Wakefield’s recent Town Election marked my 62nd year anniversary as a progressive activist / organizer and saw all six of my pro bono candidate clients for Council / School Committee cruise to victory over their more conservative rivals.
In all that time there has been an unwritten tradition of civility and mutual respect for differences in political philosophy. Many of my friends were and are more moderate than I am.
Yet recently, I see the emergence of an alarming, angry, rightist, conspiratorial–based zealotry that, I believe, threatens the very survival of a healthy democracy. If left unchecked this so-called grievance politics will grow like a cancer until it kills our democracy. We must not let that happen.
I am reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sage advice: “Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
Agreed. On this topic, Trump did not create it, he simply and brilliantly discovered how to exploit it.
Thank you for all you have done!
All politics are local and personal. Now, we are focused on re-electing our progressive State Senator Jason Lewis, Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian and Congressman Seth Moulton this fall.
I think the idea that all politics is local has seen its day come and go with the arrival of Trump and the 24 hour corporate media news cycle. Does anyone get the newspaper anymore with the “B” section “Local News”?
When voters in West Virginia are worried about “the border crisis’ and CRT, well, we’re more tribal than anything else.
The redneck southern MAGA types are not just south of the Mason Dixon, they are 20 miles outside of any major metro area….with plenty of them nearby me on Cape Cod.
My wife and I spent last weekend off the grid in Palmer Massachusetts.
At the turn of the 19th century, Palmer was a busy thriving city with seven railroads and a passenger station designed by Henry Hobson Richardson (architect of Trinity Church, Boston). Dozens of trains stopped at that station each day. Today there are none (the station is now a restaurant).
I say all this because our three days in Palmer reminded us that my wife and I live our lives in a bubble of prosperity — especially since the pandemic.
Many of the storefronts of Palmer are vacant. Many more are open only a few hours a week. The buildings are all (with the exception of the bank buildings) grim, decrepit, and in need of major repair.
An aspect of all this that is so disheartening is that NOBODY talks about the actual causes of this economic suffering and NOBODY talks about how to address it.
Do you know West Virginia? Have you ever been there? I ask because it actually exemplifies the thread-starter — but you have to know the culture enough to appreciate what’s really going on.
Like it or not, “the border crisis” and “CRT” have absolutely nothing to do with immigration or what is or is not taught in schools. It’s worth remembering that West Virginia is among the worst states in the nation when it comes to its public schools — the state has not cared about public education for decades. The number of West Virginia voters who actually care about ANYTHING that happens in their public schools is vanishingly small.
For West Virginia voters, “the border crisis” and “CRT” are about bigotry and racism. West Virginia voters believe — absolutely without foundation — that their economic suffering is the fault of “illegals” and “n*****s”. I’m sorry to be crude, but that is the sad truth. The political culture of West Virginia has been constant for generations, there’s nothing new about it. While it’s true that the state was once a Democratic stronghold, that was while Democrats were strong supporters of Jim Crow. That was also when most West Virginia voters were union members, and the Democrats were strongly pro-labor. It is true that “management”, as a scapegoat, has largely disappeared from West Virginia politics. It wasn’t hard for the GOP to replace that scapegoat with “illegals”.
As a case in point, consider Senator Robert F. Byrd — a life-long Democrat and figure often held up as a paragon of the Democratic Party.
Mr. Byrd founded a chapter of the KKK, giving up his membership only after he was elected to Congress for the first time in 1952. Here is a quote from Mr. Byrd, written in 1944 while Mr. Byrd was 37:
Robert Byrd filibustered the Civil Rights act of 1964 for 14 hours. He was also a strong and outspoken supporter of the Vietnam war. While Mr. Byrd recanted his racist and segregationist history, it is a mistake to ignore it when contemplating West Virginia culture — then and now.
It is true that economic suffering is all around us. It is also true that the cause of that economic suffering is the extreme wealth concentration that continues unabated regardless of which party allegedly controls the government.
