A couple of friends last night asked if I was ready to give up on the U.S. Has the country degenerated so much that there is no recovering? Will my view change if things go badly for our democratic republic in 2026?
I admitted that I’ve thought far enough ahead to ask that if the country collapsed if other countries would honor my U.S. passport when I attempt to leave. Then again, I reminded them, I’ve got Irish on both sides of the family. I recently changed the headers in my social media accounts to the old Irish joke: Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
Washington is bracing for a pivotal week, with key elections across the country set to gauge how Americans feel about President Donald Trump and his second term. This comes as a new CNN poll shows Trump’s approval rating stands at 37%. It’s the worst of his second term in CNN polling and roughly equivalent to his 36% approval rating at this point in his first term. Americans are also broadly unhappy with the state of the country, with 68% saying things are going badly. Dissatisfaction is even higher with the economy, with 72% rating it in poor shape — and 47% naming the economy and the cost of living as the top issues facing the US.
Poll results above suggest that Democrats are well positioned for 2026. But should Zohran Mamdani win tomorrow in New York City, and Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill win governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, doubts will predictably arise, especially in the “liberal” press.
Brian Buetler asks why it is that good news for Democrats is always an opportunity for navel-gazing, and bad news for Democrats:
Is Mamdani the future of the Democratic Party, or are Spanberger and Sherrill?
Does the Democratic Party have a socialism problem?
Isn’t Mamdani’s rise yet another indication that Democrats have Decided Not To Win nationally?
This narrative has become tiresome.
Let’s go bullet point by bullet point:
The answer to the first question is simply, “yes.” For as long as the American right is in thrall to fascism, the Democratic Party must span the left and center, and even a bit beyond.
The answer to the second question is simply to scoff and observe that the Trump regime is strong-arming major industries into giving or selling the U.S. government ownership stakes in the means of production.
The answer to the third question is to ask why political elites are so fixated on left-of-center infighting, or the ideological perception of Democrats, given that the right is currently embroiled in a civil war over whether the GOP should be one- or zero-degrees removed from Nazis.
Despite the GOP’s willingness to “ride the tiger of MAGA and all of its bigotries for a decade,” soome in the party “really do seem draw the line at remorseless Nazism.” On the one hand, sounds like a personal problem. On the other hand, their problem is ours.
The problem is that the Trump-cowed press will by reflex debate whether Democrats’ use of “trans” and “climate change” are a liability that puts them in peril again in 2026 and beyond, etc. But that also reflects why navel-gazing on the left keeps the topic alive.
These warped discourse priorities are symptoms of the broad left’s biggest liability, which is a deformed information environment. Nearly all media channels blare reminders, in one form or another, that the Democratic Party is weak, lame, and out of touch. Meanwhile, it requires specialized knowledge and curiosity to learn that the Republican Party is in the process of affirming that its mantra “no enemies to the right” includes Hitler admirers.
Democrats always seeming to be playing defense while Republicans play offense is one reason the press portrays them that way and why even Democrats and left-leaning independents feel undefended and unrepresented.
But are party pooh-bahs capable of grabbing the national narrative by the throat? Anat Shenker-Osorio observes that Democrats use polls to chase public opinion while Republicans use their polling to shape it. That’s why Republicans can pull obscurities like critical race theory out of a hat, build them into national issues, and make Democrats play defense. Democrats need to learn that trick.
CBS edited Donald Trump’s Sunday night interview with “60 Minutes” anchor Norah O’Donnell from 73 minutes to 28 for time and clarity. That’s the very thing Trump sued CBS for over a Kamala Harris interview last year. CBS caved and settled for $16 million.
Brett Meiselas zeroes in on Trump’s brag about that. It did not air. (Digby will be along shortly with her focus on the interview.)
What’s clear from the full transcript is how much (for those of a certain age) Trump sounds like a broken record when he talks about those he hates most. He knows whom he hates and whom he blames.
No question from O’Donnell about the Epstein files.
After near-incoherent remarks about rare earth minerals, Trump mentions Joe Biden’s administration 42 times. All it took was for Biden to beat him at the polls once. Biden is to blame for every problem Trump claims to be solving. Except for those associated with Barack Obama: “who was a lousy president, not nearly as bad as Biden.”
Immigrants are criminals (12 times). Immigrants are murderers (8 times). Biden let in 11,888 of them(?).
