Liberal Elitism Will Make Sarah Palin President - How Only Union Organizing Can Stop It
Conservatives win many votes saying that liberals are elitist. I am here to tell you that the liberal movement is indeed very elitist. Its organization's staffs are composed mainly of Ivy leaguers whose life experiences are dramatically different than the 70 percent of Americans that never graduate from college. Very few of them have any actual experience living with or knowing working-class people. As a graduate of Bucknell, I still feel out of a place and most glaringly underdressed when I get in a room with the Ivy Leaguers running our movement.
As garbageman turned United Electrical Workers (UE) in Political Action Director Chris Townsend put it to me:
When I am in meetings in Washington, DC, with organizations that presume to speak for workers or on behalf of workers - I ironically find myself the only worker in the room. As a worker with a GED - and 30-plus years of labor union experience - opinions like mine are rarely sought and universally dismissed as being too extremist when most workers feel the way I do about things. This is why it is so common for liberal and left-wing staff and activists to completely misunderstand workers.
The experiences of liberal elites are so outside of the mainstream that, very often, they just don't understand the working class. They fail to communicate to workers because most of them have never talked to a worker in real life, except to ask for fries at McDonald's. Instead, when they fail to understand the misdirected anger of the working class at its economic anxiety, they tend to engage in intellectual snobbery and narrow-mindedness that only serve to alienate the white working class further.
Such snobbery was expressed to me in an email recently sent to me from a Democratic media strategist who said the message of the day was, "Conservatives face a choice about the future of their movement: Will they come to the table to get things done or 'stick with the angry people'?"
Well, let me think about that for a second. If I am a poor white guy, do I want to go with the polite people (Democrats) who are going to beg for change with their sophisticated intellectual arguments that I don't understand? Or do I want to be with the party (Republicans) that embraces my anger and wants to get out in the streets to yell about how awful this economy is?
Americans are screaming now about the economic hell we are in. Republicans are screaming about how awful the economy is and winning many of them over. Although, they're winning them with the wrong solutions, but they are trying to win Joe the Plumber, not Joe Stiglitz, so the details don't really matter.
On the economy, the Democratic message is, "Sit tight, don't get out in the street and protest, everything will be alright."
White working-class guys would choose the angry people who are willing to stand up and say how frustrated they feel. The progressives who are telling me to be cool and not get upset with things are just merely talking down to me. They have the privilege of telling me not to get upset, when I have every right to be upset.
Sarah Palin indeed represents all the rage of the working class that liberals of this country are trying to quiet down. Many liberal elites engaged in revisionist history say that McCain's defeat was caused by Palin. However, anybody who actually worked on the Obama campaign like I did knew that McCain's defeat was caused by the financial crisis and McCain's baffling response and coddling of Wall Street.
As an organizer for the Obama campaign on the ground in Western Pennsylvania during the election, I remember how white, working-class, swing voters couldn't stop talking about Sarah Palin for weeks on end. For the three weeks between Palin's selection as VP candidate and the financial crash, we were scared shitless the Republicans were going to win as Palin led to McCain surging in the polls.
Many white, working-class people loved her because here was a politician who finally was working class and ready for a fight. They loved her even more as Ivy League liberals denounced her as basically "white trash." It felt to white, working-class people like liberal elites were calling them "white trash" too.
Liberals still treat Palin and the right-wing populist Tea Party Movement that she leads as "white trash." They spend more time attacking them as "stupid racists" than actually trying to win them over and address their concerns. Its as if liberals are saying we know better than you stupid working-class people.
To understand how easily Sarah Palin could be the next president, we need only look to another vice presidential candidate widely denounced by the liberal elite when he was announced in 1952 - Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon became president by mobilizing resentment of the working class against elites. By framing elites as talking down to the poor and working class, Sarah Palin, with the right slick ad men, could mobilize that same type of sentiment against the elitist "eggheads" of the Democratic Party.
From Rick Perlstein's classic, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America:
To cosmopolitan liberals, hating Richard Nixon, congratulating yourself for seeing through Richard Nixon and the elaborate political poker bluff with which he hooked the sentimental rubes, was becoming part and parcel of a political identity.