The deplorable MAGA types blame “illegals”, “blacks”, and of course “Liberals” — along with a long list of other scapegoats. The extreme fringe of the progressive left has a similar list of scapegoats.
NEITHER is relevant to the actual problem. Even if ZERO immigrants were crossing the southern border, and even if CRT were completely expunged from society, the economic suffering would continue. Even if the scapegoats of the extreme left were removed, the economic suffering would continue.
It is ONLY when we actually collect and redistribute the excessive wealth currently hoarded by a literal handful of Americans that we will see widespread prosperity return to America.
It is already clear that wealth concentration and wealth taxes will not be on the agenda during this year’s mid-term campaigns. Wealth concentration and wealth taxes will not be on the agenda for the 2024 election — whatever shape or form the 2024 election takes.
Our mainstream media make sure that these topics stay off the table. The Washington Post and New York Times are each owned by members of the ultrawealthy.
In order to appreciate the local politics of ANY neighborhood, you have to know something about the culture of that neighborhood. That culture is not set by MAGA, twitter, Fox, or local newspapers.
Local culture is set by real people having real conversations in real settings. Fred knows that. I suspect you know that. I know that.
The “redneck southern MAGA types” are everywhere that economic suffering exists. They are everywhere that provides them with their easy scapegoats and celebrates their willful ignorance.
They are in West Virginia, they are on Cape Cod, and they are in Palmer, MA.
The Dems should double down quick on rebuilding the middle class. THAT is what will ultimately protect our democracy. Politics gets tribal when people lose hope and need someone to blame.
Far too many Democrats are convinced that the only way to reach middle class life is with a college degree. Currently, 42%, of Americans ages 25 and over have a college degree of some type. Hard to build a strong party when you tell 58% of the public that they ought to live in poverty as they perform all the essential jobs in this country.
Your stubborn refusal to accept the hard facts about how a lack of higher education hurts lifetime earning potential tries the patience of anybody trying to have a discussion with you.
The impact of not having higher education has been well documented for decades and generations. It has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans. It is simply a fact.
The difference between Republicans and most Democrats (except you!) is that Republicans have always steadfastly opposed ANY effort to make higher education available to those who want it and who can’t afford it.
Democrats have, for generations, done everything possible to remove the barriers that block access to higher education. You stand that on its ear with your endlessly repetitive lies about these efforts.
I wish you would stop repeating this canard. Nobody tells anybody that “they ought to live in poverty”.
I try hard to find common ground with your commentary. Comments like this make me wonder why I bother.
This horse is dead. That dog doesn’t hunt.
So long as you keep using that straw man, I will continue to press on with what I actually say, not what you would have me saying.
I have no issue with higher wages for some occupations that require expensive and extensive training and learning at colleges and universities
What I DO have an issue with, one that you continue to ignore, is that essential jobs that do not require expensive and extensive training and learning at colleges and universities are the jobs held by most of us and we deserve a middle class life.
You want your drive up latte, your grocery shelves stocked, your packages delivered to your door, your car’s engine oil changed, your elderly parents and preschool children cared for, your hotel room tidied up, your silverware at the restaurant clean, but you hold that these people do not deserve a middle class life and live in poverty because they are too lazy to improve themselves and go to college as you have?
Might I remind you that the minimum wage is still at $7.25 an hour while former president Obama resides at his multimillion dollar vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard?
Tell me again how the Democratic Party is the party of the working class – especially the working class that did not go to college.
I agree with you that employers should not be allowed to impose unnecessary education requirements. I remind you that an explicit prohibition on this practice was codified in the first generation of affirmative action laws fifty years ago — because it was so often used to exclude black applicants.
I also remind you that those laws — that attempt to implement precisely the policy that you advocate — were put in place by Democrats over the strenuous objection of Republicans.
NOBODY but you says that. No Democrat says that. Nobody has asserted that here. Phrases like “do not deserve” and “too lazy to improve themselves” are entirely your own. THAT is what I object to.
I certainly have never written anything like this, and so I object to your use of “you” in the above.
