Hindsight is 20-20 I know, but indulge me.
The Democrats had a clear opportunity in 2009 to establish themselves clearly as the party of the white working class. The first thing they should have done was save a lot of blue-collar jobs. I would have gone big league, and picked an industry that was not only a major employer but the very symbol of a well paying blue collar job. That’s right– I’m talking about the auto industry.
Can you imagine the Democratic landslide in Michigan (and the rest of the upper Midwest) if the Democrats had rammed through a bill saving all those auto industry jobs? And done it over Republican objections? Instead, look at what happened. As other posters on this site have pointed out, the Democrats did absolutely nothing. We just sat around sipping lattes and doing identity politics.
I wouldn’t stop there. Just in case there were white workers who didn’t feel like the auto bailout benefited them personally, I would have done something that would put money in every white worker’s pocket. I would have done something dramatic about energy prices.
I mean fracking. Why oh why did we ever listen to those environmentalists and stop all the fracking? We should have ignored them and let the price of gasoline drop and drop, along with the price of heating oil, and the chances of the Republicans ever taking the presidency. What if energy prices today were a fraction of what they were when the Democrats took over? Picture gasoline at about $2.50/gallon. It seems impossible, but I’m convinced it could have happened. But I guess we’ll never know.
Low gas prices and an entire industry saved. Let some demagogue try run a campaign going after Mexicans and Muslims then.
How the Democrats Blew It
Please share widely!
petr says
… the lattes were both gluten free and delicious. So, there’s that.
HeartlandDem says
Extra hot with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top, not mixed in.
fredrichlariccia says
The first action President Obama took after preventing the economy from collapsing was to save thousands of blue collar jobs in the auto industry, cutting the unemployment rate in half and driving down the cost of gas from $4 to $2 a gallon.
Blue color workers — myself included — are in for a rude awakening if they think electing a Fascist government is going to improve their lot in life. Say goodbye y’all to Obamacare, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. They’re all going, going, gone.
The new reality is ‘ law of the jungle ‘ social Darwinist survival of the fittest — Trump style.
We’re all on our own, now. Be careful. Big Brother is watching and listening. And remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
mannygoldstein says
Bankers? Raises!
People are fed up with the bull$&@?. They want to try new bull$&@. Yes, they won’t like it.
kirth says
Not well done, but it seems to be intended as a sarcastic response to those who have criticized the Democratic Party for not addressing (or pandering to, depending on how you look at it) the working class. There’s a clue to the nonserious nature of the post in the repeated references to “white workers.” There are a lot of minority people in the working class, and they would also have benefited from economic policies that helped workers.
If this is Bob Gardner’s application for a job writing for The Onion, he should stick to whatever he’s doing now.
Christopher says
…as soon as he said we should have saved the auto industry.
jconway says
At one of her three appearances in the state. She could’ve mentioned it, matters a lot more to the UAW membership which split 60/30 Clinton/Trump than Alice Machado.
Christopher says
At this point I think you’ve mentioned her more than Hillary did.
paulsimmons says
In 2010:
In the Michigan Primary, Bernie Sanders won, despite opposing the bailout.
And in the general election, Trump took Michigan. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) explains some of the reasons why:
…and it didn’t help that competent field operations were conspicuously absent in Detroit, which had its lowest turnout in twenty years, while overall Michigan turnout rose slightly.
mannygoldstein says
a. Globalization is inevitable, your jobs must be offshored because tarriffs against goods from microwage nations have never worked, except when they’ve been tried.
b. The TPP is in your best interest, really. Stop laughing. Seroiusly, this time it will work. No, honest.
c. We made it easier to buy shitty unaffordable healthcare. Oh your drug prices skyrocketed because of the backroom deal made to make your shitty and unaffordable health care easier to buy? Oh grow up.
d. It’s natural that all wage gains go to the top 10%, they have the best education. Go get an education and share in the prosperity.
e. Your’re working in indetured servitude for the next three decades to pay off your student loans? Should have planned better. Next time, get born into a rich family.
f. Everything is the Republican’s fault, they can stop anything when they hold the Senate. We couldn’t stop a damned thing when we held the Senate, but that’s different.
g. We need to slash Social Security benefits to save Social Security.
h. The Executive Branch should be fully-staffed by Wall Street, because they are the smartest people on Earth and just want to serve mankind. FDR would have done it too, if he could have.
j. Just because you’d be fired for exclusively using your home email account to conduct all business, doesn’t mean important people should be fired for that, too. In fact, they deserve a promotion!
k. We promised what? Oh, grow up.
l. No, we didn’t cheat against Bernie. No, you can’t use those emails as proof we did because Putin. No, we don’t have evidence, but that just proves it’s Putin.
m. All the other stuff.
