"Undocumented people are 1% of the population." That would be 3.27 million. The actual number of illegal aliens is at least four times that. How can I vote for a candidate who tells me easily exposed lies and talks in euphemisms like "undocumented people"?
I’m a member of the affluent white upper middle class PMCs. I live in a blue neighborhood in a blue state. Houses start at about $650k and can easily double that. Unskilled illegal immigrants aren’t buying houses here. They’re renting apartments in much cheaper working class neighborhoods-thereby driving up rent. (Recall that it’s hard to build even in red states, let alone blue).
But my leftist neighbors pat themselves on the back about how kind and empathetic they are, unlike all the hate-filled and bigoted poor whites.
Here is the key phrase from Ruy that encapsulates the elite liberal mindset: "The real issues are economic; the culture stuff isn’t important (“a smokescreen”) and not negotiable anyway."
To elite liberals, the culture stuff IS important, emphatically so. If you disagree with them on these issues - even one of them - you are labeled as retrograde (or worse), and if you're an aspiring Democratic politician you are not worth supporting whatever your positions are on other issues. The culture stuff is a screening device: conform 100% to the woke dogmas or give up your political aspirations.
Of course, the salience of culture issues will depend on how well things are going in the economic and foreign policy areas. A deep recession in 2028 will bring Democrats to power, no matter how crazy they are regarded to be on culture issues. Same for a foreign policy calamity, especially a major military defeat. I repeat here for the umpteenth time: a genuine moderate Democrat - a liberal patriot - can win bigly in 2028 if he/she can somehow overcome the crazed Left that currently controls the Democratic nominating process.
> "To elite liberals, the culture stuff IS important, emphatically so."
Moreover, the left is the aggressor in the culture wars. We didn't have an open borders consensus (in fact, Obama recognized that this was a lunch pail issue). We didn't have a "trans autistic girls" consensus. We didn't have a "rapists in women's prisons" consensus. We didn't have a "defund the police" consensus.
But when the right pushes back, the two-faced left acts surprised and affronted, "Why are you fighting culture wars? This doesn't affect you. If you actually cared, you'd team up to fight the billionaires (read: more socialism) who are causing the real problems."
"Muslims aren't defunding our schools...It's the billionaires and their puppet politicians." No, they aren't. NO ONE is defunding our schools, you lying jerk. "Current expenditures per pupil (in government schools) increased by 13 percent from 2010–11 to 2020–21, after adjusting for inflation." Source: National Center for Education Statistics If you're going to pee on my leg, Talarico, at least you shouldn't tell me that it's raining.
They aren't defunding our schools, they are packing them with administrators: "The number of district administrators in U.S. public schools has grown 87.6 percent between 2000 and 2019 compared to student growth at 7.6 percent and teacher growth at 8.7 percent. The data from the Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Department of Education was shared by Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College."
They're defunding the schools because they decrease the amount of funding that actually goes to teaching and education. When I was young (a long time ago) my elementary school had a principal, a secretary, and a janitor. The school district (my entire county) had a superintendent, a clerk, and busdrivers. I got a fine K-12 education.
If the cultural things are not important, as the economic populist crowd claims, then why does any Dem who takes a different tack on cultural issues get tarred and feathered by their own crowd?
Dems are more enamored with these positions than even concerned working class folks. And it is that toe-the-line-or-else attitude that puts the lie to the whole pitch about “trans are only 1%…” or “illegal immigrants are a small minority…”. They make it impossible to buy their economic story when these things are life or death to the party.
Spot on as always. Along with "Orange Man Bad" the other main Dem policy appears to be "Trojan Progressivism". Talarico supports abortion until delivery, destroying childhood fertility and/or removing healthy kid body parts. James notes Jesus was non binary and "science" recognizes 6 genders, before he cheers Open Borders.
These are views unsupported by 80%+ of Americans , but they will suddenly be acceptable, because Talarico is a Minister "populist"?
It is one thing for Dems to voice an "adults should live as they please" view. Most Americans, likely support that position. It is entirely different to lecture it is compassionate to remove and replace childhood genitalia or end child fertility, all before a kid can legally enter into a contract, buy a beer or a tattoo.
