Over at Vox, James Carville takes a shot at identity politics:
Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.
This is what you'd expect Carville to say, and I'm not going to take sides on it at the moment. But one thing that's clear is that Republicans sure think that attacking wokeness is a winning strategy. Off the top of my head, the past few weeks have produced the following three-day wonders from the conservative noise machine:
- Liberals are banning Dr. Seuss!
- John Kerry is giving away our secrets!
- Joe Biden is going to ban red meat!
- You should call the police if you see a child wearing a mask!
- Kamala Harris's book is being passed out to illegal immigrants!
- Woke capital is ruining our country!
- Vaccine passports are the beginning of a liberal police state!
- Baseball is un-American for objecting to voter suppression in Georgia!
If I could be bothered to hit up Google I'm sure I could double this list in a minute or two. And I'm not even counting the big, sustained jihads about the election being stolen or the COVID-19 vaccine being a hoax of some kind. Even for Republicans, this is a helluva list.
For whatever it's worth, this means that Republicans are putting their money on Carville. That doesn't mean they're right, but it's worth thinking about.
Everybody needs to chill and have a couple of plant-based beers.
Like all good Americans, I only drink beer made from dead baby seals.
There's nothing like a cold the blood of my enemies and the lamentations of their women when you get off work.
In this Ohio diner, the red ale is hemoglobin.
This isn’t a snarky question. I understand the phrase is being used by Republicans but I honestly don’t know what is meant by it. I’m assuming there’s some kind of reference that makes sense to people in the Fox News universe but I really don’t get what the punch line could be.
Do you or anyone else here know what this is supposedly referring to?
Larry Kudlow was complaining about how the Biden administration was going to make every drink 'plant-based beers', which is, evidently, what he imagines is a thing that could happen in the worst of all possible worlds.
'everyone'.
They're going to make everyone drink that beer.
Obviously, Kudlow had too much of a plant based beverage before going on the air.
Ordinarily I’d respect Larry Kudlow’s depth of knowledge and experience about booze and recreational pharmaceuticals but unless he has inside information that Biden’s going to ban butter beer, I think the guy has sustained a not surprising amount of neurological damage over the years that has clouded his thinking.
But thanks for the info. Evidently just another Sunday Morning Coming Down for Kuddles.
https://gawker.com/5469601/larry-kudlow-cokehead
I loved Gawker. Something went out of the internet when it was murdered.
Agreed. I’ve always wondered about the trial judge. The decisions about the admissibility of evidence were completely cockeyed and the jury more than a little but peculiar. The verdict would almost certainly have been overturned except that the imposition of a huge bond made appeals impossible.
I think the public integrity unit should definitely have at look at the financials and employment history (family wide). Judges are well known to be the crookedest crooks there are.
Krudlow's coke habit doesn't surprise me a bit, he'll say anything, do anything, to keep his buzz going.
And it was funded by that, whose name escapes me, ghoul who's now on the board of Facebook.
The vampire guy whose name also escapes me but I’m too lazy to google.
And who was trying to build a strategic redoubt in New Zealand which caused them to pass a law against people like him trying to buy up the country.
Most beers use some sort of plant material for their beers, whether hops, barley, wheat, etc., right? When we're talking about liquor, it's almost all fermentation of plant materials, whether sake/soju (rice/barley/buckwheat), tequila (agave), vodka (potato), etc., too.
Which is why Kudlow's statement is bizarre.
Chuck Schumer responded to Kudlow with a tweet of a picture of him watching the TV with a beer in hand, saying:
"Excited to be watching the Oscars with an ice cold plant-based beer.
Thanks Joe Biden."
That's why everyone latched onto the phrase.
But are plant-based beers more integral to the imposition of a Democrat woketopia than are Gates-Buffet implants included in the Soros-funded COVID19 vaccine?
Got my implant this am at Oregon Convention Center. I am now an indentured slave to Sorors-Gates-Buffet.
Like anything political (anything human...) it refers to many things, depending on the speaker and the listener.
I assume, as a literate person, you're interested in what it means when both speaker and listener are reasonably intelligent and reasonably honest.
In THAT case what it refers to is this:
"Are you a communist?" What do you think when you hear that question?
