SherryB

  I've been voting since 1962 and have always voted a straight democratic ticket but I don't recognize the party anymore.  My husband said last night he wished there was a "workers" party.  The low turnout shows that people just don't see a difference between the parties anymore, except on abortion and gun control.  Sad, but true.

I was wondering when someone else was going to point this out.  I have been bitching about this for years and years when the topic of illegal immigration comes up.  When Bush says that the illegal immigrants are taking jobs that no American wants to do I scream "why don't Americans want these jobs!" 

The Democrats sold out the working class and now they are stuck with all those icky issues that turn off middle america.  A socially moderate economically liberal party needs to emerge, the Greens are too socially liberal. 

If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you'd better be prepared to produce the pig." -- HST

So much of what you say, Michael, is absolutely true.  I have often called myself a Roosevelt Democrat, i.e., a Democrat who is, generally speaking, Economics-Liberal/Values Conservative.  Back then, about the only place you could find a Social Liberal was in the Republican Party.

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Michael Lind: "For New Deal liberals, the best antipoverty program is a high private sector wage, resulting from tight labor markets created artificially by public sector workfare programs...that increase middle-class demand."

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This is very important.  It's the one thing you never hear coming out of the mouth of a Democrat politician any more.  No talk about actually fixing the labor market in a way that drives up wages.  No talk of eliminating Poverty-As-We-Know-It by using Congress' power to eliminate all unemployment.  No talk of providing all Americans with Real economic security.

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Something that may not be altogether obvious is that it is possible for Democrats to be in favor of an 'open gate' immigration policy WHILE AT THE SAME TIME calling for an end to all unemployment.  Congress has the power to maintain tight labor markets in the U.S. economy even if no restrictions whatsoever were placed on immigration.  We are not 'helpless victims' of an unforgiving Global Market.  Something can be done domestically to insulate American workers from the negative consequences of outsourcing and it should be done.  (To understand why & how, read Make The American People Richer)

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Is there any chance that chiding them relentlessly (New Democrats) will persuade them to give serious consideration to the challenge of actually helping the Working Class to experience a better life?

Ah yes, nostalgia for the party of FDR.  I guess looking at the Clinton administration it seems like it doesn't exist anymore.  Instead we have the party of the liberals, the blacks, women, and gays. And now they are trying to add latinos.  Something must be done!

Well, Mr. Lind, you give an impressive history lesson but fail to pay any attention to the present.  Yes there is no major party whose platform calls for as interventionist a state or as generous a welfare state as the Democratic platforms of 1936 or 1964, but if FDR were alive today, it is beyond a doubt that he would be a Democrat.  The states where the kinds of policies that you advocate, higher minimum wage, generous welfare and public health care systems, support for unions and the right to organize are the states that are run by the democrats.  And even where the democrats are in the minority, they are the ones pushing for these kinds of labor market interventions.  These progressive policies are being pushed only by the Democratic party of liberals, the blacks, women, gays, and latinos that you have been denigrating so much. 

The prison population of the United States DOUBLED under Clinton.  That's some social liberalism.

Crime dropped all across the country. That is most certainly a liberal policy.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I feel the Democrats were so seriously damaged by the Vietnam War that Republicans became dominant. As a result Clinton had to be a Republican President to get anything done. Hwile he was a very effective manager and many things Democrats wanted were done, it was very difficult with an obstreperous Congress, and the Norquist army on his heels, to do anything daring. I remember the howls about health care, and I think that converted him to look for the center.

I still find myself thinking about New Deal programs for work. What's wrong with that idea? Only ideology, not actual results. 

You sir have a funny way of equating success. The fact is under Clinton the Democratic turned into a minority party and shows no signs of regaining its original status as the party of the people. Given thats its opposition  is one of the most criminally incompetent administrations in history. Thats hardly something to be proud of.

And thats what you get for abandoning the middle-class and blue collars in this country. Because you liberals have shown there's not a spit of difference between you and the Grover Norquists of the GOP when it comes to the middle-class. Both have no use for the middle-class or the blue collars.

 Now all you got left are a pack of secular, wealthy,  white urban elitists(liberals), gays and some minorities.   Maybe 25% of the populace all told. The other 75% doesn't want anything to do with your elitist party.  In a way its no wonder you folks are forced to import millions of illiterate and impoverished Mexicans in the hopes they eventually support the Democrats.

