I just got off an interesting conference call held by The American Prospect led by EJ Dionne, Robert Kuttner, and Tamara Drau. Their big point was that Democrats need to do a better job of focusing on middle-class concerns, especially the economy. They said they didn’t think people outside the Beltway loved austerity and that they thought progressives were winning in Wisconsin.
My question was why Democrats are so loath to use class warfare or argue much of anything very forcefully and why E. J. Dionne bumbles around with “my good friend Charles Lane make some good points about how lazy union workers are, but I politely disagree”. Dionne claimed I was exaggerating, but admitted his style wasn’t to “punch people in the face”. They all answered that Democrats don’t use class warfare because the Democratic party is too dependent on money from rich people.
cleek
we simply need to get a better class of rich people.
anticontrarian
“There’s your problem right there,” said the repairman, hiking up his pants.
“Can it be fixed?” asked the American people.
“Yeah, but it’s gonna cost you…”
joe from Lowell
“The Democrats” as some sort of collective unit don’t “use” anything. The Democratic Party is not the Republican Party. They don’t march in lockstep or even coordinate their messages, and there is a much broader diversity of opinion and ideology.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Plus which, aside from anything else, we’re still a little hung-over from the Cold War. “Class warfare” sounds just a wee bit too Pinko for some – even if that’s what it is.
Indeed, Bob and Elvis made me hip last week to the fact that the anti-abortion shit is also class warfare.
Lotsa warfare, but the other side ain’t got much class.
Aaron
I genuinely hope it comes down to just a demographics issue. Once the generation of cold-warriors fades away I am hoping we can seriously discuss upward wealth redistribution and the class war of the rich against the poor/soon-to-be-poor.
Redshirt
The only answer I have left is many in the Dem Party are actually serving the same Masters as the Repugs, and their role (The Dems) is to play Washington Generals to the Repugs Globetrotters.
atlliberal
Democrats had better start using class warfare since republicans are at war with them right now. If they refuse to fight, they, as well as the middle class, will lose. Outside the beltway, people don’t want to see class warfare, but they recognize it when they see government bailing out banks,giving huge tax cuts to millionaires, handing giant bonuses to Wall St companies who crashed the economy and sent their jobs to China and then start trying to take away their rights to even join together, negotiate the terms of their work.
The Democratic party wouldn’t be dependent on money from rich people if they started fighting for the rest of us.
Elia
You guys see this?
Holy moly. As if this wasn’t intense, dramatic, and ugly enough already!
Zifnab
Man, if only we had some wide network of grassroots fundraisers that could help supplement the Democratic Party’s income. :-p
That said, I’m really happy to hear the Democrats finally being so open and accepting of how deep the corrupting rot of private campaign funding has finally gotten.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@joe from Lowell: This, too.
@Aaron: and this, too.
Barb (formerly Gex)
Perhaps there’s a problem when only upper class folks can win elections and even then they need the help of even wealthier benefactors. Goddamn congressmen see themselves as the moderate earners in their circles. Some Americans think they are middle class when they earn $20K. Others think they are regular old working Americans when they earn $2M. It is the concerns of regular working Americans earning over $2M that is driving policy.
The middle class was only important when America was THE place to live if you wanted to best of everything. I believe Dubai is that new place now, so it is totally okay to let America become a shithole like every other nation previously colonized by Europeans.
Mark S.
I was AWOL yesterday. Why is Doug’s last name Hill now?
And if Dionne didn’t call you shrill you must have done something wrong. Didn’t you tell him you are “a writer at Balloon Juice”?
WyldPirate
Kinda what Drum is saying in his article. Kinda what Tiabbi is saying about Obama and the DOJ/SEC ignoring the crimes of the bankstas. Kinda what Obama did by fucking the UAW members in the auto bailout while putting ZERO conditions inflicting any sort of pain on the bankstas compensation after the bailout.
The Dems don’t give a fuck about the middle class and under, either.
The only thing that will reverse what is happening here in the US is when it gets bad enough here to precipitate what is currently happening in the Middle East.
Amanda in the South Bay
Meh, here in Silicon Valley, how many upwardly mobile, upper middle class software engineer types give a shit about this? Most people here are socially liberal and fiscally clueless. IOW, nominal Democrats who culturally aren’t Republicans but sure as hell probably don’t want to get bogged down in class warfare.
Dan
sorry, not going to be generational. There is a new generation of dickheads coming up right behind this one. And one after that, and so on …
Short Bus Bully
Why do we keep trying to turn Democrats into Republicans? Why are there these envy issues?
REPUBLICANS ARE DICKS.
We are Democrats and we do things differently. On purpose. What people are proposing by “acting” like Republicans is just like U.S. foreign policy “acting” like the terrorists we are supposed to be fighting. I just don’t get it.