A truly naive person might hear "do you support a 'fair' distribution of the results of an enterprise between investors, workers, and management" and assume all the disagreement is in the details of the distribution.
But realistically the question means vastly more than that because communism has become an ideology, a totalizing worldview with claims to explain pretty much everything (certainly all of history, and all of social science, and eventually all of biology and trying for physics and mathematics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_manuscripts_of_Karl_Marx )
And for anyone who is not part of the communist tribe, REGARDLESS of their opinions about the "fair" distribution of enterprise profits, they reject the communist ideology in total because to accept it means to accept this set of ever-metastasizing claims about history, social science, and then the hard sciences. To be a communist is to prioritize the claims of the tribe over any other source of truth, even your own eyes.
And THAT is what is meant by woke today. To be a feminist is not JUST to say "yeah, I agree that men and women deserve equal treatment by the legal and social system, as far as that is practical", it is to buy into an entire ideology that purports to explain all of human history, all of social science and (yet again) making attempts at hard sciences. It is to think this sort of thing makes perfect sense:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McClary#The_Beethoven_and_rape_controversy
or this
https://read.dukeupress.edu/the-minnesota-review/article-abstract/2017/88/69/28590/Assembled-BodiesReconfiguring-Quantum-Identities
Same for the set of claims around racism or gay/trans issues.
When reasonable people reject these, they are rejecting the ideology that they demand.
THAT is what this is about. Woke is a religion in the same way that communism or christianity are religions; it's a totalizing view of the world that purports to explain everything, and that has zero tolerance for those who point out contradictions in its supposed explanations.
Now, the world is full of idiots and liars. So, sure, plenty of people, psychics all of them able to read other minds with perfect clarity, will immediately insist that the ONLY reason anyone ever rejects these ideologies is because they are women-hating POC-hating gay hating nazis. You'll see plenty of this sort of thing in the comments below...
But, like I said, if you want to understand the issue at the honest, intelligent level, that's what it is about.
If you want to understand more of where the intelligent Right Wing is likely headed with this, read
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-modest-proposal-for-republicans
The big issue will be the "stolen" election. Everything else will seem unimportant, provided the Democrats play their cards right. The GOP handed Democrats an albatross to hang around their necks with their responses to 1/6/21. I'm sure that the Democrats know what to do, and I'm 90% certain that moderate independents will remember and vote accordingly.
Personally I think the big issue next year is going to be abortion. Meaning that right now we're talking about stuff that has nothing to do with what will be important next year. But what do I know.
Nah.
Vaccine denialist GQPers keeping the COVID shutdowns alive will be the new Mexican Ebola Babies in Suicide Vests.
Lolz, like negros aren't helping that. More whites are vaccinating than blacks. 90% of whites over 64 have one shot. You need a pinky snap for this post
Not in this Holland, MI, retirement community!
I think those are good points. The woke stuff really only appeals to the people who are deeply marinated in the Fox News universe and its lore. If the Democrats get stuff done that marks a difference in people’s lives and gets people thinking the country is on the right track, that’s what will matter in 2022 and 2024.
The other thing is that the Democrats need to understand that they need to do stuff and not worry about placating Trump’s MAGA-clowns. It can’t be done and wasting time trying to win those people over is something we just can afford. Surprisingly, MoDo seems to have a much better grasp of reality and a far deeper understanding than the guy from Louisiana (words I never envisioned writing).
This is really worth a read, especially considering who wrote it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/opinion/sunday/biden-press-conference-republicans-voting-rights.html
I disagree. You want the swing, low information voters. Trump did well with them like Barry did. Your too stupid to get it. Mumbling dialect nonsense when the core "trump supporters" are long term Republicans ....Your Point is dead
"On average, Republicans – and Republican men in particular – were more likely to correctly locate North Korea than Democratic men. "
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/14/upshot/if-americans-can-find-north-korea-on-a-map-theyre-more-likely-to-prefer-diplomacy.html
Myths die hard.
I have no idea what your point is, let alone how your factoid is proof of it. Why don't you enlighten us.
GOP voters are more informed, but I gotta admit I sort of missed the point.
So how does your factoid prove this? C'mon, I know you can do it!
Repeat after me: Data is not the plural of anecdote.
Republicans being on average better informed than Democrats about one single fact does nothing to overturn the studies showing Republicans are on average slightly less informed about most things in general.
