I don’t think too many people really question the culture of their hometown until they’ve had an opportunity to live someplace else for a while. I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, an affluent Ivy League town where education is highly prized and raw intelligence is valued above most other human attributes.
The first flaw I detected in our culture was snobbery. A little while later I began to diagnose this as an undervaluation of other virtues like hard work, common sense, and compassion and empathy.
Eventually, I came back around to a more sympathetic view. It was understandable and basically inevitable that the people of Princeton would place a lot of value on the things they invested in. It’s hard to look at academic achievement as something important and praiseworthy and not to look askance at people who don’t live a life of the mind. It’s really no different from the skepticism an art student faces when they’re living in a family of auto mechanics or landscapers. People have a hard time seeing the point in living a life that doesn’t make sense to them. There’s a strong temptation to dehumanize people whose value system is completely different, especially when they place very little value on the things you hold most dear.
I’ve never fully escaped the Princeton value system, even as I’ve spent my adult life questioning it and constantly reappraising it. I have a very hard time abiding ignorance and have almost no patience for sloppy reasoning. As hard as I’ve worked to see the dignity of more working class cultures and even to dedicate myself to a politics centered on helping people cope with and advance out of difficult or modest beginnings, I sometime slip into feeling contempt for people who are not very intelligent.
I don’t excuse myself for this, but at the same time there is no way for me to fully overcome the consequences of placing a value on knowing things, like basic history and having at least a cursory understanding of the current status of scientific knowledge.
Where I live now, on the outskirts of the Main Line Philadelphia suburbs, things are not all that different from where I grew up across the river. The area is studded with elite liberal arts colleges and filled with professionals with advanced degrees. As the Democratic Party becomes less and less affiliated with the white working class, and the Republican Party becomes more of an anti-intellectual movement than a sign of status, this area is transforming rapidly from one of the most reliably Republican areas of the country into the base of the Democratic Party in the Keystone State.
In this area of the country, it simply hurts people’s brains to listen to the president talk. Take, for example, this statement Trump made during a rambling speech on Saturday at the CPAC conference in Washington DC.
The president also mocked the Green New Deal’s climate-related provisions, deriding the plan as promoting “no planes, no energy.”
“When the wind stops blowing, that’s the end of your electric,” Trump said, before launching into an impression. “ ‘Darling, is the wind blowing today? I’d like to watch television, darling.’ ”
The more the Republican Party embraces this kind of willful stupidity, the harder it is for them to be taken seriously by people who value education, and that means that the suburbs are becoming inhospitable for them even in places like Texas. As a result, the GOP is already investing a lot of energy and money in the suburbs around Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. They saw a massive weakening of their position in those areas in the 2018 midterms, and they’re not sure what to make of it.
Next November will be the real test of whether midterm results were a flash in the pan — a combination of [Beto] O’Rourke’s popular Senate candidacy and a traditional midterm setback for the president’s party, or signs of bigger headwinds for Texas Republicans.
“I still think people are trying to decide how much of [the midterm results] were idiosyncratic,” said Republican campaign strategist Jerod Patterson, “or how much is structural changes in electorate.”
But Texas Republicans acknowledge that they have to win over voters like women, minorities and others that President Donald Trump has alienated and who are moving to Texas towns.
I’m no expert on Texas but I do understand the mindset of highly educated people, and I’m fairly certain that Lone Star Republicans are missing a big part of the puzzle if they think their only problem is women and minorities.
It might be easier for them to diagnose this if they more carefully examined where their strength is growing. They’re doing well in places that do not value education very highly and where people do not immediately suffer debilitating brain cramps every time they hear the Republicans say scientifically illiterate things. It’s true that Trump speaks differently from traditional politicians, and a lot of people enjoy hearing him taunt and defame people and institutions that they feel have let them down. They don’t like people who lord it over them either because they have more money or more education. Many of these folks voted for the Democrats in the past because they were the party of the working class, but they’re leaving to join with Trump because of his anti-elitist rhetoric.
But where there’s a push there is also a pull, and the same jarring rhetoric is repelling educated folks who used to vote for the GOP because they stood for low taxes, strong national defense, and were tough on the urban crime many suburbanites had fled in search of a more stable and secure future for their children.
The Republicans are losing the suburbs because they’ve become the stupid party.
If you think about this for two seconds, it makes sense. The Democrats appealed to working folks because they supported labor unions and stood up for worker’s rights. They defended people against predatory employers and exploitative industries that prey on people facing economic hardship. The Republicans don’t defend working folks at all, so the appeal has to be based on feeling. It’s values-based, but the values are populist primarily in an anti-intellectual, anti-elite sense. It’s no longer about class resentment related to poor pay, poor housing and poor working conditions. It’s about cultural resentment against people who think they’re better because they’re smarter, better-educated, more cosmopolitan, more “enlightened.”
Republicans can’t remain with one foot rooted in Wall Street and the other foot rooted in the coal and oil fields and still be a worker’s party unless they work overtime to fuel and exploit this resentment. The difficulty is that this makes suburbanites want to Clorox their cerebral cortex whenever they see an Oklahoma senator take a snowball onto the Senate floor to explain that climate change is a myth.
There’s a lesson here for the Democrats, too. They’re beginning to lose their working class roots. They’re beginning to have disdain for people who don’t get a brain cramp when they hear Trump speak. I recognize the snobbery and lack of empathy because I grew up with it. It’s something that must be overcome. Just as the Republicans are failing in the suburbs, the Democrats are failing in many of their old strongholds. This isn’t a political realignment that should just be accepted by the left.
On the other hand, the people who should lead the way for the Democrats in the areas where they are weakening, are the Democrats who live in those communities. Cultural elites and geographical outsiders aren’t good messengers and they frankly don’t get and can’t properly represent people who don’t share some of their core values.
As far as I am concerned, there are no communities that don’t need representation from the left, and the left can’t be true to itself if it abandons working folks in any place or at any time. When places or organizations get too intellectualized, they do become snobbish and elitist. The Democrats need to fight against that trend just as the Republicans, if they want to hold onto Texas, need to quit dumbing things down to a Louie Gohmert level.
It is an aside to your otherwise excellent post, Booman, but if you don’t value compassion and empathy, you are evil. That is the core issue with the GOP. The anti-intellectualism is bad, but it’s really just an extension of that core fault.
