This discussion between Texeira and Judis is approximately the 973rd I’ve read over the past four years by liberal commentators that seeks to analyze the nature of our domestic politics without even once mentioning the word “religion.”
That makes as much sense as debating the nature of violent deaths in America without mentioning the word “firearm.”
yeah marnold and rick_b, but gerrymandering will only be undone if the Dems are able to recapture state houses and governorships and so far I see little indication that the Dem base gives a hoot about state legislatures. The well-funded right targeted those local races for decades and it will probably take a similar effort for the Dems to retake them. Not sure I see that happening.
One thing that is impeding the left is their strident embracing of the hot new cause: allowing anatomical males to pee in the women’s room. And boycotting states that consider this a violation of basic modesty. Women who are uncomfortable with this are (god forbid) prejudiced. In fact, a lot of older women find this concept embarrassing.
It is obvious that the right is behind this, the same way they used to trot out gay marriage just before every national election.
I haven’t figured out why suddenly, transgenders must pee in the women’s room. And I don’t even think it comes from transgenders. I work with several, they’re cool guys, and don’t seem to have much interest in the restroom hysteria.
You know what else is missing? There is no mention of the fact that Europe and the U.S. are fundamentally different politically because Europe is densely populated and the U.S. isn’t. The seminal work on this issue is Ronald Rogowski’s Commerce and Coalitions. You can find chapter 1, which has all the key ideas, here: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic248058.files/February%2018%20readings/Rogowski.pdf
In Texas the urban areas go blue in presidential elections.
Hillary Clinton losing the election was the best thing to happen to the Left. Let’s face it, the left did have a true enemy to rally against like the Right does with Hillary Clinton. Trump’s actions personify that and gives the left their villain to fight tooth and nail. (Maybe even consider holding off on gun restrictions to arm yourself just in case the Republicans attempt a coup.) And even if she did win, she would have just further undermined the left in America because the Republicans would just re-open the Obama playbook of nothing but obstruction. And worse pick away at pillars that are sacred to democrats, but not to neo-liberals like the Clintons. The base would be demoralized and Republicans would crush the midterms and further solidify their gains going into the 2020 census to further gerrymander everything they can. But we have Trump, and look at how fired up the left is. How they never would have been this engaged to make House seats that would normally be solid red, competitive.
Yes, everything that has happened now is terrible under Trump, but victory cannot come without sacrifice. And if you’re not willing to take that extra step to achieve it (Even if it means fellow Americans dying because of the negligence of Republicans.) Why bother to have some skin in the game when you’re going to be dead weight?
Also still noticing you bitter Hillary supporters are still trying to cry racism as to why she lost. Nope, she was a horrible candidate who’s economic position screamed the same neo-liberalism that keeps the wealth flowing to the top while giving the middle finger to the poor, even if it’s not as blatant as how the Republicans do it. If Sanders was the candidate, he would have won those necessary states that were normally considered locks for Demcorats, like Wisconsin and Michigan. Hell, he wouldn’t have taken them for granted and actually showed up to them once in the election unlike Hillary. Her and her faction of the left mistakenly put social policy ahead of the economy in an election that was clearly a referendum on the economy. While it wasn’t burning to the ground like under the stewardship of W. If people don’t feel confident and aren’t rising with the tide of the economy, they’re going to be malcontent and want change from the status quo. Which Hillary personified. Trump, for all his cons and lies was able to tap into that, which is the reason he managed to get those poor, white voters.
The longer you treat those who aren’t zealots like the enemy. The longer you’re going to see this cycle of where the left only makes gains after the right burns everything to the ground only to see the left implode within one or two election cycles. Or worse, lose elections that should be a slam dunk.
I think there will be opportunity for it to get better for the reasons Teixeira puts forward, because it simply must. It will, as always, be extraordinarily bloody for all the reasons you mention.
The left will eventually triumph because the generational shift that began in the late 1960’s and the conservative backlash and culture wars that followed are losing steam as the people of that generation are reaching old age and dying out.
The Great Depression of the 1930’s, the rise of Franklin Roosevelt and his economic reforms, and WWII established America as both a global and economic super power. The people who lived through the Depression and fought in WWII realized the value of government. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Keynesian ideal of massive government spending programs to stimulate economic growth when markets stagnate and fail, and the spending on the war effort essentially turned the economy around on a dime. It was sustained throughout the rest of the 20th century with progressive taxation, which not only paid for our social programs, but also acted as an obstacle to the ability for too few people to amass too much wealth and power, thereby limiting excessive influence over the government by the wealthy.
