I thought VidaLoca’s contribution on the interests of white working-class voters was an excellent, reality-based piece. In addition to the point about Walker showing real benefits to middle-class white voters, poor white voters who may not get the tax breaks of property owners also derive a real benefit. Matt Bruenig:
If you define the “interests” of poor whites purely in economic terms such that they align with poor blacks, then you are going to determine that anti-black attitudes and political activities go against the interests of poor whites. If you define the “interests” of poor whites more broadly so as to include reasonable concerns regarding social rank and regard, then you are going to determine that anti-black attitudes and political activities don’t go against the interests of the poor whites.
Maybe this “tribalism,” but certainly not in the sneering sense that the word is normally used by elites. Is it irrational not to want to be perceived as being in last place? If so, then the whole notion that poor whites are acting against their interest, which is pretty much a bedrock belief among a lot of Democrats, needs a re-think.
Kylroy
Freud’s work was largely junk, but he contributed one major idea to the field: if someone is doing an action regularly, they’re doing it because they get something out of it. If you want them to stop it, you need to figure out some other way to give them whatever that action gives them.
ruemara
I’m glad someone said it. Social standing and acceptance trumps economic solidarity over and over again in America.
Belafon
If that’s your goal, then I can understand the attitude.
I’m looking at it this way, though: If we’ve all been put into a line (rank), and only the first 500 get a prize at the door, it doesn’t matter if I’m not in last place. I want to change it so that you’re not required to be in the first 500 to get something, especially if you having it would be beneficial (maybe you’re the person who could cure cancer, but you were born in a family that cannot afford to send you to college).
Sherparick
There also has to be a recognition that there is a large divergence between the Northern White working class and the Southern White Working class. Yes, there are significant amounts of the Northern White working class with Southern Working Class attitudes and consciousness of “white privilege.” (See Walker, Scott and King, Peter for politicians particularly adroit at drawing northern white working class voters to the dark side, especially in places that have especially toxic race relation history as Greater Milwaukee and the Irish and Italian neighborhoods of Greater New York City). But in Mississippi, Republicans get 90% of the white vote, in Wisconsin its still at about 55% and it much of the North it is below 50%. The difference is what we have to work with and nationally get the Republicans down to 55% of White Vote. The greater the racial polarization, the less of what Chris Rock correctly calls “white people getting nicer,” and the more likely Republicans breaking above 60% of the white vote.
Elmo
The genie and the Russian peasant is a good story for a reason. If he gets twice as much as whatever I get, make me blind in one eye.
Comrade Dread
Let’s also remember that the conservative economic message to poor whites is “the reason you don’t have a job is because of immigration. Also it’s because taxes are too high on corporations and the wealthy who would make plenty of jobs for you if all of their tax dollars weren’t going to support lazy blah people who are gaming the system and lazy single blah moms who pop out more kids (with different baby daddies) to get more of that lucrative welfare money, and if we just cut welfare, medicaid, and taxes, happy times would be hear again and Those people would have to get real jobs.”
Doesn’t matter if it’s all lies to deflect attention from the systematic looting of the American dream by the wealthy and corporations who really are jonesing to go back to the days when they could pay a kid $.20 a day to grease gears and no one complained about the occasional crushed and maimed little brat.
gussie
@Belafon: I think this is wrong: “If we’ve all been put into a line (rank), and only the first 500 get a prize at the door, it doesn’t matter if I’m not in last place.”
Instead, I suspect, it works like this: “If I’m not getting a winning prize at the door, I’ll fight all the other losers tooth-and-nail for a consolation sticker.” It’s the fact that I *don’t* get a prize that makes it so much more important to ‘win’ the ranking.
Elmo
@Kylroy:
So much of good psychology comes down to the same principles as good dog training.
ETA: and by that I mean the principle of incompatible alternate behavior. It not only works, it’s really the only thing that does consistently and long term.
BGinCHI
Getting the people at the bottom to cut each other up over peanuts in order to keep them distracted and exhausted has been a Capitalism recipe for success for a few hundred years. Racial fears are just the Sriracha needed to make the whole thing even more enticing.
The only way to make a dent in this is income redistribution and education.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Belafon: Well said.
I think another part of the puzzle is that most of us have little or no interactions with people who aren’t like us. So we (as a people) believe stories we hear on the TV and radio from people who seem to be like us about people who aren’t like us, or who are like us and don’t fit the “liberal media narrative”. “The breakdown of the black family!!1” “Black on black violence!!11” “Hippies surfing all day while getting food stamps to buy sushi!!11” “Woman saved from drug-crazed predator by having a handgun!!11” Ad nauseam.
What will fix that and make us interact more and get more understanding of those not like us? I dunno. Sports? Too expensive. Cultural events? Too bifurcated and often too expensive. It probably will take explicit, long-term policies (explicitly encouraging mixed neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces) and leaders who see that it is important.
Obama has tried to do that with his speeches about us being “citizens” who “are our brother’s keeper”, but it hasn’t reached critical mass. He can’t do it alone.
DeLong has sorta tried to do that with his economic mantra that “We are the 100%”.
