I sense I’m in the minority here, but I find erstwhile BJ front-pager Freddie deBoer consistently interesting to read. Douthat of the NYT references a recent deBoer piece in yesterday’s column:
I like how the left¬wing gadfly Fredrik deBoer framed this issue: “What do you owe to people who are guilty of being wrong?” It’s a question for liberals all across the Western world to ponder, given the widening gulf between their increasingly cosmopolitan parties and an increasingly right-¬leaning native working class.
deBoer, pondering the view of “our liberal intelligentsia,” puts these words in that group’s mouth: “Trump’s rise has nothing to do with the collapsing economic fortunes of the white working class and everything to do with racism.” There are people who oversimplify the issue to that degree, but I think most folks realize there are multiple factors at play. But even if you grant deBoer’s premise, his conclusion doesn’t follow:
…in a deeper sense I think conservatives have won a major victory, one not understood by them or their antagonists: they have written the notion that dignity, respect, and material security must be earned into the progressive imagination. They have made the notion of a moral meritocracy inescapable in American civic life. The terms by which one comes to deserve the good life are different, but the basic logic of meritocracy has been preserved.
Is anyone seriously arguing that even the most vile bigots among the white working class shouldn’t have material security? I don’t think so. The liberal premise I buy into is that everyone should have healthcare, a living wage and a secure retirement. Respect has to be earned, yes. It’s not an entitlement.
Baud
It ain’t page clicks.
Doug R
I’m thinking your average Trump voter was never really that well off, just doing better than the “n*” down the street. Now that everyone’s getting a chance or at least a voice to become more equal, they are noticing just how low they and the rest of us working stiffs has slid. Those super low mortgage rates and easy easy credit hid a real slide in wages. They’re angry, and they take it out on their usual suspects, who they consider the outsiders.
PsiFighter37
This one should be good…
maeve
I would phrase it differently – the default is respect – which includes treating people as individuals – but it is not a right, it can be lost. That’s different from saying it has to be earned.
delphinium
...everyone should have healthcare, a living wage and a secure retirement. Respect has to be earned, yes. It’s not an entitlement.
Exactly this.
schrodinger's cat
I reject the claim that “conservative” intellectuals seem to be making, that liberal elites are responsible for the rise of Trump. Charles Murray, Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat seem to be making that case.
Two points of disagreement:
1. Coddled conservative elites like Douthat, Murray and Sullivan are poor spokespeople for the downtrodden and the ones left behind.
2. The primary problem is more of economics and less a cultural one. Douthat trying to blame neo-liberal policies on the Clintons is rich. It was their conservative God Reagan (and Thatcher) who upended the Keynesian view of economics for the one favored by neo-liberals like Milton Friedman. Now the party is to the right of Friedman, Lucas etc.
Baud
I can see why Freddie would oppose this principle.
Betty Cracker
O/T: A maroon Maserati with a vanity plate that reads “Merlot 1” just passed our vehicle on the highway. Peak pretentiousness?
Kay
I read him too Betty so you’re not alone. He’s sometimes interesting. His take is different.
My son travels a lot overseas for work and he brought up a good point about ‘white people and the Right” there- he runs into Trumpian-like people all over. Denmark is pretty good for white working class, and so is Germany. He was surprised by how widespread this is which tends to make him think it’s more than economic anxiety.
I tend to think it’s linked rather than categories- their sense of scarcity means they are less inclusive- they feel there isn’t “enough” to go around. I don’t blame them for that, really. We treat everything as if there is a limited supply and something must be taken from one group and allotted to another. You see it raised in everything from healthcare to wages and liberals too often buy into this idea that if one group is getting something cuts must come for another.
I had a disgruntled Democrat tell me here that conservatives set the wealthy against the middle class and liberals set the poor against the middle class. That’s the scarcity frame to me in a nutshell.
schrodinger's cat
Oh and boring Freddie is still boring even if he is being named checked by Chunky Boring Bobo.
Xantar
BONERS!!!
Schlemazel Khan
@Baud:
OK, we can shut the thread down, The next President of the United States just gave the correct answer.
Baud
You’re right, of course, Betty. What some of us argue is, for example, is that we’re not going to listen to whining from Brownback or Bevin voters. But all of us would be happy to support Democrats who advocate for a level of economic security for all.
Gin & Tonic
You lost me at “consistently interesting.”
NotMax
Was there a close-out sale on tripe? Because that’s a wagonload of it blockquoted above.
“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
schrodinger's cat
@Gin & Tonic: I miss DougJ. He had boring Freddie’s number.
Betty Cracker
@maeve: Interesting point, but I see that as more a guarantee of dignity — I recognize our common humanity as a baseline — but respect is something more, and yes, to be earned rather than automatically granted.
sdhays
When he was posting here, Mr. deBoer left a strong impression on me that he was intellectually lazy, which is why I started just skipping over his posts. He would describe things or people based on how he imagined them in his silly head without actually doing the work to support his argument or challenge his own argument before crapping it out for all to see, and then when anyone suggested that his imagination wasn’t reality (or that reality was a lot less black and white), he couldn’t defend himself on any merits, so he just whined that people were being mean to him.
You’re clearly made of stronger stuff than I am if you regularly wade through his fevered dreams and butthurt.
Marc
A lot of liberals really do begin and end with the idea that people like Trump voters are motivated exclusively by racism, and they then define that as the end of the conversation. Go into the comments on any article here, or read even high profile commentators, and you will repeatedly see versions of these claims. Basically, it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card; there is nothing that we can do to persuade those sorts of people and no need to even try.
Now people don’t usually then follow with “so they deserve what they get”, so in that sense it’s unfair to claim that liberals don’t care about people like Trump supporters. But they also don’t follow up with any way of reaching them, any recognition that there is anything but racism that motivates them, or very much of anything in the way of empathy or compassion. And there really is a lot of free-floating cultural contempt in the mix too.
It’s not as if conservatives are trying to understand liberals either. In my view people like Trump supporters have been deceived by the Republican party and I think that they could support more liberal policies if they could be reached. They were willing to do so in the past – it is absolutely not the case historically that plutocrats and working class whites were a natural alliance. So we should try, and this begins by trying to see what common ground there is or could be. And you don’t need to compromise on dignity and equity for all to do it.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m surprised it took you that long. The words “Freddie deBoer” come first.
JPL
@Doug R: The biggest issues facing the Trump voters are culture and identity. If they get those in place, then there were be less government funds, going to the others. They are willing to destroy the country, to see if their premise is correct.
IMO, a Trump presidency would destroy the country, but I’m not sure it can be rebuilt.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Nope. Peak would be a vanity plate reading IGMFY.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t think Democrats have to kiss their ass but I do think politicians have to engage honestly. I was proud of Clinton for going to the coal miners. That’s just “good government” to me- the idea that she works for them no matter whether they support her or not. Trump coming right out of the gate and announcing which people he believes are unacceptable is the opposite. Fuck him. I don’t care who he “likes” it’s not about him.
MattF
Except that wingers have gone a step further and turned ‘the notion that dignity, respect, and material security must be earned’ into the notion that the wealthy and the lucky have the dog-given right to immiserate the non-wealthy and the non-lucky.
The point is that we are not (yet) living in the Star Trek universe– it’s still dog-eat-dog out there and the right wing believes that’s the way it should be.
msdc
I find him interesting to read too, though I might quibble with “consistently.” Sometimes he asks the tough questions that challenge liberal/progressive assumptions; sometimes he’s just a contrarian attention-seeker or purity pony; and, perhaps most frustrating, sometimes he asks the tough questions and generates contrarian attention-seeking purity pony answers. But the first category is usually enough to justify wading through the last two.
Then again, there are those times when he buys into the flawed assumptions to begin with. His Trump post is probably one of them, as it shares the assumption (also made here by Doug R and others) that Trump’s voters are working-class. Nate Silver finds that’s not true; the average Trump voter so far has a median income of $72K! That’s lower than his Republican rivals (just barely, in Cruz’s case), but it doesn’t even come close to Clinton or Sanders. So yeah, his premise has some problems.
What do you owe to people who are guilty of being wrong? Well, if they’re right often enough you can keep reading them – just remember to check their work.
Baud
@Kay: I agree. Obama has said and done the same thing too. The president is the president of the entire country. But I also believe politicians are in a different position than regular commenters or advocates in that respect. It’s one reason I often don’t agree with some of the criticism I see of Democratic officeholders.
Kay
@Marc:
They do though, engage because there are a lot of places where Democrats won’t get elected without engaging. Online activists don’t engage. Democratic politicians need 35% or 40% of whatever. They don’t have the luxury of diagnosing and dismissing.
Go back and look at the Obama campaign in Ohio in 2012. It was economic populism.
FlyingToaster
@maeve: I’ll have to disagree.
Courtesy is the default. You need to be courteous to everyone — right up until they fly their asshole flag and make it clear that there’s no point in putting up with their antics.