Empathy is a neutral value. Value it because it has utility. You dont need to understand how people feel or their experiences, you just need to be willing to help and more importantly -listen to them on how best to do that-
If you’re saying empathy alone is of little value, I agree. It must result in real efforts and they must include a willingness to listen if there’s any significant hope of providing something worthwhile. I wouldn’t remotely call it a neutral value, however. To me, it’s at the very heart of what it means to be human.
Fair enough, but imo empathy can be deployed to manipulate people more effectively.
I agree, at least in the short term. But politics is inherently short term. Next vote, next election.
In terms of our deeper sense of satisfaction, sincerity is essential. If we play games they come back to bite us. There are a hell of a lot of really dissatisfied “successful” people. The monster occupying the White House could be poster child for this notion. Has anyone ever seen a more miserable rich person?
No amount of short-term manipulation can overcome the universal law that what we reap we sow. The mistake is in thinking ourselves separate from others. Deep down, we know we’re not and if we cause misery we find ourselves miserable.
Agree 100%, and this is why I believe the democrats need to return to a focus on labor. Even these high-brow suburbanites for the most part work for a living, though they are upper-middle class. Valuing labor, equal pay, living wage, access to health care and shoring up social security.
“Valuing labor, equal pay, living wage, access to health care and shoring up social security.”
Those are all parts of the Dem platform. I see Dems working every day to try to make all that happen. I also see lots of people who work hard to make a living as members of the Dem party. Just because the Rs cast us as intellectuals and elites doesn’t mean that’s who we are. I think BooMan’s East Coast upbringing blinds him to how Dems in the rest of the country view things. Most of us are anything but elite. We still possess critical thinking skills and prize a good education.
It is equally important to help Dems feel valued, especially in red districts where it’s hard to be visible and not feel intimidated or shunned. As long as we stick to our values and work to improve in areas where we need work (racism), then we’ll be fine.
Tien Le, just curious, where do you live? Because where I live (Milwaukee WI), Boo’s characterization of the Democrats is accurate and his analysis of their shortcomings is on point. The Wisconsin DP is led and controlled by a narrow and fairly insular group of people whose most salient characteristic is their refusal to listen to criticism from anyone outside their group. This is a situation that has developed over quite a few years, and as it has, the DP has lost (or more accurately, failed to rebuild) a lot of its constituency.
As a result most of the left (specifically, the left that thinks electoral politics is a worthwhile investment of time) in Wisconsin is trying to figure out how to work with the Democrats, because there’s no point in antagonizing them, while we build organizations outside of them.
Quoting from the post:
Here, it’s past the tipping point. Effectively there are no Democrats living in those communities any more.
VidaLoca writes (Emphasis mine):
.
Sounds familiar, VidaLoca. Much like the cadre of DNC “loyalists” here who spend an enormous amount of time demonizing those who offer criticisms of their centrist approaches. And…at the highest levels of the Democratic Party, the old-line “pragmatic” Dems who still control the DNC.
Only…the DNC-ers are a little more…subtle. More practiced in their diversionary tactics. They still have their “private/public” positions, but they use their public statements very well to camouflage their real intentions.
More:
Sounds very—O’Rourke-ish/Sanders-ish. Meanwhile the AOC crowd is more about getting right in the faces of the neocentrists.
We’ll see how it all shakes out.
Soon, I think.
AG
Arthur Gilroy is in vicious opposition to the policy platforms which O’Rourke, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are working to pass. He wants to “BREAK UP THE U.S.!!!” and do away with all Federal civil rights protections and social welfare programs. Beto, Bernie and Alexandria want to grow and strengthen Federal protections and programs.
Why, just yesterday Arthur Gilroy defended his long held view that the vast majority of African-Americans were better off under Jim Crow laws.
We’re not going to take his regressive bullshit any more. Every time he attempts to split this community while hiding his regressive agenda, he will be called out.
Every time.
Keep calling.
The answers are approaching posthaste, and they are not going to favor your neocentrist bullshit.
Watch.
AG
Geez. Give it a rest.
A few weeks ago, Arthur wrote here that he is ready to come here and elsewhere to campaign against the 2020 Democratic Party nominees for President and other offices.
In the Age of Trump and an increasingly radicalized conservative movement and Republican Party, it does damage to this community and our movement to allow someone with truly regressive politics to attempt to lie about his motives for hammering at wedges in our Movement and Party.
If you want the United States to break up and have a host of policy preferences and social views which are gleefully put forth by Fox News, you can’t claim to be supporting this community’s interest in respectful debate by criticizing the Democratic Party from the left. There is absolutely a good faith argument to be made that we should organize to force the Democratic Party to move to the left. Arthur Gilroy is not making that good faith argument; he’s attempting to appropriate good faith arguments for his own regressive goals.
New people come to this community all the time, whether they become commenters or not. It’s important for them to understand where AG is coming from. Arthur would hide his preference for Ron Paul’s policies and viewpoints if he were allowed to do so.
And that is precisely why this will not be given a rest. AG’s track record for something close to a decade and a half is one of divisiveness, rather than earnest criticism. That’s the game to him, near as I can figure. More and more I am viewing whomever he supports within the Democratic Party as just another shiny object that will be discarded once he becomes bored or disappointed. Happened with HRC. Would expect that will eventually happen with such diverse and to an extent divergent politicians as O’Rourke and AOC. A shame too, as these are real human beings with real agendas, and in the case of AOC a chance to effect some real change in the near term. No telling who the next shiny object will be, but there will be one. As long as few folks here talk to one another and traffic goes down further, it’s all good, eh? The one person who could put a stop to it won’t, and there are no effective means to shut someone like AG up. So best that can be done is to make sure AG’s track record here follows him around like the very noxious fart that it is.
Don – Thank you for your earnest and civil response.
centerfielddj – Thank you for your earnest and civil response.
I’ve read your posts and if it’s your suggestions being ignored… well it’s hard to argue with that
I live on the West Coast now, prior to that in cowboy country. None of what you’re describing fits with my experience. That’s fine…just saying it makes it hard for me to grasp the big divide between working class and intellectuals. It might be that distinction isn’t as pronounced out West; that’s purely speculation on my part.
Its a white working class thing imo. If you’re a minority being blinkered like that will get you fucked over real real fast.
Yes, from what I’ve been told I believe the situation is very different on the West Coast (esp. California) than it is here.