I offer two alternate explanations, both of which seem to me more likely:
(1) In my experience, Republicans worry more about the U.S.'s potential enemies, while Democrats are more concerned with maintaining allies. (Who was it that hesitated over who to support in the Falklands War? Who got miffed and renamed French fries, when the U.S.'s oldest ally wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic about attacking Iraq on the basis of lies? Who abandoned the Kurds?)
(2) Young people know more about computers than oldsters do; are there similar or opposite correlations in other areas of knowledge, e.g., geography? (A short search doesn't confirm either way.) A correlation between political party and knowledge of North Korea's location could simply reflect the known correlation between political party and age.
A poll isn't an anecdote.. Lately there's been stuff going around about how much people overestimate the number of people shot by cops. Conservatives win that one too (though even they overestimate)
What!?!?!? You can address all sorts of questions ... but you can't explain the relevance of the factoid "On average, Republicans – and Republican men in particular – were more likely to correctly locate North Korea than Democratic men. " to your contention that "GOP voters are more informed."
I'm shocked I tells ya, shocked. As to your thesis itself: Mitch, meet Pew, Pew Mitch. TL;DR: Republican voters lag badly in education when compared to other groups, particularly when it comes to science. In fact, in 2009, just _six_ _percent_ of all scientists/engineers self-identified as Republican.
Research & writin'; try to master those skills sometime this century.
I agree: wokeness is a problem for the Left. But I don't think it's as big a problem as the completely- detached-from-reality-conspiracy-theorizing-fox-"news"-watching-insurrectionist-loony-tunes are for the right.
And, frankly, I'm not certain it's the correct approach for Carville or anyone else on the Dem side of things to talk about wokeness. Better if everyone concentrate their attention on attacking the trump-obsessed-cult of a Repub party. Play offense, not defense.
This.
Yes. How many things on Kevin's list aren't so much about wokeness, but straight up *lies*?
I think on the contrary Carville highlighting that Lefty adoption of overly arch Faculty Lounge type discourse is problematic and using that Lefty Academic language when more ordinary man-on-the-street language would be harder to demonize and easier for working class - white or non-white - people to digest, would be a win.
That's important particularly as highly educated white Lefties in journalism and professions have an echo chamber of their own (as any Lefty news site shows, it's not a horridly detached as the Fox echo chamber but it's still there). The fools who defended Defund the Police as a slogan....
Successful offense means also studying and *understanding* the successful defensive tactics being used against you. Not blindly executing your preferred strategy and insisting it's the winner.
Stop calling them left and maybe you will get it. There is nothing "lefty" about them.
Carville had the good fortune to win his first Democrat presidential campaign, so he could fuckoff to watch the Bayou Bengals football team & occasional pop up on CNN or MSNBC to provide expert analysis.
Contrast to Bob Shrum, who keeps having to roll that boulder up the hill.
Republicans are focusing on the classics: Blacks are violent people and Democrats support them. Fox News and its website are showing images of violent black people many times every day. They are being as open about it as Breitbart has always been.
Wokeness doesn't work as well with the average voter because they are outside the bubble and don't know or care what wokeness is.
Well, I don't know if that's true because I don't watch Fox new. But certainly if, say, the supposed uptick in anti-Asian violence is being blamed on 'white supremacy', then it would make sense to push back against that showing who are committing the overwhelming number of these attacks.
Personally I think the alleged uptick is just the same old black on Asian violence that has been going on for decades -- it's just that crime is up overall now.
There was a fun twist in Kevin Drum's very own OC -- indeed his very own beige Chinatown-- recently. An Asian committed an 'anti-Asian' hate attack against an Asian woman because he thought she was white. Good times!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/asian-man-charged-with-hate-crime-after-allegedly-attacking-asian-woman-he-thought-was-white/ar-BB1fC7LM
Derp.
Discuss had its issues, but at least you could block all the racists so their nonsense doesn't clutter up threads. Kevin's threads are becoming a waste of time because 2 or 3 of them will fill every thread
Kevin's blog truly is old-school. We tend to think of amenities like paired like/dislike buttons, tree views, blocking arose contemporaneously with the Good Old Stuff.