Venezuela is terrible. Obama was terrible (but not as terrible as Biden who beat him in 2020). Obamacare is terrible. New York AG Letitia James is terrible (and dishonest). Journalists are terrible. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is terrible.
People who investigated him are corrupt. Biden was corrupt: “the most corrupt president and he was the worst president we’ve ever had.” His government was corrupt. But not Donald’s despite his pardoning a crypto currency money launderer Trump claims not to know but who, O’Donnell suggests, “helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin,” owned by Trump’s sons.
So it goes. It’s why retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, said Trump would rule like a dictator in a second term and was “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Damaged. Seventy-seven million Americans one year ago gave Trump permission to damage the rest of us.
Q: Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?"
Leaving his home in Ontario to work at a food bank Thursday morning, Carlos Jimenez pulled over to warn a group of federal agents that they should wrap up their stop of a car quickly because school-age children would soon gather there to take the bus, his lawyers said Sunday. In the following moments, the attorneys said an ICE officer shot Jimenez, a U.S. citizen and father of three, from behind.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said at the time that Jimenez had “attempted to run officers over by reversing directly at them without stopping” and that the shots were “defensive.”
Jimenez, 25, was charged in federal court with assault on a federal officer. A judge released him on bond Friday. Lawyers for Jimenez offered a counter narrative. They said that Jimenez reversed because he was afraid, then was unnecessarily shot in the back of his right shoulder, where a bullet remains lodged. The agents’ actions were “unreasonably aggressive” and a violation of their own policies, said attorney Robert Simon.
Jimenez, who lives in the mobile home park along the same road, approached the officers to “tell them that there’s kids that are coming out to wait for the bus,” according to his lawyers.
“He was telling them, ‘Excuse me. Can you guys please, you know, please wrap this up.’ And immediately, the masked agent pulls out a gun and exchanges some words,” said lawyer Cynthia Santiago. “[The agent is] also shaking his pepper spray.”
“He’s in fear, and he’s trying to get out of the situation,” she said. The agents and their cars had blocked one southern lane on Vineyard Avenue and jutted into a second.
“He had to reverse to get away,” said Simon. “Then there was a shot from the side, back passenger window, to the car,” Santiago said. “Use of deadly force is to be used as a last resort. Coming out to communities with guns drawn is the opposite.”
[…]
Federal authorities have painted a different picture of what happened. According to the complaint filed in the Central District of California on Friday, Jimenez pulled up to three immigration officers, two from Border Patrol and another form ICE and “engaged in a verbal altercation,” it states.
An ICE agent, identified as E.O., approached Jimenez in his Lexus and told him to leave. Then the agent “holstered” his fire arm and pulled out his pepper spray, according to the complaint. Jimenez pulled his car forward to the left.
“The Lexus then stopped, turned its wheels, and then rapidly accelerated in reverse back toward” a Border Patrol agent named in the complaint as “Officer N.J.” and the Honda the agents had stopped, which had three people inside.
You tell me which scenario sound more believable.
The shooting is the second in a little more than a week in Southern California. Last week, ICE officers fired at a man in South Los Angeles after agents boxed his car in. Carlitos Ricardo Parias was shot in the elbow, and a deputy marshal was hit by what authorities said was a ricocheted bullet. They accused Parias of trying to ram the agents’ cars.
In September and October, there were two shootings, by ICE and Border Patrol, into vehicles in Chicago, one fatal. And in August, federal agents shot into a car in San Bernardino during an immigration stop.
As I wrote earlier about the vaccine denialism, you’d think shooting people would be a wake-up call. But if half the country didn’t care about the 1.2 million dead from COVID, there’s no reason to think they’ll care about this.
Apparently, Arizona and Utah have a major measles outbreak and it appears it’s headed to Salt Lake City. And that’s going to be a problem:
Salt Lake County likely has a new one, too—the first for the county this year—as well as possible exposures. But, they can’t confirm it.
County health officials said that a health care provider in the area contacted them late on Monday to tell them about a patient who very likely has measles. The officials then spent a day reaching out to the person, who refused to answer questions or cooperate in any way. That included refusing to share location information so that other people could be notified that they were potentially exposed to one of the most infectious viruses known.
