At first glance, this seems well and good: a firm commitment to winning victories where they are available, tied to an absolute line against policies targeting immigrants, Muslims, or any other group. But there’s a problem here, and it’s found in the cast given to Trump’s campaign and Trump’s voters. Both Warren and Sanders describe Trump’s effort as a populist campaign with an almost incidental use of racial prejudice. In this version, most Trump voters simply wanted a stronger, fairer economy. The attacks on immigrants, Muslims, and black Americans were regrettable, but not a part of the appeal.
Warren and Sanders are wrong, and in a way that signals a significant misreading of the landscape on the part of the most influential Democrats. The simple truth is that Trump’s use of explicit racism—his deliberate attempt to incite Americans against different groups of nonwhites—was integral to his campaign. It was part and parcel of his “populism” and told a larger story: that either at home or abroad, foreigners and their “globalist” allies were cheating the American worker, defined as a white working-class man with a factory job. To claw back the dominion he once enjoyed—to “make America great again”—Trump promised protectionism and “law and order.” He promised to deport immigrants, register Muslims, and build new infrastructure. This wasn’t “populism”; it was white populism. Writes historian Nell Irvin Painter for the New York Times: “This time the white men in charge will not simply happen to be white; they will be governing as white, as taking America back, back to before multiculturalism.”
It seems reasonable for Warren and Sanders to make a distinction between Trump as blue-collar populist and Trump as racist demagogue. But that distinction doesn’t exist. Supporting a Trump-branded infrastructure initiative as a discrete piece of policy where two sides can find common ground only bolsters a white-nationalist politics, even if you oppose the rest of Trump’s agenda. It legitimizes and gives fuel to white tribalism as a political strategy. It shows that there are tangible gains for embracing Trump-style demagoguery. Likewise, it seems reasonable to want to recast support for Trump as an expression of populism. But Trump’s is a racial populism—backed almost entirely by white Americans, across class lines—that revolves around demands to reinforce existing racial and status hierarchies. That’s what it means to “make America great again.” It has nothing to offer to working-class blacks who need safety from unfair police violence just as much as they need higher wages, or working-class Latinos who need to protect their families from draconian immigration laws as much as they need a chance to unionize.
To gesture at individual voters and say they aren’t racists—the usual rejoinder to this argument—is to miss the point. White voters backed Trump as a bloc. They ignored his bigotry and elevated his call for a new nationalism, centered on white Americans. Whatever their actual intentions—whether they were partisan Republicans, hardcore Trumpists, or simply disgusted with Hillary Clinton—they voted for white nationalism, full stop….
his isn’t a pedantic complaint. It matters that Warren and Sanders (and, it seems, the likely chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison) have made a choice to obscure the fundamental tribalism of Trump’s appeal. It matters that they’ve cast the bigotry of Trump’s movement as an element to oppose if it comes, and not an essential part of the whole. To take that step is to sanction white nationalism as a legitimate political appeal, thus rewarding the fight against liberal pluralist democracy.
There is a path for Democrats to build a more populist, class-centered party. But this isn’t it.”
A common thread running through the many post -election articles is a review of the Trump voter,s and how they might have voted so…
What clearly is missing is an introspective of what the Dems did to cause this REVOLT. What too often I see here is a continuance of the anger, name calling, arrogance, ridicule and isolated thinking which caused so many to turn from the Dem party/agenda/candidate.
The Wall Street Journal covered the national movement being waged against Walmart in China. Disgruntled workers, who complain of low wages and a new scheduling system that has left them poorer and exhausted, are protesting across the country. Bypassing official unions controlled by the Communist Party, the workers are using social media to coordinate their actions. A fifth of Walmart’s Chinese work force has joined the messaging group WeChat, and Walmart has discouraged its workers from downloading another app called WorkIt. Walmart has instructed store managers to tell employees WorkIt wasn’t made by the company and are describing it as a scheme to gather workers’ personal information. According to the Wall Street Journal, the government, which appears to be keeping a distance, seems worried about provoking backlash or being seen as acting on behalf of a prominent American company and against Chinese workers at a time of rising Chinese nationalism.
I think Bernie has slightly less to lose by declaring himself outside the party but inside the caucus than Warren does at the moment. That calculus may change over time, but for Bernie it’s a return to normalcy and helps preserve his public identity as a progressive alternative to a party strangled by those who want to drag it permanently into position as the left edge of the Republican party.
I’m becoming gradually convinced that the three party system people are probably right. A party system composed of a left progressive party, a far right party equivalent to the “Freedom caucus” and a middle composed of half the Republican politicians and half the Democrats would be better, particularly if the center party had less than 50% of the seats in government.
