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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> Nothing curtails corporate power. It's also why the focus of politics is on being divisive on social issues. This is to distract the voters and prevent class solidarity of the working class.

I think you’re misdiagnosing the cause. Nearly everyone I know—my circle skews highly educated and well compensated—cares more about social issues than economic ones. It’s telling that, in this crowd, Clarence Thomas gets exponentially more hate for the ways in which he’s a typical older Black man from a working class background (his views on social issues) than for the ways in which he starkly departs from that background (his economic libertarianism).

While these folks would deny they’re acting in their class interest, the effect is identical. Working class people, being less educated and less cosmopolitan, are naturally going to be more socially conservative. By making politics more about “rights” and “justice” than “wages” and “government services” you’re naturally going to divide the working class and have a powerful club to use against them.

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> I think you’re misdiagnosing the cause. Nearly everyone I know—my circle skews highly educated and well compensated—cares more about social issues than economic ones.

Of course they would. They are very well educated and very well compensated. Their needs are taken care of, economics isn't at the top of their political concerns list. However, they do not represent the majority of the US, they only represent a tiny minority.

https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-americ...

The more well compensated you are, the more disconnected you are from the perils of working class poverty. Most people I know who are well compensated don't see an issue with the system simply because it has worked for them

I should note that these people are well compensated workers, and they are not capital owners even if they aspire to be one some day which helps solidify the ideals of capitalism working for them

> The more well compensated you are, the more disconnected you are from the perils of working class poverty.

For sure, but there's a type of blindness that comes from our culture and class expectations too.

I know many service workers who make more than white collar workers. But -- critically -- the white collar workers are unaware of it. You could say the white collar workers are banking on social clout for why they feel better than the service workers they utilize, but I don't think so. It looks like straight up ignorance and willful projection.

The service workers are happy to let the white-collar-fools carry on with the delusions --> it leads to big tips when the white collars need to show off and there's a payoff for workers who can put on a show of subservience while ultimately enjoying more freedom.

I learned the word for this recently is called Embourgeoisement. It’s at least a very similar phenomenon.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embourgeoisement

Many educated and well compensated people have adopted "luxury beliefs" as a form of virtue signaling, even though putting those beliefs into policy tends to harm the working class.

https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...

These are often called "champagne liberals" or even "champagne socialists" and is very much true.

I saw this in the 2016 election. What Demorats failed to understand was the groundswell against the status quo. This is why Trump won and Hilary lost. Hilary was very much a vote for the status quo and an increasingly large number of people are angry about the status quo. To be clear, Trump didn't deliver on any of his promises (other than on judges) but it explained a lot of his support, particularly in the Rust Belt. It's also why Bernie Sanders nearly clinched the nomination.

Hilary apologists like to blame her loss on any number of things (eg Bernie spoilers, Russia) but ignore the compltely obvious and actual reason: she was a terrible candidate. No one made her choose an anti-choice running mate. No one made her no campaign in Wisconsin.

I remember having a conversation with someone who is liberal about the estate tax. He opposed Bernie because Bernie wanted to lower the estate tax from $10 million. Huh? Clearly that affected him and this is of course an encdote but I found in illuminating as an example of how much momentum for Hilary was about protecting the status quo.

> What Demorats failed to understand was the groundswell against the status quo. This is why Trump won and Hilary lost. Hilary was very much a vote for the status quo and an increasingly large number of people are angry about the status quo.

I mean, Trump won with several million fewer votes than Clinton. The common narrative around Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is, as you mention, the failure to tap into an anti-establishment zeitgeist that Trump did more successfully. But the numbers alone (apart from electoral votes, obviously) show the Democrats were at least as successful, if not technically more successful, than Trump at messaging. The Democrats' failure was one of tactics, not strategy.

Having more votes does not make Hillary's run successful. Getting millions of extra votes in California but losing in other parts of the country was a poor tradeoff and the opposite of a good campaign. She gerrymandered her own voter base.

Poor strategy killed her campaign. Poor tactics doubled down her poor strategy. Poor decisions (remember when she decided to self host email), poor judgement when in power followed her entire public life. Look for a demoralizing 2024 run if Biden doesn't run or crown someone.

It's kind of meaningless to look at popular vote numbers because presidential campaigns are explicitly planned to maximize electoral college votes. Hypothetically, if we picked presidents by popular vote then campaigns would look completely different. For example, there would be a much greater effort to get out the vote in states like Oklahoma and Maryland, which are currently non-competitive.

