White voters voted leave by 53% to 47%. Two thirds of Asians voted to remain, as did three quarters (73%) of black voters.
— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHol) June 24, 2016
The consequences of white populism are now literally measurable, pound for pound.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 24, 2016
1. The constant bro-splaining that racism & xenophobia only happen because we don't coddle the mythical "white working class" is just wrong.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 24, 2016
2. In the US, this primary season, their white unicorn vote had the opportunity to vote for Sanders & for Trump. Guess who got more of 'em?
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 24, 2016
4. In WV, 39 percent of Sanders voters told exit pollsters they'd vote for Trump over Sanders! Adjusted math: Sanders 75k, Trump 204k. Math.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 24, 2016
6. It always comes down to "let's blame the victimized for other people's xenophobia & hate." Yet their alternative proposal is poppycock.
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 24, 2016
7. They had their ideal "once in a lifetime" (they said) white working class candidate this year. But an orange GOP clown got those votes!
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) June 24, 2016
ETA: Keep in mind — Giordano isn’t talking to those white working class voters; he’s talking to the many, many Well-Meaning Well-Educated White Progressives (Thomas Frank et al) who are sure “we” could get every one of our favorite laws passed if only the Democrats would be kinder to the white people who voted for Trump over Sanders. If only us women & not-white people could understand that candidates like Hillary Clinton (and, eight years ago, Barack Obama) are “too off-putting, too threatening” for the many Fox News viewers who just need a little hand-holding to make better decisions!…
Baud
They’ll regret rejecting Baud!
greennotGreen
Who was that supposed to be?
Mary G
@greennotGreen: I can’t figure it out – is it Bernie or one of the Rpublicans?
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
@greennotGreen: I thought that was the Koch Brothers candidate,
Scott WalkerUnindicted Co-conspirator #7.jl
@Baud: Baud does Brighten! Maybe you could do better against Boris? Think about it. Might work. Do you have to be born in UK to be PM?
OzarkHillbilly
@greennotGreen: This Anne, who do you think?
inventor
@greennotGreen: Sanders. The white working class male went for Cheeto Demon instead.
rikyrah
Go Al.
Tell it.
“Make America great again. ”
“Britain for the British. ”
Is there a difference?
The youth -the ones who have to COMPETE in this modern Britain : they voted to stay.
The old-on their way out the door, who won’t have to really live with the consequences – voted to leave, cause they long for A WHITE Britain. They longed for the time when Britain was putting their foot on the necks of a large part of the world.
OzarkHillbilly
@jl: If Boris can run, I think hatching is just as good.
greennotGreen
Since Al Giordano is running against Sanders for Vermont senator, I guess he means Bernie, but I don’t think Bernie fits; he’s a Jewish atheist – not part of the in crowd.
jl
I’m not sure what Giordino is getting at, other than vague, I guess, slams at Sanders.
The sad thing about the Brexit vote is that from numbers I saw, the great majority of younger people wanted to stay in. Cameron, or Boris or any of the Conservative economic policies will not produce what the ordinary people who voted for Brexit want on the economic front.
Prescott Cactus
@rikyrah:
Yes, planting there flag everywhere. Now they can barely scratch their own bums.
Major Major Major Major
@greennotGreen: @Mary G: Bernie said quite clearly in 2014(?) that, if he were to run for president, he’d base his campaign on bringing the white working class and ‘Reagan Democrats’ back into the fold. So, Bernie.
Racism and xenophobia become powerful political forces during economic downturns. There are people(!) on the internet(!!) (Freddie deBoer, for instance) who I’ve seen say that arguing this is neglecting the larger point, which is that conservative economics is bad, and that essentially we’re not allowed to point out how racism and xenophobia exist and are bad. It’s all very classically Marxist, racism/xenophobia only exist due to economics, are tools used to pit worker against worker, etc. rather than acknowledging that racism isn’t purely exogenous to economics.
So Bernie’s campaign was about playing to strictly economic concerns (recall his cluelessness on race & pooh-poohing women’s healthcare) in order to bring back white people. It worked, insofar as a bunch of white people who will vote for the Republican in November voted for him. Of course, more of these angry white disaffected working class people voted for the human dumpster fire.
There is a big strain of progressive thought saying that racism is secondary to economics, basically. It’s of the same school, I think, that says that for instance all bad things happening in the Islamic world are the result of imperialism and colonialism, essentially negating the agency of, you know, the people who actually live there, who might actually have very deeply-held beliefs about conservative theocracy.
Cacti
The “What’s The Matter With Kansas” theory of liberal white populism was weighed against an “It’s all the fault of the blacks and browns” bigoted right wing populism.
Bigotry won hands down.
OzarkHillbilly
@greennotGreen: Al is intelligent, but he’s an intelligent idiot if he thinks he can parachute into Vermont and beat Bernie on Bernie’s own home turf. Really, I have come to the point where I don’t even listen to half of what Al says, and the other half I only half listen to.
Cacti
@OzarkHillbilly:
If primarying Sanders was actually in the cards, the ideal man for that job would be Howard Dean.
p.a.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.- H. L. Mencken
Brachiator
There are all kinds of depressing ways to look at the Brexit vote. Consider social class and Education (from the Guardian):
Or as another quote summed it up, ‘If you’ve got money, you vote in … if you haven’t got money, you vote out’
And as in the US, you have regions that have been abandoned, left to sink as jobs and industries have been lost.
bemused
Those tweets are damn good.
RaflW
The more I think on it, the more I like the idea of Brexit leading to the United Kingdom of England and Wales, and Scotland and Ireland being sovereign states and (maybe) members of the E.U., assuming the lattermost doesn’t shatter. The final entropic state of the former first Imperial superpower on earth. One tatty country with a quaint, odd, mostly useless western appendage.
Mnemosyne
As I keep saying, the one thing that’s going to save us from Trump is that American minority voters are not as stupid and fearful as American white voters. If we can make sure that everyone who’s entitled to vote can get to the polls, we can crush Trump, because the Obama Coalition is bigger than the number of fearful white voters.
Kay
@jl:
Obama, June 13th:
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: Or what you said, yeah.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cacti: I certainly don’t know enuf about Vermont politics to weigh in one way or the other on Bernie v Dean, but Bernie parachuted into the Dem primary and how did that work out for him? Home turf is home turf.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
There’s that date again. Funny how that same era keeps turning up ice and over and over again, innit?
greennotGreen
@RaflW: It may be one tatty country, but it’s responsible for a bunch of excellent murder mysteries, so long live England!
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@rikyrah:
They also figured out what I figured out in the 80s. Being a white, male native English speaker in a majority of none gives one the insider edge because there are less white, male native English speakers to compete with. I means seriously, lot of these minorities see a competent white male as kind of role model to emulate. Not to mention being a full foot taller and 50+lbs more muscle than your coworkers is nothing to sneeze at. All this blubbering about white male discrimination just shows what a pack of losers these “salt of the earth” types are.
geg6
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hell, if Vermont doesn’t want him, send him here! I love Al. I’d vote for him right now. And twice on Sunday. He’s smarter and much more savvy and realistic, not to mention vastly more knowledgeable of the history and sociology of the Democratic electorate, than Bernie. I wouldn’t vote for Bernie for dog catcher at this point. He’s a petty and deeply unpleasant person.