NB: desperate people become a bit unpredictable and stupid when the abuse never lets up.
bob-gardner says
Just because Clinton got more votes doesn’t mean she won the primaries. Some of those Clinton votes were from blacks.
mannygoldstein says
I sure as heck hope that you’re not implying that I am racist.
jconway says
Anyone who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton or who is blaming her and her weak kneed neoliberal policies or her tone deaf campaign for a surprise loss of historic proportions is very clearly a racist, and a sexist as well. It’s the only logical conclusion for why Trump won, other than its somehow Bernie’s fault.
I’m getting real tired of the smug white bourgeois echo chamber BMG has turned into as we try to process the loss and move on. Posts like this hurt that effort more than help anybody move forward.
mannygoldstein says
By Hillary supporters for supporting Sanders, some of ’em probably online Brockbots. Excellent way to get the base enthused over voting for Clinton. Brilliant strategy. Brilliant.
SomervilleTom says
I agree that desperate people become unpredictable and do stupid things after long periods of abuse. Please note that while this is true, the “stupid things” they do are still stupid.
I’ll be particularly interested in revisiting these points after we have dismantled the ACA and ended even the pretense of keeping the fox away from the hens. For example, I think there’s a very good chance that your item (c) will result it most Americans finding it harder and more expensive to buy shitty unaffordable healthcare. Drug prices are likely to go higher, not lower.
After we’ve finished gutting public education and college (not to mention pretty much all research funding), it will be interesting to see where any wage gains go. My guess is that they will go to the top 0.1% (as opposed to your cited top 10%), and my prediction is that life will get even worse for those without post high school education or training.
Yeah, it’s time for we Democrats to stop talking about education. Yeah, we should stop “alienating” all those voters who are pissed off because we keep harping on that. Join the GOP in slashing education funding. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s lower taxes while we’re at it, and send vouchers so that the lily-white private schools that all those voters want to send their precious kids to are more affordable (at least those who want their kids to have high school). Yeah, we Democrats should have named Betsy Devos to head the Department of Education. She has a MUCH better handle on what will really benefit all those suffering Americans.
Yeah, let’s get the Federal government out of the way, so that states like Texas and Alabama keep evolution out of the textbooks used by their children — that’s just lies told by yankee atheists anyway. Let’s be sure that all those kids in America’s heartland can learn the TRUTH about history and geology in their schools — that the earth is six thousand years old, and was created by an invisible white God who likes white Republicans and hates everybody else.
Yeah, that’s a really really good plan. I don’t know why we Democrats were so stupid that we never embraced it. No wonder we lost to Donald Trump.
By the way, no Democrat ever promised to “slash Social Security benefits”. It’s the party we’ve just elected that has been not only promising that, but attempting to do it since the George W. Bush administration. You seem to forget that we were the party that blocked those efforts.
Funny how all that concern about security is ignored when Mr. Patraeus is being contemplated for Secretary of State. He actually WAS fired for his egregious violations of national security, the FBI actually DID recommend bringing criminal charges against him, and he narrowly avoided felony prosecution for through an artfully-negotiated plea bargain.
A closer look at what Mr. Patraeus actually did is constructive for those hyperventilating over Ms. Clinton’s email issues (emphasis mine):
We’re not talking about hypotheticals here. We’re talking about a high-ranking military official who knowingly gave classified information — ” code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council” — to a REPORTER, crying out loud. A reporter whom he was, coincidentally, having sex with at the time. A reporter who used this information to harass others, via email, for her own purposes. A reporter who recorded a conversation where Mr. Petraeus made it clear that he knew full well that the information he had revealed was top secret.
Funny how those who keep beating the Hillary Clinton email dead horse have nothing to say about this.
Indeed, I’ll be looking forward to a post-truth post mortem of all this in about four years. Let’s see what happens to all those suffering Americans that this comment claims we Democrats ignored or abandoned.
jconway says
Those that are opposing the stale, bland and frankly balless campaign the Democrats just ran and will continue to run for the foreseeable future are not automatically right wing defenders. If anything, we are tired of cop outs to the right like the Iraq War, the ACA and other compromises. This campaign has taught me the center is no longer the place we thought it was. Most voters are not free trade, charter loving social liberals as Morning Joe pretends they are but radical populists.
Absent a populist message from the left, they will gravitate towards one from the right. This has been consistently true and the entire body of work from folks like Tom Frank to Michael Moore proves this point correctly. Not to mention the history of the FDR administration and the foundation of liberal dominance it unleashed for a generation. It’s time we return to our roots as working class party, and frankly anyone who argues that makes us a right wing or racist party was never an authentic member of the left to begin with.