I remind you that you yourself have a college education with all its benefits. I’m reminded of the pithy aphorism of people who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.
We’ve hashed and rehashed these canards for years. You are turning Joe Biden’s words on their ear. Twelve years is not enough in 2022 for the same reason that 6 years was not enough by the early 20th century.
In an economy where the market sets compensation based on supply and demand, workers without higher education are ALWAYS going to be offered less than workers with higher education. So long as we have an economy that relies on wages and salaries to distribute the new wealth created by that economy, there will always be a stark disparity between the wages and compensation offered those who lack higher education and those who have it.
The only sustainable answer that I’m aware of is to remove the reliance on labor — time worked — from the mechanism for distributing new wealth. In short — a universal base income distributed to every American and collected from taxes on wealth.
Your attacks on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are false and pernicious.
The income gap between college graduates and those without a bachelor’s degree has grown significantly over the past several decades. In 1970, the median annual earnings for a full-time worker ages 25 to 37 with a bachelor’s degree or higher was $53,300. At the time, this compared with $45,000 for a worker with some college experience but no bachelor’s degree and $38,900 for a worker with no college experience. In 2018, the difference was even more pronounced: $56,000 for a worker with a bachelor’s degree or more education, $36,000 for someone with some college education and $31,000 for a high school graduate. (All figures adjusted for inflation)
As you can see, the ceiling is not rising much but the floor is sinking fast. College is not paying off as it once was, as we hear each time Democrats push for forgiving student debt.
As the ceiling continues to remain flat and the floor sinks, more and more high school students compete for the fewer jobs that are available. Many, it appears, only get saddled with debt and return to the essential but low wage jobs in the economy that is designed by those in power.
Thank you for making the case that 12 years is not enough education. Thank you for making the case that higher education in America should be public, just as it has been public in Europe for generations.
As you say, the floor is sinking fast for those who do not have higher education. That is why it is criminal to oppose making higher education available to them. That is why it is deceitful to twist the words of Joe Biden.
All the things you say are happening are truly happening. It is Democrats who have fought for generations to prevent this. It is Republicans who have fought for generations to keep higher education inaccessible.
It is incomprehensible to me that you continue to argue so passionately against making higher education accessible to the working class.
The only reason that 12 years is not enough is due to the fact that those in power have structured the economy in a way that only a minority of the working class that attends college can make it to the middle class.
Remember, the majority of the labor force and the majority of the voters and the majority of the essential jobs in the USA do not require a college degree.
Thank you for making it clear that you only want a minority of the working class to be middle class and want to the majority to live paycheck to paycheck, in relative poverty.
…and Democrats wonder why they are losing the non-college educated voters…
Stop lying about me the way you lie about Joe Biden. I wrote no such thing.
When a car going 80 MPH flies off the road in a 30MPH curve, it is not because the car wants to crash.
Supply and demand is a law of economics, just like F=mA is a law of physics. The car flies off the road and the worker without higher education gets lower compensation because that is the way the laws of the universe work.
I want to remove any economic obstacle that prevents any American from getting higher education. Your lies about me are insulting and I’m asking you as courteously as I can to stop writing them.
Any working-class American who thinks that their life will be better under today’s GOP is willfully ignorant and in utter denial about what the GOP has been doing for at least the past 50 years that I’ve been paying attention.
That’s just reality — whether you or they are willing to face it.
For the record, Obama WAS the most recent President to sign a minimum wage increase, in July 2009, which I believe was the last Congress in which Dems had a prayer of doing what they wanted. Who cares how he lives now? Do you really think middle class life would be better if his own home were more modest? That’s just unproductive class envy, and not the first time coming from you.
I do. When I try to convince a young voter who has only a high school education but is leaning “Trump” that the Democratic Party is the party of the working class, image matters.
Does the CEO of GM drive a Rolls Royce?
I neither know nor care what the CEO of GM drives, though given what I suspect his wealth is I assume it’s something nice.
