Rich Democrats and their Rich Pals, in particular.
When black or Hispanic or Latino people are oppressed, your party offers to help them by explaining that a few evil whites are behind this, and you will be their champion.
When women are oppressed and earn less than men, your party offers to help them by explaining that a few evil men are behind this, and you will be their champion.
When GLBT’s are oppressed, your party point to a few bigoted straights and offers to be their champion.
Do you see the pattern?
Identity politics plays one demographic against another, and never, ever calls into play the economics of the oppression. Where is theMoney going? When women make less than men, when black, Hispanic, and Latino children attend run down schools, when GLBTs can’t receive equal financial/economic opportunities, where does that money go?
It goes to the 1%, more accurately it goes to the .1% but that’s a hard number to get your mind around, so we use the “1%” as a brand.
Too many Democrats (not all, fortunately) have deep financial ties to the 1%. They live among the 1%. They are intermarried with the 1%. They cannot and will not attack the 1%, so they blame the Republicans, or a Global Economy, or a lack of job training on all our economic ills.
That’s why, as Democrats, we need to drop this facade and openly embrace class politics. We need to represent all the poor and all those in danger of becoming poor AND those saintly 1%’ers who know that this just an’t right.
It’s time to drop identity politics. It’s time to see JohnTMay not as a straight white male, but as an oppressed laborer who deserves our support regardless of his gender, race, age, nationality, and all the other little boxes that identity politics demands.
Identity Politics is simply a way for powerful office holding Democrats and their financiers to avoid personal responsibility for the plight of our less prosperous citizens.
The majority of your comments are “I’m a white male member of the working class, and…” I can’t think of anyone on this site who thrust their identity into discussions as regularly as you. How does that square with this article?
not what I wrote, and why white males probably feel so unwelcomed by the party.
There are plenty of white males among our ranks and we feel plenty welcome, thank you.
I feel plenty welcome. Wish you had half the issues with Republicans you seem to have with Democrats. As part of that welcome, I’ve sat on three town Democratic Committees, all chair by working white men. I guess if you really want to feel unwelcome, you will suceed.
There seems to be no real logical connection in your post between your talk of money and identity politics. You also say that the 1% is really the .1% but then say that many Democrats live among the 1% (who are really the .1%)? My wife and I have fairly high paying jobs, but we are far from making the 1% cut and don’t know anyone else who has.
Finally, I don’t see why “oppressed laborer” is not every bit an “identity” as one based on race, religion, or sexual orientation. It seems like you are saying that we switch to entirely class and income based identity politics.
The bottom of the 1 percent are folks who are worth single-digit millions, around $7 million or so as of the latest Fed survey.
These people are not the ones in control. Their share of the wealth pie is the essentially the same as it was in 1995.
Even those who are between the top 0.5 percent to the top 0.1 percent have barely seen any increase in their share of wealth.
The big winners are those in the top 0.01 percent.
That’s where the power is.
Because oppressed labor is not based on race, religion, or sexual orientation. It’s what we do, not what we believe in or what we look like.
First, try putting your family in the top one percent by income calculator. The shape of that curve is pretty interesting. There is a VERY sharp knee starting at about $125,000.
I don’t know about anybody else’s family. I know how hard it was for my wife and I to get where we are — we are a LONG LONG way away from the $430,000 floor to join the one percent by income.
This wealth calculator tells an even more depressing story about wealth.
My family is doing pretty well, better than a whole lot of other people. The wealth distribution curve, not surprisingly, shows an even sharper knee. I know how hard it was for my family to acquire whatever wealth we have. The likelihood of our entering the 1% is essentially zero.
When you argue that it’s “not that hard” to get into the 1%, either you have a completely different understanding of “hard” then me, or you are again blowing smoke that is unrelated to actual facts.
In fact, it is nearly impossible for most people to get into the top 1%, by either income or wealth. Steeply progressive income tax rates make it even more difficult to enter the top 1% by wealth — nearly all who are there achieve that standing by inheritance. The effect of raising the marginal tax rates on high incomes is to make the wall that defends the very wealthy even higher.