Dividing people into voters we can reach vs. intractable foes or unreachable stupidos doesn’t fit into that picture. But it might be a necessary tactic to gain enough political power to make the systems more inclusive. When your opponents will throw years of experience and policies away if they have 50%+1 (or less, in cases where they can bend the Senate rules, etc.), while simultaneously trying to shrink the electorate to the “right” voters, then hoping for a grand coalition with them is probably doomed – at least for now. One has to bring knives to a knife fight…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Davis X. Machina
There are ways to define ‘self-interest’ that don’t involve money.
Marx wrote a lot about alienation, too.
Holden Pattern
Ah, so now we’re using prettier words for like “group solidarity”, “preservation of privilege” and “social status anxiety” instead of the “sneering” words like “tribalism” and “racism”.
But they’re the same damn thing. “My group traditionally had an advantage over your group for no good reason except my group is white, male, Protestant, whatever, and I’m going to preserve that no matter what, and although we’re both drowning because I won’t work with you to get to the surface, I’d rather drown than cooperate with you as long as I get to stand on your neck.”
Big ole hound
It seems that humans always will need someone to look down on. “your better than” is all a group of people need to believe or be told or feel. I think it has always been that way and always will be. The “human” pack will determine a pecking order and laws, stigma or good intention seem to only suppress the lizard brain. Very sad that a lot (think cops, racists etc) have not evolved past this. Look worldwide and not just here. Depressing.
constitutional mistermix
@Holden Pattern: I’m thinking of the DC political press who think that anyone with a closely-held political belief is exhibiting tribalism.
Timurid
White Privilege is the biggest Ponzi scheme ever…
Tommy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Grew up in a town that is 98.7% white according to the Census. I moved. Lived in DC, NE in the mid-90s, where I was the only white person living on the block. Eye opening. People were pissed off at me. Why was the white guy coming in. Mad at me. We talked and things got cool.
Ruckus
Projection is not just a conservative trait. All humans do it, and not just Americans. We project our views on conservatives just like they do on us. They are all racist. They are all stupid. They are all horrible. And yes some of them are. There are black people who are not paragons of reasonable human behavior. Ben Carlson and C. Thomas come to mind. None of us fall into neat little boxes of thought. Although some people do wear their labels proudly. Like the rich fucker who destroyed his $1.2 million supercar within hours of picking it up. Or not. Like the KKK who hide their faces under dunce caps. Humans are said to be complex, although some seem to try very hard to never reach the complex stage. Humans can hold many thoughts, although many seem unable. Humans can solve complex problems, although many seem to have problems figuring out how to simply live with others.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Maybe, but it’s hardwired into the primate brain more fundamentally than anything else save for the drive to reproduce.
Dealing with it constructively rather than mocking it might be a good idea.
Belafon
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
A perceived invasion of an alient from outer space? It doesn’t have to be a real alien. It could be one made by a group of scientists that magically appears in some big city, like, say, New York.
Joel
The Frank “voting against interests” argument is dumb and lazy for all sorts of reasons. The most prominent of these is that poorer people of all races tend to vote (relatively) more liberally, if they vote at all.
Frankensteinbeck
One problem with VidaLoca’s theory: He bases it almost entirely on Wisconsin, where Walker is shuffling visible cash-type benefits to the white lower class. I’ve been the white lower class. Maybe that’s happening in Wisconsin, but it’s not happening in general – and yet, Republicans exhibit the exact same voting habits where they are receiving no perceptible material benefit. Hell, Republicans are doing much better in those areas.
Plus, what you just described IS tribalism. Racism is part of tribalism. Not in a ‘oh, but only technically’ sense. No. It’s the same kind of thinking. People who do one, usually do the other.
I’ve always believed that most Republicans are voting for their self-interest, because the pleasure of ego and hate are a kind of self-interest. There are definitely Republican voters voting Republican because they always have even though they don’t agree with Republicans in any way anymore, but I’ve never thought they were anything but a fringe.
What I agree with VidaLoca about is that this attitude doesn’t help you as a political strategy. You have to figure out what you can do, not focus on what you can’t.
Oh, and I don’t think ‘white privilege’ is a benefit. Lower class whites aren’t aware they get better treatment than blacks. They just want to be able to hurt them. It’s about negatives, not positives.
This has been Franken ‘Southsplainin’ Steinbeck, who probably should fix his blood sugar before posting in the morning.
@Kylroy:
Freud’s gigantic contribution that makes him the father of modern psychology is discovering that humans don’t know what we’re thinking.
Ruckus
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
@BGinCHI:
This is why the 99% thing is important. It is a tie that binds across the normal dividing lines. It is also the thing that unites the have nots with the have a bits and the have just more than enoughs against the have almost all of it and it isn’t enoughs. That is the ones who want it all and are willing to do whatever to get it. They don’t care if you and your kids suffer and die as long as they get it all. They don’t need it all, they don’t need a tenth of it all but they want it all just the same. They will lie, steal, cheat, maim and kill to get it all.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
There are major emotional ties between the GOP 99% and the 1%. They’re not being deceived. They’re just being offered something they want more than a material helping hand.
gene108
I have a theory about Republicans and their recent success, after the terrible defeats of 2008 and 2006 they suffered.
