Democratic Party direction post-Harris

[Voidwalkin]

You know what holds up even better? Just using "rich people" as an analytic category. Doing anything else is a bit of a giveaway that you are just trying to coopt genuine class appeals into culture war.

Harris won college grads 56 to 42, to my knowledge. This is not unsubstantial.

On "culture war", all I do is recognize that a values gap exists, and recommend strategic adaptations in light of it.

It is far from obvious to me given that you are using the phrase "graduate class" when "college graduate" is simply not a class position.

OK? Any employer is going to make judgements even if the degree isn't relevant to the field, but if ya wanna be strict on it, I don't care.

Evidence continues to mount that material isn't the sole driver of politics, though, so as a general ideological categorization, I'm still comfortable using it.

Out of curiosity, have you yourself ever attended college? That is to say, when you speak about academia, are you speaking from (albeit limited) personal experience?

Briefly. One year. Financially, it didn't make sense. Making money didn't seem relevant to what I wanted outta life(still doesn't) so I couldn't justify continued investment.

I wish I would have bucked the familial pressure and never went at all.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, Lex, but the realignment is ongoing.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Making money didn't seem relevant to what I wanted outta life(still doesn't) so I couldn't justify continued investment.

What kinds of things could people want out of life that having a bit more money not improve?

 

[Farm Boy]

It competes for finite time and attention.

As Citizen Kane said, all it takes is a lifetime of devotion.

The financial hardball people play is absolutely predatory.

 

[Voidwalkin]

What kinds of things could people want out of life that having a bit more money not improve?

Time control, freedom, and some value judgements for me.

It's difficult to control your time if you have no money. It's also difficult to control it if you're pursuing a career. Very hard to save up, quit, take 6 months off, and retain an equivalent position. Doesn't seem very free to me. Job hopping in warehousing? Very easy, more freedom.

A regular, hourly job buildin' stuff, fixin' things, movin' boxes is ideal for me. It's the correct point between the two and you don't really need a degree for it. Strong back, good cardio, and an eye for efficiency is all ya need. Pays well enough, and for me, it's emotionally healthier. I build things. I work material. It's not abstract, and it is, candidly, of more value(at least to me) than higher paying but more abstract positions.

I didn't really need a degree to live that way. Putting myself through college consequently seemed too limiting, all for an upside I didn't really wanna pursue.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Doing anything else is a bit of a giveaway that you are just trying to coopt genuine class appeals into culture war. To put things somewhat more explicitly, any conception of class that puts a precarious hourly-wage service worker in the same class position as someone making half a million a year is going to be worthless mystification at best, and at worst an active attempt to thwart the development of actual class-consciousness. Another thing to mention in this context is that this theory of class evidently allows people like JD Vance, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump, all of whom have college degrees (indeed, DeSantis and Vance have postgraduate degrees from Ivy League institutions) to transmute themselves into authentically working-class guys simply by being reactionary *******s.

Unfortunately, I hadn't caught this edit before posting.

It's pretty much impossible to talk politics and class if the split is ignored. I suppose it'd be different if income alone remained strongly indicative of voting habits, but that's less so, every 4 years. It's like the "hottest year on record" now. It'll be warmer next year. Reliably.

IDK how it could be expected to offer beneficial economic politics simultaneously alongside pretty distant social positions, and then after, expect class consciousness to develop or spread. The great numerical mass of support won't be there, because of the gap. Doubly true when skepticism is frequently met by allegations of bigotry. Nor do I think there can be much real doubt that the university is the primary conduit of many views, values and ideas pretty much unheard of outside of those individuals with exposure to it, and that there are income requirements to even attend. Most relevant split of our time, real driver of politics, maybe even culture, is a "worthless mystification, at best"?

IDK man. Pretty doctrinaire and the doctrine appears to rest on the presumption that the material is what people most care about, something evidence continues to mount against.

 

[Lexicus]

Unfortunately, I hadn't caught this edit before posting.