Anne Laurie
@greennotGreen:
Bernie Sanders, savior of DudeBros. (I thought that was obvious from the tweet labelled #2, but I was wrong.)
Keep in mind — Giordano isn’t talking to those white working class voters; he’s talking to the many, many Well-Meaning Well-Educated White Progressives (Thomas Frank et al) who are sure “we” could get every one of our favorite laws passed if only the Democrats would be kinder to the white people who voted for Trump over Sanders. If only us women & not-white people could understand that candidates like Hillary Clinton (and, eight years ago, Barack Obama) are just too off-putting for the many Fox News viewers who just need a little hand-holding to make better decisions!…
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Yup. It’s also when you and I watched so many of our peers turn into Alex P Keaton in high school.
JMG
@Mnemosyne: Another major difference between US and British politics is that there was no discernible difference between how men and women voted on the EU. The age and race differences exist in the US, of course, but so does the fact that the majority of voters (women) are a group strongly alienated by Trump.
Joel
@RaflW: dude, what did Wales do to deserve that particular monicker?
burnspbesq
Scots’ replies to Trump’s idiotic tweet have been 31 flavors of awesome.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/i-am-learning-so-much-cool-slang?utm_term=.tmdPbVmV7#.jwKmYo5oy
Patricia Kayden
@bemused: Yes they are very informative — especially the first one breaking down how race played out in the BREXIT voting. I assume the Black and Indian vote in the UK is very small so not as impactful as the minority vote here. We’ll see if the angrier and older Whites who voted Leave get what they want out of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Joel: I blame Vinnie Jones.
Brachiator
@Cacti:
In the UK and elsewhere in Europe, a great deal of the resentment is directed against white immigrants, as well. Eastern Europeans are the equivalent of the Latino menace, coming across the border into the US. From the Guardian:
Kay
Obama on Brexit:
I don’t know- the President is sounding pretty populist.
Omnes Omnibus
@Patricia Kayden: England is about 80% white. London is only 60% white.
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne:
This. Probably why I’m not panicking as yet, especially given that Secretary Clinton is leading in most polls I see (although I admit that it’s a bit early to trust polls).
OzarkHillbilly
@geg6: Again, if Al really thinks he can waltz into Vermont and take on Bernie and win, he’s not very smart and certainly not very realistic. At this point I don’t think he does, which means he’s just yanking every bodies chains and I get tired of that too. I realize that that is 90% of what twitter is and I guess that is why I don’t do twitter.
Raven on the Hill
Younger UK voters, interviewed in the Guardian. This group went 75% “Remain.”
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: He’s not sounding like a populist, he’s sounding like a capitalist who knows you have to provide certain benefits to the voters in order to maintain consensus on globalized capitalism and finance. More in the FDR/Bismarck vein.
gogol's wife
@greennotGreen:
Best actors in the English-speaking world, also too.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Boris was born in the US.
aimai
@Brachiator: To think that the Poles and Eastern Europeans are seen as unambiguously white is to know absolutely nothing about English notions of race. Famously “WOGS begin at Calais” I think that is from one of Nancy Mitford’s novels about her noble family.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator: As someone of Caribbean descent who was born in England, I find it fascinating that anti-immigrant hostility there has migrated (quite a bit) from the Black and Brown to the Eastern European Whites. Just proves that some people will always need to find scapegoats to hate and blame for all of their woes.
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah,he actually references FDR. Says we need a new social compact. Call it whatever you want. The President believes the economic system isn’t working for most people. He thinks that’s A cause – not the only cause, but A cause.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I’m very lucky — the vast majority of my high school AND college friends stayed liberal. One of them is an (Indian-American) English professor in a Chicago suburb who was active in Occupy. Middle-aged Gen X broads for the win!
ETA: My BFF from college was mad at me in 1988 because I forgot to register to vote before I came out to CA, which meant I didn’t get an absentee ballot, which meant I didn’t vote for Dukakis like she kept telling me to do. And she has remained a loyal Democrat to this day.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Downright socialist, even. There was another guy who sounded like that, some 240 odd years ago, who published a book that is very obscure and few people have read. And it shows.
hamletta
@OzarkHillbilly: He’s not quite parachuting in: Al lived in Vermont back in the ’80s and did organizing to shut down a nuclear plant in Vermont. So he has friends and connections to the state.
Brent
@greennotGreen: I think that response assumes precisely the argument AL is making right? He is saying that there have been arguments since forever that if only Democrats were more aggressive about supporting the White working class, they would get more of those votes. But when the rubber met the road, the Jewish Athiest – the one who wasn’t in the “in crowd” as you put it – didn’t get their vote despite his policy support for the white working class. In other words, it turns out it was always more about identity than policy, just as we always thought.
Aren’t you just agreeing with him?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I would say he’s sounding pretty realistic.
greennotGreen
@gogol’s wife: Yeah, but unfortunately only twelve of them. That’s why you see the same actors in so many shows.
kidding
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: The shitty grade Z movie star’s various string pullers rewrote FDR’s social contract back in the 80’s (with help from the Wicked Witch of Westminster), tilted it obscenely in the favor of the 1%, and imposed it on all of us. Which is why we have the mess we have today.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Of course, in the UK, the Labour Party had an opportunity to make up for the damage caused during the Thatcher regime. Instead, they showed themselves to be largely incompetent.
And then the more liberal Lib Dems tried to grab for power, aligning themselves with the Conservatives, and immediately ceased to exist as a viable political alternative.
The dirty little secret may be that neither standard issue conservative nor liberal remedies have halted Britain’s economic decline. It is despicable that some voters are now resorting to scapegoating the EU and immigrant workers, but denial is a powerful drug and really, really tough to quit.
dollared
A democrat got almost as many votes in West Virginia as the Republican front runner and we don’t think that is significant? How stupid are we? How committed are we to upper class-protecting neoliberalism over actually caring for the working class in this country?
Yeah, I hated the gearheads in high school too. But later I learned that they were actually people.
greennotGreen
@Brent: Stated that way, absolutely.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
I sometimes think they don’t actually know what to do about it. Some of them can diagnose it, Obama certainly can, but other than things like infrastructure bills that will never pass he can’t really address it in any immediate way.
dollared
@Kay: Exactly. He gets the message. Anne Laurie? She still doesn’t want to acknowledge the elephant in the room – because Hillary doesn’t want to acknowledge it either. Here’s hoping Obama gets to her.
aimai
@dollared: Since exit polls and later polls showed that many of those voters were simply voting for Sanders out of spite at Hillary Clinton and her AA voters I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from this. Bernie did not represent a rising, self conscious, working class voter who wanted progressive causes. A significant portion of his voters were spite voting against the Obama coalition.