In fact we didn't start to see these features become common until -- what? -- 2006?, 2008?
Wokeness, political correctness, cancel culture. This has been the extent of the GOP platform since 2016. It worked for them that year but has not really worked all that well since. But it's all they've got.
I feel like old men like Carville and Bill Maher are doing the GOP's work for them by calling so much attention and doing so much nut picking on this subject.
Overly liberal people are annoying. They always have been. The right wants to make a tempest in a teapot every time some liberal overreaches on this subject, but it's mostly a whole lot of nothing.
Ok, "wokeness" is the boogeyman du jour, along with "canceling," and there's always the old standbys like "welfare" and "PC-ness" and "big gummint," and for all I know there's still some La-Z-Boy demographic stewing about busing.
But they're all variations on the same old white-resentment tune. It was Trump's campaign song, and it's been a Republican mainstay for well over half a century now (ref. Atwater, Lee). The gullible fools, aka useful idiots, may well believe (or at least say they believe) they're upset about a children's book or anti-COVID measures, but the their fundamental belief -- and consuming fear -- is that Others are oppressing Us (white patriarchal Christianists, but there-is-not-a-racist-bone-in-our-bodies). That belief, and that fear, validates any compatible claim, no matter how outlandish, and justifies any tactic, no matter how overtly illegal or antidemocratic.
It's ignorant, paranoid tribalism. All the rest is window-dressing, and window-dressing changes with each season.
It's not tribalism. It's globalists dog herding the sheep.
Ps, blacks are violent. The stats prove it. A toxic, racist culture that Republicans have egged on for years rather than providing solutions to the racism black men feel in their heart. Matter of fact, the contraband black gangs push to into whiteys body also makes Republicans feel good.
LOL! You forgot "zionists." Gotta keep your racist troll brand going!
The New Orleans Pelicans did nothing wrong.
Tribalism is in part a consequence of the zero-sum mindset, that I can only get ahead if someone else is shoved back. Trump was totally open about this; he could not fathom ‘win-win’ deals, there always had to be a loser, and it damned well shouldn’t be him (though he made lots of bad deals). Democrats need to hammer on the universal benefits of Democratic-introduced programs and projects. Everyone benefits from a better-educated, more financially-secure society, where work is paid fairly.
Concur. And it's not just Trump; it's the entire paranoid cult that comprises the vast majority of the Republican Party (and has done for decades). They don't understand that someone else getting something does not mean they lose something (other than some vague feeling of superiority I suppose), and for all their claims of being generous and good citizens (not to mention Christians), they recognize no responsibility to anyone but themselves -- as their attitudes towards COVID mitigation make howlingly clear. They're selfish and ignorant, and many of them are just damn dumb.
They're beyond hope, but there is a small chunk of people presently identifying as Republican, and a lot identifying as independent, who need to hear a reassuring message: yeah, you get your slice of the pie. That will go a long way toward defusing any cult-curiosity they might have. And meanwhile, Dems -- especially nonwhite Dems -- will get the message loud and clear that Biden has their backs.
The graffiti-on-the-internet du jour of yesterday, about how the Biden administration was going to outlaw or ration meat, may have ultimately originated in the excellent question asked here,
If plant-based meats have major benefits for the environment, should there be federal funding to support them?
https://www.cnet.com/health/new-beyond-burger-3-0-debuts-as-questions-arise-about-alt-meat-research/
Dumb Republican virtue signaling as bad as LSU taking a pre-civil rights leader's name off a building because of a question of a "questionable" letter. Both the Prog/ Cons need to stop the virtue signaling. It's getting old.
Why 'plant-based'. Just eat plants. You don't need factories spinning out protein strands. Just have some lentil loaf.
And frankly 'Beyond Meat' is gross.
I've become so annoyed by the manifestation of political correctness, I shut out people who express themselves that way. It's annoying as hell and I can confirm that most of the people who live here are already familiar with the phenomena targeted by PC and don't really need lessons in how to describe them.
Democrats often have the unfortunate image of academicians lecturing the poor rubes on how they can live better lives and become more human. It's not fair, but it's real.
Yes, it's as real as the political correctness of the right wing, which won't countenance any discussion of government intervention without shouting "socialism!" nor any discussion of discrimination against LGBTQ people without shouting "religious freedom!" or any discussion of contraception without shouting "religious freedom!" louder.
