The Liberals Thread

[Sounder]

I live with and love mostly liberals, living in a university town as I do. But as I have explained to my wife, her class of folk does not respect or have appreciation for the tenuous nature of the lives of much of the working class.

My early prediction was that this would play out like Brexit, being the only means available for regular folk to say FU to the neo-libcom globalist corporatist brainwash machine.



I love Phil Oachs, but like Dylan and Cohen he seems to carry some private right-wing attitudes while having a public persona as a radical or progressive.

[stickdog99]

----- SOOOOO, our work now, is not to blame anyone, but to get our asses in gear to organize serious ANTI-CAPITALIST POLITICAL ATTACKS on the BANKs and MIC, not TRUMP. We need to kick some liberal ass out of the way to take on the banks and the military contractors and the entire festering, rotten money system flooding DC. We need to turn the attention away from the border fence and bathrooms, to CAPITALIST ECONOMIC PLUNDER of the working class. We're going to NEED EVERYONE --- gays, blacks, hispanics, women, Muslims and everyone else splintered off into their own narrow personal interests, to BUILD a MASS MOVEMENT unified around CLASS WAR.

While I could not agree more strongly personally, My personal discussions have taught me that there is a large segment of the US society whose major or only interest in politics is their "rooting" interest in identity politics. And that applies to race, gender identity, religion, education level, and even political party identification itself. Identity politics based on everything and anything other than class differences has been successfully inculcated in the majority of Americans I know.

Clinton successfully exploited identity politics to fend off angry urban whites who preferred Sanders almost 2 to 1. And Trump used identity politics to rally angry rural whites against Clinton.

[JackRiddler]

Candidates in the last three presidential elections, ranked in order of vote totals:

1. Obama 2008: 69.4 million
2. Obama 2012: 65.9 million
3. Romney 2012: 60.9 million
4. McCain 2008: 59.9 million
5. Clinton 2016: 59.8 million
6. Trump 2016: 59.6 million

Gentlepeople. This is RI, so just in case you want to argue those numbers are fabricated by machines: Fine. Then you have nothing to say on what or who Trump may or may not have "won."

You want to ignore those numbers? Fine. Then at least know that whatever you say is pulled straight out of your ass, and you know shit about what who Trump may or may not have "won." You're just participating on the lowest level of the spin and counter-spin machinery.

Trump didn't win shit in votes. I don't only mean that he got FEWER votes than Clinton, which is true. I mean that he did not gain any votes on prior Republicans. He did not win more of your precious white identity-politics voters than before. What happened is, millions of people who voted for Obama did not bother to vote at all for Clinton. This is not Trump's win. It is Clinton's loss.

Candidates in the last three presidential elections, ranked in order of vote totals:

1. Obama 2008: 69.4 million
2. Obama 2012: 65.9 million
3. Romney 2012: 60.9 million
4. McCain 2008: 59.9 million
5. Clinton 2016: 59.8 million
6. Trump 2016: 59.6 million

Cumulatively, about 10 million voters appear to have abandoned the Democrats since 2008. Republican vote totals have also declined but remain more stable, and still lower than the Democrats'. Only a small part of this can be blamed on vote suppression measures. The reality: More people are staying home than before, and more of them used to be Democrats.

It is not true that working class voters in the Midwest or elsewhere shifted toward Trump. That is a pernicious myth. It is being crafted right this moment and has two functions: For liberals, it shifts the blame for the DNC's self-made disaster on to "populist" sentiment. For Trump supporters, it legitimates the billionaire con artist's image as a man of the people.

What did Clinton have to offer to the working class voters of the Midwest, who are now falsely blamed for Trump? More of the same shit. More of them therefore stayed away from the ballot box. Trump won these battleground states without getting more votes in any of them than Romney did when he lost the same states in 2012.

In any case, out of the last six "major party" presidential candidates, Trump 2016 ranks sixth out of six. Dead last. He won because we do not have a democratic system in the United States. Rather, some long-dead rich guys from 1787 are still playing a joke on us.