Martin’s point:
plays out here all the time, and as the Democratic Party’s main base has shrunk to Dane County (Madison) and Milwaukee County (in fact, just parts of Milwaukee County) it has become more pronounced. For what it’s worth, that analysis is central to Thomas Frank’s “What Happened to Kansas” which got a lot of this right back in 2004. And the analysis of class resentment has been extensively developed w/r/t Wisconsin in Katherine Cramer’s “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.”
The DPW has no excuse for being unaware of all of this. Their failure to act on it is troubling but it can’t be changed and we’ve lost the motivation to argue with them anymore.
RE: actual title of Frank’s excellent analysis
I live in north San Diego County and it might be that distinction is an east coast thing.
I also grimaced reading `working class culture’ with `not very intelligent’ in the same sentence. Not out west.
.
What I can say is that those of us who were knocking on doors in one of the more hostile territories for Democratic candidates and the party was that our focus was on very basic issues: increasing minimum wage (was on the ballot), shoring up social security, more affordable healthcare, etc. If you were to look at the backgrounds of activists and candidates in some of these smaller cities and rural areas, I’d imagine you’ll encounter a number of folks who live paycheck to paycheck, who may or may not have any education beyond a high school diploma, and if old enough are facing the very real possibility that the social security and medicare systems we’ve all paid into will be taken from them before they can even collect what is theirs – let alone those just entering the workforce. I understand the party platform as one of offering a fair shake, something many of us have not experienced in ages, if ever. As an aside, I’d love to see those at a national level support those of us at the state and local levels – including states and localities that may provide much in the way of immediate electoral gratification. Something along a 50-state approach is needed, desperately, and it can be done without appealing to crass racism or other isms that the GOP wallows in like hogs in the mud after the rains stop.
We have had a slow rolling transformation in our economy. Very broadly speaking, the manufacturing jobs from previous generations have been replaced by service jobs. There will be a terrific and growing need for service workers in upcoming generations. For one of many examples, we don’t have anywhere close to enough trained health care workers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and all other States for their aging populations.
There is nothing about service workers and the work they do which inherently makes their labor of lower value than the labor of workers at manufacturing plants. The concept that “we need our middle class manufacturing jobs back!” is a load of baloney which Americans have broadly grown to accept. We should lead the way to get the American people to stop accepting this lie.
We know that Republicans are heavily invested in helping employers in the service industry keep their workers in poverty-level compensation and unsafe, demeaning conditions. There is a great opportunity for the Democratic Party and our coalition to walk through this cultural door the GOP and its coalition will continue to leave open.
The Democratic Party needs to organize more effectively with the Labor movement to make all service jobs middle class jobs with safe working conditions and dignified treatment. Passing laws and regulations which help service workers gain collective bargaining rights and legal representation is only one of many ways our Movement can achieve this.
The failure by the 111th Congress to pass any part of the Employee Free Choice Act was a major failure and an opportunity lost. We should absolutely push the Democratic Party harder and more effectively on this issue, so we can continue to pass EFCA-related Laws in the States and to lay the ground to pass Federal laws after Democrats regain control of the Legislative and Executive branches.
“We have had a slow rolling transformation in our economy. Very broadly speaking, the manufacturing jobs from previous generations have been replaced by service jobs. There will be a terrific and growing need for service workers in upcoming generations.”
All the more reason for two things: first, a $15 minimum wage, not in stages over the next 5 to 7 years when at the end the value of it will still be far behind inflation, but now.
The other is affordable health care, preferably, IMO, allowing anyone who wants to buy into Medicare.
We’ve allowed business to strip service jobs of all value and dignity. I’m old enough to remember being a cashier at a grocery store was a union job that came with union wages and protections. There’s no reason these jobs cannot have similar benefits.
Almost all oppositions to minimum wage laws which have been successfully moved have included lots of fact-free claims by the business community. It’s been my job at times to help minimum wage campaigns overcome well-financed campaign bullshit from corporations.
But it’s hard for me to imagine how true small business owners with marginal profits could absorb an immediate near doubling of the wages for their lowest paid workers. There has to be a phasing in of wage increases to get to where we need to be. I don’t want the Wal-Marts and McDonalds of the world to corner even more of the service market.
The best minimum wage Laws passed in recent years have phased in their increases way quicker than the rate of inflation for many years in a row, and include an annual COLA for all years after the flat minimum wage gets to $15 or more.
This doesn’t mean all low wage workers will have to wait an unpleasantly long time to get a living wage. Minimum wage laws are far from the only way we can raise the living standards for all workers. A most efficient way to do so is through collective bargaining with rules for organizing and contract negotiations which give workers real power.
Do we know how many jobs that effects though? Look at Washington, D.C. Look at how the City Council, which is under Democratic control, rolled back what the voters voted for. Imagine if all that many the restaurant lobby spent “lobbying” went to the workers instead. It’s why I don’t believe businesses claims at all. They can afford it. Don’t let them lie to you. Also, look at Amazon in Seattle. They made Seattle City Council, and the shit mayor, look like the craven assholes they are.
Have you considered that those small firms should simply disappear rather than pay shit wages? They may never be economically viable and they live off the poverty of the poorest. There will always be some excuse to not raise people out of poverty.
I agree that a business model which depends on being able to pay your workforce truly poverty wages and other compensation is immoral. I don’t agree that businesses which currently pay poverty wages should be made to disappear in a broad sense by an immediate and extraordinarily impactful policy change. I’ve just written a further explanation of my views on this issue elsewhere on this thread; hope you find it worth considering.
How much money are we talking about anyway? It doesn’t impress me as an earth shattering sum. Maybe it is, in which case I would be forced to agree and settle on a slower roll out. Do you have any idea?
In terms of acknowledging political and economic reality you have to phase in those reforms so that you don’t just dump a system shock into the market. But yes, I think the mythical “mom and pop” business that makes its existence off the back of undercompensated workers does not really deserve to exist.
I live just outside a small rural town. The number of small family-owned businesses is one reason we settled here. The merchants are your neighbors, become your friends and participate in the town’s governance, as well as its social and philanthropic activities. They are slowing disappearing, partly because younger family members don’t want to take over but also because no one wants to buy them. Long hours and hard to make money. It is not an evil business plan but increasing competition from big box stores that keeps down wages. I am told small businesses often cannot buy at wholesale for a price below Walmart’s retail. I have also read that Walmart controls its supply chain, often squeezing manufacturers and suppliers to the point they can barely make money themselves. But when 100% of their business has become Walmart, what do they do?
