These bankers and banks basically destroyed the american dream like no other person/corporation in history, they did more damage to minorities than any "white oppressor", yet they've basically been forgotten because activists types feel like they can make a difference by introducing trans issues into corporations. No, you didn't. The same crooked billionaires are syphoning off even more cash, not to mention the government is now printing money for them to socialise their losses.
I have to congratulate these corporations, it's been the perfect divide and conquer tactic. Almost everyone's forgotten the 2008 crises, who caused it, and what damage it did.
The Occupy movement failed because sitting in tents complaining about systems almost invariably fails, and people aren't as angry about a deep recession caused by subprime mortgage lending because it's 13 years later and the deep recession we experienced most recently wasn't caused by anything at all to do with the banking system.
Some overlapping but largely different groups, with different priorities and strategies had more success in making a difference; perhaps not a difference you care for but a difference. Rather than wonder if certain groups of "woke" activists were better at organising and picking their goals, and can be learned from, you accuse them of "neutralising" unrelated causes you feel closer to, as if it's impossible for any activist to be opposed to homophobia and Goldman Sachs, and spend your message board days railing against "woke" activism instead of corrupt bankers.
It's the perfect divide and be conquered tactic, and you can guarantee nobody appreciates your argument that the real reason billionaires got away with crookedness is some trans activists had a bit of success more than crooked billionaires.
The Democratic Party: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/16/wall-street-donors-line-up-b...
Parties are coalitions of voters. A lot of the anti-Wall Street populists are rural or working class whites who may have regressive views on social issues. As the Democratic Party moved to the left on social issues since 2010, it has replaced those working class white voters with high income professionals, including most of Wall Street.
Remember, in 2009, Democrats held both Senate seats in West Virginia. Now, those working class white states have all flipped Republican. Biden’s 2020 run failed to recover Obama’s 2008 support in the Midwest. He won the presidency thanks to vote Reagan suburbs around Atlanta and Phoenix going Democrat. (My traditionally red Maryland county went +14 for Biden but +30 for Larry Hogan, during a blue wave. It voted for both Romney and McCain.) You can’t have a meaningfully left party when your marginal voters are socially liberal Republicans.
I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here. It doesn't take a social scientist to figure out what's going on in West Virginia. West Virginia is East Wyoming. It's overwhelmingly white, has no urban centers, and is starkly less educated than Iowa (itself a heavy lift for the Democratic party). Your point is what? That the parties have polarized on education? Yes, I think we've priced that in now.
The last Democratic Presidential candidate who took West Virginia was Bill Clinton. There were still Dixiecrats in the party when he won it. It's a red state; in fact, it's the second reddest state in the union. Even Alabama sends a Democrat to the House. Not WV. Capito slaughtered Swearengin in 2020 i in every county in the state.
What that tells us about Democratic attitudes towards banks is precisely zero. Get rid of Republic Senate votes in the south and we'd have broken up the major investment banks (I don't think that would have been a good thing).
Rural whites don’t protest. But the group of people who oppose Wall Street and the WTO and private equity are rural whites and young urbanites. If you’re trying to build a coalition to oppose those things those are the people you need to pull together (which Obama did in 2008). A study showed that over half the people who fit the profile of a “Trump Republican” (versus a Romney Republican) actually voted Democrat before 2016.
> I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here.
By moving to the left on social issues Democrats make a deliberate choice to abandon parts of their coalition opposed to fighting wealth inequality—including racial wealth inequality—and replace them with groups that benefit from and perpetuate it.
Put differently, the people who actually control the levels of systemic racism, i.e. structural economic and social disparities, have a tremendous interest in keeping minorities focused on the individual racist attitudes of rural and working class white people.
This is the most economically left Democratic party we have had since Roosevelt. It's far to the left of Obama's. And Clinton, no wokescold himself, served two terms with a Democratic party that deliberately tacked to the right on economics without giving up anything to wokeism. I don't think this analysis holds together.
I get what you're trying to say, that there's a tradeoff between cultural issues and economic issues. My problem is that you haven't provided evidence that the tradeoff exists or is meaningful.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/07/24/growing-part...
And how are you going to go about proving causation between pinkwashing and support for intelligence agencies? Do you think maybe the Trump/Qanon rhetoric around the FBI/CIA/Deepstate might have had something to do with republicans opinion shift? (your own link alludes to that)
I mean, if PR didn't work, why would any organization spend money to do it?