***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[-Red-]

They already made this choice

The problem is that they don't have the numbers to enact their social democracy platform.

If Biden have FDR's numbers in Congress or LBJ's, maybe they could.

But the margins Biden has can't get it done given the political conditions we are in

You think that as a party, the Democrats have made the choice to be a party for working people and for social democracy?

Clearly I'm encouraged by much of their movement over the last half decade or so and by Biden and many other generally centrists promoting recent legislation, but I certainly wouldn't say this.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Your message that history and context don't matter and that all these white folks are just committed to racism regardless of anything else seems to be saying exactly that. Am I off-base?

That is not what I am saying, that is what people like you are sorely mistaken at what it would take to flip racist people back to the party. Unions are not some silver bullet like you present it. At best, it slowed a political realignment that was already happening.

I simply don't think unions would prevent the conservative counter-revolution from being successful. Not with propaganda campaigns becoming more and more sophisticated.

I think that is my major disagreement. Is that you want to make a criticism of the Dems labor policies, and you overestimate the consequences of their actions I think is unreasonable.

"Many black people have adapted to evolving social and economic realities and have achieved great success, so I'm not gonna make excuses for the ones that went the opposite way." This is clearly reactionary garbage. But so is the idea that white people are ontologically committed to racism. The way that conservatives talk about poor black folks is mirrored today in the way that liberals talk about poor whites—in both cases, these groups are painted as ignorant, pathological, and the cause of their own ruin. And in both cases, this assessment would be wrong. These are two sides of the same race reductionist coin.

This is nonsense, and I have not come close to saying anything close to that. You can throw around the same "race reductionist" claim like you always do I really don't care. I think it is just a silly way to dismiss an argument

If you want to throw out the comparison to black people to make what I say seem on the same level as racist rhetoric toward white people, fine, go ahead. I really don't care because it makes little sense to me.

If you rob a community of economic opportunities, give them no social services, the red line the residents, blue line them community with over-policing on minor crimes and under policing of major ones, deprive them of a social safety net, slowly poison them with lead, flood the community with drugs and cheap guns, and let that happen for generations, no matter the color or ethnicity you pack in there you would probably get the same results. White, black, Hispanics, Asian, it doesn't matter. The systematic forces producing bad results are so obvious that we also see it outside of the urban areas.

When it comes to voting for a racist, white nationalist party that doesn't just have a history of neglecting your labor rights but being hostile to them, then you would see those trends being repeated among other groups at the same rates, but we don't. I mean like you openly admit, the GOP has been worse than the Democratic Party, yet God forbid I criticize these people for not making a rational choice if that is the case. If you want to both sides the parties, then you would have to explain what exactly is the GOP offering them to get their to flip? Because you seem to like to skip over this a ton. I must ignore what these people give as the reason too it seems. Most people stuck in economically depressed urban areas will point out the material condition in their communities drive the bad outcomes. Even the people committing the crimes. I don't see this happening with motivations for voting.

So this neglect by the Democratic Party is uniquely affecting these people or not?

But I also said that these white American views on race are not static, the issue is that they are subject to propaganda created and prime their regressive cultural politics. Other races are not subject to that on the same level (even though it has started with Latinos and Asian Americans).

Not only that, affluent people without a college degree are also moving toward the GOP too. You can beat the economic anxiety drum all out want, but observable reality seems to be telling a different story.

It would be better for this country if we had more union membership, and it would be better for the Dems political prospects. But all things considered, the Dems would probably be losing support from a certain group of white people even if we change that, just at a slower rate. It would be nowhere the magnitude of change to reversing the conditions we see in urban America.

It is the Dems ever-progressing cultural politics that is costing them with these voters more than their neglect of Labor. This is not some new insight, every major GOP operative has tried to exploit this. It is not even the stupid complaints about wokeness and elite manners people like to roll out. It is that the party embraced social justice issues

I just don't think the evidence is there to a) excuse this behavior b) Put the blame on the Democratic Party's neglect of labor for it

A huge part of the Democratic Party losing Appalachia and Montana has been due to the decline in unions and the Democrats abiding, where not facilitating, this. I would absolutely say that's the number one reason.

So the fact that everyone realized the planet was warming and that it would have negative effects on humanity so something must be done is the fault of the Dems too?

