“The greed of the John Deere company is giving President Biden the perfect opportunity to win back working-class voters. All he needs to do is put up a major fight to stop Deere from shipping U.S.
According to the multiple panhandling notes I get every day from some ‘official’ Democrat, they desperately need voter money, my money, in order to win this election and keep the Senate. Always with a tone of feigned camaraderie, as if we’re best friends- as if we are in this together.
Unfortunately, as you so clearly show, protection of labor is not at all a factor in their idea of government, but labor does require little bits of wrapped candy to be thrown to it along the parade route.
All true but the alternative is even worse. Somehow progressives have to help fill the void by building a working-class movement that goes after corporate greed instead of immigrants. Thx for your comment.
Don’t know how to do it , but getting under 30’s into this (especially the recently educated) is a primary step- something called ‘labor’ is at best an intermediary goal for them…
A billionaire Democratic Party loyalist, attacking Trump for being a socialist for putting forth worker-supporting trade deals is all that really needs to be said on this situation. It's done. The Republicans are now the party of the working class, as messy as that is. Biden, who had a few pro-union policies and at least paid the unions lip service (but was certainly not the "most pro-union president ever," as 22-year-old Brooklyn laptoppers like to claim), was probably the last non-laptop class leader the Democrats will ever see (although it seemed that the laptop class bureaucrats were ultimately calling the shots). He had the old Democratic Party in the back of his brain, but his time, and his brain, are nearly gone.
Trump is boorish, loud, incoherent, unable to stay on message, and lacks the smooth speaking style that we've come to expect from politicians. I'd argue that this is a feature, not a bug, in his popularity. Normie voters were sick of smooth-talking, do-nothing politicians, and love Trump's seeming inability to even play the game. Trump arguably single-handedly decimated the neoconservative movement within the Republican Party. Note that the Bill Kristols, David Frums, Lincoln Projects, Joe Scarbroughs, Bushes, Cheneys and other neocon scum are the people most mad at Trump, and will do literally anything to get their party back—but they'll settle for co-ruling the Democratic Party. Trump's support by working class, middle class and middle American normies caused the Democratic blue-bloods and the laptop class to reflexively hate the working class and the middle class, making the Democrats the home of the neoconservatives and the neoliberals, who are more interested in holding power than good governance. (The over-educated Brooklyn "laptop left" has tried, hysterically, to rebrand themselves as the working class.)
Kamala's refusal to take a position on anything is because she's going to take whatever position the Democratic Party does, which will change constantly, depending on the day, or the need. She has no ethics or principals or ideas. She's a party hardliner, a candidate and party that's only position is "we must win (to 'save democracy' from the non-interventionist, pro-worker, anti-globalist rabble-rousing TV star)." Her slogan might as well be "Vote for My Suit."
That JD Vance doc that Ken Klippenstein leaked (and was unceremoniously and unfairly removed from X for) seemed to mostly paint Vance as having Bernie Sanders-style economic policy. No wonder Dem-friendly media didn't want to leak it! They then get to claim they're "being ethical" by refusing to release "hacked materials" (though does anyone believe that if it had salacious details about affairs it wouldn't have been released?).
I'm still put off by some of the cultural conservatism, and some of the idiotic commentary, of this "new right," and I question how well they'll be able to govern. But this marriage of left-leaning economic policy with more traditional cultural ideas has southern black guys and southwestern Hispanics and many Asians moving into the Republican Party, and is honestly more representative of the makeup of the working and middle classes than the Dems' "luxury beliefs." The south for years voted for the parties along strict racial lines, and this marriage of left-leaning economic policy and more conservative cultural issues has done what no one thought possible: unite white and black rednecks, who culturally really aren't very different, in the same party. It's messy, but it's happening, and I don't see it changing now.
