What really struck me, living out here in the micro-flyover land between Seattle and Portland, is that conditions for the working class, and in particular Latinos, really did improve noticeably during the Trump years. One of the dumbest things I often hear liberals ask is why people like that vote against their interests, which to me says they don't know a thing about what those people's interests actually are.
God, I love this line: This is what it came down to: “The Republican Party,” she said, “wants to become a multi-ethnic, multicultural, working class movement.” As if that's an evil goal. But really she should have shortened it to "The Republican party wants to be a . . . working class movement." The rest comes naturally. You need no malevolent intention behind it. And of course the only way you become a working class movement is by paying attention to the working class.
I often find it strange how the smartest people can miss the simplest points. How we identify ourselves, or how we see ourselves, comes down to a list of characteristics or labels, as much as I hate them, and how we rank them in importance to our self-image. And the parties use those labels to gear their tactics and "scare" voters. The Republicans in the past have done this. I still know conservatives who are convinced Christianity is under attack. I remind them there is a church on every corner and those churches are richer than God. I personally could put that space to better use and tax the hell out of them, but the laws protect those buildings and spaces, so, no, "Christianity" is safe.
But as one example of this blindness on the Democrat side, they think that all people of Hispanic descent, no matter how long they have been in the US, should identify first and foremost as Hispanic. In other words, they are Hispanics who just happen to be American and working class. But where the rubber meets the road, in the Democrat theories, the *only* label that should matter to these people is "Hispanic." However, America has progressed. And ironically enough, the party that kept reminding us that America is a melting pot has forgotten that America is a melting pot. These days, more people with "brown skin" are thinking of themselves as American and working class who just *happen* to be Hispanic, which makes all the difference.
Which leads me to my next point. When I hear someone call Trump and by extension the Trump-influenced segment of the Republican Party "xenophobic," what they're really trying to say is they hate anyone who is not white. But I don't think non-white working class people are reading it that way. I think "xenophobic" means to them what it actually means, which is a fear of outsiders, which they may or may not agree with but is certainly a much smaller sin than hating all people who are not white. And in this case the whole Mexicans are rapist thing rang a little true for them. We are being flooded by gangs and drugs due to an unwillingness to screen the people coming in. We also are importing a group of people that are willing to work for far less than most Americans are willing to or even should be willing to work for simply because their papers aren't quite in order and that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. So in that case, it doesn't matter that the last names are similar nor the skin color or place of origin. The people switching sides see themselves as American workers first and Hispanics second. You add in the fact that Hispanics are by and large Catholic, either devoutly or as a matter of heritage, and the socially conservative nature of the Republican Party is attractive to them. And, yes, other ethnicities will follow unless the Democrats have an epiphany, which I honestly don't see happening.
The other thing that is happening is Democrats are losing the "you're racist" war. I can't honestly think of anything more racist than reducing an entire group of people to a single label and accusing them of being traitors if they don't follow your expectations of that label. If there is anything to "white privilege," it is that we are allowed or even forced into a certain degree of diversity in thought, but minorities are not. Joe Biden's "gaffes" are always interesting for the amount of truth they contain: two of my favorites are "if you don't know who to vote for, you ain't black" and "poor kids are just as intelligent as white kids." That is the worst of Democrat philosophy in a nutshell, and I doubt I'm the only one who noticed. And I'd say it's because Joe is old and from that era, but that attitude pervades the Democrat Party and the media that spins for it.
I agree with you about the need for two thriving parties, but at the moment, the Democrats have true and well backed themselves into a corner.
The Democrat leadership's heads are so far up their own asses I think only a massive defeat will shake them loose.
1) They thought Hillary Clinton was a great candidate.
2) They are unwilling or unable to suppress the totalitarian politics of their elites. They can't even properly soften it so that normal working and middle class folks don't feel like the party holds them in contempt.
Joe Biden was supposed to soften that elitist image, but he appears entirely captured by the elitist (or, more likely, his much younger, and much more part of that elite staff push him hard in their direction because they need to be able to show their faces among their fellow ivy-league activists.
If the Republicans run anyone but Trump, I'll be thinking long and hard. (I simply refuse to vote for a man who attempted to stay in office after losing the election. Unless the Democrats put up someone with similar bona fides or plans anyway.)