Respect is beyond courtesy, and yes, it’s earned. Senator Professor Warren has earned my respect, by trying to get it right, and then making her case to all and sundry. Senator-then-Secretary Clinton earned my respect by learning from her mistakes and refusing to repeat them.
Senator Sanders failed to earn my respect; I am not 16, I don’t want a pony in my yard and however right he is about his goals, his lack of roadmap and his hectoring mean I am not going to waste my time on him. I don’t wish him ill, I’m just not interested and I’ll skip the lecture, thanks.
Candidate Trump lost my courtesy; he and his hair can go swim in the Vistula.
Marc
@msdc: That Silver analysis is remarkably poor – a definite sign of someone looking for contrarianism and clicks. Primary electorates are odd in all sorts of ways and differ from the general public. If the national polling of all voters shows a trend, and it does, then I’d believe that over the witches brew of primary exit polls.
Zinsky
I think there is a kernel or two of truth in this observation. The right definitely has a increasingly small “intelligentsia” and more redneck rubes who can’t pour piss out of their boots without instructions on the heel. I worry too about the self-satisfied smugness of some liberals like the BernieBros.
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@Kay: This
debbie
Of course not. In fact, they usually have more material security than others. Trump’s supporters aren’t interested in material security; they’ve become such rabid fans because he’s promising the end of “political correctness” (ie, the return to the glorious days of bullying).
gf120581
@FlyingToaster: The difference between Warren and Sanders can be looked on like this. Think of them as members of a work team assigned to do a task.
Warren has a solution, a plan to achieve that solution, and works with the others on the team to make sure the plan functions and the goal can be achieved.
Sanders, on the other hand, prefers to stand off to the side and complain that the others are not doing it right, but when asked for advice has none to give.
Baud
@Zinsky:
That’s true of a lot of things you can say about liberals as as long as you confine your analysis to the correct small set of liberals. The rhetoric in the Democratic primary has proven that.
Marc
@Kay: I agree completely in terms of what successful politicians do on the ground. Those efforts could be more successful if they put in the legwork to develop effective outreach. It’s hard to do that in a simple devils and angels framework, which is how online discussions and a lot of political commentary is structured; and I think that it’s pervasive enough that it’s become very difficult to break through as a result.
Johnnybuck
@Marc:
Well, here’s the thing, they do, until they discover that said policy they favor is a liberal, or Democratic policy.The ACA in general is more popular than “Obamacare”
Gee, I wonder why?
Baud
The problem with the “it’s about economic security” argument is that it doesn’t explain why everyone who is a economically insecure isn’t supporting Trump. The divisions were seeing are not defined by economic insecurity. They are better defined by race.
sdhays
@schrodinger’s cat:
Booman has been making a powerful argument how the way the Republican Party has consistently failed “its” constituents has created this situation. Their constituents are literally dying and Republican officials are doing nothing. Drug addiction epidemic – government isn’t the solution. Economy not working for working people – cut taxes on the rich. Republicans are disconnected from their own constituents, yet they still win elections, so things just keep getting worse.
These people are tribal Republicans, so they’ll never switch parties (or, at least they haven’t yet), but their representatives are fiddling while they burn, so they are seeking out people who will upend the cart with the hope that things get better.
Schlemazel Khan
There is no doubt in my mind that racism, particularly the resentment that ‘those people’ are somehow doing better than us white folks is the foundation the GOP built. The cathedral built on that racist foundation is a shrine to economic hardship created by the changing world. The stained glass windows are images of unskilled jobs moving overseas followed by many skilled jobs with the downward pressure on wages here in the US. Drumpf took over the cathedral by stating in blunt English what the high priests of the GOP only said in the language of their church.
The foundation of racism would be there without the economic hard times and the cathedral might still have been built without the foundation but neither could have lasted or been successful without the other.
Marc
@gf120581: Or, alternatively, one of them had the guts and discipline to run a national campaign advocating for progressive change and the other didn’t. Odd how that works.
The “othering” of Sanders and his supporters by Clinton supporters (and, obviously, vice versa) is a symptom of the same disease discussed in the OP. People who disagree on something, like the proper primary choice for Dems, aren’t choosing between candidates with a lot in common; they’re choosing between Jesus and Satan, and we have to come up with a long catalog of insults to describe people who’ve gone to the bad side.
MattF
@sdhays: These ‘tribal Republicans’ are all losers, according to Trump– but they identify with him. How does that work?
smith
I think that there is a danger of falling into the trap of paternalism if we look on Trump supporters primarily as poor dears deluded by the elites. They respond to his message, and those of Fox and hate radio, because those messages resonate with them. To the extent that those messages are clearly racist, they need to own them. They are adults, and it’s another form of condescension to assert that they have just stumbled into bigotry because they were misled.
J.
@Betty Cracker: Was it doing 185?
Also, is there a Baud fan club? If so, count me in.
Marc
@Baud: Nothing is ever about one thing. The white working class supported the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, or at least they elected politicians who did. They weren’t less bigoted then; but they knew that their work bosses didn’t have their best interests at heart.
msdc
@Marc:
Wait a second. The claim was made that Trump supporters – who have only and can only vote in primary elections thus far – are working class. Silver finds that Trump supporters far exceed the median income in every state (and also exceed the median income of Democratic voters). He even finds a slight decline in lower-income GOP voters from 2012. There is no evidence that Trump draws substantial working-class support, certainly not in comparison to the Democratic candidates.
If your point is that voting tends to be a middle/upper-class activity, and primary voting doubly so, well yes (and Silver acknowledges that in the article) – but primary voting activity is the only way we have of identifying Trump supporters so far.
It’s not contrarianism just because it contradicts something you believe to be true.
Suzanne
@debbie: This. The Trump supporters aren’t responding to his policies. He doesn’t have any consistent policies, there’s no self-interest. They’re members of his cult of personality, and his personality is belligerent. It’s not even really about Mexicans or women or Muslims, it’s just this sense that society has made them feel uncomfortable saying what they think, and Trump promises “real talk”, aka nastiness and objectification, which are fun when you’re not in the receiving end.
The question of what is owed to these people is really simple: they deserve the same thing that everyone else gets, and as a progressive, I think that means human and civil rights, health care, education, and a guarantee that your basic needs of life like food and shelter will be available and accessible. But they don’t get anything else, like social status or preferential treatment, and that eats them up.
Kay
@Marc:
I actually think it will take care of itself. The thing about economic insecurity is it spreads because economies are systems and no one is immune. First they came for the autoworkers and then the engineers and university adjuncts…is really true. We’re dependent on one another whether we like it or not :)
I still hear the sort of flippant “go get some new skills for the 21st century!” from liberal pundits but I hear it less and less often. The online pundits are actually joining unions and university adjuncts marched with Fight for Fifteen.. Embracing the olde-timey lunch bucket crowd :) Good for them! They need wages and health care like everyone else.
Baud
@Marc:
True. But some things are often more important than others.
Marc
@msdc: It’s exactly the point that you mentioned – primary voters are a more affluent group than the general public, so you can’t compare the demographics of Trump primary voters to those of the general public. If you look at demographic cross-tabs on where Trump gets his support in general election match-ups, it really is the case that lower income white men are his strongest group.
gf120581
@Marc: There’s no “othering” of Sanders here. Merely pointing out how his supposed “revolution” has become nothing more than a vanity campaign that’s all about him. How effective. Don’t get cranky because Warren is far more effective than the Bird Man ever was.
And “discipline?” Don’t make me laugh. The Sanders campaign is many things, but “disciplined” is not one of them by any remote definition of the word, especially now as the end comes.
Baud
@Marc:
This is what you initially said
This is what you have now said
So I’m not sure what point you are trying to make about Trump’s support.
different-church-lady
Freddie is the classic example of someone who believes “having thoughts” is the same thing as “thinking”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Way to miss the point nitwit. These people hold that being born a white, heterosexual American male should guarantee of success and anyone else who succeeds did it by cheating. That’s a tad un-American dotcha’ think?
Marc
@gf120581: And yet one of them ran for president and came quite close, despite some obvious handicaps, while the other didn’t. And I can remember someone else in 2008 who ran a primary challenge to the bitter end despite no obvious path to victory.
greennotGreen
I don’t think that all Trump supporters are racists. Racists have a rational reason to support a fellow racist. But how can anyone reach non-racist Trump supporters? It’s hard for me to see them as either rational or moral. They either have to think the hog slop he calls an economic plan is a good idea and worth overlooking the nativism or they are so immature that they’re willing to risk the security of this nation and the world just so they can stick it to the man.
They are the 27%.
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@Marc: Just speculating here, but could lower levels of educational attainment be more closely associated with support for Trump than lower levels of income?
Kay
@Marc:
I think there is a tendency for advocates to point to their issue as “popular” and economic insecurity people (of which I am one) are sort of thrilled and amazed it’s getting this much play so may want to over-determine it as causal. It’s a pitfall of advocacy- when you think about something a lot and feel strongly about it you see it everywhere.
geg6
@Suzanne:
This. A thousand times, this.
