The November 21, 2016 Thread
Move over, #MannequinChallenge. The #TrumpsComingChallenge is sending students fleeing https://t.co/aGTTAFppwz pic.twitter.com/BNylr3tPl6
— CNN (@CNN) November 21, 2016
The kids are alright.
Thomas Friedman: “Steve Jobs and Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, starting the smartphone revolution that is now putting an internet-connected computer in the palm of everyone on the planet. In late 2006, Facebook, which had been confined to universities and high schools, opened itself to anyone with an email address and exploded globally. Twitter was created in 2006, but took off in 2007… In time, 2007 may be seen as one of the greatest technological inflection points in history. And we completely missed it.”
“Why? 2008.”
“Yes, right when our physical technologies leapt ahead, many of what the Oxford economist Eric Beinhocker calls our ‘social technologies’ — all of the rules, regulations, institutions and social tools people needed to get the most out of this technological acceleration and cushion the worst — froze or lagged. In the best of times social technologies have a hard time keeping up with physical technologies, but with the Great Recession of 2008 and the political paralysis it engendered, this gap turned into a chasm. A lot of people got dislocated in the process.”
Congressional phones jammed by calls for Trump conflict-of-interest investigation https://t.co/IyvNHr3TaS
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 20, 2016
“In the days since Hillary Clinton’s stunning electoral defeat to Donald Trump, the vacuum she left atop the Democratic Party hasn’t gone unfilled,” Politico reports. “Elizabeth Warren has moved aggressively to occupy the space, a timely reminder to the party and its most ambitious members that all roads to 2020 — not to mention 2018 — go through her.”
More reasons why Dems should reject Trump's flawed infrastructure plan — from @politico: https://t.co/0jvuWXTFJA
— Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) November 20, 2016
The New York Times quotes from Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, published in 1998, which predicted our current situation:
Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
Chief of Staff Priebus has no plan for dealing with conflict of interest issues in the White House https://t.co/yslomMPoAh
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 20, 2016
President-elect Donald Trump “has turned the vital, but normally inscrutable, process of forming a government into a Trump-branded, made-for-television spectacle, parading his finalists for top administration positions this weekend before reporters and the world,” the New York Times reports.
“The two days unfolded like a pageant, with the many would-be officials striding up the circular driveway at Trump National Golf Club here, meeting Mr. Trump below three glass chandeliers at the entrance and shaking hands while facing the cameras. To build suspense, Mr. Trump offered teasing hints about coming announcements.”
Read @GeorgeTakei's essay: "They interned my family. Don't let them do it to Muslims" –> https://t.co/XGnGOHYguO #AMJoy #reiders
— AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) November 20, 2016
“House Republican leaders, looking to jump-start Donald Trump’s presidency, have already begun to map out an ambitious agenda for early next year. On the early to do-list, according to leadership insiders: repealing a host of late-issued Obama administration regulations, muscling through tax reform and dismantling Obamacare,” Politico reports.
“House members and staffers can say goodbye to their three-day weekends and lengthy recesses — at least for a while. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who’s currently devising the 2017 House schedule, is likely to keep lawmakers in D.C. on Mondays and Fridays, a stark departure from the three-day weeks that have become routine in the chamber.”
That’s Alec Baldwin responding to Trump.
New York Times: “Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead surged above 1.72 million on Sunday night, with millions of votes still to count. At 1.3 percentage points, she has built a lead not seen in a losing campaign since Rutherford B. Hayes’ bitterly disputed election of 1876.”
“The 2016 results have no such disputes, however. Mrs. Clinton’s lead keeps rising on her strength in California, where her margin stands at 29 percentage points, up from President Obama’s 23 percentage points 2012. She has failed to close the gap in any of the swing states that she lost, though Mr. Trump’s lead in Michigan has dwindled to 11,612 votes, a bad night in Tiger Stadium.”
Oh, I get it. In World War III, Germany gets to save the rest of the world from fascists. That's a pretty solid third act.