Tokyokie
@Brachiator: Great Yarmouth is a dilapidated resort on the North Sea that during the 1970s became a major hub for North Sea offshore drilling activity. But that income stream has been steadily declining, and I’m guessing that Great Yarmouth is back to being what it was, only less so. (Resorts in places like Spain and Greece with warm water and sunshine are cheap enough that few plan a week’s holiday in Norfolk.) I can’t imagine how leaving the EU will improve the lot of the poor sods who live there.
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai: The Russians, for centuries, have been trying to convince western Europeans that they’re as white as they are. This came up during the Russo-Japanese War, in the sense of “we’re fighting the wiley Oriental gentlemen, help us out!” sort of thing. But then again, the old aphorism is “scratch a Russian, find a Tatar”, which reflects English views on just how “white” the Russians are, regardless of how much Nicholas II looked like George V.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Sounds quite a bit like the people who are getting screwed in the US because employers are getting away with hiring illegal workers at sub-minimum wage. Including the part where they blame the illegal workers, not the employers.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Right, but Obama’s talking about something much bigger- a huge group of people and not enough work. They’re basically fighting over dwindling hours.
dollared
@Kay: I think the problem is that if you want less inequality, you are going to have to win some brutal, ugly confrontational battles. Labor unions didn’t just spring up like daisies. But Clintonistas believe that you can “nudge” better corporate and elite behavior, that there is always a win-win, or that we “gonna innovate to prosperity.” All ideas that are lacking in existence proofs.
Major Major Major Major
@dollared: a guy who was in jail almost beat a sitting president in the primary in 2012, what’s your point
Kay
@dollared:
Hillary is acknowledging it. She says some version of what Obama said in every speech. They know. They’re not blind.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joel: Wales has been under English domination for about a millennium. This is longer than Ireland or Scotland, and Scotland has always had a fair degree of autonomy that Wales never has experienced. Brexit won’t change that, if Brexit actually happens.
? Martin
@Kay: Curious you bring that up, because Obama is not rejecting globalization here. In fact, he’s embracing it, because it brings more resources for the country to lift people up. This line: “The issue is not resentment or class warfare or that somehow we want to level everybody down rather than lift everybody up.”
The anti-trade argument is a level everybody down argument. You may not see it that way, but that’s what it is. Obama is arguing that our internal domestic policies related to taxation, safety net, etc. have not kept pace with globalization but he would also say that rejecting globalization would be to compound the error, not correct it. Democrats need to get this right – and Sanders had this completely wrong, and a lot of people here have this completely wrong.
Obama is saying precisely the right thing here, but I have not seen from him, from Clinton, and especially from Sanders, even any hint of what a solution might look like. It can’t look like a labor-based solution (basically anything that would be seen as correct from the 60s or 70s earlier) because Obama says right in the statement:
“The issue is that, if in fact automation and globalization do have a tendency to create vast wealth and opportunity for a very small, highly skilled set of people and have a tendency to create a larger and larger group of folks who feel redundant in the economy”. The problem isn’t that they are underpaid, its that they are economically valueless. If they are valueless than returning to any structure which is dependent on payroll will fail. You can’t easily go after profits because profits are vastly more nebulous than people here want to acknowledge. You can go after returns on capital for individuals, and some things like that, and they aren’t things that Democrats oppose, but there has been no effort to connect where the GDP gains are coming from which are disconnected from labor – which is a very new concept, and a concept which a labor-friendly Democratic party does not want to deal with head-on. So you have the GOP refusing to acknowledge the problem because they are pro-capital (the source of their power), you have the Dems refusing to acknowledge the problem because they want to protect labor (the source of their power) more than they want to help those who are left out but where labor can’t be a solution.
Democrats need to re-examine some core beliefs held by labor, because there is a new category of labor-less productivity that has no rules, pays effectively no taxes, and which is eating labor alive and which is being denied. There can be no solution without addressing it directly, and part of that discussion will inevitably require asking the question of whether labor as currently defined by both parties is a necessary condition for societal participation. We have exceptions for people with disabilities, etc. but if you are not a 40-hr/wk worker then there is something wrong with you – and Dems give more exceptions but that is a core principle because that what labor demands. That has to change in some way.
TIlda Swinton's Bald Cap
Patton Oswalt on Brexit.
Leto
@Villago Delenda Est: Another take on the subject: I want my country back
It’s a quick read but it’s good.
Kenneth Kohl
@rikyrah: and these people were a bit ‘browner’, blacker’ and ‘yellower’ than the Brits. Had an email exchange with my brother this morning (he and his wife live in London). His response to my WTF?! email was they are glad their (3) children are now living in USA. He felt opportunities have taken a sudden, sharp, downward path for young people. He works in financial sector, so I’m a bit concerned about him, too
Plantsmantx
@rikyrah:
Farage on Good Morning Britain:
http://www.businessinsider.com/nigel-farage-i-dont-want-to-be-prime-minister-and-leaves-350-million-ad-campaign-was-a-mistake-2016-6?r=UK&IR=T
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
Really, the candidate who is explicitly running as Obama’s third term isn’t acknowledging the things Obama is saying?
One of these days, you’re going to have to face the fact that the Hillary you’ve made up in your head is saying and doing things that the real-life Hillary is not. Did you even watch her speech on Wednesday, or did you not bother because you already “know” what she said thanks to the Hillary in your head?
debbie
@Kay:
Shareholders, like the C-floor give less than a shit about wages for their employees Guaranteed.
Brachiator
@aimai:
See the post in this thread from Patricia Kayden to see how off base you are. And I never claimed that Poles were seen as unambiguously white. Also, everyone knows that English bigotry can include deep hatred of Scots and the Irish, people who are as white as any Brit, so you are not offering any new insight here. Ultimately, your argument may be more with the author of the Guardian article than with me.
Your citation of Nancy Mitford is irrelevant.
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
And when John Lewis was sitting on the floor of the House a few days ago, you were … ?
debbie
@gogol’s wife:
A nice cheddar too.
Davebo
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s starting to look like Brexit will happen whether the GB government (whatever it becomes) wants it or not.
Europe may have issues, but they know an FU when they see it.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: We need to get over this “you must work for a living” meme. There is plenty of work to be done, but a lot of it doesn’t come with a paycheck. There are millions volunteering and laboring for many causes, yet they’re not being paid, because there is no monetary profit, only spiritual profit, in it, and spiritual profit doesn’t show up on any MBA’s spreadsheet, ever.
Davebo
@TIlda Swinton’s Bald Cap: I love PO but you really shouldn’t put too much in his economic/geo-political commentary. He doesn’t.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: this. Plenty of dignity in non-‘labor’ work. With all the money flying around there’s no reason not to have a basic income.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I’m going to repeat what I said downstairs – it isn’t just racism. People are losing their jobs due to cheaper immigrant labor (legal and illegal) and because of jobs going overseas, and it’s happening in multiple sectors of the economy (not just blue-collar work). Many immigrants aren’t white, so there’s a racial component that gets conflated with that anger.
