IGX

dead man walking wrote:good piece about "identity liberalism" and its fatal shortcomings, by an eastern, elite liberal professor

American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opini ... ght-region

I've had problems with this for years...

The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences.

The thing I loved about the military was that we "celebrated" (had beaten into us) our commonalities in spite of our differences. That's the thing to admire. If you want to see segregated, watch the Homecoming Parade at a major university as each ethnic group club's float comes marching by. Float after mono-cultural float celebrating diversity.

dead man walking wrote:good piece about "identity liberalism" and its fatal shortcomings, by an eastern, elite liberal professor

American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opini ... ght-region

Great piece and insight into the mind of a source of he problem. He gets really close on a lot of things, but a Columbia Professor of Liberal Arts, who was educated at Harvard and takes sabbaticals for a year to France and thinks BLM is doing great things is not equipped to win hearts and minds in all those red counties across the map. The other big problem he touches on but doesn't solve is the Libs have sewed the wind of Identity politics and are reaping(hehehe) the whirlwind. Does anybody think each whiny but more importantly entitled special horizontal category of color and sexual preference is going back in the bottle now that the Genie of Identity Politics has been out for years? Love him or hate him or even just thinking he was the best choice, Trump went horizontal and appealed not on color or plumbing, either original equipment, modified, or operationally, but to the entire spectrum of incomes. He also deeply pisses off serious Libs of all income ranges. In the end people vote for their own economic interests. Right now there are just more people who believe in Trump than believed in Hilliary. We will see how it goes.

will you grant that there is at least a little irony in the fact that a self-centered billionaire who doesn't pay his bills acted as the champion of a middle class that feels ignored?

from his gold-plated loft, he feels their pain.

dead man walking wrote:will you grant that there is at least a little irony in the fact that a self-centered populist who doesn't pay his bills acted as the champion of a middle class that feels ignored?

Edited to make it more universal.

an interesting edit.

i know trump is a billionaire.

i dont know that he is a populist. i know that he's an actor who can mouth words that sound like those of a populist.

then he heads off to a nyc restaurant and promises a tax cut to the fat cats there. that's the donald who god--looking into donald's heart--knows.

Lilla's not entirely wrong but there are some gaping holes in his argument. The question isn't either/or - you can be socially progressive (which is a winning issue despite his warnings) with economic progressivism/populism (also a winning issue), the Democrats have simple failed over the past twenty years to effectively own that populist sphere.

To start:

If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of white evangelicals.

You know how a Democratic candidate wins back white evangelicals? Being an arch-social conservative. This is stupid to even bring up, they are as lost to Democrats as black voters are to Republicans.

What you could also say here is that Trump ran on white identity politics, Hillary ran on everyone else's and his were more effective this time... kind of. Pretending that Democrats normally win a majority of the white working class but this time got crushed doesn't reflect reality. Republicans win the white working class, as they have for forty years.

But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.

It would be impossible for this sentence to climb farther up its own ass.

Liberals and progressives are more aware of conditions outside their groups - they have to be, they live in heterogeneous cities and their daily interactions are inherently diverse. It's this vaunted white <whatever> that lives in a bubble - small towns and suburbs where they see people of the same religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation day in and day out.

milosz wrote:

But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.

It would be impossible for this sentence to climb farther up its own ass.

Liberals and progressives are more aware of conditions outside their groups - they have to be, they live in heterogeneous cities and their daily interactions are inherently diverse. It's this vaunted white <whatever> that lives in a bubble - small towns and suburbs where they see people of the same religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation day in and day out.

urban americans, however aware they may be of diversity in their own communities, are ignorant about rural communities and rural life.

the burlington vt progressives don't have a clue what goes on in the hills or how the rural working class think and talk. a standard line out where dirt roads are common might be something like, "i see the boss has got you working like a nigger." if you repeat that in burlington, as i heard someone do recently, half the group slips into a traumatized catatonic state and the other half looks as though someone just slipped twelve inches of cold, greased cast-iron piping of their asses.

they're clueless.

Burlington progressives are more aware of what goes on in the hills than the crackers are of what happens in the cities. Why is only one side inundated with this whining?

A bad candidate running a bad campaign would be President if not for vote-switching in the last week after the FBI interfered. This is not the end of the world as far as "liberal identity politics."

milosz wrote:Burlington progressives are more aware of what goes on in the hills than the crackers are of what happens in the cities.

would it then be fair to say neither knows much about the other?

milosz wrote:Why is only one side inundated with this whining?

i don't understand this statement

would it then be fair to say neither knows much about the other?