DecidedFenceSitter
It isn’t even the direct contributions, though with Citizens United that may change, in my opinion, it is the infrastructure that the rich bring and can fund. When you can bank roll the Tea Party Movement, it doesn’t really matter how many 100 dollar contributions you can bring to the table. You are bringing a rifle to an artillery fight.
Nate
It’s insidious. Unions are the only bulwark against the system becoming entirely swamped by monied interests. And the monied interests know it.
It’s not a demographic issue and it doesn’t matter what color the perpetrators are. So long as there are those with disproportionate money and power they will seek to hold onto that money and power by whatever means necessary. Demographic shifts are not a magic bullet, this is a battle that never ends.
PurpleGirl
@Mark S.: I don’t remember seeing where he announced the new name but in light of the focus on union and labor issues, I think it’s in honor of labor organizer and unionist Joe Hill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill
goblue72
@Elia: If the Wisconsin unions (and their supporters) stay true to their union roots (which they have so far), this sort of tactic will just steel their resolve. An attack on on one is an attack on all. Union.
If we could be so lucky, Walker’s next move will be to bus in scabs from Kentucky or Tennessee or some such place.
Elia
@Amanda in the South Bay: I don’t mean this in a snide way — what’s your point?
Mark S.
@Elia:
Well, that sounds reasonable. Walker is a fanatical asshole.
MattF
There’s the basic belief that almost everyone in this country is ‘middle class’– so, since there’s only one class, you can’t have class warfare. The catch is that ‘middle class’ in this context is a cultural marker, and ‘class warfare’ is an economic marker– the two arguments just run past each other.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Elia:
That a large bastion of affluent nominal Democrats here in the SF Bay Area probably can’t be bothered/give a shit about all this class warfare stuff? That not all affluent types are Republicans/conservatives?
Whatever.
WyldPirate
@atlliberal:
This is bullshit and lies at the heart of the “grass roots” lie that was the Obama campaign.
I remember back during the campaign in ’08 and all the buzz about the millions of “small donors” Obama had contributing to his campaign. Yep, Obama had those donors giving their small amounts, but what they gave in contributions was dwarfed by the big money donors.
Southern Beale
And Indiana Democrats skedaddle …
Loneoak
Man, if I worked at WaPo my style would certainly involve punching people in the face. Or a knee in the crotch followed by an uppercut to the throat.
Not that I condone violence. I just fantasize about it.
Davis X. Machina
Campaigns cost money. If unions shrink, or are prevented by law from providing money, and business isn’t (CU, e.g.), it’s climb into bed with business’ less distasteful fringes, and moneyed folks with non-class-based interests, or go out of business as a party.
Only a massive (order of magnitude larger) scale-up of a Dean/OFA small donation operation, that also has local and state clout, represents an effective alternative to labor on the one hand and business on the other as a money spigot.
Assumes arguendo that nationwide adoption of AZ/ME style clean elections legislation is not in the cards. As it is, both face de-funding.
agrippa
I do not know. It looks to me like most of the political class – elected officials and the commentariat ‘do not get it’. They live in a pretty islated environment and are in real comfort zone. This class warfare business could upset all that.
And, there is the money. Money that is needed to get re elected so they can stay in that isolated environment/comfort zone. We have, now, a system of crony capitalism and legalized bribery.
Times are hard and a few people may start to take notice. Life may get interesting if more people start to take notice.
jrg
It’s easy to divide Americans up, because some of us get entitlements, others don’t. It’s really fucking easy to say that we’re going to raise the retirement age N years from now, while avoiding cuts to SS and Medicare now.
The GOP knows this, so they use it to drive a wedge between the middle class. That’s how you can have teabaggers on Medicare howling about social1sm… It’s always going to be lose/lose no matter what you do. Reform entitlements? They’ll scare the shit out of Grandma. Don’t reform? They’ll scream about the deficit.
Class warfare is easy for the GOP, because the ability to divide up our electorate based on entitlements at a certain age. I’m starting to think the only way we’ll ever be unified is if SS and Medicare go away. How easy would it be to get single-payer then, do you think? I’m guessing it would be a lot easier.
Elia
@Amanda in the South Bay: If the Democratic party actually forcefully proposed egalitarian economic policies, these people would most likely either vote Libertarian or head over to the Republicans.
The kind of people you’re talking about, and I know them well, do not help the Democratic party in any way besides monetarily; and those fundraising victories are, in the long-run, pyrrhic.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@WyldPirate:
I’m worried that things won’t change until they get as bad as they were in the early 1930s. I’m also changing my view on that era. I used to think that people got together and advocated for changes that caused the New Deal. Now, I think that millions of people were finally saying the same thing because they were all screwed the same way. They really didn’t give a shit about what was happening to their neighbor, it just so happened that they were all saying the exact same thing individually.
I’m really beginning to accept the idea that Americans couldn’t care less about those around them. So much for being a Christian nation.