And to a new suburban mass middle class that was tempting itself into Republicanism, admiring Richard Nixon was becoming part and parcel of a political identity based on seeing through the pretensions of the cosmopolitan liberals who claimed to know so much better than you (and Richard Nixon) what was best for your country. This side saw everything most genuine in Nixon, everything that was most brave, - who saw the Checkers speech for what it also actually was, not just a hustle but also an act of existential heroism: a brave refusal to let haughty 'betters' have their way with him.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Republicans are rallying the troops against the educated elites of society. As a result of their political jujitsu, Republicans are making it look like they are engaged in a class war on behalf of the working class against the liberal elite.
Liberals instead are playing into the class war trap by talking down to the uneducated masses of America via TV talk shows and blogs. They can't understand why they aren't winning over the working class because they are too busy attacking them.
Such intellectual foolishness was dramatized in the way I heard liberal DC political operatives talk about the widely read focus group study by The Very Separate Worlds of Conservatives by Stan Greenberg, James Carville and others. They took the memo as evidence that working class people lived in a world so far outside of their own (socioeconomically speaking, they do) that they couldn't possibly be reasoned with using their methods). They reckoned that surely these people must be "crazy, brain dead racists" who believe Obama is a socialist out to get them.
What they failed to read is one of the main conclusions of the study that shows that their efforts to paint working class conservatives as "racist idiots" is backfiring big time:
They readily identify themselves as a minority in this country - a minority whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media and class of elites.
I wonder why they feel under attack? Maybe it's all the liberal elites calling white, working class people "stupid racists."
Indeed, the focus groups found that race was not an important factor affecting the political opposition of white, working class conservatives. Indeed, the study found that mocking these people as racists, as I argued in my article, "Martin Luther King Would Have Loved the Teabaggers, Not Called Them Racists," only serves to stigmatize them more against liberal elites.
Talking down to working class people engaged in a class war against the elites isn't going to win them over.
What liberals have to do is unite with the teabaggers and engage in a class war against Wall Street. Organized labor has succeeded in doing this by using constant, year-round, on-the-job political engagement to compel people to come over. As a result, Obama won by 23 points among white, non-college graduates who belong to a union, even as he lost by 18 points among all white, non-college voters.
We need to "Organize the Unorganized" in massive organizing drives like we did in 1930's - the heydays for the progressive reform. Union organizing is the best way to engage people one-on-one on a constant year-round basis. We need be constantly sitting down with working class white conservatives one-on-one, listen to their concerns, and engage them in honest dialogue. Only real community organizing can do this, not the slick TV ad buys that DC liberals tend to prefer.
Part of the reason the Obama movement was so successful was that they invested so heavily in community organizing. We would treat them like human beings and engage in friendly conversation. We would find out what issues they cared about and get them to critically look at issues in friendly, non-threatening communications. Much like Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy, we took no voter for granted. Our movement should do the same when it comes to voters if it expects to be sustainable over the long run.
Sure, we might not get them the first time or the second time or the third time; it might take 20, 30, 40 or 50 long, deep conversations in order to win over these working white guys, but it's worth it. However, when you get a union on your job every day eight hours day, a good, well-trained union leader or shop stewards have plenty of time to get to that 20th or 30th conversation you need to win a guy. Furthermore, you have a common bond which you guys can unite behind - fighting economic injustice in your workplace.
As a union organizer in West Virginia, I remember some of our most active members showing up with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers on their pickups. A lot of them would complain against liberals ruining society and then in the next breath argue passionately for a strike. Over time through constant dialogue and popular education, our union was able to win these members over to the liberal side. They realized that voting based on slick TV personalities made up to appear folksy was merely putting folks out of jobs.
Sure, not all of them came over, but enough that it was worth the effort. If we can just bring over one-third of white, working class conservatives, we can dramatically change the political landscape of this country. That's what the Employee Free Choice Act would be able to do.
Many liberal political operatives in DC dismiss the Employee Free Choice Act as merely political payback to the unions for their help in the election. They fail to see the larger political implications - increased unionization would dramatically change the political dynamics of this country and prevent 30,000 workers from getting fired from their jobs every year for trying to join a union.
Many lament the loss of marriage equality last week in Maine. There have been a thousand analyses of why we lost this important fight for a fundamental civil right. However, what none of them pointed out is that if we had increased unionization, the fight for marriage equality would be dramatically easier.