SomervilleTom says
Surely we can agree that there is a middle ground between “stale, bland and frankly balless” and whatever is implied by this comment.
We got beat this time by a candidate that DOES pander to “right wing defenders”.
The only mention of race I made in my comment was in reference to the focus of Betsy Devos for virtually all of her public career (at least ten years). The plain truth is that the Department of Education is about to be led by woman who has made school vouchers the focus of her attention. Now you claim that I “was never an authentic member of the left to begin with”? Screw that, my friend. That’s pure horseshit and I think you know it.
I expect push back from anti-education Hillary-Haters like johntmay. If this is where you are going in your political future, then you’ve left me behind. I think you are jumping from the frying squarely into the fire.
jconway says
If been writing here for ten years and I’ve essentially been makin the same argument that entire time. Massachusetts should be a bold liberal leader with our supermajority and should easily elect and reelect progressive Governkre. It doesn’t because our legislature it too tight fisted and conservative refusing to raise taxes in the wealthy or redistribute wealth and living wages to the working families fleeing the city and even the state because it’s so expensive to live here.
It’s immoral that I’m priced out of the town where my family had lived for four generations. And that’s a liberal enclave led by liberal politicians who’ve done nothing to help keep us in what was supposed to be our city. No one from my high school reunion is living in Cambridge save for a few kids who lucked into city jobs, family homes, or tech jobs.
Nearly all the black kids I went to elementary school with have moved to Malden since they can’t afford the places they grew up in. That’s the silent ethnic cleansing of gentrification which is making Cambridge more white, more wealthy, and certainly less liberal where it counts which is economics.
That’s a microcosm of our state and our country. And the whites left behind by globalization and gentrification become bitter old conservatives, especially when we don’t bother fighting on their behalf. But the blacks and Latinos getting priced out need to have common cause with those whites in a true solidarity inspired working class coalition.
Such a coalition isn’t impossible, it governed this country for nearly five of its best decades in its best century. Barack Obama assembled such a coalition twice and won the same Rust Belt states Hillary lost. It’s not impossible and I refuse to give up building a real majority.
I read you, perhaps falsely, as arguing we need to stay the course with a politics that isn’t resonating and hope future demographics save us. I am arguing we have to be bolder, more liberal and more progressive not less. And it’s the same argument I’ve been making since Kerry lost in 2004 by not being bold enough and Gore lost in 2000 for not being bold enough. Same with a Oakley. Warren was bolder and beat Brown decisively. Timid and poll tested loses, bold and rash wins. That’s the lesson of this campaign and many that preceded it.
Your the one who has most consistently called for taxing the 1% to benefit the 99% on this site, so I’ve been consistently surprised when I catch you making the same corporate liberal arguments the Acela corridor is. “Neoliberalism is inevitable and it’s opponents are all racists living in the past”. That’s the attitude we gotta change in order to win and reach more voters. It will also allow us to govern as progressives when we do.
johntmay says
Are too busy patting themselves on the back with their achievements on social issues rather than addressing real economic issues.
What’s you’re poor? Go to school and better yourself and become like us! Then you can join us in our fight for progressive values, but not until you get that degree, got it?
SomervilleTom says
Which “wealthy Massachusetts liberals” do you have in mind?
I don’t know anybody who has said this, especially here at BMG.
I think you’re creating a lie and a scapegoat, as egregiously as any Republican.
jconway says
Called Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberalism in Massachusetts. It’s really quite good and constructive and I would argue you, John and I are absolutely the type of people opposed to the corporate liberalism they are trying to impose on our party. That’s all I’m saying.
jconway says
That’s just one example. Also the liberals who consistently oppose fair housing, chapter 70 Reform, or raising taxes.
paulsimmons says
There isn’t.
There isn’t any serious State support for education at any level.
That said, the only way to address this is to organize your friends and neighbors (while recognizing that class versus race versus gender, etc. are often false distinctions in the total scheme of things). Below a certain income threshold, everybody in the Commonwealth is expendable, race, et al. notwithstanding.
This is not to ignore racism or sexism or any other form of oppression, but to recognize that it can be fought in the context of economic populism; provided that you recognize that you’re dealing with moving targets, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Long story short: It’s not one or the other; it’s one and the other.
There are thirty-four members on your town committee, and getting them galvanized to put some sweat equity into backing up their espoused principles (by, among other things putting some pressure on local and State electeds) isn’t a bad place to start.
I’m not trying to minimize your legitimate concerns; I merely state that there is a vacuum on the ground, and that populist worker bees can fill that vacuum by intelligent political grunt work.
paulsimmons says
…provided you don’t move next door and mess up the property values.