Fossil fuel pollution reduces testosterone and makes men less manly. Republicans better watch it or get triangulation. If I were a Democrat, I would have no problem doing that. If I were running in Wisconsin, I would say the Suess family is wrong, Republicans hate the male endocrine system and Republicans suck the monied elites cocker spaniel. With Republicans, you play mean and meaner.
PS, when border apprehensions has collapsed by the end 2021, I would show the 2020-21 graph and blame Trump. Republicans love their illegals.
LOL. It's pretty hard to imagine a manlier trade than roughnecking on an oil rig. Feminization is from all the xeno-estrogen in the environment...mostly from birth control products.
And border apprehensions didn't 'collapse'...they declined because Trump's team worked out deals with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries and because 'remain in Mexico' took away the incentive to try to game the system.
Yet more derp. We got us a live one, folks.
Re: Feminization is from all the xeno-estrogen in the environment...mostly from birth control products.
Is this a snark? Most of the ersatz estrogen mimics derive from the decomposition of certain types of plastics,
... and pesticides, and ....
And what is the biggest media outfit that has promulgated all of those charges?
Fox News for People Who Want to Be Stupid
I have to disagree with most commenters here...Wokeness is a problem...the Oscars on Sunday night was unwatchable....and if it was unwatchable to someone like me...God help the rest of the US population that is less lefty than I.
Sigh...I think these cultural wars are real and they are losing issues for the Democratic Party. There are hills worth dying, Reproductive and Voter Right, Environmental and OSHA Worker protections...
Wokeness and virtue signaling are not issues worth the cost....(think about the costs! Damn it), losing the United States to Neo-Fascism and the Oligarchy.
We MUST be smart politically...losing is not an option for me....wokeness, sure, in small dosses....this is a field full of landmines....let us be mindful and careful with this poison.
Best Wishes, Traveller
Corporations are part of the problem.
2ndly, lefty they aren't. Fix the dialectics. Liberals, progressives, reform liberals are much better. A lot of classical liberalism drives them.
The Oscars were not unwatchable, & the shift in awards to have best picture before lead acting, resulting in Anthony Hopkins's headshot glaring at us as we went to credits was great. The Silence of the Lambs sequel we needed in 2002, but not the one we deserved.
Oops...that should be..."There are hills worth dying on..."
Very Sorry, Traveller
I agree this left-wing PC cancel culture has gotten worse. People are losing their jobs over this shit now, which is frightening. I'm a white male, so attacks on white men in general are like an attack on me personally, which irritates me way more than a disagreement over America's China policy or something like that. Which is the problem with the culture wars---everything becomes very personal.
But the actions of the Republicans put these things into perspective. The summer riots were ugly, but at least those hoods weren’t trying to overthrow a democratic government. The Capitol building riot was a coup attempt. And it’s not like the first time these right-wing yahoos have pulled this stuff. They stormed a statehouse, they plotted to kidnap the governor, they terrorized election officials trying to do their jobs. It’s anger and hate and grievance on crack. So long as Republicans are passing laws making it legal to run over protesters with cars I can't get too worked up over whiny liberals fighting over pronouns.
Left wing??? Tsk tsk
What the Republican base wants is to undo the modern world, they lost the culture war and want it undone.
The only policies the Republican leadership wants to do are cutting taxes on rich people and removing regulations so business can do whatever they want. Neither of those are supported by anyone outside the top 10% so they feed the base a steady stream of nonsense like people are canceling Dt Seuss, Biden wants to ban beef, etc.
The problem is the old world wasn't sustainable anymore. That paradox escaped them and capitalism.
What the base wants is they wants 'em their zeerust future. Space travel for connected white dudes who smoke pipes in the ships lounge, miniskirts for all the pretty things, etc.
Those visions of futures past were neither particularly coherent nor consistent, BTW; they were just made to seem so by virtue of appearing in the same magazines.
Hillary-in-a-landslide Carville is as out of touch as other Clinton era political marketing consultants, and ought to be sent out to pasture. Kevin's conflating "wokeness" with the Trump Republicans' tried-and-true strategy of fabricating new "scandals" every few days to give the excitable idiots in the White House Press Rabble another story to gibber about. They've been doing it all century and they'll continue to do it as long as the media joins in the fun, which looks like being forever.
