How The Democratic Elite Betrayed Their Party And Paved The Way For Donald Trump

[BaggerofTea]

How The Democratic Elite Betrayed Their Party And Paved The Way For Donald Trump

The Republican elite is struggling to understand why so many of its core supporters have abandoned them for an authoritarian demagogue. After decades of cozy cohabitation, the plebes are moving out, leaving the cufflink wing of the party to wonder what went wrong.

Last week, the leading journal of elite conservative opinion presented a blunt, honest and unapologetic answer: Republican intellectuals loathe the rabble.

“The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture,” writes Kevin D. Williamson, one of several vocal Trump critics on staff at National Review. Williamson assails in scoffing prose what he calls the “immoral” “lie” of the current political moment. Specifically, “that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t.”

Surveying rust-belt desolation in upstate New York, Williamson concludes: “Nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.”

Liberal writers are reveling in Williamson’s straightforward poverty-shaming (which his colleague David French defended). The New Republic’s Jeet Heer sees the piece as a return to National Review‘s founding “aristocratic conservatism,” which has more recently been “obscured by a populist mask.” For Jonathan Chait, Williamson is exposing the perverse moral logic of hardline libertarianism. “The marketplace hasn’t failed the white working class,” he mocks. “The white working class has failed capitalism.”

They could go further. Republican elites have relied on such ideas for years. In the depths of the Great Recession, Paul Ryan worried that the social safety net was becoming “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency.” Unemployment had spiked not because of a financial crisis, but because the poor had suddenly decided in unison to be very lazy. Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” comment was nearly as dismissive as Williamson’s vitriol.

But this only explains why the rabble are abandoning their well-heeled overlords in the GOP. It does not explain why they have embraced a xenophobic authoritarian instead of, say, the Democratic Party.

The most comforting rationale for Democratic true believers is that these voters are racist and ignorant and hostile to Democratic policies on social issues. That’s part of the explanation. But the full truth is a bitter pill for Democrats to swallow. Thomas Frank’s new book Listen, Liberal Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of People?documents a half-century of work by the Democratic elite to belittle working people and exile their concerns to the fringes of the party’s platform. If the prevailing ideology of the Republican establishment is that of a sneering aristocracy, Democratic elites are all too often the purveyors of a smirking meritocracy that offers working people very little.

 

[BaggerofTea]

The trouble, Frank writes, began in the early 1970s, with a culture clash between the radical left on college campuses and the conservative ideas about race and gender that pervaded many union halls. The Archie Bunker stereotype of the gruff bigot denouncing communists and women’s lib ignored much labor history — Frank cites the United Auto Workers’ support for the Civil Rights Act, “the union placards carried by marchers at Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington” and the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis as counterevidence — but campus skepticism was not completely unfounded.

In the Hard Hat Riot of 1970, construction workers joined bankers in lower Manhattan to physically assault anti-war protesters, and police allowed the violence. President Richard Nixon later named the head of the construction workers union his Secretary of Labor.

It was not a good look. Organized labor’s status was about to plummet within the Democratic Party. Gary Hart started winning Senate campaigns by denouncing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Jimmy Carter lent his ear to deregulation advocates and appointed a Federal Reserve chairman bent on breaking union power. Frank quotes former Carter adviser Alfred Kahn:

“I’d love the Teamsters to be worse off. I’d love the automobile workers to be worse off. You may say that’s inhumane; I’m putting it rather baldly, but I want to eliminate a situation in which certain protected workers in industries insulated from competition can increase their wages much more rapidly than the average without regard to their merit or to what a free market would do.”

The idea that collective bargaining is incompatible with a free market would have been madness to FDR or Lyndon Johnson or Elizabeth Warren. But there’s also a not-so-subtle moral judgment about union workers embedded in Kahn’s econo-speak. The rednecks don’t deserve high wages because it takes money away from the good people. You know, the ones who went to college. This brand of elitism would come to dominate the worldview of Democratic Party leaders and the agenda of President Bill Clinton.

For most Democrats today, the Clinton years remain the good old days. The country prospered, incomes rose, and good-guy Bill survived all the insane political attacks from the Republican bad guys. Frank’s chapters on Clinton will make these Democrats feel terrible. Because for anyone who takes economic inequality seriously, the chief villain of the Clinton years wasn’t Ken Starr. It was Bill Clinton.

Here is a list of Bill Clinton’s major legislative achievements: Three separate major bank deregulation bills. Deregulating the telecom industry. Passing the North American Free Trade Agreement. Ending “welfare as we know it.” Passing a crime bill that turned over-incarceration into mass incarceration. Slashing the capital gains tax. He even cut a deal with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security, but the pact fell apart when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.

