The Washington Post tells us today that between 2016 and 2020 there was a 12% shift toward the Democrats among those earning $50,000-$100,000 a year and a smaller but significant shift toward the Republicans among those earning more than $100,000 a year. This is, in my judgment, a big deal. The bracket $50,000-$100,000 a year still leaves out almost half the country who make less than $50,000 a year but at least it suggests some measure of economic rationality on the part of the electorate, since regardless of what one thinks of the Democratic Party, its policies as actually expressed in its legislative priorities are clearly more supportive of the interests of those lower down the economic ladder than those of the Republican Party.
On a different but related matter, I believe that Georgia certifies the results of the election on November 20. When Georgia certifies that Biden won, my fervent hope is that Trump in a fit of pique will attack the Georgia Republicans as part of the deep state arrayed against him and will thereby depress Republican turnout in the January 5 runoff election. One can but hope.
40 comments:
That does suggest "a measure" of economic rationality on the part of the electorate. On the other hand, Jason Brennan at the roundtable post on the election at Daily Nous cites political science research suggesting most voters are not motivated by policy or ideological preferences. On the third hand, so to speak, the two perspectives aren't necessarily in conflict, given that a 12 percent shift in allegiance is still pretty modest.
You underestimate Trump's political cunning.
A man with Trump's legal problems wants a Republican controlled Senate so that Biden cannot name progressive Supreme Court justices if the opportunity arises.
Economic issues are important, but I think that cultural (broadly defined)issues are more important to people who are generally satisfied with their economic situation. When we ask why people would vote against their economic interest, we usually have in mind people below the 50% line--those who would benefit more from Democratic policies than Republican. Why do they oppose them? But many of us above the 50% line do the same thing in reverse.
A rising cultural issue is education. Someone (can't recall who) referred to it as the "diploma divide." Looking back, I think there were manifestations of this in the Chicago riots at the 1968 Democratic convention: white college kids protesting, white working class cops opposing. I think there's truth in the observation that many, if not all, of the college kids looked down on the cops, and the latter knew it and resented it. When I was growing up, working people were mostly Democrats and college-educated, usually wealthier people were Republicans. The reverse is happening now.
I recall reading an article about the cops who very brutally ended the Columbia occupation in 1968. They sat for days (and all night) in buses outside the Columbia campus waiting for the order to enter the campus. They could not understand why privileged almost all white kids were protesting against a system which benefitted them so clearly. They believed that the kids inside the buildings were having a good time, drinking and smoking dope (they were right in some cases) while they were sitting in the buses, bored and uncomfortable. So when they got the order to throw the kids out of the buildings, they kicked ass: one pushed me out of a second story window in fact, but there were more vicious cases.
As a matter of fact, the cops were not violent with the black students who had occupied Hamilton Hall. That building was cleared without violence by African-American police officers: a prior deal had been made to do that, but in any case, it seems that the cops
hated the white students more than the black ones since on a certain level they could understand why the black students protested, but not why the white ones did.
I cannot match s.w.'s interesting first-hand observations, since I was not yet a teenager in 1968-69 (almost, but not quite). I would tentatively suggest, however, that if some student protesters, say at the '68 Chicago convention, had disdain for the cops, it was not mainly -- contrary to what David Palmeter suggests -- because many of the cops had not gone to college, but rather because the protesters viewed the police as servants of "the system" they opposed. Also at a practical level, it's hard to empathize with people who, in some cases, are using Billy clubs (my phone insists on the capital B for some reason) to bash your head. When Sen. Ribicoff in that once-famous moment at the Chicago convention accused Mayor Daley of using "Gestapo tactics" on the streets, it wasn't because the police were acting gently or with restraint. I also recall someone referring to what happened as "a police riot." Not being a historian of the period, I don't know whether that's an exaggeration, but it's fairly clear that neither side acted with restraint on that occasion. The difference is the protesters presumably didn't have much to fight with, whereas the police did.