So where are we headed? Total domination by Walmart? Along with Amazon? Low wages, many part time workers without any benefits, often given huge government subsidies and tax benefits and profits leaving the community to enrich the already uber wealthy? Even representatives of other national variety store chains like Ben Franklin and Woolworth (late 90’s) then Alco and Shopko (Shopko just a few months ago) pulled out of our county due to company-wide economic problems, which I am assuming were related to national competition with Walmart and perhaps now Amazon as well.
What I see developing are monopolies aided by government tax loopholes–Amazon paying zero or -1% taxes in the past 2 years–or taxpayer subsidies, with NY not the only one for Amazon. How many small businesses get this kind of taxpayer support?
Booman has written about these monopoly businesses. It is time to reign them in a bit. In NY they gave up 25000 new jobs. It is a tough call, IMO, since so many people like them. They are certainly convenient. Small businesses can no longer compete and perhaps it is time for them to get out. I doubt most of them can even pay themselves enough anymore let alone hiring others.
Taxpayer cost for each NY job? Something like $120k. That’s not fair competition but a thumb on the scale that disfavors small businesses. Same with Amazon paying 0 taxes and -1% taxes in the last 2 years.
American consumers are now so focused on price that they seem to have forgotten about other aspects of retailing such as quality and diversity of the merchandise, as well as service.
What people here are doing is ordering online now that it’s become harder to find what you want locally. That doesn’t strike me as a good solution for our community. And a pretty energy inefficient way to distribute products.
Yeah they were paying a bundle of money to get Amazon and they even tried to change Bezos mind after he backed out from the bad publicity. Nothing fair about it. Reminds me of cities that build stadiums for their beloved football teams.
Last Christmas I bought all the kiddies on line at Amazon and had them delivered direct. I got my selections from all my grand daughters who even gave me pictures from the Amazon web side – all toys for young kids. I was super convenient. And come Christmas they gave me the wrapped presents to give to the kids. Nice, I gotta say. No more shopping around Toys r Us or in Walmart.
I really think it will be hard to change it now. Did you see the tv documentary on Amazon? Pretty smart fella and now the richest man in the world.
My spouse is something of an expert on taxpayer support of billionaire owners of sports teams by subsidizing their stadia. As well as other subsidies for big business. Bezos is smart because he’s gamed the system. This is not the kind of smart I admire.
You still haven’t responded to my point that the thumb is on the scale when it comes to big vs small business.
. . . $15 minimum wage phase-in over multiple years: by the time it’s in effect, it’s no longer “$15” except nominally, its value has been eroded by inflation.
And even if
. . . that helps, but does not fully eliminate the erosion-by-inflation problem. If $15 is a minimal living wage now — which is the typical argument for that specific number — then it won’t any longer be a living wage by the time it’s been phased in over multiple years.
The last part of your quote above, though, suggests an easy — elegant, even — solution to this problem: apply a COLA during the phase-in period, too. E.g., if a $15 min. wage law is passed this year on the assumption that’s a minimum living wage this year, but legislated to phase in over, say five years (e.g., $9 this year, to 10 in 2020, 12 in 2021, 13 in ’22, 14 in ’23, and 15 in ’24); then instead of $10 next year, it’s $10 plus an adjustment for inflation over the preceding year; then that becomes the basis for an inflation-adjusted increase the next year of the phase-in; and so on. (For practical reasons, including smoothing out variability and typical lags in calculating inflation indices, basing the adjustments on something like the rolling-average annual inflation over the preceding five years would probably make even more sense.)
I concede that inflation erodes the value of a multi-year phase up to $15 an hour. It by no means eliminates the value of those increased wages.
Again, I’ve been involved in State campaigns where my organization has worked with larger coalitions to help argue successfully against the bogus claims made by business communities that yearly $1 increases in State minimum wages would close small businesses. $1 wage increases in these States have been and are increases ranging slightly above and below 10% for many years in a row, way above the rate of inflation, for many years.
I’ve also taken the time to point out that State and Federal minimum wage increases are only one tool in our policy tool kit. There are other more efficient and targeted ways for workers to not only win increased wages, but better health insurance, retirement security and safe, dignified working conditions as well. Minimum wage increases offer none of those additional things.
In addition to these points, I’m asking for consideration of these things:
I am not completely ignorant of the problems with raising the minimum wage, and there are schemes to deal with it, all the way from gov financing to a gradual increase. And I suspect your ideas or others like them will be implemented, if we ever get to that point.
Nonetheless, I remain on the other side of the issue. There will be a one time inflation but I think not as much as might be believed, since the median income is well above $15 an hour. We will see increases in hamburgers and much more for jobs like lawn mowing and personal service.
Before I say too much I would want to see what MMT economists and others have to say about it, since I have found them to be quite good. Until that time I will simply be stubborn about it. The poor need our attention now and not after years of implementing what we can fix nearly in real time if there is a will to do it.
This may be the ideal time to implement the federal job guarantee to ensure unemployment does not increase during the transition. And that program could do much to bring far better care to the aging and those in nursng homes, as well – at least until the transition is complete. Something like AOCs green new deal would also ease us into a new reality, whether we call it socialist or Scandinavian or whatever. Sorry for my rant. Peace.
. . . at rather extensive length against a case I never made (i.e., that there should be an immediate increase of the federal minimum wage to $15) and ignore the potential solution I actually suggested for the quite real problem of erosion of earnings by inflation during any phase-in period, leaving workers still playing catch-up for a living wage by the time it’s fully phased-in.
Perhaps you might want to read what I actually wrote? Just a thought!
I am pretty sure your proposal will be given considerable thought. It is one way around the “problem” real or imagined.
Apologies. The early portion of this thread had a community member literally making the case for an immediate increase to $15 an hour, and some sympathies from others to the general sentiment. I recognize the significant differences in your proposal. We’re in the same ballpark together.
These sorts of discussions sometimes become a terrific picking of sides among people whose ideologies do not differ tremendously. I’m hopeful the community can avoid the worst outcomes of such side-picking.
I’m happy to have been part of the campaign to pass the very best State minimum wage in the United States, and to have been part of the National campaign which declared the “Fight for $15”. The message discipline of that campaign made these State and City minimum wages possible.
