I don't think of myself as white, but as an American of English, Irish, French, and German ancestry. However, I do think of myself as working class, and think that any USian who gets a W-2 in the...
I don't think of myself as white, but as an American of English, Irish, French, and German ancestry. However, I do think of myself as working class, and think that any USian who gets a W-2 in the mail every year is also working class.
The Democrats do not appeal to me. I only vote for them because I loathe the Republican Party for their embrace of racist, fascist, sexist, plutocratic, and theocratic elements within the party.
If the Democrats stopped being corporate stooges and offered me a better reason to support them than "Fuck the Republicans for great justice!" I might actually vote for them, instead of merely voting against the godforsaken Republicans.
I've been thinking about this thread for a while (and this topic for even longer). On the face of it, the core thrust of the argument tends to be "if you want to win elections, you need to appeal...
I've been thinking about this thread for a while (and this topic for even longer). On the face of it, the core thrust of the argument tends to be "if you want to win elections, you need to appeal to more people." And as far as things are limited to that statement, I think we're so safe with the argument that it borders on being trite. Of course you need to try to appeal to the people who are going to be the ones electing the specific position you're running for. To fail to recognize that is to fail as a political leader.
The more problematic statement that we often get into with this sort of argument is "we need to focus on the needs of the majority to the exclusion of some of the other concerns in the base that might alienate the majority." I would reject this argument pretty easily.
Any real evaluation of politics in America (and much of the rest of the world) needs to start with the recognition that trust in various national institutions is at one of the lowest levels in measured history. You don't get to run at the presidential level especially without understanding that at some level. Things get more complicated at the state and local level because trust in the federal government is so much lower than trust in state and local governments. Why is that?
There is no unifying enemy. We come together to face shared opponents. Anyone who wants to take something away from a people tends to find themselves opposed by that whole people.
Globalism came with flaws. Working class people have been saying consistently over the past couple decades that losing their job was not worth the economic good that might (emphasis on might) come from free trade deals. These concerns could have been addressed, but people have increasingly felt like they haven't been addressed. Particularly with how much free trade was preached about as an uncritical good, any flaw is strong enough for many to mistrust free trade's proponents.
Media is democratized; power sharing, not so much. In important ways, people have more control than ever over what media they consume and who they spend their time with. Many elective governments, as is often the case with these sorts of social changes, lag far behind this important cultural shift in how ideas are shared and discussed, and how people associate. With the US, the intelligence agencies struggle to deal with the greater associative power and information sharing in the hands of ordinary people. Those struggles fuel bad PR as they engage in sometimes ethically questionable tactics to obtain the information they think they need to keep people safe. No state or local government has an intelligence apparatus.
Media incentives fuel partisanship. If the structure and the valid grievances weren't bad enough, there is reduced incentive to work with people who disagree with you, and more incentive to disagree. To gain a social media following, often the safest approach is to criticize (and tag) someone more famous than you. This gets the people who disagreed with that person too to follow you, and thus you grow your support base.
I'm sure there are other big reasons contributing to this too, but I thought I'd stab at a few of the big ones.
This sort of topic, trust in government, is an arms race between the two parties, and it is one in which will ironically have some of their effectiveness undercut by trying to insist on a coherent party identity. Some democrats have much closer relationships with corporations and businesses than other democrats. Some republicans too have much closer relationships with corporations and businesses than other republicans. Claiming that no one in each party is trying to appeal to you is a tough ask when you have people like Charlie Baker in Massachusetts or Sherrod Brown in Ohio or Steve Bullock in Montana around making their respective cases about what it is they represent and want to accomplish in office.
I don't think of myself as white, but as an American of English, Irish, French, and German ancestry. However, I do think of myself as working class, and think that any USian who gets a W-2 in the mail every year is also working class.
The Democrats do not appeal to me. I only vote for them because I loathe the Republican Party for their embrace of racist, fascist, sexist, plutocratic, and theocratic elements within the party.
If the Democrats stopped being corporate stooges and offered me a better reason to support them than "Fuck the Republicans for great justice!" I might actually vote for them, instead of merely voting against the godforsaken Republicans.
Democratic socialist when sober.
Anarchist when drunk.
I've been thinking about this thread for a while (and this topic for even longer). On the face of it, the core thrust of the argument tends to be "if you want to win elections, you need to appeal to more people." And as far as things are limited to that statement, I think we're so safe with the argument that it borders on being trite. Of course you need to try to appeal to the people who are going to be the ones electing the specific position you're running for. To fail to recognize that is to fail as a political leader.
The more problematic statement that we often get into with this sort of argument is "we need to focus on the needs of the majority to the exclusion of some of the other concerns in the base that might alienate the majority." I would reject this argument pretty easily.
Any real evaluation of politics in America (and much of the rest of the world) needs to start with the recognition that trust in various national institutions is at one of the lowest levels in measured history. You don't get to run at the presidential level especially without understanding that at some level. Things get more complicated at the state and local level because trust in the federal government is so much lower than trust in state and local governments. Why is that?
I'm sure there are other big reasons contributing to this too, but I thought I'd stab at a few of the big ones.
This sort of topic, trust in government, is an arms race between the two parties, and it is one in which will ironically have some of their effectiveness undercut by trying to insist on a coherent party identity. Some democrats have much closer relationships with corporations and businesses than other democrats. Some republicans too have much closer relationships with corporations and businesses than other republicans. Claiming that no one in each party is trying to appeal to you is a tough ask when you have people like Charlie Baker in Massachusetts or Sherrod Brown in Ohio or Steve Bullock in Montana around making their respective cases about what it is they represent and want to accomplish in office.