There’s been an interesting conversation going on here on BMG concerning Democrats and the working class (especially members of the white working class). A big part of the conversation is the claim, like that of Thomas Frank’s, that Democrats’ embrace of neoliberal policies has pushed away white working class voters and led at least some of them to the Republican Party. In a similar vein, a number of BMG’ers (including the always perceptive jconway) have argued that Democrats can — and must — win back these voters by doing more to seriously address their economic anxieties.
I agree that Democrats should pursue policies of social justice and take seriously the concerns of those who feel especially economically insecure. However, there is good reason to believe that much of the white working class that have abandoned the Democrats in recent years won’t be coming back anytime soon — and that we shouldn’t want them back. Backing up both of these claims is the real reason why so much of the white working class has abandoned Democrats. It’s not because of Democrats’ embrace of neoliberal policies (which Republicans have done to a greater extent), or because the Democrats have jettisoned their commitment to issues like the minimum wage, protection of Social Security, or trying to reign in health care costs (all of which are central parts of the Democratic platform). Instead, the real reason can be summarized in one word — authoritarianism.
Political scientists have done considerable work on Americans’ authoritarian tendencies in recent years. Amanda Traub of Vox summarized some of this recent work in a terrific piece last week: The Rise of American Authoritarianism. I’d encourage you to read the whole thing, if you haven’t already. But the main point is that there has long been an authoritarian streak in American politics. What do these American authoritarians want? Well, among other things, “authoritarians prioritize social order and hierarchies, which bring a sense of control to a chaotic world.” When there are challenges to that social order, authoritarians “favor forceful, decisive action against things they perceive as threats” and flock to leaders who promise decisive action. The article’s point is that Donald Trump has very much tapped into this authoritarian strain in this election.
But there’s a broader context too. In the past, American authoritarians (many in the Populist and Democratic Parties) may have been convinced that the threat was coming from bankers, capitalists, industrialists, Northerners, and so forth. This was likely the group leftist populist (and demagogue) Huey Long tapped into back in the 1930s, when he attacked FDR from the Left. But that’s not what motivates many American authoritarians today. Instead, as the Vox article illustrates, it is exaggerated fears of terrorism, of increasing racial diversity, and of social change more generally. It is these attributes that have driven many American authoritarians to Trump — who promises to “bomb the hell out of ISIS,” attack “P.C. culture,” and build a giant wall on the Mexican border to keep out Mexican rapists (which he and many supporters see as one and the same).
Of course, not all authoritarians are members of the white working class, and not all members of the white working class are authoritarians. But as the great political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset noted back in the 1950s (quoted here), “authoritarian predispositions and ethnic prejudice flow more naturally from the situation of the lower classes than from that of middle and upper classes.” Interestingly, even as late at the early 1990s, many white, working class authoritarians associated more with the Democratic Party. But they shifted largely to the Republican Party because of the Democratic Party’s increasing diversification into a multi-racial party. (A point argued by political scientist Julie Wronski in this paper).
My larger point is that there is a significant portion of the white working class that has authoritarian tendencies. They were once Democrats, but racial diversification has pushed them to the lily-white GOP. No matter how much the Democrats shed “neoliberal policies,” or conduct “outreach” to these groups, they are not coming back to a party that treats immigrants with respect, places significant emphasis on racial justice, and believes “bombing the hell out of ISIS” is an overly simplistic foreign policy. They may have legitimate economic insecurities, but these other concerns about “social change run amok” trump the economics.
And that gets to my last point: we don’t want them back. To be sure, we as Democrats need to keep economic and social justice at the forefront of our concerns. We need to pursue a preferential option for the poor, which of course includes economically distressed whites. But having members of the authoritarian working class as part of the Democratic coalition — in other words, returning to an earlier Democratic coalition — would be, even if possible, absolutely disastrous for the progressive cause. Trying to appeal to and satisfy that part of the coalition would hamper progress on crucial issues like criminal justice reform, racial justice, gay rights, and immigration. By all means, we certainly need to reach out to non-authoritarian white working class voters (who, in any case, are likely still Democrats). But there is a significant portion of the white working class I never would never want to see come back the Democratic Party. They are going to follow Trump’s siren song of hatred. This, in turn, grants the Democratic coalition we have now more room to achieve the sort of social change that will lead to a more prosperous and tolerant American republic.
not agreeing with its conclusions, I think this is a thoughtful and interesting post on a topic worth discussing.