Its no coincidence that ranks of the Christian Coalition began to swell as the ranks of unions declined dramatically in the 1980's. Unions are organizations that bring people from different parts of society and unite them in a common cause. Union members know that their true enemy is Wall Street and not a couple of people trying to get married.
We as progressives can win only when we get all the teabaggers into our movement through getting them into unions. As Lincoln said, "United We Stand, Divided We Fall." Only organized labor can achieve that type of unity. Failure to bring working people into the Employee Free Choice Act could easily lead to the election of a Sarah Palin.
Sure, liberals laugh off the idea of Sarah Palin being elected president. However, elitist, out-of-touch liberals laughed off Nixon, Reagan and Bush as unelectable. Well, guess what, they all won.
If we don't stop laughing at white, working class people, we are going to lose too.
Follow Mike Elk on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MikeElk
Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup
Prepare for the latest Palin media onslaught. An hour with Oprah, a multi-parter with Barbara, and appearances all across the country. An initial read shows Going Rogue doesn't reveal much. No surprise there. This isn't about the book, it's about the book tour -- which includes a politically convenient stop in Iowa -- and the money. Besides, it's not like there's much we haven't already learned about Palin since she burst onto the national scene. We even know when her water broke during her last pregnancy. Talk about overexposed. In the end, I expect this will be one of the most mocked books of the year -- and one of the biggest bestsellers. Palin fans will find much to love, but I doubt a single doubter will be converted. It's a 400 page Rorschach test. With no index.
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I'm a little late reading this. Mr. Elk go and sit down with some these "real" conservative tea-party types and go ahead and discuss your liberal ideas with them instead, go ahead I dare you! As working class liberal I feel I will get lynched everytime I open my mouth with my democratic point of view when any conservatives are around. I was at a job once and a co-worker asked me what political party I belonged to, when I said I was a Democrat I was pointed at, made fun of, she'd tell customers top stay away from that one she's a LIBERAL DEMOCRAT! Lucky for me several customers complained about this to management. Everytime she called me "liberal" I'd say "Yes, I know I'm generous."
Wow. Thanks for the wake up call. I never looked at it that way, this is an excellent article....
Yes! Finally. I live in Oklahoma, the only state with all counties going for McCain. The MLK comment is spot-on, because: this being somewhat of a cultural backwater, and very much in the bible belt, they feel very voiceless and powerless these days. Some might say "well, good", but while I don't tend to share my views unsolicited to folks around here, I know that Oklahomans are 1. uncommonly nice people when treated with respect, 2. quick to help one out in a jam, and 3. a people you definitely want on your side.
The fact is that even the worst offenders around here (and everywhere) are simply coming from a place of fear, of the country going down the drain, and of their voices being ignored and mocked by the ones taking it there(the senators they've elected here are not a big help).
In general, talking down to people as if they don't understand reality (even if they don't, ESPECIALLY if they don't) is a fool's game on both ends. Hearts and minds, don't alienate good people. Because we are all good people. (just as we are all evil people, but that's another thing altogether ..)
God forbid that Palin gets anywhere near the Presidency. If she does she will use her position to go after her enemies. It is her trademark, so to speak.
An example of this is the current attempt by Harper Collins to silence two small anti palin bloggers who posted exerpts from her book. The publisher did not threaten big websites such as Wonkette, which had posted similar exerpts. Only the small voluntary, non profit making, yet highly critical ones. It's absolutely clear that Palin's hands are all over this intimidation.
You can read about it here
http://palingates.blogspot.com/2009/11/palingates-hit-nerve-letter-from-harper.html
This story should be taken up by the editors at Huffington Post - they should support the small bloggers in their attempts to expose Sarah Palin for the hypocrite that she is.
Mr. Elk, I enjoy your article and think the call to unionization and better support for working class democrats is long overdue. But I must ask, how in all of this do you account for Sarah Palin's current -10 favorable/unfavorable numbers? They have consistently dropped the longer she's been in the national spotlight past the first month, and are negative among moderate white independents, last I checked. She hasn't dropped out of the national spotlight and her game hasn't changed. I'm not seeing her ability to win elections, although if Obama continues to fail to create palpable change for the working class, her chances escalate dramatically.
