There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
You know who the white working class really like according to polling?
Joe Biden
Maybe we should be supporting him so that we can help these folks out.
Yes, this is a thing the socialists are missing. Joe Biden may not have a very good grasp of Marxism but he *does* know how to talk to white working class left-wing people. Much better than Trump, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, actually.
As an educated middle-class person, I'm voting Warren all the way. But her concerns probably seem disconnected from kitchen-sink issues to the working classes - who I doubt really care very much about breaking up Google or getting rid of the filibuster.
Warren talks constantly about kitchen-sink issues. She's been doing that kind of shit for her entire career involved with politics. It's like the core of her campaign message.
And Trump understands very very well how to talk to white working class people. It's one of the biggest reasons why he won in 2016.
Warren talks about what a person who would be concerned about kitchen sink issues might consider, whilst standing by the (possibly apocryphal) kitchen sink.
Actually just directly talking about them, not as much.
You really should actually listen to her. She constantly talks about this shit directly. It's like the core of her whole stump.
I haven't listened to her stump speeches, it's true. I've listened to her in the debates though, and she just seems too deeply entrenched in the verbal tics associated with academia to shake them off.
I should broaden a bit and see just how comprehensively this criticism really is. So far, I keep having people link me to her 'talking directly' and it never is... it's always passive-voice, once-removed, hypothetical.
+1
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Beto thinks he can push Democrats over the top in Texas.
Narrator: He couldn't.
Smash cut to Beto walking around an empty hall on election night, music from Peanuts playing
This is awfully dismissive of a candidate that came closer to taking a Texas Senate seat than anybody in recent memory and allowed a bunch of downballot victories we had no business winning.
You know who the white working class really like according to polling?
Joe Biden
Maybe we should be supporting him so that we can help these folks out.
They're all secretly leftists despite what they say to polling, how they vote and the entire history of US and western politics.
Fuck us I guess we never try to win over new voters.
But youre wrong when you say white workers have never been open to leftism in US political history.
Sure. When.
...like the entire history of organized labor up until they were finally violently crushed after the turn of the century?
I mean you know great lakes socialists used to be a thing yeah?
US socialist parties were founded and run by European working class immigrants ffs
This is damning by the faintest praise. Organized labor wasn't primarily leftist or socialist in the US, especially at the height of its power. Low level regional politics and parties that never held a single statewide or federal office are a laughable example.
You're talking about fringe movements in US history and trying to literally the central organizing force in all US politics from the early 19th century to today.
Its like saying black people support the GOP by pointing to Tim Scott.
edit
You know who the white working class really like according to polling?
Joe Biden
Maybe we should be supporting him so that we can help these folks out.
They're all secretly leftists despite what they say to polling, how they vote and the entire history of US and western politics.
Fuck us I guess we never try to win over new voters.
But youre wrong when you say white workers have never been open to leftism in US political history.
Sure. When.
...like the entire history of organized labor up until they were finally violently crushed after the turn of the century?
I mean you know great lakes socialists used to be a thing yeah?
US socialist parties were founded and run by European working class immigrants ffs
This is damning by the faintest praise. Organized labor wasn't primarily leftist or socialist in the US, especially at the height of its power. Low level regional politics and parties that never held a single statewide or federal office are a laughable example.
You're talking about fringe movements in US history and trying to literally the central organizing force in all US politics from the early 19th century to today.
Its like saying black people support the GOP by pointing to Tim Scott.
Organized labor is definitionally leftist. You were wholly mistaken to say there is no history of receptiveness to left politics among white workers in the US
You know who the white working class really like according to polling?
Joe Biden
Maybe we should be supporting him so that we can help these folks out.
They're all secretly leftists despite what they say to polling, how they vote and the entire history of US and western politics.
Fuck us I guess we never try to win over new voters.
But youre wrong when you say white workers have never been open to leftism in US political history.
Sure. When.
...like the entire history of organized labor up until they were finally violently crushed after the turn of the century?
I mean you know great lakes socialists used to be a thing yeah?
US socialist parties were founded and run by European working class immigrants ffs
This is damning by the faintest praise. Organized labor wasn't primarily leftist or socialist in the US, especially at the height of its power. Low level regional politics and parties that never held a single statewide or federal office are a laughable example.
You're talking about fringe movements in US history and trying to literally the central organizing force in all US politics from the early 19th century to today.
Its like saying black people support the GOP by pointing to Tim Scott.
