–by Sebastian
By far the biggest thing about voting is that it is very tribal. The easiest predictor of how anyone will vote is to identify the tribe they voted for last time. For most people that changes at most ONE time in their entire lifetime. Now of course it is a feedback loop–the parties try somewhat to cater to their regular voters. Though they only do so insofar as the party perceives that their votes might have a chance to go to the other side.
When things change, they typically change on the margin of that. MOST people still vote for whomever they voted for last time. But JUST ENOUGH people change that behavior to swing the election.
So when it comes to the working class, it is easy to predict that on a general basis Democrats will have won more of the working class. They did so last election, two elections ago, and three.
Clinton appears to have lost because of two things–getting MANY fewer of traditional Democratic voters to vote for her at all nationwide (including in Democratic stronghold states where voter suppression can’t be a serious enough issue to explain the drop), and showing a very large swing (in the context of the fact that people almost never change sides) against her regarding the working class in the Rust Belt States.
The current meme explaining that among Democrats appears to be ‘racism’. That is a highly problematic claim in general because it doesn’t appear to show the change in voting patterns. (Most evidence for this takes the form of “the Republicans harbor racists”. But the actual racists have been voting for Republicans for at least 4-6 presidential cycles so that doesn’t explain the CHANGE).
The Rust Belt States especially show the problem with this explanation: they went for Obama (an actual black man) twice by relatively comfortable margins. For the most part, we fully expect that they will stick with whomever they voted for before–because almost everyone does that. But quite a few of them went from twice voting for a black man who was running as a Democrat for President, to voting for a Republican.
You have to thread the racism needle pretty tight to allow for a big swing of people who were willing to vote for Democrats most of their adult lives, who were willing to vote for a Democratic black candidate for president, and then who suddenly went racist enough to vote for a Republican.
It seems much more intuitive that they changed their minds about something other than race.
Now a much more valid analysis might be that they weren’t put off by Trump’s racism nearly as much as we wish they would have been. They let their personal concerns about job stagnation and job insecurity swamp concerns about Trump’s signaled racism. But that is a VERY different argument from the “they are just racists and I won’t compromise on racism” argument.
POSTSCRIPT: We still need to do whatever we can to fight the actual racists who have been emboldened by the way they their association with Trump is validated by his election. We just don't need to overreact by writing off the huge segment of people who are normally open to us.
But that is a VERY different argument from the “they are just racists and I won’t compromise on racism” argument.
how many instances of Trump supporters doing and saying racist things do we need before we can confidently say that there are a lot of racist Trump supporters? ’cause i’ve got a dozen links in my back pocket, just from the last two days.
I think your analysis here is basically correct, Sebastian.
And to be honest, I think a lot of what drives the racism that is there is scarcity. Competition for work, for services, for whatever.
If everybody actually had enough of what they needed, racial animus might not go away, but it would be (I think) less of a political and social motivator.
What I am trying to figure out, election aside, is what an effective and achievable solution to the basic problem looks like.
Hands-on manufacturing – factory work – hasn’t just gone away because it’s been offshored. It’s gone away because machines – robots – do a lot of it now. That isn’t going to change.
Next on the list is a wide range of transportation jobs that will begin to go to self-driving vehicles. At least that seems to be the most likely use case for that technology.
Maybe Trump will put a lot of folks to work on infrastructure, or on the Keystone pipeline. But those things are kind of finite in scope. You don’t need ten highways from one point to another, or ten bridges across the same river.
He’s talking about reviving coal, but that is going to be increasingly automated as well.
What’s needed is a broad-based productive economy that is sustainable over time scales measured in generations. By ‘productive’ I mean not a service economy, not FIRE sector. By sustainable I mean it isn’t just propped up by public initiatives – it is sufficiently value-producing to keep itself going.
It would be really nice if it also didn’t damage the world we all have to live in.
What fits that bill?
Seb,
I was about to post this in the other thread.
Dem share of the vote in PA, MI, & WI went down from 2008 to 2012 and again from 2012 to 2016, as you showed. It’s true that the Dem candidate was a black man in the first two elections, and a white woman in the latest one.
It is also true that:
In 2008 the black man was a Dem running to replace a 2-term Republican.
In 2012 the black man was the incumbent president.
In 2016 the white woman was a Dem running to replace a 2-term Democrat.
Americans, half of who are mentally below average, have historically tended to re-elect incumbent presidents and then swing to the other party. Also, it’s hard to say whether black or female is the greater deviation from the historical norm of the presidency, as far as Real Murkins are concerned. So it’s hard to tease out racism or the lack of it from just those facts.
It’s extremely easy OTOH to find the racism (and misogyny, vulgarity, vindictiveness, and ignorance) in the pronouncements and the tweets of He, Trump. You are absolutely correct about tribalism, to which I will add that tribes generally have totems.
We vote for president-as-agent AND president-as-totem at the same time. The president-as-agent is who you vote for because he promises to cut your taxes, or protect your reproductive rights, or fix the pothole down the street. The president-as-totem can make you feel good about voting for a woman, or voting for a war hero, or voting for a birther.
There is a difference between the totemic factors (whatever they are, and however you weight them in deciding who to vote for) and the agency factors. The president-as-agent’s promises may not be sincere, they may not be achievable, and they may have consequences different from what you expect. The president-as-totem’s symbolism is in your face for a couple of years of campaigning. You gamble on the agent, you validate the totem.
Not even so cartoonish a figure as He, Trump is one-dimensional. He is at least one thing besides a hater of The Other: he is a flashy “billionaire”. Perhaps, to be charitable, we can agree that his voters were merely expressing their admiration of his ostentation rather than his birtherism in the totemic part of their voting calculation.
The agency piece of their calculation may or may not work out as they expect. If it doesn’t, we might charitably call THAT part of their calculation an honest mistake.
–TP
Whether or not lots of Trump voters are racist isn’t the issue. Lots of them absolutely are racist and absolutely do feel empowered by Trump’s win. But they aren’t why Clinton lost.
If you want to develop a strategy on winning, of course you can’t focus on the racists. They won’t be voting for you. But you can focus on the people who voted for a black president but then voted for Trump.
They probably aren’t racist, or at least not so racist that they can’t be worked with. They voted for a black Democratic president. They voted for Democrats for decades.
We just don’t need to overreact by writing off the huge segment of people who are normally open to us.
This is what I think too. I don’t want to go down that road of simply calling everyone names and I find that old binary “for us or against us” is coming to the fore again.
But you can focus on the people who voted for a black president but then voted for Trump.
…
They voted for a black Democratic president. They voted for Democrats for decades.
how do you know this? who is this ‘they’ ?
is there polling that shows a significant number of people voted for Obama twice and then voted Trump ?
without that, we can’t assume they’re the same people.
If you want to develop a strategy on winning, of course you can’t focus on the racists. They won’t be voting for you. But you can focus on the people who voted for a black president but then voted for Trump.
There are probably some constant things about winning from election to election, but the mood of the country and issues change significantly too, so developing a strategy to go back to 2012 when it’s 2020, and thinking that the same dynamics are going to be there is silly.
This is the first time, too, that a woman was running for President. That mattered.
He’s talking about reviving coal, but that is going to be increasingly automated as well.
Already is. A relative handful of guys with a dragline and some big trucks can put coal on a train in Wyoming/Montana for a quarter the cost of coal at an Appalachian railhead. The biggest railroads love them some coal — loose delivery schedules, doesn’t mind sitting in the rain or snow — and will give you a good price on transport. 40% of all the thermal coal in the US comes out of six counties in the Powder River Basin. It’s amazing how far east it gets moved: Plant Scherer in central Georgia, #1 GHG emitter in the US, is fueled exclusively with PRB coal.
How is he going to “revive” coal? Particularly in the face of state/local decisions about its use? LA is moving on its coal-free goal. Western states keep upping their renewable electricity mandates. Even North Carolina is getting pissed off at the coal burners’ ash ponds.
How is he going to “revive” coal?
Perhaps only in the fond wishes of some of his supporters. And I hope it goes no further than that.
Mostly my point was that it’s unclear to me how a lot the promises to create jobs are actually going to pan out.
The rust belt issues are somewhat due to NAFTA etc., but also somewhat due to simply better technology.
When my great-grandfather moved here from Italy in the 19-aughts, he fed his family by digging subway tunnels in NYC. By hand.
That job doesn’t exist anymore.
Other jobs, likewise.
To borrow from Keynes, you could imagine a government program that hires laid-off coal miners, at their old wages, to mine coal — and hires laid-off auto workers at their old wages to bury it again. Some of us snooty eastern libruls might even be willing to pay more taxes to fund such a program. Our all-GOP government would never go for it, of course, even if it could figure out how to tax only snooty eastern libruls to pay for it.
Hypothesis: the laid-off coal miners would not be happy about it either. Unless their coal was burned in power plants, they would feel … insulted.
–TP
I don’t question that a significant portion of Trump’s support came from actual racists, but those folks have never voted Democrat and have always been there if more emboldened.
My unscientific analysis from reading varied blog comments (many from distasteful sites) is that a significant amount of Trump support came from rural and/or working class whites who really are not racist, but were simply tired of being called racist, sexist and stupid simply because they disagreed with people on the left.
As you know most issues are complex and nuanced and some are interwoven with religious and philosophical beliefs. Ultimately these folks might be wrong on many of these issues, but labeling them racist or stupid and dismissing inherent complexity of issues for which on the left is settled dogma was not ultimately constructive.
So ultimately think there was a huge backlash against Political Correctness.
From a Washington Post editorial“>https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-college-educated-americans-are-out-of-touch/”>editorial
… a reduction of all disagreement to racism, bigotry and ignorance — in addition to being wrong about its primary source — will simply make the disagreement far more personal, entrenched and vitriolic. And it won’t make liberal values more persuasive to the less educated, as Trump victory demonstrates.
From a Reason post“>http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-leftist-political-corr”>post ( I admit I used to read Reason ten years ago to challenge my left of center economic views with what used to be thought provoking argumentation. I hadn’t been to the site in years and it seems to have been taken over by vile libertarian zealots., but nevertheless I offer this for thought) :
The leftist drive to enforce a progressive social vision was relentless, and it happened too fast. I don’t say this because I’m opposed to that vision—like most members of the under-30 crowd, I have no problem with gender neutral pronouns—I say this because it inspired a backlash that gave us Trump.
My liberal critics rolled their eyes when I complained about political correctness. I hope they see things a little more clearly now. The left sorted everyone into identity groups and then told the people in the poorly-educated-white-male identity group that that’s the only bad one. It mocked the members of this group mercilessly. It punished them for not being woke enough. It called them racists. It said their video games were sexist. It deployed Lena Dunham to tell them how horrible they were.
I warned that political-correctness-run-amok and liberal overreach would lead to a counter-revolution if unchecked. That counter-revolution just happened.
It is, of course, important to note that these things don’t have to be actually true, but just perceived to be true for there to be a real backlash phenomena.
From another Reason post“>http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/10/colleges-cancelled-exams-for-students-tr”>post more or less mocking the reaction of colleges cancelling exams and offering grief counseling after the election:
But campus progressives have willfully pushed race-based and identity-group-based classifications: calling for segregated safe spaces and programs for students of color, LGBTQ students, Native American students, Latinos, and so on. At the same time, they have assailed white privilege and white fragility, treating white people like the enemy. In electing Trump, whites may have lived up to their expectations, but I can’t help but wonder whether that was a foreseeable consequence of the left’s campaign to demonize them
I don’t know if this is true or not, I only offer this as an alternative to the simplistic view that it was just racism that explained Clinton’s under-performing among a portion of the electorate that either voted for Obama or didn’t care to vote for McCain or Romney.
Disclaimer – I think Trump is a dangerous demagogue and is the most intellectually and emotionally unqualified person to run for President in my lifetime. I have voted for Democrats in every election since 1992.
Regarding the racism or non-racism of middle American whites:
To whatever degree folks are motivated by race, there isn’t a lot that can be done about it. Maybe some folks will have an epiphany and change their attitudes, maybe they won’t.
To the degree that folks are motivated by a basic inability to create a stable and secure life for themselves, there are things that can be done. And should be done.
Not to disparage the Clintons specifically, but while they were gifted politicians and serious wonks, they also were the public face of political triangulation. The traditional (D) emphasis on working people kind of went by the wayside.
As much as I have vocally insisted on recognizing the element of bigotry in Trump’s rhetoric and among his supporters, I also recognize the freaking despair that comes with feeling like you have no future for yourself, or to offer your kids.
There isn’t a lot public policies can do to change bigotry, other than to simply not tolerate its public expressions.
There is a lot that public policy can do for the other issues.
I basically agree with what I take to be Sebastian and also wj’s arguments that, if the (D)’s want to be relevant at all, they need to re-engage with working people.
From what I understand of Trump’s agenda, I don’t think it’s actually going to be that great for those folks. We can find something better to offer.
Not to disparage the Clintons specifically, but while they were gifted politicians and serious wonks, they also were the public face of political triangulation. The traditional (D) emphasis on working people kind of went by the wayside.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. They got results in decreasing poverty. In the 2000’s the stagnation started, but whether or not that can be blamed on Clinton or NAFTA or any particular factor is really not clear.
I basically agree with what I take to be Sebastian and also wj’s arguments that, if the (D)’s want to be relevant at all, they need to re-engage with working people.
This is a really important discussion, but I’m not sure we should be having it in the aftermath of this election, trying to assign blame to Democrats because of their supposed disengagement with the working class.
Barack Obama was black, and subjected to race-based hate mongering throughout his presidency, even though he was such a charismatic person that he overcame that and was extremely popular. Hillary Clinton, likewise, was the victim of 20 years of hatemongering. This election year, her emails were collected, investigated, hacked and read by anyone who wanted to cherry pick anything unflattering. The hacking was done with the assistance of the Russian government, and the FBI and the press were complicit in “casting shadows” over her reputation. Most of this was completely without basis. That she had to overcome a certain amount of sexism is undeniable.
She still won the popular vote by a healthy margin. Bernie Sanders did have a populist appeal with some number of people who didn’t like Clinton for whatever reason, and to a certain extent his candidacy created some ill will towards her as an “establishment” person who was too concerned with her own wealth. This was a narrative that had some truth to it, but Bernie never really allowed the transparency that Clinton did, so … we all know that story.
Then Trump comes along, an alpha male whose personality and demeanor are repulsive to some, but extremely charismatic to others.
All of this is way more important than the “working class white economic anxiety” story. Sure, some people have lost jobs and haven’t gotten them back, but we are at almost full employment, and as I’ve repeatedly mentioned (with links that I’m not going to find again), wages are getting better, finally, at a rate not seen in decades. All this after the worst recession since the Great Depression.
I’m tired of hearing the complaining. This was not a story of Democrats generally not connecting with voters who are hurting. This is the story of the appeal of a racist strongman to people who are, culturally, interested in that.
lest we throw out everything that makes it worth being a Democrat, it’s worth keeping in mind that the Dems:
1. gained Senate seats
2. gained House seats
3. won the popular vote
4. (probably) defeated the jackhole governor in NC.
along with Tony’s very important notes about incumbency.
that is not the description of a defeated and dying party. that is not a party that needs to rebuild itself from the ground up lest it crumble into irrelevancy.
though i think she was just the best of those who ran, Clinton was not the best candidate ever. a more naturally charismatic candidate would have done better. someone with a better relationship with the press might have done better. and even Clinton might have done better against someone who wasn’t a TV celebrity who scooped up billions in free TV time because it was good for TV ratings. (i hope Les Moonves feels good about his new Trump-funded cash, and that he ultimately chokes on it)
but, ultimately, parties lose elections. roughly half of everyone who runs loses.
House Dems are fighting the tough gerrymandering from 2010, but that can’t last forever. and if the Party can get its act together for 2020, they might be able to control redistricting next time.
i’m not about to start thinking up ways i can tell deplorable people that it’s ok to be deplorable, and i’m not going to vote for anyone who does. of the many reasons i’m a liberal is a fundamental belief that racism, xenophobia and the rest are Wrong.
also, what sapient said.
one last parting shot…
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/surviving-the-age-of-trump
Good advise. Read the book.
Merry Christmas.
In the 2000’s the stagnation started, but whether or not that can be blamed on Clinton or NAFTA or any particular factor is really not clear.
Yes, I agree that the relationship is not clear. There are a lot of reasons for the decline of the traditional manufacturing sector in the US.
I also agree that they got results in decreasing *poverty*, but that isn’t the same thing as helping build a solid replacement for declining economic sectors.
Tech grew enormously during Bill Clinton’s tenure, but I don’t think that was a large boon for the areas hit by the decline in manufacturing.
I don’t especially blame the Clintons for any of that. My point FWIW is simply that the “new democracy” stuff Clinton introduced was in some ways a move away from the traditional association between (D)’s and labor.
This is a really important discussion, but I’m not sure we should be having it in the aftermath of this election, trying to assign blame to Democrats because of their supposed disengagement with the working class.
FWIW, I *am not* looking to assign blame to anyone. To whatever degree (D)’s have failed to help folks hurt by the decline in manufacturing, the (R)’s have done even more.
I think your point about the “charismatic” appeal of Trump is apt. Folks who bought into that will find out how much it will help them.
Mostly, my concern is to try to understand *what can actually be done* for folks who have been screwed over the last 35 years or so.
In any case, I’m happy to defer this discussion to a less fraught time.
that is not the description of a defeated and dying party.
I don’t consider the (D)’s to be that. I’m actually considering moving from unenrolled to (D) specifically to take an explicit side in our two-party arrangement.
Lines are being drawn, I’m dead clear about which side of them I am on.
The one and only observation I’m trying to make is (a) there are large sectors of the economy that have been harmed and neglected over the last 35 years, and (b) there is an opportunity there for (D)’s to offer better solutions than the (R)’s.
Folks who are just going to vote for the strongman asshole are still just going to do that.
Folks who might prefer not to, might not.
It seems like my comments here are on the “blame the Democrats” tip. That’s not my intent.
In any case, I’m happy to have this conversation another time, when my comments aren’t going to be construed as hating on (D)’s.
Of course a whole bunch of Trump voters were racists. They made it obvious. But that kind of old fashioned overt racism is not key to Trump’s appeal or key to the appeal of eh Republican party in general. The appeal is a nasty negative one, but not strcitly racist, in my opinion.
I read an article written by a woman who embedded herself in Alabama and listened carefully and at legnth to Repubulican voters. She learned that they were voters who voted their feelings. Reason and issues had little to do with it. So what were the feelings that motivated their vote?
She tried a metaphor out on them > She asked them if the metaphor worked and they enthusiastically siad yes. This is the metiaphor: in teh past if you ranked Americans in order from first to last you would have rich white people at the head of the line, followed by other white people in income order, eith other races and gay people at the back of the line.
Then in recent decades those folks at the back have been allowed to move up. Some have even moved ahead.
Thus pissed off Republican voters wh are mad because they people who used to be at the back of the line are being given the opportuinities to move up that they alwasy should have had.
I think Republicans see life as a zero sum game. They assume that if anyone who used to be deprived of rights, gets those rights, then it must be at their expense. They see themselves in competition and though they claim to believe in equaity the gtruth is they were quite happy to get a piece of the pie when others did not have seat at the table. And they resent the hel out of letting those others get a seat.
It does not occur to them that the pie could be made bigger. That’s how Deocrats think.
Instead they are mad at what they perceive as a loss of status. It is nnot a real loss of staus and the party they vote for will not do anything to better their circumstances.
The only thing the Republican party offers is dog whistles to appeal to that resentment.
So is racism part of this? well sure. But from a poitcal point of view I think it woudl be better to focus on making the pie bigger.
And the rightwing disnformation hate network is also powerful.
And the rightwing disnformation hate network is also powerful.
If we could figure out how to better filter truth from lies (and label it all for what it is) on various media, that would be a huge help. I trust a lot of what I read on the Internet because I’m careful about sources, but some people have a huge problem distinguishing. Also, fraudster in chief and his Breitbart buddies – he has all the tools in place.