Xenos
The theory that I am working on is that the hippy-punching reflex arises from from the absolutely necessary commie-punching that the Democrats had to do in the 40s and 50s to hold power. At some point, though, the republicans will realize that liberals are not their enemy, radicals who are actually willing to blow up the homes, resorts, offices, and private schools of the plutocracy are their enemies.
We don’t have radicals like that now, but if the plutocrats keep it up I predict we will see plenty of it within a decade. A couple generations of kids facing grinding poverty and the loss of prospects within the legal economy will do that.
ET
And tangentially
760 Dying Counties
atlliberal
@WyldPirate: If a large majority believes that you are looking out for their interests, money becomes less important. They will vote for the party that looks out for them. that’s why Democrats had such an advantage for over 40 years. During and after FDR, Democrats helped the little guy, and they voted for Dems. Note that I said believes. They don’t believe that now,(as you seem to make clear in every post) because they see both parties as looking out for the monied interests.
But seriously, does every post have to be a slam on the president? Some things are bigger than any one man. Some things have nothing to do with him. It just makes you look like a spoiled child. Obama would have won anyway even with only small donors because it was a grass roots movement and people were ready for something different after Republicans broke the economy and damn near ruined the country.
gbear
@Southern Beale: …while the state capitol fills up with protesers.
Paul in KY
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: You’re probably right about the fear of being labeled a ‘commie’.
I will note that never stopped FDR & Truman from lambasting the rich all the fucking time. This when the USSR was run by Stalin.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Elia:
I’m a little bitter from personal experience, but I tend to think the more money you make the more hostile to class warfare you become, and this area is *full* of people making money and being recession proof. Socially liberal, as I know so many IT people are, but…wow, so out of touch on class/economic issues.
It makes me sad and depressed about the future.
Loneoak
Paging Poe’s Law!
GA state Rep Bobby Franklin (lately of redefining rape fame) literally wants to create a Uterus Police Force to investigate all miscarriages and bring felony charges against women who can’t explain them.
Tim
What the fuck good do these insidery fucking conference calls with MSM asshats do anyone?
Seriously, what is their alleged purpose? To get all reporters/writers on the call on the same page? I’ve never understood how there could be any positive reason for bullshit like this, which is taken for granted.
Davis X. Machina
@atlliberal:
There are today essentially three political parties in America, albeit the third is quite small, and two of them think that getting That Man out of the White House is the first step on the road of national salvation.
Makes coalition-building interesting.
kdaug
@Davis X. Machina:
Don’t limit this to business, mate. Foreign governments, drug cartels, human-trafficking rings – doesn’t matter where the money’s coming from. They all get a seat at the table.
It’s just that, well, you don’t.
Maude
@Paul in KY:
They switch commie pinko with mooslim turrorist back forth and around. They are lost souls, or souless losers.
WyldPirate
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Your last sentence describes what it will take–millions of people in a lot of pain and realizing they are getting fucked over is what motivates the change. There was a legitimate fear of violence because it happened.
Goggle up Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of America” and read his chapters from the time of the veteran’s “Bonus Riots” post WWI up through the early years of the Depression. There was a lot of violence and a lot of general strikes.
Neighborhoods organized back in the Depression in some places that when one of their neighbors were evicted from their homes, people would break the locks and move the family right back into their homes. At one point, the unions shut down every port on the west Coast and no cargo moved.
What would get the nation’s attention is if the Wisconsin state workers called a general strike. That is what unions used to do before that odious piece of shit Reagan came along. It’s quite possible that it might be negative attention though because the pain hasn’t spread deeply enough yet.
cleek
@Xenos:
and especially the 60s, when some on the left got all shouty and bomby. that freaked-out a lot of the non-revolutionary lefties who then used hippie punching to prove to the rest of the country that they weren’t those kind of lefties.
Elia
@Amanda in the South Bay: Ahhh. OK I was misunderstanding what you were getting at when you brought it up. I totally agree with you. People like that, on the whole, get on my nerves and I think the Ds courting of them the past 20+ or so years has been a mixed-blessing at best.
I don’t think we should tell them to go fuck themselves, though. This is airy and I’m in the luxurious position of being able to talk about long-term goals but: I think something progressives, if not Democrats, need to do is make a stronger argument as to how social issues stem from inequality. If you’ve got a bloc of voters who culturally don’t feel very comfortable with the new Dixie GOP — but similarly don’t like the idea of “class warfare” because they believe to some extent that they’re Galtian Overlords — the best tactic (I think) would be to convince them that with a more equitable distribution of wealth, we’d have both a more steady and growing economy AND less of the social upheavals that drive a lot of the cultural shifts which in turn cause so much of the Republicans base to froth at the mouth.
But I’m blah-blah-blahing here, so forgive me.
Davis X. Machina
@kdaug: Ah, but I do, at least right now. I’m a union member. This is why recent events are important.
