Yeah, you know, I was talking to co-workers of mine at a retreat we held on Martha’s Vineyard a few weeks ago (Nantucket was booked) and during one of our brunches…was it the seafood on Friday or the French pastry brunch on Saturday, hard to recall???…..in any case, we discussing health care options and how they might cut into our planned winter get-a-way at Gstaad this coming March, but you know, some of us thought that a European get-a-way might appear to be too “far left” so we decided to look into Crested Butte of maybe Breckenridge, you know, USA, USA!
EXCUSE ME?
Labor has not seen a meaningful raise in pay for over four decades, we remain the only developed nation without health care as a right, paid maternal/paternal leave, guaranteed vacation…and endless list while Republicans AND Democrats have been in control, and our Democratic Governors lounging on shellfish brunches on Nantucket are worried that we might “veer sharply to the left”? Are they that disconnected from hoi polloi? I fear they are. No wonder Trump won. He’ll win again if we keep this up.
The optics of those Nantucket brunches are indeed pretty dismaying.
There are some pretty decent brunches to be had in Lawrence, Lowell, Pittsfield, Springfield, Holyoke, New Bedford, Providence, and even Chinatown.
I am glad to see some nervousness among that crowd. I’m glad to see that they recognize that the voter communities they depend on are veering “sharply to the left”. God forbid they brunch on Eggs Benedict or even Scrambled eggs, sausage, and home fries.
Who cares what they enjoy to eat and where? This does not appear to be an event on the taxpayers’ dime. I for one don’t like it when politicians go the opposite direction and bend over backwards to pretend to be the average Joe.
@Who cares?
People whose children are hungry and ill because they can’t provide food or health care despite working eighty hours a week care.
“Let them eat cake” is not a way to win the hearts, minds, and votes of working-class families.
But “let them eat cake” is exactly what this is not and the distinction I was trying to make. Marie Antoinette was living high off of the crushing tax burden of the French lower classes, not attending political fundraisers at which the well-off voluntarily contributed of their funds.
@ Marie Antoinette:
Sorry, but a great many working-class families look at the Democratic governors living high off of the crushing economic burden (including taxes) and react with the same vitriol as the French peasants.
Just where do you think the “well-off” get their funds FROM? We live in a society where virtually all of the new wealth created by our economy — including the hard labor of the working class — is accumulating in the wallets and bank accounts of the “well-off”.
The working-class most certainly does NOT voluntarily contribute its funds to those well-off contributors who pass a tiny portion along to their favorite politicians (of either party).
Ok, but Trump has gold toilets, plays golf at his own resorts, and screws workers in policy on the daily.
Why does he win this one again?
For the same reason they liked Brown for driving a truck and knowing his Red Sox players. For the same reason Wallace won Southie in the 72’ primary. It’s not like Ted Kennedy was busing his kids to integrated schools. It’s the hypocrisy of self righteous liberals they can’t stand. The perception that they won’t share the wealth with poor whites.
Trump’s a poor man’s idea of what a rich person is. He plays into the Horatio Alger myth as a guy who got his hands dirty in construction and casinos while liberal Democrats sip on rose and munch on canapés off the coast of Cape Cod. Now Obama effectively made Romney into John Kerry 2.0 in 2012. Hillary focused on the racism and the incivility instead of hitting him for being a rich moron who got his money from his dad and blew it on bad deals.
The racial resentment plays into this because the rich liberals with degrees aren’t the ones competing with immigrants and minorities for the scraps at the bottom of the economy.
Stan Greenberg has a whole piece on Obama-Trump voters in Michigan who live pay check to pay check and resent the large Muslim and Hispanic families living off welfare. I heard a black activist on Boston Public Radio bash Walsh for focusing on every minority community other than the “blacks who’ve always lived here”. It’s hard to have cross racial solidarity when the American system is literally designed to prevent that.
How to beat it? Be like Bernie and be like Warren. They don’t play the rich liberal card where they run as populists and govern as elitists like Obama and Clinton. They are also tapping into the worldwide anti-globalization anti-neoliberal phenomenon but doing so without denigrating minorities.
Warren’s personal story, her lack of big money donors, and her policies which cut right through the b.s and deliver wealth to those at the bottom by taking it from the top.
Have Democrats substantially highlighted those things? Has there been an ad about all the golf he’s taken on the taxpayer dime in his company courses or the gold toilets he’s put in the White House? I haven’t seen any. We play to his hands by making this a contest about the collapsing white majority instead of about the wealthy screwing over the working families of America.