SomervilleTom says
What part of taxing the 1% to clawback their wealth is “stay the course”?
Where have I argued that we should be “timid”? I supported Mr. Berwick in the primary and your own Evan Falchuk in the general. Is that “timid”?
I suggest that you really have to STOP attempting to compress complex issues onto bumper stickers. For example, johntmay has made supporting education a battleground. You seem to be saying that arguing in favor of education makes me a “Acela corridor liberal”.
I’ll tell you that if you think that NOT supporting education is anything but a disaster for America and more specifically for the poorest families and children in America, then I’ll tell you that you’re drinking too much.
I’m all for “bold and rash” — so long as it is also CORRECT. Boldly and rashly saying that climate change is a hoax, or that we should dismantle the US government, or that we should “throw crooked Hillary in jail” is just demagoguery.
Bold and rash, absolutely. Demagoguery — absolutely not.
jconway says
No. I am arguing that college education is not a panacea to the crisis of not enough jobs at fair wages for every able bodied American. It’s not. Especially when that education saddles its recipients with a terrible debt burden. We largely agree on what to do about education, no one here is defending DeVoss so I have no idea why she was brought into the discussion. I oppose charter expansion, why would I support bloody vouchers? Other than for special needs students, I see them as just another way to siphon public funds into private or parochial hands.
Even if you made college tuition free like Bernie proposes, it doesn’t do enough to solve the lack of good jobs at fair wages. When present college graduates have a hard time finding good work, it’s hard to argue the problem is a supply one. It’s been an employers market for 40 years. Giving power back to employees at all education levels is how we solve the economic problem.
Anyone who wants a degree should get one without being saddled with debt, I agree. I strongly support making public education better and accessible at all levels. I disagree it’ll do much to solve our economic problems. Stomv articulated this quite well elsewhere here today.
Nobody is doing the there for Crissakes! But using simple language like “the game is rigged” like Sen Warren or “too much power is in the hands of millionaires and billionaires” like Bernie resonates. I feel like you and Christopher watched too much West Wing and think the American people want ten point wonky plans and civics lessons. They don’t. They just want someone who will fight for their jobs, their families, and their communities.
And plenty of liberals get how to do this, unfortunately our nominee and her campaign was not one of them. But that’s irrelevant now, how do we make sure our party from top to bottom gets this fight and how to win it? That’s the only question I will be asking until I am satisfied we have an answer. Talking about Truno doesn’t interest me. He’s not part of my party. Most of us here are. So help me figure that out?
jconway says
Bill Clinton is the master of making the complex seem simple, so is Barack Obama or even John Oliver. Al Franken ran great de in 2014, one of the few progressives to do well that year, arguing that the game is rigged and we would do better taking on Wall Street.
Paul Wellstone put our creed going forward best when he said everybody does better when every-body-does better. Main Street not Wall Street. 99% instead of the 1%. Make millionaires pay. These are simple slogans sure, but they speak to the essence of our fight and put in broadly acceptable terms what being a progressive is all about. It’s not about sucking up to George Clooney or doing what Hollywood says, it’s about fighting for ordinary people and putting their needs ahead of the powerful. Always.
jconway says
Which is nonsensical. You keep confusing left wing critics of Hillary and left wing populists for right wing ones. I don’t see that dialogue as constructive or moving us to where we need to go. I’ve met you and know you are a liberal who agrees with me on 95% of the issues, so is John T May. Where you both get crazy is taking arguments here way too personally and dragging the primary back into the present.
Let me make two very true criticisms of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Sanders didn’t do well enough with people of color to win the nomination, which means he would’ve had problems with getting them out for the general. Hillary Clinton failed to win white working class voters in the primary which was a harbinger of her difficulties in the general. We have to win them both.
Let’s never write off a population of our fellow Americans again. Let’s stop running a mirror image slice and dice campaign on cultural wedge issues like Rove and bring the country together in a message of economic fairness and social inclusion. Both/and.
I hate it when John dismisses BLM as an irrelevant part of this coalition. It’s arrogant and wrong to argue that their priorities aren’t important. I hate it when you demean people without college educations and argue college educations are a catch all solution to this economic malaise. They aren’t. Voters didn’t vote for Trump because they were racist or stupid but because they were desperate and angry. Because working America hasn’t seen a raise in 40 years.
Arguing among Democrats why Republicans won’t provide those raises is a waste of time. We know they won’t. How can we convince the rest of the country that we will provide those raises that didn’t happen under Carter, Clinton or Obama? Fine presidents all, but they didn’t stop these tr de sonehat will? What do we need to do differently?
