I look forward to reading this in the morning.

I'm curious: Do you consider this relevant regarding the ongoing primaries and/or the GE?

The reason why I asked is this: Over in GD-P, it has been stressed repeatedly that Sanders appeals to white people outside of the "usual" Democratic constituency, i.e. working class whites in rural areas, while Hillary Clinton dominates what is currently the Democratic base, i.e. minorities and women.

Sure enough, I talked to my dad yesterday who is a working class Southerner who passes as white (truth is, he is half hispanic) and he stressed that if it comes down to Trump vs. Clinton he will go with Trump. I have learned to avoid the conversation as to why that is so. But it seems to me that he would have been somewhat more open towards voting for Sanders. He thinks Hillary is a "uppity liar" etc.

It really makes one wonder: When did the mainstream Democratic party lose white workers?

For my dad it happened somewhere around the presidency of Bill Clinton. I remember my step-mom giving me the "you should not question the president in war-times" line during the Kosovo war and saying that Bill was a good president. After her and my dad were both repeatedly laid off and the place they worked for shut down in the end, they suddenly started caring about Monika Lewinsky and they now both consider the Clintons "disgraceful liars".

Which (and I know this isn't GDP) is kind of the 900 pound gorilla about why I think we've managed to select the literal two worst potential candidates for our party.

I try not to do to GDP anymore. It is a mosh pit. It is hard to quit looking but I know it is better not to. I don't think it is possible to discuss the candidates there.

I'm curious: So you think that O'Malley would have been better suited to unite the rural white working class and minorities?

"It really makes one wonder: When did the mainstream Democratic party lose white workers?"


It began in 1968 and really became noticeable in 1972 and 1984.

Were there specific events in those years that triggered it?

1968 was the first election of Nixon and began the slide of working men to Nixon.

1972 was the second election of Nixon where there was a major "Democrats for Nixon" push in reaction to the McGovernite takeover of the Democratic Party (49 states to 2 in the electoral college).

1984 was the second election of Reagan (another 49-2 blowout).

You don't capture all of those "blue states" without taking a big chunk of the working vote.

The article talks about how liberals abandoned the middle of the country and basically holed up on the coasts. I really still don't understand why though?

And fwiw, liberals like Michael Moore never abandoned the working class in favour of the elites. But that might be why he's so damn amazing.

Last edited Fri Apr 22, 2016, 08:48 AM - Edit history (1)

he has never abandoned the working class. But they sure have abandoned him. They make fun of him, ridicule him, etc., and even call him a "fat slob" and other such things. Frankly, it's hard NOT to disdain people who reject the very person who truly has empathy for them and wants to help.

I think a lot of the so-called smugness/disdain is well-earned, but I also agree that each liberal who reads this essay will want to knock off the public shaming just to be more polite, if for no other reason. But of course most of us who get exasperated at conservatives for the reasons stated in this essay are usually very polite to any individual conservative we may deal with on a daily basis.

I also think that conservatives' disdain for liberal ideas is certainly out there in at least the same volume and for far longer than any liberal disdain for conservative ideas -- hasn't Rush Limbaugh (and others in his mold) been dishing out a whole lot more disdain for a whole lot longer than any public liberal? I think so. So, to me, a part of this newer, public liberal disdain of conservatives is a later development, helped along by the absolute howling disdain displayed for decades by conservatives like Limbaugh. Is it right or effective? Who knows -- but it seems to have worked for the conservatives in making this a conservative-voting country, so it's hard to blame liberals for imitating. It's like blaming the kid who gets bullied all year for finally punching the bully in the face.

Excellent.

Read the fourth paragraph.

I live in western NC and work in east TN. A big chunk of the problem is exactl that elitist attitude of "you people are too stupid to know what's good for you".

There is a HUGE resentment for liberal policies that are seen as originating or being pushed by the "liberal elite" from NY or CA.

On a smaller scale, in the Western NC area there is resentment of anything coming out of the one liberal enclave, Asheville. And it's not without cause, when you talk to the liberal activists here, most who have arrived in the area in the last 5 or maybe 10 years, you hardly hear them talk about the voters in conservative areas outside the city with any kind of respect or desire to learn from them. Instead it's always an attitude of disdain and contempt for the group they act like is beneath them- and that's a horrible attitude to see anywhere but especially in a party or movement that's supposed to be inclusive and for the working person.

I noticed the "smug" attitude of some liberals, mainly from those in academia and those in white collar jobs. They say they're all for inclusiveness and equality, but their attitudes towards those who are less fortunate than they are or those that don't agree with them in lockstep speaks volumes to how they really view others.

I first encountered this aspect of "leftism" about a decade ago when I argued with primitivists. Real, honest to goodness primitivists who posted online, using computers, mind you, telling me about the evils of civilization. Now, they were reasonable, intelligent people. People I held deep respect for. People whose arguments were pretty sound. But it was all deeply convoluted and out of step with the reality that current human civilization faces.

I saw a similar argumentative style from creationists, or climate change denialists, using rhetoric and spin to make some convoluted point that didn't have any basis in reality. I went so far, with climate change denialists, to produce my own climate datasets, to prove them wrong. Then I realized it was futile.

It really is pointless to engage these people. They are out of step, and largely irrelevant, to political life. And that's a damn good fucking thing. Just as Kim Davis' bigotry got shot down by the political establishment and judicial system, so too will all others who try in vein to push a hopeless narrative.

Progress is one way. Many DUers reading this will see a basic income of some sort in their lifetimes. I expect I will.