Baud
@Marc:
The problem with comparing this to 2008 is that liberals vilified Clinton for doing that. Consistency requires equal vilification of Sanders if you really want to adhere to the comparison.
msdc
@Marc:
But you can compare them to other primary voters (which Silver did) and find that their incomes are no lower than most other GOP voters (quite a bit higher in some states like NY), and substantially higher than Democratic voters. You can also compare different candidates’ supporters (as Silver also did) and find the Democratic candidates draw a substantially higher portion of their support from working class voters. If Trump’s support is driven by working class voters, where’s the evidence?
Links? And please note that “lower income white men” is a very different claim than “lower income.” One that speaks to Baud‘s point up above: income isn’t the major dividing line.
Baud
I’ll say that. Economic insecurity can help explain why Trump beat the other Republicans among Republican voters. It doesn’t explain the choice between Trump and the Democratic nominee.
hueyplong
I’m mildly irritated with the concept that “economic uncertainty” is a get-out-of-jail-free card for racists to be openly racist. “Economic uncertainty” isn’t something right wingers are willing to allow non-whites to use as an excuse for anything, and economic uncertainty is what a large percentage non-whites have typically experienced during the entirety of their stay in North America (free or slave).
I’m also tired of right wingers whining about leftists doing end zone celebrations any time they start to worry about how they might not be controlling the narrative.
Shell
Im surprised that one was still available.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Trump beat other republicans because they have a base who has been trained to eat nothing but red meat for the past 8 years, and Trump gave them more red meat than anyone else.
Anything more than that is overthinking it.
Chip Daniels
It also is a gross oversimplification to accept a premise that Trump has a lock on the working class while liberals are representative of the elite.
Neither one of those is true- the bulk of Trump’s support comes from white people of middle class means, who are anxious about downward mobility which is vastly different than the ones who never had it to begin with.
And like others pointed out, it implicitly accepts the idea that white working class voices are somehow more authentic than working voices of color.
It also isn’t doing white working class people any favors by patronizing them, failing to hold them accountable for their own agency if they make the conscious choice to lash out at black people instead of the 1% that has been ratfucking them.
Amir Khalid
A strange way of phrasing it. Does being wrong about something make you a guilty person, so that the rest of society owes you less? As punishment, are you supposed to forfeit some right you currently have? I don’t like where that line of thinking goes.
Kay
I’m just going to quote Obama here because I think he nailed what (sometimes) bothers me about liberals in (professional) policy and politics:
I think people hear this from Democrats sometimes and it comes off as scolding and patronizing. It’s why I hate the “ladders of opportunity” thing so much. I think they hear that as “advice” rather than “I’m on your side”. No one wants advocates to be distant advisers. They want advocates- on a SIDE.
different-church-lady
@Chip Daniels:
It might not be doing them any favors, but it does seem to be the thing they demand.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: It strikes me that in Freddie’s world, there is nothing worse than being wrong. Which explains why he is incapable of admitting that he frequently is.
MikeBoyScout
I neither read Freddie nor Douthat as I’ve found their writing has long past being interesting or relevant.
As to ‘Why Trump?’, I think (and thought so when he announced) he and his predominantly racist set of solutions is all the Republican party has left.
One may call it over simplification, and it is, but 35 years of bullshit policy prescriptions which have left their voting base down and out and 16 candidates offering more of the same means the carnival barker who is openly racist and an open misogynist wins.
It’s all they’ve got.
cleek
i’m truly baffled by the attention FdB gets.
smith
@different-church-lady:
Actually, they demand deference, not patronization.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
The whole class versus race versus gender intersectionality being debated by well off white males makes me want to stick needles in my eyes.
Anya
I read deBoer most of the time. But in most of his pieces there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion.
In terms of what motivates Trump supporters, clearly racism and fear of the other is how they’re channalling their anger but economic insecurity is at the heart of their problems. But how are they different from any other group in the world and throughout human history? Actually, I think Obama’s 08 quote explains it very well.
If the conservative intellectuals were honest, or interested in solusions they would examine how GOP fostered the racist and bigoted sentiments to keep the white working class voting for their destructive ecomic policies. But instead they found a whipping boy in liberal bloggers.
different-church-lady
@cleek: He does seem to have a way of getting under the skin, but not one that I comprehend. He’s not just wrong on the internet, he’s wrong on the internet in a way that makes people grab on to his chew toy an not let go. But it’s not like he’s on the TV, or in the NYTs.
different-church-lady
@smith: Well, both, now that you point it out.
Suzanne
@hueyplong: Word. Now that white people are experiencing the same kinds of systemic economic insecurity that minorities and women have always faced, it seems that there’s suddenly a realization that it’s a problem. When it was mostly something that happened to Someone Else, it was Just The Way Things Are. That is bullshit and shouldn’t be tolerated.
Same thing with drug abuse. When black people do it—THREE STRIKES! When white people do it, it’s a public health problem.
Marc
You could say that Democrats lost the support of working class whites for a lot of reasons. Among them were that Democratic economic policies didn’t prevent the loss of manufacturing jobs – this included both things that they could control, like free trade policies, and ones that they couldn’t, like automation. Liberals also didn’t have a good answer on quality of life issues like crime. The loss of credibility on issues like these made them susceptible to racial appeals in ways that they had not been earlier. An obvious implication is that their positions could be reversed, which is not the case if the story begins and ends with bigotry.
An interesting article on ideology, class, and generation by the way:
http://www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/
schrodinger's cat
@sdhays: You can’t help those who don’t help themselves. Their delusions keep them happy. Their fear morphs into hatred of the “other”. Republicans, are good at providing scapegoats to hate.
Mike J
@cleek:
We had happily ignored him for a good long while now. i don’t understand why having Douthat namecheck him makes him worthy of conversation. It’s a pity the Ralph Douthat twitter feed seems to have flamed out so quickly.
msdc
@Chip Daniels: I would agree with all of this. I would also add that the “economic insecurity” argument has the effect of letting Trump’s middle- and upper-class supporters off the hook for their support.
Some liberals have this idea, which Kay speaks to in the Obama quote up above, that racism is only a problem of ignorance, one that can be cured by sufficient income, education, manners, class. Trump’s support disproves that, but a lot of those liberals and progressives haven’t got the memo yet.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Marc:
Reagan Democrats – working class whites – voted for their own demise by voting for union busting Republicans. Why did they do that?
schrodinger's cat
@cleek: He is like Already Pretty (fashion blogger: Sally McGraw) of political bloggers. Gets clicks because of how deluded and wrong he often is.
schrodinger's cat
@Mike J: NYT connection?
Kay
@Marc:
I thought this was a more honest appraisal of the whole “loss of manufacturing jobs”. It isn’t “making cars”. It’s the economic security those jobs represented:
That’s a problem. It’s a real problem that 45% of 22 to 27 year old college grads are working in jobs that don’t require a degree. Democrats have to address it honestly and stop telling them to “skill up”. They know what they make an hour and “more education” isn’t solving it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Suzanne: Was reading an article on the black female West Point cadets and their clench fist ‘salute’ controversy. They went in to quite a bit of detail about how it is for a black person at WP, and how it is for a female at WP, and how the 2 combine to make it even harder for a black female cadet at WP. My reaction about halfway thru the article amounted to a simple, “White people need to grow the fuck up.”
Suzanne
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: They did it because they are part of the Republican tribe. They have allied themselves with the Republican brand. They selected to align with this brand for the same reason people wear sunglasses with giant-ass logos on the side, which is because it signals something aspirational about yourself to others who they want to attract. It’s all branding.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
The problem with that is there are plenty of union-busting Democrats, or Democrats who choose to distance themselves from the whole nuts and bolts “wages” discussion and offer grand theories. Fewer Aspen retreats, please. Less listening to Bill Gates and more listening to public school teachers- the people on the ground.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Apparently the sight of black women with attitude is enough to make a significant number of white men, and especially cops, lose all of their shit. See for eg.: Beyonce and Super Bowl Formation. I’m sure that’s just economic anxiety too.
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly:
This should be a rotating tag because it is really the correct response to 80% of what we discuss on this blog.
El Caganer
I found this to be a somewhat more interesting leftwing perspective than that offered by Mr. deBoer:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/white-workers-bernie-sanders-clinton-primary-racism/
Davebo
@Marc:
Who was that?
patroclus
@Marc: If your analysis is correct, why haven’t the Dems lost the support of black, Hispanic and Asian working class voters? The same issues apply.
Sorry, but the actual data for 2016 is what Silver has said – Trump voters are not white working class voters. Poll data doesn’t trump actual voting data in this election year. The Dems lost huge in 2010 and 2014 primarily for turnout reasons. Like 2008 and 2012, this will be a much larger turnout election. And the Dems aren’t running Obama at the top of the ticket; hence, it seems likely that Clinton will do better among working class whites than he did. Especially if she pivots and starts emphasizing Sanders-style issues in the general election. She’s doing well already among white women working class voters and the polls reflect this; she just needs to broaden the appeal to men. Who, in my view, are much more up for grabs with Trump running as the Republican, who does not particularly appeal to white working class men, either in rhetoric or class.
