What people believe and what they are willing to do about it are two different things. Let’s take a poll on the policies the Dems will force on us, written or just actions that will be taken, and see how they fare. Oh that’s right, they have no answers. Will they have any by 2026? The odds are against it. At this point, I would say the 2026 elections are not looking good for the Dems. They have already lost twice on the strategy of just attacking Trump. From what I observe, they’re willing to die on that hill again.
I hear a lot about the Democrats’ messaging problem. Well, duh. Democrats (1) have no vision for the country that does not include rule by right-thinking technocrats, (2) have lied and obfuscated about critically important issues for years (Biden’s cognitive state, inflation, immigration, et al) so have zero credibility outside their core activists , and (3) have demonstrated their willingness to dismiss the beliefs of over half the country in order to pursue a victim mentality and satisfy a small vocal minority. I submit that the Democrats’ problems go way beyond messaging.
Sad to say I completely agree, regarding Democratic leadership at rhe federal level at least. But the problem is that this infects the whole party now. I would not agree that the entire party is truly like this, not even close, but at this point a majority do seem to be and those who are not are still negatively influenced by it when not outright bullied into submission, so much so that dissidents within the party and those of better charecter have little to no power within it and often cannot be trusted to be consistant. I would say that those who are sincere are plagued by a degree of deeply unrealistic idialism, and/or denialism at this point. At the local and even state level (only in some states) we still have a dwindling but fair number of mostly resonable Democrats.
I say this as someone who is a former Democrat, whose overall views are still closer to Dems then to R's on most (but not all) issues, who never voted Trump, and who is sickened by much of what Trump has done and is threatening to do. But Democrats have truly broken any belief I once had in them. Elitism dishonesty and ideological ferver have taken over. So I come here to rant, and otherwise try to avoid excess thinking or discussion of politics...
Your experience may be different than mine. In eastern Washington I have not been thrilled with some of the local Republican candidates and have actively sought out the local Democrats who were running. I tried numerous times to get them to declare that they would be willing to honestly oppose the western Washington ultra-progressive Democrats when they go off the deep end (which is often) and truly represent the views of us on the dry side of the state. I was never able to get them to commit. In Washington state moderate local Democrats are those who vote the party line only 99.9% of the time. If they refuse to represent me, then there's no way I am supporting them.
In California we have a super majority of Democrats in state government, even more so (quite a bit more so) then in Washington or Oregon.
Most are like you refer, but we also have a sizable faction of Dems (a minority) in the legeslature that is is actually somewhat moderate in their votes and who do (sometimes) manage to block off the rails legeslation, though not the majority of the time because they are so inconsistsnt and unreliable. And we have a horrible governor and unelected bureaucrats deciding on many of our worst policies... So yeah, generally no thanks for me too!
However, we do still have a lot of old school blue dog dems at the local level in some parts of the state. Many of the latter would probably be Republicans or independents elsewhere.
Oh I believe you! I have heard plenty of similer stories as well, from people I know and trust. I am in the SF Bay Area so it is indeed a very differant type of local social/political context then where you live. However I would say that while seemingly quite differant responces, both of these very much ultimately fit within the same larger disfunctional picture...
It seems that working class voters prioritize economic issues while the college educated prioritize cultural issues. The only real economic issue in the perception of the Democrats is health care and even there the hill the Democrats have picked to die on in the shutdown is health care for illegal immigrants, This pushes the issue back into the cultural category. (Or worse, ghosts 12M of the people with fully subsidized premiums had 0 claims of any kind in 2024.) Democrats try to dress up climate change as economics but the public is buying it. It is the reverse watermelon issue that was covered here last weekend. At some point, Democrats need to choose and decide who they are.
While working class voters prioritize pocket book issues there are many cultural issues that are non starters. You cannot despise people with mainstream views and say it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to work to simply stick with the 20 side of 80/20 issues and hammer on grocery prices.
The working class knows how much the average D college educated leader hates them. The leadership of the D party and all the groups that own them need to be cored like an apple and replaced with folks who actually like the majority of the electorate rather than seeing them as a giant social justice project.
Talking Point: “Despising Mainstream Voters” Is a Propaganda Projection
Lincoln said “with malice toward none” — today it feels like malice toward all.
When MAGA voices say Democrats “despise mainstream voters,” what they really mean is: Democrats despise Trump and his administration. And with good reason: many of these figures have behaved despicably, undermining institutions, stoking division, and promoting destructive ideologies.
The idea that Democrats despise “ordinary Americans” is not fact, but a propaganda trope that converts criticism of Trump’s policies into hatred of his supporters.
In reality, what each side despises are stereotypes:
Democrats caricature “MAGA voters” as ignorant, bigoted, and authoritarian.
MAGA caricatures Democrats as elitist, woke, anti-American socialists.
Sometimes, individuals lean so fully into the stereotype that they become despicable in their behavior. But that is not the same as despising millions of “mainstream voters.”
The vicious cycle is this: extremists on both sides profit by personalizing political disagreements — turning policy differences into contempt for entire groups of people. That keeps the conflict going, because demonization energizes turnout.
✅ Core Takeaway:
Democrats don’t “despise mainstream voters.” They despise Trump, his cronies, and the machinery of Trumpaganda — which has made despising Democrats a core cultural marker of MAGA identity. The mutual stereotyping locks us in a cycle of reciprocal contempt, even though most people’s real differences are political, not personal.
I wasn't sure who to vote for in '12. I wasn't too impressed with Obama after a while, so I looked at Romney. He lost me when he divided America between makers and takers. Not that he was necessarily wrong, but there was a smugness, an arrogance, and a divisiveness that strongly repelled me. God damn the filthy rich bastard is what I thought then, and still think now.
Along comes Hillary Clinton in '16. She says that half of Trump's supporters are part of a "basket of deplorables." By then I'd already walked away from the Democrats, but if I didn't think so badly of Trump I'd have voted for him out of retaliation. As I write, I am struggling to control my anger at that (expletive deleted). Just who in the hell did she think she was, and for that matter just who in the hell does she think she is? Ugh!
I have cast write-in votes in the last three presidential elections. I have been following J.D. Vance, and very much like what I am seeing. I will be surprised if I don't vote for him in '28. The Democrats now make Hillary Clinton look tame.
Takaway from me is that Democrats (my former party, now I am a true independent) are not all even close to the same in their attitudes or worldview, but their internal structure has become so authoritarian in recent years that this is not always apparent from the outside. This is damaging and weakining the Democratic part from within. In other words, the majority of your takaway is correct but it is also partly wrong because it includes false generalizations.
I know for a fact that it is common (not consistant or necessarily the norm even, but definitelly common) for college educated Democrats (more so college educated white democrats!) to despise most working class whites specifically. I am a working class European American man born, raised and lived most of my life in the SF Bay Area.
This distain is VERY common and also infuences many others who don't share such negative beliefs to also distance themselves from our demographic, in more ways then one, for fear of loosing friends, family etc.
It is the ultimate underlying biggest reason why most of the extent our demographic that lived in the SF Bay Area in 1990 don't anymore today, but have moved away to other metros, rural areas and (most of all) outside California altogather. There are other reasons too of course, especially cost related and we are far from alone in our departure. But my point is that we were actually a big part of this region not so long ago.
This is all based on my own observations and experience as well as data, not influence from right wing influencers. I am not a Republican and have little respect for most MAGA influencers (some I do respect as I respect many on the left and center as well, even when/if I happen to disagree with them) but most of them suck, frankly. Point is I think for myself and I am telling up you this is not only mine but a great many others experience as well.
It is only propaganda to imply (as many right wing pundets and leaders sometimes do) that ALL Democratic party leaders or influencers 'despise "mainstream" Americans'. Is is quite clear however that many elite Democrats do depise the majority of the American public however (It is also clear that many Republicans do as well, though the specifics are differant). It is not propaganda to say so. Implyimg otherwise is either propaganda or a misunderstanding, as it is a false overgeneralization even while clearly true in some cases.
But secundly, what the heck are mainstream Americans these days? I don't think we even have a single mainstream or dominant culture anymore, though most of our subcultures are still in some ways closely related and overlapping. Of course we have always had diversity but we used to have more unity and I mean in the recent past when we were already diverse in our demographics. But, we don't exacly get along or even really identity as the same society anymore, and this is remarkably recent, -think I will sometime soon write a longer comment about why I see this as being the case.
I think the last time we did have a more common cultural identity despite our divisions was in maybe way back in 2012 or so, despite our growing estrangement back then, -we had actually come togather, especially at the local community level somewhat, and breifly increased our bridging and even bonding social capital across our various divides from 2007-2010. Obama back then and the great rescession were overall unifying factors for a while, untill it all fell apart. How long ago and another era those days now seem!
Democratic activists, and many politicians, pretty clearly despise whole swaths of the voting public who are, in fact, not MAGA.
This includes rural residents, people who like suburbs, people who don’t want to use public transportation, religious people, women who think staying home with babies is preferable, people who are against banning gas powered cars, people who want more controls on immigration, etc. Some of each of those categories are MAGA. Most are not.
When you tell voters what they want is unacceptable and they are bad for wanting it, they are not likely to vote for you. You can only get so far from what people actually want before the previously unthinkable becomes thinkable.
Claim: Democrats are uniquely guilty of moralizing and alienating voters by treating them with disdain.
This claim crumbles under even light scrutiny. It is not only factually inaccurate, but also deeply hypocritical, given the consistent and openly hostile rhetoric that MAGA-aligned Republicans, right-wing media figures, and conservative influencers have directed at broad swaths of the American electorate for years.
A Pattern of Dehumanization and Demonization from the Right
The notion that Democrats uniquely “despise” certain voters ignores the well-documented history of inflammatory, dehumanizing language from major Republican figures:
Donald Trump has publicly referred to his political opponents and critics as:
> “Vermin” (a term with fascist historical resonance).
> “Enemies of the people” (a Stalinist phrase).
> “Human scum” (about those who opposed him within the GOP).
> “Sick,” “stupid,” “crazy,” and “traitors.”
This language doesn’t just target elites or institutions—it casts entire categories of Americans as morally and even biologically unworthy.
Fox News and other conservative outlets routinely portray liberal voters as:
> Un-American for supporting social justice movements.
> Morally degenerate for accepting LGBTQ+ identities or abortion rights.
> Naive sheep manipulated by elites.
> “Baby killers,” “groomers,” “communists,” “elitists,” or “globalists.”
These aren’t fringe voices; they are often prime-time hosts or influential pundits, shaping the worldview of millions.
Religious and cultural contempt often flows in the reverse direction as well. MAGA-aligned voices portray:
> Coastal, urban, academic, or nonreligious Americans as “godless,” “decadent,” or “anti-family.”
> Government workers, teachers, and scientists as sinister ideologues or agents of control.
> Blue-state voters as lazy welfare addicts or crime-loving anarchists.
Double Standard in Rhetorical Policing
When Democrats express frustration with policies (e.g., climate denial, forced birth laws, or anti-immigrant crackdowns), they are accused of hating the people who support them.
But when Republicans caricature entire professions (teachers, journalists, professors) or communities (cities, immigrants, “the left”) as corrupt or evil, it is framed as justified indignation or “telling it like it is.”
This is a rhetorical double standard:
Democratic criticism = elitist disdain.
Republican condemnation = populist truth-telling.
Weaponized Victimhood and the Politics of Grievance
The MAGA narrative thrives on a persecution complex: it frames criticism as contempt, disagreement as erasure, and inclusion of others as exclusion of them. It converts policy differences (e.g., support for immigration reform or urban transit) into personal insult, then insists that the insult justifies political radicalization.
This allows MAGA supporters to indulge in their own disdain and outrage—while portraying themselves as the true victims of cultural exclusion.
Conclusion: Hypocrisy, Not Injury
So when MAGA voices accuse Democrats of “despising” voters, it is not a principled critique—it is a strategic projection, designed to distract from their own far more inflammatory rhetoric. If we are to talk honestly about mutual respect in politics, we must begin by acknowledging the contempt industry on both sides—but especially the highly organized, monetized, and radicalizing rhetoric that has become the beating heart of the MAGA movement.
Ollie, way to completely and totally miss the point, which was why non-MAGA voters would vote for MAGA Republicans. Although you did a really fine job of proving mine.
This is not remotely about who did it first. VOTERS DO NOT CARE. No one has suggested that MAGA politicians are nice to progressives, or that they expect them to vote for them. The core issue is that works both ways, and the meanness math is currently not in the Democrats favor.
The problem is, when you start attacking voters for their positions, the voters being attacked are not going to vote for people who clearly despise them. Do you think progressives are voting for Trump? You are confusing “Republicans” with “voters who have to pick between these two morons and picked a different moron than I would prefer.”
Rural and working class Americans are often treated with contempt. That is simply a fact and has been a fact for a long time. Rural about 20% of voters, working class about 60%.
Americans with Appalachian or country or Southern accents are often treated with contempt. Pretending that isn’t true is simply kidding yourself. Southerners about 39%.
Very religious Americans are in fact often treated with contempt and condescension. Religious Americans, self-identified, 59%.
Americans with a sense of place and attachment to their local communities are often treated as lazy losers unwilling to “move to opportunity.” 60% of Americans live within 10 miles of where they grew up.
Trump exploited those real feelings of cultural grievance. He did not invent them. He won in part because he was on the majority side of enough pain points that got enough swing voters to see him as less unacceptable.
You can either respect what VOTERS care about and craft a message that matches that closely enough to reach a majority, or you can lose to people you should be able to beat, and have to live with the results.
Please explain the term "reverse watermelon." I know what a watermelon is in political terms. It is one who advances socialist or communist causes by presenting them as environmental: Green on the outside, red on the inside. But, what is a "reverse watermelon"? One who advances an environmentalist cause by pretending to be communist?
Democrats are framing the shut down as "your health care premiums" especially if you get via the ACA (16% of US), Republicans are framing it as free health care for illegal immigrants which might well resonate, I don't have a TV and so don't know how it's playing out. Premiums have gone up and will go up regardless, so overall not a bad strategy, no one gets down into the weeds of policy anyway.
The OBBB took out extra subsidies on premiums which made some no cost to the insured policies go away. So that is a premium issue. But millions of the insured had zero claims in 2024. So that raises fraud issues. At a minimum, it is a huge subsidy to insurance companies. So even if Democrats succeed in framing it as a premium issue, there is danger there. The extra subsidies don't go away until Dec but open enrollment is now.
True, -except with our government it often doesn't! Lol I dissagree with many things R's are trying to push with this bill, but you are spot on with this comment!