Left-Right have things they could agree to work on, center left and center right have things they could agree to work on, and it would be less likely that things like the last six or seven years of the Obama administration would happen, where a shard of a party holds pretty much the entire legislative process hostage and ends up ceding massive amounts of power to the executive.
“What clearly is missing is an introspective of what the Dems did to cause this REVOLT.”
CoRev, read my lips (cut-and-paste):
As my old Bronx doctor, Seymour Tenzer, put it: “All these histories are bullshit — I got punched in the chest; that’s why I’ve got a lump.”
Trump;s victory is down to the disappearance of the $800 job for the $400 job. That subtracted from the vote in the black ghettos – and added to the vote in the white ghettos — both ghettos being far off the radar screen of academic liberals like Hill and O.
I notice the white ghettos because that is me. My old taxi job (much too old now at 72 3/4) was “in-sourced” all over the world to drivers who would work for remarkably less (than the not so great incomes we native born eked out). Today’s low skilled jobs go to native and foreign born who willing to show up for $400 (e.g., since Walmart gutted supermarket contracts). Fast food strictly to foreign born who will show up for $290 a week (min wage $400, 1968 — when per cap income half today’s).
Don’t expect the 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age males to show up for a life time of $400/wk servitude. Did I mention, manufacturing was down to 6% of employment 15 years ago — now 4% (disappearing like farm labor, mostly robo; look to health care for the future?)? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
6% union density at private employers = 20/10 BP which starves every healthy process in the social body = disappearance of collective bargaining and its institutional concomitants which supply political funding and lobbying equal to oligarchs plus most all the votes …
… votes: notice? 45% take 10% of overall income — 45% earn $15/hr or less — a lot of votes.
J.Goodwin,
Reconstitute high union density — perfectly doable on a state by progressive state basis — and we reconstitute the institutional machinery to address the average person’s (black and white) daily concerns.
At present you see a TV story about pharma gouging or for profit school gouging, etc., but there is no institutional process to deal with it on a systematic basis. A story may provoke some limited action or not — and then it’s forgotten.
Most of all we reconstitute an actually free labor market where labor’s price is set by the max the consumer is willing to fork over — rather than the minimum the (poor, immigrant?) vulnerable worker is willing to subsist on (the vicious circle race to the bottom that eventually sucks everyone in like an economic black hole).
6% private economy union density is like 20/10 blood pressure. It starves every other healthy process (and can give rise to a tumor called Donald Trump).
Republicans control Washington now, but a string of successful campaign finance ballot initiatives at the state and local level has buoyed the democracy movement.
(cut-and-paste of mine)
To shore up my usual assertion that states can make union busting a felony (taking same as as serious an economic crime as taking a movie in the movies – couple year fed hospitality), state and federal laws against bank robbing coexist side by side (so could copyright violation penalties, no?).
Right now, at the federal level we have placebo protection for organizers. Jobs can be reinstated after years of waiting – mostly fired again for something else. No deterrence to suffocating unionizing – nor recourse, like mandating elections on finding of union busting – zero; nothing at all.
As such today’s federal law sets up a union certification gauntlet most all employees cannot survive – an inherently lopsided contest in an inherently adversarial process. Being forced into the straightjacket of an inherently unworkable organizing process – preempting something with nothing — is the equivalent of forbidding employees to organize a collective bargaining unit – a First Amendment right.
Interestingly, California has its own certification process for farm workers only. Seems FDR told Congress – trying to get the union law through; not written in the law – that it would not apply to farm workers. With this as an excuse states are able to set up certification of their own.
Leaving the esoteric aside – states can inarguably back up the federal labor organizing scheme by instituting criminal penalties for muscling in our most important market (would anybody doubt states may penalize unions for the reverse?).
The Dems elected Chuck to be minority leader so there won’t be any change forthcoming. They don’t care if they lose as long as the Wall Street gravy train keeps rolling apparently
“The Dems elected Chuck to be minority leader so there won’t be any change forthcoming. They don’t care if they lose as long as the Wall Street gravy train keeps rolling apparently”
Romney apparently interviewing for an administration position.
Health & Human Services would make sense to me…Ryan’s got no plan to reform ACA, and assuming you don’t just want it dead, you need someone with passing familiarity with healthcare reform.
CoRev, there’s no independent caucus. Repubs and Dems are constantly obsessed with getting a majority or supermajority so they can push their legislative agenda, instead of working across the aisle to accomplish mutual goals. Three equally powerful caucuses works better for this than two similarly powered caucuses that won’t engage with each other. No single caucus can accomplish any agenda item without support from someone else.
