Posted on 04/20/2018 6:22:55 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The Democratic Party has never been more reliant on the support of upper-middle-class voters than it is today. And the economic fortunes of affluent Americans - and those of the typical working-class household - have rarely been more disparate. These twin developments have inspired much commentary about the class tensions beneath Team Blue’s “big tent”.
There is little doubt that it would be easier to advance radical economic reform in an America where politics was sharply polarized along class lines, and working people of all races were concentrated in a single partisan coalition.
It is absolutely true that a liberal software developer in Williamsburg and the delivery person who brings her Seamless have different class interests. And as Thomas Edsall notes in his New York Times column this week, America’s urban housing crisis is making those disparate interests more apparent: Many upper-middle-class Democrats own homes in metropolitan areas, and thus, directly benefit from both housing scarcity and gentrification; many working-class Democrats, meanwhile, are being displaced by those same forces.
All of which is to say: Progressives should be concerned by the fact that working-class Americans are voting less than they used to — and that those who are still casting ballots are voting for Republicans more than they once did. As Edsall suggests, uniting an organized, multiracial, working class under the Democratic banner would expand the horizons of progressive possibility. But in this benighted, neo-feudal era, the left can accomplish a great deal by waging war on America’s ruling class with a coalition of the proletariat and the “woke” bourgeoisie.
(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com ...
It is absolutely true that a liberal software developer in Williamsburg and the delivery person who brings her Seamless have different class interests.
What is unique and important is the ability move from class to class. Both up and down. This used to be the USA!
Affulent Democrats are Affulent Democrats, because they and their children never have to live with the consequences of their policies. They are able to insulate themselves in cloistered communities in urban enclaves and large acre gated estates in rural areas. Try to build “affordable housing” in rich white liberal areas and they’ll rise up against it. Look at the wealthiest zip codes in the US, they are all almost exclusively white and vote Dem.
Edsall’s article is actually a worthwhile read. He is pointing out that affluent Libs are hypocrites. When “affordable housing” is about to come to THEIR neighborhood they turn into bigger NIMBY-types than Archie Bunker.
Likely why Obama sought to use HUD to export those people to Republican suburbs. Keep affluent Lib supporters happy and SCROOOOOO with “red” voting districts.
The class struggle as a political struggle might have made sense in Europe in 1848.
In America? In the 21st century? They want to promote class struggle? What a joke.
Partisan Media Shill Eric Levitz, regurgitating swill in New York Magazine: There is little doubt that it would be easier to advance radical economic reform in an America where politics was sharply polarized along class lines, and working people of all races were concentrated in a single partisan coalition... Progressives should be concerned by the fact that working-class Americans are voting less than they used to -- and that those who are still casting ballots are voting for Republicans more than they once did... But in this benighted, neo-feudal era, the left can accomplish a great deal by waging war on America's ruling class with a coalition of the proletariat and the "woke" bourgeoisie.
What a reprehensible reptile -- same anti-worker, anti-American language that Hag Hitlery used ("deplorable"; "glad we destroyed coal mining jobs") and same devotion to single party state rule by a rich aristocracy. Thanks Oldeconomybuyer.
here’s the Edsall piece — the author could serve as exhibit A for why the NY Slimes is in such a downward spiral, typical ignorant bigot of the left:
The Democrats’ Gentrification Problem
By Thomas B. Edsall
April 19, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/democrats-gentrification-cities-voters.html
[All of which is to say: Progressives should be concerned by the fact that working-class Americans are voting less than they used to — and that those who are still casting ballots are voting for Republicans more than they once did.]
Exactly what Trump tapped into and what the Establishment GOP needs to get with him on.
Instead they will keep their heads firmly up the a** of corporate lobbyists and globalists.
Democrats have become the party of silly white ‘elites’, blacks, illegals, Stormy type sluts, and other assorted losers.
They are NOT the party of ‘working people’ at ANY economic level.
Period.
Democrats and their ‘servants’...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/democrats-gentrification-cities-voters.html
from link:
Michael Lind, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in a prescient 2014 essay, “The Coming Realignment: Cities, Class, and Ideology After Social Conservatism,” that “high-density downtowns and suburban villages are coming to have an hourglass-shaped social structure.”
“Wealthy individuals” are at the top, according to Lind, with a “large luxury-service proletariat at the bottom.” Democrats, in this scheme, have become the party of
the downtown and edge city elites and their supporting staff of disproportionately foreign-born, low-wage service workers.
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