“The patient has declined to be tested, or to fully participate in our disease investigation, so we will not be able to technically confirm the illness or properly do contact tracing to warn anyone with whom the patient may have had contact,” Dorothy Adams, executive director of Salt Lake County Health Department, said in a statement. “But based on the specific symptoms reported by the healthcare provider and the limited conversation our investigators have had with the patient, this is very likely a case of measles in someone living in Salt Lake County.”
Measles is extremely infectious. It is spread through the air and can linger in the airspace of a room for up to two hours after an infectious person has left. Among unvaccinated people, 90 percent will become infected if exposed. Two doses of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) are 97 percent effective at preventing the infection, and that protection is considered lifelong.
I had measles and I don’t remember it being “fun” like these right wingers are saying. Neither was chicken pox which is probably what RFK Jr is remembering. Not that it was fun but it wasn’t as miserable as measles. (And the shingles virus, which lingers in the body once you have chicken pox, definitely isn’t fun.)
But sure. Let’s go back to the dark ages and refuse to vaccinate your children but then refuse to cooperate with public health officials as they try to trace it and warn people who’ve been exposed. Great.
Support among US adults for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine has dropped from 90% to 82% in just a few short months, while confusion reigns over whether Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the top US official spearheading prevention efforts—recommends that children be vaccinated against measles, according to the latest poll from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania.
The poll also found that most Americans correctly believe that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, though that number has slipped, while over half of those surveyed weren’t sure whether a mercury-based preservative in some vaccines increases the risk of autism, despite studies showing no link.
The results come as US measles cases surpass 1,600 and outbreaks across the country grow.
The poll was conducted August 5 through 18 among 1,699 adults, 28 of whom took the survey in Spanish. It has a margin of error for the entire sample of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
In a normal world I would say that once a few kids die people will have to wake up. But then I remember that 1.2 million Americans died during COVID and these throwbacks have all doubled down. They are impervious to reality. And apparently, they just don’t care.
Uh oh. Another church filled with sexual predators, many of the pedophiles. And yes, they were protected by the holy rollers of the Assembly of God. You know, the ones who love Donald Trump. I guess we don’t have to wonder why anymore. He may not be a bible thumper but he’s one of them.
A children’s pastor was caught filming girls in a church bathroom in Arkansas. Elders suspended him for a few weeks.
In Illinois, a preacher was accused of sexually abusing children. Church leaders sent him to therapy rather than call police.
In California, a worship minister went to prison for molesting boys. His congregation threw him a party when he returned.
All of these men remained in ministry in the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. All went on to abuse more children.
Since the 1970s, Assemblies of God churches have repeatedly reinstated ministers and volunteer leaders accused of sexual misconduct, returning them to pulpits and youth groups, an NBC News investigation found. While some of the other largest Christian denominations now require safeguards such as background checks and mandatory reporting, national Assemblies of God leaders have resisted, arguing such rules would increase legal risk, undermine its commitment to local church autonomy and defy a core biblical command: to forgive.
The result is a patchwork system that has protected accused predators and left generations of children in danger.
NBC News identified nearly 200 Assemblies of God pastors, church employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexual abuse over the past half century, based on a nationwide search of lawsuits, criminal records and news archives. Together, they allegedly abused more than 475 people — the overwhelming majority of them children. The allegations stretch into this year, when a 10-year-old girl said in a lawsuit that her pastor groped her during Bible study.
It’s some really sick stuff:
Survivors say they were violated in sanctuaries, at pastors’ homes and in tents on camping trips. A California preacher was accused of holding knives to children’s chests while forcing them to perform sex acts on each other. In Louisiana, a youth leader confessed to drugging and assaulting three boys during a sleepover. A couple in New Mexico say their pastor used his spiritual authority to drive them apart, then coerced the wife into sex.j
I just don’t know what to say about this anymore. These are the people having hysterics over a trans woman using a bathroom but this stuff is just fine.
Apparently there is an “equal treatment provision” in federal SNAP regulations which prohibits discrimination against and preferential treatment for EBT participants. I don’t know why they needed to make a point of that in these circumstances but the administration is such a a stickler for the rule of law…
It’s quite clear that they really want people to suffer.
Rampell writes:
Meanwhile USDA Sec Rollins is trying to change the subject —subject being Trump's decision to withhold food aid from 40M people—by claiming admin is focused on rooting out SNAP fraud. To be fair, no one can fraudulently receive benefits if no one receives benefits, period. A… pic.twitter.com/AIxTGiR3lh
TAPPER: Obama's comments came within a day of Trump hosting a Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago while SNAP benefits are set to run out. What's your response?
