With Democrats like these...

by: Thurman Hart

Mon Jan 19, 2009 at 10:09:16 PM EST

During the Civil War, a number of Democrats in Northern States opposed the war. Among other derisive names, they were often called "Butternuts" (the color of Confederate uniforms). But the lingering term of derision is "Copperhead."

The name was taken, obviously, for the copperhead snake. Copperheads are true ambush predators. Snakes with stronger venom, like rattlesnakes, will strike an aggressive pose and attempt to intimidate a threat. Snakes with lesser poison (or no poison) will either try to escape or will play dead. Copperheads earned a more notorious reputation because they simply depend on their coloration and stillness to pass undetected - until an unwary pedestrian steps too close to the snake. Then it strikes, injecting a poison that, while not threatening to the life of a grown human, is still painful and can cause damage to both muscle and bone tissue. It is potent enough to be a source for cancer treatments.

This is where I introduce you to the reigning Copperhead in the state legislature, Ray Lesniak. While calling himself a Democrat, Lesniak is actually doing little more than serving as a Republican mouthpiece. He's New Jersey's version of Joe Lieberman. Take the jump and I'll explain.

Thurman Hart :: With Democrats like these...

Consider Copperhead Ray's take on affordable housing:

COAH is the classic governmental regulatory nightmare - created with the best of intentions, the council has become nothing more than a zoning bully, forcing municipalities to comply or face rampant overdevelopment under the umbrella of the dreaded "builder's remedy." If the promise of affordable housing is to be realized in the Garden State, we need to revamp COAH, with an understanding of the limitations New Jersey faces as the most densely-populated state in the nation, and with fairness to all parties.
New Jersey needs economic development. We need to encourage businesses and corporations to locate here, to create high-paying jobs for our residents and continued ratables for municipalities. Affordable housing means nothing if potential homeowners can't earn a paycheck to buy the homes.

How many right-wing memes can one man throw into a single answer? "Regulatory nightmare", a governmental "bully", and linking the idea of providing people with affordable housing to economic malaise. Hey, with friends like these, we might as well just cut our own throat and get it over with.

Meanwhile, Sean Kean gives the Republican view:

Ironically, the chilling effect on economic development means that the low and moderate income people the rules were designed to help will not have the jobs they needed to buy even modest homes. There is no such thing as an "affordable" home for someone with no income. The plan seems designed to solve our affordable housing problem by driving more people from our increasingly unaffordable state.

Yes, I see how this is so very different from Lesniak's position. Here, we're told that the bully government has pushed nightmare regulations that are not only killing jobs, but it defeats its own purpose by increasing unemployment among the poor and, magically, forcing them out of the state. Lesniak just doesn't use the whole array of right-wing memes.

The Copperhead continues to push the right-wing storyline:

We must allow for commercial development as well as residential development. If that means scaling back the number of affordable housing units that can be built in municipalities, that's a sacrifice we must make

Yes, I'm sure that the ~~Butternut~~ Lesniak family is really sacrificing a lot these days. I always love it when a politician tells us they are willing to screw the poor and passes it off as a shared sacrifice. It's a sacrifice he'll make, you see, because he doesn't really have to sacrifice a damn thing. He'll sit in his home and sacrifice the opportunity for other people to do the same.

Let's be honest, too. There isn't a single development that has been cancelled by a 2.5% affordable home assessment. There were a lot of projects cancelled by the credit crunch set off by the unwillingness of people like Lesniak to force lenders to follow common sense regulation to protect ordinary people from rapacious, predatory financiers.

Lesniak's plan is to unhitch affordable housing from development and to somehow dump it into "smart planning" that is based on funding from the federal government. Affordable housing, he claims, is an infrastructure issue. Kean's plan is to simply scrap affordable housing plans altogether. I'm not sure which is more cynical - saying that it will happen by itself if we do nothing or saying that Washington will do it for us if we do nothing.

Housing is a human rights issue. Every person deserves a place to live. Lesniak is supposed to be a member of the party dedicated to speaking for those people who cannot muster the economic and political might to pluck their piece of the American dream from the stream of our times. So why does he sound so much like a conservative Republican trying to convince us, in Ronald Reagan's words, that "government is not the solution, it is the problem?"

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With Democrats like these... | 2 comments

Copperhead (4.00 / 1)

Just a historical footnote: Copperheads were indeed Northern conservative Democrats who either supported the racist regime in Richmond or opposed a war to bring it down. Some were for "states-rights." NJ, being a small state, was largely responsible for what has been called the first "minority protection" plank in the US Constitution---the equal representation of all states in the US Senate, regardless of population. Consequently these conservatives opposed an enlargement of Federal power and the raising of a Federal army to suppress secession. Secondly, there was economic dependence upon Southern cotton in many Northern manufacturing centers. Last but never least, racism undoubtedly infected their political judgment and sympathies. But they were called Copperheads not from the poisonous snake, but from the copper Liberty head penny. They apparently did not regard this as a pejorative term but as self-identification with the goddess of Liberty. It is interesting how such "labels" can flip and take on new and oftentimes more powerful associations. And here's the warning: History has not added the slightest perfumed whiff to cover---no less to improve---their obnoxious reputation even after one and a half centuries.

by: Teedyuscung @ Tue Jan 20, 2009 at 13:42:40 PM UTC

History (4.00 / 1)

The term was used as early as the 1840s in parts of Pennsylvania to differentiate between greenback Democrats and "copperhead" Democrats who disapproved of paper money. The popularity of the term around the Civil War, however, is related to the snake.

The New York Times printed a story in April of 1861 that told of a box mailed to President Lincoln from somewhere in the south. The box fell and broke open at the post office and two copperhead snakes were revealed. Although the story was sort of discredited by the Chicago Tribune (the larger of the two snakes was said to be "four and a half feet" - which is about a foot and a half longer than the maximum length for a copperhead), the "attack" was denounced as a cowardly form of assassination. Horace Greeley picked up on the idea and on July 20, 1861 began referring to northern sympathizers as Copperhead Democrats in the New York Tribune, ready to strike without warning from their hidden lair.

By 1864, the Peace Democrats (as they called themselves) had taken to using the liberty penny as a badge worn on their lapel or hatband to denote membership in their many secret socities. This was due, in large part, to the utter failure of Union Generals to win in the field and to the re-election campaign of Lincoln, which was no sure thing at the time.

While Copperheads are remembered as being vile, they had considerable political power in some states, particularly the mid-west. In South Jersey, the rather large Quaker population opposed war on general principle, and were unfairly lumped in with the more subversive members of the Copperhead contingent.

Copperheads gained control of the platform committee and made immediate peace as platform of their campaign (even while nominating McClellan as their candidate - who rejected the idea of immediate negotiated peace). Lincoln won because of Union victories in Shenandoah and Atlanta (as well as a Virginia overland campaign that cost Grant men but pushed the front back) and because John Fremont withdrew his abolitionist Radical Republican when Lincoln adopted abolition of all slaves as a platform and accepted a pro-war Democrat as his VP (Lincoln won his second term as a "national union party" ticket").

You are quite correct, though, that there has never been a white-washing of the copperhead efforts - which included open recruitment for the Confederate army in some places and official acts of subversion in many cases.

And to sharpen a fine point, the New Jersey Plan was intended to protect small states, but it was not a protection for minorities - although New Jersey was one of the few states that allowed free Blacks and even women to vote under our original state Constitution.

by: Thurman Hart @ Tue Jan 20, 2009 at 14:51:31 PM UTC

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