There were no States where the majority of voters supported a $15 minimum wage as recently as 2014. There are States where the voters still do not support such increases. That doesn’t dissuade me from joining you in seeking ways to push the envelope, on wages and all the other issues and compensations important to workers and those who rely on them.
I agree whole-heartedly. In the field I work in, developmental disabilities, there is a huge need for higher wages and professional development for direct service workers. (They are often called “direct support professionals,” which is an appropriately respectful term but one that does not reflect the reallity of the woefully low compensation they receive.) A 2017 report from the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, https://acl.gov/sites/default/files/programs/2018-02/2017%20PCPID%20Full%20Report_0.PDF, stated that 4.5 million people in the U.S. present work as Personal Care Assistants, Home Health Aides and Nursing Assistants. In comparison, there are 140,000 steelworkers and 50,000 miners in the U.S.. I have had a lot of experience interacting with direct support professionals in the ID/D system, and most are people with good values and good hearts who genuinely care about the people they work with. Very many of them are minorities and immigrants. But low wages leads to high turnover. Many people cannot afford to stay at their jobs long enough to acquire the skills to properly support people with complex disabilities. That’s just one sector of the economy in which workers desperately need advocacy for appropriate compensation and professionalization. Their job should be regarded as a skilled profession, not one in which minimal skills are required. Policies that can lift service workers out of poverty are desperately needed, in my opinion, certainly as much so as appeals to the white working class men and women who voted for Trump.
Policies and platforms that benefit all working people, not just people who used to have well-paying manufacturing jobs, hold the best hope of appealing to a wide constituency. That’s why social security and Medicare have such wide appeal and have been so thoroughly resistant to Republican efforts to dislodge them. The Democrats need to articulate policies that benefit people in poverty because they benefit everyone.
Another really important field where workers are woefully under paid is child care. And it’s also too expensive for many working parents to afford and actually make enough money to make that work worthwhile.
Yes!!!
And some of the stupid shit the GOP has been saying about the green New Deal is so way over the top they set themselves up for when people find out its not true. For years they screamed about the “death panels” of the ACA. They talked about how the 2017 GOP tax cuts was a middle class tax cut when it wasn’t. Now they’re saying truly stupid stuff about democrats wanting to ban cows, air travel, and wanting to ride trains to Hawaii. Sure, its great for laughs or for their followers to get their fear fix. But when the rubber meets the road, as it eventually has to, like with the ACA and the GOP tax cuts, there’s hell to pay.
The GOP is never going to expand beyond its base and will continue to shrink as long as it embraces stupid.
There are several kinds of intelligence, Harvard minds proposed. Republicans and Democrats could be in different leagues with regards to several of them.
Democrats appear to be missing visceral, agreeable leadership skills. In particular, their enthusiasm for social justice issues may concern many voters as one-sided, unappetizingly high-minded, unnecessarily heedless. The impression after the 2018 election is that Democrats will know no limits of their agenda. If Dems see 2020 so brightly as an opportunity for an epic progressive push, they might allow the most
preposterous scenario.
Stark inequalities look awful emotionally and intellectually, but humans were coping with them through all ages (including whole evolution). Human distaste for inequalities may turn out to be surprisingly limited, especially on a limited planet under a climate change. See Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Syria, Burma… Tribal instincts of GOP supporters would be more appropriate than eager DNC matriarchy. Science and democracy will not even have a chance to follow the last hero of Marquez’s “One Hundred Years Of Solitude” in figuring it all out at the same moment while the world is collapsing.
Its pretty simple. Democrats are always saying “the way you’ve always done and said (or thought about) things is bad. You should feel bad.”
Yes. The habit of critical analysis is not powerful socially.
Got to throw a wet blanket on the whole concept of multiple intelligences. There has been some controversy for quite a while about whether the theory holds up. This is just one critique, but I am somewhat aware of others. Same article is critical of EI research as well. These are intuitive theories and they “feel good” to those using it to make whatever point they wish to make, including in areas that are relatively divorced from the arcane theorizing among a bunch of intelligence researchers. Unfortunately, when it comes to any sort of rigorous testing of these theories, there appears to be a lot of sizzle but very little steak. Since you appear to be using these as support for whatever point you are attempting to make, you might want to keep that in mind. Also goes to show that any theory, even a bad one, can be potentially used or misused by those wishing to support any of a number of political ideologies, including those that depend upon rigid hierarchies (authoritarianism exists on both the left and right), which seems to be the basic thrust of most of your recent posts these last few years. At least you use some good five dollar words while you do so, which I reckon is something.
Scientists, post-modernists, Democrats (and us two) are great in critical analysis, surely. But let’s consider really: people had been living in an uncertain world for ages. They do not have much experience of dealing with problems with scientific certainty. Instead, they usually find certainty in cultural habits, leaders, religion or mythology. Evidently, that still gave them amply positive survival probabilities. Science and progress still have that competition for broad trustworthiness.
Particularly politics is an art of trust and being trusted. With their focused skeptical hermeneutics, the progressives may know less than enough about trust, appreciation.
I believe that multiple intelligences can be rigorously tested to your satisfaction — after much effort though. With political, economical, ecological pressures building up fast, we may not have time for rigorous testing everywhere. That is another thing that Dems lacked in 1968 and 2016: a leap of faith that self-change was necessary. Waiting for rigorous conclusions can be a more foolish thing than old-fashioned intuitive belief (“feel good” or “feel bad”). Progressives will hardly find (let alone implement) an on-time justifiable ideology that would replace tribal or hierarchical competitions for lesser resources, alas.
So I should take whatever convenient theory someone posts on the internet as a basis for supporting the argument that progressives should be just as tribal as the wingnuts on faith because…reasons? That doesn’t work for me.
I suppose if you are looking for some sort of hierarchical leftist system, there are plenty of them. They don’t seem to have much influence, but they know party lines. Trotskyists come to mind. Surely there are a few left. Greece has a communist party that seems to do okay as far as membership, but manages to keep its hands clean of actually governing. Maybe there is an appeal for that sort of thing.
In the real world, those who are struggling need a break. The Democratic Party in the US is far from pure, and it lives up to that wonderful Will Rogers quote from the 1930s, and yet it still manages to remain competitive – even in an age of right-wing nationalism. The 2017 and 2018 elections are harbingers that the Trump style of running campaigns need not be emulated by liberals or progressives.