Every time I get in one these discussions, I am reminded of my late neighbor
HS grad, blue collar employee of airline. Spent decades as union rep on benefits committee. Knew his stuff. I would walk my dog along his fence line and he would come out to talk and we would talk policy about health plans. I have known CFO types that were as good but never one that was better. Good guy and I miss him yet
Bill Clinton put it best when he said that the Democrats stand for people who work hard and play by the rules. If only the fool hadn't fallen for a thong, he'd have gone down in history as one of the best presidents. Still, "work hard and play by the rules" was as "working class" as it gets, but universal and unifying at the same time. It was brilliant, and sadly forgotten.
How far the Democratic Party I supported for so long has strayed! These days, they pay consultants big bucks for "messaging," when "work hard and play by the rules" was as good as it gets, right up there with "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and "make America great again."
Is it a class gap? Yes and no. The numbers in the article show it, but as strongly drawn to hard data as I am, one thing I learned in finance was that the numbers, as critical as they are, have their limitations. Numbers are the tool of engineers. I love engineers and engineering, and we are in an engineering culture. But engineering will inevitably focus narrowly, and miss larger realities. This is why I am a huge fan of liberal arts, even if your average sociology professor makes me grind my teeth.
Back to Bill Clinton. I will say it again: "Work hard and play by the rules" is pure factory worker (I worked in two factories, and in potato fields and a rock quarry along the way), but it was universal. It applied from top to bottom, excluding the lazy and the criminal while favoring the productive. Any CEO could recognize it in his personal affairs, as much as the people who cooked and served his dinner in a fancy restaurant. Work hard and play by the rules. It was American idealism and pragmatism at its very best. It is how those of us who pay the bills in this joint live, fer chrissakes!
So now we have a Democratic Party run by rich "progressives" who for some reason don't think about working hard and playing by the rules, even though it's how they got to where they are. Their top priorities have nothing to do with climbing the ladder. Why? Because they already climbed it, and like Thurston Howell III from "Gilligan's Island," climbing the ladder isn't even on their radar screen.
I don't think there's as much class difference as all of this implies. I think something else is at play, encapsulated by two things my departed father would always say: "Never forget where you came from" and "Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time." The nouveau riche "progressives" who have come to run the Democratic Party don't want to think about how they climbed the ladder, or how the rest of America is forever trying to. Why not? What makes these people think they are so god damn special that they are above it all? Grrrrr.
Good post Jim. I reluctantly socialize with this crowd out of a sense of support for my wife. (There is a good reason that domestic tranquility is central to the Constitution.) They are smart, educated, and interesting yet they are overtly callous toward the working class with no appreciation for the struggles of everyday life. They are loathsome toffs who signal their status through a ritual of disparagement toward the less advantaged. It serves the same function as gang signs or tribal tattoos. Express any deviation from prescribed opinions and you're out - shunned and banished, never again invited to prestigious pretentious parties. So these people have to be god damned special in order to be above it all. A neurotic need to attain status cancels out their humanity.
Boy did you hit the nail on the head . 25 years in CA, before we were paroled. I was once at a dinner party, where dinner was late. Fueled by a 2nd drink on an empty stomach, I asked a very educated and wealthy woman who repeatedly mentioned CA's homeless problem was blown out of proportion in the Press, how she didn't notice the homeless at intersections, on the street and in front of world class restaurants in SF.
She patted my arm and explained she was just so perpetually rushed, her job so all consuming and important, she was just too busy to bothered by such a small problem.
It reminded me of being in an outdoor cafe in Istanbul one time, and discussing the street dogs that seemed omnipresent with a waiter. He shrugged and noted they had been around his whole life, so locals didn't notice, nor where they bothered. Of course, he was talking about dogs, not people.
I have to tell a story about my potato farmer friend. I tell him that he has no idea how much mileage I get from talking about him.
So in high school, he turns in a paper he wrote for a class, and the teacher accuses him of cheating. No one could do that well, she said. You must have copied it. Next day, he brings in all the materials he used. Slams them down on her desk in the 1960s in North Dakota, and says if you can find how I cheated, give me an F. Otherwise, give me an A+. He got the A+. And an apology. It was North Dakota, old school.
He gets out of high school, and the episode stuck with him, so he arranged to get an I.Q. test from a private examiner, which is how he knows his I.Q. is 164. One point shy of Albert Einstein. He's 1 in 100,000. Just for the hell of it -- well, okay, more than that -- he developed his own special seed potato last year or the year before. No one will care except for the U.S. patent office and the Belgian outfit that's building a $500 million potato processing factory in Grand Forks. They will care a whole lot.
Anyway, I digress. Anyone ever hear about the Glomar Explorer and Project Azorian? No? Then read the link.
At the age of 22, he was the radioman on the Glomar Explorer. How is it that a kid from North Dakota who was 2,000 miles from any ocean wound up in the Navy, anyhow? Answer: The Vietnam War was on, and his father told him to join the Navy because if he went into the Marines or the Army he'd come back in a box. Why not the Air Force? More opportunity in the Navy.
Anyway, the communications system on the Glomar wasn't working very well at all. The geniuses at CIA HQ in Langley, VA couldn't figure out why. My friend fixed it. Got a commendation and dinner with the ship's captain and senior officers, which was kinda sorta a big deal 50 years ago for an E-4. "How long did that take you?" I asked one day. "Half an hour. The physics part was a little complicated but the stratosphere stuff was easy."
Dumb farmer.
p.s.: They recovered a lot more of that Soviet sub than anyone was told.
Not really a good correlation between intelligence and education. I have known plenty of smart people with just a HS education, including my mother. Likewise, I have known plenty of dumbasses with doctorates.
As a rule, intelligent people thirst for education. I distinguish between credentials and education. In recent years, in some fields, I see a widening gap. I think this is why the Ivy League has been taken down a notch or two. Their standards have deteriorated, and it's been noticed.
On average I'd say there is. MDs generally higher, same with college profs, not all but most. Little formal edu here but tested out high. SATs keep out low IQ from engineering, MCATs from medicine etc. Undergrads are now close to average.
I don't have a "noble savage" thing about blue collar people. The "working class" is a mixed bag like any other bag. But I just don't have the economic snob gene, and bothers the hell out of me to see it. I'm a bit of an intellectual snob in the sense of not suffering fools gladly, or at least I was until I got to know the smartest man from sea to shining sea, a potato farmer in NE North Dakota who I tell all kinds of stories about.
A month and a half ago, I visited he and his wife, and he and I got down on our hands and knees together and dug up 100 pounds of spuds on one of the fields in his 400 acres, soon to become 1,000. All but about 15 spuds went to food banks, with the others serving as tips to hotel clerks and waitresses along the way West. The same guy routinely reads scientific papers, and occasionally tracks down the author and the author winds up having to write a correction.
There are some very, very smart people doing unglamorous things in this country's unlikeliest places. If some snotty "progressive" wants to get my friend angry, they'll call him a dumb farmer who needs to engage in critical thinking. Hoo boy. LOL
p.s.: Want to get an idea of the I.Q. distribution among the farmers? Go dig spuds some morning and listen to the guys who stop by while you're doing it. Keep your ears open, and find out the difference between 164 and 110.
I'm not so sure many climbed the ladder as merely started up further via their parents who were part of the great boom of the middle class. In the 70s college was still cheap and by 80 there was still only 17% with a bachelors. A bachelor of arts was an easy stepping stone to middle class stability and income.
The next gen, the children of professional boomers didn't have the exposure to knowing where they came from, they were already a generation removed. There was already a large income divide developing. They hired folks to hold their trousers while slipping into them two legs at a time.
I thought of the same thing, but a) didn't want to fuzz things up, and b) we don't really know what the economic profile is of the movers and shakers. On the second point, I'd love to read a taxonomy of how the Democratic Party is organized. With all due respect to Will Rogers, I presume there's an organization to it.
That is definitelly a big part of it, but I think there is an even larger issue that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, and that is the the form of geographic sorting that has occured in recent decades. And it isn't even prymarily in the form of an urban rural divide that this sorting takes place.
Indeed, there are still a great many professional class Republicans, independents, and even non elitist democrats (as weak as the latter tend to be these days) who come from professional class or elite backgrounds too, even some younger ones. Of course many such Republicans are also elitist just in their own way, so there is that. But there is a much larger scale cultural divide now.
Basically, a subculture and social class of mostly "progressive" (but decidedly not Republican or conservative) professonal class and wealthy people (though still including some of their downwardly mobile kin) have formed, and have lived in an increasingly geographically segregated manner from not only working class people (especially from working class whites) but also from those with differant politics, -including from college educated republicans, since at least 1970 or so. Almost every other group is less segregated, from each other at least. From what I can tell, the majority of this shift has occured just since 1990, and only since covid has it finally began to (vary slightly) go into reversal, at least temporarally.
This social class of progressives lives largely in upscale, gentrifying, or (to some extent, mainly among its less affluent members) transitional neighborhoods within large, densely urbanized, highly globally connected regions of the country. They live both within the urban core and in 'favored quarter' suburbs, -and within any estsblished older upscale suburbs closer to the city that may exist outside of it as well.
Others live in college towns or smaller upscale enclaves elsewhere, and many do still live regionally clustered in places like parts of the Pacific Northwest and Northeast (or even Minnesota) or Colorado, where they are more dominant in influence but also far more integrated with certian other demographics (especially with working class whites) then they are elsewhere. This latter aspect is part of why there has been so much chaos in places like Portland, Oregon or Minniapolis in recent years.
Every other segment of society, in every demographic, lives basically everywhere else in large numbers. Yes, there is still traditional forms of segregation elsewhere to various degrees, but every other group is at least likey to live in every other TYPE of place, from rural/small town, to exurb, to aging non elite suburb, to older regional city to sprawling suburban or sun belt boom town, even if not in every actual place in large numbers. And this is true within all regions of the country as well, not just a few geographically fairly small clusters.
Except for just this one fairly large (probably somewhere between 10-20% of the population) segment of society, that is...
Things seemed to finally reach a tipping point where this "progressive" upscale subculture largely detached from the rest of society and then began to go off the rails during Obama's secund term. This is now an enclave mentality write large, but the people who hold it largely seem to not even understand that they have it or at least not it's true implications. Or they are in deep denial. They are basically in a variable filter bubble, which often leads them to not notice the filter they are wearing untill it is too late.
The big change in income inequality (Gini Coefficient) in recent years has been the acceleration of the super rich away from the merely rich rather than middle class gaining on working class.
A lot depends on who is middle class, super rich, etc. The bottom half has nothing. The 10% is wealthier in aggregate than the 0.1% super rich or even the merely pretty rich 1%, because there are so many. The 10% of households would be 12 million houses. Half of consumer spending is from that demographic.
The 10% has also realized rapid gains in wealth. Income inequality has accelerated. The middle class hasn't done as well, with income or wealth, the 50 to 90 % I mean. Objectively I'd call the bottom half poor, almost no wealth, incomes very sticky. Lucky if they have a house.
The Democrats will welcome working class people back into the party when they finally shed their deplorable views. This comes across loud and clear in the Dems’ constant smug and condescending rhetoric. I’m not even convinced they’ll take the House in the midterms, bar a political catastrophe for the Rs.
It’s easier for Dems to dismiss problems with the economy, immigration, and crime, because as a group, they’re less affected by them. Though I’ll admit that I’m completely stumped on how people who hector us to “follow the science” can claim that men can become women, that a man dressed as a female in the women’s changing room is not creepy (and threatening) at all, and that their brand of racism is virtuous.
How can the party claim to want to “save democracy” when it lied about Biden’s condition, barred competition against him in the primaries, and anointed a candidate who had never even been in one single primary?
How does gerrymandering in California save democracy? I know Texas is doing it too. The solution to antidemocratic methods isn’t doubling down on them.
I’m at a loss. I’m angry. I’m frightened about where this is leading.
The Republicans can be cruel, but right now the Dems strike me as being more the dangerous party.
I have a long list of grievances against the Democrats. Near the top of my list is this: What principles do they have?
I fully understand the need for flexibility and compromise. But you have to believe in something for that to work. Yeah, the gerrymandering in California and now the embrace of a shutdown? When they opposed gerrymandering and shutdowns, they invoked high-minded principles. So they were just talking points. What principles does the Democratic Party actually have?
Agreed. They cite principles when they want to use them as weapons and ignore them when it suits their purposes.
Not that the Republicans don't do that too, but the Dems are the ones who are telling us they're saving democracy and civilization as we know it. Yet they're the ones who undermined it in 2024, in large part by lying. And the party that throbs over women's rights is more than happy to undermine them by allowing males to compete in female sports and by allowing men to enter women's spaces. And don't get me started on what they do to children in the name of their gender religion.
"Voters were given a choice between these two statements about Trump’s time in office so far: “Donald Trump is cleaning up chaos and disorder,” or “Donald Trump is creating chaos and disorder.” By 25 points (61-36 percent), white working-class voters think he’s getting rid of chaos and disorder, while white college-grad voters are almost exactly the reverse; by 27 points (63-36 percent) they think Trump is creating chaos and disorder. Interesting!"
This is really easy to understand. Democrats live in their heads more than do Republicans. So Trump is causing chaos in their heads... and their media feeds amplify the chaos in their heads. They blame Trump for their internal turmoil and lack the self-awareness that there isn't really much real that they can claim as actual material chaos causing.
Funny how Dems would not consider the open southern border, BLM and Antifa riots as chaos, but Trump sending ICE and the National Guard to bring order is somehow chaos.
These pieces are always well researched and thoughtful, without condescension, which is skill most Dem pundits lack. That said, they somewhat feel like discussions of living room paint color, as the rest of the Dem house burns around them.
58% of white college grads think Trump has gone too far with deportations? Those are hardly overwhelming stats. Only the Rep inability to message facts regarding immigration, crime and education has saved Dems from a successful political suicide.
Few Dems will acknowledge the obvious. 90% of Biden's 10 million lack valid asylum claims. Moreover, we lack housing, healthcare professionals, speciality teachers and the money to finance their existence. Thats does not mean migrants are personally flawed, only that most do not qualify for asylum or possess the education and skills to be economically self sufficient in a high cost of living, knowledge economy, like the US.
We know that because govt stats show 54% of all naturalized citizens, and legal and illegal immigrants are enrolled in US welfare programs. The same group now comprises more than 25% of all US poor. We are not curing anyone's poverty. We are relocating it.
Nor are prospects for their children much better. US public schools educate only 1/3 of students to grade level or better. That includes millions of US families with 2 college grad parents. Guess the rate for kids with non English speaking parents with 5th and 8th grade educations, dwelling in acute poverty?