Yes, the students’ referring to the police as “pigs” did seem to express a lack of respect, and the police, not surprisingly, did not take kindly to the insult.
In retrospect, trying to be honest, I'd say that student hostility towards the cops in 1968 was mixture of seeing the cops as defending the system and plain old good elitist class prejudice, each one reinforcing the other.
LFC,
You can see live footage of the clashes between the police and the Vietnam war protesters, mostly students, at the 1968 Democratic Convention in the movie “Medium Cool,” directed by Haskell Wexler and made in the midst of the events as they took place. (I believe there is also footage of the events in the new movie, “The Chicago Seven.”) And it was, for all intents and purposes, a police riot.
I was attending Rutgers University at the time of the Columbia University student occupation, and, with the naive exuberance of youth, went into New York City just to get a first hand look at what was happening. I witnessed the police chasing and beating students with billy clubs. I was fortunate that, for whatever reason, I was not mistaken for a Columbia U. student. The experience left an indelible mental, and fortunately not physical, impression on me.
LFC
I don't see an inconsistency for the protestors' looking down at the cops and at the same time seeing them as tools of the system. I think that's just what they were doing.
In 1968, I was a junior trial attorney in the Justice Department. One of my cases was being investigated by an FBI agent who, to me, was an old man. He was probably in his 50s, was Southerner in J.Edgar Hoover's FBI and not at all a liberal. He was among the agents sent to Chicago to observe what was going on and to be available in the event federal issues arose. When he returned, he told me that watching what the cops did to the students in Grant Park made him ashamed, for the first time in his life, to be wearing a badge.
The election in Georgia should have been certified well before the Nov. 20th deadline because Biden is the clear winner. However, now they are doing this audit (not technically a recount, since by law a recount must take place after the certification), which the Secretary of State says will be completed just before the deadline. But what if the audit isn’t completed by the 20th (in eight days)? Is this some sort of delay tactic meant to kick the election up to the GOP-controlled legislature? Be vigilant.
Meantime, who knew? I picked this up from an e-mail coming from the Berkeley historian David Hollinger, that is beginning to spread around my small circle. (I apologise to Prof. Holllinger for quoting him without permission. Also apologies if I’m advertising something already well known.):
This amazing (and magnificently pertinent) passage from Nixon's memoir is making the rounds. Every Republican who is participating in the current nonsense should be forced to read it out loud on Fox News. ---David
From Richard Nixon's book Six Crises. In that memoir, Nixon discussed the 1960 presidential campaign and the allegations of voter fraud by Democrats. He then explained why he decided not to demand a recount (on page 413):
*******
If I were to demand a recount, the organization of the new Administration and the orderly transfer of responsibility from the old to the new might be delayed for months. The situation within the entire Federal Government would be chaotic. Those in the old Administration would not know how to act--or with what clear powers and responsibilities--and those being appointed by [John F.] Kennedy to positions in the new Administration would have the same difficulty making any plans.
Then too, the bitterness that would be engendered by such a maneuver on my part would, in my opinion, have done incalculable and lasting damage throughout the country. And finally, I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box, It is difficult enough to get defeated candidates in some of the newly independent countries to abide by the verdict of the electorate. If we could not continue to set a good example in this respect in the United States, I could see that there would be open-season for shooting at the validity of free elections throughout the world.
Consequently, I made the decision not to support the contest and recount charges. I know that this greatly disappointed many of my best friends and most ardent supporters--but I could see for myself no other responsible course of action.
*******
David Palmeter,
Were you still affiliated with the Justice Dept. in 1982-83, and if so, were you familiar with the Vincent Chin case?
Anonymous,
What you have written demonstrates how far the Republican Party has fallen since Nixon was President. As much disliked as Nixon was in Democratic and liberal circles, he was, with all his flaws, a superior person to Trump. Nixon refused to put the country through what Trump is willing to do. just to same himself. And Nixon had a better claim to having actually won the presidency than Trump, since the margin of victory for President Kennedy was in Chicago, and there were widespread reports of voting irregularities in Chicago, controlled at that time by Mayor Daley. Nixon, in addition, had the good grace to resign from office rather than risk being impeached, something we have seen Trump would not do.
