A Provocative Question

Sun Nov 27 07:56:20 CST 2016

Yeahp. We differ on interpreting Lilla. He is arguing that
strategically--see the sentence quoted,-- it was a mistake to appeal by
piecemeal identity politics. (Do you really believe he 'denies the
existence of minorities"?. I don't. Almost nobody does, I suggest,
as he is here and in the rest of the piece  trying to argue for a strategic
"political" way to reach all minorities, everyone)

I have to to agree with Bill Clinton who kept arguing to no avail that
there was not enough of an overarching message
in the campaign. A unifying message. A message like the one that enabled
him to win the working class, all colors, hugely, back when. A message that
offered new ( economic) hope to ALL.  A lack of message belief that, very
unverified, Mrs Clinton is said to have angrily accused her strategists of
on election night. Which, however frustrated and disappointed and angry she
really was, she had to have shared such an opinion with her husband that
night, I think.

When H Clinton could not bring out, or turn, more women for her historic
goal (and with Trump's misogynistic criminality re women.); When the
Islamic Council says 14% of Muslims voted for Trump (many doubt the
methodology however) vs 5% who voted for Romney; when HRC got 5% less of
the Hispanic vote than Obama in key states; when many fewer
African-Americans turned out;
when party switching was, reportedly, 2% more D to R; when 110,000 (another
figure I post with doubt since I have not seen it picked up and used. I had
a trusted public source but mistakes happen) Michigan voters vote for
downballot candidates and for neither Preseidential one; when Michael Moore
speaks of all the 'racist' Michiganders who had voted Obama who went Trump
this time:-- Then I think the strategy of "identity politics" accumulation
of voters by appealing to NOT TRUMP failed and might even have caused a
resentment counterforce. See Strangers in Their Own Land's finding of
massive resentment.

Recheck how total was the Dem loss nationwide and ask yourself if it might
be summed up well with "Throw the Bums Out". Read about some of the Dems
who won despite the sweep; One thing I am finding is those who won SPENT
TIME everywhere in their area, during their whole term, listening,
responding, seemed to do well. Remember that HRC's strategists, the ones
who had all the polling wrong, did not even send her to Wisconsin, I
believe.

To reduce the conversation to 'the white working class' as so many are
doing is 1) to create a division that needn't exist within a class that
does, I would say. Reason I quoted Pynchon's precise 'working class". He
knew back then that the worst off in Watts and the hard hat white males
were both not reached by a politically unifying party or movement.

I think that Ms Zito's "They Take Trump Seriously but not Literally"
[Atlantic] is a wider and deeper truth than I thought before the election.
I still think there is a lot of aspiration voting, most of it,  in the
Presidential election.

Although few are more Obama fanboys than I am, I am fan enough to believe
him when he has said more than once, over the last five years, that he, his
Admin did not 'sell' all his achievements well. Starting with the
Affordable Care Act. He couldn't both do it all and sell it---read The New,
New Deal, if interested,  about his economic achievements. I have and when
I talk to other liberals, everyone is amazed at all that has been done to
improve things for all. "Why don't we hear about this?" I get asked. Mrs.
Clinton could not ride those economic coattails.....Stat: Fewer than 500
counties, all of which HRC won, generated 64% of all economic activity; the
2000+ counties Trump won generated 36% of the nation's economic activity.
Wa Po today.

Globalization and other changes have hollowed out many communities of
lifelong workers. We know almost all Repubs don't really care. But I
remember Robert Reich in his film quietly stating that he left Bill
Clinton's administration, where he was Sec of Labor, of course, because his
concerns about the working class were no longer being heard. Every week I
read new studies of
the lost jobs Americans have suffered, and the lower earnings of most of
the new ones. I try to imagine not having the dignity of
a productive middle-class job if I were younger. As Alice famously said,
"it's about Work".

I think the Dems have to rediscover that "it is the economy, stupid" with a
full court press starting around yesterday. ( I saw over the weekend that
Sanders might be the lead huskie in that pull as he is going one-on-one
with all of Trump's new lies and promises--Carrier jobs for one. Good).
Economic ideas like a guaranteed income for ALL (even Republican fave Hayek
believed in it). For ALL, it provides a baseline for the poor and a
stimulus to spend for those not really needing it. Lots of economists think
more demand is needed in the economy, the huge gap in incomes means lower
aggregate demand therefore slower growth. I could name a ton of other ideas
that ought to be 'in the conversation'. Lots less quixotic than the above
but for another forum.

 But I'm still trying to figure it all out.

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 25, 2016, at 5:22 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

"More inclusive?" As opposed to Lillas complaint?:

"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."