So if Carville is so out-of-touch, what's your explanation for how badly the party did in the election? Or why the polls are so misleading?
The Dems won the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The margins were narrower than we might like but I'd hardly call that doing "badly". And I'm not sure why you'd assume that wokeness somehow made the polls wrong.
It didn't do badly. Nor can it change the fact that lots and lots of Americans are drawn to white supremacism and feel threatened by Blacks, Hispanics, feminists, gays, lesbians, Asians, "greenies" etc.
Maybe. But, everything that is supposedly bad about being *woke* can be turned around and used to attack Republicans for supporting values that enable misogyny, racism, corruption, and anti-democratic insurrections. If Rs want to embrace their identity, let them.
Oh heck, I'll do it....this is a very good read published 4/21/21. The lead sentence says it all....but the details of her hanging are very well written!
"Hillary Rodham Clinton was hanged at Guantanamo Bay Monday night, her death the culmination of an operation that began on March 2 when U.S. Navy SEALs on Donald J. Trump’s authority arrested the disgraced politician at her Chappaqua, NY mansion."
Read it all at the link...good stuff
https://realrawnews.com/2021/04/hillary-clinton-hanged-at-gitmo/
Best Wishes, Traveller
QAnon is the feng shuei of the Weekly World News.
More like borenan. Oligarchs astroturf.
PS I didn't see this initially....but there are at the moment 437 comments on this News Release. Amazing stuff.
(it is always best to know what your enemy is thinking)
Best Wishes, Traveller
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin... How could you possibly make this list and completely forget about how tuber gender is ruining our society?
So Republicans will be running on white peoples' grievances again. As long as we have as many white people as we do, that will be a problem.
Is anyone here confident that it won't work? Why or why not?
White people??? Again, why even bother. Dialectical nonsense on people who don't like being white.
I maybe should apologize a little for the Qanon link if it was Qanon...this was so obviously a joke to me I though I'd pass the giggle along....but thinking on those hundreds and hundreds of comments...some people sounded like this was real for them...
I find it difficult to believe that anyone at all is this stupid or dumb....but hey, I've been wrong before. Maybe people do believe this stuff (there have been shootings in LA tonight, I am a little upset).
Traveller
Pingback: Are Democrats Too Woke for Voters? - Rifnote
Yeah, I dunno. On the one hand, I think the whining about wokeness mostly appeals only to FOX zombies, and no Dem is getting their votes anyway.
On the other hand, obviously, wokeness inspires ugly excesses here and there. It doesn't turn me against the project as a whole because I've got some perspective, but the Dems aren't going to win many elections if they turn off everyone to my right.
I'm in contact with a fair number of people who are the sort who'd vote Republican if Republicans ever got sane again, but were never-Trumpers from the day Trump descended his staircase. So far, wokeness isn't on their radar at all. So maybe there's hope.
This post is lol. They are irrelevant. Woke stuff turns away Democrats. Get the message???
There are going to be some folks outside of your bubble who gave 'Oh the places you'll go' to their daughter when she graduated college and they are going to think, wow, 'they' are attacking Dr. Seuss. Then they are going to hear that Coca-Cola wants them to 'be less white' . And you know what, they aren't getting this from 'The Republicans'...they are getting it from places like the 'Armstrong and Getty' show or John and Ken.
Dude, Dr Suess screwed Dr Suess. A stupid reaction by a corporate trust, a decision that should be reversed. Everybody and their mother knows there is no "they".
BTW the library at UC San Diego, just down the road from Mr. Drum, is named after Theodore Geisel. Maybe Kev can get a 'Change.org' petition going to erase that.
I read the James Carville interview at Vox, and I'm a little frustrated with the interview. Carville is correct when he says wokeness is a problem, but I think is analysis is little shallow. Carville thinks only of the people Democrats are trying to reach out to: white working class voters. He say Dems need to talk about race, but he doesn't give any examples of how to do this without turning off white working class voters and without sounding, in his words "jargon-ny". How can we do it better, James? Part of the problem as well is that the democratic base is minorities who respond to rhetoric about racial injustice and whites who are uncomfortable with it. I've often felt we might do better emphasizing class instead of race; saying white working class whites have more in common with working class blacks than with the Republican donor class who passed all the tax breaks for rich people.
