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In the interview Martin Gurri characterizes the left thusly: > Today the big issue is… what? Wearing MAGA hats? Racism certainly isn’t a divisive issue. Ever

by wahern 6y ago

In the interview Martin Gurri characterizes the left thusly: > Today the big issue is… what? Wearing MAGA hats? Racism certainly isn’t a divisive issue. Everybody’s against it. Capitalism isn’t much of an issue. Nobody even talks about class or poverty any more. Identity’s too diffuse and dispersed – if identitarians started fighting, it would look more like a scrum than a civil war. That's not honest. It would be like saying that Reagan supporters in the 1980s only cared about welfare queens, without any substantive policy preferences regarding industrial regulation, unions, defense, etc. In reality "welfare queens" was short-hand for all the substantive policy preferences demanded by conservatives, as well as a statement about the perceived consequences of the excesses of liberal policies. Similar, MAGA hat derision is a liberal statement about the irony of promoting conservative, free market, anti-social safety net policies to "Make America Great Again" when from the left's perspective all the agreed upon societal ills--e.g. loss of blue collar jobs to free trade, lack of income growth combined with increasing income disparity, corporate oligopolies, etc--are a consequence of conservative, Republican, policies. The GOP was the architect of both NAFTA and China entering GATT/WTO.[1] The "neoliberal" movement in the Democratic party was a conservative movement; it was an adoption by some Democrats of conservative Republican economic policies in an attempt to win over increasingly Republican-leaning voters who had been successfully persuaded that traditionally Democratic economic policies (e.g. antagonism to free trade, pro union, "tax & spend" entitlements, etc) were hostile to job growth. And just as Democrats were scrambling to realign their economic platforms with the rightward shift in the electorate, so too was Labor doing exactly the same thing in the U.K. Thatcher and Reagan ushered in the preeminence of conservative economic policies, and Blair and Clinton were late-stage responses to that. To then blame Democrats and their "neoliberal" policies for the legacy of conservative (classically "liberal" outside the Anglosphere--note the semantic games) economic policies is... rich. I'm sorry, but either Martin Gurri is less than 25 years old, or he's willfully misrepresenting actual, factual, not-particularly-distant political history. I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and he's simply using obtuse, scholarly-sounding terminology to sell a constructed narrative popular among far too many conservatives. I'm familiar with the tactic having heard plenty of similar B.S. political fantasies (e.g. Marxist, Fascist, etc, arguments) that build plausible seeming narratives around hidden, false premises. There's plenty of blame to go around regarding contemporary cultural divisions. The conservatives were right in their criticisms of the left's identity politics and victim culture. Indeed, identity politics has swallowed up everybody, and it turns out the empowered and entitled often make for the most sympathetic victims of all. But let's be clear about who promoted what, when, and why before we start naming our oppressors and nominating our saviors. [1] When NAFTA passed under a Clinton presidency, 2/3 of House Republicans voted for it (including Newt Gingrich, who successfully helped to push through special "fast-track" voting rules), while only 1/3 of Democrats voted for it. President Clinton, like Tony Blair in the U.K., was seen as successful precisely because of his conservative economic policies. Clinton also supported GOP authored welfare reform, including block grants to states (which Democrats feared would be directed away from the working class), despite fierce opposition from his own party.