Paul in KY
@Maude: How was FDR able to do it? Because he was super rich, maybe? Truman wasn’t, but he had no fear of whomping on them.
The rich Democratic supporters back then knew that the Democrats had to support policies that would put a little less change in their pockets, but they were OK with that, as they knew it was good for the country as a whole.
Davis X. Machina
@Elia: If the GOP weren’t monumentally stupid, and got its mind out of people’s bedrooms, and its preachers back in their pulpits, the Republicans could harvest those people like corn in August.
They have money, leisure, access to tools, and are engagé. I will pay a fairly hefty price to keep them off the other side’s bench.
lllphd
well, dammit, all the more reason to support unions who can then throw some of it back into the party that supports them.
and then, ya know, there are those silly things called votes.
Paul in KY
@WyldPirate: I think ‘General Strikes’ (i.e. striking only out of sympathy for another union’s predicament) were outlawed sometime around WW II.
That took the cannon out of Labor’s arsenal.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Ding ding ding! We have a winner. This is where conservatives, libertarians, and the economic model are partially right. People will always act in their own self interest. The enlightened part is the part that they get wrong.
Napoleon
As to Doug J, er Doug Hill’s second paragraph part of it is also that the conservatives by years of pointing fingers at the Dems and screaming “class warfare” have got them to pull punches. IMO this may be the single stupidest thing Dems do. They should be loud and proud in calling out the rich and conservatives, class warfare be damned.
Davis X. Machina
@Paul in KY: No secondary strikes. Part of the Taft-Hartley Act, passed over Truman’s veto in ’47
LLeo
Why is it that only States with Republican Governors are Broke. I’ve heard the Govs of Wisconsin and Ohio claim they have to break the unions because their governments are broke.
So why are Republican Governed states all BROKE?!?
rapier
It’s 20 years too late for Democrats to do anything and to do it first all the current ones would have to be replaced starting at the top. So let’s see, it took the GOP 30 years to do it so in 2040 the Democrats will be ready to do battle. I don’t think so.
It’s kind of sad these Beltway liberals still think the game is on. The game is over. Pumping and burning every drop of oil for 30 years has put the world in a hell of a pickle. There is no going back to the economic order and easy wealth of the cheap energy age.
kdaug
@Davis X. Machina: Yeah, I was coming at it from more of a Citizens United p.o.v, but your point stands.
jl
You wouldn’t know it from the hack propagandist in the corporate media, but governor Walker in WI has only about 40 percent support on his power play. About 52% oppose. This was not one of the AFL-CIO polls mentioned by the dangerous revolutionist socialist commie Wobbly Doug Hill, or some other poster this morning. In fact, I read the polling outfit is has come connection to a manufacturers association, but cannot find the link given the background.
Details in a comment I made last night:
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/02/21/fortunate-son/#comment-2441865
The innumerate corporate propagandist George Will implied that the vast majority of WI residents were opposed to the union position, without reference, so I assumed he made it up and went looking.
It was so hard to find actual facts about it. Took two search specifications, and almost five minutes (partly because I found an interesting story about something unrelated in the first search, and read it).
How much do Brooks, Will, Lane, McAddled make?
They are irresponsible and incompetent journalists, but they are very good and obedient hacks.
lllphd
hey folks, walker is planning to start laying people off next week if he doesn’t get his way.
jl
Stupid WP moderation nonsense blocked my comment, so I repost:
You wouldn’t know it from the hack propagandist in the corporate media, but governor Walker in WI has only about 40 percent support on his power play. About 52% oppose. This was not one of the AFL-CIO polls mentioned by the dangerous revolutionist s * c * * l* s t c0mmIe W*bbl* Doug Hill, or some other poster this morning. In fact, I read the polling outfit is has come connection to a manufacturers association, but cannot find the link given the background.
Details in a comment I made last night:
https://balloon-juice.com/2…..nt-2441865
The innumerate corporate propagandist George Will implied that the vast majority of WI residents were opposed to the union position, without reference, so I assumed he made it up and went looking.
It was so hard to find actual facts about it. Took two search specifications, and almost five minutes (partly because I found an interesting story about something unrelated in the first search, and read it).
How much do Brooks, Will, Lane, McAddled make?
They are irresponsible and incompetent journalists, but they are very good and obedient hacks.
Edit: what the hell went wrong with the linking to comments? I will try to fix.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Elia: I think the fundamental misunderstanding here, and it is one that I often catch myself with, is that everyone wants to make things better. Quite literally some people want their tax cut more than they care about the long term state of anything. No amount of wishing they cared about the long term or rational explanation of how that investment in society works will make them *want* the long term benefits for all over the short term benefits for them. Especially if they don’t feel that the culture wars hurt them, which is a large portion of the libertarian/IT trend.
Davis X. Machina
@rapier: The urgency of structuring a new order therefore is high, must be undertaken now with available tools, and will not brook waiting 20 or 30 years.