… It’s unclear to me if there is a strong, a priori, authoritarian tendency that GOP has run into or if the GOP has run a bunch of people into that valley with their constant refrain of fear and, it must be said, smear. Constant, unending and increasingly more strident descriptions of chaos, imminent doom and blame aren’t a result of interfacing with authority, but a desire for more authority can result from constant exposure to those things…
One of the more marked characteristics of the GOP/Conservative mindset, and something Frank, et al, don’t understand, is that they are distinctly anti-Democrat: they constantly describe problems and ascribe blame. This, in my estimation, is the main reason “they” aren’t coming back and the left, et al, are powerless to do anything about it. It’s nearly impossible to embrace anything on the Left as component of the solution when you’ve constantly been told, and believe, that the Left is the problem.
source (can’t remember the author, the hard copy is home) mentioned in a Vox article. Research supports what you’re saying, Petr.
The Far Right thrives on ” strident descriptions of chaos, imminent doom and blame,” and the GOP has increasingly catered to the Far Right.
I think the Democratic Party has a chance to get back voters who are not born hard-core authoritarians. We are not really like the GOP. We are results-oriented more than identity-oriented. We have ideology, but it all tends back to social programs and policies. We are more a coalition of groups with interest in government doing something. The modern GOP is more a coalition of groups interested in being something. What once held them together is no longer working.
…while mistaking result for cause.
Simply put, middle and lower class interests have been ignored for more than four decades, resulting in widespread insecurity, in turn resulting in the desire for a savior among huge swaths of the electorate.
Alexander Hamilton explained the result in Federalist 1:
No amount of pop psychology will address the fact that the Trump electorate (and in a much more constructive sense Bernie Sanders’ supporters) don’t so much feel authoritarian as they feel impotent.
And the latter sentiment is supported by the facts.
One cannot successfully fight Trump without realizing that he is pimping legitimate grievances.
aspect.
I would say that Trump and Sanders both reflect those legitimate grievances, but Trump represents an authoritarian response to them, Sanders a democratic response.
The question I would ask is, why don’t Trump supporters support Bernie?
“Authoritarian” is rather a political science category and not a subjective self-identification.
You are 100% correct. Yet every election cycle Dem pols nearly have their tongues fall out of their mouths uttering the phrase “working families.” Even Elizabeth Warren does it despite the fact that it’s the “working families” set that refers to her as Fauxcahontas.
I’m a believer in policies that helps those folks despite themselves (that trickle down is never going to arrive), but that’s because it means we get a healthier economy. Yet the wasted effort in convincing those people to vote Democrat astounds me. They’ve gone right wing and they’re quite comfortable with their misdirected anger.
…that it would be quintessentially American to be ANTI-authoritarian from the time we threw off a distant Parliament in which we had no say. I also figured workers especially would reject authoritarianism as sounding too much like the bad experiences they have had with their bosses. It is completely beyond my understanding why the “white” part still matters at all in 2016. I liked Deval Patrick’s mantra of turning to each other rather than on each other. We all should look into the eyes of every man and see a brother, of every woman and see a sister, regardless of other factors.
Consider the Alien and Sedition Acts:
First I’m talking about now rather than 200+ years ago in terms of how we should see each other, and second the Federalists were the elite part of a population of eligible voters that was a lot narrower than it is today anyway.
…irrespective of the size of the eligible electorate.
Let’s see (keeping this to the Twentieth Century), there were the Palmer Raids, in the context of the larger Red Scare.
There was the McCarthy Period.
Insofar as the Sixties are concerned, you would do well to read Nixon Agonistes, a contemporary account of the 1968 Nixon campaign, wherein Nixon’s operatives openly, approvingly, and on the record discussed oppressive policies during the campaign, itself (and let’s not bring up George Wallace).
The list goes on…
Huey Long, Father Coughlin…
… you are demonstrating one of the problems of the right. It’s normal, especially for children, when confronted with a problem to do a 180 and embrace its opposite. When you are angry at someone and they say “yes” there is an urge to say “no”. When they are angry at you and you say “white” they might wish to say “black.” It’s reflexive. I think many ‘conservatives’ can accurately be described as “not-liberal” in this same way. Their frame of reference is not about embracing a conservatism but about rejecting liberalism. In this way conservatism can be, ideologically, all over the map and still claim victory by being ‘not-liberal’
It is in this manner, I feel, you are saying, “since AN authority was a problem, we must be anti- ALL authority.” I don’t think that this is, per se, a response to be considered out of the ordinary. Most people would have it. I think, however, we have to continue past that instinct and deliberate on it. I think this is the genius of the founders, and (paraphasing Edison) much more of perspiration than of inspiration: We have a President, in whom resides all the authority of the Executive Branch, which office we embraced after the failures of the Articles of Confederation, a distinctly anti-authoritarian attempt.