The Republicans, since Reagan, have been identified as a party that will cut taxes or not raise them, at the worst, not confiscate your guns and let you use them whenever and wherever you want, anti-abortion, and so on.
It may not be the most appealing or the best way to do things, but it is a brand and people will no what they get, when they elect Republicans or at least feel that way.
I think it is sort of like McDonalds. The food sort of sucks, is bad for you, but you know what you are getting, when you go there or to any other chain restaurant.
I know Republicans can flat out lie, when they need to get elected, such as not turning Midwest states into right-to-work states to get elected, but I think that veneer of “they would not do that” dropped off in 2010 and voters seem to have developed a comfort factor with what they’d get from Republicans.
Democrats have trouble defining themselves in this way.
The Republican strategy is a high risk strategy, since if people no longer find comfort in your brand, you will lose big everywhere. So far it has paid off for them.
Frankensteinbeck
@gene108:
So, what is the Republican brand, and why did it suddenly get vastly more attractive to a whole bunch of whites after the 2008 election?
EDIT – Damn, am I cranky! I’m going to drag myself away from this until I fix that.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Don’t believe I used the word or the idea of deception any where in there. But it is there none the less. Lower taxes and jobs! would be a prime example. And your deception prognosis is correct there, the 99% want jobs, most of them know they will never be anywhere near wealthy, they just want to live and they need jobs for that. The deception is that the 1% know there are no more jobs with lower taxes and within the 99% those who think they can get a job convincing the rest of the 99%, Lower taxes, more jobs!!. Of course, given today’s conservative grifting that part of the 99% is correct. But they are also deceived in that the ROI for the 1%’s grifting money is immense. It’s not in for a penny, in for a pound, it’s in for a penny, get a pound in return.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Being cranky is a good debating tactic. Don’t give it up. It’s a major way to discuss ideas and open the conversation. It breaks the logjam of tribalism that we all have. It’s going from cranky to pissed off that gets bad results. And who was it that said “If you aren’t mad, you aren’t paying attention”?
negative 1
Um, has anyone ever met someone who views themselves as a member of ‘the white working class’? Most people I meet, who are white and working class, think of themselves as middle class. So if your opening enjoinder starts with ‘for poorer white people’ or implies it, you’re going to get a big fat middle finger before you even utter another sentence or say something about minorities.
Ruckus
@gene108:
I think this is important.
The GOP has opened the bottle of anger and resentment and is winning with it currently, but it is hard to control and may not be able to be controlled. Right now they are barely managing, if that anger and resentment get worse they most likely won’t be able to control it. And that will be the end, and I don’t think the fallout will just be the GOP.
schrodinger's cat
I find these endless ruminations about working class white voters pointless. Barack Obama has shown Democrats the way to win, emulate it, end of the story.
schrodinger's cat
@negative 1: I have and they vote for Democrats, but I live in the Northeast.
Fair Economist
I think denigrating the white racists’ attitudes as tribal/backwards/whatever is exactly the way to go. A lot of it is about status – if racism is perceived as low-status that creates an incentive not to be racist, or at least not to show it as much (which helps). This is complementary with creating economic incentives to support Democratic positions to counter the peanuts the Republicans toss the white working class.
gene108
@Comrade Dread:
That may have been true 30-40 years ago, when people had some level of job security and felt maybe the reason they weren’t getting raises like they did or their dad did was because of the Great Society programs.
But today, I do not think lower income people have any great love of any corporation as very few of them have anything other than living paycheck to paycheck.
I think people have been working harder for less for the last 40 years that people can no longer conceive of any other way things should be.
Also, too change can be scary. Even good changes are not certain to turn out good, at first.
So people vote for what they know or they just get apathetic and do not vote. I think the latter is more prevalent than the former, with regards to voting patterns as you go down the economic ladder.
Archon
One of the paradoxical and fascinating thing about our politics now is that Republicans aren’t even pretending to come up with policy ideas that help the white working class anymore (especially at the federal level). They still half-heartedly defend trickle down but the real Republican game seems to be assuring white folks that they will hold the line against government being used to help in anyway, “those people”.
The fascinating part is poor whites no longer have to feel like fools for being promised economic gains by Republicans and getting nothing. They can look at the Republican promise of absolutely nothing except taking moochers of the government trough as voting for principle or even as an act of civic virtue.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I hesitate to draw sweeping conclusions about the electorate based on an extremely low turnout election.
Mr. Twister
@schrodinger’s cat: This. See also:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/12/5/112451/266
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodinger’s cat:
But they turned out, and have been turning out, with extreme zeal. Analyzing the turnout and why the turnout is very much the key issue. I actually think, and I can’t recall ever thinking this before, that the media scuttled it. The last month before the election was nonstop ISIS and ebola, and I watched in person liberals stop being angry and start being depressed at all the stupidity, while exactly the reverse happened in conservatives. I haven’t seen the figures, but I’m told voter motivation shifted wildly in that time frame.
