Democratic (Party) Direction

When you reach over to grope a cute dude and it turns out to be a rattlesnake.

Right, Rachel Vindman says she was a Republican until 2019: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/it-was-time-to-fight-back-my-journey-from-the-republican-party-through-grief-to-advocacy/ar-AAQ9hRb

the Republican gentrifiers in the Democratic party are upset that there are still brown people in the neighborhood

Amazingly, this article does not shit on the people interviewed:

Alexandra Chadwick went to the polls in 2020 with the singular goal of ousting Donald J. Trump. A 22-year-old first time voter, she saw Joseph R. Biden Jr. as more of a safeguard than an inspiring political figure, someone who could stave off threats to abortion access, gun control and climate policy.

Two years later, as the Supreme Court has eroded federal protections on all three, Ms. Chadwick now sees President Biden and other Democratic leaders as lacking both the imagination and willpower to fight back. She points to a generational gap — one she once overlooked but now seems cavernous.

“How are you going to accurately lead your country if your mind is still stuck 50, 60 or 70 years ago?” Ms. Chadwick, a customer service representative in Rialto, Calif., said of the many septuagenarian leaders at the helm of her party. “It’s not the same, and people aren’t the same, and your old ideas aren’t going to work as well anymore.”

Nate Cohn has a column in the NYT called the Upshot and recently posted an article there based on a NYT/Siena College poll that seemed to suggest that white liberal Democratic voters in upper income brackets are motivated by abortion and gun violence and could be counted on to vote in the midterm elections. Somehow this seems to me not to be quite the right footing for progress in the Democratic Party because I think economic issues even if unspoken are fundamental; carrying about anything else is a luxury. Why did he write this based on a college poll? What is a college poll?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/upshot/poll-2022-midterms-congress.html

Siena College's poli sci (or statistics or something) team does the polling.

When you reach over to grope a cute dude and it turns out to be a rattlesnake.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

tbh at this point i trust rattlesnakes more than i trust cute dudes, present company excepted

so at what point does the big tent start to actually hurt you

― no one wants to twerk anymore (will)

when you open a twitter account and start tweeting, as far as i can tell

yes, Siena College, realized after posting (bad parsing)

from 2006 (the possibilities for strategy if not purpose):

i think something that's still missing from a lot of this is an understanding that the current republican base was built from the ground up. it wasn't just a matter of coming up with the right code words or whatever, it was a long and systematic takeover of the party by various interest groups with overlapping or at least complementary agendas. the democrats at the moment seem disconnected from whatever constitutes their base, and even suspicious of it. it seems very top-down.

i do think it's worth understanding and analyzing the republican party as an authoritarian revolutionary movement, understanding their success and their failures, particularly in light of the democrats' tendency to self-define in negative terms, in terms of "we're whatever the republicans aren't"

like for instance, the republicans have certain advantages both structural and strategic. radical theocratic christianity, for instance, has become a huge asset to them. look at the way they've taken over the roman catholic church! a tremendous success. sixty years ago, catholics voted overwhelmingly democratic; now, they're a solidly republican bloc, and the way that happened was the willingness of theocrats to exploit roe v. wade specifically to gain catholics as allies. given the _outsize_ roman catholic role in the judiciary, this was a _significant_ long-term success.

all of american christianity, at this point, belongs to the republican party. it is the single largest base of organizational power within that party, and it has taken effective power starting from a grass-roots level (school boards, etc.) up through the state level, to where it can now legislate its agenda without restriction.

and what of christianity outside the radical republicans? it is dying, just as the democratic party is dying, by its understandable hesitation to engage in holy wars. they don't want _conflict_, they don't want _dissent_, they don't have the fervent conviction in their own unassailable _right_ that the theocrats do. "god", they say, "is not on our side; we strive to be on god's". well, that's not what the theocrats say! they proclaim it strongly and with absolute conviction, and who disagrees? nobody. all you can do with fanatics of this sort is shrug and walk away. you can't talk with them, you can't _reason_ with them. and these are the republican base, the people who have all of the power in america, although of course _they_ will swear up and down that they're the victims.

