American Politics 3.0 - Back to Brunch

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Democrats can't bash on Amazon and Walmart when mostly minorities are working there. Again, big tent.

What kind of silly take is this? The left doesn't bash on Amazon and Walmart workers. They bash on Bezos and the Waltons to try and improve the working conditions for the workers there.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

WHITE working class is in the GOP tent.

Under $100k earners much more likely to vote Democrat. https://www.statista.com/statistics/...tes-income-us/

We would have to divide this more. We were talking about unions, not all under 100K belongs to unions. We could be talking about nurses and teachers for examples. And you'd have to split poor, and low income, under $50,000 as it's own category which I agree is mostly non-white and non-unioned.

Originally Posted by rubecube

What kind of silly take is this? The left doesn't bash on Amazon and Walmart workers. They bash on Bezos and the Waltons to try and improve the working conditions for the workers there.

That is what i meant. Not bashing on the workers, bashing on Bezos and Waltons. But can you really bash on them when they're workforce is the majority visible minorities. Maybe Amazon and Walmart are not equal examples. Amazon is quite progressive, Walmart is not.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

That is what i meant. Not bashing on the workers, bashing on Bezos and Waltons. But can you really bash on them when they're workforce is the majority visible minorities.

What does that have to do with anything?

Amazon is quite progressive

Yes, forcing your warehouse workers to work in deplorable conditions, and aggressively trying to quash any attempt the workers make to organize themselves is SUPER progressive.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

WHITE working class is in the GOP tent.

Under $100k earners much more likely to vote Democrat. https://www.statista.com/statistics/...tes-income-us/

White non-college are 40 per cent of the U.S. voting population. Democrats can’t just concede them to the GOP with a shrug of contempt.

And Democrats also have to stop pretending that the values and issues that engage educated, liberal whites - the kind who steer discourse and party activism - align with the values of the non-white working class. The Colbert Report, Twitter, and NPR aren’t windows into the Democratic base.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...problem-514992

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

And Democrats also have to stop pretending that the values and issues that engage educated, liberal whites - the kind who steer discourse and party activism - align with the values of the non-white working class. The Colbert Report, Twitter, and NPR aren’t windows into the Democratic base.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...problem-514992

This has been my point. For instance, opening up the January 6th hearings with a song from the cast of Hamilton demonstrates just how completely tone-deaf the party is. It's seriously "white woman's instagram" ####.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by rubecube

What does that have to do with anything?

Yes, forcing your warehouse workers to work in deplorable conditions, and aggressively trying to quash any attempt the workers make to organize themselves is SUPER progressive.

But this is my point. To you and me, the fact that they hire minorities, what does that have to do with anything? But to the Democratic party it's this constant balancing act of woke virtue signalling, which you have acknowledged in this thread, that's like walking on eggshells.


"Well, they hire minorities, that's good. And they do DE&I, they promote diversity and have a $17 minimum wage we can't attack them too much over working conditions" This is the crazy big tent thinking people have, they weigh the good diversity stuff against the deplorable working conditions stuff. "But they're diverse, they get a pass." Too many issues that the Democratic Party supports are in conflict with each other, so they go nowhere.



And that's not even getting into the money and corruption part of it.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

White non-college are 40 per cent of the U.S. voting population. Democrats can’t just concede them to the GOP with a shrug of contempt.

And Democrats also have to stop pretending that the values and issues that engage educated, liberal whites - the kind who steer discourse and party activism - align with the values of the non-white working class. The Colbert Report, Twitter, and NPR aren’t windows into the Democratic base.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...problem-514992

Originally Posted by GirlySports

"Well, they hire minorities, that's good. And they do DE&I, they promote diversity and have a $17 minimum wage we can't attack them too much over working conditions" This is the crazy big tent thinking people have, they weigh the good diversity stuff against the deplorable working conditions stuff. "But they're diverse, they get a pass." Too many issues that the Democratic Party supports are in conflict with each other, so they go nowhere.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see how advocating for better working rights is going to alienate minorities. Do you think minorities are going to side with Amazon over the Democrats if the Democrats are trying to improve conditions? It's not like Amazon has a great public image at this point. People know what/who they are.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see how advocating for better working rights is going to alienate minorities. Do you think minorities are going to side with Amazon over the Democrats if the Democrats are trying to improve conditions? It's not like Amazon has a great public image at this point. People know what/who they are.

