Thread by @timjacobwise on Thread Reader App
There is a stunning lack of analytical sophistication among much of left Twitter, which causes their loudest voices to grossly overstate support for progressive/left policies. As someone who supports those policies it pains me to say this but it's true...
A THREAD
2/ These folks excitedly point to survey data showing broad support for M4A, for instance, or other left priorities & say "see, the people are with us!" and thus, the reason we don't get those things passed is "big Pharma money" or other corporate money buys off the lawmakers...
3/ This is incredibly simplistic on multiple levels. First, NO lawmakers would actually vote against what the people in THEIR district supported if they believed those people were actually going to vote, money be damned. They wouldn't commit political suicide for PAC money FFS...
4/ If they ARE voting counter to the wishes of most in their district its bc those people aren't voting. But what are they supposed to do? If the people who DO vote are NOT as prog/left then naturally they will vote the way actual voters lean, bc otherwise they lose office...
5/ So the only way to make that survey data relevant -- even assuming it's accurate at the congressional precinct level (which it might not be, seeing as it's aggregate national data typically) -- is to make sure those prog residents of x y or z district vote...
6/ But if the Rep has no rational reason to expect them to, bc they never or rarely do, it's absurd to expect them to go out on a limb in the hopes that will suddenly excite regular non-voters. They won't take the chance. Whether they should or not isn't the issue They won't...
7/ Second, just bc national data tells you x percent support some progressive idea, doesn't mean those numbers adhere at the local or state level in enough congressional districts or states (which elect Senators) to make it possible to gain support for those policies...
8/ For instance, Dem Senators represent millions more people than GOP ones, and bc of gerrymandering, house delegations tilt GOP too, even in states where the population is pretty evenly split (like NC as one example)...
9/ This means, you could have 70% supporting a really progressive policy, but given the structural skew to the GOP & states w/far fewer who lean that way, this won't translate into incentives for lawmakers to push those policies or even make it possible to vote for them...
10/ running up the score (when it comes to progressive policy support) in a handful of populated Blue states and Blue cities in Red States won't matter at the policymaking level because of the structural impediments to actual democracy built in to the system...
11/ None of which means we don't fight like hell for those ideas, but we need to stop being stupid and acting like it's just big money or lack of political will or "being bought off by the 1%" which is the issue here...
12/ To gain broad support and get those policies, we will have to either do massive outreach to those folks currently not in favor of those things and get enough of them to be, or change the structure (gerrymandering, electoral college, filibuster, etc). ..
13/ An additional layer of left naiveté is saying that we just need to appeal to people's class interests (for better health care, jobs, education etc) and push for broad universal programs, to build unity between white folks and Black and brown folks and win progressive policy..
14/ Today Matt Yglesias's intern wrote some shyt like this on Matt's substack, totally misunderstanding the work of
@hmcghee to which the essay was somewhat responding. Look, Heather and everyone on the left believes in those types of programs (minimum wage hike, etc)...
15/ But what Heather points out brilliantly & what many of us have tried to point out for years, is that precisely bc of white racial resentment (stoked by politicians for generations), and the effect that has had on white political consciousness around policy to help folks...
16/ we basically "can't have nice things." Unless we confront that racial resentment and its deployment directly (not dance around it by just speaking in colorblind terms as a way to trick the white working class into solidarity), we will never win progressive policy...
17/ Why? Bc white folk associate those efforts with racial redistribution, whether you mention race or not. And history shows they'll sacrifice class interest for caste interest. They end up opposing universal programs BECAUSE they are universal, and they see POC as undeserving..
18/ They will literally be willing to die not to be associated with programs from which they view Black and brown folks as benefitting at all, even when they are universal (like ACA), as
@JonathanMetzl showed in "Dying of Whiteness."...
19/ So this means the left can't just appeal to material self interest, bc caste benefits trump them (no pun intended).
We also can't just rant about the elites, because white working class folks conceptualize the elite differently than most of us do...
20/
To those folks, the elites are cultural and political, not economic. It's. Hollywood, it's entertainers, it's professors and politicians (the "swamp"). Not rich folks. They don't mind rich folks (and many want to BE rich folks). But they hate the other "elites"...
21/
Because they "look down on" their traditions, their cultural affectations, etc. They buy the notion of individualism and meritocracy though, sadly, which means the rich (like Trump) are fine, so long as they don't seem pointy-headed and intellectual (like Bill Gates)..
22/ So if we want to build solidarity for progressive policy we can't just switch white working class anger to a different target by saying "The real enemy is Wall Street." 1), they SEE immigrants & are fed stereotypes of Black folks daily in news, etc. Wall Street is abstract..
23/ and then 2)
fighting Wall Street seems much harder and less likely to succeed than just fighting to stay ABOVE someone else they're already above (black and brown). Whiteness, in that sense, is property for them (as Cheryl Harris notes)...
24/ And given a choice between fighting for some revolution or major reform of the class system that has always kicked my ass, or simply cashing in the chips I already have and trying not to LOSE ground, the latter is much more likely...
25/ It's not that we can't build solidarity. But we'll have to directly confront the racial resentment & the way politicians have utilized it. THIS might work w/white working folk bc it places blame on POLITICAL elites whom they hate, not class ones, whom they don't...
26/ By saying politicians are manipulating our fears and hostilities in order to keep working people divided, we are implicitly attacking class elites (after all, it's for their benefit the pols do this) but by focusing the ire on the POLS rather than those they govern for...
27/ ...we start where the populist rage is focused, which is on elected officials, and make them the first-order problem. Voters are more willing to see themselves as the victims of political swamp monsters lying to them, than they are to see POLS as the victims of big money...
28/ Seeing pols as victims at all is hard for working folks, for good reason. Better to make them the enemy, since so many people across the spectrum already feel they are. even that might not work to overcome the caste benefits of whiteness for many, but it might work for some..
29/ Ultimately, @hmcghee is right on the money when she points out the way race has blocked class solidarity and how we have to directly confront that reality--demonstrating why racial equity and justice are good for everyone. Not just why class solidarity is...
30/There will be no class solidarity without a direct discrediting of white racial resentment. It's a hard trick to pull off, but a necessary one. Trying to side step it is not only disrespectful to folks of color injured by white supremacy and those politics, it is going to fail
31/ Oh one more thing, going back to the stuff at the top of the thread..some say, naively, that "if we just get non votes to vote we could win bc they're mostly progressive." Bullshyt, they are not. The only data on non voters I've seen says they largely mirror voters...
32/ Which is to say, pretty evenly split. So they are not this "ready to mobilize" base of leftists just waiting for a good class analysis to come along...they are much like everyone else. Some turned off and on the left, others on the right...
for Jimmy Dore and Krystal Ball.
