Democratic (Party) Direction

(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

I like this post

Put another way: it used to be (on the right) about sticking it to the poor, but now it has actually become more about sticking it to marginalized people, regardless of their income level.

You could make the argument (somewhat successfully) that rich, shadowy, evil people are manipulating "low-information" voters into fighting each other rather than uniting against their common foes in the 1%, but at this point, I don't even know anymore. So many people seem caught up in this nasty, cruel behavior/reward cycle.

DJI, the way that I see it, the Right in this country is currently guided by several "principles" (if you can call them that):
- white supremacy/fear and hatred of an Other (which includes non-white groups, as well as queer people, disabled people, sick people, etc)
- bootstraps ideation/mammon as evidence of virtue (which ties into prosperity gospel BS and the gutting of social welfare programs)
- anti-intellectualism
- an unswerving fealty to an idealized past
- militarism
- utilizing (occasionally quasi-) nationalistic signifiers as code for these other principles

Since so many of these principles can be tied directly to a total hatred and disregard for the poor AND minorities, it makes sense for the left to also treat "culture war" issues as directly affecting the material realities of its members, because the right obviously does and wants to use them to keep people poor, dumb, and just unbroken enough to be exploited.

You could make the argument (somewhat successfully) that rich, shadowy, evil people are manipulating "low-information" voters into fighting each other rather than uniting against their common foes in the 1%, but at this point, I don't even know anymore. So many people seem caught up in this nasty, cruel behavior/reward cycle.

― DJI

yeah i'd make that argument, and i'd also argue that you "not even knowing anymore" is the result of a _deliberate strategy_ by "rich, shadowy, evil people" - we might call them perhaps "capitalists" - to keep us ignorant and divided, because this is necessary for them to remain in power.

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.

this seems like a variation of the "accelerationist" label that gets applied to me occasionally. this is not something _we are creating_, this is something that has _already been done_. we are already divided by sexuality, gender, race, class. i don't want to _create_ these, differences, i just want to _acknowledge_ those differences. to me, solidarity means that i acknowledge that i have different lived experiences, different material conditions, different ideals, goals, priorities, from other people who are not like me, that we do _not_ all way the same thing, that _conflict, class conflict, is an inevitable and necessary part of life_.

while i certainly work to resolve difficulties i might have with people who are not like me, to work together with people who are not like me for the common good, this is not _universal_, there always needs to be the option to walk away, to decide that i am not in coalition with somebody. if a cis person or group of cis people decides, for instance, that trans rights aren't important, then i'm not in solidarity with them, i have to walk away from them, we can't work together for our mutual benefit.

acknowledging diverse identities is the foundation of coalition-building, imo, and the next step to acknowledge identities, in a strategic sense, is to say, ok, what communities are most important for me to work to be in solidarity with? with what groups can i work to advocate most effectively for the common good against those whose notion of "good" is opposed to my well-being? and for me, personally, cishet white men are real, real low on that list, most of all because members of that group tend to _not conceive of themselves as a distinct, non-normative class_. no shade intended, just real talk here.

"that we do _not_ all way the same thing"

"want" not "way", god i used to be coherent, i swear

I guess I just believe that trying to spread economic security and education will result in the best policies and the most sustainable growth for the most people. Not that you'd agree with everyone on every issue but that no one would be so inconsiderate of others as to do them blatant or knowing harm. This is probably incredibly naive. (I also feel incredibly stupid for having momentarily read "college poll" incorrectly above; I remembered and just reminded myself that there was age data and know that the NYT conducts polls with other higher education and research institutions. Sorry about that!)

You could use preventive health as an analogy: instead of responding to bad news, you could try to take actions that decrease the likelihood of bad news. Bad news can (momentarily) energize and motivate ...

acknowledging diverse identities is the foundation of coalition-building, imo, and the next step to acknowledge identities, in a strategic sense, is to say, ok, what communities are most important for me to work to be in solidarity with? with what groups can i work to advocate most effectively for the common good against those whose notion of "good" is opposed to my well-being? and for me, personally, cishet white men are real, real low on that list, most of all because members of that group tend to _not conceive of themselves as a distinct, non-normative class_. no shade intended, just real talk here.

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

that's a deep feeling for me

I guess I just believe that trying to spread economic security and education will result in the best policies and the most sustainable growth for the most people.

― youn

i mean, i think that's a good belief! my question is, is that belief supported by empirical data? i'm not a radical because of theory, i'm a radical because it's the approach that seems most suited to the data available to me!

cishet white men are real, real low on that list, most of all because members of that group tend to _not conceive of themselves as a distinct, non-normative class_

Totally, and I guess that's why I (as a chwm) wish that for everyone - that their identities could be based on their beliefs, how they treat people, etc. That people could explore their gender and sexuality without having to "pick a team." But I guess what I want for other people is not necessarily what they want for themselves.

Totally, and I guess that's why I (as a chwm) wish that for everyone - that their identities could be based on their beliefs, how they treat people, etc. That people could explore their gender and sexuality without having to "pick a team." But I guess what I want for other people is not necessarily what they want for themselves.

― DJI

one of the things i had to unlearn hardest was, well, wanting things for other people, wishing things for _everyone_. i mean, people live their own lives, people make their own decisions, like, i was raised to want what's best for _everyone_ and there's some real, like, white man's burden shit in there, i think. there's nothing inherently bad or wrong or anything with being a white man, it's just lived experience. i was functionally indistinguishable from a cishet white man for several decades and i was fucked up in ways which are, in retrospect, really fucking clear to me, and it's _not_ just because i wasn't actually a cishet man. would i have _listened_ to someone who wasn't a cishet white man pointing those things out for my benefit? nah, even though i've done a lot of reading, like a lot of folks mostly i learn from _experience_. that's the thing, there are a lot of things that cishet white men tend not to get, and it would be _advantageous_ to a lot of people if they did, but it is _not_ within my power to make that happen.

What is politics, though, but wishing things for everyone?

I think I'm getting why you don't vote. :)