Organized labor is definitionally leftist.
This doesn't track the history of the US labor movement. Or many modern unions (all cop unions being the obvious example)
One of the Best Parts in the Mine Wars is noting how the mine owners worked to keep their workers segregated by race and nationality where they lived, but they all still worked together in the actual mines themselves and were able to overcome those efforts to segregate them by actually working side by side.
We could probably learn something from that.
Perhaps multiple things.
Things like how racism has historically been a tool used by the powerful, repeatedly in the US, to divide the lower socioeconomic classes against each other so they're easier to control and serves to protect the capital class from retribution from the various ways they exploit those classes. It mutates into its own distinct nightmare, like a weaponized virus evolving beyond its initial use, but that was the reason it was fostered constantly by the richer classes in American history.
One of the Best Parts in the Mine Wars is noting how the mine owners worked to keep their workers segregated by race and nationality where they lived, but they all still worked together in the actual mines themselves and were able to overcome those efforts to segregate them by actually working side by side.
We could probably learn something from that.
Perhaps multiple things.
Things like how racism has historically been a tool used by the powerful, repeatedly in the US, to divide the lower socioeconomic classes against each other so they're easier to control and serves to protect the capital class from retribution from the various ways they exploit those classes. It mutates into its own distinct nightmare, like a weaponized virus evolving beyond its initial use, but that was the reason it was fostered constantly by the richer classes in American history.
Thank you for proving my point by parroting the rhetoric I was pointing out.
edit (The UMW was often segregated in the South btw)
You know who the white working class really like according to polling?
Joe Biden
Maybe we should be supporting him so that we can help these folks out.
They're all secretly leftists despite what they say to polling, how they vote and the entire history of US and western politics.
Fuck us I guess we never try to win over new voters.
But youre wrong when you say white workers have never been open to leftism in US political history.
Sure. When.
...like the entire history of organized labor up until they were finally violently crushed after the turn of the century?
I mean you know great lakes socialists used to be a thing yeah?
US socialist parties were founded and run by European working class immigrants ffs
This is damning by the faintest praise. Organized labor wasn't primarily leftist or socialist in the US, especially at the height of its power. Low level regional politics and parties that never held a single statewide or federal office are a laughable example.
You're talking about fringe movements in US history and trying to literally the central organizing force in all US politics from the early 19th century to today.
Its like saying black people support the GOP by pointing to Tim Scott.
Organized labor is definitionally leftist.
This doesn't track the history of the US labor movement. Or many modern unions (all cop unions being the obvious example)
The history of labor and the cops' place in it is another thread
In that same regard, I think it was in here the answer to "What do we do to make the populace less terrible about things?" is "Educate them and desegregate them so that people have more experience with people unlike themselves so that they form bonds together instead of being able to fall back on bullshit that divides us."
You know who the white working class really like according to polling?
Joe Biden
Maybe we should be supporting him so that we can help these folks out.
They're all secretly leftists despite what they say to polling, how they vote and the entire history of US and western politics.
Fuck us I guess we never try to win over new voters.
But youre wrong when you say white workers have never been open to leftism in US political history.
Sure. When.
...like the entire history of organized labor up until they were finally violently crushed after the turn of the century?
I mean you know great lakes socialists used to be a thing yeah?
US socialist parties were founded and run by European working class immigrants ffs
This is damning by the faintest praise. Organized labor wasn't primarily leftist or socialist in the US, especially at the height of its power. Low level regional politics and parties that never held a single statewide or federal office are a laughable example.
You're talking about fringe movements in US history and trying to literally the central organizing force in all US politics from the early 19th century to today.
Its like saying black people support the GOP by pointing to Tim Scott.
edit
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
One of the Best Parts in the Mine Wars is noting how the mine owners worked to keep their workers segregated by race and nationality where they lived, but they all still worked together in the actual mines themselves and were able to overcome those efforts to segregate them by actually working side by side.
We could probably learn something from that.
Perhaps multiple things.
Things like how racism has historically been a tool used by the powerful, repeatedly in the US, to divide the lower socioeconomic classes against each other so they're easier to control and serves to protect the capital class from retribution from the various ways they exploit those classes. It mutates into its own distinct nightmare, like a weaponized virus evolving beyond its initial use, but that was the reason it was fostered constantly by the richer classes in American history.
Thank you for proving my point by parroting the rhetoric I was pointing out.
edit (The UMW was often segregated in the South btw)
What "rhetoric" am I parroting?
