Matt Taibbi

Taibbi still making the 2016 blunder of assuming that voters who rate "the economy" have anything to do with "income inequality". Trump's base remains people who make over $100k, we know this, the idea that there are reachable working class voters out there defecting from D to R over income inequality issues is a fantasy

if there was real substance to those allegations he'd have gotten the boot

jesus christ

Taibbi still making the 2016 blunder of assuming that voters who rate "the economy" have anything to do with "income inequality".

^^^ this. It doesn't change the fact that Dems have to reckon with income inequality, most of which accelerated under Dem presidents, but it's not on Trump voters minds. "Income inequality" means 'Socialists wanna take my money.'

He’s not doing that, though. He’s not talking about the upper-middle class MAGA hordes. He’s talking about the gains that were made, for one, with young Latino and Black men, for one - people that are more likely to be working class and non-college educated.

In Florida, more people voted for a $15 minimum wage than for Trump or Biden.

I was about to say!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-two-expat-bros-who-terrorized-women-correspondents-in-moscow/2017/12/15/91ff338c-ca3c-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html

sounds very chill and nbd!

He’s not doing that, though. He’s not talking about the upper-middle class MAGA hordes. He’s talking about the gains that were made, for one, with young Latino and Black men, for one - people that are more likely to be working class and non-college educated.

No, he's not. He's attempting to handwave and obfuscate so you think the two are connected, when they're not, at all. The young Latin and Black male voters who went for Trump were responding to his bluster and machismo — there are numerous articles on the subject, including plenty of quotes — while the "economic anxiety" MAGA types were, as said above, voting to say "I don't want the government to give my money to poor people." Taibbi, by switching rapidly back and forth between the two, is being deliberately deceptive. Because he's a fucking asshole.

xp mention this on twitter w his name & you get swarmed by weird accounts dedicated to defending him

also those kinds of issue-ranking polls are kind of obsolete in the time of modern political tribalism, i dont really trust them for very much useful data anyway. asked what their #1 issue is, voters cant say "voting for trump, because that is the tribal identity i identify with above all else", so they say "the economy" because they are reverse-engineering a reason that makes their choice sound like it was a decision they thought about. A lot of these same respondents probably identified "character" as their top issue once upon a time, or whatever else was the issue that the GOP candidate of that cycle seemed to be strong on.

The young Latin and Black male voters who went for Trump were responding to his bluster and machismo — there are numerous articles on the subject, including plenty of quotes —

Lazy stereotypes are still stereotypes coming from liberals.

while the "economic anxiety" MAGA types were, as said above, voting to say "I don't want the government to give my money to poor people." Taibbi, by switching rapidly back and forth between the two, is being deliberately deceptive.

He’s switching between them by... not mentioning Trump’s base or economic anxiety at all?

we've been over this iirc, honestly my best guess is that if there was real substance to those allegations he'd have gotten the boot from Rolling Stone long ago

― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Monday, November 9, 2020 2:35 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You are being a huge dumbass.

https://nypost.com/2017/11/02/executive-exits-billboard-after-sexual-harassment-accusation/

https://pmc.com/about-us/person/stephen-blackwell/

Lazy stereotypes are still stereotypes coming from liberals.

What are you basing your statement on? Because you've seen hard data contradicting what Alfred said, or are you just being lazy and assuming you know more about the young Latin and Black male voters who went for Trump?

Milo, you talking about lazy thinking is the funniest shit I've read all day. Thanks for that!

ah, it was unperson you quoted, tho Alfred has said similar things

Thanks for that!

I always say, if I can bring just one ray of sunshine into someone's otherwise, drab, boring stultified life, I'm content I've done a good thing.

You are being a huge dumbass.

can you read more than one post in a row

What are you basing your statement on?

That saying that heavily Latino Texas border counties turned less blue because of “machismo” is a lazy stereotype?

If it was machismo, why would those voters turn toward Trump against Biden (man) than Clinton (woman)?

Even if you think the cliches are God’s truth, it doesn’t invalidate Taibbi’s point. If the Democrats can’t make an economic case to hold together the multiracial working class that allows them to win elections, then their supposed social conservatism, or love of machismo or whatever, will continue to bleed them into the GOP.

why would those voters turn toward Trump against Biden (man) than Clinton (woman)?

So, what numbers did you look at that substantiates the implicit assertion in your question? I haven't seen any breakdown comparing Clinton's total votes among that demographic to Biden's. In an election where at least 12 million more people voted than four years ago, and a demographic full of first time voters, I don't think it is safe to assume many Clinton voters in 2016 flipped to Trump in 2020.

there was a pretty huge swing in those mainly-Latino southern Texas counties.

Is it churlish and uncouth to point out that the overwhelming number of racist white people voting for Trump is a much bigger problem than any of this?

Or are we still on a "let's make all the brown people save us from ourselves" kick?

Racist white people are going to be Republicans no matter what (for now). Holding together an opposing coalition is possible.

several xp taibbi's point that those voters were driven into the arms of trump due to dems not being strong enough on economic inequality (as taibbi defines it) is absent data and doesnt make sense for a few reasons. the idea that there is an electorally significant number texas voters whose order of preference would apparently be Sanders->Trump->Biden is not reality

don't really know enough about hispanics in the US but there's got to be a "how the Irish became white" thing happening to some extent? i.e. as hispanics become integrated they're going to respond to republican southern strategy politics

So yes, the expectation is that brown people will save white people from themselves

figured as much but it's good to have confirmation

ok

there was a pretty huge swing in those mainly-Latino southern Texas counties.

