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Wednesday, November 6, 2024

When I went to college, seventy-four years ago, five percent of adult Americans had four-year college degrees. This meant that aside from doctors, most lawyers, dentists, college professors, most [but not all] high school teachers, and such, virtually no adults had college degrees.  I cannot recall whether universities offered MBAs.  My first father-in-law made it to the rank of Vice-President of Sears, Roebuck without the benefit of a college experience, let alone a degree, and there were more private than public tertiary institutions.


America was a severely economically stratified country, although corporate presidents made twenty or thirty times the salaries of workers, not a thousand times.  But because of the relative rarity of college degrees, the economic mobility of working-class American men [I will come to women and African Americans later] was less obvious. 


Today, three-quarters of a century later, a third of American adults have college degrees. Sixty percent of young Americans start college, but since only 55 percent finish, the college educated portion of the population is still only at one third.


I have spent the last four months, lying in bed and watching television. During that time, I have watched hundreds of hours of commentary on the political situation. I cannot think of a single commentator who does not have a college degree. I should like to try and experiment and that has almost never been attempted. Let me ask what America looks like to one of the two thirds of the population without a college degree. To such a person, most of the good jobs are closed off. Without a college degree in America today, an ordinary American cannot be a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a nurse, a college professor, a high school teacher, a middle school teacher, an elementary school teacher, an FBI agent, a Wal-Mart store manager, and in most large cities, a police officer, or a management trainee. It matters not how ambitious or hard working such a person is, he is simply denied those opportunities for lack of the educational credentials. 


The truth is, even fifty or seventy-five years ago when the minority of workers had any real shot at the good jobs in this country but because access to such jobs did not require such credentials, it was possible to conceal that lack of access from view. 


Today, there are more than 3,000 college and university campuses that offer a four-year degree. And I'm not talking about those elite institutions that virtually guarantee their graduates of the upper middle-class jobs with salaries over $100,000 a year, with pensions, benefits, paid holidays, and the like. The United States is the third largest country in the world. Only China and India, each with well over a billion residents, or larger, because the United States has so large a population, it is possible to make the mistake of supposing that the concerns of the one-third with college degrees, especially when being discussed by people who have college degrees, constitute a totality or at least the preponderance of the concerns of Americans. But even that enormous population is only one-third of all the adults in America. 


The obscene character and performance of Donald Trump and his characterless followers make it easy to dominate our attention. But the real question is how such a desperate group of protofascists could command such support of virtually of half the voting population. Once we recognize the real character of America's population, the answer becomes obvious. The democratic party in the recent decades has become the party of the educated third of America. Because of the complexity of America's history with slavery, and the almost self-destructive embrace by the republican party of anti-abortion politics, the democratic party has been able to conceal from itself it's lack of commitment to the interest of the non-educated two-thirds of the population (one of the many ironies of the education of the electoral fiasco that has just played out before us is the fact that Joe Biden is the most genuine supporter of the interests of the non-college educated class). If we managed to survive the next several years, a survival that will be made more probable if Hakin Jefferies manages to gain control of the house perhaps, we will finally begin to ask whether the interests of the two-thirds of the AMerican population without college degrees should be made central to the concerns and mission of the democratic party. 


(Dictated from my bed in the skilled nursing facility at Carolina Meadows with the invaluable assistance of Erika Hamlett)



97 comments:

LFC said...

Nice to hear from Prof. Wolff. I would point out that a second or two with Google indicates that the number of Americans with a bachelor's degree, per the Census Bureau's latest figures, is 37.7 percent. Presumably that doesn't count those with an associate's degree, or those w some college attendance who didn't finish.

So the post's statement that only a third of Americans have a college degree is not quite accurate, since 37.7 percent is higher than a third. (I suspect it's also not accurate to say that all the mentioned occupations, e.g., police officer, require a college degree, but I'm not sure.)

Unknown said...

Thank you for breaking this out so clearly.

Anonymous said...

Beats the unbearable commentary of Tobias on facebook, though that’s not hard at all.

John Rapko said...

Thanks for this post, which I'm compelled to call 'beautiful'. It goes well with the points that James Wilson made about meritocracy near the end of the comments on the previous post. My personal experience (a couple of 'uneducated' decades working in the restaurant and building industries) suggests that asking elite liberals, with their individualistic, meritocratic ideologies, their narrow experience in life, and their fossilized sense of moral superiority and pearl-clutching about 'deplorables', to imagine the life of those without college degrees is the socio-political counter-part to the philosopher's question 'What is it like to be a bat?'. I'm not saying it's impossible. Consider how Elisabeth Costello in J. M. Coetzee's eponymous novel answers the latter: through reading Kafka, Rilke, and Ted Hughes, and vivid reflection the struggle of an animal to live. As Costello says, there are no limits to the sympathetic imagination. But do the Democrats' strategists care, or have they contented themselves with at least keeping the candidacy away from Sanders?

Howie said...

Well said. In New York I come across all types including Trump supporters- they are not evil, they just think the system is rigged and some are not too bright and when someone articulate (I mean that with slight irony) like Trump gives voice to their trials and tribulations, they flock to his side as their champion. Doormen and plumbers admire people who made it (again the irony) like Trump. If these Trump supporters went to college perhaps they'd take a philosophy class and apply the appearance/reality distinction and use it propaerly. People do bad even evil things for good intentions, they do stupid things because they know "what really is going on" and they let the abominable Trump into the citadel to slay their overlords, the college educated.
Let's hope we hold the house desperate though the hour may be.

Anonymous said...

I agree with this assessment. I would add that it's already challenging to keep working-class voters loyal in the face of constant, corporate-funded propaganda of the most tribalistic nature. When Democrats caved to special interests, it became impossible.

Howie said...

Let me add that the masses along with many college educated have a cartoon image of how power and the world works, a pretty lame vision which Trump exploited- they are victims but they are hardly wise even in the philosopher's sense. For Christ's sake (and I am not a Christian nor a Marxist) the French Revolution was sparked from world class suffering- just a little inflation, to bring in a goon with a silver spoon in his mouth like Trump, because of a childish notion that the President has the power because he is duh the President. Let them suffer, they deserve it, they only fooled themselves. The real issue is not true economic misery but the so-called American Dream, everyone wants to live the life. They did bad things for stupid reasons. Let them be teleported to Dickensian London, for all I care. I'll get along with them as individuals, but

james wilson said...


First of all, Professor Wolff, it’s great to hear from you again. I’m sorry you had to rely on assistance, but I’m glad you have a good amanuensis. (I use that word just to establish my educational credentials. As to why that might be necessary, see below.)

I’d like, however, to add a little something to what you say about education, for it seems to me one ought also to take note of the nature of the education now on offer. Much has been written about the corporatisation of tertiary education in the US and elsewhere in the western world and the economic system which both contributes to the shaping of these institutions and relies on them to provide the workforce the corporations need or envisage they will soon need. Credentialisation is an element in that.

But as the noted student of education Henry Giroux recently noted in his Counterpunch essy, “Universities in dark times,” this process of corporatisation “weakens the humanities and liberal arts, stripping higher education of its capacity to serve as a democratic public sphere and robbing it of the potential to cultivate socially aware students who challenge injustices and hold power to account.” (Cavillers please note this was written after the campus demonstrations against the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza last spring.)

If these are the sorts of people who are becoming so significant in the Democratic Party—and note, I’m not blaming them, they are the creatures of their times (as I think I said in a previous comment)—impressed by their own credentials gained no doubt by quite a lot of hard work and maybe even self sacrifice, they are perhaps unlikely to face up to the nature of the political party they now cleave to and unlikely to contemplate changing it in substantial ways of the sort you advocate in your posting. Maybe it will take a few more disappointments of the sort inflicted yesterday to make them--and the rest of us--begin to examine our political fundamentals?

But back to really important matters: Get well soon! Best wishes, jw

Anonymous said...

A penetrating critique.

John Pillette said...

The question of the day is, will the Dems abandon their ideology (an ideology developed and employed to take up the space that would other be occupied by a focus on political economy) and return to the pre-1972 status quo ante?