JG, I see what you are saying organizationally, but you are assuming near equality in size. That’s not a likely situation. Each will forever strive to dominate. So, it appears you are adding a third stress to an already stressed organization.
I guess I just don’t see the benefit to 3 versus 2.
The two party system definitely has matured into one where parties would literally prefer to stop any action at all rather than engage in discussion to get any portion of their shared agenda completed.
This has even put the Republican party into a position where they can’t even take action with a large majority (there were several situations in the second Obama term where the Republicans wouldn’t bring something to a vote if they could not get enough votes only from Republicans to pass the legislation, anything less was unacceptable, and they didn’t have enough consistency in their caucus to ensure that, even if the legislation advanced their policy agenda (i.e. agreed with their stated party platform)).
That’s crazy.
They don’t even have to be that equal in size, you could have 40/40/20 and it works. 45/45/10 and it works. You just need to shear off enough members of the two existing parties to break their ability to need both a majority in the chamber AND agreement among the coalitions that make up their party to accomplish something. Once that is broken, they have to look for partners on a bill by bill basis.
I never voted for a Clinton. First I preferred GHW Bush, second I did not care for Wm J.
I registered dem but always voted my choice.
I was for Bernie.
The dems must overcome the image they are liars a common tea party observation and corrupt, aka Clintons.
Obama saying that Assad caused all the casualties in Syria riven by US and Saudi support for al Qaeda standing next to Merkel does nothing for the democratic party’s liar image.
Bust up the DNC and find some honest people vice the hacks.
The “hacks” is the chorus of most alt right talk shows! For years, why Clinton the superb hack was run ………
Stop being nice. It is a gun fight.
”
At first glance, this seems well and good: a firm commitment to winning victories where they are available, tied to an absolute line against policies targeting immigrants, Muslims, or any other group. But there’s a problem here, and it’s found in the cast given to Trump’s campaign and Trump’s voters. Both Warren and Sanders describe Trump’s effort as a populist campaign with an almost incidental use of racial prejudice. In this version, most Trump voters simply wanted a stronger, fairer economy. The attacks on immigrants, Muslims, and black Americans were regrettable, but not a part of the appeal.
Warren and Sanders are wrong, and in a way that signals a significant misreading of the landscape on the part of the most influential Democrats. The simple truth is that Trump’s use of explicit racism—his deliberate attempt to incite Americans against different groups of nonwhites—was integral to his campaign. It was part and parcel of his “populism” and told a larger story: that either at home or abroad, foreigners and their “globalist” allies were cheating the American worker, defined as a white working-class man with a factory job. To claw back the dominion he once enjoyed—to “make America great again”—Trump promised protectionism and “law and order.” He promised to deport immigrants, register Muslims, and build new infrastructure. This wasn’t “populism”; it was white populism. Writes historian Nell Irvin Painter for the New York Times: “This time the white men in charge will not simply happen to be white; they will be governing as white, as taking America back, back to before multiculturalism.”
It seems reasonable for Warren and Sanders to make a distinction between Trump as blue-collar populist and Trump as racist demagogue. But that distinction doesn’t exist. Supporting a Trump-branded infrastructure initiative as a discrete piece of policy where two sides can find common ground only bolsters a white-nationalist politics, even if you oppose the rest of Trump’s agenda. It legitimizes and gives fuel to white tribalism as a political strategy. It shows that there are tangible gains for embracing Trump-style demagoguery. Likewise, it seems reasonable to want to recast support for Trump as an expression of populism. But Trump’s is a racial populism—backed almost entirely by white Americans, across class lines—that revolves around demands to reinforce existing racial and status hierarchies. That’s what it means to “make America great again.” It has nothing to offer to working-class blacks who need safety from unfair police violence just as much as they need higher wages, or working-class Latinos who need to protect their families from draconian immigration laws as much as they need a chance to unionize.
To gesture at individual voters and say they aren’t racists—the usual rejoinder to this argument—is to miss the point. White voters backed Trump as a bloc. They ignored his bigotry and elevated his call for a new nationalism, centered on white Americans. Whatever their actual intentions—whether they were partisan Republicans, hardcore Trumpists, or simply disgusted with Hillary Clinton—they voted for white nationalism, full stop….
his isn’t a pedantic complaint. It matters that Warren and Sanders (and, it seems, the likely chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison) have made a choice to obscure the fundamental tribalism of Trump’s appeal. It matters that they’ve cast the bigotry of Trump’s movement as an element to oppose if it comes, and not an essential part of the whole. To take that step is to sanction white nationalism as a legitimate political appeal, thus rewarding the fight against liberal pluralist democracy.