Moreover, how could any real populist ever support Open Borders? Cesar Chavez was fiercely anti migrant, but not remotely racist. Chavez understood the wages of the US citizen farm laborers he led, had no prayer of rising if an endless supply of exploitable labor crossed the border.
The above explains Obama's "Deporter in Chief" title. Obama is not racist. He knew South Side Chicago residents were far less likely to improve their lot in life, if forced to compete with imported cheaper labor, who never complained about wages, working conditions or sexual harassment.
Moreover, such workers compete with low income US citizens, not just for employment, but scarce affordable housing and other resources. The undocumented that now comprise 10% of Chicago's population are not raising rents or clogging ERs on the North Shore. They do not drain school or local govt budgets in Winnetka and Hinsdale.
If Reps do not figure out a way to counter the Trojan Horse Party, Dems may be successful in the short run, but not over time. Talarico as a Trojan Longhorn and Beshear as a Trojan Thoroughbred . . . will eventually spell Dem doom. The Biden/Spanberger well, likely has a point where it runs dry. Sounding moderate during the campaign, only to govern as AOC will eventually backfire. Most of the US is not SF or the Bronx. At age 80, extremes driven by Trump hatred will fade.
Unless of course, Dems actually utilize their wins to really burn it all down. Pack the Court, add states, and open borders permanently.
> "Unless of course, Dems actually utilize their wins to really burn it all down. Pack the Court, add states, and open borders permanently."
Spain recently naturalized 500,000 immigrants with the express purposes of offsetting conservative voters. If the Democrats win the Presidency in 2028, and all three branches of government, then they could abolish the filibuster and turn the entire US into California. Grant citizenship to the vast majority of illegals from the Biden era and re-open the borders to an eternal stream of new citizens. That would be the end of conservatism in the United States and grant the left a permanent electoral majority that would easily last 50 years.
But would they? I've realized that the left creates these doomer fantasies about Trump because they want to be proven right about Trump's supposed "authoritarianism". I don't want to fall into the same levels of derangement as the left.
It is becoming increasingly clear that large minorities of Muslims make a country far less safe, to the point of turning it into third world status. Great Britain is now Mediocre Britain. A few Eurosa have realized too late they must deport large number of Muslims. But this is true of any "immigrants" who aren't here to assimilate in all ways. As long as Democrats have Ilhan Omar and Tlaib as their "face," they are screwed. And their subservience to the Islamic element of the base is one reason why probably the best candidate they might have, Shapiro, will never ever win a nomination (Civil War #1)
BTW, in other matters, PA after 2 reports of very slight D voter reg increases, is back to strong R increases. My guess is that the total departure from the D party by November since 2024 will be along the lines of 1.5 million. Most sources put the illegal population at 12.5-17 million, not 3. That would mean that Trump has deported about 25% of all illegals. Further, I think most people would assume that if they vote, they vote D. How many voted? No one knows, but let's use a conservative estimate of 50%, or anywhere from 6-8.5 million. By November, that number will be down around 1.5 million illegal "voters." Combined with that earlier 1.5m registration collapse and voter roll purges, I think you're probably looking at whatever the 2022 turnout for Ds was, then subtract about 3m nationally.
There are two different economic issues here. The first includes resentment like why can't the attendees of Sanders/AOC rallies have the things the billionaires have. The second economic issues is wages and income related. Like when illegal immigrants take over every single job in a localized specialized trade, like drywall or flatwork. Economic populism as practiced by the current Democratic party refuses to address the second much more widespread economic populism.
Instead we label people racist and xenophobic, and granted, there certainly are some, but of late the entire working class is including minorities, and they vote every four years.
The elites are no longer very elite. Haven't read the books they were supposed to, not bilingual even in a romance language, no art on the walls. They identify as elites by the causes they support, brands they buy, and credentialed jobs they hold.
I think Teixeira is right that Democrats are trying to answer cultural populism with economic populism alone. It was obvious in their State of the a union rebuttal. But that isn’t just a messaging choice. It’s a design issue.