(The real dealbreaker for this old leftie is what most of the "new progressive" media—and often, unfortunately the ACLU—ignores: the encroaching censorship, the horribly one-sided propagandist reporting, and the insane turn against free speech, and all civil liberties really, among nearly every single Democratic Party leader. Everyone from Hillary Clinton to John Kerry, to the editors of the New York Times and the New Yorker, are calling for the end of the First Amendment. That was always a key part of being on the left, as far as I'm concerned. There seems to be a push to forcibly manufacture total consensus, and guarantee permanent single-party rule, and punish those who disagree, digress or rebel, and it's frankly terrifying.)
Wow! Quite a response. The Cuban red-baiting might deserve it's own piece. What jumps out at me from what you've written is the shear chaos of working-class politics. The big fear I have is that an anti-immigrant party will emerge as in Germany that creates a real home for working-class folks. Your comment gives us a great deal to consider. many thanks.
I think whatever is happening with this working person realignment, throughout the west, inevitably goes hand in hand with new restrictions on immigration.
As much as I can't stand some of the nasty rhetoric around this issue with social media professional assholes, there's a lot of truth in the fact that unrestricted immigration drives wages down, and we seem to be creating a new permanent serf class while pseudo-progressives (falsely) claim it's all for humanitarian reasons. This used to be a common refrain among the American left. I recall Bernie Sanders, in interview with Ezra Klein in 2016, controversially flouting YIMBY bro consensus—which includes having housekeepers and yardworkers they can pay less than minimum wage to—that "open borders is a libertarian Koch brothers proposal," and that yes, it hurts workers.
With all of that chaos around Haitian immigrants in Ohio last month, one thing sticks with me: a factory owner there saying that the Haitian employees are "great. They don't call in sick." So, he's saying that migrant workers from a much poorer country, granted temporary work status and depending on their continued employment to stay in the US, and paid lower wages than could be paid to citizen workers, and living piled on top of each other during a housing crisis is a preferable situation? This is not a worker-friendly idea.
Italy's Giorgia Meloni, who is part of this new realignment (and is, or was, usually referred to as a "fascist") made some striking statements last week where she talked about France forcing their currency into, while stripping resources from, poor African countries, and then bringing the desperate, penniless refugees to Europe. Her solution is to let countries control their own resources and their people would have a reason to stay in their countries. She was fact-checked out the wazoo, and seems to have gotten some basic facts wrong, but it is true that the west is stripping the developing world of resources, using slave and child labor, and has a more than a hand in keeping parts of the world in continuous conflict. This all sounds like stuff from copies of Mother Jones and Adbusters, circa 1998, and not a "right wing" idea.
Trump also went on that tech bro All In podcast and said he wants more immigration from people getting high-end tech degrees in the States (he actually said he wants them to get automatic citizenship), so they don't start giant tech companies overseas after we educate them. He was forced to walk these statements back after the more anti-immigration parts of his coalition balked at this, but I think his immigration ideas are more complicated and that the heated rhetoric is to keep his base excited (and a lot of that rhetoric is just plain bad).
If everyone could cool the rhetoric and extreme name-calling—and apocalyptic pronouncements—and say what they really mean, we may be able to cut through this immigration morass, but nobody is interested in that. I just never thought, never in a million years, that the American "left" would angrily denounce protesting truckers and farmers and rail workers, while throwing whistleblowers and leakers and muck-racking journalists to the wolves.
The old New Deal party suffered an unfriendly takeover by the neolibs by the late '70s. I know because as a rank and file union activist and local campaign mgr, I fought them. Recently it was pointed out to me the likely connection to the Powell memo. Consider the Clinton deregulations. The huge anti-WTO Battle of Seattle in 1999 (I was there) was practice for suspending the Bill of Rights. The D elite has been solidly aligned with the econopaths for decades.
Their real feelings toward us, the declasse', made all too obvious by that "basket of deplorables" remark. The Ivy D party elite considers itself a meritocracy. Ala' The Best and Brightest, title of Halberstam's book about the same arrogance that produced the Vietnam war. Never mind that only 30% in the US have 4 year degrees--that's from anywhere in anything, so many are de facto working class. Thus the econ system is rigged against 80% of the population. It's fine for the 15-20% admin and professional class, the ones whom the Ds really represent. They don't worry about job loss, healthcare costs, or retirement. Although college professors and MDs are fast becoming underpaid, overworked assembly line workers, too.