— Nathaniel Tapley (@Natt) November 20, 2016
Patrick Eddington at Just Security writes—The Islamophobia Administration:
Trump, Bannon, Sessions, Pompeo, former DIA Director (and Trump National Security Adviser designee) Mike Flynn, and Trump transition team adviser and long-time Islamophobe Frank Gaffney are poised to further derange our counterterrorism policy. By increasing the demonization and stigmatization of Arab or Muslim immigrants, they will legitimize the ISIS narrative that America is at war with Islam as a whole—giving public relations oxygen to Salafist-oriented terrorist organizations from Africa to Southeast Asia, facilitating their recruitment efforts globally.
Even more ominously, if Trump picks similar Islamophobes to lead the Department of Homeland Security and fill out sub-cabinet positions with the Department of Justice, Arab- and Muslim-Americans will see still more of their tax dollars go to potentially fund the persecution of them and their families. Some key positions in DHS—namely the Chief Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer and the head of DHS’s Office of Community Partnerships (the department’s “countering violent extremism” office)—do not require Senate confirmation. Some of Gaffney’s acolytes have already been floated as possible Trump national security team members in slots that the Senate will have no say over. The implications are truly chilling.
1. We talked to George W. Bush's ethics lawyer. Trump is in some serious legal trouble. https://t.co/dgL6pfj4tN
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) November 19, 2016
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—What Democrats owe the country:
However attractive an old-fashioned let’s-pass-good-stuff strategy might seem, the alarming signals emanating from Trump Tower require more than politics as usual.
If Democrats do not issue very clear warnings and lay out very bright lines against the most odious and alarming aspects of Trumpism, they will be abdicating their central obligation as the party of opposition. This is not a time for ideological and factional positioning or for focusing on the 2018 elections.
Before they even get to infrastructure, Democrats and all other friends of freedom must make clear that if Trump abandons the basic norms of our democracy, all the roads in the world won’t pave over his transgressions.
In case you missed the @WSJ calling on Trump to liquidate his holdings. Needs to happen or will be a long 4 years https://t.co/6LpXmpN0Mk
— Comrade Balding (@BaldingsWorld) November 20, 2016
In “Should Democrats Work With Donald Trump? Only under the following extremely stringent conditions,” Jim Newell writes at slate.com, “Since Election Day, Democrats of all stripes have signaled a willingness to work with the president-elect on issues of common concern. Specifically, they’ve broadcast their interest in helping Donald Trump follow through on his vow to fix the nation’s ailing roads, bridges, and grids….Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat representing Phoenix, said that Trump’s “infrastructure plan is really a privatization scheme, rife with graft and corruption, whose real purpose is to enrich the Trump family and his supporters.”…To whatever extent Democratic senators work with Trump on these proposals, they should work extra hard to block the rest of his agenda. They should fight mass deportations, hard. They should fight appointments, like Jeff Sessions’ for attorney general, hard. They should walk out of Congress if Trump moves forward with a “Muslim registry.” They should use all the leverage they can possibly muster in the appropriations process to block rollbacks of the social safety net. If they do it right, they can show that they’ll work with Trump on areas where he meets their interests, on their terms, while also making it known that they’re not, in any way, interested in seeing this president serve a second term.”
This session of congress will provide Tom Carper with a rendezvous with destiny. In his senior position, he can really step up and be a hero in defense of the constitution, or he can expose himself as a cowardly piece of shit.
I’m out of the prediction business, but I have a gut feeling about which path he is going to take.
First town hall Carper announces needs to be full of us. Make it clear to him that any Medicare or Social Security bills put forward by the GOP are to be opposed, no negotiations.
Does Carper even do town halls anymore? I don’t recall hearing of any for a long time. Not even the transparently fraudulent telephone town halls that Carney loved so much.
We all know Republicans will pass a big tax cut for the rich right away. Any Democrat who votes for it should be primaried, with no whining about “purists.”
Then, if a big infrastructure plan gets traction and is “paid for” by cuts in social spending, it will inevitably be supported by Democrats in Congress. I expect to read arguments right here why this is OK.
If a big infrastructure plan is passed it will be “paid for” by cuts in social spending. There is no hidden agenda, there is only the agenda. And yes, it will be supported by Democrats in Congress (Tom Caper) because America voted to “end the gridlock” and “I hear from my Delaware constituents that they want us to ‘come together’ and ‘get down to the business of governing'”
Again, this is all in plain sight. There is no conspiracy afoot.