SomervilleTom says
I’m observing that Betsy DeVos is the nominee for secretary of the Department of Education. I’m saying that the OUTCOME of this election is that she will determine federal policy towards education for as long as she holds that cabinet office.
I have NEVER demeaned people without college educations, please show me where. You are repeating johntmay’s lies about me and I resent it. I have said that people who choose not to go to college make their lives MUCH MORE DIFFICULT. That is plain fact.
Similarly, I have never argued that “college educations are a catch all solution to this economic malaise”. Are you, too, unable to understand the phrase “necessary but not sufficient”? America NEEDS to make college available to ALL our children. We frequently cite the German model — that premise lies at the core of that model.
Voters who voted for Donald Trump because they haven’t seen a raise in 40 years will learn that they won’t get a raise under Mr. Trump either. Voters who oppose legislation mandating equal pay for equal work ARE casting a sexist vote.
The OUTCOME of this election is, in fact, that working Americans still won’t see any more money than we ever have — and millions of people of color, immigrants, Muslims, and other scapegoats will live in fear or worse. Tens of millions of women will watch their hard-fought gains be erased in a right-wing tide. Texas is just the first.
What do YOU think will happen when Mr. Trump and the GOP puts their second Justice on the Supreme Court?
I am outcome driven. The outcome of this election is a disaster. It is a disaster for working men and women. It is a disaster for minorities. It is a disaster for women in general. All of this was known and well-understood.
Fifty nine million Americans voted for Donald Trump anyway. You seem willing to excuse that awful decision and its awful consequences because they were “suffering”. I have news for you — ALL of us are suffering. ALL of us struggle with the same things johntmay whines so loudly about. ALL of us lie awake wondering what we do if we are laid off. ALL OF US.
Some of us resist the urge to go bash the nearest scapegoat. Some of us turned OFF Rush Limbaugh the moment he came on the air.
What do we need to do differently?
I think we need to turn off the talking heads. I think we need to talk in full sentences with each other instead of “tweets”. I think we need to restore civility, intellectual discipline, reason, logic, and an acceptance of objective fact.
I think that when someone spends months writing lies, misquotes, and distortions about another, we need to make it clear that such behavior is unacceptable.
jconway says
Who here is listening to Rush or scapegoating minorities?
Why can’t we have an honest conversation about the fact that Americans haven’t gotten a raise in 40 years and part of the reason for that is that the Democratic Party has transitioned from a party of laborer to a party of professionals? We can’t control what the Republicans do, which is why I don’t bother taking about why they are bad here. Everyone here knows that. What we can control is what our party does to respond to that?
And I say our since my first reaction to Trumps win was to rejoin a party my family has belonged to four generations. Back when we were the fresh off the boat immigrants who didn’t speak English. Back when my grandparents didn’t finish the 9th grade let alone go to Harvard. Grandpa never met a Harvard man the entire 30 years he ran our corner store at my old house on Montgomery and Rindge. That’s the old Democrats.
The New Deal gave my grandparents work, the Great Society gave my mother help and some education when she was a single mom after her divorce to her first husband. Section 8 kept my sister housed after rent control was voted away. I’ve eaten WIC food before, the period of 91-93 when my dad couldn’t find steady work.
That’s what our party represents to me. Not George Clooney or George Soros, but hard working people banding together to protect their class. That’s the vision I want our party to return to. And I won’t apologize for it. And that vision totally includes my black niece and nephew, my Latino niece and nephew, and my foreign born wife. It includes our gay friends.
Why is this vision so hard for you to understand and why do you persist in fighting it and linking it to policies that are diametrically opposed to it?
jconway says
It was horseshit and a cheap shot for which I apologize. I’ll also retract my downrating. I haven’t disagreed with any of your analysis of why Trump and his appointments are awful for the country. I don’t disagree with your passionate belief that Hillary Clinton would’ve made a great president. Where we do disagree is on how we got here, but I actually think we agree on where the country needs to go. Even if we also disagree on how it’s going to get there 😉
mannygoldstein says
to cut Social Security.
Shame!
Clinton was thwarted by the erupting Lewinsky scandal, Obama by the Republicans eventually turning him down.
jconway says
The GOP was so dumb that they looked a gift horse in the mouth and said no. They could’ve achieved a long time policy dream and probably elected Romney by forcing Obama on defense. 2011 was the worst year of his presidency, and the “grand bargain” had a lot to do with it.
mannygoldstein says
It was then that I knew for sure that we had been hoodwinked into electing a Third Way Republican. Remember the Catfood Commission? Very, very demented stuff, starving and freezing the old, the sick, and the poor so rich people can have hyperlow taxes.
