“Squaring the circle” is an allusion to a task that seems straightforward but is actually impossible: Drawing a square that has the exact same area as a circle. The explanation has to do with irrational numbers and quickly gets all nerdy sounding. But “squaring the circle” is a metaphor, and it’s one that came to mind as I read Booman’s piece about a dangerous electoral realignment and readers’ responses to his blog post. The theme of Booman’s piece and those responses was how to bring back those white working class Rustbelt voters who flipped and went for Trump in 2016. There was a lot of discussion about approaching this task on the basis of policy. Sounds fair enough, right? Of course, this approach is predicated on the assumption that people calmly and dispassionately size up the policy positions of opposing candidates, opposing parties, and then mark their ballots. But of course there’s another line of argument: that those white working class Rustbelt voters flipped to Trump as an expression of their resentments: resentment about rapid cultural change; resentment about race; resentment about “press 1 for English; para español, marque el número 2”; and especially, a general desire to poke liberals in the eye. We all know folks whose political stance seems to boil down to “if that smart-ass liberal likes it, then I’m against it”, even if taking that stance is objectively self-defeating.
Here’s the question, then: Is it plausible–it is rational?–to pitch policy proposals to people who don’t give a damn about policy? Who are seething with resentments? I believe Booman is saying that we either do that or yield the territory to neo-fascist manipulators like Trump.
I don’t know how to square this circle. I’ve taken the personal decision to try to be very mindful of how I talk and write about the folks whose votes seem to be about resentment, however. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met anyone who responded positively to be told he’s a ignorant, bigoted fool.
Why did so many of these irretrievably racist voters vote for Obama 4 years earlier but then switch to Trump?
Why did the young, who in polling hate Trump more than any single group desert the Party? Why, in particular, did so many vote for a third party?
If the issue is all about race, why was there a collapse in young african american male vote?
We seem to want to retreat into an easy single sentence answer.
There is none.
The basic truth is we lost to the most unpopular major party candidate in political history. We have suffered defeat after defeat in down ballot races.
The most shocking thing to me is the incredible defections in key states among the young. The shifts in many battleground states are 15 points or more.
Why did they shift?
I have posted about 10 diaries here since the election: because I don’t really know why.
I know this: if you aren’t going to try and address the economic problems these people confront, you aren’t going to win their vote.
And I suspect you are going to win many other people’s vote either.
I know this: if you aren’t going to try and address the economic problems these people confront, you aren’t going to win their vote.
The democrats are not rewarded by addressing the economic problems those people confront. They are punished. Over and over the same dynamic obtains. Policies that provide economic security to all Americans drive the white working class away from the Democrats.
IOW, people vote their wallets.
I’d also add that offering a better policy with the subtext “You white scum aren’t worth it, but I’ll do it anyway because I’m so superior” isn’t going to work either. The pendulum has swung since 1960. Now the Democratic Party relies on black racists instead of white racists.
In the sixties I thought we could work together for a color blind society. In 2012 I thought Obama would provide the final healing of our racial wounds.
I was wrong on both counts.
The party doesn’t depend on racists of any stripe.
In fact, polling indicates that Clinton’s voters were the least racist bunch in the history of the party. Much less racist than Obama’s voters, amazingly.
They all flocked to Trump.
This is exactly why explanations of the past election that don’t have racism front-and-center don’t fly for me. Trump sent up the bat signal and the racists heard it loud and clear.
Look in the mirror. Better yet, talk to the man in the street. Ask if they think that the Democratic Party hates white people. You can’t go around screaming about how all white people are privileged racists without blowback.
And remember “Demographics is Destiny”? And right on this blog, “I can’t wait for old white men to die.”
Let that racist flag fly, dude.
A prime example!
The fact that you think the Democratic Party hates white people says something very obvious about you. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.
I’m not alone in that thought. The fact that you can’t recognize that says something about YOU!
No, you’re not alone in that thought. You have a lot of company. A lot of very ugly company.
Ah, yes.
The classic: “no, blacks and women and Mexicans and everyone else but me are the real bigots!” comeback.
As a white male, I don’t think that the Democratic party hates white men.
I’m also not a fucking idiot. That could possibly explain my non-idiotic belief.
Go ahead, square that circle by telling me what I do and don’t believe, while also saying that, somehow, I’m the real bigot. It has to be true, because it’s what you believe, and it’s all about you, just like it’s all about the bigoted fucking idiots d/b/a “the white working class”, because otherwise allowing anyone else to have political, social and economic concerns is the real racism, damn’t!