Racism in the US was developed initially as a means of cementing chattel slavery in the American colonies by plantation owners as a means of circumventing protestant practices regarding the freeing of slaves through the acceptance of Christianity. By establishing the idea of people being lesser as signified through "race," the powerful managed to create a paradigm where they were the rightful rulers and controllers of land and property through virtue of the color of their skin, while likewise cementing their own place in that hierarchy. This was aided by giving even exploited lower class whites a rung below them on the social heirarchy, allowing them to feel that there was someone worse off than they were. Thus effectively dividing the lower classes against one another while allowing them to be exploited ruthlessly by the upper classes.
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
EDIT: By this logic, think about what that means the Democratic Party needs to do to beat Trump
Please follow that train of thought, and join me in screaming in horror at what you are, I hope, accidentally suggesting
Netanyahu's proposal to annex occupied territory would violate international law and make a two state solution nearly impossible. All who support Israeli-Palestinian peace must oppose it.
The last time a mass democratic movement actually got anything done in this country was undoing Brown v Board and even that was like forty years ago
So no, actually, I don't think "I will trust the people to rise up and rework our society in the sort of peaceful revolution that has happened maybe five times in the whole of human history" is a good plan, sorry
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate. Which all basically circles back around to the idea that forging a mass political movement in part by appealing to white people with economic populism does not seem at all likely to happen.
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate.
Again, do you not see how your attempt to rationalize the behavior of the party post-Reagan is suggesting that we have to become like the people and policies we are decrying as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the nation?
like, I totally get what you're saying. I just disagree with you and am horrified at the implications of it because, without realizing it, you appear to be endorsing following the Republican party wherever they go when they win an election (because it's what the body politic wants, according to your diagnosis), which leads us further and further right, which has been the problem in American politics for the last several decades..
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate. Which all basically circles back around to the idea that forging a mass political movement in part by appealing to white people with economic populism does not seem at all likely to happen.
No, polling pretty frequently puts Americans on the left of Democratic leadership and its gotten more so as time has gone by. They convinced themselves they had to be conservative-lite and haven't changed in 30 years.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
bernie is completely right to say that the democrats should try to appeal to the white working class on economic issues, and the idea that this is somehow an intrinsically racist enterprise constitutes a much bigger purity test than anything socialists have ever done
He’s right, but do the white working classes agree? They have minds of their own, and just because socialism is logically best for them doesn’t mean they support it.
A lot of them seem determined to die in a slightly better ditch than their brown neighbor. Nazism wasn’t the best choice for the German working class either - it predictably destroyed their country - but they chose it anyway.
This is weird because it seems like youre saying people will condescend to the WWC but youre doing it here.
The mistake is in believing that voters are invariably voting against their best interests when they vote for things that hurt them economically.
I think a bigger mistake is in believing that voters are consciously voting to hurt themselves economically.
People don't simply value racism over their own well being. "Immigrants are stealing our jobs" isn't some incidental belief, irrelevant to the core of just really loving racism. The racist narrative isn't that the Other is inferior but actually harmless.
The racism isn't blinding people to voting for things that make them poorer, the racism is explicitly telling them that voting different would make them poorer.
Until they are presented with evidence that contradicts the narrative that "immigrants are stealing jobs" and they just cling harder to their racism. "Economic anxiety" is just a cover for racism, even if they don't know it.
Unless you're saying that people accept the evidence and still defend their claim, I don't think "people won't believe you" is much of an argument against the idea that people have mistaken beliefs
Also for reference, as much as Shryke wants to continue this hypothesis about the Reagan victories being indicative of the total American political worldview, it should be noted that 80 and 84's turnouts were 52.8% and 53.3% of voting age population, respectively.
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate.
Again, do you not see how your attempt to rationalize the behavior of the party post-Reagan is suggesting that we have to become like the people and policies we are decrying as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the nation?
like, I totally get what you're saying. I just disagree with you and am horrified at the implications of it because, without realizing it, you appear to be endorsing following the Republican party wherever they go when they win an election (because it's what the body politic wants, according to your diagnosis), which leads us further and further right, which has been the problem in American politics for the last several decades..
No, I'm pointing out that the Nixon-and-onward Republican party began winning because they seized on the changes caused by the civil rights era to forge a new winning coalition. Nixon and then Reagan are the results of this. And that attributing the movements of the american political scene to the parties rather then the populace is missing the point.