I certainly agree that this is what we all should do, but it’s unfortunately not what matches the reality in 2016. It’s important to note that the racial animosity and fear of the “other” that Trump is tapping into is not simply a “distraction” for people who would otherwise support left-wing economic policies. It cuts to the core of many people’s worldview, especially in the times of rapid social change that we are currently experiencing.
There is a Venn diagram of support for Trump that includes outright bigots, the displaced who feel disenfranchised, and the overlap in between. I think it’s political malpractice to assume his entire base of support falls exclusively in the bigot camp. That’s liberal elitism at its worst, especially since it is its own subjective prejudice rather than something born out by the data. The Frank piece, and his research has been backed by data for decades where even his early critics conceded the point to him, is that trade and questions of fairness are at the heart of dissatisfaction with the status quo. And many Trump voters are first time voters or folks unenrolled in a party who occasionally vote that are coming back to the fore to back someone who will look out for them and protect them from special interests.
I watched his whole speech last night and he spent far more time (I counted!) on fighting special interests, not being bought, and to stop losing to other countries on the trade deficit. He spent far less time demonizing minorities now that he is pivoting to a general election and there are no challengers left to outflank on the right. Just you watch him ditch the racism and embrace the populism in the general. These are always the first issues people mention when they say he’s a different kind of politician who tells it like it is.
The Beltway consensus has been lying to them, from Iraq which Trump brought up to the benefits of NAFTA to Obamacare being more preferable to single payer. That’s our health care policy argument now. That this hard to use complicated monstrosity of corporate giveaways is somehow preferable to Medicare for All. Hillary may be the first nominee to have attacked her opponent from the right on healthcare and been rewarded for it by our increasingly professional and wealthy electorate motivated by culture rather than class. We are fucked going into the general if we think we can beat him on wedge issues.
I’m sorry, but especially with the option of voting for Sanders available I just cannot let the economically displaced off the hook for voting for someone who has expressed such shameful views toward other people. Nor can I forgive the candidate himself for going so far off the bigoted deep end and just call it the routine tack to the base for the primary, tack to the center for the general trick. Some attitudes are so beyond the pale, that we should not allow the person expressing such to be politically rehabilitated, at least in the same cycle. Even George Wallace is more forgivable because he ultimately changed with the times and eventually apologized, though I’m certainly glad he wasn’t elected in 1968. If that makes me a liberal elitist, so be it.
Yesterday you said there was an easy case to be made to these people, and denied that there is really any rift at all between the present Democratic Party and the white working class. I asked you to make the case, and you huffed at me instead.
Now you say, eh, there’s no point anyway, because anyone that isn’t already in your (minority in Congress) party is beyond redemption anyway.
…but there are still some lines I will not cross.
The media has barely covered him, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has gone out of her way to hand the nomination to Clinton, and these are voters who have been lean Republican on culture issues and taxation for quite some time. The irony is, their base is class conscious enough to know that the GOP elite and establishment are no longer what they want but they have confused ‘conservatism’ with ‘populism’ for quite some time.
My dad just lost a friend to a blood disease a few months ago who regularly said things like ‘conservatives support social security, liberals oppose it. conservatives support veterans benefits, liberals oppose it, etc.’. His entire worldview was skewed and corrupted, but he really thought Reagan balanced the budget, saved social security, and was tough on defense and immigration. It’s really the ‘get government off my medicare’ argument in a nutshell, and it’s one where the party of the farmer and the heartland was the GOP and not the Democrats.
This is a cognitive dissonance stocked by the right and Fox News but also stoked by the fact that the Democrats gave up being a populist party and haven’t been for quite some time. We were a messy hodgepodge of identity politics interest groups between the 70s and 80s and Clinton brought back enough pro-gun control and pro-choice suburbanites in the 90s to successfully move to the center-right on economics and foreign policy while solidifying the center-left perspective on social equity to keep the identity groups happy.
