Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Donald Trump likes to pit elite and non-elite white people against each other. Why do white liberals play into his trap?
By Joan C. Williams @ TheAtlantic.com, for the Dec. print issue (Williams is a professor and the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. She is the author of White Working Class and the co-author, with Rachel Dempsey, of What Works for Women at Work)
"I want them to talk about racism every day,” Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former strategist, told The American Prospect last year. “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
Bannon was tapping into an old American tradition. As early as the 1680s, powerful white people were serving up racism to assuage the injuries of class, elevating the status of white indentured servants over that of enslaved black people. Some two centuries later, W. E. B. Du Bois observed that poor white people were compensated partly by a “public and psychological wage”—the “wages of whiteness,” as the historian David Roediger memorably put it. These wages pit people of different races against one another, averting a coalition based on shared economic interests.
And so it is with Trump’s carefully timed injections of racism: [....]
Comments
The problem with the proposal that going after a small number of white voters is rational. The recent statewide races in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas show that going after disaffected Democrats and Independents resulted in more votes than past efforts by Democrats who attempted to reach out to Republican voters. Why repeat a failed policy? The big shift in voting appeared among Independents, a 12 point swing.
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 11:06am
read it again. I don't see where she says "go after Republicans". The article is about social class and it's about populism and going after lower class whites and how elite whites fit into the picture, can either help or hurt.
And neither did Bannon in the citation she starts with, for that matter. Bannon was not going after "Republicans", is actually easier to make the argument that he was giving a big fuck you to establishment Republicans.
To fixate on assigning party labels to voters makes no sense anymore, not going to take you anywhere. as the majority of the country now calls themselves independents.Sure, people who want to serve as politicians have to chose and work within a party. But voters don't.
If anything, she's suggesting how to get some of the indie working class to vote Dem more often.
by artappraiser on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 11:28am
From the article
————
It’s true that overt racists flocked to Trump; chillingly, 35 percent of Trump voters report having used the N‑word. But does this mean every Trump voter is a deplorable whom Democrats could never win over, and would never want to?
No. An important, largely overlooked 2017 study by the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group identified five distinct types of Trump voters. Two of them—Staunch Conservatives and Free Marketeers, who together account for more than half of Trump voters—are unlikely to ever go for Democrats in substantial numbers. (Free Marketeers may not like Trump’s trade wars, but many cheer his gutting of regulations.) The other two big blocs, American Preservationists and Anti-elites, each include about a fifth of Trump voters, and believe that the economy is rigged in favor of the wealthiest Americans. (The final bloc, the Disengaged, accounted for 5 percent of Trump voters.)
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by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 12:14pm
Don't see where it says "Republicans." Whether you believe so or not, her article is actually all about how there are several different groups that voted for Trump, that a considerable percentage of them think like independent voters and not partisans, and some will be more amenable than others to Democratic version of populism.Nothing about Republicans. She actually is making the case, made in a gazillion other articles in the last few years, that Trump would never have won without independent working class voters.
Edit to add: behind her argument, though she doesn't say this out right, is a rejection of the idea that winning over some suburban elite educated who normally vote Republican, is not enough. She just says elites are not enough. What she does mention along those lines: you need white working class for national election purposes where some states have a lot more influence than others, and locally where things are heavily gerrymandered to white working class benefit.
by artappraiser on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 3:18pm
There was outreach in 2018. It failed statewide in the South.
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 6:18pm
The big shift in voting appeared among Independents, a 12 point swing.
Aren't the vast majority of those independents white voters?
by ocean-kat on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 11:56am
They aren’t Republicans. Prior candidates in the states I mentioned running for statewide office failed when they attempted outreach to Republican voters. Trying to get Independents is a better strategy. Gollum and Abrams talked about the racism in their opponents’ campaigns. Espy pointed out the meaning of Hyde-Smith’s words. The races were closer than they should have been in a Southern state. Each brought out enough voters to get downstream candidates to win.
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 12:11pm
The problem with the proposal that going after a small number of white voters is rational.
Here and often in other threads you claim democrats shouldn't attempt to appeal to white voters. Then you claim democrats shouldn't try to appeal to republicans. /shrug I can't follow the inconsistencies as your arguments change when challenged.