In the 2016 race, the Clinton campaign spent about twice as much per popular vote received than the Trump campaign. So by that metric, Democrat messaging wasn't successful.

> presidential campaigns are explicitly planned to maximize electoral college votes.

Well, no, they have numerous objectives, many of which are in tension. In rough order of priority for a typical Presidential general election campaign, though there is considerable variation from campaign to campaign:

(1) Maximizing the probability of at least 270 EC votes (this can be quite different, and conflict with, maximizing the expected total number of EC votes), because that’s how you win,

(2) Maximizing downballot coattails, because that’s how you get people in position to pass your agenda into place, and get the people that are in that position to see you as important to their position,

(3) Maximizing EC and Popular vote totals, both of which are important to the perception of a mandate, which helps your agenda.

> I think you’re misdiagnosing the cause. Nearly everyone I know—my circle skews highly educated and well compensated—cares more about social issues than economic ones.

That's because they're liberals (or, worse, neoliberals) and liberalism is about aesthetics. It's about appearing to do something without actually doing anything. I don't mean this is any kind of perjorative sense by the way. I know many people like this too.

Take the Democratic Party. In response to the Dobbs leak the Demorats did... nothing. When the decision was handed down they sent a bunch of fundraising emails and texts and did... nothing. Well, other than "vote harder" messaging. The leadership has decided an issue with 75% public support is "too controversial" to tackle.

Why is the Democratic Party in this situation? Because there is always a rotating villain that blocks any action. Currently that's Senators Manchin and Sinema. In past years it was Joe Lieberman. This is by design. Everyone else gets to point at the rotating villain and say they tried but they got blocked and then fundraise off [insert blocked issue here].

Now look at an issue like homelessness. The most important factor that leads to homelessness is cost of housing. The one thing that would help above anything else is a housing-first policy, meaning giving homeless people somewhere to live. But rampant NIMBYism, even in heavily blue states like California, means that's a nonstarter. This is why you'll see people fund raise for homelessness without tackling the root causes.

This is what I mean by aesthetics.

You can’t overlook the deliberate prioritization of certain issues over other issues.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of people who agree on “bigger government offering more services” and little else. Obama as a populist and social moderate in 2008 and got Obamacare with several Senate votes in socially conservative Midwestern states. Since then Democrats tacked left on social issues and kicked the “deplorables” out of the coalition. They’re mad at Sinema and Manchin, who are holding onto seats deep in GOP territory, but should be mad at the party that lost labor and agriculture voters in South Dakota, Iowa, etc.

Folks I know were talking about kicking Joe Manchin out of the coalition for being pro life before the 2020 election. About 1/4 of the Democratic Party identified as “pro life.” 1/6 (mostly Black and Hispanic people) oppose same sex marriage. 1/10 want to restrict immigrant (and that’s after Trump converted a bunch of those voters in 2016). Kick all those people out of the party and give capital owners exactly what they want.

> Since then Democrats tacked left on social issues and kicked the “deplorables” out of the coalition. They’re mad at Sinema and Manchin, who are holding onto seats deep in GOP territory, but should be mad at the party that lost labor and agriculture voters in South Dakota, Iowa, etc.

Case in point: not too long ago they used to control the entire congressional delegations of deep-red North Dakota and South Dakota. Now they're all red. That's two reps and four senators, which I'm sure the Democrats theoretically wish they had right now.

IIRC, the last Democratic senator from those states lost because she was boxed into to unelectable social policy positions by out-of-state donors.

If Democrats were serious, they would give McConnell a Hobson’s choice - either accede to court packing or split Oklahoma into two states, rump Oklahoma and Tulsa and environs (“Indian Territory”, “Lafferty Land”, what have you), get more senators, and tell him PR and DC are the next chambered rounds if he interferes with abortion rights on Indian lands.

> coalition of people who agree on “bigger government offering more services” and little else.

If I could vote in the US I’d vote democrat (and likely join them) because I don’t want Christian fundamentalists to be in power, not because I believe in their policies and especially not in their abilities.

There may be a coalition of people who believe in what you think, but I’d wager the vast majority of support comes from those who simply think they’re less bad than the alternative.

> I don’t want Christian fundamentalists to be in power

America is as religious, in terms of percentage of people praying daily, as Bangladesh: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/with-high-l.... That includes core Democrat constituencies, like Black people. 76% of Black Protestants, who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, think the Bible should have at least some influence on US laws: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/13/half-of-ame....

Most atheists and agnostics are Democrats, but they're a pretty niche constituency within the party.

