thinly-disguised "the Democratic Party has a problem" article. money quote: "The study describes a Democratic base that looks far less like the progressive left and more like the American mainstream. Elizabeth Damon, 54, a veterinarian in Eagle Point, Ore., is a registered Democrat because 'I really don’t think anybody should be able to tell me what to do with my own body.' But she also thinks the party has drifted too far left, and in 2016 she voted for Donald Trump. "'More than anything, they just want to pick fights,' Dr. Damon said of Democrats. The Senate confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh was one example, she said. "William Baltimore, 55, a mail clerk in a bank in Overland Park, Kan., who usually votes Democrat, said Mr. Trump repels him. "But on immigration, Mr. Baltimore prefers Mr. Trump. The Democrats 'are just willing to accept anything, anybody and anyone, and that doesn’t fly good with me,' he said. "Bruce Bell, 32, of Whitmore Lake, Mich., voted Democratic his whole life, including twice for Barack Obama, but has drifted from the party, tired of what he said was progressive contempt. "'The progressives, they just shut you down,' said Mr. Bell, who works on electrical systems of semitrucks. 'You are a complete idiot, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have a college degree to even have an opinion on the matter.' " https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/sunday-review/elections-partisanship-exhausted-majority.html more at the link
Just about the most worthless article on here since Hotballa posted an article on proper deli etiquette.
It's pretty bad really, click the link or read https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...b718/1539107467397/hidden_tribes_report-2.pdf if you want to avoid the article and just see the study
I was just making a joke with the OP; I agree with much of the point of that article: "progressives" and much of the liberal establishment do in fact talk right past and condescend to a large block of voters who used to be their base. I see it and hear about it all the time and I'm guilty at times as well. Dems need to re-brand and re-package their message (when they find a cohesive one).
And yet we all wait breathlessly for your next post..... I appreciate Os posting different views and giving us things to read/talk about. People should want to learn what other people who view the world differently think.
Modern Dems need to realize that not everyone views the world the way they do or value issues the same way they do. Not everyone is tied to asylum for immigrants south of the border. Not everyone really cares that much about transgender rights or gay rights being a top issue. A lot of people are not living and breathing the MeToo# movement or multiculturalism. There are many many people that don’t hate immigrants or gays or feminism... indeed in many cases they support those causes; but they are not anywhere near the top priority. They live in nuclear families and drive a truck or minivan, have children and make $50,000 a year. They are worried about paying their bills and having a job and feeling safe and preserving their idea of normality. These voters supported Clinton and Obama when they spoke about being humble and supporting Americanism. Now, as both parties spread to polar extremes, there are a lot of people stuck in the middle and they don’t feel entirely connected to a party overly concerned with marginalized groups that they don’t relate to or have first hand experience with. When these people are told they should believe these issues are the most important, it alienates them and when they are called bigots it causes them to vote differently. I am not talking about every republican voter, but moderates or the apolitical that have been marginalized.
Agreeing with Nook, but I would add that years of pent up class resentment finally shattered, and it's unreasonable to expect that the same political process that caused it is somehow going to fix it. If the GOP denies climate change, the Democratic Party denies the existence of class. Triangulation has made it the party of the professional (or upper-middle, if you prefer) class. The only Republicans prominently visible these days in the urban, professional class are Republican politicians themselves and the staff of Fox News. If there's one thing the professional class hates it's the grubby, less-educated, non-jazz and-classical-music-listening working class, with notable exception for minorities, because identity politics and virtue signalling is the prescription of choice to alleviate upper-middle class white liberal guilt. It's also very safe, because identity politics and culture war virtue signaling threatens no conflict of interest with all the not-so-liberal positions that have been normalized since Dukakis lost in 1988: curtailed press freedoms, unwarranted surveillance, unconstitutional wars in seven countries, and growing ever closer to big business at the expense of labor, like the consolidation of media companies, bank bailouts, welfare reform, building private prisons to incarcerate poor people for petty crimes and other crony capitalist schemes Ayn Rand could have only dreamed of. You can do those things and still claim to be "center-left." When Max Boot is sharing his "woke" credentials and supports your candidates, you should be very alarmed. If you are working-class, you hate the professional class right back, especially when they give a condescending lecture about privilege, for which class never figures into the equation, because if it did, they would have to pretend to like the white working class, too. Yet, for all the hate of the professional class, they idolize the ultra-rich,as long as they aren't George Soros or Michael Bloomberg. It's not a joke: the infatuation with Trump will not end soon, regardless of how little populism actually makes it into policy, because it is fuelled with high-octane Schadenfreude that has been growing since the early 90s. Watching "the libtards" panic over every little thing Trump tweets or what twats he's grabbed is providing a lot of high-fiving and doubled over laughter in rural America that feels as good and smug to them as the Daily Show once made the bourgeoisie feel (in the old days, of course, when W "wasn't their president" and was a war criminal they despised, and not at all like now, after he was redeemed for appearing on Ellen and giving Michelle Obama candy, and more importantly after eight years of her husband's administration that expanded every extralegal action they once protested). All the upper and lower middle class can really agree on universally is their hatred for the poor, unless they are minorities, which would be racist, which is of course what sets them apart from those despicable Walmart shopping purveyors of rap-metal and country music. This is why the professional class spends considerable time giving reassuring TED talks about how everyone in Watts can all go to coding bootcamps and net six figure incomes as Ruby programmers in the same way they pretend that microloans are really going to help people in sub-Saharan Africa. As for the oligarchs, the 1%, the job-creators, the robber barons, or whatever you choose to call them, business has never been better, the market is booming, and divide and rule is providing absolutely splendid return on investment. That millions of American don't want to participate in this self-destructive masochism is entirely understandable..