The next generation born after WWII, the Baby Boomers, did not live through the Great Depression. They inherited an economy in which a person (if you were white and male, at least) through adequate effort and hard work, get a job and/or go to college, raise a family, buy a house, etc. It’s very easy for people born under these fortunate conditions to conclude that everything they attained were solely due to their own efforts without considering the sacrifices made by their parents in order to build the system that the Baby Boomers benefited from. Therefore, they did not have the same inclination to participate in (i.e. contribute to in the form of taxes) as their parents.
As the Baby Boomers were reaching adolescence and young adulthood in the mid-1960’s, great social changes occured. The Civil Rights movement was underway. When de-segregation was mandated by Lyndon Johnson, the Baby Boomers became the last generation to grow up during the Jim Crow era. In addition, the Vietnam War began, as well as the anti-war/hippie movement. Feminism, culminating with the Roe Vs. Wade decision to legalize abortion was also a significant factor that affected this generation of people.
The social upheavals of the late '60s brought about significant social changes, but the majority of Americans were still far more socially conservative, religious, and racist than they are today. The conservative backlash against the late 60’s began with the Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy” to attract white southern voters, disillusioned with the Democrat’s support of racial equality. Southern religious evangelicals, angered by the sexual permissiveness, secularization, rock music, and especially Roe Vs. Wade, began to mobilize into a political movement, and were also embraced by the Republican Party. By the late 1970’s the Baby Boomers had reached their early 30’s, which is the age that people tend to be settled with families, economically established, and begin voting in large numbers, just in time to elect Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980.
Reagan, of course, began dismantling the New Deal model in favor of a supply-side/trickle down economic model. Lowering top marginal tax rates, we were told, would ease the financial burden on the wealthiest Americans, who (as “job creators”) would spend all that newly accessible wealth on expanding their businesses and hiring more workers. The whole idea is fairly ridiculous, as a “job creator” will have no incentive to spend money on expansion/hiring unless there is sufficient consumer demand to justify doing so. The real motive behind Reaganomics was the Republican goal of oligarchy, reached by reducing the tax burden on the wealthy, reducing government regulations, and allowing the wealthy to concentrate vast amounts of wealth and power.
The Baby Boomers remained the largest voting bloc throughout the 80’s and 90’s. Clinton was able to win the Presidency, but only after he (and the Democrats in general) moved into a more corporate-friendly, centrist economic direction. Essentially the Democrats had sacrificed their New Deal progressive economic principles for the sake of political expediency. Bush followed after disillusionment with Clinton’s impeachment and Al Gore’s bland, uninspiring campaign. 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq (as well as another bland, uninspiring candidate in the form of John Kerry) guaranteed Bush a 2nd term.
During the Bush years, the WWII generation began to die off in large numbers. As Baby Boomers aged, more younger, liberal Gen X voters reached their 30’s and the first wave of millenials had reached voting age. The population had grown steadily more racially diverse, more socially permissive, and more socially and economically liberal as the pre-civil rights population was slowly being replaced by the post-civil rights population. We saw Obama elected for 2 terms, but we also saw the older white conservatives resisting in the form of the 2010 midterm elections and the rise of the Tea Party.
Presently, the WWII generation is almost totally died off. Baby Boomers are now senior citizens and are beginning to die off. The remaining generations are less religious, more racially diverse, more tolerant and socially liberal than at any other time in history. Furthermore, just as the Baby Boomers were shaped politically by the events of the late 60’s, the Millenials came of age during 9/11, the debacle of the Iraq War, and the failure of Reaganomics/supply-side economics.
The 2016 elections were the result of several different factors. First, the Democratic establishment failed to realize that Obama won by running as a Progressive with an inspirational message of hope and optimism–largely the same (minus the Progressive part) strategy that Reagan employed. Hillary Clinton, who deservedly or not, was seen as a pro-war, pro-corporate, economic centrist and was also vilified and despised by the right, was the wrong candidate for this past election. She’s a brilliant person and was far more qualified than any of the Republican candidates, but her lack of inspiring economic message, the constant allegations and mischaracterizations from the right, and overconfidence that she could just coast to victory by being less repugnant than Trump all worked against her. By contrast, Bernie Sanders, who did have a progressive economic message overwhelmingly won younger Democrats and white working class union voters.
