I’ve been following the Liberal Patriot sub stack and appreciate its insights. It’s from the same people who wrote the Emerging Democratic Majority back in 2004.
The ideological movement of Democrats in recent years towards a more leftist posture on issues involving race, immigration, gender, and religious expression primarily reflects the values of a small group of credentialed elites and some younger people. It does not reflect the views of the vast middle of working-class Democrats—white, black, or Hispanic. On the Republican side, the full-on embrace of Trumpism—with its general nastiness, corruption, and bogus “big lie” about the 2020 election—has equally alienated a huge swath of working-class voters outside of a rump base.
This is astute analysis of today’s political climate and what the real “center” is starting to look like. Voters are a lot more left wing on economics and a lot less “woke” on culture than the media would lead you to believe. I’ve been shouting to the wind for years that there’s a huge untapped corner of the electorate that’s economically progressive and culturally moderate. Winning candidates like Eric Adams and Joe Biden understand this. Sanders and Trump understood this in their 2016 primary runs, but lost the script in 2020. Understanding these voters is the key to 2022 and 2024.
Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, the mission for smart and strategic party leaders is clear: (1) ramp up the economic nationalism agenda and messaging; (2) turn down the culture wars and accept people’s moderate-to-conservative stands on many of these issues; and (3) appeal to more working-class voters across racial and geographic lines.
https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/economic-nationalism-cultural-moderation
James Carville has been making a hugely important point on CNN and MSNBC lately — he loudly complains about the vocabulary used by the more progressive activists in the Democratic Party.
He says — to paraphrase — “I’ve been walking around Latino communities my entire life. I’ve never met ANYONE who calls themselves “Latinx”. I’ve been working in black communities even longer. I’ve never met a anyone there who calls their neighborhood a “community of color”. We’ve got to start talking to people in the language they use.”. Mr. Carville repeated an observation I’ve read here that support for Democratic Party candidates actually FELL in black, Hispanic, and Latino neighborhoods in the 2020 elections (nationwide). Mr. Carville blames at least some of that on activists who aren’t part of a community preaching to, rather than working within, that community.
I’m dismayed by what I’m starting to call “intellectual carpetbagging” — loud expressions of passionate concern by a small group of outsiders who presume to tell people what’s best for them.
That’s a huge part of this. Carville’s
Slate interview was needed medicine. The authors I cite also discuss it and I believe they are Texas based and know it first hand. You can see this divide in the NYC race in Brooklyn where the gentrified communities voted for Wiley or Garcia while the working class communities voted for Adams.
There was a similar divide here between Markey and Kennedy. It’ll be interesting to see how Boston’s mayoral race turns out. None of the candidates running are white men, so class could be the ultimate divide over which constituencies and classes the candidates appeal to.
Also that was an issue in the recent Winthrop-Revere special election. A lot of progressive canvassers turned off more voters than they turned on by attacking a local community leader for his (admittedly wrong) views on cultural issues. Focusing on what the actual voters need is almost always a better strategy than telling them why they should care about issues they don’t.
From my perspective, many “credentialed elites” within the party and among those in town committee meetings I have attended ignore basic economic problems facing ordinary working class (non-college educated) citizens while they boost their “progressive capital” with their support of the LGBTQ, Black, and now Latinx communities, using the aforementioned as mascots of their political image.
To borrow from the Queens heckler who shouted out “I can’t eat my I-pad” in reply to a government official bragging about tech advances offsetting high food prices, “A transgender bathroom does not make my house affordable”.
(yes, college is a good thing that all should be allowed to attend if they choose and transgender citizens should be respected and allowed to use the rest room of their choosing)
Working class voters all want the same thing, regardless of their ancestry, skin color, sexual orientation, level of formal education: a fair wage, a fair system, a measure of security, and a level of respect for the job they do.
Do you know what kind of formatting you are using that makes — appear multiple times in your comment?
Am I inferring correctly that you are using economic nationalist and economic progressive interchangeably? I would identify as the latter but not the former.
Leave it to Carville to repurpose Nixon’s southern strategy. If the Dem’s want to do something popular, they will skip the economic nationalism and go after the 1% in this country. The perception (because it’s the reality) that the Democratic party in in thrall to it’s wealthy donors is the real problem.
Going for an “erosive” (I love that word!) wealth tax and using the language of black and Latino communities are not mutually exclusive. I’ve never heard James Carville say anything remotely approaching “economic nationalism”. Mr. Carville is instead observing that “woke” leftist Democratic activists are actively dissing black and Latino voters. This wing of the party is ignoring the issues that black and Latino voters deal with every day and using offensive and patronizing language while doing so.