Also for reference, as much as Shryke wants to continue this hypothesis about the Reagan victories being indicative of the total American political worldview, it should be noted that 80 and 84's turnouts were 52.8% and 53.3% of voting age population, respectively.
I said the electorate for a reason. Which skews rightward compared to the populace as a whole, as you see every time the polls switch from registered voter to likely voter models.
It doesn't matter what non-voters thought in an election. They didn't vote.
How people think about this or that in abstract it irrelevant. This was even pointed out earlier. Doesn't matter what a pro-life voter thinks on other issues if they are voting based on the abortion issue before all else. It's also not reflective of actual electoral results because, again, the electorate =/= the populace as a whole.
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate.
Again, do you not see how your attempt to rationalize the behavior of the party post-Reagan is suggesting that we have to become like the people and policies we are decrying as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the nation?
like, I totally get what you're saying. I just disagree with you and am horrified at the implications of it because, without realizing it, you appear to be endorsing following the Republican party wherever they go when they win an election (because it's what the body politic wants, according to your diagnosis), which leads us further and further right, which has been the problem in American politics for the last several decades..
No, I'm pointing out that the Nixon-and-onward Republican party began winning because they seized on the changes caused by the civil rights era to forge a new winning coalition. Nixon and then Reagan are the results of this. And that attributing the movements of the american political scene to the parties rather then the populace is missing the point.
You're right Shryke, we should therefore adopt a slightly friendlier version of Trumpism so that we can win again.
Let's make the new Democratic Platform harsh deportation for undocumented immigrants (but maybe with nicer ICE agents), find slightly better but still human rights crushing despots to buddy up with (let's make Bolsonaro our new best friend! we can trade off being BFFs with Kim for that one) and instead of, say, suggesting our base beat the hell out of protestors we just have state agents do it for them.
After all, he won the last election, so that's clearly what the demographics want!
We're Bush Republicans here, and we are fighting the Trump Republicans. We stand for regulated immigration and free trade and the free market. Isn't that great?"*
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate.
Again, do you not see how your attempt to rationalize the behavior of the party post-Reagan is suggesting that we have to become like the people and policies we are decrying as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the nation?
like, I totally get what you're saying. I just disagree with you and am horrified at the implications of it because, without realizing it, you appear to be endorsing following the Republican party wherever they go when they win an election (because it's what the body politic wants, according to your diagnosis), which leads us further and further right, which has been the problem in American politics for the last several decades..
No, I'm pointing out that the Nixon-and-onward Republican party began winning because they seized on the changes caused by the civil rights era to forge a new winning coalition. Nixon and then Reagan are the results of this. And that attributing the movements of the american political scene to the parties rather then the populace is missing the point.
You're right Shryke, we should therefore adopt a slightly friendlier version of Trumpism so that we can win again.
Let's make the new Democratic Platform harsh deportation for undocumented immigrants (but maybe with nicer ICE agents), find slightly better but still human rights crushing despots to buddy up with (let's make Bolsonaro our new best friend! we can trade off being BFFs with Kim for that one) and instead of, say, suggesting our base beat the hell out of protestors we just have state agents do it for them.
After all, he won the last election, so that's clearly what the demographics want!
This is flat out bad faith straw manning. Also reeks of willful blindness to what is actually being said.
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate.
Again, do you not see how your attempt to rationalize the behavior of the party post-Reagan is suggesting that we have to become like the people and policies we are decrying as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the nation?
like, I totally get what you're saying. I just disagree with you and am horrified at the implications of it because, without realizing it, you appear to be endorsing following the Republican party wherever they go when they win an election (because it's what the body politic wants, according to your diagnosis), which leads us further and further right, which has been the problem in American politics for the last several decades..
No, I'm pointing out that the Nixon-and-onward Republican party began winning because they seized on the changes caused by the civil rights era to forge a new winning coalition. Nixon and then Reagan are the results of this. And that attributing the movements of the american political scene to the parties rather then the populace is missing the point.
You're right Shryke, we should therefore adopt a slightly friendlier version of Trumpism so that we can win again.
Let's make the new Democratic Platform harsh deportation for undocumented immigrants (but maybe with nicer ICE agents), find slightly better but still human rights crushing despots to buddy up with (let's make Bolsonaro our new best friend! we can trade off being BFFs with Kim for that one) and instead of, say, suggesting our base beat the hell out of protestors we just have state agents do it for them.