Wow! wait a minute! I don't know where you hang around, but I know plenty of working class white Liberals!
Look the ones in power in all political parties are all elitist because they are the ones who have the money. For you to legitimize the bogus claims of the extremist conservatives that all Liberals are snobs and don't understand or give a rats ass about workers is so far from reality that you must have taken in lots of that extremist conservative gas they feed their followers!
The "Liberal snobs" are the ones who are always fighting for workers rights! Who the hell do you think pushes for legislation that protects workers rights, fights to increase the minimum wage, fights for equal pay, is fighting for affordable heatlh care for all Americans, etc.? It is certainly not the conservatives who run around with their cowboy boots and hockey sticks claiming to be the "workers" party, yet fight every single piece of legislation that is meant to improve the lives and livelihoods of America's workers?
Who the hell is fighting against capping COE bonuses and salaries of the big corporations? the conservatives!
Wake up! That garbage rhetoric that the "Liberals" are snobs and dont care about the workers of this country is just that, garbage! Like I said, I know many blue collar workers who are liberal. They may not all have college educations, but they do ask when they don't understand something, unlike the neanderthals behind the teaparties.
My favorite Ted Kennedy story, as well as I can remember it:
Early in his career, during some local or state campaign that his opponent had just started to go negative with "elitist" noises, Kennedy went to a factory or labor union. A steel worker approached him and said "I hear you haven't done a day's work in your life. . . I just wanted to tell you, you haven't missed a thing!" smiled from ear to ear and gave him an enthusiastic handshake. I would say that steel worker was a working class Liberal.
Beca, you're entirely right in terms of the overarching goals of the Democratic Party. What Progressives need to do within the next election cycle is to put those goals front and center. Win the narrative fight, and when we pass EFCA, make it about the rights of workers to stand up to powerful interests arrayed against them. Take a harder stance with Wall Street, most importantly. The Democrats have been pushed this year into the unfortunate position of being the party of Big Business in a climate of real and palpable anger against big business. If Obama is seen as standing up to Wall Street interests while the Republicans support those interests, he and his party will win reelection handily. If he continues to occupy the middle ground and the Democratic Congress continues to allow much of their legislation to be dictated by lobbyists, many working class people will start to fall into the category Mike is describing here. In 2010 and 2012, many people will be angry. Whichever party harnesses that anger more effectively will win their votes. Regardless of peripheral issues, tea partiers are mainly concerned with governmental handling of the economy, especially giveaways to wall st. A strong policy shift that balances using the big investment banks for what they're good for--capital--without coddling them and allowing them to get away with exploiting everyday Americans can tip this balance as workers begin to feel that legislation and taxes are truly there to support their interests.
There are two things which bother me about Mr. Elk here
First, to claim that liberal elites are to blame for the rise of Sarah Palin is silly. When Obama dared to suggest that white people were angry, everyone jumped on him. The claim that any criticism of the heroes or ideas of the so-called "working class" (and I say so-called because there are service worker jobs that do not pay even close to a living wage and many people on entitlement incomes who join the tea parties to hold onto their share and deny anybody else anything, hardly a Walter Reuther courageous worker movement) will lead to their further embitterment is strangely patronizing. Don't say anything except bromides, and don't do anything but blow kisses when talking about Tea Parties and the inane claims people make.
Second, Mr. Elk claims that there is no racism in white "working class" America. You cannot speak with many white people without hearing their fear and their defensiveness, including "N" word slurs and "jokes".
I would love to see an unedited tape of the things white people say when they do not think black people are around. There are racists and a deep history of racism in America and Mr. Elk should stop blaming people for noticing that fact and the fact that Sarah Palin is a liar.
Again, offensive. But beyond the patronizing attitude: you are confusing class with status. Working class means that you must work in order to survive, that you do not have any alternative form of income, and so must continuously offer your ability to work to the highest bidder. As such, service workers are very much working class, which, by this definition, constitutes more than 80% of the US population. A clerk at 7-11 is no less a worker than an assembly line worker at Caterpillar, it just is the nature of assembly line work lends itself better to organizing for higher wages (power in the wage bargain) and thus Caterpillar (Gm, Ford etc.) workers are paid around three times as much and have excellent benefits. But the 7-11 worker is no less working class.
And again, what specifically offends you about it?