It's pretty much impossible to talk politics and class if the split is ignored. I suppose it'd be different if income alone remained strongly indicative of voting habits, but that's less so, every 4 years. It's like the "hottest year on record" now. It'll be warmer next year. Reliably.

IDK how it could be expected to offer beneficial economic politics simultaneously alongside pretty distant social positions, and then after, expect class consciousness to develop or spread. The great numerical mass of support won't be there, because of the gap. Doubly true when skepticism is frequently met by allegations of bigotry. Nor do I think there can be much real doubt that the university is the primary conduit of many views, values and ideas pretty much unheard of outside of those individuals with exposure to it, and that there are income requirements to even attend. Most relevant split of our time, real driver of politics, maybe even culture, is a "worthless mystification, at best"?

IDK man. Pretty doctrinaire and the doctrine appears to rest on the presumption that the material is what people most care about, something evidence continues to mount against.

The whole argument here is that current voting patterns are driven by "worthless mystification" and not class interest. You started off arguing something similar, that working-class voters vote against their class interest due to the social issues. The current situation is therefore one where voting behavior is largely not based on class interest, but instead on "worthless mystification" such as the notion that it is more important to torture trans people to death than to have free universal healthcare, or the notion that it is in the class interest of working people to set up a massive apparatus of repression to round up and brutalize immigrants.

 

[Farm Boy]

The immigrant thing is definitely class in significant part. You can't shave much more off production costs of food(the eggs thing right meow) for example. You have to trim the expenses elsewhere, the expenses are elsewhere. Over half the farm bill is food stamps. Basic grain still under 10 cents a day fed through pigs cost wise at production point, everything else is what the food stamps pay for. And that's just food. There's everything else. I know I haven't leveled this one at you in a while, but nothing just gets done. Somebody has to do everything. Call that infatuation on my part a relic from administrative(secretarial) work. The bastion of workplace "low control, high accountability."

 

[Lexicus]

Somebody has to do everything.

The only thing terrorizing immigrants does is ensure that the somebodies doing things are in no position to confront or challenge their bosses on anything. And of course pushes down the wages of anyone in labor market competition with this class of precarious non-persons. From the other end of things, assume for a moment that we successfully deport all the undocumented people in the country. We will have done this by massively expanding the police state - perhaps a million new ICE agents, networks of detention facilities, and so on. What do you think happens to all this stuff the day after the last undocumented immigrant goes? Can't really just get rid of it, these are paying jobs after all...

 

[Farm Boy]

Yes, that's class interest at work.

The realignment has a reason, after all.

 

[Voidwalkin]

The whole argument here is that current voting patterns are driven by "worthless mystification" and not class interest. You started off arguing something similar, that working-class voters vote against their class interest due to the social issues. The current situation is therefore one where voting behavior is largely not based on class interest, but instead on "worthless mystification" such as the notion that it is more important to torture trans people to death than to have free universal healthcare, or the notion that it is in the class interest of working people to set up a massive apparatus of repression to round up and brutalize immigrants.

OK, you argue that these non-material values are worthless mystifications, something I've seen elsewhere. The implication is that the values and beliefs of large swathes of the actual working class deserve no representation, neither in media, nor policy. At least, not on the left.

A belief widely shared amongst college graduates, who believe theirs should have infinite time in the sun. Course, this ideological monopolization is to be ignored and accepted by those whose votes you're trying to court and claim to represent.

If you cannot convert, nor tolerate, the voters with these values(your further characterizations of them imo excessive), with the numbers and math necessary for victory increasingly bleak if trends continue, well, the path to victory looks awfully dim.

I recommend disengagement from the culture war to the extent possible, via punting to states explicitly. You seem determined to fight it regardless of the odds of victory or the real effects on real people that will come about from the defeat.

 

[Gorbles]

A belief widely shared amongst college graduates, who believe theirs should have infinite time in the sun.

By whom? Where? Can we evidence these wild claims in any way whatsoever?

You speak of "the culture war". It seems like you're the one trapped in it. You've been told who the enemy is and you believe it fervently. Hook, line and sinker.

