Tell you what - why don’t you provide us with an example of a recent speech by Donald Trump concerning the working class that you think is factually correct in its assessment of the problem and the solution.
Is the question: Should the Democrats do less to advocate for minorities?
Or: Should the Democrats do more to advocate for the white working class?
These need not have the same answer.
They should do more to advocate for the working class, period. While making clear that everybody should benefit from that.
I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I just asked you a simple question.
Sure, but are you suggesting they should drop issues like LGBT discrimination or racial bias in policing, because those are “minority issues” not “working class issues”?
I believe you’ve done a good job of explaining the “get along” request. Depending on who you’re talking to, “get along” means “think like a yellow dog Democrat”, or “learning to accept the choices, requirements, and beliefs of others”.
Everyone will “get along” if they would simply think, and act, like everyone else.
You did not ask “a simple question” you asked several pointed rhetorical questions that seem to me to have much more to do with your disapproval of Trump than an honest intention to further the actual discussion at hand. If I am wrong, I do apologize, but I have no interest in contributing to the tangent you were going on - I think there are already several threads currently open for that line of discussion.
OK,
Here is one from March 17 where Trump is addressing German Chancellor
Angela Merkel :
*I welcome collaboration between our two countries and our industry leaders. We have some of our great industry leaders here, as you know, Chancellor. Great people. We must embrace new and effective job-training approaches, including online courses, high school curriculums, and private-sector investment that prepare people for trade, manufacturing, technology, and other really well-paying jobs and careers. These kinds of options can be a positive alternative to a four-year degree. So many people go to college, four years, they don’t like it, they’re not necessarily good at it, but they’re good at other things, like fixing engines and building things. I see it all the time, and I’ve seen it – when I went to school, I saw it. I sat next to people that weren’t necessarily good students but they could take an engine apart blindfolded.
The bolding and the underlining are mine. Now, this may not seem like much to most people, but to me there is something very new and different in this approach to the problems of the working class - I was almost taken aback when I heard it. For the most part, what is considered good, what is considered progress is changing people who may be good at a trade and thinking that they are only useful if they can be academically successful. What Trump is saying here is that if you’re good at a trade, you are just as valuable a citizen in America as if you are a professional. He is not trying to make people into something they are not, but is saying they are valuable, that their skills are valuable.
The fact that you’re unable to grasp that some of those issues cut across identity groups (how do you think religious, low-skill blacks feel about transgendered rights and open borders?) or that there there is a spectrum of possible political positions between (e.g.) whole-hearted embrace of race-based preferences everywhere, every time on the one hand, and “straight white conservative Christian men are the real oppressed class” on the other pretty much illustrates the problem the Dems are facing.
And this resonates with working class people of all types. Bigly.
Whether or not you think it’s right, fair or accurate, people who work with their hands have felt for a long time like politicians only care about rich people and/or poor people, but not people like them. The Dems used to have this cohort. They have lost it.
I lived in California when Pete Wilson and the Republicans won with such wedge issues. In less than a generation the Republicans lost California because by fanning those divisions it was not only the minorities that reacted against the Republicans, but most Christians that realized that hate can only get you so far.
Yeah, asahi, I also thought you overly focused on the word ‘tone’ to be combative.
Please. Mr. Nylock, continue with the point you wanted to make. Or, I guess, thank you for doing so.
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Clinton will help minorities, Trump will help whites, so everyone voted in their interest.
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Democrats and Republicans are proven liars when it comes to class issues. Trump may be lying, but maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s a vain narcissist who really does want to MAGA.
Both of those opinions were common among Trump supporters I know.
Their rhetoric treats economic issues like a natural law instead of man made problems. No one can do anything about free trade or globalization you know, it’s like gravity. Everyone should go to school and be a programmer or stockbroker.
I would guess most of the members of this site are paper pushers, college grads, or involved in a creative industry. But also, Trump is a habitual liar, and many of his policies will hurt the people who voted for him. If he helps the WWC it’ll be by accident. He does talk a nice game, as does Bannon, but what will actually come of it?
Saw this article in Business Insider, thought of this thread.
I think I know what issues Mr Shop Class really cares about, sorry. And I don’t agree with them, morally or intellectually.
These people didn’t vote for Trump because they felt economically detached from the Democratic Party and Trump (and the GOP) fulfilled that need, they voted for Trump because they felt white-privileged detached from the Democratic Party, and Trump (and the GOP) fulfilled that need.
The Democratic party doesn’t have an “identity politics paradigm,” it has a “People should have equal rights and civil rights” paradigm.
The only one with a lack of understanding here is you. You’re unable to grasp the fact that the Republican platform of actively opposing the rights of everyone who’s not a straight, white, cisgender, American born conservative Christian man means that it doesn’t matter if the other groups are homogeneous, you are against their rights as a conglomerate.
When you claim that black people have just as many rights as white people, and the only reason they have less success is because they’re all stupid, not because of systemic racism, they’re gonna know you’re racist. It doesn’t matter if you then turn to the transphobic among them, and say ‘hey, you hate trannies, right? We hate them more than we do you!’
The Democrats? They accept that everybody has rights. Doesn’t matter their sexuality. Doesn’t matter their gender. Doesn’t matter their race. Nor country of origin, religion, medical status, or anything else.
A black man has the same rights as a white man. A lesbian has the same rights as a straight woman. A transgender man has the same rights as a cisgender man. An immigrant has the same rights as the native born.
Doesn’t matter that the black man doesn’t give a shit about the lesbian, or actively hates the trans dude. You’re still against his rights.
And, actual voting demographics show that he’ll overwhelmingly vote to protect his rights, not take away other people’s…or that the average black person is more liberal than the hypothetical man in question.
There’s an old saying - the enemy of my enemy is my friend. When you make an enemy of everybody, don’t be surprised when they ally, even if they don’t see eye to eye about everything.
Just trying to make a friendly reminder that the question is whether identity politics is helping or hurting, not whether everybody should have equal rights protected, and protected better. It’s a question of targeting groups of people with a message as opposed to making the message generic. Did that strategy backfire last year, and if so, why?
Trump’s policies will hurt everyone if they ever come to fruition. It’s just that some people will have the resources to deal with the pain. When we had the financial crisis in 2008, most people I know were hurt. Even if they didn’t lose their job the value of their retirement accounts and real estate took a hit in most places. But those who were just barely hanging on and getting were pushed into indefinite unemployment or forced to take jobs or careers that paid half the salary.
I get that the white working class felt might have felt snubbed by the Democrats, but the policies of the GOP have been unequivocally worse for most Americans than those proposed by Democrats. And Republicans have held most of the power in this country since the late 1990s. I can sympathize with white working class voting for a guy who promises to shake things up and be a man of the people – or at least understand the sentiment. But it ought to be by now clear that Trump is a disaster, regardless of however badly the WWC might have felt snubbed.
Tim314 wrote: “Sure, but are you suggesting they should drop issues like LGBT discrimination or racial bias in policing, because those are “minority issues” not “working class issues”?”
The two are not, or at least shouldn’t be, mutually exclusive. I expect folks to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Yes, and as another poster put it if you’re not invited to the birthday party you are going to chose other friends. The WWC is a large enough chunk of the electorate that they will spoil your day if you can’t corral enough of them to win. Expecting the majority of voters on either side to be “analytical” about candidates and their platforms is absurd, people vote their guts and if you expect to win you’ve got to be the kind of person people cotton to and you have to see enough of them that their impression of you is that you are interested in them.