The Democratic Party is structured as a coalition built around protecting minority claims and avoiding exclusion. That design has moral weight. But it also makes it very hard to engage cultural populism directly, because doing so requires drawing boundaries and defining a shared practical center. And inside that coalition, defining a center immediately raises the question: who gets to define it, and whose norms are being privileged?
So the party defaults to economics. It’s the safest common ground internally. But that’s not where cultural populism is operating. Voters who are reacting to questions of order, norms, authority, and institutional gatekeeping won’t feel answered by an economic-only response.
In that sense, what we’re seeing isn’t confusion. It’s design delivering its natural output. Until that structural tension is addressed, economic populism will keep running into the same wall.
Perhaps this dilemma in messaging and non-negotiable positions won’t be resolved until the baby boomers pass from the scene and even the wokesters are gone. A new generation of activists would solve the problem. In the mean time, serious people who need to be at the policy table will likely be Republicans (in name only).
1. I remember a TV commercial where an older white guy in a suit is telling a young subordinate to "stick it to the man." The young man replies, "Uh, sir . . . you are the man."
2. Trump won't be on the ballot in 2028. The D's will need to beat a smoother and smarter candidate (Rubio?).
3. Immigrants who are far different from us do change an culture more rapidly than you think. Talk to people of Christian or Jewish faith in Hamtramck or Dearborn. But discussion of this quickly is branded bigotted or racist, or at least xenophobic. Most of us have a little xenophobe in us, whether we admit it or not.
4. To win, the D's will need to abandon the tiny planks that loom so large in the common person's mind.
I am old enough to have met with people who lived under Nazi Germany, including in the labor camps. Almost all of them did not despise Hitler. Hitler was a tinny voice in a speaker mounted near the ceiling. What they did despise were the Little Hitlers, the lower-level Nazi functionaries. These were the people who Ruled their lives and made a point of insisting they knew it.
"Undocumented people are 1% of the population." That would be 3.27 million. The actual number of illegal aliens is at least four times that. How can I vote for a candidate who tells me easily exposed lies and talks in euphemisms like "undocumented people"?
Undocumented sounds like "Yeah, I have documents but the dog ate them."
I’m a member of the affluent white upper middle class PMCs. I live in a blue neighborhood in a blue state. Houses start at about $650k and can easily double that. Unskilled illegal immigrants aren’t buying houses here. They’re renting apartments in much cheaper working class neighborhoods-thereby driving up rent. (Recall that it’s hard to build even in red states, let alone blue).
But my leftist neighbors pat themselves on the back about how kind and empathetic they are, unlike all the hate-filled and bigoted poor whites.
Here is the key phrase from Ruy that encapsulates the elite liberal mindset: "The real issues are economic; the culture stuff isn’t important (“a smokescreen”) and not negotiable anyway."
To elite liberals, the culture stuff IS important, emphatically so. If you disagree with them on these issues - even one of them - you are labeled as retrograde (or worse), and if you're an aspiring Democratic politician you are not worth supporting whatever your positions are on other issues. The culture stuff is a screening device: conform 100% to the woke dogmas or give up your political aspirations.
Of course, the salience of culture issues will depend on how well things are going in the economic and foreign policy areas. A deep recession in 2028 will bring Democrats to power, no matter how crazy they are regarded to be on culture issues. Same for a foreign policy calamity, especially a major military defeat. I repeat here for the umpteenth time: a genuine moderate Democrat - a liberal patriot - can win bigly in 2028 if he/she can somehow overcome the crazed Left that currently controls the Democratic nominating process.
> "To elite liberals, the culture stuff IS important, emphatically so."
Moreover, the left is the aggressor in the culture wars. We didn't have an open borders consensus (in fact, Obama recognized that this was a lunch pail issue). We didn't have a "trans autistic girls" consensus. We didn't have a "rapists in women's prisons" consensus. We didn't have a "defund the police" consensus.