Protip: I’m a male member of the white working class. So, before you start spittle fleckin’ about me hating white men who work for a living, keep that card for another hand.
I’ll wait here.
you’ve got to look at in both directions.
if what had happened was that the bat signal went up and an army of previously disengaged racists were activated, then that would tell us one thing.
but, what actually happened was far more nuanced and complicated. the bat signal went up and Democrats who voted for the black guy (many of them twice) wound up switching sides.
so, racist enough to vote for Trump but not so racist as to not vote to make a black man president.
that’s the situation.
those are the voters who matter for recovering from this fiasco. if they’re gone forever and our attitude is good riddance, then that has consequences. and most of those consequences are much worse for people of color than if we win presidential elections, win state legislatures, win governor’s races in places like Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maryland rather than losing them.
It’s not a simple thing. and knee-jerk reactions aren’t helpful.
racist enough to vote for Trump but not so racist as to not vote to make a black man president.
Yeah, this is clear. The problem we have is that the Republicans have now seen this turnout model in action and they’re not likely to abandon it any time soon.
2018 should be a good test for how many of these people can still be motivated to vote white identity in the face of Republican policy failures and Trump’s betrayals of his populist rhetoric. Will putting the boot in on minorities through ICE and the DOJ give them the warm fuzzies they need to continue to support the Rs? Or will they recognize they’ve been suckered? Maybe we’ll be lucky and find it was the confluence of racism and misogyny that turned out to be a bridge too far and direct appeals to racism alone aren’t enough to carry the day.
I disagree.
Racists, and bigots and generally reprehensible people will do things that make sense, and don’t make sense, depending on the situation. Similar to how you or I might flip a light switch depending on whether we need to see something, or wish to go to sleep.
What Strongman Trump (and there’s a reason I’ve been labeling him as such for years) did was mobilize Right-wing authoritarians. He flipped that fucking switch like a champ.
Right-wing authoritarians may accidentally vote for someone who they think is a better option, if both options are not fascist social dominators.
Strongman Trump, by his very nature, is a Social Dominator.
So, bigots who accidentally voted for Obama flocked like flies to a pile of fresh shit to Strongman Trump.
Rather than wincing at their further emasculation by having to respond just right to code words and dog whistles that Bush, McCain, and Rmoney used, they got to let their Alt-Right flag fly as Strongman Trump FINALLY let them be themselves in public, loudly and proudly.
Just look at phrases like Cuck-servative. Who is a cuck? Men who are emasculated by women they should rightly control. And never mind the inherent sexism, because even that doesn’t matter to a right-wing authoritarian. Because the only thing that matters to a right-wing authoritarian is whether the correct authority is asking for power.
Every other post-analysis that attempts to square the circle of labeling the people who voted for Obama and against Clinton/for Strongman Trump as “white working class” voters is simply attempting to paint right-wing authoritarians as something…anything else.
Seriously. It wasn’t racism, or bigotry, or sexism, or any other populist/economic reason.
Strongman Trump made it really fucking clear that he is a Strong Man (unlike the rest of the Republicans running then and in the past) and that he was a correct authority (rich, dominated others, able to lie and gaslight on command, etc.) like a proper Strong Man social dominator.
Right-wing authoritarians couldn’t help themselves.
There is very little actual policy difference between what Strongman Trump and Friends want, and the average Republican. So how did Strongman Trump win over substantially more voters than the typical Republican?
Because Strongman Trump was a Strongman who directly appealed to right-wing authoritarians by loudly, and proudly, being a social dominator.
Hell, this is all old news, really. Altemeyer described this shit decades ago.
that doesn’t explain the defections among the young.
And I will say no more aspect of 2016 is more ignored than what happened with those under 30.
It’s really easy to explain. Gamergate. Milo. Pepe. Russian bots.
The 2016 under 30 Trump advantage was the result of SEO botnets on steroids.
Reddit, imgur, funnyjunk, all the mass market meme sites fell to wingnut bots.
Bannon was pivotal here, as was Putin. Most of the top 30 daily posts on all these sites were bot-promoted MAGA posts. Closely followed by Deus Vult! memes of the same provenance.
More of those under 30s are rural than you think.
