A Return to Class Politics?

I’m much persuaded by this Sherrod Brown piece in the latest New Republic. I didn’t want to be a soft audience. My initial thought was, if this stuff was so good, why couldn’t you win reelection? Why isn’t Bernie the president? Sure, the Bernie thing is a stretch, since the party establishment would not permit an open contest; they ganged up for Hillary, then Kamala. But the more salient answer resonated: the “Democrat” brand has been dragging everybody down since Bill Clinton’s betrayal on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). People believe what they like and choose their own preferred facts. This I like.

Barack Obama and his economic crew accelerated the slide downward with their lofty, high-minded neoliberal blend of free trade, “we believe in the market,” and civic republicanism. Then there was Hillary, Queen of Intersectionality, and the idea that it was okay to trade working class voters for liberal, better-off suburbanites, taking the votes of not better-off POC for granted. In this context, a meme that I had always rejected, that those of us left-of-center looked down upon the working class, starts to make sense. The roots of the alienation aren’t the LGBTQI+ stuff or the trans bathroom nonsense. It’s the economic inequality.

It became a theme of what I would call the neoliberal center to accuse those of centering economic discontent as capitulating to racism in the white working class. Sure there is plenty of racism. But there was plenty in the 1930s too, when those racist white workers built the CIO and voted for FDR. There was plenty when we had Democratic senators from Texas, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida. There was plenty when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were elected, twice each, not so long ago. Now, liberal POC support is bleeding into MAGA votes.*

The other big hit in the essay for me is the demonstrated stupidity of lines like inflation has ended and unemployment is rock-bottom. These were technically true and a big thing for economists and other professional types, including me, but as I myself suggested way back, the fact that Joe Biden took us out of a recession and high inflation was scant relief for those who were unhappy before all that started. Sure, the economy was better, but better than what, and for whom? As Brown points out, the accurate point about inflation being transitory was of little solace to those facing long-standing problems affording housing, health care, higher education, and child care, much less eggs or gas.

On the housing bit, relevant in my own little liberal neck of the woods, I like Ezra Klein’s rant in the New York Times about the liberal blockade of housing and other development. The housing issue is especially important for younger families. Couples who want to start a family and get into a house are on a clock.

My political theory is that what’s missing in the Democratic message is class war. We are not all in the same boat. Some are making out, while most are not. People not doing well need targets, enemies. Love is not the answer. A buddy invented the acronym “WITT” — ‘We’re in this together.’ Cute, but No!

Trump for all his perversions conveyed something of an idea of us and them. Join with him against “them.” Them could be whomever you wanted them to be, all the better. Meanwhile Kamala was doing Hillary 2.0, “no-daylight” Biden, and babbling about joy. The low-hanging fruit for the midterm elections will be Trump/Musk’s antics, but it may not hang low enough.

Biden and his team have nothing to apologize for, as far as the content of their economic policies were concerned. Messaging, to say nothing of Biden’s going back on his pledge to withdraw from any 2024 candidacy, are a different story. I usually defer to others on messaging, since I avoid people and don’t understand how they think. But in this case I feel comfortable deferring to Brown, an expert who has been winning elections in Ohio for twenty years.

People rant about consultants. Of course the consultants stink. They tell elites what they want to hear. The elites would rather lose elections than lose their control over the party. That’s how they stay elites. So we get stories about Rahm Emanuel thinking he can run for president. That’s the territory. It does no good to complain about it. The only remedy is grassroots mobilization. Light fires. Ambitious pols will figure out how to exploit it and out-maneuver sclerotic leaders.

Newsom screwed the pooch after his love-match with the scum Charlie Kirk. Kamala, take back your California Senate seat. Put Al Franken back in the Senate. Bring on a liberated Tim Walz for 2028. If you talk to workers, don’t be weird. Be like Bernie.

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*I like this bit in the linked article, an interview by Albert Toscano with Daniel Martinez HoSang and Joseph E. Lowndes:

“If you want to develop an anti-racist, progressive politics, it has to be socialist. It has to take on property, domination and hierarchy. That’s an anti-racist project, but it has to be articulated as such, not as liberal symbolism.”