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Comment by lamename | Hacker News Reader

I am young and am ignorant of a lot of this history, but the claim here is that Democrats have lost working class voters, particularly white working class voters. What I do not see is how this is consistent with:

1) policies advocated by people in the D party like Bernie Sanders, e.g. social safety nets for such job losses in manufacturing as described. Isn’t this part of the progressive dream?

2) How working class voters end up aligning themselves with a party that is less likely to care about them, e.g. by cutting taxes for earners well above the working class income bracket.

To be fair, it doesn’t seem like either party does a _great_ job helping the working class. Populism comes in ‘left’ and ‘right’ flavors...maybe it just happens to have come from the right (Trump) at the right time.

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Quick summary (obviously not comprehensive) relevant for self-interested white working class voter:

Relevant Democract policy: Minimum wage(+), Healthcare(+), Progressive Taxation (+), Affirmative Action (Diversity Ban)/California Prop 12 stuff (-)

Relevant Republican policy:Minimum wage(-), Healthcare(-), Progressive Taxation (-). Affirmative Action (Diversity Ban)/California Prop 12 stuff (+)

Relevant Democract Rhetoric: You are white supremacist deplorable hillbillies

Relevant Republican Rhetoric: You are "real" Americans and the backbone of this country

Which one would a white working class voter prefer?

Keep in mind the rhetoric is experienced every day in the relevant news/social media, whereas policy decisions and impacts are not... Even if most Democracts don't use that kind of language, it's the language that gets headlines and is reported/retweeted.

Finally, many policy consensus issues (with mainstream Republican and Democract support) such as military spending, worker hostile trade agreements, etc... mean that policy differences may not be as large as they appear. I also put healthcare as a (+), but often things like Obamacare may appear as a burden to many healthy working class voters.

> How working class voters end up aligning themselves with a party that is less likely to care about them, while cutting taxes for earners well above the working class income bracket.

That's words vs. actions. His words were that he was going to take care of them, and his voters believed him. The fact that he didn't do it is just like any politician lying. They might not even have believed him either, but at least his voters felt like he listened to their pains.

No, he took care of them. He redid NAFTA and other trade agreements. Even those are favor free trade see the pain while forcing the issue as necessary to fix some problems. (There is not agreement that the replacements are enough better to be worth it, but that is different)

They don’t think like that. The Democratic Party needs to listen to them and speak in a language they understand. Today they believe in conservative talking points. Eg the Left wants to ship all your jobs overseas. The Left wants to end Fracking and take away the few good jobs remaining. The Left wants everyone to be unemployed and live off welfare and be completely dependent on the state. This is the conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party needs to rebut. The Democratic Party needs to restart talking about fighting for the working man, good jobs, and economic issues. When Bill Clinton ran for president, the mantra was “It’s the economy, stupid”. Now you can debate if the president or congress can influence job creation or not. But economic pocketbook issues is what the working class has on its mind.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid

People don't want safety nets; they want _jobs_.

If a worker's job gets eliminated by market forces and then the government steps in to pay that person to do the job anyway, that's literally a safety net in the form of public subsidy.

They don't have to admit that. They can pretend that they pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.

> "Bernie Sanders... Isn’t this part of the progressive dream?"

no, the "progressive" label has been appropriated (or misunderstood) in this regard, since "socialist" has been so negatively politicized, but they're not synonymous, and in many ways, are othogonal or antagonistic.

progressivism aims to empower workers toward social, economic, political, and technological progress, while socialism aims to split stuff among everyone more equally, regardless of progress or holistic benefit.

a cursory perusal of bernie's policies belie the same aims as other politicians: to shift political, economic, and social power, not a coherent vision for a more progressive future.

the working class isn't stupid. they (we) know that the both parties are captured by moneyed-interests focused on amassing more power for themselves, not building a great society inclusive of workers and respectful of regular labor.

Their ego and sense of entitlement necessitates that they believe they are self reliant. This means they don't want social safety nets, they want jobs. Republicans are willing to lie to them and say they can bring back jobs even though they can't. Democrats aren't willing to lie. So they vote fior the people who say they'll bring back jobs.

I think the problem is that the Democrats treat the working class like developed countries often treat people in the third world. They don’t respect them as equals but as people who don’t know what’s good for them so they need to be helped. That causes a lot of resentment amongst the people because they aren’t allowed to have self respect. This may just be a problem of messaging. I am not sure.

But I am 100% sure that the left wing in the US right now is mainly comprised of well educated upper middle class people who have a certain level of disdain for blue collar workers.

Can we not spread mistruths?