If intelligence researchers want to do their thing, that’s beautiful but irrelevant for our purposes here. Let them have TED talks. Building on 2018 is the task at hand.
Henri Poincare: “Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think.”
Thinking is indeed much to ask oftentimes. Sticking with proven principles and authorities is fine usually. But are you really satisfied how proven grounds work currently?
If you wish to understand hierarchy only reflexively in terms of Stalin or so, you will miss socio-biological pulls from below. People may not want that much empowerment and responsibility in bottom-up governing. Most of them prefer to delegate philosophical and executive governing details to those who would not ask particularly much overseeing. Isn’t this what we are dealing with? The Democrat eagerness to (presumably) please voters and minorities might be akin to a hapless husband who would never make a decision without explicit deference to wife’s preferences.
Also, China is reportedly happier with its hierarchical governing than democracies. Not only Communist domination, but explicit Confusian reverence to social hierarchies plays a big role here. We are swimming in social-hierarchical waters and do not want to know that. Western people get more empowered or entitled, but not happier.
I get the impression you are making a lot of assumptions that are not applicable to US political life, and thus far your evidence is based on readings from three rather disparate sources that I suppose are driving whatever agenda you are attempting to advocate. Fair enough. That said, I am not sure that I would want to trust surveys that treat “happiness” as an end unto itself (remember that Venezuelans were “happy” until just a few short years ago). I would rather not waste this space on what really is more of an extended philosophical and psychological discussion that would be of little interest to nearly everyone here. Short version: happiness is a fleeting emotional state. One could note the same about “satisfaction” however one wishes to define that. Dissatisfaction leads to advocacy for reform – which presumably folks on this site and in real life do on a regular basis. Nor should we want to assume that we can apply Confusian reverence to vast swaths of the cultures making up the US. That’s a hard sell at best.
Would also caution citing Quillette as a source of much of anything. I get its appeal to conservatives, as it is one of several sources admired by the so-called Intellectual Dark Web. Having read enough of its offerings, my impression was that the content reminded me of what some of the cool privileged kids back in the 1980s read Ayn Rand and advocated for their own hierarchical systems in which the privileged got the spoils and the rest of us – well got nothing. Maybe there are extremes on what we call “the left” that get excited by this stuff as well? Would not be the first time, and there the common thread is probably some form of authoritarianism. Measuring authoritarianism on the right and demonstrating its impact on real world behavioral outcomes. David Neiwert does a wonderful job of distilling that work. Measuring left-wing authoritarianism has been more of a challenge, although it turns out that those who have managed to measure members of communist cells in eastern Europe have managed to tentatively demonstrate its existence (and I’ll just say it was nice to finally have a bit of confirmation of something I saw at the street level in a previous life).
I think what I am finding is that we have a bit of a disconnect going on here. We are each coming from radically different value systems and assumptions, and I don’t see a way forward to reconcile that vast gulf in between us. I am assuming you are a philosopher, correct? If so, you are in a vocation that enables overthinking. I work in a field that also enables overthinking. Within our particular work lives, I suspect that is all well and good. The point is to shut that off a bit when trying to engage everyday folk. I come here to engage with everyday folk. Nothing more. Something else: I don’t trust and I tend to place a great deal of doubt on extremes – something that comes from hard-earned experience, as well as actually bothering to read treatises from extremists from both left and right. On some fundamental psychological level, there is little light between them – and I think that is enough to turn me off. Would reckon would be enough to turn others off as well.
My philosophy would not be big news to specialist consultants for high performance, organizational change. (E.g.) It’s for highly active, swiftly thinking, high paying folks, usually. Quite possibly they are into Quilette.
You are too comfortable with quick impressions, judgements. Just saying.
That’s one perspective, I suppose.
After reading this, Booman, I have to ask where you place AOC on your scale? For my part I think she just could be – and probably at that – the leadership of the party in future years.
She impresses me as a very smart, no bs, young lady but from a minority working family.
I agree.
AG
Me too. I see it as one of the reasons she so scares Republicans. Her existence and appeal threatens their entire narrative. Particularly since she’s so resourceful and capable of getting her ideas out in soundbites ordinary people can understand. This is precisely where Democrats have been incompetent for so long.
So long!!!
Maybe the worm is turning.
Let us pray it so.
AG
In 2018, Arthur Gilroy wrote here that he would like to split New York State in two so the Northern portion of the State could pass regressive policies.
Arthur Gilroy is a Ron Paul evangelist who is unwilling to wrestle with the outcomes which would come if Roe v. Wade, the Civil Rights Act and the New Deal/Great Society programs were taken from Americans, as he effectively proposed to do in his “BREAK UP THE U.S.!!!” manifesto and his many subsequent articulations of the New Confederacy he wants to bring about.
He’s going to be made to make the case for his rotten, regressive ideology and politics. No more abiding his bullshit, no more ceding the community to his divisive bullshit without responses.
Arthur Gilroy needs to try honesty. It’s going to be uncomfortable for him, but his fraudulent brand of divisiveness is not going to be abided.
Continue your bullshit, centerfielddj.
The days of you and your neocentrist allies’s power are numbered.
The electorate is awakening as we speak.
Buh-bye…
AG
This doesn’t even meet the description of a non-denial denial.
Thank you for confirming that you want the United States to break up and you want New York State to split. Now hang in there and make the case for those extremely regressive policy positions.
I think AOC is one of the best things that have happened to the democratic party, a smart breath of fresh air in a dank, musty basement of moldy status quo “ideas.” If only we had more like her.
The other day I was listening to a popular Sirius XM left of center talk show, and the host was railing against AOC’s appearance in the Cohen hearings, saying she just decided to show up to do more “grandstanding.” Somebody had to tell him she was on the damned committee and was thus doing her job! It was AOC who proved to have done her homework, asking Cohen questions whose responses added into the record the names of people who will likely be witnesses in future House investigations.
Then, a centrist dem friend of mine who thinks she “talks too much” sent me the times article about AOC being late in opening a district office as “proof” that she doesn’t care about her constituents and only her “national profile.” It was silly, but that’s an example of the straws they’re grasping.
Unfortunately AOC makes some democratic leaders and of course the “centrists” as uncomfortable as she makes republicans. And I believe this is because she is recognized as truly challenging the status quo that many on both sides of the aisle find comfort in and/or are beholden to.
The NY Times.
