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The Party of Snobbish Elites
National Review ^ | 1/8/2015 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 01/08/2015 2:22:01 PM PST by Servant of the Cross

A gentrified cocoon of progressive privilege has cost Democrats the middle class.

Democrats for over a century were associated with the American middle class.

Working-class voters once believed that Democratic-inspired intervention into the economy — minimum-wage laws, overtime pay, Social Security, Medicare, workers’ compensation — protected their interests better than unfettered free-market capitalism.

Republicans often had trouble selling the argument that an unleashed economy and new technology would relegate poverty to a relative, not absolute, condition — something like suffering with a cheap, outdated iPhone 4 while the better-off could afford an iPhone 6.

Why, then, have Democrats lost the working class — especially white, lower-middle-class voters?

There are several obvious reasons.

For one, high-profile progressives are largely rich, and their relatively small numbers live in a gentrified cocoon. Politicians, academics, media personalities, celebrities, and other Democratic-aligned professionals had just the sort of academic brands or technological, linguistic, cultural, and service skills that were well-compensated during the transition to globalism.

Their out-of-touch privilege, however, led to agendas — radical green politics, hyper-feminism, transgender advocacy, forced multiculturalism, open borders — that were not principle concerns of the struggling working classes.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: compassion; dems; elites; feudalism; snobbish; uniparty; vdh; victordavishanson

1 posted on 01/08/2015 2:22:01 PM PST by Servant of the Cross
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To: Sir Napsalot; Kaslin; neverdem; EXCH54FE; 2ndDivisionVet; Rummyfan; smoothsailing; Hojczyk; ...

VDH ping ...


2 posted on 01/08/2015 2:22:46 PM PST by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: Servant of the Cross

I give up....when did we vote for a “transition to globalism”?


3 posted on 01/08/2015 2:52:13 PM PST by Regulator
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To: Servant of the Cross
The tipping point came when it became clear this fella

is the face of the modern Democratic Party.

4 posted on 01/08/2015 3:13:18 PM PST by Oratam
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To: Servant of the Cross

The pre-WWII white working class were Democrats because of the Depression. After the war, the GI Bill helped them to become middle class, but they still felt gratitude to the Democrat Party. Their children largely became professionals, bought into the leftist propaganda, and transformed the Democrat Party into the leftist party that it is—in 1972, at the age of 18, I was a part of that movement, helping McGovern obtain the Presidential nomination.

Then three things happened, all within a generation. One was the collapse of Leninist and Maoist communism, with a portion of the intellectual leftists realizing that they had been had, and going back to the philosophical basics to discover the conservatism of Aristotle, Locke, and the Federalist writers. (I be one of them.) One was the realization among many that the Democrat Party had become the Agitprop Party, where all anti-American-value people felt at home—and as the WWII generation went into its eternity, this became more and more obvious.

The final one, which I think is the most important one, is that the people who had genuinely embraced the ideals promoted by the Democrats in the 1960s—racial equality, women’s rights, Christian concern for the poor, desire for peace in the world—realized that the Democrat Party no longer stood for these, but rather for twisted caricatures: racial equality was twisted to become “fighting white privilege,” women’s rights were twisted to become man-hating feminism along with abortion at any time for any reason including after birth, Christian concern for the poor was twisted to become government-mandated “social justice,” world peace was twisted to become the shrinking of the Pax Americana. And above all that, the embracing of Islam as a more acceptable religion than Christianity.

You can fool the American people for a while, but not forever.


5 posted on 01/08/2015 3:13:29 PM PST by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: Servant of the Cross

Interesting pic of Hill.
I’ve heard she and Chels get 2 for 1 deals at the cosmetic surgeon.


6 posted on 01/08/2015 3:15:16 PM PST by nascarnation (....)
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To: Oratam

> The tipping point came when it became clear this fella
is the face of the modern Democratic Party.

You can also tell them by that familiar lisp and swishing sound they make when they walk. Holding a limp wrist up the air with pinky dangling is another sign..,


7 posted on 01/08/2015 3:25:26 PM PST by jsanders2001
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To: chajin

Very astute.


8 posted on 01/08/2015 3:35:11 PM PST by M. Thatcher
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To: chajin

I think the transition you’re discussing started in the mid sixties with the understanding that change was going to come only through revolution, the naïve belief that revolution was possible, followed by the ultimate realization in the late sixties (as a result of Chicago, Kent State, Peoples Park, etc.) that revolution would never be possible because when it came down to direct conflict, the establishment had a monopoly on force. That’s the genesis of the “undergrounding of the revolution”.


9 posted on 01/08/2015 4:10:22 PM PST by ArmstedFragg (Hoaxey Dopey Changey)
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To: Servant of the Cross

Could have fooled me! Given the title, I thought this was a story about the GOP leadership...


10 posted on 01/08/2015 5:24:48 PM PST by COBOL2Java (I'm a Christian, pro-life, pro-gun, Reaganite. The GOP hates me. Why should I vote for them?)
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