This was right-wing domestic policy on a scale unimaginable to Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush, achievements made possible only by a Democratic president willing to advance the ideological agenda of a Republican Congress (Frank cites a celebratory White House memo saying as much after a bank deregulation bill passed). The upshot of these policies was to shift economic power from Washington to Wall Street, while converting a large swath of the social safety net quite literally into prison.

“Toil hopelessly or go to prison,” Frank writes. “That is life at the bottom, thanks to Bill Clinton.”

Clinton defenders today argue that this was the best anyone could have done amid the full-throttle, facts-be-damned, you-murdered-Vince-Foster opposition he faced. But Frank teases out an elitist ideology underpinning Clintonism, laying bare its roots in earlier Democratic Party trends and its continued influence today.

Here’s Clinton in December 1992: “Our new direction must rest on an understanding of the new realities of global competition. The world we face today is the world where what you earn depends on what you can learn. There’s a direct relationship between high skills and high wages.”

This is the mantra of meritocracy. A degree means money and success. No degree equals poverty, and it’s your own fault if you don’t get one.

It turns out that boosting overall levels of education doesn’t actually assuage income inequality. The rate of college-level enrollment has been increasing steadily since the late Clinton years, while economic inequality has been exacerbated.

Striving to earn what you can learn has in fact destroyed the finances of many working-class families under Clinton, Bush and Obama. Between 1990 and 2013, enrollment at for-profit colleges and universities soared 565 percent, fueling a massive increase in the nationstudent debt burden. Americans now collectively owenearly a quarter of a trillion dollars to for-profit schools.

It’s generally proving to be a national ripoff. Only a third of students at for-profit schools graduate within six years, and those that do often receive limited economic benefits.

How has the Obama administration responded? The Department of Education hasmisled the public about alleged fraud at major student loan contractor Navient. It has refused to punish schools that violate state and federal rules. It has dragged its feet on providing debt relief to students from the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, even after federal judge ruled that the school scammed more than 100,000 students.

“What I fundamentally believe — and what the president believes,” former Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan told The New York Times in 2012, “is that the only way to end poverty is through education.” Heckuva job, Arne.

The student debt debacle has been a replay of Obama’s response to the Wall Street meltdown, when he rushed to get money to big banks while leaving struggling homeowners in the dust. His foreclosure-relief initiative was a backdoor effort to help banks, not borrowers. His Treasury Department didn’t even bother to spend the foreclosure aid money it was allocated, and his Justice Department shrugged off Wall Street prosecutions despite widespread evidence of fraud.

Like Clinton’s criminal justice reforms, these policies were not only classist, they were racist. Black and Latino students are overrepresented at for-profit colleges. Subprime mortgages disproportionately targeted black neighborhoods. Wall Streeters are overwhelmingly white.

This is why Democrats can’t just point their fingers and cry “but they’re racist!” when considering why white working class voters are turning to Trump. The Democratic Party’s commitment to racial justice clearly softens as we descend the class ladder. Democrats, Frank notes, applaud the shrewd technocratic management of the first black governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick. They don’t talk much about his tenure on the board of subprime lending giant Ameriquest from 2004 to 2006. Ameriquest was one of several firms sued by the NAACP for targeting black borrowers with predatory mortgages, and toward the end of his tenure, the company agreed to pay $325 million to settle predatory lending charges with 49 states. Patrick now works at Bain Capital.

To Frank, issues of racial and class justice get attention from Democrats so long as they do not threaten existing benefits for the multicultural professional class, which sees itself as the enlightened and deserving recipient of those rewards. If the Republican Party had not spent so much of its political energy over the past three decades winking and nodding to white nationalists, the Democratic Party wouldn’t be getting such an easy pass from voters of color.

At times, Frank underplays the Obama administration’s achievements. The creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the passage of the Affordable Care Act really have addressed problems faced by millions of working people. But he is correct to note that Obamacare was an effort to achieve a liberal policy goal while avoiding conflicts with the established order in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. When the CFPB moves to regulate payday lending, it isn’t taking on an industry where many elite Democrats can envision themselves operating. They want to work at JPMorgan Chase, not ACE Cash Express.

The Republican Party has been fanning the flames of fascism for years now. It’s grimly funny to watch Mitt Romney, who campaigned on self-deportation and sought Trump’s endorsement during his birther mania, suddenly insist that the GOP front-runner isn’t a proper Republican. But Trump’s supporters aren’t wrong when they envision liberals looking down their nose at the white trash. We’ve known since at least World War I that sustained economic misery breeds fascism, and Democratic leaders have consistently brushed aside the material needs of working class people for decades. It shouldn’t be a surprise that they’re looking elsewhere for solutions. It could have been prevented.

