I wish smart and witty people, such as Scott Limeux, would realize there is economic anxiety behind these types of overt actions. These people are broken proletarians. His snark at the end of his post at Lawyers Guns and Money is a typical overstatement of his basic point, which is these particular people are primarily driven by racism--a point I am in basic but not overstated agreement. What I have said is people such as Scott go off the rails in the belief that somehow, an economic populist candidate for Democrats is not sufficient to win nationally or in so-called Red states. My view is precisely the opposite, which is an economic populist politics is the true alternative story to go up against white cultural resentment story. It is not that such candidates and consistent messaging will get all or most of these people to suddenly agree with Democrats. It is that enough of these white working class Republican voters would be peeled, which will result in far more victories up and down the Democratic Party's ballot.
The Republicans have had a unifying (for their party) message for decades, and that is all male, and mostly white, cultural resentment. With the corporate media defining politics through cultural issues, not economic issues, this has allowed Republicans to win elections, even as less and less voters identify as Republicans. The Democrats' message is purposefully muddled, and, again, corporate media enables, and often reinforces, that muddling. The disconnect in polling data on economic issues, where Americans favor a more left leaning economic policy agenda, including among various cultural conservatives, is where the Democrats strategically fail.
This is why I am back to my views from the 1990s, and hoping this time around, social media will be more effective in countering corporate media propagandistic framing and punditry. The People's Party has already applied to be a formal party in Maine, and is ready to roll. The concurrent best thing that can happen, once a vaccine is distributed, is movement politics. The national Democratic Party must be vanquished as it is the last and often most effective brake on positive change. It is in a symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party, which has descended into madness, delusion, and violence-enabling.
Anyone who worries about what Republican messaging will be is feeding into continued progressive and Democratic Party defeat. The key is to worry less about Republican messaging and having a consistent economic message that unites workers and the poor.