And the DNC set wonder why working Americans won’t give them hugs and kisses.
fredrichlariccia says
WHEN YOU MUST BE ON THE RIGHT SIDE AND LOSE.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
Fred Rich LaRiccia
johntmay says
Democrats saved Wall Street, the Hedge Fund Crowd, the “money HAS to come from somewhere crowd”. There was no way Hillary was going to rake in $225,000 per “speech” to Wall Street if she was really interested in helping Americans raise their wages. Wall Street does not like high wages, unless those wages theirs.
Democrats caved into the “it’s a GLOBAL economy” horse shit which is newspeak for “you have NO economic rights as a citizen, none. Corporate needs outweigh your personal needs”
That’s why we lost and that’s why we’ll keep losing.
SomervilleTom says
I’m disgusted by your uprate, James.
If this hostile and uninformed rubbish is our future, we are no better than the Trumpists.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that when this contributor uses the word “we”, he means an entirely different group of people from those of us who have spent lifetimes fighting to advance progressive values.
We are fighting for the heart and soul of our community here, and this kind of nonsense is an intentional knife inserted and twisted.
jconway says
JimC and others besides JTM have been making this argument that taking Wall Street money and playing by a different set of rules were two major enforced errors that hurt the narrative and perception, even if I would be the first to argue they were much ado about nothing. Not to the voters they weren’t, which ends up being the verdict that counts.
I strongly agree with your vision of where we need to go, so stop fighting me and stop fighting those that want a more liberal party. Our argument is at least ten years old and is the very reason sites like this one burst into the scenes after DLC centrism lost a second election to Bush, our worst president until Jan 20th 2017.
Populism does not equal Trumpism. Right wing populism in the absence of left wing populism does equal Trumpism and that is exactly what we saw in Nov 8th. I refuse to believe that this election wasn’t a verdict on an economy that still isn’t fair, still doesn’t provide for every working American, and a yearning for something authentic and unbought by the corporate class. Trump is certainly not the candidate those voters needed, but until we provide them with a real alternative he is the kind of candidate they will gravitate towards.
Weren’t you the one always praising FDR for welcoming their hatred? I would rather welcome their hatred than pretend tolerance for corporate greed is somehow linked to tolerance for racial or social equality. It’s not. If anything fighting economic inequality makes us better advocates for social and racial equality as well.
I am against inequality in all its forms. Whether it’s corporate liberals like Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos making a living by taking a dump on labor or alt right losers like Trump sucking at the teet of Wall Street while scapegoating minorities at the bottom for the crimes of those at the top. We are all in this together and until the working class unites in a political party it will continue to get screwed. The Democratic Party is the only vehicle left standing capable of this task, if it isn’t up to it and willing to abandon a lot of comfortable compromises with corporate America that don’t work anymore.
johntmay says
If not for Trump, Jeb Bush would have won the nomination and lost to Clinton. But the disenfranchised working class Republicans had enough. They refused to obey the party leaders. We Democrats still lined up behind the candidate that our party leaders picked for us. It’s like they evolved and we got stuck in a time warp.
jconway says
I think we underestimate how much it hurt Jeb to be associated with immigration reform and a politics of social inclusion. Trump won a lot of conservative voters by ditching the dog whistle and being a real racist. He also ditched a lot of free market dogma on his path to victory in either election. I think both explanations are valid and I think ditching the free market dogma our own side has embraced from trade to charters to ‘meritocracy’ to college education as the only acceptable path to prosperity will help us win some of those voters back.
But it’s wrong to say it’s all racism and equally wrong to pretend that racism wasn’t a factor. Being an openly racist candidate helped Trump win votes in the election and the general, along with ditching free market dogma. Seeing that he put racists and free market dogma believers in his White House, we know which part of his coalition he thinks is most essential to his ability to govern and get re-elected. We know which parts of our coalition we have to shore up to best that back. Let’s get to work and stop arguing!
Christopher says
That’s interesting, since I figure if Clinton lost (sort of) even to Trump, she really would have had problems with a more mainstream Republican. That would have been disappointing, but not nearly as angering, shocking, and frustrating as this loss is and I at least would have had a much easier time with analyzing how and why we lost. If I ever sound like I’m spitting nails in these discussions it’s because there’s always the question in the back of my mind: HOW THE HECK COULD ANYONE OTHER THAN A KLANSMAN OR SKINHEAD EVEN CONSIDER VOTING FOR THIS GUY!? I would not have that question about Jeb Bush.
jconway says
You and I had this argument at the time, but I felt it wasn’t enough to hit Trumps character since that wasn’t what attracted people to him. It the fact that he had the brass to take on the establishment consensus that led to bailouts, open borders, nation buillsing abroad but not at home, and free trade deals had benefitted the 1% not the 99%.