I enthusiastically agree with you that Democrats need to focus on wealth distribution. The wealth tax proposals from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders don’t go nearly far enough — even if they were in place, they collect at most 3% per year from the ultrawealthy. Recent tax data shows that the average growth in net worth is MUCH larger than that.
An “erosive” wealth tax is needed — wealth tax at a rate steep enough that the net worth of our wealthiest households will have been eroded by a significant amount after ten years. We should apply “catch-and-release taxation”, a phrase I used in one of my earliest front-paged diaries here years ago (including a picture of a trophy-sized bass).
It’s great that certain people are good at acquiring great wealth in a given year. We should give them a prize, fifteen more minutes of celebrity, and tax enough of that newly-gained wealth to bring the wealth-based GINI coefficient of America back into line with the rest of the first world.
We should ban “Latinx” and “Communities of color” from our vocabulary and go after the ultrawealthy with everything we can bring.
Sorry to have conflated Carville’s statements with those made by the “Patriotic Liberal” whoever that is. The impression I got was that they were saying pretty much the same thing.
The problem with this type of proposal is that it means different things to different people, and that every listener hears what they want to hear.
Are they proposing that we stop saying “latinex”? Or should we stop tearing down confererate statues? Should we stop fighting over transgender bathrooms or maybe just drop this whole LGBT thing altogether. Should we jettison animal rights advocates, or maybe all those environmentalists?
Or we could go about this in a scientific manner: bring back Pat Caddell and whatever group or cause doesn’t poll well, they’re a liability.
Is that anyone’s idea of party building?
There are a great many residents in Massachusetts who describe themselves as “Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal”. In my view, these are the people who support LGBTQ & minority rights, they are pro-choice…but they want low taxes and tell the workers at Target & Dunkin that if they want a better life, get a college degree while they fawn over the successful lives of executives, CEO’s and so on. They begrudgingly vote for Elizabeth Warren but they give strong support to Charlie Baker and view themselves as “moderates”.
These aren’t “moderates”.
In today’s economy, any household with net worth exceeding some threshold (like $50 M) should be paying erosive taxes on that net worth.
If the new wealth being generated by the ultra-wealthy in Massachusetts were distributed to all of us in some form, there would be substantially less pressure on workers at Target and Dunkin.
The answer to today’s economic suffering in MA is NOT a higher minimum wage, it is to instead tax and distribute the extreme wealth being generated every year by the handful of our wealthiest households.
That isn’t to say that I oppose an increased living wage — I enthusiastically support it. Such an increase is irrelevant to solving the problem though. It is akin to putting a bucket on the floor to catch the rainwater dripping through the failed roof.
Wealth concentration is far and away the most important contributor to economic suffering today.
I could not agree more, Tom, these are not moderates but they see themselves as such while the media and the local culture tells them they are. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is labeled as a member of the far left while Kyrsten Sinema is describes as a moderate, even on MSNBC. But again, the Media is not liberal on economic issues, it is completely corporate and corporates want us to believe that low taxes for the rich and low wages for working class citizens are “moderate” positions.
And yes Wealth concentration is far and away the most important contributor to economic suffering today.. I live on the Cape and the stark difference between the haves and have nots is mind boggling…while the haves are living a life of luxury and idleness as the have nots provide the labor and services that make that possible.
Apology accepted.
It seems to me that a policy statement along the lines of “We should impose a wealth tax that is 5% higher than the annual rate of return for any given household’s portfolio when the net worth of that household exceeds $50M” is clear and effective. It also neither precludes nor enables taking any position on any of the several social “issues” you enumerate.
In answer to your perhaps rhetorical questions:
I’ll add an item that isn’t on your list:
We should be aggressively shipping any COVID vaccine doses that residents of states like Alabama refuse to accept to regions like Africa where literally billions of people are desperate for these lifesaving shots.
The current policy of promising “500,000 doses” over the next two years is shamefully small. America is the wealthiest nation in the world and has the ability to produce billions of doses. It is obscene for Americans to be offered “Vaccine Lottery” prizes worth millions of dollars while people are dying because they have no access to those doses.
Media voices who promote anti-VAX lies and misinformation should be held liable for their lies. I personally feel that anybody who refuses the vaccine should forfeit ALL access to medical care after that decision. I admit that my position is extreme, and is probably not wise public policy.