So what, In the name of protecting unionized coal miners, the Dems should have not tried to lower carbon admissions? They should have engaged in protectionist policies to make sure they protect unionized coal miners?

Hell it wasn't even green energy that did the most damage to coal. It was natural gas, green energy just gonna finish the job. So what then? The Dems should have banned fracking and ****ed over workers in different parts of the country to protect Appalachia

Should have also banned imports of solar panels from China too? They should have banned utilities from buying power from renewable sources?

Because of a lot of good reasons both environmentally, and economically that coal got ravaged. The Dems are complicit in those things.

Simple leftist stories can't be universally applied famb.

 

[RustyShackleford]

You think that as a party, the Democrats have made the choice to be a party for working people and for social democracy?

Clearly I'm encouraged by much of their movement over the last half decade or so and by Biden and many other generally centrists promoting recent legislation, but I certainly wouldn't say this.

Yes, it has been this way for the median Dem for a while. And they have moved left even more economically.

They tried to pass a massive expansion of the welfare state, with tons of benefits for the middle class, funded by tax increases on the wealthy and the median Dem was all for it. The establishment was for it.

Biden is not a centrist. Sinema and Manchin are. This progressive-centrist binary misses a whole bunch of nuance

This is at the core of the argument I have had with you, Rex. and other leftists. That you guys have legit grievances with the modern party but you use the actions of people on the margin and ascribe it to the median Dem and the majority of the party. Ignore how our electoral systems drive bad outcomes and inaction and put it all on the Dem establishment.

Leftists completely rewrote the history of the ACA to benefit their rhetoric so history is giving them another example showing the damage real centrist do. And gap between a centrist, the establishment, and a liberal president.

But I know in four years I will be hearing about all the cuts Biden supported in the BBB plan.

 

[IATT]

 

[mplsdunk]

never in a million years will the old racist dudes in the trades vote for a progressive democrat because they are pro union. these dudes are about to retire anyways in the next 5 years.

they should focus on not losing the younger ones which will happen if they keep abandoning them.

I'm not saying fire up the coal mines again because thats just dumb. but don't stop copper mining in mn for example because some clowns who have never left their bubble in Minneapolis except once a year to canoe in the iron range, who don't know a damn thing say its bad.

thats actually a problem here, all these anti mining morons want to shut it down when it supplies all the copper for clean energy, all the concrete for your "luxury" condo and all the aggregate for your bike paths.

the unions are always talking about this issue here.

the average age at my job is probably 22-35, the old people are retiring and they have a lot of younger guys and girls entering the industry. these people aren't some q anon trump people. 80% of them don't even vote, there is a chance to win them over and get them to vote.

 

[biggie62]

never in a million years will the old racist dudes in the trades vote for a progressive democrat because they are pro union. these dudes are about to retire anyways in the next 5 years.

they should focus on not losing the younger ones which will happen if they keep abandoning them.

I'm not saying fire up the coal mines again because thats just dumb. but don't stop copper mining in mn for example because some clowns who have never left their bubble in Minneapolis except once a year to canoe in the iron range, who don't know a damn thing say its bad.

thats actually a problem here, all these anti mining morons want to shut it down when it supplies all the copper for clean energy, all the concrete for your "luxury" condo and all the aggregate for your bike paths.

the unions are always talking about this issue here.

I agree with this fully. We need those items for technology and better we keep the resource here than from a foreign nation. We see how supply issues are causing inflating. For example my hobby golf, many items are on 2-4 month back orders and prices of used Equipment jumped. Why, because the Asian factories were stopping production due to Covid, then shipping containers aren’t Being offloaded in time and shortage of truck drivers. It’s just an avalanche of issues. I’m hoping some of this will result in some of the blue collar jobs to come back to the US and Europe. However the jobs will be different. They won’t be as high paying as they were in the 70s and 80s.

One other post you made about the pipeline being canceled. Let’s keep it , 90% of those construction jobs for the pipeline would have been to out of state workers. That’s been widely documented already.

