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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDemocrats have reached out to the white working class before by neglecting people of color
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2016/11/14/13621894/democrats-white-working-class-racism?client=ms-android-samsungThe consensus among political pundits after the 2016 election: Democrats should reach out to the white working class. That’s one of the key groups, after all, that carried Donald Trump to his shocking upset victory on Election Day. So winning this group over, the thinking goes, could stop Trump’s reelection or another Trump-like figure in the future.
But it’s really not that simple. As New Yorker writer James Surowiecki explained in a series of tweets, reaching out to the white working class in the past has often been coupled with racist messages against people of color (POC). That is, in fact, what Trump did — with proposals to ban Muslims from entering the US, to build a wall to stop Mexican immigrants he described as “rapists,” and to expand the stop-and-frisk policing strategy that was struck down by courts in New York for targeting minority residents. And that seemed to be what many of Trump’s supporters in the white working class liked about him, considering surveys show Trump backers tend to have hostile views against minority Americans.
Yet if Democrats try Trump’s approach, they risk neglecting and losing the base of minority constituents that they’ve built up over the past few decades, and effectively becoming the kind of candidate they’re now trying to stop.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/797926644514177026?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Well, one way to kill anti-racist economic populism is for prominent liberals to pronounce it dead from the start.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/welcome-to-the-second-redemption/507317/
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Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Last edited Fri Nov 25, 2016, 08:11 AM - Edit history (1)
Furthering the lies that "we" are not black, as well as white and "other," working and middle class men and women?
Poor Hill. And I mean that. She worked like a dog for two years (and that was shifted into high gear from what came before) reaching out to all groups. Her arms must have felt like they were falling off from "reaching out." Neither white men nor black were "neglected," in attention or agenda.
Remember that appearance in Kentucky, where she spoke for the better part of an hour about her extensive plans to revitalize coal country and the white men there grabbed a phrase out of context and claimed said she admitted she was destroying coal jobs?
They rejected her and the Democratic Party out of partisanship. They rejected increasing their wages and affordable college for their children in favor of...nothing. At very best.
THAT is our Democrat Party's problem. An insane degree of partisanship. Not failure to "reach out."
OKNancy
(41,832 posts)
mountain grammy
(26,614 posts)and I agree. I supported Bernie in the primary, but the platform and policies of the Democratic party are more than the candidate. Hillary was a good candidate, intelligent, empathetic, and experienced. The message of hope and progress from the Democratic party couldn't have been clearer, but the people who most needed to hear that message, only heard trump's, because that's what they wanted to hear, a message of hate.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Political partisanship has mutated into a national cancer that has taken over and will destroy those of us who can don't unite to destroy it first.
WhiteTara
(29,699 posts)she is a woman. Woman in this world don't lead, they form a ladies club and serve the men.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)has become not just the main, mindless ideology for Republican voters but their party's reason for being. Republicans have been turned into an attack dog serving plutocrats in the background by stopping us. If the Democratic Party disappeared, the GOP would immediately fall apart.
It's why Limbaugh starts segments in every show with some variation of "Folks, you're not going to believe what the Democrats are up to now." It's why they'll support destroying Social Security, Medicare, the ACA, the USPS, and much else they themselves want--because we created and support these programs.
It's become a national pathology that is much bigger and more powerful than sexism, which is only one of the wedges being used to divide us. Conservatives would elect a woman president if she became their leader in the opposition of Democrats.
This is why we have to be nice to conservative voters, btw, not treat them as enemies--to not push those capable of some degree of independent thought back into their protective fold, away from us.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)The South was guaranteed the Democratic vote because Lincoln and those evil Republicans freed the slaves and forced them back into the union. That lasted until Johnson and those evil Democrats let black people into lunch counters, toilets, and the front of the bus.
Northern cities were Democratic because the Irish managed to dominate politics in many of them and it worked for them. Unions got what they wanted more from Democrats than Republicans. In both cases, corruption eventually became the rule and it took over a hundred years for reform Democrats to get rid of things like Tammany Hall. Without the machine, though, it's tough for Northern Democrats to have an encompassing message.
So, really, where do we go now? Who is our "base"? Minorities, of course, since we support them, or at least say we do. But that humongous group of "middle class" homeowners (of all races, btw) out there has no place to go and call home.
yardwork
(61,588 posts)If they don't feel "at home" in the Democratic Party it's because they ignore what the party does for them. Every year this demographic supports Republicans and the Republicans abuse them. The few remaining Democrats are helping everybody as much as possible in the face of Republican obstructionism. Obama saved our economy.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)don't seem to get the votes everywhere.
I don't have time to check a map, but I remember a road in New Jersey that started in Newark and went through some middle class towns, then to wealthy Upper Montclair and beyond.
Every snowstorm, the streets were dry as a bone in Newark, reasonably well plowed as you went on, but when you got to Montclair and beyond you could barely move. They hated government so much they would gladly suffer unplowed roads to save a few tax bucks. It boggles the mind.
mountain grammy
(26,614 posts)Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)they are always wrong and give terrible advice. I'm personally sick of hearing about the WWC.
"The consensus among political pundits after the 2016 election: Democrats should reach out to the white working class. "
Fuck that. Dems should stick to their principles and not craft message that alienate POC.
BumRushDaShow
(128,766 posts)because they have been fed the 24/7 lie that POC are "taking their jobs". I.e., it's the fault of everyone but their own white GOP politicians and their regressive policies. And this is an easy strategy for the GOP to use because it is backed up by their plethora of fake news sites and RW talk radio (which is what reaches all those small town and rural areas where most of their low power stations are located)... as well as the entire entertainment and "infotainment" industry, that continues to perpetuate ridiculous stereotypes.