(You can check state numbers for 2012 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... tion,_2012 and compare these to 2016 numbers. Remember the U.S. electorate has grown in the last eight years.)

I'm adding the following info for reference and framing, since of course we do not have the exact same people alive or eligible to vote in the three elections:

Voting age population (over 18), 2008: 227 million.*
Voting age population, 2016: about 255 million.*
Number of people in U.S. who turned 18 since 2008: about 31-34 million.
Who died: something under 20 million.
Naturalized citizens since 2008: about 5.6 million.
* - Resident aliens make up about 6% or 7% at any given time and cannot vote.

Mr Morty, finally you make me laugh:

"College lecturer" is absolutely meaningless. I can assure you colleges are currently getting them for practically free, and even at Columbia or Harvard 2/3 of the lecturers and teachers are now adjuncts. It's an appalling situation - the underfunding of higher education.

So this two-bit right-wing talk radio rant from Mason, whoever the fuck he is, has no special authority by virtue of his also getting to speak in classrooms. Of course, if he had anything credible to say, that would authority.

But Mason is wrong. Trump is another win for the single biggest identity politics group: angry, older, male white people (and a smaller majority of white women). Fact.

The same group that has been the beneficiary of identity politics for most of U.S. history. The same identity group that has been voting for the Republicans consistently since 1968. The group that Mason probably belongs to, I figure.

And yeah yeah, I got that Mason thinks he's waaaaaaay revolutionary left. But if he wanted to just alienate his own allies, he couldn't do better with that rant.

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[Novem5er]

I find the entire argument about college-educated voters versus non-college educated to be ridiculous. Look at the actual numbers:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/

In the 2016 election, a wide gap in presidential preferences emerged between those with and without a college degree. College graduates backed Clinton by a 9-point margin ([b]52%-43%), while those without a college degree backed Trump 52%-44%. [/b]This is by far the widest gap in support among college graduates and non-college graduates in exit polls dating back to 1980. For example, in 2012, there was hardly any difference between the two groups: College graduates backed Obama over Romney by 50%-48%, and those without a college degree also supported Obama 51%-47%.

Among whites, Trump won an overwhelming share of those without a college degree; and among white college graduates – a group that many identified as key for a potential Clinton victory – Trump outperformed Clinton by a narrow 4-point margin.

Amongst ALL college graduates, Clinton got 9% more. So? If 100 graduates were in a room, 9 more would side with Hillary. That's statistically relevent, but not enough to classify people into two distinct groups. 43 of those college graduates would stlil side with Trump!

Look at the last bolded part. Trump won white college graduates by 4 points. So more "smart" white people sided with Trump than Hillary . . . is that what that means? I don't think so. I don't think it means anything, in relations to education or intelligence.

90% of my co-workers have college degrees, from Bachelors up to Doctorates. Most of them are white. Most of them backed Trump. Most of them also go to church and have kids in youth soccer teams. Most of them also make less than $45k a year. I don't fit in with their crowd because I'm not a Southerner, but we are friendly to each other because everyone is face-to-face nice.

[Morty]

We probably need a dedicated "Where to from here?" thread, but I guess this piece fits in this current thread:

Freedom Rider: Dump the Democrats for Good

Submitted by Margaret Kimberley on Wed, 11/09/2016 - 04:07

2016 presidential campaign

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Donald Trump, the white nationalist that claimed to oppose the corporate establishment, appears to have won the U.S. presidency. But, “even the victory of the openly bigoted Trump poses an opportunity to right our political ship.” The Democrats were not “our” party, but the party that thought they owned us. Their “rejection must be complete and blame must be laid squarely at their feet” for raising those chickens that have come home to roost.

Freedom Rider: Dump the Democrats for Good
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“The Democrats were so entrenched in their corruption and self-dealing that they didn’t see the Bernie Sanders campaign for modest reform as the savior it might have been.”