And I have defended you when I said that model worked for that time, but it won’t work in 2016. The electoral map benefits Trump if he wins WI, MI, OH, NH, ME 1 and PA instead of Clinton, and there aren’t enough moderate Republicans to offset the blue collar Democrats and independents Obama carried twice against establishment Republicans that may be tuning into Trump. Even if Colorado, Florida, and Nevada become easy wins due to higher than average Latino participation and she forces the Republicans to spend money and time in Texas, she would have to carry North Carolina which Obama lost last time in order to offset those loses.
Now this is an ideal scenario for Trump, but it’s the one plausible path he has to the presidency and it’s one Team Clinton isn’t really defending against by focusing on stocking minority and moderate rage, entirely justified, at the prospect of a bigot extremist like Trump being president. The average voter still votes with their wallet and their gut, not their brain or their compassion for a person that looks differently than them.
She has to offer them more than just a civility course and a ‘not Trump’ button to push. She has to give them a reason to vote for her and why her presidency will be different from her husband’s and her predecessors for this neglected demographic.
You think this is a bad thing. That’s where I disagree. “Populism” and “power to the people” has both a long tradition and always a certain resonance within the American electorate. It also has a dark side. It has a tendency to advocate a simplistic, “us vs. them” mentality that many here might like when it’s directed to the top 1%, but will not like when it’s directed to other groups, including immigrants and racial minorities.
The problem is that it’s difficult to cabin the targets of populist anger once it is let loose. If Democrats want to maintain their longstanding commitment to the disadvantaged, stoking populist anger isn’t the answer — and in fact would be more likely to hurt the very people progressives claim to champion.
….if they don’t know about Sanders? Sanders himself has pointed out how he HAS gone from negligible name ID to very competitive and I see Sanders coverage all the time.
Huey Long, Father Coughlin…
And it’s important to note his 10 point share the wealth plan has a lot more in common with pure socialism than fascism. Bernie would blush running on it today it was so left wing. But a big part of the argument was anti Jew as much as anti bank, no doubt about that.
And there were more than enough voters in the Midwest to reject the internationalism of FDR focused on helping the victims of facism (re: Jews) while sopping up the radical left wing populism of Long that made FDR look like a Koch brother. I mean, it was public ownership of the banks and a cap on personal wealth.
I wonder how many people here would be voted for McKinley over Bryan because he believed in evolution.
are not behind this iteration of American authoritarianism too. The 19th century railroad tycoon and robber baron Jay Gould is said to have bragged that he was so powerful he could make one half of the working class kill the other half. I’d guess his 21st century counterparts have been helping to stoke the current fears of terrorism and racial diversity.
The last thing the bankers, capitalists and industrialists want is a Trump presidency and Hillary is just their kind of Democrat. Hillary represents stability and a known quantity. The Dow won’t go drop down precipitously if she wins the presidency. She will have even less incentive, in her mind, to adopt economic populism after she disposes of Bernie in the primary. I pray that she doesn’t make this fatal mistake, and forces Wall Street to pick her while she runs against them. But that isn’t what I am seeing from Team Clinton.
I really think they view this as a bigot v moderate election that they can easily win, and they are totally misreading the mood of the electorate.
Neoliberalism has been incredibly destructive to this country. Tens of millions in this country have suffered immensely from it.
You want to continue on with neoliberalism because authoritarians currently support someone who opposes it?
That’s not good policy, that’s tribalism.
No, my point is not that Democrats should become more neoliberal. Indeed, as I mentioned in the last paragraph, Democrats need to keep economic and social justice at the forefront of the party’s concerns.
Instead, my argument is that Democrats will neither appeal to nor should they want a significant portion of white working class voters to return to the Democratic coalition, no matter how much the party rejects neoliberalism.
It is not a given that racism is hard-wired into the majority of these voters.
On the contrary, the failure to engage white working class voters and honestly engage legitimate interests created a dynamic tailor made for bait-and-switch Republican tactics (which, via Trump, is now biting them in the ass). Given the Michigan results, I’m cautiously optimistic that this can be at least partially addressed post-convention.
Based upon exit CNN’s polls, Sanders took whites with or without college degrees, and voters with incomes between $30,000 – $100,000 (and tied with voters with incomes from $100,000 – $200,000), while Clinton took voters with incomes below $30,000 and the black vote.
There are two potentially positive takaways from this:
(1) If the candidates rein in their zealots and unify after the Convention, the possibility exists to recreate the New Deal/Great Society coalition; and:
(2) If folks on the ground are able to use the national campaigns to leverage the resources necessary to establish self-sufficient and locally accountable grassroots organizations – in or out of the Democratic Party – the potential exists to deal once and for all with racial tribalism.