Trump managed to upset the Republican establishment and ultimately the Presidency with his own economic message of jobs and stimulus spending (when Republicans talk about stimulus they call it “growth”–when Democrats talk about stimulus, the Republicans call it “socialism”) and also by appealing to the racial/xenophobic fears and resentments , anti-government Tea Party dolts. Trump himself, even more so than Sarah Palin, represents the culmination of the past 40 years of Republican strategy backfiring in their faces. The Republicans have spent the past few decades pandering to people who were too stupid to realize that they were voting against their own economic self interests in exchange for having their fears, ignorance, and bigotries enabled and validated. Problem is you can only appeal to the most negative aspects of people’s natures for so long until it gets out of control and turns on you. Right now we’ve got a Republican Party–a traditionally pro-business, anti-tax, anti-regulatory party–taken over by evangelical lunatics, racists, and ignorant redneck hicks. Trump himself is dangerously stupid, to the point of making George W. Bush look like a quantum physicist. He was able to rally enough of an angry mob to defeat a weak, barely competent Hillary campaign that was backed by an even more inept and incompetent DNC that seemed more intent on maintaining their status quo against Bernie than actually winning against Trump. Had the Democratic nominee been Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or if Hillary had run a slightly better campaign, Trump would have failed. I see this election as the last and final victory of a dying generation and a dying set of socio-political ideologies. The left likely will triumph. Whether or not their triumph is sustained for the long term will likely depend on the Democrats embracing the economic policies described in this article and promoted by progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
He makes it clear that PoC are an essential block of Democratic voters. One assumes perhaps that these communities and their allies at least are mindful of the issue of racism. Did you think he needed to be more explicit, you know, touch all the bases on the fundamental liberal issues? He didn’t mention gay equality either, but most people know where the two parties tend to divide on that, too.
Race is a dog whistle used by the rich to keep the poor and middle class fighting among themselves. The Tiny Fingered Vulgarian is perfectly happy being called a racist, a bigot, a misogynist to distract from the Republican Party’s economic fascism. If and when the people of the USA realize they are in a class war against the hoarding rich then the country might be able to reform itself.
Because the Clintons won’t last forever . . . .
I like Texiera’s thinking. I even bought his book. But nothing in recent events has supported his theories. Nothing. Show me how the emerging majority wins against the money and entrenchment of the right, and maybe I’ll buy your next book. (Eventually) can be nearly infinite.
EXACTLY! This is why the Democratsneed desperately to move their focus away from identity politics (what used to be called “special interests”) and back to a New Deal-style platform focused on economic equality and justice… That is not to say that I believe Dems/progressive should abandon social/racial justice, but to face the reality that we are still a society that is deeply divided on racial/social/religious ideologies and that running campaigns focused on those ideologies are only going to be a win for Democrats in highly educated, urban centers. In the South, in the rust belt, the Dems have to focus on jobs, healthcare, and the economy and they have to do it in a way that exposes the failure of Republican supply-side economic policies.
Teixeira has been saying this stuff since the 90’s. As much as I would like to think it’s realistic sounding and he is a prophet, it just keeps sounding more and more like a lost future. Only one event has come to pass which would indicate we are moving toward his predictions: the election of Obama. All else seems to be running in a very strongly and accelerating current against progressivism:
I could go on, but I’m tired. Perhaps some of you people in your teens, 20s and 30s may yet see Teixeira’s forecasts come to fruition during your lifetime, but I am 62 and doubt I will.
It is clearly time for a basic, common-sense middle party. The right has delivered an oligarchy, and the left has gone head-over-heels into loony land.
When the left takes the most draconian punitive measures on their most talented, like Al Franken, it’s a sign that they’ve completely lost it.
…And that’s a bad thing? Though the sting has dulled for some and the socialist left have collectively limped away from one of the most catastrophic political upsets in WORLD HISTORY, it is important for us to drill down passed identity politics (which they did discuss) and oversimplified reasoning. Our path forward must contain wide ranging analysis and diverse discussions that don’t necessarily funnel the electorates rejection of liberal ideals into one deplorable (yeah I SAID it!) ideology, such as racism. Not every round table conversation on the 2016 defeat needs to beat that particular drum. While I completely agree that American democracy, at all levels, has always been indoctrinated with excessive and unacceptable xenophobic elements – I welcome a discussion that attempts to not just figure out why we lost (or why single payer polls well, but doesn’t equate to votes), but looks at international trending and fights to see the bigger picture.
In all honesty, I appreciated these kinds of articles and interviews (debate?) because they don’t fall prey to the current buzz word of the day designed to create immediate, simplistic rage. I would rather read less explaining Russia and more how we are attacking Gerrymandering or Electoral College. Less assumptions about peoples racist tendencies and more about strategies about bringing strong labor unions back. When I saw the title, How the Left Will Eventually Triumph, I envisioned a massive collaboration of freethinking liberals redefining the word socialism and clearly articulating progressive positions that actually sway those previously hesitant to extraordinary social and economical shifts.
P.S. If I have not made it clear: I am in no way trying to minimize racism or excuse racism. I just feel strongly about moving off the obvious and figuring out how to envelope those on the fence regarding liberal ideals. I don’t think we will ever convince the 70 year old white man from Alabama that our prison population is tilted towards the black population, and if you could, I don’t think you accomplish that by having racism be the center of all discussions.