Issues are what will matter – Clinton’s issues are better for all, inclusive of white working class men.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
Yet, there’s something that Republicans offer that is more appealing. Scapegoats, perhaps?
NotMax
Take the time to bone up on Lincoln, who paid with his life when he answered that question.
RandomMonster
The fact that deBoer gets paid to knock down strawmen is the reason I don’t read him.
smith
@Kay:
Well, unions could help. I think there was a time when liberal elites retreated from full-throttle support of the labor movement, and it followed close on the migration of the Reagan Democrats to the R side. Even vigorous enforcement of labor laws we have now could help, but there also needs to be a revival of the idea that banding together the oppose the power of corporations is a good thing.
Davebo
@Baud:
No, the problem with comparing this to 2008 is that it really didn’t go down that way in 2008. Certainly Clinton could have shut it down when her chances were slim. But she did shut it down when she had no realistic chance unlike Bernie today.
dww44
@Doug R: In my environment those who support Trump, or at least put his signs on their big white diesel pick-up trucks, along with the definitely comfortable well-off firmly esconced in the middle class white ladies are not aggrieved white working class folks. They come from a place of privilege and, in a real sense, cultural isolation from those less well off than them (private schools and gated communities). They seek to preserve their isolation. It’s rooted in a racism which in many cases they don’t even acknowledge to themselves.
schrodinger's cat
@El Caganer:
I don’t buy it. Conservative elites and the Republican party are as condescending to labor of all colors and have worked to undermine their interests at every turn. The problems of that the working class faces are not because some liberal commenters superior attitude.
Davebo
@Shell: If it’s not available you get in contact with who has it and buy it.
Happens a lot.
In Dubai it get’s truly crazy. As in spending $14.2 million for license plate 1
Suzanne
@patroclus: Issues aren’t what matter to many people. Shit-tons of people vote against their own self-interest and in fact for candidates who don’t support their views because they want to be part of the country club in whatever way they can. It takes a higher level of political awareness to connect policies and issues with one’s own life, and an embarrassingly large share of Americans don’t have that. They think Democrats love TEH NI-CLANG and that feminists hate men and that poor people are icky, and so they don’t want to join that club. Okay, let’s not pretend there’s a good deal more behind it.
OzarkHillbilly
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: @Suzanne: One of the past cadets interviewed for the article said something along the lines of, “If there were more than 3 or 4 of us sitting at a table, someone would come along and tell us to ‘break it up’.” It was done for the reasons of ‘Army cohesiveness’, and I think that was what they honestly thought, but….
It is hard to explain so here’s the article: ‘They didn’t see the pride’: West Point photo puts race and gender in spotlight
Chris
“Liberal elites are responsible for the rise of Trump.” It’s funny, these people never get around to explaining what mean liberal meanness has to do with the outcome of a primary whose contestants were all conservative.
Mike J
@Davebo:
You don’t have to go to Dubai. Delaware has the same thing.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Republicans are the party of Manifest Destiny, another way Trump supporters can feel themselves to be superior. Fuck yeah!
smith
@dww44:
This may be the only crack through which we might be able to reduce the sway of racism among the foot soldiers of the right. They know that racism at its root is immoral, however much they want to crow about being defiantly politically incorrect. I’ve been thinking about Cliven Bundy and his little discourse on “the negro.” I think he was genuinely surprised and somewhat abashed when people reacted to that as racism (you can see his rather hilarious defense of it in his recent court filing). Even someone as far gone into fantasyland as Bundy doesn’t really want to be thought of as a racist.
Anya
These discussions always give me a headache because the sole focus on the woes of working class whites. What about Latinas and African American working class woes?
Mike J
@OzarkHillbilly: I find the West Point story interesting in part because people complained that BLM is a partisan political group. Which is just another way of saying the Republican party doesn’t believe that black lives matter, but you rarely hear it stated so bluntly and publicly.
schrodinger's cat
@El Caganer: read the Jacobin article. It is funny how remarkably similar, a Sanders friendly perspective is to that of Murray, Sullivan et al. Apparently Democrats other than St Sanders has done nothing for the interesting of white working class. Pray tell, then what was the ACA all about?
Yes the Democrats need to do more for labor but to say that they have done nothing is a wilful lie.
Johnnybuck
@msdc:
You mean like Bernie Sanders?
patroclus
@Suzanne: Issues have mattered in every single election I’ve ever seen. The Democrats have won 6 of the last 7 national elections because of issues. The only time the Republicans have (arguably) won was when W was pretending to be a “compassionate” conservative, in favor of a prescription drug benefit, immigration reform and education reform, as well as no “nation-building.” Trump hasn’t even tried to pretend anything of the sort – he doesn’t favor a minimum wage increase, he doesn’t favor immigration reform, he doesn’t favor an employment non-discrimination act, he doesn’t favor a climate change.energy conservation act, he doesn’t favor health insurance, he doesn’t favor education and cheaper college, Medicare for all, campaign finance reform, women’s liberty, union rights or anything similar. That is why he will lose.
Chris
@Marc:
Obviously it’s not “exclusively” racism or they could vote for any Republican. Obviously economic pain and insecurity play a huge role in it. But how they REACTED to that insecurity? The fact that they chose to flock to the incoherent, vaguely anti establishment bigot instead of the non racist left wing populist, or the reformer following in the footsteps of a president who’s already done a lot for the economy? Yeah, that’s the racism.
Iowa Old Lady
I vote against my own self interest all the time, since I’d benefit by having my taxes reduced. Self interest doesn’t completely determine my decisions, so I don’t expect it to work that way for others.
Or maybe there’s just more than one kind of self interest at stake. I value a country in which everyone lives a decent life, and I value my own self image as a not completely selfish person. Stuff is complicated.
schrodinger's cat
@Davebo: Bernie has a realistic chance? Please show your math.
different-church-lady
@schrodinger’s cat: I think you misunderstood: Davebo was saying that Bernie has no realistic chance, but he won’t shut it down; that’s the part which is unlike Clinton in 2008.
greennotGreen
@Iowa Old Lady: Yes, I think that a lot of people have a very narrow view of what “self-interest” entails. Sure, it’d be great if my taxes were lowered. But I’d be dead if those taxes hadn’t paid for a lot of cancer research. I don’t have kids. Why do I have to pay for schools? Because I also don’t live on an island by myself. I interact with others every day. Heck, I’m doing it right now. Somebody has to keep this series of tubes working, right? And they probably need some form of education for that.
I suspect the ability to define “self-interest” more broadly may be a fairly accurate way to discern liberals from conservatives.
Steeplejack
OT: Got up this morning to discover that the Manchester United-Bournemouth Premier League match was postponed because of a “suspect package” in the stadium. This is big—equivalent to the same happening at an NFL game. The whole stadium was evacuated, and the match (last one of the season) will be rescheduled.
ETA: Announcers in the match I’m watching just said that a “controlled explosion” was carried out at Old Trafford (the Manchester stadium), so apparently the threat was real.
Suzanne
@patroclus: And in midterm elections, Republicans do really well. Their success is disproportionate to their numbers and has been for a while, because they get a lot of people on the team for less-than-thoughtful reasons.
The good news is that I believe that Trump is doing serious damage to their brand. There’s nothing that destroys an aspirational brand such as the Republican Party like being associated with not-rich people. The bad news is that even if some people change their voting behavior, this sort of hierarchical thinking didn’t go away.
patroclus
I’m off to the NCAA tennis regionals at Northwestern. TCU punched their ticket to Tulsa yesterday. Go Frogs!
Davebo
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s exactly what I’m saying. He doesn’t. But he’s made it clear he’s taking it all the way to the convention.
I was responding to the claim that Hillary did the same in 2008 which is a fallacy.
Aimai
@Kay: uh…conservatuves/republicans set poor whites against poor blacks, jews, and the middle class.
Davebo
@different-church-lady: Thanks!
Mike J
@Steeplejack: They often blow up packages that later turn out to be harmless. It’s just the safest way to be sure.
Chip Daniels
OK we’re over 100 comments, so Godwin demands a Nazi reference.
The German working class were in fact victims of a transnational elite, who ratfucked and ignored them.
They just missed the target- instead of hating on the elite aristocrats, the ones FDR correctly called the “malefactors of great wealth”, they consciously chose to lash out at the Jews.
Their pain and sense of injustice was real enough. But pain and injustice doesn’t excuse inflicting more of it on innocents.
And wanting to push someone else lower down the ladder to lift yourself up isn’t righteous anger, its just a poor man’s aristocracy.
schrodinger's cat
@Davebo: Sorry, must not write comments while also doing something else.
schrodinger's cat
@Anya: Some animals are more equal than the others, to paraphrase George Orwell in the Animal Farm.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Iowa Old Lady:
Enlightened self interest – it’s my religion, if anyone asks me.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
It’s one approach to bomb disposal: if you’re not sure you can disarm it in situ, or that you can safely carry it away, you set up a barrier to contain the explosion and blow it up where it is. It might destroy enough of the bomb to preclude further investigation, but protecting human life always comes first.
mike in dc
DeBoer isn’t within spitting distance of a valid point, BUT….