Obama's comments were vilified by rethugs, and were generally about those voting against their own interests (now called tea-baggers) "hugging their bibles". Media still covers itself, giving Fox incredible leverage with 24-hour talking points (read Franken). Workers/Progressives must unite and speak out, yet "no drama Obama" seems to squelch it through back channels. I am mystified. Yes we must stay on message (unlike Teabags), but we must show support other than through PayPal. There is an agenda of the working class, fought using fear by the right. "The Candidate' (1972): We cannot play off rich against poor, young against old, white against black. (straight against gay, college grad against trades).
"Workers/PrÂogressives must unite and speak out, yet 'no drama Obama' seems to squelch it through back channels."
Why do you blame President Obama for what unions aren't doing? Or how would you like Workers and Progressives to unite, and why do you think he is squelching that, rather than it just not happening because nobody is uniting those two groups?
Of course, race, gender, and sexuality oppression must be addresses as well--but without an analysis of Capitalism and the violence that is so integral to its functioning, liberals will ceaselessly be "wishy washy" and elitists as their class interests and consciousness indicates.
Thanks Mike.
Of course, most self-identified liberals identify progresiveism with gay marriage, as if political equality (which is undoubtedly serious and an essential task) is the only barrier to overcome systemic oppression. Looking at civil rights legislation, and its deep limitations to overcome centuries of economic apartheid and Black superexploitation that have led directly to the ghettoization of African Americans today, reveal the deep limitations in the assumption that with full political equality comes equal power relations.
Indeed, I want to argue what separates the viability of America's left from its European counterparts--who all, incidentally, have socialized health care, great public transportation, and of course, are willing to implement a carbon reduction policy that has teeth--is that the American left has fundamentally retreated from a class or economic analysis of society. Or in other words, liberals abandonment of Marxism has severely impaired their ability to read society and power relations in it, which indeed are primarily economic.
The American left has shed the powerful analytic and conceptual tools that Marxism granted -- a sophisticated analysis of Empire and American interests abroad (and understanding, say, the Honduras coup from a different angle), an understanding of Obama's relationship to the financial elite in this country, and, of course, of class conflict and the responsibility the Democratic party has to deindustrializiation and economic librealization which undoubtedly and systemically hurts the working class.
Right on, fanned.
"Indeed, I want to argue what separates the viability of America's left from its European counterparts--who all, incidentally, have socialized health care, great public transportation, and of course, are willing to implement a carbon reduction policy that has teeth--is that the American left has fundamentally retreated from a class or economic analysis of society. Or in other words, liberals abandonment of Marxism has severely impaired their ability to read society and power relations in it, which indeed are primarily economic."
Hasn't that been necessary, in large part, BECAUSE OF the white working class, who for decades have voted their race and culture before their own rational economic self-interest?
I would argue that it's been necessary due to Cold War attitudes toward Marxist though, combined with the unusually high conceptual value Americans place on individualism. The American Dream is a fundamentally libertarian one at heart, and American political and social discourse elevates the situation of the individual over any concept of class or societal role in anything.
The rise of pop psychology in the 1970's is exemplary of this attitude: the underlying assertion of simplified faux-psychological theory is that a problem of the individual can and should be fixed at the individual level. I would argue that the more sociological or anthropological theory enters mainstream American discourse, the more space there is for a class- or society-based construction of the individual and of the plight of the worker.
But then, as an Anthropologist, I suppose I'm biased.
Great article Mike. It's interesting seeing people's responses, it seems like you really struck a nerve in the liberal community that is overwhelmingly present here. I am going to offer a few suggestions as to what it reveals.
Many people say "Mike, you got it all wrong--where were these working class whites during the past 8 years of bankruptcy?" Or, "No, the unions did it to themselves when the failed to unionize the south." Etc.
The first comment is interesting--many of them were experiencing foreclosure and losing their jobs do to the policies of NOT only the Bush admin but equally the Clinton Admin, who really pushed free-trade into gear with NAFTA and a deeper embrace of the WTO. Certainly it seems some "liberal" identity is certainly invested in disdaining these "ignorant, misled and racist" workers as masses that need to be saved or kept at bay.