How do you commit to infrastructure while still fucking over the workers? Like Trump:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-big-infrastructure-plan-its-a-trap/2016/11/18/5b1d109c-adae-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?utm_term=.f7a9222a52f3
“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion.”
I want to use the term “unacceptable”, but if this were to, in fact, happen, how does our country go back to a marginally-better societal structure than the Bull Connor days? I think you would have violence in the streets, but just that paragraph scares the shit out of me…
@Prop Joe – I hear ya.
That paragraph was the entire message of the Trump campaign. That’s what “Make America Great Again” meant. There’s not one minority group that’s confused over this. Not one minority believes Trump’s win was about economic anxiety.
For those that don’t believe me, listen to his supporters. Ask them about Trump’s policies on Immigration, the ACA, refugees, BLM, reproductive rights, Muslims, etc. and then listen to all the details they can supply – the wall, deportation, raise in rates, Muslim registry, abortions the day before birth (???), etc..
Then ask them about his economic policy… crickets. Know why? They didn’t vote on economic policy.
Our only hope rests on these people realizing they voted to screw themselves. And, boy, did they.
Social conservatives may impose some of their agenda in legislation or the courts, but they have already lost the battle for hearts and minds. They will not win the culture wars.
Was watching Captain America: Civil War for the 337th time… I’ve seen the quote on memes, and I’m sure it’s sourced to a real person, but it rolls around in my head because of the movie. I find myself thinking about how the action it suggests plays out in a modern society/modern world:
“Compromise when you can. When you can’t, don’t. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move. It is your duty, to plant yourself like a tree, look them in they eye and say, ‘ No… you move.'”
“Then ask them about his economic policy… crickets. Know why? They didn’t vote on economic policy.”
Social anxiety is caused by economic anxiety, even if they can’t articulate it at the time.
In 1980 Reagan ran on a mix of dog-whistle racism, nationalism, and voodoo economics. Why was that so appealing? Because the working class had suddenly come to the expectation, for the first time, that their children probably wouldn’t have the same standard of living as they did. That was a major psychological blow to that generation. Racism was just one of several routes to tap into that economic anxiety.
But ask those same people or their descendants today why they voted for Reagan, and their narrative becomes pure economic – because he brought back the economy and we had good jobs again.
if the democrats had tried to appeal to white workers even a little on “economic anxiety,” we would have won. this has been said before, but the point bears repeating until some people on the left get it through their skulls. bernie would have made that appeal. yes, i thought hillary would be more likely to beat trump, but i was wrong. we can learn! she had to say more than “trump bad.” that’s enough to appeal to thinking people on the left, but democrats were so sure of themselves they didn’t think they needed to say more. it took a big tent to win, but since the democrats are sometimes more like a religion than a political party, they couldn’t be bothered. purity, you know. now we’re in a real mess.
“But ask those same people or their descendants today why they voted for Reagan, and their narrative becomes pure economic – because he brought back the economy and we had good jobs again.”
Really? I guess it makes sense from their imagination, but their pure economic narrative was fiction. But hey, Reagan sure showed those unions! And now it looks like their time and a half overtime might be history. Lord, spare me from these geniuses whose “feelings” never actually result in economic advances for them.
“their pure economic narrative was fiction”
Of those who admire Reagan, who says they admire him because “Man, he sure cracked down on those blacks, didn’t he?” I don’t think even racists say that.
Lee Atwater definitely understood what dog whistles racists would respond to though.
Racists don’t ever say they’re racist.
And this idea of the Dems winning message being jobs? Let’s flesh that out. Hillary (who actually did speak quite a lot about jobs and the economy – if you actually watched her rallies/interviews for the 30 seconds of coverage they received.) talks about jobs and policies and then Trump comes in and says, “My job plan is better. It’s the greatest. Believe me.” And everyone then votes for Hillary? You guys are given these people far too much credit.
“We all know Republicans will pass a big tax cut for the rich right away. Any Democrat who votes for it should be primaried, with no whining about “purists.”
Any Democrat who votes for it should be promptly impaled upon his own petard.
I know Democrats are trying to find a better message to coalesce around, but somehow I don’t think “white devils” is a winner.
Oh no, not white devils! Stupid white people who continually vote against their economic interest, maybe? 😉
You keep talking about this new Dem message, but you’ve yet to supply one.