This columnist did not see a Donald Trump victory coming. The degree of disgust directed at an awful candidate was more than I had predicted. Neither the corporate media, nor Wall Street nor the pundits nor the pollsters saw this coming either. Their defeat and proof of their uselessness is total. Those of us who rejected the elite consensus and didn’t support Hillary Clinton should be proud.

Black people are now in fear and in shock when we ought to be spoiling for a fight. All is not lost. Even the victory of the openly bigoted Trump poses an opportunity to right our political ship. Not the electoral ship, the political one. For decades black Americans have been voting for people who have done them wrong. Bill Clinton got rid of public assistance as a right, and undid regulations that kept Wall Street in check. He put black people in jail and yet black people didn’t turn on him until he and his wife tried to defeat Obama. But Obama gave us more of the same. Bailouts of Wall Street, interventions and death for people all over the world, and a beat down of black people who still loved him. Despite the fear of Republican victory we end up losing whenever a Democratic presidential candidate wins.

“Obama bailed out banks, insurance companies, Big Pharma and even Ukraine.”

Victory is ours if we dump the Democrat Party and their black misleaders. The Democrats were so entrenched in their corruption and self-dealing that they didn’t see the Bernie Sanders campaign for modest reform as the savior it might have been. Instead they marched in lock step with a woman who was heartily disliked. Sanders went along as the sheep dog who led his flock straight over the cliff. The Democrats inadvertently galvanized people who had stopped participating in the system and who want change from top to bottom.

One of our biggest problems lies not in facts but in perceptions. What did Democrats do for black people? The Democrats ship living wage jobs off shore in corrupt trade deals like NAFTA and TTP. They don’t prosecute killer cops or raise the minimum wage. Trump will be hard pressed to deport more people than Obama did. The list of treachery is very long.

When Donald Trump asked black people, “What have you got to lose?” his words were met with derision. But in reality he posed a good question. What do we have to show for years of Democratic votes? Obama bailed out banks, insurance companies, Big Pharma and even Ukraine. But he didn’t rebuild Detroit or New Orleans. The water in Flint, Michigan is still poisoned and the prisons are still full.

“There may be opportunity in this crisis if we dare to seize it.”

The outpouring of love for Barack Obama was purely symbolic. In state after state, black people who gave him victory in 2008 and 2012 stayed home. They loved seeing him and his wife dressed up at state dinners but they were never fully engaged in politics because that is not what Democrats want. The love was phony and void of any political intent. Donald Trump will be president because of that veneer of political activism.

As for white people who voted for Trump, of course many of them are racists. However they are not without valid complaints. They don’t want neoliberalism but black people don’t either. They don’t want wars around the world and neither do black people. We corrupt our own heritage of radicalism in favor of shallow symbolism. While we slept walk in foolish nostalgia for Obama and cried at the thought of him leaving office, white people kept their hatred of Hillary to themselves or lied to pollsters. They want America to be great again, great for them. White nostalgic yearnings are dangerous for black people, and we must be vigilant. But there may be opportunity in this crisis if we dare to seize it.

Republicans have been the white people’s party for nearly 50 years. Trump just made it more obvious. He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. We don’t have to be the losers in this election. Let us remember what we have achieved in our history. Half of black Americans didn’t even have the right to vote in the 1960s yet made earth shattering progress in a short time. But we must understand the source of that progress. It came from struggle and daring to create the crises that always bring about change.

“The dread of redneck celebration should not be our primary motivation right now.”

Yes white people will strut for president Trump but that doesn’t mean we must submit as if we are in the Jim Crow days of old. We have ourselves to rely on and we can reclaim our history of fighting for self-determination. The dread of redneck celebration should not be our primary motivation right now. Before we quake in fear at white America we must send the scoundrels packing.

The black politicians and the Democratic National Committee and the civil rights organizations that don’t help the masses must all be kicked to the proverbial curb. The rejection must be complete and blame must be laid squarely at their feet.

Those of us who voted for the green party ticket of Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka must stand firmly and proudly for our choice. We must strategize on building a progressive party to replace the Democrats who never help us. We must applaud Julian Assange and Wikileaks for exposing their corruption. There should be no back tracking on the fight to build left wing political power.

