The Blue State Model: How the Democrats Created a "Liberalism of the Rich"

[friendly_iconoclast]

Last edited Mon Apr 4, 2016, 05:21 PM - Edit history (1)

In this excerpt from his new book "Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" Thomas Frank explains what's happened in my own state, Massachusetts:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176121/tomgram%3A_thomas_frank%2C_the_inequality_sweepstakes

Let’s go to Boston, Massachusetts, the spiritual homeland of the professional class and a place where the ideology of modern liberalism has been permitted to grow and flourish without challenge or restraint. As the seat of American higher learning, it seems unsurprising that Boston should anchor one of the most Democratic of states, a place where elected Republicans (like the new governor) are highly unusual. This is the city that virtually invented the blue-state economic model, in which prosperity arises from higher education and the knowledge-based industries that surround it...

...At a 2014 celebration of Governor Patrick’s innovation leadership, Google’s Eric Schmidt announced that “if you want to solve the economic problems of the U.S., create more entrepreneurs.” That sort of sums up the ideology in this corporate commonwealth: Entrepreneurs first. But how has such a doctrine become holy writ in a party dedicated to the welfare of the common man? And how has all this come to pass in the liberal state of Massachusetts?

The answer is that I’ve got the wrong liberalism. The kind of liberalism that has dominated Massachusetts for the last few decades isn’t the stuff of Franklin Roosevelt or the United Auto Workers; it’s the Route 128/suburban-professionals variety. (Senator Elizabeth Warren is the great exception to this rule.) Professional-class liberals aren’t really alarmed by oversized rewards for society’s winners. On the contrary, this seems natural to them -- because they are society’s winners. The liberalism of professionals just does not extend to matters of inequality; this is the area where soft hearts abruptly turn hard.

Innovation liberalism is “a liberalism of the rich,” to use the straightforward phrase of local labor leader Harris Gruman. This doctrine has no patience with the idea that everyone should share in society’s wealth. What Massachusetts liberals pine for, by and large, is a more perfect meritocracy -- a system where the essential thing is to ensure that the truly talented get into the right schools and then get to rise through the ranks of society. Unfortunately, however, as the blue-state model makes painfully clear, there is no solidarity in a meritocracy. The ideology of educational achievement conveniently negates any esteem we might feel for the poorly graduated.

Lots more at the above link, and well worth the read.
Walter Benn Michaels said much the same thing in his "Let Them Eat Diversity":

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/

Walter Benn Michaels: The differentiation between left and right neoliberalism doesn’t really undermine the way it which it is deeply unified in its commitment to competitive markets and to the state’s role in maintaining competitive markets. For me the distinction is that “left neoliberals” are people who don’t understand themselves as neoliberals. They think that their commitments to anti-racism, to anti-sexism, to anti-homophobia constitute a critique of neoliberalism. But if you look at the history of the idea of neoliberalism you can see fairly quickly that neoliberalism arises as a kind of commitment precisely to those things....

...First, there isn’t a single US corporation that doesn’t have an HR office committed to respecting the differences between cultures, to making sure that your culture is respected whether or not your standard of living is. And, second, multiculturalism and diversity more generally are even more effective as a legitimizing tool, because they suggest that the ultimate goal of social justice in a neoliberal economy is not that there should be less difference between the rich and the poor—indeed the rule in neoliberal economies is that the difference between the rich and the poor gets wider rather than shrinks—but that no culture should be treated invidiously and that it’s basically OK if economic differences widen as long as the increasingly successful elites come to look like the increasingly unsuccessful non-elites. So the model of social justice is not that the rich don’t make as much and the poor make more, the model of social justice is that the rich make whatever they make, but an appropriate percentage of them are minorities or women. That’s a long answer to your question, but it is a serious question and the essence of the answer is precisely that internationalization, the new mobility of both capital and labor, has produced a contemporary anti-racism that functions as a legitimization of capital rather than as resistance or even critique.

I often make the joke that Wellesley (AKA Swellesley) was a place that was open and
affirming of all wealthy people, regardless of race, sex, gender orientation, or religion.

How true it is...

[haikugal]

1. Thank You! K&R!

[Cobalt Violet]

2. yeah, the I got mine attitude is alive, well and flourishing in MA.

Same could be said about Newton. Funny I often call it Snewton.

[maindawg]

3. As I have been saying

It's not about immigrants , people of color or women. It's about poor people. They just don't like poor people. So we punish people for being poor. We penalize them with fees fines and ultimately prison. They aren't behaving like proper slaves. They refuse to toil for pennies all day so they must be punished. Even if they do work 10 hours they are still poor. Americans hate poor people.