There is a path for Democrats to build a more populist, class-centered party. But this isn’t it.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/the_democrats_are_already_screwing_up_the_trump_resistance.html
.
Nice to see Sanders distance himself from the democratic party , Warren should switch to independent too.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/306528-sanders-wont-join-democratic-party
A common thread running through the many post -election articles is a review of the Trump voter,s and how they might have voted so…
What clearly is missing is an introspective of what the Dems did to cause this REVOLT. What too often I see here is a continuance of the anger, name calling, arrogance, ridicule and isolated thinking which caused so many to turn from the Dem party/agenda/candidate.
“The Basket of Deplorables” spoke!
https://onlabor.org/2016/11/17/todays-news-commentary-november-17-2016/#more-19204
Posted on November 17, 2016 by Alexa Kissinger
The Wall Street Journal covered the national movement being waged against Walmart in China. Disgruntled workers, who complain of low wages and a new scheduling system that has left them poorer and exhausted, are protesting across the country. Bypassing official unions controlled by the Communist Party, the workers are using social media to coordinate their actions. A fifth of Walmart’s Chinese work force has joined the messaging group WeChat, and Walmart has discouraged its workers from downloading another app called WorkIt. Walmart has instructed store managers to tell employees WorkIt wasn’t made by the company and are describing it as a scheme to gather workers’ personal information. According to the Wall Street Journal, the government, which appears to be keeping a distance, seems worried about provoking backlash or being seen as acting on behalf of a prominent American company and against Chinese workers at a time of rising Chinese nationalism.
I think Bernie has slightly less to lose by declaring himself outside the party but inside the caucus than Warren does at the moment. That calculus may change over time, but for Bernie it’s a return to normalcy and helps preserve his public identity as a progressive alternative to a party strangled by those who want to drag it permanently into position as the left edge of the Republican party.
I’m becoming gradually convinced that the three party system people are probably right. A party system composed of a left progressive party, a far right party equivalent to the “Freedom caucus” and a middle composed of half the Republican politicians and half the Democrats would be better, particularly if the center party had less than 50% of the seats in government.
Left-Right have things they could agree to work on, center left and center right have things they could agree to work on, and it would be less likely that things like the last six or seven years of the Obama administration would happen, where a shard of a party holds pretty much the entire legislative process hostage and ends up ceding massive amounts of power to the executive.
“What clearly is missing is an introspective of what the Dems did to cause this REVOLT.”
CoRev, read my lips (cut-and-paste):
As my old Bronx doctor, Seymour Tenzer, put it: “All these histories are bullshit — I got punched in the chest; that’s why I’ve got a lump.”
Trump;s victory is down to the disappearance of the $800 job for the $400 job. That subtracted from the vote in the black ghettos – and added to the vote in the white ghettos — both ghettos being far off the radar screen of academic liberals like Hill and O.
I notice the white ghettos because that is me. My old taxi job (much too old now at 72 3/4) was “in-sourced” all over the world to drivers who would work for remarkably less (than the not so great incomes we native born eked out). Today’s low skilled jobs go to native and foreign born who willing to show up for $400 (e.g., since Walmart gutted supermarket contracts). Fast food strictly to foreign born who will show up for $290 a week (min wage $400, 1968 — when per cap income half today’s).
Don’t expect the 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age males to show up for a life time of $400/wk servitude. Did I mention, manufacturing was down to 6% of employment 15 years ago — now 4% (disappearing like farm labor, mostly robo; look to health care for the future?)?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
6% union density at private employers = 20/10 BP which starves every healthy process in the social body = disappearance of collective bargaining and its institutional concomitants which supply political funding and lobbying equal to oligarchs plus most all the votes …
… votes: notice? 45% take 10% of overall income — 45% earn $15/hr or less — a lot of votes.
“Jim Webb: White working-class people don’t believe Democrats like them” http://hotair.com/archives/2016/11/16/jim-webb-white-working-class-people-dont-believe-democrats-like-them/
Just look at the articles and especially the comments we are seeing.
Continuing with the race baiting will be a failure. Why is is only the white population? Many minorities increased their Trump support.
JG, “I’m becoming gradually convinced that the three party system people are probably right.” How’s that different from Dem/Rep/Independent?
J.Goodwin,
Reconstitute high union density — perfectly doable on a state by progressive state basis — and we reconstitute the institutional machinery to address the average person’s (black and white) daily concerns.
At present you see a TV story about pharma gouging or for profit school gouging, etc., but there is no institutional process to deal with it on a systematic basis. A story may provoke some limited action or not — and then it’s forgotten.