this is another key aspect to the republicans' success, their fundamental _narcissistic psychopathy_. they are willing to lie and cheat and steal, anything, _anything_, to gain power, which they self-conceptualize as "self-defense". i mean, it's right there in the 14 words, right? don't tell a republican where the 14 words come from and see how many agree with it. hell, don't tell a _democrat_ where they come from and see how many agree with it.

the limit, of course, is that they are delusional, narcissistic, psychopaths, on an organizational level. they can't govern effectively. hell, they can't even _rule_ effectively. all they can do is hurt people, and a moderate, discourse-based party like the democrats, one which believes, first and foremost, in _principles_ rather than _people_, one which is _universalist_, believes in _coexistence_, believes that deep down we all want the same thing, that all we have to do is talk out our differences - such an organization is powerless to stop it.

the challenge here is that there are three aspects here, three aspects which are compressed into a dualist framework, a framework which is one, or the other. the republicans have embraced the aspect of the destroyer. the democrats are left with this tension, trying to encompass the creator and the preserver at the same time.

but there is more of the destroyer than the preserver in me, in me now. i look at the america which was, many years ago, created, the america that was, the america which the republicans destroy, and i do not find it good. i find that the liberals' world had no place for me, that it _still_ has no place for me. i cannot be shoehorned into their vision. i do not _belong_, _cannot_ be in the world as they would have it. i am a monster produced by the "sleep" of reason. the world they want to preserve, to restore, is one which would be ruinous to me, which was ruinous to many of us - all those who were not old white landowning cishet men - and yet they persist in calling out, "bring the balance back". not only are they deluded in the belief that they can _do_ that, they are deluded in thinking i _want_ that. i do _not_.

the democratic party, as it is currently constructed, has as much future in this world, as much _use_ in this world, as mainline protestantism, which is to say: little to none.

y'all i _will_ get these reports run, i promise

(not making other or saying (or thinking?) they?)

(not making other or saying (or thinking?) they?)

― youn

was that to me? i can't parse that, i'm sorry

The Democratic Party in some ways seems not as inclusive as the Republican Party in its approach to working class voters.

what even are "working class voters", this is one of the fundamental framing divides the democratic party has, because all those jobs fucking got taken by machines, there's a bunch of people who are out of work or doing service industry bullshit, and the people who belong to that class - i admit "proletarian" is a big jargony word - aren't voting republican because they're _poor_, they're voting republican because they're _white_. enough with the stupid fucking euphemisms so liberals can avoid acknowledging race. see: thread on the pull quote from that guy in the article upthread where we're meant to _assume_ his skin color because actually talking about it in an article about _how the democrats are losing black voters_ would be gauche or something.

i mean unless i'm reading you wrong? this just seems like "hillbilly elegy" all over again. trying to get the "white working class vote" by being racist won't work because the democrats can't possibly be as racist as the republicans, even if they try really really really hard (and they do, a lot of the time).

for the record i did finally finish those reports, thank fuck

I think I meant that I think economic class is what matters most and that this cuts across lines of race, gender, religion, and views on personal liberty vs. the state, but many people might not identify with economic class most strongly or I may be wrong in my assumption.

i mean it's either/or thinking, _class and race cannot be differentiated_, black people are poor _because they're black_, trans people are poor _because they're trans_, white people are poor because they're brainwashed into supporting racist shitheads who appeal to their racism and blame minorities for their poverty. it's not the same thing. you want to try to make white people woke, be my guest, but that sort of thing doesn't seem to be playing very well right now.