McKim
(2,412 posts)However Democrats reach out, we do not yet have massive radio stations all over rural America.
This hate junk is all over the airwaves with Trumpster talk and it has a big influence. We need to invest in media that will reach working families. Think Jim Hightower and Michael Moore and what they could do in a network of radio stations.
whathehell
(29,065 posts)Getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980's opened the door to RW Radio and Faux News.
mountain grammy
(26,614 posts)
downeastdaniel
(497 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Just add egalitarian economics to the mix. And place greater emphasis on the economic populist aspects of our EXISTING program.
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)Segment of the vote. It's never enough, it has to be exactly what Bernie said or nothing. Well thanks for nothing.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And it's not as though those economic things were only good for white men. They were for the good of all. You missed the part where I said it was also important for the campaign to put what was in the platform INTO THE CAMPAIGN ADS, rather than depending on personal revulsion towards Trump to be enough.
I wanted us to win(and yes, we did win in the popular vote).
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I'm just reporting what I saw from where I was working.
There was great stuff in the platform. But it wasn't being shared in the ads.
Most of the ads were devoted to slamming Trump on a personal level.
Ad after ad was about Trump being a dirtbag. And yes, he IS a dirtbag.
But I could see that the ads weren't connecting with the people we needed.
It probably looked, to some of these voters, that we were attacking Trump(not that he didn't deserve it-he deserved all he got) because either we had something to hide or because we had nothing to offer.
Neither one of those voter assumptions was true. Obviously. But the focus on negative ads against Trump over pretty much everything else(there were SOME issue-based ads) made enough voters feel that they were valid. And this goes back to one of the most damaging traits of the Democratic Party establishment mindset-the belief that we can never campaign in the fall in wholehearted support of our core progressive values because those values are supposedly never popular. The strategists who believe that think we can never win by being better than the 'thugs, but only by discrediting them. It's something I've pointed out in every campaign I've been part of, and other than the Obama fall campaigns(to some degree), the party "braintrust" refuses to let go of it, despite the fact that it almost always costs us presidential elections we could have won.
In 1988, Dukakis could have stopped Bush the First in his tracks by saying "hell yes, I'm a liberal-and here's why that's a good thing". The only time in that fall campaign he even identified by the "l word", Dukakis cut Bush's lead in half in a single day. He lost because he never used it again.
In 2000, Gore pulled ahead when he used the line "for the people, not the powerful" in one of his fall's speeches. Then he NEVER said it again and the race stayed close enough for Bush the Second to steal Florida.
In 2004, Kerry never said it at all and lost a race he could have won.
We were never going to get votes, in ANY of those years, from anyone who hated the fact that we are at least somewhat to the left of the GOP. We never will.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)That's all I saw including a Republicans for Trump ad trying to court Republicans but nothing on the value she brings.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That was the Nineties under the DLC, and has nothing to do with what Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are calling for.
We don't have to be close to Wall Street to fight racism.
Grey Lemercier
(1,429 posts)soft racism of the "Bernie Bros" crowd are still alive and kicking in the Party.
I just do not think people understand the inherent fear and actual systemic oppression we exist under, even those of us (like me) who are relatively or very much so "well off" economically. I live in a bubble, I live in West London, surrounded by wealth and economic privilege, BUT, as we are dealing with the USA as a whole, I am under NO illusions of how utterly fragile my life and lifestyle would be IF I was forced to move back to somewhere in the 90% of the American landmass that is NOT socially progressive. I see and talk to so many people who are like me in terms of colour, or sexual orientation, or gender, and who do NOT have my geographic and wealth cocoon around them. Furthermore, I personally have experienced raw hate and prejudice in my own life, no more so than when I was living in the USA whilst I was reading for my MBA at Columbia, in NYC.
It is truly worlds apart from my little bubble, and my living situation is so so so far an exception rather than the rule for most people who share one of my identity groups. ALL of us, whether posh or poor, whether situated in Greenwich CT or South Kensington London or some backwater, hardscrabble rust belt town in Ohio or a dirt poor border area town in TX or a middle class suburb in Oregon are literally and figuratively put into danger of losing both life and livelihood, of being constantly attacked psychologically and/or physically by the white, racist, xenophobic, sexist, fundie christian-foundationed power structure that TENS of Millions of poor whites not only condone but EMPOWER. These bastards literally do not care if the powers that be strip them down to 10 quid in their pocket as long as the "gays" or the the "blacks" or whoever the "other" is have zero.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We're on the same side, Grey, and I was never one of the people who dismissed the importance of defeating Trump.
moondust
(19,972 posts)is some white people's warped expectations. Like a boss who gets his ass kissed by sycophants on a regular basis, he may eventually come to expect it all the time. When he doesn't get it he may feel slighted, like he's been disrespected.
Like whiny little babies, some white people will always feel neglected if they are simply treated as equals and don't receive the special treatment they have come to expect, more so if some historically disadvantaged group receives a little extra "compensatory" attention.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
Marr
(20,317 posts)Hillary did not do this. She could not. She has a record longer than her arm of pushing the very trade deals and foreign policies that have pulled the rug out from under working class people of every shade for the last 20 years. They aren't stupid.
The only reason the 'white working class' is of particular note here, is because the party's insistence on using racial/gender identity politics instead of the more unifying idea of wealth inequality (an unpopular cause on Wall Street), seemed to work ok at recruiting support, if lukewarm, from minority working class people, but did nothing for working class whites.
The party does need to reach out to working class whites. It has abandoned them in recent decades. We should be improving the lives of working class people of every color.