What is more revealing is how few liberals realize the Obama admin, and more fundamentally, the democratic party, is tied to the same corporate powers as the Repubs, the only difference is aesthetic and style to these interests. As Spitzer recently noted, "we are going through a regulatory charade." Of course, simply looking at Larry Summers, as Cornel West also commented, that this is not going to be a progressive admin.
Right on, fanned.
If you find Sotomayor and Scalia the same, I can see how you would feel that way. If you find "axis of evil" and "mission accomplished" the same as a speech from Cairo, I again can understand your opinion. Of course, I agree with Bill Maher. We have one party that supports business, the Democrats, and one that is totally off the wall crazy, the Republicans. We eventually need a progressive party, as soon as the tea-baggers destroy the GOP.
soisay, your points in party distinction are good, but they also reinforce BreakBS's point... the biggest change between the Bush and Obama admins has been foreign policy, which is important, but until we can stop fighting foreign wars, is not really hitting home. And Supreme Court justices become known when they make landmark decisions, until then, Sotomayor will be out of the news and out of most voters' minds. The next election will be won by the first party willing to take real and obvious steps away from big business, and it's a scary thought that the Republicans might pull that one off.
Of course there's ideological divergence between Sonia (who of course I like) and Scalia; my whole point is that its primarily ideological divergence, or if you like, primarily two sides in the "culture wars" that have marred American politics since the 60s, with no reference to class and no apparent need to even put a materialist analysis back in play. (Materialist, of course, meaning one that puts primacy in economic
This, of course, not only makes liberals completely complicit in the exploitation of millions, at home and abroad, but also means they risk understanding the whole operation of power itself in Capitalist societies and why Obama is struggling, and does not even seem to want, to challenge the interests he was elected to dismantle...
Working class people in the U.S. never used to have a problem understanding complex economic and political arguments. I as a working class person never had a problem with them, part of the problem in the U.S. now is the attitude that these arguments are in some manner elite and beyond them which was not there before.
There used to be a celebration of and pride in working class ownership of some lines of political and economic thought and theory, now there's a celebration of working class ignorance and simplification.
It’s not up to the elite to engage the working class in dialog in order to explain things to them. It’s up to the working class to reclaim their own political outlook and tell the elite to either do it for them or get out of the way and let them do it for themselves.
Right on! Fanned.
"There used to be a celebration of and pride in working class ownership of some lines of political and economic thought and theory, now there's a celebration of working class ignorance and simplification.
It’s not up to the elite to engage the working class in dialog in order to explain things to them. It’s up to the working class to reclaim their own political outlook and tell the elite to either do it for them or get out of the way and let them do it for themselves."
True story. But don't forget who has a MAJOR hand in all this. It's the right wing press that creates TV shows like the Simpsons and Family Guy that make fun of working class people. The show gives the impression that Hollywood-DC elites are writing the show but it is really Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch gets his attack on liberals and liberal elites take the heat for it. Genius! Karl Rove would be proud.
I didn't know that Rupert Murdock actually spent time trying to influence the audience of The Simpsons' and Family Guy. What a great concept. Become a multi-billionaire and find time to brain wash purile adults who confuse cartoons with reality.
You are thinking about it in a very narrow way. You think Rupert does not consider what kind of influence or perception his shows will give people and how that might benefit his political party? Of course he does, he is not dumb, he does not just select shows just because they have cute characters! There is intent in all that he does, that is how he got so filthy rich.
He knows that Americans are addicted to the television and they spend more time in front of the TV than they do reading and actually having conversations with eachother. That is the perfect venue to use to influence the way people think about any issue under the sun. TV shapes the perceptions people have of all issues presented, especially for those who are under educated and relatively socially isolated from the rest of the world--the result: teabaggers express, birthers, deathers, truthers, etc.
Mike:
I am a college-graduate liberal that fully supports America's Free Choice Act. Even though I have never worked in a field where there was a union.
Stop blaming Progressives for the Union's uphill fight. The Unions are in this mess because they chose to ignore the South for so many years, and allowed the Olin Foundation to win the war, and control the message. Now there are 22 states with RTW laws, and the unions have a lot of catch up to do.
Unions need to change how they do things, they need a new strategy just as Democrats needed a new strategy.