…what do BernieorBust folks owe Latinos who are supporting the “wrong” candidate, and who face unfathomable suffering if that “wrong” candidate loses in the general election? This seems to be something noticeably unaddressed by the Berniebros.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Beat me to it!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodinger’s cat:
The only discussion those two should be having with each other is how lucky those two extremely mediocre white men are to be given a high profile platform as evidence of a rigged system that favors mediocre white males over millions of way more interesting and insightful people. Including by the way, most of the commenters and FPers here on BJ.
WaterGirl
@cleek: It baffles me, too. In fact, I think this is the first Betty Cracker post that I haven’t read. I tried, I really did, but even talking about Freddie bores me to no end.
Amir Khalid
@mike in dc:
They decided this question months ago: they owe it to Latinos and African-Americans and whoever else to write Bernie in, or skip voting for a President, even if it means letting Trump win.
scav
@Amir Khalid: I seem to remember being warned that could happen to my luggage if I left it unattended for too long — I think it was actually in a bus station (or the bus connection part of an airport) in Sweden. Rather concentrated the attention (although it made staggering about desperately trying to find post-flight pre-ride coffee rather a lumbering process).
Glidwrith
@Marc: One could point out that it is not, in fact, the working class that has lifted Trump on their shoulders to win the primary. The actual voters that did so are distinctly more middle class, which shows that the whole ‘economic insecurity’ trope as a reason for racism really isn’t the case.
Steeplejack
@Mike J:
I get that. But it’s still a step up from “Oh, some kid forgot his daypack.”
Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter
@Amir Khalid: Facepalm – will the madness never end?
dmsilev
@Davebo:
Well, he’s saying that now. I’m willing to wait until the last primary on June 14th to see what happens then. And to be fair, Clinton in 2008 kept saying “we’re going to win this” right up through the last primary, and only conceded after that.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Betty Cracker: A former colleague had a giant maroon Dodge van with the vanity plate “ordinaire” (probably missing a letter or two).
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@mike in dc:
It’s been addressed – they’re hand waved away as being dumb, bought, corrupted or uninformed about the awesomeness that is Bernie fucking Sanders. Ask Dolores Huerta.
? Martin
@Mike J: Just saw lap 1. Unreal.
Bobby D
No. Freddie DeBoring is not “interesting”, or “insightful” or anything else except a left version of that young kid Randy Andy Sullivan was pimping before he “retired”. Connor something or others? Both about as useful as tits on a boar.
Mike J
@? Martin: Yeah, I was holding off commenting on a race with a 5am start. I woke up at four thirty, turned on tv for prerace, fell asleep again, and woke to the announcers yelling at lap 1 turn 4.
Frankensteinbeck
First, yes, everyone deserves things like healthcare and security. That’s important. Conservatives pick and choose who ‘deserves’ and it’s hideous.
Second, on whether bigotry is caused/inflamed by economic insecurity, did racism get stronger or weaker as the Great Recession eased?
@Suzanne:
This. It would make a particularly good topic tag.
gogol's wife
I have to stop going to dinner parties. Every time I do, someone ends up telling us all that we’d better get used to saying “President Trump.”
I live in Bernie country.
Amaranthine RBG
The left does little to conceal its contempt for working class whites, particularly those in the South and Appalachia. Obama’s statement about them being “bitter” and clinging to “guns and religion” was actually an attempt to engender empathy, in my view, not an attack. But the fact that Obama felt the need to try and get his audience to extend some empathy to “those people” just underlines the gulf that exists.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Define “left”. Does it include Susan Sarandon?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Baud:
Dunno.
I saw a piece recently (maybe at DeLong’s place) that complained that the left trying to work on “framing” was a doomed approach, but I’m not sure.
Our brains are actually several complex interacting systems that work on different things at different speeds. We react to loud noises or sudden shadows with different circuits than when we’re trying to get inside our neighbors heads or do math problems. If our lizard brains get activated, then it’s really, really hard for our pre-frontal cortex to think about the issue rationally.
We need to find better ways to talk about the problems we face and their solutions than to keep fighting the last wars with the old slogans (soak the rich, smash the fascists, etc.). I think Hillary’s “breaking down barriers” and “love and kindness” is a good start. “Obamacare” is a toxic term because it’s explicitly tied to Obama. Too many people have a visceral reaction to him, their lizard brain is activated just hearing the name, because of all the distorted things they’ve heard associated with him. Race enters into that (of course), but it’s more than just racism. It’s trumped-up fears that a foreigner is running the government, that he’s doing unconstitutional things, that he got where he is due to unfair preferences that people struggling in Kansas didn’t and don’t have access to.
We need to be able to change the conversation so that the lizard brain isn’t activated. We know that the Teabaggers will be doing everything they can to rile up fears in the coming months. They have no positive record to run on, so that’s their only hope. It’s what they do.
I haven’t read Freddy since he stopped posting here. Betty’s excerpt of Bobo-ish buzzwords make it look like I haven’t missed anything.
Cheers,
Scott.
cleek
@Amaranthine RBG:
don’t make the mistake of thinking that there is no “left” in the South or in Appalachia.
but yes, there’s a lot of anti-South bigotry from NE liberals.
raven
@cleek: And it shows up here all the time.
D58826
@maeve: And I would phrase it differently than both, even though I’m struggling with the exact wording. Everyone is entitled to respect as a human being. Admiration ( is the word I’m looking for) is gained/earned or lost based on how they lived their lives
Davebo
@Amaranthine RBG:
That’s an incredible sweeping statement. Can I assume you believe working class whites in the South who identify as part of “the left” hold themselves in contempt? Or for that matter, working class whites in the North East or Pacific North West?
WaterGirl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Yours is a truly great comment, all the way through.
J R in WV
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
That’s all wrong and bass-ackwards, it should make you want to stick needles in THEIR eyes!!
hueyplong
How is this B.S. “the left is contemptuous of white working class people” different from “right wing racists are the real victims?” I don’t see contempt for the white working class. I see contempt for white working class racists. To the extent they’re the same thing, who’s fault is that?
And what’s worse, a “contempt” style point (Dems) or actual economic policies that drive the white working class lower (GOP)?
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I don’t blame liberal pundits for liberals problems with the (white) working class. Liberals don’t have a problem with the black working class. But when President Obama said that “communities” in Pennsylvania had been left behind in that quote he said Clinton AND Bush. I can’t deny that. It’s true. Democrats have to address it. If they don’t know what to do to raise wages or maintain standard of living then say that instead of making it about some deficit inherent to “those people” or blathering on at these retreats about the 21st century economy as if it’s weather of the phases of the moon- a natural and inevitable occurrence.
I don’t buy it. I don’t think it’s wholly about them having the wrong “skill set” or some culture of stupidity or something – decisions were made. Actions were taken. Sectors of the economy were promoted and subsidized. We elevated the FIRE sector with deliberate actions. It WASN’T all markets and it doesn’t even make sense for Democrats, who are PRO GOVERNMENT intervention to claim it’s all merit and markets. The President has to realize that when he tells people we need trade deals so ‘we make the rules” people will ASSUME he’s directing something or other. He can’t then come back and tell them deliberate actions have no effect and it’s all markets. He just finished telling them “we” were writing the terms. It’s reached the point where it’s incoherent.
D58826
@Davebo: And she was much closer to Obama in terms of votes and delegates right thru till the end.
One of the Slate Bernie bros is talking about how weak a candidate Hillary is in comparison to the charismatic Obama of 2008. Well for a weak candidate she gave Obama a good run for his money.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I don’t understand this analysis. White working class people have a problem with liberals, not the other way around, and it’s because of the second sentence. The Republican brand is attractive to the white working class as Suzanne mentioned above, is because the brand literally is “we hate the same people you do, and we’ll make sure they’re all immiserated too.” The zero sum thinking of white working class that any benefits that accrue to the minority working class, are benefits that they no longer can enjoy. Until they learn how to share – ie., join the coalition, they’re going to continue to have problems with liberal Democrats.
smith
I think “The South” has become code for a certain type of virulent American (white) tribalism, that can be found all over the country, not just South. It’s easy to conflate it with the South because that’s where it’s most out and proud, but clearly Trump’s (and racist RW demagogue’s) appeal outside the South shows it’s not really regional. Maybe we can hope that this election will make our language more precise about this, and we can start calling it more accurately “Trumpsim.”
Miss Bianca
@El Caganer: Yeah, I think this is an interesting take. And I do think there is a crying need for the Democrats to embrace a full-on program of public investment and also a full-on embrace of union organizing, living-wage, basic income, protection of women’s reproductive rights, defense of public education as *public* education – not charter-schooled to death, but proudly public – protection of social security and other social programs that people have come to depend on and expect. Heck, I want to see it go more Socialist in its orientation, it’s true. It’s also true that while turned off by Senator Sanders personally, and by the behavior of his most extreme fans, I am glad to see an economic populist message demonstrably resonating with a large section of the American population.