“[HIllary] actually did speak quite a lot about jobs and the economy – if you actually watched her rallies/interviews for the 30 seconds of coverage they received.”
It’s up to the candidate to get the coverage. Any message more complicated than “jobs good” is over their heads and, from the media standpoint, is a snooze.
Whatever you claim the media’s role is “supposed” to be, you’re pissing up a rope. The media as constituted today is a for-profit oligarchy. Their only obligation, like that of any other business in our responsibility-free age, is to make money. Les Moonves of CBS actually said so out loud (another trend in our responsbility-free age, telling the “truth” without apology, even when it’s morally bankrupt).
Look at all the sore winner stories — Trumpkins lashing out at people they hear criticizing him (look up the drunk asshole who started shouting during the “Hamilton” performance in Chicago), stamping their tiny feet and shouting, “We won!” as if that means he can’t be criticized.
Now imagine if liberals had acted that way after Obama’s re-election. Imagine blacks lashing out this way every time they heard a white person criticize Obama. Yeah, I can’t either.
Atwater was telling the truth, but what he either didn’t say or didn’t realize was that white people apparently can refrain from saying the word “ni**er,” but only under tremendous duress. The pressure can build only so long. Apparently the urge to call the people you fear and resent ugly names is so strong that some people will elect a con man and traitor to be able to do it in public again.
Let me make something clear. I apply the economic argument not to the great mass of Trump voters. Most of them, as Jason has maintained from the beginning, were simply the usual GOP voters. A subset of those voters, apparently about half of them, consider the racism, etc., a feature, not a bug. A subset of that subset is eager to get fitted for their brown shirts.
I know many longtime Republicans, almost all of whom are in one form of denial or another about how horrifying this is. (I like, best of all, to remind them that all our secrets are now an open book to our new best friends the Russians. I like to ask them if they were voting specifically for that, because if they were it sounds like treason to me.) While liberals are shunning the news because it’s so dreadful, conservatives are hearing nothing but pro-Trump propaganda. There is no common cause with these people. We pointed out what they were voting for, and they ignored us. Hillary wooed them, and they ignored her.
My point about the economy applies to a much smaller subset of the Trump electorate — the few hundred thousand in the Rust Belt states that did not trust Hillary on the TPP and believed Trump’s protectionist rhetoric. One thing I’ve seen mentioned in several stories about this is how little the press paid attention to the economic arguments in Trump’s stump speeches. I do think that influenced a small group — maybe a half-million people — in places where that many defections did her the most harm.
“You keep talking about this new Dem message, but you’ve yet to supply one.”
Why do you keep insisting jobs is not a message?
Now that’s what I’m talking about:
Fight for $15 plans mass protests November 29
Buckle up buttercup – see you there.
Where, though? Site didn’t say. Keep us posted, because I’m not giving anybody permission to call on my cell phone. Stingray, dude.
Airports and McDonalds. I guess details will be distributed by cell phone, but I agree with you about surveillance so I’ll look for details elsewhere, or I’ll just show up.
Why did so many women vote for the carnival barker
Stupid is equal-opportunity.
Oh, I included white women in my stupid white people description. (See how I used the word people?)
I haven’t insisted jobs wasn’t a message, but we had an entire thread about crafting a message that appeals to white, Trump voters. I said that I have no idea what that message would be, but would guess it would have to be a teensy bit racist. If the people saying Dems need a new message to attract these voters then I’d like to hear that message. Without it, I’m sticking to what I think motivated these voters.
Did white women vote on racism or some other dynamic?
“Without it, I’m sticking to what I think motivated these voters.”
I really don’t care what you think motivated these voters. I’m more interested in what they think motivated them, because convincing you of anything here isn’t going to make any difference.
In short, I’ve made my case plenty of times now, and you choose to believe instead what makes you feel, I dunno, better about yourself? Because whatever YOU think motivates them is bullshit. You have correlation, not causation, and by god you’re not going to question any of YOUR assumptions.
But you have done a good job of making sure you’re not part of the solution. Not that I actually seek one, because the first step here is disempowering your wing of the party. Since I don’t think that’s going to happen, I expect the Democratic Party to disappear even before the GOP does.