For Lilla, being "inclusive" means denying the existence of minorities.
 "Diversity" in Lilla's rhetoric means division, and thus betrays its
bias. That is the point of this blog post, which is quite clearly
displayed.  And I agree wholeheartedly.

David Morris

On Friday, November 25, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> From the first lines, this guy is off. The smartest, including
> Bernie, are not "throwing any of their constituencies" under
> The bus...THAT, first assumes his " constituent identity"
> Belief, second, the post/election strategy is to be more inclusive
> With policy and message and (maybe should be first) those thrown
> Under any metaphoric bus are the failed Dem strategists.
>
> I'm more with Bernie and Lilla( as I understand him) for the new
> Direction.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Nov 25, 2016, at 10:08 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2016/11/post-identity-dumbassery.html
> Thursday, November 24, 2016
> Post-Identity Dumbassery
>
> <https://thomasnastcartoons.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/uncle-sams-thanksgiving-dinner-11-20-69.jpg>
> *Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner, Thomas Nast, 1869*
>
> Since the election we've had a whole bunch of pundits (and Bernie Sanders
> <http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/23/13715164/bernie-sanders-identity-politics-democrats-progressives>)
> blaming the result on "identity politics" and urging Democrats to throw
> their core constituencies under the bus. The worst of these may be this
> one
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html?_r=0>,
> by a humanities professor named Mark Lilla:
>
> One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and
> its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be
> brought to an end. Hillary Clinton was at her best and most uplifting when
> she spoke about American interests in world affairs and how they relate to
> our understanding of democracy. 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.
>
>
> He says "identity politics" have made liberals "narcissistically unaware
> of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the
> task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life"--which is pretty
> hilarious because that description certainly applies to the willfully
> ignorant shitheads living in 95% white enclaves who wound up voting for
> Trump. His "post-identity liberalism" "would concentrate on widening its
> base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that
> affect a vast majority of them"--in other words, ignoring any issues that
> make white people uncomfortable. (*Ixnay on the Ackblay Iveslay
> Attersmay.*)
>
> About halfway through, we get to this passage that gives away the game:
>
> National politics in healthy periods is not about “difference,” it is
> about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures
> Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny. Ronald Reagan did that
> very skillfully, whatever one may think of his vision. So did Bill Clinton,
> who took a page from Reagan’s playbook.
>
> You can take your "commonality" and shove it up your ass, dumbfuck. Reagan
> harped on "welfare queens
> <http://www.salon.com/2015/09/27/ronald_reagans_welfare_queen_myth_how_the_gipper_kickstarted_the_war_on_the_working_poor/>"
> and started his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia,_Mississippi#Murders_of_three_civil_rights_workers> with
> a speech extolling "states' rights"
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan%27s_Neshoba_County_Fair_%22states%27_rights%22_speech>.
> Bill Clinton picked a fight
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Souljah_moment> with a prominent
> hip-hop artist and executed a retarded black man
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector>. That's not rejecting
> "identity politics"; that's practicing *white* identity politics. (And
> yes, Clinton and Reagan differed in both magnitude and relative malignancy
> of their white identity politics. But they both practiced it.)
>
> And that's what Lilla is arguing for: white identity politics--a kinder
> gentler white identity politics, with, y'know, less cross-burning and shit.
> That's what all these critics of "identity politics" are arguing for,
> either explicitly (like Lilla) or implicitly.
>
>
> On Friday, November 25, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  i was reminded yesterday by David Kipen that Pynchon wrote of the
>> inability of the student (New) Left to connect with the working class in
>> the intro to SLOW LEARNER.
>> And this reminds me that it is still identity politics to think and say
>> 'white working class' as I and most are doing. Always respect Pynchon' s
>> precision, I repeat to myself.
>>
>> New relevant books: Strangers in their Own Land ( excerpts around), White
>> Trash and Hillbilly Elegy.
>>
>> I learned from a polling strategist that since race is ascertainable from
>> voting records, they report and the mainstream media simply uses "whites"
>> and "blacks" ( along with Hispanics and Others (say) in their reductionist
>> way, fostering the bad shit.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> > On Nov 24, 2016, at 3:09 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Am 23.11.2016 um 20:48 schrieb kelber at mindspring.com:
>> >>
>> >> http://fortune.com/2016/11/11/trump-voters-lynn-nottage/
>> >
>> > Very interesting, thank you.
>> >
>> > I would like to learn more. Are there any other contemporary writers
>> addressing the situation of the working class in the US today? The impact
>> of the war on terror, the impact of globalisation?
>> >
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
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