My wager on this is … no way! I expect the Dem policy gurus (the mandarins, the Brahmins, the ideologues) to double-down and give us not just more of the same, but more of the same and “now in a new, super-concentrated formula!”

Consider this: there is more to be gained personally and materially for the professionals who run the party to make themselves into the party of morality and serve as a (well-funded) permanent opposition than there is to go back to the antediluvian concern for all those LOSERS out there in middle America. I’ll go further and submit that, material questions aside, it is psychologically impossible for all these cIever boys and girls to make this pivot, b/c doing so would call into question their own superiority.

It hurts me to say it, but if some (future) party will direct itself to the needs of most Americans I expect that to be be some splinter of the GOP.

LFC said...

Pillette,
How do you deal w the fact that the Biden/Harris legislative measures actually helped working-class voters? I agree that there shd be changes in rhetoric and approach, but the portrait of the Dem party here is something of a caricature. After all, the richest single person in the world was firmly in Trump's corner.

[p.s. for the record, I note that I have had in recent years (though not currently) the kind of job that requires no educational credentials whatsoever. Admittedly, I was not relying on the meager income from it to survive, but I did have it.]

LFC said...

Anonymous @ 7:17 p.m.
My comment was not really intended as a critique, which you might have realized were you not so intent on being sarcastic.

T.J. said...

Nice to hear from LFC. I would point out that a second or two with Google leads to the Census Bureau website whose data indicates the 37.7% figure is for Americans age 25 or older while the professor made the claim that a third of adults (not just adults older than 25) had college degrees. The number for adults is 34.8%.

So the comment's statement that 37.7% of adults have a college degree is not quite accurate, since 34.8% is closer to a third than it is to 37.7%

LFC said...

T.J. @8:41 pm
Point taken. (For some reason I can't seem to do replies to comments within the sub-thread.)

Anonymous said...

In terms of delivering THE GOODS I’m afraid that’s “too little too late”. Let’s consider instead something like the Gini coefficient and where it’s traveled to over the last 50 years—we are currently in a tie with Morocco. Voters don’t sit down and chin-stroke and analyze and parse and faff around the way we do, but even the stupidest of them can see that (1) their slice of the social product has been diminishing steadily; that (2) the dems—the folks who brought you NAFTA and other delights—are clearly NOT overly concerned with what’s going on out there in all of these (formerly Democratic) districts; and (3) what the party IS concerned with and HOW they are concerned with is offensive.

LFC said...

See brief replies threaded below (i've now discovered how this stupid new system works).

LFC said...

Re number (3): aided by the Repubs spending millions on advertising designed to scare people about a fictional agenda to subject their kids to trans surgeries and other similarly nonsensical claims.

Anonymous said...

LFC @ 10:16 PM

Surely it's not just the Republicans who spend a huge amount of money trying to shape the perceptions and imaginations of other people. One of my take aways from the past few months is that we've been inundated with "rumors" of secretive women, tidal waves of women who'd be voting to save themselves from the Republicans, about that wonderful polling result from Iowa proving that there was an anti-Trump tide, etc. etc. All of it just designed either to make "us" feel good, or encouraging "us" to jump on the bandwagon, or . . . In short we were being fed a diet of lies and misrepresentaions and wishful thinking all masquerading as fact.

Eric said...

Hakeem Jeffries is emblematic of the very problems of which Prof Wolff writes. Jeffries is an anti-left corporate attorney.

"[P]erhaps [Jeffries'] defining in-caucus alliance is with Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, one of the most conservative Democratic congressmen, who has threatened to blow up Biden’s agenda to defend tax breaks for the wealthy. Together with Alabama’s Terri Sewell, they formed the Team Blue PAC last year to protect incumbents against primaries from their left — which doubles as a warning shot to newly elected leftists such as Summer Lee and Maxwell Frost."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/hakeem-jeffries-speaker-of-the-establishment.html

Eric said...

Wrt the Republicans' embrace of anti-abortion rights policies, it's noteworthy that in all the states in which the right to abortions was put to referendum in this election, more voters voted in support of abortion access than voted for Kamala Harris.

As various commentators noted on Twitter, the voters weren't necessarily opposed to some forms of progressive legislation. They just didn't necessarily want Kamala Harris to be their president.

When I last checked this morning, the numbers were

Arizona 62% for abortion rights, 49% for Harris
Colorado 61% for abortion rights, 55% for Harris
Florida 57% for abortion rights, 43% for Harris
Maryland 74% for abortion rights, 61% for Harris
Missouri 52% for abortion rights, 42% for Harris
Montana 57% for abortion rights, 36% for Harris
Nebraska 49% & 45% for abortion rights, 44% for Harris
South Dakota 40% for abortion rights, 28% for Harris

(in some of those states, such as Montana and South Dakota, however, fewer than 10% of votes had been counted when I was checking the numbers)

Anonymous said...

Lucid comments as always Professor Wolf. I think we should have two separate parties now-one for college educated to start a war with the extreme cultural right. And one mainstream to cater to political needs of the 2/3 majority. Although i wonder, if you don't have something to eat (basic, fundamental inequality) does it matter that your 'diversity' rights are not so well respected? (you are death by hunger anyway). So what should be the priority? (right also have a more integrated approach in the culture war; traditional family etc supports its vision of basic inequality, unlike the left. In a way is 'normal' as the right worked about 40-50 years to integrate these arguments, the left did not even start it)

s. wallerstein said...

I don't expect much from some splinter of the GOP, but I agree with Pillette about liberal Democrats.

Maybe the two party system will break down. The GOP is no longer rational and the Democrats are lost to moral grandstanding. I could see a third party alternative arising. It has in other countries and as Trump's election shows, the U.S, is a lot less "special" and "exceptional" than most Amerikans imagine.

David Palmeter said...

I believe the Prof is right on. And I don't know how to solve the problem. It seems cultural to me--cultural in the sense of the outlook of those without degrees. It was the Democrats who gave us such programs as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), unemployment insurance. It was the Republicans who opposed every one of them, and who still oppose them. And they increasingly are getting the votes of those who benefit from them.

Part if the explanation, I think, is the resentment of the white working class with the decline in manufacturing. Those jobs not only paid well, they offered self-respect. In places like Upstate New York, where I grew up, manufacturing jobs have have largely disappeared. NAFTA gets most of the blame, but that's mostly a convenient, and popular, excuse: blame the foreigner. Far more jobs have been made redundant because of technology.

My father (and his father, his brother, and his brother-in-law) worked at a Remington typewriter plant. There were others all over Upstate: IBM, Royal, Smith-Corona, Underwood. Those jobs were eliminated 25 years ago by the arrival of what I'm typing on right now: a computer. Eastman Kodak was economic base of Rochester. The smart phone bankrupted the company.

Those who could find work elsewhere have left; those left behind compete for the low-paying service jobs available. The world has changed and they have been left behind. People left up there don't know what to do next. Understandable anger and resentment are wide-spread.

People in their position in the past--like in Germany of the 1930s--have been respondent to right wing demagogues who find a villain: Jews then; immigrants now.

No doubt there are other factors at work, but this is a major one.

PS--I'm with LFC. I hate this new software.

Eric said...

NAFTA gets most of the blame, but that's mostly a convenient, and popular, excuse: blame the foreigner. Far more jobs have been made redundant because of technology.

All the stuff in our houses and offices, all the devices we use to communicate and study with, all the clothes we wear, all the medications we take are manufactured somewhere. Almost none of these items, which used to be made almost exclusively here in the United States, are produced in the United States today. Most are manufactured in China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc. So I don't buy the argument that technological advances are the primary explanation for the relative immiseration of the American middle classes.

The Chinese have wisely used the proceeds from their sales to lift their massive population out of poverty. They have taken a number of efforts to limit the excesses of their capitalist class and spend only a tiny fraction of their nation's wealth by comparison to the US on arms and military adventurism. The priority of the Democrats (and Republicans) is to "ensure that America will always have the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world."

Eric said...

LFC (in response to comments in RPW's post on The Return of the Irrepressible): it would be congenial to think that moving the Dems in a more leftist -- as opposed to rightist pseudo-populist -- direction would have electoral benefits. But relatively little in U.S. political history supports that assumption.