The ramifications are everywhere. Been in an ER lately? 4-5 hour waits are now the new norm in many places. Had a fender bender with someone lacking a license and/ or insurance? Is your 3rd grader in need of extra teacher time, suddenly losing ground because because 3 new students speak 3 different languages, but none are English? 40% of CA is now too poor for subsidized Obamacare, and Medicaid dependent.
All this before we even mention the rest of the Dem unholy Trinity of Failure, crime and education. Dems are welcome to keep polling and rattling on incessantly about Trump's shortcomings. He is nearly 80 years old and term limited by both law and life. It does not appear failing Dem policy has any expiration date.
Progressives have a hostile view of Trump voters. It is this, not issues, that accounts for the massive switch in almost all demographic groups to Trump. It is what drove us, 50-year voting Democrats, to get out of the party.
I have noticed a ground-level aggressive intolerance among liberals of anyone who doesn't HATE Trump as much as they do. I was "de-friended" over it by someone I'd known for quite a while. Mind you, this is someone who knows that I've never voted for Trump (write-in for the last three presidentials) but that's not enough. The skins just get thinner and thinner.
Check out the senators who are up for reelection in 2028 and 2030. Even if the Democrats somehow hold on to *all* of their current seats in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania they are still a decided minority in the senate. And the next census will be bringing such demographic changes that it will be much harder for a Democrat to win the Electoral College. They Democrat senators in these swing states are basically serving at the pleasure of Republican-oriented voters in these purple/reddish states. My point is that they are way worse off than it appears with regard to the senate and probably the electoral college. Is there any hope? Think about the current Republican Party which managed to cobble together a ruling plurality (barely) by going full-on populist in 2016. How incredibly different is the 2024 GOP from the 2014 GOP? This should give hope to the Democrats. Can Democrats pull off a similar metamorphosis? I think that is the question that Ruy is asking. As one of those white, college educated (sort of) Republicans I can actually see the Democrats' being able to pull it off. It wouldn't really take much more than agreeing to work with Trump on some of his favorite issues. The country is desperate for comity and true bipartisanship on *anything*. But the current leadership in Washington seems incapable of this change (both sides). So it take a big change on the part of the Democratic voters to replace these leaders. There are still very strong Democrats at the state level. And Trump's "landslide" was only in the Electoral College. Yes, he won all the swing states, but other than Arizona they were all relatively close. This moment in time feels like the ship is sailing into the fog and the lights on the ship are beginning to fade into the darkness for the Democrats. There is still time to signal to the ship to come back, but it seems like that moment is rapidly closing. I don't want to live in a country governed exclusively by either of these dysfunctional parties.
We have another poster in this substack who's been tracking what he says is a surge in Republican voter registration vs. a decline in Democratic registration, and its relationship to elections. I have yet to dive into the deep end of that pool, but I will do so soon.
My gut feel, and that's all it is right now, is that the Democratic Party is a good deal closer to the precipice than many of their people want to see, or to admit. Putting aside the registration question (it intrigues the hell out of me, but I have to examine it), I note that the Democratic Party seems content with having lost FL, WV, OH, MO, IA, NE, ND, SD, and MT, and to have seen WI and MI become much more swing. Just wait: NJ and MN could be surprising.
Okay, they picked up ME, NH, and CO, and made GA, VA, and NC more swing. Now, as a numbers nerd and an arithmetic wiz from the age of five, I have to ask these smug geniuses: "Can you add and subtract?" And then there's that there "live for the moment" thing. Must be quite the "progressive" religion, because it sure doesn't seem like they're thinking of what happens after '30. And they're not too good at history, either. In that sense, they remind me of the wingnuts who acted as if history began with Reagan, or of Francis Fukayama, whose "The End of History and the Last Man" was laughable even before they put it in the book stores.
I have to point something out: Trump only looks like he was sudden. I try, and usually fail, to make liberals understand that the guy's ascendancy is as much symptom as cause. He's sui generis, but he didn't come out of nowhere. America has a way of puking up some surprising people. Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dick Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump. You just never know which person, but each one of them fit the times where they appeared.
None of them was "constructed" through "messaging," with the possible exceptions of Reagan and Clinton, at least partially. So if the Democrats somehow think they'll come up with their own Donald Trump, all I can say is this: "Stick a fork in them; they're done." Really, that's not how it works. Not how it has ever worked. If I had any pull in the Democratic Party, I'd tell them to get off your god damned high horses and spend all of your time west of the Appalachians and east of the Cascade-Sierras, and see if you can bear to find America. Go look for America, you arrogant fools.
It just kills me to see how out of touch the Democratic Party has become. Really: Just how is it that a fat, sarcastic billionaire from New York God Damn City is closer to the people than they are? Maybe it's time, figuratively I promise, to take the Democratic Party out behind the barn and shoot 'em. They're that bad.
The above is kind of the key. Many new Reps voters are not new to voting, they are former Democrats. New voters are great, but when Reps poach a former Dem voter, they are subtracting from Dem totals, while adding to their own. Far better than just adding to Rep counts.
The Republicans, for all of Trump's glaring deficiencies of character, are playing the politics of addition. The Democrats have been playing the politics of subtraction ever since Obama ran for re-election in 2012.
Climbing the ladder, if the steps are not changed, only implies that for those who climb up there must be an equal number who are pushed down. All workers should get adequate pay, benefits and respect for their work even if they are at the bottom of the ladder. All workers should have access to good health care and affordable housing.
There needs to be an increase of higher level jobs for widespread upward mobility. This was true in the post WWII years. When the economy is stagnant there are still opportunities for talented individuals to move up the ladder, but this entails someone else moving down. Just do the math. Greater investment by companies could create more jobs at the upper ranks but companies seem to be more interested in short term profits than long term investments.
So in your world, for someone has to move up, someone else has to move down. You have never studied the history of this country that you don't begin to understand and would never want to understand, have you? Tell us: What Ivy League finishing school gave you a diploma? What business did you create? How many people owe their living to your efforts? What have you accomplished on your own? Anything? Which Washington, D.C. politician do you work for? Absent that, which government agency? Please don't be a "teacher."
Creating more jobs at a higher level allows for many more individuals to move up without anyone moving down. That is what we need, a more dynamic economy.
The issue for the Democrats is how to hold the college educated voters that everyone hates here while addressing the issues that everyone loves here. Maybe it is impossible and, like the GOP from 1932 until recently, the Democrats will only win elections when the opposing party has a bad candidate or otherwise screws up. As most here seem to love the Trump agenda on tariffs, immigration, climate and crime, maybe that's not so bad and we should just quit worrying about the Democrats?
I am college educated and damn proud of both my undergrad education and my Wharton MBA. The difference between myself and "progressives" is that I have never looked down on those who didn't go to college. In fact, the smartest American I've ever known (measured I.Q., 164) dropped out of college and rescued his grandfather and father's farm. Stop being such a smug "progressive" snob.
Colgate, Boston College Law and Simon School of Business. But I grew up in a blue collar family and never could leave the ethos.
The democrat party lost me a long time ago. I never could bring myself to join the Republican party though. I'm a registered independent and will likely die that way.
For me, both parties are part of a political establishment that's long since lost the confidence (justifiably so) of the whole of the people.
When I was at Wharton, I called Volvos "cars for rich people." Trust me, some of my classmates were a good deal more affluent than I was, and didn't have a clue. LOL
And actually, the article on which I commented made the distinction between white college-educated voters and others. Apparently according to Mr Teixeira, those are the smug progressive snobs who still favor the Democrats. I don't do any polling myself.
I certainly did not mean to suggest that everyone who went to college is against Trump (or that everyone who did not go to college loves him). If you would prefer, my comment is equally applicable if you substitute your term, "smug 'progressive snob," for what I suggested would be left of the Democratic Party. So, you win. The Democratic party will control those few areas that like smog 'progressive snobs' and the issues those people care about you who are not sps will rule nearly everything, that will be wonderful, and there is no problem here left to solve. Still better, I will be off this site at the end of November when my 1 year subscription runs out.
While it's true I like some of Trump's agenda, or three out of the four you mention, there's a ton more I'm not crazy over at all, and where generally the Democratic Party has a better track record, the social safety net, health care, and taxes for instance. Ultimately I think the Democratic Party has a better chance of doing good than the Republican Party, we've simply blown it on some key issues.
The college educated are needed for any society, without them there is no science or technology, no arts, no society itself. The Democratic Party used to be a conglomeration of both, the inteligencia, and the blue collar, of late the party has become estranged from the working class, implemented policies detrimental to our well being, I simply want policies that benefit all, or most of us.
The real problem is not a “class divide” in the strict sense but the suffocating effect of Trumpaganda — the multifaceted, ubiquitous, and highly effective media and cultural ecosystem that shields Trump from accountability and keeps much of his base from recognizing how badly he is betraying their own values.
By Trumpaganda I mean the closed-loop information environment that includes Fox News, talk radio, Facebook and TikTok memes, Elon Musk’s X amplification, MAGA church pulpits, merchandise, and peer networks. It saturates working-class communities daily with the message that Trump is their warrior and Democrats are their enemies. Every failure is pre-explained (“deep state sabotage,” “fake news,” “Biden’s fault”), every betrayal reframed as loyalty, every doubt neutralized by identity: to turn against Trump is to betray your community. In that environment, lived experience — higher prices from tariffs, lost manufacturing jobs, healthcare costs, the chaos of Jan. 6 — is blotted out.
If voters judged only by outcomes, they would see Trump trampling their values (fairness, accountability, law and order, community stability, respect for service), failing to deliver on core promises (jobs, cheaper healthcare, draining the swamp), and actively harming them (tariffs functioning as a hidden tax, inflicting job losses, stripping away insurance, inflaming instability). But Trumpaganda convinces them that pain is actually proof of loyalty — that suffering is the price of “fighting back.”
Democrats’ failure is that they have not developed a strategic response to this propaganda machine. They keep treating the problem as a matter of demographics and priorities — college vs. noncollege — instead of confronting the informational armor that keeps Trump’s base locked in.
A serious strategy would include:
Message: Stop framing Trump only as a threat to democracy. Frame him as a betrayer of his own voters. “Trump promised. Trump betrayed. You’re paying the price.” Tie every failure directly to kitchen-table pain — groceries, rent, healthcare, jobs lost to tariffs.
Messengers: Elevate voices that Trump’s voters trust — disillusioned Republicans, ex-Trump voters, veterans, farmers, union workers, pastors. Stories beat statistics.
Mediums: Go where working-class voters are — local radio, short-form video, peer networks — not just elite outlets.
Narrative Discipline: Stay on message. Repeat it endlessly. Pair critiques with alternatives: “We could have cheaper medicine and more jobs if we stopped the tariff scam and invested here at home.”
Until Democrats stop treating this as a simple “class gap” and start treating it as a battle against Trumpaganda, they will continue to hemorrhage working-class support. The paradox is that Trump is failing spectacularly on his own terms — but unless Democrats find a way to puncture the propaganda bubble, his base will never see it.
Stupid? Stupidity knows no party lines. Many, perhaps most, Dems have been taken in by a certain strain of leftist indoctrination that has various names - "woke mind virus" is one, though "critical theory disorder" is more descriptive. This makes Democrats attribute many social problems incorrectly solely to power imbalances in which straight white males impose their will on members of historically marginalized racial, ethnic and gender communities. This is untenable for several reasons, including the failure to take socioeconomic class and the culture of the minority into consideration.
Like the Right, the Left has effective channels for disseminating and enforcing its ideology through propaganda. The 1619 Project, which incorrectly framed the nation's founding as a means to perpetuate slavery, is one such example that was propagated by The New York Times, a pillar of liberalism with progressive leanings.
There is a difference, though, and it is that the Dems are somewhat more tolerant of dissent within their ranks that the Right. For example, many Democrats have come around to the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab leak. In contrast, there is great unwillingness in Trump's base to accept the demonstrable fact that the 2020 election was not stolen.
Dems "have come around to the possibility" after Senile Joe's minions strongarmed Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube into censoring anyone who said so, and "debanking" conservatives. Oh, isn't is great that they "have come around?" LOL
"Message: Stop framing Trump only as a threat to democracy. Frame him as a betrayer of his own voters. 'Trump promised. Trump betrayed. You’re paying the price.' Tie every failure directly to kitchen-table pain — groceries, rent, healthcare, jobs lost to tariffs."
But make sure not to mention egg prices. Remember 7 months ago? Pepperidge Farm remembers, and so do I. Liberals were throwing those prices in Trump's face after he was inaugurated. Being a retired finance guy, I know where to look, and have followed that one not only in the two rural grocery stores where I shop, but in the wholesale market, and at Costco, where I go every couple months to stock up.
It's a 160-mile round trip, but I LOVE Costco and don't care that they are liberals. Every time I go, I tell the cashier that I am a happy Costco victim and have been shopping there for 30 years. Then a scarf down a $1.50 hot dog and soda. And them $5 rotisserie chickens? Wow. Thank you Costco. You are my friend.
Anyway, wholesale egg prices peaked on March 2 of this year at $8.17/dozen. Today, October 2, $1.16. For the arithmetically impaired (because math is racist), that's an 86% decline. Oh, you might say, egg prices haven't declined that much at the store. True. Now tell me: Did you pay $8.17 at Safeway? Nope. Where I live, they peaked at $6.50. Two days ago, they were $2.39.
p.s.: I have never appreciated Trump's bombast and overstatement at all. That said, I have not exactly appreciated liberals calling me a fascist, a Nazi, and a bloodthirsty "ammosexual" because I am a gun owner. And a racist because I'm white, and an idiot because I live in a rural area. So there.
I went to Costco one time and that was enough. Who has two hours to wonder thru a warehouse with no signage? I'm single - why would I want to buy a package of 12 muffins and a 2 pound bag of shredded cheese? I did save $10 when I rented a car - big whoop.
The great thing about America is that you don't have to go to Costco. We like the big portions. It helps to have a freezer. By the way, their $5 rotisserie chickens cost half as much as the ones at our local store, are much tastier, and almost twice the size. I like the 40-lb sacks of dry dog food, and the big packages of the wet stuff in cans. Good prices, too. A bag of chips that's twice as big as what's at the local store for the same price. All-purpose flour at the local store is a buck a pound; at Costco, it's 38 cents.
The worst you'll find at Costco is the same price, an example being razor blades. But usually things are cheaper there. Yeah, it takes a few visits to figure out what is where, I'll grant you that. We always go to the same one, and have long since figured out where everything is. But hell, if you don't like the stores, there are others.