You wouldn't need to import millions of impoverished Mexicans if you people actually stepped up for the middle-class and blue collars instead of looking down at them like serfs. But that means you'd really have to work for their vote and thats not going to happen.

     Add me to the list of socially moderate social democrats very bitter that nobody, not even the Greens, actually cares about the interests of ordinary Americans, the American working class.

     Witness not only their tolerance of a flood of illegals and willingness to accept a drag on wage levels like the guest worker program.

     Look hard as well at opponents of free trade who oppose it with fair trade.

     Free trade is the choice of capital and makes the best profits.

     Fair trade aims to let industry relocate to foreign nations to produce for reimportation while improving the situation of the foreign workers to do the jobs exported from the US.

     This is second best for capital but just as bad as free trade for US labor.

     Anybody interested in protecting American labor opts for economic nationalism.

     Restrictive or prohibitive import quotas, protective tariffs, the whole nine yards.

     So what do the Greens or "progressives" like Dennis Kucinich favor?

     Fair trade.

     It's the foreign workers whose interests they want to defend against free trade. Not ours.

     PS. Don't say I should support Pat Buchanan. He's good on this, sort of, yes.

     But he's hellish in lots of other ways.

How did trade with Mexico and India and illegal immigration become the main labor issues?

There is the minimum wage and there are a lot of things the government can do to make organizing and maintaining unions easier, and to give unions more leverage in disputes with management.  There are also restrictions on union political activity that can be removed.  Not to mention universal healthcare.

Compared to real labor issues, trade and immigration have very small impacts on the wellbeing of US workers.

The transformation these nativist issues into workers issues is an illustration of how far the labor movement has fallen since the backlash to the 1960's, but the decline of US unions and the resulting decline of the US working class will continue at full speed after the US further restricts immigration.

A better move for labor would be to make as many as possible legal and unionize them - that might result in the union movement eventually returning from the dead. 

Did the working class desert the democrats because the dems weren't sufficiently defending its interests ? Or was it because  a substantial portion of the white working class is racist , sexist , nativist , chauvinistic , and supportive of government funding of religion ? Try visiting a working class bar and see what conclusion you reach. Check back and let us know what you find............................I disagreed with some of the Clinton economic  policies discussed above  but don't believe for a minute that altering them would have had any effect on the political orientation of the working class................................ We should support issues that benefit the working class because it's right , not because that is going to have much effect on the voting patterns of that sector and certainly not because of a romantic vision of that class.......................................

The democrats could sweep into the White House behind a candidate like Bob Casey. And we shouldn't. 

Working people can vote. How much damage have they done to their own cause? But again, since Lind referred to Krugman, he puts things in perspective by admitting that the problem is more political than economic: an 8% drop in wages due due to illigal workers. There would be other ways to make up the slack if people were willing to make the real fight. The medicare bill alone does more damage. Progressive taxation, insurance, living wage: these are things to fight for. The Clintonites never fought for working people, anywhere.
You want to stick it to manhattan liberals for their hypocrisy? Get in line.
But don't blame people poorer than you.

And don't get me started on the absurdities of the construction unions in NY.

Yeah, we could do that. Or we could, say. do something wild and crazy like building a decent precinct by precinct organizations and directly approaching voters.

How about something even wilder? I have heard of this thing called the Internet. Crazy as it seems, you can communicate to people all over America. How about doing something, like, say, a channel (lets call it a Webb Site, after our esteened occasional special guest speaker)  We can use it to do all sort of things, say, like sending print and multimedia files that we can use our precinct organizations to distribute by hand to voters. Maybe we can even get Jon Stewart to donate funny bits from the daily show, or Cspan from the one minute speeches

Getting even crazier (I am one wild and crazy guy) we could hold town meeting to discuss issues of concern to communities, and actually convince people we care. What a novel idea.

Or we could all get together, vent our frustrations at how stupid the people we disagree with are, write long, boring polemics that compete with Russion novels in turginess, and  never win an election in a decade.

Your choice.

ONWARD AND UPWARD! 