Mr. Twister
@Frankensteinbeck: The day after the election Fox said they would stop reporting about Ebola.
schrodinger's cat
@Frankensteinbeck: I completely agree about the media, they behaved like an arm of the Republican Party even PBS and NYT.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: If you think holding the White House alone is sufficient, that makes sense. But maybe not even then. Obama is a truly gifted politician, plus he came on the scene at a unique time in history, when the opposing party’s chickens were coming home to roost. We (Democrats) do need at least a portion of the white working class to have any chance of sane government.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: No I don’t think it is sufficient just to hold the White House. I was saying that Dems should try to replicate his strategy at the district and state level. Cowering in the corner and playing Republican Lite, doesn’t get them votes of anyone, white working class voters included.
ETA: Democrats need to win but elevating the prejudices of white working class voters over everyone else’s interests is not the way to go. Of course YMMV.
Mike in NC
@Mr. Twister: Also, too: not much heard about ISIS and Benghazi. Those were three things that the elderly Tea Party types were foaming at the mouth about. That and immigration (the imaginary brown hordes flooding over the border).
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker:
I do agree with this too, but stoking racial resentment like Hillary tried to do during the primaries is not the way to go about doing this.
schrodinger's cat
@Mike in NC: They are still foaming at the mouth about immigration. The craziest thing I heard was that the South American migrant children are bring Ebola to America.
FlipYrWhig
Look, people who aren’t voting for Democrats and have never voted for Democrats aren’t going to _start_ voting for Democrats based on some promise of something something economic populism feeling your pain. It’s not rational now and it’s not going to be rational later. Start by outnumbering them at the ballot box; then by putting into effect policies that do things that help everyone, including the ungrateful and resentment-fueled ones. Only then, when they’re feeling less embattled and more secure, will the tribal appeals cease working. When economic times are hard, people harden their hearts and, like some politician guy once said, they cling to their guns and religion. Improve the economic climate _even though you get no immediate political benefit from it_, and eventually there’s less suffering, and then less violence and anger and general dipshittery.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mr. Twister:
Wow. This is a really wise article. I don’t think there’s anything in here I disagree with.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Frankensteinbeck: Your assumption is wrong, about white voters suddenly turning to the Republican Party after Obama. Here’s a link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/11/08/president-obama-and-the-white-vote-no-problem/
Obama in 2008 received 43% of the white vote, which was the same percentage as Clinton in 1996, and more than either Gore in 2000 or Kerry in 2004. His percentage dropped to 39% in 2012, but that’s still more than Mondale received in 1984, and really not much different than either Gore or Kerry.
Regarding the Republican “brand,” I think that it has a lot to do with the idea of self-sufficiency. (Maybe I should call it the “myth” of self-sufficiency, but I’ll try to state it as fairly as possible to the Republicans.) Republicans promote the idea of “individualism,” which is a nice narrative to tell yourself as you attempt to move forward in life. Everyone likes to think that they control their outcomes more than they actually do.
It’s difficult to understand and internalize that there’s no such thing as “self-sufficiency” in the sense argued by Republicans, and it’s even more difficult to understand that the plutocrats benefit when the masses eschew collective action and focus on individualism. Those difficulties are compounded by the fact that the Right has spent much time, effort and money promoting these memes, and the Left hasn’t found an effective response.
To those who way “fuck” the Republicans who vote against their interest and clearly must be racists/fascists beyond reach, I remind you that only 10 years ago John Cole was one such Republican. 15 years ago I was, too. It’s been a journey for me as my eyes have opened, and our mission going forward should be to open more eyes every day to what’s actually happening in the world.
catbirdman
I’m a biologist in southern California who often works on projects with linemen and other pretty well-paid working-class dudes. I believe the Republican message is intended to reassure people down who are feeling stressed out and vulnerable — not reassure them that things are really going to get better, or that they are going to responsibly tackle the existential threats to society, like global warming or dwindling water supplies or Middle East chaos. No, the Republicans simply reassure them that these are NOT existential threats — we can bomb another country, we can drill, baby, drill, we will be growing peaches in Michigan! God and country and hot dogs, etc. These are simple responses to freaking scary situations that most of us feel very uneasy about, deep down inside, if we allow ourselves to go there.
But who has the time to worry about far-away, existential threats? Most of us are focused on staying employed and keeping all the balls in the air. We don’t want to be told that gassing up and getting to work is killing the planet. We want to be told we’re doing everything we can, and that the frickin’ Democrats don’t think it’s enough. The Democrats want your gun, they want your SUV, they want your lawn, they want your incandescent light bulbs, they want you to stop drinking Coke, stop smoking, and lose 20 pounds.
The working-class people I know really aren’t exactly racist — they come from all backgrounds themselves — but as a group they do really resent people of any color who are here illegally and who they see as either dragging down wages or mooching off the system. The Democrats are going to take your tax money and give it to a bunch of anti-American hippies driving Priuses and making solar panels that can’t compete with good old oil and coal. The Dems are also going to give your tax money for a variety of “public services” to people who aren’t working as hard as you are to make a decent living, and if a lot of those people are brown or black, well, it’s not racist if you’re just calling things like you see them. The Dems are also going to give amnesty and drivers’ licenses to all the people here illegally who will do your job for half the price. Again, not racist, just being real.