Of course, this is America and I don't have to shop there, I'm just puzzled about the attraction. In my case it's about a 30 minute drive through traffic and it's just not worth the hassle and after gas and time am I really saving anything? I can go three blocks away, pay more, and have access to clean, well-lit stores with more brand choices and not wait to check out, and be home for dinner with my more expensive chicken lol.
I go there incident to another errand I have to do every month and a half or so. Their prices are significantly cheaper, and as for variety of brands, they have the best packaged dinners that aren't available locally. So I wait for 5 minutes. Meh. I laugh at the anti-Costco commentary, especially the wingnuts who go after them for being "woke."
People do not watch Fox News, or listen to AM talk radio, or look at posts on X, because they have to. They do it because they choose to. If you object to that, offer them something they will like better.
Given that half the country is conservative, you'd think that there'd be at least ONE conservative broadcast network. Nope, so over time we see a steady growth of conservative competitors taking eyeballs away from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and NPR. Gee, who would've thought? LOL
Rachel Maddow has won three Emmy Awards, a Television Critics Association Award, a Du Pont Award, a Grammy Award, a Hillman Prize, a Walter Cronkite Award, and a long list of awards from homosexual organizations. Stephen Colbert has won two Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, and a Grammy Award. Greg Gutfeld, who has won no broadcast awards at all, attracts an audience twice the size of Maddow's and has trounced Colbert in ratings for several years. I suggest that the discrepancy between the talk show hosts who win broadcast awards and the talk show hosts the American people choose to watch is primarily a matter of social class--whom do you feel the need to please? Maddow and Colbert please the people inside the media bubble while Gutfeld pleases those outside of it.
So they hand out awards to each other. So impressive! It's an incestuous, self-congratulatory circle jerk. I love it when the N.Y. Times has the occasional article about what the late-night shows said the night before, while studiously ignoring the late night show that's more popular than the others combined. I would call all of those exhibits that explain what's at the link below.
Something BIG happened a year ago. Joe "Who In Hell Is He?" Rogan got 70 million hits for two three-hour interviews, one with Trump and the other with Vance. Meanwhile, 60 Minutes typically might get 10 million viewers, and last year they actually spliced one of Harris's answers onto the end of a question that it didn't match.
I'm going to reveal a biographical detail here: I've had two careers, one in finance and before that, in journalism. I was in Washington for 5 years from 1985 to 1990, and held a "Hill pass" and White House credentials. You know that briefing room? I hung out there about a dozen times. I wasn't a big fan of the whole thing back then -- I decided to quit going to the White House because I had actual work to do -- but journalism really fell off a cliff in the early '00s and has never stopped falling.
I could go on at length about how I was educated and trained, and how I practiced. Journalism was in trouble in the 1970s and slowly deteriorated in the '80s and '90s, but really went into its late Roman Empire stage when the NY Times ran that phony WMD series by Judith Miller in I think 2002. The other body blow was when Ted Turner sold CNN to Time Warner.
So they can give each other as many god damned awards as they want to. They've always been somewhat ridiculous, but when the NYT won a Pulitzer for their bullshit "1619 Project," which by the way I checked out of my local library and actually got two-thirds of the way through, I stopped paying any attention even to Pulitzers, which were the Holy Grail.
Anyway, in '28, I expect the alternative media to be steering the ship. Oh, the legacy guys will still be there, pretending that they are what they once were, but they won't have much influence. Watch out for Rogan, and probably Gutfeld. They'll matter. Rachel Maddow? You're joking, right?
Today, journalism is in hospice care. It's depressing and scary to be honest, but I'm an optimist underneath. Journalism will be reconstituted at some point starting in the '30s and flowering in the '40s, but without the awards among other things.
Did you see the latest Biden reveal with pictures on cards so he would know who he was talking to? One of cards was of ABC's Mary Bruce with the question she was going to ask at an upcoming press conference. Shameful what journalism has turned into.
Or Dems could realize Trump is a near 80 year old, term limited President, with expiration dates sooner rather than later, and seek to revamp polices that roughly 60% of the US dislike.
The notion that people with young kids, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, bath in Trump propaganda all day, is a bit hard to swallow. Those Americans work one or two jobs, then they clean their own homes, prepare their own food and launder their own clothing. A staff of foreign domestics does not relieve them of household chores.
Dems obsession with Trump and his mythical hold on 1/2 the country, prevents Dems from amending broadly unpopular policies. That is the problem, not the messaging or the manner in which they criticize Trump.
"the closed-loop information environment that includes Fox News, talk radio, Facebook and TikTok memes, Elon Musk’s X amplification, MAGA church pulpits, merchandise, and peer networks"
Oh, but I thought you were talking about the closed-loop information environment that includes all four broadcast TV networks, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Associated Press, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Steve Colbert, 99% of Hollyweird ... oh wait, couldn't be that! OL
A familiar pattern emerges in threads like this: a critique of Trump’s behavior or the right-wing media ecosystem meets a barrage of replies that don’t directly engage the argument, but instead pivot to grievance, moral self-flattery, or lifestyle defensiveness.
This isn’t accidental. For many, Trumpism functions less as a political preference and more as a social identity. Criticism of Trump is perceived not as a policy dispute but as a personal attack — on one’s intelligence, values, or community. That’s why the replies aren’t designed to persuade or refute. They’re designed to defend the self and signal in-group belonging.
Hence the sudden pride in doing one’s own laundry, the fixation on egg prices, the complaints about being called a racist or fascist. These aren’t rebuttals. They’re cultural affirmations. They say: “We are decent, hardworking, grounded — unlike the elites who look down on us.”
This is the deeper function of the propaganda ecosystem: not to convince on the merits, but to pre-frame any challenge as hostile and to substitute moral grievance for engagement. In that context, facts bounce off. Evidence becomes an insult. And loyalty becomes proof of virtue.
No one should expect minds to change in a thread like this. But it’s important to name the pattern, because it explains why even obvious betrayals — failed promises, corruption, incitement — don’t register as disqualifying. The political has become personal, and the personal is armored against outside input.
My issue with most of the attacks on Trump is that they are shallow, knee-jerk exercises, riddled with boilerplate and broadsides. I have never voted for him on account of his character deficiencies, manifested by his thin-skinned trolling, his bombast, his constant hyperbole, and his indiscipline and often indignity.
I just could not get past what I mentioned, but I do respect his abilities. He does have a talent for cutting to the quick, for piercing the empty gas baggery even while being a gasbag himself. I think he's correct about the U.S. getting hosed in trade relations by our putative "allies," and his attack on the climate change religion, and on the so-called cultural issues.
Even if I can't support his methods, I can understand them and at times sympathize. The "progressives" need to have their smug, arrogant asses kicked up one side of the block and back down the other. They are errant children and deserve spankings and even a good whipping. I just wish ol' Archie Bunker Trump was a little more, um, judicious about it. I have no trouble with the harshness, but the erratic part doesn't sit well with me. Go get 'em, Trump, but don't be so tempermental.
The usual accusations: corruption, threatening democracy, blah blah blah? When I see that lazy crap, my tendency is to want to tell whoever is throwing that shallow. stupid, obnoxious tantrum to go to bed without supper.
Parks, in every election cycle, liberals pay consultants good money, hundreds of millions of it, to tell them that their conservative competitors are ignorant, neurotic and self-defeating at best, and racists and fascists at worst. Why can't some of that money be yours? Hang out a shingle, print some letterhead, and offer your services as a Democratic campaign consultant. If your customers win, claim the credit. If your customers lose, you've still got the money. Good luck!
Agreed that Democrats need to work on developing positive messaging to complement their criticism, and that both parties could benefit from tolerating more diverse policy stances amongst their ranks.
But isn't withholding criticism of the opposition when they do something awful--even if they do something awful every other day--simply because you're afraid of hurting someone's feelings, and because the opposition is going to label you "histrionic", just reverse wokeness?
The opposition should be critical, but as someone who's been around for a long time I can't recall a period where the opposition was less effective than the Democratic Party's opposition right now. "I don't like him" really doesn't cut it.
I was surfing the comment section of leftist bubbles again. I really hope Ruy is correct about normal people not living on line because if he is wrong, we are in big trouble.
True--although it's difficult to do much when you are out of power and saddled with sclerotic leadership. The party needs new blood and a charismatic leader who knows how to message in the modern social media era, and who can organize it around a positive, identifiable platform. (and while they're at it perhaps inform their populists that the word 'socialism', whatever they really mean by it, has huge historical baggage from the Cold War that you don't want to carry around)
But when the opposition, and the sitting president that leads it, is sending troops into major American cities for no discernible reason beyond 'crime', and talking about using them as training grounds; or monetizing the presidency to the tunes of billions of dollars; or suing media organizations for merely criticizing them; or limiting vaccines that help provide herd immunity to key diseases; etc., etc.--they should be criticized for doing so. Even if that means constant criticism, should they choose to do something egregious every week. (a deliberate strategy, if we are to believe Steve Bannon) Or, at the very least, it is contradictory to reprimand the woke left (as Ruy, myself and I'm guessing you probably do) for constantly saying "Well your criticism of X may be true but you mustn't say it out loud because group Y would find it offensive and you'll be labeled 'racist'" and on the other hand also argue "Well yes [insert egregious act by your political opposition] may be worthy of severe criticism but you must withhold/minimize said criticism because you might make group X feel bad and you'll be labeled 'histrionic'".
And Ruy has more or less said or directly implied the latter of those two statements in multiple articles now. I just find it harder to take his criticism of woke left politics seriously when he advocates for woke right politics as a response. Wokeness and its illiberal excesses needs to end everywhere, IMO.
One difference between the "progressives" and the hated flyover "normies" is that we normies don't put quotation marks around the word crime, as if there is something wrong with noticing or opposing it. Where I live now, if some addicted dirtbag tries "crime" against us, there's a damn good chance they will wind up dead. When asked what my home defense gun is, I reply: "Which room?"
In the front hall closet, a Henry Big Boy rifle in .357. In a footstool, a Dan Wesson revolver in .357. Each with a set of shooting "ears" next to it, and a magnetic flashlight attached to the barrel. The dog will wake me up, and if the criminal gets in he will see an old man in his underwear wearing headphones, holding a gun, the flashlight set on strobe. The old man will say as calmly as he can: "By the time I count to three, you will will be face down on the floor. Whether you are still alive depends on what you do right now." Laugh if you want, but that's how it will go.
The sheriff in our 55%-45% Republican rural county will look at the details, and then he will shake my hand and invite me to a steak dinner. The county prosecutor will be there and he won't charge me. Other way around: They will thank me for solving a problem. Why? Because what's mine is mine, and if you or your friends think they will take it, they should think again. Don't like that? Think I'm a bloodthirsty killer? Fine. Think what you want, but don't try to take what's ours. Thieves are slavers, and I will not be someone's slave. Hate me now.
There's a reason why your blue cities and blue states are stagnating.
I don't hate you, and crime is very real, and serious, and should be dealt with through robust policing, no disagreement there--the quotes are there to denote that its *mere existence* is far too nebulous a justification to warrant the extreme measure of deploying the military to a domestic civilian environment. That is something reserved for exceptional crises and exceptional circumstances. If the existence of crime alone justified military deployments to a US city or town, then you could justify permanently occupying every city and town in the country. We've seen what that looks like--it's ugly and we had to fight two world wars to stop those types of governments from conquering Europe. Crime should be dealt with through local policing, by officers who know their town or city, like your sherriff--it shouldn't be outsourced to the military.
Applying it to your example: if troops from the US military were combing the landscape of your rural county and stationed outside your house, and all your neighbors' houses, and your sheriff was replaced by an army colonel, and when you asked him why his battalion was deployed there he merely said "we heard there was a robbery somewhere", and that he wasn't sure when or if they would leave, I doubt you (or your average normie, for that matter) would be happy with the situation.
And remember--it's Trump's military now, but if it's made a precedent one day it could be president AOC sending in troops to your town to 'stop racism' or for some similarly ridiculous reason.
But that is not what is happening. DC is under federal control, and the exception. The NG stands on the street deterring crime by their presence and freeing cops to go into areas of the city, that need more attention.
In other cities, the National Guard is there to protect federal workers and property. They are not stationed in front of houses and the military have not replaced the police force.
Dems are far more concerned with academic possibilities, than reality of much of the US. People are attacking ICE agents. Elderly widows in urban areas who cannot safely leave their homes alone at night. Open drug use. So many young women that share a slight resemblance violently murdered, the Dem Congressperson can't keep their names straight.
Dems are so consumed with their mythical slippery slope they ignore what actually would have to transpire for Dem nightmares to materialize. We have Courts. Trump, unlike Biden, does not defy SCOTUS. Moreover, the military and ICE are heavily minority in many places. In Texas more than 1/2 of ICE agents are minorities and they always have been. The notion they are grabbing Hispanics off the street without cause is ridiculous. They and their families and friends, are often the Hispanics on the streets.
It's true that in DC's case legality isn't an issue, since as you said there are special laws to put DC under federal control. But, again, military deployments in civilian environments are meant for exceptional situations, not to do things local police can do. Whether it's legal or not, it's still a bad idea.
I think you can be concerned with the slippery slope *and* recognize people's concerns about issues like crime. You could, and should, do more than one thing at a time. And if you truly want the federal government to assist a city with a crime epidemic, providing additional funding and infrastructure to its police force is a far better long-term solution. But you should also be honest about the state of things--a single assault (the pretext for the DC shutdown) does not constitute a national crisis, and crime has been falling in places like Chicago. Portland is not a 'warzone', and the president shouldn't be directing the military to act based off what he sees on television.
That's the type of thing you do when you militarize a federal entity and send it into a city with little knowledge of local conditions to takeover the functions of local law enforcement. Again, the best solutions for crime (including illegal residency) are local ones. Using the BBB's funds to bolster the immigration enforcement capacity of local police (and reform the asylum system) is a far better long-term solution to problems of illegal immigration than constructing a de facto paramilitary force which will inevitably be abused.
But I do think the Democrats should also talk about these better solutions *while* criticizing the bad ones Trump and (most) of the R's are providing. It should also be recognized that it is difficult to do so when you're A.) out of power and B.) there's a new act of overreach practically every other day.
The feds are using the Nat'l Guard to defend federal property. We don't have any federal property in our county. All the rest is your paranoia and love of illegal aliens talking. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military for policing. By the way, where were "progressives" when the Nazi governor of NY put the National Guard in the subways? LOL
The president and GOP leaders are saying otherwise--they claim the DC shutdown, and the proposed deployments to major cities, is to crackdown on crime, not just for the narrow purpose of defending federal property. (and in DC the assaults that were cited as a pretext for beginning the deployment didn't happen on federal property) They haven't provided specifics beyond that. (and they haven't recognized that crime has been falling, not rising, in the cities they propose to deploy to.) Since there's always crime going on, even when the crime rate in a city is exceptionally low, that's an excuse for an open-ended deployment.