Well, it certainly got FDR elected to four terms of the presidency.
But since then, aside from Obama, who won two terms after campaigning as a progressive (although he generally had little interest in governing as one), Democrats have run from the left.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence in American history that Democrats trying to out-Republican Republicans (such as proudly embracing the support of Liz and Dick Cheney) is a losing strategy.

Eric said...

Someone offered this on Twitter:
"If you are someone who was able to overlook the genocide and cast a vote for Kamala Harris, then you already understand how a conservative was able to overlook Trump's extremism to vote for him."
https://x.com/megindurti/status/1854291214595768557

Anonymous said...

billionaires everywhere--https://jacobin.com/2024/11/election-2024-how-billionaires-torpedoed-democracy

LFC said...

Not sure the FDR case proves all that you want it to. The New Deal started out farther left than it ended up. (See Alan Brinkley, _The End of Reform_.) As a separate pt, FDR's coalition included segregationist Southern Dems. Still, that period does stand out as one where a leftward movement in certain policies was linked to electoral success. I am only cautioning against assuming that that is the magic wand that will solve all the Dems' problems. I voted for Sanders in the 2016 primaries and perhaps he cd have won the general election. If that had happened, we wd obvs be in a different place now.

I think one shd try to avoid monocausal analysis of Trumpism and why the Dems were not able to prevent his return to office. The most obvs, though not only, factor in this current outcome is that the economic situation (inflation) produced a strong anti-incumbent sentiment.

LFC said...

P.s. a sentiment that transferred to Harris as a representative of the incumbent party.

Anonymous said...

Not sure why people assume, which they seem to do, that there is a democratic future in the US. There will be new elections, sure, but they will be the leader's lap dog: certainly not free and equal, designed only to a clout of democratic legitimacy. Surely, this is what Trump and co will attempt to achieve, no one can blame any of them to be big advocates of democracy. You grab power democratically, then you keep undemocratically. Straight from the autocrat's playbook.

John Pillette said...

Eric asserts that the Dems run “from the left”. But what does this mean? In common parlance, being on the “left” now means subscribing to a host of cultural and moral issues—it no longer means having an orientation that is grounded in questions of political economy, and for that reason the (soi-disant) “left” is unable to think or act strategically. Because moral positions cannot be compromised they exist outside of politics, in the transcendental melodramatic realm of good and evil.

Being on this sort of “left” is also compatible with the stupidity of nationalism—chanting, shouting, marching, waving flags—provided that it is the nationalism of your favorite nation and directed against your disfavored nation. The funny thing about this is the complete failure to see that nationalism (dressing for resistance and engaging in LARPy street “action”) goes both ways.

I do not believe that the “left” as it currently exists is a “left” as that term was formerly understood.

Anonymous said...

@ John Pillette The left as we know it is a social movement and it is the variety that seeks no compromise. That much is clear. They express this by being sanctimonious and superior. This turns voters off. Nobody wants to be lectured to. The right is a social movement called MAGA founded on lies and will do anything for power. The Republicans were like that before Trump, who brought that maximal approach to a new level. People apparently prefer lies and having a piece of Trump's power, and being used to any semblance of good government and being lectured to and condescended to. That is a big part of what we're facing in America today. So I agree with you. We`have to be ready for anything. Trump's rule will be the equivalent to a war, much more harmful than 9/11 I'd say

Anonymous said...

Also Trump is like (correct me if I have the wrong play and character) Richard III, who forces marriage on Anne after mudrering her husband, I believe it is the opening scene. Trump forced the big lie and all his other lies on the public, in much the same violent way. He is worse than a demagogue and has the darkest of charisma and I'll be happy to read all about his horrible misdeeds when he is gone.

John Pillette said...

It may be fair to say that MAGAism is based on lies, but I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s based on “Bullshit”—good ole, All-American, Grade A, P.T. Barnum, Reality TV Show, Elmer Gantry, Panem-et-Circenses Bullshit. The GOP convention could have been an out-take from “Idiocracy” (2006, Dir. Mike Judge). The Panem may be missing, but the OTT quality of the Circenses more than makes up for it.

Anonymous said...

I'm willing to accept that change of a word; but take the lie about 'stop the steal' That is more than bullshit; can you cram bullshit down a country's throat? It is like the Shaeksepearean quote (see above) too violent for bullshit. There is the carnivalesque aspect to the MAGA tent, then there is the out and out malicious

Anonymous said...

Oh and thank you for your thoughtful reply

james wilson said...

I pretty much agree with you, JP, on the vacuity of the term "left" as it is now so widely used. As I think I suggested on a previous thread, there was once a link between social progressivism and economic justice. But the various movements which once combined these objectives have in the course of time deteriorated into advocacy that "those of my identity" ought to be able to advance as far as other sorts of people within the system that exists. As a result, "some of my identity" will benefit, maybe even enormously, while the "majority of my identity" will continue to suffer the sorts of miseries and indignities which are part and parcel of the system we inhabit. Ergo Trump. Not that that will bring any relief. But it might in the longer term help a more genuinely "left" alternative arise--no doubt over the political bodies of those who see nothing deeply problematical in today's Democratic Party or in "actually existing US democracy."

aaall said...

What got FDR elected was the luck of the stock market crashing in late 1929, Hoover being locked into the Progressive notion of volunteerism, Treasury headed by a liquidationist (btw, ditto Musk), and MacArthur crushing desperate veterans. That led to the five of the seven years in the past century when social democratic things were a possibility. Of course, having Eleanor, Perkins, etc. around as opposed to folks like Geithner, Summers, and Emanuel helped.

Ohio is interesting. The common clay chose a former auto dealer (who now owns a blockchain company) over Sherrod Brown. I checked the pre-market late Tuesday evening and bitcoin was up over $5,400.

Currently private prison companies are doing quite well over the prospect of mass deportations. The economy was heading into recession (manufacturing was already there) when COVID hit. Overall Trump dodged a bullet. Folks on the left pondering the working class and young males in general should factor in that you can't fix stupid (I assume Dems had internal polling that led to the reach for Reps).

My impression is that too often a high school diploma is basically a certificate of attendance and too many HS graduates have what would have been a grade school education back in the day.

LFC, all military officers and most senior enlisted have degrees, LAPD start just south and CHP start well north of 100K. Applying with just a HS diploma isn't likely competitive.

Eric said...

What does running from the left mean? An example is Kamala Harris refusing to campaign with Bernie Sanders, campaigning instead with Liz Cheney, inviting a slew of Republicans to speak at the DNC, promising to put a Republican in her cabinet, and saying that Trump supporters will always have a seat at the table when she is making policy--while she/her campaign & surrogates relentlessly attack Green Party candidates and use lawsuits to get them kicked off the ballots in several states.

I used the term "the left" in response to LFC's comment about moving 'in a more leftist direction.'

LFC said...

John Pillette asserts that there is a common meaning of "left" today in "common parlance." I disagree. There is not one meaning of "left," but several, or at least two. There is on the one hand the (so-called) identity-politics left, which is what james wilson refers to, and then there is the left that is more concerned with issues of political economy and class. Adolph Reed Jr., for example, is in this second category. So too, I presume, is Bhaskar Sunkara. The list of names could be extended, quite a lot. There are also organizations with this general focus. Perhaps the two emphases are somewhat reconcilable, but that would be a longer discussion.

tom llewellyn said...

The Senate filibuster keeps the Congress from helping the working class in one of the few ways possible--raising the minimum wage.

Anonymous said...

Since the 1970s, college students have been disproportionately female. Ergo the non-college population is disproportionately male. For the past decade at least, the Democratic Party has been dominated by the idea that helping a disproportionately male demographic is, essentially by definition, "anti-women". Completely re-orienting around a disproportionately male demographic is an absolute non-starter.

james wilson said...