Only if they there is a perception and it would lead to job loss. Is that fear real? We've discussed the minimum wage argument here, does raising it reduce jobs? Also, we know minorities do the jobs white people won't. So economically, does raising wages and working conditions suddenly make it appealing for white workers again? If you have a white person against a minority for a job, does the white person always win? How diverse is Amazon really? Or do temporary working visas become harder to obtain because there would no longer be a shortage of crappy jobs? I think you and I would agree that this fear is exaggerated.

So you've got a lot of factors here on the Democratic side. You've got the greedy side who just want to keep the status quo because money is rolling in and screw the workers, they're lucky to even have jobs. And you've got those who want better conditions but what if it leads to a changing landscape detrimental to minorities?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Need to change the laws for that to be possible.

Not really

You don’t need things like mandatory membership, or rights not to be fired or any of these things to organize. You need a structural advantage in the labour market so that you can’t be replaced so that when you organize mass strikes you can demand these changes be legislated.

Labour can force political change, they used to force political change but eventually as standards of living improved it became less worth it to strike so things like when Raegan destroyed the air traffic controllers it didn’t trigger a country wide mass strike.

[jayswin]

I chuckled at the Colbert Report that ended in December 2014 being used as a current example to make a point in this thread.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by jayswin

I chuckled at the Colbert Report that ended in December 2014 being used as a current example to make a point in this thread.

Substitute Last Week with John Oliver then. I think you get the point. I’m confident that all of the 20-something college-educated white Democratic staffers who are the ground troops in election campaigns watch it, and about 2 per cent of the people they’re trying to win over do.

The linked article explained that the ads campaign staff liked the most turned prospective voters off the most.

The “Mirrors” ad featured prominently in a series of experiments that Shor did with Civis to evaluate the effect of various Democratic campaign commercials on voters’ decisions. The findings of the experiments were not encouraging. For one, they found that a full 20 percent of the ads — including “Mirrors” — made viewers more likely to vote for Republicans than people who hadn’t seen the same ads. And after his team started polling members of Civis’s staff, they made an even more troubling discovery. On average, the more that the Civis staff liked an ad, the worse it did with the general public.

This is a problem.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

Only if they there is a perception and it would lead to job loss. Is that fear real? We've discussed the minimum wage argument here, does raising it reduce jobs? Also, we know minorities do the jobs white people won't. So economically, does raising wages and working conditions suddenly make it appealing for white workers again? If you have a white person against a minority for a job, does the white person always win? How diverse is Amazon really? Or do temporary working visas become harder to obtain because there would no longer be a shortage of crappy jobs? I think you and I would agree that this fear is exaggerated.

So you've got a lot of factors here on the Democratic side. You've got the greedy side who just want to keep the status quo because money is rolling in and screw the workers, they're lucky to even have jobs. And you've got those who want better conditions but what if it leads to a changing landscape detrimental to minorities?

The problem with left wing policies is unlike the right the left likes big gesture policy, one time minimum wage hikes of 35% or 40% in an attempt to make everything right at once, which of course does cause economic shock and ends up backfiring, the right wing has been trying to get rid of womans reproductive rights for years and will succeed by taking small seemingly pointless bites over 20 years until now we are at a point where getting an abortion will be all but impossible in most of the US while at no point has any GOP President run on a platform of getting rid of abortions.

It shows how stupid the US left are that the morons in the GOP are massively tactically smarter

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Substitute Last Week with John Oliver then. I think you get the point. I’m confident that all of the 20-something college-educated white Democratic staffers who are the ground troops in election campaigns watch it, and about 2 per cent of the people they’re trying to win over do.

Even as someone who agrees with you about the vapid liberal media landscape, I'm not sure LWT fits in the same category as Kimmel and Meyers.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Really the biggest problem is the right unites and the left will eat itself.

Left Wing #1: I support LGBTQ rights
Left Wing #2: It's 2ALGBTQIA+ you fascist ######

Right Wing #1: All Mexican immigrants should be shot in the street.
Right Wing #2: They don't actually mean *my* Mexican immigrant friends, they mean the evil ones, where do I sign?

I also think AFC is right, the Republicans are playing small ball. Putting runners on base and trying to move them along. Happy to lay a sacrifice bunt to get the runner on first to second, or just trying to get a ball deep to the outfield for a sacrifice run with a guy on 3rd.

The Democrats want nothing less than a Grand Slam. Doesn't matter that the guy at the plate is the leadoff hitter. He's gonna swing for the fences and if he doesn't hit a grand slam he's a failure (despite there being, you know, no one on base).