And sure the Posse Comitatus Act says the military can't do policing, but if the executive branch merely needs a thin pretext to make something a "national crisis", then it's a toothless law. If the executive can simply declare 'crime in American cities' a national emergency requiring a military response, it can feasibly use the military to supplant local police, because (according to it) the military's there to serve a 'national' function.
You may not have federal property in your county, but if the executive can declare 'crime in America' (or even just 'crime in state X') as a national crisis that authorizes a military response, then so long as there is crime in your county--of any sort--they'll have an excuse to send in the troops. And it's not realistic to say 'no crime of any sort will ever be committed in my county'. Even counties in which crime is rare will still have a crime occur on occasion.
I don’t know, things today feel an awful lot like they did a year ago, with one party giving voice to the primary concerns that determined the 2024 election and the other continuing to ignore them and, worse, claiming the issues don’t even exist (societal impacts of Biden’s illegal immigrants, crime in our big cities, Leftist political violence, etc…)
I also think you need to account for the ‘stickiness’ of the Trump/GOP convert. Switching from Democrat to Republican, especially in the Trump era, is not a decision one easily comes to. As we all know, doing so earns you instant admonishment and ridicule from the left, including friends, family, coworkers, etc. (if you’re vocal about it). It’s a ‘crossing of the Rubicon’ of sorts. Once you’ve crossed that line, it becomes very difficult to cross back. To do so rejoin those who hate you and to validate their hate. This drives one further down the path of ‘fuck me? No, fuck YOU!’ and, in my opinion, with good cause.
Democrats have not changed a single thing since their 2024 electoral ass whooping. They’ve doubled-down on the ‘war on democracy’ and ‘Trump/MAGA are fascists’ arguments, which America resoundingly rejected in 2024. It’s to the extent now where they’re in open rebellion against the federal government over deportations, an issue most Americans agree is valid at the very least, if not vocally supportive of. What are these people to think of the riots taking place at ICE detention centers, the doxing of federal agents, the ambush-style attacks on ICE, the attempted murders, the bounties? Shockingly, Democrats have not distanced themselves from this. They are too weak, they lack any governing principle, and have no clear party leader.
If the 2026 elections were to occur this Fall, Republicans would gain seats in the house. I don’t see that changing based on the Democrats current trajectory.
I like to analyze this through the lens of Martin Gurri's five wave theory of communications. The educated class flourished in the Age of Gutenberg with printed books they could argue about and Mass Media they could control. The last 100 years has been the age of the administrative state with lots of jobs for educated class. But with independent media and populist nationalism the age of the educated seems to be coming to an end.
Interesting polling no doubt, I've been slicing and dicing it since it came out. I like that question about "do you consider the other folks to be fellow Americans or the enemy" LOL Watch out for those non voters he he.
I couldn't understand the difference the poll of No College vs No BA, I'd guess they include BS within BA, but what about an associates or some college as they sometimes ask. Those results would be different. I guess I should read the fine print, probably there somewhere.
What people believe and what they are willing to do about it are two different things. Let’s take a poll on the policies the Dems will force on us, written or just actions that will be taken, and see how they fare. Oh that’s right, they have no answers. Will they have any by 2026? The odds are against it. At this point, I would say the 2026 elections are not looking good for the Dems. They have already lost twice on the strategy of just attacking Trump. From what I observe, they’re willing to die on that hill again.
I hear a lot about the Democrats’ messaging problem. Well, duh. Democrats (1) have no vision for the country that does not include rule by right-thinking technocrats, (2) have lied and obfuscated about critically important issues for years (Biden’s cognitive state, inflation, immigration, et al) so have zero credibility outside their core activists , and (3) have demonstrated their willingness to dismiss the beliefs of over half the country in order to pursue a victim mentality and satisfy a small vocal minority. I submit that the Democrats’ problems go way beyond messaging.
Sad to say I completely agree, regarding Democratic leadership at rhe federal level at least. But the problem is that this infects the whole party now. I would not agree that the entire party is truly like this, not even close, but at this point a majority do seem to be and those who are not are still negatively influenced by it when not outright bullied into submission, so much so that dissidents within the party and those of better charecter have little to no power within it and often cannot be trusted to be consistant. I would say that those who are sincere are plagued by a degree of deeply unrealistic idialism, and/or denialism at this point. At the local and even state level (only in some states) we still have a dwindling but fair number of mostly resonable Democrats.
I say this as someone who is a former Democrat, whose overall views are still closer to Dems then to R's on most (but not all) issues, who never voted Trump, and who is sickened by much of what Trump has done and is threatening to do. But Democrats have truly broken any belief I once had in them. Elitism dishonesty and ideological ferver have taken over. So I come here to rant, and otherwise try to avoid excess thinking or discussion of politics...
Your experience may be different than mine. In eastern Washington I have not been thrilled with some of the local Republican candidates and have actively sought out the local Democrats who were running. I tried numerous times to get them to declare that they would be willing to honestly oppose the western Washington ultra-progressive Democrats when they go off the deep end (which is often) and truly represent the views of us on the dry side of the state. I was never able to get them to commit. In Washington state moderate local Democrats are those who vote the party line only 99.9% of the time. If they refuse to represent me, then there's no way I am supporting them.
In California we have a super majority of Democrats in state government, even more so (quite a bit more so) then in Washington or Oregon.
Most are like you refer, but we also have a sizable faction of Dems (a minority) in the legeslature that is is actually somewhat moderate in their votes and who do (sometimes) manage to block off the rails legeslation, though not the majority of the time because they are so inconsistsnt and unreliable. And we have a horrible governor and unelected bureaucrats deciding on many of our worst policies... So yeah, generally no thanks for me too!
However, we do still have a lot of old school blue dog dems at the local level in some parts of the state. Many of the latter would probably be Republicans or independents elsewhere.
Oh I believe you! I have heard plenty of similer stories as well, from people I know and trust. I am in the SF Bay Area so it is indeed a very differant type of local social/political context then where you live. However I would say that while seemingly quite differant responces, both of these very much ultimately fit within the same larger disfunctional picture...
It seems that working class voters prioritize economic issues while the college educated prioritize cultural issues. The only real economic issue in the perception of the Democrats is health care and even there the hill the Democrats have picked to die on in the shutdown is health care for illegal immigrants, This pushes the issue back into the cultural category. (Or worse, ghosts 12M of the people with fully subsidized premiums had 0 claims of any kind in 2024.) Democrats try to dress up climate change as economics but the public is buying it. It is the reverse watermelon issue that was covered here last weekend. At some point, Democrats need to choose and decide who they are.
While working class voters prioritize pocket book issues there are many cultural issues that are non starters. You cannot despise people with mainstream views and say it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to work to simply stick with the 20 side of 80/20 issues and hammer on grocery prices.
The working class knows how much the average D college educated leader hates them. The leadership of the D party and all the groups that own them need to be cored like an apple and replaced with folks who actually like the majority of the electorate rather than seeing them as a giant social justice project.
Talking Point: “Despising Mainstream Voters” Is a Propaganda Projection
Lincoln said “with malice toward none” — today it feels like malice toward all.
When MAGA voices say Democrats “despise mainstream voters,” what they really mean is: Democrats despise Trump and his administration. And with good reason: many of these figures have behaved despicably, undermining institutions, stoking division, and promoting destructive ideologies.
The idea that Democrats despise “ordinary Americans” is not fact, but a propaganda trope that converts criticism of Trump’s policies into hatred of his supporters.
In reality, what each side despises are stereotypes:
Democrats caricature “MAGA voters” as ignorant, bigoted, and authoritarian.
MAGA caricatures Democrats as elitist, woke, anti-American socialists.
Sometimes, individuals lean so fully into the stereotype that they become despicable in their behavior. But that is not the same as despising millions of “mainstream voters.”
The vicious cycle is this: extremists on both sides profit by personalizing political disagreements — turning policy differences into contempt for entire groups of people. That keeps the conflict going, because demonization energizes turnout.
✅ Core Takeaway:
Democrats don’t “despise mainstream voters.” They despise Trump, his cronies, and the machinery of Trumpaganda — which has made despising Democrats a core cultural marker of MAGA identity. The mutual stereotyping locks us in a cycle of reciprocal contempt, even though most people’s real differences are political, not personal.
I wasn't sure who to vote for in '12. I wasn't too impressed with Obama after a while, so I looked at Romney. He lost me when he divided America between makers and takers. Not that he was necessarily wrong, but there was a smugness, an arrogance, and a divisiveness that strongly repelled me. God damn the filthy rich bastard is what I thought then, and still think now.
Along comes Hillary Clinton in '16. She says that half of Trump's supporters are part of a "basket of deplorables." By then I'd already walked away from the Democrats, but if I didn't think so badly of Trump I'd have voted for him out of retaliation. As I write, I am struggling to control my anger at that (expletive deleted). Just who in the hell did she think she was, and for that matter just who in the hell does she think she is? Ugh!
I have cast write-in votes in the last three presidential elections. I have been following J.D. Vance, and very much like what I am seeing. I will be surprised if I don't vote for him in '28. The Democrats now make Hillary Clinton look tame.
Takaway from me is that Democrats (my former party, now I am a true independent) are not all even close to the same in their attitudes or worldview, but their internal structure has become so authoritarian in recent years that this is not always apparent from the outside. This is damaging and weakining the Democratic part from within. In other words, the majority of your takaway is correct but it is also partly wrong because it includes false generalizations.
I know for a fact that it is common (not consistant or necessarily the norm even, but definitelly common) for college educated Democrats (more so college educated white democrats!) to despise most working class whites specifically. I am a working class European American man born, raised and lived most of my life in the SF Bay Area.
This distain is VERY common and also infuences many others who don't share such negative beliefs to also distance themselves from our demographic, in more ways then one, for fear of loosing friends, family etc.
It is the ultimate underlying biggest reason why most of the extent our demographic that lived in the SF Bay Area in 1990 don't anymore today, but have moved away to other metros, rural areas and (most of all) outside California altogather. There are other reasons too of course, especially cost related and we are far from alone in our departure. But my point is that we were actually a big part of this region not so long ago.
This is all based on my own observations and experience as well as data, not influence from right wing influencers. I am not a Republican and have little respect for most MAGA influencers (some I do respect as I respect many on the left and center as well, even when/if I happen to disagree with them) but most of them suck, frankly. Point is I think for myself and I am telling up you this is not only mine but a great many others experience as well.
It is only propaganda to imply (as many right wing pundets and leaders sometimes do) that ALL Democratic party leaders or influencers 'despise "mainstream" Americans'. Is is quite clear however that many elite Democrats do depise the majority of the American public however (It is also clear that many Republicans do as well, though the specifics are differant). It is not propaganda to say so. Implyimg otherwise is either propaganda or a misunderstanding, as it is a false overgeneralization even while clearly true in some cases.
But secundly, what the heck are mainstream Americans these days? I don't think we even have a single mainstream or dominant culture anymore, though most of our subcultures are still in some ways closely related and overlapping. Of course we have always had diversity but we used to have more unity and I mean in the recent past when we were already diverse in our demographics. But, we don't exacly get along or even really identity as the same society anymore, and this is remarkably recent, -think I will sometime soon write a longer comment about why I see this as being the case.
I think the last time we did have a more common cultural identity despite our divisions was in maybe way back in 2012 or so, despite our growing estrangement back then, -we had actually come togather, especially at the local community level somewhat, and breifly increased our bridging and even bonding social capital across our various divides from 2007-2010. Obama back then and the great rescession were overall unifying factors for a while, untill it all fell apart. How long ago and another era those days now seem!
Democratic activists, and many politicians, pretty clearly despise whole swaths of the voting public who are, in fact, not MAGA.
This includes rural residents, people who like suburbs, people who don’t want to use public transportation, religious people, women who think staying home with babies is preferable, people who are against banning gas powered cars, people who want more controls on immigration, etc. Some of each of those categories are MAGA. Most are not.
When you tell voters what they want is unacceptable and they are bad for wanting it, they are not likely to vote for you. You can only get so far from what people actually want before the previously unthinkable becomes thinkable.
Claim: Democrats are uniquely guilty of moralizing and alienating voters by treating them with disdain.
This claim crumbles under even light scrutiny. It is not only factually inaccurate, but also deeply hypocritical, given the consistent and openly hostile rhetoric that MAGA-aligned Republicans, right-wing media figures, and conservative influencers have directed at broad swaths of the American electorate for years.
A Pattern of Dehumanization and Demonization from the Right
The notion that Democrats uniquely “despise” certain voters ignores the well-documented history of inflammatory, dehumanizing language from major Republican figures:
Donald Trump has publicly referred to his political opponents and critics as:
> “Vermin” (a term with fascist historical resonance).
> “Enemies of the people” (a Stalinist phrase).
> “Human scum” (about those who opposed him within the GOP).
> “Sick,” “stupid,” “crazy,” and “traitors.”
This language doesn’t just target elites or institutions—it casts entire categories of Americans as morally and even biologically unworthy.
Fox News and other conservative outlets routinely portray liberal voters as:
> Un-American for supporting social justice movements.
> Morally degenerate for accepting LGBTQ+ identities or abortion rights.
> Naive sheep manipulated by elites.
> “Baby killers,” “groomers,” “communists,” “elitists,” or “globalists.”
These aren’t fringe voices; they are often prime-time hosts or influential pundits, shaping the worldview of millions.
Religious and cultural contempt often flows in the reverse direction as well. MAGA-aligned voices portray:
> Coastal, urban, academic, or nonreligious Americans as “godless,” “decadent,” or “anti-family.”
> Government workers, teachers, and scientists as sinister ideologues or agents of control.
> Blue-state voters as lazy welfare addicts or crime-loving anarchists.
Double Standard in Rhetorical Policing
When Democrats express frustration with policies (e.g., climate denial, forced birth laws, or anti-immigrant crackdowns), they are accused of hating the people who support them.
But when Republicans caricature entire professions (teachers, journalists, professors) or communities (cities, immigrants, “the left”) as corrupt or evil, it is framed as justified indignation or “telling it like it is.”
This is a rhetorical double standard:
Democratic criticism = elitist disdain.
Republican condemnation = populist truth-telling.
Weaponized Victimhood and the Politics of Grievance
The MAGA narrative thrives on a persecution complex: it frames criticism as contempt, disagreement as erasure, and inclusion of others as exclusion of them. It converts policy differences (e.g., support for immigration reform or urban transit) into personal insult, then insists that the insult justifies political radicalization.