LFC @3:10 PM

You’re right that I was referring to the “identity politics left.” But I did so only to repudiate the notion that in its contemporary manifestations it constitutes any sort of left at all. Taking “left” to properly mean rejection of the systemic status quo, I also hoped my comment would be seen as calling for a recognition of the sort of left advocated by Adolph Reed and others. I therefore see the two as irreconcilable. Maybe “identity” could recover its lost aspects and become again an instrument for critically deconstructing the miserable reality so many of us now inhabit. But to repeat, I’m not holding my breath.

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Eric said...

I am trying to understand what those who criticize the 'identity politics left' here are calling for. Are you saying (as some have in other spaces) that Democrats lose elections because they cave in to demands of 'special interest groups' on issues like support for state recognition of same-sex marriage, protections for transgender workers and athletes, and affirmative action for racial minorities in college admissions and hiring? And that in the face of the fascist threat posed by the right, and the hostility to these stances of a large proportion of the reliable voters, these 'special interest groups' should put their aspirations on hold and instead allow for the progressive movement to coalesce around class issues/redistribution of wealth, which affect the whole of the working class rather than individual groups?

Vaughn said...

This doesn't follow. As was pointed out time and again, the election wasn't a referendum on Harris. It was a choice between her and Trump. So the analogy in that tweet would only apply if anyone thought Trump would somehow be better for the Gazans than Harris -- which is of course absurd. (Trump will soon be president again -- that'll show Netanyahu!)

Or maybe we can construe the tweet as saying "Look, we often overlook terrible things politicians do because they promise us something else we want, which outweighs that terrible thing -- and that's just the calculation that Trump voters were making." But this still makes no sense in the curent context. If what we want is a world where the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza hadn't taken place (and won't continue to take place), then that's precisely what Trump *doesn't* promise.

Or maybe we can construe these Trump voters as saying that he was and will be such a good steward of the economy, that his promised extremism is worth the cost. But that strikes me as just wrong, factually and morally, and is bad strategy as far as voting your interests are concerned.

David Zimmerman said...

Sadly, Eric, that is exactly what critics of "identity politics left' (critics of those pesky woke folks) are saying--- ignore the gays, the trans, the minorities....

Vaughn said...

One of the remarkable features of Harris's candidacy was her assiduous avoidance of 'identity politics'. Unlike Hillary, she never mentioned her sex or that she'd be the first woman president, and she didn't rise to the bait when Trump went all racist on her. Add to that her leaning into her record as a prosecutor, and it seemed like the Harris campaign was doing everything it could to run as far away from 'wokeness' as possible.

Still, it wasn't enough. Why not? I don't think gay marriage is a salient issue anymore (witness J.D. Vance appealing to "the normal gays"). And SCOTUS has rendered affirmative action a moot point. So it really does all come down to the trans stuff. The GOP has successfully been able to frame the issue as one of systemic child abuse, what with tales of elementary school children routinely "getting healthy body parts cut off" -- though as far as I know, surgical intervention for trans minors is virtually non-existent. Plus there's scaremongering about men in women's bathrooms, men beating up women in sports, etc.

I really don't know how the party will deal with this, though they'd better come up with something fast. Thankfully it seems that most people have a baseline sympathy for trans people, even as they want compromise on some of these more hot button issues. So that could be a start. (I read somewhere that during the month of October, fully 40 percent of GOP ads in the swing states were aimed at the trans issue, and that polls showed they were effective.)

Aside from that, it does seem like the language of identity politics is by now too embedded in the culture -- and too much associated with the Democratic Party -- for Harris to have overcome it with a single haphazard campaign. It's everywhere. Take for example the recent flare-up caused by the actress Cynthia Erivo, where some random and perfectly innocous piece of fan art caused her to complain that she was being "erased." This is the idiom of identity politics run amok -- invoked by a rich and privileged celebrity to stoke victimhood. Which is not to say, of course, that Ms. Erivo has never been an actual victim of racism. But it's this sort of thing that penetrates with voters.

And at the same time, there's been an backlash to woke that's coalesced in the so-called "manosphere" online, where Howard-Stern-style racism and misogyny has reconstituted itself, only unlike Stern, these guys are leaning fully into politics. The featuring of Tony "Puerto Rico is an island of floating trash" Hinchcliff at a Trump rally, and Joe Rogan's endorsement ofTrump, can be seen as the consumption of this movement. I find all this depressing beyond belief.

John Pillette said...

Allow me to suggest that following Rapko’s suggestion and doing some imaginative work is not only illuminating but fun. Recall if you will the 2008 primaries. Remember how pointing out that Hillary Clinton was an unappealing candidate got you labeled as a misogynist? But what does HRC resemble? Does she not look and sound like Management? Is she not the very personification of the Professional Agent of the Corporation, the pants-suited HR director of your nightmares? And did she not serve as outside counsel for one of America’s worst employers, Tyson Foods?

If the answer to these questions is “no”, then you are probably a member of this managerial caste. And while we’re on the subject lets be aware that the rich (the really rich) regard the managers who work for them with an haut-en-bas contempt, as the humorless, unimaginative drones that they are. They get the hate from both sides, from Labor and Ownership! (And I have to say they deserve all of it).

But if the mass of the electorate didn’t like HRC, so much the worse for them, those deplorable misogynist troglodytes! As for the women who didn’t like her either, it was their internalized self-hatred! Or something. Anyway, the only thing wrong with the Dem approach is that not enough people like it. Is this a problem for a political party?

Danny said...

'If we managed to survive the next several years, a survival that will be made more probable if Hakin Jefferies manages to gain control of the house perhaps, we will finally begin to ask whether the interests of the two-thirds of the AMerican population without college degrees should be made central to the concerns and mission of the democratic party.'

As for this diagnosis that Democrats are becoming a smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party, there is of course a point here that among working-class voters, there was a significant decline. The party only won among those who make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Sure, I mock weakly populist ads targeted to swing states, though it’s true that inflation has hurt incumbents across the world. However, what drove Harris’s selection as vice-president to begin with? An emphasis on anti-discrimination. The idea that the Democrats as a whole are associated with this is what I ponder, while I mention the prominence of efforts like White Women: Answer the Call and Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders for Kamala. So yeah, a party increasingly divorced from workers. So yeah, a staggering shift in working-class support across demographics.

Danny said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vaughn said...

John Pillette,

The problem with scoffing at charges of misogyny vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton is that you're dismissing what too many people know to be simply true.

"The pants-suited HR director of your nightmares" -- I do detect some sexism in that phrase, not because I deny that regular folk are generally put off by corporate managerial drones, but because experience has taught me that many men (and some women) reserve a special kind of vitriol for women in positions of authority. You can't deny what I've seen with my own eyes. One common charge against Hillary was that she seemed to "try too hard" (too much smiling, too much cheeriness) -- to which I say...well, yeah, ambitious women often have to try very hard to forestall the sexist backlash they've come to expect -- and when they're less than successful at doing so, somehow that only seems to invite more gender-coded resentment.

So yes, misogyny, internalized or not, is real.

As always in politics, there's a tension between what's true and what we have to do to sell people on the truth. Regarding the former: I don't fault the masses for "not liking" Hillary Clinton; I fault them for not realizing that despite all her unappealing traits (and I mean genuinely unappealing), she was obviously far better than that grotesquerie with whom we're still saddled. In that sense, I do consider them troglodytes.

But of course we have to meet people where they are, and politics is showbiz which means 'likeabilty' is everything. I agree we need a candidate who doesn't come off like they're only here to represent bougie interests -- and better yet, we should want one who *actually* doesn't represent those interests. Unfortunately, after this week's debacle, it's unlikely that any future such candidate will be a woman.

John Pillette said...

Assuming, arguendo, that this “misogyny” (in whatever form) may be real … so what? A political party complaining about the wrongthink of their electorate is like a fisherman complaining about hungry fish that you can SEE swimming around but (perversely!) aren’t biting: “What the hell is wrong with them? Guess I’ll have to change the way these fish think!”

But that’s why it’s called “fishing” and not simply “harvesting”. Politics deals in the real, not the ideal. It would be …ideal … were it nothing but women’s studies majors out there in Pennsylvania and Michigan (and God willing that will be the case someday!). But for now, this population of awful wrong-thinking people are what actually exist.

