Odds & Ends

Political Roundup

Voters Say They Want Gun Control. Their Votes Say Something Different.

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Anonymous asked: As long as liberal and left leaning spaces have control over the institutions of culture, they will always code as elite. “Only war is class war” is cope from progressives that don’t want to give up that cultural power.

If the only war was class war, the Teamsters wouldn’t be endorsing Vivek Ramaswamy lol.

Joe Biden bailed out their pensions to the tune of billions, and the union still didn’t endorse Kamala Harris, although to be fair, that’s also because rank-and-file of the Teamsters votes Republican now due to immigration and cultural issues, and party leadership can’t really go against their membership. It’s probably a favor that Sean O’Brien didn’t endorse Trump.

The problem isn’t really Ohio though, it’s that where Ohio goes, the Blue Wall follows. Biden lost (or barely won depending on which results you look at) union voters in Pennsylvania in 2020, which is why he won the state by only 1.2% and it took a week for the election to be called. The only reason the “Blue Wall” was called that is because pre-2016, Democrats were able to win those states by running up the numbers with blue collar union rank-and-file, and if those voters aren’t voting Democrat anymore, those states are going to be competitive at best since there aren’t enough college-educated voters in them to make up for it.

And no, we can’t just shift our focus to the Sunbelt because Hispanic voters may not love Trump and have buyer’s remorse on voting for him, but they still don’t want to vote for Democrats.

Sunbelt voters aren’t unionized (which isn’t helpful since non-college union voters are still more Democratic than non-college non-union voters) and they still don’t want more immigration, even if they’re naturalized citizens themselves. At least in the case of the Sunbelt, Texas and Arizona actually share a border with Mexico unlike Wisconsin and Michigan, but the point stands.

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The Democrats’ Class Gap Problem

Of course, Democrats since the election have been talking nonstop about the need to reach working-class voters. They’re not unaware their party is increasingly a vehicle for educated professionals, whose priorities are quite different and frequently opposed to those of vast sectors of the working class. They’re just not willing to do much about it except proclaim their deep affection for the working class and assure them they are on their side and are really, really concerned about the cost of living. Efforts to materially change the image of the party on difficult cultural issues have been assiduously avoided, save the occasional and tentative suggestion that perhaps those with unorthodox (or, heaven forfend, conservative) views should not be immediately drummed out of the party.

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Anonymous asked: Why are moderates such pushovers? They have better lives than most of the people attacking them, they need to get their licks back.

Punching down is déclassé lol

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Numerous speakers warned against throwing any progressive constituency “under the bus,” a phrase that has become a term of art in the factional battle. It stands for the idea that Democrats should not retreat from positions taken on behalf of allies, however unpopular they may be. No compromise with the electorate was the conference’s standing order.

[…]

First, they deny that polls showing any left-wing positions as unpopular convey meaningful information. Anat Shenker-Osorio, a progressive strategist, roundly dismissed the relevance of polling as “pollingism,” and rejected the very notion that politicians can win support by heeding public opinion. “We know that humans are in fact irrational creatures,” she explained from a panel at Persuasion 2025.

What’s more, where voters do support regressive positions, Democrats should dismiss this as a kind of false consciousness. As various speakers argued, working-class voters facing economic stress tend to lash out at vulnerable targets.

[…]

Attempting to disarm right-wing attacks by abandoning positions that are unpopular with these and other voters is not only unnecessary, but also futile. “You cannot feed your opposition’s narrative,” Shenker-Osorio argued. She is even more absolute on her website: “Conventional wisdom says to meet people where they are. But, on most issues, where they are is unacceptable.”

“Democrats Still Have No Idea What Went Wrong” by Jonathan Chait

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Anonymous asked: Why do people online get so aggravated when you imply that socially conservative working class voters might care more about advancing socially conservative beliefs than economic populism? Of course, citizens are going to choose “proper culture” over “life saving healthcare”. Have these morons met the fucking electorate?

I mean, people get mad at me because I don’t moralize about this reality lol. I don’t say “Socially conservative working class voters might care more about advancing socially conservative beliefs than economic populism (and that is bad),” and they somehow seem to believe that I’m endorsing and embracing people that give my husband and me dirty looks when we’re on their turf (aka eastern Washington/northern Idaho) because we have the gall to be in an interracial relationship.

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Anonymous asked: Why are Democrats so averse to functioning as a united front?

Because their voters and the people who populate their extended professional and media apparatus are. This isn’t a group problem, this is one of individuals who comprise the group.

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