I’ve posted links to multiple stories explaining what happened in Rust Belt locales that switched from Obama to Trump. I’m sorry you feel this way, but it’s really nobody’s job to convince you you’re wrong. You’re going to have to realize it yourself before anything good comes out of this.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but you are indeed a housewife, and one who has a beach house at the shore. I don’t think you’re in any position to be lecturing people about what economic insecurity feels like, or why those people lashing out over it are actually just racists.
Perhaps I am reading this all wrong when it comes to Dems, but I’m not seeing identity politics as being the prime motivation of Dems. I see it as the motivation of the Republicans.
Republicans were the ones saying they were fine with women not being paid the same as a man for doing the same job. Republicans were the ones who told black people – who said, “Stop killing us” to the police – that All Lives Matter/Blue Lives Matter. Republicans were the ones who put forth the idea that birth control should be treated (and, in some cases banned) like abortion. Republicans were the ones that drew the line in the sand over gay wedding cakes and bathrooms. Republicans were the ones calling President Obama the “Food Stamp President” and screaming for his birth certificate.
To me, that’s Dems calling out Republican identity politics – because Republicans ran on all these issues, and many more like them, for decades. Their message has always been quite clear.
Hey, I live in a beach house and I’m relatively poor and voted for Clinton
I don’t think you’re in any position to be lecturing people about what economic insecurity feels like, or why those people lashing out over it are actually just racists.
Of course she is. Just because you know a little about her situation now doesn’t mean you have the entire narrative. And a very great many people who “lashed out against it” are: racists; available to be motivated by a racist message; and/or AOK with the racism. This guy is the logical result of an entire GOP message that is focused like a laser on stoking white racial resentments.
And, no, you haven’t put forth an economic message that will compete with: “I will make Bethlehem Steel, the coal companies, car companies, Carrier come back with their jobs”. Because that claim was always a lie. And I haven’t heard one thing that was ever going to compete with that lie. Sold to a bunch of people accustomed to buying the lies about job creation too.
pandora, do you really not understand what identity politics are (is?) and how that has been the engine of the left? the identity politics you have been espousing since i came on this blog? the identity politics that cannot win elections by themselves (by itself)?
“And, no, you haven’t put forth an economic message that will compete with: “I will make Bethlehem Steel, the coal companies, car companies, Carrier come back with their jobs”. Because that claim was always a lie. ”
Please. If Democrats are going to compete on that ground, they obviously do so by pointing out that he’s lying and we have an actual plan. Ross Perot made a whole campaign out of charts, remember? Or are you just assuming that Hillary’s team would be inept with whatever message they were peddling?
You’re acting like “identity politics” is something Dems made up on their own. They didn’t. In fact, a great deal of the Dem platform is a reaction to the GOP’s actual words, actions, bills and laws.
Know what else is identity politics? White nationalism.
I also have a problem with the term “identity politics” itself. In my experience, 99% of the time it’s a dog whistle term.
None of this may matter soon as we may be about to lose the Pacific Ocean:
“Japan’s Fukushima region was bracing for another tsunami Tuesday morning, after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake rocked the area devastated by an enormous earthquake and tsunami five years ago.”
Already one of the cooling systems has shut down, and the biggest waves haven’t hit yet.
White nationalism is the original identity politics — because all of the other groups that Dems try to support are the target of the original identity politics.
“Just because you know a little about her situation now doesn’t mean you have the entire narrative.”
I have what she put out there. I’m willing to wager that somebody with no job and two houses hasn’t spent much of the past 20 years sitting awake in the kitchen at 3 a.m. wondering how she was going to pay the mortgage before the late due date. If I’m wrong, then I wonder why she doesn’t show more empathy for such people.
And while I understand your frustration, it’s disappointing to see both of you spouting uncharitable dismissals of all 60 million people — the kind of stereotyping that you’d be the first to admonish if some of those people were spewing dismissals of blacks, immigrants or liberals.
And this is happening in a Federal Building.
These people aren’t interested in an economic message.
If whites are going to act like an identity-voting bloc, Democrats would be fools to fight on that battlefield. Yet that’s sort of what happened this election. Rednecks of all education levels said, “No, we’re better alone.”
I used to like to say that you couldn’t depend on just one group or another because “That’s not enough, we need a majority.” Now even a majority isn’t getting the job done. Last I saw she was ahead by almost 2 million votes.