 

[mplsdunk]

I agree with this fully. We need those items for technology and better we keep the resource here than from a foreign nation. We see how supply issues are causing inflating. For example my hobby golf, many items are on 2-4 month back orders and prices of used Equipment jumped. Why, because the Asian factories were stopping production due to Covid, then shipping containers aren’t Being offloaded in time and shortage of truck drivers. It’s just an avalanche of issues. I’m hoping some of this will result in some of the blue collar jobs to come back to the US and Europe. However the jobs will be different. They won’t be as high paying as they were in the 70s and 80s.

One other post you made about the pipeline being canceled. Let’s keep it , 90% of those construction jobs for the pipeline would have been to out of state workers. That’s been widely documented already.

it's just NIMBY all over again, let them mine in Asia and Africa where we don't have to see it and they can use child labor for cheap and pollute all they want.

yeah, nobody lives where that pipeline is, its in the middle of no where. my union had people out there on it. I think it was just like 60 jobs or something tiny. all the trades are hard up for people, if you aren't working it's by choice.

the truck driver shortage is also kind of a myth IMO, everybody and their mom has a cdl. there is a shortage of drivers willing to work in those conditions for trash pay. I'm one of them, to hell with the transportation industry and hauling containers and dry goods. I'll go make 3x the money in construction and have a union and not be treated like trash.

transportation being trash is a direct result of jimmy carter de regulating it btw. Paid by the mile, no over time etc etc.

 

[Methodical Management]

I am comfortable saying #ChopOn

Why am I not surprised?

NCAI Reiterates Longstanding Opposition to Atlanta Braves’ Mascot and “Tomahawk Chop” Fan Ritual as Team Plays in World Series | NCAI

The Kansas City Chiefs’ "Arrowhead Chop" chant isn’t a tribute to people like me. It’s racist.

The offensive fight song needs to go.

www.vox.com

“Many black people have adapted to evolving social and economic realities and have achieved great success, so I'm not gonna make excuses for the ones that went the opposite way." This is clearly reactionary garbage.

This reads like , “If I started a network called White Entertainment Television, you’d say it was racist - so how come BET isn’t?”

If this sentence causes offense, is it clear evidence that Marx is a reactionary classist, or is it just nonsense created through thoughtless substitution? "Labor is dead capital, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living capital, and lives the more, the more capital it sucks."

If anything, it's more insulting to poor White Republicans to portray them as ignorant dupes twisted against their own clear self-interest by shadowy puppet masters as opposed to rational actors who have made the conscious decision to favor the continued receipt of public and psychological wages over the potential spoils of class solidarity.

 

[RustyShackleford]

This is not meant at a shot at anyone, so I hope no one takes it as that

But it says something about America when the main type of job lost we obsess about is unioned blue-collar work in the midwest, and how it affects white middle-class citizens. (I mean this has severely affected black people too, but for numerous reasons, they are spoken of as an afterthought)

However little to no attention is ever paid to how the collapse of public government jobs has hurt the black middle class.

Quality government jobs were a vehicle for black people to expand their economic prospects, yet no attention is paid to what happens when these jobs go away.

 

[wr]

Definitely "pointing out how that is reverse racism" attention being paid.

 

[mplsdunk]

I’m just offering my insight as someone in the trades.

it’s not so simple as saying the guys in the union trades vote Republican against their interest because they’re racist.

plenty of democrats throw them under the bus.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I’m just offering my insight as someone in the trades.

it’s not so simple as saying the guys in the union trades vote Republican against their interest because they’re racist.

plenty of democrats throw them under the bus.

So then why don't black people turn to the GOP at the same rates?

Why vote for the party that is hostile to unions and other anti-worker policies?

At best, the reason people give is that the GOP's alignment with suppliers of certain jobs is seen as a positive. This applies to cops, border control, coal miners, pipeline workers, and natural gas workers, etc. see the Dems as anti-union if they dare show sympathy for anything they view as a threat to their industry.

The Democratic Party as a whole needs to pay the price for any grievance anyone other has with any liberal.

But in fairness to you, rent-seeking is a better reason than most put forward. But from my time working blue-collar jobs around white people, I find it hard to believe that they don't get utility from the GOP's cultural politics too.

 

[mplsdunk]

So then why don't black people turn to the GOP at the same rates?

Why vote for the party that is hostile to unions and other anti-worker policies?

At best, the reason people give is that the GOP's alignment with suppliers of certain jobs is seen as a positive. This applies to cops, border control, coal miners, pipeline workers, and natural gas workers, etc. see the Dems as anti-union if they dare show sympathy for anything they view as a threat to their industry.