Bill Clinton got where he was through the so-called ‘Third way’. Hindsight is 20/20, but given that no other OECD country has been able to assemble a coalition of working class that advocates progressive policies or protect their manufacturing jobs, I’m not sure what he or anyone else could have done to stop the problem the Dems are facing. He could have avoided having an affair and Gore might have won, a (slightly) more enlightened approach to the middle east may have prevented islamophobia from being a thing and we might all be better off now, but railing at what Clinton did, given that his administration was 2 decades ago, seems a waste of time.
Sebastian: When things change, they typically change on the margin of that. MOST people still vote for whomever they voted for last time. But JUST ENOUGH people change that behavior to swing the election.
This is such a neat, reasonable explanation that it’s really a pity that the data don’t support it.
Trump didn’t win because some people who voted for Obama changed parties and voted for Trump. Note that Trump got fewer votes than either McCain or Romney got. He didn’t win because he attracted (for whatever reason) voters who previously voted for Obama.
Trump got elected because voters who turned out (twice) to vote for Obama stayed home this time. Trying to figure out what made Obama voters change isn’t going to get you anywhere because that isn’t what happened.
Actually, I read something earlier this week on the topic. (Which I can’t put my finger on just now.) The core point was that, over the past couple of decades, the Republicans can reliably turn out a set number of voters for a Presidential election. What determines whether they win or lose is how many voters the Democrats can turn out. Just that; nothing else.
So, to understand what happened and why, focus on the folks who turned out for Obama, but not for Clinton. That has some prospect of telling you something useful.
P.S. None of this is to say that people don’t change party preference. Sometimes in large numbers. Just that in this case, that isn’t what we’re looking at.
Alan, your Reason links have extraneous characters which prevent the articles you mention from showing up.
http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-leftist-political-corr and http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/10/colleges-cancelled-exams-for-students-tr
Both of which reminded me why I don’t take libertarianism or Reason seriously any more.
This is a really important discussion, but I’m not sure we should be having it in the aftermath of this election, trying to assign blame to Democrats because of their supposed disengagement with the working class.
Ah, yes, this. And once we’re past the immediate post-election period, it’ll be time to look forward, not back, right?
We all know how this game is played, and to what end.
Wonkie, the exact metaphor is:
It is subtly different from the one you gave.
A great line from the same report:
For me one underappreciated key think to notice is that he won’t count as unemployed in the unemployment statistics. So when people say things like–places that voted for Trump didn’t have bad unemployment levels–they aren’t really capturing the problem in their minds.
Ah, yes, this. And once we’re past the immediate post-election period, it’ll be time to look forward, not back, right?
Speaking of looking forward, what is your plan? I asked you what political candidates you were looking at who met your purity criteria, since you’re so good at prognosticating electable general election candidates. Got one in mind? In the meantime, I hope you’re doing something to protect vulnerable people in your community from the goon squads, since you were too good to GOTV for the alternative to the Nazi.
As far as looking back, I’m looking right at you. This is on you.
As I look back, and see you, NV, I realize that it does me no good at all – it just worsens the physical sickness I’ve felt since Tuesday night. I’m going to say goodbye to these little snarkfests with you. I value some of the other people here tremendously, but I won’t be reading anything you offer up. I need to focus on coming together with good people to fight this monster. It’s counterproductive to continue to have meaningless dialogue with nihilists.
“I’m not sure what he or anyone else could have done to stop the problem the Dems are facing.”
I agree with this.
my comments up thread were not about hating on clinton. either clinton. nor were they about blaming them for Trump’s success.
Clinton lost precisely because she displayed the same mindset that sapient has been displaying on this blog for some years now:
the arrogance, the inability to listen, the narcissism, the moralistic self-righteousness
Clinton lost precisely because blah blah blah.
To be really precise, Clinton won the popular vote and has the support of the majority of the American people as a whole. Clinton lost “precisely because” millions of other Americans who have an outsized electoral college presence were charmed by a Nazi. Wherever you live, I’m sure you have your own contingent of them, and when they rear their ugly heads, the purists have to
get their heads out of their assjoin together with others, and fight them.I will put you with NV on my list of trolls not to read.
It is subtly different from the one you gave….. A great line from the same report:
I read the article. I have about a thousand things to say about it, I will try to be brief.
Yes, many of the kinds of work that used to provide a livelihood to working people – blue collar people, for lack of a better word – have either disappeared, or are no longer secure, or no longer pay enough to provide a stable life.
Yes, as even Charles freaking Murray has discovered to his astonishment, even among white people that has led to a huge amount of social dysfunction.
I am with them every step of the way so far. I am willing and happy to do whatever can be done to make their situation better.
Sign me up.
Blacks, Mexicans, Syrians, Muslims, Somalis, and whoever else you want to name have not one thing to do with that, nor are they to blame for it.
That is the precise point where I part ways with the folks in the article, and with the tea party people, and with the Trump supporters who share the same perception that “those people” are the problem.
Not only it is incorrect for them to blame those people, *it does nothing whatsoever to improve their lives*. On the contrary, *it is an impediment* to improving their lives, because it doesn’t address any of the causes for their distress.
It’s folly.
And, not only is it folly, it’s harmful evil bullshit, because it breeds hate and resentment.
It’s admirable that people, in the face of economic distress, want to try to do for themselves and not accept any help from the government. That said, it may also be self-defeating. The situation may be such that the things that people can do for themselves are not sufficient.
And, it’s no longer admirable when people not only refuse that help for themselves, but insist that no one else can have it either.
I’m really not sure where to go with things like this. I felt the same way when I read Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy”. I sympathize with these folks, and would be happy to pitch in in whatever way I can to help them out. They don’t want it, and are proud of not wanting it.
And, they don’t want anyone else to have it either.
So, WTF? Where does that leave any of us?
Lastly, I don’t care how poor you are, you can brush your freaking teeth. And, Obama “paid for Harvard” by working his ass off and earning his place there.
They could do the same.
Working people in this country have been royally screwed, for a generation. And if the Paul Ryans of the world are any indication, it ain’t over yet, not by a long shot.
Hating on the blacks, Mexicans, women, gays, Muslims, or whoever, is going to do bugger-all for them. And, it has earned them, and will continue to earn them, my resistance in any way I can express that.
Quit hating on people.
And yes, I know that the world is full of snotty people who look down on working people. I’ve been a working person by that definition for that matter, and I remember it quite well.
It’s no excuse.
Quit hating on people, and accept the help that other people want to give you. Or, don’t accept it, and find constructive ways to improve your lives.
But quit fucking hating on people.
Their lives will not improve until they give up the hate. Not because of anything I say or do, but because it will be a fucking ball and chain for them, and will prevent them from doing anything effective to help themselves.
The big shock for these people is going to come when they see what a Donald Trump administration does for them. I could be wrong, I have no crystal ball, but I don’t see a great and urgent passion for the plight of the working class in his resume.
So much for brief. But, that’s most of what I have to say on it.
To be really precise, Clinton won the popular vote and has the support of the majority of the American people as a whole.
More people voted against Donald Trump than voted for him.
His supporters are a minority of the electorate, and of the population.
Tuesday’s outcome did nothing to change that.
I expect the ranks of people who are not fans of Donald Trump to expand as the reality of life under Trump plays itself out.
I’ve been an independent or unenrolled voter all my life. I’m going to register as a (D), because I just don’t think there’s a lot of room for standing on the sidelines anymore.
I don’t care if the (D)’s are not perfect, or even if they suck. They aren’t (R)’s. That’s good enough for me at this point.
The country may be going down the tubes, but I’m going to at least try to do something about it. Not have an opinion about it, but do something about it.
His supporters are a minority of the electorate, and of the population.
here’s a fun little fact. both Trump and Clinton we selected by 1/7 of their party’s eligible voters. the other six didn’t bother.
but everybody complains about how ‘bad our choices were’.
both Trump and Clinton we selected by 1/7 of their party’s eligible voters. the other six didn’t bother.
but everybody complains about how ‘bad our choices were’.
Of course we do. It’s just ever so much easier to blame someone else for your problems than it is to wade in and work at actually doing something about them. That applies to blaming others for the general election candidates. That applies to blaming others for not being able to get a job, at least one that pays as well as you think you deserve.
Always easier . . . but useless when it comes to solving the problem. See also Russell’s comments above.
In case someone hasn’t linked to it yet, this supports Sebastian”s post–
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/business/economy/can-trump-save-their-jobs-theyre-counting-on-it.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
The people interviewed don’t sound like haters. Some voted for Clinton, some for Trump, but I get the impression they are closer to each other than to either of the candidates.
One account of why Clinton lost, which to me is reasonably persuasive:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-series-of-strategic-mistakes-likely-sealed-clintons-fate/2016/11/11/82f3fcc0-a840-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_clintonmistakes-1010pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Of course, it is predicated on Trump getting more votes than any of us expected him to, hence the racism debate. In any event, whatever it was went beyond simply racism, as this New Yorker article makes quite clear:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/learning-trump-won-in-west-virginia
Trump is an unconscionable liar, and deeply unpleasant person, but it’s hard to deny that he is simply a better campaigner than Clinton. And the envelope of what is acceptable in a candidate seems to have expanded alarmingly.
Trump is an unconscionable liar, and deeply unpleasant person, but it’s hard to deny that he is simply a better campaigner than Clinton.
A flawless candidate.
Trump knows how to work a crowd (of idiots), no doubt.
Trump was right the election was rigged.
http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/
The important thing is that whatever role racism plays you are not going to get people to reduce it by putting them in a basket of deplorables and writing them off. This feeds the tribal instincts of liberals but does not win votes. Clearly enough people do change to decide elections, as Sebastian writes.
Is the way to combat racism palling up with Goldman Sachs to get more money to run the negative ads which don’t work? Democrats should be focusing on the class war, not the race war, and they should put themselves clearly on the side of the 99%.
the arrogance, the inability to listen, the narcissism, the moralistic self-righteousness
That’s a pretty good summary of Republican rhetoric for decades.
Attributing those attributes is blaming the victim. It is part of the bully technique for the bully to try to shut the victim up when the victim objects to the bullying behavior by attributing to the victim the bully’s behavor.
One of the differences between Deomcrats and Republicans is that Democrats are willing to take engage in self-criticism when we lose, but Republicans only re-examine their sales pitches. They don’t look at their tactics or their policies.
I think that it is true that Trump voters would be best serviing their own interests if they voted for Democrats. However Trump voters are heavily influenced by Republican hatemongering (which includes racism, but is more genearlly a message about the complete superiority of Republicans in contrast to how bad everyone else is), thus they fail to see that Democrats have been serving working class interests fr decades while Republicans have been attacking those interests.
During the Obama years the Republicans voted down a loong list of Democratic job creation bills wule proposing none of their own. In sontrast the Repubicans have been promoting the lie that tax cuts for the rich creates jobs. Democrats support unions while Repubicans seek to suppress them. Democrats xupport government services which create good pahing jobs in red states and are the mainstay in rural economies while Republicans defund those jobs. The list goes on and on. If Trump is going to deliver on job creationhe will have to do it by promoting Democratic ideas and opposing Republican ones.
So the statement above is that Dems should side with the 99% –well we have. Consistently. For years and years and years. The failure for Trump voters to see that comes from their addiction to rightwing disinformation and hatemongering. (which again is sometimes racist but often take other forms such as “lock Hillary up!” or Hillary killed Vince Foster!” or Planned Parenthood is killing babies!” or “illegal immigrants are voting!” and so on.
whatever role racism plays you are not going to get people to reduce it by putting them in a basket of deplorables and writing them off.
i will not associate myself with deplorable people. and i refuse to be a member of a party that tolerates racism.
if the Democratic party ever decides it wants to do that, they will lose me.
if the Democratic party ever decides it wants to do that, they will lose me.
And me.
I don’t think that the Democratic party needs to appeal to racists to peal off some Republican leaning independents or even some Repubians.
I think that the the Democrats need to realize that for rightwing voters style trumps content, facts don’t matter, image trumps substance and reason is totally irrelevant. The appeal has to be emotional.
The Republican emotional appeal is negative–demonizing and marginalizing– of which racism is a subset.
Obama had a counter emotional appeal: hope. HIllary tried an emotional appeal to decency, but she came pre-slimed by decades of rightwing hate, so was not the right purveyor of that message to people who believed the slime, which is quite a few, even including Democrats.
I don’t think Democrats do a good enough job of managing the optics, and that’s a real problem since Repubican voters vote on optics.
So …the difficulty is that rightwing voters are already in the thrall of the emotionaly appeal of rightwing hate media. Also they just seem to be more responsive to appeals to negative emotions.
But the goal is not to get all of their votes: just pick up some from the edges, including swing voters who tend right. It should be possilbe to communicate with them without in any way supporting racism.
Obama had a counter emotional appeal: hope. HIllary tried an emotional appeal to decency, but she came pre-slimed by decades of rightwing hate, so was not the right purveyor of that message to people who believed the slime, which is quite a few, even including Democrats.
This was a matter of charisma. Misogyny for older women may have been a factor against Hillary’s earlier charisma. That nauseates me, but it might be a fact.
Remember, Trump was the winning candidate. Was he the “flawless” candidate? Is there anything about him that I want in my candidate? No.
I came to love “flawed” Hillary, after having been lukewarm, but who cares now? I would encourage anyone who wants to find “flawless” Democratic candidates to work with their local Democratic Party on that. Or run yourself, because who can do it better than you?
We have a more urgent problem now. This is about the monster. What are we going to do about that?
“Or run yourself”
I think I might be able to single-handedly usher in a 100 years of absolute (R) rule, simply by running for dog catcher as a (D).
I’m gonna stick to behind the scenes support.
🙂
My personal and very pessimistic prediction is that the Dem leadership will do what it almost always does: blame the DFH/leftist base/unserious non-realists and see the solution in appealing more to the donor class and being more ‘centrist’, i.e. following the GOP rightwards (which in turn will make the latter go even farther out).
I already read commentary from the ‘serious’ people* that the worst thing the Dems could do now is to listen to their own populists and to go ‘left’ in any kind or way.
*even over here in g#dd#mn#d f#ck#ng Germany from otherwise intelligent guys who then talk about how both sides have to compromise. Haven’t they listened to The Newt on FOX who sounded like a communist party secretary from the early 1950ies?
I think I’ve read this somewhere, but I can’t place it, but I think that Trump will be impeached, (he has enough skeletons in his closets to supply the next decade of CSI and NCIS franchises) with his erstwhile allies leading the charge, and then Pence will be able to slid into the job and be a dependable Republican. The Dems will help with the impeachment and congratulate themselves and then go back to fighting among themselves.
This is a very thinky thinkpiece. I like it a lot. There is a little woo at the end, but I feel it is valuable because with the election of Trump I am feeling a lot of hate.
http://charleseisenstein.net/hategriefandanewstory/
Sapient I do not think Hilary was a flawed candidate. I donlt think there was anything substantively wrong with her. I think she came pre-slimed by rightwing haters and the complicity of the mainstream media. It was unfair to her and unfair to the rest of us. But the effect on the election was that she started behind the starting line.
And of course Trum what s hugley flawed candidate. However both Repubican voters adn the MSN have always had a double standard: Dems get scrutinzied and attacks on them are presents as their scandal, while Republicans get a pass. The MSN only started covering Trumps flaws when they began to realize that their biased coverage (biased agaisnt Hillary) was goig to get him elected. Even with that realization they gave almost on coverage to his convictions and his upcoming trials while continuing to report every baseless charge against Hillary as her scandal, in effect convicting her over and over.
I don’t konw that Deomcrats will decide to blame progreesives for this loss since Hillary was very middle of the road. Its a hard narrative to push. The useful idiots working for the Republicans will push that narrative, of course.
From what I have been seeing, it seems at least equally likely that the Democrats will try the same (except for direction, of course) approach we have gotten accustomed to seeing from the Republicans: We lost because our candidate wasn’t ideologically pure enough. (i.email. far enough left)
Experience of the Republican Party (at least watching them here) suggests that this, at least as usually implemented, will prove counterproductive. Maybe the Democrats can figure out how to reconnect with the parts of their potential constituency that aren’t wealthy, without going full bore left. But I don’t think I’d bet the ranch on it.
All,
A brief interlude in my self imposed exile to bring you a link with some interesting back and forth from a “reluctant Trump supporter” in The Atlantic.
Basically, the argument was that “PC” and liberal smugness drove this guy over the edge to vote for a pig. There was some back and forth (the whole exchange is fascinating), but the last entry is compelling (cut and paste follows):
“Thank you so much for your kind words about my note on feeling empathy for Trump supporters. I do take issue with the implication of what you (reluctant Trump supporter) wrote in the “in other words” section following my note:
Or in other words, two wrongs don’t make a right, even if one of those wrongs—outright bigotry—is much worse than the other—an over-willingness to label someone a bigot. And the latter is counterproductive to fighting the former.
Perhaps I was not clear enough, but my belief is that liberal bullying of perceived bigots is only a tangential effect of progress in dismantling system of social privilege and power. It is not part of the work to dismantle those systems; it is merely the result of marginalized people finally gaining the power to express their anger at those who have been collectively furthering their oppression in individually minor ways. It is a problem that will inevitable arise with a new balance of social power, especially without any widespread engagement from the right or even acceptance of the reality of these concrete issues of marginalization and oppression, without some sort of “truth and reconciliation” for American society.
It is not actually a part of the work that is being done to address these issues, so I disagree with the implication I see in your comment that this behavior must be stopped before we can continue making progress. If people oppose the dismantling of systems of privilege because of these cases of bullying, and instead support the resurgence of straight white male supremacy, that is a failure on their part. It is a failure of perspective and values and they are responsible for that failure.
And that failure of perspective brings me to the email from the person who “voted for the wrecking ball.” That person knows so many things about this country. That person knows exactly what you need to do to succeed and overcome adversity. That person knows exactly how all their fellow white people feel about marginalized groups and how they would treat marginalized people if those people could only be just a little better.
That person does not know what they do not know about the experience of life as a marginalized person in this country. That person does not know that the opportunities his parents and their parents and their parents had to pursue the right kind of life were not afforded to the parents of others. That person does not know that the issues marginalized people complain about are not excuses for a failure of hard work; they are legitimate and real challenges that this person has not experienced. That person does not know that it’s not that “not everyone starts off on the same spot”; it’s that many grow up constantly being dragged down and boxed in by the people around them. That person does not know that bigoted speech, whether they agree that it is bigoted or not, leads to harmful action.
But on that last point, your reader will likely learn better. Because he knows that his “wrecking ball” will leave him relatively untouched. But he doesn’t know that the hateful people swinging this wrecking ball with him are real, not a liberal bogeyman. He does not know that marginalized people are going to be hurt; they are going to die because of this. They are going to keep being hurt and keep dying for years because of this. And the people who voted for Trump—however understandable and relatable their motivations might be—are responsible for this, whether they know it or not.”
This is what I tried so miserably to say. HOW COULD WE HAVE DONE THIS?
Keep on truckin’
wonkie: I don’t know that Democrats will decide to blame progressives for this loss since Hillary was very middle of the road.
I am mightily trying to get over the rift between Hillary and Bernie folks. I totally was over it [almost] until Wednesday. I have some friends who I know probably voted for Hillary, but were turning their nose up at every dinner party, complaining how she was “flawed”. And ACA wasn’t good enough. And today was the first day I managed to face-to-face with people I knew voted for Trump. Lots of other catching up to do, as my stomach churned.
This stuff came up here constantly. Same “Let’s shit on Obama.” “Hillary is corrupt.”
And now we have Nazi Germany. And, people, let’s understand, we may not have the Internet as we know it. No more room for fixing climate change – it’s over.
“They killed us, but they ain’t whupped us yet.” I love you, Tim Kaine, for that evocation of William Faulkner. I hope you’re right.
I was a Bernie supporter and I dont think the ACA is good enough but I also don; think that had anything to do with her “lose” which now is up to over a million votes beyond Trump.
I think she “lost” because of the power of rightwing hate media, combine with the depraved, debased adherence of the MSN to false equivalency and “he said/She said” and their willingness to be used by Republicans for faux scandalmongering, combined with an electorate that includes a large number of people who vote without bothiering to know what they are really voting for.