Generally true, but I do wonder whether you've overstated the extent to which this transition has actually happened in the Republican Party. Definitely, the battle is on, but for a working class orientation to make its way into policy, it's going to have to be far more than just Ron DeSantis or Matt Gaetz holding press conferences against wokeness. There are donors, think tanks, ancient Congressmen and Senators in safe districts and states, and just plain old longstanding ideological commitments to low taxes, limited government, and free enterprise. But the ship is turning . . .
Of course it's a class issue. Happily the Dems don't realize it's all about class. Race is yesterday's news. The Republicans will ultimately receive a bigger and bigger share of the African American working class vote as more and more they realize how the Dems have fucked them over for years: viz. public schools, charter schools, defund the police, BLM hucksters...We will see this clearly when "Gov." Stacey Abrams gets clobbered in Georgia this November. Ultimately the Republicans will ultimately own the Jewish and Asian vote. They will be the last holdout because they are mostly college educated and middle class and today's radical Dem party will become too uncomfortable for them. Nothing is forever in politics it just feels like it will never end!
So the Republicans are poised to “reap electoral bounty” you say by attracting greater numbers of working class voters of all races due to “Alien” sounding Democratic ideologies.
But in other articles you describe voters/the non-elite as mere “Symbolic Props” in the power structure.
So are you cautioning Democrats that they are at risk of losing intra-PMC bragging rights with the Republicans over voter counts?
Or what is at stake here for the Democrats exactly?
Superb article - more than worth my upgrade to a "Paid Subscription".
As I pointed out on your Twitter a few months back - https://twitter.com/BRuegazer/status/1499877058121457667 - the progressive left's response to this is that they simply argue that members of the working class who don't share their very-specific-if-somewhat-incomprehensible SJW worldivew - aren't *actually* members of the working class at all.
The progressive Left is not only dumb - it's selfish, too. Allow me to explain...
The left likes to pretend that a socially-conservative party that represents the working class isn't even theoretically possible. That - as anybody familiar with the political parties founded in the 20th Century based on Christian Democratic and Liberation Theological principles knows - is false.
In fact, there presently exists such a party in the United States - the American Solidarity Party - though nobody should be under any illusions as to how far these folks are from the halls of power. The platform highlights are here: https://www.solidarity-party.org/platform
Yes they embody unabashedly-conservative notions of family and anti-abortion - but also support Medicare for All, Foreign Policy Restraint, Worker co-ownership of the means of production (free-market capitalists they ain't!), Anti-Consumerism, Rehabilitation of Drug Users vs Incarceration, Combating Climate Change, etc. They have *considerable* overlap with Bernie Sanders' 2016 economic platform.
So when the Left publishes this sort of stuff: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/why-we-should-abolish-the-family - the end result is that the Left relegates the socially-conservative working class vote to the goons backed by The Heritage Foundation who don't care about the economic circumstances of the working class at all and keep the USA in its neoliberal/neocon doom loop.
So the Left not only keeps itself from power, it's preventing parties from "the other side" from ever having a chance to assist the Working Class.
Another banger, thanks Leighton. I couldn't agree with this take more. I expect the share of Hispanics voting GOP to increase even more in '22 and '24 elections. If I'm not mistaken, Yongkin won the Hispanic vote in VA. Maya Flores from TX is another harbinger.
Check out different Hispanic areas across the US: East LA, National City / Chula Vista, El Centro, San Luis, AZ, El Paso, Cicero, IL, etc.; the direction of change is very clear. I don't expect those areas to be majority GOP in the next 5 years, but it seems likely the plurality of GOP voters there will continue to increase to the point that they will behave similarly to toss-up suburban districts.
An example, from Britain, of how what Pickety dubbed the ‘Brahmin Left’ has become less relevant to its former base. The leftish anti-Brexit group Another Europe Is Possible now campaigns almost solely on the rights of asylum seekers who everyone can see include a high proportion of economic migrants. This observation would get you branded as racist on British Twitter.
Working class people also see the downward shift in wages available for some jobs due to uncontrolled illegal immigration. Here in FL, unskilled construction workers make less than fast food workers. Construction workers make less per hour then they did 30 years ago, and they have no workers' compensation coverage or a chance to be covered by Social Security.
Want to see someone who is really screwed, find someone who is hitting their 60s after a lifetime of hard work, but they don't qualify for SS or Medicare... They are legion..
What really struck me, living out here in the micro-flyover land between Seattle and Portland, is that conditions for the working class, and in particular Latinos, really did improve noticeably during the Trump years. One of the dumbest things I often hear liberals ask is why people like that vote against their interests, which to me says they don't know a thing about what those people's interests actually are.