After all, he won the last election, so that's clearly what the demographics want!
Not what I said, so I've no idea what you are going on about. You are just throwing around random shit no one is saying for some reason.
The Democrats have already displayed the ability to forge winning coalitions in the modern era. Which is very different from what it was in the 80s. In large part by being a lot less white. And while winning over some white working class voters is definitely needed, because of how damn many of them there are and where they live, it's still a strategy with limitations because of their politics.
The idea of forging a mass political movement out of appealing to a large number of extra white working class voters is just not realistic imo and is reflective of a mindset that views the post-civil-rights-era changes in US politics as reflective of a failing on the part of the Democratic party rather then a change in the way american voters voted and identified themselves. But this does not seem to match up with what actually happened.
Abandoning people for the beliefs that are forced upon them is wrong. So is abandoning them because you think their views won't change, especially given how it clearly required effort to get them to those beliefs in the first place.
It's not really about abandoning them, per se. It's an issue of where to focus resources.
Give me a few months, and I could plausibly get a carefully selected anti immigration Trump supporter to realize that his policies are hurting people and that this isn't right and that he should vote for a Democrat to stop that happening.
Or I could convince a half dozen coin-flip voters who went Trump in 2016 to pick Not Trump this time around.
Or I could convince 20 disaffected non voters to get enthusiastic about someone like Warren.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
There is literally a giant chunk of the country who has completely disengaged from politics and by and large I think when Sanders and others talks about trying to get back the working class maybe we should be thinking about them.
They aren't all working class.
I think a lot of working-class non-voters are afflicted by "voter suppression" in that Republicans make it tedious, difficult, or anxiety-provoking for them to vote.
Hard Voter Suppression is a thing, yes, but I think we also vastly underestimate just how much of the populace essentially suffers under a soft version where they have become actively discouraged from feeling like they have a voice even if they do vote. In a lot of cases, we chock it up to apathy, but I think it's a lot closer to a form of depression that has been cultivated by the heavy rightward shift American politics has taken economically over the years that leaves people to rot if they're not a member of the donor class, while any efforts to fix that are barely ameliorated through means-tested-to-hell measures that fail to aid up those being crushed.
The right is also very good at doing a thing that hurts working class people and then pointing at the nearest Democrat and saying "He did this to you! Vote for us and we will make him suffer as you do!"
At some point we have to stop saying "But the right"
Yes, the right keeps doing shit that breaks the country.
And the Democratic Party has by and large done little to meaningfully help, because the last several decades has seem them captured by the rhetoric of the right, because, again, trauma from the Reagan Victories.
We have to be more than the alternative. We have to be a positive force of change, not just half-assed firebreaks and stopgap measures.
Calling it "trauma from the Reagan victories" is ridiculously silly. Reagan crushed them. Because he actually appealed to a wide swatch of americans. Mostly white americans. That's not trauma, that's demographics.
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate.
Again, do you not see how your attempt to rationalize the behavior of the party post-Reagan is suggesting that we have to become like the people and policies we are decrying as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the nation?
like, I totally get what you're saying. I just disagree with you and am horrified at the implications of it because, without realizing it, you appear to be endorsing following the Republican party wherever they go when they win an election (because it's what the body politic wants, according to your diagnosis), which leads us further and further right, which has been the problem in American politics for the last several decades..
No, I'm pointing out that the Nixon-and-onward Republican party began winning because they seized on the changes caused by the civil rights era to forge a new winning coalition. Nixon and then Reagan are the results of this. And that attributing the movements of the american political scene to the parties rather then the populace is missing the point.
You're right Shryke, we should therefore adopt a slightly friendlier version of Trumpism so that we can win again.
Let's make the new Democratic Platform harsh deportation for undocumented immigrants (but maybe with nicer ICE agents), find slightly better but still human rights crushing despots to buddy up with (let's make Bolsonaro our new best friend! we can trade off being BFFs with Kim for that one) and instead of, say, suggesting our base beat the hell out of protestors we just have state agents do it for them.
After all, he won the last election, so that's clearly what the demographics want!
Not what I said, so I've no idea what you are going on about. The Democrats have already displayed the ability to forge winning coalitions in the modern era. Which is very different from what it was in the 80s. In large part by being a lot less white. And while winning over some white working class voters is definitely needed, because of how damn many of them there are and where they live, it's still a strategy with limitations because of their politics.