W/r/t the accusation of sexism on my part, you will be glad to know that I hate all managers regardless of sex (or race). As do most employees. Part of the managerial mindset (the HILARIOUS part, for which see David Brent) is the delusional belief that everybody LIKES them!

John Rapko said...

Surely Vaughn is right that, beyond the bungling of 'Mama Warbucks', there was an element of misogyny is Hillary Clinton's defeat. But how large an element? Is there any non-impressionistic way of determining it? Ages 0-18, I lived in Illinois, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Virginia, Hawaii, and California (with Japan thrown in for perspective); if someone had asked me at age 18 whether it would be more likely that a (so-called) Black man or a (so-called) White woman would become U.S. president in my lifetime, I'm pretty sure I would have said the latter, as I'd encountered rather a lot more of virulently racist remarks than virulently misogynistic ones. Of course, this biographical tidbit does not count as any kind of serious evidence. But what does? Is there/might there be any evidence with regard to Harris?--John Pillette's point about the poor managerial class getting hated on from both sides reminds me of a particularly unpleasant dinner party about 5 years ago. I was excoriated for so much as bringing up for conversation Albert Murray's claim in The Omni-Americans that all Americans and their culture are "part Yankee, part backwoodsman and Indian, and part Negro". Driving around the next day and reflecting on the incident, I coined the wisecrack "If liberals were self-hating, it would be unanimous".--Just as a reminder of how repellent Clinton was, here's the clip of her chortling about the torture-killing of Gaddafi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXDU48RHLU

Vaughn said...

John Rapko,

Don't you think you're being a bit pearl-clutchy posting that video of Clinton? Gaddafi was a perfectly revolting human, so delighting in his death, while a bit tacky perhaps, hardly seems repellent. When Trump or Putin finally leave this earth, I may not crack a joke, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of my friends did. (Also, the description makes clear that the footage captures Clinton's reaction to unconfirmed reports about Gaddafi's death, so she couldn't have known it was a torture-killing, I'd imagine.)

Of course, someone will immediately want to say that HRC herself oversaw plenty of war crimes; and if that's the case, then I'd also have no problem with one of her victims delighting in her demise.

John Pillette,

We are in agreement. See the final two paragraphs of my last reply.

John Pillette said...

Dinner parties ARE a problem. Two glasses of wine and my disguise of liberal rectitude gets sloughed off like a callinectes sapidus in molt. My misogyny is there for all to see … I remember this one party where I got just (justly!) reamed out for not liking Leni Riefenstahl. So I feel ya!

fritz poebel said...

since managers seem to be personae non grata here, it may be fair to cite a German term for stress: Managerkrankheit. Also, I noticed a solecism today in philosophy website in reference to JD Vance: Zieg heil. The Z should be S, but an amusing interpretation of Zieg heil would be hail goat!

james wilson said...

Perhaps I’m being much too self-important and sensitive to think that certain comments were prompted by things I wrote, so:

No, David @ 9:46 AM, I’m not saying ignore the gays, etc. I am quite aware of the burdens and the indignities they have suffered and still suffer in everyday life. I sympathise with them and I even sympathise with their aspirations to be able to seek the things and the opportunities this society makes available to them.

But, Eric @ 8:52 AM, I thought I was quite clear—which wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been mistaken on that score—that my criticisms of identity politics rested on my perception that for the most part those pursuing the things and opportunities this society makes available to them are quite uncritical of the nature of this society except insofar as it affects their particular identity predicaments. In short, while I would not presume to tell them what to aspire to, I would reserve the right to argue that some of what some of them aspire to comes at the cost of imposing injuries upon others including upon some of their fellow indentitarians.

That said, I’d also accept, more generally, that whenever it is necessary to pursue a lesser-of-two-evils, united front approach, it still remains necessary to raise questions concerning what that lesser evilism may result in. (OOOps, Marx said something like that in the Manifesto, didn’t he, when he was writing about alliances with those who saw the world a bit differently. Sorry.)

I’ll also offer that it’s a mistake to assume that those of Identity X, or Y, or Z, don’t have a great many other aspects which determine their political choices—witness, it seems from some post-election analysis, that women voted on the basis of a number of factors besides a concern to be able to make decisions over whether or not to bear a child, or elevating one of their own sex to the White House, etc. Ditto for those of other Identities. In other words, don't we do all these people a great injustice when we see them only through the lens of their identity?

Anyway I’d appreciate not being Identity-baited, for that’s what it feels like. To make it crystal clear: David, I’m not saying ignore X, or Y, or Z. And, Eric, I’m definitely not claiming that the Democrats lost because they caved to ’special interest groups,’ other, perhaps, than to that interest group we for a time identified as the “1 percent.”

Best wishes to all, j.

Anonymous said...

What gets me is that this rebellion of the working classes over a little inflation, maybe stressfull and significant but not like the economic turmoil in places like Weimar Germany and the France of the Ancien Regime, this rebellion by voting Trump in to demolish the system is so out of whack with the reality on the ground: this may be due to the Fantasy Land thesis of Anderson, or the feeling of lost status, or the feeling they want to have the American Dream and feel like if they can't live like a millionaire than fuck it. The fact that it snuck up on us is that aside from Trump's rallies it was a virtual mob- no parades through the streets of New York or Chicago or LA. I think we're in for it though with no overwhelming certainty, just a survival instinct.

Anonymous said...

If you think it's just "over a little inflation," I think you're not seeing the long-term onslaught on working people extending over at least a couple of generations since the "post-War dream", as Pink Floyd referred to it, began to collapse. And the Democrats and Republicans were both party to that. Trump did in the Republican perpetrators and now it looks like he's doing in the Democratic perpetrators too.

David Zimmerman said...

But Trump IS one of the perpetrators.

Anonymous said...

When you use the word "onslaught" I assume you mean the working class is exploited? Meaning other people have what they desreve and they lose status. The best case you can make is that people feel insecure and have to work their asses off- first, many of the victims made that social contract by buying into the system; second, that is how historically life has always been for most of us; third, they are making themselves less secure by voting in Trump; finally "onslaught" is an emotional, subjective term that a demagogue whether on the left and right would use. There is something to be said about "standing up for oneslef" but there is also something to be said about being thankful for what you have and not being so materialistic. I suspect that when you talk about exploitation you really mean something like "other people taking advantage of me" That is a matter of status, and not having what others do, that is materialism. People in other times and places had it far worse and lived through it. Why did Bernie lose? Surely some of the working class who now voted for Trump voted for Palin or put Republicans in the Senate to fight to the last against Obama's health care plan, so part of the working class is partially complicit in their own oppression- they didn't need the Trump revolution, they, you, we had the votes.

John Rapko said...

With the usual hesitations, but because it speaks so directly to the professor’s post, I’ll post an account of a conversation among ‘educated’ and ‘uneducated’ I was in a couple of hours ago, by far the most interesting I’ve heard about the election. There was a great deal of use (not mention) of what educated folks called the ‘n-word’. I’ll leave it out, except where I’m quoting or giving something close to an exact quote. Here it is, re-constructed and highly condensed:
Returning from Doe Library and lugging UC Berkeley’s precious copy of Aquinas’s commentary on De Anima, I stopped at the local al fresco chess spot on Telegraph Avenue. I watched for a minute as two gentlemen were pondering their dynamically balanced middlegame position, then a conversation erupted about The Election. Gentleman #1, missing a front tooth and perhaps 35 years old, was playing white. Gentleman #2, perhaps 45 years old and presenting an immensely attractive air of mixed elegance and serenity, played black. Gentleman #3, perhaps late 40s, was also watching. All three gentlemen were African-American. I’m not certain, but I think it likely that by the professor’s criterion G#1 and #2 are ‘uneducated’, and G#3 is ‘educated’, and very likely I was the only participant especially afflicted, i.e. with a Phd.
G1: I voted for Trump
G2: You're kidding me, aren’t you, N? You used to be a Panther, and now you’re voting for a fascist?
G1: Look here, N, I would have voted for that N-woman in the 1970s.
G3 and Me: You mean Shirley Chisholm?
G1: Yeah.
G2: Then why didn’t you, a Panther, vote for Harris?
G1: That N put me and a lot of other Ns in prison.
G2: But why vote for Trump? You could have just not voted.
G1: Because there was a lot of social progress under Trump.
Me: Can you give an example?
G1: Before Trump a woman could make you pay child support just by saying you’re the father. Now they have to have a DNA test.
Me and G3: Well, I suppose that’s progress.
G2: How old are you, N? Don’t you remember what it was like under Trump? Don’t you remember Covid?
G1: Covid wasn’t Trump’s fault. It was just a cough and a sneeze. If you want to see a real epidemic and response, look at Ebola and how it was handled.
G2: What are you . . .
G3: Let the brother speak.
G2: Don’t you know that a million people died here from Covid?
G1: I don’t know anybody who died. [Addressing me:] Did you get vaccinated?
Me: Yeah, four times.
G1: I’m not vaccinated. I never got it, and I worked with crowds of homeless people.
G2: The world’s coming to an end.
G3: No, the world’s not coming to an end. We’re going to survive. The question is: What do we do next?
I had to get back to De Anima, so at that point I shook everyone’s hand and thanked them for the most interesting conversation I’d heard about the election.