Is your current argument that if the white voters claim to be independents democrats should try to shift some of them but if the white voters claim to be republicans democrats shouldn't try to get any of them to shift?
by ocean-kat on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 12:29pm
Trump has an 88% approval among Republicans. Outreach attempts in statewide races in the South have failed. Democrats got closer to victory by appealing to disaffected Democrats and Independents. I don’t see the problem. A majority of white people voted for racist candidates. A majority is not all. If the choice is to repeat a failed outreach program rather than looking for votes from different groups, expect repeated failure.Racial anxiety trumps economics for many white voters. Race does not trump economics for all white voters. Independents appear responsive to outreach. Outreach to Republicans has not been successful.
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 5:34pm
Independents voted for Trump, in many states by double digits. Previously you said democrats should not reach out to whites who voted for Trump because they are all racist. Now you think democrats should reach out to whites who voted for Trump but only if they claim to be independent, not if they claim to be republicans. If a white Trump voter claims to be independent does that voter become not racist? Or is it ok to try to get some of the people you claim are racist to vote for democrats?Why?
by ocean-kat on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 5:48pm
Some early data indicates that some Republicans voted for Democrats because they were disgusted by Donald Trump. I’m not sure if those Republicans were responding to a message from the Democrats.
https://www.vox.com/2018/11/15/18078974/trump-gop-midterms-2018-arizona-texas-never-trump
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 6:06pm
Some Republicans are disgusted by Trump’s behavior. They cast votes in the midterms to send a message to the GOP. I don’t see evidence that these protest voters dislike Trump’s policies and have become Democrats.
Roy More lost in Alabama. That doesn’t mean that a viable Republican cannot beat Doug Jones.
Edit to add:
Are there some Trump voters tired of Republican racism and who have become a Democrats. Yes, I’m don’t know those numbers.
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 7:55pm
Gillum, Abrams, and O’Rourke, were clear that they were attempting to reach a different group of voters.
Abrams won against a Democratic primary opponent who specifically went after Republicans voters
———-
Abrams is convinced the only way a Democrat can win is by engaging with untapped minority voters, particularly those in rural communities, who've often been overlooked.
She says it's not about excluding the Democratic base of white progressives, but broadening the coalition.
"My campaign is about ... both those who are traditional Democratic voters and those voices who will be Democratic if we ask them to speak up," she said after a recent campaign stop in Marietta, Ga.
But her opponent Stacey Evans has a different strategy. She, too, says the party needs to dig deep into its base and reach out more to rural voters, but she's also committed to converting disaffected moderate Republicans.
———-
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/612323600/stacey-vs-stacey-the-democratic-fight-for-governor-in-georgia
by rmrd0000 on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 10:05pm
Politics is religion. People fought centuries-long wars over whether mass wafers were Christ's body or not. There is no magic bullet to make opponents see your reality. No strategy is the right one. It's a war of attrition. Just try it all and see what works. But don't expect instant miracles. 30% this election, 35% next, 40% next... is an excellent trajectory, even tho slow - that's reality.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 12/03/2018 - 1:27am
was just re-reading one of the articles on the protests in France (from a week ago, before the violence); the comparison value in this excerpt caught my eye:
by artappraiser on Sun, 12/02/2018 - 4:28pm
here we go again with the Bernie way of approaching the issue causing a ruckus:
btw, he's running
oh lookee here, the other Orange Satan, he says this
Meanwhile here's "Iowa Dems"
by artappraiser on Mon, 12/03/2018 - 1:22pm
Competing headline story @ Politico.com right now: The Democrats’ Hispanic Problem
To beat Trump in 2020, the party will almost certainly need Florida voters who didn’t turn out for Bill Nelson or Andrew Gillum. What went wrong, and can they fix it?
By Michael Grunwald and Marc Caputo for Politico Magazine, Dec. 4
by artappraiser on Tue, 12/04/2018 - 11:01am
While greater outreach can help Hispanics are not natural democrats. They are conservative, religious, mostly Catholic, and have the lowest support for abortion of any ethnic group. It's only immigration issues and the perceived racism of the republicans that causes a majority of Hispanics to vote democrat. If republicans can solve their racism problem a majority of Hispanics will vote for them. That's one reason I'm suspicious of the demographic argument for democrats over the long term.
by ocean-kat on Tue, 12/04/2018 - 12:06pm
I basically agree with you. If one is going to stereotype an ethnic group, which I'd prefer we not, but since we still do it: they would be more like natural "swings" actually. I don't see maybe as much about the strict Catholicism, anti-abortion as used to be. But there's a pro-business slant with many of the immigrant ethnicities involved, I think that's underestimated, that's why they emigrated, for the business opportunities. Start out working class, but want to climb out of it.
by artappraiser on Tue, 12/04/2018 - 2:25pm