As a child I wanted to be a Democrat. The Democratic Party was the party of the Kennedys and Johnson, and the Civil Rights Movement and associated in my head with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I couldn’t wait to join.
Maybe there never was a place in the Democratic Party for me or people like me. According to Political Compass I am as far left and as libertarian as it is possible to be based on people who have taken their test. I am right there with Emma Goldman and Pyotr Kropotkin. I was already an anarchist at 12.
I freely admit to being a social anarchist and a social naturist. I am also a not completely reformed monkey wrencher and eco-warrior. However, despite my green and anarchist roots I have always voted Democratic up and down the ballot in US elections. In Canada (Dual Citizen) I vote Green Party of Canada federally and NDP (socialist) provincially.
Today I am primarily focused on positive activism. I have helped to found and build two political parties in Canada, the Green Party of Canada and now the massively revamped Alberta Party, here in Alberta that are dedicated to ideas over ideology and are meant to be non-partisan. I am extremely active in the Cooperative and Communitarian movements. I am an activist for immigrants particularly Black and Muslim immigrants. And I have been fighting for Indigenous Rights since the early seventies and yes I’ve broken some laws along the way. My retirement project is building a Alternative Energy Cooperative of farmers, ranchers and Tribes/Bands. I don’t like negative politics and “can’t do” attitudes. I grew up thinking this was a classically Democratic position.
I actually have an extensive list of arrests from my years as an activist and it isn’t anywhere near as long as it should be. But I’d do it again. I believe if you want a better world you have to fight for it, even if that fight takes decades. I used to think, apparently naively, that this and fighting the good fight made me a typical Democrat.
I know now there never has been a place in the Democratic Party for the American Left and Progressive Activists. And particularly not self-government anarchists like me of a fierce disposition. But the thing that threatens to drive a permanent wedge between me and the Democratic Party is that it has become clear to me they have abandoned working class and rural Americans and me along with them. I am rural and working class.
I am an organic and regenerative farmer. I make far below annual median income in Alberta, Montana, and Washington the three places I farm and ranch. Sometimes I have been below the poverty line. And I rarely have any income from my agricultural adventures or misadventures. They are spectacular money pits. Especially since I pay my staff well above minimum wage and provide a wide range of benefits. I used to think treating your employees well was a fundamental tenet of Democrats.
I am very different from my neighbors in several critical ways and why they matter will become apparent as we move forward. I grew up farming and ranching and living in rural community as is typical of most of my neighbors. But that community was extremely ethnically, linguistically, racially and religiously diverse which isn’t true of my neighbors.
I fled that community when I was fifteen. At which point I swore I’d never be a farmer or rancher never mind both. I am as surprised as anyone. But this means I fought and sacrificed to build my own operation instead of inheriting my parents or grandparents operations. And thus I chose this life, 100% free choice.
This isn’t true of my neighbors in the US. To some extent they all feel trapped or left behind. This makes them resentful. Hell it makes them as angry as spit.
I also spent 17 years in university and professional school and have for 45 years taught university part time. I am permanently stuck in sessional hell. I love it. When some Coastal Elite looks down on me, and believe me that happens quite a lot, I just giggle. In just the last week people here, people I used to respect have called me racist, MAGA, and told me to stop defending Republicans. My neighbors don’t realize these people are defective thinkers and take it to heart and get angrier still. Me I know they are dumb as a bag of hammers.
I can’t believe the number of Democrats who can’t grasp that education doesn’t make you smart, it doesn’t make you ethical, it doesn’t make you moral, it doesn’t make you good, and it really doesn’t make you good at governing.
I am not only multiracial I am highly multicultural. I am by no means a world traveler but I have lived in Nepal, Tibet, and Senegal. And in California and Appalachia. I like foreign cultures. My neighbors tend to have grown up with and lived among white people their entire lives. I think we should throw open the doors and let immigrants flow in. The idea of any immigration at all terrifies my neighbors and they react about like you’d expect.
If I feel like the Democratic Party has abandoned me imagine how my neighbors feel. Many pre-Trump were Democrats. Others switched sides after Clinton and the Neo-Liberal elitist thinking he brought. I had brought many of them back to their Democratic roots, well with a lot of help from Steve Bullock and Jon Tester. And now you’ve tossed all that work in the trash.
I know some here dispute my contention that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class. The idea didn’t originate with me. It is wide spread. Here is an article by Kevin Drum writing in Mother Jones, Democrats Have a Problem With the Working Class.
To put this more simply, recent evidence suggests that Democrats don’t just have a problem with the white working class anymore, but, increasingly, a problem with the working class, period. Unfortunately, this inevitably brings us around to the tedious—but important—question of whether liberals need to move toward the center on social issues.
