The left continually insists that the average moderate middle-class white male is a racist, sexist, homophobe with a criminal disregard for the poor and unfortunate if he isn’t totally happy about being treated as a second class citizen. As long as this continues, the left will lose support among moderate middle-class white males.
I was seriously considering voting for Kerry up until the debates. After watching them I realized his message was the same tired old socialist nonsense that the left has been spouting for years. That wasn’t enough to make me vote for Bush, but it was certainly enough to make me not vote for Kerry. And by making Dean DNC chairman, they have effectively already lost my vote in 2008. Of course I will evaluate the candidates on their merits when the time comes, but it seems unlikely that the Democrats will produce a candidate that appeals to me (or other moderate middle-class white males).
Wish I could have said it as well and as efficiently. I’ll just shut up from now on and let YOU do the talking.
Fair enough…it wasn’t my intention to strawman you EC. I’ll look them over tonight and if I have specifics to say I’ll do another post.
Liberals need to look at actual society and whats REALLY happening…not what they THINK is happening. Again, whats the magnitude of these ‘problems’? Is it frequent or fairly rare. Do the majority of citizens get along fine or are these things really wide spread? How do they shift with the general fluxuations in the economy? How difficult is it REALLY to achieve the ‘middle class dream’?
Those are the things you’d need to show…and not just to me. The general perception, at least IMHO, is that most of these AREN’T general problems but fairly infrequent…i.e. it happens, but happens to a very small percentage of the population. The general perception, again, IMHO, is also that the ‘middle class dream’ IS attainable by just about anyone who cares to attain it…as most people do.
Oh, I’m not disputing they will swallow a lot…up to a point. Then they get pissed off and changes happen. See the '60, and The Malaise of the '70’s. Other examples abound. And I promise you one thing they WILL notice and not be happy with is a hike in their taxes. As to Bush’s economics…I don’t know about you, but my taxes are a lot less. I don’t agree with much that Bush has done mind you, ESPECIALLY on the economics front, but if you are trying to say that Bush et al did some kind of hidden tax raise to the poor or middle classes I’m not seeing it here.
I disagree that the poor and middle class got a tax hike in the recent cuts…they just didn’t get as large a tax cut as the rich (of course, they don’t pay as much either but this is all for another thread).
If the ‘liberals’ can show that their programs would be revenue neutral AND that the programs would be run efficiently with real oversight then I’d be all for them. While I’m a libertarian at heart, long ago I came to the conclusion that some social programs and a minimal safety net IS a very good thing, especially in a Capitalist nation. And especially since, frankly, we can afford it. The citizens in America, for better or worse, are used to certain levels of taxation. However, this shouldn’t be a licence for ‘liberals’ OR ‘conservatives’ to think they have a blank check to do whatever they want. The government needs to figure out a way to work within a fixed budget determined by the actual realized income from taxes…and probably to stop raiding SS to make up the difference (not to mention deficit spending).
Programs should be constantly evaluated by third party’s with no vested interest to determine how effective they are…and cut if they are determined to NOT be effective at all, as some are. No sacred cows…if it doesn’t work cut it and find something that does. If liberals do THAT, they will probably get my vote…and I doubt I’d be the only one. The problem of course is…will they. I’m not going to be holding my breath here.
It’s never seemed to me that economics was ever at the forfront of people’s mind in any negative perception of liberalism. It’s always seemed that the thing people don’t like most about liberals is what appears to be overwhelming naivete in the areas of criminal justice and war. The popular images of liberals that persist today are 1) that of tie-dyed hippies talking airily about giving peace a chance and how terrible the USA is for fighting communists, while ignoring the actual belligerence, internal repression, and expansionism in communist regimes, and 2) that of ACLU-type lawyers and high-powered defenders like the late Bill Kunstler who will fight to the Supreme Court to get genuine evidence or confessions of crimes thrown out on technicalities, or manipulate juries to get their clients acquitted. Liberal politicians end up playing to both these stereotypes, resulting in a situation where a Democrat, in order to get elected, needs to show evidence of “toughness” beyond what’s asked of Republicans. Michael Dukakis failed the toughness test miserably. Bill Clinton passed it by executing an Arkansas criminal during the 1992 campaign. Al Gore and John Kerry both pretty much passed the test due to having served in Vietnam, one won the popular vote, the other lost though not by much…and it could easily be said that his loss was due to Bush’s ability to seem even tougher by his black-and-white, good-vs-evil rhetoric.