Yes, the Democrats are going to have Big Government impose all of this on you, they’re going to raise your taxes to pay for it, and they’re going to look down their noses at you while they do it. What a bunch of a##holes. This is the real “perception problem” that I see. It really has very little to do with Scott Walker or anyone else handing out $100 tax cuts, so far as I can tell. It’s about easy, American-sounding, answers to scary problems. Or simply pretending that the problems don’t exist and so don’t need to be dealt with. As the Dems are finding out, these are not easy perceptions to change. What’s more, it’s hard to drum up enthusiasm for an ever-tightening regulatory environment — even Democrats want to feel like they live in a “free country,” and if your party is all about Big Government telling people what to do and engaging in “social engineering” projects, a lot of people aren’t going to get excited about voting for that.
Obviously, I could drone on and on about this, but now I’m boring and depressing myself, so I’ll stop here.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat:
This is a drastic overstatement. Playing Republican Lite (balanced budgets, business growth, cutting regulatory “red tape”) worked for two decades to get them the votes of middle-class white suburbanites. That’s why they did it and still try to do it.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: You misunderstand me, perhaps I was unclear, I am not saying that Dems are Republican Lite, but many campaign as Republican Lite, the people running this cycle ran away from Obama, and his achievements, including the ACA.
FlipYrWhig
@Jonny Scrum-half:
OK, but did either of you convert on the basis of how Democrats made some new promise to do something tangible and economic? That you hadn’t realized that Democrats were on your side, but then you heard something new that won you over? Or did you just get fed up with Republican nonsense and destructiveness?
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m not proposing “elevating the prejudices of white working class voters over everyone else’s interests,” of course. That’s not what going after working class white voters means, unless you’re Fox News or a Republican. Which I’m not.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Democrats should try to win as many votes as they can, white working class and everyone else’s.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m saying the opposite: running as Republican Lite (by some definitions) was a winning strategy for Democrats pretty much throughout the 1990s. It’s not that it never won and people always thought it was stupid; it really did win and a lot of people found it appealing, especially the middle-class white suburbanites in places like the Northeast Corridor who used to be a bread-and-butter Republican constituency. It didn’t work everywhere and it’s not doing all that well in 2014, but for a while there it was a rather successful strategy.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: It worked for Bill Clinton, but I am afraid its not going to work for Hillary.
Paul in KY
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I’d like to bring a gun to a knife fight. To me, that gun is populism. Full-throated populism.
Paul in KY
@Big ole hound: Apes and monkeys certainly have social hierarchies.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: A lot of people who will respond well to “full throated populism” support the cops in Ferguson and NYC and the building of the Keystone Pipeline and so forth. It’s not a strategy without risks to liberal politics and priorities.
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: They are single issue voters, who have a pet issue that they know the Republicans support & they will crawl over broken glass to vote, just due to that particular issue they are nuts about (IMO).
schrodinger's cat
The next big and ugly fight is going to be over immigration. If Obama had signed EO on immigration before the election, the outcome of the election could have been different. The problem with many Dem politicians is that they shy away from a fight while the Republicans thrive on it.
If you can’t fight for yourself why should I believe that you will fight for me, is what many voters must think.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: His way is not working at the state level, in low turnout elections.
Cacti
@Frankensteinbeck:
I agree with your assessment of VidaLoca’s observations. What happens in Wisconsin is apropos of Wisconsin, not something that translates neatly to the rest of the country at large. Walker’s presence in the governor’s mansion and election wins in 2010 and 2012 hardly translated to Republican success during the next Presidential election, where Romney mustered 45.8% of the state vote. In Walker’s wins for governor, he’s also never captured as many total votes as Obama did during his wins in 2008 and 2012. That problem in Wisconsin is the same as it is elsewhere, too many Democrats don’t show up in off year elections.
And of course there’s political tribalism. Suggesting that there isn’t is hopelessly naive. The primary tribalism in US politics has always been racial. What fractured the New Deal coalition was civil rights for people of color. Working class whites decided about 50 years ago that voting white was voting in their interest. They believe prospertiy is a zero sum game. If minorities are becoming more prosperous, it must be at white people’s expense. White males have always been the most prosperous group in this country. No other group has ever pulled even, much less gotten ahead. But there’s poll data out there saying that a majority of white males consider themselves the most picked on and ill-used group in the country, and they believe it sincerely, despite all data to the contrary. Even in the case of white women, a majority of them vote Republican, despite the GOP’s draconian positions on issues of reproductive health. A majority of white people will vote white first.
And my own opinion on why they hate Obama, and by extension the Democratic party so badly, isn’t because he won in 2008. It’s because he won in 2012, over the loud objections of 60% of white voters. That scared them to death, because it confirmed that their political dominance is slipping.
SatanicPanic
@schrodinger’s cat: THIS
SatanicPanic
@schrodinger’s cat: This too.
schrodinger's cat
@Paul in KY: Obama changed the electorate and increased the turnout, got people to come out and vote for him. Did the Democrats try that this time?
ETA: He answered questions and did not treat voters like they were imbecile, that helped too. When ALG played coy about voting for the President, I don’t think it won her any voters.
schrodinger's cat
@SatanicPanic: Thanks for the vote of confidence, GMTA!
Linnaeus
@Mr. Twister:
That’s a good article. That’s white identity politics in a nutshell.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
If anything, I’d say it had the opposite effect.