Thank you for another great piece.
God, I love this line: This is what it came down to: “The Republican Party,” she said, “wants to become a multi-ethnic, multicultural, working class movement.” As if that's an evil goal. But really she should have shortened it to "The Republican party wants to be a . . . working class movement." The rest comes naturally. You need no malevolent intention behind it. And of course the only way you become a working class movement is by paying attention to the working class.
I often find it strange how the smartest people can miss the simplest points. How we identify ourselves, or how we see ourselves, comes down to a list of characteristics or labels, as much as I hate them, and how we rank them in importance to our self-image. And the parties use those labels to gear their tactics and "scare" voters. The Republicans in the past have done this. I still know conservatives who are convinced Christianity is under attack. I remind them there is a church on every corner and those churches are richer than God. I personally could put that space to better use and tax the hell out of them, but the laws protect those buildings and spaces, so, no, "Christianity" is safe.
But as one example of this blindness on the Democrat side, they think that all people of Hispanic descent, no matter how long they have been in the US, should identify first and foremost as Hispanic. In other words, they are Hispanics who just happen to be American and working class. But where the rubber meets the road, in the Democrat theories, the *only* label that should matter to these people is "Hispanic." However, America has progressed. And ironically enough, the party that kept reminding us that America is a melting pot has forgotten that America is a melting pot. These days, more people with "brown skin" are thinking of themselves as American and working class who just *happen* to be Hispanic, which makes all the difference.
Which leads me to my next point. When I hear someone call Trump and by extension the Trump-influenced segment of the Republican Party "xenophobic," what they're really trying to say is they hate anyone who is not white. But I don't think non-white working class people are reading it that way. I think "xenophobic" means to them what it actually means, which is a fear of outsiders, which they may or may not agree with but is certainly a much smaller sin than hating all people who are not white. And in this case the whole Mexicans are rapist thing rang a little true for them. We are being flooded by gangs and drugs due to an unwillingness to screen the people coming in. We also are importing a group of people that are willing to work for far less than most Americans are willing to or even should be willing to work for simply because their papers aren't quite in order and that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation. So in that case, it doesn't matter that the last names are similar nor the skin color or place of origin. The people switching sides see themselves as American workers first and Hispanics second. You add in the fact that Hispanics are by and large Catholic, either devoutly or as a matter of heritage, and the socially conservative nature of the Republican Party is attractive to them. And, yes, other ethnicities will follow unless the Democrats have an epiphany, which I honestly don't see happening.
The other thing that is happening is Democrats are losing the "you're racist" war. I can't honestly think of anything more racist than reducing an entire group of people to a single label and accusing them of being traitors if they don't follow your expectations of that label. If there is anything to "white privilege," it is that we are allowed or even forced into a certain degree of diversity in thought, but minorities are not. Joe Biden's "gaffes" are always interesting for the amount of truth they contain: two of my favorites are "if you don't know who to vote for, you ain't black" and "poor kids are just as intelligent as white kids." That is the worst of Democrat philosophy in a nutshell, and I doubt I'm the only one who noticed. And I'd say it's because Joe is old and from that era, but that attitude pervades the Democrat Party and the media that spins for it.
I agree with you about the need for two thriving parties, but at the moment, the Democrats have true and well backed themselves into a corner.
The Democrat leadership's heads are so far up their own asses I think only a massive defeat will shake them loose.
1) They thought Hillary Clinton was a great candidate.
2) They are unwilling or unable to suppress the totalitarian politics of their elites. They can't even properly soften it so that normal working and middle class folks don't feel like the party holds them in contempt.
Joe Biden was supposed to soften that elitist image, but he appears entirely captured by the elitist (or, more likely, his much younger, and much more part of that elite staff push him hard in their direction because they need to be able to show their faces among their fellow ivy-league activists.
If the Republicans run anyone but Trump, I'll be thinking long and hard. (I simply refuse to vote for a man who attempted to stay in office after losing the election. Unless the Democrats put up someone with similar bona fides or plans anyway.)
Generally true, but I do wonder whether you've overstated the extent to which this transition has actually happened in the Republican Party. Definitely, the battle is on, but for a working class orientation to make its way into policy, it's going to have to be far more than just Ron DeSantis or Matt Gaetz holding press conferences against wokeness. There are donors, think tanks, ancient Congressmen and Senators in safe districts and states, and just plain old longstanding ideological commitments to low taxes, limited government, and free enterprise. But the ship is turning . . .
