I'm About 70% Sure This is Dead Right: Project Blue Christmas is Dead Wrong

The idea of Project Blue Christmas is that Democrats should buy from companies that support Democrats.

The purpose is to organize and develop a decentralized network of citizen soldiers - activists, if you prefer - to prove to those big corporations that, just as the candidate with the least money loses, so too does the business that actively works against our interests and causes.

A thought experiment featured on the Cobb24 website, which is apparently the driving force behind Project Blue Christmas, asks readers to ask themselves this question:

Suppose a man in your town with Neo-Nazi views launches a vigorous campaign. If the hardware store down the street you have been going to for years hung Nazi flags up around the store and put signs up with racist language on them to support his campaign, would you still shop there and why not?

One of the reasons I disagree with the whole idea of Blue Christmas is encompassed in that question: Republicans, for all of their considerable flaws, are not neo-Nazis.  If you can't tell the difference between Republicans and Nazis, you need to go out and meet more Republicans.  (The same goes for Republicans who can't tell the difference between Democrats and terrorists.)  For our liberal democracy to work, we need to be able to make qualitative distinctions between the different groups with which we disagree. 

Those qualitative distinctions are not something we do well, these days.  (Not "we" Democrats; "we" Americans.)  The marketing consultants who run political campaigns are big on product differentiation, which invites all kinds of mischief.  Product differentiation is how John Kerry's meidcal insurance plan became a "government take-over of the healthcare system," something it was decidedly not.  The marketing consultants are aided by TV bookers who believe that conflict is entertainment, and who do what they can to turn titanic overstatement into the only political discourse we have.  It's no wonder we spend all of our time arguing past each other and not actually accomplishing anything.

Declaring economic war on companies that support Republicans based on the logic that that's what you'd do with neo-Nazis is not going to make our political culture less acrimonious.  It's not going to do us any good at all.

There are good tactical reasons to avoid Project Blue Christmas as well.  Take, for example, Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart is everybody's favorite whipping-boy not only because it's Republican, but because it is the Angel of Death for lots of small, inefficient businesses.  Where Wal-Mart goes, creative destruction follows. 

People forget that Wal-Mart's initial growth strategy was to bring quality and selection to rural markets the big retailers only served by catalogue.  Everyone sentimentalizes the infinite Mayberry downtowns that Wal-Mart killed.  Yeah, well, having a wife who grew up in one of those idealized Mayberries, let me tell you that Wal-Mart's arrival out on the outskirts of Ottumwa, Iowa, was a Godsend.  I tried to buy a tie one Christmas Eve in Ottumwa, and the downtown "shoppe" that was my only option was dingy, barely staffed, and had in stock a selection of neckware that dated back to the mid-1950s at a price that made me want to hang myself.  This much for something this ugly? 

A year later, Wal-Mart had opened its doors and the shoppe was gone.  When I needed an article of clothing -- a white dress shirt, I believe -- I was in-and-out in ten minutes with a 100% cotton button-down that was crisp, inexpensive, and -- admittedly -- a little boxy in its tailoring.

If Wal-Mart hadn't come to Ottumwa the tiny downtown stores would have died anyway.  The small shops couldn't afford to stock the kind and quantity of merchandise even rural shoppers prefer, and city-dwellers who decry Wal-Mart sometimes remind me of the environmentalists whose goal seems to be to keep indigenous peoples from moving out of their thatch huts.  Well-educated white people aren't the only people who want indoor plumbing or, to bring things back to Wal-Mart, a decent selection of clothing for their children.  If Wal-Mart weren't there, it doesn't mean Ottumwans would shop at the Leave It to Beaver Haberdashery downtown.  Instead, they'd drive 70 miles to Des Moines to get something their kids will wear without complaining.

Wal-Mart dumps a ton of money on Republicans, there's no question about it.  (Maybe they wouldn't if Democrats would stop trying to put Wal-Mart out of business, but that's another subject.)  So let's say Project Blue Christmas is incredibly succesful and the Democratic 48% of the country stops shopping at Wal-Mart.  Who gets hurt?  Along with people who shop at Wal-Mart -- who have t ostart driving to Des Moines to dress their kids -- the people who suffer the most are Wal-Mart's employees and shareholders.  All of those employees and a good percentage of those shareholders are potential Democrats: People of modest means who would benefit from a government more attuned to the needs of the Little Guy.  Damage them and they'll not likely vote Democrat any time soon. 

So let's recap: If Project Blue Christmas is succesful, it will increase public acrimony and alienate large chunks of the population most likely to vote Democrat.  Sounds like a great idea.

In general, I'm in favor of market pressure as a tool to change corporate policy.  Boycotts, it seems to me, are a healthy sign in a free-market Democracy.  So I'm not entirely comfortable being as entirely uncomfortable as I am with Project Blue Christmas. 

But then I read this:

This is not a boycott. Companies expect simple boycotts. It is a fact of business. The chief flaw of most boycotts is their narrow appeal, and reliance on public anger over issues which in many cases do not directly affect the very people they rely on to support the boycott. Boycotts and strikes come and go in corporate life.

This is a campaign of attrition.

Project Blue Christmas is an attempt to kill companies based on the party affiliation of company management.  That's different from boycotting a product to inspire the company to environmental sensitivity or to convince them to pay their overseas employees a living wage.  It's not penalizing a policy; it's penalizing an affiliation.  It posits a poltical culture where party affiliation is at least in some sense a crime sufficient that vengeance must be exacted. 

Progressives of both parties -- yes, there were Republican progressives -- spent much of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries fighting against that.  That's why there's Civil Service protection for public employees, for example.  You open that particular Pandora's Box again and you've enabled a political culture where employers can hire and fire based on party donations and activities, and where marketplace behemoths (like, for example, Wal-Mart) can exclude vendors who support the wrong candidates.

That turns us into a whole country that is either scared to voice a political opinion or dependant on voicing the right political opinion in order to keep eating.  Can you name a country that has that kind of political culture that you admire?

I'm as angry as anyone at the way Republicans are changing this country, and I'm disgusted that they're doing it using fear, dishonesty and secrecy as their primary weapons.  But even given that, I doubt that the Democratic response should be a rollback of people's right to party affiliation without economic consequence. 

So here we are: Project Blue Christmas. If we win, if it's massively succesful, both the country and party are weaker.  Why go to the trouble?

Via Skippy and Skippy.

Comments

[John]

Don't put people out of work as others are forced into virtual slavery because you don't want to drive to Des Moines. What does that teach you kids? Your inconvience is more important than dignity and a living wage. You hurt the Wal-Mart employees and all other service employees by shopping there and ligitimating Wal-Mart's anti-labor policies.

Use the Internet or mail order, hello!