Jeb and Hillary disagree on just about every social issue, but their foreign and economic policies come from different wings of the same establishment playbook. And it was easy for Trump to dispatch them both by refusing to play by the old rules of politics.
So a brash and angry sounding progressive (I can think of two that come immediately to mind) could channel that anger at the same establishment, especially if Trump governs as just another Republican on most issues as he seems to be doing.
kbusch says
First off, there were plenty of anecdotes about how Trump has cheated workers in clear, straightforward ways. None of this subtle Wall Street convinced Senators to pass laws which in complex, hard to understand ways benefited Wall Street. With Trump it was straightforward and clear. Granted, the relationship of the Schumer wing of the party to the financial sector remains a huge concern for those of us who care about policy but effectively no one cares about policy. Voters instead care about personality and story.
After all, this election revolved around issues of fitness for office and perceptions of honesty. To the extent it revolved around policy, it was reduced to marketing slogans by the Trump camp. And the Trump camp, without any policy commitments at all, was able to tailor a marketing campaign that appears to be completely divorced from how they intend to govern.
jconway says
And there will be golden opportunities for the Democrats to consistently point out the swamp drainer is actually draining it right into the White House which will be overflowing with lobbyists and Wall Street stooges.
Christopher says
We have someone who gave a few speeches on WS, and who probably did have some of their interests in mind as their Senator vs. a man who is the personification of the 1% not just in wealth, but also mentality.
We have someone who has this undefined aura of mistrust vs. someone who actually has fraud suits to his name.
Trump’s campaign was all about I’m rubber and you’re glue, but I assign most of the blame on this to the media. The facts and record would suggest Trump has the much bigger problem both in terms of WS and honesty.
jconway says
Jeb was old money and establishment money. Like Romney, he’s a guy who made money off firing people. The Clinton’s represented (unfairly as it may seem to us) the confluence of big finance and big government and were perceived to have been made wealthy off their relationships with both unpopular entities. And this is where the qualifications angle you bring up went against them. His best line during the debates was “you had 30 years to stop guys like me and you took our money instead”. That resonated with people.
The mythical idea that Trump couldn’t be bought and since he knows how to game the system he knows how to fix it. It was a lot more salient than people give it credit. Particularly if you look at the exit polls that showed people distrusting business, government and the elites. Those didn’t bode well for Clinton. She wasn’t a bad candidate and she would’ve made a good president, but she was the wrong candidate at the wrong time.
Christopher says
…in the, BTW, 8 years she might have had a chance to as Senator. If people distrust business, government, and the elites, that’s still 2 strikes out of 3 against Trump by my count.
kbusch says
is assigning too little blame — at the risk of sounding like a meanie.
On the one hand, yes, the media have been derelict. The coverage of the Clinton Foundation, an actual charity doing actual good work, was such that Trump could accuse it of being a well of corruption; whereas the Trump Foundation, which had no such pretenses, received precious little attention. And now, there’s the strange normality of a guy who just shelled out $25M for fraud moving into the White House. Oh happens every day.
Nonetheless, Clinton got the Democratic nomination to win the Presidency not to enter some kind of media lottery to see whether she could win good media coverage. If the Clinton team couldn’t figure out how to overcome those obstacles, they’re fired. We need better teams than that.
We can’t afford this loss.
We can’t afford another.
Christopher says
…let’s hear them, because I’m coming up empty and this getting close to my political management wheelhouse.
kbusch says
I actually have no idea what the contested comment even means. One might best regard it is as a sort of political poetry rather than, as is more typical here, a set of facts and arguments culminating in a logically derived conclusion.
As such, then, the weighing of its faults and merits is best left to connoisseurs of such poesy.
paulsimmons says
n/t
jconway says
I keep trying to move past arguing about the last battle to refocus on the next one and then bullshit posts like this one that argue there is nothing wrong with the party as is drag me back into that counter-productive space.
Let’s all agree that we want the party to move left anyway, and that’s exactly what it has to do to win the next election.
johntmay says
Do you mean left on social AND economic issues, at the risk of losing key financial contributors?
I hope you do.
It’s a new world out there and my hunch is that with social media, big money donors may have met their match.
bob-gardner says
. . .cheap energy and saving auto workers jobs, I’m listening.
The trouble is, all you seem to be proposing is that we pay less attention to “identity politics” which means either absolutely nothing, or means that Democrats should pay less attention to . . . whom exactly?
Now that Republicans are about to take control, Democrats ought to propose some real progressive policies, like single payer, a much higher minimum wage, and higher taxes on the rich. None of those proposals will have the positive effect that the auto bailout and the fracking induced cheap gas had–simply because none of those proposals will make it into law.