Trump definitely is not the image of the working class, nor for that matter the image of making an honest living. I don’t know what to say to the person who thinks that Trump is more representative of or sympathetic to struggles than Obama. Might as well be talking to a flat-earther.
Roosevelts and Kennedys were both very wealthy, but had the support of working folks. One time when JFK was campaigning an opponent had tried to show he couldn’t empathize with the working class on account of his background. At a campaign stop a blue collar worker said to JFK, “Your opponent says you’ve never actually worked a day in your life – is that true?” JFK sheepishly admitted that it basically was, to which the worker replied, “Don’t worry sir – you haven’t missed a thing!”
FDR delivered the New Deal, Social Security, he Minimum Wage. He was wealthy prior to being in the White House. He did not use the office to increase his wealth. No book deals, etc.
Trump is a con man. Obama is a disappointment in his post presidency as I see it and prefer the manner of Jimmy Carter, who remains a humble public servant dedicated to helping the poor working class instead of raking in a fortune with speaker fees and book deals.
Is the Democratic Party the party of the working class – even if that citizen did not go to college and it working at an essential job that only required a high school diploma?
I’m not sure if that is true anymore, especially when 13% of the country is crippled by college debt and not living up to that earning potential. I feel like John is idealistically hoping to rebuild the 50’s and 60’s political economy, and I’m sorry John, it’s not gonna happen. I also feel like Tom is stuck in an 80’s and 90’s paradigm where college=middle class. That’s not the case anymore.
It’s probably another decade until I get a house, I’m 85k in debt with 3 degrees to my name and I’m making 75k start of next year. Part of that is due to my principals degree program. Without it, I’m 66k with a masters, 55k without. I’m renting from my brother who is charging me <6h less than market rate for our place. He’s also willing to sell it to me for under market value but I still need another 20k I don’t have for the down payment. We need a new car and pretty soon we’re going to need to budget for a baby. I feel squeezed and I’m in the top 20% of HH income.
I’m seeing really top students pick Bunker Hill and North Shore or UMB or Salem State while staying at home. I can’t say I blame them. With the uncertainty of zooming into college and the high cost of room and board, I can’t blame them. I have a strong AP calc student in my psych class and his ambition is to be a plumber. He’ll be making more than me in five years, can’t say I blame him.
We gotta be a both/and party. You want to go to community college or trade school? That’s covered. You want to go to state school? That’s covered. Both/and. The days of subsiding gender studies/indigenous art degrees from Skidmore at over. We gotta fully fund public education. Steer kids into community college/trade/state schools. The days of subsidizing crappy private schools are over.
I’ve NEVER said that. I really don’t understand why this simple logic is so difficult to understand.
People WITHOUT higher education will fare MUCH WORSE than people WITH higher education. That is not any sort of guarantee.
People who are less than five feet tall are never going to play professional basketball. People with small hands and no left-hand dexterity are never going to be professional concert pianists. People who do not buy a ticket are never going to win a lottery.
Whether we like it or not, higher education is the ante for playing the game of life in America today. Paying the ante in NO WAY guarantees a win — it is the price of playing the game.
Would ANY of the students you mention make the same choices if their attendance at U-MASS Amherst or any public university or college was fully paid for by the government?
The issue here is the outrageous price of college — especially since not having a college degree means a lifetime of substandard wages and compensation.
If public education is truly fully funded, how many people would choose a two-year program instead?
In any case, the lies about how Democrats say that workers “don’t deserve” high wages are offensive and need to stop. NOBODY says that. Joe Biden didn’t say that. I didn’t say that.
Those lies are what really gets my blood boiling — especially when they are directed at me.
Are you saying that the period in time, from the mid 1940’s to the early 1970’s where we saw the birth and growth of what we now call the “middle class” was just an oddity and we are destined to return to a society that resembles the 1800’s and earliest 1900’s?
The reason it “happened” in that period was that labor had a voice in government and a seat at the table of corporations.
Any economy is or is not simply by the choices that the people are willing to accept.
The reason it’s not going to happen yet, by my estimation, is that things have not gotten to that point, yet, but it’s definitely smoldering.