The Democratic Party as a whole needs to pay the price for any grievance anyone other has with any liberal.

But in fairness to you, rent-seeking is a better reason than most put forward. But from my time working blue-collar jobs around white people, I find it hard to believe that they don't get utility from the GOP's cultural politics too.

because black people don’t work in copper mines in northern mn dude…

I hear what you’re saying and I don’t disagree.

im never voting Republican but I can see why some do. Just giving some insight on the topic.

 

[aepps20]

because black people don’t work in copper mines in northern mn dude…

We all Black in the mines so this is FALSE.

 

[elpablo21]

We all Black in the mines so this is FALSE.

Amen Brother!

 

[RustyShackleford]

We all Black in the mines so this is FALSE.

Speak for yaself, b. After a shift in the copper mines, ya boy comes out shinning...

 

[-Red-]

That is not what I am saying, that is what people like you are sorely mistaken at what it would take to flip racist people back to the party. Unions are not some silver bullet like you present it. At best, it slowed a political realignment that was already happening.

I simply don't think unions would prevent the conservative counter-revolution from being successful. Not with propaganda campaigns becoming more and more sophisticated.

I think that is my major disagreement. Is that you want to make a criticism of the Dems labor policies, and you overestimate the consequences of their actions I think is unreasonable.



This is nonsense, and I have not come close to saying anything close to that. You can throw around the same "race reductionist" claim like you always do I really don't care. I think it is just a silly way to dismiss an argument

If you want to throw out the comparison to black people to make what I say seem on the same level as racist rhetoric toward white people, fine, go ahead. I really don't care because it makes little sense to me.

If you rob a community of economic opportunities, give them no social services, the red line the residents, blue line them community with over-policing on minor crimes and under policing of major ones, deprive them of a social safety net, slowly poison them with lead, flood the community with drugs and cheap guns, and let that happen for generations, no matter the color or ethnicity you pack in there you would probably get the same results. White, black, Hispanics, Asian, it doesn't matter. The systematic forces producing bad results are so obvious that we also see it outside of the urban areas.

When it comes to voting for a racist, white nationalist party that doesn't just have a history of neglecting your labor rights but being hostile to them, then you would see those trends being repeated among other groups at the same rates, but we don't. I mean like you openly admit, the GOP has been worse than the Democratic Party, yet God forbid I criticize these people for not making a rational choice if that is the case. If you want to both sides the parties, then you would have to explain what exactly is the GOP offering them to get their to flip? Because you seem to like to skip over this a ton. I must ignore what these people give as the reason too it seems. Most people stuck in economically depressed urban areas will point out the material condition in their communities drive the bad outcomes. Even the people committing the crimes. I don't see this happening with motivations for voting.

So this neglect by the Democratic Party is uniquely affecting these people or not?

But I also said that these white American views on race are not static, the issue is that they are subject to propaganda created and prime their regressive cultural politics. Other races are not subject to that on the same level (even though it has started with Latinos and Asian Americans).

Not only that, affluent people without a college degree are also moving toward the GOP too. You can beat the economic anxiety drum all out want, but observable reality seems to be telling a different story.

It would be better for this country if we had more union membership, and it would be better for the Dems political prospects. But all things considered, the Dems would probably be losing support from a certain group of white people even if we change that, just at a slower rate. It would be nowhere the magnitude of change to reversing the conditions we see in urban America.

It is the Dems ever-progressing cultural politics that is costing them with these voters more than their neglect of Labor. This is not some new insight, every major GOP operative has tried to exploit this. It is not even the stupid complaints about wokeness and elite manners people like to roll out. It is that the party embraced social justice issues

I just don't think the evidence is there to a) excuse this behavior b) Put the blame on the Democratic Party's neglect of labor for it



So the fact that everyone realized the planet was warming and that it would have negative effects on humanity so something must be done is the fault of the Dems too?

So what, In the name of protecting unionized coal miners, the Dems should have not tried to lower carbon admissions? They should have engaged in protectionist policies to make sure they protect unionized coal miners?