I view polling as a measurement tool. It is helpful in measuring progress towards a specific communications goal. It is not helpful in setting values and priorities.
I’m glad we agree on my rhetorical list (except for number 1) .The problem is then, that you’re whole program of avoiding the culture wars comes down to stop using the term “Latinex”. Is that really going to reinvigorate the Democratic Party?
More to the point, is that what James Carville or the Patriotic Liberal (who in my opinion should change his title to “holy Roman Emperor”) have in mind? I doubt it.
It sounds to me as though you’re assuming away the point of Mr. Carville’s observations.
I don’t think Mr. Carville has said that we should “avoid the culture wars”. He instead says that our outreach to black and Latino communities should be done by people familiar with those communities who use the vocabulary of those communities and who know the people they’re talking to.
Here in Somerville, we have a group of “woke” progressive candidates running on a “progressive” slate that prominently features “Defund the police” in their literature. Several of them claim that if they are elected, they will seek a 60% reduction in the annual police budget.
In the most recent finalized city budget (https://www.somervillema.gov/sites/default/files/final-fy2020-municipal-appropriations.pdf), police department expenses are about $17M of a $237M city budget. Reducing that $17M by 60% means not paying any salaries. At. All.
This misguided idea would reduce city expenditures by a little over 7% and would devastate day-to-day life in Somerville. It has a hugely negative impact, while bringing little or no tax relief to anybody.
Leaving aside niceties like contracts, state and local law, and similar nitpicking, what sort of person thinks dissolving the Somerville police force is a good idea?
Somerville is not Minneapolis. This mindless bumper-sticker nonsense promoted by these “progressive” candidates is, I think, what Mr. Carville is talking about.
I’ve already said what I think will invigorate the Democratic Party. I think that applying an erosive tax to the very wealthy is, in fact, the thing that the ultrawealthy — and the various media outlets, pundits, and parties that cater to them — fear most.
That is why I think it is the most important thing for us to pursue starting right now.
No, Tom, here’s the passage from this post “ (2) turn down the culture wars and accept people’s moderate-to-conservative stands on many of these issues”
I don’t know Somerville politics or anything about the municipal budget there. I wouldn’t have thought that budgetary analysis was the the type of culture war issue that the “patriotic liberal” was talking about.
Let’s go back to my list. We agree about everything except the first item, so let’s exclude that. For the rest of the list
2.We should continue tearing down confederate statues
3 Any of us who care about transgender rights should continue passionately advocating for those rights.4
4 We should not “drop this whole LGBT thing altogether”.
5 We should welcome the passion of anyone who cares about animal rights.
6.Climate change and environmentalism affects each and every one of us. We should pursue science-based policies towards each.
Are you ready to “accept people’s moderate to conservative stands” on any of these issues?
Whoa there, slow down please.
I join you in disagreeing with the item (2) you quoted from the thread-starter.
My point about Somerville politics is that our local contingent of Sanders-style culture warriors are loudly promoting “defund the police” in the slate of “progressive” candidates they advocate for various positions on the city council. It is my understanding that have a fielded a candidate for each open position and have provided leaflets and a common platform for each of those candidates.
A candidate for city council is, by construction, engaging in budget analysis. Pretty much every action taken by a council member involves the municipal budget.
Any political advocacy group that puts “Defund the Police” at or near the top of their “issues” list for the leaflets they distribute in town is making a statement about budget priorities.
In answer to your last question, yes — absolutely yes.
The fact that I have an opinion about each of the items we’ve been discussing means simply that I have an opinion. It does not nor should not mean that a differing opinion should be suppressed.
If we focused on the wealth concentration issue, these others would be far less important.
My bigger issue with Latinx is that it’s a term from a predominately white academic discipline being superimposed upon terms that are actually from the Spanish language and Hispanic-American culture. I have seen Latino activist students of mine use the term and it seems to be becoming more mainstream. We had an interesting debate on that one and the consensus seemed to be that Latino/a made sense when talking among or between Spanish speakers, but that Latinx made more sense as a catch all term for “Latino facing white systems” as one student put it, to adopt like the census or the school district. I think the nuances of that entire conversation would be lost on most voters, particularly those without college educations or who are not online where many of these conversations are being shaped.
I would be curious how many of those candidates are actually from Somerville or have lived there for at least a decade or so. Most are probably part of Packers “Just America” and spending their parents money to win these seats. I know that’s the case for the new state rep who grew up in Brookline and moved to Somerville to run as a socialist on mommy’s money.