"oh if we tell white people they're racist they're not going to vote for us", they're _already_ not voting for you, wake up and smell the napalm. throw away white cishet male voters, throw away a good chunk of white cishet female voters, a good chunk of white cis gay male voters, the more you try to hold on to them the more of us you keep away from the polls. get rid of white cishet candidates altogether. don't run them anywhere, don't run a white cishet guy for dogcatcher. the republicans have that market locked up, it's _nothing_ but a net disadvantage for y'all. go after women, go after minorities, do the work to build solidarity between groups with different interests - if the republicans can get mormons and baptists on the same fucking team y'all can get black guys and white trans women on the same team. and for god's sake, actually acknowledge the structural impediments that keep us from having a voice, all of the bullshit the republicans have put in place to suppress our vote, and _don't accept it as legitimate_, because it's fucking _not_, the cops are not _legitimate_, the racist carceral state is _not legitimate_. because if you agree to play by their rules, they've already fucking won.

^This is a bad idea. There are plenty of white cishet male voters who are down with the cause(s). And running an entire political party based on identity is reductive and probably unworkable.

P sure the numbers just don't work for that - too many of everyone who is not a white cishet man are either nonvoters or conservatives, including huge % of white women and growing percentages of hispanic voters.

The Democratic Party in some ways seems not as inclusive as the Republican Party in its approach to working class voters.

yeah, we all remember the "working class" people who owned $55,000 pickup trucks

I mean, the Dem party is absolutely abysmal at it. but the gop my god it’s 100% cultural signifier horseshit.

I think the #'s show pretty clearly that the GOP base is still wealthier, but I haven't checked in a while. It's that whole habit we can't shake of imagining "working class" to mean white coal miners and auto workers when a lot of it is actually POC and/or women who work for walmart and amazon and hospitals.

and like, out loud racist about it now. dog whistle fully gone.

when JD Vance et al says ‘working people’ he’s not talking about a single black mother in Atlanta working to gig economy jobs, and like, they do t even care that ppl know it. sicko shit.

two*

The Democrats don't want to approaching working-class people of color as working-class - they want their votes as a lesser evil but appealing along class interests and identity is unworkable to capturing the party's most desired demographic, college-educated white suburbanites.

Responding as if anyone who says "working class" is actually saying "working class whites" is a huge mistake.

I am not sure this is possible, but I think there is an income bracket that could be made as wide as possible for people who depend on wages for a living, constitute a majority of eligible voters, and favor social and economic policies that expand the number of voters by spreading economic security and education. This is what I mean by working class and what I think is the strongest tie in the Democratic Party.

in a class-based analysis you have to account *in class terms* for how race and gender politics can so effectively cut across and nullify and hold together and reproduce class antagonism with something more than false consciousness handwaving at best or total anti-woke capitulation at worst. this means taking the culture war seriously as a material struggle for access to resources to literally determine the life and death of workers and not some kind of spectacular distraction from an ideal of real class politics from 100 years ago run through a filter of postmodern class-as-identity bullshit

Left - I think you are making a good point but I can’t tell. Can you try to explain that again?

it is naive to pretend that in the void left by the murder of the workers' movement the phrase working class hasn't become how you say racially charged in popular discourse. saving it from total appropriation requires acknowledging that this has actually happened xp

you're probably wrong. just that the endless recapitulation of the identity-over-class vs class-as-identity wars is a hopeless dead end for everyone

I am not sure this is possible, but I think there is an income bracket that could be made as wide as possible for people who depend on wages for a living, constitute a majority of eligible voters, and favor social and economic policies that expand the number of voters by spreading economic security and education. This is what I mean by working class and what I think is the strongest tie in the Democratic Party.

― youn, Thursday, July 14, 2022 4:35 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think there is *something* to this. I've always felt for example that there would be pretty widespread support for universal healthcare done right even among people in the income range where they probably have at least ok work-based health insurance, because even middle class and UMC people tend to have a litany of bad healthcare experiences in the US.

Student debt also seems like an issue that extends into people who are "better off" but have six figure loans.

white people are poor because they're brainwashed into supporting racist shitheads who appeal to their racism and blame minorities for their poverty.

Just want to be clear that this is only part of the story here— the rise of neoliberalism and offshoring of steady working-to-middle-class jobs, the decimation of unions, and rapid corporate expansion backed by government subsidies have a lot to do with white people being poor. Not to mention the suppression of wages almost across the board.

