I already wrote an article about this, so I'm going to be succinct. I notice a huge tendency of the democratic party supporters to privilege shame people in response to the results. This was an issue before the election, and it's an issue now. People are shaming people for voting Trump, for voting third party. They're telling people that people who didn't vote for Clinton are privileged and don't care about minorities, women, the LBGT+ community, etc. This is patently untrue. Many of us do care, it's just that using these people as your political pawns is distasteful and polarizing. People care, but when faced with dim economic prospects, maslow's hierarchy of needs dictates that people will care for their own well being first.
If you want people to care about social issues, you need to bundle them with issues people do care about. Political parties and platforms are about coalition building, and Clinton lost because her campaign ignored a crucial segment of their coalition: the economically depressed. In 2012, Mitt Romney wanted to screw the American worker, and the unemployed by cutting welfare and unemployment benefits to give tax cuts to the rich. In 2016, the democrats failed to be the champion of the American worker. And their paid for it. And now they're coming around with their high horse talking about how we ingrates didn't care enough about the underprivileged? Yeah, no, go screw yourself. Remember what I said about boomer politics? Well in boomer politics, minorites and the like vote democrat, whereas the white working class vote republican. The democrats used to support the white working class, and this is how we got the rise of the new deal and all the social programs we get today. But the republicans won the white working class over, and in doing so, the parties focused on stupid BS identity politics while ignoring the real economic issues that affect us all. Heck, we were turned on one another. The republicans focused on tax relief for the white working class, whereas the democrats pushed for affirmative action and social programs for the underprivileged. This put the two groups against one another, and the democrats STILL haven't learned their lesson. When Sanders appealed to white millennials, they were privilege shamed out of the party, they were told they didn't care enough about minorities and Clinton was the real savior of the underprivileged. Wow, white savior complex much? When these same people refused to come out for Clinton after months of browbeating, it's continuing again. Trump voters are deplorables, people who didn't support Clinton don't care about civil rights, blah blah blah.
Democrats, wake up. If you want a winning coalition, you need a uniting message. You need to bring the white working class to the democratic party while also appealing to the more traditional minority bases. But you'll never do it by shaming white males into voting for you. You need to combine a message for the underprivileged with promises of greater prosperity with the white working class. This is why I support universal solutions. I don't support affirmative action, which pits privileged vs underprivileged. I don't support a hodgepodge of messed up welfare problems that are so arcane millions of white working class voters think people are scamming the system while they get nothing. I want universal solutions. Universal healthcare, universal basic income, more labor laws, more unions, workplace democracy, free college, etc.
I want the same thing that the social justice people want. I really do. An open inclusive society where everyone is equal and respects each other. And I'll go further I want a society in which everyone can live an economically secure and good life. But we need a message that unites, not divides. Democrats are failing bad here, and shaming people who didn't vote for you isn't going to win them over.We need change. Stop clinging to the old ways. We need a new way that unites a majority of Americans together. The real problem is the economic system, and the 1% vs the 99%. Instead of dividing and conquering the 99% and having them at each others' throats, we need to unite them together against the 1%, and push for policies that help everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment