Since 2020, Joe Biden’s support among working-class voters of all races has fallen alarmingly. Here are seven ways he and his party can reverse the slide.
The subheadings alone won’t give you a very good idea about it; they honestly don’t really indicate much on their own. If you are trying to get a sense of what the article says in TL;DR form, you could do a lot worse than this little excerpt:
Two months after the 2022 midterms, a poll by the nonprofit American Family Voices asked 600 likely voters living in industrial counties across six Midwestern states to name the top issues. “The rising cost of living” led, with 37 percent, because at the time the Consumer Price Index was twice what it is today. But ranking second was “jobs and the economy”—which Democratic candidates had avoided in the election.
Don’t blame President Joe Biden, who has lavished more attention on working-class issues than any president since Harry Truman (and considerably more than Biden’s three modern Democratic predecessors Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter). Blame Biden’s fellow Democrats. Only half of the Democratic-candidate websites surveyed by the Center for Working-Class Politics bothered to mention Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Only about one-quarter mentioned Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which is spending another half-trillion on technologies to reduce climate change. And only 15 percent mentioned the CHIPS Act, signed into law three months before the election, which will spend another $53 billion to boost domestic manufacture of semiconductors. The combined effect of these three bills has been to nearly triple the construction of manufacturing facilities since Biden took office.
Part of the Democratic reticence was perhaps attributable to Biden’s low approval rating, then stuck around 40. Still, however unpopular Biden was (and remains), Biden’s policies are very popular, especially among working-class voters—on those rare occasions when they hear about it. The IRA, for example, was favored in a March 2023 poll by 68 percent of people earning between $50,000 and $99,999. But these working-class people needed the pollsters (from Yale and George Mason) to first explain what the Inflation Reduction Act was. A 61 percent majority had no idea.
And it lays out a bunch of specific prescriptions for what to do about that weird disconnect.
I mean I read it before I posted that, I was just picking it out because I think it warrants dissection.
Whats interesting is that they associate the ‘brahmin left’ with issues that I largely associate with RW issues projection (moral panic over transrights/ dont say gay/ book banning/ immigrant crime/ border crisis/ you fucking name it).
Like its only being brought up and defended because some RW pr firm trotted it out as a new talking point, and there is always some one willing to write an article on why the RW moral panic is stupid. But the term is pretty fucking perjorative, and dismissive of the fact that without the progressive left of the left-wing of the Democratic voting block, they don’t get elected, period. Its this kind of weird, anti-activist performative centrism.
Like this class of individuals exists mostly as a response to RW moral panic, then the RW touts them around as having made those arguments in the first place. Its a kind of circular straw man where you engage in a moral panic, some one speaks out in defense, then you project the arguments you want them to have made onto them. Its what the right does, and its what the author is doing to.
This one is a ‘leave’ in the take it or leave it of the authors bullets.
Hm… I actually 1,000% agree with you on this part:
Its a kind of circular straw man where you engage in a moral panic, some one speaks out in defense, then you project the arguments you want them to have made onto them.
I don’t think I see this discussed nearly enough – Sometimes the left picks up some strawman the right has come up with and actually runs with it, which I’m sure delights the right. It’s a common enough pattern to have a big impact and I basically never see it discussed, so yeah.
Whats interesting is that they associate the ‘brahmin left’ with issues that I largely associate with RW issues projection (moral panic over transrights/ dont say gay/ book banning/ immigrant crime/ border crisis/ you fucking name it).
Did they list all these things? I thought it was just trans rights and “defund the police” mostly. I could have missed it?
I think the author is talking about more of performative leftist stuff. “I put my pronouns on my Starbucks nametag but I have no appetite for starting a union there” style of left that I would also be critical of. But, on the other hand, police reform is a grey area arguably in the core leftist category and the author puts it in the “Brahmin left” category… so yeah, maybe you’re right, and the author is throwing out some stuff that shouldn’t be thrown out (even if it would tactically a “good idea” for appealing to not-politically-conservative-but-not-real-leftist working-class voters.)
Here are the 7:
Shut Up and Listen
Forget Fox News
Forget the Brahmin Left
Tax and Spend and Support Labor
Talk Insulin
Be Working Class
Not agreeing or disagreeing but wanted to pull them out because they weren’t obvious.
The fuck is the Brahmin left?
Google Bhodisatva
Yahoo Hanuman
Bing Chandler
Duck Duck Goose
The subheadings alone won’t give you a very good idea about it; they honestly don’t really indicate much on their own. If you are trying to get a sense of what the article says in TL;DR form, you could do a lot worse than this little excerpt:
And it lays out a bunch of specific prescriptions for what to do about that weird disconnect.
I mean I read it before I posted that, I was just picking it out because I think it warrants dissection.
Whats interesting is that they associate the ‘brahmin left’ with issues that I largely associate with RW issues projection (moral panic over transrights/ dont say gay/ book banning/ immigrant crime/ border crisis/ you fucking name it).
Like its only being brought up and defended because some RW pr firm trotted it out as a new talking point, and there is always some one willing to write an article on why the RW moral panic is stupid. But the term is pretty fucking perjorative, and dismissive of the fact that without the progressive left of the left-wing of the Democratic voting block, they don’t get elected, period. Its this kind of weird, anti-activist performative centrism.
Like this class of individuals exists mostly as a response to RW moral panic, then the RW touts them around as having made those arguments in the first place. Its a kind of circular straw man where you engage in a moral panic, some one speaks out in defense, then you project the arguments you want them to have made onto them. Its what the right does, and its what the author is doing to.
This one is a ‘leave’ in the take it or leave it of the authors bullets.
Hm… I actually 1,000% agree with you on this part:
I don’t think I see this discussed nearly enough – Sometimes the left picks up some strawman the right has come up with and actually runs with it, which I’m sure delights the right. It’s a common enough pattern to have a big impact and I basically never see it discussed, so yeah.
Did they list all these things? I thought it was just trans rights and “defund the police” mostly. I could have missed it?
I think the author is talking about more of performative leftist stuff. “I put my pronouns on my Starbucks nametag but I have no appetite for starting a union there” style of left that I would also be critical of. But, on the other hand, police reform is a grey area arguably in the core leftist category and the author puts it in the “Brahmin left” category… so yeah, maybe you’re right, and the author is throwing out some stuff that shouldn’t be thrown out (even if it would tactically a “good idea” for appealing to not-politically-conservative-but-not-real-leftist working-class voters.)