ANd every time some MSN bobble head called her a damaged candidate I got enraged–damaged because of them labelling her as damaged fucking buch of assholes. Fortuantatley I am very rarely forced to wathc tv “news”.
Thank you, wonkie. I actually am on the road to getting over it, and am completely over it with regard to you. And the ACA isn’t good enough, and we all acknowledge that. But it’s better than it’s repeal.
Just venting here, so that I am still welcome at dinner parties. Come to think of it, I hosted the last one and haven’t been invited since …
nope, can’t be race. and we can’t said it could be race.
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/13/yep-race-really-did-trump-economics-a-data-dive-on-his-supporters-reveals-deep-racial-animosity/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
etc.
Trump has proposed a srudent debet relie plan. I lovhave wondered sometimes if he wouldn’t adotp democratic ideas pretty readily. He likes being the heor. It is so hard to guess which way he will jump. It owudl be funny if he turned out to be a moderate due to being ecpetive to voices from the political left.
Cleek, your link makes the mistake I address above. No one who is paying attention suggests that there aren’t a frightening number of racists in the Republican Party. The problem is that focusing on those voters (who you can’t reach anyway right now) you miss out on the voters you can reach. The voters who feel that they tried decades of the economic plan that Clinton represented and have been complaining–unlistened to–that it wasn’t working. They aren’t even wrong about that. Democrats in institutional power have not been paying attention to the problems globalism has wrought. So much so that until Sanders dragged her kicking and screaming, Clinton was still reflexively supporting the TPP without trying to mitigate the problems caused as far back as NAFTA.
Cleek, you write:
Who is asking you to do that? If you had to guess, what percentage of Trump voters are inveterately dangerous racists compared to those who are merely deeply wrong about what we need to do to have a serious break with establishment on issues important to them? 50-50? 60-40? 75-25? 80-20? 90-10?
The thing to notice is that even if you get to implausibly high percentages of people, there are still enough that Democrats can win over to win elections.
If we really can’t find the inklings of a common ground with THOSE people, that is probably a failure of OUR empathy.
Sebastian- If you are the person I think you are: someone I remember from the Bush years. Then I have to say I’m impressed with your personal evolution. You seem like a good guy.
It’s a bit of eerie synchronicity to have Frank mention Sebastian back in the day because I was remembering something he wrote about travelling somewhere, losing his luggage and giving thanks to the existence of Walmart. I don’t bring this up to accuse him of anything, but just to frame his last comment. (because I, too, cannot imagine going back to a time before I could run to a local Uniclo to get cheap pair of khakis when I realize that I’ve gotten too fat to fit in the previous pair). Sebastian writes:
Democrats in institutional power have not been paying attention to the problems globalism has wrought.
How exactly has anyone been able to make a dent in the problems that globalism has wrought? Maybe the scandinavian countries, but they have done it with a pretty potent brew of socialism that would not get very far, given the way corporate power works in the US. I think that one way is outlined in this article by Sarah Jaffe (via Eric Loomis at LGM) but I’d be pleasantly surprised if you fell in line with what she was saying.
Still, something like that can only staunch the bleeding, if the factories have already been removed to China and Vietnam, there is not a lot that can be done, I think.
I’d rather not discuss this in terms of the recent election, cause it is still rather raw for me, and the discussion would come out like ‘who do I blame’, which I don’t want to do, but If you are arguing that the Dems need to do something, how would you feel if they started doing something like what is laid out in the article? And if that isn’t what they are supposed to do, what do you suggest they do?
When the world stood around stroking their chins and thoughtfully considered whether torture was really that bad of a thing overall, Sebastian wrote a simple and eloquent piece making the argument that torture was wrong because it was fucking wrong, full stop.
the profanity there being my editorial addition, not part of Sebastian’s original argument.
In context that was an act of courage that was damned rare at the time. and still. I won’t ever forget it.
we all evolve, but Sebastian has always been a good guy,
Who is asking you to do that?
you see… there’s this thing going on in all of these discussions (here and abroad), where the racism of some of Trump supporters is downplayed (oh it’s not that much of a factor!) or outright denied (the Dems are worse!). so i offer evidence to refute that.
and then Clinton is blamed for mentioning that some large percentage of Trump supporters are bigots; as if liberals are wrong to call out bigotry, that we should ignore it or excuse it in order to get the votes of these bigots. we should coddle them because their votes are so precious. i disagree.
the problem is that focusing on those voters (who you can’t reach anyway right now) you miss out on the voters you can reach
i agree!
they’re not the same people.
I am not sure you are right about that cleek. Seems many of them might be the same :
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/rust-belt-democrats-saw-trump-wave-coming
if they are the same people, then see my second paragraph. see also, Elizabeth Warren.
“The thing to notice is that even if you get to implausibly high percentages of people, there are still enough that Democrats can win over to win elections.
If we really can’t find the inklings of a common ground with THOSE people, that is probably a failure of OUR empathy.”
I really liked Sebastian’s comment up thread. I just want to point out that there already is common ground between Trump voters and Democrats. Huge common ground. If anythign is done for working class people, it will be done by the Democrats against Republican opposition. This needs to be made clear to those voters who are capable of hearing the message. Gardcore racists will not hear it, but as Sebastian pointed out, we should not assume that every Trump voter or every Republican voter is a racist. A lot of them are just too busy with two ro three jobs and kids and live to be able to get ore than an occasional glimpse of the “news” on cable or hear malicios hatemongering gossip being passed off as fact from a friend or neighbor who reads Brietbart. They are often badly misinformed on very fundamenta things. I do not think it helps to brand them.
So I do think that people like Brietbart should be called out, loud and long and often. But that’s different than yelling “racist” at a whole bunck of people I haven’t met and don;t know.
This is a quote from an editorial in WAPO by DionneIn fact, Trump’s immigration stand (he won 86 percent of voters who want to build a wall on the Mexican border, according to CNN’s exit polls ) and his law-and-order appeal (he won 74 percent among those who rejected the idea that the criminal justice system treats black Americans unfairly) were key to his victory. When exit pollsters asked voters to name the most important issue facing the country, he won among those who listed immigration or terrorism; he lost among those who cited the economy. Trump’s hard-edged social conservatism, not just a general anti- establishment appeal, drove up white turnout in many key counties.
Finally, lest anyone doubt that the outsized attention given to the matter of Clinton’s use of a private server was decisive, consider that 45 percent of voters said that her use of private email bothered them “a lot,” and they voted better than 12-to-1 for Trump.
So the takeaway is that an awful lot of Trump voters were motivated by rightwing extremist hatemongering toward immigrants and toward Hillary herself.
And voter suppression is what made the difference in Wisconsin.
So even though I agree with Debastian that we need to not over generalize about groups of people because to do so is to write them off and push them away, I also think that to combat the rsing tide of nativist nationalism and disregard for the institutions of representative government, we need to find a way of combatting the vehicles used by Republicans to degrade our nation: the rigthwing hate machine. I think that is a bigger and more threatening issue than racism (I see racism as a subset of that anti-democracy movement).
let me just point out that more than 40% of Sanders voters in the WV Dem primary told pollsters that they were planning to vote for Trump in the general. nearly half of his voters weren’t actually his voters.
Trump > Sanders > Clinton ?
those people are probably not the Dem’s natural allies. they are either GOP spoilers or armchair anarchists who think Berning It Down™ is a good way to get their jobs back. and nothing Clinton was likely to say was going to get them to vote for her.
And voter suppression is what made the difference in Wisconsin.
I have to wonder if that was also true in Michigan and Pennsylvania – especially Michigan, where the margin was less than 12k votes.
I agree with a lot of what wonkie has said. I think the lack of any news outlet deemed unbiased by the population at large is your worst problem, as I have indicated in numerous previous posts. I think it was Reagan who abolished any requirement for the “news” to be properly fair and balanced, is that correct? In the UK, the BBC is under an obligation to be so, and although it gets lots of criticism for bending over backwards in cases where it shouldn’t (i.e. putting the case for and against vaccinations, despite overwhelming scientific evidence), the fact that it is routinely criticised for bias by whatever colour of government is currently in power indicates to many of us that it is doing something right. One of the ObWi commenters, I now can’t remember who, pointed me towards the Christian Science Monitor for unbiased news, and I have seen https://theconversation.com/us the editor of which is a previous higher-up in BBC news, although American, but the issue is that this “unbiased” news source would have to be trusted by the population at large, like in the good old days. I just don’t see how that can be achieved, given the extreme polarisation and the separate bubbles currently occupied by so much of the American public.
A cartoon from the Guardian, to determine how much of an elitist you are (russell, I think we know where you fall, with your hacking knots):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/14/are-you-a-sinister-filthy-elite-take-this-quiz-and-find-out-now
I don’t think the problem is quite so much extreme polarization, or even seperate information bubbles per se. It is that we have become accustomed to having a news source which generally confirms our pre-existing views.
And, especially, does not make us uncomfortable by telling us things that conflict with those views. Both left and right have this to some extent. However the right seems to have taken it to a higher(?) level. Perhaps because conflicting information might require changing one’s views — and conservatives, almost by definition, dislike changing.
There’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You can see, hear, and read that part of truth that confirms your existing opinions. That’s fairly common nowadays, and it is problematic.
What’s far more problematic, to the point of being outright dangerous, is when people consume misinformation, outside of the space of nothing but the truth. This is where the right is significantly outpacing the left.
It is one thing to ignore uncomfortable truths. It is another to believe lies, even after they’ve been demonstrated to be lies.
wj: a news source which generally confirms our pre-existing views.
As I have asked many times before: where do our “pre-existing views” come from in the first place?
Are they genetic? Did we imbibe them at our mother’s knee? Were we brainwashed at some point in our schooling? Did we fall in with evil companions later in life?
–TP
I think the lack of any news outlet deemed unbiased by the population at large is your worst problem, as I have indicated in numerous previous posts.
I trust the major newspapers for the most part, but the problem is their emphasis. For example, a Saturday article in the New York Times about Trump’s pledge to “lock her up” said this:
Why a decision regarding torture is found to be in any way comparable to any decision to “lock her up” based on Clinton’s private email server is a frustrating false equivalence. The Washington Post did a much better job of reporting. Reading as much as possible in both of those two newspapers with a critical eye still gives people a good overview of national and international news. Supplementing it with the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books and other periodicals is good. Plus Internet discussions like this that point people to good work on specific issues.
Cable news is a bad sole source, and opinion journals can be good to know what people with stated ideological preferences are thinking. People just have to scrutinize whatever they read.
Somehow, when I think of “draining the swamp”, Steve Bannon just doesn’t come to mind.
Mileages vary, I guess.
“So the takeaway is that an awful lot of Trump voters were motivated by rightwing extremist hatemongering toward immigrants and toward Hillary herself.”
Again, the very most predictive poll to determine if you voted for Trump is “Did you vote for Romney” and the very most predictive poll to determine if you voted for Clinton is “Did you vote for Obama”.
In some respects you literally don’t need any more analysis than that if you want to say things about “most Trump voters” or “most Clinton voters”. Everything you talk about is going to be less accurate than that. Somewhere north of 40% of people would vote for a potted plant that had the (R) or (D) next to its name on the ballot depending on whether they voted (R) or (D) last time. That is how tribal politics works.
But the elections are won or lost on the margins. They are won or lost by people who voted for Obama but refuse to vote for Clinton. They are won or lost by people who voted for Obama and then for Trump. Characterizing “an awful lot of Trump voters” isn’t helping you get insight about what you need to get the Trump voters who are open to voting for Democrats to vote for your candidates.
Writing off all of ‘those people’ as ‘racists’ because “an awful lot of Trump voters” are racist is bad politics. If you want to win, you cleave those people from the racists.
Saying something like ‘I don’t want to deal with people who are willing to deal with racists’ is misreading the situation, is self-defeating, and is untrue. You were willing to deal with the people who were willing to deal with racists, so long as they were voting for Obama (an actual black man).
Why a decision regarding torture is found to be in any way comparable to any decision to “lock her up” based on Clinton’s private email server is a frustrating false equivalence.
Ya think?
IMO the NYT stopped being credible somewhere around 2002. Bill Keller broke the place. And then whined for the next 10 years about how everybody was picking on him.
I like Reuters and the AP.
Racists were not unwilling to vote for Romney, I guess.
Somehow, when I think of “draining the swamp”, Steve Bannon just doesn’t come to mind.
Mileages vary, I guess.
i think it was Colbert who said Bannon is exactly what he’d expect to find at the bottom of a drained swamp.
Writing off all of ‘those people’ as ‘racists’ because “an awful lot of Trump voters” are racist is bad politics.
it’s also something Clinton didn’t do and nobody here is doing.
As I have asked many times before: where do our “pre-existing views” come from in the first place?
Tony, all of the above. Some of our views we do indeed learn from our parents (“at our mother’s knee”). Most are learned by the time that we finish school — children spend their time learning about the world around them, and are good at learning new stuff. Some people retain that ability to learn easily into adulthood; many do not.
Occasionally even those who do not learn easily will change their opinions later in life. Typically, I think, in response to some traumatic event (good or bad) which forces them to reexamine their views.
Does that help?
Sebastian: elections are won or lost on the margins. They are won or lost by people who voted for Obama but refuse to vote for Clinton. They are won or lost by people who voted for Obama and then for Trump.
Except that, overwhelmingly, the election was lost (and it was lost, not won) by voters who had voted for Obama and simply did not turn up to vote this time. Whether they were “refusing to vote for Clinton”, or simply weren’t enthused enough to take the trouble to vote, is not clear (as far as I have heard).
The things I have read suggest that a Republican candidate can expect to get around 60 million votes — pretty much no matter who it is. Whether the Democratic candidate wins depends, almost entirely, on whether (s)he can get more votes than that.** Enough more to carry the electoral college, which given the way electoral votes are distributes mostly means at least 2% more. Obama did; Clinton didn’t.
** The other factor is where those votes get cast. But that still tends to me a matter of turning out the vote.
Again, the very most predictive poll to determine if you voted for Trump is “Did you vote for Romney” and the very most predictive poll to determine if you voted for Clinton is “Did you vote for Obama”.
Here is my analysis of the voting patterns in 2016.
Trump fired his people up.
Clinton did not.
When I say that I am not faulting or criticizing Clinton. I think a lot of her folks not being “fired up” was a matter of laziness on their part, and not taking Trump sufficiently seriously.
I guess you could fault her for not being a gifted natural public speaker, but everyone can’t be good at everything. She’s a policy wonk, and she’s good at political inside baseball.
If you think that is not a valuable skill set in a public figure, I suggest you think again.
About 55% of eligible voters voted. That’s the lowest since 1996. Almost half the eligible voters just stayed home. They couldn’t be bothered to show up.
A little less than half of those folks who voted, voted for Trump. A little more than half voted for somebody else, mostly for Clinton. More folks voted for Clinton than for Trump.
Trump did better in places where the electoral math was in his favor. So, he won.
If you’re looking for why Trump is POTUS, my thought is that you might look at why US voters are so freaking lazy that they can’t even get their @sses to the poll.
As far as racism or bigotry go, if you think that animus toward black and brown people and women are the main reason Trump won, IMO you are missing a big piece of the plot.
And IMO if you think that animus toward black and brown people and women were not a significant part of Trump’s appeal, and that he did not recognize and exploit that, you are missing a big piece of the plot.
Somebody sold a lot of “Trump that bitch” T-shirts. I sure as hell didn’t buy any.
Disturbed by a Trump presidency? Think it might be harmful, and want to mitigate the damage?
You need to get off your @ss and get engaged.
Trump’s supporters do not represent a majority of the people in this country. Assuming that votes are a reliable proxy for such things, the values and priorities that he plans to advance are not those of the majority of the people in this country.
If they aren’t your values and priorities, find something constructive to do, and do it. It beats sitting around and crying.
In any case, what I expect from a Trump administration is that he’ll make a lot of rich people a lot richer, advance the cause of f***ing up the planet, and keep the social conservatives happy with dog whistle BS and some executive appointments.
Basically, another 4 years of “f you, hippie”.
If we’re lucky, that’s as bad as it will get.
If we’re not, not.
Politics is about emphasis. There are a lot of good things in the world. There are a lot of bad things in the world. Political sides and even more so politicians choose which good things and which bad things to emphasize.
On the one hand I don’t want to over-talk about Clinton’s failed campaign. But on the other hand being really clear about what it was lets us decide what to keep.
My read of Clinton’s emphasis in the campaign is something like this:
In general she didn’t emphasize the good she wanted to do, she emphasized the bad that Trump might do.
To the extent that she talked about herself, she emphasized her continuity with her long political past rather than an explanation of how she has changed and why. This was an election where the voters on the margin were going to be voting for change, she needed to emphasize the change she wanted to make. In order to make it seem authentic she also had to explain WHY she made certain changes so she didn’t look just like a panderer. I’m not actually sure she had the political skill to thread that needle. Which is a reason to wonder if she was such a good choice for this election.
Her campaign played up the “I’ll be the first woman” in a way that Obama’s did not play up “I’ll be the first African-American”. It emphasized an “It’s my turn” thing that felt like it hung over the whole Clinton campaign extending back even into the primary.
I think a lot of her folks not being “fired up” was a matter of laziness on their part, and not taking Trump sufficiently seriously.
Does anyone here share my speculative opinion that, if there was do-over of the election, Clinton would win? Not that it matters – just curious.
If we’re lucky, that’s as bad as it will get.
given the velocity at which Trump’s running away from his positions, we might turn out to be very lucky.
two weeks ago, the email nothing was ‘worse than Watergate’. now they’re good people – lying corrupt Hillary is now ‘good people’.
If there was a do-over, I think the Clinton campaign would focus a lot more on GOTV in the three states that she narrowly lost: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. And pay a whole lot less attention to places like North Carolina and Arizona, perhaps even Florida, which were always going to be a stretch.
Yeah, it would have been great for the Democrats if she had managed to get those marginal states, too. But it was a matter of taking the campaign’s collective eye off the critical point, which was to win the election at all.
“When I say that I am not faulting or criticizing Clinton. I think a lot of her folks not being “fired up” was a matter of laziness on their part, and not taking Trump sufficiently seriously.”
I am going to rant a bit. This isn’t aimed at you, russell, as this was a pretty mild statement, but it is a very mild statement of something that is often put much more harshly.
Firing people up, one way or another, is part of the job description of a politician. Liberals online have been putting the onus on voters to go to the polls first and second, vote for the right candidate and not “waste” their vote on third party candidates and they have made this a moral imperative. Maybe it is. I find the argument for voting and not going third party compelling most of the time, but not the moral outrage at those who disagree, because it takes away from the responsibility of the politician to give reasons why he or she should get your vote. There is no need for that, apparently, because it is the absolute moral duty transcending all others for people to give their vote to the Democrat–otherwise they are at best narcissists who don’t care about others and at worse they are evil racists out to transform the US into a fascist state. We are all moral absolutists on some things and pragmatists on others and some people claim their pragmatism is their form of being politically moral, but there is an element of puritanism in the self-proclaimed pragmatists. And the browbeating may backfire. I am not saying that you are browbeating anyone with that comment, but in harsher form we have probably all seen that comment made countless times since the Nader debacle. Does it work? I doubt it. I listen to the logic and resent the browbeating. People sometimes can give arguments for why they think third party voting is valid–for instance, the threat may force a mainstream politician to modify his or her stances but the threat isn’t there if everyone accepts that the Democrat has a right to your vote. And people whose lives are miserable under both parties may need to be told just why they should bother and it may not be obvious why they should. It is the responsibility of politician to convince people to vote for them. If they can’t do it then they are in the wrong line of work. Reagan was very good at this. Reagan was seen as a nut by the liberal press and he won, as did Trump, but Reagan won the popular vote as well. By no means am I praising Reagan in general, but he was very good at winning elections and pushing his ideas through Congress.
This is from the WSJ, as reported elsewhere. You may have already seen it. I can’t get through the WSJ pay/registration wall to the original article, but here’s the quote:
It’s so neat that he’s going to be our new president.