Of course it's a class issue. Happily the Dems don't realize it's all about class. Race is yesterday's news. The Republicans will ultimately receive a bigger and bigger share of the African American working class vote as more and more they realize how the Dems have fucked them over for years: viz. public schools, charter schools, defund the police, BLM hucksters...We will see this clearly when "Gov." Stacey Abrams gets clobbered in Georgia this November. Ultimately the Republicans will ultimately own the Jewish and Asian vote. They will be the last holdout because they are mostly college educated and middle class and today's radical Dem party will become too uncomfortable for them. Nothing is forever in politics it just feels like it will never end!
So the Republicans are poised to “reap electoral bounty” you say by attracting greater numbers of working class voters of all races due to “Alien” sounding Democratic ideologies.
But in other articles you describe voters/the non-elite as mere “Symbolic Props” in the power structure.
So are you cautioning Democrats that they are at risk of losing intra-PMC bragging rights with the Republicans over voter counts?
Or what is at stake here for the Democrats exactly?
Superb article - more than worth my upgrade to a "Paid Subscription".
As I pointed out on your Twitter a few months back - https://twitter.com/BRuegazer/status/1499877058121457667 - the progressive left's response to this is that they simply argue that members of the working class who don't share their very-specific-if-somewhat-incomprehensible SJW worldivew - aren't *actually* members of the working class at all.
The progressive Left is not only dumb - it's selfish, too. Allow me to explain...
The left likes to pretend that a socially-conservative party that represents the working class isn't even theoretically possible. That - as anybody familiar with the political parties founded in the 20th Century based on Christian Democratic and Liberation Theological principles knows - is false.
In fact, there presently exists such a party in the United States - the American Solidarity Party - though nobody should be under any illusions as to how far these folks are from the halls of power. The platform highlights are here: https://www.solidarity-party.org/platform
Yes they embody unabashedly-conservative notions of family and anti-abortion - but also support Medicare for All, Foreign Policy Restraint, Worker co-ownership of the means of production (free-market capitalists they ain't!), Anti-Consumerism, Rehabilitation of Drug Users vs Incarceration, Combating Climate Change, etc. They have *considerable* overlap with Bernie Sanders' 2016 economic platform.
So when the Left publishes this sort of stuff: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/why-we-should-abolish-the-family - the end result is that the Left relegates the socially-conservative working class vote to the goons backed by The Heritage Foundation who don't care about the economic circumstances of the working class at all and keep the USA in its neoliberal/neocon doom loop.
So the Left not only keeps itself from power, it's preventing parties from "the other side" from ever having a chance to assist the Working Class.
Another banger, thanks Leighton. I couldn't agree with this take more. I expect the share of Hispanics voting GOP to increase even more in '22 and '24 elections. If I'm not mistaken, Yongkin won the Hispanic vote in VA. Maya Flores from TX is another harbinger.
For anyone who needs more convincing about the Hispanic shift towards the GOP, check out this detailed NYT map that shows change in votes from '16-'20 on a very granular basis across the country: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html
Check out different Hispanic areas across the US: East LA, National City / Chula Vista, El Centro, San Luis, AZ, El Paso, Cicero, IL, etc.; the direction of change is very clear. I don't expect those areas to be majority GOP in the next 5 years, but it seems likely the plurality of GOP voters there will continue to increase to the point that they will behave similarly to toss-up suburban districts.
An example, from Britain, of how what Pickety dubbed the ‘Brahmin Left’ has become less relevant to its former base. The leftish anti-Brexit group Another Europe Is Possible now campaigns almost solely on the rights of asylum seekers who everyone can see include a high proportion of economic migrants. This observation would get you branded as racist on British Twitter.
Working class people also see the downward shift in wages available for some jobs due to uncontrolled illegal immigration. Here in FL, unskilled construction workers make less than fast food workers. Construction workers make less per hour then they did 30 years ago, and they have no workers' compensation coverage or a chance to be covered by Social Security.
Want to see someone who is really screwed, find someone who is hitting their 60s after a lifetime of hard work, but they don't qualify for SS or Medicare... They are legion..
As Paul Begala told Donna Brazile almost 15 years ago, “We can’t win with [just] eggheads and African Americans.”
Good!