But when the right pushes back, the two-faced left acts surprised and affronted, "Why are you fighting culture wars? This doesn't affect you. If you actually cared, you'd team up to fight the billionaires (read: more socialism) who are causing the real problems."
"Muslims aren't defunding our schools...It's the billionaires and their puppet politicians." No, they aren't. NO ONE is defunding our schools, you lying jerk. "Current expenditures per pupil (in government schools) increased by 13 percent from 2010–11 to 2020–21, after adjusting for inflation." Source: National Center for Education Statistics If you're going to pee on my leg, Talarico, at least you shouldn't tell me that it's raining.
Public employee unions are defunding our schools.
They aren't defunding our schools, they are packing them with administrators: "The number of district administrators in U.S. public schools has grown 87.6 percent between 2000 and 2019 compared to student growth at 7.6 percent and teacher growth at 8.7 percent. The data from the Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Department of Education was shared by Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College."
They're defunding the schools because they decrease the amount of funding that actually goes to teaching and education. When I was young (a long time ago) my elementary school had a principal, a secretary, and a janitor. The school district (my entire county) had a superintendent, a clerk, and busdrivers. I got a fine K-12 education.
If the cultural things are not important, as the economic populist crowd claims, then why does any Dem who takes a different tack on cultural issues get tarred and feathered by their own crowd?
Dems are more enamored with these positions than even concerned working class folks. And it is that toe-the-line-or-else attitude that puts the lie to the whole pitch about “trans are only 1%…” or “illegal immigrants are a small minority…”. They make it impossible to buy their economic story when these things are life or death to the party.
Spot on as always. Along with "Orange Man Bad" the other main Dem policy appears to be "Trojan Progressivism". Talarico supports abortion until delivery, destroying childhood fertility and/or removing healthy kid body parts. James notes Jesus was non binary and "science" recognizes 6 genders, before he cheers Open Borders.
These are views unsupported by 80%+ of Americans , but they will suddenly be acceptable, because Talarico is a Minister "populist"?
It is one thing for Dems to voice an "adults should live as they please" view. Most Americans, likely support that position. It is entirely different to lecture it is compassionate to remove and replace childhood genitalia or end child fertility, all before a kid can legally enter into a contract, buy a beer or a tattoo.
Moreover, how could any real populist ever support Open Borders? Cesar Chavez was fiercely anti migrant, but not remotely racist. Chavez understood the wages of the US citizen farm laborers he led, had no prayer of rising if an endless supply of exploitable labor crossed the border.
The above explains Obama's "Deporter in Chief" title. Obama is not racist. He knew South Side Chicago residents were far less likely to improve their lot in life, if forced to compete with imported cheaper labor, who never complained about wages, working conditions or sexual harassment.
Moreover, such workers compete with low income US citizens, not just for employment, but scarce affordable housing and other resources. The undocumented that now comprise 10% of Chicago's population are not raising rents or clogging ERs on the North Shore. They do not drain school or local govt budgets in Winnetka and Hinsdale.
If Reps do not figure out a way to counter the Trojan Horse Party, Dems may be successful in the short run, but not over time. Talarico as a Trojan Longhorn and Beshear as a Trojan Thoroughbred . . . will eventually spell Dem doom. The Biden/Spanberger well, likely has a point where it runs dry. Sounding moderate during the campaign, only to govern as AOC will eventually backfire. Most of the US is not SF or the Bronx. At age 80, extremes driven by Trump hatred will fade.
Unless of course, Dems actually utilize their wins to really burn it all down. Pack the Court, add states, and open borders permanently.
> "Unless of course, Dems actually utilize their wins to really burn it all down. Pack the Court, add states, and open borders permanently."
Spain recently naturalized 500,000 immigrants with the express purposes of offsetting conservative voters. If the Democrats win the Presidency in 2028, and all three branches of government, then they could abolish the filibuster and turn the entire US into California. Grant citizenship to the vast majority of illegals from the Biden era and re-open the borders to an eternal stream of new citizens. That would be the end of conservatism in the United States and grant the left a permanent electoral majority that would easily last 50 years.
