James Rowen & Elitism

This article by James Rowen slipped by me on Monday when it was published at Wispolitcs.com, but fortunately I caught the second time around when it was published at OnMilwaukee.com. James Rowen, amongst other issues with his piece, perfectly encapsulates why Democrats are finding it so hard to win elections these days. It's because of their haughty elitism.

I should step back at this point. Rowen was not so perceptive as to actually write an article that would cause the Democratic party to look within and address its ample problems. Instead, it was his own arrogant attitude which allowed those of us on the outside of the Democratic machinations to see how party opinion makers truly think:

Want to know how and why erroneous information could get entered on registration cards? There are people in our less-than-wealthy city -- and this is a fact that may have escaped suburban politicians like GOP state Rep. Jeff Stone as he lectures Milwaukee about how to conduct a proper election -- who don't write or spell well.

And

When I was in a long line of people at City Hall waiting to vote absentee, the couple behind me could not read the small print on the forms. I loaned them my cheap, drugstore magnifying reading glasses, and they passed the glasses down the line where a half-dozen more people were grateful to use them.

The couple was elderly. They did not speak the Queen's English with perfection. They appeared to be low-income. They did not know that non-prescription glasses are available at the local Walgreen's, though at $10 or $12, the glasses might have been out of their reach. Without them, I can guarantee you that their forms would have been a mess, and perhaps, would have shown up as someone's Voter Fraud Exhibit A.

Let's break this statement down a little bit. Rowen wants to play class warfare here, and he continues to use it throughout the article, claiming also that it is just too much trouble for the poor to get identification. The only reason the Democratic party isn't a completely broken and irrelevant organization is because they fear monger on the basis of age, wealth and race. So Rowen, instead of making the simple point that some people just aren't good readers and writers, links wealth to one's ability to read or write well. That is one of the most condescending statements I've ever seen. Instead of honestly and intellectually looking at the problems in Wisconsin's current election law, Rowen decides to blame it on poor, Democrat constituents being too ignorant to fill things out correctly. This is the kind of tripe that, along with basic moral issues, that drove me away from the Democratic party in college, and which helped me learn that Conservatives were not the evil monsters I'd been hearing from all corners.

Rowen's elitism is not the only problem in this article. A larger problem is Rowen's spin. At least that's what I'm attributing it to-spin. It could be a disconnect from reality, it could be a failure to intellectually understand his opposition's position. I trust that Rowen, who tells us in the article "...I have a masters degree in English," is smart enough to see where Republicans are coming from, so it has to be spin. Let's start with this fantasy:

The GOP-er's dream scenario is that investigators can connect election-eve tire slashings, incomplete or erroneous voter documentation and sloppy decision-making by overwhelmed poll workers to a hidden Democratic Party bunker behind a secret door in City Hall.where Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett oversaw Fraud Central like a crazed Wizard of Oz.

What? I understand that Rowen rhetorically wants to make Republicans look like bogeymen here, but come on. It does not take a lot of effort to see that Republicans do not see the tire slashing incident and voting problems in Milwaukee as some sort of single conspiracy directed by some evil genius Democratic mastermind. In fact, I've not seen the two connected in any way other than as examples of the overall disregard Democrats seem to have for fair elections these days. Next, let's watch Rowen cover for a prank:

The tire-slashings damaged a parking lot filled with vans rented by Republican election workers. It was stupid and criminal behavior, but let's also remember that it was a prank that got out of hand.

Rowen goes on to compare it to an earlier case in Milwaukee when E. Michael McCann went easy on some Rocky Horror Picture Show devotees who got out of control. There is no comparison here. This was much more than a prank. It was a deliberate attempt at disenfranchisement, and to back that up, let me quote Lavell Muhammad from the criminal complaint: "We got ‘em, we got ‘em. They’re not going anywhere now." If you or I were to pull a prank that resulted in the death of someone, make no mistake, we'd face felony charges. These 5 deliberately set out to disable the vehicles Republicans were going to use to transport poll workers and voters. Felony charges sound just about right.

I initially disregarded Rowen's piece because what he writes is so transparently partisan. In this piece, he's just not on the right side of history, and the way he sells out to the Democratic Party and condescends to a Democratic constituency is just one more example of why more and more of the country is turning away from the Democratic party