And it’s lousy, my wife is an immigrant and a woman of color and these comments really scared her and angered us. I’m concerned we are slipping backward in terms of accepting biracial couples and families. I want to reunite those kids with their parents and close these concentration camps down. As a history teacher in a district that’s nearly 60% immigrant and went 44% for Trump I gotta be blunt about these truths or I’m shortchanging my students.
BUT If our candidates are similarly blunt and lead with anti racism they will lose. They gotta lead with breaking the rigged system. They gotta lead with fair wages, fair trade, affordable health care and putting bankers in jail.
We are supposed to be the good guys.
When terrorists broadcast a video that depicts the murder of an American hostage, it is a mistake for us to broadcast a video of us executing a terrorist — albeit by “more humane” means — no matter how many Americans clamor for vengeance. We did the right thing by refusing to respond to this in-kind.
If we Democrats wish to present ourselves as champions of the working class, and wish to effectively paint the GOP as exploiters and plunderers of the working class (a strategy that I think is an absolute winner), then anything we do that blurs the distinction hurts our strategy.
A group of Democratic governors eating burgers and drinking Budweisers at some urban sidewalk cafe has totally different optics from the same group enjoying oysters on the half-shell and chardonnay at a harborside table at Straight Wharf on Nantucket.
Optics matter, especially in a hyper-polarized campaign season.
This is not new stuff, by the way. If you look at portraits of Ben Franklin, you’ll notice that when he was in the colonies, he dressed like a city gentleman but when he visited the European cities, he wore buckskin and a coon skin cap……image matters to certain audiences. The image of Democratic leaders dining on shellfish brunches on Nantucket sends the wrong message to the working class.
Trump wins on this one for the same reason he wins on extramarital affairs, connections to convicted felons, and all the rest when his supporters can point to Democrats dining on shellfish brunches on Nantucket and say “See, THEY ALL DO IT”….so it does not matter who is doing it. To the working class voter, punching the time clock or swiping their ID badge to get paid, they nod in agreement and say, yeah, the’re no real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats…..so let’s give a Republican a chance this time… That’s how he wins. That was actually part of his pitch to voters.
Plus, Trump ran on the illusion that he is a successful businessman. Gold toilets are part of that charade., He makes no effort to say he can identity with the working class.
He said that he contributed big money to politicians in both parties because they’re all crooks, looking for a bribe. Trump wins, and cult of personality candidates win, when the voters are convinced that there is no difference between the parties.
They don’t all do what Trump does. Let’s please call a lie a lie. Nobody would complain if Trump ate shellfish with buddies on Nantucket either. If you can’t tell the difference between a Republican and a Democrat these days I can’t help you.
It’s not just bad optics. It’s corruption.
The job of a good candidate is to help them tell the difference. Successful politicians meet the voters where they are and connect the policies and proposals to their day to day lives. Bill Clinton was a master of this. Elizabeth Warren is increasingly getting there.
This is an example of how “they all do it”…….even though there are differences without a distinction. Clinton groped women, so did Trump…”they all do it.”…even though Obama and Bush never did it.
We need to hold our candidates to a higher standard.
@Clinton groped women, so did Trump
Mr. Clinton never did anything like what Mr. Trump bragged about doing frequently. You’re making a false equivalence there.
It’s true that we need to hold our candidates to a higher standard. I suggest that we need to discipline ourselves to resist the temptation to repeat rhetoric and wildly false claims that support our opinions and have no basis in fact.
We do hold our candidates to a higher standard, and our candidates meet that standard.
Mr. Clinton is not comparable to Mr. Trump. Never was, never will be.
I might add the 2012 Obama re-election effort was a highly underrated campaign that did a great job portraying Romney to be an out of touch rich wierdo. Attacking Trump on those angles rather than the stuff everybody already has an opinion on might shift enough people back into the fold. It’s also a great way to motivate African Americans and Latinos who either stayed home since they thought both candidates were equally out of touch and the smaller number of those who actually voted for Trump because he’s a celebrity.
Warren is doing a good job making inroads with these voters. Her remarks in opioids in W. Va were well received while one Trump voter in suburban Milwaukee who was recently interviewed by CBS said Warren’s plans for her day to day life as a waitress resonated with her and got her to switch.
As long as she continues to honestly address the Pocahontas problem and connect her plans to her family history and people’s daily lives, she can eat into this. There is no reason a Democrat can’t run out populist the Trump campaign. He’s a rich elitist and he should own that.
Because the betrayal of a friend cuts deeper than the opposition of an enemy. We see this in the long time rift between progressives and democrats. Neither side seems to have learned anything about the idea of “divide and conquer” being applied to themselves.