 

[Lexicus]

OK, you argue that these non-material values are worthless mystifications,

No, that is not an accurate characterization of what I said:

To put things somewhat more explicitly, any conception of class that puts a precarious hourly-wage service worker in the same class position as someone making half a million a year is going to be worthless mystification at best, and at worst an active attempt to thwart the development of actual class-consciousness.

You seem to be confusing my exposition of what actually counts as "class politics" with a claim about what is important in politics, or more specifically about what factors most influence voting behavior.

If you cannot convert, nor tolerate, the voters with these values(your further characterizations of them imo excessive), with the numbers and math necessary for victory increasingly bleak if trends continue, well, the path to victory looks awfully dim.

Why don't you characterize the "values" you're referring to in your own words?

I recommend disengagement from the culture war to the extent possible, via punting to states explicitly. You seem determined to fight it regardless of the odds of victory or the real effects on real people that will come about from the defeat.

Punting issues to the states will no more "disengage from the culture war" than popular sovereignty took the question of slavery out of national politics once upon a time. As for the second sentence here, we haven't even gotten to my prescriptions yet because you still haven't understood my diagnosis of the problem. Meanwhile, speaking of "real people", do you just not acknowledge the many victims of red-state social policies as real? Are the women who have already died as a result of abortion bans not real? Do you think trans people are real?

 

[Voidwalkin]

As for the second sentence here, we haven't even gotten to my prescriptions yet because you still haven't understood my diagnosis of the problem. Meanwhile, speaking of "real people", do you just not acknowledge the many victims of red-state social policies as real? Are the women who have already died as a result of abortion bans not real? Do you think trans people are real?

Yeah. There's no real chance of imposing your will and overriding the moral consensus in those places, though. I suppose if I thought it was possible, I might re-evaluate my present position. As it is, the federales aren't gonna be sending in the National Guard to ensure people have access to their wanted medical procedures.

Why don't you characterize the "values" you're referring to in your own words?

Abortion: don't care, no strong position.
Immigration: don't care, no strong position.
Trans issues: generally, think people should be able to do what they want in a free country
LGBT issues: no interest beyond discrimination

What I do care about is the ability to use the state to alleviate poverty, address automation, and create opportunity. This is not possible with mass appeal. Without accord on the above, an uneasy truce, yeah, collectively, we're just gonna endlessly squabble about them.

 

[stfoskey12]

I think this article has a good explanation of some of the issues facing Democratic governance. It's a nine-minute read, but the gist is that progressive activists, who often are the most reliable primary voters, focus more on stopping things than doing things.

This came out of progressive activism in the 1960s and 70s, when opposition to the Vietnam War and environmental pollution was of paramount importance. However, that stopping things mentality led to excessive bureaucracy. That excessive bureaucracy then leads to NIMBYism, making housing and clean energy more expensive to produce than they would be otherwise. This makes heavily Democratic states such as New York or California very expensive, while states like Texas, which make constructing new housing or energy projects easy, more affordable. This causes Democratic states to lose population to Republican states. And causes people to view Republican states as having better economies, because in some ways they do, as you can actually live there affordably.

Similarly, Democrats often want to do many studies before enacting any sort of policy whatsoever. This makes it hard to enact new policy, as they try let perfect be the enemy of the good. Democrats need to focus on more action and less talk is the main conclusion.

The Crisis of Democratic Governance

State Democrats have failed to deliver what the American people want.

www.liberalcurrents.com

 

[Narz]

Very readable. Fear of power sums it up well.

 

[Zardnaar]

Heh similar thing here. Big ideas nothing gets down. Right campaigns on XYZ and it gers done.

I have considered where I woukd live if I moved to USA and it's red states. California, BYC and New England are to expensive.

For those wondering Colorado, Carolinas, West Virginia.

 

[danjuno]

What? Colorado is nowhere near a red state. It's the bluest between Illinois and the West Coast.

 

[Kyriakos]

Things are changing, not necessarily for the better. Biden pardons his entire family minutes before he stops being potus.

 

[Narz]

Every still of Biden these days look likes he's about to cry & fall over.