Thanks for the replies to me, above.
On the Nixon quotation: what makes it all the more telling is that Nixon probably had some non-trival grounds to demand recounts etc, at least in Illinois at any rate, whereas Trump appears to have none. The Trump team apparently managed to find one witness in Nevada who claimed that he saw various ballot improprieties but none of these alleged incidents, even if they occurred and are reversed on some kind of recount, will likely alter the outcome. Afaik Georgia is the only state that has announced a statewide "audit" (E. Barreras, above) of the presidential-race ballots.
Posted the above before seeing MS making the same point.
MS,
I was there from 1966 to 1968, then went into private practice.
Whether Nixon was a superior person to Trump is a rather depressing question.
'From Richard Nixon's book Six Crises. In that memoir, Nixon discussed the 1960 presidential campaign and the allegations of voter fraud by Democrats. He then explained why he decided not to demand a recount..'
I'm reading this thread about how Nixon was not cynical and disruptive, eh? Forswearing political calculations and following his own lights, eh? Perhaps you credulously accept and repeat his claim. I gather the impression that his top aides and the Republican Party, almost certainly with Nixon’s backing, waged a campaign to cast doubt on the outcome of the election. Looking this up, I find that this involved actually launching challenges to Kennedy’s victories in 11 states. If Nixon publicly distanced himself from the challenges, then maybe we conclude that he seemed to realize the damage such an association could cause him. Say that Nixon understood the wisdom of keeping his fingerprints off the effort. I remember reading that in Illinois, Republicans sued in federal court to recount the ballots, *again*, and about how the so-called Nixon Recount Committee raised $100,000, and evenn, appealed to the State Board of Elections, petitioning for it to certify the Republican slate of presidential electors rather than the Democratic one. The state board rejected the request..
A useful corrective to what I posted, Danny. Thanks. It's good to be reminded of Nixon's many wrongs. anon.
Nixon had many, many serious faults and until 2016 was unquestionably the worst President in my lifetime--probably the worst since Andrew Johnson, though I must confess to ignorance of the deeds and misdeeds of many of those 19th century presidents. Nonetheless, I'd take Nixon unhesitatingly before I'd take Trump. There's no comparison.
David Palmeter and LFC: if you are not familiar with it, you might be interested in Richard Sennett's (1972) Hidden Injuries of Class. From a 1973 review in the Political Science Quarterly:
*******************************************************************
The source from which he draws his impressions is a series of 150 interviews in depth of men and women in Boston all of whom had passed most of their adult lives as manual workers. Though women were interviewed, the book is primarily about men, and the effect on them of being permanently enmeshed in a subordinate occupational role while trying to maintain their dignity as husband, father, and individual human being. "Dignity" is the key concept in this analysis of class distinctions, rather than welfare or the standard of living.
The basic theme is the familiar one: on the one hand the American dream-the belief in individual freedom and equal opportunity, and on the other the reality, of inequality and, for the majority, social immobility; the result, frustration. But the most distressing effect of this, in the view of the authors, is the feeling of shameful failure and personal inferiority that it produces, in place of a sense of injustice or spirit of revolt-which might be healthier. Because people believe that careers are shaped by merit, they attribute their personal lack of success to a personal lack of ability. The critical discriminating factor which distinguishes the elite minority from the masses is education, because it is the source of those intrinsic abilities which mark the superior person and give him dignity. So the most common aspiration of the ambitious is to become-or for their sons to become-not the boss, but rather a professional of some kind, whose superior status, and dignity, are rooted in himself, not in his position.
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In an interview a few years ago, Sennett mentioned that reading it now (then), he feels that had he to do it over he would do it quite differently, but he feels the results hold up.