However, I do think it’s disingenuous to downplay the influence of race and racial politics on the efforts to bring about a more just economic society. We can deny it, but history, as American Socialists themselves point out, tells a different story. Plus there’s the troubling truth to contend with that even the “socialist paradises” like Denmark – best of socialism and capitalism combined! Bernie Sanders (among others, including petite moi) approved! – tend to turn remarkably…ah…unparadisical when confronted with non-white population surge.
In other words, it appears to be remarkably, depressingly easy for white people in general to say “liberty, equality, dignity, and social justice for all – who look like me. If not, you’re right out.”
That’s a real challenge for the Democratic Party to deal with.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
When the President says he is engaging on a trade deal to “write the rules” and “promote American workers” can American workers then ask how they benefited from this deal or do we go back to global movement of capital and markets as weather systems? Democrats have to decide. They can’t take the upside of trade deals as us “writing the rules” and then not take responsibility for the losers. THAT’S what Trump is exploiting on trade. If we’re “leading” on trade then we’re directing this, right? They’re not crazy to wonder why it isn’t being directed in a way that improves wages. The President just told them he was running it. They want to know the upside for them. There’s nothing wrong with that
Linnaeus
@Chip Daniels:
The power base of the Nazi Party was primarily among the German middle class. Working class voters tended to support the Social Democrats or, in smaller numbers, the Communists.
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
“…Controlled explosion was carried out…” this doesn’t imply that the suspicious package was dangerous. Security folks often use a small (controlled) explosive charge detonated on the suspicious package to cause the suspicious package to explode, if it was indeed a bomb.
If it was a bundle of shopping some drunk set down and forgot, it means that his shopping got reduced to tiny fragments. If it was a bomb, there is a bigger bang when the controlled explosion is set off. The bomb experts know how big a bang to expect, that’s what “controlled” means.
So from what you quoted, all we know is how the experts decided to deal with the S. P. – without risking anyone trying to investigate the package in person, or even with a robot.
Linnaeus
We should acknowledge that the white working class does not have a monopoly on white racism.
Kay
@smith:
I agree. Trump should actually put paid to this notion that it’s all the hicks in the sticks, considering how well he did in the NE among primary voters.
it was never true. If I recall correctly there was plenty of opposition to school integration in Boston, and Boston is better-educated than 90% of the country.
Miss Bianca
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
the sadly ironic thing is, of course, that PBO’s mother’s people *come* from that demographic of “people struggling in Kansas.” Hell, they come from KANSAS itself. That’s what I can’t forgive about this birther crap – it’s that old “one-drop rule” coming into play. “One drop of black/foreign blood makes you Black/foreign.” Is that part of our lizard brain? it is. Does that shit need to get blown up? It does.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
Trump’s biggest douchebro supporter here in MA is multimillionaire heir Ernie Boch Jr., and a lot of his douchebro country club friends. Ernie actually unironically said “how much bad stuff can happen in 4 years”? It’s just a game to them, but they’d never be caught in public saying red meat racist things. Their flavor of racism is the exclusionary nudge nudge wink wink libertarian IGMFY (inherited) kind. Of course, they’re the same people who’s kids would never be in a school subject to a court order to desegregate.
Tripod
@Anya:
They do the actual shit work in America, and get paid accordingly, so they don’t count.
Online liberals are whiter, more male, more educated, and higher earners than the base, (I’d also guess less union households) so that drives this sort of navel gazing.
different-church-lady
@Kay: That was Southie in the 70s, and Southie in the 70s was racist as all fuck. A fair part of the rest of the city too.
But your point is taken: racism is marbled through our society. Just because it gets concentrated in certain places doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist in the others.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Suzanne:
I’d phrase it a bit differently.
White people in, say, SW Ohio aren’t suddenly experiencing economic problems – it’s been happening since the ’70s. Dayton was a powerful manufacturing center with NCR, GM and lots of other industries having good paying, stable jobs for people. Those jobs went away over the decades and nothing much has replaced them.
I think a big problem is that the national political press is dominated by people who live in and around DC and NYC and the problems in the heartland only get talked about every 4 years when Ohio is a battleground state for the Presidential election. Or when an occasional story about “the Rust Belt” seems timely. Or when a new international trade deal is coming to a vote. Bobo talking about it from his estate in Cleveland Park (or wherever he is now), or Freddy trying to talk about it, doesn’t mean that it’s a new issue.
And that 4-year cycle is gong to keep repeating, and little if any progress is going to be made, until people and the press force politicians to pay attention and act. And that means spending money. Trump is a fraud on issues like these (economic issues for lower-middle-class whites and minorities in the midwest) because he has no plans to spend money on fixing it. Hillary has a plan. She can make real progress with these people if she finds a way to talk about it without activating our lizard brains…
Similarly with the opiate/opioid epidemic. It’s not a new problem just because DC is finally talking about it…
Cheers,
Scott.
ThresherK
@Miss Bianca: From last night re Laura, the other side of the coin re Price’s mama’s boy is the attention Clifton Webb’s Svengali pays to Dana Andrews’ cop. I always thought that was a very Celluloid Closet aspect (if it didn’t actually get mentioned in the documentary “The Celluloid Closet”.)
It’s almost French in that it’s about people, but, oh yeah, there’s a murder in there somewhere.
scav
@Linnaeus: But is that an assumption most of us are actually making or is that an assumption we are assumed to be making? Because making a fuss about hiring at upper echelons or in Hollywood or in university programs doesn’t seem to target areas where working class people are calling the shots.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
The only thing I’d change about your premise is that it’s been 35 yrs, not just 8. The last 8 have layered additional racist crap on top of that.
JaneE
“Respect has to be earned, yes. It’s not an entitlement.”
I respectfully disagree. Every person has a right to basic respect. It can be lost, fairly easily in fact, but it has to be assumed in the beginning. You earn my contempt, you lost my respect.
Miss Bianca
@ThresherK: awesome point. Yeah, Waldo is as fascinated by Dana Andrews’s cop as he is by Laura. The constant needling, for example, the “brain vs. brawn” thing he keeps harping on. His jealousy when Laura decides she’s going for the hunky cop herself really cuts both ways.
Never seen “The Celluloid Closet” but first found out about this movie from its prominent mention in a feminist film history book, “From Reverence to Rape” by Molly Haskell, which made me really aware of how women’s roles in movies drastically devolved in complexity and scope from the high point of the 30s-40s to the point where she was writing, which was originally the 70s. Sadly, I think a lot of her points are still relevant 40 years on.
Glidwrith
@Amaranthine RBG:
Really? I would suggest the contempt is targeted at the beliefs of a subset of those working class whites – you know, the ones that insist with rank hypocrisy that only lazy people get government help while busily cashing their government checks, the ones that deny disaster assistance to states that don’t match their viewpoint then scream for help when a hurricane lands on their doorstep, the ones that are SURE only sluts need abortions, yet somehow theirs is a special circumstance when such services are required.
In contrast, I don’t see any liberals demanding that only tan people need apply for government services. I don’t see demands to bow to a particular god to receive charity.
And despite all of the contempt that subset of people shovel out by the bucketsful, we are STILL out there trying to raise wages for all, keep the air and water clean and trying to solve the very difficult problem of how to restart small town economic engines.
We should not coddle homophobes, misogynists or racists. Such philosophies are deserving of contempt, if, for no other reason, that they are excuses to kill. I would also posit, by showing them such positions are contemptible, that it is a way to reign in such behaviors. Trump is giving them a big old excuse to behave abominably; we react by telling them that it is not excusable and is abominable.
scav
@JaneE: I think that’s what everyone’s basically agreed on, the distinction seems to be subtle differences in how people define words (rather like is zero a positive or negative number, although that’s an imperfect analogy as I’m sure mathematicians have an exact definition. Huh. Never really thought about negative odds and evens.).
ThresherK
@Miss Bianca: I didn’t read the book, but saw the documentary. It’s about 20 years old, and of course since it’s about movies has movie clips in it, which makes it a better demonstration.
Just offhand I can remember another scene in it from one of the Rock Hudson/Doris Day flicks, where Hudson shows up in the lobby of the apartment building, in a hurry after Day storming out, and he’s wearing her robe.
(And life laughs at preconceptions: In the end it was Tony Randall who, in the last decade of his life before dying at 84, sired two children with his much younger wife. We all remember Rock Hudson’s demise.)
ETA: My ex-hippie-chick LCSW wife probably has that book you mentioned somewhere.
Linnaeus
@scav:
It’s not so much an assumption as it is, IMHO, a bias (sometimes subtle, sometimes not) that can creep into discussions about class and race, particularly among white people. In my experience, people of color tend not to display this bias, which I suspect is because of their experiences of racism in a multitude of spaces.
Bob In Portland
What I said.
ruemara
While I, personally, cannot contain my joy at a white male liberaltarian explaining that race isn’t the problem, it’s economic insecurity, strangely, i must deny myself such glory.