In fact, the best (some argue the only) way to resolve the issue is to dramatically expand taxes on generational transfer of wealth — the estate and gift tax. Those who voted for Mr. Trump apparently don’t understand this basic reality — Donald Trump, not surprisingly, proposed to eliminate the gift and estate tax altogether.
It doesn’t matter what words you try to put on it, here is the reality:
1. Wealth and income concentration is higher than its been since the Great Depression. That means that the 99% have less money to spend than we’ve had in a century.
2. White men have gained the lion’s share of the tiny bit of wealth and income left to the 99% for that same period (actually, for forever, but that’s a different story).
3. White men today have proportionally more than black and minority men. White families today have proportionally more than black and minority families
4. Women of all races and ethnicity today earn about 70% of men of all races and ethnicity for the same work
However loudly white males whine and yell about how much they suffer, blacks, minorities, immigrants, and women suffer far more and have been suffering longer.
Indeed, we do need to fight and win a class war so that we take back the wealth that the one percent has plundered from us. That war will not be won overnight.
In the meantime, fairness demands that those who suffer the most from our long-standing habits of racism, sexism, and xenophobia stand ahead of those who still benefit from those habits. I think that’s been the position of the Democratic Party my entire lifetime, and I think it’s the correct position.
I am eager to forego raises so that my colleagues who are black, female, Hispanic, and so on may gain parity with me. I am happy to pay the increased tax rates that accompany the success my wife and I have achieved — so long as the resulting tax revenue is used to help those less fortunate.
I think that angry white men who demand that they remain at the front of the line are asking that Democrats like me betray our fundamental values. I refuse to do that.
If my stance causes our party to lose national elections for a time, I say “so be it”.
You are writing as if there are tons of Democrats with ties to the 1%. That isn’t really the case.
Furthermore, you totally failed to explain why class identity is not “identity politics”. No doubt that class difference are qualitatively different than race or religious differences, but so what? Why should your perception of yourself as being oppressed because of your social class and income be more important than someone else’s perception of oppression due to their racial identity? It really doesn’t make sense.
and now Chuck Schumer to lead the senate? Have we learned nothing?
It’s identity politics because we pit one group against the other.
When the sell out from Somerville talks about racist and misogynists and bigots, he’s talking about…..white guys. And he blames this all on them at face value.
How do we reach out to a demographic when so many of us denigrate it at every turn?
It’s bad form to insult and name call someone with whom you are not having an exchange.
The terms of service here say quite explicitly that it’s bad form to insult and name call at all.
Frankly, I’ve reached the point where I welcome his attacks as a sign that I’m on the right track (channeling FDR and bankers, as it were).
“When the sell out from Somerville talks about racist and misogynists and bigots, he’s talking about…white guys.”
Yup. You got it. Because guess what … the racists, misogynists, and bigots that voted for Donald Trump ARE white guys.
After the commentary you’ve offered here for months now, you’ve certainly persuaded me that you are not anybody the party should “reach out” to. Here’s why:
1. You oppose equal pay for equal work
2. You offered nothing but hostility to our nominee from day zero.
3. You attack our values and those of us who live them at every opportunity
4. You claim we have abandoned you
5. You demand that we reach out to you
To the extent that your commentary here represents the demographic in question, we absolutely should NOT reach out to you.
Instead of re-inventing itself for the benefit of people who didn’t support it.
How’s that working out?
If a political party doesn’t show any loyalty, it won’t get any.
Perhaps you’ll feel more at home in today’s GOP. Perhaps you’ll feel better if you stay away from the polls altogether.
I sincerely hope that my party has precious little room for angry straight white men who resent any and every effort to address the centuries of exploitation they have benefited from. Angry white men who cheered lustily while blacks were screwed, women were screwed (literally), immigrants were screwed, and who were suddenly “converted” when straight white men started getting screwed.
You’ve said that you want no part of a party that fails to offer a special outreach committee to you. Don’t let the door hit your backside on your way out.
More whining because you’re afraid you might not be the center of attention.
You attack everything the Democratic Party does that isn’t directly and explicitly focused at straight white males like you, and then complain that you are seen only as a straight white male.
The Democratic Party is not and never has been the party of me-my-mine. I hope it never will be.
when the sell out in the group starts tossing stones at me.
But if the point is that the Democratic Party has emphasized social issues at the expense of economic issues, then that is a point worth discussing.