“We must strategize on building a progressive party to replace the Democrats who never help us.”

The black people who didn’t return to the polls shouldn’t be blamed either. Those individuals must have personal introspection that is meaningful and political. Their lack of enthusiasm speaks to Democratic Party and black misleadership incompetence. We should refrain from personal blame and help one another in this process as we fight for justice and peace.

The end of the duopoly is the first step in liberation. Staying with a party that literally did nothing was a slow and agonizing death. Sometimes shock therapy is needed to improve one’s condition. If we don’t take the necessary steps to free ourselves this election outcome will be a disaster. Instead, why not bring the disaster to the people who made it happen? The destruction of the Democratic Party and creation of a truly progressive political movement is the only hope for black America.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com

[stickdog99]

Mark Mason is a socialist/anarchist ecologist college lecturer. If your objective is to criticize liberals, Mark Mason is a handy guy to have around. From

I don't see why we can't be against the military industrial complex, the Donald, and stand up for all races and sexes at the same time.

Because when you characterize your movement as being against Trump and for BLM, you lose 80% of the angry white male identifiers, most of whom are angry about the same things you are, or at least would be if you stuck to a strictly economic argument.

Again, I don't know the answer here, but I don't think "big tent" identity politics and partisanship are effective tools for generating class consciousness.

[JackRiddler]

BLM is as non-negotiable as MLK would have been. You cannot ask people to abandon BLM because it might hurt the sensitive receptors of some white folk conditioned in racism since they were babies. You cannot ask black people to do that, and they won't. You cannot ask their non-black allies to do that, either. Furthermore, BLM is class politics. Black people in this system are a class. It is a basic justice issue.

The white folk who are sensitive to BLM are the ones who need to get over themselves, and gradually some of them have, and the young in any case are less racist than the old. The long term has seen an improvement. More and more conditioned racists are just dying of old age, and fewer are replacing them. It's an incredibly slow process. So that the Republican vote has declined constantly but slowly. Stable enough to get Trump in, once Clinton collapses the Democratic vote. But even then, Trump got fewer votes than Clinton.

Deal with it: The worst identity politics in the United States are those played for older white men. The original political identity group of this country.

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[stickdog99]

So this two-bit right-wing talk radio rant from Mason, whoever the fuck he is, has no special authority by virtue of his also getting to speak in classrooms. Of course, if he had anything credible to say, that would authority.

But Mason is wrong. Trump is another win for the single biggest identity politics group: angry, older, male white people (and a smaller majority of white women). Fact.

The same group that has been the beneficiary of identity politics for most of U.S. history. The same identity group that has been voting for the Republicans consistently since 1968. The group that Mason probably belongs to, I figure.

I agree with you that Mason's diagnosis was bullshit and that white identity politics won the day because of Clinton's uniquely powerful voter suppression qualities.

However, I do think that identity politics drives American politics because it diminishes class consciousness.

[coffin_dodger]

The increasingly frantic JR quoted:
Cumulatively, about 10 million voters appear to have abandoned the Democrats since 2008
Your explanation for this loss of voters is 'they stay at home'. I wonder why. Might it be because Democrat policies have morphed towards extremist territory, but they don't want to vote right wing, so they cast for neither?

It is not true that working class voters in the Midwest or elsewhere shifted toward Trump

Again, can you please link to the official stats that show the breakdown of regions and their racial profile when voting, to substantiate your claim. Oh yeah - you can't - they don't exist. I'm feeling deja vu, here.

[Wombaticus Rex]

For what it's worth:

[Morty]

Mark Mason is a socialist/anarchist ecologist college lecturer. If your objective is to criticize liberals, Mark Mason is a handy guy to have around. From

I don't see why we can't be against the military industrial complex, the Donald, and stand up for all races and sexes at the same time.

Because when you characterize your movement as being against Trump and for BLM, you lose 80% of the angry white male identifiers, most of whom are angry about the same things you are, or at least would be if you stuck to a strictly economic argument.