Until liberals can convince Middle America that they understand that there are people in the world who are not merely misguided, not merely rection to bad circumstances, but genuinely have no concern or consideration for the rights of others and that more efforts should be put into protecting law-abiding citizens from them than into making sure every i is dotted on the search warrant, that image will not change. And this translates into the national level as well.
Liberals can try to talk pocketbook issues as much as they want. But ordinary citizens are concerned first about personal safety, and only second about personal comfort. And that’s the most deadly area where liberals are perceived as weak.
Or, perhaps, until they can convince Middle America that the people who have no concern for the rights of others often got that way because of circumstances that can be addressed by social or economic programs.
Evil Captor, it would be refreshing if the Democratic Party could get back to its roots as advocates off “the common man.” {I hear Copeland in the background.}
I don’t want the DNC ads to wait until there are candidates attached to the concept. Just the sound of the Fanfare and the faces of ordinary Americans. And I want the Democrats to work on being so real that “image consultant” will become an obsolete term.
Liberals need to show middle class people that these social programs, corporate restrictions, etc. DO apply to them, even if they don’t explicitly use them. The man who isn’t downsized is the man who doesn’t rob your corner store. The man who’s able to get a college education is the man who doesn’t steal your car. In short - the person who isn’t kept in destitution is the person who’s not selling drugs on your corner and raping your wife because he has nothing left to lose. You want to appeal to safety and security? Keeping your neighbor from getting fucked over is a great way to start working on a more harmonius society, period.
I think the “Horatio Alger Myth” - the belief that “here in America, everyone starts out on an equal playing field and you’re only limited by your ambition - anyone can make it!” - is complete bullshit, but it seems to be a very deeply ingrained concept in our culture. For every person like Bricker who manages to move up in America’s caste - I mean class system, there are hundreds of thousands who, despite working their absolute hardest, are prevented from doing so by institutionalized factors. What’s dangerous is that this myth allows people to endorse programs and policies that operate from this “pull yerself up by your boot straps!” mentality that is ultimately damaging to “America.”
Affirmative action policies say it’s okay to treat people differently based on their race. Whites and asians are generally the ones discriminated against by such policies. Therefore, they are treated as second class citizens.
Since this has come up several times in this thread, I have to ask: how do these distressingly high and low percentages compare historically? Are there significantly less people that move upwards in class now than in the past? How does the wealth of the lower classes now compared to the lower classes in the past factor into your feelings about this situation?
If the American left did this… if the American left did that…
It’s total twaddle. As this threat generally demonstrates and cmkeller and mmsmit in particular, the American right has the fatal combination of an overwhelming grip on popular media and no scruples whatsoever in distorting and lying the character of the US left, to advance the interests of the Republican party.
Irrespective of what turns the US left takes, the institutional popular media will expend the same effort, day in day out, to demonize the them.
There is no policy prescription that could work. It is exclusively and entirely a matter of gaining media influence.
I’ll grant you that if that approach had a prayer of working, yes, that’s a viable alternative.
However, I don’t see that as likely. The reason is people understand the impulse to be bad. There’s no one in the world who hasn’t wanted to act in an unethical way out of greed, laziness or anger. That’s what the large majority of people who witness an act of criminality (whether on a personal or national level) ascribe the criminal’s behavior to.
What people want most out of ther government is a sense that they will be protected, and that anyone who violates that protection will end up the worse for it. Whether by perception or by reality (and likelihood is that, like most generalizations in the world, it’s a core of reality magnified to some degree by spin), liberals have come across, in the past, as having an instinctive (“knee jerk”) pity (“bleeding heart”) for a perceived underdog, even when that underdog is in violation of that.
And Sevastopol, the only “twaddle” is that the media somehow magnifies or distorts this in order to make liberals look bad. More often, in my experience, the media picks up on the poor, downtrodden criminal’s untold story and runs it as “human interest,” and practically never say anything about the victim’s life. Two prize examples of this (in my experience) are columnists Jimmy Breslin and Dennis Duggan. They may in fact be perpetuating/magnifying charicature of liberalism, but the tone of the stories is clear that they aren’t doing it for that reason.