I don't care - I still don't want them in power any more than I would want to live in Afghanistan with the Taliban in power as a non-Muslim, and consequently would vote to keep them out, almost regardless of other policy.

Furthermore, those who think the Bible should have influence on US laws fundamentally fail to understand the very basics of the first amendment of the constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Allowing influence of a particular religious sect over laws is exactly akin to a state religion, which is expressly unconstitutional.

> Allowing influence of a particular religious sect over laws is exactly akin to a state religion, which is expressly unconstitutional.

But doesn't this argument also mean "Allowing influence of religious people over laws (e.g. allowing them to vote) is unconstitutional"?

You might think that you're being completely neutral when you apply your atheist worldview to political questions, and that it is only those weird out-groups that are biased with their desire for laws that your in-group opposes, but from their perspective you are being just as biased by your religious beliefs (i.e. your beliefs about religions).

If you really think that the First Amendment was written with the intent to invalidate any policy which can be supported by some interpretation of the Bible, then you haven't thought through the consequences of that.

> I don't care - I still don't want them in power

That’s fine but it’s not what we’re talking about, which is what keeps the democratic coalition together. Opposition to Christianity having a public role isn’t it.

You are aware that Christian morals and ethics explicitly were sources of inspiration, energy, and direction for the country's founding--both as an event and its documents--right? You are aware that those principles are largely responsible for you being able to freely type your message on Hacker News, right?

Do you have any sources for that claim? Because I've heard the argument that it was actually the Enlightenment, and the removal of religion from government (e.g. separation of church and state, reason and science in place of dogmatism), that was the primary source of inspiration for the country's founding. A search for "Declaration of Independence" with "Enlightenment" provides many references for this.

> 76% of Black Protestants, who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, think the Bible should have at least some influence on US laws

This is kind of a vague opinion. The Bible says many things, many of them contradictory and some of them just outright ridiculous. Let's just pick one gem, Exodus 21:7-11 [1]:

> When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not satisfy her owner, he must allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. But if the slave’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave but as a daughter.

> If a man who has married a slave wife takes another wife for himself, he must not neglect the rights of the first wife to food, clothing, and sexual intimacy. If he fails in any of these three obligations, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.

Here we have slavery, selling your daughter into slavery and polygamy all in one. Should this influence the law?

If the answer is "yes", well you're crazy. If the answer is "no" then you've conceded the Bible isn't an authority and you can freely choose to ignore what pats of it you want.

There are others such as putting people to death who work on the Sabbath.

The issue of the Bible is most brought up when it comes to abortion (and gay marriage). The Bible is in fact silent on the issue. Up until the 1970s, white evangelicals didn't actually care about abortion [2]. Catholics had some opposition but it wasn't front and center.

What mobilized evangelicals against abortion was actually a deliberate political movement to opposed racial desegregation, as sparked by whites-only schools in Mississippi and Bob Jones University.

So my point is that I don't put a lot of stock on statements like "the Bible should have at least some influence" on US laws because it doesn't mean anything. The question itself is a form of manipulation. I mean the Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" and murder is a crime. Does that meet the standard of "some influence?"

[1]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2021%3A7...

[2]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/10/abortion-h...

To be fair, when people answer yes to "should the Bible have some influence on US laws" what they mean is "the Bible, as interpreted by my particular sect". Fortunately the number of members of the Republican party who belong to sects that approve of selling your own daughter into slavery is approximately zero, so it is possible to support Biblical influence without being "crazy" or "freely choos[ing] to ignore what pa[r]ts of it you want".

Actually a more neutrally phrased question to ask people would be "Does your opinion of the Bible have at least some influence on how you vote?", although there would be no point running that poll as the only possible answer to that question is "Yes". Either you think the Bible is a valid source of moral wisdom, in which case you are more likely to vote for policies which support that morality; or you think it isn't a valid source, in which case you vote for policies which (in at least some cases) oppose that morality. In both cases, the person is voting consistently with their opinion of the Bible, which means believers and non-believers aren't so different after all.

If the answer is "no" then you've conceded the Bible isn't an authority and you can freely choose to ignore what pats of it you want.

That is not how the Bible works. It is a book of history, stories, laws, information, and other things. No Christian denomination on the planet, not even the most straw fundamentalist fringe sect you can imagine, takes this reductive view that because it is in the text it is automatically a command to be followed by the modern day reader.

Failure to make that distinction when interpreting a volume of such history absent its context does not mean that distinction is nonexistent or arbitrary.