 

[Robbie3000]

I don't buy most of this argument. The White America underclass as he calls it, is overwhelmingly driven by racial resentment. I don't know if much can be done to attract people who willingly vote against their own interests out of bigotry and racism.

 

[BaggerofTea]

I don't buy most of this argument. The White America underclass as he calls it, is overwhelmingly driven by racial resentment. I don't know if much can be done to attract people who willingly vote against their own interests out of bigotry and racism.

The democrats were in a prime position to address the economic undercurrents to white americas racial resentment.

Instead of grabbing the ball and ending the game, they gently hit it back to the republicans.


They didn't stand up and call a spade a spade, they played the identity politic game on their end as well

 

[SirReginald]

We already know if it comes down to Hillary Vs Trump that Trump will win I still don't know how Clinton was allowed to run. Man, I wish they allowed Lessig to debate

 

[Robbie3000]

The democrats were in a prime position to address the economic undercurrents to white americas racial resentment.

Instead of grabbing the ball and ending the game, they gently hit it back to the republicans.


They didn't stand up and call a spade a spade, they played the identity politic game on their end as well

I don't know breh. The hate is strong with those people.

 

[BaggerofTea]

I don't know breh. The hate is strong with those people.

No doubt, dont get me wrong. But the democrats had a change to really hone in on the class struggle and unite working class blacks and whites

 

[Tate]

Democrats don't act in the interests of working class whites in meaningful ways. They don't position themselves as doing so rhetorically either generally, at least on the national scale. The GOP at least offers these people cultural affirmation.

The democrats offer limited support for unions and neoliberal means testing for non union workers. All the while sneering at hicks and hillbillies from lofts in Bedstuy.

Important point here; for as much pub as the white working class has gotten for supporting trump this year, they aren't his sole support group nor his most crucial. While trump wins big with GOP voters who lack a college degree, his support among actual blue collar workers isn't freakishly high. Many of these Trump voting high school grads are in managerial positions or self employed.

Trumpism is mostly an extension of the Tea Party movement(one can see the Trump vs Cruz primary as a split between the libertarian and populist factions of the Tea Party). On average the Tea Party was wealthier and better educated than the American public.

Also important to note; historically fascism is a middle class/petty bourgeois movement. Racial divides in America complicate this but I believe the trend will still hold.

Also, remember that the poor of all races and locales vote at very low rates and have little to no direct impact on the political process.

 

[hashmander]

the non-southern folks who are flocking to donald trump abandoned the democratic party with the reagan revolution, the southern ones abandoned them in the 60's. so now this clown is trying to act like they were in the fold before trump and were just chased out, fukk outta here. what did jimmy carter do to union voters to make them abandon him and vote for an anti-union man like reagan? he was more likely to preach that they are the victims of urban blight and they are right to engage in white flight.

if you understand that it's 1. race 2. economics and in that order you can save yourself the hand-wringing about how they were lost.

 

[TTT]

They see it as a zero sum game, isn't this what Lee Atwater was hinting at, if you claim minorities are getting benefits you imply that white working class are getting less. When was the last time Democrats actually won white working class men. Here is an excerpt from a NYT article about Clinton and white voters

Many said they did not trust her to overhaul the economy because of her wealth and her ties to Wall Street. Some said her use of private email as secretary of state indicated she had something to hide. A few said they did not think a woman should be commander in chief. But most said they simply did not think Mrs. Clinton cared about people like them.

“She’s talking to minorities now, not really to white people, and that’s a mistake,” said Dennis Bertko, 66, a construction project manager in Youngstown, Ohio, as he sipped a draft beer at the Golden Dawn Restaurant in a downtrodden part of town. “She could have a broader message. We would have listened.”

“Instead, she’s talking a lot about continuing Obama’s policies,” he said. “I just don’t necessarily agree with all of the liberal ideas of Obama.”

Mr. Bertko said that he rarely crossed party lines but that he voted for Donald J. Trump, who is making a strong pitch to disaffected white men by assailing free-trade agreements that Mrs. Clinton once supported. “I know a lot of guys who are open to Trump,” he said.[/B]

The fading of white men as a Democratic bloc is hardly new: The last nominee to carry them was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and many blue-collar “Reagan Democrats” now steadily vote Republican. But Democrats have won about 35 to 40 percent of white men in nearly every presidential election since 1988. And some Democratic leaders say the party needs white male voters to win the presidency, raise large sums of money and, like it or not, maintain credibility as a broad-based national coalition.

In Youngstown, a city battered by job losses, Mrs. Clinton’s record was a flash point at the Golden Dawn.

“Being an ex-serviceman, the situation with Benghazi still upsets me greatly,” said Hayden Gerdes, 72, referring to the terrorist attacks in Libya. A Clinton voter in 2008, he chose Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, on Tuesday.