Oops.
I think he means “New Left” and not “neoliberal.” I’m not sure why the white working class might have drifted to the Republicans because of Democratic embrace of de-regulation. He is arguing against altering course on the various New Left policies championed by the Democratic Party since the 60s.
“Neoliberal” is a crappy word in the context of American politics. You might as well use “conservative” and avoid confusing people.
…as a working term, in order to avoid confusion with the folks over at the Washington Monthly, who were the first people in my experience to use the term self-descriptively.
I think that a lot of this goes to the fact: that:
The American economic use of the term differs from that in Europe, and:
The term as currently used started on the Eurocentric Left, where “Liberal” is traditionally a pejorative word.
…as to the right of neoliberalism. The former is Reagan while the latter is more Bill Clinton.
Of course “liberal” is a pejorative among the European left– because it means the opposite of what it means in the US. Thatcher was a liberal.
I still think that hoya and rye and describing different things.
I won’t go as far as Rye as saying that the Democratic Party fully embrace neoliberalism, but it definitely rejected traditional liberalism, the kind FDR-JFK-LBJ embraced that focused solely on bread and butter economics, for the social liberalism of the Davos set.
Tim Cook embodies this kind of liberal activism. Still makes his shit in China for slave wages and dodges federal taxes overseas, but Apple embraces the counter cultural ethos of the 60’s and focuses on being green, pro-gay, pro-feminist, and ‘different’. He gets plaudits from liberal pundits for opposing Indiana’s RFPA law, but barely a peep for supporting ‘right to work’ laws that decimated labor in the same state. Labor, along with the black community, is like a spouse that stays with an regularly unfaithful partner since it has nowhere else to go.
And it will be fatal to the Clinton candidacy if she adopts that narrative.
…can be found in this Washington Post think piece:
They are authoritarian, yet mistrust intellectuals and experts? Intellectuals and experts are by definition authorities in their subject so shouldn’t it stand to reason that such people follow them without much question.
“Authoritarianism” at least in the context of this discussion does not denote taking guidance from experts or intellectual authorities. Similarly, the word “important” does not refer to imports.
…whether those who take the reins of power or those who know what they are talking about.
…as disdained as ‘pointy-headed’ among many voters, who have very different ideas as to who they think REAL authority should go to.
This confirms what I said yesterday. The authoritarian Republicans do exist, but they have been a part of the party for a long time and tend to gravitate towards extremely religious social conservatism. Many white working class voters, as Charles Murray has pointed out, dropped out of organized religion decades ago since they simply don’t have the free time. They are indifferent to the culture war, as is Trump, but definitely feel like they are on the losing end of American life and tend to blame immigrants, fear Muslims, and hate the black guy in the White House who they feel complicated their lives with Obamacare and hasn’t had their back or the back of our troops.
Those are the issues Trump appeals to, not religious authoritarianism. His is more of a Perot mixture or a softer version of Pat Buchanan. It’s about erecting walls to preserve what little they have left and start settling scores with those who took what they had away. It’s still a terrifying vision, but it’s not one fueled by authoritarian impulses that Vox identified.
Trump’s rhetoric is Buchanan, straight with no chaser.
Blame immigrants? They think the immigrants came into the US and are willing to take jobs at very low wages, and work under the table which causes the wages they make to go down or them to lose their jobs.
Fear Muslims? A small percentage of Muslims have vowed to kill Americans so they fear and want to restrict what they do not know. Similar to the way some liberals fear and want to restrict all gun owners because a small percentage have done horrendous things.
Hate the black guy? Maybe they hate the guy in the White House who they feel complicated their lives with Obamacare and hasn’t had their back or the back of our troops.
How can the party of smaller/less/no government be the party of people who want more authoritarianism?
Have you ever really talked to gun owners? They talk much more about defending their rights and defending themselves against intrusive government than they do about shooting people breaking into their home.
I truthfully think this is all bunk. It puts together natural desires not to be a victim of a terrorist attack, that the police due their job, and everyone obeys the rules into one “wants a strongman to take over” bucket.
is uniform. Your logic is correct, but it proceeds from a false premise.
The GOP is more ideologically uniform than the Democratic Party, but for the last 40 years, the GOP has been all about more government on social issues. The GOP has no problem telling women whether they can have abortions. Trying to force them to get ultrasounds of their fetuses. Forcing welfare recipients to get drug-tested. Not allowing gay couples to adopt.
