Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Just returned from a trip where I met a couple from Canada, dairy farmers who milk 150 head. They couldn’t understand why Americans would support Sanders.
It seems the political party that dominated their province was conservative until a “Tax The Rich Corporations” party won and raised corporate taxes in order to lighten the load on the middle class. Corporations are rich, they’re not stupid, so they moved out, taking their jobs with them, leaving a budget shortfall that required raising taxes on the middle class, who are now worse off because greed blinded their common sense.
Gee, where have I heard that one before?
Joe Doakes
We have a generation of voters who don’t remember the lessons of socialism in Eastern Europe.
Or Cuba.
Or Argentina.
Or Western Europe in the ’60s and ’70s (and coming back for an encore now)
Or India through the seventies, when it almost starved itself back to the 1600s.
Or Africa,’til today.
Or Venezuela in the past 20 years.
Other than that…
That’s the key.
Years of brainwashing by left wing radicals, have at least two generations convinced that the government knows what’s best for them.
The party of Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryant, the party that fought for states rights to retain slavery and then retain segregation, the party that legislated unconstitutional and undemocratic powers for corrupt union bosses, that Democratic party, doesn’t exist any more. It had a good look at itself in the 1960s during the Wallace era and decided to turn away from Wallace voters, even after Wallace was done. It became the party of single women, black and Hispanic minorities, and social liberalism. You seem to want the party to re-embrace the Wallace voters, as though there is no cost to doing so.
Older, white, less-educated voters are supporting nativist policies, protectionist policies, reactionary policies that have no hope of producing a more prosperous country. These are the Trump supporters, but don’t kid yourself that Trump created them. Trump, by telling them what they wanted to hear, coalesced a group of voters who felt unrepresented. And they are, in large part because history and economics show that the policies that they want will be disastrous if put into place in today’s America.
There are policies which would help those Trump voters in a 21st century economy, but re-creating the country that George Wallace dreamed of isn’t the solution, even if he might win as much support today as he did in 1968. Both parties know that unrealistic populist policies, whether Trump flavored or Bernie flavored, might get you elected once, but the resulting economic disaster might just ruin for a generation the party that backs the populist.
in short EI is advocating Boss Tweed (Clinton) over George Wallace (Trump)
As usual, your analysis is incorrect, Emery. It seems driven by snobbery.
What happened to the democrats did not happen in the 1960s. It happened in one year, 1968, when the New Left used strong arm tactics to take over the Democratic party. It sis this in large part by changing the rules used to pick delegates. That is what explains the difference between Humphrey in ’68 and McGovern in ’72, not the party taking a look at itself. How would it even do that?
A better explanation is that the democratic party has always practiced the use of state power to dispense political privilege. To the Left, the only government power that is worth exercising is its power to privilege one group over another. The New Left did not share the worldview of the mass of traditionally Democrat blue collar voters in the 60s. These voters thought that they had the right to teach hippies (for want of a better term) what they should value.
Never stand between a boomer and what he wants.
As a result of the changes in the rules the Democrat party used to pick delegates after ’68, the post-Johnson Democrats began a program of disfavoring working class voters in favor of traditionally excluded groups.
The problem with believing that this was a good thing is that the Left has never developed the ability to tell which groups were typically excluded for good reasons from those that were excluded for bad reasons. They are happy to register the insane and felons along with minorities.
Like the Democrats of old, they use hatred and exclusion to mark the group that they want to de-privilege.
You yourself talk about less-educated whites being a problem, when you know that the least educated group of voters is Blacks, and they vote solidly Democratic. So for whatever reasons these whites prefer these policies, it has nothing to do with level of education.
It had a good look at itself in the 1960s during the Wallace era and decided to turn away from Wallace voters, even after Wallace was done.
Aside from what Bento said?
They did turn away from those voters.
Eventually.
While blue-collar southern Democrats voted for Nixon (along with Vermont and California) in ’68, the Dems held the majority of the southern Congressional delegation until ’94, and a majority of governors and state houses until 2000.
So they turned veeeeeeeeery slowly.
Ignorant racists have bad ideas. Yeah, Emery, we hear that a lot. Thing is – the Good Ideas that you Educated Liberals imposed on society for our own good, haven’t worked out as promised and as a result, everybody is worse off – just as the Canadian couple explained.
Trump isn’t the cause, he’s the reaction. You are the cause.
Joe Doakes++
I like to tell liberals that if a large enough majority supported it, the US could repeal the 13th amendment and allow the states to legalize slavery. The howls are unimaginable, but it’s true (just as it is true that the federal government is not a state, and can never be a state, and this limits its powers). Liberals believe in a morally progressive vision of history. They think that if the US were to do something wicked, like legalize slavery, there is some higher power that will judge us.
Maybe so, but it is a difficult thing to prove.
Most people in the North opposed slavery. Most people in the South supported it. Was it because the Northerners were better educated? The Southern politicians who supported slavery were well educated. The greatest opposition to slavery in the North, in terms of numbers, came from small family farmers. They knew that where slavery thrived, small farms did not thrive. The moral opposition to slavery in the North came from religious people.
The point that I am making is that if you believe that an educated elite must over rule the will of the people, you will have to justify it by showing how such an elite has made ‘better’ rulers than the people in the past, and you can’t. The educated elite designed and filled death camps, starved foreign nations, starved their own people, and went to war for foolish reasons or just to get more rich. If rule by an educated elite led to peace and prosperity, the people would demand it.
There is no easy way out of this fun house.
BG, funny how libturds get all up in arms over Jim Crow and yet their vision of utopia is where every person, regardless of creed, color or race is a slave to the ruling elite progressive apparatchiks. How much different is a life of a black slave on a plantation to the life of a slave to Big Brother? Would you rather live on a plantation as a slave or in a Stalinist gulag, building BelMor canal? I prefer neither, unlike eTASS. Of course, according to Duranty, Stalin was a picture of civility, charm and progressivism US should have emulated. And of course, eTASS version of socialism would somehow, magically, using unicorn and pixie dust would turn out different than what history teaches has happened – every… freaking… time…
JD+++
( Oops, comment ended up in moderation. Mitch, please release. Thanks )
After demagogues all you have left is militias.
JPA, the difference between the life of a slave on a plantation and that of a resident of the gulags of Stalin, Mao, or others is that a slave had a reasonable chance of dying of old age with his family around him. No?
And it’s worth noting that both slavery and concentration camps for political prisoners are only possible when the state decides that they’re going to support that. Hence smart people oppose the expansion of the state–as Jerry Ford noted, a government strong enough to give you everything is also big enough to take it all away.
bb:
That Jerry Ford quote makes a great point.
The problem is that libidiots don’t believe that their beloved government would ever be malevolent. That said, there is enough evidence in society today to draw the conclusion that they also can’t think independently and need someone to run their lives for them. Ironically, libidiots are literally slaves, being lorded over by their elected masters.