Well, the sad fact is that the GOP had to go somewhere else after breaking California.
Union support for Democrats didn’t change until 2016 based on percentages and by raw numbers the same number voted for Clinton as Obama 2012. There is no world where his claim that union support has been stolen by the GOP has been accurate. Even in the 80s they are not the same people from the non-voting pool voting for the GOP and Democrats.
It’s why the premise is a non-starter. By popularity Clinton was hated by unions because of NAFTA, but data being analyzed without weighing it for voter turnout - especially comparing percentages of who did vote as a trend when you are competing for those who didn’t vote - has no bearing on the conclusion.
Reagan. Demcrats. Were. Never. Democrats. It was wrong for Clinton to chase them in 92, and it is wrong to say Trump stole them back in 16.
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Cite?
Nationally, Clinton outperformed Trump among union households by just 8 percent, the smallest Democratic advantage since Walter Mondale’s failed campaign against Ronald Reagan in 1984. For a more recent perspective, President Barack Obama won union households by 18 percent in 2012.
Clinton’s poor performance among union households appeared to especially damage her in crucial Midwestern states. Obama won Ohio in 2012, besting Romney in those households by 23 percentage points. Clinton actually lost Ohio’s union households to Trump by 9 points, according to exit polls. The state went to Trump.
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Regardless of that detail, I think the focus of Frank’s argument is not to claim that there was an HRC-specific collapse in union support, but instead that there has been a gradual dissolution of both union power and union support for the Democrats ever since 1968.
That is a percent of the people that voted, not any meaningful tread with regards to union voting patterns. It’s one of the most glaring flaws with anyone talking voting habits in the United States. Comparing trends of who did vote is how the DNC has drifted right to begin with to chase those people voting Republican from traditional Democratic support when there is no data to support they were ever the same people.
More union members voted for Trump and against Clinton compared to history (the raw numbers are more that Clinton’s support was flat and Trump gained people from the non-voting pool), but union support for Democrats has been mostly flat as a percentage with the GOP voting increasing as partisanship has risen - all the while more and more people voted (i.e. the union members that didn’t vote went from not voting to voting for the GOP at a faster rate). Most people should see that as already Republican union members have been disenfranchised and like Trump - and there probably is data somewhere to show if they were also the ones that liked Reagan.
Now his conclusion might be right, but I don’t give a fuck about a message I probably would support propped up with manipulations in data like that. I’m probably more I rested about it now than I would be in a few days or a week ago because I’m already irritated by misleading with data going into it - doesn’t make his supporting evidence better.
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The DNC shifted right post Carter because the country as a whole (as in the general population, as shown by polling on issues themselves rather than party affiliation) under went a genuine rightward shift during the same time frame. Reagan won in part because the country was more conservative than it had been. And our population was generally speaking more conservative during and after Reagan’s term than it had been previously. This is a major, often un-cited, factor in DNC losses at the national level at the time. The rightward shift of the DNC eventually resulted in Bill Clinton as president, a guy who was resolutely from the moderate/right leaning part of the DNC’s coalition. Additionally as the GOP has continued to move further and further right. What used to be their moderate to progressive wing has offloaded itself into the DNC. Meaning that until pretty recently that center right bit of the DNC coalition has remained the/a dominant one often in combination with a big moderate block. Frankly you had a more Conservative population over all, and the far left and progressive wing of the DNC was one of the smaller blocks within the party. You had a party that was largely a centrist one, with center right and center left wings. With a tiny leftist progressive block bolted on. In part because the far left and progressive voters were a smaller share of the national electorate, and the DNC block as a whole.
Now since Clinton, and especially since G Dubs and Obama, the country has undergone a rapid and decided leftward shift. Especially those parts of the country that tend to go for the Dems. While things like the internet, back lash to G dubs, and our economic situation seem to be factors. The largest driver seems to be younger, more liberal generations of Americans entering the voting pool (look at all those surveys of religiosity and political opinions where big leftward shifts are mostly driven by massive disparity between millennials and older Americans). While older more conservative generations drop out of the electorate (by dying).
Reagan’s success with the unions is pretty well understood. He ran on a pro-union platform. As a former Union head (SAG). And had the explicit endorsement of several major unions. This lead to significant actual support within unions, particularly public sector ones. Including among the PATCO Airtraffic controllers who’s lives he would later destroy. Needless to say all of that was pretty much a lie, and Reagan kicked off a massive erosion of Union support, membership, and influence.
A lot of these sorts of complaints about the DNC are constructed by assuming the past DNC coalition (one that was more moderate to center right, and moving rightward) is still the current one. While simultaneously assuming that the current disposition of the electorate and gen pop existed in the past.
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I expect the GOP to oppose universal health care. They have been paid to do so by the health insurance industry. What i object to is Dems accepting contributions from health insurers. My position on this is incompatible with the current scale of the health insurance market. If my prefered policies are adopted they are fucked. Dem politicians who accept money from these lobbies compromise themselves in implementing my preferred policies. I cant stop them but i wont choose them.
I have my priorities and others have theirs. I can debate but its sort of irrelevant. If the Dems wont deliver my preferred policies after 40 years and with what i perceive a clear shift in public opinion in my favour well - if not now when?
There will always be a reason why americans cant have nice things. Mostly the arguments are generated by the health insurance industry and aggressively marketed to americans so they are taken as objective truth. If they were objective truth then they would probably be true in canada and western europe as well. “Political realities” - oxymoron alert! - can and do change. Political parties are coalitions of interest. For me universal healthcare is a deal breaker. I wont support politicians who dont support it and i dont care about their “lesser evil” bullshit. I draw the line here. For what little that is worth.