And that was before Roe v Wade which stripped off at least the catholic working class ................................ There must be  "longitudional studies"- which would  substantiate or rebut my rant.. Maybe my working class relatives aren't representative - but they're the ones I know and they sure don't vote democratic nor are likely ever to do so. Except for democrats who are at least right- to- life.......................................My concern about the suicidal plan to oust Liebeman is that it reflects this same kind of wishful thinking about Conn voters who chose Joe in the first place because Weicker was too socially liberal .We should consider ourselves lucky not to have that seat held by someone worse , which it will be if Lamont is nominated .   

lind wrote:

If the New Democrats were, and are, really economic conservatives, closer to Robert A. Taft than to Harry Truman, what exactly makes them "progressive"? The answer: sex and race. These economic conservatives call themselves "progressive" or "liberal" only because they are pro-choice, pro-gay rights and in favor of low-cost racial tokenist policies, like affirmative action

I pretty much agree with everything you have said here and above. THe Dems are now SOCIALLY leftist, instead of ECONOMICALLY leftist. In fact, leftist politics in America has shifted from an economics orientation to race and gender identity politics orientation.

But you are wrong when you said HOW the Democrats mutated. It is not about the Democrats mutating. It is instead about how the American political culture has changed. You are only looking at the surface EFFECTS of this change. The real FORCES AT WORK that CAUSE THIS CHANGE are almost totally unremarked by any political pundit. This is social science stuff.

First, one MUST consider the role of the large non profit foundations in this political shift. Please read Joan Roelofs' book THE MASK OF PLURALISM. This book shows how the large nonprofit foundations such as the Ford Foundation, et al., were funded by the rich and megacorporations and were used to shift American leftism from economics to identity politics. This was all tied into the use of the CIA and FBI from WW2 aftermath till the 1960s to thwart and undermine leftist organizations here and overseas. As Richard Bissell, CIA and Ford Foundation honcho said, the goal was not to debate leftists about their ideas, but to divert them to less harmful pursuits. Less harmful being race and gender identity politics.

A new brand of Leftism was grown by these foundations giving out money to the right kind of left activists. For example, Gloria Steinem was first funded by the FBI. Over 45 years or so, this new breed of leftism was "taught" to up and coming leftist activists. American leftism was in a sense "domesticated" by the monies of these large nonprofits. This also domesticated the political culture of America, along with other factors.
http://cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/

also, one must look at the sweep of history and see where America has come from.
America has always been dominated by interests at the top. Read Fresia's online book Toward An American Revolution: http://cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/

America was first and foremost an exploitation machine for white slaves from the British Isles and then for black slaves from Africa. We are now a creole nation where about 25% of all white Americans are part black and more than that are part Indian. Read for example Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom and Jim Goad's Redneck Manifesto.

But our true white slave past and mixed race nature is hidden in our popular culture, which makes it easier for identity politics to take hold.

Also, identity politics carries within it a school of thought that blames all white people for the race crimes of black slavery, even though it was only the upper class that could afford even one slave. White men in particular are seen are irredeemably racist. In fact the idea of "white racism" is perhaps THE core element of the new American leftism now. This "white-hating" aspect of American leftism has alienated many American whites, especially white males, and especially blue collar white males and rural whites. They never had slaves. But they get the blame for it, when all along it was the rich people who did it. Most educated whites are indoctrinated into accepting this "white-hating" paradigm of American leftism when they are educated at college. And the mass media is indeed a prime disseminator of white hating identity politics. THe GOP is right about that aspect of the media--they are liberal in that respect: the media does tend towards identity politics leftism. But the elite media is very conservative economically.

However, the white hating aspect of the new American leftism has alienated blue collar males and rural whites. This makes it easy for the Rightwing to seduce them. Because the Left sees rural and blue collar whites as evil (at least that is how many rural and blue collar whites feel about it), then the GOP can get their votes just because Limbaugh et al., subtextually tells them the GOP is the party for white people.

This divide between college educated white liberals (Who more or less accept the paradigm of white racism as the core evil in America) and the white blue collar and rural whites (and other whites) is at the core of the red state - blue state divide.

This split in white Americans is the primary achievement of elite friendly politics, and it is perhaps the central political force of our age.

Moving on to another aspect of the evolving left: historically, America was a slave colony with a culture domniated by slavemaster ideology. Only from about 1870 to 1970 was there are dramatic grassroots shift to a Europeanesque political consciousness. This shift was centered around labor. THe massive railroad and steel strikes from 1870s to 1940s shaped this nascent American labor consciousness. But this died on the vine. Why? Why did our path diverge from the path Europe took? Identity politics, immigration and mass media.