LFC: police riot was the phrase used in the Walker Commission Report, commissioned by U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence to study those events.
Manual labor is not ignoble. Studs Terkel interviewed manual laborers and wrote respectfully about them. There was a time when trades and crafts were highly regarded in this country, because they required years of training. devotion and skill to perfect. A carpenter, lather, pipe fitter, auto mechanic could perform wonders that no Wall Street banker, attorney, or stock broker could do. Ludwig Wittgenstein, as cerebral as he was, had more respect for craftsmen than for philosophers, and was himself an excellent carpenter, who designed and built furniture for himself and his sister. With the increased role of computers and the focus on making money in our culture, these trades have, unfortunately, lost their allure for the general public. That is why it is refreshing to hear President-elect Biden talk proudly and affectionately of his blue-collar father.
marcel proust,
Thanks. That's worth chewing on.
MS
I think a distinction has to be made between a skilled craft--a carpenter, a plumber, and electrician--and assembly line jobs, and even those jobs have gone. Many have gone abroad in search of cheaper labor; many more have been lost to automation. I don't recall the exact numbers any longer, but a few years ago I had reason to check on the number of labor hours per ton of steel produced. Over a 25 year period, beginning sometime in the 70s, it had dropped by 2/3s--i.e., one worker at in year 25 produced (with advanced machinery) as much steel in an hour as three did at the beginning. The economy offers little to the 2/3 who have lost out via automation. It's a challenge to figure out how to do that.
LFC - I was a freshman at G’town in the fall of ‘68. I remember going to the “Counter-Inaugural” where a pig was sworn in as president, and Phil Ochs performed. I think whenever the discussion turns to cops the main point is authoritarianism. Whether it’s about the police riot in Chicago, the numerous instances of cops cracking skulls at anti-war demonstrations in D.C. I experienced, or the most recent outbreak of police on Black violence, it is always about order and authority.
As to Nixon’s conceding the election to JFK, I doubt it had much to do with character. The decision to concede was most likely premised on Nixon’s assumption that he would have another chance to run for president. At the same time, there is good reason to suspect the vote count in Chicago. Political machines and corruption didn’t end with the progressive era. LBJ secured his election to the House with rather obvious manipulation of the vote in TX (R. Caro’s bio of LBJ). Danny is correct in noting Nixon’s proclivity for political calculation. Nixon’s Six Crises was published in 1962, thus one can infer that he was crafting his political image rather than telling us what he really thought.
a Kant quote:
As to whether Manual labor is not ignoble, I have a Kant quote:
'I am an inquirer by inclination. I feel a consuming thirst for knowledge, the unrest which goes with the desire to progress in it, and satisfaction at every advance in it. There was a time when I believed this constituted the honor of humanity, and I despised the people, who know nothing. Rousseau set me right about this. This blinding prejudice disappeared. I learned to honor humanity, and I would find myself more useless than the common laborer if I did not believe that my investigations can give worth to all others in establishing the rights of humanity.'
David Palmeter & MS: strange that you should bring up skilled trades and crafts (well not so strange, but my use of the word is a rhetorical device that allows me to slip in this link).
Marcel Proust,
Interesting article.
How do you make those links?
Have v. little time right now, but thks M. Proust for Walker Commission etc., & I tend to agree w C. Mulvaney re Nixon. (Am sort of familiar w Sennett but never read Hidden Injuries of Class.)
Didn't Adam Smith say something about how little difference there was between those youngsters who went on to become street sweepers and those youngsters who went on to become philosophers and that the differences which did emerge were largely in consequence of the privileged access the latter had had to a privileged education? A question which then arises, I suppose, is which is more beneficial for their fellow humans. I'm going for the street sweeper.
I for one would rather have the world a less stupid and a little dirtier place.
Now do all philosophers contribute to making the world a less stupid place?
No, probably not but the best ones do. Marx not only helps make the world a less stupid place, but he contributes to our understanding the capitalistic system which is screwing most of humanity. Plato certainly makes the world less stupid by raising all kinds of interesting questions as do Nietzsche and so many others.