Again, I don't know the answer here, but I don't think "big tent" identity politics and partisanship are effective tools for generating class consciousness.

Why insist on being against the Donald from the outset? It does little else besides alienate you from his supporters. He said he'd govern for all Americans, and those who doubt it are in a weak position, because he just got voted in. The best thing you can do is try to hold him to his word.

[stickdog99]

BLM is as non-negotiable as MLK would have been. You cannot ask people to abandon BLM because it might hurt the sensitive receptors of some white folk conditioned in racism since they were babies. You cannot ask black people to do that, and they won't. You cannot ask their non-black allies to do that, either. Furthermore, BLM is class politics. Black people in this system are a class. It is a basic justice issue.

The white folk who are sensitive to BLM are the ones who need to get over themselves, and gradually some of them have, and the young in any case are less racist than the old. The long term has seen an improvement. More and more conditioned racists are just dying of old age, and fewer are replacing them. It's an incredibly slow process. So that the Republican vote has declined constantly but slowly. Stable enough to get Trump in, once Clinton collapses the Democratic vote. But even then, Trump got fewer votes than Clinton.

Deal with it: The worst identity politics in the United States are those played for older white men. The original political identity group of this country.

Of course, poor white rednecks against BLM need to "get over" their vile racism. Meanwhile, the 0.1% keeps the few voters among the 99.9% successfully divided to the point that 100,000 votes can elect a racist-in-chief to lead a federal government now fully controlled by racist, sexist, homophobic puppets of the 0.1%.

Since the anger is righteous, these divisions are non-negotiable. Now everybody kneel to the Fascist Anthem.

[JackRiddler]

The increasingly frantic JR quoted:

Ooh, you got me. Adjectives! I'm done.

The increasingly senile coffin_dodger. The progressively cancerous? The soon-to-be leaving Rigorous Intuition forever? Etc. etc.

Pretty easy.

So, moron, I put the numbers I consider relevant up above. I also added a link to the 2012 numbers by state, which you can compare to the 2016 numbers.

Can you read them? Are they too high for you?

Oh, wait, WR has usefully provided the point in a format you may be able to understand. You can distinguish the relative sizes of the bars in the following, yeah? You get what they mean? Have you read charts before? You know what a chart is?



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[JackRiddler]

Why insist on being against the Donald from the outset? It does little else besides alienate you from his supporters. He said he'd govern for all Americans, and those who doubt it are in a weak position, because he just got voted in.

Actually, no. He just lost a close election by about 200,000 votes.

Of course, 130 million voters don't count.

The "president" is actually to be installed by the vote on December 19th of a group of 538 persons known as "electors." That, apparently, the con-man from my borough of Queens is going to win.

I insist on being against Trump from the beginning because I have been subjected to him since the late 1980s, and know well what he stands for. It is not your interests. I am against him because he said Mexicans are rapists, 11 million people should be rounded up into concentration camps and deported, a wall should be built on the border, and "Muslims" as such should be kept from entering the country. Also, the U.S. should occupy the oil-producing regions of Iraq. All elements of an explicitly racist and imperialist program. Apparently what you support. But your thinking seems to be the most racist thing one could possibly do is mention racism.

The best case scenario you can make out of this guy is that he is lying about his core statements. Nice wishful thinking.

By the way, if we had some kind of basic intelligence test for posting at RI we wouldn't have to deal with people seriously saying shit like this: "He said he'd govern for all Americans." Oh, okay then. Great. I gotta shut up if he said that.

People are not born TRump supporters, sir. That is a choice they make. They can unmake it.

In January 2015, Donald Trump had very few supporters.

By January 2020, it will be about as many.

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[coffin_dodger]

One last try. Please can you explain, specifically, how those figures and bar diagrams that you have presented above indicate how individual race elements voted by candidate.

I know this presents yet another opportunity for personal insults, to call into question my intellect and generally mock my contributions here, but your response is always such a fine example of everything I aspire not to be, it's worth it.