You realize that non-white folks existed in the 80s too, right? Maybe they weren't a demographic powerhouse compared to today, but they were still hurt by the party desperately tracking right to regain the Reagan Democrats in the 80s and 90s.
Like, I am not comfortable trucking with this whole "Well, you see, the demographics" excuse, because people were still getting crushed by the systems in place.
It's crafting apologia for the failures of the party to stand up for what is right, which it still has difficulties with today, in large part because that generation of Democrat from the Reagan-era still hold the levers of power within the party.
I feel like you're ignoring the implications of the defenses you're trying to make because ultimately you want to defend the party from critiques that it's maybe not as progressive and inclusive when push comes to shove as it likes to pretend it is and still has a long way to go, and that is a deeply discomfortable reality to face.
Also for reference, as much as Shryke wants to continue this hypothesis about the Reagan victories being indicative of the total American political worldview, it should be noted that 80 and 84's turnouts were 52.8% and 53.3% of voting age population, respectively.
I said the electorate for a reason. Which skews rightward compared to the populace as a whole, as you see every time the polls switch from registered voter to likely voter models.
It doesn't matter what non-voters thought in an election. They didn't vote.
How people think about this or that in abstract it irrelevant. This was even pointed out earlier. Doesn't matter what a pro-life voter thinks on other issues if they are voting based on the abortion issue before all else. It's also not reflective of actual electoral results because, again, the electorate =/= the populace as a whole.
what non-voters think in an election is incredibly important
they're the biggest single demographic and their decision to abstain determines elections as much as anything else
driving up voter turnout is absolutely vital and you can't do that if you don't know why they're not voting
You know who the white working class really like according to polling?
Joe Biden
Maybe we should be supporting him so that we can help these folks out.
They're all secretly leftists despite what they say to polling, how they vote and the entire history of US and western politics.
Fuck us I guess we never try to win over new voters.
But youre wrong when you say white workers have never been open to leftism in US political history.
Sure. When.
...like the entire history of organized labor up until they were finally violently crushed after the turn of the century?
I mean you know great lakes socialists used to be a thing yeah?
US socialist parties were founded and run by European working class immigrants ffs
This is damning by the faintest praise. Organized labor wasn't primarily leftist or socialist in the US, especially at the height of its power. Low level regional politics and parties that never held a single statewide or federal office are a laughable example.
You're talking about fringe movements in US history and trying to literally the central organizing force in all US politics from the early 19th century to today.
Its like saying black people support the GOP by pointing to Tim Scott.
Organized labor is definitionally leftist.
This doesn't track the history of the US labor movement. Or many modern unions (all cop unions being the obvious example)
your obvious example being something that is really fundamentally different from organized labour in general is really not doing you any favours.
I do think the best route forward for the left and center-left isn't trying to peel off current white labor voters in the hopes that they pay attention to the economic bits and don't get turned off by the social bits (because like it or not, a fuckton of white voters and potential voters are single-issue voters for white supremacy), it's activating the much higher proportion of minorities and young people who don't vote.
I suspect stamping out voter suppression and making it easier to vote would do more for the left than any stated policy or messaging or campaign style. I favor mandatory voting as a solution, personally, but even just making it so anyone who cares can vote without headache would do a lot.
Unfortunately, stamping out voter suppression and making it easier to vote is a relatively hard issue to win elections on, for obvious reasons.
Posts
And he appealed to them on lies, racism and bullshit.
We should, perhaps, not adopt light versions of those things in order to win.
Which was what the impulse of the party was in the wake of those victories. Conservative austerity economics, campaigning at Stone Mountain, etc. We are still reeling from the wake of those choices on the part of the party and they are fuel for the depression we see in the nation today.
Couple decades of literal state sponsored terrorism has an effect on coherency
I haven't listened to her stump speeches, it's true. I've listened to her in the debates though, and she just seems too deeply entrenched in the verbal tics associated with academia to shake them off.
I should broaden a bit and see just how comprehensively this criticism really is. So far, I keep having people link me to her 'talking directly' and it never is... it's always passive-voice, once-removed, hypothetical.
Horseshoes, hand grenades, and atom bombs.
This is damning by the faintest praise. Organized labor wasn't primarily leftist or socialist in the US, especially at the height of its power. Low level regional politics and parties that never held a single statewide or federal office are a laughable example.
You're talking about fringe movements in US history and trying to literally the central organizing force in all US politics from the early 19th century to today.