I talk to gun owners. I’ve been a gun owner. None of them were particularly thoughtful about owning guns. The attachment seems to be more on emotional level. One guy I know, lives down the street, seems to buy a gun and post the picture of it on Facebook once a month. A lot of Republicans don’t care at all about guns, but accept the anti-gun control issue as part of being in the party.
This discussions have been extremely annoying. Some of us are stepping all over ourselves trying to give some politically questionable people the benefit of the doubt. Some of us are taking a statement about some Trump supporters as being a statement about all Trump supporters. I have serious doubts about many of us having much more than a passing acquaintance of actual white working class people.
But I am white working class as are my parents and most of my extended family. And our friends and relatives voting for Trump are some of the least religious people on the planet who have been indifferent or inconsistent in their voting patterns. They liked Clinton, they voted for Dubya and McCain, hated Romney and stayed home in 2012 and are ready for the Donald today.
The couple in Leominster is anti immigrant since they are the only white family in their trailer park. Priced out of Waltham years ago and bouncing further and further out as they lost job opportunities and faith in government which has done a miserable job helping them raise a now adult son with Downes syndrome. My sister should be a Trump voter since she’s white working class, low info and low consistency with voting but she doesn’t because she’s also her last two husbands are Brazilian and her kids are half, even if her current husband is not.
These are the folks left behind by our information economy, driven out of the city when it became fashionable for the wealthy again, and stuck without a lot of options. My sister voted for Bernie since she thinks he’ll make my nieces private college tuition free. He won’t get anything he wants passed and his plan would have no bearing on Regis College. But low info voters want simple solutions. 29 point policy plans and pawns to the better angels of our nature didn’t cut it for Jeb or Marco, won’t cut it for Hillary if that’s the only plan she has to beat Donald.
I know your back story. I live in a white, working-class community. I grew up there. My family is mostly middle-class, but friends, acquaintances, and others are not. Lots of friends and relatives are in the military or reserves or guard. I used to hunt. I’ve had rifles and shotguns. I don’t drive a truck, but all my neighbors do. It’s not your experience I’m questioning.
But I think there are two valid ways to look at politics. One is the quantitative and “objective” side. For many years the left/right dynamic has been the x axis and now we have a rich/poor dynamic on the y. Silvers models are failing since like a general he prepared for the last war. The 20 year period of close elections fought along that x axis. Now we are seeing a realignment along the y.
And the other way is more qualitative and subjective, but there is a narrative of discontent that people have had with both Obama and Bush and now they are rejecting that for something new on both sides. The machinery of the Democratic primary was designed to prevent a popular uprising, but the GOP was ripe for a hostile takeover. If Clinton loses to Trump, still an unlikely prospect, I expect we will see the end of super delegates and a bolder generation of progressive leaders emerge in the wake of that historic defeat. If she wins the shit his candidacy has kicked up won’t go away.
the number of younger folks voting in the primary. A lot of pollsters don’t survey cell phones, and you guys live on them. Harry Enten said on NPR yesterday, that Sanders’ upset in Michigan was a confluence of many things. It will take time to sort them all out, but the younger generation is making itself felt.
I’m working on a post about GOP vs. Democratic parties. One of the research things I’ve read, which makes sense to me, is that the Democrats are a coalition of groups that want to get things done. We may quibble about ideology here, but we are less ideological uniform than the GOP. We are a big tent, and that’s problematic. Periodically, part of the coalition assumes more power than others–the business-oriented, white collar elite has dominated too much. Their hegemony is, I predict, over. They won’t disappear, but they aren’t going to dominate.
I agree that this is the big battle, and I’m not sure how this will turn out. Will the Democrats become more of a populist party (moving left on economics and de-emphasizing to some extent social/cultural liberalism) or more of a white-collar elite party (centrist economics and emphasizing social liberalism).
My own view — particularly if it’s Trump v. Clinton — is that the populists take over the GOP which in turns pushes professional white-collar individuals further into the Democratic Party. If that happens, it could be a significant re-alignment and make the two major American parties look more similar to how parties look in Europe (where the technocratic elite is center-left and “populism” is largely right-wing).
But you forget there is a substantial populist left wing that has been energized by Occupy, Warren and now Bernie. It won’t go gently into that good night if moderate Republicans and even conservatives flee into the Democrats to protest Trumps rage against the dying of the light.