The paper of (bad) record.
Amazingly…even more towards the neo-center than the
CIA…errr. ahhh I mean theAmazon…oh shit, I’m sorry…theBezos…DAMN!!! Of course I mean to say the Washingtoon Post!!!Whadda woild we live in!!!
Fox News/MSDNC News.
The two extremes of the ongoing neocentrist hustle.
All the same shit.
It ain’t even faux!!!
It’s gone way beyond that now.
It makes no pretense of truth.
It’s all about which side of the Scylla/Charybdis-dominated Strait of Medina (N-Media in another spelling) on which they want you to stand.
Either side, as long as you will put up with the bullshit.
Sad…
AG
Arthur, if you wander back to BooMan’s front pages like this, we will ask you to answer questions about your own views.
Please tell us again why you think conservative areas of the United States should be allowed to force women and girls to carry all pregnancies to term.
Go ahead.
Ask away.
Your hustle is dying underneath your false witness.
Best of luck.
You and your allies are going to need it.
The worm is turning.
You’d be well to hope it doesn’t have an appetite for McCarthyite liars like you.
Have a nice day…
AG
I’m having a very nice day helping community members understand your record.
Your desire to “BREAK UP THE U.S.!!!” would strip away Federal protections and benefits from State and regions which seceded from the United States. There are States which have already passed laws which would force all women and girls to carry all pregnancies to term. This is among the policy outcomes which would result from this repellent policy plank of yours.
And nothing tells the community that you’re a holier-than-thou leftist than arguing in favor of a counterfactual which would have left African-Americans in literal chattel slavery for an additional 50 years or more:
“What if we had not fought that war? I don’t know for sure myself, but I believe that as the world moved on into the 20th century and industrialization, the south would have become a failed state. Hell, it might have even become a black state in time, or itself suffered insurrection and secession by majority black states. Wouldn’t that have been interesting!!!”
Make a stand and defend your real views, not your pathetically made up leftist claims. Don’t call us names and then take a powder when called upon to make the case for your glorious faux-libertarian revolution.
. . . ‘democratic leaders and of course the “centrists”‘ whom AOC makes “as uncomfortable as she makes republicans”?
“Enquiring minds want to know.”
You mention, but don’t name, some allegedly “left of center” Sirius talk show host and “a centrist dem friend of [yours]”, but these just seem representative of the useless “even-the-[faux]liberal” cohort of Corporate Media and some behind-the-curve marginal Dems flirting with being left behind.
Note: Not saying no such exist. Obviously, some such do (and their dominance in media, especially, seems a perennially intractable problem). We need names named so we can get them
sent off to the re-education campspolite remedial instruction on the error of their ways, including the current nature of the evolving mainstream of the Democratic Party.Claire McCaskill called her a “shiny object” on her way out the door after her failed centrist campaign. Pelosi recently referred to the Green New Deal as “the green dream or whatever they call it”, thanks Nancy!
. . . as she makes republicans”‘???
Sorry, not buyin’ that. Have seen no evidence whatsoever that supports it.
I suppose this is some of the linkage to attempt to back up that claim? Buried amidst the rather clickbaity headline is a statement that there is no evidence of animosity between Pelosi and AOC. Hmmmm. Imagine that. My guess is that if I had the patience to wade through the dross found on the usual right-wing sites (and have to thoroughly clean my computer of malware afterwards), this would turn out to be just one more wingnut fantasy with no basis in reality. AOC really drives these people nutso.
. . . my point. Clickbaity “Dems in Disarray” headlines? Sure, don’t have to look far.
Substantive evidence supporting the wildly over-the-top claim that AOC makes PELOSI[!!!] “as uncomfortable as she makes republicans”‘???
Not so much!
The Dems in disarray narrative is one that needs to be swept into the dustbin of history. Right-wingers clearly benefit from pushing it. Some authoritarians who are allegedly “leftist” seem to love to push that as well. In any event, AOC is doing what I would expect any ambitious rookie to do: try to figure out how to make her mark and hopefully give herself some staying power. There is not much daylight between her and Pelosi, contra said media narratives.
For what it’s worth, on my FB page several people have been having a discussion about AOC & Sanders affiliation with the Democratic Socialist platforms and this article got posted https:/fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-scandinavian-socialism?fbclid=IwAR1Z4sF6PtqsE8iqB_joMm08wiwlEc
iEGVQu7AW7sreSIdLQHbAMKRv-Vxc
I’m now intrigued just how not just the booghaboogha of ‘socialism’ gets shouted out by the Right but how the actual policies of the Democratic Socialists could rip the Dems apart vs ‘social democracy’ that we could prosper from.
While Mr. Iacono is technically correct what he is not factoring in is 90 years of right wing talking points. To the GOP any program that uses taxes to promote the general welfare of the citizens of the United States is “socialism”.
Until liberals can find a way to counter right wing framing (and media) we’re stuck with their dishonest strawman definitions.
I say don’t get hung up on labels, focus on policies that truly help communities as Booman says “there are no communities that don’t need representation from the left.”
Right. If we get hung up on someone’s framing with labels we lose. We need to see past it and decide if we want the program or not. That is what I like perhaps most about AOC.
Martin, forgive me for running in a different direction than the thrust of your article. I’ve long been struck by both your extremely skilled penchant for sharp analysis (which is what draws me to your site before all others) and also, at times, by the sharpness of your tongue at those moments you slip into judgment.
I grew up in a working class family and was the first to attend college. But it wasn’t an ordinary working class family because we were Jewish and the culture itself carries this reverence for education. Not having sophisticated parents to guide me was an impediment but my desire to be loved, and the fact that my family lionized intelligence above all else, propelled me forward. I wound up attending an elite university, Johns Hopkins. Not quite Princeton but not bad for a kid from my background.
Like you, I rejected certain aspects of the academy. It was a place that seemed rife with dysfunction, intellectual snobbishness just the most obvious tip of the iceberg. When one overvalues the mind, what’s lost is the heart (and with it, one’s sense of humanity). We become machines. That’s what I rejected.
The world I grew up in was not far from where Donald Trump was raised. His family was of course far more wealthy but the values of the time and place were similar. What drove me from New York was that the primary value was money. Men (in those days, just men) were judged by the thickness of their wallets; not at all by the values that had guided their journeys.