Which tells us exactly nothing about how difficult it was for you to get where you are today. Not all immigrants are tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. You say you were not remotely wealthy; were you remotely poor? Did your father work in car wash, or pick strawberries, or cut lawns; or was he already solidly middle class when he came here, perhaps an engineer, lawyer or businessman? Until you provide us with more information, we really have no idea what odds you struggled against, or if you struggled at all.
Be that as it may, affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to minorities* are very unpopular in the US. Here in CA, almost every anti-affirmative action initiative put to the ballot has passed with a solid majority. And CA is probably more “liberal” than most states. So, the fact is, as long as liberals support racial preference programs, that’s one more reason that many (most?) people will have a negative image of the term “liberal”. And this is not just due to “poor marketting” by liberals.
*I distinguish those from “outreach” programs, which I think most people do support.
Well, mine was…we were about as poor as you can get in the US when we came here from Mexico. My father worked odd jobs, mostly as a mechanic until he could join the service…and get shipped off the Vietnam. My mom was a maid for rich white folks. Myself? Well, I was 4 when we moved here, and grew up in south Tucson in what can only be called a hispanic ghetto…and was dirt poor through much of my life. We lived in a 2 room house along with several other family (thats my folks, myself and my 3 sisters and my brother, as well as an aunt and an uncle and his wife and baby) members with no electricity and no indoor plumbing…at least for the first few years we lived there. That poor enough for ya?
Yet I went to college, worked my way up and today I own my own business in the IT industry and live a life I couldn’t even have dreamed of when I was a boy in mexico. My father also owns his own company today contracting to the government and my mom doesn’t have to clean anyone else’s house. My sisters also are fairly successful…in fact my youngest sister is studying to become a new age healer type (accupuncture and herbal medicine…blah), and my brother is the manager of a tire store in Tucson. My family has come a LONG way.
And my family and I are far from alone in this. It happens more than many people like to admit. Oh, I’m not saying everyone can be as successful…but moving up from a lower ‘class’ to something better is something that happens all the time, at least in my experience. Many of my friends and neighbors from childhood who grew up in the ghettos of south Tucson have moved up from there. Most are solidly middle class now. Certainly I have some friends that have stayed right there and done little or nothing to improve their standard of living…but the majority, even if they still live there, are better off today than they were when I was a child.
I don’t expect my anacedotes to mean anything in this discussion, but you did ask (though it was directed at Bricker…maybe he’ll answer as well). Perhaps someone will produce a cite showing that the poor really have no chance to improve their station in America. Its a recurring theme whenever ‘liberals’ get rolling, but I don’t know how much of it is reality bases…after all, most of the ‘liberals’ I know are middle class (or higher) white folks who don’t have a clue what being poor is about…but who like to guess and wring their hands over it. I’ve never seen a definitive cite showing that the poor don’t have any real chance to move up, or that they don’t move up frequently, and would be very surprised if I’m so special that only myself and my friends who were equally born poor and a minority are able to rise above that to improve our standard of living. But perhaps its so…maybe I and the people I know really ARE special…or maybe its just me. Knowing me transfers some of the magic.
Fear Itself, my father was a Greek immigrant. He arrived here when he was 17 according to the stereotype: everything he owned was in a small valise. He had had six years of schooling. By the time he started a family, he had worked his way up to owning a small diner. My two brothers and I all worked our way through college, and hold graduate degrees. I am doing better financially than most of the people in my high school class, many of whom had it better than me.
Now, to complicate things a little: the state university we graduated from received lots of state and federal funding, enabling the three of us to graduate debt-free with marketable degrees. Had this not been the case – if I would have had to take out big loans to go to college – I’m not sure whether I’d be in the same boat today.
So while I do believe that I have worked for what I have, I acknowledge the assistance provided by the non-laissez faire society I grew up in.
And I think economic polarization should be a concern to people of all ideologies – I don’t want to soak the rich, but I think it sucks that middle-class jobs formerly available to high-school graduates have been replaced with Wal-Mart and McDonald’s.