The American Middle Class is dying. Way back when I was a conservative, I watched this video and it opened my eyes to the truth and stated me on path that led me to where I am today. I even sent an email to then “professor” Warren and she replied. I wish I saved that email.
The American Working Class is getting hammered, and not just those without a college diploma, Doctors are seeing increased workloads and lower wages as Private Equity firms buy out hospitals, medical practices, and so on.
In closing, the reason essential jobs that do not require a college degree pay poverty wages, and the reason college debts place many graduates in an economic downward spiral unable to buy a house, and the reason the number one cause of bankruptcy in the USA is the cost of health care, and the reason that 64% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and the reason that American CEO’s now make a ratio of 250:1 over their workers as CEO pay has grown 90 times faster than typical worker pay since 1978….is because WE are letting it happen.
You’ve listed a set of symptoms, not reasons.
The reason why the middle class is dying is that wealth concentration is sucking the wealth out of all but the top 0.1%.
Sadly, yes — to a great extent.
The period from mid-1940s to the early 1970s were, in fact, an oddity. It was an oddity for several reasons, including:
There are a number of oddities in the period you describe that were a direct result of this bubble.
Drive-in movies, for example, are economically feasible ONLY when land is cheap and a big parking lot is readily available to a burgeoning newly-mobile population. By the time land prices and density caught up with the impact of the automobile, the land used by a drive-in was FAR more valuable as commercial, industrial, or even residential real estate.
It was Professor Warren who first documented the collapse of the middle class (so far as I know). She says essentially the same thing.
The conditions that created the American middle class from the mid 1940s to the mid 1970s will not be repeated.
Even during that period, the prosperity you describe was almost exclusively the province of whites and white men. Minorities and women did not participate in that bubble.
Women were routinely and explicitly excluded from the job market. Single women — especially single women with children — suffered enormously during that period. The “middle class” boom during that time absolutely — often explicitly — excluded black and Hispanic families.
It was, in fact, a bubble. It was a bubble enjoyed primarily by white men.
Surely it is possible to recreate some of those conditions while being more inclusive than previously.
Elizabeth Warren didn’t think so when she was doing her research on bankruptcy.
Perhaps you can be more specific about which of those conditions might be recreated.
I don’t think the US will win another world war. I don’t think gasoline and land will ever be cheap.
The only thing we might be able to do is apply an erosive wealth tax in order to dramatically increase the amount of wealth available to consumers.
It is not possible to rebuild the middle class when so much of the enormous wealth that the American economy generates goes to the pockets and portfolios of the already-wealthy.
I enthusiastically agree that we Democrats should double-down quickly on rebuilding the middle class.
Here are some things that have NO PRAYER of doing that:
Each of these things is a bright and shiny object that appeals to a particular subset of the electorate. None of them does anything about rebuilding the middle class
Here are some things that are needed:
Nothing will change until Democrats start talking about less of the former and more of the latter.
I guess my whole point is that Dems need to do what you suggest if that is what it takes (though I also think the items in your first list are beneficial since they do put/keep more money in the average person’s pocket and don’t know why we should not try to pay down our debt).
I agree that the items in the first list are beneficial. They don’t do anything about wealth distribution.
The easiest way to understand this is to appreciate that the national debt is held in the form of treasury securities, and those are held almost exclusively by the already-wealthy.
Reducing government expenditures on goods and services that benefit everyone in order to create a “surplus” to pay down the national debt is effectively a wealth transfer from everyone (in the form of reduced goods and services) to the already-wealthy who hold the treasury securities.
The national debt NEVER has to be repaid in the sense that you or I have to repay loans. Paul Krugman uses the national debt incurred by the US during WWII as an example. That was an enormous amount by the standards of the day.
As the economy grew in the next two decades of post-war prosperity, the national debt as a percentage of GNP (which is the only figure that matters at the federal level) declined to nearly zero.