This allows MAGA supporters to indulge in their own disdain and outrage—while portraying themselves as the true victims of cultural exclusion.
Conclusion: Hypocrisy, Not Injury
So when MAGA voices accuse Democrats of “despising” voters, it is not a principled critique—it is a strategic projection, designed to distract from their own far more inflammatory rhetoric. If we are to talk honestly about mutual respect in politics, we must begin by acknowledging the contempt industry on both sides—but especially the highly organized, monetized, and radicalizing rhetoric that has become the beating heart of the MAGA movement.
Ollie, way to completely and totally miss the point, which was why non-MAGA voters would vote for MAGA Republicans. Although you did a really fine job of proving mine.
This is not remotely about who did it first. VOTERS DO NOT CARE. No one has suggested that MAGA politicians are nice to progressives, or that they expect them to vote for them. The core issue is that works both ways, and the meanness math is currently not in the Democrats favor.
The problem is, when you start attacking voters for their positions, the voters being attacked are not going to vote for people who clearly despise them. Do you think progressives are voting for Trump? You are confusing “Republicans” with “voters who have to pick between these two morons and picked a different moron than I would prefer.”
Rural and working class Americans are often treated with contempt. That is simply a fact and has been a fact for a long time. Rural about 20% of voters, working class about 60%.
Americans with Appalachian or country or Southern accents are often treated with contempt. Pretending that isn’t true is simply kidding yourself. Southerners about 39%.
Very religious Americans are in fact often treated with contempt and condescension. Religious Americans, self-identified, 59%.
Americans with a sense of place and attachment to their local communities are often treated as lazy losers unwilling to “move to opportunity.” 60% of Americans live within 10 miles of where they grew up.
Trump exploited those real feelings of cultural grievance. He did not invent them. He won in part because he was on the majority side of enough pain points that got enough swing voters to see him as less unacceptable.
You can either respect what VOTERS care about and craft a message that matches that closely enough to reach a majority, or you can lose to people you should be able to beat, and have to live with the results.
I thought “average D” meant it was their grade point average.
😅
If they didn’t inflate the grades, your point would apply.
The point is sarcasm.
oh, I got it. I’m with you
Please explain the term "reverse watermelon." I know what a watermelon is in political terms. It is one who advances socialist or communist causes by presenting them as environmental: Green on the outside, red on the inside. But, what is a "reverse watermelon"? One who advances an environmentalist cause by pretending to be communist?
Yes. There was an explanation in the weekend edition of TLP
Democrats are framing the shut down as "your health care premiums" especially if you get via the ACA (16% of US), Republicans are framing it as free health care for illegal immigrants which might well resonate, I don't have a TV and so don't know how it's playing out. Premiums have gone up and will go up regardless, so overall not a bad strategy, no one gets down into the weeds of policy anyway.
The OBBB took out extra subsidies on premiums which made some no cost to the insured policies go away. So that is a premium issue. But millions of the insured had zero claims in 2024. So that raises fraud issues. At a minimum, it is a huge subsidy to insurance companies. So even if Democrats succeed in framing it as a premium issue, there is danger there. The extra subsidies don't go away until Dec but open enrollment is now.
The OBBB took out extra TEMPORARY COVID subsidies. Covid is over. Temporary means temporary.
“ Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
Milton Friedman
Not in government.
True, -except with our government it often doesn't! Lol I dissagree with many things R's are trying to push with this bill, but you are spot on with this comment!
Amazing. I'd no idea. Now I wish I still had no idea. I'll have to read up.
Every time I get in one these discussions, I am reminded of my late neighbor
HS grad, blue collar employee of airline. Spent decades as union rep on benefits committee. Knew his stuff. I would walk my dog along his fence line and he would come out to talk and we would talk policy about health plans. I have known CFO types that were as good but never one that was better. Good guy and I miss him yet
Bill Clinton put it best when he said that the Democrats stand for people who work hard and play by the rules. If only the fool hadn't fallen for a thong, he'd have gone down in history as one of the best presidents. Still, "work hard and play by the rules" was as "working class" as it gets, but universal and unifying at the same time. It was brilliant, and sadly forgotten.
How far the Democratic Party I supported for so long has strayed! These days, they pay consultants big bucks for "messaging," when "work hard and play by the rules" was as good as it gets, right up there with "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and "make America great again."
Is it a class gap? Yes and no. The numbers in the article show it, but as strongly drawn to hard data as I am, one thing I learned in finance was that the numbers, as critical as they are, have their limitations. Numbers are the tool of engineers. I love engineers and engineering, and we are in an engineering culture. But engineering will inevitably focus narrowly, and miss larger realities. This is why I am a huge fan of liberal arts, even if your average sociology professor makes me grind my teeth.
Back to Bill Clinton. I will say it again: "Work hard and play by the rules" is pure factory worker (I worked in two factories, and in potato fields and a rock quarry along the way), but it was universal. It applied from top to bottom, excluding the lazy and the criminal while favoring the productive. Any CEO could recognize it in his personal affairs, as much as the people who cooked and served his dinner in a fancy restaurant. Work hard and play by the rules. It was American idealism and pragmatism at its very best. It is how those of us who pay the bills in this joint live, fer chrissakes!
So now we have a Democratic Party run by rich "progressives" who for some reason don't think about working hard and playing by the rules, even though it's how they got to where they are. Their top priorities have nothing to do with climbing the ladder. Why? Because they already climbed it, and like Thurston Howell III from "Gilligan's Island," climbing the ladder isn't even on their radar screen.
I don't think there's as much class difference as all of this implies. I think something else is at play, encapsulated by two things my departed father would always say: "Never forget where you came from" and "Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time." The nouveau riche "progressives" who have come to run the Democratic Party don't want to think about how they climbed the ladder, or how the rest of America is forever trying to. Why not? What makes these people think they are so god damn special that they are above it all? Grrrrr.
Good post Jim. I reluctantly socialize with this crowd out of a sense of support for my wife. (There is a good reason that domestic tranquility is central to the Constitution.) They are smart, educated, and interesting yet they are overtly callous toward the working class with no appreciation for the struggles of everyday life. They are loathsome toffs who signal their status through a ritual of disparagement toward the less advantaged. It serves the same function as gang signs or tribal tattoos. Express any deviation from prescribed opinions and you're out - shunned and banished, never again invited to prestigious pretentious parties. So these people have to be god damned special in order to be above it all. A neurotic need to attain status cancels out their humanity.
Boy did you hit the nail on the head . 25 years in CA, before we were paroled. I was once at a dinner party, where dinner was late. Fueled by a 2nd drink on an empty stomach, I asked a very educated and wealthy woman who repeatedly mentioned CA's homeless problem was blown out of proportion in the Press, how she didn't notice the homeless at intersections, on the street and in front of world class restaurants in SF.
She patted my arm and explained she was just so perpetually rushed, her job so all consuming and important, she was just too busy to bothered by such a small problem.
It reminded me of being in an outdoor cafe in Istanbul one time, and discussing the street dogs that seemed omnipresent with a waiter. He shrugged and noted they had been around his whole life, so locals didn't notice, nor where they bothered. Of course, he was talking about dogs, not people.
I have to tell a story about my potato farmer friend. I tell him that he has no idea how much mileage I get from talking about him.
So in high school, he turns in a paper he wrote for a class, and the teacher accuses him of cheating. No one could do that well, she said. You must have copied it. Next day, he brings in all the materials he used. Slams them down on her desk in the 1960s in North Dakota, and says if you can find how I cheated, give me an F. Otherwise, give me an A+. He got the A+. And an apology. It was North Dakota, old school.
He gets out of high school, and the episode stuck with him, so he arranged to get an I.Q. test from a private examiner, which is how he knows his I.Q. is 164. One point shy of Albert Einstein. He's 1 in 100,000. Just for the hell of it -- well, okay, more than that -- he developed his own special seed potato last year or the year before. No one will care except for the U.S. patent office and the Belgian outfit that's building a $500 million potato processing factory in Grand Forks. They will care a whole lot.
Anyway, I digress. Anyone ever hear about the Glomar Explorer and Project Azorian? No? Then read the link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
At the age of 22, he was the radioman on the Glomar Explorer. How is it that a kid from North Dakota who was 2,000 miles from any ocean wound up in the Navy, anyhow? Answer: The Vietnam War was on, and his father told him to join the Navy because if he went into the Marines or the Army he'd come back in a box. Why not the Air Force? More opportunity in the Navy.
Anyway, the communications system on the Glomar wasn't working very well at all. The geniuses at CIA HQ in Langley, VA couldn't figure out why. My friend fixed it. Got a commendation and dinner with the ship's captain and senior officers, which was kinda sorta a big deal 50 years ago for an E-4. "How long did that take you?" I asked one day. "Half an hour. The physics part was a little complicated but the stratosphere stuff was easy."
Dumb farmer.
p.s.: They recovered a lot more of that Soviet sub than anyone was told.
Not really a good correlation between intelligence and education. I have known plenty of smart people with just a HS education, including my mother. Likewise, I have known plenty of dumbasses with doctorates.
As a rule, intelligent people thirst for education. I distinguish between credentials and education. In recent years, in some fields, I see a widening gap. I think this is why the Ivy League has been taken down a notch or two. Their standards have deteriorated, and it's been noticed.
On average I'd say there is. MDs generally higher, same with college profs, not all but most. Little formal edu here but tested out high. SATs keep out low IQ from engineering, MCATs from medicine etc. Undergrads are now close to average.
Perhaps at the tails but not in the middle. Plus there's the mix between cause and effect.
I don't have a "noble savage" thing about blue collar people. The "working class" is a mixed bag like any other bag. But I just don't have the economic snob gene, and bothers the hell out of me to see it. I'm a bit of an intellectual snob in the sense of not suffering fools gladly, or at least I was until I got to know the smartest man from sea to shining sea, a potato farmer in NE North Dakota who I tell all kinds of stories about.
A month and a half ago, I visited he and his wife, and he and I got down on our hands and knees together and dug up 100 pounds of spuds on one of the fields in his 400 acres, soon to become 1,000. All but about 15 spuds went to food banks, with the others serving as tips to hotel clerks and waitresses along the way West. The same guy routinely reads scientific papers, and occasionally tracks down the author and the author winds up having to write a correction.
There are some very, very smart people doing unglamorous things in this country's unlikeliest places. If some snotty "progressive" wants to get my friend angry, they'll call him a dumb farmer who needs to engage in critical thinking. Hoo boy. LOL
p.s.: Want to get an idea of the I.Q. distribution among the farmers? Go dig spuds some morning and listen to the guys who stop by while you're doing it. Keep your ears open, and find out the difference between 164 and 110.
I'm not so sure many climbed the ladder as merely started up further via their parents who were part of the great boom of the middle class. In the 70s college was still cheap and by 80 there was still only 17% with a bachelors. A bachelor of arts was an easy stepping stone to middle class stability and income.
The next gen, the children of professional boomers didn't have the exposure to knowing where they came from, they were already a generation removed. There was already a large income divide developing. They hired folks to hold their trousers while slipping into them two legs at a time.
I thought of the same thing, but a) didn't want to fuzz things up, and b) we don't really know what the economic profile is of the movers and shakers. On the second point, I'd love to read a taxonomy of how the Democratic Party is organized. With all due respect to Will Rogers, I presume there's an organization to it.
They may claim as they do with antifa that the Democratic Party is just an idea, not an organization.
Sorry, I'm not receptive to hyperbolic partisan absurdity here.
That is definitelly a big part of it, but I think there is an even larger issue that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, and that is the the form of geographic sorting that has occured in recent decades. And it isn't even prymarily in the form of an urban rural divide that this sorting takes place.
Indeed, there are still a great many professional class Republicans, independents, and even non elitist democrats (as weak as the latter tend to be these days) who come from professional class or elite backgrounds too, even some younger ones. Of course many such Republicans are also elitist just in their own way, so there is that. But there is a much larger scale cultural divide now.
Basically, a subculture and social class of mostly "progressive" (but decidedly not Republican or conservative) professonal class and wealthy people (though still including some of their downwardly mobile kin) have formed, and have lived in an increasingly geographically segregated manner from not only working class people (especially from working class whites) but also from those with differant politics, -including from college educated republicans, since at least 1970 or so. Almost every other group is less segregated, from each other at least. From what I can tell, the majority of this shift has occured just since 1990, and only since covid has it finally began to (vary slightly) go into reversal, at least temporarally.
This social class of progressives lives largely in upscale, gentrifying, or (to some extent, mainly among its less affluent members) transitional neighborhoods within large, densely urbanized, highly globally connected regions of the country. They live both within the urban core and in 'favored quarter' suburbs, -and within any estsblished older upscale suburbs closer to the city that may exist outside of it as well.
Others live in college towns or smaller upscale enclaves elsewhere, and many do still live regionally clustered in places like parts of the Pacific Northwest and Northeast (or even Minnesota) or Colorado, where they are more dominant in influence but also far more integrated with certian other demographics (especially with working class whites) then they are elsewhere. This latter aspect is part of why there has been so much chaos in places like Portland, Oregon or Minniapolis in recent years.
Every other segment of society, in every demographic, lives basically everywhere else in large numbers. Yes, there is still traditional forms of segregation elsewhere to various degrees, but every other group is at least likey to live in every other TYPE of place, from rural/small town, to exurb, to aging non elite suburb, to older regional city to sprawling suburban or sun belt boom town, even if not in every actual place in large numbers. And this is true within all regions of the country as well, not just a few geographically fairly small clusters.
Except for just this one fairly large (probably somewhere between 10-20% of the population) segment of society, that is...
Things seemed to finally reach a tipping point where this "progressive" upscale subculture largely detached from the rest of society and then began to go off the rails during Obama's secund term. This is now an enclave mentality write large, but the people who hold it largely seem to not even understand that they have it or at least not it's true implications. Or they are in deep denial. They are basically in a variable filter bubble, which often leads them to not notice the filter they are wearing untill it is too late.
The income ratio between CEOs and workers was much lower than today.
True enough, but that has no bearing on the point I made.
My response was to Ban Nock. Gets tangled sometimes
The big change in income inequality (Gini Coefficient) in recent years has been the acceleration of the super rich away from the merely rich rather than middle class gaining on working class.
