Washington Post urges Democratic Party to act really stupid and racist

[La Comédie Noire]

This is an opinion piece, but I think it illustrates with perfect clarity the dead end that is mainstream politics .


Democrats need to understand why Republicans have been so successful at courting working-class whites -- and why Democrats have been consistently unable to do so. Let's start with the tea party's battle cry to "restore America."
Racism?


Then the economy shifted. The wages of high-school-educated men fell by nearly a fourth in the 1980s and 1990s. Family income fell less, but only because families sent wives into the labor force. While this was happening, the Democrats' social justice concerns moved away from universal economic entitlements and toward race, gender, the environment and gay rights.


When Democrats did address economic hardship, they focused on the poor through programs such as welfare, housing subsidies, Head Start and Medicaid. These programs mean that "the have-a-littles fight the have-nots" -- a description that a Brooklyn lawyer in the 1970s gave Jonathan Rieder in his book "Canarsie." A working-class housewife added: "The taxes go to the poor, not to us. . . . The middle-income people are carrying the cost of liberal social programs on their backs." That captures the enduring divide between working class voters and the Democratic Party.
Popular misconception, welfare does not always go to the very poor, which in the American mind is synonymous with black people. A lot of whites including those in the middle income bracket receive welfare benefits. Also most welfare recipients have jobs, they aren't content to just lay on the backs of productive people.

I find it funny the author doesn't suggest the simple solution that they try to do both while taxing the rich. Although, then they wouldn't be a mainstream political party anymore, but it is very telling.

Instead he suggests:


Democratic leaders can't seem to speak to working-class concerns in a way that doesn't alienate the very people they're trying to reach. Having ceded this cultural ground, they need to win it back.
Workers value directness as an expression of personal integrity. Obama's silver tongue highlights his elite education, while Sarah Palin's inarticulateness confirms her working-class bona fides. Remember when she wrote notes on her hand (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/02/sarah-palins-palm-cheat-sheet.html)? She was just waiting for the elite to make fun of her -- a trap the president's press secretary obligingly fell into.
:lol:


Republicans destroyed the New Deal coalition by appealing explicitly to white working-class culture in many instances, from Richard Nixon's talk about urban crime to George W. Bush's talk about family values. Democrats need to find ways to express their genuine and deep respect for working-class morality, something they can do without abandoning key commitments on issues such as same-sex marriage and the environment. Racism again?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092402437.html

So there it is laid bare, the left should not build a viable alternative to the tea party movement that includes working people, blacks, gays, and women, they should just be more like the tea partiers.

I guess we'll just have to do it guys.

[ed miliband]

I haven't properly read the article but I'm fucking sick of the idea that working class people are racist, homophobic and/or sexist simply by virtue of being working class. It's as if the people who believe this shit think there is a mythical working class spirit that is in and of itself completely hateful and ignorant, ignoring the very obvious fact that material conditions will have an impact on people's social outlook (and that hate and ignorance amongst the working class is often very useful for a small group of people).

So yeah, it's not simply the call for the Democrats to be racist (they do that pretty well already) that annoys me, but the fact that the article essentially says they only way that the Democrats can ever be popular with working class people is by being racist. I find that very, very offensive tbh.

[cb9's_unity]

Typical American media talk. It's apparently OK to talk about how the party's get elected instead why they should get elected. Politics in America are totally exposed as nothing more than a game, where demographics have to be treated like chess pieces.

Its amazing that a public can still support a government when it is blatantly clear that electoral victory has nothing to do with how valid the party's arguments are.

[Red Commissar]

The appeal to "go with the masses" isn't a new one. It's the justification that many people use for "centre-left" parties moving to the center, or defending the gains of far-right groups as failure by mainstream parties to pick up on this.

And considering the nature of many of the Washington Post's op-eds, this is not too surprising.

[genstrike]

The US Democrats acting really stupid and racist?

And that's a change from what we have how, exactly?

[Red Commissar]

The US Democrats acting really stupid and racist?

And that's a change from what we have how, exactly?

Of course it isn't much of a change, but to some Americans the Democratic Party is a eurosocialist mutlicultural LGBT happy fun festival bent on destroying the moral fiber of America.

[Tzadikim]

It's stupid. I am the "working-class" the Washington Post so derisively dismisses. I live in a trailer. So does most of my family. Not one of them particularly gives a shit about the "moral fabric of society". Not one of them are evangelical Christians. Most of them are apathetic to hot-button social issues. Most of them don't vote.

[Red Commissar]

Yeah, but that's the beauty of media. It doesn't matter what the reality is in many cases, just what ever somehow proves their point.

[¿Que?]

I don't get it...So the working class is exclusively white? And if you're a brown or black working person, you fall into some other category?

[ed miliband]

I don't get it...So the working class is exclusively white? And if you're a brown or black working person, you fall into some other category?

Yeah, this is something that also bugs me. In Britain a lot of attention is paid to the "white working class", who are presented as being inextricable enemies of anyone who isn't white, straight and "normal". Politicians talk about the need of recognising "white working class" opposition to immigration in order to justify harsh immigration controls, etc. I read that this trend has roots in the New Left abandonment of a traditional class analysis in favour of applying a similar analysis to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.

What annoys me about this more than anything is it seems to imply that white working class people have more in common with white bourgeois people than they do with black working class people.

[Crux]

Divide and rule.