And the mediocre philosophers are necessary to produce the great ones. Probably Marx studied with lots of mediocre philosophers in the university, but without them Marx would not have become the great philosopher that he became.
And speaking of dirt, I had a friend who went to Switzerland to avoid being drafted during the Viet Nam War. After a year he returned and when I asked him why, he replied, "too clean".
Yeah, I guess some, like Marx, take that eleventh thesis seriously. And then there's what he said about where his sort of theoretical conclusions had their origin.
'Marx not only helps make the world a less stupid place, but he contributes to our understanding the capitalistic system which is screwing most of humanity."
Marx, like any man of keen intellect, liked a good problem; he wanted to have a theory of exploitation, and a basis for his prediction that capitalism would in some sense impoverish the workers and pave the way for revolution into a new stage of society. So the element of exploitation had to be worked hard. And it's just .. so far I have been talking about Marx as an economist. Even this represents a resurrection of Marx's reputation. Keynes, for example, was much more typical of 'our professional attitudes toward Marxism' when he dismissed it all as "turbid" nonsense....
Beyond that, why philosophers are still so enamored of a long-obsolete, mediocre economist whose greatest achievement by any measure was being the intellectual godfather of the contents of the Black Book of Communism is another question.
But I know of this sort of reply:
'--a number of things Marx advocated for were adopted by Capitalist economies, such as child labor laws and universal education and probably a few others.'
Okay, but to my eyes, this means 'and the revolutionaries are left whining' that pragmatic hybridization doesn't work. Or, put it this way, that the modern MARXISTS! are arguing against systems which are more like what Marx envisioned than Marx would have ever thought possible. We've seen the creation of weekends where most people take 2 days in 7 off. Sounds a lot like all that free leisure time Marx discusses. Of course the massive advancement in safety regulations, compulsory holidays and general employee welfare as well. It doesn't take much research to identify that almost any facet of life is significantly better for essentially any class in any corner of the developed world due to free-market capitalism in the last 50 years, let alone the last 200+. By the standards of the 1800s, we're already living in a utopia. I am telling you, specifically, in economics, no one calls Marx economics. What type of Maurice Dobb sh*t is that?! The short version is that noises came out of a hole in the middle of Bordiga's face. It is not necessary to know much more.
If things are so great for most people, why do almost half of U.S. voters support Donald Trump?
I suggest that if you want to understand Trump and rise of rightwing populist demagoguery rather than recurring to the typical sentimental nonsense about a wound in the soul of America (since when do societies have a soul?), you start with Marx, go on to works in the Marxist tradition such as Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality and Fromm's Escape from Freedom and continue reading more contemporary works in such tradition.
Sometimes works that are flawed contain insights that are either original or, if not entirely original (and few ideas are), are presented and expressed with a compelling force and eloquence. The idea that the surface of a phenomenon might be misleading or "mystifying," sometimes in an "intentional" way, and that it is necessary to try to uncover the hidden or less immediately visible aspects of the phenomenon to get at how it actually operates, is something Marx should get credit for (as he applied it to classical political economy and the operation of the capitalism of his time), even if one doesn't agree with the details of his economics. In other words, his economic theory is independent of the general idea that one has to do a critical "socioanalysis" (Heilbroner's term) of any political-economic system. This idea may seem banal and obvious now, but the reason it seems banal is that Marx's elaboration of this insight has become a part of the consciousness of a great many contemporary social scientists, including probably at least a certain number of "mainstream" economists who write off Marx as a "mediocre" second-rate theorist and are not conscious of the ways they are indebted to him. Any social scientist who, when confronted with the surface manifestations of whatever she is studying, stops and asks herself (or himself) "wait a minute, is this is all that's going on here, or is this really what's going on here?", is indebted to Marx, even if the object of study has little or nothing to do with economics per se.