A lot depends on who is middle class, super rich, etc. The bottom half has nothing. The 10% is wealthier in aggregate than the 0.1% super rich or even the merely pretty rich 1%, because there are so many. The 10% of households would be 12 million houses. Half of consumer spending is from that demographic.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/
The 10% has also realized rapid gains in wealth. Income inequality has accelerated. The middle class hasn't done as well, with income or wealth, the 50 to 90 % I mean. Objectively I'd call the bottom half poor, almost no wealth, incomes very sticky. Lucky if they have a house.
Disaggregate by age and it's worse
The Democrats will welcome working class people back into the party when they finally shed their deplorable views. This comes across loud and clear in the Dems’ constant smug and condescending rhetoric. I’m not even convinced they’ll take the House in the midterms, bar a political catastrophe for the Rs.
It’s easier for Dems to dismiss problems with the economy, immigration, and crime, because as a group, they’re less affected by them. Though I’ll admit that I’m completely stumped on how people who hector us to “follow the science” can claim that men can become women, that a man dressed as a female in the women’s changing room is not creepy (and threatening) at all, and that their brand of racism is virtuous.
How can the party claim to want to “save democracy” when it lied about Biden’s condition, barred competition against him in the primaries, and anointed a candidate who had never even been in one single primary?
How does gerrymandering in California save democracy? I know Texas is doing it too. The solution to antidemocratic methods isn’t doubling down on them.
I’m at a loss. I’m angry. I’m frightened about where this is leading.
The Republicans can be cruel, but right now the Dems strike me as being more the dangerous party.
I have a long list of grievances against the Democrats. Near the top of my list is this: What principles do they have?
I fully understand the need for flexibility and compromise. But you have to believe in something for that to work. Yeah, the gerrymandering in California and now the embrace of a shutdown? When they opposed gerrymandering and shutdowns, they invoked high-minded principles. So they were just talking points. What principles does the Democratic Party actually have?
Agreed. They cite principles when they want to use them as weapons and ignore them when it suits their purposes.
Not that the Republicans don't do that too, but the Dems are the ones who are telling us they're saving democracy and civilization as we know it. Yet they're the ones who undermined it in 2024, in large part by lying. And the party that throbs over women's rights is more than happy to undermine them by allowing males to compete in female sports and by allowing men to enter women's spaces. And don't get me started on what they do to children in the name of their gender religion.
At some point, I don't know what they stand for.
Do they?
"Voters were given a choice between these two statements about Trump’s time in office so far: “Donald Trump is cleaning up chaos and disorder,” or “Donald Trump is creating chaos and disorder.” By 25 points (61-36 percent), white working-class voters think he’s getting rid of chaos and disorder, while white college-grad voters are almost exactly the reverse; by 27 points (63-36 percent) they think Trump is creating chaos and disorder. Interesting!"
This is really easy to understand. Democrats live in their heads more than do Republicans. So Trump is causing chaos in their heads... and their media feeds amplify the chaos in their heads. They blame Trump for their internal turmoil and lack the self-awareness that there isn't really much real that they can claim as actual material chaos causing.
Funny how Dems would not consider the open southern border, BLM and Antifa riots as chaos, but Trump sending ICE and the National Guard to bring order is somehow chaos.
These pieces are always well researched and thoughtful, without condescension, which is skill most Dem pundits lack. That said, they somewhat feel like discussions of living room paint color, as the rest of the Dem house burns around them.
58% of white college grads think Trump has gone too far with deportations? Those are hardly overwhelming stats. Only the Rep inability to message facts regarding immigration, crime and education has saved Dems from a successful political suicide.
Few Dems will acknowledge the obvious. 90% of Biden's 10 million lack valid asylum claims. Moreover, we lack housing, healthcare professionals, speciality teachers and the money to finance their existence. Thats does not mean migrants are personally flawed, only that most do not qualify for asylum or possess the education and skills to be economically self sufficient in a high cost of living, knowledge economy, like the US.
We know that because govt stats show 54% of all naturalized citizens, and legal and illegal immigrants are enrolled in US welfare programs. The same group now comprises more than 25% of all US poor. We are not curing anyone's poverty. We are relocating it.
Nor are prospects for their children much better. US public schools educate only 1/3 of students to grade level or better. That includes millions of US families with 2 college grad parents. Guess the rate for kids with non English speaking parents with 5th and 8th grade educations, dwelling in acute poverty?
The ramifications are everywhere. Been in an ER lately? 4-5 hour waits are now the new norm in many places. Had a fender bender with someone lacking a license and/ or insurance? Is your 3rd grader in need of extra teacher time, suddenly losing ground because because 3 new students speak 3 different languages, but none are English? 40% of CA is now too poor for subsidized Obamacare, and Medicaid dependent.
All this before we even mention the rest of the Dem unholy Trinity of Failure, crime and education. Dems are welcome to keep polling and rattling on incessantly about Trump's shortcomings. He is nearly 80 years old and term limited by both law and life. It does not appear failing Dem policy has any expiration date.
Progressives have a hostile view of Trump voters. It is this, not issues, that accounts for the massive switch in almost all demographic groups to Trump. It is what drove us, 50-year voting Democrats, to get out of the party.
I have noticed a ground-level aggressive intolerance among liberals of anyone who doesn't HATE Trump as much as they do. I was "de-friended" over it by someone I'd known for quite a while. Mind you, this is someone who knows that I've never voted for Trump (write-in for the last three presidentials) but that's not enough. The skins just get thinner and thinner.
Check out the senators who are up for reelection in 2028 and 2030. Even if the Democrats somehow hold on to *all* of their current seats in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania they are still a decided minority in the senate. And the next census will be bringing such demographic changes that it will be much harder for a Democrat to win the Electoral College. They Democrat senators in these swing states are basically serving at the pleasure of Republican-oriented voters in these purple/reddish states. My point is that they are way worse off than it appears with regard to the senate and probably the electoral college. Is there any hope? Think about the current Republican Party which managed to cobble together a ruling plurality (barely) by going full-on populist in 2016. How incredibly different is the 2024 GOP from the 2014 GOP? This should give hope to the Democrats. Can Democrats pull off a similar metamorphosis? I think that is the question that Ruy is asking. As one of those white, college educated (sort of) Republicans I can actually see the Democrats' being able to pull it off. It wouldn't really take much more than agreeing to work with Trump on some of his favorite issues. The country is desperate for comity and true bipartisanship on *anything*. But the current leadership in Washington seems incapable of this change (both sides). So it take a big change on the part of the Democratic voters to replace these leaders. There are still very strong Democrats at the state level. And Trump's "landslide" was only in the Electoral College. Yes, he won all the swing states, but other than Arizona they were all relatively close. This moment in time feels like the ship is sailing into the fog and the lights on the ship are beginning to fade into the darkness for the Democrats. There is still time to signal to the ship to come back, but it seems like that moment is rapidly closing. I don't want to live in a country governed exclusively by either of these dysfunctional parties.
We have another poster in this substack who's been tracking what he says is a surge in Republican voter registration vs. a decline in Democratic registration, and its relationship to elections. I have yet to dive into the deep end of that pool, but I will do so soon.
My gut feel, and that's all it is right now, is that the Democratic Party is a good deal closer to the precipice than many of their people want to see, or to admit. Putting aside the registration question (it intrigues the hell out of me, but I have to examine it), I note that the Democratic Party seems content with having lost FL, WV, OH, MO, IA, NE, ND, SD, and MT, and to have seen WI and MI become much more swing. Just wait: NJ and MN could be surprising.
Okay, they picked up ME, NH, and CO, and made GA, VA, and NC more swing. Now, as a numbers nerd and an arithmetic wiz from the age of five, I have to ask these smug geniuses: "Can you add and subtract?" And then there's that there "live for the moment" thing. Must be quite the "progressive" religion, because it sure doesn't seem like they're thinking of what happens after '30. And they're not too good at history, either. In that sense, they remind me of the wingnuts who acted as if history began with Reagan, or of Francis Fukayama, whose "The End of History and the Last Man" was laughable even before they put it in the book stores.
I have to point something out: Trump only looks like he was sudden. I try, and usually fail, to make liberals understand that the guy's ascendancy is as much symptom as cause. He's sui generis, but he didn't come out of nowhere. America has a way of puking up some surprising people. Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dick Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump. You just never know which person, but each one of them fit the times where they appeared.
None of them was "constructed" through "messaging," with the possible exceptions of Reagan and Clinton, at least partially. So if the Democrats somehow think they'll come up with their own Donald Trump, all I can say is this: "Stick a fork in them; they're done." Really, that's not how it works. Not how it has ever worked. If I had any pull in the Democratic Party, I'd tell them to get off your god damned high horses and spend all of your time west of the Appalachians and east of the Cascade-Sierras, and see if you can bear to find America. Go look for America, you arrogant fools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo2ZsAOlvEM
It just kills me to see how out of touch the Democratic Party has become. Really: Just how is it that a fat, sarcastic billionaire from New York God Damn City is closer to the people than they are? Maybe it's time, figuratively I promise, to take the Democratic Party out behind the barn and shoot 'em. They're that bad.
The above is kind of the key. Many new Reps voters are not new to voting, they are former Democrats. New voters are great, but when Reps poach a former Dem voter, they are subtracting from Dem totals, while adding to their own. Far better than just adding to Rep counts.
The Republicans, for all of Trump's glaring deficiencies of character, are playing the politics of addition. The Democrats have been playing the politics of subtraction ever since Obama ran for re-election in 2012.
Climbing the ladder, if the steps are not changed, only implies that for those who climb up there must be an equal number who are pushed down. All workers should get adequate pay, benefits and respect for their work even if they are at the bottom of the ladder. All workers should have access to good health care and affordable housing.
"All workers should get adequate pay, benefits and respect for their work...access to good health care and affordable housing."
Empty slogans without specifics.
So you think it's a zero-sum game. Damn good that this has never been the way successful Americans think. Are you a government employee, might I ask?
There needs to be an increase of higher level jobs for widespread upward mobility. This was true in the post WWII years. When the economy is stagnant there are still opportunities for talented individuals to move up the ladder, but this entails someone else moving down. Just do the math. Greater investment by companies could create more jobs at the upper ranks but companies seem to be more interested in short term profits than long term investments.
So in your world, for someone has to move up, someone else has to move down. You have never studied the history of this country that you don't begin to understand and would never want to understand, have you? Tell us: What Ivy League finishing school gave you a diploma? What business did you create? How many people owe their living to your efforts? What have you accomplished on your own? Anything? Which Washington, D.C. politician do you work for? Absent that, which government agency? Please don't be a "teacher."
Creating more jobs at a higher level allows for many more individuals to move up without anyone moving down. That is what we need, a more dynamic economy.
You just contradicted yourself. You don't know what you think, because you don't think.
You can't do the math for a stagnant economy!
The issue for the Democrats is how to hold the college educated voters that everyone hates here while addressing the issues that everyone loves here. Maybe it is impossible and, like the GOP from 1932 until recently, the Democrats will only win elections when the opposing party has a bad candidate or otherwise screws up. As most here seem to love the Trump agenda on tariffs, immigration, climate and crime, maybe that's not so bad and we should just quit worrying about the Democrats?
I am college educated and damn proud of both my undergrad education and my Wharton MBA. The difference between myself and "progressives" is that I have never looked down on those who didn't go to college. In fact, the smartest American I've ever known (measured I.Q., 164) dropped out of college and rescued his grandfather and father's farm. Stop being such a smug "progressive" snob.
Colgate, Boston College Law and Simon School of Business. But I grew up in a blue collar family and never could leave the ethos.
The democrat party lost me a long time ago. I never could bring myself to join the Republican party though. I'm a registered independent and will likely die that way.
For me, both parties are part of a political establishment that's long since lost the confidence (justifiably so) of the whole of the people.
When I was at Wharton, I called Volvos "cars for rich people." Trust me, some of my classmates were a good deal more affluent than I was, and didn't have a clue. LOL
And actually, the article on which I commented made the distinction between white college-educated voters and others. Apparently according to Mr Teixeira, those are the smug progressive snobs who still favor the Democrats. I don't do any polling myself.
I certainly did not mean to suggest that everyone who went to college is against Trump (or that everyone who did not go to college loves him). If you would prefer, my comment is equally applicable if you substitute your term, "smug 'progressive snob," for what I suggested would be left of the Democratic Party. So, you win. The Democratic party will control those few areas that like smog 'progressive snobs' and the issues those people care about you who are not sps will rule nearly everything, that will be wonderful, and there is no problem here left to solve. Still better, I will be off this site at the end of November when my 1 year subscription runs out.
You should stick around. You irritate me, but I listen even if it doesn't seem that way.
While it's true I like some of Trump's agenda, or three out of the four you mention, there's a ton more I'm not crazy over at all, and where generally the Democratic Party has a better track record, the social safety net, health care, and taxes for instance. Ultimately I think the Democratic Party has a better chance of doing good than the Republican Party, we've simply blown it on some key issues.
The college educated are needed for any society, without them there is no science or technology, no arts, no society itself. The Democratic Party used to be a conglomeration of both, the inteligencia, and the blue collar, of late the party has become estranged from the working class, implemented policies detrimental to our well being, I simply want policies that benefit all, or most of us.
The real problem is not a “class divide” in the strict sense but the suffocating effect of Trumpaganda — the multifaceted, ubiquitous, and highly effective media and cultural ecosystem that shields Trump from accountability and keeps much of his base from recognizing how badly he is betraying their own values.
By Trumpaganda I mean the closed-loop information environment that includes Fox News, talk radio, Facebook and TikTok memes, Elon Musk’s X amplification, MAGA church pulpits, merchandise, and peer networks. It saturates working-class communities daily with the message that Trump is their warrior and Democrats are their enemies. Every failure is pre-explained (“deep state sabotage,” “fake news,” “Biden’s fault”), every betrayal reframed as loyalty, every doubt neutralized by identity: to turn against Trump is to betray your community. In that environment, lived experience — higher prices from tariffs, lost manufacturing jobs, healthcare costs, the chaos of Jan. 6 — is blotted out.
If voters judged only by outcomes, they would see Trump trampling their values (fairness, accountability, law and order, community stability, respect for service), failing to deliver on core promises (jobs, cheaper healthcare, draining the swamp), and actively harming them (tariffs functioning as a hidden tax, inflicting job losses, stripping away insurance, inflaming instability). But Trumpaganda convinces them that pain is actually proof of loyalty — that suffering is the price of “fighting back.”
Democrats’ failure is that they have not developed a strategic response to this propaganda machine. They keep treating the problem as a matter of demographics and priorities — college vs. noncollege — instead of confronting the informational armor that keeps Trump’s base locked in.