Working class people (of all races) do have legitimate grievances, and dismissing it all as being solely motivated by racism does everyone a disservice. Yes, WWC voters are supporting white nationalists, but the white nationalists are the only ones even pretending to care about what’s happening. The rest of us are too busy calling them racist shitheads and telling them to suck it. We don’t need to coddle WWC voters, but we shouldn’t dismiss them, either. Just because they’re blaming the wetbacks for their troubles doesn’t mean their troubles aren’t real.
Calouste
@greennotGreen:
I can’t work that out either. Neither Trump nor Sanders has class or any recent connection with work.
Dan
@Kay:
Hillary and Obama aren’t blind, but I’m beginning to think that dollared is
Kay
@? Martin:
Martin, “anti-trade” is a strawman. No one is “anti-trade”. I would be pretty goddmaned stupid to be “anti-trade” since the largest employers in this county are German and Japanese companies. No one in manufacturing is “anti-trade”-they know where the parts come from and they know where they ship things. Do you see how patronizing it is to continually tell people who PRODUCE PRODUCTS for export that they are “anti-trade”?
They want trade deals that benefit working people. Why is that so hard to understand? They know what’s in the deal, Martin. They were at the table.
Here’s a suggestion. Stop telling them the deals will “create” 600k or 1.4 million or 2 million jobs because that’s bullshit. The elites need to take some responsibility here. If they’re no longer credible I would suggest that they had something to do with that loss of credibility. Maybe they should regroup and try to figure out why no one believes a word they say anymore.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Some crappy employment practices are universal. This sounds familiar as well.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: Neither one are actually addressing it, in part because Democratic voters won’t hear it.
Democrats are too hung up on opposing globalization themselves. Fucking Sanders ran an anti-trade campaign, and Clinton jumped on board to a fair degree. The problem isn’t trade but how we redistribute the benefits of trade. That’s what Obama is saying, but Democrats aren’t willing to hear it. Either they’ve determined that the internal policies can’t be fixed and therefore the external driver needs to be killed (which will hurt everybody) or they actually believe that the external driver is the cause, which is worse, because there’s untold evidence that it isn’t true.
So given that Democratic voters are focused on the wrong thing, how does Obama or Clinton focus on what is needed? How do you change the domestic narrative that your personal value to this country should be defined by a 40-hour workweek? Obviously the work that needs to get done is getting done – per capita GDP keeps going up. We’re getting increasing amounts of shit done even with unemployment and low wages. What’s the formula for taking from the parts of the economy that are benefiting from this laborless productivity and returning it to workers affected, without trying to take from the parts of the economy that are entirely labor-driven which would actually have the effect of displacing more workers? This shit is hard and I see precisely zero realistic conversations about it anywhere on the left or right, from think tanks or pundits, or the candidates themselves.
Yes, I think Obama has identified the problem, but there’s no solution being offered. And when that’s left as an exercise to the reader, we get retrospectives from an era when none of this was even possible, so everything looks like ‘well, put people back to work’. Even the Democrats keep asking for the 1950s – just a different aspect of it.
lollipopguild
@Kay: FDR saved capitalism and our country in the 30’s. Not that any Repthug would ever admit it.
jl
@Kay: Thanks for link. Nice sentiments from Obama. If he really believes that, then I think the only explanation for some of his trade and international fiance policies is that he is unaware, or has been mislead, that some policies that he advocates really push the benefits towards the rich in ways that are hard to undo using other policies. But, still, encouraging to hear that he said that.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Of course, the Brits could also hate the Hun when the Royal Family was more German than English.
On the other hand, the Brits love Helen Mirren, who is of Russian descent. Mirren’s paternal grandfather, Colonel Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, was in the Imperial Russian Army and fought in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War.
Of course, Mirren is sexier than the average home grown Brit. Go figure.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, and hmmm, trying to recall who was Prime Minister of the UK in the early 1980s. I’m sure it’ll come to me….
Kay
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
They all know it. I watched a forum with three former Treasury secretaries about a month ago, 2 Democrats and 1 Republican, and they all know it. The Republican was the most delusional, chirping about “opportunity ladders”. Tim Geithner was downright dour. He’s not real optimistic anyone is up to addressing this.
Tokyokie
@aimai: I spent my summers during my undergraduate years working as a timekeeper on offshore drilling sites in the North Sea, and learned firsthand of the severe racism of the English, or more specifically, those from the south of England. The head timekeeper was from Norwich and used “Esq.” after his name. He considered the Scots timekeeper to be an oaf, the Gilbraltarian radio operator to be a “dago,” was wary of the surly Welsh brothers who were radio operators, and dismissive of the Liverpudlian timekeeper and the Geordie warehousemen. His fellow Englishmen (the Geordies and the guy from Liverpool) regarded him with a combination of loathing and bemusement (I still have the maritime British Jack one of them stole from the head timekeeper for which I traded him an authentic Atlanta Braves cap), while the Welshmen simply hated his guts. And all these fellows were his countrymen.
Of course, the fellow I met out there who influenced me the most was the ship’s captain, a Protestant who was a citizen of the Irish Republic. He regarded his co-religionists in Northern Ireland with unbridled contempt, saying they feared union with the Republic, because they feared that should they become the minority, they would receive the same treatment they’ve been doling out for centuries. Yet his experience had been the exact opposite. And I think his analysis can be applied to other places with ethnic turmoil.
piratedan
and to be fair, I don’t want to discount something that does need to be recognized….
based on what we read elsewhere (and was magnified about three weeks ago by poster Chris, I believe) small town rural america is dying. The lack of jobs and the prospects of the future seem to point to the old rural model of living is withering on the vine and the folks trapped in that cycle have neither the means of the skills (much less the desire) to relocate to an urban environment and compete. Are we making the subconscious choice to say fuck those people or do we re-invest in them or conversely ourselves?
This is what I hope that the Dems will do, not because we will receive their loyalty or even change their minds because there needs to be a reinvestment of ourselves and our priorities. I want better roads, bridges, water treatment plants. A more efficient energy grid and a possible future for those folks (not at the exclusive expense of the cities mind you but can’t we do both because we’re America dammit!) that gives people a sense of hope and purpose with a future…
We’re obviously blessed with a lot of knowledge and wherewithal, so why can’t we try and solve the world’s problems? Why can’t we spread the wealth around?
I think that is why Bernie resonated with quite a few folks, in that its not just minorities that need attention, there’s a lot of what we can do to make things better for a lot of us and while economics is huge and racism is in fact a thing, it seems like this is more of the 1% using any lever possible to stay in control… economics and skin color be damned and fear of the other is a very real thing and its been wielded by those that have for a very long time against those that do not.
zzyzx
@? Martin:
There’s an assumption there. I’m not convinced that there is a solution, or at least not an easy one. It’s like gentrification and the out of control rents that are happening in NYC/SF/Vancouver/Seattle/Portland. It’s easy to see the problem but no one can really figure out how to stop it.
