In theory. In reality, there are plenty of Steve Kings in the House right now and they don’t say shit about them.
King stepped out of bounds one too many times and too overtly, but he was allowed those other 500 transgressions without a single comment until now.
The entire Iowa GOP establishment was kissing his ass a couple months ago and the national organization was right behind them. Steve King didn’t start saying racist shit last week, he’s been doing it for over a decade.
So I doubt anyone is thinking the GOP is coming around on it. Steve just became too blatant and loud and they couldn’t ignore him anymore. His replacement will likely be a racist fuck, but he’ll stick to the codewords like he’s supposed to and they wont say shit.
I think Trump has shown that is the case. Don’t forget he campaigned on “fuck rich people and banks, they’re screwing you over.” Of course he forgot all that stuff once elected and went after brown people because that works and it pays a lot better than going after people with money. But don’t forget a big part of what resonated for a lot of people with Trump was that they saw Hillary as beholden to the banks/Wall Street, while Trump was saying he wasn’t. The racism was just an added bonus for a lot of them.
Did you read the entire Carlson article? He stays kind of in-bounds for the first half of the article. Then the second half of the article transitions into talking about how all of our social ills are caused by women in the work place rather than staying at home raising kids. It’s the standard GOP propaganda tactic when they want to appear nice or intelligent; they give you a nice shiny apple, and you bite into it and find the razor blade.
Anyway, should the entire right wing pundit class be sealed alive into a giant tomb-complex where their only source of sustenance is eating each other? More after the break.
I picture Alex Jones screaming and jumping on the back of Rush Limbaugh as they fight over a trembling, crying Sean Hannity who is waving a shiv made from the bones of Tucker Carlson at them.
Okay, I get the theoretical connection. But… do you have an answer for the working class of the midwest, the Ozarks, coal country? Work harder? Drive an Uber? Learn to program a computer and join the digital age? These folks are seriously underwater. What Trump proves is that a charlatan can attract their votes. But you still need a real answer to their problem. And what kind of country are we where we twiddle our thumbs while they overdose on fentanyl and Jeff Bezos builds a rocket ship? More of the same “rising tide lifts all boats rhetoric” is going to leave them to either embrace socialism or despotism because democracy and capitalism have done jack squat for them for fifty years.
Now you mention it, answers to these midwest working class peoples problems should be the Democratic Party’s bread and butter. The whole point of the Left is helping people like this lead better lives.
Yeah, they used to do that by supporting their unions, but unions aren’t sympatico with global capitalism, which Democrats support as much as Republicans. Unions gum up the works. But Democrats at least have some proposals for them, like socialized medicine, which is something, but not everything. It’s not jobs, for one. And it’s the kind of solution conservatives generally oppose, so what are their actual counter-offers?
Hmm well you have done it again. Now you mention it didn’t Obama and Trump both get votes from this group primarily because they each focused* on jobs? *code for “talked about when campaigning”
I barely recall Hillary Clinton talking about job creation at all. Minimum wage hike yes, but that doesnt help if you dont have a job or worried you are going to lose one.
And yeah, the answer is to do better. It’s the only answer there is. Maybe it’s not what they want to hear, but that’s too fucking bad. That’s the way it is. The world has moved on.
We don’t need coal miners anymore. Even if we want the coal… Because we have more efficient ways of getting it out of the ground now. That’s where those jobs went. And guess what? They were shitty fucking jobs. They paid ok, but they destroyed you. Their life expectancy was like 13 years below the national average.
And after the recession, there were a bunch of groups, started by folks from those communities themselves, that got federal funding and offered all kinds of retraining programs. And they didn’t use them.
Some would use them and get training… For coal mining. Because they were convinced that those jobs were going to come back, mainly from assholes like Trump lying to them and saying that some elites were making those jobs go away, but that if we just beat them, everything would go back to the way it was!
It’s not gonna. Ever. The world has moved on. If you want to mine coal, go live in China. They’re still doing it the old fashioned way there in the Hunan province.
There are always gonna be folks who refuse to change with the times. They are gonna be screwed. Populism isn’t going to save them, because there’s no way to stop the future from coming. Anyone who says otherwise is just lying.
Her job creation plan was one of the tentpoles of her overall economic plan, and even a big part of one of the debates. She cited 10 million jobs would be created by her plan, and that figure was the subject of much debate. But, in Leslie Knope style, it was at least somewhat detailed in nature.
It may have been drowned out in all the other nonsense with the 2016 campaign, and so if it didn’t stick, that’s on her for failing on the messaging side.
The Leslie Knope “I have a binder that spells out my entire plan…” thing feels great in a sitcom and sounds like it might work with the right kind of messaging, but I think the reality is much different.
Free post-secondary education - college and vocational - help.
Paid family leave help.
Increasing minimum wage help.
Universal health care help.
Not gutting Unions with right-to-work laws and SCOTUS judges that overturn decades of labor law help.
Fixing a broken elementary and secondary educational system help (easy to say, tough to do.)
Addressing institutionalized racism and misogyny help.
Etc.
All these things are supported by the Democratic party, and these things were talked about during the 2016 campaign (ages ago I’ve linked all speeches Clinton made supporting these policies. She did talk about them, but the media was focused on conflict politics and email server management and was too busy equalizing and normalizing trump. Everyone by now has see the word cloud count - the media did talk about some policy: trump’s immigration xenophobia.)
Unlike Timex’s prescription of “bootstraps, lads!” poverty is a self-sustaining cycle. Sure, there are self-motivated individuals or others with parents who instill values to overcome this, but they are few and far in between. I’ve worked with at-risk youth, and the overwhelming commonality they had were broken parents who didn’t love them. Poverty is soul crushing. No one wants to be poor, but for many millions it’s a place they can’t see a way out. Government isn’t the only solution but good governance is a solution.
In addition to all that stuff @MrGrumpy said, I think it’s important to include something for the disaffected to work at that gives them a feeling of important contribution. The culture in those Rust Belt/mining towns/rural areas puts a heavy emphasis on your profession as self-worth (actually true in most of the USA but especially those areas). My favorite idea along these lines is a big infrastructure push that would provide significant employment for exactly those people who are being displaced, and specifically those who aren’t psychologically equipped to go the “reeducate and switch careers” route.
And I agree that Democrats have talked about all this stuff - in 2016 and 2018 and on an ongoing basis. But clearly they haven’t been doing it effectively. Some better marketing is in order.
That’s not a conservative position, it’s reality. People dedicated to coal mining are screwed. The industry is shrinking. If they insist on staying in it, they’re screwed. If they ignore job retraining initiatives, preferring to wait until their old jobs come back, there’s little one can do to help.
Policies like free college can help the next generation escape that trap, and Medicare For All will at least ensure they don’t go bankrupt when they get sick. But the coal industry isn’t coming back, and if they keep waiting for that to happen and voting for candidates who promise that, they’re not headed back to prosperity.
Timex’s example was coal mining, but the question he was answering was the working class in the Rust Belt states. And I think his answer was pretty clear: It’s on them.
You’re proposing free college and Medicare for all. That’s a different approach. That’s taking the attitude that policy can somehow help these folks. As I read Timex, we’re better off leaving them to sink or swim.
I don’t think that is what he is saying: he’s saying that people who refuse to acknowledge that they have to move on can’t be helped. Its sort of a 12-step program problem. Until you admit change is necessary, you aren’t ever going to get to step 2.