Mass media was a large factor in ending that labor leftist uprising. Before mass media, political ideas traveled from person to person. Thus these ideas were filtered mainly through ordinary people, at the church, at the grange hall, etc.

Nowadays, the vast vast majority of political ideas come from tv, radio and large circulation newspapers. These media organs are owned and operated by powerful, rich people and institutions. Not surprisingly, they act as a filter for political ideas. THe ideas that come from these elite institutions are ideas that are essentially friendly to the elite.

This torrent of elite friendly ideas from the mass media has taken the place of ordinary person to ordinary person as the transmission channel of political ideas. This has helped domesticate American politics for the elite, and and helped shift the American political consciousness from economics oriented leftism to identity politics oriented leftism.

Also the human brain itself is susceptible to indoctrination via those at the top of the dominance hierarchy. America is a paragon of this indoctrinability. Read:
Darwinism, Dominance and Democracy: The Biological Basis of Authoritarianism Albert Somit and Steven A. Peterson Praeger.

Mass Immigration has helped cause a rightward shift. Over the last 20 years large American cities have had dramatic shifts in population. White Americans are shocked by this change in America from the AMerica of their childhood. Rapid change like this helps conservatism.

So, political punditry is a peculiar species of neutered thought. It deliberately ignores the real forces at work and glosses over real issues. You look at the pond and remark upon the ripples, deliberately ignoring the causes of the ripples.

Why? Maybe because political punditry was developed via the mass media, which is controlled by the upper classes, and therefore only accepts for the most part ideology friendly to the upper class?

My documentary/book in progress is at http://www.leftwingmediamachine.blogspot.com

Well, I guess NAFTA was enormous, because it completely split the house democrats -- I think with  a majority voting against -- and ever since then a majority of the democrats in Congress have been the ones leading the fight against trade deals that lack strong labor protections.  Anyway, the white blue collar exodus from the democratic party started with Nixon and accelerated with Reagan.  That Clinton and a handful of democrats supported a trade deal that had been negotiated by Bush I does not explain the perceived anti-working class bias of today's democratic party.

We will never succeed in closing of the border (do you want shoot-on-sight policy?) And how much do you want to budget for the attempt? Everything else on the list can be fought for regardless.
The workers on both side of the border would do better to work together.
NAFTA is not "Mexico's problem" is it?

Cryofan wrote: This "white-hating" aspect of American leftism has alienated many American whites, especially white males, and especially blue collar white males and rural whites. ....................While  Cryofan's post  was thought provoking , this quote is a case of rounding up the usual suspects .Working class whites were the bulk of  the  KKK  when  the college educated were a minority and college educated liberals were a tiny minority within that minority. And BTW also a tiny minority in the upper class........................................Collective resentment  arises in many ways   but the depressing consequence  is nearly  always  to think  that nirvana can be reached if we just  deal with the kulaks , or the jews , or the muslims , or the long haired war protestors , or the pro- choice lobby  or even  the educated white liberals. .

Wow you are a special one alright.  Reflexive use of the race and Nazi card right out of the gate. Not attempt at even examining cryofan's argument.

So much for discourse.

Surely you don't mean "coerced"? How about "persuaded."

Other than that, excellent point. Though there may be a limit to what can be done with these voters. Here's a piece I've plugged before on these boards that takes a more pessimistic view of the situation -- you can either have social liberalism, or leftist economics, but you can't build a majority coalition that does both.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/Road%20to%20Victory.pdf

It is a pretty good paper, though the self indulgent "North is winning" sentiment about halfway through is just dead wrong. The south is winning and they know it.

But there is one important point to take away from it. We have to get proactive.

Where do I go to start discussing tactics and strategy? I really don't care whose to blame, or who to blame in the future, or what went wrong in the past.

I wanna know, what do  we do now, and in the future.  Nobody, not America, not even the Republicans, can afford to let America descend into a one party system. Katrina, if nothing else, taught us that. we need the rivalry to keep all of us working at our best. Philosophy be damned, I wanna go out and help win something, an election, a referendum or at least a debate.

So what do we do? Where do I go to sign up?  Where are the ideas for strategy and tactics being discussed? I have plenty of ideas, and one or two of them might actually not be total disasters, after all the law the averages has to assert itself sometime, it's way overdue.

 ONWARD AND UPWARD!