2020 Democratic presidential primary

Didn't mean to imply those were the only working class voters who have abandoned the Democrats!

so non-racist non-college educated, white, low-wage workers have abandoned Democrats for the Republicans? huh. show me the data.

xp

Trumka might have more to work with if he had a Democratic Party as a full partner

thinking maybe I should step away from this convo tho

The thing that bums me out about these never-ending arguments is that I think at bottom it's perfectly reasonable to be disappointed in the Democratic party as a whole and their failure to stop/willingness to capitulate to right-wing demogoguery and nonsense, especially during the Clinton-Bush years when this dynamic was really at it's worst. I just hate seeing things sloppily argued, with no grounding in reality about how the party actually functions and what it has (or hasn't) done.

Wow, Mr. (or Ms.) "^^^deluded" and "read a book" just hates sloppy argumentation. Apologies, oh high minded one. I guess my rhetoric was just too sloppy, that's why you had to step in.

But our entire government has steadily ratcheted ever to the right since the New Deal era.

I mean here's some more ahistorical nonsense. LBJ passed shit FDR *would never* have passed (why because must appeal to poor white racists in the South) - namely the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. And then he gets Medicare and Medicaid and the Clean Air Act passed, creates the Federal Transit Administration, creates the NEA and PBS, the Higher Education Act etc. Richard Nixon (Nixon!) creates the EPA. Obama passes the ACA, ARRA, etc. These are huge liberal tools and policies still in place and with huge ramifications for our country. It hasn't all been a "steadily ratcheted" drift to the right. The one Democratic president that really drifted to the right was Clinton - deregulating the financial, pharmaceutical, and telecom industries (which we are also all still reeling from the shitty effects of).

But he bailed out the benks!

Regan's overwhelming victories and successes in the 80s traumatized the party, resulting in all the "triangulation" crap from the Clinton years that were essentially an effort in re-branding. And then all the old Dixiecrats died off. And then 9/11 was another trauma - no one could criticize Dubya/oppose the war for fear of being labelled as disloyal etc (fucking John Kerry ugh). The party couldn't figure out how to maintain it's old coalitions and bases of power, so it floundered (should we be corporatists or pro-labor? how racist/"tough on crime" do we need to be to keep poor white people voting for us? etc.) Obama was a course-correction to a generally more liberal, more inclusive Democratic party than prior eras, and it looks like whoever wins the nomination this time around (unless it's Biden, which I doubt) will further that transformation.

xp

I generally agree with Barney Frank about the bank bailout. I didn't like it (and a whole shitload of people should have gone to jail) but the alternative was pretty grim.

Economist/YouGov Poll, July 21 - 23. "Very + somewhat favorable" and "somewhat + very unfavorable"

Biden        69%  22%
Warren       66%  11%
Sanders      66%  23%
Harris       61%  13%
Booker       55%  13%
O'Rourke     53%  17%
Buttigieg    52%  11%
Castro       52%  11%
Klobuchar    43%  13%
Gillibrand   41%  20%
Yang         33%  19%
Inslee       32%  12%
de Blasio    31%  28%
Hickenlooper 29%  14%
Gabbard      26%  24%
Steyer       25%  16%
Ryan         24%  18%
Bullock      23%  11%
Delaney      21%  16%
Williamson   21%  26%
Moulton      19%  11%
Sestak       17%  11%
Weld         17%  12%
Gravel       16%  10%
Schultz      15%  26%
Messam       13%  10%

^ among those who identify as Democrats

Who is Messam?

wait, Weld is not a Democrat

neither is Bernie lol

I was this week years old when I learned Williamson is from Houston.

is it my imagination or are Biden's numbers not what they were a couple months ago

xp: I hesitated on that, but just decided to data dump. Most important finding: 10-11% of Democrats are cantankerous curmudgeons (no offense) who will dislike anyone...

Biden's unfavorables have doubled in the past few months.

Is Tulsi Gabbard the only one that goes on Tucker Carlson?

10-11% of Democrats are cantankerous curmudgeons (no offense) who will dislike anyone...

if we're using this board as a representative sample--this checks out

The Morbs Caucus.

I will forever call Sestak "Sleestak"

^^^

Biden's unfavorables have doubled in the past few months.

lmao can't imagine why

he started talking iirc

its probably been discussed a lot but Biden definitely does not speak like he did even 5 years ago

As Shakey said, you can't overestimate the degree to which Reagan frightened and still frightens the shit out of a certain generation of Democrat.

Out of curiosity, as an non-tristate ILXor, could someone point me to an expose on just why de Blasio is so disliked? My impression of him from the debates is just "labor/I have a black teen son/labor"...

and it quite offends me when Democrats, usually white and male, use a term called The Working Class, which often implies that blacks and Latinos and gays and women don't comprise The Working Class.