Mark S.
@Loneoak:
Do most statutes contain 4 pages of teabagger Constitutional analysis? I noticed in the discussion of Article 3, Sect. 2, the author leaves out a rather important part: “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.” It’s kind of an important clause.
I’m not sure I trust the rest of his analysis because of this.
WyldPirate
@atlliberal:
Sure didn’t take long for that to change did it, altlliberal? Now why is that? Could that possibly be due in part to people realizing that the “hope and change” being promised didn’t materialize? (and yeah, i know, cue the “Dems stay at home in off years”, and “Obama is really popular” and “he has a 91% approval rating among black voters”).
It is not that I am so much just “against Obama”. It isn’t that this is solely an Obama problem for me. I’m mad as hell because the whole goddamned system is corrupted and Obama is just the latest in a long string of Dems that go before the people and say that he is going to work to better their lot in life and it turns out to be a big fucking lie.
I used to be a Rethug back in the 80s. I was swayed by all of the claptrap and bullshit that Reagan used to spout until I began to see through it. I was swayed by the claptrap that both Kerry and Obama spewed as well because I KNOW FOR A FACT that the Rethugs are lying through their teeth.
When Obama was nominated, I thought that at long last here is a candidate that really gets it and REALLY MEANS what he says. His actions since have convinced me that he was simply spewing the same old platitudes and bullshit. He is like all the rest of the politicians–he’s going to take care of the money boys first and foremost.
Rommie
@goblue72: I would so laugh if Walker brought in a bunch of Johnny Rebs from down south to Wisconsin. That’ll go over well, heh indeedy!
Barb (formerly Gex)
This whole issue is further complicated by the fact that Nixon and Atwater conflated class issues with race issues – deliberately. A large number of the old white conservative voting bloc finds social justice to be code for taking their money and giving it to black people. These are people who grew up pre-CRA and whether they admit it to themselves or not they are just spouting racist propaganda in the guise of economic policy arguments.
jl
From We Ask America automated poll Feb 17 2011 of 2397 Wisconsin residents
Question: “As you may know, Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a plan to limit the pay of government workers and teachers, increase their share of the cost of benefits, and strip some public-employ unions of much of their power. We’d like to know if APPROVE or DISAPPROVE of Gov. Walker’s plan.”
APPROVE: 43.05 percent
DISAPPROVE: 51.90 percent
UNCERTAIN: 5.05 percent
Wisconsin residents also want the fleeing Democratic Senators to come back and duke it out, by 56 to 37 percent.
Weirdness in Wisconsin
admin | Feb 18, 2011
http://weaskamerica.com/2011/02/18/weirdness-in-wisconsin/
Elizabelle
@Nate:
I’ve never seen a better case for public financing than what’s going on now.
Witness a lot of Democrats during the healthcare reform battle.
I think Americans can understand “money talks, and no one is listening to YOU. Let’s level the playing field.”
WyldPirate
@Paul in KY:
Some laws were made to be broken, Paul. This is one that falls into that category, IMO.
Triassic Sands
E.J. Dionne’s heart isn’t in a bad place, but he isn’t often a great spokesperson for a solidly liberal or progressive viewpoint. There is a big difference between “punching someone in the face” and behaving like the lying thug on the other side of the discussion isn’t spewing hate and lies.
@cleek:
That would be nice, but I’m afraid we’ll have to import them from Europe (there may be a few in Canada, but not nearly enough), because American capitalism breeds nasty, greedy people. Only the relatively rare exception acquires both wealth and a decent sense of his or her place in our society. Since American capitalism measures human worth in dollars and cents, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the people who are most successful are comfortable with the idea of expendable human life, especially if it is pursuit of greater wealth for themselves.
Judas Escargot
Dionne claimed I was exaggerating, but admitted his style wasn’t to “punch people in the face”.
Yeah, we noticed.
Judas’ takeaway: We need more punch-em-in-the-fecking-face liberals in the ‘liberal’ media.
Long-term plans are hardest to execute when you keep getting pulled into small-stakes skirmishes. The RW learned that lesson decades ago, hence the “outrage of the week” pattern and its overwhelming success. Hard to push forward when you’re constantly forced to dig in your heels.
Time to turn the tables, and let the RW waste most of its time explaining itself for a change.
Maybe WI/OH/IN/etc is the start of that.
singfoom
@Triassic Sands: I dunno, I’m a longtime NPR listener and I think of EJ Dionne as the Bobo of NPR. A purveyor of conventional widsom and not able to analyze all that much on his own.
I find him mealy mouthed and boring. Now, NPR isn’t all that agressive in tone, so it’s not all that surprising, but still. Ask Dionne about the deficit wars and he’ll spout the Medicare/Medicard Social Security bullshit that anyone with an adult attention span and 10 minutes of researched would be able to figure out is false.
