Misreading the Tea Leaves
CHRIS MAISANO
Analyzing the burgeoning Tea Party movement has become something of an obsession on the left, but unfortunately I think that many of us are misreading the nature of the movement. At last week’s Young Democratic Socialists conference in New York, numerous speakers made reference to the teabaggers, usually to either denounce them as a nascent fascist movement or to characterize them as representative of the political and economic frustrations of the downwardly mobile white working class. Related to this second point was the frequently invoked corollary that many of the teabaggers could have been footsoldiers of the left if only we had gotten to them before the astroturf outfits of the right set visions of Obamunism dancing in their heads.
But recent reportage and polling on the teabaggers seems to point out that this analysis doesn’t have much of a basis in reality at all.
A few weeks back, CNN released the results of a poll that shows that Tea Party activists and sympathizers are largely drawn from the ranks of the upper middle class. Almost three quarters of the teabaggers have attended college compared with 54 percent of all Americans, and 66% reported annual incomes of $50,000 or above. The largest income group among teabaggers were people making $75,000 or more. The only demographic characteristics that jibe with many leftists’ perceptions of the teabaggers is that they tend to be rural or suburban white males.
And if journalistic accounts of Tea Party activism are to be believed, the teabaggers are far from a fascist horde itching to set crosses ablaze. If anything, it seems that they tend to be social moderates who are much more interested in pushing a libertarian economic program than anything else. According to a New York Times report on the ideological proclivities of the teabaggers,
when the Sam Adams Alliance, a Tea Party-friendly conservative organization in Chicago, surveyed 50 leaders of the movement about the most important direction for the movement, none selected social issues. Most said “budget” or “economy/jobs.”
Needless to say, I don’t think the left has much to offer upper middle class white guys who mostly want to cut taxes, balance budgets, and destroy the last vestiges of the welfare state. The Tea Party ranks don’t seem to be a very fertile ground for left organizing, and anyone who thinks the teabaggers can be brought over to our side is engaging in wishful thinking. Let them have their little party. It’s not one I’d like to be invited to anyway.
Yes, you are mostly correct. However, the polling shows that only 66% make over $50,000 meaning that over a third make less than $50,000. The poll also shows that 58% of self described teaparty activist respondents make less than $75,000 a year. I am not sure but I don’t really think $50,000, or even $70,000, makes one upper middle ‘class’. This however is also a major problem: why are you conflating income with class? Realated to this, why wouldn’t the left care about proletarians who make $75,000? This economic crisis is undermining the security of these middle income people. Are you saying that the left should not care about this income group regardless of their relationship with the MOP? So, say, an auto worker who was laid off and is concerned about the economy and the increasing size of the federal budget (due to TARP and the wars) is not someone that the left should have some answers for? I don’t know, but it would appear that the white nationalism is the opiate for the masses of workers who are under attack, not automatic. It represents the ideological battlefield. If the left retreats into its ultra-left ghettos in the face of this huge crisis we stand to only swell the ranks of the ugliest of social responses. But you are correct, we should not be reaching out to teapartiers or going to rallies hoping to flip people.
I wouldn’t use the modifier “only” before 66%. That’s a huge majority. And I’m not just conflating income with class, but also educational level, which is also a very good indicator of class status. If something like 66% of teabaggers make over $50,000 and 75% of them have been to college (with 40% of that group graduating college, which is a huge percentage), then it’s pretty clear that we’re dealing with a group of people that is more well off than most other people. And that’s reflected in their ideology, which is focused on advancing a libertarian economic agenda rather than the kinds of social issues that matter to a lot of working class conservatives. It doesn’t look like we’re dealing with a movement of disgruntled proletarians here. And this kind of data undermines claims that the teabaggers are some sort of incipient fascist movement, which a lot of people on the left make.
We should definitely be trying to give people who think that the deficit is too high and that spending needs to be immediately cut an alternative explanation, because that view is dangerous and crazy. But I’m just trying to point out that the perceptions that many people on the left about the teabaggers is inaccurate in a lot of ways.