Anonymous said...

One picks up the instruments available to one. "I'll have [him] but I will not keep [him] long"

John Rapko said...

As always, I made a mistake in the previous post. Please switch 'G2' and 'G3' in the attributed statements.

Anonymous said...

No, I didn’t necessarily mean exploitation, though I won’t run away from the term. I simply meant that over several generations, since roughly the mid-1970s, we’ve seen wages remain relatively stagnant despite the enormous increase in productivity and the enormous increase in prices. The consequences of that are all about us.

As to people making the social contract that treats them so, that’s —sorry— laughable. Whoever, apart from some mythical beings in liberal political theory, ever had any choice in the matter.

As to being materialistic, is it more commendable to accept that the children are going hungry, that there’s no affordable place to live, etc. etc.?

You’re right, in a sense, that we have the votes. But just look at the processes that block these votes from ever coming together in an effective way. Vote for the capitalist of your choice, I suppose.

Fritz Poebel said...

There have to be multiple “reasons” for this disaster. And one of them has to be the omnipresence and effectiveness of propaganda. It works, and it’s only going to get more sophisticated and manipulative. Here is an example I culled from a local newspaper about a girl who explains why she’s voting for Trump:
“SIDNEY – A steady stream of voters trekked in and out of the James H. Bean School on Middle Road on Tuesday, where 185 people had cast ballots by 9:15 a.m.
“First-time voter Haileigh Miller, 19, received applause as she registered. Later, she said she voted for Donald Trump.
“’He aligns with my morals,’ Miller said.”
Where did she get this idea? Clocks strike 13, and a lot of people, like this one, don’t notice.

levinebar said...

When I was born, the Democratic party was the party of labor, and of segregation. It ceased to be the party of segregation in '64 and lost the South shortly after. It then ceased to be the party of labor in '92, when Bill Clinton perceived that it was more important to court bankers and their money than to listen to workers (where were they going to go, anyway?). Highly-educated party leaders keep waiting for a largely uneducated voting public to develop class-consciousness.

John Pillette said...

JR, shame on you. You’re an educator, how could you pass up such a teachable moment? These guys needed to learn about their male privilege! I’m sure they would have thanked you.

But back to the professor’s post: it brings to mind learning a bit of history, way way back in junior high it must have been … Specifically, learning of the existence of two institutions: (1) the Negro Leagues and (2) the New Model Army. W/r/t the first, I was astonished to learn about this. I literally could NOT believe that this used to be the arrangement … No Willie Mays, No Hank Aaron … No REGGIE JACKSON? I mean, WTF?!? It made no SENSE at all. Ditto the New Model Army.

Radically limiting your group’s effectiveness by making membership a matter of heredity is obviously stupid and bound for failure, is it not? But of course, for the people inside the favored group (be they creaky-limbed ball players, nitwit aristos, or Robby Mook types) it makes all the sense in the world.

charles Lamana said...

Fritz, I agree with you about propaganda. You know, tell a lie over and over, and people start to believe it as true. I am not sure it's the same as Ideology as critique of the system, but the total dominance of Trump and his rallies, full of unreal stupid garbage but the many maga folks latched on to it cause yes many are hurting and many hate the liberals, and many are racist, homophobes, who hold to the belief that white male christian nationalist are the superior form of human being. How can so many be so wrong about Political reality that their desires overwhelm their use of better sensibility?

Cromwell said...

What is it you don't understand about my New Model Army?

John Pillette said...

I’ll be more explicit. The Negro League and the Cavalier military (the “Old Model Army” if you will) made perfect sense (to the people in charge, anyway) in their time and place—i.e., Jim Crow America and unreformed England. But they vanished immediately when the context changed. And which change nobody saw coming. So the “New Democrat” ideology made perfect sense to “everybody” (everybody in charge of ideology, that is) in 1975.

Remember? The New Deal was now Old Hat—no need for securities regulation, and all those factory workers were going to become some much more groovy new kind of worker. I can’t remember how many NYT articles I read about the historic inevitability and the wisdom of this approach, culminating in the pseudo-Hegelian nonsense of Frank Fukuyama.

But 50 years on? The present situation reminds me of Wyle E. Coyote suspended in midair, just before he drops 1000’.

Cromwell said...

I take your point, but I'm sorry you don't allow for the fact of my agency, John. "The context changed" you say. But why? In the case of my New Model Army, under my direction, several things made it a powerful instrument of war and politics.

1. Officers did not need to be gentlemen. They needed to understand tactics and adhere to them and obey my orders;

2. In battle, groups should stick together and maintain their coherence—no galloping stupidly about in pursuit of an enemy which had already been discombobulated and no silly displays of horsemanship;

3. The Levellers were not allowed to mislead them. They were to limit their aspirations. They were to defend property not seize it—though some few were permitted to seize it from the Royalists.

4. If they kept Burford in mind, they’d see the wisdom of behaving as I wished them to behave.

John Pillette said...

Well thank God you and your agency are back. Now get to work and fix things so that henceforth Dem strategists will no longer have to be ersatz “gentlemen” (i.e., Ivy League grads). We’ll all benefit from the new thinking this would allow.

John Pillette said...

Don’t let it be said that all I do is carp about the Dems (as much fun as that is). Here’s an actual policy idea w/r/t healthcare.

It may come as a surprise to most, but the federal government does in fact already operate a system of socialized medicine—it’s called the VA and it is the largest healthcare system in America.

As an agency the VA is entirely under the control of the executive. With the stroke of a pen the president can do pretty much what she likes with it. Harris could have gone rogue three weeks ago and promised to open up the system to everybody: free healthcare! I’m sure that that would have flipped everybody over to our side.

Yeah yeah yeah, it would have generated a giant admin law dispute, but all of that is further down the road and those sorts would be clearly legitimately seen as TRYING TO KILL GRANDMA. And sure, she would have been assassinated before New Years … but she would have WON the election.

Michael said...

Late to the funeral, but here's where I am, sorry for the word count... (Not that I'm confident it's the right place to be, but w/e.)

My immediate emotions here most likely don't line up with reality, which is probably merciful in a way, or at least a testament to the strength of whatever subconscious defense mechanisms... I don't feel that the return of Trump is as doom-heralding as it was the first time around. I'm feeling fearful and dejected, of course, but not utterly hopeless, and the fear and dejection are somehow kind of muffled and easier to compartmentalize this time. But in trying to convince myself that my reflexes aren't totally skewed - or, at minimum, to make some sense of WTF happened - here's where I happen to be:

To me the most reasonable-sounding reactions say roughly this: What probably helped conservatives most (and not just in the US) was the expensiveness of groceries/gas/housing and the like. ("Are you better off now than you were four years ago?") Democrats and their supporters inadvertently salted the wounds by defending Biden's economic accomplishments (however accurately); with things in general being more expensive, without clear relief in sight, this often felt like "gaslighting" on the part of "out-of-touch elites." The incumbent party is probably highly disadvantaged in this scenario, no matter what - it's not as though the clearly better strategy is not to defend Biden's accomplishments! Still, Harris might've been less disadvantaged if her campaign had stronger, more consistent emphasis on taxing billionaires, attacking price-gouging, etc. (Leiter's "post-mortem" links a Jacobin piece that has interesting evidence for this.)