As for the larger context of this post, we’ve lost this class war. I’d really like some ideas, but as far as I can tell, reclaiming the power would mean public financing of elections and the removal of private money from our elections.
The Roberts Court with Scalia and Thomas won’t let that happen. The original intent of the framers is clear:
Corporations are the winners, regardless of the context, when it’s people vs. Corporations. Of course, there’s nothing in the documents of the founders about Corporations, but hey, no one said Originalists had to be internally consistent.
Turgidson
@atlliberal:
I think there was a window just after the 2008 meltdown where the Democrats could have basically said “DAMN RIGHT IT’S CLASS WARFARE! We aren’t taking this shit anymore!!!” and it would have worked to their advantage. They were too chickenshit to try. I don’t blame Obama for being afraid – he is forbidden from getting angry, ever, because of the color of his skin. But the rest of the party should have stepped up.
Instead, we got the teabaggers foaming at the mouth, not even knowing quite what they were mad about. But they were mad, dammit. And the right wing ran with it. To everyone’s ruin except for the bajillionaires.
Elia
@Barb (formerly Gex): I agree.
This brings us back to having no substantial progress when it comes to the fundamental balance of power until things are so bad that people feel as if society itself is in peril, though, yes?
Not a fun position to be in.
magisterludi
@cleek: Been saying that for years. I guess noblesse oblige is unamerikun, too, also.
Paul in KY
@Davis X. Machina: That’s what I was thinking about. Thank’s Mr. Machina!
Amanda in the South Bay
@Elia:
Ella,
I’m pretty much an outlier, I think. Here, living on the poor end of the income scale, the powers that have money here tend to be rather liberal. There are few teabaggers or fundiegelicals here to vent my wrath at. Of course, being as poor as I am, maybe my definition of “upper middle class” is skewed, but from my personal experience with friends who have very comfy IT jobs, and from working my day job as being on the shit end of the stick from such people…I honestly believe the average IT person here, the high 5/low 6 figure salaried individual, doesn’t give a shit about class warfare and unions. Sure, they don’t fit in culturally with John Boehener’s America, and they care for stuff like social justice in the abstract, LGBT rights, drug legalization, etc. I mean, seriously, I don’t know why libertarians aren’t more popular among the rank and file here. The “I got mine, fuck you” style is popular here.
*ends bitter rant*
Dave
Well, if “Democrats” aren’t going to take on rich people, I guess that leaves the rest of us.
Paul in KY
@WyldPirate: I’m certainly fine with them saying ‘fuck Taft-Hartley’ and doing a General Strike.
That might be what it takes, here.
Chris
@jrg:
This.
It’s true that populism is the only response to big money governments, but it only works if the people are going to unite behind you: as long as the big money can keep the people divided, the populists will lose. Dividing them based on entitlements, like you just listed, is one way to do that. Using race and immigration is another way.
It was like this a hundred years ago too. That’s why our welfare state was born so late compared to the French, British and German equivalents: the rural, Northern WASPs of the Republican base just couldn’t stomach being on the same side as the urban Catholic and Jewish immigrants and the Southern WASPs who were the Democratic base.
Divide et imperia, QED.
singfoom
@Amanda in the South Bay: As a member of the “comfy IT” class, I can tell you I at least care very much about class warfare.
I’m hoping that Wisconsin/Indiana/Ohio will raise general consciousness enough to get normal Americans to realize how horribly they’ve been screwed by both parties.
The problem is this though: We know the Republicans won’t help the middle/lower class, but the Democrats get their money from Wall Street as well. When we try to recruit Democrats eager for class warfare and progressive policies, they get shut down by their own party.
I hope that things will change, but all evidence points to it being a very fucking Dark Tea Time of the Soul for the next couple decades…
Elia
@singfoom: Yeah, I think, more than it has so far, the progressive community needs to accept that the war’s been lost and plan accordingly. Stop thinking of it as something we need to make sure doesn’t happen; it’s happened, it’s happening. I dunno what that means in-practice, though.
gene108
I’ve read on other forums, where a large group of people are of the attitude, “I had to take a cut to keep my job, so you – government worker, union worker, or whoever – should share in my sacrifice”, rather than think, “damn, those cats aren’t getting shafted like me, how do I get to be treated like them?”
There really is a split in the middle-class, between people who feel like the big money interests are the enemy and the rich are trying to turn us into a Third World nation versus those who believe big money is neutral or beneficial and government is the enemy and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer is the natural order of things.
You can talk all you want about the poor getting poorer, but there are too many people, who would rather let 100 people starve than have one strapping young buck or welfare queen get a penny of their money.
Part of rift in the middle-class is racial. A ground swell didn’t start against the New Deal and Great Society programs, until white folks realized black folks would be getting some of their money. I don’t think the feelings are as explicitly racial now, but the underlying sentiment that ‘they’ do not deserve my help still prevails in much of middle-class America.