The theme of BooMan’s piece was that the Democratic party MUST find a way to appeal to people who aren’t voting Dem now. Not just barely enough of those people in key states that HRC could have been elected President, but enough of those people to elect a majority in congress and provide a functioning presence in every state.
Is it plausible? It has to be, and people have to make it happen somehow, or we’re fucked. It can’t be done without accepting some ideas in various areas that many of us are unhappy about.
One can run on resentment on the left, it is just targeted differently. Instead of kicking down, you kick up. Blame the banksters, the fatcats on Wall Street, the millionaires and billionaires.
Would it work? Not for all, but probably for these voters:
Why did Trump win? New research by Democrats offers a worrisome answer. – The Washington Post
That is the mortal fear of DNC dems. Obama is coming back to bury Bernie, not Trump, imo. To tell the donor class that it will be business as usual.
Exacvtly.
ASG
certainly hope not. read that he’ll be working on remedying gerrymandering
Blaming the fatcats is exctly what Democrats need to do if they want to attract a broad base of the electorate. The problem is that a large portion of the party sees more profit in being future lobbyists for those fatcats, except that they call it the modern economy instead of the legalized corruption that it really is.
Republicans win because they offer voters religion and hatred of minorities. Democrats win because they offer speeches every 4 years on how Republicans hate minorities.
I have said this before here and now i am going to say it again.
So-called “racism” is economically driven. The majority of white people who are judged as “racist” by mainstream, centrist means…pollsters, major media, etc…are simply afraid of not having enough work to be able to sustain their established lives in at least some sort of semi-comfortable fashion. And the majority of non-white people who are judged the same way? Ditto, only their “racism” is based on the fact that most of them feel like they will never be able to sustain even a working class-level of living.
Further…the whole racist system that has been at work here since Europeans started taking over this continent by any means necessary (including slavery and genocide)…is also based on economics.
As Lenny Bruce so prophetically asked when the civil rights movement was beginning to gather some force, “But…who’ll clean the shithouse!!!???”
Now both groups of “racists” have another fear with which to deal.
Automation.
Technology.
Who will clean the shithouse?
Who will do many of the other fairly low skill-level jobs, and any number of higher-skilled jobs as well?
Robots, baby.
Robots.
It’s already happening.
Too many people, not enough jobs.
Robots.
The ultimate slave class.
That leaves the real question dangling.
One that th eDeep State controllers have undoubtedly war-gamed thousands of times.
One that resides deep in the back of the minds of most people because…with good reason… it hasn’t been emphasized by the Deep State media.
UH oh!!!
It has already been well established that you cannot control the urge to procreate, especially amongst people in lower economic positions. As the old Down Easters say about endless Maine winters:
Ayup.
If a permanent economic winter sets in, there’s gonna be a whole lot of drinking, fighting and fucking goin’ on. More than there is even now.
Everywhere.
The only answers that come to mind…come to hive mind, to computer mind…are probably:
1-Kill lots of people.
And/or
2-Shut…or at least massively slow down…the tech progress acceleration.
Since the Deep State and its corporate owners are now almost totally dependent on tech for their very existence in terms of economics, function and in terms of what we might laughingly call “crowd control,” guess towards which of the above approaches they will lean.
Ayup again.
The only problem?
One that they have not yet solved?
How to run that bloody game without themselves and their necessary support systems going down with the ship.
They can create a technological prison that holds captive their subjects to some degree, but the whole hacker thing has proven that they cannot effectively sustain it.
Too many bright little proles out there just itching to fuck with the big boys.
What to do, what to do…???
An interesting diemma for us all.
My take?
I dunno what will happen.
Some kind of nuke problem, probably.
Will it finish the controllers and the controlled?
I dunno.
Stay tuned.
If your communications suddenly go down?
Kneel down, put your head between your legs and kiss your mortal asses goodbye.
If they don’t?
You’ve got another day to hustle.
And be hustled in return.
Later…
AG
I’ve been trying to warn folks for some time online and in RL about overpopulation being at the root of most of our major Earthly problems. Too few jobs and increasingly so, not enough natural resources to sustain an already wildly overbooked planet, decreasing amount of arable land, increasing susceptibility to disease and “natural” disasters brought on by our greedy and destructive human industry, etc.
But it’s not PC to talk overpopulation. When was the last time a pol or someone other than an environmentalist talked about it? How often does it get mentioned on liberal blogs as a major issue to address? Not very.