Yes, they may well be ‘more well off than most people’, but what does that have to do with class? You seem to be implying that the majority of self described teapartiers are petty or pure bourgeois. Maybe you have a point about the petty, but I know very few members of the capitalist class that make less than $75,000 (which 58% of those polled do) and many workers who make this much (most auto workers and unionized public sector workers). So yes, we are talking mostly about well off workers who feel threatened. Are we to just conceed that they are going to side with the bourgeois class?
I completely agree that many on the left hold inaccurate ideas about them, mainly the idea that they represent a larger ‘movement’ then they actually are and that they are fascist.
From a lot of the reports I’ve read about, it seems as if a very large proportion of tea party activists are small business types or have fairly high level jobs in the corporate world, not people that we might consider to be “workers” in a traditional Marxian sense. In this New Yorker article (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/02/01/100201fa_fact_mcgrath?currentPage=1), we come across an electrical engineer, the owner of a car dealership, a vintner who used to work in finance, and a project manager. You see people from similar social backgrounds popping up in other articles about the teabaggers too. NY state teabaggers want to run a real estate developer for governor. And let’s not forget that the whole tea party thing was launched by a rant against “the losers” by a finance guy on a trading room floor that was broadcast on CNBC. Sociologically speaking, these are not the kinds of people who will have much sympathy for much of anything the left has to say. They will side with the bourgeoisie because to a significant extent because they are the bourgeoisie, or at least the lower levels of it.
You are attempting to draw broad conclusions from very specific examples. The problem is that nobody has any real data on them. I doubt very much that they are all capitalists though. Either the teaparty is made up of capitalists- in which case there is really nothing more to fear than there ever was- or it is drawing in workers- in which case it is something to fear and to be combated. If it is just capitalists talking about how taxes suck and they want government off their backs, then why are we even talking about it? The reason that we are talking about it is because it is more than that, because its ideology has begun to resonate with some members of the working class (which in a traditional marxian sense means those who don’t own the MOP, not level of income or just unskilled manufacturers). I have no idea how one is in ‘a lower level of the bourgeoisie’? Either one owns the MOP or one sells their labor. There are no levels. Part of the major problem on the left is this confusion over what class means and a failure to take class politics seriously.
Brad
I’m thinking that the Tea people are essentially the same crowd as voted Perot.
By all of my personal accounts, these statistics are less than true. I am very close to a woman who is one of the creators and organizers of our local tea-party movement (weird, huh?), and her families annual income is over $300,000. I know a lot of other tea-baggers in my area, and they also all have am annual family income of over $100,000. I don’t live in an area that is packed full of upper-class people, on the contrary I live in an area that is very diverse of upper and lower class, And the majority of my friends and acquaintances that are considered upper-class are involved in the tea-party movement, while the majority of my lower and middle class friends are self proclaimed Republicans or Democrats that in all actuality don’t really give a shit about politics one way or another as long as they have job security and some level of material comfort, and just vote for their party out of comfort and habit. All of this said, I live in Texas which is of course a conservative stronghold. By all of my personal run-ins, the tea-baggers are upper class people who don’t want to give away any of their money in the form of taxes, and these people cannot be converted over. However the lower and middle class majority can be turned leftist. I really disagree with your description of upper middle and middle class. Where I live you cannot buy a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom house with an income like that, that to me is not upper middle/middle class.
What concerns me most about the Tea Baggers is that they are given tons of airtime in the corporate media and therefore their message is amplified. Even though left and liberal forces can in many places out-protest them if there is a town hall meeting, when the Tea Baggers are on the news as having rallies in all 50 states, etc. it makes it easier for a politician to vote the way their corporate campaign donations dictate they ought, and then say it was because their constituents were pressuring them to vote that way.
I’m with you there. I hate all the air time they’ve been given. The corporate media tends to go to the people who do the craziest things and whoever has the biggest crowds.