Jose Padilla
At the national level, a lot of Democrats think class warfare is a losing argument. It’s better to grow the pie than an argue how the pie should be divided, etc. Of course many national Dems may not really believe in the class-warfare argument.
gene108
@Turgidson: They did try.
Maybe not hard enough from you, but hard enough that business owners openly stated they weren’t going to do squat to improve the economy and would actively work to defeat President Obama because of his anti-business rhetoric / policies.
Who knows, they may still not be hiring to try and improve the chances Obama is defeated in 2012.
Wall Street plowed a $100 million into the 2010 elections to defeat Democrats, after being strong supporters of Democrats and President Obama in 2008.
I don’t think people on the left properly appreciate how arrogant and entitled the business community feels, at the current moment.
The only way to change this is to have a dedicated, organized, movement on the left. So far the left has been too fractious to sustain a movement. Maybe the dust up in Wisconsin will change things and people will work together for a common agenda.
Joel
@joe from Lowell: And therein lies the painful truth. Managing a coalition is hard.
Calouste
“Campaigns cost money.”
That’s the problem right there. In the UK the major parties have a yearly budget of around 10 million pounds each. For that kind of money you can hardly run a Senate race in a smallish state in the US. And if something costs a lot of money, only rich people can afford it.
Turgidson
@Jose Padilla:
They may be right about that in general. As I said above, I think there was a window where they could have been shrill about it and won the argument, in the depths of the malaise after the 08 crash. But they didn’t (not as a unified party, anyway…Bernie Sanders and a few others said the right things). Probably because they get their cash from many of the same Galtian overlords the GOP does, and because they have been convinced over the past 30 years that it’s a losing argument.
And as a result, we’re all screwed unless we’re billionaires. Yippee.
Judas Escargot
@Amanda in the South Bay:
That a large bastion of affluent nominal Democrats here in the SF Bay Area probably can’t be bothered/give a shit about all this class warfare stuff? That not all affluent types are Republicans/conservatives?
When I joke about “Eloi”, this is exactly the demographic I’m poking fun at.
Well-meaning, but utterly clueless as to how politics and economics affect the greater mass of people outside of their own narrow/niche interests.
singfoom
@Calouste: This this and this x1000. Our politics has been corrupted to the very core by money. Public financing is the only way to fix this, yet there is no incentive for our politicians to support such a thing.
Why would they want to stop the gravy train that they’ve been feeding off of so long?
Baud
@gene108: Exactly! Thank you.
Turgidson
@gene108:
I think some Democrats tried. Not enough. I don’t think Obama tried particularly hard, nor the party as a unified voice (Democrats unified? HA!). Because I think a lot of them don’t believe it, they’re funded by the very business interests they should be protecting us from, and are for all intents and purposes on the GOP’s side in this.
That the business community howled about the weak sauce stuff they did do is neither here nor there to me. They were gonna do that no matter what.
I just think if there ever was a chance to advocate for the middle class in plain terms, that was it. And it didn’t happen as zealously as it should have. Yeah, there was mealy-mouthed pap about “what’s good for main street,” but it wasn’t backed up by action, or delivered with the ruthless efficiency the Wurlitzer would employ to get a point across (yeah I know, we don’t have a similar messaging machine. Sucks.)
agrippa
I dislike the argument of ‘the worse, the better’; it has always seemed cold blooded and self serving to me.
But, people are passive and do not pay attention. I think that it will take quite a lot of adversity to get people to pay attention. I do not think that will happen.
I think the country will muddle and dither itself into a kind of seinfelded crony capitalism – fatuous and philistine.
singfoom
I have a suggestion. Just a small idea to push our future just one small step forward.
Something we might actually be able to make happen if peeps write their representatives.
Make federal election days a federal holiday with required time off for worker of all trades.
That’s it. Start there. Once we get that, then we can start about tax incentives for voting. That one little thing shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish.
I’m going to write my reps and Senators about that today. Maybe we can’t get public financing yet, but a federal holiday so as many people can vote as possible is better than where we’re at now…
Paul in KY
@singfoom: It’s a good idea. The Repubs will fight it with the same fury as if you’d came in to raise the tax rates back to what they were under LBJ.
I am certainly for it.
singfoom
@Paul in KY: Perhaps they will. I see no cogent non-partisan arguments against it. Sure, they don’t want large numbers of people to vote, so they would oppose it.
At this point, I see two courses of action: Give it up and go home and make the best life I can within my circle of family & friends.
Or, take baby steps towards fixing our Republic. This is baby step one.
Chris
@gene108:
Which makes me wonder what had happened if he’d simply raised taxes on the rich back to pre-Reagan levels and used that income to employ people WPA style. If the rich are going to sit on their money and can’t be counted on to use it for the good of the nation, then tax their money away and use it yourself.