Most of all we reconstitute an actually free labor market where labor’s price is set by the max the consumer is willing to fork over — rather than the minimum the (poor, immigrant?) vulnerable worker is willing to subsist on (the vicious circle race to the bottom that eventually sucks everyone in like an economic black hole).
6% private economy union density is like 20/10 blood pressure. It starves every other healthy process (and can give rise to a tumor called Donald Trump).
Stalled at the Federal Level, Democracy Advocates Look to the States
http://prospect.org/article/stalled-federal-level-democracy-advocates-look-states
Justin Miller
November 17, 2016
Republicans control Washington now, but a string of successful campaign finance ballot initiatives at the state and local level has buoyed the democracy movement.
(cut-and-paste of mine)
To shore up my usual assertion that states can make union busting a felony (taking same as as serious an economic crime as taking a movie in the movies – couple year fed hospitality), state and federal laws against bank robbing coexist side by side (so could copyright violation penalties, no?).
Right now, at the federal level we have placebo protection for organizers. Jobs can be reinstated after years of waiting – mostly fired again for something else. No deterrence to suffocating unionizing – nor recourse, like mandating elections on finding of union busting – zero; nothing at all.
As such today’s federal law sets up a union certification gauntlet most all employees cannot survive – an inherently lopsided contest in an inherently adversarial process. Being forced into the straightjacket of an inherently unworkable organizing process – preempting something with nothing — is the equivalent of forbidding employees to organize a collective bargaining unit – a First Amendment right.
Interestingly, California has its own certification process for farm workers only. Seems FDR told Congress – trying to get the union law through; not written in the law – that it would not apply to farm workers. With this as an excuse states are able to set up certification of their own.
Leaving the esoteric aside – states can inarguably back up the federal labor organizing scheme by instituting criminal penalties for muscling in our most important market (would anybody doubt states may penalize unions for the reverse?).
The Dems elected Chuck to be minority leader so there won’t be any change forthcoming. They don’t care if they lose as long as the Wall Street gravy train keeps rolling apparently
“The Dems elected Chuck to be minority leader so there won’t be any change forthcoming. They don’t care if they lose as long as the Wall Street gravy train keeps rolling apparently”
Scary thought.
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=42246265&nid=757&title=source-donald-trump-mitt-romney-to-meet-this-weekend
Romney apparently interviewing for an administration position.
Health & Human Services would make sense to me…Ryan’s got no plan to reform ACA, and assuming you don’t just want it dead, you need someone with passing familiarity with healthcare reform.
CoRev, there’s no independent caucus. Repubs and Dems are constantly obsessed with getting a majority or supermajority so they can push their legislative agenda, instead of working across the aisle to accomplish mutual goals. Three equally powerful caucuses works better for this than two similarly powered caucuses that won’t engage with each other. No single caucus can accomplish any agenda item without support from someone else.
JG, I see what you are saying organizationally, but you are assuming near equality in size. That’s not a likely situation. Each will forever strive to dominate. So, it appears you are adding a third stress to an already stressed organization.
I guess I just don’t see the benefit to 3 versus 2.
The two party system definitely has matured into one where parties would literally prefer to stop any action at all rather than engage in discussion to get any portion of their shared agenda completed.
This has even put the Republican party into a position where they can’t even take action with a large majority (there were several situations in the second Obama term where the Republicans wouldn’t bring something to a vote if they could not get enough votes only from Republicans to pass the legislation, anything less was unacceptable, and they didn’t have enough consistency in their caucus to ensure that, even if the legislation advanced their policy agenda (i.e. agreed with their stated party platform)).
That’s crazy.
They don’t even have to be that equal in size, you could have 40/40/20 and it works. 45/45/10 and it works. You just need to shear off enough members of the two existing parties to break their ability to need both a majority in the chamber AND agreement among the coalitions that make up their party to accomplish something. Once that is broken, they have to look for partners on a bill by bill basis.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-mitt-romney-secretary-of-state_us_582e0eb6e4b058ce7aa9efbf
Romney Secretary of State?
That seems like…a questionable idea.
I never voted for a Clinton. First I preferred GHW Bush, second I did not care for Wm J.
I registered dem but always voted my choice.
I was for Bernie.
The dems must overcome the image they are liars a common tea party observation and corrupt, aka Clintons.
Obama saying that Assad caused all the casualties in Syria riven by US and Saudi support for al Qaeda standing next to Merkel does nothing for the democratic party’s liar image.
Bust up the DNC and find some honest people vice the hacks.
The “hacks” is the chorus of most alt right talk shows! For years, why Clinton the superb hack was run ………
The line in the alt right chorus about hacks rhymes with Schumer!