Obama won 94,000 more votes in Kentucky in 2012 than Grimes did in 2014.
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think that’s wishful thinking. IMHO most Democrats in the Senate who ended up losing would have lost worse, and Mark Warner probably would have lost too. Because what would have happened is that the Democrats who were running would have run away from Obama _on immigration as well_. A huge number of the Democrats on the ballot were trying to quietly pull off a 50%+1 strategy with nothing risky or sudden, just being a steady hand on the tiller who looks after the locals and won’t change the world drastically.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: We support the cops too. When they really do have to shoot a criminal, I’m all for shooting the SOB. I just don’t want them shooting people by mistake, having medical problems, are deaf, have surrendered, etc.
If you are pointing a real gun at a cop, then I think you should be shot & that they have every right to shoot you (saving themselves/bystanders).
FlipYrWhig
@schrodinger’s cat: Had Grimes said, “Yes, I voted for Obama, because I thought he was and still think he is a better choice for the people of Kentucky,” she would have looked more confident — and also would have lost even worse than she did.
schrodinger's cat
Someone needs to figure out how to scale Obama’s winning formula to state and Congressional races. I think it can be done we don’t need to win all seats just > 50% of them.
Ed
@Holden Pattern:
^^^^ This.
If you take folks at their word that they are not racist, then they ARE voting against their (non-racist) interests. The reality is that they ARE racist. They are scared at what the world would be like if you took away their white privilege.
Are there this many racists in Canada? (percentage wise, I mean ). if not, how hard is it to emigrate?? Toronto is like Chicago ( Detroit and Cleveland too, to a lesser extent) – except way cleaner and more polite. It would be very easy to get used to.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: OK, but my point is that “populism” and “liberalism” aren’t always the same thing, and when politicians are populists and not liberals, the blogosphere doesn’t like them for very long.
Paul in KY
@schrodinger’s cat: Right about ALG. Hell, if she really didn’t vote for him (even though she was a delegate, etc.) she should have said so. If you are campaigning for office & as part of my vetting process, I ask you who you voted for in a particular election, I damned well expect an answer.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I disagree. She still would have lost, but it would have been closer. People want you to be confident in your ‘team’. They also want a straight answer to the question & she didn’t give them one.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Playing slow and cautious is not going to work against the nihilist Republican party. Obviously, we see things differently, so lets just agree to disagree.
Paul in KY
@FlipYWhig (number 74): The blogosphere doesn’t like many Republicans…yet, here we are.
SatanicPanic
@FlipYrWhig: This is important. I am a liberal and I’m not really comfortable with populism as commonly practiced in this country.
SatanicPanic
@Paul in KY: She could have said “of course I did. That doesn’t mean I support everything he’s done, but I am Democrat and obviously I would vote for my party’s candidate”. That would make sense to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic: I raise my “populism can head in ugly directions” flag as a warning whenever the topic comes up. Populism can be beneficial, but liberals need to keep a close eye on it lest it stray in an illiberal direction.
Bill
Yes.
If the party in “first place” holds 99% of the capital and power, the “place” of the rest of the line doesn’t matter one bit. Fighting over who’s in second place, 1,000th pace or last place too divide up table scraps is irrational. The rational move is to team up with everyone not in first place to storm the Bastille.
Another Holocene Human
@gussie:
You got that right. That’s exactly it.
And trust me, plenty of Crackers will deny they enjoy white privilege. They feel under siege by cops, taxes, the Man as well. (The fact that Blacks suffer worse under the same stuff they get screwed by is something they wave off.) In fact I’ve even heard Crackers offer a form of cross-racial solidarity to African Americans: Hey, that’s not fair, white people hate the po-lice too! And so on.
One thing that’s missed is for the poorest whites in the South and Appalachia, GUNZZZZ could be a tribal issue–and for many, they are–but for the POOREST people they’re actually an existential issue. Guns are how you hunt game to supplement you and your family’s nutrition. Protein is … not cheap. Republicans have successfully alienated quite a few poor whites from the Democratic party by convincing them that the Democrats are gunna took ‘er gunnnnz.
They get convinced in part because SOME poor whites are just trying to get by and SOME poor and middle class whites are stone cold race hating masturbating-to-the-race-war freaks who are building mini arsenals. So when the neighborhood gun expert swears up and down that the Democrats are comin’ fer their guuuuunz, the others believe him. That leaves the last Dixiecrat or two running around to all the rural events swearing how much they luve guuuunz.
The fact that the GOP is actively raising all of their park and hunting fees and tag fees on their vehicles gets lost.
This is the same kind of fraud that reels in the rubes in Gamergate. They’re feckless, aimless young people who think trolling or watching other people troll is funny and the ur-trolls running the whole thing actually pulled them in with their fake-ass “facts” and make-believe POC twitter accounts and so on. I think most of the ‘innocents’ have caught on by now but a month ago you had GGers swearing they were left wing and it was all about ethics in game journalism and GG is fighting harassment and reporting it. (This is like when my brother told me that 4chan hates CP, I said, brother, 4chan is famous on the internet as the only open board where you can download CP. If 4chan hates it why is it constantly uploaded? That made him think.)
