So, I've made no mistake that I've been a critic of the suburban/sun belt strategy that I outlined in the previous articles. And to me, it's a bit personal. While yes, I do think it's a terrible idea that has screwed up the electoral map for the democrats for the foreseeable future, but it's also a strategy that is alienating to me personally.
Explaining myself demographically and where I fit into the democratic coalition
As we know, I came over to the left through that all important 2012 election cycle, which is why my blog is named what it is. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm male. I grew up conservative. I was very religious, I idolized Reagan and Rush Limbaugh, but as I got older, went to college, and started analyzing the world as I understood it, cracks formed in my worldview. I left Christianity, and became a "new atheist" and secular humanist. I questioned trickle down economics as the great recession took its toll on my area and shook my faith in the economy as it exists, and I inexorably shifted to the center during Obama's first term, becoming a very progressive democrat by 2012.
In the aftermath of 2012, I went further, exploring my worldview and expanding it, to eventually come to something reminiscent of Yang's 2020 campaign with the populism of Bernie's campaigns.
Socially, I became progressive. Not a social justice warrior, but more a foil to my previous culturally christian and conservative identity being very secular, progressive, and libertarian.
Economically, I looked at the struggles I faced in the more rust belty part of pennsylvania.
On foreign policy, I merely retreated to the center, satisfied with Obama's foreign policy mostly.
And yeah. But, beyond my own personal identity, geography plays a role. See, take note of that chuck schumer quote from the previous article:
For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.
--Chuck Schumer
And yeah, Pennsylvania is kind of divided that way. I mean, south and east of king of prussia or so, I'd say you're "in philly" broadly speaking. Youre either in the city itself, or the suburbs. Many people in the suburbs are relatively upper class. A lot of corporate offices in the places my family worked ended up being in places like Exton and West Chester, relatively wealthy suburbs. Meanwhile we live in the opposite area, the North and West of king of prussia line.
If you live down in "philly" you live in one world. You live in an urban or suburban paradise where the American dream is possible. Where you can commute and get a job in a rather wealthy city or suburb and end up making six figures. Rent is high, cost of living is high, but that's where the jobs are.
If you live on the other side of the divide I mentioned, you are basically suffering Andrew Yang's War on Normal People. Cost of living is low, but there's no good jobs. Everything is the service industry. It's all minimum wage, it's crap. My own area has had a median income around $30,000, while the rest of the nation had one in the $60,000 range. Median individual income was like $13000, basically part time minimum wage or near it, while nationally it was closer to $30,000. I know it's higher now. Median individual is $50k, household is $70k, but my area is still around $20-25k individual income and around $40k household income. We're still lagging behind, at roughly half what the rest of the country has on average.
It's no wonder I have such a dismal view of jobs. And that's what's driving a lot of anger in the rust belt. The trumpers will say it's the illegals taking the jobs, noticing a growing latino population, and they'll blame outsourcing for all the factory jobs going away.
With me, my view has always been more Yang-esque. I kinda noted the very concept of job creation seems broken, and I have my own take on the labor market and how jobs are created by businesses for profit and there's no profit in cities like mine, only crime, poverty, and liabilities. But businesses won't hire here because they wont make money, and they wont make money because people are poor. See the issue? it's the opposite issue as the Philly type areas. There, you got perpetual money making machines. And in net, I'm actually saying anything is better there. They got a whole different set of problems though. They got high jobs with high desireability, but because everyone wants to live there, rent and cost of living is insane. It's one of the reasons the "JuSt MoVe" mindset the neoliberals have plays so poorly to me. Okay, so we sell the house I live in for $150k. Then what? We move to a place that costs $500k+? How does that solve anything? But but, I make good money. Yeah, IF I find a job, and IF i can actually hack it. Which I probably can't. Because now I got a resume gap. I graduated college during the great recession, the only jobs available were minimum wage, they sucked, they dont look good on the resume and don't get my foot in the door in an actual career So basically, I'm ####ed.
You see the issue?
So here I am, white male working class guy, pissed off at the literal world, but not quite on the same page as the trumpers as I got an education, as I said, my views basically are Andrew Yang before he actually went in his specific direction. I see the same stuff he does, I just approach it from the other end.
Why Clinton was so alienating to me
So again, straight white male pissed off at the world, and part of the Obama coalition. Obama won me over in 2012 in part because he opposed mr moneybags who believed in trickle down economics and firing people. So I'm progressive AF on economics, and as I expand my views in Obama's second term, I'm basically like, yeah, this sucks, we need to do better. What the GOP is doing definitely aint working, but neither is the democratic party. What we really need is like a new FDR who will actually fix the entire economy with a new 21st century new deal.
My original new deal was just UBI, medicare for all, and free college, but I have expanded it to more planks over time, with climate change being a 4th pillar, housing a 5th, and I'm currently thinking of adding reducing the work week as a 6th. While Andrew Yang will warn people robots are coming for our jobs and we need a UBI to adapt to that, I'll straight up say F the jobs, we should automate jobs, and give people a UBI. I mean, I never really liked the idea of work anyway. I just saw it as necessary as a religious conservative and expanding my humanism into economics, I just saw no point in continuing on this weird sisyphusian hell that we created.
