at this point in the W presidency he was still ****ing around with no child left behind. TRUMP is way out in front here comparatively.

I agree that the Democratic party should emphasize those popular messages, and I also agree that the domination of the party by technocratic/centrist/wealthy interests (however that should be described) is a problem.

But, it's not as clear to me that a simple change in messaging to emphasize further-left arguments about economics or distribution is enough. The problem, and it seems to me that this is increasingly clear, is that for a lot of Americans (read: white Americans) the cultural concerns trump the economic concerns, even when they hold more left-leaning opinions about the economic issues. Basically, there's a reason the Republican party has been successful running almost entirely on cultural grievances.

The above doesn't mean I think the left shouldn't make the changes you are suggesting, because I think we should. And there is the argument in favor of accepting the polarization on cultural issues as a given and simply working to turn out more voters who are sympathetic to those core left ideas. But the culture war issues seem like a big problem nevertheless.

To be clear, I'm opposed to changing the Democratic platform to be more appealing or less confrontational to people with retrograde views on race, gender, immigration, LGBT rights, or etc (in case that's not obvious :P), but it seems implicit in the suggestion about messaging that Democrats de-emphasize cultural issues in favor of economic ones, and I'm worried that in the long run winning the culture wars is as important as winning on economic issues, and I'm not sure how political parties on the left should harmonize these two problems. Particularly because a lot of the opposition in American politics to more progressive economic policies is motivated by cultural grievances.

So I guess after all this is just straight-up resentment over the civil war, and the continuing creeping loss of the White Man's dominion over everybody else. We joked that when they said MAGA they were referring to the time before women had the vote, but it turns out it's much earlier than that. When people like that douche in the Charlotesville thread talk about how the alt-right is a natural reaction to white men being continually told how horrible they are, this is what they're talking about. They really, really, don't want equality or progress.

This looks/feels like the situation in the middle east. These attitudes/resentments are really baked in. Maybe it'll change but it will take literally hundreds or thousands of years. I can't think of any way of "resolving" this situation so I want to start thinking of the best ways to live in it.

I mostly agree with this, but not 100%. The John Adams quote is great, but (i) he did business with slaveholders, (ii) he served as the vice-president to a slaveholder (George Washington); and (iii) he did nothing politically to oppose slavery. I haven't done any research, but I'm sure that he was opposed to things like women's suffrage.

All these things would be abhorrent to modern sensibilities. Even so, I think it's OK to give John Adams credit for being on the better side of the curve for his time. In other words, temporal context isn't an excuse for everything, but it can't be ignored entirely.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting we embrace some measure of retrograde views on race, gender, immigration, etc. so as to appeal less confrontational to angry whites. This is not Clinton Triangulation. There should be no Sister Souljah moment.

I feel like I'm a broken record on this and don't want to repeat myself, but will if asked. But the basic point: economic conditions allow for cultural strife to become significant political problems. Their natural position is somewhere in the background. There's no reason for normal people to be basing their votes off of Christmas greetings and statues. That's a void, a chasm really, that the right-wing adeptly filled because the left has nothing meaningful to offer.

Solve the woes of modern American with affirmative, popular policies that address significant economic stagnation and hopelessness for the majority of Americans watching their relative standing deteriorate and I predict cultural problems will recede to 2nd and 3rd level political priorities. They are ascendant and central now because the left has abdicated any meaningful political differences from the right in the space of how to talk to middle class and working class voters about policies that help them, leaving the playing field dedicated to only cultural grievances.

Do not flatter angry whites but don't let the playing field be defined exclusively in an area where they have natural, built-in advantages. You are not going to win a lot of middle class and up whites who are so far gone and don't really need much help. But I think we can animate some measure of convertible middle class and working class voters to participate, and override the effects of angry middle class and up whites who are simply motivated by cultural grievances. The right is mustering all of their available voters by delivering precisely what they want: white resentment politics. The left is leaving tons of voters adrift and meandering and unorganized.

tl;dr summary:



The critical mass of people are in that under $50k cohort. And I think the best solution to the problem of activating those voters is a strong economic populist message. Prattling on about statues and norms is not going to win them back. I think you accurately describe what motivates Trump voters (cultural concerns > economic ones) but not what motivates the totality of potential voters.

hard to believe this guy is king of the neocons

Zero haughtiness. Props.

A comment on a FB post I made:

lol

Question for the President, or any other Republicans I guess. If a sculptor in Charlottesville crafted a statue of Heather Heyer, where should it be placed?