>Does that meet the standard of "some influence?"

I would argue that all of western culture and civilization has been influenced heavily, almost exclusively by Christianity (including the Hebrew Bible), at least since Constantine.

I have no idea what people expect dems to do about abortion. They cannot pass a national law without the senate. Most blue states already put in protections.

It's not like they can just trot down to the court house and change the judges mind.

>> They cannot pass a national law without the senate

Which party is the majority in the Senate? I thought it was the dems.

If your political party can't pass a law when it controls Congress, that's a legitimate reason for people to be disappointed with your political party, is it not?

That's a great question ("What can they do?") and the answer is a lot.

As you may or may not know, legislative bodies have a whip. The current Democratic Senate whip is Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). The job of a whip is quite literally to whip votes. It is to get legislation passed. Betwen the whip and the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), they could:

1. Remove Manchin and Sinema from committee chairs;

2. Remove them from committees completely (eg Dianne Feinstein was effectively removed because she's basically a billion years old and senile);

3. Investigate the links between Manchin, his actions on the Energy Committee and his brother's coal company in West Virginia from which he personally profits.

The counterargument is that they'll switch sides and either join the Republicans or simply caucus with them to retake the majority (eg like Tom Daschle did with Jim Jeffords). Let them. You cannot allow people to hold you hostage like that. They probably won't either because currently they enjoy a disproportionate amount of power. As soon as the GOP doesn't need them, they'll just be relegated to being junior Senators with little to no power.

The Republicans unlike the Democrats know how to whip votes. Take the fascinating case of Madison Cawthorn who found himself the subject of an organized hit campaign after making off-the-cuff remarks about Republican sex parties (seriously). He got dragged into Kevin McCarthy's office and came out looking like he'd been physically beaten. The GOP primaried him and he lost. That's how you get your caucus to toe the line.

So Manchin and Sinema could (and should) be primaried.

Biden could create executive orders to advance his agenda. He's too much of an institutionalist to worry about separation of powers and doing anything "too divisive". You know who doesn't worry about that? Republicans. Republicans care about winning. Democrats care about fundraising off how terrible Republicans are.

Even if such executive orders are struck down by the Supreme Court as overreach then at least you tried.

Example: The Senate could raised the minimum wage to $15 as a budget reconciliation process. They didn't. Why? Respect for some outdated notion of norms, rules and procedures. You know what the Republicans did when faced with pushback from the Senate parliamentarian on passing Bush's tax cuts? They fired him and found someone else [1].

Remember that keeping Roe v. Wade enjoyed wide public support (eg 64% according to [2]; I've seen other figures as high as 70-75%). Even if legislation cannot pass you force politicians to put their vote on the record. Votes on the record matter. Hilary's support for the Iraq War came back to haunt her (in 2008, mostly).

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/05/08/k...

[2]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099844097/abortion-polling-r...

> The counterargument is that they'll switch sides and either join the Republicans or simply caucus with them to retake the majority (eg like Tom Daschle did with Jim Jeffords). Let them.

When Tom Daschle was Senate majority leader, Democrats held both Senate seats in South Dakota. Virtually all of Democrats' economic achievements of the 20th century were built with a coalition including socially conservative midwestern and southern voters. Obamacare was passed with the support of voters that went over to Trump in 2016 over social issues. If you kick those people out of the coalition, as Democrats have been doing, you're left with a party that can't actually muster the votes to deliver on their economic promises to working class voters.

> Remember that keeping Roe v. Wade enjoyed wide public support (eg 64% according to [2]; I've seen other figures as high as 70-75%).

The majority of Americans don't understand the actual legal effect of Roe. They also support a 15-week ban on elective abortions--like the Mississippi law in Dobbs--which was prohibited under Roe. https://www.wsj.com/articles/support-for-15-week-abortion-ba....

More importantly to this conversation, a big chunk of the people who support legalized abortion are Republicans. https://news.gallup.com/poll/246278/abortion-trends-party.as.... The 2010 Democratic coalition that enacted Obamacare included about 30% folks who identify as "pro life." Continuing to kick those folks out of the coalition is a great way to do exactly what Mitch McConnell wants.

The Democratic Party becoming liberal is a recent development.

In 2006, 32% of Democrats identified as liberal. 23% were conservative (the rest identified as moderate). In 2018 it's 46% liberal/35% moderate/17% conservative.

That means that even today, a minority of Democrats are liberals. An even smaller minority are progressives. The Democrats are not and have never been a majority liberal party, although that is rapidly changing.