No, I think if you took the average liberal/urban voter and gave them a multi-part quiz on life in the other, they'd be wildly more accurate than if you quizzed the kind people of Podunk about the big cities. If nothing else, because of educational attainment.

i don't understand this statement

Where is the professor's complaint about the white working class's bubble? Where is anyone's? Identity politics are evil... unless you get elected Republican President using them. Bubbles are bad... unless it's okay because it fits a certain narrative.

the professor wrote:

But when it came to life at home, she tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of white evangelicals.

i read this to suggest he thinks hillary's message in effect propped up "white identity" politics.

by the way, i agree that comey's announcement was death. i blame bill. his meeting with lynch revealed ethical blindness (a clinton problem) and effectively eliminated her from being able to influence comey at the crucial moment.

milosz wrote:Lilla's not entirely wrong but there are some gaping holes in his argument. The question isn't either/or - you can be socially progressive (which is a winning issue despite his warnings) with economic progressivism/populism (also a winning issue), the Democrats have simple failed over the past twenty years to effectively own that populist sphere.

So it's a winning issue just not in application?

dead man walking wrote:
i read this to suggest he thinks hillary's message in effect propped up "white identity" politics.

How did they need to be propped up any more is my question - in 2012, Democrats lost white people overall 59-39, in 2004 58-41. There is nothing Democrats can do to swap that - the GOP is too closely identified with white identity politics. Progressive/populist economics can shave a few points, as they generally have.

Not even getting into the evangelical side - how is a pro-choice, pro-gay rights party supposed to win back evangelicals aside from betraying the core principles of its voters?

Turdacious wrote: So it's a winning issue just not in application?

Well, Democrats still win more actual voters, so in a system that isn't designed to favor the poor put-upon rurals...

But even then, yes, it's a winning application. Perhaps you've heard of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Rightly or wrongly, Hillary like Gore before her was seen as less concerned with the common person (of any race) than her same-party predecessor. She didn't effectively communicate a vision of economic prosperity for all.

milosz wrote: She didn't effectively communicate a vision of economic prosperity for all.

yes

milosz wrote:

Turdacious wrote: So it's a winning issue just not in application?

Well, Democrats still win more actual voters, so in a system that isn't designed to favor the poor put-upon rurals...

But even then, yes, it's a winning application. Perhaps you've heard of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? .

I remember what happened when both of them tried to implement a progressive agenda.

They won second terms and historically high approval ratings?

milosz wrote:They won second terms and historically high approval ratings?

You only demonstrate that Americans are ok with democrats in charge with a restraint on their ability to implement a progressive agenda. Not exactly helpful to your argument.

In 2012 Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate along with returning Obama.
In 1996, Democrats picked up seats in the House but not in the Senate, along with returning Clinton.

So... no? That doesn't fit the facts of the situation.

milosz wrote:In 2012 Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate along with returning Obama.
In 1996, Democrats picked up seats in the House but not in the Senate, along with returning Clinton.

So... no? That doesn't fit the facts of the situation.

But what progressive legislation did they get passed? I'm genuinely curious-- New Democrats (who aren't really progressives) like Bubba got things done (like them or not) but with the dearth of progressive governors I'm wondering what the <65 generation of liberals has actually accomplished.

Clinton got the only progressive tax increase in my lifetime, family and medical leave act IIRC, minimum wage increase, domestic violence legislation.
Obama got the ACA, ended the worst excesses of the war on terror in terms of torture, Cuba relations, signed Dodd-Frank, Paris Accord, has issued pardons/clemency to more non-violent drug offenders than any other President

More Americans vote for the (relatively) progressive party election after election. Do they appeal to fundamentalist farmers? No. They can't and maintain any semblance of a party unity.

milosz wrote:Clinton got the only progressive tax increase in my lifetime, family and medical leave act IIRC, minimum wage increase, domestic violence legislation.
Obama got the ACA, ended the worst excesses of the war on terror in terms of torture, Cuba relations, signed Dodd-Frank, Paris Accord, has issued pardons/clemency to more non-violent drug offenders than any other President

More Americans vote for the (relatively) progressive party election after election. Do they appeal to fundamentalist farmers? No. They can't and maintain any semblance of a party unity.

You're pretty much making my point-- most of those actions were in the first two years of their respective presidencies, and were followed by massive losses in the mid-term elections. That's a lot of risk for progressive legislators. And the ACA is a train wreck.

And not sure where you're getting this rosy outlook. Republicans control the POTUS, both houses of Congress, most governorships, and most legislatures-- and Trump won an 'unwinnable' election. If I were a progressive, this would be a time of reflection rather than celebration.

County map of the election. Lots on view here as to the main puzzle pieces of the Dem coalition.

DrDonkeyLove wrote:County map of the election. Lots on view here as to the main puzzle pieces of the Dem coalition.

And now she is up by 2,000,000 in the popular vote.

I'm not saying that snarkily, it's just an interesting contrast between human and physical geography.

are we sure he won? or did putin rig it?

A group of election lawyers and prominent computer scientists have reportedly asked Hillary Clinton’s team to consider a recount in three crucial swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—that were won by Donald Trump.

New York’s Gabriel Sherman reports that the group may have found “persuasive evidence” that the election results might have been messed with.

The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.

if hillary had won, conspiracy nuts on the right would be frothing