There are myriad ways that the disparate left of center groups can and do turn each other away. This particular article lays the blame at the educated and comfortable "elites", and there is much merit in that accusation, some of which I am personally guilty of (in a very much contained sense; I am not important or influential in the slightest and unlikely to single-handedly discourage, or encourage either to be sure, any political switches of allegiance) and some of which I decry myself. For example if a typical blue collar union Dem is sententiously told at the bar on Sunday he can never be a real liberal if he calls the other team's quarterback a word supposedly (but not actually) deriving its insulting nature from reference to female genitalia, or complains about his boss's unreasonable demands by using a verb connected to female dogs, he's generally not going to respond in warm appreciation for the genteel opinion leaders of his natural party. Same for if any reference even slightly tinged with race-specific origins is greeted with outraged disgust that he is essentially the same as Simon Legree if he sniggers at somebody saying "CP time."

Oh I'm not shirking my own foibles as irritants with the same set either. I DO sit at the bar with these folks and they'll agree with me completely about the need for progressive taxation, reduction in military spending, often universal single payer healthcare and racial and GLBT equality too, but fuck they often turn against me when I say religion should be kept out of politics or that foreign aid is both a paltry part of the budget and a sound investment. I'm probably not helping the general impression of Democrats as champions of the common man by bringing wonkish facts and figures into the typical barroom moaning sessions about welfare recipients or immigrants to correct misconceptions either.

What this article misses though is the reciprocal problem. There are more droputs than doctorates it's true. But the former need the latter too. Wonkery may annoy the beer and burger crowds, but it's the lifeblood of policy and analysis, the stuff of government. If the less well-educated either cannot or do not want to grasp it, it would probably behoove them better to stop fighting it and demonizing it as unamerican and unmanly. It was not always thus. The scorn directed at ivory towers is not more than a few decades old, and counterproductive to the needs of the "dropout" side as much as the "doctorate" side. Fear, loathing and distrust of "the other" comes from both sides of the economic and educational echelons after all, and blame should not be unilaterally assigned.

I'm not interested in drying patriarchal dominionist White Guy tears.

I'm not interested in Americans who have no problem with a Theocracy.

I'm not interested in Americans who politicize basic human rights. I'm not interested in a dialogue with people who think Capitalism is going to solve it's own short and long term problems.

I'm not interested in a dialogue with grown adults who believe bullshit fairy tales like trickle-up socialism will lead to the benefactors and handlers being more benevolent . . . . or in an invisible sky daddy who will make their lives better while blowin' up the Mooslims and Commies. That's on them, not me.

If they want to believe they're better than someone because they're white, fuck them. I don't have time to recalibrate the fuckered parts of these people's heads. I have my own problems to deal with.

They need to wake up, grow up and OWN up. Stop believing in religions; that includes their precious "free marketz". There's a start.

If you want to treat these people as grown adults and not spoiled babies, have at it. They need to stop acting like petulant fucking children who thinks it's ALLLLLLLLL about THEM and THEM ONLY. You live in America, yet you love re-branded Feudalism. You think bake sales are going to pay for $200,000 cancer bills. You make due legal human rights, feminist issues and race issues all about white guys. You think anything that challenges American Capitalism As Is is an affront to God, Country and The Troops. I'M SUPPOSED TO REASON WITH THESE FUCKERS????

"Oh, stop with the Daily Show! Shows like that and teh meen lib'ruls needs to make fun of the poor conservatives are why they hate you." Geee, just imagine the people who have to suffer daily under dominant conservative economic policy how enlightened they'll be with the argument that a laugh at their tormentor's expense is the reason for their own continued subjugation. "The more we make fun of them, the more they DIG IN"?? COME on.

Unbelievable, sheer fucking gall and BALLS that this author states that WE'RE the ones at fault for "being smug" at fucks who Red-bait like they're breathing, act like bullying high-schoolers who solve everything with violence and ad-hominems, and disparage and finger-wag any notion of changing a corrupt and fuckered system. CHILD, PLEASE.

"Being the better person" has gotten us BUPKIS in 45 years. They're powerful and own and control everything because we do absolutely nothing whatsoever to stop them. To the contrary, we tried to BE like them with the "Third Weigh" crap. WHERE'S THAT LANDED US??

Self-loathing.

tend to embrace a worldview that is predicated, at the very least, on a sense of justice, and do not hate working-class people.

It's hard to figure out who the author is yammering about when he refers to liberal elite. Like most pretend liberals, like those who make up the Democratic party establishment, he probably embraces the political status quo and the economic orthodoxy, and then can't figure out why a lot of working people reject them as hypocrites and deceivers.

So much wrong with this article it is impossible to even begin.

But I will just say this. The wheel article is based on the idea that it is smugness that is the problem and completely ignores all of the actual issues where it can be shown time and time again that not only is the Republican party wrong about a whole host of issues but dangerously wrong.

It is not smugness that points out the ridiculous stance of the Republican party to climate change for example.

The fact they to this day deny it despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is a perfect example of the mindset of the Republican party. Ideology before reality time and time again on issue after issue.

The only issues that are arguable are the moral issues they support and oddly that is what they run on time and time again.

Nothing smug about pointing out the idiocy of denying gclimate change. That is like saying you are being smug of someone claims the sky is red and you point out how they are wrong.

The problem with people who vote Republican is they are willing to put their morals ahead of reality. They will vote for the guy who protects them from gay marriage at the same time knowing full well that that same clown is going to destroy social security.

It also ignores the fact that our media is a huge part of the problem. rarely if ever do they inform the public past a sensational headline. The public is to blame as well as our national state of curiosity is at dismal levels. You can even see it here I can't count how many times I have seen people get outraged over a provocative headline that has little or nothing going to do with the actual facts I the story.

Men I could go on all day about the ways this article is nothing more than navel going by someone who clearly has little understanding of what actually happens inside the parties when they govern.

Bush won twice my ass...