But I definitely agree with him on the following paragraph:
But the Democrats can’t fuck it up. They have to make the Republicans own that insurrection every day. They have to pound it. They have to call bookers on cable news shows. They have to get people to write op-eds. There will be all kinds of investigations and stories dripping out for god knows how long, and the Democrats should spend every day tying all of it to the Republican Party. They can’t sit back and wait for it to happen.
Democrats need to make Republicans own the Capitol insurrection. I would have hearings for it just like republicans had hearings for Hillary's emails. Get something in the news cycle every day you can. The same goes for Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan; make Republicans own these guys.
Another suggestion for democrats: never use the term "tax cuts", always use the term "tax breaks" to emphasize they are being paid for by spending cuts.
Racial justice for who and what??? Part of the black problem is a toxic culture of degeneracy that pushes racism for their own people. Doing bad in school, waving a gun, doing criminal behavior....is getting back at the white man. Then comes resisting arrest and large rap sheets. Your post is typical 20th century jargon. Democrats that run for office need to push back on the excessive idiocy the institutional liberals promote. That wins Democrats who see it the same, the lost 6 million Obama voters from 2008.
Wokeness is a real problem. Even many liberals find it annoying to say the least. It would be best to keep it under control, if possible. But for Republicans it's just one subject through which they can arouse racism. If it didn't exist they would use something else. Anything that could be construed as favoring non-whites can be a trigger. In fact Republicans have used many fake issues in the past, such as "Obamaphones". They do not need valid issues or even facts to get the base aroused.
The headline quote about wokeness being a problem isn't really representative of what I think Carville was saying in full context of the interview. Basically he was critiquing was not really "wokeness" but the language of liberal activists and politicians who espouse the ideas of wokesness. This quote sums it up pretty well:
"We have to talk about race. We should talk about racial injustice. What I’m saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language that’s unrecognizable to most people — including most Black people, by the way — because it signals that you’re trying to talk around them. This “too cool for school” shit doesn’t work, and we have to stop it.
There may be a group within the Democratic Party that likes this, but it ain’t the majority. And beyond that, if Democrats want power, they have to win in a country where 18 percent of the population controls 52 percent of the Senate seats. "
What percentage of that 18 percent is in Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut?
Carville's point is about the use of language, not the ideas behind that language. I think he has a point. Consider the following paragraph:
I am very lucky. I've worked hard in school and my career, I've had some terrible things happen to me, and I've overcome a number of obstacles. At the same time, I have to notice that I've been very lucky in some things. I'm lucky to have parents who loved me, and were white. I'm lucky that I'm white. I'm lucky that my parents had the means to send me to college, and take me on trips that enriched me and motivated me. I'm lucky that I have such a good memory and that really helped in school. There's a few ways I'm not so lucky, and those small (by comparison) issues that come from this help me realize that it's important to consider how someone might not be as lucky as me.
OK, there I just gave a long paragraph about privilege, but I never mentioned the word "privilege" because I think it doesn't really work for most people.
We need to make this less about saying the right words, and more about focusing on the best values.
And by the way, as a white guy - an old white guy - I will engage with people, but I hope to never shame another white person with "how dare you!!?" I want to both set limits on behavior (not persons), and invite people to this new world that's opening up. Don't be afraid of it, it's quite interesting!
I find it incredibly hard to believe conservatives eat anything other than baby food.
I was trying to work out what Carville's stance on AOC was. There's talking like a woke liberal leftie and BEING a woke liberal leftie. AOC is definitely the latter, but she talks as plain and direct as Marjorie Taylor Greene. More so because she's not delusional. So does he think AOC is doing it right? My bet is that if you gave her a chance to talk directly to white working class voters without Fox News commentary attached she'd go down better than you might imagine.
" My bet is that if you gave her a chance to talk directly to white working class"
She can barely conceal her disdain for white working people.
At any rate there was a clip showing her talking with some juiced up Jewish poobah last week. She knew she couldn't got against the Tribe, and she couldn't go against 2/3 of the remaining 'squad'. The result, jibberish.
Gibberish. Gubble. Derp.