Hell it wasn't even green energy that did the most damage to coal. It was natural gas, green energy just gonna finish the job. So what then? The Dems should have banned fracking and ****ed over workers in different parts of the country to protect Appalachia

Should have also banned imports of solar panels from China too? They should have banned utilities from buying power from renewable sources?

Because of a lot of good reasons both environmentally, and economically that coal got ravaged. The Dems are complicit in those things.

Simple leftist stories can't be universally applied famb.

So I run through a series of major political developments bearing directly on labor unions, loss of income, power, and stability for workers, abandonment by the Democratic Party, etc. and the response is "Nah, it's just the racism." That's fine that that's your perspective, I suppose. But clearly that's what I'm responding to; it isn't some mysterious strawman in my own head.

And you can dismiss the comparison in discourse around poor blacks and whites if you want, but it is clearly a reality. (I literally took your own framing of whites and racism and applied it to blacks and crime.) You're in here talking about dispossessed white folks in a way that you (or I) would never let fly in talking about dispossessed black folks (and rightfully so). This been the standard liberal "anti-racist" practice for a while now. Any attempt to try to apprehend the sociohistorical dynamics giving shape to racism is interpreted as "letting people off the hook" or "making excuses" for people, etc. On the right, meanwhile, any attempt to apprehend the sociohistorical dynamics giving shape to urban crime and gun violence is interpreted as "letting people off the hook" or "coddling people," etc. That is anti-historical and lazy intellectually and counterproductive politically, no less so in the former instance than in the latter. The similarities in these potted narratives and refusal to interrogate things more critically on both sides are pretty striking, in my opinion.

I agree with you about having those things happen to black communities and getting the same result if it happened to other communities. That's exactly my point—it's not something innate in the people who these things have happened to that produce these outcomes; they are the fallout from the things you describe. But you abandon this same kind of nuance and historical perspective when it comes to the white working class. You do understand that the things you just described largely reflect the experiences of many white communities as well, right? Do you think only black communities were redlined, devastated by job loss, environmental degradation, etc.? None of those things are fundamentally racial phenomena and none of them were applied nor felt in racially exclusive ways.

In this context, some whites have certainly been drawn to racist rhetoric and beliefs and internalized them to varying degrees. Others may be less committed but do not see racist rhetoric as a political deal-breaker. Others have withdrawn from political participation altogether. I'm not denying that racism is often one dimension of this for folks. But GOP politics cannot be reduced to racist appeals.

I don't know what's "simple" about my attempt to grapple with transformations in the political and economic landscape over the last half century. If anything, the narrative that "everything boils down to racism" clearly seems like the simple story IMO.

what I don't think you and others have an appreciation of is how these same forces have affected many white communities as well. Do you think the only communities that were

The mines in Appalachia and Montana were dying before Reagan was elected. I know very well, my pops is from a mining town in western Montana and I went there every summer as a kid. This wasn't about solar panels and climate change; this was about economic globalization and Cold War geopolitics dating back to the 1960s. And that had everything to do with the decline of these locales and the weakening of the Democratic Party there.

 

[RustyShackleford]

So I run through a series of major political developments bearing directly on labor unions, loss of income, power, and stability for workers, abandonment by the Democratic Party, etc. and the response is "Nah, it's just the racism." That's fine that that's your perspective, I suppose. But clearly that's what I'm responding to; it isn't some mysterious strawman in my own head.

And you can dismiss the comparison in discourse around poor blacks and whites if you want, but it is clearly a reality. (I literally took your own framing of whites and racism and applied it to blacks and crime.) You're in here talking about dispossessed white folks in a way that you (or I) would never let fly in talking about dispossessed black folks (and rightfully so). This been the standard liberal "anti-racist" practice for a while now. Any attempt to try to apprehend the sociohistorical dynamics giving shape to racism is interpreted as "letting people off the hook" or "making excuses" for people, etc. On the right, meanwhile, any attempt to apprehend the sociohistorical dynamics giving shape to urban crime and gun violence is interpreted as "letting people off the hook" or "coddling people," etc. That is anti-historical and lazy intellectually and counterproductive politically, no less so in the former instance than in the latter. The similarities in these potted narratives and refusal to interrogate things more critically on both sides are pretty striking, in my opinion.