When deBoer explains how the median income of a Trump supporter is so high, how economic issues relate to their abortion stance, etc., etc., I’m sure I’ll be thrilled at his insights.
Linnaeus
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Good comment.
scav
Suppose it’s a question of experience. My real preconceptions are more about suburbanites, especially upper end suburbanites because I’ve seen some nasty BS there, far worse than the crap I’ve seen in some small towns. Bias is about damn near impossible to avoid — half the hullabaloo here seems to be more about stereotyped preconceptions of liberals and what they (necessarily) believe.
ETA: Also, my experience with (mostly observing) active prejudice in workplaces has tended in the academic and tech-oid.
Ruckus
@Iowa Old Lady:
You really aren’t voting against your self interest then. Your self interests are to raise everyone to make everyone equal and reasonably successful. You will gain the benefits of that so it is in your self interest. But it’s not only your self interest or at the expense of others. You gain when everyone does, they don’t give a shit about everyone.
HRA
It has been very interesting to read this post and thread. I wonder if I am the only one among many who does not label supporters of any candidate other than to acknowledge their right to their choice. What I have learned by listening at gatherings where the election is discussed is the reasons vary for a person’s choice. Yet, there is one reason I have not seen addressed here for the choice of Trump. “He is not a politician.” That was not at all as surprising as having Trump supporters who had voted for President Obama twice.
Miss Bianca
@ThresherK: LCSW? As in Licensed Clinical Social Worker? Or is this some new urban dictionary thing I ain’t hep to?
debbie
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
And the same can be said about Hillary Clinton.
D58826
sor of OT. the open SCoTUS seat and a proposed solution
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-schmookler/how-obama-can-break-the-i_b_9971588.html
different-church-lady
@HRA:
Political incoherence is a thing this year.
ThresherK
@Ruckus: Now all I can think about is that old Simpsons where there’s an emergency drill at the nuclear plant, and Homer (who doesn’t know it’s a drill) proceeds to (1) get out first and then (2) drag a bench to block the emergency exit, trapping his fellow employees inside.
That’s what I call self-interest: If I live and others live, my having survived is devalued.
D58826
@debbie: Fortunately our lizard brain knows exactly how to react when Ted Cruz’s name is mentioned.
ThresherK
@Miss Bianca: No, she’s an MSW and LCSW. And (as I feel obligated to tell everybody) we met square dancing, not in any professional setting.
Kathleen
@Suzanne: Thank you thank you thank you.
Cacti
@hueyplong:
Everything I’ve read by Freddie the Bore is a textbook example of a straw man fallacy, and the above piece is no exception.
He ran from BJ like a hit dog with his tail between his legs, because the commenters here would routinely point out how facile his “thoughtful” pieces were.
Freddie thinks he’s a lot smarter than he actually is, and has a paper-thin skin to go with it. Pompous is how I’d charitably describe him. Useless mother fucker would be more accurate though.
gogol's wife
@D58826:
Great idea.
Splitting Image
@HRA:
It’s understandable if you postulate three things:
1. Electing Barack Obama President pissed off a lot of people.
2. Electing Donald Trump President would piss off a lot of people.
3. There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.
Another_Bob
@Betty Cracker: Ha-ha: Merlot? Most wine snobs would consider merlot to be the hamburger of grape varieties. I guess it’s better than “Pink Chablis 1” or “White Zinfandel 1” but not by much. To wit, from the movie “Sideways”:
“I am NOT drinkin’ any fucking merlot!!!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5PItDrtjOA
chopper
@Cacti:
the word I use to describe freddie boners is “tedious”.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@greennotGreen: Well said.
I understand taxes are pretty low in Yemen right now, what with the national government being broken and all…
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: He is the very model of a modern intellectual.
D58826
@greennotGreen: The entire issue of self interest and taxes can be summed up in a slightly different way – a frivolous law suit is one filed by anyone else but ME!
RSA
This is a good example of why I’m not a fan of Freddie deBoer. It’s awkwardly written, so that it takes me a minute to figure out; it claims a deep insight that somehow conservatives and liberals have both missed; and (as Betty points out) it’s wrong.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@smith: It’s not just in the “South” either. We met someone from Rotterdam when we were on a Switzerland vacation and after we said we were from Virginia he kept going on and on about how great it would have been if the Union had lost the Civil War, how Lee was such a Great Man, and on and on… :-( It was a real eye opener, though it shouldn’t have been of course.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
This is a spectacularly ignorant statement, as many others have remarked.
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
Merlot 1
Once saw a silver Rolls Silver Shadow illegally parked at San Francisco Airport.
The vanity plate read RCHPHKR (or maybe RCHFKR; it’s been a while since this happened)
The tow truck was just backing up to it. Very very carefully.
J R in WV
@D58826:
I actually love this idea – another benefit would be that Mitch McTurtle’s head would explode on network TV. It does say “shall appoint”, and the Senate has had a vast opportunity to advise and even dissent.
So I think, given the importance of the Court, the nominee should proceed to take his place.
Ruckus
@ThresherK:
Thing is everyone has self interest. We have to, that’s survival. But in a society we should recognize that our self interest, survival, is usually better served by the entire society surviving, not just parts of it. And by surviving I don’t mean just breathing, I mean surviving with dignity and food, shelter and health. But we are being told that we have ruined the planet, our food sources, our food quality, our way of life (what ever the hell that is) and that we don’t have enough for all to survive. So people make a choice. The rich want more because more is never enough, the poor want some because that is survival, and everyone in between doesn’t want to go backwards financially. Sanders is right that money is everything, except he leaves out the most important part, what humans do for it, what we do for lack of it, who we blame for both having it and not having it. And leaving that out is vital to any concept of adjusting the values we assign to having it and not having it. It disrupts the respect that is discussed above, it disrupts the society, hell it is the society.
different-church-lady
@D58826: Mel Brook’s distinction between tragedy and comedy.
Kay
This is my bottom line:
If the official position of the Democratic Party is people are imagining that their wages are dropping or stagnant and it’s all amorphous resentment and irrational anger then Democrats will lose and they will deserve to lose.
I don’t care what Republicans do. I want Democrats to address this honestly and head-on. It’s a problem.
Keith G
@D58826: Obama won’t go near that idea since its lack of mooring in the real world makes it idiotic and thoroughly counterproductive.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Ruckus:
There’s a name for that: Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest.
That’s what it means to be a liberal, too – at least for me.
Keith G
@Kay:
My solace during this very unfulfilling primary season is that HRC is smart enough to see this. I hope that she has thought enough about this to see that this stems from an area that might be one Obama’s weaknesses in the historical record. The Democratic Party missed opportunities to position itself in a way that precluded space for Bernie Sanders to grow as he has. The fact that it/they did not is leaving us with a handful of problems that were preventable.
D58826
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: This should not be to hard to understand. It took a crew to sail the Mayflower to Plymouth. An old sailor saying ‘one hand for ther ship and one hand for yourself. A bit later in American history the local militia and the log fort. Moving further forward in American history – the wagon across the great plains on the Oregon trail. Even that icon of individualism the ‘cowboy’ it took more than one to move them doggies up the old Chisholm trail. Individualism has always been part of the American character but it seems that it is only in the past few decades that it has been accorded this extreme, almost cult like, reverence.
Heck working together is bread into our DNA. Early hominids worked as a group. They had to, in as much as most of the critters on the African plains were bigger, faster, stronger and had sharper claws and teeth than our ancestors.
Amaranthine RBG
@cleek: Oh, I know it exists, but there’s no shortage of side-eye from southern/rural leftists towards the southern/rural working classes.
Kay
@Keith G:
I don’t know why it’s so hard to say “we know your wages haven’t gone up since 2000 and you have more debt”
These are facts. People know. We aren’t going to be able to scold them into not knowing. 2000 was 16 years ago. What’s the plan? If there is no plan and most people have to adjust to a lower standard of living then say that. I don’t know-maybe we can (or should) be content with less. Maybe the post-war period was a fluke and the middle class was a mirage. They will at least know then that they’re not alone and it isn’t their fault.
Amaranthine RBG
Glidwrith:
Agreed. I was commenting on the fact denunciations of homophobia, racism, misogyny, are often accompanied by unnecessary and gratuitous class-based criticisms. You seldom see a ran to of any length directed toward issues of homophobia/racism among southern/rural folk that does not include: e.g. swipes at fat-asses at Walmart, NASCAR fans, people who hunt/fish, etc.
I admit that I am probably more sensitive to this than most as I am a progressive whose relatives still live in the rural south.
Bob In Portland
Sounds like the village of Balloon Juice.
Bob In Portland
@Kay: You could probably scroll back the date when the working class stopped growing wealth to about the time of the PATCO strike. But wages have been at an absolute standstill for the last fifteen years.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Kay: You mean like this?:
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who agrees that the message needs to be at the forefront. I think HRC is trying to make that happen, but it’s hard with HB2 and all the other stuff the Teabaggers are throwing up.)
