Socialists versus Liberals
In a time of dueling narratives, maybe look at the data.
In Liberals Are Giving Up on America, Liza Featherstone makes it clear she’s fed up with liberals blaming the Trump win on white people -- white men in particular -- for voting against Harris and the Dems. The thread that America has shown itself to be racist, and people's concerns about the economy are bullshit, is just living in make-believe, one possibly as deranged as Trump’s gloom-and-doom prattle.
Featherstone mention's Rebecca Solnit's Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do quite early in the essay, and maybe that is what motivated Featherstone to write this, in distinction to the false narrative Solnit advanced.
While much of what Solnit wrote about in her essay may be true, it isn't a good political analysis of what happened in the election. Yes, Trump is terrible, the media sucks, the internet is bad, and a lot of people believe a lot of dumb shit, but the hard truth is a majority of Americans believe that the economy, the direction of the country, and the domination of the elites is even more terrible. They didn't rally to Harris' tepid mantra of joy, and -- like the majorities in the other advanced countries of the West -- wanted an overthrow of the status quo, which is what Harris represented, despite her 'turning a new page' rhetoric.
The story of the election is not the crisis of masculinity or billionaires throwing their money around (Harris had the support of far more billionaires than Trump did, for example), but why young people and non-white women abandoned Harris, while still supporting women and progressives down ballot.
Featherstone says that the left can get all those that swung to Trump back, because Biden, Bernie, and Hilary got a lot to vote Dem in earlier elections.
She namedrops sociologist Musa al-Gharbi but didn't summarize his findings: it was young people, and non-White women whose votes decided the election, not white men. But the cavilling Dems don't want to look at the data: as al-Gharbi states, they would rather continue with bullshit narratives that suit their worldview.
The stark reality, says al-Gharbi, is that the Dems have become the party of the well-educated, wealthy elite, and the GOP has become the party of the low education, low income working class:
Featherstone says rejecting a vast tranche of Americans is stupid politics, because you need to get a majority to win. And the messages from socialists seem attractive for Trump voters:
In New York City, both Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (who is running for mayor) have been engaging in conversation with constituents who voted for Trump, asking them why. Answers have included the cost of living, endless war and genocide, plus elite condescension, to name a few.
In a video released today, when Mamdani told several voters he was running on universal childcare, free buses, and a rent freeze, he was received with handshakes and big smiles. As one Trump voter said, “You’d have my vote all day.”
Well, 'a chicken in every pot' wins votes, or at least one 'I'd vote for that' on the street corner.
Featherstone’s big close is a pitch for socialism, and a slap at liberals (and maybe particularly Solnit):
This election, Trump was the beneficiary of a pissed-off electorate. It doesn’t have to be this way. We on the Left — in our community organizing, our unions, our socialist electoral campaigns — must become the political home of those who are so rightly angry at the establishment. We can win by rejecting the agendas and sensibilities of the rich, and advancing a political agenda that will make working-class people’s lives better. We cannot beat a promise to Make America Great Again with a mournful dirge or misanthropic insults. We believe in the American people, we know that we all deserve better, and we have a policy agenda to achieve it.
But the Dems are now the party of the wealthy elites, not the working class. How is that supposed to meld?
Some basic questions for Featherstone: What's the plan? Will the socialists take control of the Democratic party? She says the socialists have a policy agenda, but where's the plan to rebuild a coalition, and pull together a majority?
What role do the Democrats — the elite — get to play, if any?
Solnit offers no plan, aside from the prediction that ‘we’ — meaning Democrats — will be ‘the cleanup crew because men like this’ — meaning Trump and his adherents — ‘never clean up after themselves’.
Again, she leaves out that it was non-White women and the young that defected from Harris’s camp. But it just feels better to rant about the ills of the right than the misfire of the left.
I’ll end with al-Gharbi, whose A Graveyard of Bad Election Narratives is a must read:
Many Harris sympathizers seem set on believing Kamala’s campaign was “flawless,” and the problem lies with the voters. Because of these same tendencies very little was learned from the previous Trump cycles. I fear the same may hold true this time as well. Distressingly high numbers of influential people seem more interested in telling self-flattering stories than actually winning elections — and it’s hard to persuade folks with that priority set of anything.
thanks for asking "what is the plan?". today, i am not sanguine about the near future, and maybe more ....
My friend Douglass Carmichael wrote in his recent book Gardenworld about the loss of religion and tradition as providing some authoritative truth about the world (Max Weber was onto this as well). And this excerpt here, for me, seems to shed some light on what we are living through:
“The even deeper story of the loss of Christianity in Europe leading to loss of belief in a humane and meaningful society. Interesting and important questions, such as can a society cohere without a shared belief system, have not been engaged. Instead, we are left with the mathematics of supply and demand.”
— Gardenworld Politics: The hope and the issues: Responding to climate collapse by Douglass Carmichael https://a.co/3MdmdHb