So, we go into 2016, I want Bernie, but it's clear the democratic establishment wants Hillary. And the Clinton people were ALWAYS hostile to the Bernie people. I wanna make that clear. We Bernie guys didn't fire the first shot here. The clinton people did by being insufferable. They told us our ideas werent pragmatic, that we cant have nice things, that we had to settle, and that we had to vote for clinton in the general (blue no matter who, but it was gonna be clinton, so basically vote clinton you ingrates).
And that rubbed against my idea of democracy. Keep in mind i JUST came over to the dems the previous cycle. Who the F were they to treat me that way, I didn't HAVE to vote for them, and I wasn't gonna. F them if they treat me like that. So I got entrenched in my position. And then on them, Clinton executed her centrist strategy.
Basically keep in mind, the strategy is that schumer quote. F those white working class people in central PA, we gotta win the moderate republicans in philly. Basically, her whole strategy was to get the suburbanites on our side. But heres the thing, I LEFT the democrats in part to get away from these guys. These are fricking Romney voters. They liked his upper class "well the 47% will never vote for me" bull####. F that guy. I hate Mitt Romney politically speaking at the time, I hated him more than Trump (that has since reversed, but it made sense in 2016). And here's the thing. You get those guys in the democratic party, we will NEVER have progressive economic policy. Because who would pay for it? The top 20-30% of people. We all know how the taxes work out on my policies. And who are those people? Well, most of them are wealthy and live in suburbs. And who is Clinton trying to appeal to....wealthy people who live in suburbs!
Heck, it's why she's so moderate. In order to win, she has to do some stuff for the poor, but she also cant be too progressive to alienate people making 6 figures in the suburbs, so that limits us fiscally with what we can do. And you know what? bernie's out. We can't do that. Medicare for all? hell no. Why don't we settle for some weird ### ACA expansion that does F all, but costs exactly $4.56? And then you gotta fill out tons of paper work and jump through all kinds of hoops to get it because we cant make anything easy for the poor in america, because we got rich republican friends now and we gotta appeal to their work ethic. but we're still gonna virtue signal about how great these programs are for poor people because the alternative is doing literally nothing.
Oh, and then the other shoe came down. Suddenly, being a white male progressive like me in the party became a bad thing. I was "too white", I was a bernie bro. I hated hillary not because her politics were like nails on a chalkboard to me, but because she was a woman. And omg, I just dont understand black people, silly me. How dare I be white I guess. I'm privileged, I should just sacrifice all my priorities on the altar of white male liberal guilt because my views mean F all in the party.
I mean, you understand how this crap is alienating right? We went Obama, who was right up my alley at the time even though he was too moderate, to Clinton, who was nailed on a chalkboard and insufferable with the identity crap, and basically spat in my face loudly proclaiming we would never ever accomplish the kinds of change I wanted accomplished. Yeah.
So F her. And I refused to vote for her. Of course, I was too smart and educated to vote for Trump, but I get why dumber people did. With clinton resonating so badly and driving white working class voters out of the party, suddenly the guy who wanted to bring back jobs by being protectionist and getting rid of the illegals seemed like a good idea for a lot of white working class voters. I mean, let's face it, most people in my demographic class dont have my education, so they're not gonna make the same decisions as I would. And let's face it, you took away my college education, and trump would be right up my alley. I mean, I admit it. Really, being educated saves me from Trump's appeal, but i get why a lot of less educated white guys like him. When the dems basically say they'll do nothing for you while laying on identity politics that thick, where do you think they're gonna go.
But yeah, due to my education, I basically went further left instead, into progressive politics and eventually to Yang, who represented my politics all along.
But yeah. In short, the big thing is that, if we go back to Andrew yang terms, Clinton appealed to the bubble. She appealed to the people who lived in the suburbs, and had good jobs, and were affluent, and for them everyone worked, and then they would pontificate about their privilege. Because such virtue signalling does nothing to threaten their interests. if anything, it appeals to them. it has the same mindset that volunteering on sunday for a soup kitchen would. And I know enough about that as an ex christian to know how many busy body suburban type people seem to do that just for the social recognition and to make themselves LOOK GOOD. It allows them to act like they care...without doing anything. I've heard it said that that stuff is like church for democrats and it really is. And it really gives off a "pharisee" vibe to me. They get to pretend to care and pat themselves on the back for being such good people, while looking down their nose at someone like me who won't bend the knee to that kind of politics, is more outright self interested, won't deny it, won't care what anyone thinks.
In a way, I kind am as boorish as a Trumper. You get that, because I'm an ex conservative. i dont care what others think. F other people and their perceived moral superiority, F those people, and I still kinda got the "own the libs" mentality. And it comes out again, despite being a lib politically, when these holier than thou A-holes try to pull this crap on me. Because they cant control me.