It too has rage-in many ways a justified rage that is similar to the populist rage on the right. Either a new populist coalition can be formed from the anti-elitist majority in both parties and we have a class rather than social issue oriented politics (in some ways a reversion to the midcentury New Deal consensus) or we may see the crack up of the two party system into fragments.
Probably as fragments within the parties, but the Warren-Sanders wing may grow restless and thurn on their party elites as the ascendant Trump wing just did.
I think populism is going to rage inside the Democratic Party for awhile. I support an establishment candidate, but I also support the little guy. The next generation is much more liberal than ours. They will have a different relationship to the capitalist overlords in our society. There’s a lot to be played out. The question for me is, do they just vote for our candidates or do they join us under the tent?
This statement is definitely true, but I think “liberal” does not equal “populism.” I don’t think younger people are rallying so strongly behind Sanders because of “populism” — I think it has more to do with Sanders’ authenticity and strong commitment to left-wing beliefs. After all, younger people flocked to Obama in ’08, and he was/is hardly a populist. By contrast, I don’t find many young people enthralled with Trump’s populism.
If anything, I think younger people are even less “populist” than older people, due in large part to more of them going into white-collar professions.
Many of us are not comfortable white collar professionals and we were spoon fed a lie that college and only college was a guarantee to a middle class life. I won’t be capable of buying a home until I’m in my late 30s since our credit is so poor from loans and credit cards we over relied on to supplement our low wage jobs out of school and my period of unemployment.
We will be back on our feet soon, but 60% of millennials aren’t even going to college and won’t have an opportunity to be white collar professionals. Many of the 40% took out debt burdens they weren’t capable of understanding that will take decades to pay back. College is the next subprime mortgage.
My friends supporting Sanders are grad students saddled with debt and trying to unionize, my friends who are veterans desperate for a better VA, and my friends who feel like this economy has left them behind. It’s probably the bulk of my social circle from the kids who didn’t finish Rindge and the kids from U of C. It’s a cross racial cross class allegiance to a 74 year old white guy from Vermont and Brooklyn peddling old left ideas in a social media savvy package. If that isn’t a form of populism, I don’t know how we define the term.
I don’t really disagree that Sanders is advocating a form of populism, though a somewhat muted one in comparison to Trump’s full-throated embrace of it.
Where I (perhaps) differ is concerning whether younger people are “populist” or simply more liberal/socially inclusive. I think it’s the latter, illustrated by the fact that younger voters (1) love Obama, whom I would classify as decidedly non-populist and (2) while overwhelmingly preferring Sanders in the primary, would also overwhelmingly prefer Clinton (another non-populist) over the decidedly populist Trump.
I think this is actually an important point, because populism may well be the dividing line in the next political re-alignment. Most younger people will choose social inclusiveness over the dominant form of us vs. them populism that may be poised to take over the GOP.
Though I think our conception of social inclusion is very much linked to economic inclusion and mobility. It’s a rising tide lifts all boats rather than us vs them. All our friends come from different backgrounds and cultures and orientations, but we were all equally ducked by the banks and the academic industrial complex.
Abortion on demand is the law of the land
Gay Marriage is everywhere
Transgender legislation is more common
Hardly the land of authoritarianism
Falwell in his endorsement basically waved the white flag of surrender on the old hot button issues and endorsed the “socialism for white people” Trump seems to be running. It wouldn’t surprise me if he backed off his pro-life and anti-gay stances in the general since they no longer serve his purposes, he is already toning down the anti immigrant sentiment.
voters to an authoritarian country. You’re kind of changing the goalposts. I never said this was an authoritarian country.
The GOP is coming apart at the seams because most people don’t want their social conservatism. As JConway says, their failure of change has got people pissed.
Not referring to the whole country.
… maybe they don’t really want one of those things…
A very small group of people want to dictate how the rest of us live.
… on the Internet, it’s difficult to convey exactly how firmly one’s tongue is planted in cheek.
A moment’s pause to think will complete the circle of how, gun owners in particular but others as well, can both want lesser government and more authority: they believe that the gun conveys a certain level of authority and a government is an authoritative entity in direct conflict with that authority of weaponry. Religious conservatives think that the government is likewise an authority in competition with the authority of God as delivered via the Bible (or the Koran).
They may be dumber than a bag of hammers but they’re not nihilists.
and most Republicans assume your knee-jerk (especially the ones that only vote every four years) are pretty stupid themselves.
So it appears there really is no difference in the attitude of those on the edges.
… Stupid is as stupid does.
