ACORN is the new "Stabbed in the Back"

Why have the Republicans redoubled their attacks on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) as Obama's lead increases?

During the third debate, McCain claimed with the straightest face he managed all night that ACORN was destroying the fabric of our democracy.

ACORN did register over a million new voters in the last two years, most of whom are expected to break for Obama. However, the authorities are only questioning a few thousand registrations in each of the states where ACORN is being investigated.

Registering ficitional voters doesn't translate into additional votes in any case. Nobody is going to show up to vote as Mickey Mouse. Paid canvassers were taking advantage of ACORN by submitting made up names to fill their registration quotas.

The ACORN fight isn't about winning the election, it's about stoking resentment after the loss. Republicans are attacking ACORN to lay the groundwork for a "stabbed in the back" narrative to explain, if necessary, why their guy got beat by a black man and his millions of supporters around the country.

Comments

[Eric Jaffa]

Is "stabbed in the back" a quote from somewhere?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

It's more of an allusion to the stabbed in the back myth.

[TB]

Yeah, essentially the ACORN thing is a polite way of saying the Negroes stole our election.

And don't forget that the DOJ attorney firing scandal was because of "failure to prosecute vote fraud".

To republicans, it's just a system to be gamed.

[togolosh]

The great irony is that many, if not most, of the fake registrations were flagged by ACORN itself before submission to the government. That's some shitty-ass voter fraud if you ask me.

[parse]

As I understand it (and your link suggests) the stabbed in the back myth was the story that Germany lost World War I because citizens, who should be expected to support their country in a time of crisis, either withheld support or actively aided the enemy.

I don't see how ACORN could fit into a similar narrative to rationalize a Republican loss, unless you begin with the premise that ACORN could have been reasonably expected to support the Republicans and instead either did nothing or worked against them. That strikes me as a pretty hard sell. Who would have expected ACORN to support McCain to begin with?

Regarding paid canvassers taking advantage of ACORN--I've long had the impression that ACORN takes advantage of paid canvassers, using the (legitimately) progressive goals of the organization to pay workers pitifully small wages, sometimes on a piece-work basis. My direct experience with their labor practices is decades old, and perhaps they have changed in the interim, but I think a organizer interest in workplace justice, for example, would be hard pressed to justify the way ACORN treats its workers.

The organization doesn't seem to merit the criticism Republicans are throwing at them, but it sure does merit criticism.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

If Obama wins, Republicans will falsely claim that ACORN stole the election through massive voter fraud. As they will tell the story, they lost because they were cheated by a quasi-criminal organization, not because they were defeated by a rival political party in a fair election.

[B-Money]

Lindsay, you are speculating as to what MAY occur. But the way you are stating it makes it seem like fact. That is misrepresentative. You do not know what the GOP will do, no more than I do or anyone else. You are merely being derisive and partisan. I do not disagree that ACORN is being used as a tool by the GOP to attack Obama, but to say that the blame will be put squarely on ACORN and voter fraud is ridiculous.

I agree with what parse stated above. ACORN is not as stand up an organization as it's portrayed. Here in Ilinois, it is looked upon negatively outside of the inner city. Even Dems in the burbs where I live do not respect ACORN.

ACORN is sleazy, but not worthy of all the attention the GOP wants to give it currently.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I'm predicting based on the evidence at hand.

ACORN underpays its workers, so does Disneyland. Neither organization is trying to register Mickey Mouse to vote.

[parse]

Well, I've joined protests against Disney based on the way they treat their workers. But Disney doesn't present itself as a progressive organization, which ACORN does. If workers in Disney sweatshops can get find ways to get paid for more stuffed mice than they actually produce, my hat is off to them. I have similar respect for folks trying to make a living who try to get a few extra bucks out of ACORN. I don't think ACORN is a very good example of being the change you want to see in the world.

And claiming that defeat was due to cheating by a quasi-criminal organization doesn't really share much with the stabbed in the back myth. I think the analogy is inapt. A stabbed in the back myth would imply that the Republicans blame the defeat on members of their own party--saying, for example, that evangelicals refused to come out to vote for McCain or that they cast their votes for Obama.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I'm not defending ACORN's labor practices, I'm saying that their pay scale is irrelevant to the allegations of registration fraud.

