I can't believe what I'm seeing with my own eyes-- and it's playing out glacially-- but the Democrats and Republicans seem to be switching their essences again. Remember, from history books, when the Democrats were the bad guys defending slavery and the Republicans were the anti-slavery party? A 100 years later, the Republicans were the party of bigotry and racism and the Democrats were the aspirational party for people of color. But what I want to talk about-- think through really-- has more to do with class than race per se.The a big giant chunk of the FDR coalition, basically shattered and buried by Bill Clinton and Obama, were working class voters. Unions were strong and they delivered elections to Democrats on every level. The Republicans were barely a serious party in the '30s and '40s and were busy being reborn during the '50s and '60s. Fortunately for them-- though not for the Democrats:
Pointed threats they bluff with scornSuicide remarks are torn From the fools gold mouthpiece the hollow hornPlays wasted words, proves to warnThat he not busy being born Is busy dying
But, no, it wasn't alright, ma. The GOP gradually started reaching the white working class, while the corporate Democrats saw a "business-friendly" a better strategy, abandoning unions to the not so tender mercies of the Republicans, and paying less and less attention to workers and more attention to a new identity-oriented coalition they were stitching together of minorities, women, gays, wealthy people and suburbanites. Hillary's 2016 campaign was, in effect, the New Democratic Party. If it wasn't because the Kremlin fixed it, she lost Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Michigan because her outreach to the white working class was perfunctory and inauthentic. She seemed happy enough winning every Orange County district while losing traditionally Democratic white working class districts like ME-02, IA-01, WI-01, MI-11 and IL-17.As I've mentioned before, when I was growing up, the Democrats used to be called the Santa Claus party-- because they gave things away, like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps-- while the Republicans were the Scrooge party. With Pelosi's lunk-headed announcement last month that one of her top 3 priorities when the Dems regain the House in January will be to reinstate the reactionary PAYGO, the 180 degree switch is now complete.Just look at the midterm candidates the DCCC has recruited this cycle-- virtually NO WORKING CLASS CANDIDATES at all... instead all upper middle class corporate lawyers, business types and military-industrial complex goons. The few working class candidates who made it past the primaries often had to fight the DCCC every step of the way. The DC Establishment hates the working class and reacts to candidates who make living with their hands as if they were being invaded by aliens. It's their elite club and they do not want working class men and women in it. And it's not just the Republicans any longer. Pelosi's worth $16 million and there are so many millionaires in the Democratic caucus that it's no wonder they don't represent-- or even want to represent-- the interests of the working class anymore.Did you read Ron Brownstein's report for CNN yesterday? He pointed out that this year Democrats' "opportunities in blue-collar and small-town districts appear to be stalled or even receding. Given Trump's continued strength with working-class whites, Democrats were targeting far fewer of these seats to begin with... If this pattern persists through Election Day, it would widen the trench between major metropolitan areas increasingly dominated by Democrats and less densely populated areas beyond them where Republicans still rule. "If you look back over 20 years, these alignments are very pronounced, as the Republican base has migrated from the country club to the country," says Tom Davis, a former Republican representative who served as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. "This is entirely consistent with a 20-year movement that Trump is putting an exclamation point on... [W]hile the blue-collar terrain remains rocky, Democratic opportunities seem to be expanding in white-collar seats."As you might expect, Chris Hedges was far harsher in his American Anomie post at TruthDig! yesterday. "The belief," he wrote, "that if we work hard, obey the law and get a good education we can achieve stable employment, social status and mobility along with financial security becomes a lie. The old rules, imperfect and often untrue for poor people of color, nevertheless were not a complete fiction in the United States. They offered some Americans-- especially those from the white working and middle class-- modest social and economic advancement. But the capture of political and economic power by the corporate elites, along with the redirecting of all institutions toward the further consolidation of their power and wealth, has broken the social bonds that held the American society together. This rupture has unleashed a widespread malaise... The reconfiguring of American society into an oligarchy and the collapse of our democratic institutions have left most of the population disempowered. The elites, predatory by nature, have discarded all restraint."
The political process, as the research by professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page underscores, no longer advances the interests of the average citizen. It has turned the consent of the governed into a cruel joke. “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” This facade of democratic process eviscerates one of the primary social bonds in a democratic state and abolishes the vital shared belief that citizens have the power to govern themselves, that government exists to promote and protect their rights and interests.The economic structures, like the political structures, have been reconfigured to mock the belief in a meritocracy and that hard work leads to a productive and valued role in society. American productivity, as the New York Times pointed out, has increased 77 percent since 1973 but hourly pay has grown only 12 percent. If the federal minimum wage was attached to productivity, the newspaper wrote, it would be more than $20 an hour now, not $7.25. Some 41.7 million workers, a third of the workforce, earn less than $12 an hour, and most of them do not have access to employer-sponsored health insurance. A decade after the 2008 financial meltdown, the Times wrote, the average middle class family’s net worth is more than $40,000 below what it was in 2007. The net worth of black families is down 40 percent, and for Latino families the figure has dropped 46 percent.
That's the very first meme I ever used-- actually I created it-- when writing about Randy Bryce for the first time. I noted that he used that messaging again in a new e-mail to his supporters yesterday." They think I'm unfit," he wrote. "I'm a father and a son. I'm a veteran and a cancer survivor. I've spent my career building things with my own two hands. I'll never quit fighting for what working families need because I'm a working person myself.
But according to the head of Paul Ryan's super PAC, I'm "unfit" to serve.Instead, they think Bryan Steil, a corporate attorney and former Capitol Hill aide who literally spent his career outsourcing jobs from Wisconsin while he was hand-groomed by career politicians, is more qualified.In Congress, I'll work to protect Social Security, to make Medicare for All a reality, to bring back good jobs, to protect workers with strong unions, to stand with women and families with access to reproductive care, and to make our children's future brighter by reinvesting in public schools. I'll fight for working people because I am one-- and I don't know about you, but I think that makes me pretty darn fit to serve.
I see that Ryan's corporately-funded SuperPAC has spent $1.8 million intensely smearing Randy. The DCCC's response? The DCCC isn't spending on working class candidates. They haven't spent anything, let alone $1.8 million, countering Ryan's SuperPAC. I should note, though, that the DCCC has reserved $3 million in airtime to defend multimillionaire lottery winner Gil Cisneros, a Republican who conveniently claims he's now a "Democrat" and who was recruited by the DCCC because they love multimillionaires who live in beachfront mansions. Iron-workers who didn't graduate from college but who have struggled the way ordinary Americans struggle... not so much.You'd think the DCCC would be supporting Ammar Campa-Najjar, now that his opponent, Drunken Hunter, has been indicted for dozens of serious crimes. But if you did, you'd be wrong. Even though the two are tied 46-46% in the polls, the DCCC is not supporting him. My contention is that it's because he's another working class kid they don't want in their exclusive club. But a friend at the DCCC told me that's less a factor than the virulent racism that still infects the DCCC going all the way back to Rahm Emanuel and Steve Israel days. Hard to know. But there is a pattern-- two in fact. (And, remember Bryce is half Mexican too.) Other working class kinds the DCCC is shunning include J.D. Scholten-- no, the DCCC does not want to rid Congress of cash-cow Steve King-- Jess King and James Thompson. Interestingly, there's some correlation between candidates who back Medicare-For-All-- oposed by the DCCC-- and working class candidates. We'll talk more about this as the election proceeds and as it becomes more apparent which candidates the DCCC spends money on and which they grind into the dust.