pdonis 6y ago
> from the left's perspective all the agreed upon societal ills--e.g. loss of blue collar jobs to free trade, lack of income growth combined with increasing income disparity, corporate oligopolies, etc--are a consequence of conservative, Republican, policies But even if this is accepted for the sake of argument (I'm not sure it's entirely true, but let's assume it is), the left has not done what a sane political party should do when these things happen: penalize their own party leaders who let it happen. If Clinton allowed NAFTA to pass despite his own party's fierce opposition, why didn't the party fire him? Why didn't some other candidate beat him in the 1996 primaries? Why did the Democrats continue to protect him despite the fact that he's a womanizer and a liar? And why does the party machine of which he and his wife are poster child beneficiaries continue to run the party despite the fact that it obviously doesn't represent the will of the people? If it did, Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic candidate for President in 2016, and again in 2020 (and he might have won in 2016). In other words, I think Gurri is correct that the left talks a lot about reforms it says it wants, but doesn't back up its talk with action.
- js2 6y ago
  Once the New Deal coalition fell apart after the Civil Rights Act passed and the GOP implemented the Southern Strategy and right-to-work laws destroyed unions, the Democrats lost unions as their base of financial support. They still held on in Congress for a while, but couldn't win the Presidency until the Third Way/neoliberal Democrats and groups like the Blue Dogs took charge of the party. At that point, the Democrats became captured (at least financially) by Wall Street and rich urban professionals who were socially liberal but fiscally conservative. There's no "firing" Clinton at that point. The party has been captured. The Democrats are also a much more diverse party since they are as much "not-GOP" as anything else. Why should a conservative Black voter vote Democratic? Of course they shouldn't, but the GOP was pretty explicitly home to racists for decades. Both parties continue to self-sort in unhealthy ways. The GOP needs more diversity (but of course, is doubling-down on gerrymandering) and the Democrats, frankly, need less. I'd love to trade off some fiscally conservative Democrats for some working-collar populist Republicans. Bernie's support came from appealing to what used to be the base of the Democratic party: the working-class. But it's not enough voters in the raucous big-tent Democratic party to win a primary, and likely not the general election. We also can't even have a serious conversation about policy since the GOP attacks everything the Democrats do as socialism. Anyway, to your last point: the left is part of the Democratic party, but it doesn't have a strong-enough hand to play. Also, look, voters are weird. I volunteered as a Democratic poll greeter here in NC with two women, both professionals, a white woman originally from Cincinnati and a Black woman originally from New Jersey. They'd both voted for Biden in the primary. I was like, what, why? Why didn't you pick someone more progressive? They both said: "because Biden is who we thought would make the strongest general election candidate." So they're not even voting on who they think is best, but who they think the rest of America will accept. p.s. don't be so hard on Hillary. Let's not forget that she expended a lot of political capital trying to pass universal healthcare. She got killed on that, by Democrats and Republicans alike. I think that really changed her idea of what was possible in politics in the US. She is not the devil she's been made out to be.

by wahern 6y ago

pdonis 6y ago

> from the left's perspective all the agreed upon societal ills--e.g. loss of blue collar jobs to free trade, lack of income growth combined with increasing income disparity, corporate oligopolies, etc--are a consequence of conservative, Republican, policies But even if this is accepted for the sake of argument (I'm not sure it's entirely true, but let's assume it is), the left has not done what a sane political party should do when these things happen: penalize their own party leaders who let it happen. If Clinton allowed NAFTA to pass despite his own party's fierce opposition, why didn't the party fire him? Why didn't some other candidate beat him in the 1996 primaries? Why did the Democrats continue to protect him despite the fact that he's a womanizer and a liar? And why does the party machine of which he and his wife are poster child beneficiaries continue to run the party despite the fact that it obviously doesn't represent the will of the people? If it did, Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic candidate for President in 2016, and again in 2020 (and he might have won in 2016). In other words, I think Gurri is correct that the left talks a lot about reforms it says it wants, but doesn't back up its talk with action.

js2 6y ago
Once the New Deal coalition fell apart after the Civil Rights Act passed and the GOP implemented the Southern Strategy and right-to-work laws destroyed unions, the Democrats lost unions as their base of financial support. They still held on in Congress for a while, but couldn't win the Presidency until the Third Way/neoliberal Democrats and groups like the Blue Dogs took charge of the party. At that point, the Democrats became captured (at least financially) by Wall Street and rich urban professionals who were socially liberal but fiscally conservative. There's no "firing" Clinton at that point. The party has been captured. The Democrats are also a much more diverse party since they are as much "not-GOP" as anything else. Why should a conservative Black voter vote Democratic? Of course they shouldn't, but the GOP was pretty explicitly home to racists for decades. Both parties continue to self-sort in unhealthy ways. The GOP needs more diversity (but of course, is doubling-down on gerrymandering) and the Democrats, frankly, need less. I'd love to trade off some fiscally conservative Democrats for some working-collar populist Republicans. Bernie's support came from appealing to what used to be the base of the Democratic party: the working-class. But it's not enough voters in the raucous big-tent Democratic party to win a primary, and likely not the general election. We also can't even have a serious conversation about policy since the GOP attacks everything the Democrats do as socialism. Anyway, to your last point: the left is part of the Democratic party, but it doesn't have a strong-enough hand to play. Also, look, voters are weird. I volunteered as a Democratic poll greeter here in NC with two women, both professionals, a white woman originally from Cincinnati and a Black woman originally from New Jersey. They'd both voted for Biden in the primary. I was like, what, why? Why didn't you pick someone more progressive? They both said: "because Biden is who we thought would make the strongest general election candidate." So they're not even voting on who they think is best, but who they think the rest of America will accept. p.s. don't be so hard on Hillary. Let's not forget that she expended a lot of political capital trying to pass universal healthcare. She got killed on that, by Democrats and Republicans alike. I think that really changed her idea of what was possible in politics in the US. She is not the devil she's been made out to be.