And people whose lives are miserable under both parties may need to be told just why they should bother and it may not be obvious why they should.
People whose lives are “miserable”? I’m assuming you’re talking about people who have jobs that pay poorly, or don’t have jobs, or whose jobs are insecure. Or are you talking about people who have medical needs that aren’t met? Or are you talking about people who have family problems? Or are you talking about people who can’t get a date?
You should be more specific about which people are miserable, and what they want from politicians. Early on, we had a conversation about how “miserable people” don’t want help from politicians.
I understand, and don’t downplay, that there are people in poverty, and who have problems that society should help them with. But people in the “bad old days” also fought for union organization, and they voted for social programs. Now many just use their vote to, in Marty’s framing, raise their middle fingers.
Reagan also appealed to racism, but the ideas he pushed through Congress had nothing to do with helping people. We need politicians who are charismatic and also will pursue helpful policies. Those people are rare. In the meantime, Americans have to step up their game.
By the way, Donald, in my despair I dismissed your suggestion to contribute to the ACLU as a valuable step. It is a valuable step, especially in the short term, before the legal system is destroyed. The prospect that it might be destroyed isn’t a certainty, but it is a significant possibility.
“Firing people up, one way or another, is part of the job description of a politician. ”
yes, it is a part of their job, as it is part of the job of any kind of leadership position.
and I don’t think Clinton was as good at it as Trump was.
it’s also part of a citizen’s job to get informed, get engaged, and get off their @ss.
Trump’s people were better at that than Clinton’s people were.
which is to say, for probably most folks here, us.
we got beat. let it motivate you.
What the hell, I’ll pile on. The cheap shots are just too easy to come by.
At least there’s no racism in WV.
My favorite part is where the woman says that being called out on it is a hate crime against her.
If you want to know why hacking-knot-tying liberal coastal elitists think racism is a thing in Trump-land, this is why.
It’s a thing.
thanks a lot, russell. you just insured that the Dems won’t win WV for another 20 years.
That will be the good folks of WV’s loss.
Does anyone here share my speculative opinion that, if there was do-over of the election, Clinton would win? Not that it matters – just curious.
Yes. Same with the Brexit, I guess. For comparision I do not believe that a re-do of the last election in Berlin would diminish the numbers of the RW populist AfD. The first two were (I hope) accidents, the latter (I fear) is a sign of a developing serious systemic malfunction.
The reason the Republican party decided to use demonizing, marginalizing divisiveness promoted in their political rhetoric on the campaign trail and thorough a network of hate-powered disinformation sites such as Breitbart was to create a base of voters who believed that it was an existential threat to them as citizens to have any election outcome except Republican victory. SO where does that tribalism come from? It was not created, probably, by the Republican leadership as a tactic toward the goal of a one=party state at a national level, but tribalism certainly has been promoted for that purpose. That’s a big part about why their turn out is so consistent.
“The ingroup has a rich, varied and deep decision making process. The outgroup are simple creatures driven by base instincts.”
Both groups make subtle distinctions for themselves and gross generalizations for the other.
“…create a base of voters who believed that it was an existential threat to them as citizens to have any election outcome except Republican victory”
They didn’t create them, they just identified them. And the concept that the Democrats present an existential threat to their way of life is not very far fetched.
The difference is in how people perceive what has, and is, replacing that way of life.
On this blog, somewhere in the last few weeks, someone said “they should just move to the city”. Flippantly, I’m sure. That’s a pretty big change, practically existential.
If the goal is to understand why something is seen as an existential threat to a way of life, the first thing is to understand what defines that way of life. Defines it in the minds of those who are living it.
When you understand that, you can see which changes, how described, will not trigger the threat reflex. And which changes should not be bundled together, if you don’t want the whole package rejected out of hand.
None of that guarantees that you can get any particular change accepted. But it does let you pick your battles.
The most interesting thing I’ve read on the topic: Trump is Marion Barry for Rural Whites
Oops I meant to include this quote from it
“And the concept that the Democrats present an existential threat to their way of life is not very far fetched”
That’s the thing I simply don’t get. Especially if you extend that sentence to include “and the (R)’s are not”.
I will, sincerely, be grateful if you can explain that to me, because I do not get it. It might take a couple of passes for it to sink in, so I’ll offer my thanks in advance for your patience.
I would freaking love to see people all across this country have a shot at a decent way of life. good, stable, meaningful, rewarding work, a place to live that suits them, sufficient resources to get their kids on their way, and something to live on when they’ve had their fill of working life.
I want that for people in WV, KY, and southern OH. for people in LA, MS, and AL. Detroit, Baltimore, and St Louis.
everyone, everywhere. that’s what I want.
I don’t care if people go to nascar or the opera. i dont care if you hunt and fish for fun, or spend your free time cultivating artisanal kale in your precious williams-Sonoma window box greenhouse. whatever floats your boat. its all good. i am so freaking sick of the god-damned culture wars that it makes me want to puke.
I want to understand what makes people think (D)’s represent an existential threat to their way of life.
because right now we’re looking at 4 years of trump, and I do not see how that is going to be anything other than a non-stop crap show.
not because of the folks who voted for him, but because of him. the man is not cut out to be a hands-on POTUS. IMO. it’s just going to be a freaking mess.
so if can lay it out for me, please do.
Unfortunately, it really is all about culture.
Culture, among other things, is about how people are supposed to interact and about what is important. If they are told that some ways of interacting are no longer acceptable, and others which were previously unacceptable must now be tolerated? That’s an attack, on their culture, and thereby on them. If they are told that the things that they consider important will be overridden by new things? That, too, is an attack.
In a constantly changing world, even those who dislike change know that they will have to adapt to some change. They might prefer no change at all, but they realize that isn’t happening.
However, there is a limit to how much change, how fast, they will tolerate. (And for this purpose, technological change and cultural change both contribute to reaching the limit.) When that limit is hit, they push back. Hard. And, more than hard, desperately — because they just can’t cope.
In a situation, like today, where big doses of change come from the government, the obvious place to push back is at the government and those who control it. The amount of technological change may be greater, and harder to deal with, but there’s no obvious place to push back against it.
So, first option, support a party which talks about smaller, less intrusive, government. Because that means less change to cope with. Second option, when the first consistently fails to work, vote for someone who talks about smashing the government. It’s not they have any desire for anarchy; they just want an end to government mandates to do things differently.
This is where I think that liberals, as those who are the ones who want to make change, should be attentive to which changes are crucial and which ones aren’t. To take an example that I use with my other gay friends on a regular basis: gay marriage.
Getting the US government to recognize gay marriages is in the crucial category. Having county clerks issue the proper documents is part of making that legal and is therefore also in the crucial category. Making sure that every evangelical who sells cakes for weddings must do so even for weddings they don’t like–not crucial. In fact it almost feels like rubbing it in their face a little bit if we’re honest, right?
Multi-culturalism is about making honest determinations about which things are big deals and which aren’t. I won’t compromise on the safety or well being of minorities. I will compromise on side matters, because that is what compromise means.
Making sure that every evangelical who sells cakes for weddings must do so even for weddings they don’t like…feels like rubbing it in their face a little bit if we’re honest, right?
Right. “We got what we wanted and now we’re going to rub your nose in it.”
“Multi-culturalism is about making honest determinations about which things are big deals and which aren’t”
I had that exact conversation with someone last night. It was about compromise on a different subject (abortion). Very tough compromise, women’s inalienable rights versus status of the baby.
I suggested that I could live with a compromise similar to what exists mostly today, to be lectured on how that makes me bad. I won’t say from which side because it could be either.
What is crucial? A woman should have a choice and a viable human being should have some protection.
Timing is the compromise. But after all of my lifetime we can’t, in general, even have a calm discussion about it being a compromise.
I watch NASCAR, every week. Championship in Miami this week. Tell a hundred people in the Boston Tech community that and see how many have a pretty judgemental reaction. Same with going to church every Sunday.
It doesn’t take long to get past the big things and get to the list of little, everyday things that Democrats look down their noses at, notwithstanding the opposite being true.
Compromise is essential but that is built on mutual respect. The constant criticism and mocking of the suburban/rural religious community is pretty openly disrespectful.
That disrespect may not be shared by a single person on this blog, but Obama’s comments on clinging to blah blah weren’t an outlier, they were liberal orthodoxy.
That disrespect may not be shared by a single person on this blog, but Obama’s comments on clinging to blah blah weren’t an outlier, they were liberal orthodoxy.
Aren’t you a grown man? This whining should embarrass you. Get over yourself. This is what persecution looks like:
Grow the f up.
Sapient, What I said and what you wrote are certainly not mutually exclusive. I don’t quite get why refusing to recognize one prejudice is a requirement to point out another.
I’m pretty sure that I didn’t minimize in anything I said the 257 incidents in 2015. Nor did I say anything I was talking about was equivalent to open, violent racial attacks.
I very much appreciate the thoughtful replies. Seb, wj, Marty, many thanks.
what I think is that if this is really all down to culture wars, then we’re basically rogered.
maybe it really is time to figure out how to go our separate ways, because as it stands now we *are not* one nation. we are unable to function effectively, and it is dragging the country down.
I understand why people feel slighted and disrespected by other folks attitudes toward them, but if we can’t put that stuff aside, I think we’re kind of done.
I have been doing this blogging thing for fifteen years now, in the hopes of understanding what other people think and also trying to make my own point of view heard.
it’s been interesting and I’ve met some great people, but as far as I can tell it hasn’t moved the dial one inch.
I have no idea how we move forward from here. (D)’s will win some, and do some stuff, then (R)’s win some and undo it all and do some other stuff. and vice versa.
not in a check and balance way, but in a burn it all down and do it over way.
dysfunction, stagnation, and chaos.
we don’t seem to value the same things. I’m not talking about nascar or kale, I’m talking about basic values. what we think the country is about, what responsibilities and obligation’s we owe each other. whether we really need to see ourselves as the “best country that ever existed” or not.
we don’t want or value the same things. and that’s fine. I’m just sick of arguing about it.
I am, seriously, open to a conversation about how we can disentangle ourselves from each other. without fucking going to war, because killing each other because we can’t get along seems pretty stupid. to me.
I think we should seriously consider it as a choice. what were doing isn’t working.
I am, seriously, open to a conversation about how we can disentangle ourselves from each other.
all groups of people have sub-groups who want different things.
try deciding on dinner with a group of ten – somebody’s going to feel disappointed that he has to eat pizza, again (third time this week, people!).
I understand why people feel slighted and disrespected by other folks attitudes toward them, but if we can’t put that stuff aside, I think we’re kind of done.
I actually don’t understand it. I have some weird interests and hobbies that people think are silly. I have some beliefs that people aren’t on board with. I’ve been laughed at in my life. That doesn’t mean I start some movement based on resentment and payback. I don’t like nascar, and although I’ve tried church, I don’t go. Plenty of people do, including friends of mine. This isn’t a real issue; it’s made up whining by people who want a reason to lash out.
I think we should seriously consider it as a choice. what were doing isn’t working.
That’s not going to happen nonviolently. We’re going to look like Syria by 2020. This has become an emergency, and we don’t need to pretend that it’s about kale or nascar or anything else. It’s about white people getting revenge.
what if it wasn’t the WWC what dun it? what if it was upper-middle-and-above whites who pulled the trigger?
https://twitter.com/MWLaPointe/status/796419859559182336/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/KagroX/status/786978434907901954/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
it really is all about culture
No, I don’t think it is. Unless “culture” is predicated on keeping outsiders down. And perhaps it is, as Sebastian’s invocations of ‘tribal’ seem to suggest.
If you look at that metaphor that Wonkie cited and Sebastian linked to here, you’ll see that the problem is that people who are not white are ‘cutting’ in line. I (re)paste it here
You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black—beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you’re being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He’s on their side. In fact, isn’t he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It’s not your government anymore; it’s theirs.
The Trump supporters see themselves being left behind while non-whites are moving ahead of them. It’s fine for non-whites to get some benefits, they just can’t get more than them. That’s unfair and it goes against the way things are supposed to be. When you say that’s racist, they (or their amanuenses faithfully justifying their choices), say no, they’ve got nothing against blacks or hispanics. How dare you call them racists! It’s just that they should get to the front of the line first.
There are a lot of definitions of culture and I’m sure that some dictate that only people from that culture can partake of what the culture offers, (hell, some of the cultural things I do are shot through with that notion, which is a really downer, but I like what I’m doing, so people who think like that can piss up a rope)
Knowing one’s place is the key here and minorities clearly don’t know theirs. This is why Coates call for reparations concentrated not on lynching or incarceration but on redlining. The fact is that Trump supporters don’t understand the Matthew effect.
The ironic thing (or more precisely, one of the ironic things of this whole mess) is that it was one of those perceived ‘line cutters’, Barack Obama, (and please don’t tell me he’s not considered that, just google Obama+Harvard+affirmative+action) who prevented the US economy from imploding. So they turn the country over to a grifter who seems to have made all his money on being a bully.
But it’s all about white folks feelings. If we are nicer to them, things would have been alright….as long as no one cuts in front of them in line.
If Democrats were the smug snobs some people claim, why is it that Democratic loses are invariably followed by post mortems wherein Democrats look for character flaws in themselves?
Face ti: the criticisms launched by the political left at the rightwing base are largely valid; it is a base which includes a large number of people who believe stupid things, who are easily manipulated agasint their own interests by hate-fueled propaganda, who respond with Pavlovian predictability to negative dog-whistles and are not, apparently, offended by open appeals to bigotry of various kinds, who cannot tell a policy from a slogan, who have no idea what their elected officials do once elected and yet in spite of their abject failue eto meet even the most minimal standards of good citizenship consistently proclaim themselves as more patriotic and more genuinely American than everyone else and, to top it all off, whine and act like victims when other people are offended by their crappy behavior.
If Democrats fail to appeal to these people, that does not mean there is something wrong with the Democrats. It may mean a failure of tactics, an inability to con and manipulate as well as the Republicans do, but not a failure of character.
The Democfratic party has been the party to address the real needs of the working class since FDR. What the Deomcrats have not met is the apparent need for demoguery and hatefulness.
No, I don’t think it is
Well, I asked, and some of the conservatives here answered.
I’m taking their word for it.
I’m sick of fighting about this stuff. I don’t have the same values as conservatives. Certainly not the same as McK. Lots of overlap with Marty, but I’m not going to make a dent in his sense that he and people like him are being insulted on a daily basis.
Probably lots of overlap with wj, probably lots with Seb.
Those guys are probably the closest shot at finding common ground. They’re the ones who will come and hang out on a largely left-leaning blog and let us all pile crap on their heads and try to make themselves understoood.
Then there are the folks in the “Fuck your feelings” T-shirts.
I’m not gonna fight with those people. I don’t want anything to do with them, frankly. I am tired of trying to share a nation with them.
This country is being shredded from within. I want to staunch the bleeding and see what we can do with what’s left.
The election of Donald J Trump is kind of a bridge too far, for me. I can live with differences, I don’t know if I can live with that level of nihilistic, burn-it-all-down, fuck you hippie animosity.
If that’s where we’re going, I’d rather that we all just go our own ways.
Lines are being drawn here. They reflect real differences. I’m not talking about NASCAR, I’m talking about, for instance, torture, and rounding millions of people up and ejecting them from the country, and adopting a bellicose war-mongering foreign policy.
All of which is apparently on the way.
That’s not a country that I can really belong to. It’s not what I’m about, it’s not what I value, and I want nothing to do with it.
And I’m by god tired of fighting about it.
You all can go your way, and I and folks like me will go ours. I think it’s time to discuss it.
Why stay in a bad marriage? It was an uneasy alliance from day 1. We’ve had a good run, mostly, and now all we do is argue about stupid crap.
Enough is enough.
Yes, some people feel disrespected.
My question is: are they ACTUALLY being disrespected? If so, you should have a lot of hard-to-dispute, objective and clear examples of disrespect.
Otherwise, what does the “perception” of disrespect, with minimal actual disrespect, say about the person that feels disrespected?
Is there a shrink in the house?
My question is: are they ACTUALLY being disrespected?
Yes.
Hypocrisy is insisting on sensitivity for some and denying it to others. Hypocrisy is denouncing bigotry while simultaneously practicing it.
Guess who said that?
…and adopting a bellicose war-mongering foreign policy.
With the continuation and escalation of much of Bush’s foreign policies and the confrontations with Russia, that’s seems to be pretty much bipartisan.
“It’s just that they should get to the front of the line first.”
No. In a nation defined as a meritocracy, with a set of rules about how one gets ahead, they shouldn’t get to get ahead by jumping the line ahead of people playing by the rules.
Stand in line for your iPhone and see what happens to someone coming up to jump the line as the store opens, pretty much no matter the color of their skin.
Fairness, as a principle, has to include everyone. White advantage is not an accepted “fact” among lower and working class whites who have been left behind.
They, rightly, don’t think it is racist to complain that others are being allowed to compete by a different set of rules. The people who are deciding who gets to jump the line are the ones choosing to do that by race.
No. In a nation defined as a meritocracy…
Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Ideals, even if universally held (and particularly when not), and reality are two different things.
White advantage is not an accepted “fact” among lower and working class whites who have been left behind.
It is none the less a reality, regardless of some people’s failure to recognize it.
They, rightly, don’t think it is racist to complain that others are being allowed to compete by a different set of rules. The people who are deciding who gets to jump the line are the ones choosing to do that by race.
Right! This sounds like an argument for Affirmative Action as much as one against it.
“Stand in line for your iPhone and see what happens to someone coming up to jump the line as the store opens, pretty much no matter the color of their skin.”
I was just at Wall Mart yesterday and was informed that if I downloaded their app. I would never have to stand in line again. I can just scan the bar codes with my cell phone and skip the checker. Skin color is irrelevant.
In a nation defined as a meritocracy, with a set of rules about how one gets ahead
Who defined the US as a meritocracy?
What are the rules for getting ahead?
These are extraordinarily large assumptions.
Why not a nation defined as a place where we make sure that everyone has access to what they need in life?
Where we help folks get where they need to get, regardless of who is “better” or “worse”?
Better in what ways?
We don’t all share the same assumptions about what “America” means. Yours are no more or less legitimate than mine.
what I think is that if this is really all down to culture wars, then we’re basically rogered.
It rather depends on what you see as constituting “culture war“.
If we get to the point where it means both sides trying to force the other to conform to our culture, then yes. There’s no way forward then but separation.
But if it means everything including the “Democrats looking down their noses”? Both sides could do a little more tolerance of those who are different. And both could get over feeling like having their culture “disrespected” is a mortal threat.
I’m inclining mostly towards the latter. If someone wants to watch NASCAR, and I find it among the more boring things on the planet, that doesn’t have to be cause for separation. (Good thing, else my wife’s fondness for NASCAR, and car shows generally, would have been a problem long since.)
Likewise church attendance, performance art from other cultures, collard greens vs kale, or anything else where our subcultures diverge. We’d do well to sneer less at those whose enthusiasms diverge. And we’d do well to shrug off those who sneer at us.
No. In a nation defined as a meritocracy,
Unless whiteness is inherently meritorious, we do not have a meritocracy (assuming that would even be desirable).
Affirmative action is actually a pro-meritocratic measure, inasmuch as the idea is to give individuals who DO have merit access to the institutions of success to which they might otherwise be overlooked and denied.
russell:
Looking at the spam trap, I see some comments of yours from 5 days ago. Should I free them, or let them lie?
“We don’t all share the same assumptions about what “America” means. Yours are no more or less legitimate than mine.”
As you know, I never said they were. I was, as usual, trying to explain how someone could feel that they were being treated unfairly without being racist.
And no, hsh, there is no white advantage if you are born to a lower or working class family. Its a myth. The class line erases any racial advantage.
You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits.
Setting the racism aside for a moment, the deeper issue here seems to me the writers apparent axiomatic acceptance that the “American Dream” is something over the horizon somewhere, and that there needs to be a line for it at all.
Forgive me, but that’s a pretty fucked up definition of the American dream.