So as a young adult, I had no place to stand, having rejected both materialistic and academic worldviews. All of which set me upon an eccentric journey to find and embrace values that were truly my own. Perhaps in your own way you are on a similar journey. One in which you struggle to shuck off the prejudices you were steeped in to find the deeper truth of your heart.
Parallax has largely saved me the task of writing about growing up in a working class, immigrant Jewish family. Yes, Jews have a very strong traditional emphasis on education. My parents busted their butts precisely so that that their children would NOT follow in their footsteps. I see the same dynamic playing out in, say, the immigrant Southeast Asian families who are such a vital part of the population here in Portland, Oregon: Women busting their tails in little salons and tailoring shops so they can afford to send their kids off to college to learn a profession. When I walk into, say, a sandwich shop or doughnut shop or teriyaki joint and give my order to a teen who then turns and relays the order to an older person–probably a relative–in Vietnamese, I get it, because it parallels my own experience: the family working together for a common purpose.
My non-Jewish white working class friends grew up differently. Their parents did not aspire for their children to get an education and learn a profession. Indeed, they felt threatened by that prospect. Why? I would imagine it had to do with not wanting to become alienated from their own children. Educated people felt like a threat. That was true with the white working class in the 1960s and 1970s as surely as it is now. What changed? Well, Democrats used to run candidates for office whose roots were also working class. How common is that today?
I would argue that Dems too smart, GOP too stoopid is not really the point. The Republican Party knows how to play to people’s fears and resentments. They’ve perfected that for the last half century, and there is absolutely no reason to think they’ll change, because it’s been a very successful strategy.
The reason I like Sherrod Brown is precisely because he has found a way to connect with the white working class. And he hasn’t done it by becoming a Blue Dog.
They’re beginning to lose their working class roots
Did you mean to say “white working class roots” instead?
The Democrats have bifurcated their appeal in kind of the opposite direction from that which you suggest.
Every time someone complains that “working class” is used to refer to “white working class,” they ignore that this refusal to see things in class terms is what’s driving the wedge.
In other words, as long as the Democrats emphasized policies based on their broad benefit for working people irrespective of race, they were able to hold onto a good percentage and often the majority of white working class voters. But we’re now rather aggressively embracing the narrative that white working class voters are different and not our concern.
They’re just uneducated bigots whose lives don’t matter and whose votes can’t be won.
They are most definitely getting the message.
It’s true that there is a big population of poorly educated people of color that the Democrats do still care about, but not really because they are in need or for class reasons. It’s more because they are under attack from the racist right, with a major assist from white working class voters.
So, the Democrats wind up moving farther and farther away from their working class roots because they talk less and less about working class issues.
And when they do talk about things like raising the minimum wage or expanding access to health care, they’re spearheaded by non-white progressive/urban coalitions and carry a far left Working Families flavor that isn’t resonating in white working class areas.
I’d add to this that “white man” has become such a common and casual epithet on the left that a day doesn’t go by when I’m not confronted with it as a direct attack on my being multiple times on social media. This rather obviously relies on me not to take it personally or overly literally, and also presumes that I at least somewhat agree that my race/gender has seen enough time in the Sun and should take a back seat from now on.
Needless to say, this isn’t a good look to most white men, regardless of their education level or class. But among working class white men, it’s poison.
And, believe it or not, it’s all rooted in a form of elitism, sometimes couched as anti-elitism. It’s elitism because it looks down its nose at people who are deemed lesser and unworthy. It’s couched as anti-elitism because it’s supposed to be a strike against “The Man.”
What it is most of the time is a severe self-inflicted limitation on the potential appeal of the left in this country. It’s basically a daily confirmation of what used to be a bullshit Republican talking point: that liberals think they’re better, smarter, and morally superior.
When we get back to a politics based in compassion, empathy, and fighting for workers, we’ll have a chance to win by FDR margins again. Right now, we’re fighting for 51 percent, and everyone else can fuck themselves.
And, to be sure, the Republicans are doing the exact same thing.
. . . copping the plea: I think I’m better and smarter than, and morally superior to, racists and other bigots. I cop to that plea unapologetically.
The mystery to me is how any decent person, i.e., non-bigot, could see it otherwise.
Every time someone complains that “working class” is used to refer to “white working class,” they ignore that this refusal to see things in class terms is what’s driving the wedge.
If you want to write a piece about working-class people, make sure you’re included nonwhite people in your analysis. If you’re only writing about WWC, then specify that. Looking at class and ignoring the racial subtext leads to garbage conclusions. (A) “Hillary won the working class” and (B) “Hillary lost white working-class voters” are not equivalent statements. A and B are also both true. The reason why snarky jerks still point that out is because political analysts keep making this particular mistake.
The reason why this is important is because Democrats have not been the white working class party for a long time. According to Pew, the turning point that caused non-college whites to strongly shift toward the Republican party was 2010. Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics didn’t seem to exhibit similar voter behavior.
In other words, as long as the Democrats emphasized policies based on their broad benefit for working people irrespective of race, they were able to hold onto a good percentage and often the majority of white working class voters. But we’re now rather aggressively embracing the narrative that white working class voters are different and not our concern.
If that were true, wouldn’t Democratic politicians have dominated politics for forty years after passing the Great Society legislation of the 1960’s?
they talk less and less about working class issues.
Democrats won the 2018 cycle by discussing bread-and-butter issues- roads, health care, education, child care, etc. For example, Kevin McCarthy told donors that the attempted ACA repeal was responsible for the lost GOP majority.
non-white progressive/urban coalitions and carry a far left Working Families flavor that isn’t resonating in white working class areas
What sorts of policies are resonating in WWC areas? Also, concluding that Democratic policy priorities are bad because they aren’t appealing to WWC seems like shoddy analysis.
(whites) should take a back seat from now on.
That’s just self-evident; the Democratic party is far more fractured, racially, ideologically, culturally, than the Republicans. Any successful, sustained Democratic electoral success is going to rely on a multiracial coalition.
This needs to be repeated over and over. The above are issues that matter to those of us who are scraping by paycheck to paycheck – in other words the working class broadly defined.
Working class black and hispanic people are no less well-educated than working class white people. It’s not the stupidity they like. It’s the racism.
I think you still need to work on your understanding of the working class because
These are not the same thing.
The first isn’t even true unless your definition of “working class” includes the words “conservative white male”.
Democrats as a group do not have disdain for the working class. They have disdain for bigots and con-men.