BESSENT: I believe President Obama played a record amount of golf of any president, so I'm not sure why he's… pic.twitter.com/rd8YoJsO35
Tapper asked the question referencing Obama and Trump fiddling while the White House is being demolished. But he wasn’t prepared with this fact, which is right on his own website? It’s from 2020 during COVID but since Trump has already exceeded his first term golfing in the same period, I’m sure it holds up. (In fact, Tapper could have had his ace fact checker Daniel Dale prepare a totally up-to-date number, but no.)
Obama played 98 rounds of golf through this point in his presidency, according to data provided to CNN by Mark Knoller, a veteran CBS News White House correspondent who is known for tracking presidential activities. By contrast, Knoller said, Trump has spent all or part of 248 days at a golf course.
CNN’s own count has Trump at 266 days spending some time at a Trump golf course.
Since Trump and his aides often refuse to confirm that he actually played golf during a visit to a golf club, even when he has been spotted in golf attire, it is not possible to definitively say how many times Trump has golfed as President. And some of Trump’s rounds, like when he plays with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, mix leisure with official business.
Regardless, it is clear that Trump has spent more time golfing than Obama. And Trump’s own golf-related “carbon footprint” has been bigger than Obama’s even if you count only air travel.
Through this point in his first presidential term, Obama had made three vacation trips to his birth state of Hawaii for a total of 29,978 miles in the air, Knoller tweeted, while Trump has made 30 trips to Palm Beach, Florida, the home of Mar-a-Lago, for a total of 51,540 miles.
Obama played 333 rounds during his eight years as president, according to Knoller. In other words, Obama played golf once every 8.77 days as president. Trump, conversely, has been at a golf club once every 4.92 days so far.
It’s also worth noting that Trump’s trips – like his Saturday and Sunday visits to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia – have almost exclusively been to resort properties and golf courses his company owns.
In addition to the promotional value of these trips by a president, Trump’s company has generated hundreds of thousands in revenue from charges to the Secret Service, according to Washington Post reporting.
Bessent is a supercilious twat and a confirmed liar, almost as bad as his boss. You literally can’t believe a word he says which is very bad for a Secretary of the Treasury. He even lies about political matters like this, which is beneath him. He should just skip the question and say that he’s focusing on the economy but instead takes the opportunity to give Trump the big slurpy tongue bath he needs on a daily basis.
The Obama Golf Counter estimated that Obama played just over 300 rounds of golf as president. That’s probably low; CBS News reporter (and keeper of presidential data) Mark Knoller had the count at 333 over Obama’s two terms. That is in fact more than the 259 outings Trump made in his first term — although spread over eight years.
In other words, Trump almost played as much golf in his first term as Obama did in two. Bessent and the rest of the POS’s in the MAGA media just lie about everything.
You have to see this to believe he would write the above after seeing it.
This is the Seth Meyers clip Donald Trump just had a meltdown over on Truth Social where Seth brutally mocks Trump’s insane rant about steam powered catapults. Trump REALLY doesn’t want people to see this so whatever you do please do NOT share this video! pic.twitter.com/APvamZhzR5
This from Jonathan Martin is unusual because he’s usually a confirmed “Democrats in disarray” guy. Here he talks about how Trump is the kiss of death in swing states:
Neither Earle-Sears nor Ciattarelli are Christie-level political talents, to put it mildly. But it makes the races all the more difficult when Trump is a get-out-the-vote machine for Democrats and puts his own party’s candidates in a vise in which they’re squeezed between his enthusiasts who expect loyalty and more skeptical voters who demand independence.
It’s hardly a new story. Democrats dined out on this exact same dynamic in almost every election between 2017 and 2020, the first time Trump was president. As the ever-insightful Charlie Cook recently noted, “In the four elections since Trump was first elected president, Republicans have lost 17 of the 21 Senate races” in the country’s seven presidential swing states.
What’s remarkable is that Republicans have been here before, and they still just take it.
Sherrill and Spanberger can scarcely believe how easy their rivals have made it to link the Republicans to Trump.
In an interview at an Oktoberfest in South Jersey earlier this month, Sherrill told me with an element of wonder that Ciattarelli has “not separated himself an inch” from Trump (which is quite the full circle turn for someone who said in 2016 that Christie should consider resigning if he was going to spend so much time stumping for then-candidate Trump).