Timurid
…and the shit has absolutely hit the fan in West Virginia, but on this particular day it’s a giant non-story.
Mnemosyne
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I had a lot more sympathy for WWC voters before they re-elected Brownback in Kansas despite his completely tanking the state.
Oh, and electing Matt Bevin in KY who ran on an explicit platform of ending universal healthcare and then being shocked that Bevin is following through on what he said he would do.
They are not looking at the results of the policies they are choosing, and there aren’t too many alternative explanations left.
jl
@? Martin:
” We’re getting increasing amounts of shit done even with unemployment and low wages. What’s the formula for taking from the parts of the economy that are benefiting from this laborless productivity and returning it to workers affected, without trying to take from the parts of the economy that are entirely labor-driven which would actually have the effect of displacing more workers? ”
How are you measuring ‘getting increasing amounts of shit done’? By standard productivity measures and growth in real per capita GDP we are not getting lots of shit done by historical post WWII standards during an economic recovery. And again, you seem want to attribute every penny of absolute and relative economic loss for middle and working class to inevitable laws of economic progress. But a good chunk of that loss is due to policy choices, not inexorable economic laws.
Major Major Major Major
@? Martin: well, you’re forgetting that labor is a big part of the D coalition, especially the ground and local levels.
lollipopguild
@Mnemosyne: Bevin is a dick and ran as a dick and alot of white voters voted for him as a way of giving certain people in Ky the finger.If bevin takes away what little they have they will not care.
Kay
@? Martin:
Obama again, 2015:
He’s not telling them they don’t understand the magic of markets, Martin, and it’s up to them to get with the program. He recognizes that this is a problem.
Markets aren’t going to fix it and scolding them about how stupid they are won’t fix it either. Telling them “it’s crucial that we write the rules” for trade and then turning around and telling them “but we can’t write any rules that benefit you” is not going to fly. We just finished telling them it’s crucial that we write the rules.
Plantsmantx
@Major Major Major Major: Cornel West, back in the Eighties:
Bernie Sanders:
Marc McKenzie
Nice. Al Giordano bringing the harsh truth–and he’s more liberal than any of us here.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
It’s funny how it was okay to go out and exploit ‘those natives’ around the world for centuries. Now they are upset because too many of them followed back home. Hey white people we are here and we are not going back. These tantrums you are having are not going to get rid of us. Young people have grown up in a very diverse environment and are cool with it. You old people can long for those good old days when ‘darkies’ were few and farther between, and the few who were there knew their place, but those days are long gone and are not coming back. For years most of you were happy supporting governments that pursued policies that screwed the people at the bottom of the heap (mostly people of color). Well guess what shit rolls down hill and you too are now down at the bottom with us. And I guess it now sucks to be you, we told you so, economic policies that are pro business at the expense of the bottom wrung of society are bad for everyone. Especially when that bottom keeps moving up.
It’s too late to shut the barn doors, the horses are all out. Cutting your nose off to spite your face in this case didn’t hurt just you it hurt all of us. Unfortunately the Drumpsters supporters will see this as proof that they too can ‘take their country back’, but the UK voters were 94% white. The best they can hope for here is 70% if they are lucky, and that other 30% will not be with you.
This rant is not directed to the habitants of this blog, with a couple of exceptions who know who they are.
Sorry.
Major Major Major Major
@Plantsmantx: yeah, sanders hasn’t exactly been shy that this is his approach. Not sure why people can’t see it.
Kay
@zzyzx:
Agreed, so what about trying this? What about saying “you know, we DON’T really know what to do about this but we’re very interested in thinking about it and trying to figure it out!”
One of the things that erodes credibility, IMO, is the certainty from “elites” (just for lack of another term- I don’t know what else to call them). The truth is they don’t know.
Anoniminous
Sanders won re-election with 71% of the vote. I’m sure he is quaking in fear of Al Giordano and his twelve friends.
Kay
@Anoniminous:
I think he has (or had, maybe not anymore) the highest approval rating of any Senator.
ruemara
@jl: Vague? A slam? Jesus, don’t shut down just because you don’t like it. Sanders has always felt economic populism would bring white voters in droves. Just because he was less offensive on the ears doesnt mean he wasn’t doing a version of the Webb campaign.
Major Major Major Major
@ruemara: Yeah, Sanders has, in fact, said that. With words and everything.
Kay
@? Martin:
Clinton will sign TPP which everyone in Ohio knows, just like everyone in Ohio knew in the ’08 primary that both Clinton and Obama supported NAFTA.
Free trade is not at risk, rest assured. They don’t spend ten years negotiating one of these things not to pass it.
lamh36
So basically POC and women are once again gonna save America from the majority white fuq up
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Brachiator:
Take away the jobs, and the same pathologies that have been endemic in minority communities appear in the white communities, but only whites turn to Donald Trump. Why is that?
Mnemosyne
So I’m not sure if this will help the current debate or only pour gasoline on the fire, but has some interesting numbers. Note that US workers continue to work more hours than in Europe, and that full-time workers here are reporting an average 47 hour workweek (our overall average is low because of part-time workers).
A huge part of our problem is that US businesses have chosen to take our productivity gains and put them towards corporate profits rather than worker salaries or hiring more workers. They would far rather have people working at a flat rate for 50+ hours a week than hire a second person to help with that job.
This is where the productivity gap is: increased productivity has not led to higher salaries, and the response to increased work has been to make people work longer hours rather than hire more people. This is (IMO) a cultural problem with our current laissez-faire capitalist system that could probably be alleviated with government action … except that this is exactly the system that conservatives want and have been working towards for 30+ years.
I wouldn’t say that Martin is wrong, exactly, but he certainly expresses himself inartfully. There are jobs to be had if companies would hire more people rather than making their existing employees work more and more hours.
Matt McIrvin
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: This is the question I keep asking myself when people say “it’s not about race”.
ruemara
@Major Major Major Major: yeah, but, free college & legal pot! I’m tired of the Bernie in people’s hearts. Please acknowledge the flawed human running a dead campaign so we can stave off the Fascist Cheeto.
Timurid
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Because Trump actively drives them away.
You want scary, wait about 30 years… when a party and ticket supported by a bloc vote of nonwhites is at least theoretically viable… and the brown version of Trump shows up. Just think of how deep the anger and grievances will be behind that guy’s campaign…
Kazanir
Thanks for that Obama quote, Kay. Sanders said something similar on MSNBC this morning — that while he is worried about the decline of global cooperation, and supports more of it, that what the Brexit vote shows is that people are upset about feeling like the global economy has left them behind.
I’m glad to see Obama sounding the same themes — political unrest and people’s openness to demagoguery are in part based on if they feel mistreated by the system and the elites we currently have.
El Caganer
@? Martin: There are a lot of partial solutions, but I think the only one that really addresses the problem head on is the universal basic income. And that’s not happening in my lifetime.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: Those workers used to be unionized, and they had a contractually fixed workweek and got overtime pay. Now, mostly, they’re not.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
Pretty much, yeah. FWIW, those of us who understand the dynamic appreciate it, because we realize it’s like constantly trying to pry a fork out of a toddler’s hand before he manages to stick it into an outlet.