All bad enough. Now add the neocons, Cheney trained acolytes running the Biden Dept of State. That he endorsed Harris means he's sure she will keep his gang at State. The Ivy D elite is intellectually capable, firm, and can be trusted to fight as many wars as necessary to preserve the neocon ideal of power as a unipolar empire. Whereas Trump and his loyal cultist cadres are unpredictable and uncontrollable. The political system has become a degenerate form of dual-aspect monism. No choice between evils when it's the same evil.
In the short term, wars are quite profitable. In the long run... Well, the tunnel vision neocon arrogance leads to nuclear destruction. The neolib econ system which considers devastation of human and natural resources to be mere unimportant externalities finally cannot extract anything more out of cheap labor and polluted ecosystems. Heads the neolib/neocon US and western Euro cabal wins, tails 90% in the US and the rest of the world loses. The 1/10th of 1% thinks they're going to ride it out on their megayachts and island refuges. A few minor eco-friendly bandaids might be applied, but as the real powers don't see any need to change anything substantial, the devastation will continue until the 90%, having no alternatives left, finally says NO. Presuming there are enough of us still alive to say no.
Les, I really feel for you. I understand why you are doing your best to talk to the Ds. After all, the Rs haven't listened to appeals to to common good since the Progressives a century ago. In econ discussions on other sites, I mention your book. Pointing out that while my labor experiences may be anecdotal, your arguments have years of research and solid stats to back them up. Alas it seems that being both factually and morally right are no longer enough.
Hear you loud and clear. We have to put our minds to work on how to build something new that reaches deep into the working class. I'll get on that more fully after the election. Needless to say, the current two parties could care less. Thanks for sticking with me.
According to the multiple panhandling notes I get every day from some ‘official’ Democrat, they desperately need voter money, my money, in order to win this election and keep the Senate. Always with a tone of feigned camaraderie, as if we’re best friends- as if we are in this together.
Unfortunately, as you so clearly show, protection of labor is not at all a factor in their idea of government, but labor does require little bits of wrapped candy to be thrown to it along the parade route.
All true but the alternative is even worse. Somehow progressives have to help fill the void by building a working-class movement that goes after corporate greed instead of immigrants. Thx for your comment.
Don’t know how to do it , but getting under 30’s into this (especially the recently educated) is a primary step- something called ‘labor’ is at best an intermediary goal for them…
Good piece as usual.
I should amend it with the fact that one of Mark Cuban's recent attacks on Trump is that he's a "socialist," more "socialist than Bernie Sanders" even! (https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/25/politics/video/mark-cuban-trump-is-more-socialist-than-bernie-sanders)
A billionaire Democratic Party loyalist, attacking Trump for being a socialist for putting forth worker-supporting trade deals is all that really needs to be said on this situation. It's done. The Republicans are now the party of the working class, as messy as that is. Biden, who had a few pro-union policies and at least paid the unions lip service (but was certainly not the "most pro-union president ever," as 22-year-old Brooklyn laptoppers like to claim), was probably the last non-laptop class leader the Democrats will ever see (although it seemed that the laptop class bureaucrats were ultimately calling the shots). He had the old Democratic Party in the back of his brain, but his time, and his brain, are nearly gone.
Trump is boorish, loud, incoherent, unable to stay on message, and lacks the smooth speaking style that we've come to expect from politicians. I'd argue that this is a feature, not a bug, in his popularity. Normie voters were sick of smooth-talking, do-nothing politicians, and love Trump's seeming inability to even play the game. Trump arguably single-handedly decimated the neoconservative movement within the Republican Party. Note that the Bill Kristols, David Frums, Lincoln Projects, Joe Scarbroughs, Bushes, Cheneys and other neocon scum are the people most mad at Trump, and will do literally anything to get their party back—but they'll settle for co-ruling the Democratic Party. Trump's support by working class, middle class and middle American normies caused the Democratic blue-bloods and the laptop class to reflexively hate the working class and the middle class, making the Democrats the home of the neoconservatives and the neoliberals, who are more interested in holding power than good governance. (The over-educated Brooklyn "laptop left" has tried, hysterically, to rebrand themselves as the working class.)
