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The white working class part of their coalition, which tends to more socially conservative, are not a focus of the party anymore. It used to be a bedrock part o

The white working class part of their coalition, which tends to more socially conservative, are not a focus of the party anymore. It used to be a bedrock part of their strategy in the Midwest. At least that is the perception - forget for a moment if a) it’s actually true, that they’ve dropped focus, or b) that voting block was ever a permanent part of that party’s coalition or merely on borrowed time.

zozbot234 7y ago
This is part of a generalized development in Western politics though - it even explains why Brexit and Boris Johnson won in the UK. The "left" is now explicitly the party of managerial, globalizing crony capitalism, pushing for maximum openness and free mobility for all factors of production - not of the working classes with their petty, localized concerns, or of traditional "business" classes with their long-time appreciation for economic diversification and the value of free markets. Some people might want to map this to ethnic stereotypes of some sort, or posit that it's the outcome of some kind of intentional conspiracy, and of course this would be quite incorrect. Nonetheless the shift was very real.
- JoeSmithson 7y ago
  Your position is that the UK Labour party, led by life long socialist and eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn, who's manifesto proposed nationalising several industries, is "explicity the party of globalizing crony capitalism"? In a strong field this might be the weakest political take I've read in the last month.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Jeremy Corbyn is only one player out of many in the British Labor Party. He's a pretty divisive figure for other reasons, and many Labor supporters are even starting to acknowledge this. In fact, if anything positive can be said about the shift towards favoring globalizing crony capitalism, is that it happens to be somewhat less divisive than the old-fashioned Marxist alternative that Corbyn favors. As strange as it may seem, this was very much a shift towards intentional moderation.
    - JoeSmithson 7y ago
      The shift from Blair/Brown to Corbyn was a shift towards intentional moderation?

zozbot234 7y ago

This is part of a generalized development in Western politics though - it even explains why Brexit and Boris Johnson won in the UK. The "left" is now explicitly the party of managerial, globalizing crony capitalism, pushing for maximum openness and free mobility for all factors of production - not of the working classes with their petty, localized concerns, or of traditional "business" classes with their long-time appreciation for economic diversification and the value of free markets. Some people might want to map this to ethnic stereotypes of some sort, or posit that it's the outcome of some kind of intentional conspiracy, and of course this would be quite incorrect. Nonetheless the shift was very real.

JoeSmithson 7y ago
Your position is that the UK Labour party, led by life long socialist and eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn, who's manifesto proposed nationalising several industries, is "explicity the party of globalizing crony capitalism"? In a strong field this might be the weakest political take I've read in the last month.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Jeremy Corbyn is only one player out of many in the British Labor Party. He's a pretty divisive figure for other reasons, and many Labor supporters are even starting to acknowledge this. In fact, if anything positive can be said about the shift towards favoring globalizing crony capitalism, is that it happens to be somewhat less divisive than the old-fashioned Marxist alternative that Corbyn favors. As strange as it may seem, this was very much a shift towards intentional moderation.
  - JoeSmithson 7y ago
    The shift from Blair/Brown to Corbyn was a shift towards intentional moderation?