Comment by dhimes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhimes | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

1) Prioritize lower/middle class economic concerns over progressive identity politics

This. This right here. And I can't get any Dems to pay attention to this.

In the '90s it became popular to "brand" the Democrats as the "liberal elite." I had no idea what they were talking about (and neither did most of the people who were using the term).

But now there is a new term going around- one that makes much more sense: Coastal liberals. I grok this term because I now live in MA. These are Democrats who (although they mean well and have a heart of gold), they truly don't understand a lot of the middle-class, working Americans. They live in white neighborhoods and their kids go to private schools. Nobody in their family every mined coal or built Fords. They really, truly, do not understand what those people are going through. And because of that, they aren't talking to them and they lost them in the election.

This is why we still have an electoral college, and why I actually favor it. It was put in place to help ensure that everybody has a chance of being heard, and the large cities wouldn't be able to run roughshod over the smaller (but very important to our country) areas.

The Dems still aren't talking to those folks. If you watch left-tv (which is damn near unwatchable, I must say), nobody is talking about how to help middle America. Everybody is still talking about "anything but Trump." They should be doing both, and if they don't then Trump is going to win again in 2020.

> I can't get any Dems to pay attention to this.

Because they are all funded by corporations who want, as Alan Greenspan put it, "worker anxiety" to keep profits high. They gave Trump 37 billions more in the military budget than he asked for - authorising a level spending on par with the height of the iraq war, but will balk at Bernie Sanders's suggestions for universal healthcare or free tuition because it's unaffordable.

It also helps that the republicans are horrific towards anyone who isn't a straight white male: Roy Moore overwhelmingly won the white vote despite talking about how America was greatest during the times of slavery, how he believes all the amendments after the tenth were mistakes(these include allowing woman and black people to vote), not to mention the rampant homophobia.

Trump is the absolute worst thing that can happen to middle America. His policies hit the middle and lower class whites the worst. But they will _feel_ safe and secure with a giant wall and a ban on refugees.

>It also helps that the republicans are horrific towards anyone who isn't a straight white male

There are women in all rungs of the Republican Party, from local to federal levels. The GOP has also followed the general trend of growing diversity (1) and I believe in 2013 were MORE diverse than the Democrats (although this isn't true today).

The Democrats are more diverse, but the idea that the GOP is just some old boys club is outdated.

Also, what do you mean by horrific? Certainly many are not as progressive on the issue as Coastal-Elite-White Democrats (and I'm being very specific there), but homophobia is extremely prevalent among the democratic base, especially among African-Americans (2) and Latino Americans (3).

>Roy Moore overwhelmingly won the white vote despite....

I agree with you, Roy Moore was an absolute disaster.

(1) http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/13/1-the-changing-compos...

(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2974805/

(3) http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0739986390012400...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com