― JoeStork

It's complicated. From what I've read, the swing in south Texas was real, but Hispanic turnout in big cities was impressive. What happened? More white people voted.

Thread:

South Texas accounts for only 15% of the Latino vote, while the 5 biggest cities make up 60%.

In Latino majority precincts across the state, Latinos matched or exceeded participation records from Clinton and Beto. Some Latino majority precincts in Dallas went 80% for Biden. 2/5

— Antonio Arellano (@AntonioArellano) November 5, 2020

multi-xps - It's not so much a matter of "let's make all the brown people save us from ourselves", as trying to figure out how to build a strong enough coalition to acquire power and prevent the racist whites from running everything. The racist white people are going to vote their racist white people agenda and short of killing them I don't see any sure fire ways of converting them to voting for social justice or legally preventing them from voting at all. It's not like there isn't plenty of non-racist messaging out there for them to ignore, misinterpret or violently reject.

White is a construct whites can't get out of any more than you can, but even if we can't eradicate it, there are plenty of us who want to weaken it as much as we can.

@DJP Pretty sure the whole project right now is to save America from racists, with whatever coalition we can put together.

xp - lol

several xp taibbi's point that those voters were driven into the arms of trump due to dems not being strong enough on economic inequality (as taibbi defines it) is absent data and doesnt make sense for a few reasons. the idea that there is an electorally significant number texas voters whose order of preference would apparently be Sanders->Trump->Biden is not reality

You're trying to shoehorn this into a Berniebro narrative but he spends as much time talking about Warren - and doesn't say a word about either Sanders or Warren winning Texas or doing better nationally.

He's talking about the impact of a fracturing 'anti-racist rich white people' coalition on future elections and how you can hold that coalition together.

The Warren section of Taibbi's piece was mostly otm

Yeah, that seemed especially clear and focused.

I like Warren too much to trust anyone who tells me she was a great candidate "kneecapped" by the establishment. It's much less congenial to me, and therefore much more believable, that people fundamentally mostly don't want the things that I want or admire the things I admire, and thus that Warren is just plain less appealing to most voters than she is to me.

he's otm that her health care flip flopping tanked her credibility with many progressives, especially with Sanders as her opponent for that lane

but he's very far from the first to point that out

I admired her attempting to thread a needle by avoiding a "your taxes will go up" soundbite, at first. But if she'd just gone for a "taxes go up, your costs come down" line and moved on, she wouldn't have left herself room to waffle later.

So Elizabeth Warren was kneecapped by the Dem establishment because she was a stalking horse for the *checks notes* Dem establishment?

Warren's great weakness was not having the courage to fully back up her own message. She got all tangled up in triangulation. It didn't help her that Sanders already filled much of the political space she most wanted to occupy and she was doubtless told by her consultants she had to differentiate herself from Sanders. Nope. She just needed to run hard, say her piece and let the chips fall.

But that was several eons ago.

So Elizabeth Warren was kneecapped by the Dem establishment because she was a stalking horse for the *checks notes* Dem establishment?

That’s not what he wrote.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, Warren’s health care turn confirmed suspicions that many voters had, that she was a stalking horse for party interests, a vehicle for marketing anti-corporate rhetoric who would abandon those positions at the first hint of criticism from above. It’s not an accident that Sanders rose as Warren was hurtling downward.

So, "party interests" rather than the "Dem establishment"? Is that the distinction you're drawing? I'm saying Taibbi doesn't give convincing evidence for what motivated this kneecapping. Not saying it didn't happen, but failing to support M4A doesn't seem like something establishment interests would have a problem with. If anything it would prove she was Very Serious Person.

I think it’s more that he’s not saying that Warren actually was a stalking horse, just that her decisions around M4A messaging made more leftist voters suspicious, while the establishment wasn’t comfortable enough to see her as the safe alternative to Sanders.

I’m drawing a distinction that he doesn’t call her a stalking horse. He’s continuing his point about progressives jumping ship when she started to hedge on things like M4A - making her appear to be moderating toward the machine interests, opening the door to Sanders’s surge. ‘Berniecrats’ feared she wasn’t as good as she portrayed herself initially (and, uh, yes that seems to be quite accurate as a read on their opinion circa January).

He says she was kneecapped by the establishment, and suggests they preferred people like Bloomberg. But he doesn't say why. Anyway, the article's actually NOT about what the Democratic Party should do to connect with working class voters - Taibbi has no idea - it's a laundry list of all the mistakes Taibbi feels the party made during this election. But if it WERE an article about what the Democratic Party should have done to connect with working class voters, I'm not sure that nominating Elizabeth Warren would have been the answer!

He says she was kneecapped by the establishment, and suggests they preferred people like Bloomberg. But he doesn't say why.

You skipped the part about her being an anti-corporate economic populist, I think?

You mean this part?

Warren didn’t blast the party structure or stoke crowds with Burn-the-Rich rhetoric

Yes, that’s the part where he illustrates her difference with Sanders and why the party should have been accommodating to her from the start in order to assuage the rebellious Berniecrats without spooking other people.

He does leave out how much people like Buttigieg and Klobuchar went after her on M4A, and she did make herself more vulnerable on that issue than Sanders due to not wanting to raise taxes. I'm not sure I buy the "kneecapping" line, she certainly was a good candidate on paper but her political instincts were a real drawback and I don't think a friendlier Dem establishment would have kept the moderate opponents from finding her weaknesses.