Other obvious things that seemed to help the Republicans: hysterics over "illegals," Trump's "martyr" image, resentment against the "sanctimonious woke" (LGBT allies, anti-racists, etc.) - I'd guess these were the main ones, and I'd also guess that these by themselves wouldn't quite suffice to ensure Republican victory. All else being equal, perhaps the Democrats would've gotten the votes they needed if things had just been easier on people's wallets. On a weakly consoling note: If this is right, and if (as seems likely - I'm sure there are good arguments) the financial hardships of the non-wealthy will tangibly worsen over the next four years, then it might make sense to expect the Republicans to lose much of their advantage.

We've also been talking about trying to understand the concerns and the mindset of the non-college educated majority. All I can offer from my experience is: Leiter might be very right to point to "correlation = causation" as a particularly alluring fallacy. ("Prices have been higher with Biden in office, compared to Trump" = "Biden's policies are responsible for worsening my financial burdens" = "Another Trump presidency would surely lighten these burdens.")

I think it's also pretty natural to confuse anecdotal evidence with representative, statistically meaningful samples. Hence: "I see lots of news stories about Black men committing violent crimes in certain parts of town," etc., can feel suggestive of, "Black people are generally more dangerous than the rest of the population"; and so, hearing a more educated person object to the latter on the grounds of, say, "the cyclical, intergenerational effects of systemic racism and poverty, amply documented by research" - again, the feeling may be that of being gaslit and condescended to.

"But it might instead be the case that my beliefs really are the product of faulty reasoning or inadequate information. I should at least pause, put my ego aside, and reconsider": I think it's rare for anyone, though a bit less rare for a college-educated person, to say this sort of thing.

LFC said...

WaPo has a piece today about the Trump campaign's very conscious online strategy to reach young men whose "information" (the quotation marks are v. necessary) comes from video clips, memes, podcasts etc. on certain online platforms. Un-paywalled link:
https://wapo.st/4fx8g4Y

Anonymous said...

An optimistic, revolutionary communist take on the processes that are at play here: https://marxist.com/usa-democrats-tossed-out-defeat-trumpism-with-communism.htm

Danny said...

'Just as a reminder of how repellent Clinton was, here's the clip of her chortling about the torture-killing of Gaddafi:'

Not precisely what she is chortling about, though we know of her forceful support of U.S. intervention in Liba. Whether this was an obviously short-sighted intervention, I recall how the whole pretext for the intervention was ostensibly to stop a "slaughter" of civilians. Maybe some Libyans say life was better under dictatorship, it's just that when it comes to what Hillary Clinton was caught pumping her fists about. Also, she exclaimed "We came. We saw. He died!"

Anonymous said...

This strikes a chord. I joined the army because I had most other avenues closed to me. And now I'm racing against my contract clock to get a degree on the armys dime so I can get a good enough job after to support my growing family. The army has been my social welfare program, and it has never been more obvious that unless I can get a degree, I'm stuck doing infantry stuff, or other low paying jobs.

Nadia Adams said...

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Michael Llenos said...

Thank you to Erika Hamlett for typing out the wonderful comment of RPW's.

Makes me wonder how real the movie October Sky was in reality? Also Yeager, that great test pilot, didn't have any college and yet he ended up a pilot in WW2 & later on a 4 star general never getting a college degree. Richard Marcinko, the famous Seal, was helped out by a military mentor to gain his officer rank by studying to get his High School diploma.

Nowadays there are Chief Master Sargents in the armed forces with PhDs. There are Special Forces Combat Divers in the Army who are NCOs but they have J.D.'s & M.D.'s. More kudos to them.

I guess the Prophet Daniel was right at the end of his book when he said that later on "knowledge will increase, & people will run to and fro."

Michael Llenos said...

But to be fair to Chuck Yeager he did attend the Air Command and Staff College in 1952 and the Air War College in 1961.

John Rapko said...

I've been trying, and failing, to avoid election talk. And I've had to 'unfollow' almost all of my news outlets to avoid seeing pictures of people like Stephen Miller (is there anyone who looks more deserving of 24/7 police surveillance?).--On the perennial topic of lesser-evilism: In the past few days I've run into several people who claim either to have self-censored by not criticizing Harris or (like myself) were told to shut up about St. Kamala. This morning I read a short thing in CounterPunch from the Kierkegaardian philosopher M. G. Piety (her real name) about the abuse she got for OPENLY voting for Jill Stein. [Side note: Raymond Geuss says that Robert Paul Wolff gave great class lectures on Kierkegaard back in the 1960s. I would give a lot for a transcript. I recently re-read Repetition and was reminded of Wittgenstein's remark that Kierkegaard was by far the greatest philosopher of the 19th century.] "I was viciously attacked by someone I love simply for daring to do what I felt was right, even when it made no difference to the outcome of the election. Toeing the Democratic [Party] line which used to be justified as a means to the end of winning an election, has now become an end in itself — and anyone who fails to recognize it as such is viciously attacked." https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/13/the-one-thing-needful-some-post-election-reflections/

s. wallerstein said...

John Rapko, it's not the best moment to question progressive orthodoxy. progressives are very upset and do not react pensively to contrarians or heretics, even if the contrarians and/or heretics are basically coming from a left or progressive posture. several family members would have stoned me if I had been within range.

John Pillette said...

Professor Piety uses the phrase (in her 2012 piece on the same subject) “wasting” one’s vote. She sees voting as a moral exercise, such that holding one’s nose and voting Dem (as a lot of us have been doing for quite a while now) is a vote wasted on a morally undeserving candidate.

This is a familiar position to take, and one that seems more prevalent on the “left” (or at least the non-right). But why is voting for one of two candidates an endorsement of that candidate as a person in her entirety? Do you ask your plumber about his political affiliations before you pay him to fix your toilet? It is hard (well, impossible) for me to see the position of POTUS as one that is primarily moral as opposed to ministerial. Even the position of Archbishop of Canterbury is primarily ministerial. Confusing the essential nature of the two offices must be a vestige of our puritan history.

This approach seems to me to be related to a similar phenomenon in the world of literature—that of the fear of contagion. The vocal majority of readers and critics, it seems, are incapable of separating the work of art from the artist, and so the work of morally dubious artists are banished. To judge by what I’ve read Celine, Pound, Wyndham Lewis … even Nabokov have all been sent to sit in the corner, and reading and enjoying them can earn you some stink-eye.

On the right itself, they seemingly have no problem voting for candidates that are clearly amoral, but who have promised to give them the material gains they want. The right votes strategically, while strategic voting is considered suspect on the left. I’d be interested to know if this non-strategic approach is huit-tarded (that is, a legacy of 1968).

I think we can all agree that this is at least an interesting state of affairs. I’m a born materialist, so it seems to me that Prof. Piety is confusing two realms, the earthly and the celestial, but I suspect that my opinion is a minority one.

james wilson said...

Materialists are surely made, not born? But be that as it may, John P., aren’t you suggesting that the votee is a complex creature, as is the writer, and that the voter/reader ought to take that into account? But isn’t the voter/reader also a complex creature? And isn’t the decision to vote/not vote, read/not read the outcome of a complex collision between these two complex creatures?

I don’t claim to be very complex myself (hence, no doubt, my intellectual confusion on the points you made J.P.), but I do know that for a time I enjoyed reading Kingsley Amis. But then I happened to read with great anticipation one of his novels, I can’t remember which, which left me feeling somehow sullied, and I could never read him—or his son, as it happens—again. Lucky me!

In relation to s. wallerstein’s response to John Rapko: I thought it had been suggested somewhere up-thread that the notion of progressivism needed to be analysed because it seemingly assumed that the notion contained several disharmonious elements which “progressives” have tended to disregard? Presumably Piety’s—and Rapko’s—remarks are part of an already ongoing effort to hasten such a critical analysis along. And that I take to be one of the few politically healthy things we can do at the present moment since “progressivism” as it is currently understood has clearly been found wanting.