Mr. Gerdes had a sparring partner in dikk Lucarell, 73, who voted for Mrs. Clinton in 2008 and again on Tuesday. Mr. Lucarell said that Mrs. Clinton was the target of unfair Republican attacks, and that she and her husband would be “a strong team.” But he also said she had yet to give white men compelling reasons to stay in the party.

“If I’m a woman, I probably vote for Hillary. If I’m Hispanic, I vote for Hillary. Blacks will vote for Hillary,” Mr. Lucarell said. “But white people, especially white men — she has a big problem there.”

 

[hashmander]

and the posters on this site that want to cite articles like this are generally left leaning and the articles themselves show that the people they are crying about who abandoned the party because the party isn't liberal enough (in the posters' opinions) have views like this man:

“I just don’t necessarily agree with all of the liberal ideas of Obama.”

you same people would say there is nothing liberal about Obama and this dude thinks Obama is too liberal. so no, he has no itnerest in supporting the candidates that you might think are sufficiently progressive and pure.

If you are considerate of minority opinion, that's valuing our opinion TOO much and abandoning white people.

“She’s talking to minorities now, not really to white people, and that’s a mistake,”

how do you win the white voters who believe it's a zero-sum game like TTT said above? maybe 35-40% of white males is the best the party can hope for.

 

[Tate]

and the posters on this site that want to cite articles like this are generally left leaning and the articles themselves show that the people they are crying about who abandoned the party because the party isn't liberal enough (in the posters' opinions) have views like this man:

“I just don’t necessarily agree with all of the liberal ideas of Obama.”

you same people would say there is nothing liberal about Obama and this dude thinks Obama is too liberal. so no, he has no itnerest in supporting the candidates that you might think are sufficiently progressive and pure.

If you are considerate of minority opinion, that's valuing our opinion TOO much and abandoning white people.

“She’s talking to minorities now, not really to white people, and that’s a mistake,”

how do you win the white voters who believe it's a zero-sum game like TTT said above? maybe 35-40% of white males is the best the party can hope for.

Liberal is a word that means something different to everyone, so do Moderate and Conservative. Self describing your political positions in general is dumb. Most people who describe themselves as Moderate do so out of a combination of right wing economic and liberal social views, or left wing economic and conservative social views.

This can be seen pretty clearly in a current polling: leftist sanders soundly beats the centrist Clinton among self described moderates and independents(who usually ID as in between parties) by emphasizing left economics moreso than social liberalism. On the other hand; the economically populist Trump wins moderate GOP voters despite his hard line on certain social issues. He also wins libertarian votes despite being by far the least libertarian option in the field and competes or wins very conservative voters despite his economic heresies.

Globally this is a well understood concept. In Britain, Labour debated moving to more conservative social positions to win back UKIP and Tory working class votes, while the Conservatives advanced issues like gay marriage to win cosmopolitan voters turned off by social conservatism.

Democrata have largely geared all efforts toward winning the cosmopolitan social liberal over the working class economic populist, with some notable exceptions in certain states where labor is still strong

 

[BaggerofTea]

and the posters on this site that want to cite articles like this are generally left leaning and the articles themselves show that the people they are crying about who abandoned the party because the party isn't liberal enough (in the posters' opinions) have views like this man:

“I just don’t necessarily agree with all of the liberal ideas of Obama.”

you same people would say there is nothing liberal about Obama and this dude thinks Obama is too liberal. so no, he has no itnerest in supporting the candidates that you might think are sufficiently progressive and pure.

If you are considerate of minority opinion, that's valuing our opinion TOO much and abandoning white people.

“She’s talking to minorities now, not really to white people, and that’s a mistake,”

how do you win the white voters who believe it's a zero-sum game like TTT said above? maybe 35-40% of white males is the best the party can hope for.

When you abandon your economically leftist policies for every so slightly left neo-liberalism economics, you are going to have these issues

Had the democrats stuck to FDR leftist economics they would have been a position to dominant the working class vote, instead they play identity politics in a bid to separate themselves from the Republicans but still run the same economic system

 

[Family Man]

The democrats were in a prime position to address the economic undercurrents to white americas racial resentment.

Instead of grabbing the ball and ending the game, they gently hit it back to the republicans.


They didn't stand up and call a spade a spade, they played the identity politic game on their end as well

You're giving these CACs too much credit. You think they give a fukk about none of that shyt? These mouth breathing CACs are irrational and operate just off emotions.

 

[BaggerofTea]

You're giving these CACs too much credit. You think they give a fukk about none of that shyt? These mouth breathing CACs are irrational and operate just off emotions.

Sometimes I wish that wasnt true, but then reality lets me know that it is