Susan of Texas
We don’t have class warriors because people with money will not pay someone to go to war against people with money.
We don’t have more class warriors because the majority of us believe that rich people are better than us–or at least more interesting and more deserving.
We don’t have class warriors because our country was founded on a two-tier society, and our national psyche depends on believing that we are the elite, not the lower class. Any poor white trash can consider himself one of the elite as long as minorities are worse off than he.
To become a class warrior you have to accept that you’re not special, and no matter your beliefs you have to believe that whatsoever we do to one fellow human being, we do to them all. The teachers’ rights are being taken away because there’s money to be made by starving the schools, drowning them in the bathtub, and starting for-profit schools instead. Get rid of the unions, fire the teachers, hire uncredited people off the street, and have them hand out Direct Instruction to the middle class, helpfully provided by The Walton family or the Bush family or some other well-connected corporation. Eliminate the property taxes that fund the schools but tax the middle class to pay for vouchers for for-profit charter schools for the poor. Meanwhile, the rich continue sending their children to $40,000/year prep schools, training those children to believe that their superior education endowed them with superior morals and ability.
How can people not be class warriors?
goblue72
@WyldPirate: Wisconsin labor unions are already preparing for general strike:
http://www.biztimes.com/daily/2011/2/22/
Doug Hill
@gene108:
Not that many people took big cuts at work. Real wages are doing a fine, it’s just that we have high unemployment. If people want to say “my company laid people off, the government should lay people off”, that’s one thing (it’s crazy but it’s logical), but most people are not experiencing wage reductions right now.
Elia
@Turgidson: I very strongly agree with this. Although I’m sure my input would’ve been utterly irrelevant, I regret not being more shrill during that period. It was a golden opportunity. I’m not saying all is lost and down with NOBAMA etc., but I think we under-achieved.
Elia
Obama not being more shrill at that moment was probably a mixture of 1. it’s not his nature 2. he didn’t want to immediately alienate a lot of his prospective financing for reelection and 3. being stuck in a mentality that fails to see new opportunities.
But while I’m disappointed, I find all 3 understandable and don’t think it means he’s a crypto-Republican, etc.
But what this whole discussion does have me thinking, though (and I think someone earlier alluded to this) is that, paradoxically, the best thing the Dems could do would probably be to somehow find an absolute bazillionaire who also wants to tax the fuck out of his brethren.
That’s something that was true about the Roosevelts that is probably too often forgotten or undervalued.
Brachiator
@Doug Hill:
Thanks to Sarah Palin(tm) and the Tea Party People, the GOP has found a way to pivot around class warfare arguments. For them, the battle is between Real Americans(tm), and the lazy, shiftless Islamic sozul ist hoard, led by unpatriotic Democrats and Barak Obama.
They have also found a way to pit public sector employees, seen as part of a bloated permanent bureaucracy, vs private sector employees who are hanging on for dear life as they watch their savings be plundered, their homes devalued and their wages and jobs slashed.
And although almost all of this has come at the hands of conservatives, the Fox News drumbeat is that if only the federal government would approve more tax cuts and reduce more regulations, then we would have another shining city on the hill, with milk and honey flowing for everyone.
Beltway pundits are hip deep in the pushing of class and racial anxiety, and they seriously wonder about the failure of Democrats to craft a message?
Chet
@cleek: Of course, a lot of the “shouty and bomby” types in the ’60s weren’t serious leftists at all, but rich-kid poseurs engaged in a bit of épater le bourgeois playacting.
Many of them would be only too happy to clean themselves up and reclaim their class perogatives in ensuing years.
Davis X. Machina
@Elia: Obama has the ability to make a commonplace, ordinary, normal. middle of the road thing instantly become toxic, because he’s Obama.
Case in point, the PPACA, which Bob Dole ran on in ’96.
I want him squarely in the background, just singing backup in the choruses. If the people lead, the leaders will follow.
Comrade Luke
If Indiana Democrats really are leaving the state, they should go to Madison and join the protesters.
Chet
@magisterludi: Well, to the extent that noblesse oblige is seen as a concomitant of landed aristocracy, it sort of is.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Jebus, Doug, if you’re going to appropriate the Hill surname, you should at least find a way to squeeze in a “There’ll be pie in the sky when you die” headline.
piratedan
well to be honest, the congresscritters elected in 2008 passed a shitpotfull of legislation, the problems were tied to the masterful job that the Rethugs did in delaying damn near everything so a boatload of legislation was never given the chance to be enacted. If Harry Reid had proven to be as competent as Nancy Pelosi, we would have seen a damn sight more progress than we did. Then again, I do allow the cveat that the weasels that Reid had to corral were a damn sight less inclined to work with him than Nancy found in the Congress. Like everything else, too many comprosmises in teh Senate watering down legislation passed in the House.
Tonal Crow
@atlliberal:
This. Exactly this.