Needless to say, the progressive wing of the party is massively resistant to this idea. During the election, my Twitter feed was jam packed with quixotic ideas for expanding the Democratic map: eliminating the Electoral College; admitting Washington DC and Puerto Rico as states; packing the Supreme Court; etc. This is all pie-in-the-sky stuff, a desperate attempt to propose anything other than the obvious: embracing social policies that appeal to more people, especially those without college degrees. That’s Politics 101. I don’t know how this is all going to turn out, but I’ll bet it’s going to be a helluva fight.
It is not just Mother Jones. In the Guardian we find Democrats beware: the Republicans will soon be the party of the working class.
The narrative would surely be different had Trump lost in the resounding landslide foreseen by professional pundits and pollsters. In that universe, the president and everything he represents would have been repudiated, creating an immense temptation for the Republican party to revert back to its lily-white, elite-driven comfort zone.
Instead, Trump defied expectations by winning the largest share of non-white voters of any Republican since 1960. This ranged from modest gains among African American men, to major swings in party preference within working-class Latino communities – and not just in Miami-Dade, where Cuban-American turnout helped secure Florida for Trump while unseating two Democratic incumbents. In Starr county, Texas, for example, Biden beat Trump by five points down from Hillary Clinton’s 60 – a 55-point swing in a border town that’s 95% Hispanic and which has a median income of only $17,000.
It is simply a fact that the Democratic Party has become the Party of educated Americans. I assume that like me most people here think this is a good thing. Good or bad it was inevitable.
In the years since WWII the working class have gone from being left leaning to being right leaning. In this same period voters with university/college educations have gone from being right leaning to being left leaning and this has happened all over the world not just in America. Thus, if the Democratic Party was going to continue to occupy the left half of the political spectrum they were going to become the Party of the formally educated.
Unfortunately educational attainment is tied to family wealth. The literature on this is extensive and consistent. This if from a recent paper. I chose it because it is typical of the scholarship in the field.
This article describes gaps in educational attainment by family wealth and their change over two recent cohorts, born in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. In line with prior research (e.g., Conley 2001), substantial gaps in educational attainment by family net worth can be observed across all educational levels—namely, high school attainment, college attendance, and college graduation—and the role of family wealth in predicting these educational outcomes is independent of that of other socioeconomic characteristics of families, including family income. Most pressingly, however, this article provides the first evidence (to my knowledge) that wealth inequality in college graduation has been rising further over recent cohorts, with the college graduation rates of children from higher wealth backgrounds surging while children from lower wealth levels are left behind. The extent of this surge in wealth inequality in college degree attainment is profound: for children born between 1970 and 1979, the college graduation rate among those who grew up in the top 20 % of the wealth distribution was 39.5 percentage points higher than among those who grew up in the bottom 20 %. However, for children born only a decade later, that wealth gap in college attainment has grown to 48.9 percentage points. This rapid increase in wealth inequality in college degree attainment is especially concerning because the stakes of college completion have also been rising, both at the individual and the societal level. Not only do individuals’ opportunities to attain comfortable earnings increasingly depend on the completion of a bachelor’s degree, but the country’s international competitiveness and economic growth are widely seen as depending heavily on a highly educated workforce (Goldin and Katz 2008).
As a result of this correlation between family wealth and education and education and left leaning politics the Democratic Party is losing contact with its working class roots.
Significant amounts of research suggest this was nearly inevitable. For example in this review from the American Psychological Association Monitor they present evidence of the negative outcomes that can arise from increased educational status.
One outcome of these differences is that people of lower rank tend to be more emotionally attuned to others, these researchers contend. A 2010 paper in Psychological Science by Kraus and colleagues, for example, reports that less educated people are better than more educated peers at identifying emotions on faces. They also are more accurate at reading a stranger's emotions during a group job interview. Another study finds that people with less income and education are more generous, trusting and helpful than their wealthier, more educated counterparts (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2010).
This turning away from their roots hasn’t hurt Democrats up to now because their coalition of the Upper Middle Class and non-white voters was enough when combined with Republicans ineptitude to usually give the Democratic Party a fighting chance at a Federal level. State politics of course tell a different story.
But what if Republicans wake up to the opportunity and abandon Wall Street and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working class voters? Think that is impossible, again from the Guardian article,
The Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a rising star within the GOP’s populist faction, was quick to offer his interpretation on Twitter. “Republicans in Washington are going to have a very hard time processing this,” he wrote. “But the future is clear: we must be a working class party, not a Wall Street party.”
The Florida senator Marco Rubio concurred. “#Florida & the Rio Grande Valley showed the future of the GOP: A party built on a multi-ethnic multi-racial coalition of working AMERICANS.”