Hmmm… Who said this:
“I’m still punching holes in the wall over how stupid your classmate is. White people in this country are so fucking lazy they can’t even be bothered to take the two seconds on Google it would take to educate themselves.”
And…
“It’s cold comfort.
We fight for two generations to help these dumb fucks, and then they turn around and vote for Trump to “get even” with liberals. They do this again and again. And it’s not that they’re stupid. They’re lazy. They rail against government running things without understanding that pre-FDR they’d be sitting on the front porches of their squats trying to figure out how to get rid of their pelagra.
“Niacin? That sounds foreign.”
Talk about uncharitable dismissals.
the kind of stereotyping that you’d be the first to admonish if some of those people were spewing dismissals of blacks, immigrants or liberals.
It’s not a stereotype when it is true. If people spend 30+ years voting for the GOP bambozzlement that is part and parcel of why their economic circumstances and are happy to have their attentions directed to women, people of color, LGBTQ people, millenials who need a break on college tuition — you know the list — as the people holding them back, then it is just plain stupid not to take them at their intentions.
Bill Clinton might have been the last President who was really clear about what the future of American jobs was and that future is not good unless they decide to focus on training and a different career.
I have what she put out there.
Which still doesn’t mean you have the entire story. Just because you need a narrative to rail against doesn’t mean you have the right one.
“I’m still punching holes in the wall over how stupid your classmate is. White people in this country are so fucking lazy they can’t even be bothered to take the two seconds on Google it would take to educate themselves.”
Indeed. Apparently the New Rule is that the only people who can criticize white nationalists are White Men.
“These people aren’t interested in an economic message. (photo of Trump team)”
True, the Trump inner circle is unpersuadable and irredeemable. The people we need to convince are the voters who put them there.
20M Trump voters could lose their newly won OT pay under the GOP they voted for.
(photo of Trump team)”
And you clearly didn’t even click on the link.
@cassandra: Apparently the New Rule is that the only people who can criticize white nationalists are White Men. Rats. Now when I do criticize white nationalism below, it’s going to feel like I fell into your trap.
There is a parallel here between white nationalism and freedom of religion.
When the Constitution was written we still had several States with State-established churches. (Note: the Constitution didn’t end that practice at the State level; there was a State-established church in Massachusetts until about 1836.) The prohibition against the national government establishing a church, which essentially gave us religious freedom (more correctly, “religious plurality”) did not come out of some enlightened intellectual reasoning such as Thomas Jefferson followed in the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom: “Whereas almighty God has created the mind free. …”
No, it came from the fear that if there was an established national church it wouldn’t be my church, because my congregations weren’t a majority, although there were a couple that were large enough to threaten that one day under the right conditions. People opted for freedom of religion only when it became clear to them that the odds were that their particular religion would not come out on top.
Had there been 40-45% that was Catholic, Anglican, or Presbyterian in 1787, you can damn well bet that those folks would not have ratified a Constitution with language prohibiting a State religion, because they’d have had a legitimate shot at establishing their own. Once established (see Mexico), it would not have been easy or perhaps even possible to disown.
Now think about race. With certain geographical exceptions (South Carolina and Louisiana in the early period come to mind), whites/western Europeans were not just in control, but were usually the demographic majority. There was no need to think about sharing power in a pluralistic society, because it wasn’t a pluralistic society, and anybody who wasn’t part of that majority had to live with whatever that majority dictated.
The presence of large numbers of African-Americans in the new cotton South, from about 1815-1850 forced an involuntary expansion of what was considered “white.” Originally, for example, the Irish and others of Celtic descent weren’t considered part of the ruling race, but the Irish quickly became “white enough” by the standards of the slave-holding South, even when they remained persona non grata for many years still in New England.
This was the strategy–as Blacks emerged from slavery, as Asians and ultimately Latinos began to represent significant demographic groups, the boundaries of “whiteness” were expanded by reluctantly accepting those who had not been accepted before–Catholics, Jews, Italians, Greeks, Slavs–these folks became “white” to the people of “western” European descent because their amalgamation within the umbrella of “whiteness” was the only way to maintain political control. Giving white women the vote can be viewed as one of the last moves along this line open to traditional Western European whites, although they’ve been flirting with accepting Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans as essentially being “honorary whites” for the past few decades.
