campaign, as close as it was between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, can be seen as the closing of one door and the opening of another in American politics. Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic to be elected president, and the last Irish Catholic candidate for whom that mattered. Before him was Al Smith, the first Irish Catholic to be nominated for president of either major party, back in 1928 for the Democratic Party. Unlike Kennedy he had no shot at winning running against Herbert Hoover who was the air apparent to the prior two Republican presidents of the 1920´s, but what he did was to solidify the ¨ethnic¨ white vote, consisting of largely Catholic descendants of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Before Smith the ¨immigrant¨ vote was actually split according to region and nationality. Afterwards it became off-limits for Republicans for about four decades.

Just like how Al Smith´s success bringing in a new constituency for the Democratic party proved latent, Kennedy´s greatest success would prove to be tapping into the Latino vote. Kennedy´s campaign was ahead of its time by bringing Latino voters into national politics because of how small a proportion of the population they were. In 1960 Latino´s were 3.6% of the population, compared to 16.4% in 2010. They were such a small percentage of the population that the Census Bureau didn´t even list Latino/Hispanic as a separate racial category until 1970. However the closeness of the 1960 election meant that every vote counted. Mexican-American voters helped tip over Texas and New Mexico to Democrats. The first Spanish political ad was done by Jacqueline Kennedy, and the slogan Viva Kennedy was adopted. In fact a day before his assassination on November 22nd 1963, he made the first speech acknowledging Hispanic-Americans as an important voting block speaking to a group of Mexican-American civil rights activists in Houston, and convinced his wife to speak to them in Spanish. In 1960 Kennedy won 85% of the Latino vote. A Democrat has not won the presidency since without at least 60% of Latinos. 

At the same time, twilight had been reached with white ethnic voters. As soon as 1964 working class and urban whites began casting ballots for right-wing candidates like George Wallace and Barry Goldwater as the old political loyalties to the Democratic Party faded away and were replaced with the ¨New Politics¨ of appealing to younger and minority voters. The linchpin of ethnic white support for Democrats was economic. By the 1920´s the Republican Party had purged most of its progressive wing and the Democratic Party had by way of Woodrow Wilson´s efforts brought those progressives into the fold as well as trying to reduce the influence of the reactionary elements of the Solid South. When the Great Depression hit its worst in the early 1930´s, the previously progressive Herbert Hoover opposed federal relief efforts and as the unemployment rate passed double digits was routed in a landslide by Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Roosevelt´s strong support of labor rights ensured the largely blue-collar ethnic whites would opt to re-elect him to serve a total of four consecutive terms. This voting pattern continued for decades until after World War 2 when the nation suffering over a decade and a half of depression found itself into unprecedented levels of prosperity. Thanks to the GI Bill and federal investments in national infrastructure as well as strong labor rights, working class whites finally were able to join the middle class. Becoming middle class meant moving out of the urban environment and from the influence of Democratic political machines and restrictions on immigration passed in the 1920´s cut off the influence of immigrants from the Old World who might pressure their Americanized counterparts to stick to their ethnic roots. 

The significance for today is whether Kennedy´s courtship of Latinos into the Democratic coalition will end some time in the future like Al Smith´s efforts did by the 1960´s, resulting in Latino´s voting more or less like white Americans. This goes beyond politics as a ¨normalization¨ of voting patterns may also coincide with full assimilation into American society meaning Latino´s will cease to be a distinct demographic. Already Latinos vote slightly more Republican than they used to, but still overwhelmingly choose the Democratic Party. They have gone from a high of 90% for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to a low of 53% in 2004. When controlling for general waves in the whole electorate, the Latino vote has been 30-40% for Republicans since the 1980`s. By Bush 43`s administration, Latinos appeared to be leaving the Democratic Party as Bush won a staggering 44% of their vote in his close re-election. When looking at American-born Hispanics, they lean more Republican than their predecessors and were set to continue this trend. During the 2000`s Latinos replaced Blacks as the largest minority group in the United States and became a large source of new small businesses. It seemed likely that the ¨race card¨ that Democrats have used with Blacks since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would not work with a population arriving after the chaos of the 1960`s became the norm and when being Catholic wasn`t special, possibly neutralizing race and cultural issues. Republicans after Reagan to Bush Jr. further neutralized the immigration issues by backing amnesty plans in 1986 and 2006 respectively.