The problem is that the Dems and liberals don't want to say a lot of this stuff out loud, because they supported the policies that created this environment, along with Republicans. The Republicans are able to deny their active complicity in these policies by brainwashing, which is where the part you're talking about comes in.

Mike Davis' Prisoners of the American Dream is a good look at this kind of history from a much more detailed and wonkier perspective than I could ever hope to muster.

^This is a bad idea. There are plenty of white cishet male voters who are down with the cause(s). And running an entire political party based on identity is reductive and probably unworkable.

― DJI

(looks over at Republicans, makes "L" gesture with thumb and forefinger)

to thread discussion: yeah i was obviously phrasing it in controp engagement-bait terms, which i don't usually do but i'm unusually pissy today and sometimes i behave badly. apologies.

i agree with left. i _think_. i haven't actually read marx and a lot of leftist stuff is kinda hard to parse given that i haven't read marx.

this means taking the culture war seriously as a material struggle for access to resources to literally determine the life and death of workers

This makes sense to me!

Same!

absolutely true

Culture war? Do you mean racism/anti-racism? Anti/pro-marginalized groups? Please just take a little more time to write things in a less coded manner, if possible. I'd try to parse what you are saying but I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Are you just saying that racism leads to poor minorities?

Not trying to put words in mouth, but what I interpreted it as is: culture war issues (abortion, trans and LGBTQ issues, teaching of racism, etc) have now become a stand-in *for* class and material economic issues, and so the left would do well to treat them that way instead of separately.

Yeah I feel like using “culture war” is definitionally playing on conservative turf right out of the gate. but it is the current shorthand. there needs to be, just like, something *else*. is (eg) James Carville et al too old to get this? or is it just lazy?

identity politics would be better but it's been smeared so hard no one uses it non-pejoratively these days

Of course, in a sense most (all) politics is identity politics. Republicans have been living on white fear, anger and resentment for at least 40 years.

Totally, jimbeaux, but that's not a good thing about the GOP. Pitting people against each other based on their identities is not something we should strive for or emulate.

Not trying to be a total dumbass, but table could you talk more about this:

Not trying to put words in mouth, but what I interpreted it as is: culture war issues (abortion, trans and LGBTQ issues, teaching of racism, etc) have now become a stand-in *for* class and material economic issues, and so the left would do well to treat them that way instead of separately.

Do you agree with the words you put in Left's mouth?

Totally, jimbeaux, but that's not a good thing about the GOP. Pitting people against each other based on their identities is not something we should strive for or emulate.

Absolutely, but I find it very difficult to get this point across to my more conservative friends. They don't (or don't want to) see their own "identity politics."

that is an accurate summary not putting words in my mouth BTW

maybe it's different coming from a more-or-less-ex welfare state with a more centralised media and political culture in which every culture war thing for years has been pretty openly about "how do we deny support to *this* marginalised section of the population now?"

"oh if we tell white people they're racist they're not going to vote for us", they're _already_ not voting for you, wake up and smell the napalm. throw away white cishet male voters, throw away a good chunk of white cishet female voters, a good chunk of white cis gay male voters, the more you try to hold on to them the more of us you keep away from the polls. get rid of white cishet candidates altogether. don't run them anywhere, don't run a white cishet guy for dogcatcher. the republicans have that market locked up, it's _nothing_ but a net disadvantage for y'all. go after women, go after minorities, do the work to build solidarity between groups with different interests - if the republicans can get mormons and baptists on the same fucking team y'all can get black guys and white trans women on the same team. and for god's sake, actually acknowledge the structural impediments that keep us from having a voice, all of the bullshit the republicans have put in place to suppress our vote, and _don't accept it as legitimate_, because it's fucking _not_, the cops are not _legitimate_, the racist carceral state is _not legitimate_. because if you agree to play by their rules, they've already fucking won.

― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, July 14, 2022

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