Democrats and Republicans are Tweedledee and Tweedledum when it comes to actually addressing wealth concentration. Although the parties follow superficially different paths, they arrive at the same destination — ensuring that the wealth of the wealthy is safely protected from the grasping masses.
The plain fact remains that the obscene wealth concentration of the last few decades has obliterated the middle class.
It is not possible to rebuild the middle class while the wealthy hold such a large share of the nation’s existing and newly-created wealth.
I wonder what solutions and conversations could reach those folks, I ask this genuinely, I’m out of answers at this point.
I don’t think they’re going to be reached. They certainly will not be persuaded.
I think the best we can do is put the truth in front of them, put viable alternatives in front of them, and hope for the best.
This is why I resist the attacks on Joe Manchin. His positions often infuriate me. At the same time, he has won elections as a Democrat in West Virginia time and again.
Much of the time, we would collectively be better off if our national leadership steered our course towards Joe Manchin and away from, for example, AOC.
It the GOP takes the House and Senate in 2022, it’s over.
I’m really serious — I don’t think people, at least people here, realize how many right-wing crazies have been nursing grudges against “liberals from Massachusetts” going all the way back to the civil rights era.
If the GOP takes over in 2022, then federal troops will be marching through the streets of Massachusetts to enforce nationwide bans against abortion and — for that matter — artificial contraception.
As a historian, you know about the Edmund Pettus bridge and what happened there — and the subsequent use of the National Guard by LBJ to protect MLK’s march to Selma. I promise you that these fascists are chomping at the bit for payback on the streets of Boston.
At very least, Joe Biden is still President after 2022. As I recall what happened on the Pettus Bridge advanced the causes we believe in. Yes, the marchers met resistance, but that resistance lost and will again. There will not be out own troops conquering Massachusetts – JUST STOP IT! Nobody has even suggested that.
You’ve CLEARLY never spent any time in the deep south.
You have NO CLUE about how deeply and passionately southerners hate “Yankees” in general and “Massachusetts Liberals” in particular.
You don’t appreciate that people in Georgia STILL — in the privacy of their own homes — rail about Sherman’s March to the Sea.
An organized, well-funded, and heavily-armed insurrection is mounting an assault on America.
Do you think Donald Trump’s thumb-in-our-eye SALT limits just coincidentally happened to hit MA, NY, CA, and NJ more than anywhere else?
Have you forgotten the harsh and personal rancor directed towards any and every Kennedy?
If you think that that insurrection, if successful, will not be felt on the streets of Boston, then you are leaving in a dream world.
You are the only person I have heard suggest this. No Republican official to my knowledge has fantasized about doing these things, and they aren’t the least bit shy about fantasizing about some pretty crazy things. I also think the vast majority of people throughout the country just want to live their lives. Only people like us who spend too much time on the internet and are politically active constantly sound like we hate each other. As for Georgia, they just elected two Dem Senators (one African-American and one Jew) and came close to electing Stacey Abrams Governor. I think they deserve more credit than you are giving them.
Those elections happened two years ago. The GOP in Georgia has been actively working every hour of every day to make sure that a similar outcome never happens again.
If the GOP takes power in 2022, then Joe Biden will be impeached within weeks. He might not be convicted, but he will be paralyzed.
Every member of the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate will be subjected to subpoenas in dozens of trumped-up (literally!) “hearings”.
By 2024, if the insurrection succeeds, Democrats will be in jail.
A DoJ under the next GOP president will not be paralyzed the way it has been under Merrick Garland.
You show no awareness of what these thugs intend — even though they’ve been telling the world their plans for the last two years.
You get more and more paranoid with each comment. They could try impeachment, but would likely face political backlash just as they did with the unjust Clinton impeachment. Plus, when 2024 votes are counted, Kamala Harris will be presiding so she won’t brook any nonsense. Bottom line – do not bet against the United States!
Anyone taking on Bobby Wong? I love his mai tais, and he’s the only Republican I voted for last fall since he voted for some MTA priorities, but we gotta get a real Democrat in that seat.
You mean Donald Wong. No one challenging this incumbent Republican thus far.