? Martin
@Kay:
I don’t say that. Trade deals never create jobs in the industries they are affecting – they only lose jobs there. They will create jobs in some completely unrelated industry that displaced workers will almost certainly not benefit from directly. But not making the deal doesn’t stop the jobs from being lost. They were lost before the deal got made, it’s just the workers don’t know it yet. Here’s the problem:
People are not meant to produce products. Machines are. It just took us a while to make the machines good enough to do that. That was the lesson from farming as well. That’s going to take us a while to come to grips with and to find ways for the people who produce products to feel respected and secure with that role gone.
? Martin
@El Caganer: I agree that universal basic income is the solution. I’m more optimistic that we’ll see it eventually.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
But again I feel I must point out that no one in the Democratic Party leadership actually says what Giordano says. Obama doesn’t say it. Three days ago Obama said someone had to let go of some golden eggs or there was gonna be some unrest and turbulence. Obama and Clinton aren’t actually arguing this, that all of this is attributable to resentment. Neither one of them are saying that.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
And, frankly, many of those WWC voters voted to kill the unions. They made their bed, and now they refuse to understand why it’s full of cigarette butts and broken glass.
Mnemosyne
Ugh. I hate when I forget to close a tag. At least the link seems to work.
NotoriousJRT
Another futile plea for FP’ers to put some of these long chains of tweets below the fold.
smith
@Timurid:
Actually, I think that’s a white fantasy/nightmare more than a realistic expectation. We’ve already played out this drama in a number of cities where the non-white population increased to the point of having real political power. The white anticipation was like your scenario — we’ve been screwing POC so hard for so long they certainly will do the same when they are in charge. We saw this in spades here in Chicago when Harold Washington became mayor. And of course it didn’t happen. Washington was more open and inclusive than his white predecessors. The same thing has happened with Obama — the right wing has had to make up stories about Obama’s tyranny and bias to fulfill the usual fantasy/nightmare when Obama did nothing to make it come true.
Kay
@? Martin:
The biggest single beneficiary of TPP is agriculture. The other two are IP and pharma. Pharma got huge protections to protect their profits and mitigate risk. No free trader objected, because they’re not autoworkers, I guess.
We make conscious decisions on what to promote and protect and what not to promote and protect. That’s the whole point of writing trade deals. They’re engineering an economy. If they can engineer an economy to promote pharma then it isn’t “markets”- it’s people sitting at a table making decisions.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
I think you’re wrong about that. The problem is that international trade has two components: a general economic component and a distributional component. It’s true that increasing trade does increase overall productivity, so that there’s more to go around, but it also helps some people more than others, so that there are still winners and losers.
The big problem we’ve been encountering is that most of the benefits of trade liberalization have gone to workers in poor countries and business owners in both rich and poor countries, while workers in rich countries have tended to lose out. Since rich countries have a lot more workers than business owners, the result has been rising inequality. The country as a whole has a lot more money, but that’s because the very rich are doing staggeringly well while the poor are actually worse off.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Timurid:
You misspelled “scapegoating”. Trump, and an infinite number of white men behind him, will demagogue the “others” until they’re vastly outnumbered and overpowered, and it will be another civil war before that happens.
Scamp Dog
@? Martin: How about universal basic income? It’s probably too much of a “dirty hippie” concept to get any acknowledgement from an elected official, but it is getting some discussion now.
@piratedan, @zzyzx: One of the things I like about universal basic income is that it goes to everyone, regardless of where they are, so that you don’t have to move to a major city to get work, but then find yourself having to deal the expensive real estate market or long commute. And with a bit more money sloshing around in these smaller communities, there’s now more demand, which will probably create some number of jobs, even if it’s not huge.
Major Major Major Major
Yayyyy UBI also a land use tax in the Bay Area while I’m dreaming
Timurid
@smith:
The rules of human nature apply no matter your color.
If Trump’s base is reacting so badly to adversity, what happens to people who have, by any objective measurement, had it much worse when they are presented with similar circumstance, opportunity and temptation? Of course just because something can happen does not mean that it will. And Brown Trump, like the white version, would likely struggle to get even half the vote of his target racial group(s). But he’d make a hell of a mess in the process…
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: There is precious little for most of the population to gain the way “globalization” is currently structured. The gains mostly go to those who DO NOT have to “work for a living” because they earned their money the old fashioned way, by falling out of a wealthy uterus. See the Waltons, the Kochs, Drumpf.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know why this isn’t accepted as the reason why and how we got here. It’s as clear as the nose on the white working class face which they cut off out of spite. The WWC just simply refuse to share with “those people”. Working class white racism did the work of the oligarchs for them, and has been used as the income inequality cement of the oligarchs since.
Chyron HR
@Anoniminous:
Well, if Giordano loses then that means Bernie has to do everything Al says for the next 6 years, so he wins either way. It’s the time-honored principle of “Loser’s Perogative”, which is definitely a thing that exists and isn’t something you deranged halfwits made up when your alleged God got his ass kicked in the Democratic primaries.
Timurid
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
White privilege is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
Trump is what happens when the marks at the bottom of the pyramid finally realize that they’ve been robbed…
PatrickG
@lamh36:
As a white male, I dearly hope I’ll live to see the day when I can finally claim that the majority of us don’t fucking suck. I’m not optimistic, but it could happen.
Kay
@? Martin:
The UK and the US are also the (western) countries with the most income inequality. I think these things have consequences. Do I think it’s the only issue? No. My son travels to Denmark a lot and he tells me he runs into vehemently anti-immigrant people there. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the UK and the US were in lockstep on financialization of the economy and privatization and a whole host of other crap policies and we’re seeing some blowback.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Timurid:
90% of poor Southern whites vote for tax cuts for billionaires. They simply accept their immiseration, because their unearned white privilege is the most important thing to them, above all else. They may have nothing, but at least they’re not niggers. Explain to me how to get at that.
geg6
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t do Twitter either. But Al has the reality thing down. And your theory of carpetbaggers doesn’t hold much water if you think about Senator Clinton. It happens, if the conditions and electorate are right. Burlington College might be a Bernie problem if the right opponent knows how to take advantage.
Villago Delenda Est
Lack of a close tag in 115 makes it impossible to respond to.
The last sentence drew my attention: the problem is that management doesn’t want to hire more workers, they cut into sacred profit to much with all their human needs for benefits, etc. There’s a basic disconnect going on here, and the problem is with the boundless greed of those at the top, for whom no value other than monetary profit is important.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Coupled with the white working class’s belief that keeping “those people” in their place is the most important thing, you have a match made in hell.
nutella
@geg6:
And the fact that he almost completely abandoned his job as senator for Vermont while campaigning.
And spent much of his campaign whining about being cheated. Not an attractive look.
But who knows? Maybe Vermonters like that kind of thing.
dollared
@Kay: Bingo.
dollared
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Well said. Exactly this.