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I can agree with that, but not with the sentiment that mainstream Democrats should “fuck off and/or die.” Mainstream Dems support all the points jeezers ticked off, and more. Don’t conflate the centrist neolib “leadership” with the bulk of the party. Please do insist that party leadership and candidates reflect the prevailing attitudes of the members. They haven’t, and that is frustratrating. Obama probably came closest, with the exception of the massive blind spot he had on Wall Street malfeasance.
Ok, and drone warfare/extrajudicial assassination.
I get really pissed at “Bernie bros” like jeezers who, apparently, want to “Tea Party” the Democrats. My parents are mainstream Democrats who were actively involved in the Civil Rights movement. They protested at segregated lunch counters and buses. They went on strike with their union and made real sacrifices to improve their lives (and everyone else’s). So when I see someone shitting on that, I won’t stand for it. It shows a malignant naivety that creates a schism in the party that plays right into the hands of the alt-right and Russian bots.
None taken.
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Just calling Democrats you dont like “neolib” doesnt make them “neolibs”.
Also, Democrats tried a Bernicrat (a “commudem”) already. He was called George McGovern. It didn’t end well. Bernie is great for one party, the Republicans, who I’m sure wish him well for the next election cycle.
Plus, the fixation on Sanders is so shortsighted. If you want socialist policies enacted, you need a socialist Congress, specifically, a socialist Senate with a supermajority. Good luck with that (which can be taken both sarcastically and non-sarcastically). There is just as much chance of this as there is a Freedom Caucus with a supermajority in the Senate.
Bill Clinton and Obama have shown the Democrats can succeed. Yes, Hillary was a flawed candidate. It doesnt mean Democrats have to hew obsequiously to Sanders, who can’t even bear to call himself a Democrat. The “outrage” Sanders supporters seem to feel should be directed toward the proper place (not at Democrats).
I’m supposed to read your mind? And I’m supposed to use a nomenclature that is nothing but a slur? Thanks, I’ll pass.
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Question:
Is a Paul Krugman a neoliberal?
Why or why not?
Well of course he is. Because he uses a neoclassical synthesis type economic paradigm in analyzing economic policy and because he is basically happy with the status quo in the US. The changes he has in mind (if any) are incremental which is striking in the context of a 40 year trend deterioration in real wages, real opportunities and massively greater inequality - trends which I think clearly discredits the governing economic paradigm and the class that implements it.
Or to use a line from No Country for Old Men, “If the road that you traveled brought you to this place, what use was the road?”.
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Incidentally, this popped up on Twitter a short time ago:
The person using it unironically as their profile image is a self-identified “corporate Democrat” centrist.
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argues that Krugman and Stiglitz “utterly fail to transform the discipline.”
perhaps this makes them obstacles in the face of your revolution.
If Mirowski is often acidic about the Left’s failure to understand this point, he also recognizes that the neoliberals themselves have been canny about keeping the real nature of their project hidden through a variety of means. Neoliberal institutions tend to have what he calls a “Russian doll” structure, with the most central ones well hidden from public eyes. Mirowski coins an ironic expression, “the Neoliberal Thought Collective,” for the innermost entities that formulate the movement’s doctrine. The venerable Mont Pelerin Society is an NTC institution. Its ideas are frequently disseminated through venues which, formally at least, are unconnected to the center, such as academic economics departments. Thus, neoclassical economists spread the gospel of the free market while the grand project of remaking the state falls to others.
I prefer to focus on the innermost dolls.
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OK. Name a Democrat who you think I don’t like who isn’t a “neolib”.
Also, notice Tom Perez’ purge in the DNC this weekend and witness the lack of outcry from establishment Dems. Do you think any of those silent Dems are not “neolibs”?
here’s a good discussion of the topic by Mark Blyth (who has a pretty good explanation of this whole populist trend)
I don’t doubt for a moment there is voter suppression, but the populist rise is a worldwide phenomenon
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For 30 years, the postwar period enjoyed the biggest boom, in France the trente glorieuse, Il boom (in Italy), all of which was a consequence the Keynes Bretton Woods. They knew Europe was in ruins and half occupied by Russia. They had to provide something - which was a focus on full employment. This is a great thing, since people could move costlessly from job to job, and capital was forced to invest because higher wages ultimately come out of profits. Back in 1943 Michael Kalecki (you can find his short 7page critique online) predicted that while this is great - ultimately it will lead to the wage and price spiral in the 70s - the high inflation and strikes. With full employment the wages rise all across the board even at the bottom- so once capital no longer has the whip hand to discipline labour and sees its profits eaten away with inflation, it will fund a market revolution. Another thing that Kalecki predicted in 43.
So you have Reagan and Thatcher, you have the Patco strike, and the miners strike in the UK. You deregulate finance which can now move freely and instead of focusing on full employment you focus on INFLATION. This leads to 30years of wage stagnation for the middle class, and since there is low inflation- wall street starts up coming up with crazier ways to make returns (ultimately gambling with everone elses savings) hence the collapse in 08.
There has been recovery since then, but most of it went to those in the top, and 50% of new jobs created since then are part time, zero-hour contracts, with zero benefits. Quite frankly Trump stumbled on to this (even though he’s a pluto-populist) and most people know he’s a bullshit artist but what did they hear from the Democrats, “we have to save Obama’s legacy” America is already great. Sure but there are hollowed out cities in the Midwest with opiate epidemics and jobs that used to pay well such as manufacturing got replaced with call centres and later Wall mart and those Amazon warehouses where you get strip searched going in and out.
Now I don’t believe Trump has the solution, but we need to look at this as a world wide trend.
Global Trumpism
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Mark Blyth has been a fantastic commentator on recent events. Highly recommended for anyone.
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