There's a lot more to say in Marx's defense, but on this blog in particular it's sort of like carrying coal to Newcastle (to use an old expression), so I'm not going to bother.
MA asked How do you make those links?
To make it visible, I am going to use curly braces, but you need to substitute a less than sign for a left curly brace, i.e. {, & a greater than sign for a right curly brace, i.e. }. Without the curly braces, you would not be able to see how to do it.
{a href="[place the url of the link here, including the http:// or https://. do not include the straight brackets that I have included]"}text that you click on to go to the link{/a}
For more, perhaps clearer, info, see here
'There's a lot more to say in Marx's defense, but on this blog in particular it's sort of like carrying coal to Newcastle (to use an old expression), so I'm not going to bother.'
Hooray for not bothering. I honestly approve of doing what you take yourself to be doing. I can't object to 'not bothering'. For my own part, while I'm on the subject, I note that investing in labour-intensive sectors should be the most profitable, right?. I mean, if more labour goes into a product then there's the scope for more exploitation. To Marx that's how the Capitalist gains profit, it's wages that should go to the labourer. We can get rid of the idea of exploitation and say that profit works in a different way. That makes everything consistent. So, this left Marx with a tricky problem, it remains a tricky problem for Marxists today. Marxists are divided on the issue, is I guess a way of saying 'I'm not bothering'..?
s. wallerstein said...
'If things are so great for most people, why do almost half of U.S. voters support Donald Trump?'
Pondering whether 'things are so great for most people', it occurs to me to clarify that in my view, many people with lots of money have horribly unhappy and radically imbalanced lives.
'I suggest that if you want to understand Trump and rise of rightwing populist demagoguery rather than recurring to the typical sentimental nonsense about a wound in the soul of America (since when do societies have a soul?), you start with Marx, go on to works in the Marxist tradition such as Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality and Fromm's Escape from Freedom and continue reading more contemporary works in such tradition.'
Ah -- understanding the Trump voters. I am unclear on whether understanding them in your terms would provide hope in reaching them. In any case, people are complicated. In fact I barely understand myself half the time. I do have another thought about Trump, that I find relevant, and that is this: what does it mean to communicate at 6th grade level? Even though I communicate at this level all the time, I'm really bad at this. Try explaining ‘The Matrix’ to a 10 year old. By using small, single or double syllable words your message will get instantly understood. The more you talk at the 6th grade level the more your communication will get understood. Justapose, as Donald Trump describes them, "the smart, smart, smart people that don't have the big education." Who are they, and why are they sticking with Trump even as other voters are peeling away? Sure, Marxists talk about the lumpenproletariat, or riffraff. To be sure, those aren't actually the typical Trump supporters, who turn out to be not so much the people who live in the trailer courts as the people who own them. Even so, what's going on with America's white people? One, you know, if you’ve always been privileged, equality begins to look like oppression. The second thing is we don’t like to talk about class. We like to talk about upward mobility, even though there’s been more downward mobility than upward mobility. It's a truism, then, but as they say, what Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” tapped into was a layer of resentment in what was then the solid Democratic South, as well as the working-class white ethnic enclaves in the North and in the Midwest. It was very targeted. It stirred that pot. We’re seeing the kind of demographic transmission of that kind of we/them. I certainly think a lot of liberals are able to see what these people are going through, but there’s a basic cultural disconnect.
..an addendum about the idea that 'between 2016 and 2020 there was a 12% shift toward the Democrats among those earning $50,000-$100,000 a year and a smaller but significant shift toward the Republicans among those earning more than $100,000 a year.'
In almost every election since 2000, Democrats increased their share of votes in urban areas that are densely populated and prosperous. The transformation has been swift — and stark. Some call it the urban versus rural divide, but it is also a digital versus blue-collar split. ed America is more White, less likely to have gone to college and reliant on blue-collar sectors like manufacturing, construction and energy. This is perhaps a continuation of the 2016 election, when Trump won a huge share of places that had struggled under President Barack Obama.
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