Is anyone else watching the Republican National Convention this week? I’m enough of a junkie that I always watch both conventions, but I skipped CSPAN this year in favor of MSNBC’s coverage because I figured it would be better for my sanity. Tonight’s theme is “We Built It” as the GOP tried to find examples of business that has never had any public assistance, contracts, etc. There are several governors at the podium tonight, most of whom touted their own records with what seemed to be a hint of, “Please consider me for 2016.” There were plenty of claims that will keep the fact-checkers busy, but so far they’ve managed to keep the craziest people and talking points off the stage. Rick Santorum did repeat the thoroughly-debunked claim that Obama waived work requirements for welfare.
The analysis on MSNBC talked about going after working-class voters, but I don’t get why Dems are vulnerable here. The working class is getting so royally shafted by GOP policies. Dems still have the unions, but nobody is forcing the unions to stay loyal and interests of unionized and non-unionized workers can’t be that divergent. I’ve heard that emphasis on social issues alienates workers, but I see no way that social issues and worker issues are in any way mutually exclusive. I’d love to be enlightened on that point.
Due to shortening by a day on account of Isaac the roll call took place outside of primetime, and apparently the Ron Paul delegates made themselves heard during a rules vote. Ann Romney just took the stage; she seems to have a slight southern accent which I didn’t realize. I invite you to treat this diary as an open thread on the GOP convention over the next couple of days.
I tried to watch last night but when Santorum started speaking, my revulsion for this jerkwad overcame all else and so I watched an old “Big Bang Theory” episode instead.
Have you been living under
Unions are 10% of the workforce now and even less of the votes. Dems have consistently lost the working class white vote (white under 30k a year) every election since 1968 where they did not run a Southern Governor. Its a serious problem and while I do believe in the short term we can rely on blacks, hispanics, suburban women to win but in the long run need the white working class to come back. Really read Rick Perlsteins Silent Majority, Nixonland, and Thomas Franks Whats the matter with Kansas? and his monthly Harpers column that touches on the same themes. To me the culture war is a giant distraction from serious economic issues plaguing our country and how to save our middle class and the American dream.
I’ve read What’s The Matter With Kansas, but that doesn’t mean I understand it. It just baffles me that Dems are so obviously on the side of workers, but they vote against us anyway. What do they want us to do? Being pro-choice and pro-civil rights make us no less pro-worker. If anything they go hand in hand because they share the common theme of speaking up for those who are too easily marginalized. It shouldn’t matter what percentage of workers are officially unionized. It seems all workers want decent wages, secure jobs, good benefits, etc. As I said, all workers are so royally getting shafted. How do we make them see that?
Like it or not, the key word in the phrase “white working class” is the first.
Sadly, the “white working class” is far more racist than we Democrats are willing to admit — at least in the deep south and even the midwest. As jconway observed, we lost them when we kicked out the segregationist Southern Democrats in 1968. The GOP has openly pandered to them since.
I grew up in the south (well, MD, but I think that’s close enough), my mother’s family is all from the deep south (LA). The racism in this demographic is pervasive and deeply-rooted (read Faulkner to get a flavor of it). I know that some are weary of my emphasis on this (I hear you, CMD), but it is nevertheless an important dynamic that isn’t going to respond to economic arguments.
So long as the racism in our culture festers, those of us who reject racism and embrace diversity will never get a majority of the white working class to vote for us.
Or must we content ourselves with letting a generation die out? Besides didn’t the New Deal coalition include both minorities and the white workers? I know that was the era of having a segregationist wing, but we had a strong civil rights plank as early as 1948. Somehow Truman managed to win even with both Dixiecrats and the hard left bolting.
The civil rights plank of 1948 caused the immediate creation of the “State’s Rights Party” (“Dixiecrats”). While they returned to the Democrat Party almost immediately, they set the wheels in motion that ultimately resulted in the deep South flipping to the GOP. Truman managed to win because his civil rights initiative caused enough black voters to turn out to sway the election in his favor. The racial dynamics between the Democratic Party and the GOP remain the same today — Barack Obama and Democrats work to turn out minority votes, and the GOP strives mightily to suppress them.
Letting a generation die out isn’t enough. Racism, like religion, is generally transmitted “vertically” from grownups to children. In my view, we have largely dropped the ball in comparison to my parent’s generation (who controlled the political system in the 50s and 60s) because of our reluctance to forcefully reject racism in our culture, our governance, and our politics.
In order to eradicate racism, we must inoculate our children against it early and often. I think we were making great progress until the rise of the hyper-partisans, especially in the last decade. The election of Barack Obama was an enormous leap forward and has, in my view, created a enormous backlash of racist hostility (witness the 2012 GOP campaign).
Our job now, in my view, is to loudly and forcefully reject that racist hostility in all its forms.
We should note that the increasingly regional nature of the political parties is not at all new; it is likely that the New Deal coalition, and its 25 years of afterglow “bipartisan consensus” for which we are so nostalgic, was the exception to the rule. The electoral map of the 1928 Presidential election shows a pretty stark regional division:
The last four decades of Republican success hinged on their ability to reverse the east coast of that map, while holding the west. The Democrat’s ability to make things close again stems from their re-capture (or the Republican’s foolish loss of, more accurately) California.
That leaves the elections on knife’s edge, and much depends on this “white working class.” It will never be a solid Democratic constituency again. But it need not be a solid Republican one either, and Republicans NEED to to be to tip the election their way.
That is why announcing to people– that you need in order to accomplish anything at all– that they are racist or _______ist unless they enthusiastically support the following list of policy prescriptions outlined in the plaform…
People perceive “racism” to mean the deliberate and the malicious: Bull Connor’s fire hose, but the bulk of the present Democratic Party mean something else: inadvertent or “systemic” which causes people to recoil. Thus the minefield of affirmative action type-policies:
School District: We are increasing your class size, by a lot, because we are moving one of the teachers from your school to the other school in the district that serves a “historically-underserved” community and laying off two more so that we can hire three ESL tutors.
Parent: But our school already has twice the number of kids in each class as that other school.
School District: We are rectifying past injustice.
Parent: By sticking it to us?
School District: You’re racist.
This is just not a fruitful dynamic. People rebel against perceived unfairness, and Democrats must find a way to engage with that reaction in a way that neither is a “loud and forceful rejection of racist hostility” nor a lecture from a sociology professor. I get that this is not easy. But it is the only way.