Michael said...

I voted Harris, but perspectives like that of Prof. Piety do have a way of pricking my conscience. (As does just about everything, to be fair. Catholic upbringing here, various kinds of mental illness in the family, etc.)

I think the basic idea comes across in a sort of thought experiment: Is there anything you can substitute for X, such that the statement, ‘I shouldn’t support someone who participates in X, no matter how much the world otherwise benefits when that person is sufficiently empowered (no matter that their being sufficiently empowered is *not* determined by my personal support),’ comes out as true?

(Sorry that’s a terribly written sentence.)

For example, we’ve seen Eric in these discussions substitute ‘genocide’ for X.

Like, to what extent do ‘lesser-evil’ Democratic voters compare to (IIRC) Roy Moore’s voters, who evidently live in a world (however ludicrous, but set that aside) where voting non-Republican is more objectionable than voting for a child molester?

Anyway, this seems to me like a sort of moral fork-in-the-road, having to do with the status of consequentialism itself: ‘the lesser evil’ versus ‘justice though the heavens fall.’ In an idealized case (i.e., involving perfectly rational and informed actors, each without mixed motives or conflicting ideas, but having opposite ‘ground-level’ principles; sort of the ‘frictionless plane’ of moral deliberation), I can’t picture what either position could possibly have to persuade the other.

It strikes home for me whenever I make sketchy choices as a consumer as well. The world would (if only for economic reasons) be a better, more just and humane place if no one consumed animal products beyond the dictates of medical/nutritional necessity. At any rate, I believe this, and I also believe that my individual consumption choices don’t affect the system at large. In practice, that’s how I ‘rationalize’ my cheese addiction (that, and not wanting to inconvenience friends when we share meals, not wanting to get weird looks). This would not impress the likes of Kant or Sartre, and I don’t think those guys are simply nuts, or somehow less perceptive than me (surely it’s the opposite!).

A long while ago, I saw someone (random philosophy student) claim that ‘being ethical is impossible.’ I figured that was an exaggeration for effect, but part of me also wishes I could’ve heard the guy elaborate on this; maybe he was onto something. A little later, I saw Sigwick’s despairing remark in his later years that he ‘didn’t know the ABCs of morality.’

But as always, it’s Hume at the end of the day. Forget about it, play some billiards, etc.

s. wallerstein said...

Michael,

Adorno: Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

Anonymous said...

Having read Piety's piece in Counterpunch, it seems to me sufficient attention isn't being paid here to the fact that what she was really writing about wasn't so much about voting one's conscience as it was about the over the top reaction of one of her friends who called her a Nazi because of how she voted, an inconsequential vote at that, and because she suggested that Trump might actually not follow through on some his more outrageous "promises." She was drawing attention, I thought, to the unfortunately now widespread tendency regard anyone who doesn't thoroughly and completely align themselves with you in thought and deed as the most horrible enemy.

John Pillette said...

Further investigation reveals that Prof. Piety is indeed a pious Christian, a member of the (echt-Protestant) sect of “Friends”. Voting your conscience does make sense under these circumstances, i.e., where you believe that you will ultimately have to face that celestial bureaucrat, St. Peter (See Revelations 21:21). You don’t want him running his index finger down the ledger, stopping at 11/05/24, frowning and reaching for that big black Sharpie of Damnation.

David Palmeter said...

I am ignorant, among other things, of what the "left" is and what the left means by "progressive." I am, I gather, dismissed for being a "liberal." I would describe myself as a "New Deal Liberal." Bernie Sanders says that he is a socialist, but that he does not advocate government ownership of the means of production. He simply wants the rewards of that production to be more equally distributed--and he has offered specific programs for doing exactly that. Sounds like a New Deal Liberal to me.

What specific policies do progressives advocate that liberals do not? What do progressives do to sell those policies to the larger electorate, a majority of whom (in a democracy) need to agree before those policies will enacted in law. Most people have not read Marx and never will. What do progressives do, in this somewhat semi democracy, to obtain their support?

Anonymous said...

This is an unfair description of Piety's (totally reasonable) position, if you read her earlier (2012) article on wasting your vote. She doesn't speak of "voting your conscience" in this sense; she explicitly separates what she's doing from seeking to maintain self-respect or some moral status. Her point is more pragmatic than that, just from a longer-term point of view. Her argument is that voting for the lesser of two evils has contributed to the rightward move of the perceived "center" of American politics, and that the only way to stop this process is to vote for candidates who are members of the genuine left, knowing full well that in the short term this will entail some political losses, but having faith that in the long term people will join you. It is optimistic, but it's not an abandonment of all political strategy or something.

Anonymous said...

According to the one (and ONLY one) story I can be bothered to read on the subject (in Al Jazeera, make of that what you will) Stein siphoned off enough votes in each swing state to hand the election to Trump. I leave it to the moral philosophers in the audience to turn this into a trolley system diagram.

I don’t think I’m being unfair to Prof. Piety. It was Fuerbach’s great insight to see that He is really a projection of you, and that by voting your “conscience” you can achieve a two-fer: you can grovel before Him, and you can God-up yourself. You can also lord it over the rest of us … I’m speaking as a corrupt Catholic here, but there’s something characteristically Protestant about public declarations of piety, with their mixture of masochism and self-regard.

As for whether or not Jill Stein and the Greens are genuinely “left”, that’s a good question.

Anonymous said...

Well feel free to ignore this if you're not genuinely interested in the subject, but...

-I don't see how mentioning Feuerbach's projection theory of the Christian religion settles anything about what Piety is talking about. Of course it's true that this is one possible justification someone MIGHT have for voting third party. But it's not the only possible motivation, and it's not Piety's (unless we're just disregarding everything she says).

-I think the argument works whether or not Stein is a real leftist. (I have my doubts about Stein myself.) The point is only that if you think a third party candidate is speaking to what you think are good solutions to our actual problems, you should vote for them even if they don't have a chance of winning this election. Your vote should express your real preference, since if you give that up you're easy prey for someone trying to convince you to go against those preferences for what they try to portray to you as "strategic" reasons that never really pay off.

Anonymous said...

Well that's he first I've heard, that Jill Stein cost the Democrats the Presidency. Last I looked, her totals were inconsequential to the outcomes. It maybe should also be mentioned that overall she and RFK Jr. each got about 700,000 votes.

As to what is or is not "left"--or "right" or "progressive" or etc.--something David P. also seems to find confusing, I'd suggest it makes sense to view them ass as 'essentially contested concepts,' meaning that they're all subject to debate, a debate which will never give rise to a final definitive answer.

LFC said...

David P. @7:20 p.m.
As some of the discussion in this thread indicates, there are no universally accepted definitions of "left," "progressive," "liberal" (in the contemporary political sense of that word), etc. That said, it is not hard to find differences -- on policy and even more in terms of general emphasis -- between, say, Sanders's campaigns for the Dem nomination and those of some of his primary opponents. Sanders was for single-payer health care, for instance, and H. Clinton, if I recall correctly, was not. There were probably other policy differences too. (Proposals like a universal basic income count as "pre-distribution" rather than as re-distribution in the tax-and-transfer sense; I forget whether Sanders proposed this or not.)

The more immediate problems now relate, istm, to trying to keep the amount of damage Trump will do within some kind of bounds. The Dem governors of Illinois and Colorado have formed a new group that sounds like a good idea at the practical level of resisting certain foreseeable and dubiously legal moves by the Trump 2.0 administration. Most of Trump's appointments that have recently been announced are stunningly bad. Tulsi Gabbard as director of natl intelligence? Pete Hegseth (whom I'm not sure I had ever heard of, not having watched Fox) as sec of defense? Matt Gaetz as attorney general!?! One hopes the Senate, even though w a Repub majority, will draw some lines, but my guess is that "let him have whom he wants" will prevail, unfortunately. The exact role that RFK Jr. will have has not yet been announced, afaik.