I might not be as racist as them, or as sexist, as I AM a lib, but I tend to express my own the lib side by just expressing how little i care about their stupid intersectionality BS. Because I dont. It was never a part of my political DNA, if anything my history as a conservative makes me hostile to that strain of liberalism. And yeah thats why my own objections to social justice stuff manifest as they do I guess. It's not that I'm a rightoid who actually is racist and falls into those tropes, i AM a progressive after all, but I go in a different strain of progressivism, and my custom ideology tends to make me not receptive and kind of hostile to that stuff.
As such, Clinton basically repulsed me from the coalition, and I would happily vote third party. I would double down on my economic progressivism demanding that the democrats would meet my purity standards, while telling them F their stupid blue no matter who oh noes what about all the minorities/women/lgbt+ crap. Appeal to me or else. Again, because I AM that trump demographic, I'm just more educated, so it manifests as me being the biggest and most obnoxious bernie bro ever.
2024 and my shift toward Biden
In some ways though, I am coming back around to the democratic coalition. I was still too pissed and put off by clinton to vote for Biden even, as I just saw Biden as a white male clinton at the time. But then Biden governed, and he did okay things. And the left kinda got too crazy going down the marxism rabbit hole and decided to also pick a fight with my exact yangesque "liberal" politics. And the left never put up a challenger. And honestly? Trump went insane. I could stand him just being a stupid boorish leader who says politically incorrect things, but given how this guy basically has gone full fascist, and the republican party is going in the hyper authoritarian direction of wanting to push their religious extremism (something I've opposed all along, i may not be an atheist any more but I still have the same humanist value system), and wanting to overthrow democracy, and basically going full on psycho, and yeah it's like, ok, I can't let the GOP go unchecked. Also I understand on economic issues that I cant just abandon biden and watch him get wrecked by the right. It actually is counterproductive to my goals, as the conservative framing as for why Biden sucks tends to take direct aim at economic progressivism, and that if Biden loses here, the dems might get locked into that same suburban shift.
We might go forward in future election cycles where the dems keep pushing the suburban strategy, knowing that it's gonna be harder and harder to win working class white guys and how they kinda lost them for an entire generation to trump (thanks hillary). So as such they might end up having to go the full clinton strategy to win elections. They will continue to appeal to identity politics (although that seems to be falling apart right now), and suburbanites (which also seems to be falling apart), but at the same time they might just stop appealing to my demographic at all (because let's face it, they seem to be losing those guys full stop to trump).
Basically, I kinda realize that clinton basically blew up the obama coalition, and now it might not ever come back. And what mold will future dems appeal to if Biden loses? THey're gonna go the clinton direction. More centrism, more identity politics, and basically you either fall in line or you get shamed.
So....in a sense, voting for Biden, especially if the rust belt strategy is Biden's best shot at winning, is actually in my interests. because I do wanna show the dems they can win people like me, they can win the rust belt, and they're better off with the obama coalition with the obama map, than they are basically appealing to suburbanites who live in places like phoenix, dallas, raleigh-durham, or atlanta.
Really, I am basically an Obama democrat who was alienated from the coalition. I want the electoral map to go back to how it was in the Obama era. I dont care about the south. F the south, let the religious nutjobs have it. Try to keep appealing to what always worked.
And you know what? idk if it's still viable now in 2024 and going into 2028, but in 2016 and 2020, bernie would've won. He wouldve won by narrower electoral margins than Biden did, he wouldn't have gotten georgia or arizona, but he wouldnt need them. And in 2016? Forget it, I will keep chanting "bernie would've won" until the day I die on that election cycle. BECAUSE HE WOULD HAVE, and I know it, anyone who followed the data knows it, the dems literally pushed the same arguments they push now that the polls didnt matter and they'd change because the GOP would attack him and tank him and blah blah blah. but much like how the country went for trump, so they would have for bernie. because they wanted change. They were DESPERATE for change. I'm not sure the political environment still holds NOW. I think clinton mightve F'ed things up for us for an entire generation possibly. It doesnt seem like a progressive could win the white house in 2024. We're literally stuck with Biden. And if we lose that, we might lose everything. Idk.
Once again, I look at it this way. If I were in 1968 and had to back Humphrey, or 1980 and had to back carter, would I do it? Yes. Would I do it even if it leaves a bad taste in my mouth? YES! Some election cycles you do have to suck it up and support "your guy" even if they are kind of lacking. Because if you let the GOP win, you're screwed. I keep saying it, but 2016 and 2020 were protest years, but this is a year to just suck it up and rally behind Biden. Because if we don't we're screwed.
And before anyone asks if we shouldve supported clinton in retrospect, no because the same realignment would've happened both ways. If anything the arrogance of those centrist neolibs rubbing it in my face that their suburban strategy worked would've just sealed the deal for me that way. I literally tried to derail their entire coalition to force them to shift back. I'm not sorry for that. Clinton's failure is on clinton, and any repercussions from it belong primarily to clinton.
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