[parse]

I would say that the relevance of ACORN's pay scale to allegations of registration fraud would be whether their penurious compensation scheme encouraged exploited workers to submit bogus registrations in the hope of earning a living wage. As I said, I'm not familiar with ACORN's labor practices in recent years, but I think the pay scale of years past would encourage desperate workers to game the system in order to have money for rent and food. It would certainly make me think twice before I described workers of "taking advantage of ACORN." I don't consider slacking in the face of exploitation to be taking advantage.

[TB]

Yes, and let's not forget that what we're talking about here is registration fraud, not VOTE fraud.

A lot of what the right is up in arms about, and what they keep alledging is vote fraud, which is a completely different thing.

Also, a lot of what people are complaining about ACORN doing, it has to do by law. In a lot of states, if someone turns in a registration card, correctly filled out or not, it MUST be entered into the rolls.

This is all part of a long term and ongoing voter suppression effort by the GOP.

[Dabodius]

McCain campaign hancho and sometime Freddie Mac lobbyist Rick Davis claims to see "a cloud of suspicion hanging over this election”
and pledges that “when John McCain gets elected President, we want to know that these are the most honest elections that Americans will have confidence in.” The implication? If Obama is elected, it was a dishonest election we shouldn't have confidence in.

And McCain said in the last debate:

"We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Setting aside the bad grammar (which suggests ACORN is a fictitious corporate person to McCain, a bogey or hobgoblin perhaps), we are being set up to believe that Obama's election will be an egregious fraud -- and the Obama presidency a monstrosity, illegitimate from the get-go.

When the elder Bush was elected, RWers spoke of a "Republican lock on the presidency." Bill Clinton's election threw cold water in their fervid faces, but they blamed third-party candidate Perot. Rather than account for Clinton's re-election as a repudiation of Gingrich's "Republican revolution," the Right sputtered that the election had been stolen with Chinese money. And in 2000, in a chutzpadik paroxysm of projection, they accused the Gore campaign of trying to steal Florida.

They don't take repudiation and defeat well, do they?

Btw, the people the German Right blamed for back-stabbing their German Siegfrieds (tens of thousands of whom were Jewish) were the Jews. We all know where that went. This time we are being invited to blame African-Americans for "destroying the fabric of democracy."

[parse]

But the Jews were German. ACORN members and African-Americans are not, by and large, Republicans. That's why the analogy doesn't work.

I also wasn't aware that ACORN was an African-American organization. Unless that is so, how would claiming that ACORN was destroying the fabric of democracy invite people to believe African-Americans were destroying it?

[Windypundit]

"To republicans, it's just a system to be gamed."

Not just the Republicans. I'm from Chicago. I know what I'm talking about here.

[Alon Levy]

As I understand it (and your link suggests) the stabbed in the back myth was the story that Germany lost World War I because citizens, who should be expected to support their country in a time of crisis, either withheld support or actively aided the enemy.

That's not exactly true. The German right didn't blame the WW1 loss on lack of support among the general citizenry, but on the social democrats, the unions, and the Jews. Supposedly, these groups demoralized the nation and forced Germany to surrender when it could win. The parallel is to the American right's version of Vietnam - "We could win, but the liberal media and anti-war protesters forced a withdrawal."

And no, there isn't much of a parallel between the Dolchstosslegende and ACORN. The closest parallel to ACORN is the insistence of many Democrats that Bush stole the 2000 and 2004 elections.

[JollyRoger]

I don't see how ACORN could fit into a similar narrative to rationalize a Republican loss, unless you begin with the premise that ACORN could have been reasonably expected to support the Republicans and instead either did nothing or worked against them. That strikes me as a pretty hard sell. Who would have expected ACORN to support McCain to begin with?

This is a twisting of the story to make it unwieldy. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that after they lose this election, the Klanservatives are going to insist that they lost because ACORN was allowed to pad the rolls. This, if played right, might get some more money flowing in to the coffers of intolerance. As a matter of fact, Rick Davis all but said today that the SCOTUS was assisting the State of Ohio in perpetrating voter fraud. There you have yourself a whole bunch of "America hater" officials, all conspiring to keep Johnny and the GOP away from what is rightfully theirs. It doesn't have to make any sense, because the average wingtard fanatic doesn't really care whether something he's been told is true or not.

[Alon Levy]

the Klanservatives

I stopped reading at this point.

[john_manyjars]

the Klanservatives

I stopped reading at this point.

Posted by: Alon Levy | October 18, 2008 at 01:42 PM

Too bad, you might have learned something.