But would they? I've realized that the left creates these doomer fantasies about Trump because they want to be proven right about Trump's supposed "authoritarianism". I don't want to fall into the same levels of derangement as the left.
It is becoming increasingly clear that large minorities of Muslims make a country far less safe, to the point of turning it into third world status. Great Britain is now Mediocre Britain. A few Eurosa have realized too late they must deport large number of Muslims. But this is true of any "immigrants" who aren't here to assimilate in all ways. As long as Democrats have Ilhan Omar and Tlaib as their "face," they are screwed. And their subservience to the Islamic element of the base is one reason why probably the best candidate they might have, Shapiro, will never ever win a nomination (Civil War #1)
BTW, in other matters, PA after 2 reports of very slight D voter reg increases, is back to strong R increases. My guess is that the total departure from the D party by November since 2024 will be along the lines of 1.5 million. Most sources put the illegal population at 12.5-17 million, not 3. That would mean that Trump has deported about 25% of all illegals. Further, I think most people would assume that if they vote, they vote D. How many voted? No one knows, but let's use a conservative estimate of 50%, or anywhere from 6-8.5 million. By November, that number will be down around 1.5 million illegal "voters." Combined with that earlier 1.5m registration collapse and voter roll purges, I think you're probably looking at whatever the 2022 turnout for Ds was, then subtract about 3m nationally.
There are two different economic issues here. The first includes resentment like why can't the attendees of Sanders/AOC rallies have the things the billionaires have. The second economic issues is wages and income related. Like when illegal immigrants take over every single job in a localized specialized trade, like drywall or flatwork. Economic populism as practiced by the current Democratic party refuses to address the second much more widespread economic populism.
Instead we label people racist and xenophobic, and granted, there certainly are some, but of late the entire working class is including minorities, and they vote every four years.
The elites are no longer very elite. Haven't read the books they were supposed to, not bilingual even in a romance language, no art on the walls. They identify as elites by the causes they support, brands they buy, and credentialed jobs they hold.
AI can't come fast enough.
I think Teixeira is right that Democrats are trying to answer cultural populism with economic populism alone. It was obvious in their State of the a union rebuttal. But that isn’t just a messaging choice. It’s a design issue.
The Democratic Party is structured as a coalition built around protecting minority claims and avoiding exclusion. That design has moral weight. But it also makes it very hard to engage cultural populism directly, because doing so requires drawing boundaries and defining a shared practical center. And inside that coalition, defining a center immediately raises the question: who gets to define it, and whose norms are being privileged?
So the party defaults to economics. It’s the safest common ground internally. But that’s not where cultural populism is operating. Voters who are reacting to questions of order, norms, authority, and institutional gatekeeping won’t feel answered by an economic-only response.
In that sense, what we’re seeing isn’t confusion. It’s design delivering its natural output. Until that structural tension is addressed, economic populism will keep running into the same wall.
Perhaps this dilemma in messaging and non-negotiable positions won’t be resolved until the baby boomers pass from the scene and even the wokesters are gone. A new generation of activists would solve the problem. In the mean time, serious people who need to be at the policy table will likely be Republicans (in name only).
1. I remember a TV commercial where an older white guy in a suit is telling a young subordinate to "stick it to the man." The young man replies, "Uh, sir . . . you are the man."
2. Trump won't be on the ballot in 2028. The D's will need to beat a smoother and smarter candidate (Rubio?).
3. Immigrants who are far different from us do change an culture more rapidly than you think. Talk to people of Christian or Jewish faith in Hamtramck or Dearborn. But discussion of this quickly is branded bigotted or racist, or at least xenophobic. Most of us have a little xenophobe in us, whether we admit it or not.
4. To win, the D's will need to abandon the tiny planks that loom so large in the common person's mind.
I am old enough to have met with people who lived under Nazi Germany, including in the labor camps. Almost all of them did not despise Hitler. Hitler was a tinny voice in a speaker mounted near the ceiling. What they did despise were the Little Hitlers, the lower-level Nazi functionaries. These were the people who Ruled their lives and made a point of insisting they knew it.