[raging moderate]

4. Forty years ago, I was a poor kid just about to get a Master's degree.

I had worked my guts out to get there, often living on peanut butter sandwiches and bread taken out of the garbage at work. First I had planned to get an English BA and then MA and become an English teacher. Then they weren't hiring English BA students, and I got a BA in anthropology with plans to become a librarian. Then, working in a library to get money for the MA, I found out the library world was going technological, and I just couldn't manage that. So I got first the BS equivalent and then the MS equivalent in speech/language pathology & audiology, and had a 35 year career.

One of the last hurdles was student teaching. My clothes were all from the Salvation Army store, and the middle-class people running the student teaching program thought they were all dirty and wrinkled, no matter how carefully I had washed and ironed them. A good friend gave me an expensive wool suit. At first, I thought I would wear it only for special days, but, as time went on, I wore it more and more, although I have a wool allergy, finally at least 3 times a week. I never had the money to take it to the cleaners; I skipped lunch and ate rice that whole semester just to pay the rent. That suit got dirtier and dirtier despite my hand-sponging. I could see it getting dirtier. But guess what? The middle-class people supervising me COULD NOT SEE THE DIRT on that expensive suit. Every time I wore it, they would remark on how neat and clean I looked that day.

I have since noticed that middle-class people react the same way in public washrooms. The new, fancy washrooms look clean to them. They complain of dirt in old but well-scrubbed washrooms (as a former janitor/cleaning woman, I know where to look). Middle-class people, you need to scrutinize your criteria in these areas.

[Scruffy1]

5. This is a very interesting observation . I have seen this many times myself.

I have always noted how my friends of other colors were judged differently, and i usually dress down just to avoid interacting with large swaths of the public. If you look a little grungy it's just assumed you are poor and ignorant. I haven't ever been a cleaning person, and I never thought about the perceptions of people on the cleanliness of a room by its age, but then I never lived in Suburbia.

[Scruffy1]

6. I just finished reading it last night.

There were no surprises for me there, but it was depressing. The gap between the "liberals" o top nationally and the local Dems is astounding. It almost makes me ashamed to register as a Democrat when I know what the National leadership thinks and does. It's a safe bet that No Hillary supporter will read it.

[Aristus]

7. I think this is a little short-sighted. Working people left the Democratic Party.

They weren't pushed out.

They abandoned the Democrats, and took up with the very people who were keeping them down economically. The bank-fraudster, union-busting, anti-minority and immigrant Republican Party.

If the 'Reagan Democrats' ever admit they were wrong and come crawling back to us, fine. But we don't owe them anything. If anything, they owe us an apology: "Jeez! You guys were right. Reagan and his sub-moronic, misbegotten political children are whacked!"

[friendly_iconoclast]

8. Here's how I *know* you didn't read the linked Thomas Frank article:

Because you completely elided the discussion of Fall River, one of the neglected
post-industrial cities that establishment Massachusetts Democrats like to ignore
until elections come around.

Fall River, in Bristol County that went Democratic in all three Presidential elections of the 1980's:

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/datagraph.php?year=1980&fips=25&f=0&off=0&elect=0

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/datagraph.php?year=1984&fips=25&f=0&off=0&elect=0

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/datagraph.php?year=1988&fips=25&f=0&off=0&elect=0

You also elided the mention of our Democratic former governor taking a job with Bain Capital,
a company founded by Mitt Romney:

http://www.baincapital.com/team-members/bain-capital-corporate/deval-patrick

Deval Patrick
Managing Director
Boston
Experience

Mr. Patrick joined Bain Capital in 2015 to found a new business that focuses on impact investing. Prior to joining, Mr. Patrick served as Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for eight years. Before entering public office, Mr. Patrick was Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The Coca-Cola Company. He also worked as Vice President and General Counsel of Texaco, Inc. and served on the company’s Executive Council. Mr. Patrick was previously a Partner at Day, Berry & Howard and a Partner at Hill & Barlow. In 1994, he was appointed by President Clinton as Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Education

Mr. Patrick graduated cum laude with a BA degree from Harvard College and earned his JD degree from Harvard Law School.

I think the above CV rather makes W.B. Michaels' line about neoliberalism worth repeating:

"...(I)t’s basically OK if economic differences widen as long as the increasingly successful elites come to look like the increasingly unsuccessful non-elites."