Also, I would like to say, that comparing Palin to Nixon is completely ridiculous. Nixon was an intelligent and well read man, and he didn't misrepresent his accomplishments. Even most Republicans wouldn't vote for Palin, she is so destructive to their party. Frankly, I resent when someone uses fear-mongering, even when they are on my side.
Emphasis on the differences between the factions of the Progressive movement is not going to get you anywhere. You need to build consensus, not attempt to splinter us over perceived maltreatment.
Divide and conquer, isn't that the American way? most notably the Conservative American way? and this guy must have drunk from their overflowing cups a wee bit too much.
"Liberal elitism" is a conservative myth. Of course Liberals need to support organized labor better, but the rest is bilge water. The logical contradiction of your premises is evident from your recommendations that we should simultaneously be more respectful of the "working class" while also talking down to them enough that they can "understand" Liberals' "sophisticated intellectual arguments" and elite ideals.
"If I am a poor white guy, do I want to go with the polite people (Democrats) who are going to beg for change with their sophisticated intellectual arguments that I don't understand?"
Learn to understand them, or doom yourself and your fellow workers to repeat the history of Cheney/Bush. Really. Liberal ideas ARE BETTER -- elite in the exact meaning of the word, not the one that Republicans' made up -- and we don't need to apologize for that. "Working" (quotes because doctors and many other well-paid professionals work, too, so I object to reserving that label for lower paid laborers) people are going to have to figure out that being literate and polite are in their best interests. Let the GOP pander to belligerent idiocy, and pick up the least qualified workers' votes. If that sort of foolishness wins a majority of the votes, then this country deserves to go the way of the Roman Empire. But I don't think that's the case. Democrats just won a national election last year, and a majority of local elections, by organizing and not dumbing down.
I find this comment to be offensive, and alas, typical of liberal attitudes toward workers. Kurt Vonnegut once described the attitude of liberal reformers as that of a "nose-holding charity that passes out clothing to bums on the street," i.e. feeling both pity and contempt for workers.
Workers need to organize ourselves, not be used as a tool by the wealthy who own everything. Including the liberal elite. I long ago became a Marxist for that reason. If more progressives would recognize the flaws in liberal individualist theory (in which every person is responsible for his or her economic outcomes) we could both put a stop to the patronizing contempt liberals have for working-class values and finally move the country forward for everyone.
I'm not sorry. What part of my comment offended you? The two themes of my message are that workers ARE capable of understanding good ideas, which Liberals have and conservatives do not, and should therefore not be treated like drooling, illiterate mobs of teabaggers who only understand propaganda that Samuel Joseph (the unlicensed almost-plumber) Wurzelbacher can comprehend after his fifth beer; and that more workers than not are already clued-in well enough to have voted for the better man nationwide last year, as well as for the better candidate in MOST local elections. I expressed neither pity nor contempt for workers. You're making shi+ up.
Yes Reed, I agree with you, and I actually understood you!! wow, I work and I understood a "Liberal elitist"! that must mean I am an elitist too! (just a bit of sarcasm here) The last thing we need is for dopes like these to be trying the old Divide and Conquer tactics on our end, we have enough problems as a country to be playing those tired old games.
LOL! I'm glad somebody could tell what was sarcasm and what was not! Thanks for saying so. Do you ever feel like you're talking to a wall, or the vacuum of deep space? I was starting to get that feeling.
You oversimplify things dramatically and omit plenty of relevant facts.
Yes, lots of Dem politicians went to fancy universities. A higher percentage than the general population. No sh#&. Funny how the same is true of GOP politicians - in fact, maybe it has something to do with being a politician, rather than a liberal.
Sarah Palin provided a huge poll bounce because she was new and fresh and entertaining and winked a lot. I'm absolutely not surprised that white working-class guys in Pennsylvania were smitten with her. Of course, Pennsylvania ended up going blue. You attribute this to McCain's bewildering ineptitude and "coddling of Wall Street" as the economy tumbled. You conveniently leave out the timeline that correlates to Sarah Palin's popularity: unknown, unexamined --> popular; vetted, quizzed, publicized --> unpopular. Gosh, I can't imagine how that could be considered a reason to blame her AS well as the economy going kersplat.
I couldn't even finish reading your post. It's too long and poorly argued, even though I absolutely agree with the underlying theme that unions are good and the left needs to remember where our strength lies.
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