Feel free. I’m sure we’ll both have plenty of ammunition.
I would prefer to have a more civilized discussion, but I know that you like throwing your intellectual superiority around, so take more shots at the working class if you want.
Wake. Up.
A SINGLE vote for Donald Trump is a corrosively stupid decision in motion. Your party is about to repeat that stupid decision millions of times over.
You missed the point of the link to the Dunning-Kruger effect: it compounds problems; the lack of self-critical insight leads to an illusory superiority that not only deepens the problem but puts deliberate obstacles in the way of people capable of implementing the solution. Of course I’m going to be called a ‘libtard’ by someone who’d use such an egregiously stupid portmanteau to begin with. Duh. The very word itself is a marker of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
The vehicle just happens to be the Republican primaries. For years I have been hearing that the Kochs have been running the show. Clearly with Trump that’s not the case. What makes me think anyone’s opinion ( and that’s all it is-opinion) here carries any insight, especially not the smug intellectual snob ones, who think most people are stupid?
my mamma used to say.” FORREST GUMP
Fred Rich LaRiccia
…rarely has vehicle and cargo — and, one assumes, destination — been so snugly fit together as in this instance. For every job, even the ones we don’t particularly wish to see done, there is the perfect tool.
Sure, it may look to be a specie of snobbery to be so angry, both at them and for them, as I am. And it would, indeed, be exactly that if I believed stupidity to be a congenital and intractable defect to which people are consigned by the fates to suffer without let, pardon or hope. My understanding of the brain, the aforementioned Dunning-Kruger effect (among other phenomena) and, indeed, my own experiences suggests that intelligence is significantly more transitive than that and, in fact, the only necessary condition for immediately becoming smarter is humility. I suppose a detestation of a fell pride could be termed an entirely different specie of snobbery, but that’s an even harder sell than Donald Trump and only a fool would make it.
also to others, even the dull and ignorant, for they too have their story
…if you listened to what I was saying, you’d feel no need to admonish me: you’d know I listen and you’d realize your objection is that I call a comedy a comedy and a horror story a horror story.
You could take it as an admonishment or an emphasis of your point on humility.
How does that relate to GOP leaning people wanting more government authority?
The base coming out for Trump wants “socialism for white people” and is far removed from the conservative movement of the think tanks and past thirty years of fighting. Its why the Trump/Goldwater comparisons are lazy since he welded elitist Old Right concerns opposing the New Deal and civil rights legislation to the New Right anti-communist fusion.
Trump is reviving Old Right attitudes about America being a European nation, a strong tariff, and moderate isolationism but welding it to the midcentury liberal economic tradition. The fact that this hybrid unique to American politics and rarely applied has done so well is a stinging rebuke to the conservative establishment.
The Republican Party, like the Democrats, is made up of wide coalitions. It is overly simplistic to assume that the GOP is the party of “smaller/less/no government.” A big portion of it is, to be sure, but plenty of people willing to vote Republican — particularly Trump supporters — don’t share those commitments.
It’s safe to assume the Democratic Party includes people who are anti- gay and anti-abortion. What’s your poin?
You specifically asked how the party of small government could also be the party of authoritarianism. The straightforward answer is that there is no contradiction here given that American parties are coalitions. There are plenty of libertarian types in the GOP. Trump’s voters, by contrast, have authoritarian tendencies but are not “small government” types by any means.
Your question made it seem like this was impossible, which it certainly isn’t — it’s long been beneath the surface in modern Republican politics, but we’re seeing it come to the surface right now with the Trump phenomenon. Whether the rise of Trump ultimately destabilizes the coalition remains to be seen.
The GOP is no more the party of authoritarianism than the Democratic. Probably less so. Big government by definition is more authoritarian. If you want your benefits to continue, you must do as we say.
of Mayor Bloomberg and his soft drink size fiasco, and the imposed speech-limiting policies that are now so in vogue at Colleges and work places. There is plenty of authoritarianism on the left.
The contention is that authoritarianism appeals to a certain segment of voters who support Trump. Not that the GOP is authoritarian or that this is the “land of authoritarianism.”
Black people don’t like Bernie Sanders
Therefore Bernie Sanders is a racist
Therefore people who like Bernie Sanders are also racists.
That makes about as much sense as any arguments above.
don’t understand the argument.
…and omit the word ‘black’ and you have 8 years of principled Democratic explanation of why people who do not agree with The President can be dismissed and ignored.
It has made blowhards and demagogues very attractive in this election cycle.