I agree with you about having those things happen to black communities and getting the same result if it happened to other communities. That's exactly my point—it's not something innate in the people who these things have happened to that produce these outcomes; they are the fallout from the things you describe. But you abandon this same kind of nuance and historical perspective when it comes to the white working class. You do understand that the things you just described largely reflect the experiences of many white communities as well, right? Do you think only black communities were redlined, devastated by job loss, environmental degradation, etc.? None of those things are fundamentally racial phenomena and none of them were applied nor felt in racially exclusive ways.

In this context, some whites have certainly been drawn to racist rhetoric and beliefs and internalized them to varying degrees. Others may be less committed but do not see racist rhetoric as a political deal-breaker. Others have withdrawn from political participation altogether. I'm not denying that racism is often one dimension of this for folks. But GOP politics cannot be reduced to racist appeals.

I don't know what's "simple" about my attempt to grapple with transformations in the political and economic landscape over the last half century. If anything, the narrative that "everything boils down to racism" clearly seems like the simple story IMO.

what I don't think you and others have an appreciation of is how these same forces have affected many white communities as well. Do you think the only communities that were

The mines in Appalachia and Montana were dying before Reagan was elected. I know very well, my pops is from a mining town in western Montana and I went there every summer as a kid. This wasn't about solar panels and climate change; this was about economic globalization and Cold War geopolitics dating back to the 1960s. And that had everything to do with the decline of these locales and the weakening of the Democratic Party there.

Like always, you respond to what you think I meant instead of my actual point

I just don't respect your reverse racism stuff regarding what I said, nor do I find remix of the economic anxiety argument convincing

It is whatever man, I have traveled down this rabbit hole too far as it is

 

[-Red-]

Why am I not surprised?

NCAI Reiterates Longstanding Opposition to Atlanta Braves’ Mascot and “Tomahawk Chop” Fan Ritual as Team Plays in World Series | NCAI

The Kansas City Chiefs’ "Arrowhead Chop" chant isn’t a tribute to people like me. It’s racist.

The offensive fight song needs to go.

www.vox.com

This reads like , “If I started a network called White Entertainment Television, you’d say it was racist - so how come BET isn’t?”

If this sentence causes offense, is it clear evidence that Marx is a reactionary classist, or is it just nonsense created through thoughtless substitution? "Labor is dead capital, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living capital, and lives the more, the more capital it sucks."

If anything, it's more insulting to poor White Republicans to portray them as ignorant dupes twisted against their own clear self-interest by shadowy puppet masters as opposed to rational actors who have made the conscious decision to favor the continued receipt of public and psychological wages over the potential spoils of class solidarity.

You and others can talk about and treat people from "different races" as though they live in completely separate worlds and have mutually exclusive experiences and interests if you want. But if you care about progressive politics, even if only to the extent that it would benefit poor and working-class black folks, that is a counterproductive strategy.

I don't think painting folks as irredeemable racists is less insulting than saying that there's another way that they might look at things that lead them to some different conclusions. But maybe I'm alone in that thinking.

 

[RustyShackleford]

You and others can talk about and treat people from "different races" as though they live in completely separate worlds and have mutually exclusive experiences and interests if you want. But if you care about progressive politics, even if only to the extent that it would benefit poor and working-class black folks, that is a counterproductive strategy.

I don't think painting folks as irredeemable racists is less insulting than saying that there's another way that they might look at things that lead them to some different conclusions. But maybe I'm alone in that thinking.

Pointing out the massive role cultural politics of some white people has played in reshaping our electorate is tantamount as painting them as irredeemable racists.

Of course

 

[aepps20]

Speak for yaself, b. After a shift in the copper mines, ya boy comes out shinning...

ZADDY APPEAL OVERLOAD BEES KNEES B.

 

[Methodical Management]

You and others can talk about and treat people from "different races" as though they live in completely separate worlds and have mutually exclusive experiences and interests if you want. But if you care about progressive politics, even if only to the extent that it would benefit poor and working-class black folks, that is a counterproductive strategy.

I don't think painting folks as irredeemable racists is less insulting than saying that there's another way that they might look at things that lead them to some different conclusions. But maybe I'm alone in that thinking.

When did I get to a school board meeting?

 

[RustyShackleford]

The aepps20 rep on that is just...

 

[aepps20]

Very proud of -Red- and I support him 1000%. Probably best post I've read in here.

 

[IATT]