As people’s level of affluence rises and as some sort of social safety net develops, birth rates drop. That’s happened in many places at many times in history. If having lots of children and hoping that some survive to adulthood is the functional safety net, then people will keep having lots of children.
Not nearly so many, however, if there are severe financial or other penalties attached to excessive births.
Just want to remark, Brodie, that there is a subset of so-called progressive/liberal opinion that scorns parenthood altogether. I have no idea if that fits you, but if it does, then I urge you to re-think carefully about how to address the overpopulation issue.
No it doesn’t. But I am a One and Done advocate.
It has to be a worldwide based solution, including population restrictions with severe financial penalties in all or nearly all the major countries (Russia, suffering from pop losses in recent decades, and beginning again to start up as a new country, could be given some leeway on the number of births for a period of time) and other countries of whatever size where population growth is out of hand.
It won’t be easy, but delaying for decades as the world community did on global warming before finally coming up with a less than satisfactory solution is not what I had in mind. But before that, the case has to be put to the public in as many countries as possible. So far, this hasn’t occurred except at the margin of the margins by a few brave environmentalist voices.
“Liberal” blogs?
Like…which???
“Liberal” = “Centrist” these days.
And “Centrist” = “Fucked!!!”
Sorry…I really am…but there it is.
Deal wid it.
AG
Oh, okay, you got me on that one. Centrist or center/right Dem blogs is more accurate. Especially as we consider the Russiagate insanity and New McCarthyism of these people.
I am dealing wid it.
And does overpopulation have anything to do with people losing their political bearings, going over to the dark side in their thinking?
I think overpopulation is stating the problem in the wrong way.
Population times resource use on average equals total ecological footprint. Our current total ecological footprint is to big, and it is growing because both factors are growing. However, population is following a trajectory where growth is slowing in most of the world, in contrast to average resource use per capita that is as a rule increasing. If we don’t curb the increase of average ecological footprint, no matter the population numbers it is only a question of when we reach the tipping point.
The World Wildlife Foundation publishes yearly reports on resource use and ecology. A couple of years back, they had a graph with resource use vs human development index. One country made it to the zone of low enough resource use and high human development: Cuba.
Perhaps they got pressure because of that, anyway I have not seen that graph in later publications. But it gives you an idea of what is possible. You can have great healthcare (because that depends mostly on labour), enough food (but not tons of meat) and jobs for all (labour is a resource, after all) and still manage the planets limits.
Or to quote Gandhi: “The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.”
Citing Cuba isn’t very encouraging. How many people elsewhere in this globalized economy/high tech world are going to be content living in a severely limited consumer goods economy tightly controlled by the state? Or having to recycle their autos for half a century or more.
It’s wildly optimistic to believe 8 billion people on the planet will want to live in a 19thC/early 20th limited way or long accept it.
But it is possible to vastly improve currently wasteful and destructive industrial farming practices, even cut back on it considerably with local community and personal gardens. More natural forms of farming should be a high priority.
Scientists would be incentivized to get going on cultivating meat in the lab so we can eventually end the mass slaughter of animals.
Plenty of ways to greatly improve our individual and collective footprint. Including strict population controls.
And Gandhi was around when the world population was barely a third of what it is now — easy enough to say that back then. It was probably roughly in line with the truth.
Probably only slightly more than the number of people who closely watch presidential debates with note pad and pencil, carefully scoring, down to the half point, the quality of each candidate’s response to the question asked and issue addressed.
You’re hitting more paydirt. Trump definitely ran on a negative, populist Resentment platform, speaking as bluntly and plainly to the folks as any candidate since the late George Corley Wallace of 1968 (Poppy Bush ’88 also deserves dishonorable mention here). No excuses, no apologies, just serving up the resentment and hatred the way folks want to hear it.
By contrast, the Dem offered up the usual laundry list of identity politics groups in a politically correct Inclusiveness manner (not sure, but she might have been careful to include the “Q” in LGBT, lest that tiny segment of the population were to be offended by their exclusion), while also noting for approval Black Lives Matter, a group whose aggressive approach was bound to really tick off many blue-collar whites (and even annoy some liberals). H was that and the policy wonk candidate, offering nuanced positions on a variety of DP issues, delivered in a way to appeal to deep-in-the-weeds wonks.