Even more than before, it is required that Republicans bend the knee to Dear Leader. And the only people who like that are members of the cult.
People always talk about how the Democrats are purists and demand total adherence to the left agenda but it’s really the Republicans who are the purists. And it’s not even to a set of ideas or values — it’s to one freaky old man who tells them that windmills cause cancer. You tell me which party is off the rails.
So far, the Republicans in Congress are actually saying no to this demand that they nuke the filibuster so they can be forced to put their own names and reputations on all the extremist lunacy he wants to pass. We’ll have to see if they can withstand demands like the one above — and how the cult responds if they do.
Working-class voters see Democrats as “woke, weak and out-of-touch” and six in 10 have a negative view of the party, concluded a frank internal assessment of the hole the party finds itself in.
My problem is that (unless I missed it) they don’t include a link to the poll itself. Without the data, there is no way to know who the pollsters included in “working class.” We’ll get to that issue in a moment.
The Democratic brand “is suffering,” as working-class voters see the party as “too focused on social issues and not nearly focused enough on the economic issues that impact every one, every day,” the report said.
“We lost people we used to get [in 2024], so why did we lose them? Why don’t we go ask them,” said Mitch Landrieu, co-chair of Democracy Matters and senior adviser to then-President Joe Biden. “They said what they thought about us and it was painful to hear … They feel forgotten, left out, and that their issues are not prioritized by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.”
I can tell you that without a poll after spending 12 straight Friday rush hours holding signs on an overpass. (The side facing the interstate changes each week. The side facing pedestrians is the one above.)
The week I aimed YOUR LIFE SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD at the interstate, the diversity of vehicles that responded with waves, honks, and thumbs-up caught my attention. Sure, there were Subarus (ubiquitous here), plus Hondas and Toyotas, and even one Mercedes. But positive feedback also came from lawn-service pickups, Latinos in a work van, personal pickups, a couple of semis, and aging beaters with hanging body panels and peeling paint. Many are the sorts of voters and non-voters Democrats have lost to despair, disgust, and apathy.
Cynical and frustrated Americans feel unheard and undefended by both parties. They want to feel seen. This message above has won me instant credibility and trust. Pedestrians on the bridge week after week after week — especially those 35 and under, and especially women — look me square in the eye and thank me. Seriously.
A slim, tattooed young woman about 30 read it and said, “Oh, hell yeah,” and shot me a pinky-and-thumb, shaka salute. She asked if she could take a picture. A car full of 20-something women saw the sign, stopped on the bridge and cheered. A woman on a scooter turned around at the end of the bridge and came back to take a photo. A trio of young guys, early 20s, fist-bumped me on Friday.
I’m no messaging expert. I just lucked into this message after speaking with a 20-yr-old summer intern struggling to make any money while paying $1200/mo. for a short-term apartment. (It might have been $1500.)
If I were canvassing, they might be the first six words out of my mouth when the door opens … before I ask what would make their lives better and how Democrats might help.
Yes, the bulk of pedestrians are white, but the bulk of the “working class” are not. That’s why Rebecca Solnit last week offered this perspective after reading a Tressie McMillan Cottom op-ed regarding Graham Platner, the U.S. Senate candidate from Maine. Solnit posted to Facebook:
It’s been infuriating for a long time that “working class” is too often code for white men, fantasy white men from 1934 wearing hard hats and carrying lunch buckets, stingy-hearted white men who imagine their own thriving can only be built atop others’ deprivation, too often fancy rhetoric to justify pandering to the most prejudiced by throwing anyone and everyone else under the bus. Which is not just bad ethics, but bad strategy, since the backbone of the Democratic Party IS everyone else.
And here’s an important point: despite the wording of the headline, this isn’t a thing “the Democrats” do: I can promise you AOC, Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren, and Ilan Omar don’t do. It’s a thing that mostly white guys do in the service of white guys.
Tressie McMillan Cottom writes (in part, but there’s a gift link so you can read the whole thing):
I cannot swear to know the minds of men like Murphy and Sanders. But, were I a betting person, I’d wager someone else’s riches that they know racism and xenophobia are inextricably linked to America’s inchoate understanding of class politics. They know that “working class” has become a powerful political totem of its own — a discursive sleight of hand used to separate out white voters’ concerns as more legitimate, more materially grounded, more important than other voters’ concerns.