It’s not bullshit to point out what really happened during the Obama administration–not after weeks of John T May complaining that the Democrats did absolutely nothing.
And it’s not bullshit to call out Manny for suggesting that the Democratic primaries were rigged by the all powerful manipulators in the DNC, and that the result was somehow illegitimate.
I voted for Sanders. But Clinton won because she got more votes–a lot more votes–than Sanders. I shouldn’t have implied that Manny’s attack on the results was racist. I should have just stated it for a fact.
jconway says
I’m not. And I don’t see why we can’t argue for all three of those things at the same time.
I think we have to agree that Trump tapped into a sentiment with heartland workers that NAFTA sold them out. Thomas Frank and other progressives have pointed out how that really drove the 94′ midterms even if the GOP also voted for it. It’s not enough to oppose the scapegoating of minorities by whites left behind by globalization, you should also have a plan for whites and workers of all races left behind by globalization. NAFTA hurt black workers far more than white ones, which might be why so many of that forgotten demographic stayed home. I haven’t seen a great plan from either party regarding what we need to do to help the workers left behind by trade and automation.
We know Trumps plan is morally bankrupt and impractical to boot, but what should our plan look like and how can we articulate it?
Christopher says
…about a three-legged stool for progressivism. Any chance you can find and link to it? It had both a lot of itemized points, but each leg also boiled down to a single slogan.
jconway says
I’ll do the hunting and bump that. I might bump my Tales of Two Commonwealths piece as well. I think this isn’t as complicated or divisive as we are making it out to be. And laying out a positive prescription will unite this community more than the endless finger pointing.
Charley on the MTA says
I share jconway’s interest in the moral basis of politics, and think it’s really important to re-establish a shared set of values that we can talk about, and develop and strengthen communally.
I was watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” the other night, and every time I see it I’m struck — awed — by the set of moral assumptions it lays out as normative: Of course the good guy sacrifices himself; of course he’s not greedy, and fights greed. Of course the laissez-faire poor-hating plutocrat is the bad guy. That’s 1946 for you — post war, post Depression.
As liberals abandon religion, and as conservatives debase it, I’m curious how we re-establish a sense of morality based on compassion and commonality, and how that filters into politics.
jconway says
Link here’s
jconway says
Link here’s
johntmay says
Republican Plan: Deregulate, Lower Taxes, and watch as the money from that trickles down to the workers left behind by trade and automation. (and in 40+ years, it’s still not trickling)
Democratic Plan: Educate, Higher Job Skills, and watch as the money from that trickles down to the workers left behind by trade and automation. (and even as more more Americans go to college, the wealth gap continues to widen)
One of my favorite lines from a movie, The Outlaw Josie Wales…”Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining”.
There is a plan, but it involves bold leadership and most importantly, putting Wall Street in its place, as a servant to the citizens, not leader/provider.
petr says
…you struck a nerve. Well done.
Your satire was trenchant and well-observed. If the… well, for lack of better term… shrillness of the response, isn’t testament enough, the altogether logic-defying mental acrobatics in response will do.
johntmay says
I missed it. I remember the banks getting bailed out. I recall hearing about many people losing their homes. We know that wages still never changed their flat trajectory. We know that the wealth gap actually widened as a majority of the recovery went to the wealthy.
What did I miss?
petr says
…If you were wrong about the last battle, you are unlikely to be focused properly on the next.
Your argument boils down to the rather arrogant ‘accept my analysis and move on.’
No.
jconway says
I reject the whiners calling for a retreat from identity liberalism since I refuse to let cops continue to kill unarmed blacks with impunity, I refuse to see my friends rights rolled back under Mike Pence, and I want women to have access to equal pay and equal healthcare which is as much an economic issue as it is a social one.
I also reject the notion that Bernie forced Clinton too far to the left or his voters didn’t show up to help her. We need their energy and passion to reform this party and evangelize it to people who’ve never heard our message from a real worker before. Time to move forward.
kbusch says
Let’s be clear of the upcoming danger.
Trump is going to try to appoint what is essentially a segregationist to the be our chief law enforcement officer. This guy, like Republicans in too many places. is going to try and suppress the Black vote. On moral grounds alone, that’s abhorrent. If we want to see another Democratic President — or Congress again, that must be fought tooth and nail. It’s a serious threat.
johntmay says
if you’re not in a position to do so. We lost the house. We lost the senate. We lost the White House. We lost a lot state races for governors, including one in Massachusetts.
Blaming and denigrating the people who did not vote for you is not a way to win elections, retake the house, senate, and White House.