I would replace "often" with "always"

and abortion as "social issue"

and football as “soccer”

and it quite offends me when Democrats, usually white and male, use a term called The Working Class, which often implies that blacks and Latinos and gays and women don't comprise The Working Class.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 2, 2019 12:07 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would replace "often" with "always"

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, August 2, 2019 12:08 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah "always" sounds right

Sorry - I did think Democrats had lost ground among black and latino voters too

dems've been gaining with latinos for a while. dubya won 40% of latino voters in 2004 iirc.

that's about when i moved to the UK so i guess I'm just a LEETLE out of date

The bright side:
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/FT_18.11.09_LatinosMidterms_many-more-voted-dem-than-rep.png?w=420

The perplexing side:
https://www.pewhispanic.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/10/PH_2018.10.25_National-Survey-of-Latinos-2018_6-04.png

that could be a phrasing thing. "concern for" is kinda vague.

re de Blasio, NYC hasn't changed much since he entered office re affordable housing, wages, giant commercial boondoggles like Hudson Yards being built, etc, and even tho he has no direct control of the transit system he's getting blamed for that ongoing decline. He also has engaged in some dubious chicanery re donors, favors, and policy.

He polls much better among PoC, and the cops hate him, so I'll give him that.

dems've been gaining with latinos for a while. dubya won 40% of latino voters in 2004 iirc.

― Carisis LaVerted (m bison), Friday, August 2, 2019 12:19 PM (eleven minutes ago)

republicans kind of threw latino voters away. tons of latinos are at least small c conservative and dubya was - in comparison with contemporary republicans - extremely dovish on immigration, and courted latino voters using spanish in campaign adds and speeches (hispandering maybe, but at least he made an effort). so he did really pretty well with latino voters.

compare with mexico are sending us rapists

(or at least the cop union leaders, a vile bunch, hate him) xxp

What the hell, I've never taken "working class" to mean anything but people who work for a living. It seems to me that trying to redefine "working class" to refer only to white men would be a strategy used by people who just don't want to talk about class and would prefer to shade conversations on the subject as racist.

Guess it's time to go back to the word "proletariat", huh?

dems've been gaining with latinos for a while. dubya won 40% of latino voters in 2004 iirc.

― Carisis LaVerted (m bison), Friday, August 2, 2019 12:19 PM (eleven minutes ago)

republicans kind of threw latino voters away. tons of latinos are at least small c conservative and dubya was - in comparison with contemporary republicans - extremely dovish on immigration, and courted latino voters using spanish in campaign adds and speeches (hispandering maybe, but at least he made an effort). so he did really pretty well with latino voters.

― bookmarkflaglink (jim in vancouver), Friday, August 2, 2019 2:33 PM (forty-five seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

i know im from tx! and tx gop continues with the same. greg abbott won reelection for governor hugely despite a poor showing from the zodiac killer against bob o'rourke. abbott has balanced the whole border security shit with "my wife is mexican-american, im not like THOSE republicans".

I’ve seen people argue (quite plausibly imo) that the Biden drop is not due to hardening opposition from the left, but centrists seeing that he’s just not up to a general election, regardless of his policies.

let's hope so!

What the hell, I've never taken "working class" to mean anything but people who work for a living.

plz explain your claim that the Dems have been hemorrhaging the working class vote then. Because, like I said, the only working class votes they've been losing are the racist white ones.

to be fair, there are quite a few working class whites. so losing them to racist demagoguery hurts the Democratic coalition. But you're totally right about continued support among non-whites, I was wrong. i found this page, which is easy to find with a cursory google:

https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/wide-gender-gap-growing-educational-divide-in-voters-party-identification/

I do think the Democratic Party hasn't had a significantly different attitude to capital and state macroeconomic power than anyone else in Washington has, which is bad not good, and they need to pay a lot more attention to the unions

state macroeconomic power

the two parties have very different views on the role of federal government in the economy. One party (guess which one!) believes in and often acts on a management model predicated on federal oversight of industry. The other is essentially just corrupt robber barons using the power of the state to benefit their own narrow economic interests and little else.

Like, Trump believes in state macroeconomic power but only insofar as he can wield it to punish his perceived enemies and dole out (tbf, totally inadequate) subsidies to constituencies his policies would otherwise harm

tax policies are totally different. one creates regulatory entities, the other undermines when it can't outright destroy them (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for ex.) etc

don't want to beat a dead horse, but: if Pelosi's main concern is caucus wrangling, tamping down dissent, what would she lose by dropping the kayfabe and just saying that? (genuine question). would conservative and moderate dems would see that as backstabbing?

and what specifically does she gain from publicly spanking popular leftists promoting broadly popular policies? I just feel that someone with her experience would be cagey enough to either not speak on it directly, or at the very least parry these kinds of questions more artfully. idk.