These senators are demonstrating a willful blindness that has become endemic in the Democratic Party. Their rhetoric — and the conventional wisdom that flows from it — suggests that we cannot talk about economic solutions without abandoning our commitment to the Black, Latino, gay, transgender and female poor that are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party’s base. The conceit at the heart of that belief is that poor white people are too racist, and too uniquely ignorant of their racism, to vote in their best interests. Therefore, Democrats have to accept a little racism to win the working class.
It is an old argument. History will tell you that negotiating with racism or fascism or authoritarianism never ends well.
It is also a cop-out that can sound like political pragmatism: The idea that we simply must learn to overlook bad behavior as mere human foibles. Who among us, it is implied, has not said or done or etched a hateful symbol of exclusion and oppression into our minds or bodies? If Democrats are to win back the “working class” that they have lost to Trump, they have to look beyond silly things like Nazi iconography or a little casual racism or a soupçon of sexism and anything else that the “woke” left of the party cares about.
I find it hard to imagine that we would be having this conversation at all were Platner anything other than a fit middle-aged white guy who dresses like a stock photo of a “real man.” Our culture is built to eternally forgive men, generally, and white men of means, especially, for their mistakes. Every single time, they were young and immature and it would be a shame to hold them accountable for anything they did wrong. The rest of us just need to be strong-armed into the forgiving and forgetting portion of the program.
That is how you get to the place I found myself this week, reading apologia for a hateful symbol pretending to be sound, hard-nosed political analysis.
Now, I know for a fact that the working class in this country looks more like a Latino woman who cleans houses than it looks like Platner, a former defense contractor turned oyster farmer with some leftist political beliefs.
I also know a lot of actual poor white people. The kind of poor white people who don’t even make enough or have enough to be counted among the working class. The people who rely on SNAP benefits for their meals and emergency rooms for their health care.
Sometimes they subsist on a diet of racist notions to explain why their lives are as hard as they are. Sometimes those poor white people even have racist tattoos. I live in the South. There is no shortage of Confederate flags and “Don’t tread on me” tags on display in hot, humid months.
Once, at a meeting with tenant organizers in the center of white American poverty in Appalachia, a young white guy showed up to a meeting with his Stars and Bars tattoo on display. The poor white rural women and working-class Black women who run those meetings took this guy to task. They told him (colorfully) to get himself together. And the next week they all protested their landlord together.
Their coalition-building wasn’t the kind of kumbaya that Platner apologists are talking about, where a room full of people were expected to swallow their outrage to preserve one man’s feelings. There was accountability. There was education. And there was meaningful action. There was not a college degree or a political donor among them, and yet, somehow, actual poor people figured out how to handle racist iconography without scapegoating minorities or making excuses for a white man’s mistakes.
Here’s the thing. The Democratic Party has a problem. The party’s leaders think they have a problem with Trump voters. Some polling says white men without college degrees don’t like them, don’t trust them and won’t vote for them, so they think the only logical way forward is to pander. Their polling addiction ignores more complex political instruments telling them that the working class isn’t just white men and that centrism isn’t enough to bring white voters back into the fold.
It is going to take hard politics. The kind that shows up in communities between elections and solves problems that don’t sound glamorous on television talk shows. It looks like facing down the Klan in a trailer park, not complaining about racism while doing far too little to avert it. It means believing that racism is not a natural condition of poverty but a political weapon that rich men use to constrain poor people’s political power. And — most critically — it looks like not wanting, even for a second, to be confused with the people who would do that. You don’t wear a red hat as a joke. You don’t fly the ironic flag of historical hate to get a rise out of people. You don’t wear the cool tattoo for over a decade that maybe, kind of, possibly, probably looks like something horrible and hateful.
That’s why it is annoying not to have the link to the poll to examine the demographics behind it. I get Cottom’s complaint. Solnit is right too. “Working class” is broader than white men of the Rust Belt. “The working class today is much more complex and diverse than the white, male, manufacturing archetype often evoked in popular narratives,” declares Demos. None of my pedestrians look like Platner. But it is not pandering to acknowledge people’s economic struggles whatever they look like, that life in America shouldn’t be this hard. People — not just beefy white men — feel their country and its promise are failing them. And both major political parties. Maybe start with that.