Two things put a dagger into the heart of maintaining this racial hegemony–pure demographics and the desertion of increasing numbers of whites from the notion of an ethnically dominated society to that of an ethnically pluralist society. This has always been an unpopular notion with the majority of whites until about the last 10-15 years when another demographic shift has been raising increasingly large numbers of young Americans who simply don’t give a shit about holding onto heterosexual or masculinist or ethnic domination. They don’t see it as working for them; but they are still a distinct minority among whites.
Like Bamboozler I interact with these folks on a regular basis, and they have no intention of accepting the dis-establishment (as it were) of the Church of the White People in favor of the Rainbow Coalition. The notion can best be summed up by a “joke” told to me by a Black soldier for the first time in about 1988, and which i have heard many times since:
Q. When does a Black man become a Nigger?
A. When he leaves the room.
I don’t disagree with Anonymous that fear and economics play a part–but you have to understand that the consistent folk belief is that everybody just went back into their proper place (reference “The Bell Curve”), everything would be better. We would make American great again.”
That’s really what’s going on here, and it’s why the Democrats have a truly difficult road ahead.
Rats. Now when I do criticize white nationalism below, it’s going to feel like I fell into your trap.
We can make you an Honorary Negro. I can do that, you know.
Mouse – Comments should advance the conversation, or be funny. If you continue with these comments which add nothing, you are going to be cut off. You are only getting this warning because you are not a right-wing troll. But please know that left wing trolling is equally unwelcome.
I realize some people have a hard time appreciating this, but it’s actually possible to think most GOP voters are stupid while understanding their fears.
I actually love your words of understanding.
(Also, to whoever yanked Mouse’s comment… Thank you.)
Yes, I can actually hold those views while espousing other, conflicting views that I also believe in. That’s why I’m not a politician, a field in which that is punished.
Obama, too, can understand those people while being exasperated by them. That’s what his full “clinging to guns and religion” quote embodied:
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.”
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
He said that before the market crash, so of course he never got the chance to do anything for anyone other than the Titans of Finance. We’ll never know if he could have done more for the downtrodden of the Rust Belt, or if he intended to, but the only thing that has changed since his statement is the number of years since the last of their glory days.
I’m trying to explain the same thing he was trying to explain. It doesn’t mean I’m less frustrated than you. The point of hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is that it feels good when you stop — but these people refuse to stop.
Would it do more good to be even more blunt with them? I can’t claim to know, so good luck with your approach. Maybe they need the good cop, bad cop approach. Like you, I’m all ears for better messages.
“If everybody just went back into their proper place (reference “The Bell Curve”), everything would be better. We would make American great again.” That’s really what’s going on here, and it’s why the Democrats have a truly difficult road ahead.”
But Trump’s younger supporters were never alive during the Jim Crow years. They have no experience of the days of overt discrimination of women, blacks and gays. Where do they get their proclivities if not from direct experience?
I’m trying to explain the same thing he was trying to explain.
Then you should stop. Because most of the people you are “trying to explain to” get this. Why do you think we are making the point that Trump’s promises of jobs the way they used to be was a lie? Why do you think we keep making the point that these folks keep voting for the people who work at extending their economic pain? What Obama knew, what Bill Clinton knew, what Hillary Clinton knew, what pretty much everyone knows is that those jobs are done. Obsolete. And if any of them come back, it will be to supervise robots and who knows how well these jobs will pay. (And they’ll come back with a massive government subsidy.) Even you — who has argued against the focus on creating manufacturing jobs — gets this. Towns that were decimated by the closing of a plant are not going to be better off in 4 years. We do not have a manufacturing economy — and while I think there is the possibility of creating more manufacturing that takes advantage of American skill sets, the days of Bethlehem Steel are just done.
@anonymous: Where do they get their proclivities if not from direct experience?
From their parents (remembering, as you say above, the “glory days” that even they did not experience); from internet memes and fake history/news; and–in many states–from the required history textbooks that tell that story subliminally.
Don’t say that, Cassandra! We need to lie to white people!
And Steve Newton swoops in to set the record straight.
