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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIs liberalism "smug"?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/is_liberalism_smug.html(The Rensin piece Bouie is responding to is here: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism )
Its a comprehensive case. Its a full-throated case. And its informed by a tradition of intra-left criticism of liberal elites, much of it fair and often needed. But its wrong. Or at least, it has three fatal flaws that make it far from persuasive.
The first is just history. That liberal smugness might deter the white working class from the Democratic Party seems reasonable, if unfalsifiable. But to suggest that it is a prime mover in their alienation from the party is to ignore the actual dynamics at work. The driving reason working-class whites abandoned the Democratic Party is race. The New Deal coalition Rensin describes was devoured by its own contradictions, chiefly, the racism needed to secure white allegiance even as the party tried to appeal to blacks.
Pressed by those blacks, Democrats tried to make good on their commitments, and when they did, whites bolted. The Democratic Partys alliance with nonwhites is what drove those whites away, not the sniffing of comedians on cable television. And, looking at the politics of the last seven years, its still keeping them away. (Its worth noting that, up until left-leaning whites and minorities elected Barack Obama president, Democrats suffered little loss with working-class whites outside of the South.)
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Or not. The republican voters are realizing the GOP has played them.
In 2008, the people voted for "anyone-but-Bush". McCain was basically Bush III, and Obama happened to be around. So they voted for Obama.
In 2016, the people are voting for "anyone-but-GOP-establishment". And this time, this any-other-guy is Trump.
ileus
(15,396 posts)Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)releasing a Tweet of apology then they just do the same crap again. Here is Hillary 'Big Christian' Clinton rewriting the history of our times to insult LGBT activists while lavishly praising her allies on the right, Ronald and Nancy Reagan. She credits the Reagans for doing the exact things they are hated for not doing. She and her supporters have been ultra smug and dismissive about it. What she said is much like saying George W Bush was the hero of Hurricane Katrina, if Katrina had killed 600,000 Americans. Which AIDS has. But that storm did not.
Imagine if Bernie Sanders praised Bush for his Katrina work......what would the smug shitty center have said and done? We all know what they would have said and done. They are hypocrites of the Smug Kind...
She is the face of smug centrism.
dembotoz
(16,811 posts)usedtobedemgurl
(1,141 posts)We are not smug but they hate how educated we are and how we use science, etc....Look at Rove and how resentful he was that the more educated ANYONE is, the more likely they are to vote Democrat. Look at how the poo poo science. I think they are all scared of being looked down upon so instead of educating themselves, they use transference and they cast their insecurities on us in an attempt to make us look bad.
BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)As the Democrats became more and more the party of racial justice, they became less and less the party supported by the white working class. The republicans used racial resentment as an effective political tool. They framed racial justice as just giving free stuff to "lazy" black people. They found ways to signal their racism without being overtly racist. The busing controversy was a huge one for them. This stuff was eaten up in the former Confederate states. They turned solidly republican almost overnight. Nixon's "Southern strategy" worked and continues to this day.
Iggo
(47,561 posts)Chan790
(20,176 posts)as labels and frames when these Democratic-pretenders are nothing of the sort.
Hillary Clinton is a lot of things (many of which I despise her for)...but "progressive" isn't one of them, though "smug" sure as fuck is.
Given a choice between a fascist (Trump) and a smug corportatist (Hillary), I expect a record number of Americans to vote "No" on the one-party Wall St. American state.
There's one party...and we still ain't in it.
NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)KG
(28,751 posts)melm00se
(4,993 posts)from my personal experience here and interfacing with some of my more extreme right wing neighbors, this article could be tweaked easily apply to both ends of the political spectrum.
As to those here who stridently deny that this article doesn't apply to "liberals", it doesn't take much work to find posts (and not just a few but many) that fit into the article's thesis.
11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)ronnie624
(5,764 posts)It's usually simply flung as a charge to distract from an illogical position on a given topic, instead of addressing the facts.