Its like saying black people support the GOP by pointing to Tim Scott.
edit
First, again organized labor != socialism/leftism.
Second, counter example to show the order of magnitude difference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-mine-wars/
Organized labor is definitionally leftist. You were wholly mistaken to say there is no history of receptiveness to left politics among white workers in the US
This doesn't track the history of the US labor movement. Or many modern unions (all cop unions being the obvious example)
We could probably learn something from that.
Perhaps multiple things.
Things like how racism has historically been a tool used by the powerful, repeatedly in the US, to divide the lower socioeconomic classes against each other so they're easier to control and serves to protect the capital class from retribution from the various ways they exploit those classes. It mutates into its own distinct nightmare, like a weaponized virus evolving beyond its initial use, but that was the reason it was fostered constantly by the richer classes in American history.
Thank you for proving my point by parroting the rhetoric I was pointing out.
edit (The UMW was often segregated in the South btw)
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The history of labor and the cops' place in it is another thread
Pants I've literally watched this documentary multiple times.
They were fucking socialists. This is pointed out, multiple times, by term, in the documentary.
Go watch the damn thing.
He dominated the elections. To the point that his 1984 opponent's name is synonymous with getting fucking destroyed in an election in the US. It doesn't matter what he appealed to them with, it worked. Overwhelmingly.
Calling this trauma is nothing but an attempt to ignore that Reagan just won. He crushed them and demonstrated that his political ideas were dominant at the time. The reaction you see from the Democrats is not because of trauma, it's because they couldn't win elections.
The fallout of this whole post-civil-rights era period in US politics is the very reason the Democratic party and the Republican party look like they do now, demographically. Which is in many ways demonstrated in Trump's populism and it's effectiveness.
The Democrats will definitely need to win white work class voters as they always do. Because there's so fucking many of them, especially concentrated in swing states. But one should not ignore that they vote Republican by a good margin and have for a long time. And that gains have been made in part by the reduction in whites as a percentage of the electorate.
What "rhetoric" am I parroting?
Racism in the US was developed initially as a means of cementing chattel slavery in the American colonies by plantation owners as a means of circumventing protestant practices regarding the freeing of slaves through the acceptance of Christianity. By establishing the idea of people being lesser as signified through "race," the powerful managed to create a paradigm where they were the rightful rulers and controllers of land and property through virtue of the color of their skin, while likewise cementing their own place in that hierarchy. This was aided by giving even exploited lower class whites a rung below them on the social heirarchy, allowing them to feel that there was someone worse off than they were. Thus effectively dividing the lower classes against one another while allowing them to be exploited ruthlessly by the upper classes.
Cite: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/05/why_america_adopted_race_based_slavery.html
I dunno, JFK got to bang movie stars and do hella drugs, that seems cool
You do realize the logic you're making is "To win, you must adopt the policy of the winner" right?
And how that's very bad thing when the policies that supposedly won the election for them is Racism and Unchecked Capitalism and Government is The Problem, right?
EDIT: By this logic, think about what that means the Democratic Party needs to do to beat Trump
Please follow that train of thought, and join me in screaming in horror at what you are, I hope, accidentally suggesting
It's not cool to nearly start nuclear war
Only the coolest kids start actual nuclear wars. Not that sissy nearly crap.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
The last time a mass democratic movement actually got anything done in this country was undoing Brown v Board and even that was like forty years ago
So no, actually, I don't think "I will trust the people to rise up and rework our society in the sort of peaceful revolution that has happened maybe five times in the whole of human history" is a good plan, sorry
The point I'm making is that you should stop pretending like the problem was that the Democrats were too traumatized to do the right thing or whatever and instead accept that the political changes in the wake of the civil rights era are in fact just a reflection of the beliefs of the american electorate itself and that the Democrats, like the Republicans, were simply attempting to forge a coalition that could win given that electorate.
The point of this all being that trying to frame it as "trauma" is an attempt to make the Democratic party issues with white voters into some sort of failing of the democratic party itself rather then a reflection of the changing views of the electorate. Which all basically circles back around to the idea that forging a mass political movement in part by appealing to white people with economic populism does not seem at all likely to happen.
Again, do you not see how your attempt to rationalize the behavior of the party post-Reagan is suggesting that we have to become like the people and policies we are decrying as dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the nation?
like, I totally get what you're saying. I just disagree with you and am horrified at the implications of it because, without realizing it, you appear to be endorsing following the Republican party wherever they go when they win an election (because it's what the body politic wants, according to your diagnosis), which leads us further and further right, which has been the problem in American politics for the last several decades..
