Just about the time I think the Democratic Party can’t get
any more out of touch, it proves me wrong. Headline from Sunday’s Boston Globe: “Anti-Trump wave lifts and
worries Democrats.” Worries!!!??? Some party leaders fret that the leftward
tilt of the Warren-Sanders “base” will be a turn-off to “moderate” voters in
the Rust Belt. Or so says Ohio’s Tim Ryan.
Okay, so much wrong with that, starting with the obvious: any
party ignoring its “base” will crumble like a randomly stacked pile of stones.
Worse, Ryan’s sentiment is more of the all-bullshit-no-beef posturing of
Hillary Clinton and many of her doe-eyed middle class supporters. Need I remind
you how that turned out? Can we revisit the question of why so many Sanders supporters
did not vote for Clinton? Wrong
answer from Democratic elites: "These delusional fools are responsible for
putting Trump into the White House." Real answer: Clinton never connected
with palpable economic and social concerns, excited far fewer than voted for
her, and resonated best with educated elites. (Spare me the, “She got three million more votes” line. I
agree the Electoral College is a travesty but, for now, it exists.)
Moderates? Try this definition: Those who lack the courage,
the commitment, the compassion, and/or the incentive
to make up their minds. Ryan and others who worry that the anti-Trump
movement will push the Democratic Party too far to the left are drawing the
wrong conclusion. The goal isn't to become more like Trump; it's to push the “moderate”
electorate leftward. The "center" is a myth. Stop thinking of wage
earners as inherently racist, sexist, and conservative. Many are, but that’s
true of the vaunted middle class as well—especially suburban whites, the only
difference being that the latter dissemble in politeness. (That’s why Martin
Luther King Jr. feared white "moderates" more than overt bigots.)
Here’s a short history lesson: The American working
class has been far more liberal and activist than the middle class. This is
the class of the labor wars, unions, civil rights marches, NOW*, Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, anti-globalization protests, etc. It is the class
that taught the middle class how to
protest.
I weary of hearing about the woes of the middle class—a den of
privilege and plenitude that behaves like they are paupers. (Yes, I am now a
member of its intellectual elite.) Here’s a small guide for the misguided who
conflate the working and middle classes. Take it to heart; the Democratic Party
cannot speak to the first if it carries the assumptions of the latter. ( MC=
middle class WC = Working class)
1. Housing: You
are MC if you worry about affording a mortgage. Many in the WC fear not being
able to scrape up rent money.
2. Making your income
meet needs: You are MC being "strapped" means Johnny’s
orthodontics have to wait, if you are forced to forgo a new cell phone, or carry
some debt on credit cards. Many in the WC must choose between which bills to
pay immediately, still have a landline, and their cards are maxed out.
3. Food: Pretty
simple: If you’ve never known hunger—real hunger, not gluttonous desire—you’re
MC.
4. Clothing: WC
is patch and pass down; MC is pitch and keep up with fashion.
5. Paycheck: MC
draws a salary; WC gets paid by the hour. The size of the paycheck matters less
than its security. Contract workers must be paid for the length of that
document. No such net for hourly employees.
6. Cars: The MC
worries about car payments. So does the WC, but it truly fears unexpected
repair bills. No one from my WC family has ever used Uber.
7. Education: The
MC worries about how to pay Buffy’s tuition to Stanford; the WC fears its smart
children won't have enough to go to a local state school or community college.
The WC fixates on what kind of job
their kids will get; the MC wants its kids to develop their minds.
8. Mindsets: Before
you tell me how much more electricians make than teachers, I know! But the MC misses
the point when it measures everything in monetary/property terms—as if they
were Marxist materialists! If you don’t get the whole intellectual versus
manual labor thing, you’re clueless—the difference resonates in how worldviews
are formed, including thoughts on economics and politics. Don’t tell the WC that
globalism helps the economy or generates investment wealth; it's fixated on
well-paying jobs—in the USA and now. The MC also needs to be less
particularistic and more universal, because every time it uses group-specific
terms, the WC thinks, “Special privileges. What about us?” And they’re right!
If the Democrats actually want to win elections, it needs to
shut down the Tim Ryans of the party and listen harder to Warren and Sanders on
how to re-radicalize the working class--at least in the North and Midwest. (Much of the South might be hopeless!) Think big, not small: free health care,
cracking down on Wall Street pirates, job creation, protectionism, equal opportunity, higher taxes on the
wealthy, improving public education,
deregulating individuals, and
securing the blessings of the Bill of Rights for all Americans—not just elites.
That’s true populism, not Clintonian triangulation.
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*Sadly, we tell the story of feminism from a middle-class
perspective. Women from the United Auto Workers co-founded NOW.
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