There must be a good reason for GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to fly to London to meet with Julian Assange, I just cannot think of what that good reason could be which is clearly a failure of imagination on my part.

conjugal visit?

Also the Phoenix rally is 100% so he can announce Derpaio's pardon in front of an adoring crowd.

His spokesman told Politico he was meeting up with his wife to celebrate their 20th anniversary, so presumably he just stumbled into the Ecuadorian embassy by mistake on his way to Cafe Rouge.

How long will it take "wait for all the facts" president to comment on Barcelona? I imagine not very long.

Right, I know you aren't suggesting anything like that. I just wanted to make sure it was clear I wasn't

I've heard this argument many times. Most recently, during a plenary session at the ASA, although in that case the speaker was using a somewhat more explicitly Marxist way of framing it.

The thing is, I'm not convinced that this is correct. I've not really seen any compelling evidence for the conclusion that cultural strife will recede if economic conditions improve in the US. It's not clear to me why the opposite of your statement can't also be true: that cultural conditions allow for economic strife to become a significant political problem. I think you can read the history of the politics of the welfare state in the US in the 20th century in this way. In the 30s, enacting a progressive agenda required making racist concessions to southern Democrats. It seems reasonable to me to connect the stagnation of the progressive economic agenda in the wake of the civil rights era explicitly to racial politics, for example in the way media depictions of poverty changed from being almost universally depictions of white poverty to being mostly depictions of black poverty, and the impact this had on support for anti-poverty programs.

Or, maybe it's a chicken-egg problem. Maybe cultural strife would recede if widening economic inequality were addressed, but cultural strife makes it much, much more difficult to tackle the problem of economic inequality. There's also the point that there is at least some evidence (survey data about Trump voter incomes, for example) that suggests the people most outraged about Christmas greetings and other cultural issues are not themselves the most economically disadvantaged, so it's not clear why changes in inequality would cause them to care less about those issues. I've seen it argued that economic insecurity makes people less likely to prioritize cultural issues, rather than the opposite.

Re: your edit (the graph)

I think it suggests the strategy I mentioned before of focusing on turning out blue voters rather than convincing red ones, since the <$50k people are already more liberal. From a practical standpoint in the immediate future, I think that's a pretty good strategy. I'm not sure that it's an answer to the long-term problem of American culture though. Maybe the long term solution is education. I would like to make all high school students attend my wife's Sociology 101 courseindoctrination camp.

Politics in USA#1 can be confusing until you discover the Rosetta Stone:

all political issues today and going back to 1800 are actually about "are black people fully equal humans?"

Housing, education, taxes, health care, law enforcement, prisons, and infrastructure connect. Even issues that seem impossible to connect often do.

It is common to declare race off limits in discussing an issue, like "why are you playing the race card" or "race hustlers and other outside agitators" or from the other side "let's just fix class issues and never mention race".

Applying the rule to your question: The confederacy answers the question with a strong no, and the great again america patriotism that those guys desire and support also answers with a strong no. When America flirts with yes the patriotism jumps to insurrection faster than you can say 2A.

So just got off the phone with my Dad, who was trying to explain to my how Robert E. Lee wasn't racist.

There's a good reason. They met over "proof" that wikileaks never got the DNC stuff from Russia.

What would the Dem response be if conservatives pretending to be liberals began advocating for the removal of Jefferson and Washington memorials / statues / etc? Assume it couldn't be ignored; that conservative politicians were rabble rousing over it and calling it liberalism gone too far or something.

I'm closer to DVaut than well named on the chicken/egg problem, at least as the debate applies to middle and lower class white men in the South.

The most pervasive characteristic among that group is a deeply embedded sense of inferiority. That sense of inferiority manifests itself in reflexive support of "Southern" things (like Confederate monuments), hair trigger overreactions to any hint of condescension by non-Southerners, and retrograde social views, which tend to elevate white men over other social groups (minorities, immigrants, women, etc.).

The root causes of that sense of inferiority are multiple and complex and surely vary from person to person, but economic conditions are a big part of the stew.

I've been out of the South for a long time now, so maybe my views are dated, but I don't think much has changed.

yeah all those statues of Himmler, Goring, Goebbels, et al on every street corner.

wtf are you talking about?

2/3 of republicans are either conscious or barely sub-conscious racists. Sounds about right.

underground?

Corker has really gone from someone I thought might be reasonable to a full-blown #Trump4Lyfe whack-job in a matter of months. Dude is fully committed and will go down with the ship.

The other TN senator (Lamar!) is not much better.