My preference would be that we walk and chew gum at the same time, but apparently we can’t.
As I’ve written before, we are awash in cash. Not to single out HRC, but I happen to have the stat handy in my head: for her 2006 reelection campaign, she spent $10 million. If memory served she was unopposed.
I can remember when we always had a money disadvantage, and our consultant class solved that problem, so good for them that was their job. But I think we can all agree that money dilutes our focus. We should for example be highly suspicious of Google and Apple and other tech giants.
MOST Americans are not rich, or at least don’t feel rich. We should be on that side of the equation, and within that on the side of all members of society (such as LGBT).
Ad hominem responses don’t address the larger issue of legitimate and unaddressed issues, which make create fertile ground for lynch mob politics.
I’m still waiting for an answer. I’ve had lovely interactions with Tom and John on and off this site and strongly feel they actually agree on 99% of the issues, particularly the issue that the 99% are getting fucked by the 1%.
Focusing like a laser on that single issue and doing all we can to restore power to the 99% is how we solve income inequality. It’s also how we make black lives matter, protect equal pay for women, fight for full equality for our LGBTQA brothers and sisters and create a foreign policy that emphasizes cooperation over endless bellicosity and war.
It’s the 1% that thrives on dividing us by race, gender and identity. It’s the 1% that laughs at the white contractor who is voting against the Mexican who “took his job” instead of working with the Mexican against the 1% to ensure fair wages and fair work for all.
Follow the money to find the truth.
I don’t think BLM, an organic grassroots movement that largely supported Sanders FWIW, was a tool of the 1%. Neither is Planned Parenthood which primarily delivers health care to poor women or any of the other social issue oriented groups. The stereotypes about LGBT being wealthy is largely wrong, as their homelessnesss population and feelings of abandonment are real issues.
I consistently believe in the fight for justice. That means making sure the rich pay their fair share and the law protects the vulnerable and not the powerful. Trying to solve one without simultaneously solving the other is not a successful plan. Returning to the labor party of the 60s is impossible. That was a party shut out to women and minorities and it ossified and was split apart by the changes of the 60s. For the better.
But I also think too many Atari Democrats and their modern day antecedents feel that market based technology and innovation will solve all our social and economic problems, when you really need government to be part of the solution. It always has been and always will be. Not just as a safety net to save people from falling down but as a trampoline to help them rise up.
The Democratic Party has, for too long, been directed by groups/individuals without empathy for “working stiffs”. If that working stiff is a minority or fits into any one of a few special “outreach” divisions, the party will listen to them on social issues (like marriage and police brutality) but that’s about it.
The Democratic Party’s message to poor laborers has been to “Get an education similar to the ones that the professional class has achieved and then you are one of us!” The path to justice is via a class upgrade, from common laborer to professional career advancement.
We have to stop this approach if we ever want to win another national election because MOST of us are just working stiffs, looking forward the weekend and eventually, retirement.
All the empathy in the world won’t help without an education.
If the message of the Democratic Party is “we feel your pain”, without simultaneously providing a path for each and every child to get a college degree or the trade equivalent, then we join the ruling class in exploiting those workers.
You wrote upthread that “the 1% is not that hard to get into”. How many of those on the very bottom of the 1% don’t have a college degree?
A “working stiff” who doesn’t strongly encourage his or her children to get a degree banishes them to a life with no hope of retirement. All those voters that elected Donald Trump just did all in their power to destroy Social Security and Medicare, the only barely-tenable lifeline left. The incoming administration promises to gut the federal government.
Without OSHA and a powerful government enforcing it, those working stiffs are today very much less likely to have a weekend to look forward to.
Attacking the 1% is great. Attacking bankers is great. Attacking those who have been working to make college available and accessible to everyone is, frankly, self-destructive class suicide.
Sorry, but I do not advocate for a three tiered America, with an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class. I see that you do. Point taken.
What you advocate is, instead, a prescription for worsening the class barriers that already exist. Your antipathy to education is an automatic weapon with its muzzle buried in the mouth of the people you claim to defend.
I hear Tom saying (and it’s a view I share) that education is precisely the key to a classless society. We need to narrow the gap between theory and practice that in this country you can in fact rise from rags to riches.
