Democratic Party still bleeding White voters?

[TNF]

TNF, class warfare politics (I mean real class warfare politics, rather than cosmetic or lip service class warfare politics), just doesn't work in a global economy.

Yes, businesses and middle class jobs can easily "go where they are wanted" today in a way that they just couldn't from 1930-1970.  And US policy really has very little to do with why things have changed.

That's not entirely true. Capital became more or less mobile after World War II, with every subsequent administration making it easier for American corporations to do business abroad. The Kennedy administration was probably a leader in this field, and even as early as the 1960s you started to see a lot of job losses in the manufacturing sector as a result of some early offshoring combined with technological change. That said, most of it was masked by an influx in federal spending on armaments throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. When spending was cut back and capital controls dismantled, it became easier to accelerate the process, which really hit home during the Carter years.

I don't think it's fair to say that US policy has nothing to do with it, given that since the end of World War II, the role of the United States has been that as international protector of the capitalist system. Every move the United States made to rebuild the economies of Western Europe and Japan, to push for greater liberalization of trade, etc. has been a calculated move to restore the waning power of Capital during the 'Great Compromise' and weaken the international working class movement. That's always been the end game, and it went ahead big time when the USSR and the 'people's democracies' of Eastern Europe collapsed in the late 80s/early 90s. If you think that neoliberalism is anything but a project by the ruling class to reassert the class power it lost to labor between the 1940s and 1970s, you need to do more reading on it, because that's exactly what it was.

The 'Great Compromise' was not the norm and everything else the aberration, it was the aberration. We cannot go back to where we were, but we can build something even better.

[Beet]

TNF is making some good points in here.

[Torie]

TNF is making some good points in here.

Commie! I will read TNF's posts more carefully later, particularly now that you have "blessed them" a bit.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

TNF, class warfare politics (I mean real class warfare politics, rather than cosmetic or lip service class warfare politics), just doesn't work in a global economy.

I disagree. A genuine politics of class struggle is an internationalist politics, because the working classes of every country have more in common with one another than they do the respective ruling classes of their countries. Past approaches will not work, that I will concede to you. We cannot, for example, think that we have any shot of restoring the 'Great Compromise' of the 1940s-1970s, because we never will. The only solution for a genuine class politics is to reach across national borders and construct a truly international working class party that can combat Capital anywhere and everywhere. Capital is mobile and organized on an international basis, and so must be the working class.

I don't think that's impossible, either. Liberals might because they don't believe in the agency of the working class, but the historical record proves them wrong. Time after time, workers from many different countries, speaking many different languages, of many different colors and religions and ethnic backgrounds, have come together and influenced politics in a big way. What was the CIO but a miniature version of what I'm proposing here? If a group of half-literate, half-starved immigrants from every corner of the globe (along with the native born) could get together and bring corporations like General Motors to the bargaining table 80 years ago, who's to say that we, in our more connected society, with fewer international barriers between us, couldn't do the same to Google, Microsoft, etc?

The identitarian struggle benefits no one but the ruling classes of each country. They have a vested interest in the division of the population on racial, ethnic, or religious lines because it helps them maintain their rule over the mass of people. In the old days, they did that with Jim Crow and the exclusion of non-white immigrants. Today, they do it by manipulating our better impulses, our inclinations toward anti-racism. They tell us that whites and blacks and browns and everyone else and in between cannot ever understand one another, because the experience of that particular group overrides any universality the human experience might bring. And because of that, they tell us that any struggles we engage in must be the struggle of the oppressed or marginalized 'community' or individual, who cannot hope to ever really form lasting bonds with others who may be from a different background than they, because they're too racist or too sexist or just don't get it.

And all the while they do that, they also deliberately stoke resentment among other segments of the population. Deprived of full-time employment, living wages, and basic access to the fundamentals of life, is it any surprise that many white Americans would turn to racist or sexist or other kinds of conspiratorial forms of thinking to help them understand why they're making less than their parents did, why they're losing their home, why they're children are growing up as poor as the children of black and brown parents? Combine this with the fact that you have  hyper-segregated society, in which when most white people say they 'have black friends' they're literally meaning one or two people, and you have a recipe for unmitigated hatred, misunderstanding, and the very kind of inability to understand the other that the ruling class tells us already exists.

This is exactly how they want it. They don't want us to go to the same movie theaters, to visit the same shopping malls, to go to the same schools, to eat at the same places, to fall in love with one another and have children together. Because if we do, they know that every barrier that they have thrown up to keep us apart, to confuse us, and to rule over us, begins to shake at its foundations, and they know what that means for them.

Who is "they"?  It can't be the capitalists, who spend billions of dollars in advertising every year to get us all to visit the same theaters and shopping malls and restaurants.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Who is "they"?

Snowball the pig or whatever other mythical bad guys the commies like to pretend covertly run the world. Apparently the unifying bond of wanting other people's stuff will unite "us" all against "them." They being the rich, and "rich" being anyone with more money than yourself. Thing is, compared to the poor around the globe, our poor are "rich" by that definition. 

[CountryClassSF]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Amen.

[King]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Amen.

Avoiding the issue is not a solution, and comparing ourselves to the world standing is a lame argument that can be used to justify anything. Let's have a 100% maximum earnings tax on millionaires because $1,000,000 USD can go a long way in Guyana so the rich shouldn't complain. Let's expand NSA surveillance, you wouldn't be complaining if you were North Korean! Two child restriction seems fair, after all China only allows one!

The simple fact is Republicans need to produce a valuable plan to provide advancing infrastructure for the working poor: education so they aren't stuck in dead end jobs, health insurance so they aren't derailed by acts of God, and means to get somewhere. Pretending the working poor have it already isn't doing anything. Hell, even if you go with the narrative that they are being lazy, they don't even have a stated plan to get them to get them off the couch.

Maybe if we think hard enough, it can be done without spending more money and raising taxes. But we aren't even going to think about it, are we? What a joke.

It's really quite stunning how devoid of solutions the GOP is right now. It's a huge contradiction. They speak like the challenger yet act like the incumbent.

GOP opinion of the USA: "Everything is going to sh**t!"
GOP's plan for the USA: "Don't try to do anything! Everything we have is fine!"

[CountryClassSF]

I'm for fixing infrastructure. However, can't do it with unions running the show.

[RR1997]

there's a clear hard floor of artists, musicians, vegans, social workers, mommy bloggers, standup comics, alternative medicine practictoners, enviro activists,  and gays that prevent the GOP from going much further with whites

Don't forget Jews, lawyers, people of Middle-Eastern descent, liberal arts majors, professors, vegetarians (you only said vegans), and Atlas posters.