Kamala's refusal to take a position on anything is because she's going to take whatever position the Democratic Party does, which will change constantly, depending on the day, or the need. She has no ethics or principals or ideas. She's a party hardliner, a candidate and party that's only position is "we must win (to 'save democracy' from the non-interventionist, pro-worker, anti-globalist rabble-rousing TV star)." Her slogan might as well be "Vote for My Suit."
That JD Vance doc that Ken Klippenstein leaked (and was unceremoniously and unfairly removed from X for) seemed to mostly paint Vance as having Bernie Sanders-style economic policy. No wonder Dem-friendly media didn't want to leak it! They then get to claim they're "being ethical" by refusing to release "hacked materials" (though does anyone believe that if it had salacious details about affairs it wouldn't have been released?).
I'm still put off by some of the cultural conservatism, and some of the idiotic commentary, of this "new right," and I question how well they'll be able to govern. But this marriage of left-leaning economic policy with more traditional cultural ideas has southern black guys and southwestern Hispanics and many Asians moving into the Republican Party, and is honestly more representative of the makeup of the working and middle classes than the Dems' "luxury beliefs." The south for years voted for the parties along strict racial lines, and this marriage of left-leaning economic policy and more conservative cultural issues has done what no one thought possible: unite white and black rednecks, who culturally really aren't very different, in the same party. It's messy, but it's happening, and I don't see it changing now.
(The real dealbreaker for this old leftie is what most of the "new progressive" media—and often, unfortunately the ACLU—ignores: the encroaching censorship, the horribly one-sided propagandist reporting, and the insane turn against free speech, and all civil liberties really, among nearly every single Democratic Party leader. Everyone from Hillary Clinton to John Kerry, to the editors of the New York Times and the New Yorker, are calling for the end of the First Amendment. That was always a key part of being on the left, as far as I'm concerned. There seems to be a push to forcibly manufacture total consensus, and guarantee permanent single-party rule, and punish those who disagree, digress or rebel, and it's frankly terrifying.)
Wow! Quite a response. The Cuban red-baiting might deserve it's own piece. What jumps out at me from what you've written is the shear chaos of working-class politics. The big fear I have is that an anti-immigrant party will emerge as in Germany that creates a real home for working-class folks. Your comment gives us a great deal to consider. many thanks.
I think whatever is happening with this working person realignment, throughout the west, inevitably goes hand in hand with new restrictions on immigration.
As much as I can't stand some of the nasty rhetoric around this issue with social media professional assholes, there's a lot of truth in the fact that unrestricted immigration drives wages down, and we seem to be creating a new permanent serf class while pseudo-progressives (falsely) claim it's all for humanitarian reasons. This used to be a common refrain among the American left. I recall Bernie Sanders, in interview with Ezra Klein in 2016, controversially flouting YIMBY bro consensus—which includes having housekeepers and yardworkers they can pay less than minimum wage to—that "open borders is a libertarian Koch brothers proposal," and that yes, it hurts workers.
With all of that chaos around Haitian immigrants in Ohio last month, one thing sticks with me: a factory owner there saying that the Haitian employees are "great. They don't call in sick." So, he's saying that migrant workers from a much poorer country, granted temporary work status and depending on their continued employment to stay in the US, and paid lower wages than could be paid to citizen workers, and living piled on top of each other during a housing crisis is a preferable situation? This is not a worker-friendly idea.