Granted, once you’ve convinced someone to put their dreams on hold and stand in a motionless middle class soup line instead of pursuing them, it’s probably much easier to whip up animosity toward all the others who are “cutting”…
Doc, please let those comments slide away into the void.
And we’d do well to shrug off those who sneer at us.
Yes, that is my prescription as well.
Apparently it is not an option that is available to us.
Not my choice, I just get to live with it. So do we all, so in fact does the whole freaking world.
Maybe we’ll all be surprised and Trump will turn out to be a thoughtful and effective POTUS, and will actually be the working man’s friend.
There is not one thing in his resume or personal history or deportment that makes me think that will happen.
A minority of the voting public has delivered us a palpably, profoundly inappropriate president. He might actually ruin the nation. We’ve been around a long time, our institutions are pretty resilient, but he might just be the guy to do it.
They did this because they were aggrieved by other folks not respecting them enough.
It was an act of profound collective irresponsibility. Profound. In my opinion, borderline unforgivable. We will all, including them, pay for it, perhaps for the rest of our lives.
There’s a limit to what I can shrug off.
I have no idea how we move forward from here. (D)’s will win some, and do some stuff, then (R)’s win some and undo it all and do some other stuff. and vice versa.
not in a check and balance way, but in a burn it all down and do it over way.
From what I can see, we aren’t there yet. We have one side do something, and the other side rant about reversing it. But when they actually come to power, what they actually reverse is a small subset of what they were ranting about.
See, for just one example, the various issues on which Trump ranted during the election about reversing “root and branch”. But is now (already!) talking about keeping broad swathes.
Immigration? Yup, focusing on criminals (which is what the Democrats in power were doing). And already talking about something that looks, to me at least, enormously like “amnesty” without the label.
Obamacare? Yup, keeping lots of parts. And the ones that are still on the chopping block (e.g. the individual mandate) are bits that the rest won’t work without — as the insurance companies will no doubt make abundantly clear when the Replace bill comes up for hearings.
I’ve seen enormous changes take place in our society and culture in just my lifetime. Do some things still need to get change? yes. Do some of the changes need to be backed out? Also yes. Do we do a lot of three steps forward and one or two steps back? We do. But we still move forward.
Look just at marriage. When I was born, anti-miscegenation laws were still on the books in almost every state. Loving v Virginia got a lot of upset at the time, but today nobody is proposing a constitutional amendment to reverse it. Gay marriage likewise got a lot of ranting. But it’s not going away, and everybody knows it. The freedom to discriminate against gays in selling wedding cakes? Might well go, at lest for a few years. But the weddings themselves will still happen.
They, rightly, don’t think it is racist to complain that others are being allowed to compete by a different set of rules. The people who are deciding who gets to jump the line are the ones choosing to do that by race.
Marty, what I think you are saying is that nobody would have a problem if Affirmative Action was based on economics rather than race or ethnic group. So suppose people get special treatment if, for example, their parents and grandparents were in the lowest quintile (or pick your favorite threshold) of income. Do you think something like that would be OK? And, more important, be accepted by those who do most of the ranting about affirmative action?
Speaking of racism, guess who is coming to the defense of Bannon?
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/zoa-head-wants-adls-greenblatt-to-apologize-to-bannon/2016/11/15/
Way upthread sapient asked me about who is miserable in this country–I would say that there are millions of people, both black and white and Native American, who are hurting badly and they aren’t all noble victims suitable to be the heroes of a Victor Hugo novel. People sometimes lash out at scapegoats or behave in ways that don’t help their situation. I don’t feel like I can stand in judgment over them–I can say that if they lash out in bigoted ways they are wrong, but that’s not quite the same.
I have less sympathy for the affluent bigots and you find them in both parties, on different issues, though I would certainly say more so on the right. I can guess why Klein defends Bannon.
there is no white advantage if you are born to a lower or working class family. Its a myth. The class line erases any racial advantage.
hah. good one.
everywhere on the income scale, a white man is less likely to be incarcerated than a black man of a similar educational level.
From what I can see, we aren’t there yet
It’s only been a week. Give it time.
Maybe I’m not being clear about what I’m saying.
I don’t think the danger posed by Trump is that he’s conservative. I don’t know if he even is conservative.
I think the danger is that he has no understanding of the proper role and responsibility of the POTUS. I don’t think he has sufficient self-awareness and self-discipline to understand or accept the limits that a national elected official is bound to observe under our form of government.
I don’t think he has the temperament to function in institutions that require deliberation and compromise.
I think he is going to be baffled by what he’s gotten himself into, and is going to rely on and thus be the pawn of people like Bannon and his son in law Kushner, who he thinks he can trust and who have agendas of their own.
And with a (R) White House, House, Senate, and soon to be SCOTUS, the usual institutional guardrails will simply not be there.
Ryan is already looking to 86 Medicare in 2017. That’ll go well.
It’s not like stuff like this hasn’t happened before in history. A resentful and disappointed people elect a demagogue who has no regard for the institutions he has stepped into and inherited.
What could possibly go wrong?
I’ll be glad to be wrong, but I’m not counting on it.
Trump is a danger to the nation. I’m not calling for his ouster, because I respect the process and I’m not interested in tossing that out the window just because of Trump.
But he is a danger to the nation.
wait, did i only say ‘incarcerated’? because it’s actually: watched, stopped, detained, arrested, convicted, incarcerated, and sentenced for a longer time.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/26/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-blacks-more-likely-be-arreste/
When I was born, anti-miscegenation laws were still on the books in almost every state.
And where would that all be if, for example, George Wallace had won the presidency?
That’s where we are at, IMO.
Granted, once you’ve convinced someone to put their dreams on hold and stand in a motionless middle class soup line instead of pursuing them, it’s probably much easier to whip up animosity toward all the others who are “cutting”…
Jack, I think that the problem actually is that the line is motionless. That is, there is far less social mobility than there was even just a few decades ago.
If the line was moving, and people were confident (and correct!) that their children could, with hard work, do better than they had? Then line cutting might be an irritant, but not a huge one. But when the line is stopped, and has been for half your working lifetime? Then line cutting becomes a big deal.
How do we fix that? I don’t know how do-able it is, although Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives managed it after the last Gilded Age. But what we need is something which reins in the ability of the richest to accumulate ever more wealth.
Maybe a nice juicy estate tax, for example, on inheritances above say $20 million per person. (Go ahead, anyone. Tell me that is horribly hurting the heirs. But prepare to be laughed at.)
Or maybe an income tax rate of 50% or 75% on income above $5 million per year. If McKinney is unwilling to work when his tax rate goes above 50%, no problem. Work until you hit $5 million and then take the rest of the year off. Work pro bono (there must be folks who need legal expertise, but can’t afford his usual rates), play golf, sit on the porch sipping drinks, whatever. In January, rinse and repeat. $5 million a year isn’t exactly living in penury.
Ryan is already looking to 86 Medicare in 2017. That’ll go well.
Yes, a lot of people will get hurt by that. But a lot of people are getting hurt by ripping out the ACA as well. And what 86ing Medicare will do is destroy the radical libertarian wing of the Republican Party, including Ryan.
As I say, a lot of people will get hurt. But that may well be what it takes to convince them that the folks they have been religiously (sorry!) voting for all these years have got it wrong. It will have to be something that hits close to home, and that may well be it.
wj-
I mean, the thing is, it’s not supposed to be a line at all. I don’t have to wait for your success to be finished in order to have a shot at mine. In a functioning society we can both succeed simultaneously. In fact, we will both tend to succeed much more spectacularly if we do both succeed together, because there will be that much more to share.
This whole “wait in line until your turn” thing is toxic as hell.
The line isn’t motionless because there’s a holdup. It’s motionless because it’s not a line at all, it’s a holding pen. One we’ve more or less voluntarily allowed ourselves to be led into, and wait patiently in while a handful of our “economic betters” glut themselves on whatever it is over that horizon.
The class line erases any racial advantage.
What cleek said. But I will concede that some racial advantages are largely attenuated if you’re on the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Some, perhaps, to the point that they are negligible, particularly if you live in an extremely depressed area, especially if populated almost entirely by white people.
I’ll add that I find the rhetorical ploy of suggesting that one lacks concern for poor white people if one supports any form of affirmative action or acknowledges white privilege to be extremely annoying and tiresome.
Which makes me curious about wj’s question about purely socioeconomic affirmative action – something I could support.
Or maybe an income tax rate of 50% or 75% on income above $5 million per year. If McKinney is unwilling to work when his tax rate goes above 50%, no problem. Work until you hit $5 million and then take the rest of the year off. Work pro bono (there must be folks who need legal expertise, but can’t afford his usual rates), play golf, sit on the porch sipping drinks, whatever. In January, rinse and repeat. $5 million a year isn’t exactly living in penury.
If McKinney was making half of 5M a year, he’d already be doing pro bono full time.
However, how will higher tax rates at any level make someone else’s life visibly better?
Maybe a nice juicy estate tax, for example, on inheritances above say $20 million per person.
Non-starter. Not on offer. (R) House, (R) Senate.
Or maybe an income tax rate of 50% or 75% on income above $5 million per year.
See my comment immediately above.
Yes, a lot of people will get hurt by that.
A lot of people will suffer needlessly from painful debilitating illnesses. A lot of people will be reduced to financial penury.
A non-trivial number of people will die.
Do you think HSA’s and across-state-lines insurance policies are going to deliver a useful level of medical services to every person over the age of 65 in the US? That’s what Medicare does.
If Ryan prevails, it’s going away. In a year.
Do I think that kind of upheaval will change the minds of Trump supporters? Not in large numbers.
They’ll blame it on the ACA, like Ryan does.
I’m sorry to be so negative wj, but we’ve seen this movie before.
This one is just worse.
I mean, I get that it’s just a metaphor.
I think it’s a pretty revealing choice of metaphor on the original author’s part.
There’s a million practical solutions to the problem of wage stagnation and widening economic inequality. In theory, it’d be easy to fix.
None of them are ever going to come to anything if more of us don’t at least agree what the problem is though, or at least what the domain of the problem is.
You can’t talk about different strategies for leveling the playing field with people who forgot there was even supposed to be a playing field in the first place, and are instead convinced they’re just in a really long slow line at the supermarket, and the people dropping in on their side are line cutters…
hsh, I’m not sure I could formulate a rhetorical ploy.
I don’t believe people who advocate affirmative action don’t care about poor white people, I just think they aren’t solving the whole problem. I’m not sure it’s called affirmative action if it’s class based. But it’s a better way to talk about a solution.
However, how will higher tax rates at any level make someone else’s life visibly better?
taxpayer => tax => govt => goods and services => taxpayer
However, how will higher tax rates at any level make someone else’s life visibly better?
Is that a rhetorical question? Everyone’s lists probably differ on the order and the details, but mine might start with fully funded health care and education systems…
There’s also the idea that excessive income inequality itself is toxic to a free, just, well governed society. That’s a thought at least as old as Plato, but I think it’s growing more credible by the day.
That’s a thought at least as old as Plato, but I think it’s growing more credible by the day.
Starting no later than a week ago.
From FiveThirtyEight on what Trump is likely to do for the poor (not much).
This jumped out at me:
I disagree, in that I don’t believe you can reveal a plan that you do not have.
remember when the Deeply Serious Conservative complaint was that Obama had never been vetted?
I don’t believe people who advocate affirmative action don’t care about poor white people, I just think they aren’t solving the whole problem. I’m not sure it’s called affirmative action if it’s class based. But it’s a better way to talk about a solution.
If the problem you are trying to tackle is institutional racism, it’s hard to see how working on a different, albeit overlapping, problem is ever going to be as effective as addressing the first problem head-on.
Now, I could envision an argument that tackling the second problem instead would at least help somewhat, and would be far more politically expedient because it won’t get the racists in a self-righteous huff, but I wouldn’t want to pretend that it’s a first-tier solution.
System economic inequality is a problem in and of itself, but it is not actually “the whole” problem of racial injustice. In fact, it’s really more like a symptom. One symptom.
System economic inequality is a problem in and of itself, but it is not actually “the whole” problem of racial injustice.
While I agree, we were discussing affirmative action, which I don’t think is a solution to the whole problem of racial injustice to begin with. Unless I’m mistaken (and I may be), it doesn’t directly address, say, racial bias in the criminal justice system.
While I agree, we were discussing affirmative action, which I don’t think is a solution to the whole problem of racial injustice to begin with. Unless I’m mistaken (and I may be), it doesn’t directly address, say, racial bias in the criminal justice system.
No, but even just taking the subset of problems affirmative action is targeted at — that is, racially differential access to institutions of higher education, employment, etc. — I think it would be…simplistic to say that all of them, or even a majority of them, revolve primarily around economic background.
how will higher tax rates at any level make someone else’s life visibly better?
What cleek (1:27) said:
“taxpayer => tax => govt => goods and services => taxpayer”
Yes, what we are talking about here is redistribution — a toxic word, but the concept is apt.
At the moment, the growth in the economy is pretty much entirely distributed to those who are already wealthy. It doesn’t have to be that way; in, for example, the 1950s, it wasn’t. If we are not going to have a lot of people in a stopped line (or a holding pen, if you prefer), that is going to have to change.
Russell is right that it isn’t going to happen with the coming Congress. That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, just that it won’t happen soon. And something like 86ing Medicare, horrible as it would doubtless be for a lot of people, may be what it takes to get us to a Congress where it can happen.
And, Russell, I submit that, horrible as it would be, the only difference between axing the ACA and axing Medicare is in who would be hurt. One hurts a bunch of poor (undeserving, according to some) people; the other hurts the parents and grandparents of people we all know. (Or, in some cases, us personally. 😉
But the amount of harm isn’t all that different. I’d have thought a dedicated liberal would see that instantly, but….
But the amount of harm isn’t all that different
I absolutely agree. I don’t support getting rid of either Medicare or the ACA.
The problem with affirmative action in this context is precisely the same as the problem with globalism. Both make the society as a whole better off. Both tend to make poorer people feel like they have to bear the costs while richer people reap the benefits.
i think if Trump actually tries his 35% tariff on China, the poor will bear some costs, too.
Both tend to make poorer people feel like they have to bear the costs while richer people reap the benefits.
Rich people reap the benefits of AA?
The problem with affirmative action in this context is precisely the same as the problem with globalism. Both make the society as a whole better off. Both tend to make poorer people feel like they have to bear the costs while richer people reap the benefits.
I can buy that, at least in principle.
If learning and economic security were not artificially scarce resources, it theoretically ought to be easier for white people to accept a few more black people having those things.
The problem is that the moment someone suggests maybe trying to spread education and economic security more widely, the same white people will object, in part because “those people” might be part of it.
So you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Once a substantial portion of people have been gaslighted into the false belief that you’ve gotta “wait in line” for a sharply limited quantity of American Dream, then obviously anyone else joining the line is a cheating line cutter. And you can’t make the line wider, or open up more service windows, because that’s just catering to the cheaters who won’t wait their turn.
It’s just a big finger trap of racism and ignorance.
“taxpayer => tax => govt => goods and services => taxpayer”
I used the word “visibly” for a reason. If we raised taxes as you propose, how would that increase improve any particular citizen’s life in a way that can be recognized? My take is that taxes go up, gov’t services, whatever is meant by this, remain pretty much the same. At the national level, what service does gov’t provide for individual consumption other than $$$ transfers? The mail, I suppose, and national parks. What else? We have a military establishment, but it isn’t used by private citizens. AFAIK, gov’t produces no ‘goods’ as I understand that term.
Jack thinks the tax is good because the current income gaps, low to high, are toxic. Essentially, making people feel good by taking someone else’s money because “you already have enough.” I get the concept even if I don’t agree with it. But in terms of getting enough money from the wealthy to do something new and noticeable, are the wealthy people with combined family incomes over 250K or 5M or what? I never can tell what Democrats and Progressives mean by the *wealthy* who aren’t paying their fair share.
“we were discussing affirmative action, which I don’t think is a solution to the whole problem of racial injustice to begin with. Unless I’m mistaken (and I may be), it doesn’t directly address, say, racial bias in the criminal justice system.”
SURE it does! There’s a very strong ‘affirmative action’ program in the CJ system. It makes sure that black guys go right to the front of the line of people who get sent to prison.
BTW, while ‘colorblind, class-based’ programs sound decent, remember that most of what gets labeled “welfare” goes to white recipients, yet still is denigrated in race-based terms by GOPers to gin up support for cutting those programs.
Don’t make me drag out the Young Bucks With T-bones.
I think it would be…simplistic to say that all of them, or even a majority of them, revolve primarily around economic background.
Maybe. I guess the question is whether a socioeconomic-based AA-like program would be better overall, politically and in outcomes, while also doing a reasonably good job of specifically addressing racial disparities.
Certainly, it would have to be properly administered so as not to disproportionately benefit a given group over another relative to the overall socioeconomic statuses of those groups (for an extreme example, making sure it doesn’t exclusively help poor whites).
What it might do is better focus resources where they are truly needed. I’m sure it’s fairly rare, but affirmative action, as it now exists, could benefit a black or Hispanic or Asian kid whose parents are, say, doctors and who went to one of the best public school districts or to an excellent private school and whose family has the social and financial resources necessary to ensure admission to a top-tier university. So this kid, who has greater family resources than a poor kid of any racial/ethic background, including those from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, receives the benefits of affirmative action.
So any given group should receive the benefits of the program to the extent that the group is disadvantaged, and the benefits go to those individuals within those groups who are most in need (in theory, at least).
If I recall, one of the arguments made by one of the judges (justices? – not sure how far it had gotten by then) during the U of Mich discrimination case several years ago was that even a non-race-based program to help poor kids get into school would be discriminatory, because it would be, in practical terms, disproportionately beneficial to blacks and therefore largely the same in practical terms as race-based affirmative action. While that may have been more or less correct in terms of the outcome of such a program, I thought it was completely idiotic to suggest that that made it problematic somehow.
At the national level, what service does gov’t provide for individual consumption other than $$$ transfers?
A whole lot of infrastructure leaps to mind. I suppose it amounts to a dollar transfer, but the Interstate freeways are seriously overdue for a lot of maintenance and a lot of capacity increases. The states may do the actual work, but if the money doesn’t come from the Federal government, the work joins other deferred maintenance in not happening.
Maybe a lot of what the Federal government does is money transfers to the states. Are you saying that is a bad thing; that we should have national, Federally run, programs instead?
And if the government isn’t providing services that impact individuals, what is all that money going to? Or are things like the CDC not directly benefiting identifiable individuals, so they don’t count either?
Seriously, McKinney, I don’t understand where you are coming from here.
Only because no one else has said it: at least they’re little, teensy hands.
McKinney’s a lawyer. Does the court system leap to mind? Or does that not qualify as a “good” for “individual consumption”? If not, why should whatever benefits the government provides to its citizens be limited to such a category?
It’s like asking, “If we raise taxes on the wealthy, who’s going to get an iPod from the federal government? If no one is going to get an iPod, what good is it?”
“Rich people reap the benefits of AA?”
I’m not sure you’re understanding the analogy. Most rich people don’t *directly* benefit from globalism either. But the society as a whole benefits from both globalism and affirmative action, while concentrating the costs among the poor and less well connected (i.e lower class).
OK, I follow it now. Thanks Sebastian!
Pierce nails it.
Does anyone here think anyone in Mexico ME is going to get one damned thing of value out of a Trump presidency?
If so, tell me what it is, because it escapes me.
Own goal. Except we’re all getting dragged along.
I don’t hold any particular bad feeling toward people who supported Trump, but I’m also never going to forget this election as long as I live.
WTF do these people think is going to happen to them. Or the rest of us.
WTF are they thinking? I can “understand it”, sort of, in the sense of following the logical dots, but I can’t comprehend the freaking recklessness of turning the country over to a guy like Trump.
It boggles my mind. Utterly.
If we make it out of this in one piece, it’ll be a freaking miracle.
WTF are they thinking?
Quick answer: they aren’t. Mostly, they’re just feeling.
And the ones who were thinking, are working in the belief that things are so bad in the Federal government that even a massive change, any massive change, can’t be worse.