Some of us who support leftist policies grew up and may still exist in heavily working class areas. Assuming that we have disdain for our current or former neighbours is borderline slander. In all honesty, the majority of my more left leaning friends tend to be from more blue collar backgrounds.

Maybe that's true for you. From my experience a lot of blue collar people I talk to absolutely despise democrats and liberal people I talk to can't even comprehend why the working class doesn't join them in their efforts or how anybody could vote for Trump. It's a total disconnect and I think it's because of growing inequality. People of different income and professional classes are mixing less and so they only know caricatures of each other.

> 1) policies advocated by people in the D party like Bernie Sanders, e.g. social safety nets for such job losses in manufacturing as described. Isn’t this part of the progressive dream?

Yes, but progressives aren't really a majority of the party, nor do they have much control over it. The progressive caucus of the Democratic party in Congress has ~100 members, but there is no actual policy one has to support to be in that caucus. Being a "progressive" is a useful label for many Democrats, so they join. As far as I'm concerned, the only "true" progressive members of congress are Justice Democrats (Dems that don't take corporate PAC money for their election campaigns). All others need to have their record carefully examined first.

Secondly, the moderate wing of the party always is the first to blame the progressive side for any and every electoral upset or issue, arguing that being associated with their radicality costs them votes. Maybe this is true to an extent, but if these moderate members had their own thing they were running on, they wouldn't be associated with the progressive wing.

> 2) How working class voters end up aligning themselves with a party that is less likely to care about them, e.g. by cutting taxes for earners well above the working class income bracket.

Republicans cater to a lot of single-issue type things. Guns, abortion, religion. Finally, and maybe I'm completely wrong, but there's a lack of class consciousness among the rural working class (working class in cities at least has geographic proximity to aid organization).

With respect to point 1, the entirety of the leadership of the Democratic party acted in concert to prevent Bernie Sanders from being the nominee. The overwhelming majority of the party is ideologically opposed to the kind of large-scale social programs he advocates. With respect to point 2, working class voters, who still tend to vote Democrat, although less so than before, are reacting to the failure of the Democratic party to offer them any substantial improvement in their material conditions for the past 40 years. 2016 afforded them a chance to vote for someone who was at least promising positive change (as spurious as it was), and in addition to that, was free of the kind of sneering technocratic contempt that Democrats so often direct at the working class.

>1) policies advocated by people in the D party like Bernie Sanders, e.g. social safety nets for such job losses in manufacturing as described. Isn’t this part of the progressive dream?

Bernie didnt get the nomination. It's President Biden.

>2) How working class voters end up aligning themselves with a party that is less likely to care about them, e.g. by cutting taxes for earners well above the working class income bracket.

There's a huge amount of misconceptions and misrepresentations by how progressive taxes work. There's a very clear understanding as to why "all tax cuts are for the rich" which is a true statement. The thought experiment goes: Imagine 3 brothers who earn exactly the same wage in exactly the same industry. Except they work different hours. The first brother works 20 hours, second brother 40 hours, and third brother 80 hours.

They all have a shared project that costs $30,000. The fair split of the cost is $10,000 each. the first brother exclaims he cant pay it, he doesnt have the money because he doesnt work enough. The middle brother then devises the 'progressive' system. Since the third brother works so many more hours, he's to pay for over 2/3rds. The first brother agrees because he gets benefits without paying anything. The second brother designed it such that he pays less. They voted democratically that the brother who earns much more money pays virtually all.

That's exactly how society breaks down. If you look at real tax rates net of spending. Even the middle class who 'pay taxes' actually receive more back from the government than they put in. Therefore when you look at 'who pays taxes' it's always the rich. That's why "all tax cuts are for the rich" is a true statement.

>To be fair, it doesn’t seem like either party does a _great_ job helping the working class. Populism comes in ‘left’ and ‘right’ flavors...maybe it just happens to have come from the right (Trump) at the right time.

Did you also know that the real tax rate has pretty much not changed in the USA for >40 years. Politicians have come and left all changing the way the tax system works but fundamentally have never actually changed taxes.

The rich pay the taxes, but they also have the ability to make everyone else pay the taxes for them. High taxes benefit the rich. This is why you keep hearing about mega corps who pay no taxes.

The rich get all the power because they are who control the spice.

I remember reading someone on the right of British politics saying something like "Everyone keeps saying conservatives don't like poor people. It's true: we want to turn them into rich people."

Notwithstanding whether or not their policies actually achieve that, if that's the way the US working class see it I think that might answer your first point. They may see it as the elite throwing them bones as long as they stay in their place.

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