Italy's Giorgia Meloni, who is part of this new realignment (and is, or was, usually referred to as a "fascist") made some striking statements last week where she talked about France forcing their currency into, while stripping resources from, poor African countries, and then bringing the desperate, penniless refugees to Europe. Her solution is to let countries control their own resources and their people would have a reason to stay in their countries. She was fact-checked out the wazoo, and seems to have gotten some basic facts wrong, but it is true that the west is stripping the developing world of resources, using slave and child labor, and has a more than a hand in keeping parts of the world in continuous conflict. This all sounds like stuff from copies of Mother Jones and Adbusters, circa 1998, and not a "right wing" idea.
Trump also went on that tech bro All In podcast and said he wants more immigration from people getting high-end tech degrees in the States (he actually said he wants them to get automatic citizenship), so they don't start giant tech companies overseas after we educate them. He was forced to walk these statements back after the more anti-immigration parts of his coalition balked at this, but I think his immigration ideas are more complicated and that the heated rhetoric is to keep his base excited (and a lot of that rhetoric is just plain bad).
If everyone could cool the rhetoric and extreme name-calling—and apocalyptic pronouncements—and say what they really mean, we may be able to cut through this immigration morass, but nobody is interested in that. I just never thought, never in a million years, that the American "left" would angrily denounce protesting truckers and farmers and rail workers, while throwing whistleblowers and leakers and muck-racking journalists to the wolves.
The old New Deal party suffered an unfriendly takeover by the neolibs by the late '70s. I know because as a rank and file union activist and local campaign mgr, I fought them. Recently it was pointed out to me the likely connection to the Powell memo. Consider the Clinton deregulations. The huge anti-WTO Battle of Seattle in 1999 (I was there) was practice for suspending the Bill of Rights. The D elite has been solidly aligned with the econopaths for decades.
Their real feelings toward us, the declasse', made all too obvious by that "basket of deplorables" remark. The Ivy D party elite considers itself a meritocracy. Ala' The Best and Brightest, title of Halberstam's book about the same arrogance that produced the Vietnam war. Never mind that only 30% in the US have 4 year degrees--that's from anywhere in anything, so many are de facto working class. Thus the econ system is rigged against 80% of the population. It's fine for the 15-20% admin and professional class, the ones whom the Ds really represent. They don't worry about job loss, healthcare costs, or retirement. Although college professors and MDs are fast becoming underpaid, overworked assembly line workers, too.
All bad enough. Now add the neocons, Cheney trained acolytes running the Biden Dept of State. That he endorsed Harris means he's sure she will keep his gang at State. The Ivy D elite is intellectually capable, firm, and can be trusted to fight as many wars as necessary to preserve the neocon ideal of power as a unipolar empire. Whereas Trump and his loyal cultist cadres are unpredictable and uncontrollable. The political system has become a degenerate form of dual-aspect monism. No choice between evils when it's the same evil.
In the short term, wars are quite profitable. In the long run... Well, the tunnel vision neocon arrogance leads to nuclear destruction. The neolib econ system which considers devastation of human and natural resources to be mere unimportant externalities finally cannot extract anything more out of cheap labor and polluted ecosystems. Heads the neolib/neocon US and western Euro cabal wins, tails 90% in the US and the rest of the world loses. The 1/10th of 1% thinks they're going to ride it out on their megayachts and island refuges. A few minor eco-friendly bandaids might be applied, but as the real powers don't see any need to change anything substantial, the devastation will continue until the 90%, having no alternatives left, finally says NO. Presuming there are enough of us still alive to say no.
Les, I really feel for you. I understand why you are doing your best to talk to the Ds. After all, the Rs haven't listened to appeals to to common good since the Progressives a century ago. In econ discussions on other sites, I mention your book. Pointing out that while my labor experiences may be anecdotal, your arguments have years of research and solid stats to back them up. Alas it seems that being both factually and morally right are no longer enough.
Hear you loud and clear. We have to put our minds to work on how to build something new that reaches deep into the working class. I'll get on that more fully after the election. Needless to say, the current two parties could care less. Thanks for sticking with me.