Kay
@dollared:
Ugh, The financial crash was basically a UK/US joint venture. Along with the Iraq war. And massive privatization.
I can’t figure out which country is taking the other’s horrible ideas and running with them, but this running off cliffs with joined hands has to end. It’s not going well.
dollared
@? Martin: Because people have to have a real, measureable contribution to society. And until you, Martin, make us all philosopher kings, then we all need jobs that pay living wages. And our voters should expect that politicians will do what they can to make that possible.
The workerless future is exactly that, Martin. It is a possible future that doesn’t exist today. The real problem is depressed wages. Corporate profits are at an all time high. Wages are stagnant. It’s not about robots. It’s about class war, and the rich winning.
Villago Delenda Est
@Plantsmantx: Yeah, Bernie (and Eugene Debs) missed the boat. The economic aspects certainly play a role, but so much of it is simply “the other” for no reason other than “the other”. It’s a lazy way to explain your plight without having to put much thought into it.
I recall a passage in one of Harry Turtledove’s alternate history books, with the situation in the CSA in their defeat after WWI. One of the protagonists (who later becomes a key figure in the genocide of African-Americans in the South), a veteran of the Great War, begins to see that the black man is pretty much like himself, but this brief moment of lucidity ends and he’s back to the old N word based view of the black man.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@rikyrah: Maybe, but the Raj ended almost 70 years ago, and most of the people voting to leave hadn’t been born, or were quite young. The only people who wanted to keep the Empire alive at that time were older Victorian and Edwardian politicians like Churchill, who was rejected pretty firmly shortly before the end of war 2. The Brexit vote was about xenophobia and racism, not Empire.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
I’m certainly not going to argue that humans of any particular ethnicity are more moral than others — I think we have plenty of worldwide examples to the contrary — but fascism (which is what Trump is touting) is a movement from strength. It’s the majority feeling threatened and moving to try and protect what they have. So our society would have to change a whole lot for a non-white “Trump” figure to be able to pull the same trick.
El Caganer
@Major Major Major Major: LVT? Henry George? Hey, go for it.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
It’s unstated, because it’s not conducive to coalition building with whites around the big issues. Obama in particular is careful, but he’s said things that definitely point to that, like his comments about the double standard in the way the opiod “crisis” is now considered a public health crisis instead of a law enforcement matter because it affects whites now. He let’s the truth bombs fall in certain instances to point out how minorities are treated as lesser citizens to be policed instead of coddled.
Applejinx
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I don’t think you quite get it, Conster. While you’re not wrong, you’re missing something important.
They think billionaires really, truly are better than them. There might be a little of the ‘play the lottery and become a millionaire after which they would not want to be taxed ever’, but more insidiously they think billionaires are BETTER than them.
Silicon Valley works the same way. All through freemarket capitalism there’s this tendency to think the big winners are much much better and smarter and wiser than the rest of us.
When in fact they are Martin Shkreli, they are Peter Thiel, they don’t give a shit about ruining or destabilizing the world to get what they want.
It’s like the Zappa song ‘Dumb All Over’. They are dumb selfish pigheaded smallminded jerks just like the gnarliest Southern cracker. And just as you’ll find some wonderful people there, you’ll find the full range of people in among the billionaires because there’s no difference and it’s not even a meritocracy in any sense, it’s a mechanism owing more to birth and self-perpetuating wealth than any other factor.
But those people you’re decrying, they think billionaires are better than them. Holy, in a peculiarly American way. And they must protect the objects of their veneration. It’s a religious thing.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Applejinx:
Yet, they cheer when famous black millionaires are roughed up and arrested by police because “those blacks think they’re better than us”. I think you’re missing the point, being a white male from whitest white Vermont.
RK
Not sure Frank believes that, but he does argue the Democratic party has become a corporate/professional one, essentially leaving the interests of the working class behind.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@RK:
That completely ignores the role that Republicans have played at thwarting every Democratic effort to pass a jobs bill, Medicaid expansion, environmental legislation, laws that preserve women’s right to health care, etc. etc. It’s a blind spot that white progressive men refuse to acknowledge.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
You are so lucky. I was one half of the pair in the young democrats club.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I’m not talking about what Obama didn’t say. I’m talking about what he did say. Three days ago he told Bloomberg Business that they had to find a way to mitigate the effects of globalization or we will end up with a situation like that in the UK. That’s nothing like what Girdano is saying. Girdano is saying something about “Berniebros”. Again.
Denying income inequality isn’t the Democratic Party position. It really isn’t the position of Obama and it isn’t the position of Clinton.
Obama is simply stating facts. Obama knows an economy that only works for the top 1% is a problem and he also knows that 65% of people in the US don’t have a college degree and those people have to support themselves. It isn’t abstract. They need more than 9 dollars an hour.
They all know it- from Larry Summers to Tim Geithner. It’s central to the Democrat’s position in 2016.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
Giordano is calling out Sanders supporters/Berniebros blindness to the fact that any effective, meaningful, policy centered push from the left about income inequality has to be multiracial, and until that happens all Sanders supporters – the real ones who aren’t dudebro whiners – railing against income inequality is useless. I agree with him.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Obama can believe both things. Obama can believe there is massive income inequality and he can also believe in racial disparities in sentencing and law enforcement. In fact, he DOES believe both of those things. So do all the rest of the Democrats. I just think this has gotten nuts. In the effort to discredit Berniebros the Democrats now have to deny income inequality and wage stagnation? Why would they do that? It’s 50% of their platform.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
He is not. He’s making some ridiculous comparison between “leave” voters and people who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary.
Wasn’t he lecturing us all weeks ago that it was time to move on to the general? Why is he comparing people who voted in a Democratic primary to voters he doesn’t like in the UK? How is this “moving on the general”?
Anne Laurie
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Absolutely. “Our” problem — the one Giordano is addressing in his tweets — is that a lot of well-meaning white (mostly) men, some of whom even come from working-class backgrounds, keep insisting that we need to keep lying to the WWC voters. The world has changed, and even if there’s some kind of global economic collapes, the Leave-It-to-Beaver 1950s are not coming back. But these Very Serious Marxists/Anarcho-Libertarians claim that WWC voters are so dumb that they’re incapable of accepting that the mines are played out, the factories are increasingly automated, and the “colored” people (native or immigrant) are not returning to second-class status… unless someone with a white face and a penis tells them comforting fairy tales to soothe the transition into the 21st century. (The fact that most of the Very Serious people making this claim happen to have white faces and penises is, of course, totally coincidental & has nothing to do with their personal grievances at having to compete with a much larger talent pool of women & people of color who weren’t permitted into the competition back in the ‘golden age’.) WWC voters may be uneducated, but they’re not *that* stupid! Given a choice between trusting some pointy-headed politician/professor who tells them that everything will be just PERFECT if only they accept this year’s version of “empowerment through retraining”, and going with the Rage Candidate who tells them they might be fvcked but at least they should have the right to hate uppity nigras/wetbacks/bitches/pansies in public… Well, they’ll vote the Rage Candidate nine times out of ten, because at least that burst of spite is more satisfying than another mouthful of pap & empty promises.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@? Martin:
I think you and Kay are talking past each other a bit because you’re seemingly talking about some grand future when people just work in design and machines do all the manufacturing. And Kay is talking about the problems with specific “free trade” agreements like the TPP.