The NC bathroom bill — Dems seemed to spend a lot of time and energy in the last 2 yrs on that one, an issue affecting a handful of people. Kinda crazy to prioritize it, but not entirely surprising for modern-day identity group-focused Dems.
Occasionally a few liberals or Dem-oriented types speak up about Dem pols and identity groups/PCness. There’s one good center-left Dem-voting historian, well-known in his field, who’s been calling out this problem for years on his blog. The numbers are still small, but I detect a growing trend.
(Personal anecdotes: A majority of my recent paying guests here at Rancho Brodio — all smart, college-educated elite types — when asked about our recent election talked most frequently about the off-putting PCness of liberals (this included one foreign-born grad student, pro-Hillary/very anti-Trump, who couldn’t believe how we Dems tip toe around things to avoid offending certain groups), and generally liked or much preferred Donald’s refreshing blunt style. One young college Republican, here last summer, complained about how he as a Trump backer was treated as if he didn’t have the right to express his political views on campus. He felt intimidated by the PC culture there. I’m fairly sure that mod-conservative GOP youngster, more of a Romney type actually, was even more determined to vote Donald as he reacted negatively to the campus culture.)
This is another example of how to square the circle: how do Democrats talk up inclusivity without it all becoming self-parody?
I think–I hope–we all agree that winking and nodding at exclusionary attitudes and policies cannot be on the Democratic agenda. So how to talk about this without falling into the check-every-box approach that you criticize?
This matters a lot to me. My family is mixed race and includes someone who identifies as LGBT.
We could take the Rising Tide Lifts All Boats approach in matters economic, social, political and so forth, instead of approaching it initially and rather too loudly from the Let’s Check All the Identity Boxes angle. Make sure our major public political speechmaking gets away from the usual box-checking and reflects this different emphasis.
Own up to our past mistakes of making inclusivity too much solely about helping minority groups at the expense of the blue-collar folks who also feel excluded and forgotten as they struggle to make ends meet.
Prioritize and pick our battles better. Our side should have been shouting from the rooftops over NC’s attempt at voter suppression and, lately, over the GOP’s attempt at disempowering the newly elected Dem gov, not over the handful of people affected by the bathroom bill.
Where Dems still have political power, write the bills and laws carefully to include anti-discrimination language and strong penalties for violation, then make sure enforcement is sure and swift. No more wet noodles of non-enforcement, like Eric Holder not going after big banksters and big corps violating anti-trust laws with impunity.
Trump himself has constantly abused the little guy in his business dealings. This was knowable for those who wished to know. The Trump Administration is abandonding enforcements against actions by businesses and wealthy people who abuse the little guy.
Trump supporters loved him for abusing the right “little guys” during the campaign, and they love what his Administration is doing.
I think this part of your analysis is wrong.
Trump supporters don’t really care about these things; it certainly doesn’t animate their votes or their support. Some liberals do care about these things. Many of them failed to vote for Clinton.
Well, they’re certainly getting a big snootful of what they wanted now, eh?
Question: what policies pursued by Democrats err in your view by being “…solely about helping minority groups at the expense of the blue-collar folks who also feel excluded and forgotten as they struggle to make ends meet…”?
We also need to be cautious about inaction due to a paralysis by analysis attitude.
The matter being addressed here is not close to being in the “impossible” category. It just needs to be handled carefully as we go forward.
And go forward we must, else the Dem Party will likely suffer further defeats in defense of its identity politics, to the point where it will became nearly extinct.
When he came into office in 1933, FDR didn’t have a precise grand plan mapped out to tackle the Great Depression. His strategy was Let’s try something and see if it works; if it doesn’t, we’ll try something else. But by all means try something.
Some humor – this was very funny and very much to the point.
“I get that now after I attended a gender fluid non-binary poetry slam at Swarthmore. A couple of buddies of mine from work went to and now it is all we talk about on the line”
Funny.
Did Democrats really prioritize it or was it just a routine DOE policy directive that was played up by the right wing media? This is a honest question – I really dont know the answer, though I am guessing that it was the former originally and Democrats played to the latter once it became big news.
And won the state house on it as well.
As I don’t follow RW news and don’t live in NC, couldn’t say. But the DOJ and DOE got wind of it, and began the push back, including Justice threatening to withhold fed education funds from the state.
So while I applaud the enforcement, it does help make my point that priorities are askew — lack of enforcement in the banking and antitrust areas especially.