Bob In Portland
@Keith G: I don’t think so.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Interesting. The economy grew from 1992 to the present but wages for the working class didn’t. Growth and rising wages did not happen, so strong growth has been disconnected from rising wages. Sounds a little like trickle down economics. How do you raise incomes? Your raise the minimum wage, you strengthen unions, you raise the tax rate on the top 5%. You make sure the working class and poor get good educations. You create good-paying government jobs like rebuilding the infrastructure.
Is Hillary bullshitting or is she about to adopt Sanders’ platform?
Cheers.
Ruckus
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Exactly. I just thought it would be good to spell it out.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: Read the link, Bob. Your questions are answered there.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Sure looks like she’s adopting Sanders’ platform.
And no, which way she pivots or triangulates after she’s elected is not guaranteed by that piece of propaganda.
Cheers.
Kay
@Bob In Portland:
The spokesperson matters. You know who is selling Obama’s trade deal? Michael Froman, who came from finance and is a multi-millionaire and Penny Pritzer, who is literally a billionaire. You can’t make this stuff up. They hire millionaires and billionaires to speak to the concerns of the working class. When is the last time either of those people had any interaction at all with someone who makes 15 bucks an hour?
He’s saying the trade deal will create jobs in agriculture. They know what “jobs in agriculture” are, right? They know those aren’t high wage? Christ almighty they are the worst jobs in the world. Pritzer is saying we’ll be ending tariffs on handbags for export that cost 500 dollars and aren’t even made here. Maybe she can explain how this has fuck-all to do with ordinary people. I’m at a loss.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: It’s been there for a long time, Bob.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I think there is a plan. At least, like you I hope there is a plan.
But don’t forget the stolen election in 2000 and the next 8 yrs. We aren’t starting from 2000 levels, we went far below that for most of us, I know that I did and that the country surely did.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t compare to 2000 or even earlier, just that we can’t forget what happened in the next 8. The fact that we are where we are is somewhat amazing to me. Look what it took to get most of the country out of the depression, have we done better or worse over the last 7 yrs?
JMG
@Kay: Raising the minimum wage is one thing government can do. Vigorous enforcement of labor laws and using the executive branch to encourage unionization would be another. The Democrats could promise to repeal Taft-Hartley if they win control of Congress. Those measures would help, but I’m not sure how much. I was a newspaper journalist. My industry was destroyed and jobs eviscerated by factors beyond any government’s ability to influence, and it’s far from the only industry where that’s the case.
Also, one reason more college grads are filling jobs that don’t require college educations is that there are way more college grads than there were even 20 years ago.
Bob In Portland
@Kay: By the way, Penny Pritzker set up that half-million dollar fund in Flint and put Mayor Weaver and Chelsea in charge of it the week of the Michigan primary, at the time that Weaver was firing the city manager for calling for an investigation into Weaver moving money from another fund into her own PAC fund. It also coincided with Weaver’s endorsement of Hillary.
Bob In Portland
@JMG: Obama’s promise for The Employee Free Choice Act didn’t last until the summer of 2009. That was the tell.
Larry Summers.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I think we need Kay as the spokesperson. You seem to be in touch far better than most anyone in DC about minimum wage jobs, training, etc. Hell I make better than minimum wage working part time. I’ve been without so I know what that’s like but when I’ve had a job for the last 20+ yrs, I’ve made more than minimum by quite a bit. And I sure as hell am not getting rich or even in the same zip code. And I’d bet many here would say the same.
Edited to clarify.
Feathers
@smith: One of the real issues to be dealt with is making the union movement healthier. The best job I ever had was a union one, and I was glad indeed to have them, but the union’s role in defending all workers meant that they were often keeping really bad and harmful people in place. It leads to a great deal of resentment and distrust of the union by its members.
But US unions are always under siege, so it means no room to innovate. Talking with someone who studied unionism worldwide, he pointed out that the US system of having a local at every workplace is not the norm. In many European countries, the union handles training and what we would call career development. The union gets on the case of underperforming employees rather than unceasingly defending them. I know that this is probably idealistic, and probably too late, but getting rid of the worst union excesses would probably help. Perhaps not on the right, but at least on the left.
Tim C.
@Cacti: And what’s worse, this is why he’s making money. He gets to be the “Even the liberal FdB thinks that…”
Wasn’t there a thing where he called Balloon Juicers names or something a few years back and John basically dared him to come here and say it to our faces…. spoiler alert: He didn’t.
chris m
@Kay: Things may be good for the working class in Denmark and Germany, relative to the US, however workers in these countries have ample reason to feel economic anxiety. They can see what has happened to workers in Greece, Spain and Portugal and they know that their own elites intend to impose the same policies on them given the chance – just look at what is happening in France right now.
Bob in Portland
@Feathers: One of the more infamous cases I worked on when I was a shop steward in the post office was about a guy who was stealing credit cards out of the mail and then going to Reno to feed his gambling habit. The guy was really despicable, he lied to me, which made his defense a lot tougher. Everyone wanted him gone.
However, he was a vet and served on active duty in an area where he earned protections under a parallel federal adjudication system. His removal papers didn’t advise him of this right. When I got his removal thrown out because of this everyone was angry at me for (temporarily) saving this guy’s ass. (They eventually reissued the papers with the proper information.)
When people came up to me and asked me how I could save this guy I told them that under the union contract we all have certain rights. Then I’d ask, what right of yours should I surrender if you are fired?
Chris
Since the original reply was deleted –
@Amaranthine RBG:
Alternative interpretation: maybe it’s not white working class people, or the South, or Appalachia, that “the left” has all that contempt for. Maybe it’s just conservatives. Yes, conservatives have for years been claiming that this contempt for them is really contempt for white people or blue collar people or male or heterosexual people or people from a certain region – because it’s easier than facing the fact that it’s their policies and not them personally that we hate, and because identity politics is so ingrained in them that many genuinely don’t understand, or believe, that not everybody sees the world that way. And yes, the mainstream media has carried that message far and wide because it fuels their “both sides” mantra. But none of that means it’s actually true. I mean, do you see a lot of people here going any easier on conservatives from the East Coast or from middle or upper class backgrounds than they do on those from Appalachian mining backgrounds? Or rejecting the support of liberals who happen to be from these backgrounds?
Kay
@Bob In Portland:
Nothing says “we’re in touch with the common folk” like hiring a billionaire donor with a sketchy labor and predatory lending record to be the public face of the deeply unpopular trade deal in a populist year.
Can they possibly find one ordinary person who backs this deal? My god, if they have to they can pay one.
Citizen Alan
@Marc:
At this point, I’m not even giving them that much credit. Racism, while it is ignorant and morally wrong, it at least comprehensible as a viewpoint. The Trump voters are simply nihilists, people who really do want to watch the world burn. They are the people Hunter S. Thompson was talking about when he described all of America as “a nation of bastards and bullies who would rather kill than even try to live in peace with other people.” But then, what do I know? I just live in Mississippi, where every single Republican in a position of state-wide authority is demonstrably a crooked sadist.
WaterGirl
@Marc: It’s all so depressing. On a happier note, how are the kitties? Or did I miss it when everyone went to live somewhere else?
Ian
@Baud:
You confuse 2008 Liberals with 2008 online Obama supporters. Just as you confuse 2016 Liberals with 2016 online Sanders supporters.
For someone I am supposed to write-in my vote for, I is not impressed.
sherparick
One of the reasons I don’t find Freddie particularly interesting, is that both he and Douthat say “working class” when they mean “white, or really White Southern or those with White Southern attitudes and values, working class,” and not the Yankee white working class. Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics make up about 30% of the electorate, and probably 35% of the working class since large numbers are de jure (non-citzens and felons) or de facto unable to vote. Yet Freddie, Thomas Frank, and the and so many commentators, left and right, adopt a kind of vulgar Marxist trope with the term “working class” and imagine old John Garfield movies.
Although the core of Trump support was the lower rung of Republican voters on income levels, http://election.princeton.edu/2016/05/07/among-republican-voters-trump-supporters-have-the-lowest-income/, their income levels (as demographically older white voters it should be expected was still above the national median income and well above the income level of the average Democratic voter. http://election.princeton.edu/2016/05/07/among-republican-voters-trump-supporters-have-the-lowest-income/
It should be remember, as the late George Carlin would have pointed out in far more colorful terms, that Trump does not give a gnat’s ass for the suckers he is getting to vote for him. And the people voting for him don’t particularly care about the economy, as they do about getting even with all the non-whites in the world who are upsetting the world they grew up with watching from “Leave it to Beaver” and “Happy Days” from the 1950s through 70s. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/trump-voters-are-not-angry-about-economy-really
As an old, college educated white guy, who was the child of college educated parents, I can tell you that there are privileges that come with both “whiteness” and “class,” but the biggest privilege, of just being able to breath free and easy in society and feeling you are the “normal,” is being “white.” Because if you are white and leave a loaded gun lying around that your 2-year old then blows its brains out with, the cops who show up will be sympathetic, and think “there but for the Grace of God goes I.” If you are Black or Hispanic, not so much. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/racial-disparities-in-toddler-shootings.html