Let me give you an example from right here on Daily Kos of why I feel the Democratic Party has abandoned me. According to a remarkable number of diarists and posters here 74 million Americans are racists and fascists and all of them are Republican. It is astonishing how many Democrats know 74 million Republicans.
Even more astonishing, in fact totally preposterous, is these Democrats belief that no Democrats are racist or fascist. And they have to assume that because if some are then by their argument (guilt by association) all Democrats are racist and fascist since they associate, based on voting behavior, with racist and fascists.
The reason this ridiculous hyperbole passing as rigorous thinking offends me so is I am deeply integrated as are my ex-wives, my current wife, my children and many of my grandchildren in a Republican world. I am guessing I know far more Republicans than most people here. I trade livestock with them, I negotiate with commodity buyers on their behalf, I teach their kids AP and college biology, I have helped them go organic and go off the grid, and I could go on. I like and trust them, we do million plus dollar deals on a handshake and over Zoom. Some I even love.
Have I met overt racists and white supremacists who were Republicans? God, yes. Of course. I helped drive Aryan Nations out of East Central Alberta. The allotments on what should be the Flathead Reservation are a breeding ground for racists and white supremacists most of whom are Republicans. My granddaughter who is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Ktunaxa Tribe wants to burn them out and extend the National Bison Range.
Have I and my family been victimized by the racism of Democrats? Over and over again. Recently my daughter Leah was rejected for a top Post Doc position at a major US university. The interview committee openly told her she was the top candidate but she “wouldn’t fit their culture.” That was a group of Democrats. In fact my daughters have all experienced overt as well as systemic racism (and of course sexism) from devout and influential Democrats in Academia.
I see the differences in racism and fascism between the Republicans and Democrats as simply different expressions of the same fear of the other.
My personal experience leads me to assume every white person I meet is a racist and fascist until they prove otherwise. America (and Canada for that matter), is founded on white supremacy, slavery and repeated genocides perpetrated against my people. American history oozes racism and fascism. To me the distinction isn’t between Democrat and Republican but between those who can see past their ancestral beliefs and welcome me and mine with openness, tolerance, friendship and even love and those who can’t.
My experience is the Republicans I have bonded with can do exactly that. I find people who don’t know me attributing beliefs to me deeply offensive. I extend that response to people I know being unfairly attacked by people who have never met them. The “all Republicans are racist and fascist” meme is vile, vicious, boorish and offensive. Everyone perpetrating it should be deeply ashamed.
But it is just part of a recurring pattern of Democrats and the Democratic Party misunderstanding rural and working class Americans. In a great opinion piece for Politico Bill Hogseth calls a spade a spade. You only have to read the headline to get Bill’s point.
Why Democrats Keep Losing Rural Counties Like Mine
I’m the chair of the local Democratic Party in a Wisconsin county that Donald Trump won. It wasn’t for a lack of progressive organizing. It was because national Democrats have failed communities like mine.
But Bill doesn’t stop there.
Why did Trump do so well with rural voters? From my experience, it’s not because local Democrats failed to organize in rural areas. Instead, after conversations with dozens of voters, neighbors, friends and family members in Dunn County, I’ve come to believe it is because the national Democratic Party has not offered rural voters a clear vision that speaks to their lived experiences. The pain and struggle in my community is real, yet rural people do not feel it is taken seriously by the Democratic Party.
My fear is that Democrats will continue to blame rural voters for the red-sea electoral map and dismiss these voters as backward. But my hope is for Democrats to listen to and learn from the experiences of rural people.
The signs of desperation are everywhere in communities like mine. A landscape of collapsed barns and crumbling roads. Main Streets with empty storefronts. The distant stare of depression in your neighbor’s eyes. If you live here, it is impossible to ignore the depletion.
I would add that many Democrats and the Democratic Party seem woefully ignorant of the concerns of rural communities. I was asked in an earlier thread to elucidate some of these concerns and came up with this list.
Sure concern one — the schools in their communities are either closing due to lack of funding or being privatized.
Concern two — their local hospitals is either closed or slated for closing.
Concern three — climate change is making farming harder and harder.
Concern four — deliberate government policy has been go big or stop farming. They want Big Ag broken up by anti-trust enforcement and government support to be preferentially available to small family farmers.
Concern five — they want better mental health care and support.
I could go on and on. Do any of these sound like the sort of problem Democrats are better at solving than Republicans.
Some things are tougher reaches for Democrats.
They want wild lands preserved and clean water and air but they also want continued fishing and hunting access.
But even there you can see common ground. As a radical environmentalist I have built strong bonds with fish and game associations and individual fishers and hunters. Want to stop a gas line or logging or mining they are there with you every step of the way.