No, polling pretty frequently puts Americans on the left of Democratic leadership and its gotten more so as time has gone by. They convinced themselves they had to be conservative-lite and haven't changed in 30 years.
Unless you're saying that people accept the evidence and still defend their claim, I don't think "people won't believe you" is much of an argument against the idea that people have mistaken beliefs
No, I'm pointing out that the Nixon-and-onward Republican party began winning because they seized on the changes caused by the civil rights era to forge a new winning coalition. Nixon and then Reagan are the results of this. And that attributing the movements of the american political scene to the parties rather then the populace is missing the point.
I said the electorate for a reason. Which skews rightward compared to the populace as a whole, as you see every time the polls switch from registered voter to likely voter models.
It doesn't matter what non-voters thought in an election. They didn't vote.
How people think about this or that in abstract it irrelevant. This was even pointed out earlier. Doesn't matter what a pro-life voter thinks on other issues if they are voting based on the abortion issue before all else. It's also not reflective of actual electoral results because, again, the electorate =/= the populace as a whole.
Biden and Harris are...less impressive, on our shittier allies.
You're right Shryke, we should therefore adopt a slightly friendlier version of Trumpism so that we can win again.
Let's make the new Democratic Platform harsh deportation for undocumented immigrants (but maybe with nicer ICE agents), find slightly better but still human rights crushing despots to buddy up with (let's make Bolsonaro our new best friend! we can trade off being BFFs with Kim for that one) and instead of, say, suggesting our base beat the hell out of protestors we just have state agents do it for them.
After all, he won the last election, so that's clearly what the demographics want!
*https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/07/21/clinton-swipes-the-gops-lyrics/9c725e88-b5a7-46a5-bb74-8bc12b22795b/
This is flat out bad faith straw manning. Also reeks of willful blindness to what is actually being said.
Not what I said, so I've no idea what you are going on about. You are just throwing around random shit no one is saying for some reason.
The Democrats have already displayed the ability to forge winning coalitions in the modern era. Which is very different from what it was in the 80s. In large part by being a lot less white. And while winning over some white working class voters is definitely needed, because of how damn many of them there are and where they live, it's still a strategy with limitations because of their politics.
The idea of forging a mass political movement out of appealing to a large number of extra white working class voters is just not realistic imo and is reflective of a mindset that views the post-civil-rights-era changes in US politics as reflective of a failing on the part of the Democratic party rather then a change in the way american voters voted and identified themselves. But this does not seem to match up with what actually happened.
It's not really about abandoning them, per se. It's an issue of where to focus resources.
Give me a few months, and I could plausibly get a carefully selected anti immigration Trump supporter to realize that his policies are hurting people and that this isn't right and that he should vote for a Democrat to stop that happening.
Or I could convince a half dozen coin-flip voters who went Trump in 2016 to pick Not Trump this time around.
Or I could convince 20 disaffected non voters to get enthusiastic about someone like Warren.
You realize that non-white folks existed in the 80s too, right? Maybe they weren't a demographic powerhouse compared to today, but they were still hurt by the party desperately tracking right to regain the Reagan Democrats in the 80s and 90s.
Like, I am not comfortable trucking with this whole "Well, you see, the demographics" excuse, because people were still getting crushed by the systems in place.
It's crafting apologia for the failures of the party to stand up for what is right, which it still has difficulties with today, in large part because that generation of Democrat from the Reagan-era still hold the levers of power within the party.
I feel like you're ignoring the implications of the defenses you're trying to make because ultimately you want to defend the party from critiques that it's maybe not as progressive and inclusive when push comes to shove as it likes to pretend it is and still has a long way to go, and that is a deeply discomfortable reality to face.
what non-voters think in an election is incredibly important
they're the biggest single demographic and their decision to abstain determines elections as much as anything else
driving up voter turnout is absolutely vital and you can't do that if you don't know why they're not voting
your obvious example being something that is really fundamentally different from organized labour in general is really not doing you any favours.
http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
I suspect stamping out voter suppression and making it easier to vote would do more for the left than any stated policy or messaging or campaign style. I favor mandatory voting as a solution, personally, but even just making it so anyone who cares can vote without headache would do a lot.
Unfortunately, stamping out voter suppression and making it easier to vote is a relatively hard issue to win elections on, for obvious reasons.