I don’t even remember what I said. Sick of this anyway with all the self righteous BS. Bye
@cassandra: I’m sorry, I didn’t get a strong signal that you understood. In that case we’re in agreement. Just realize that every time you point out the racism, lots of white men among the 39% who voted for her are going to get their backs up. If she had gotten 40% the GOP goon squads would be shooting up the streets because she won.
Yes, manufacturing is done. Rebuilding infrastructure involves construction, though, and that’s not mechanizing as dramatically as most industries. They care more about the breadth of the shoulders than what sits on top of them. We can’t bring back the factory, but the legitimate infrastructure needs are vast. A trillion-dollar, ten-year plan is exactly the right combination of unskilled labor and economic stimulus we need. I believe in the trickle-up theory of economics — you prime a fountain by putting water in at the bottom.
The fight for $15 is another important part of this. A lot of what we call the “middle class” these days are people who are working two almost-full-time jobs (getting benefits from neither) because they can’t live on one. I realize this is too far left for many mainstream Democrats — has any of our Congressional delegation supported it? — but it seems to have populist appeal to me, just speaking as a white guy.
I think two things are worth observing here, regarding a new message (and these are just thoughts, not pretending to be finished):
1. I can distinctly remember a lot of conversation here during the Democratic primaries about the fact that Sanders was only appealing to white voters, and not winning any other hearts and minds. That was seen as a weakness then; now maybe a thorough re-examination of his message in terms of what appealed to whom would be in order. There are elements in his insurgence that did appeal to the traditional white middle-class Dem voter who either stayed home or held the nose and voted for Trump.
2. It is easier to divide than unite. This is an unfortunate truth of politics. The simplest way for the Dems to win the missing white vote is to find a way to disaggregate it into smaller groups.
It’s easy to dismiss Fight for $15: “Why should I care, I make more than $15.”
First of all, whatever it is that you do for a living, people who make $7.25/hr (the current Federal minimum wage) are NOT your customers. At $7.25 they have no disposable income. But at $15/hr, many of them will suddenly be able to afford your products or services. And more customers is a good thing for business.
Secondly, if you are feeling smug because you are now making $15/hr, when the minimum wage goes to 15 you will probably soon be making $20+ just from market pressure. You and everybody else who works with you. And they will all become somebody’s customer, buying stuff they could never afford before.
Not to mention, many businesses have their workforces subsidized with food stamps, Medicaid, charity food pantries, and other sources. At $15 many of those workers could afford more of that themselves, freeing up welfare and charity for others.
@puck Probably all true, but unfortunately too long for a soundbite.
The fight for $15 is most opposed by folks (left and right) who have been concerned that they will pay more for their goods at Walmart of McDonalds or the people who think that you are making minimum wages due to bad choices you made.
Re-read that last part. Because there is some magic that makes people who don’t have many other options undeserving of better wages (even though this work is what our economy looks like) vs. the people who used to do manufacturing work for a clear middle class wage who need to be catered to at all costs.
$15.00 is about paying people the value of low-skill jobs in this economy. Jobs that won’t be taken up be college kids or high-schoolers. If your governor or mayor is doing photo-ops at new workplaces where they pay minimum wage and is touting the “good jobs” being created there, then $15.00/hour will help those guys not look like complete idiots.
A trillion-dollar, ten-year plan is exactly the right combination of unskilled labor and economic stimulus we need.
But that will not be effective if infrastructure development is privatized or if it is accompanied by a weakening (or elimination) of Davis-Bacon. And there is more skilled labor in infrastructure that you might think. Those machines that you see working need qualified operators.
I’ve worked construction. Laborers still have a union, and there’s a lot more of them than there are crane operators.
The privatized model is what Trump is offering, so it will indeed be ineffective.
Laborers have a union depending upon where you work. Outside of the Northeast and Great Lakes unions have a tough time.
I posting this here because I don’t see a Nov. 22 thread:
https://storify.com/Alex_Zucker/library-knitting-group-warned-to-be-careful-what-t
WTF? What jackass library employee is threatening/intimidating an old woman and her knitting group?
True. But outside of the Northeast and the Great Lakes, we’re talking about citizens who have worked against their own interest since before the Civil War. Economic arguments hold no sway outside the Great Lakes and Northeast. But the Great Lakes and the Northeast are both the Democrats’ turf and the areas most in need of updated infrastructure.