“Oh, they just want more status than Blacks, well I guess any selfish person would choose that,” is not a useful analysis because it’s a complete failure to grapple with how the GOP has been pulling this trick off.
Paul in KY
@SatanicPanic: That would have been a fine answer.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: People in Kentucky also don’t want their Democrats to be aligned neatly with the national party. The lousy answer didn’t hurt, and a good answer wouldn’t have helped.
tam1MI
@Frankensteinbeck:
2 other reasons why motivation dropped so sharply:
1. Right about that time is when the Dems dropped the economic themes that had been working for them (“Raise the minimum wage? What minimum wage?”) at the behest of the Blue Dog types who lost huge anyway.
2. I happened to have a coworker who listened to Hate Talk Radio every day. Every day I heard a steady vitriolic stream of hate and bile. But the rants all ended the same way: “YOU can turn this around! YOU can take your country back! VOTE!!! VOTE!!! VOTE!!!” Then I’d go on liberal blogs and all I read was “Obama sucks. The system’s broken. There’s no hope. DESPAIR!!! DESPAIR!!! DESPAIR!!!”
We lost the last election before we even hit the voting booth.
Dalunay
@negative 1:
I live in a working-class enclave in otherwise liberal Marin (that rich limo liberal heartland) CA. Most of the people in this community are skilled working middle class – carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. There’s a lot of support for anti-immigrant politicians in local elections (but not majority support); the messages are usually coded (fighting against low-cost housing and state control) rather than explicit (but sometimes they are). The builders who try to compete honestly (by not hiring illegals) have a hard time making it against the cheaters, and the local craftsmen have a hard time finding decent work, when illegals are so easy and safe to hire.
The attitudes against illegal immigrants don’t come just from racism or perception, some of them come from actual injustice. As long as we liberals ignore the unjust parts, Republicans can use immigration to vigorously club us. Yes, there’s bigotry, but the injustice (real or imagined) is what generates the real heat.
@Sherparick:
Yes, this! Republicans don’t have the white vote – it’s even everywhere in the U.S. except in the South, where it is overwhelmingly Republican. Republicans believe that whites are their constituency, but it’s really not true. I tried pointing this out last election, and was amazed how quickly the Repub. heads went into the sand in denial. The stats don’t lie, and we certainly shouldn’t give up on a group that’s half with us already. Give up on white Dixiecrats — sure!
If Dems want to win, they need to start appealing to things beyond self-interest. Self-interest works, but an appeal to self-interest and justice or fairness works much better. That’s why welfare queens and illegal-bashing win the elections for Republicans. If we want to win, we have to show the injustice of the Republican agenda towards working-class whites. Dems need to show that they’ll all fight the rich and powerful when the elites are doing illegal and unethical things, instead of cozying up to them for a campaign contribution.
A fight against injustice, fraud, and business cheating isn’t class war. It’s a fight for the American dream, the original American dream. And it’s a fight that the best-known Dems don’t fight any more (Elizabeth Warren excepted).
Archon
@FlipYrWhig:
You can’t ignore the fact that Obama won 100,000 more votes then Grimes did, midterms or not. Especially when considering not a single Kentucky Obama voter in 2012 went to the booth thinking their vote was going to make a bit of difference in their state and in the country writ-large.
Kryptik, A Man Without A Country
@tam1MI:
And the two aren’t exactly two separate issues. #1 is a huge factor in #2. It’s hard to sell a brand on the ground when the faces of the brand don’t seem to want anything to do with it.
Jonny Scrum-half
@FlipYrWhig: My turning point was the Iraq War. I saw how the war supporters misled me and twisted arguments against the war, and it opened my eyes to begin looking skeptically at other arguments. It’s been a process that led me through libertarianism (I’m sorry to say), but has resulted in where I am now.
schrodinger's cat
@Jonny Scrum-half: I was never a Republican but the Iraq war opened my eyes about the MSM.
Visceral
@Belafon: Only if you believe the other tribe won’t join up with the alien invaders/overlords in order to get a leg up on you at best … or to destroy you, your kin, and your way of life at worst. The aliens would have to be a pure and indiscriminate force of destruction – locusts with spaceships – to rally all of humanity against them.
FlipYrWhig
@Archon: McConnell beat Grimes 56.2%-40.7% out of 1.4M people casting votes. Romney beat Obama 60.5%-37.8% out of 1.8M people casting votes. In raw vote terms, you’re right. But in percentage terms, Grimes outperformed Obama; and Jack Conway in 2010 outperformed both of them when he ran against Rand Paul. So, in conclusion, Kentucky is a land of contrasts.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: There were people (IMO) who were inclined to vote for her if they thought she was ‘authentic’ and a ‘straight shooter’. Even if her answer indicated she didn’t hate the Kenyan usurper with the heat of a 1000 suns. Those people either reluctantly pulled the lever for the Senatortise or stayed home.
As I said, probably not enough to win anyway.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@catbirdman:
Excellent. Really, really excellent. Thank you.
That fits in with American’s distrust of science and experts. We really want things to be simple and things to keep going as they were in the past. Change is hard and scary.
But it fits with Jonny Scrum-half’s post at #47 that people do change parties, too. There isn’t a magic incantation, or $100 check, that is going to make things go the Democrats’ way. It’s a long, difficult process, and we need to understand the other side.