Then richthetraveler added these.
Concern six (which should be concern 0) — They want well-paying jobs, which could be created by FDR-style infrastructure projects.
Concern seven — They want more money in their pockets, especially when they can’t find work, and I believe would rally about a program like universal basic income.
We could go on and on, but such ideas are frequently not welcome here because they are “too progressive” or would also help the “white working class”, which they believe is lost to the Republicans.
Since then I have added numbers 8 and 9.
Eight is that more and more rural communities are turning into food deserts and many are also pharmacy deserts.
Nine is rural residents feel belittled and left behind. This is equally true of working class Americans. These feelings occur across all ethnic, racial, religious and gender groups in these populations.
The thing is the first eight concerns all seem like classic Democratic priorities. But for some reason they pretty much aren’t part of the Democratic Platform. Six and seven, the ones rich provided are fundamental to the reason the working class is turning away from the Democratic Party. They feel abandoned in their hour of need.
In closing I want to expand on the fundamental psychological differences between upper middle class people and the working class.
The fact that lower‐class people have been found to hold more egalitarian values and to be more likely to help regardless of compassion level suggests that it is the greater resources of higher‐class participants that makes them more selfish and therefore less likely to help others. This ‘selfishness’ account of the social class effect on prosocial behaviour is supported by another series of studies reported by Piff, Stancato, Côté, Mendoza‐Denton, and Keltner (2012), who found that, relative to lower‐class individuals, higher‐class people were more likely to show unethical decision‐making tendencies, to take valued goods from others, to lie in a negotiation, to cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize and to endorse unethical behaviour at work. There was also evidence that these unethical tendencies were partly accounted for by more favourable attitudes towards greed among higher‐class people. Later research shows that the relation between social class and unethical behaviour is moderated by whether the behaviour benefits the self or others. Dubois, Rucker, and Galinsky (2015) varied who benefited from unethical behaviour and showed that the previously reported tendency for higher‐class people to make more unethical decisions was only observed when the outcome was beneficial to the self. These findings are consistent with the view that the greater resources enjoyed by higher‐class individuals result in a stronger focus on the self and a reduced concern for the welfare of others.
Interestingly, this stronger self‐focus and lesser concern for others’ welfare on the part of higher‐class people are more evident in contexts characterized by high economic inequality. This was shown by Côté, House, and Willer (2015), who analysed results from a nationally representative US survey and showed that higher‐income respondents were only less generous in the offers they made to an anonymous other in a dictator game than their lower‐income counterparts in areas that were high in economic inequality, as reflected in the Gini coefficient. Indeed, in low inequality areas, there was evidence that higher‐income respondents were more generous than their lower‐income counterparts. To test the causality of this differential association between income and generosity in high and low inequality areas, the authors conducted an experiment in which participants were led to believe that their home state was characterized by high or low degree of economic inequality and then played a dictator game with an anonymous other. High‐income participants were less generous than their low‐income counterparts in the high inequality condition but not in the low inequality condition.
A possible issue with Côté et al. (2015) research in the current context is that it focuses on income rather than class. Although these variables are clearly connected, class is generally thought to be indexed by more than income. The research nevertheless suggests that economic inequality plays a key role in shaping the attitudes and behaviours of higher‐class individuals. There are at least three (not mutually exclusive) explanations for this influence of inequality. One is that inequality increases the sense of entitlement in higher‐class people, because they engage more often in downward social comparisons. Another is that higher‐class people may be more concerned about losing their privileged position in society if they perceive a large gap between the rich and the poor. A final explanation is that higher‐class people may be more highly motivated to justify their privileged position in society when the gap between rich and poor is a large one. Whichever of these explanations is correct – and they may all be to some extent – the fact that prosocial behaviour on the part of higher‐class individuals decreases under conditions of high economic inequality is important, given that the United States is one of the most economically unequal societies in the industrialized world. In unequal societies, then, it seems safe to conclude that on average, higher‐class individuals are less likely than their lower‐class counterparts to behave prosocially, especially where the prosocial behaviour is not public in nature.
In simple terms, I grew up with the belief that the Democratic Party should be in power because they aced the Humphrey test.
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Hubert H. Humphrey
But things have changed. The Republican Party has flunked out. The Democratic Party is on Academic Probation. They need above average marks this term to avoid joining the Republicans. I am not optimistic the students will apply themselves with adequate discipline. They seem far too interested in engaging in the same antics that got the Republicans turfed from the program. They have their own exclusive club that is defiantly in opposition to the goals of this program. They call themselves the Neo-Liberals.
I hope I have made myself clear.