I disagree with your repeated contention that people are being made obsolete by machines. There are more people working in the world than ever before while we have more robots and machines than ever before. As I’ve argued before, a robot that can do things like repair a car is a long way off. Machine assembly is very different from repair, and we are not going to continue to go down the road of throwing everything away when it breaks (it’s too expensive in the long term).
Yes, automation is a natural part of economic development, and yes, less human labor is needed to make things than in the past. But new products, new services, new industries are created as older ones mature. We have lots and lots of needs that aren’t mature enough to be taken over by, say, 3D printers and VR. Someone who lives in a 50 year old house in the suburbs or a 100 year old walkup in the city isn’t going to have big robots helping to care of their elderly parent any time soon. Uber isn’t going to make cars and drivers obsolete any time soon. Drones aren’t going to be delivering 50 pound bags of mulch any time soon. Etc.
Kay argues vociferously against the TPP (at least the way it is sold to Ohio), but Obama recognizes the complexity of the economic issues involved. (Hear me out). That’s why he’s pushing to make overtime more available. (The TPP doesn’t address wage theft by fast food franchises and others, AFAIK.) That’s why he wants something like “Card Check”. That’s why he wants an immigration bill that pulls people out of the underground economy so that they can’t be forced to accept criminally low wages (which hurt all other workers but reward the employers). Thats why he wants expanded health care and expanded day care. He knows that lots and lots of things need to be fixed, and he thinks (and I think he makes a decent case) that the TPP can be part of the fixes but that much, much more needs to be done in the US. The tax code needs to be changed, workers need more protections, finance needs to be reigned in, retirement needs to be much more secure, but all of these things will be very difficult without more ordinary people getting up and voting. And even with more Democrats in Congress, there are going to be compromises that need to be made, there will be fits and starts and reversals, and it is going to be a long hard slog.
Maybe the TPP won’t create 2M (or whatever) new jobs; maybe those jobs are already gone; but maybe it will help by making the rapidly growing markets in East Asia more rational for US exporters. Maybe it will make less abusive policies for EA workers more likely, and thereby decrease the likelihood of US workers competing with abused laborers there. Maybe it will be a successful-enough group that China and India will want to join and thereby billions more people will have more protections, also too.
I don’t think we’re at the part of needing to talk about “universal basic income” or “what will we do about the robots”. We can fix a lot more pressing things first. I think Atrios is right that self-driving cars are farther off than many people think (robots in a warehouse or a factory have a much, much smaller operating space than those out on the roads, and making them able to handle all the things that humans deal with routinely in the real world is much more difficult than staying in a lane or keeping a safe distance). I think that Dean Baker is right that we have to think carefully before we buy the “robots are taking all the jobs” and “there are not enough qualified people to do the work” mantras.
Markets are man-made. And there is no “Free Market™” that exists on a national or international scale. There are laws and rules that define what is permitted. The rules can be changed as circumstances change. And they should be.
My too-long $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Erg. Bolding fail. If I try to fix it, I’ll almost certainly be thrown in moderation, so I’ll just leave it.
Sorry.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who wishes we had a “Preview” and a reliable editor that didn’t throw me in moderation all the time…)
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kay:
Are you saying that Obama and Clinton are supposed to cater to white racists to soothe their racist beliefs that income inequality isn’t the direct result of their racist beliefs? I think Giordano has worked really hard to point out that turning to the general with the white male Berniebros voting Dem will make defeating Trump easier, but they’re kind of a lost cause if they’re stuck on Bernie or nothing so it will be up to all the rest of us to leave them behind because they’re stuck on a concept that isn’t in effect any more. Also, they’re pretty much delusional, hence unreliable allies, because they’ve had the luxury of politicians willing to tell them fairy tales for way too long, like the Leave voters.
Anne Laurie
@Kay:
You know, I think that may be another piece of the puzzle here: It’s every bit as threatening for some “elite” members (especially the men, double-especially the white men) to admit it might come down to “Fvck if *I* know what to do about this genuine crisis; how do we work together to come up with a fix?” as it is for the white working-class voters to admit the world where they grew up is gone forever.
Back in 2008, I remember random people (cab drivers, checkout clerks) repeating Limbaugh-sourced ‘jokes’ about the horrors of Democrats having to choose between a nasty old lady and a colored guy. I would ‘joke’ back that, yeah — wouldn’t you know that spoiled rich frat kid Dubya & his friends would wreck the whole country, and then demand that a woman or a Black guy come in to clean up his mess? And they’d agree with me!
I never thought it was a coincidence that, with the Great Recession unfolding, suddenly it just happened to be the right time for a Black man to become president. The great American voters suddenly decided (to be generous) that a major break with the previous white-guy tradition might be a source of desperately needed new ideas; or (to be less generous) that if the country was gonna go down the toilet, there should be an other-than-White face at the head of the obituary.
liberal
@jl: yeah…Martin’s delusion that he knows anything about economics is pretty amusing.
El Caganer
Well, it looks like one less distraction for the voting public – the Democratic platform committee deep-sixed Rep. Ellison’s proposed $15/hr minimum wage amendment.
El Caganer
@El Caganer: Oops – looks like the thing I saw may have been a hoax.
Lurker Extraordinaire
@Plantsmantx: And this is where Bernie loses me. Even rich and well to do African Americans and Latinos still face discrimination. Wealthy women still face having their right to determine what is best for their bodies shot down by religious busy bodies (although the wealthy women could just fly to a less restrictive state- but why should they have to?). These things have nothing to do with economics. Bernie is a stupid man if he doesn’t get that.
Kay
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
An economic platform that admits the obvious truth that there is massive income inequality isn’t “catering to white racists”. Come on. That’s crazy. Also, you keep insisting that I somehow “want” Obama to say these things about economic insecurity. He’s saying them. He didn’t consult me. He’s been saying them for years. He has a whole extended riff in his book about well-meaning liberals who believe all economic ills can be solved with a higher SAT score.
You haven’t yet explained to me why Obama and Clinton seem to disagree with Gioridano’s theory. The two Democratic leaders themselves connect this to income inequality and wage stagnation yet there seems to be a concerted effort to deny that any of this is connected to that.
The White House JUST HELD a forum on this very issue! Yesterday! Are they “Berniebros”?
Lawrence
@? Martin:
I hear these same arguments from the blogger Yasterblansky. And you’re both right, in theory. In practice, until American labor is made whole there is no reason for the left to agree to one goddamn dime of profit to capitol from new trade agreements. And pardon me if I don’t trust Obama, Clinton, or certainly any Republican, to actually deliver this on good faith.