You may think that’s a daft analysis. I certainly do. But that’s where they seem to be coming from.
Maybe. I guess the question is whether a socioeconomic-based AA-like program would be better overall, politically and in outcomes, while also doing a reasonably good job of specifically addressing racial disparities.
I don’t think they have to be mutually exclusive. You can obviously have both efforts targeted at poorer people qua poorer people, and programs that try to address racial inequalities. The combination would likely be highly effective.
But by the same token, I don’t think you can have only the former and claim that it’s a perfect substitute for the latter.
I’m sure it’s fairly rare, but affirmative action, as it now exists, could benefit a black or Hispanic or Asian kid whose parents are, say, doctors and who went to one of the best public school districts or to an excellent private school and whose family has the social and financial resources necessary to ensure admission to a top-tier university.
As you say, that is going to be quite rare.
It also highlights some of the critical difference between a race-based program and a “color blind” class-based one. So ok, maybe once in a while you do find a relatively well-off black kid. Rich or poor, that’s still one more black face in the system. Someone who can be an example or a mentor to others. Someone who can normalize the idea of seeing black faces in [insert professional field here].
But we can turn that argument around too: if we imagine a purely class-based affirmative action program, it’s actually really easy for me to imagine a hiring process, say, that somehow still tends to make very…monochromatic final staffing decisions. It’s actually almost guaranteed if you’re not doing anything proactive to address the implicit racial bias that is demonstrably a factor in those decisions. It’s certainly a lot easier to imagine a class-based hiring process that somehow hires all/mostly white people, than a race-based one that only manages to recruit upper middle class brown folks.
It’s important to look at this from an institutional perspective as well. If you’re running a tech startup or a history department or whatever, diversity is a good in its own right, quite apart from the broader societal considerations of fairness. An all-white company, even one with a couple of white people from very impoverished backgrounds, is still going to have a sharply limited range of perspectives. Even a middle class black dude is going to bring in some new ideas.
Oh for crying out loud, McK. *Most* of what the Federal gov’t does is insurance, especially old-age insurance: Medicare, Social Security, and pass-along Medicaid payments that go to nursing homes. There’s also a certain amount of disability & unemployment insurance.
No, the government doesn’t provide all that many *goods*, but it provides a lot of *services*: keeping E. coli out of the food supply, poison out of the air & water. Scientific research, weather reports. Making sure there’s a network of reliable airports throughout the country (not just in profitable hubs) so that air travel is possible. Transportation infrastructure may be the largest physical “good” the government produces besides weapons, and it’s used by individuals every day.
And, as I said in the first paragraph, *insurance*: for individuals, and for communities that are hit by disasters natural or otherwise.
The problem with affirmative action in this context is precisely the same as the problem with globalism. Both make the society as a whole better off. Both tend to make poorer people feel like they have to bear the costs while richer people reap the benefits.
While they are similar, there are some subtle differences. First, globalism operates in a way that is difficult to undo and while easy to demonize on a grand-scale, cannot be dealt with on a local scale or even a national scale. When globalism was taking root, it was easy to see how falling prices could make a huge impact on what people were willing to accept or ignore. As Dave Chappelle said, ‘those strawberries ain’t gonna pick themselves’. It is the inverse of the NIMBY problem.
On the other hand, the benefits of affirmative action are a lot harder to quantify and a hell of a lot easier to dismantle through demagoguery. It’s been part of conservative DNA from the get go. Reagan’s example of welfare queens in cadillacs springs to mind.
Globalism is a system that provides us with some very tangible benefits, so it is very difficult to argue against it if it means you are going to take away those benefits from people. No more Walmart, no more cheap vegetables and food. If you aren’t going to take away those benefits, how exactly are you going to deal with it? Affirmative Action provides benefits that cannot be seen, so it is very easy to claim that it is not doing anything, and use it as a cudgel. We see that when people lump AA together with welfare.
Finally, in the OP, Sebastian suggests that Dems have failed because they have not taken a stand against globalism and I repeat my question: What country in the world has been able to hold the line against globalism? Globalism can only be dealt with through organizations that work across borders and Dems are assailed on from both sides about buying into cross border groups. There is a reason why Putin supported Trump and it wasn’t to make international organizations stronger.
Seriously, McKinney, I don’t understand where you are coming from here.
I am questioning two separate ideas. First, I question the idea that increased taxes provides an identifiable increase in identifiable person’s life. Other than a feeling of justice in taking money from someone with a lot of money to take, I suggest it is virtually impossible to identify an incremental increase in any one person’s life when someone else’s taxes are raised.
Second, I question the notion that tax dollars go primarily for “goods and services” as posited by Cleek and WJ. If the only federal spending were “goods and services” or, more accurately, “services”, then we would have huge budget surpluses and much lower taxes. The primary gov’t role is transfer payments.
So, let’s talk about transfer payments.
How many additional tax dollars would have to be raised to produce an extra $100 a month in take home benefits/cash to SS/Medicare recipients? I have no idea what that number is, but it seems to me that if you’re going to tell people that higher taxes on someone else will directly benefit those less well off, you should have some idea what marginal rate on what amount of income is needed to put X in the intended beneficiaries’ pockets.
Otherwise, the only purpose of higher taxes is reduce, at least in theory, the amount of money gov’t needs to borrow to provide the current level of transfer payments (or the current level adjusted for inflation, as the case may be).
McKinney’s a lawyer. Does the court system leap to mind? Or does that not qualify as a “good” for “individual consumption”?
Keeping in mind that we are talking about federal income tax here, the only courts paid for by the feds are the federal courts. Access to the federal courts is limited to federal question and diversity cases, which are a very small percentage of litigation nationally.
Moreover, if an average person is going to find him/herself in a non-criminal court, it will most likely be some specie of domestic relations court and therefore not paid for by federal dollars.
Finally, courts and their personnel are a small fraction of state and federal spending, benefiting a somewhat larger fraction of society.
Most lawyers never go to court and have no need of the courts other than as a theoretical place where disputes over what a contract or a will get sorted out. About 10% of us do trial work of one kind or another.
It’s important to look at this from an institutional perspective as well. If you’re running a tech startup or a history department or whatever, diversity is a good in its own right, quite apart from the broader societal considerations of fairness. An all-white company, even one with a couple of white people from very impoverished backgrounds, is still going to have a sharply limited range of perspectives. Even a middle class black dude is going to bring in some new ideas.
Diversity is a good thing for a number of reasons, and I don’t know how, past a fairly low employee census, you can have an all white operation absent a refusal to hire anyone who isn’t white. My last two professional hires were Asian female and Hispanic male respectively. Over the years, I’ve worked closely with a fairly significant number of Hispanic and African American and gay lawyers, less so Asian. If I’ve seen a difference in how diversity produces a noticeably different outlook or insight, it’s been driven by biological sex more than skin pigmentation or sexual orientation, and even then, none of the differences that come to mind strike me as particularly significant. That is, the driving force in differing outlooks seems to me to be more testosterone vs estrogen than any other distinguishing marker. And even in the, it’s more a matter of degree or style than any marked differences in outlook.
I see numerous references here and elsewhere that seem to take it as a given that African Americans, because of their history, approach “things” differently than do Hispanics, Asians or whites (and that other ethnicities have their own perspective the derives from their ethnicity). For African Americans and Hispanics in particular, I can see this being true with respect to, say, the criminal justice system. Or, as another example, of feeling welcome–or, more to the point, not all that welcome–as the only black person in a room full of white people. But absent certain specific situations, I don’t see how being any particular race or sex produces a different take on most “things”. Nor does my experience support the notion that there is uniformity of thought or reaction that is recognizably related to race or ethnicity.
The principle virtue of diversity is that it is a tangible statement that discrimination based on ethnicity is rejected. IOW, it is a good thing because of the statement it makes about what is right and what is wrong.
On a somewhat different note, a significant obstacle to diversity is supply. I quickly googled black high school and college graduation rates. All I got were percentages, which begs the question, percentages of what numbers? Anyway, black HS graduation rates were said to be 69%, college graduation rates for black men 35% and 46% for black women. Also missing is: degrees in what field? Some degrees are more marketable than others. I have no idea what percentage of what number of blacks pursue skilled trades.
Bottom line: the ability to be diverse is limited by the supply of reasonably qualified candidates for inclusion in a particular work force. I’m fairly sure the numbers of the right degrees skew less favorably toward some ethnic groups the higher up the skill/education ladder one goes. What is the solution there?
“Finally, in the OP, Sebastian suggests that Dems have failed because they have not taken a stand against globalism”. I don’t mean to say that. I mean to say something a bit softer. Globalism has great benefits and big costs. Democrats (and republicans) have done a very poor job of making sure those costs don’t fall especially hard on the poor. Or if they do they haven’t worked hard to mitigate them.
Thanks Sebastian and apologies if I overstated. I was looking for the exact line that prompted that thought and I couldn’t find it, so mea culpa.
I question the idea that increased taxes provides an identifiable increase in identifiable person’s life. Other than a feeling of justice in taking money from someone with a lot of money to take, I suggest it is virtually impossible to identify an incremental increase in any one person’s life when someone else’s taxes are raised.
Two things to think about.
First, if you are going to have transfer payments to individuals, that money has to come from somewhere. Either you increase tax revenue, or you run up inflation. if there’s a third option, I’m not sure what it would be.
Second, a person’s life isn’t just about money. There’s a feeling that, if all of the increase in income goes to those at the top and none to the folks doing the work, something is basically unfair. It’s not a matter of everybody ought to be paid the same. Just that, if the country as a whole is getting richer, those riches ought to be spread around.
As noted, we had a time (1950s roughly) when the difference in income between those at the top (i.e. CEOs) and those who did most of the work was around 20 times. Now it’s hundreds of times. That is a major factor in the feelings against “elites” that led to Trump. How do you fix that? Again, I see only two options:
– a sudden, unprecedented, burst of social conscience on the part of executives and the boards or directors who set their salaries.
– marginal tax rates such that it just isn’t worthwhile to ratchet up your salary further, since you won’t get to keep it anyway.
You can argue that feelings of inequity are not reasonable, not based in facts, and take no account of how much different people contribute. And you may be right on some of those. But what we are talking about here are feelings. Period.
So either something changes, so that there is visibly more equity in where the prosperity goes, or we are going to continue to see populist reactions. Reactions which will make Trump seem like a mere ripple. That populist reaction may be massively counterproductive — personally I think it would be. But that doesn’t change the fact that it would happen.
So, let’s talk about transfer payments.
First, SS and Medicare are not means tested, so they aren’t a good example of taking from wealthier people and giving to poorer.
Lots of people who have plenty of money get SS and Medicare.
A better example might be TANF, which is a basic cash grant to poor families. It’s our current version of what used to just be called welfare.
There are about 1.6 million households receiving TANF as of 2014. An extra $100/mo would be $1200/year per household, for a grand total of a little under 2 billion additional cost.
That seems achievable with a quite modest increase in revenue. Current TANF benefits for a family of three range from middle $200/mo to not quite $700/mo, so the extra $100 would make a difference.
These are not difficult things to look up.
Democrats (and republicans) have done a very poor job of making sure those costs don’t fall especially hard on the poor.
No, Republicans have done a poor job at that. Look at the income and poverty situation when Clinton was President. Then look at Bush. Of course, the economic crisis happened at the end of Bush which Obama had to recover from, and the economy has recovered. Then there was a populist anti-trade movement. Still, assistance to the “losers” has been addressed, and could have been addressed more robustly but for Republican obstruction.
I don’t know why I’m even commenting here about such things now. It’s all gone to hell.
the ability to be diverse is limited by the supply of reasonably qualified candidates for inclusion in a particular work force. I’m fairly sure the numbers of the right degrees skew less favorably toward some ethnic groups the higher up the skill/education ladder one goes. What is the solution there?
As someone noted up-thread, we have some artificial shortages (and artificially high prices) in education. We could provide better job-related training for those who are not going to college. But we don’t. We could provide college educations to everyone who is willing and able to go, and at a price that they can afford. We used to do exactly that; we stopped in order to reduce (state) taxes.
I think a significant part of the shortage of people with appropriate education/training from “some ethnic groups” has a lot to do with the shortage of openings that would allow them to get that education — affirmative action notwithstanding. And a price for getting that education which puts even the openings that exist out of reach for many. Fixing that might well not be a complete solution.** But it would deal with a readily identifiable bottleneck, and the solution is something that we know how to do because we used to do it.
.
.
** A related issue involves the grammar school and high school education needed to prepare for college.
We once had great teachers at those levels because we had an (also artificial) abundance of women who were well educated and generally unable to get jobs elsewhere. Which kept the prices down. New opportunities meant that the supply of skilled labor went down, but political constraints kept the price from going up. So we get mostly what we pay for: a few dedicated teachers who love their work and can afford to live with the low pay, and more teachers who either do it while waiting for another job to open up, or who just couldn’t hack it in a better paying job.
Nobody is going to succeed in re-restricting women’s career options. So if we want those schools to work well, we are going to have to live with paying more. Which means transfer payments to a lot of poor school districts. And, necessarily, is going to mean things like teacher tenure in public schools are going to have to change drastically, too.
So either something changes, so that there is visibly more equity in where the prosperity goes, or we are going to continue to see populist reactions.
Taxes have gone up several times since Obama was elected. I don’t see where any one person can point to any actual uptick in benefits, much less the class of people intended to benefit from the increase.
You can increase taxes to the nth degree and there will never be “visible” changes in prosperity. There isn’t enough income over 1M or 5M in *earned income* to permanently fund a *visible* change in prosperity. Once you start taxing that aggressively, people quit working beyond the point where it isn’t worth the risk and effort. If there is going to be a visible rise in prosperity, it is going to be because the economy produces a much higher number of good paying jobs than it currently does and, at the same time, the economy grows fast enough and long enough to make labor scarce. Raising taxes isn’t going to produce that kind of economic growth because no one at the high end of the income scale is going to risk their capital if the reward is confiscation or something close to it. No country has every taxed itself to prosperity.
Rather than worry about who has too much money, why not worry about promoting an economy where most are able to make a good living and have a good life?
Finally, Trump wasn’t elected promising to Robin Hood. That was Clinton. She lost.
You can argue that feelings of inequity are not reasonable
It’s not just feelings.
In places where there are high concentrations of people with lots of surplus money – money above and beyond what they need to provide for basic needs – folks who don’t have lots of money get priced out of housing and other goods. But probably most significantly, at least these days, housing.
People end up either living in effective poverty due to being house-poor, or traveling very long distances to get to work. Or, they just move away.
This has been brought home to me recently due to friends and co-workers moving away because they simply can’t afford to live in my area. Not if they want to have kids, or pay off college loans, or build their savings.
It’s not the end of the world, but it is a thing.
Nobody expects everyone to make the same amount of money. Nobody expects everyone to make remotely the same amount of money.
The situation we have now is orders of magnitude beyond everyone not having the same amount of money.
There are about 1.6 million households receiving TANF as of 2014. An extra $100/mo would be $1200/year per household, for a grand total of a little under 2 billion additional cost.
Ok, this makes sense.
McKinney,
When was the last time you “used” the US military? I ask in the context of your bizarre assertion that most lawyers don’t “use” the courts.
Now, about your other interesting points:
If you can’t point to an individual child who got to see a doctor thanks to the tax-funded CHIP program, I suspect there are people who can help you. If you can’t imagine how individual people’s lives could be measurably improved by FEMA, then nobody can help you.
On “transfer payments”, let’s get our terminology straight: do insurance companies make “transfer payments” when they collect premiums and pay claims?
As for increasing the supply of high-skill members of “some ethnic groups”, which do you believe: that it can never happen no matter what or We The People do? that if only We The People wised up and adopted conservative approaches, like giving “some ethnic groups” stern lectures, we would see the current generation of their children rise to professional (and parenting) par with non-ethnics? or what?
–TP
There isn’t enough income over 1M or 5M in *earned income* to permanently fund a *visible* change in prosperity. Once you start taxing that aggressively, people quit working beyond the point where it isn’t worth the risk and effort.
OK, so people quit working beyond that point. But the work still needs to get done (presumably). So now we have a second individual (and maybe eventually a third) stepping in and getting paid well to do it. In short, the benefits get spread around. Does that “trickle down” to the whole workforce? Probably, just because those additional people doing the first job leave behind openings which also need to be filled by someone.**
Rather than worry about who has too much money, why not worry about promoting an economy where most are able to make a good living and have a good life?
Definitely a great idea. How do you propose we accomplish that instead? Because what we have been doing the past few decades clearly wasn’t the answer. I suspect most of us would be fine with a solution which included no tax increase . . . if it worked. Got one?
Finally, Trump wasn’t elected promising to Robin Hood.
Actually, he was. That’s exactly what “sticking it to the elites” is. And Trump was pretty explicit about getting money from those elites and spreading it around to his supporters.
** Just to be clear, I’m not restricting myself to “earned income”. I’m thinking of all income. I find the arguments for special tax treatment of capital gains utterly unconvincing. Great for manipulating for individual benefit, of course. But justification when it comes to a benefit for the economy as a whole just doesn’t hold water.
On a somewhat different note, a significant obstacle to diversity is supply. I quickly googled black high school and college graduation rates.
I quickly googled “funding disparities black white high schools” and got this
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/public-school-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085/
Bottom line: the ability to be diverse requires a lot larger commitment in society than simply viewing who is coming out of high schools or colleges. If you think it is something that is important in society, you have to support broader based efforts.
For something like law, where your education teaches you how to ‘think like a lawyer’, the value of diversity is going to be a lot less than one where differences in thinking can make a huge difference. (though more diversity in backgrounds in the court system would mean a hell of a lot. Look at what Sonia Sotomayer brings to the USSC) Different ways of thinking are the stuff of scientific breakthroughs. But again, this is hard to see, thus easy to demagogue.
Rather than worry about who has too much money, why not worry about promoting an economy where most are able to make a good living and have a good life?
Those two things are not necessarily unrelated. But, basically, yeah, fine with me.
I’m not interested in redistribution. I want people to have rewarding – in all sense of the word – work to do, and to be paid well for that work.
In terms of social policy, that is probably number one on my agenda, because a lot of other problems would either go away or fade to the noise level if that was achieved.
If you want to talk about that, fine, but it’s not going to go anyplace congenial to people drinking the neo-liberal Kool-Aid.
In fact, I suspect we may circle back to inequalities in wealth and income, and the causes for those things.
From my point of view, that discussion is going to have to wait for another time, because at this particular juncture it would just be wankery. Hypothetical late-night-grade-school-dorm airy-fairy blather.
You might as well talk about what things would be like if Planck’s constant was really big.
Wow, we could walk through walls!!
Planck’s constant isn’t gonna be really big.
There aren’t going to be any public policies that will foster the creation of lots of well-paying secure jobs anytime in the foreseeable future.
Ok, this makes sense.
Thanks McK. The affirmation is very much appreciated.
more teachers who either do it while waiting for another job to open up, or who just couldn’t hack it in a better paying job.
What do you do with under-performing teachers?
When was the last time you “used” the US military? I ask in the context of your bizarre assertion that most lawyers don’t “use” the courts.
Me quoting me: “We have a military establishment, but it isn’t used by private citizens.”
Most lawyers don’t go to court. Fact. Not a bizarre assertion.
If you can’t point to an individual child who got to see a doctor thanks to the tax-funded CHIP program
Me quoting me again, with some added emphasis: I question the idea that increased taxes provides *an identifiable increase in identifiable person’s life*. Other than a feeling of justice in taking money from someone with a lot of money to take, I suggest it is virtually impossible to identify an incremental increase in any one person’s life when someone else’s taxes are raised.
Me, no longer quoting me: Russell makes a more responsive point, probably because he paid a lot more attention to what I was actually saying.
As for increasing the supply of high-skill members of “some ethnic groups”, which do you believe: that it can never happen no matter what or We The People do? that if only We The People wised up and adopted conservative approaches, like giving “some ethnic groups” stern lectures, we would see the current generation of their children rise to professional (and parenting) par with non-ethnics? or what?