But alas this shift didn`t continue as conservatives realized how Republicans were trying to co-opt Latinos by moderating their tone and policies on illegal immigration, and lashed out creating grassroots movements led by AM talk-radio to kill the 2006 and 2007 attempts at comprehensive immigration reform. Even though Republicans ran John McCain for president in 2008, who was a leading advocate of immigration reform, they won only 31% of the vote nationwide reversing much of their gains only four years prior. In between 2008 and 2012 the Tea Party wave of the 2010 midterms elected at the state level governors and legislatures which would reverse any support for a more lax immigration policy and aggressively go after illegal immigration. In 2011 Arizona passed SB1070 which required law enforcement to inquire the citizenship status of someone they pulled over on suspicion for a crime. Several other states like Georgia followed suit and invited federal prosecution from the Justice Department. Nationally Republicans conspired in the Senate to kill the DREAM Act which would give citizenship to undocumented youths who finish High School or join the military. During the 2012 primary for their presidential, Texas Governor Rick Perry who signed a bill similar to the DREAM Act was attacked from all sides as supporting amnesty, and received the harshest attacks from Mitt Romney who would go on to win the nomination. Romney did this as part of a larger strategy to win over hard-right holdouts who preferred just about anybody to the Governor who signed a healthcare bill in Massachusetts which served as the basis for the Affordable Care Act. In addition to lambasting Rick Perry, he also gave his support to self-deportation. Self-deportation is the idea that making life for illegal immigrants harder by barring them from government benefits will incentivize them to go back to their home country and apply for citizenship. This was included in the 2012 GOP platform and sealed the Republicans performance with Latinos. Romney received 27% of the Latino vote nationwide and lost the popular vote in total by 5 million. The decades long gradual drift towards the Republicans reversed itself within four years.

This isn't a surprise however. Even before the backlash in 2006 and 2007, at the state level in the 1990´s conservatives were already honing their attack. Independent 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot ran a populist campaign against the North American Free Trade Agreement and argued that passing NAFTA would increase illegal immigration, bringing the issue of Mexican illegal immigration to national attention. Patrick Buchanan was the first to run a populist movement against immigration as he gave a serious challenge to George Bush Sr. in the 1992 presidential primaries winning 38% in New Hampshire and getting the high profile keynote speech at the Republican nominating convention, and again performed very well in the 1996 primaries actually winning the New Hampshire primary and coming second in the Iowa caucus. The turning point came in 1994 in California when then Republican governor Pete Wilson visibly supported Proposition 187 which prohibited illegal immigrants from accessing state social services. This and other propositions like Prop. 209 in 1996 which banned affirmative action were the first instances of self-deportation and the backlash against comprehensive immigration reform. Prop. 187 incidentally was the first time immigration policy was dealt with on the state level, setting the stage for Arizona in 2011. It was also the first time Latinos mobilized as a political block of consequence. Their efforts bore fruit when in 1999 the Proposition was ruled unconstitutional. Since the 1990´s the Republican Party has fallen into minority party status in California and after 2010 holds no statewide office.

While Romney was extolling self-deportation, Obama made amends with Latino voters. Obama won big with Latinos partly by promising to pass immigration reform in his first term. As this didn´t happen due to the primacy of the faltering economy and Congressional opposition, Latinos began to sour on him. This was made worse as the recovery in his second term still saw higher unemployment rates among Hispanics than the total population. As 2012 approached Obama knew he needed every vote he could get in what seemed to be a close re-election. In the summer of 2011 he announced that the Department of Homeland Security would defer deportations of minors, enacting a sort of DREAM Act. Now he had something to show for Latino voters. He and his wife Michelle also appeared on Spanish-language television and ran campaign ads in Spanish. This combined with the outright hostile rhetoric of the Republicans garnered him 70% of the Latino vote.

Voter trends are not deterministic, and depend a lot on how parties can adapt to rising demographics. Such reactions can accelerate or reverse even linear trends. So far Latinos have followed the pattern laid by previous ethnic groups, but have reversed course recently due to Republicans doing just about everything they can to lose as many Latino voters as possible. It would seem that 2012 would signal a reverse of this, but besides some encouraging words about outreach efforts, Republicans again have fought to kill an effort to reform immigration. Comments by Iowa Congressman Steve King describing immigrants as dogs have seen heavy rotation on Spanish media. And so Democrats continue to reap the gains of the Hispanic vote. An extended childhood period seems to be the foreseeable future. What is interesting is that this phenomena seems to be effecting all minority groups, even Asians who despite assimilating rapidly vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. What seems to be happening is that the current crop of immigrants have the additional aspect of being racial minorities and are affected by the concentration of White voters into the Republican Party since the 1960´s when White Ethnics pulled the lever for Richard Nixon in ´68. With the first non-White president being a liberal Democrat this exodus has reached completion. But still this isn´t inevitable as Asians like Latinos were slowly leaning more Republican before the Nativists emerged post 1990´s. The future will be either a return to a linear progression or a sharp reversal, the first over decades and the latter in maybe a few years.

(Written for Latino politics class)