Election 2024 Part III: Out with the old!

[amadeus]

When did you [Lexicus] read it?

I've tried to. It's pretty boring.

 

[Lexicus]

When did you read it?

About ten years ago now...

 

[GeneralZift]

If it was a couple weeks ago I would have said Trump had this election in the bag but Kamala and the democrats made a miraculous comeback at the last minute

Politics is truly unpredictable

 

[SemiLazyGamer]

If it was a couple weeks ago I would have said Trump had this election in the bag but Kamala and the democrats made a miraculous comeback at the last minute

Politics is truly unpredictable

There's a reason why the October Surprise is called that.

 

[GeneralZift]

There's a reason why the October Surprise is called that.

Whats it mean for my stocks though?

 

[Voidwalkin]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/01/kamala-harris-working-class-voters

I liked that Guardian article. It's about class vs identity politics.

I disagree with its statement that identity politics may be a winning move. The wide unpopularity of bougie progressivism is basically the only thing that keeps Trump at all viable, electorally.

 

[KMRblue1027]

So overfocus on white people instead yeah sorry completely nonsense article

 

[Lexicus]

So overfocus on white people instead yeah sorry completely nonsense article

Where does the article say anything remotely like this?

 

[KMRblue1027]

Working class is a dogwhistle has been for 40 years. Come on you know that. The article is the same stuff they always say abandon core continuances of the party to focus on regaining whites.

It's especially funny since the Democatic party already does better with lower income people.

 

[Hygro]

Trump is Weird

 

[Lexicus]

Working class is a dogwhistle has been for 40 years. Come on you know that. The article is the same stuff they always say abandon core continuances of the party to focus on regaining whites.

It's especially funny since the Democatic party already does better with lower income people.

Of course, "working class" has been used as a euphemism for "white people", but to leap from that to claiming that the phrase 'working class' is necessarily a racist dogwhistle is totally wrong and erases leftists of color (which moderate Democrats are always all too happy to do).

You can tell when 'working class' is being used as a dogwhistle. There are multiple indications that that article ain't it:

A recent study by the Center for Working-Class Politics found that less than 5% of TV ads by Democrats in competitive 2022 congressional races mentioned billionaires, the rich, Wall Street, big corporations or price gouging.

When Gallup regularly asks “what do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”, the responses are remarkably consistent across different ethnic groups. It’s the economy. It’s wages. It’s the rising cost of living. “Speaking to issues that people of color care about” generally means speaking to issues that all working-class people care about.

These are material issues that affect everyone, not just white people. The idea that it's racist to give some rhetorical focus to these issues is imo very wrongheaded.

 

[Voidwalkin]

You can tell when 'working class' is being used as a dogwhistle.

I don't think your average voter can actually do this, of course. At least, not with regularity.

This fundamental difficulty leads to inaccurate criticism creating social stigma, a great deal of self-censorship, and a general toxicity of culture by and large, imo.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't think your average voter can actually do this, of course. At least, not with regularity.

Good thing we're people who talk about politics on CFC dot com and not average voters, then, eh?

This fundamental difficulty leads to inaccurate criticism creating social stigma, a great deal of self-censorship, and a general toxicity of culture by and large, imo.

Read Adolph Reed if you want to understand

 

[sophie]

It always weirds me out how “cultural issues” or “identity issues” (here framed as initiatives designed to benefit a specific oppressed group) are always framed as existing in direct opposition to “economic” or “working class” issues.

Like that’s the piece with this obsession of going back to working class or economic issues. It is rarely, in my experience, framed as “a thing we should emphasize in our messaging,” but rather is something we should be doing instead of identity politics. It is firmly of a kind with the old radical centrist chestnut of “we should sell out trans/gay/immigrant/etc. people because the average voter will never countenance any sort of positive view of them.

I think it’s also sort of ahistorical at this point? Like Bernie in 2019/20 did the full-bore “lead with economic politics and hook in oppressed groups by connecting their struggle back to the material issue” strategy and he got rinsed in the south because he failed to connect with African American voters. Meanwhile the most successful union drive in recent memory owes its dramatic success in large part to centering identity politics. Like the central organizing issues that drove the initial surge of the starbucks union were 1) organizing around BLM and questions of racial equity in the workplace in the wake of George Floyd, and 2) the way that management used the threat of revocation of health care access, and in particular gac access, as leverage to demand total compliance from precarious workers.

It’s the same with a lot of the ASE drived as well. Like a cornerstone of the most recent strike action here at UW was about rights and protections for international students. It’s important, not only in that these sorts of “identity-specific issues” don’t actually tend to turn ostensibly unaffected people off, but rather that when you get buy-in from the most precarious, they become the most enthusiastic, most motivated, most radical, and most active organizers in the movement.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Yesterday, Trump indicated that he didn't know whether Harris was Indian or Black.

Maybe the Democratic party could brand itself as the party for people capable of the (admittedly mindboggling) complexity of realizing that people can be more than one thing. And that government can serve various dimensions of a particular person through various of its initiatives.

We should look for a candidate who understands those kind of complexities first hand. Oh, wait . . .

Anyway, somebody should organize a "Workers for Kamala" zoom, take a screen shot of the racially diverse turnout, and the point would pretty much make itself.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Read Adolph Reed if you want to understand

I thought favorably of him, the times I've heard him speak.

I agree with most of his points, many of which I've independently observed and organically incorporated into my views, over the years.

I fear for the future of a class based politics, at this point, though. Race as prime mover is I think understood to be, by consensus on the left, the party meant to be pursuing change. I would agree with Reed that this results in the hitting of so often meaningless targets. Class is of more utilitarian use but I'm unsure the two can co-exist, as one is less nuanced and requires less thought as an explanation for larger disadvantageous trends, and therefore, in the opinion of this amateur memeologist, is likely to be dominant.

 

[Lexicus]

Do you think affirmative action is bad identity politics that the Democrats shouldn't be doing?

 

[Voidwalkin]

Do you think affirmative action is bad identity politics that the Democrats shouldn't be doing?

It's pretty simplistic as currently structured. As a tool for promotion of upward mobility, I think it's had some unspectacular results that could be improved on.

Class-based affirmative action would be preferable to the current system, and do more good for more poor people.

 

[Farm Boy]

But that would, again, defeat the point for thems that make the point.

 

[Lexicus]

It's pretty simplistic as currently structured. As a tool for promotion of upward mobility, I think it's had some unspectacular results that could be improved on.

Class-based affirmative action would be preferable to the current system, and do more good for more poor people.

There is already a body of evidence showing that class-based affirmative action does not effectively address racial disparities in either the job market or college admissions.

But leaving that aside, why shouldn't we have both race and class-based affirmative action?

But that would, again, defeat the point for thems that make the point.

What do you think is "the point" Farm Boy?