TP, this is your typical response: answer a question with a question and never give an answer you are prepared to defend. My position on dealing with the epidemic of single parent families and the predictable, objectively sub-optimal outcomes for the children born into those circumstances is well known. It is, on a large scale, what most parents do for their own children: introduce balance and discipline into their lives, along with love, affection, support, etc. Schools aren’t parents. Balance, guidance, discipline and support can be delivered. Not perfectly, but it’s better than the present regime. Which is a miserable failure with no end in sight.
And no, I don’t believe there is no solution. I do believe the current program is a proven loser.
Snark away. I’m impervious to it. The lives being wasted while we do the same dumb shit over and over again isn’t on me. I’m willing to try something new and tangible. And I’m willing to hear and discuss your concrete proposals.
What do you do with under-performing teachers?
what do you do with any under-performing employee? Either you train him so he is able to perform. Or you motivate him so he will perform. Or you suggest he pursue other opportunities. Fish or cut bait.
I can see arguments for the need for tenure when a teacher, say at the college level, is doing and teaching stuff that might be controversial. But where is the need for a grammar school teacher? Is there anything controversial about fractions that might get someone fired?
McKinney: Taxes have gone up several times since Obama was elected. I don’t see where any one person can point to any actual uptick in benefits, much less the class of people intended to benefit from the increase.
Not sure how much taxes have been raised, or on whom. (Since Congress raises taxes, and it’s been R for 6 years, that’s their territory.) Again, I link to the fact that our economy is improving, especially for the middle class, in a way not seen in decades. I would suggest that it’s the result of early stimulus after the financial crisis, the bailout of the auto industry, the ACA, and smart policies by the Fed.
But, McKinney, it’s in your interest to whine.
And we’re going straight to hell because of your retrograde attitudes anyway.
the ability to be diverse requires a lot larger commitment in society than simply viewing who is coming out of high schools or colleges.
Ok, what *is* required?
the value of diversity is going to be a lot less than one where differences in thinking can make a huge difference.
Ok, enlighten me: when/where/how do differences in thinking that are a result of ethnicity make a “huge difference”?
I want people to have rewarding – in all sense of the word – work to do, and to be paid well for that work.
Every rational person wants this. The prize goes to who figures out a way to sustainably (apparently ‘sustainably’ is not a word, so I’m copyrighting it right now) promote an economy that allows this and create a work force that can match the economy.
It’s certainly a lot easier to imagine a class-based hiring process that somehow hires all/mostly white people, than a race-based one that only manages to recruit upper middle class brown folks.
This may be an aspect of AA for which a class-based program would not work well. I was thinking more of admission to educational institutions. I’m not opposed to your suggestion of doing both, either.
McKinney, don’t you think more people benefit from federal courts than just those people who stand before them?
Ok, what *is* required?
A larger committment to education at the very least. A calling out of bigotry and prejudice at a much earlier stage than trying to blame the victim.
Ok, enlighten me: when/where/how do differences in thinking that are a result of ethnicity make a “huge difference”?
It is not the ‘result’ of ethnicity. It is the byproduct of being raised in systems that don’t have the same background assumptions.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/
McKinney,
If you think I doubted the “Fact.” that most lawyers seldom GO to court, you should try reading more carefully yourself. If you are suggesting that any lawyers could ply their trade without courts looming in the background (and the police power of the state behind them) to resolve disputes, enforce contracts, and whatever else 90% of your guild gets paid for doing, then you have a very literal definition of “use”.
The reason I ask you questions is probably cultural: a long-dead member of my “ethnic group” used to try to persuade people by asking them questions instead of preaching to them. Fat lot of good it did him in the end.
The following is something I read, not simply cut-and-pasted:
My position on dealing with the epidemic of single parent families and the predictable, objectively sub-optimal outcomes for the children born into those circumstances is well known. It is, on a large scale, what most parents do for their own children: introduce balance and discipline into their lives, along with love, affection, support, etc. Schools aren’t parents. Balance, guidance, discipline and support can be delivered. Not perfectly, but it’s better than the present regime. Which is a miserable failure with no end in sight.
Forgive my pointing out that you do not make clear who is supposed to do the “delivering” here. Not clear to me, anyhow.
I can think of many ways that We The People can deliver “balance, guidance, discipline and support” to the children of “some ethnic groups”, but all of them require money, and most of them require a level of intrusion into “parental authority” that both “ethnic” parents and the Texas School Board might find oppressive.
One thing I would do that even you might go for is “pay for performance”. Not the teachers; the students. I would set up a national chain of Quiz Parlors, or Testing Arcades, or some other playful name, where kids could walk in and take tests for money. No pass/fail criteria; just so many dollars per correct answer, cash on the barrel head. If you believe in “incentives”, you must be able to see the possibilities of such a scheme. Nerds would suddenly become cool, whatever their “ethnic group”, because money talks louder than any preacher known to man.
I would start in the “inner cities”, then expand to the backwoods areas with the highest rates of poverty and family dysfunction. I must tell you up front that I would ask the National Academy of Sciences, not local school boards, to devise the questions and specify the correct answers. And yes, I would raise your federal taxes (and mine) to pay for it.
–TP
First, SS and Medicare are not means tested, so they aren’t a good example of taking from wealthier people and giving to poorer.
Actually, they are good examples to taking from relatively poor young people and giving to relatively wealthy old people.
until the relatively poor and young people get old.
see how that works?
Charles,
Over time, they’re the same people.
I mean, you could describe the mortgage payments you make in your relatively impoverished youth as paying a relatively affluent older person’s housing costs, but why would you want to?
–TP
Paying a 15% payroll tax all their working lives greatly increases the odds that they are going to need SS and Medicare badly when they get old.
Greatly increases the chance they’ll HAVE it, too.
We tried it the other way until 1935. It didn’t work.
–TP
Old age poverty has decreased a great deal since 1935.
And you don’t think SS and Medicare had something to do with that??
–TP
1935 you say?
funny, that.
“i’m not gonna get a flu shot this year”
“why not?”
“well, I’ve gotten them for ten years now, but I just don’t get the flu anymore, so I don’t see the point!”
catch my drift?
I really, really, really try not to be a smart-ass, but sometimes you guys just make it really hard.
The elderly are much more wealthy now than anytime in the pass regardless of SS and Medicare.
Except for the ones who would otherwise be destitute, at least.
ctually, they are good examples to taking from relatively poor young people and giving to relatively wealthy old people.
and the reverse is maybe even more pernicious: taking from the old and wealthy and giving to the young and poor in the form of school taxes.
why should i have to pay for some snot-nosed urchin’s education? get a job, Horatio!
Hmmm. Someone is having a little trouble with logic in his own succession of comments:
Paying a 15% payroll tax all their working lives greatly increases the odds that they are going to need SS and Medicare badly when they get old.
Old age poverty has decreased a great deal since 1935.
The elderly are much more wealthy now than anytime in the pass regardless of SS and Medicare.
For those workers who start out poor and don’t have the ability to move into higher paying jobs, the highly regressive 15% payroll tax makes it much harder for them to accumulate any wealth during their lifetimes. Unlike most of the elderly population, they may arrive at retirement with very little but SS and Medicare. If they live long enough to benefit from them.
no disagreement that SS and Medicare are highly regressive taxes. we could fix that.
no disagreement that SS and Medicare are highly regressive taxes.
No, they’re old age insurance premiums, not a tax. And the reason people arrive at retirement with little but SS and Medicare is not because they would have saved that money privately and it would have grown into a large fund. The reason SS was created was because people got old and had nothing.
I agree that that is why SS was created, and it has been a tremendous success.
my only point was that the way we fund it is regressive. and, if folks find that to be a point of criticism, it can be addressed by making it less so.
I can see arguments for the need for tenure when a teacher, say at the college level, is doing and teaching stuff that might be controversial. But where is the need for a grammar school teacher? Is there anything controversial about fractions that might get someone fired?
Oooo, pick me! I know the answer to this one!
As the child of TWO teachers, one in a tremendously wealthy suburban high school district and one who over the course of decades taught every grade from kindergarten through junior high in the community we could actually afford to live in, my parents’ conversations over dinner gave me a lot of ground-level insight into what things are like for teachers when they are not in front of students teaching.
My dad regularly got rich parents demanding that he change little Susie or Ralph’s grade–not simply from an F to a D, like you might expect, but less frequently from a B to an A–because “this grade would ruin little Susie or Ralph’s future / college prospects / etc.” Sometimes they would include in these conversations the fact that they would take this to the administration and the school board (and sometimes remind him they were themselves on the school board).
He taught algebra 2 / trig and AP calculus, so it was always easy for him to prove the grade was justified. Imagine teaching English or history, though. (As many of my parents’ friends did.)
There were less dramatic (and fewer) examples in the elementary and junior high school where my mother taught, but there was still the occasional situation where some parent wanted a teacher fired (for recommending a child be held back, etc.).
Tenure for teachers below college gives the administration an easy way to shrug their shoulders and say “he’s got tenure, nothing we can do” when a parent is howling for a teacher’s blood when they feel their child deserves special treatment. It doesn’t make a teacher who SHOULD be fired unfirable, though; of course it does make it harder than employees in other professions.
No, they’re old age insurance premiums, not a tax.
While I get where you’re coming from, that’s a semantic quibble. You could just as easily say it’s a dedicated tax, for old-age insurance, since the federal government is taking money out of your paycheck, and it’s not optional.
And like russell wrote, it really doesn’t change the point that it could be made less regressive, if that’s what people wanted to do, regardless of what you call it.
Is the SSA an insurance company, or an arm of government?
Is FICA a premium, or a tax?
Are SS checks claims pay-outs, or government spending?
Depends who you ask and when you ask them.
As an arm of government, the SSA can’t “go broke” any more than the Pentagon can. As an insurance company, it can go broke just like AIG did — and be bailed out by government, just like AIG was, but I digress.
–TP
And like russell wrote, it really doesn’t change the point that it could be made less regressive, if that’s what people wanted to do, regardless of what you call it.
That’s fine. Economists and policy people disagree about how regressive it actually is, and whether changing its funding to make it more of a “social program” rather than a “contract” would diminish its popularity.
I don’t have a particular view on it since I haven’t read about it for awhile, but I certainly don’t believe in cutting benefits or raising the age of eligibility, which is what’s on the table now.
People who would like eventually to have single payer government guaranteed health care need to pay attention to why social security remained so popular even when “safety net” programs did not.
In Trump world, this is probably all fantasy.
Economists and policy people disagree about how regressive it actually is…
In a “teach the controversy” sort of way, like creationism in science class? It’s a flat rate on the first however-many dollars earned, dropping to zero thereafter. It does affect your taxable income, but, in and of itself, it’s pretty damned regressive.
Read this.
If you see it as a tax, unrelated to benefits, it’s regressive. But if you take into account that “The lower your average earnings the higher a benefit you get relative to your contribution” it doesn’t look as regressive.
Again, I support a lot of wealth redistribution mechanisms, but social security has succeeded, in part, because it’s considered a contract, not just a safety net. I would, for example, like to raise the income level from which contributions are required. I’m certainly open to having it funded by a different formula, but the McKinneys and Martys of the world will then start messing with it, and complaining about it constantly.
Whether a program is an insurance program or a social program is important to consider in whether it receives general support. So if we all want single-payer someday, we need to give these distinctions some thought. Again, I don’t care – I’m not the one trying to cut it or get rid of it.
Sorry, here’s a link from which I quoted.
I’ll now withdraw from fantasy land and call my Congresspeople asking them when we’re going to get an investigation of the Putin hacking.
You can increase taxes to the nth degree and there will never be “visible” changes in prosperity. There isn’t enough income over 1M or 5M in *earned income* to permanently fund a *visible* change in prosperity. Once you start taxing that aggressively, people quit working beyond the point where it isn’t worth the risk and effort. If there is going to be a visible rise in prosperity, it is going to be because the economy produces a much higher number of good paying jobs than it currently does and, at the same time, the economy grows fast enough and long enough to make labor scarce. Raising taxes isn’t going to produce that kind of economic growth because no one at the high end of the income scale is going to risk their capital if the reward is confiscation or something close to it. No country has every taxed itself to prosperity.
That is just… I don’t even…
I mean, pretty clearly, the United States taxed itself to prosperity.
For example, it is taxes which paid for a system of universal, compulsory primary education, as well as an extensive state university system (with all of the associated research programs, extension services, etc.) These were in large part what allow(ed) US workers and industries to rise to be some of the most productive in the world over, say, the 100 year period starting in 1852.
There are also all the taxes which go toward construction, maintenance and regulation of infrastructure, like roads and navigable waterways. It is taxes which fund the establishment and administration of systems and institutions of disease and public health protection, fire protection, monopoly and unfair trade practices protection, environmental protection etc. It is taxes which fund court systems, weather forecasting services, and coast guards.
I could go on.
But no, I’m sure none of those things have anything to do with improving (indeed, outright creating) prosperity.
Nor, I’m sure, would a taxpayer funded universal public health insurance program (which would, among other things, break entrepreneurial-minded individuals free from employer-provided health insurance dependencies). Or daycare services. Or providing greater access to university and trade school training. Or providing social insurance to those unemployed by automation or globalization. Or more extensive regulation of banking services. Or tripling or quadrupling public funding for basic science research…
…Just, seriously?
If you see it as a tax, unrelated to benefits, it’s regressive. But if you take into account that “The lower your average earnings the higher a benefit you get relative to your contribution” it doesn’t look as regressive.
Ah, I see. Point taken. I don’t see it as a tax unrelated to benefits, but I was only referring to the withholding scheme as being regressive.
People who would like eventually to have single payer government guaranteed health care need to pay attention to why social security remained so popular even when “safety net” programs did not.
It seems pretty straightforward. Social Security (likewise Medicare) is paid to me and mine (everybody understands parents and grandparents, even if their own aren’t involved). Whereas “safety net” programs benefit the undeserving Them.
Note that this doesn’t have to be true in fact. It’s how the programs are seen by those who favor one but not the other.
“I could go on.
But no, I’m sure none of those things have anything to do with improving (indeed, outright creating) prosperity.”
If McTx wants to magnanimously move to some spot on the globe with ZERO taxes to impede his prosperity, and ZERO “government services” to go along with them, I for one am willing to contribute to the one-way ticket.
Cause I’m just generous when it comes to helping people find their dreams, y’know.
some spot on the globe with ZERO taxes to impede his prosperity, and ZERO “government services” to go along with them
Not hard to find that libertarian paradise. It’s called Somalia.
Of course, libertarians have no end of excuses about why that isn’t really what they are talking about. And their ideal wouldn’t play out like that. Except none of their reasons why it wouldn’t work out like that are convincing, at least if it involved real human beings — especially neighbors.
Imagine Walmart without interstate highways.
Imagine Walmart without interstate highways.
Or food stamps
Imagine Walmart without interstate highways.
or cheap Chinese merchandise.
If only they could free themselves from the yoke of government oppression.
It seems pretty straightforward. Social Security (likewise Medicare) is paid to me and mine (everybody understands parents and grandparents, even if their own aren’t involved). Whereas “safety net” programs benefit the undeserving Them.
Note that this doesn’t have to be true in fact. It’s how the programs are seen by those who favor one but not the other.
I think this is why an honest-to-odin single payer system would paradoxically have much better long term political viability than a more half-assed compromise system like Obamacare. Harder to get to in the first place (and of course probably impossible for at least 4 years), yes, but once you get there it’s much more stable.
Because while Obamacare is definitely making…whatsit…oh, a “visible change in the prosperity” of many people’s lives (namely – people who didn’t have and couldn’t get insurance before), there are also many people — most of us, probably — for which there’s hasn’t really been any noticeable change.
If you’re still getting your actual health coverage from employer plans, or Medicare or whatever, nothing looks that different. If you’ve heard anything at all, it’s probably negative, because maybe your employer or insurance company jacked up rates or dropped coverage and scapegoated Obamacare. And things that do affect all of us positively, like the slowing in long term cost growth (it is working) are wonky and invisible.
On the other hand, if everyone was pulling out an ObamaPlan card every time they visited the doctor (or better yet, no longer had to carry a card at all, because universal), it’d be a lot harder to take that away and tell people they had to take a chance on the old system again.
I don’t think that is necessarily super-dependent on how such a system is funded. It’s mostly just a matter of making it visible and integral enough that the status quo fallacy moves over to its side.
Not all the Trump supporting racists are working class. Some of the people supporting Bannon are people like Dershowitz, whose definition of antisemitism is someone critical of Israel.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/steve-bannon-made-breitbart-space-pro-israel-writers-anti-semitic-readers/
Not all the Trump supporting racists are working class. Some of the people supporting Bannon are people like Dershowitz.
Not clicking the Intercept, but there’s no guarantee that Dershowitz isn’t a racist. He’s been on the wrong side of many things.
Oh, and sorry – I confused the issues, but yeah – clearly Bannon supporters aren’t all working class. That whole working class anxiety theory has a lot of holes.
I mean, pretty clearly, the United States taxed itself to prosperity.
“Tax” is doing some pretty heavy lifting here. There was no income tax prior the the 20th century, and 19th century schools were not funded by the feds. Nor were 20th century schools for the most part.
Federal spending on harbors and roads was and is funded by taxes, user fees, etc. If we were to limit the conversation to these modest investments, you would be correct, but we would be living in an alternative universe.
The current marginal rate on earned income is 42.5% or thereabouts. My statement was made in the context of a proposed 50-75% tax on earnings over 5M. My statement stands. Moreover, I will amplify on it ans say and country cannot sustainably tax, borrow and spend its way into long term prosperity. Feel free to explain why this is incorrect.
If McTx wants to magnanimously move to some spot on the globe with ZERO taxes to impede his prosperity, and ZERO “government services” to go along with them, I for one am willing to contribute to the one-way ticket.
Feel free to step in for Jack and explain how we, today and in the context in which I made my statement, can tax ourselves into prosperity. I’m all ears.
Not hard to find that libertarian paradise. It’s called Somalia.
Of course, libertarians have no end of excuses about why that isn’t really what they are talking about. And their ideal wouldn’t play out like that. Except none of their reasons why it wouldn’t work out like that are convincing, at least if it involved real human beings — especially neighbors.
Is someone confusing me with a libertarian or is this just the choir preaching to itself? If there is a serious discussion of taxes and tax burdens going on, I think I’ve been pretty clear that that the current tax load is bearable, but adding to it is not.
Whenever we talk about health care, it is always useful to mention the 1993 Kristol memo
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/stepping-back-from-the-heady-storm
“the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse–much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for “security” on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.”
Is someone confusing me with a libertarian or is this just the choir preaching to itself?
Actually, I was talking about Ryan, not you McKinney.
the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse–much worse
God forbid that the government be allowed to do something that benefits the public at large.
It’s the road to serfdom.
Back to the whole concept of the white middle class, if you haven’t been paying attention to Sarah Kendzior, you should start doing so on a daily basis. She’s on twitter, but here is an interview and an essay. She writes a lot so try to follow her to find more.
Just as a preface, she’s been living in St. Louis, but has a history studying former Soviet satellite state dictatorships. She’s quite familiar with what happens when Putin’s politics prevail.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/edmonton/programs/edmontonam/trump-nation-1.3845502
https://thecorrespondent.com/5575/our-fate-was-sealed-long-before-november-8-and-not-because-the-elections-rigged/1576889402275-7591b019
Not clicking on the intercept is silly–some people in the NYT drive me nuts but I read the paper anyway.
The working class anxiety theory is true, I think, if not taken too far. Several things can be true at once. The Trump campaign was horribly racist and bigoted and obviously attracted a lot of support for that reason. And a lot of working class people were probably attracted by Trump’s criticisms of free trade agreements and his claim to feel their pain ( which doesn’t mean they were wise to trust him.). And for some people it was probably a bit of both.
There were other reasons for Trump support, but I don’t want to get into them here.
And there were people not feeling any economic anxiety whatsoever who definitely found the bigotry attractive. As I think I mentioned in this or some other thread, I am friends with someone like that. His beliefs about Muslims are paranoid lunacy. I am being polite. . He is like a brother to me in other ways, so there is a lot of tension over this.
some people in the NYT drive me nuts but I read the paper anyway.