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by GGG

Not really

Yes really.

You don’t need things like mandatory membership, or rights not to be fired or any of these things to organize.

I think you really need to take a more in-depth look into how the labour laws work in the states. Right to work states are set up to drain Unions of their resources by forcing Unions to represent employees who do not pay them any dues to cover the cost of that representation. You can’t organize employees if you don’t have enough resources to do so and there is little reason to join a Union if they don’t have enough resources to represent you.

You specifically mentioned the need to organize Walmart but that is all but impossible under the current laws because among other things the company has the ability with what amounts to impunity to deny employees of their “right” to join a Union by closing locations where employees unionize.

I honestly don’t think anyone would agree with you that being protected from termination for joining a Union isn’t necessary to organize in the overwhelming majority of cases. It’s the reason those laws were invented in the first place.

You need a structural advantage in the labour market so that you can’t be replaced so that when you organize mass strikes you can demand these changes be legislated.

How has waiting for that structural advantage to grow organically been going?

What exactly does the structural advantage you’re alluding to look like and how do you propose the US get there without changing legislation?

Labour can force political change, they used to force political change but eventually as standards of living improved it became less worth it to strike so things like when Raegan destroyed the air traffic controllers it didn’t trigger a country wide mass strike.

The Taft-Hartley Act which enabled Raegan to fire all of the air traffic controllers also prevented mass strikes because it enabled employers to fire employees who engaged in support strikes too. While there probably is some truth to your argument that an improved standard of living can lead to complacency within the labour movement, after watching the President fire 13,000 federal employees I think it’s safe to say the fear of being fired was the primary factor in deterring support strikes.

[GGG]

That’s the point the standard of living in the US hasn’t degraded to the point where people are willing to risk their jobs for political change. The political system is set up to not allow that change and neither party is interested in that change.

Therefore focusing on organization and people willing to lose jobs over striking is your only way forward. You are saying it will be difficult. I agree it will be difficult.

[#-3]

[QUOTE=Maritime Q-Scout;8134521Left Wing #2: It's 2ALGBTQIA+ you fascist ###### [/QUOTE]

Rube is that you?


Your post is exactly right, it took 6 months of Biden for half the left wing to jump onboard the conservative bandwagon for every half assed critique of him they could drum up. Believe it or not especially as an executive without legislative power all he can do is try to convince people, it really isn't 100% his fault that there aren't 50 people out their who are convincible.

You want something different get on the team, cheerlead the things that are going well, ask for more when they don't go well. But remember who is trying to help you and find ways to get them more power. You want more of the same, just assume that every reasonable person has the exact same beliefs as you, and anyone who doesn't isn't rational.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by #-3

Rube is that you?





Your post is exactly right, it took 6 months of Biden for half the left wing to jump onboard the conservative bandwagon for every half assed critique of him they could drum up. Believe it or not especially as an executive without legislative power all he can do is try to convince people, it really isn't 100% his fault that there aren't 50 people out their who are convincible.



You want something different get on the team, cheerlead the things that are going well, ask for more when they don't go well. But remember who is trying to help you and find ways to get them more power. You want more of the same, just assume that every reasonable person has the exact same beliefs as you, and anyone who doesn't isn't rational.

Lol. Classic. I called this perfectly.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by #-3

Rube is that you?

Ha

Originally Posted by #-3

Your post is exactly right, it took 6 months of Biden for half the left wing to jump onboard the conservative bandwagon for every half assed critique of him they could drum up. Believe it or not especially as an executive without legislative power all he can do is try to convince people, it really isn't 100% his fault that there aren't 50 people out their who are convincible.

You want something different get on the team, cheerlead the things that are going well, ask for more when they don't go well. But remember who is trying to help you and find ways to get them more power. You want more of the same, just assume that every reasonable person has the exact same beliefs as you, and anyone who doesn't isn't rational.

That is correct, the President can't force votes. The system is set up so the house and Senate are checks on Presidental power not to follow it.

Trump's cult of personality is enough for Republican congressmen and senators to be fearful of the backlash and to be primaried.

The Democrats don't have the same groundswell to control primaries at the presidential level.

That said, there was an article posted a few pages back that demonstrated that while Biden is getting chastized in the media, what he's actually accomplished to this point has been impressive.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

That said, there was an article posted a few pages back that demonstrated that while Biden is getting chastized in the media, what he's actually accomplished to this point has been impressive.

Love it. In what way would you say the Biden presidency has substantially improved the material conditions of the average, working-class voter?