From the Economic Policy Institute:
For college-educated black women:
For college-educated black men:
Insofar as region is concerned:
The Northeast is second to the Midwest in terms of increasing wage gaps.
I haven’t ever argued that education alone is enough.
I have instead argued that advanced education in some field is a requirement. Without it, a young man or woman is much more likely to remain mired in abject poverty.
But it does NOT make a difference in the 1% or the .1% or the .01%, you know, the people who can afford $225,000 to hear a speech. Those people do not rely on education. They rely on the stranglehold that they have with our government as they fund the campaigns and we turn a blind eye because “the money HAS to come from somewhere”.
An education and practiced skills do make a difference within the working class, separating the “haves” and the “have nots”, but an education plays NO role in the wealthy class, the “Have It All” people. They are the problem that we need to address. They are the elephant in the room that Democrats must address.
N/t
Actually they patronize that working stiff and promise support that they never deliver.
Yup, lots of lip service.
If Obama had rescued the working class with the same enthusiasm that he rescued Wall Street, Hillary would be our next president. Instead, Democrats bailed out Wall Street and told the rest of us to improve our education and work on our job skills if we wanted to get ahead.
We need a stronger focus on letting students gain access to the skills needed to advance to professions that pay living wages. Agitating for unions, agitating for living wages, and creating the climate where all occupations are paid living wages is essential. We also need to make sure that the jobs that currently pay living wages are staffed by skilled and eager workers. Again, a both/and approach is needed.
Advocating exclusively for better worker protections and wages without emphasizing universal education access is tinkering around the margins. So is emphasizing education while ignoring the fight for workers rights.
I often praise Germany as a model to follow, and it’s one we really need to learn from. There they have nearly universal education through the graduate level, alongside a workforce that is highly skilled and highly unionized in the trades. With labor even having seats on boards. Every German who wants advanced education for their own sake can afford one, every German who is able bodied and willing to work can. And they have access to world class social insurance, seven weeks paid vacation, universal paid leave, and are one of the most successful capitalist economies on the planet. Recession proof. Surely we can do this here.
Let’s talk about reality. Our largest private employers in the USA are retail and fast food. Are we going to get all these people jobs elsewhere? And if we do, who works at Walmart?
See? Education is BAD. The Germans are wrong, they don’t know what they’re doing.
Let’s look at some facts about private employers in the US. For example, this 2013 Newsweek piece.
The facts are that IBM (434,246), Hewlett Packard (331,800), and General Electric (305,000) are in the top ten, and nearly all of those are high-skill high-wage jobs with full benefits.
For a young man or woman entering secondary school, the best way for them to assure themselves of wages that sustain themselves and their family is to acquire the skills needed to join employers like IBM, HP, GE.
Your antipathy to education only expands the problem you object to. Your posture produces more, not less, young workers unable to do anything EXCEPT work at low-skill jobs in retail and food service.
Here is the 2013 Newsweek piece I intended to cite above.
…but jconway said, “…creating the climate where all occupations are paid living wages is essential”. We need people to work those fast food and retail jobs AND for said people to make a living wage. Those people ALSO need to be provided opportunities to advance themselves through education if so inclined with as little financial barrier as possible.
See? There you go again, advocating for a three-tiered America. Don’t you see that we don’t need no stinkin college? Yer just another wall-street sellout, goin on an on with that “education” nonsense.
These exchanges are why it is such a mistake to not rigorously call out lies and deceptions as they happen. Without ground-rules that demand that we stay based in facts, rationality, and truth, democracy is either dead or, even more dangerously, an excuse for demagoguery.
…or was this intended as snark.
It really is ironic that I was composing this response that I intended to be ironic while johntmay was composing a response that fulfilled what I thought was irony.
It seems that johntmay actively opposes providing college. He certainly attacks each and every post and comment that proposes it, and attacks our party for offering it.
Lie in it. You support, or at least ignore or do not want to know about our Democratic candidates being largely financed by the rentier class. You support the policy that only college graduates (like you?) deserve a decent wage.
I enthusiastically agree when you write “You made your bed, now lie in it”. You seem to have landed in a place of abject denial of readily accessible facts combined with outright lies about those who oppose you. Your commentary here epitomizes the toxic post-truth era that we are now immersed in.