Me too, but Glenn Greenwald is exceptionally evil. He will not be enriched by me. He is a horror story just as bad as most of the actors in this play.
Again, read Sarah Kendzior. Her work is much better. Give it a try, then we’ll talk.
When the bottom line is bigotry? It’s probably bigotry.
McT, I’m in the process of writing a post on diversity, so I hope you will bring your enlightened comments there. Hope to finish it tomorrow my time
The bottom line isn’t bigotry in all cases. That’s the point. And Democrats may lose again if they aren’t at least a little self critical. At the moment Trump seems so spectacularly incompetent one might be a little hopeful that his support plummets fast, but I don’t think one can count on that.
I completely disagree regarding Greenwald, but that’s another perennial argument we can skip for now.
can we please keep in mind that Clinton won the popular vote ? more people voted for Clinton than voted for Trump.
the Dems gained seats in the House and Senate.
why aren’t we talking about how the goddamned GOP can continue to exist having lost the Presidential popular vote six of the last seven elections?
No discussion of Kendzior? She’s an incredibly important voice. I won’t respond until you address her views.
And why to people have to scream in order for other people to read women writers?
I googled her. I’ll read some of it, but it looked a lot like material I have seen elsewhere. Whether we discuss things or not isn’t something that should concern anyone that much ( including us).
You don’t want to read the work of a woman, Donald, obviously. I won’t talk to you until you read what she writes and you respond to it.
the Dems gained seats in the House and Senate.
why aren’t we talking about how the goddamned GOP can continue to exist having lost the Presidential popular vote six of the last seven elections?
Especially when the Presidential candidate of the Democrats was opposed by the Russian government and the FBI? It’s Watergate, except that it succeeded. I think the election should be challenged and set aside. I get it that it’s not going to happen, but I’m going to pester people endlessly because what’s happening is wrong.
By the way, Donald, one of the links I posted is a video.
Not that hard.
I am trying to understand what sort of person would write that first comment about not reading a woman. It can’t be that you really want a discussion. Bye.
what sort of person
Hit a nerve? Bye.
Glenn Greenwald is gay, not a woman.
😉
The Kendzior piece is interesting in its characterization of the mob. But like many of its type, it fails to explain what is different about now–which is to say why did we go through a relatively long space where racists were not nearly so ascendant.
I think that Tobias Rose *may* be better at explaining that.
sapient, you’re currently behaving like a petulant and controlling ass. When you in the same breath refuse to read material offered up for comment by someone who you are demanding read your proffered sources, and proceed to attack their character and impute deep moral failings for not doing so on command, you are being the absolute worst you that you ever are here. And it’s pretty damned awful.
Grow up, and treat others as you ask them to treat you.
Actually, I was talking about Ryan, not you McKinney.
Ryan is hardly a libertarian.
why aren’t we talking about how the goddamned GOP can continue to exist having lost the Presidential popular vote six of the last seven elections?
The popular vote is an interesting artifact, but not all that meaningful. Mathematically, a candidate could get 270 electoral votes with less that 22% of the popular vote.
Besides candidates structure their campaigns to get as many electoral votes possible, not popular votes.
why did we go through a relatively long space where racists were not nearly so ascendant
Obama inflamed them, made them feel like they need to be heard. yada yada “take our country back”. countless racist emails from elected GOP members or GOP party chairs and uncountable bajillions of racist emails and FB memes.
and the internet has enabled them to be heard without fear of retribution.
and then Trump made them feel like it was OK to say it out loud.
[but don’t talk about it. you’ll hurt their feelings and then they’ll never vote for a Democrat again ever.]
I remember the good old days when Sebastian and Phil used to snipe at each other. They were far more amusing when they did it.
Seb, that Rose article seems like a good overview and in keeping with some discussions my former classmates who studied/work in social media have been kicking around (on Facebook, natch). Facebook hasn’t done a great job of segregating my newsfeed (I suspect it’s because I’m not giving them enough data to work with), so I’ve had the, ah, pleasure of a mixed feed this electoral cycle. It’s frustrating seeing the crap that is spewed (on both sides; I’m looking at you, Addicting Info and Occupy Democrats) and lapped up, and uncritically accepted. One point one of my former classmates made is that the feed structure favors strong shallow reactions – clickbait – and that opening up the structure or even the API of the newsfeed could allow for competition among newsfeed algorithms, potentially breaking out of that trap. The problem, of course, is that this runs counter to Facebook’s profit motive.
It’s an artificially hard problem that we’ve made for ourselves. And there isn’t an easy solution. There certainly isn’t an easy solution that won’t invite pushback. The only way out I can see is motivating people to diversify their information sources and educate themselves about those sources they choose… which is unlikely to happen since time-saving convenience is how we got to the current mess we’re in…
why did we go through a relatively long space where racists were not nearly so ascendant
We did a fairly solid job of making public racism taboo. It’s vogue to attack political correctness as mealy-mouthed, but it did do a pretty solid job of attaching stigma to expression of racist attitudes. Racist attitudes didn’t disappear, nor did racism, but the range of acceptable expressions of them narrowed a lot.
This was not all positive, I think. We have a generation growing up who’s never seen unequivocal widespread pervasive racism first-hand, and who can thus buy into nonsense about our nation being post-racial or that “the pendulum has swung too far”. Couple that with the creation of (toxic) safe spaces for them online, and you have a perfect breeding ground for a new generation of racists to spill out into public, and ofc that will bring the racists that PC culture suppressed out as well.
Growing up, I had a certain sense that racism was slowly dying out, and with time it would have to go away because its strongest adherents would die off without being able to immerse a new generation in racist culture and pass on their “values”. That looks so naive now that it pains me to even write it…
Sapient, I have been insulted online by people where it stung. Yours are on the level of calling someone a libtard. It is unpleasant, but not for the reason you imagine.
“The popular vote is an interesting artifact, but not all that meaningful. ”
really? i’ll break it down for you.
it means more people voted against Trump than voted for him.
in turn that means that any claims he might make of speaking “for the american people” are bullshit.
he won. well played. if you support him, don’t let it go to your head.
People. Calm down. Let people lick their wounds.
Okay, I will behave.
On racism, I had a couple of rude awakenings. First in 1994 with the wild popularity of the Bell Curve. All these white people finally relieved that they could come out of the closet because Science had confirmed that blacks performed poorly on average on I Q tests and so liberals who sputtered about the Flynn effect and other factors were just denying Science. Most of the online debate back in those prehistoric days was dominated by white guys so obviously relieved that what they secretly thought was now confirmed. And no, they weren’t racist, they insisted, because they believed in judging people as individuals, but the IQ difference explained why blacks were poor. The Bell Curve furor gradually died out, but it startled me at the time.
The other has been the slow realization during the Bush years that Bush was actually a liberal compared to his party on Islamophobia. My crazed friend on that subject gradually became mainstream. And of course some of the rightwing hatred of Obama was a mixture of crackpot Islamophobia and racism. I am not saying that all of it was, but you had to be blind to miss the racism. As for my friend, he occasionally said things that had my jaw drop, but it could be dismissed because he was just a kook. Now the sort of kook who spread that crap is likely to be an advisor to the President.
“Bush was actually a liberal compared to his party on Islamophobia. ”
credit where credit is due.
Maybe now is the right time to put the “Miss me yet?” posters up again. 😉
Or maybe a joint Dubya/Obama version.
At the moment Obama is quite inconvenient to me. He is visiting here currently and the security measures ruin traffic (private and public) in the inner city. 😉
The drumbeat for direct election is certainly a drumbeat for the end of the United States. This article shows, along with any map of red and blue by county how Republican the US is.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/12/these-3-maps-show-just-how-dominant-republicans-are-in-america-after-tuesday/?client=ms-android-att-us
Yes, many more people live in cities thus creating their own echo chamber. So out of 250 million people, 100 million voted and 500k more or so voted for Clinton, maybe. Given the population advantages in the New York and California metro centers that represents a huge loss across the rest of the country.
But if folks are unhappy they should just move to the city.
Mathematically, a candidate could get 270 electoral votes with less that 22% of the popular vote.
and if that happened, would you say the party that got 78% of the popular vote was in deep existential trouble ?
The drumbeat for direct election is certainly a drumbeat for the end of the United States.
the way direct election of governors has ruined… what?
LJ–I look forward to your post and the ensuing exchange.
It’s certainly true that Dubya was no islamophobe; the photos of him walking hand-in-hand with “Bandar Bush” certainly showed that at a personal level. That said, the attitudes of “Dubya Admin” != “Dubya”, but there was some moderating influence.
But what woke *me* up to continuing racism wasn’t “The Bell Curve”, but rather the reaction by some “ordinary white people” to “THOSE people” affected by hurricane Katrina. It was much less “abstract policy” and much more “in your face racism”.
I thought we were better than that. I thought we could heal those wounds and make it better. I was wrong. And now we get to see if “burn it all down” will do the job.
Marty: … any map of red and blue by county how Republican the US is.
Acres don’t make up America, people do.
Try comparing the red/blue county map of the US to a photo from space of the US at night. You might conclude that Democrats are afraid of the dark.
–TP
TP,
I think that is an interesting observation. As I was thinking about the maps this morning I went through mental list of how moving to the city would negatively impact my way of life. Not being able to see the stars without the city lights blocking them was very high on the list.
Marty,
I originally wrote “You might conclude that Republicans like to live in the dark” but decided it might hurt your feelings 🙂
–TP
I thought candidates structured their campaigns around the electoral college, and that candidates who won the electoral college, but not the popular vote, could just as easily have won the popular vote if that’s what they had set out to do. Now I find out that elections based on the popular vote would be poison to America.
“Maybe now is the right time to put the “Miss me yet?””
credit where credit is due doesn’t quite reach all the way to “miss me yet”.
“The drumbeat for direct election is certainly a drumbeat for the end of the United States”
there are things to be said pro snd con sbout the electoral college. but if the nation is incapable of surviving a direct national election, it’s not worth the candle.
I don’t know if this has occurred to you, but a direct election might actually increase the influence of, for instance, all the conservative people who live in blue states. of whom there are many. or all the people of whatever stripe who don’t live in swing states.
all of whose interest are basically ignored every four years.
are we a nation of states or people? Webster said people. I agree.
if you want to live in the city live in the city. if you want to live in the country live in the country. if you don’t want people to bit cheaper about your choices, don’t bibich about theirs.
BITCH about your choices, don’t BITCH about theirs.
tablet auto-correct + fat fingers = word salad
We are by definition, and a good one IMO,a nation of states. With limited central authority meant to maximize local autonomy while providing for the shared good where it is obviously a common good.
The problem seems to come in when local autonomy is considered bad, yet there is not a shared vision of the common good.
And no. The Republicans in Western Mass would have no more say in a direct election while thirty states worth of people would also have none. A much larger percent being ignored.
If we ditched the electoral college, every state, regardless of size, would still have two senators, not to mention their own state governments.
why should states elect the President?
counties don’t elect governors.
hsh, that’s always the next argument, why should states with 100000 people have the same number of Senators as California?
Big slippery slope to a tyranny avoided at the outset of our country.
Sticking to the electoral college for the moment, the states that get the most attention are the ones that are actually in play. Wyoming, for instance, is not one of them. Part of it is the winner-take-all nature of the electors that most states follow. You could get rid of that without getting rid of the electoral college altogether.
hsh True enough. I would have to think about that, it could give red people in blue states and vice versa more incentive to vote.
“Tax” is doing some pretty heavy lifting here. There was no income tax prior the the 20th century, and 19th century schools were not funded by the feds. Nor were 20th century schools for the most part.
Non-income and non-federal taxes are still…taxes.
Federal spending on harbors and roads was and is funded by taxes, user fees, etc. If we were to limit the conversation to these modest investments, you would be correct, but we would be living in an alternative universe.
Yes, one significantly less prosperous.
The current marginal rate on earned income is 42.5% or thereabouts.
Quibbling, but AFAICT, the top nominal marginal rate is 39.6% according to my quick googling, which kicks in in the mid-400s. The top capital gains rate is only 20%. The estate tax top rate is only 40%, with an exemption of five and a half million.
But the numbers are arbitrary. There is nothing magic about the number 75 that makes it too high, or the number 15 that makes it too low. The right number will probably vary over time and place – what was right for 1870s might not be right for the 1970s or the 2070s.
The question is a) whether there are positive effects from reducing income inequality qua income inequality (to which I would answer: yes, yes there are) and b) at any given time whether productive investments can be made with the money (investments at least marginally more productive than the best alternatives that money would be put to use in private hands).
So, leaving a) aside for the moment, the correct frame of analysis is not percentage points, it is programs.
And, shockingly, it looks like there are many productive investments which can be made – from education to health care to energy and transportation infrastructure.
My statement was made in the context of a proposed 50-75% tax on earnings over 5M. My statement stands. Moreover, I will amplify on it ans say and country cannot sustainably tax, borrow and spend its way into long term prosperity. Feel free to explain why this is incorrect.
Feel free to explain why it is correct.
This is basically blind assertion, with perhaps some vague handwaving about crowding out and Galtists going on strike.
I think we’ve established that qualitatively the statement is false. Every country with any prosperity at all borrows, taxes, and spends to make the investments to get there.
So I understand you’re arguing a narrower quantitative point. Namely, taxing and spending at 20% or 35% (or whatever your number is) is ok and “sustainable”. But taxing people with millions of dollars in income at 70% would be a bridge too far and eventually bring the whole thing collapsing down. Because…reasons?
Daniel Webster.
We’ve had two very contentious elections in less than 20 years where more people voted against the POTUS-elect than voted for him.
That’s a problem. I don’t know what the solution is. But it’s as legitimate to be concerned about the interests of the *majority of the population* as it is to be concerned about people who live in lower-population areas.
“Tyranny”, as you want to style the ability of one demographic to impose their political will on other ones, cuts in more than one way.
The problem seems to come in when local autonomy is considered bad, yet there is not a shared vision of the common good.
I would say the problem comes in when there is not a shared vision of the common good. Full stop.
And here we are.
“Tyranny”, as you want to style the ability of one demographic to impose their political will on other ones, cuts in more than one way.
I believe one of tyrannies to be avoided was the abolition of slavery. Tyranny!
That’s a problem. I don’t know what the solution is.
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
It needs another 105 EVs, so if it’s not passed in your state, call up a state senator or something: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
We are by definition, and a good one IMO,a nation of states.
Like it or not, there is a federal government with a great deal of power, and it is that rather than the collected states that the President presides over. Someone living in a low-population-density region should have their vote get three times the weight of someone living in a densely populated region for an official whose policies affect both of them equally.
*should not
We are by definition, and a good one IMO,a nation of states.
Once upon a time, we were a nation of states. That was under the Articles of Confederation. The reason we have a Constitution is because the “nation of states” worked so unsatisfactorily.
It’s probably just a slur. But the reason for the Civil War was precisely that some folks wanted to keep the “states’ rights” of a nation of states.
I think it’s more because people thought that state’s rights trumped the rights of their respective inhabitants.
Some of them, anyway.
This article shows, along with any map of red and blue by county how Republican the US is.
This map show just how (R) the country is at a county by county level.
The answer is not especially (R) and not especially (D).
If you want to live in the country, live in the country. I don’t give a crap. The country is nice, I’m sure it’s really enjoyable to be there.
More people voted against Trump than voted for him. His positions, and the values and agendas of the people who voted for him, do not represent a majority of the people who voted, nor a majority of the people in this country.
If folks feel like their traditional lifestyles are in danger of changing, they’re probably right. Things change. That’s life.
Guess what? My lifestyle is changing too. Everybody’s is. Things change. That’s life.
If you want to talk about how to get people in rural areas good stable jobs, or health care, or transportation, or good schools, or whatever they need to have stable, rewarding lives, I’m on your side. I am all in for all of that stuff.
I want that for you, and for me. I want it for every part of the country, and every kind of people who live in it.
If you just want to piss and moan about people “looking down on you” and “forcing their lifestyles and values on you”, I don’t want to hear it. Because we all – every single one of us – deals with that stuff all the time.
If everything that appears to be so about Trump turns out to actually be so, he is going to be a horrible, horrible President.
The people who voted for him made that happen. Not the liberals who weren’t nice to them. Them. They cast their votes for a crappy candidate.
Not my circus, not my monkeys? If only. We’re all in the circus now.
Resentment is a shitty motivation for participating in public life.
Ti get tired the majority of the population you need a lot more votes. To get to the majority of those that voted you need to count them all, and as far as I can tell that isn’t happening.
dream on Marty.
LJ–I realize you haven’t posted yet. Myadelayed response will be due to the press of business. It may be Monday or Tuesday. I look forward to it.
F’ing iPhone.
I grew up in the Washington, DC, area, with a lot of government folks, so maybe I’m a little sensitive, but
Whoever is Secretary of State (Romney’s name appears in misinformation), Putin is running the foreign policy of the United States starting in late January. Get on the phone.
Michael Flynn, really?
Trump is gonna do whatever the hell he wants to do. He is utterly unaccustomed to self-restraint or self-discipline. He is used to being an autocrat in his private business enterprises, and in his private life.
He is no longer a private person.
Nothing whatsoever in his life or experience has prepared him for the role he is going to have to assume in January. He is utterly unprepared for a role in which he will be expected to understand and observe limits – legal limits, constitutional limits, limits imposed by the sovereignty and dignity of other nations, and the simple basic limits of decorum and decency – on his behavior.
He is a man-child.
We’re a very powerful nation, and our history has built a store of good faith with many of the other nations in the world. The rest of the world will therefore probably cut him some amount of slack.
There will be a limit to that.
He has an extraordinary amount of growing up to do in about 60 days. He’s 70 freaking years old. I’m not seeing that in the cards.
Here we go!
And yes, the lack of transparency around his relationships with Putin are freaking concerning.
F’ing iPhone
Don’t blame Apple. A Samsung is every bit as irritating.
Putin is running the foreign policy of the United States starting in late January.
Can’t say that’s a stunning surprise. But I would have thought Putin, at least, had enough trade craft to go with something a little more subtle. Guess it’s the price he pays for working with a novice. And one who is pretty much incapable of learning at that.
Questions for Marty:
What are your thoughts about the fact that the first piece of legislation under discussion after the election is Paul Ryan’s plan to replace Medicare with a voucher program?
Is that going to be a good thing for all of the working people of the US who are in, or are nearing, retirement age?
Social Security is up next. They need to trim entitlements in order to fund Trump’s agenda. Not my words, talk to Orrin Hatch.
How is that all going to work out for the working people of rural America?
Do you know what? I personally will probably be more or less OK no matter what. I’m a snotty liberal coastal elitist, my wife and I have some – not a great big pile, but some – money tucked away. If the markets don’t totally go sideways, we’ll probably be OK.
Even if they go totally sideways, I’ll just work a few years longer than I thought I would have to.
What a freaking snotty liberal coastal elitist I am!!
You know who is going to pay, and pay, and pay, and pay, and pay, and pay, and pay? And then pay some more? And then die paying, and still not be done?
All of the hard working middle-ish class folks of good old heartland America.
Ryan and his pals are going to fucking roger them like they’ve never been rogered before. And Trump is going to be fine with it.
I’m not sure there’s ever been an own-goal quite like the own-goal of the 2016 election.
You know what? I’m sure it sounds like I’m being an insufferable prick, but it’s breaking my fucking heart. All of it.
This was a not-bad country once upon a time.
Bon chance to one and all.
I wish I could be more empathetic, but apparently my friends all suck and are shitty parents and I’m unhinged from reality.
I’m going to bed now before I actually get freaking rude. Night all.
Pertinent:
“The ability to take risks is what has made America great,” said Ferguson, 56, who lives in South Salem, New York. Repealing Obamacare “will stop people from taking risks. There will be a lot fewer start-ups and entrepreneurs [without] some compelling replacement.”
Oh well. No biggie. I’m sure freeing people to take entrepreneurial risks has nothing to do with generating prosperity!