Ruy Teixeira, a top Democratic strategist whose highly influential book The Emerging Democratic Majority was misread and distilled into the conventional wisdom that “demographics is destiny,” badly wants off this ride. As we approach the 2022 midterms, Teixeira & Co. are in a hostage situation.
“For forty years or so the left has been preaching against neoliberalism—the view that capitalism and markets should mostly be left alone to generate prosperity with only modest regulation and a frugal welfare state. For forty years the left has polemicized against this economic model, frequently despairing that they could ever get through to ordinary voters, particularly working class voters, who, the left said, were duped by political elites who either promoted this model or were afraid to challenge it.
Well a funny thing happened in the wake of the Great Recession, a worldwide pandemic and persistent, maddening economic inequality: ordinary voters, including working class voters, are sick of neoliberalism. They’ve had it and they’re ready for something different.
The answer to the left’s prayers right? The opportunity—finally!—to push the American economic model in their preferred direction by building up the mass support the left has always lacked.
A great opportunity, yes, and also an opportunity that’s being impressively blown by today’s left and, in the process, is taking the Democratic party down with them.
At the very moment when neoliberalism has been comprehensively discredited, the left has become more and more associated with unpopular sociocultural issues and less and less with solving the problems of working class people. …
How did this sorry state of affairs arise? This is best illustrated by looking at the area of culture and language where the left’s estrangement from ordinary voters is most obvious and which has increasingly defined the left’s brand—and by extension the Democratic party’s.
The culture of the left has evolved and not in a good way. It is now thoroughly out of touch with its working class roots and completely dominated by college-educated professionals, typically in big metropolitan areas and university towns and typically younger. These are the people that fill the ranks of the media, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations and the infrastructure of the Democratic party. They speak their own language and highlight the issues that most animate their commitments to ‘social justice”.
It is time for Joe Biden to pick a side. The left is dragging his party and Presidency down. And in the process the left is blowing its big opportunity to move American society away from the neoliberalism they’ve been criticizing for forty years. In that sense, Biden, by taking a side, would be doing the left a favor and saving them from themselves. That is, if they still believe in replacing neoliberalism. …”
You’ve read the same thing here a million times.
The Democratic Party is dominated by these people: the shitlibs, the progressive activists, the DILEs, the PMCs, the BoBos, George Packer’s “Smart America” and “Just America,” the woke professional class which lives in a bubble on the coasts. These days it is more like the BoBos and their brat Millennial children who absorbed absurd and highly impractical ideas in college. We’re thinking of Elizabeth Warren’s base. They are the people who put words like “Latinx” and “equity” in Joe Biden’s mouth and who staff his administration. They dominate Twitter which is conflated with real life. They are the people who launched a crusade to deplatform Joe Rogan for “misinformation” and using the “n-word.”
It has gotten to the point where the Republican Party is based on nothing but hatred and resentment of these people. It is a coalition of people who want to own these people. That’s it.
Ruy has another heresy up this morning on his Substack: climate change hysteria is a electoral loser for Democrats.
“What’s green and near the bottom of voters’ policy priorities? Climate change, that’s what. Democrats have a very, very hard time acknowledging this but it is nevertheless true.
In the latest Gallup “most important problem” poll, climate change comes in at a whopping 2 percent (open-ended response). A new Pew survey asked the public about a lengthy series of policy priorities and whether they should be a “top priority” to address in the coming year. The result: climate change came in way behind strengthening the economy, reducing health care costs, dealing with the coronavirus, improving education, defending against terrorism, improving the political system, reducing crime and improving the job situation and also behind dealing with immigration, reducing the deficit, addressing the criminal justice system and dealing with the problems of poor people (whew). That’s 13 issues in front of climate change!
The Pew report breaks down these ratings by education. Interestingly, among working class (noncollege) respondents climate change repeats its dismal 14th place finish in the policy priorities parade. But among the college-educated, climate change does much better, going up to 6th on the list. Hmm. …”
If he keeps telling the truth like this on his Substack, it is going to piss a lot of people off. We know what happens then.
The Word Economic Forum is an international group of the worlds 2,000 largest businesses. Biden is too tight with Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum to care about the average man on the street. Build Back Better is from the WEF, Build Back Better is a WEF policy initiative and neo-liberal Joe sought to implement into US law, this policy proposal from a foreign entity.
Leftists today will never reject neoliberalism. Neoliberalism has bought them and paid for them. They absurdly pose as valiant rebels against the Establishment, when in fact they are nothing but Establishment stooges and flunkies.
Teixeira will end up de-platformed for spreading heresies amongst the Church of Woke faithful. Try to imagine, if you can, my copious tears when this happens – from laughing too hard.