The reason democrats like Manchin and Sinema block liberal policies is that they are conservatives. Both parties have traditionally had sizable liberal and conservative wings, but they are rapidly polarizing and Democrats are pushing out the conservatives. In the 90s there would be about 20 Democratic senators like Manchin, now we only have a couple.

>In response to the Dobbs leak the Democrats did... nothing.

Everyone who follows politics knew that when Hillary lost in 2016, Roe v. Wade would inevitably be overturned. There's nothing we can do about this in the short term, especially when we don't have liberal majorities.

I'm going to disagree on your main point- social issues are the main problem in the US and they cannot be distinguished from economic ones.

Abortion, for example, is an economic issue. Allowing women to control their reproduction is, by far, the most effective way to combat poverty. A child costs over $250,000 to raise on average, and that's the type of burden that keeps people in poverty. Abortion rights have strong support among the wealthy; this is not a case of the "elites" dividing the working class, it's the working class that supports regressive policies.

Also, wealthy countries that are ethnically and culturally homogenous generally have much stronger social support systems than the US. This is, again, a social issue. Americans don't want their taxpayer money helping people who they see as "different" so they vote against welfare programs. And again, the wealthier and better educated someone is the more progressive they are in this regard, this is another example of working class people shooting themselves in the foot.

> Abortion, for example, is an economic issue. Allowing women to control their reproduction is, by far, the most effective way to combat poverty. A child costs over $250,000 to raise on average, and that's the type of burden that keeps people in poverty. Abortion rights have strong support among the wealthy; this is not a case of the "elites" dividing the working class, it's the working class that supports regressive policies.

Meanwhile, just 29% of folks who primarily speak Spanish at home, and 41% of first generation Hispanic immigrants, think abortion should be legal. If Democrats want to be the party of telling working class Hispanics that their views are “regressive” and the most important problem is that they can’t or won’t abort enough of their babies, that’s a dream come true for the GOP.

Bonus points for “[a]bortion rights have strong support among the wealthy.” The attack ads write themselves. “Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley engineers think that their maids and gardeners are having too many kids and should abort more of them.”

We got Obamacare passed, but not a law codifing Row vs Wade. Its almost like its about money and power, and not personal freedom

> We got Obamacare passed, but not a law codifing Row vs Wade.

Codifying Roe v. Wade only makes sense as a symbolic act of protest against a court ruling against it when you lack the votes to do anything meaningful. Preemptively, it makes no sense, since a court that would reject the right held to exist in Roe as a 14th Amendment right is also sure to rule that no power granted to Congress allows it to curtail the powers reserved to states by codifying Roe.

> The Democratic Party becoming liberal is a recent development.

It being the left-most of the two major political parties has been the case since it was clear how the emerging alignment from the long 20th century realignment was shaking out, by, say, the late 1960s.

> In 2006, 32% of Democrats identified as liberal. 23% were conservative (the rest identified as moderate). In 2018 it’s 46% liberal/35% moderate/17% conservative.

So…what? Unless you have some kind of calibration of where the people with these self-identifications place the liberal/moderate/conservative divides, this doesn’t tell you anything, since it can just as easily be interpreted as shift in what Democratic voters consider liberal vs. moderate.

You can’t measure how liberal the Democratic Party is by how liberal Democrats see themselves.

> That means that even today, a minority of Democrats are liberals. An even smaller minority are progressives. The Democrats are not and have never been a majority liberal party, although that is rapidly changing.

You seem to be using Pew data [0] for self-identification. But–while it lacks the kind of over-time comparison one might like (they’ve done it several time since the 1980s, but the methodology has changed), Pew also has a present (well, 2021) political typology derived by bucketing actual views into descriptive buckets: 51% of Democrats are in left/liberal buckets, 28% in a distinctly-Democratic group that tends to self-identify as moderate, 13% in a moderate group that is about evenly split between the two parties, and the remaining 8% in more typically Republican buckets (all of which are Right/Conservative.) [1]

> The reason democrats like Manchin and Sinema block liberal policies is that they are conservatives.

Neither seems to be a conservative (in any of the senses usually used within the American political spectrum.) Manchin might be in the equally-split “Stressed sideliners” bucket, maybe.

Sinema has maybe made the most rapid transition from a far-left critic of the Democratic Party for being too friendly to the Right to the the very right edge of the Democratic coalition over her career as a political activist and politician…or she is just an ideology-free opportunist.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/17/liberals-ma...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/the-democrat...

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