My political evolution (5-cent version):
In middle school in suburban Atlanta, I was always confused why we couldn’t win in Vietnam. We could fight and win a world war but we couldn’t defeat a backward (though very large) army in a tiny country?? We didn’t talk about politics at home, but I figured my dad was a Republican, so I kinda was too.
One of our activities in social studies was to have a debate before the 1972 election. I got assigned to McGovern’s team. I wanted to win, so I studied up on his positions and slowly found that they were pretty compelling.
Various trials and tribulations happened over the next few years, but didn’t pay much attention to politics in an active, in the trenches, way. I leaned Libertarian, voted for Anderson in the 1980 election (my first). I really liked the idea of the $0.50/gallon gas tax. I figured Reagan was too puritanical and his economics didn’t make sense, but liked his optimism. Carter seemed to be unable to get anything done even though his policies (in retrospect) were good and ahead of their time… The Democrats saying that Reagan was going to get us into a war and blow up the world seemed to be over-the-top scaremongering.
I continued to be disillusioned about national politics in general. Went through my brief Libertarian phase (read lots of Ayn Rand) but never internalized it to the belief that the poor ‘needed to be punished for their own good’ the way many seem to these days…
In 1989 I moved to Virginia so I could continue to be “above” D/R politics and “help” broaden the discussion by supporting 3rd-party candidates… as my vote wouldn’t matter so I couldn’t be blamed.
I voted for Perot in the Clinton/Bush/Perot election in 1992.
I think I voted for Nader in 1996. Dole was scary. Perot had gone off the rails (even more-so) and though Clinton had shown that he knew what he was doing, I couldn’t tell myself that I was really a Democrat.
In 2000, I voted for Nader but felt very uneasy about it. I mainly did it because J liked him a lot. Again, it didn’t matter in Virginia.
When the Supreme Court gave the White House to W, I shrugged it off – “oh well, it was basically a tie in Florida and the Republicans controlled the state so they were going to decide who wins, and the law was a mess, so whaddayagonna do…” W floundered around trying to figure out what he wanted to do except cut taxes and destroy the surplus until a certain beautifully clear morning in September 2001… :-( And the anthrax-in-the-mail stuff. And the DC sniper. Things were really going off the rails and our only responses seemed to be based on panic…
Saddam kept pushing and living up to his name (“he who confronts”, supposedly). Shooting at fighters in the no-fly zones. It seemed like something needed to be done…
I couldn’t believe that there really wasn’t evidence that Saddam didn’t have an active WMD program. W saw a lot of intelligence that nobody else did, so surely there had to be evidence. Right? Then there was Powell’s presentation at the UN. I took the time to look at the “evidence”. It was crap. Ancient stuff; the worst possible interpretation of dodgy items. That’s the best they had???
Even after the invasion was delayed so many times, the Iraq operation was crap. Saddam and his sons didn’t surrender as W maybe hoped. There were no WMDs as Scott Ritter and so many on the left said from the beginning…
I was snapped out of my “above politics” vaguely right-wing complacency and continued to move leftward through W’s term.
In 2004, I voted for Kerry.
Terri Schiavo.
Katrina.
And on and on.
I was an enthusiastic Obama supporter from the day of his speech in the snow in Springfield, IL.
I’m continuing to move left, but not as far as many.
My best friend from HS, on the other hand, has moved farther and farther right. He has taken a motorcycle trip out to Cliven Bundy’s ranch and supports him. A few weeks ago we were discussing politics and said he thought there should be no minimum wage – people should be able to work for whatever wage they’re willing to accept. “Liberty” is a big thing for him now… :-/ He works as a mechanic for his city government.
So, my evolution was initially driven by horrible policies and actions on the Republican side, and not so much by great policies by the Democrats. It seems like JC’s was similar (based on my understanding of Schiavo, anyway).
Personal change is really hard and takes a long time. Nobody wants to tell themselves that they’re wrong.
Vague anger and disappointment can be channeled many, many ways. My HS friend went Right. I went Left. Taking that anger and directing it into something positive (policies that will make the present and the future better) is important. People know that “shit is fucked up and bullshit” as Atrios says, but differ on who and what policies are to blame. We need to make a compelling case, not just say the other side is wrong.
(Wow – this is really long. The thread is probably dead now!)
My $0.02, or maybe a little more.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bobby Thomson
@Holden Pattern: this.
priscianus jr
@Fair Economist: if racism is perceived as low-status that creates an incentive not to be racist, or at least not to show it as much (which helps).
You have a point, but it’s not decisive. “Not to show it as much” helps in public, but not in private. We have the secret ballot in this country. You don’t have to tell anyone who you voted for, but you can always tell the people that will agree with you.
Bobby Thomson
And by the way, I’m going to continue to sneer at racism, fuck you very much.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Jesus.
This is really very simple:
The subtext of Republican politics is: “Democrats are the party of niggers. Democrats are out to take your hard earned money, your hard earned tax dollars like the lazy, shiftless niggers they are. We are the party of the white man, so vote for us.”
The Republicans have become the Confederate party; and Confederates have ALWAYS been about keeping control of the niggers.