So long as you stay in that place, my reaction is “good bye and good luck with that.”
Meanwhile, you again lie about my positions. I have never said that “only college graduates deserve a decent wage”. More of your “post-truth” deceptions. It seems that you not only don’t care about whether what you hear, read, or believe is true, you also don’t care about whether or not what you say is true.
I believe that such a posture is toxic to American democracy, and the results of the 2016 election demonstrate that.
Are you blind?
Here are two statements, see if you can tell them apart:
1. Joe is suffering
2. Joe deserves to suffer
You do not care that big money is in control. You said it. Own it.
You do not care that someone without a college degree is struggling. Own it. You said it.
I won’t own either statement, because I didn’t make either statement. Each is your own invention. You don’t even bother to put words in my mouth, you instead shamelessly lie about me.
Your commentary about me is nothing but lies.
I favor the fight for $15 for low skilled, low wage workers in parallel with a strong vocational and community college oriented higher ed program. In Germany a man or woman with just a high school education can make VWs or high quality tools and make about the same as a PhD, who’s entire education path was paid for by the state from cradle to dissertation. I want both of those things! Janitors, Die manufacturers and philosophers are both needed for society to function properly, and they should both be fairly compensated.
I wish we would stop using this term. It divides labor into two camps. Divided, we fail. Divided, we see ourselves as two classes, the low class and the middle class. The rent seekers pit us against each other.
Are these “low skill” jobs unnecessary? Can our society, as we currently enjoy it, operate without them? If not, why don’t we pay these people wage that will sustain their lives?
I get that you want us to stop using the term, such denial is necessary to keep your head in the sand about the economic reality that surrounds us.
“Skill” is different from “need”.
What you are actually saying is that our society must find a way to pay every person a living wage that is irrelevant to either their skill level or the necessity of what they do. I have been saying that, here and elsewhere, long before you arrived.
In the meantime, during the time that the US has not reached or embraced a guaranteed annual income, skill and necessity each matter. It is objective reality that divides labor into multiple camps, not me, not “Democrats”, nor anybody else.
The plain fact is that our much-vaunted “innovation economy” has been striving mightily to transform skilled into unskilled labor for generations. That’s because unskilled labor is, by construction, easily replaceable and easily exploited. Unskilled laborers are easy to hire and easy to fire. Once hired, they need minimal or no training. When they leave, they cause minimal if any impact because they are so easily replaced. If their employer doesn’t like them — doesn’t like their skin or eye color, doesn’t like their hair, doesn’t like their manner, doesn’t like their refusal to provide sexual gratification in the corner closet — they’re easily fired. On the spot.
Some say that our party has abandoned those workers. I argue that for each and every one of the ways that such exploitation is practiced, our party leads the way in striving to eliminate it, and the GOP leads the way in enabling it. It is true that the GOP seems to have been inexorably advancing since the Reagan era. That is NOT because the Democratic Party has joined them, it is because we have been overwhelmed by an encroaching tide of GOP misanthropy (pick your poison … misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc). Choosing the GOP over the Democrats, for any of those workers, is jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
I agree that these attitudes are immoral and even evil. Some of the world’s great faith traditions have been saying that for millennia. They are, nevertheless, pervasive.
The ONLY way out of that for young men and women today is advanced education. That’s an example of an inconvenient truth that you loudly object to, and in so doing deny. You attack those of us who remind you of that truth. Your apparent unwillingness or inability to separate the messenger from the message exemplifies an important learning that usually comes with advanced education.
Whether we call it “post truth” or “ignorance”, the awful impact is the same.
To the extent that the anti-education bias that you so loudly promote is influential, the result of that influence is to condemn yet more children to the very evil that you claim to oppose.
And we have Democrats like you and the Clintons to thank for that.
Seriously. To say “Democrats like you and the Clintons” to somervilletom is a pretty broad brush. I have noticed that he gets on your nerves, and maybe that’s where this comes from, but I think you’re going to be dissatisfied with Democrats for a long time if ST is a sellout.
So, no hostility intended, but are you sure you’re in the right party?