If the left got out there with their message, I think they would be given some air time.
Well, I think the teabaggers get press because they’re really the only ones out there protesting the administration in any visible way at this point, and they have some fairly sophisticated organizations doing media work on their behalf (and Fox News certainly helps their cause). But I also think it’s at least partially because they tap into an ideological strain in the American body politic that is much more widespread than our own. More often than not, there’s just more people that want to listen to what they have to say than what we have to say.
+1 to Chris’ last comment
The appearance and celebrity of the “teabaggers,” as Immanuel Wallerstein points out, is a symptom of the increasing political chaos taking place in the capitalist world system. What the World Left should be concerned about is creating a movement which not only attains the visibility of that recently enjoyed by right wing populists, but one which will display a greater degree of durability and effectiveness in attaining progressive change. We must be able to seize the social imaginary, as Castoriadis called it.
Chris, I think you have them nailed. But what are your arguments/narratives to counter the Tea Parties? I suspect the people who can be reached are those who already loathe the Tea Parties but aren’t confident how to respond. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places, but I see an excess of commentary and a dearth of counter-arguments.
Paul Street says to engage ‘em: http://www.zcommunications.org/notes-on-building-a-left-in-the-age-of-obama-by-paul-street
But ironically, shortly after the article appeared, the black agenda report (which has published a few of his editorials) denounced the tea party groups as racist.
The teabaggers are a lynchmob in waiting. I think the fact that they finally went around on Saturday calling certain congressmen fa**ots and ni**ers pretty much says it all. Leftists who mistake occasional antiestablishment and anticorporate sentiments coming from this mob for something the left might tap into are deluding themselves.
The income figures is interesting, but not conclusive, and another study by Quinnipiac University found the education level much lower than the CNN phone interviews: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1436
In general though the historical parallels to fascism are myriad. For an alternative perspective to the article above, check out: http://www.informationisaweapon.com
Also, Teabaggers are generally anti-high-finance and support “socialist” schemes such as government job creation. Contra the New York Times reports, many of the rank-and-file are evangelical though it is a pluralistic movement. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-25/tea-party-backers-who-scorn-socialism-want-government-jobs-push.html
Here’s the counter argument, what do you think of it?
http://www.informationisaweapon.com/blog/liberal-denial–bourgeois-ideology
I think the Tea Party movement is being co-opted by the mainstream Republican Party. Obviously both parties love war and both parties love to spend. The nature of the state is to tax, spend, and wage war. I don’t see how all of you Democrats support a party that is so in love with the warfare state. I don’t hear ANY Democratic congressman calling out the Administration on this point. While Ron Paul has been basically outcasted in the Republican Party for his unwavering devotion to anti-war and limited government principles.
I opposed Bush becuase of his warmongering and big spending ways. He was a statist. I oppose Obama for the same reasons. He is a corporatist and warmongerer. All you guys care about is the political party that you are apart of, and not the principles. Obama is the “righteous one” so I guess that makes Democrats wars a-okay! It is a wonderful thing for the left to protest right-wing movements, but for right-wingers to protest the left is rascist. How shallow can you folks actually be? I just don’t understand it. HOW DARE YOU CHALLENGE THE STATE!
Basically liberals and conservatives want the same thing just for different ends. You all want to take away our rights in order to amass power but to use that power for different reasons. You are all statists and are hopelessly devoted to your party hacks one way or another. You all should be ashamed for not having any principles. You are love with the use of force. Whether it is using that force to tax and spend or using that force to wage unconstituional wars of aggression. Shame on you.
Me, on the other hand. I believe in voluntary transactions and contracts, anti-war, non-coercion, freedom of expression and speech, and in a nutshell and simple put……LIBERTY. But the left and right love to have state control to force others to comply with their rules and their agendas. In other words you like to CONTROL people how you see fit. Me on the other hand, I have absolutely no use for controlling others.