I’m in the proper party, the party of FDR. He and the neo-liberals? They are closer to free market right wingers than they are to Democratic principles. He is a sell out. He has said that he does not care where the money comes from. What would you call that? I am in the correct party and I mean to eliminate the cancer that has spread and bring is back to its roots. If we are to be the party of well educated professionals backed by Wall Street, then yeah, I am in the wrong party. That is his vision, not mine. What’s yours?
The Sanders/Warren wing ought to be listened to and given a chance to lead, but that doesn’t mean we have to ostracize and purify the party of the Warner’s and Manchin’s. We will need a big tent to beat Trump.
That’s my point.
The Clintons are a different story, but at this point we have to say they’ve shown a strong commitment to the Democratic Party, so that argument is settled.
Also … the party is bigger than economics. I agree with you that we need a sharper economic focus, but the other stuff is important too.
and will turn a blind eye to corrupt “donations” to candidates.
His words, not mine.
He thinks that college only exists for the poor laborer to better himself. I suppose we ought to end studies in anthropology, history, literature, the arts in general. Only “skills needed by those who own the machines” are to be taught.
That’s a hell little different from the one I fear with Donald J. Trump.
You are embarrassing yourself, and lying about me and my commentary here.
Whoever it is you think you are attacking, it isn’t me. I defy you to cite any of my words that mean any of the lies you are vomiting here.
A lesson I’ve learned the hard way. Greens will never amount to anything since they do jack shit down ballot. A party focused solely on the downballot will get drowned out in a presidential year and have a tough time staying on the ballot. And in the age of Trump it’s the best way to have a united opposition.
Bernie showed how the Democratic Party can bring in new members from the ranks of third parties and the unenrolled. We will need to be a. If tent to beat Trump which will include the neoliberals, the paleoliberals, new left and old left alike. And frankly libertarians and centrists should join too, there will be no room for them in the statist nationalist party the GOP is rapidly becoming.
Once they regain power with this route, they can extend into the social areas that the well-to-do liberal elites would admire. If they keep avoiding this route, as they get further and further from labor, from the common people, they keep allowing the Trumps of the world to reign.
I am a laborer, always have been, always will be. Damn proud of it. I do have a college degree but only out of curiosity and love of history, not for economic gain. I’ve cleaned public toilets, hauled freight, moved furniture, washed dishes, hawked used cars, wrote radio advertising copy, replenished assembly lines, milked cows, picked apples, repaired tennis courts, and on and on and on because I am a laborer.
To those who tell me that I am not worthy of a sustainable wage for me and my family? I have two words and the second one it “OFF” .
Nobody said anything about what you deserve.
You have a college degree and still, by your own repeated commentary here, do not have a sustainable wage. You have never admitted the plain fact that those who are less educated than you will have an even harder time than you.
You are lying about me and lying about my commentary here. You are so busy lustily tilting after a windmill that doesn’t exist (“those who tell me that I am not worthy of a sustainable wage…”) that you seem to hear absolutely nothing else, and you make it impossible for any other discussions to proceed.
If this were a bar and I owned it, I’d toss you out until you sobered up.
YOUR words.
If you owned a bar, you would no doubt not let people like me in. We get that. Only the privileged are allowed.
we’d welcome you, but doubt you’d feel comfortable with the draught beer and pretzels that we have on hand. However, give us a call in advance of your arrival and we’ll order in a bottle Domaine Francois Raveneau Foret, Chablis Premier Cru, France and some Beaufort D’ete for your enjoyment.
Nowhere in the words you quote do I say anything about what you or anyone else is worthy of or “deserves”.
When you say that I “tell [you] that [you are] not worthy of a sustainable wage for me and my family”, you lie about me.
You again repeat my simple factual statement that campaigns require money, and the money has to come from somewhere.
My words do not mean, at all, what you say they do. I think you know that, and I think you don’t care.
…is that out of context quote you keep circling back to? I would argue that Tom was being DESCRIPTIVE of what our campaign finance system is rather than PRESCRIPTIVE of what it should be. I’m pretty sure he favors the kind of campaign finance reform that would make Wall Street connections moot. Hillary Clinton herself certainly does. Until then, you raise money from any legal source and in whatever legal amounts you can. Yes, that may include Wall Street, especially when you were once Senator from New York, home state of, you know, WALL STREET.