A serious strategy would include:
Message: Stop framing Trump only as a threat to democracy. Frame him as a betrayer of his own voters. “Trump promised. Trump betrayed. You’re paying the price.” Tie every failure directly to kitchen-table pain — groceries, rent, healthcare, jobs lost to tariffs.
Messengers: Elevate voices that Trump’s voters trust — disillusioned Republicans, ex-Trump voters, veterans, farmers, union workers, pastors. Stories beat statistics.
Mediums: Go where working-class voters are — local radio, short-form video, peer networks — not just elite outlets.
Narrative Discipline: Stay on message. Repeat it endlessly. Pair critiques with alternatives: “We could have cheaper medicine and more jobs if we stopped the tariff scam and invested here at home.”
Until Democrats stop treating this as a simple “class gap” and start treating it as a battle against Trumpaganda, they will continue to hemorrhage working-class support. The paradox is that Trump is failing spectacularly on his own terms — but unless Democrats find a way to puncture the propaganda bubble, his base will never see it.
If only the working class wasn't so stupid, right Ollie?
Stupid? Stupidity knows no party lines. Many, perhaps most, Dems have been taken in by a certain strain of leftist indoctrination that has various names - "woke mind virus" is one, though "critical theory disorder" is more descriptive. This makes Democrats attribute many social problems incorrectly solely to power imbalances in which straight white males impose their will on members of historically marginalized racial, ethnic and gender communities. This is untenable for several reasons, including the failure to take socioeconomic class and the culture of the minority into consideration.
Like the Right, the Left has effective channels for disseminating and enforcing its ideology through propaganda. The 1619 Project, which incorrectly framed the nation's founding as a means to perpetuate slavery, is one such example that was propagated by The New York Times, a pillar of liberalism with progressive leanings.
There is a difference, though, and it is that the Dems are somewhat more tolerant of dissent within their ranks that the Right. For example, many Democrats have come around to the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab leak. In contrast, there is great unwillingness in Trump's base to accept the demonstrable fact that the 2020 election was not stolen.
The Dems used to be "somewhat more tolerant of dissent within their ranks." Now? NO WAY.
I know, right? Why is there no laugh emoji on here.
Dems "have come around to the possibility" after Senile Joe's minions strongarmed Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube into censoring anyone who said so, and "debanking" conservatives. Oh, isn't is great that they "have come around?" LOL
"Message: Stop framing Trump only as a threat to democracy. Frame him as a betrayer of his own voters. 'Trump promised. Trump betrayed. You’re paying the price.' Tie every failure directly to kitchen-table pain — groceries, rent, healthcare, jobs lost to tariffs."
But make sure not to mention egg prices. Remember 7 months ago? Pepperidge Farm remembers, and so do I. Liberals were throwing those prices in Trump's face after he was inaugurated. Being a retired finance guy, I know where to look, and have followed that one not only in the two rural grocery stores where I shop, but in the wholesale market, and at Costco, where I go every couple months to stock up.
It's a 160-mile round trip, but I LOVE Costco and don't care that they are liberals. Every time I go, I tell the cashier that I am a happy Costco victim and have been shopping there for 30 years. Then a scarf down a $1.50 hot dog and soda. And them $5 rotisserie chickens? Wow. Thank you Costco. You are my friend.
Anyway, wholesale egg prices peaked on March 2 of this year at $8.17/dozen. Today, October 2, $1.16. For the arithmetically impaired (because math is racist), that's an 86% decline. Oh, you might say, egg prices haven't declined that much at the store. True. Now tell me: Did you pay $8.17 at Safeway? Nope. Where I live, they peaked at $6.50. Two days ago, they were $2.39.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us
Have an omelette!
p.s.: I have never appreciated Trump's bombast and overstatement at all. That said, I have not exactly appreciated liberals calling me a fascist, a Nazi, and a bloodthirsty "ammosexual" because I am a gun owner. And a racist because I'm white, and an idiot because I live in a rural area. So there.
I went to Costco one time and that was enough. Who has two hours to wonder thru a warehouse with no signage? I'm single - why would I want to buy a package of 12 muffins and a 2 pound bag of shredded cheese? I did save $10 when I rented a car - big whoop.
The great thing about America is that you don't have to go to Costco. We like the big portions. It helps to have a freezer. By the way, their $5 rotisserie chickens cost half as much as the ones at our local store, are much tastier, and almost twice the size. I like the 40-lb sacks of dry dog food, and the big packages of the wet stuff in cans. Good prices, too. A bag of chips that's twice as big as what's at the local store for the same price. All-purpose flour at the local store is a buck a pound; at Costco, it's 38 cents.
The worst you'll find at Costco is the same price, an example being razor blades. But usually things are cheaper there. Yeah, it takes a few visits to figure out what is where, I'll grant you that. We always go to the same one, and have long since figured out where everything is. But hell, if you don't like the stores, there are others.
Of course, this is America and I don't have to shop there, I'm just puzzled about the attraction. In my case it's about a 30 minute drive through traffic and it's just not worth the hassle and after gas and time am I really saving anything? I can go three blocks away, pay more, and have access to clean, well-lit stores with more brand choices and not wait to check out, and be home for dinner with my more expensive chicken lol.
I go there incident to another errand I have to do every month and a half or so. Their prices are significantly cheaper, and as for variety of brands, they have the best packaged dinners that aren't available locally. So I wait for 5 minutes. Meh. I laugh at the anti-Costco commentary, especially the wingnuts who go after them for being "woke."
People do not watch Fox News, or listen to AM talk radio, or look at posts on X, because they have to. They do it because they choose to. If you object to that, offer them something they will like better.
Given that half the country is conservative, you'd think that there'd be at least ONE conservative broadcast network. Nope, so over time we see a steady growth of conservative competitors taking eyeballs away from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and NPR. Gee, who would've thought? LOL
Rachel Maddow has won three Emmy Awards, a Television Critics Association Award, a Du Pont Award, a Grammy Award, a Hillman Prize, a Walter Cronkite Award, and a long list of awards from homosexual organizations. Stephen Colbert has won two Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, and a Grammy Award. Greg Gutfeld, who has won no broadcast awards at all, attracts an audience twice the size of Maddow's and has trounced Colbert in ratings for several years. I suggest that the discrepancy between the talk show hosts who win broadcast awards and the talk show hosts the American people choose to watch is primarily a matter of social class--whom do you feel the need to please? Maddow and Colbert please the people inside the media bubble while Gutfeld pleases those outside of it.
So they hand out awards to each other. So impressive! It's an incestuous, self-congratulatory circle jerk. I love it when the N.Y. Times has the occasional article about what the late-night shows said the night before, while studiously ignoring the late night show that's more popular than the others combined. I would call all of those exhibits that explain what's at the link below.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx
Something BIG happened a year ago. Joe "Who In Hell Is He?" Rogan got 70 million hits for two three-hour interviews, one with Trump and the other with Vance. Meanwhile, 60 Minutes typically might get 10 million viewers, and last year they actually spliced one of Harris's answers onto the end of a question that it didn't match.
I'm going to reveal a biographical detail here: I've had two careers, one in finance and before that, in journalism. I was in Washington for 5 years from 1985 to 1990, and held a "Hill pass" and White House credentials. You know that briefing room? I hung out there about a dozen times. I wasn't a big fan of the whole thing back then -- I decided to quit going to the White House because I had actual work to do -- but journalism really fell off a cliff in the early '00s and has never stopped falling.
I could go on at length about how I was educated and trained, and how I practiced. Journalism was in trouble in the 1970s and slowly deteriorated in the '80s and '90s, but really went into its late Roman Empire stage when the NY Times ran that phony WMD series by Judith Miller in I think 2002. The other body blow was when Ted Turner sold CNN to Time Warner.
So they can give each other as many god damned awards as they want to. They've always been somewhat ridiculous, but when the NYT won a Pulitzer for their bullshit "1619 Project," which by the way I checked out of my local library and actually got two-thirds of the way through, I stopped paying any attention even to Pulitzers, which were the Holy Grail.
Anyway, in '28, I expect the alternative media to be steering the ship. Oh, the legacy guys will still be there, pretending that they are what they once were, but they won't have much influence. Watch out for Rogan, and probably Gutfeld. They'll matter. Rachel Maddow? You're joking, right?
Today, journalism is in hospice care. It's depressing and scary to be honest, but I'm an optimist underneath. Journalism will be reconstituted at some point starting in the '30s and flowering in the '40s, but without the awards among other things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXqPNlng6uI
Did you see the latest Biden reveal with pictures on cards so he would know who he was talking to? One of cards was of ABC's Mary Bruce with the question she was going to ask at an upcoming press conference. Shameful what journalism has turned into.
Or Dems could realize Trump is a near 80 year old, term limited President, with expiration dates sooner rather than later, and seek to revamp polices that roughly 60% of the US dislike.
The notion that people with young kids, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, bath in Trump propaganda all day, is a bit hard to swallow. Those Americans work one or two jobs, then they clean their own homes, prepare their own food and launder their own clothing. A staff of foreign domestics does not relieve them of household chores.
Dems obsession with Trump and his mythical hold on 1/2 the country, prevents Dems from amending broadly unpopular policies. That is the problem, not the messaging or the manner in which they criticize Trump.
"the closed-loop information environment that includes Fox News, talk radio, Facebook and TikTok memes, Elon Musk’s X amplification, MAGA church pulpits, merchandise, and peer networks"
Oh, but I thought you were talking about the closed-loop information environment that includes all four broadcast TV networks, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Associated Press, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Steve Colbert, 99% of Hollyweird ... oh wait, couldn't be that! OL
A familiar pattern emerges in threads like this: a critique of Trump’s behavior or the right-wing media ecosystem meets a barrage of replies that don’t directly engage the argument, but instead pivot to grievance, moral self-flattery, or lifestyle defensiveness.
This isn’t accidental. For many, Trumpism functions less as a political preference and more as a social identity. Criticism of Trump is perceived not as a policy dispute but as a personal attack — on one’s intelligence, values, or community. That’s why the replies aren’t designed to persuade or refute. They’re designed to defend the self and signal in-group belonging.
Hence the sudden pride in doing one’s own laundry, the fixation on egg prices, the complaints about being called a racist or fascist. These aren’t rebuttals. They’re cultural affirmations. They say: “We are decent, hardworking, grounded — unlike the elites who look down on us.”
This is the deeper function of the propaganda ecosystem: not to convince on the merits, but to pre-frame any challenge as hostile and to substitute moral grievance for engagement. In that context, facts bounce off. Evidence becomes an insult. And loyalty becomes proof of virtue.
No one should expect minds to change in a thread like this. But it’s important to name the pattern, because it explains why even obvious betrayals — failed promises, corruption, incitement — don’t register as disqualifying. The political has become personal, and the personal is armored against outside input.
My issue with most of the attacks on Trump is that they are shallow, knee-jerk exercises, riddled with boilerplate and broadsides. I have never voted for him on account of his character deficiencies, manifested by his thin-skinned trolling, his bombast, his constant hyperbole, and his indiscipline and often indignity.
I just could not get past what I mentioned, but I do respect his abilities. He does have a talent for cutting to the quick, for piercing the empty gas baggery even while being a gasbag himself. I think he's correct about the U.S. getting hosed in trade relations by our putative "allies," and his attack on the climate change religion, and on the so-called cultural issues.
Even if I can't support his methods, I can understand them and at times sympathize. The "progressives" need to have their smug, arrogant asses kicked up one side of the block and back down the other. They are errant children and deserve spankings and even a good whipping. I just wish ol' Archie Bunker Trump was a little more, um, judicious about it. I have no trouble with the harshness, but the erratic part doesn't sit well with me. Go get 'em, Trump, but don't be so tempermental.
The usual accusations: corruption, threatening democracy, blah blah blah? When I see that lazy crap, my tendency is to want to tell whoever is throwing that shallow. stupid, obnoxious tantrum to go to bed without supper.
Parks, in every election cycle, liberals pay consultants good money, hundreds of millions of it, to tell them that their conservative competitors are ignorant, neurotic and self-defeating at best, and racists and fascists at worst. Why can't some of that money be yours? Hang out a shingle, print some letterhead, and offer your services as a Democratic campaign consultant. If your customers win, claim the credit. If your customers lose, you've still got the money. Good luck!
Agreed that Democrats need to work on developing positive messaging to complement their criticism, and that both parties could benefit from tolerating more diverse policy stances amongst their ranks.
But isn't withholding criticism of the opposition when they do something awful--even if they do something awful every other day--simply because you're afraid of hurting someone's feelings, and because the opposition is going to label you "histrionic", just reverse wokeness?
The opposition should be critical, but as someone who's been around for a long time I can't recall a period where the opposition was less effective than the Democratic Party's opposition right now. "I don't like him" really doesn't cut it.
I was surfing the comment section of leftist bubbles again. I really hope Ruy is correct about normal people not living on line because if he is wrong, we are in big trouble.
True--although it's difficult to do much when you are out of power and saddled with sclerotic leadership. The party needs new blood and a charismatic leader who knows how to message in the modern social media era, and who can organize it around a positive, identifiable platform. (and while they're at it perhaps inform their populists that the word 'socialism', whatever they really mean by it, has huge historical baggage from the Cold War that you don't want to carry around)
But when the opposition, and the sitting president that leads it, is sending troops into major American cities for no discernible reason beyond 'crime', and talking about using them as training grounds; or monetizing the presidency to the tunes of billions of dollars; or suing media organizations for merely criticizing them; or limiting vaccines that help provide herd immunity to key diseases; etc., etc.--they should be criticized for doing so. Even if that means constant criticism, should they choose to do something egregious every week. (a deliberate strategy, if we are to believe Steve Bannon) Or, at the very least, it is contradictory to reprimand the woke left (as Ruy, myself and I'm guessing you probably do) for constantly saying "Well your criticism of X may be true but you mustn't say it out loud because group Y would find it offensive and you'll be labeled 'racist'" and on the other hand also argue "Well yes [insert egregious act by your political opposition] may be worthy of severe criticism but you must withhold/minimize said criticism because you might make group X feel bad and you'll be labeled 'histrionic'".
And Ruy has more or less said or directly implied the latter of those two statements in multiple articles now. I just find it harder to take his criticism of woke left politics seriously when he advocates for woke right politics as a response. Wokeness and its illiberal excesses needs to end everywhere, IMO.
One difference between the "progressives" and the hated flyover "normies" is that we normies don't put quotation marks around the word crime, as if there is something wrong with noticing or opposing it. Where I live now, if some addicted dirtbag tries "crime" against us, there's a damn good chance they will wind up dead. When asked what my home defense gun is, I reply: "Which room?"
In the front hall closet, a Henry Big Boy rifle in .357. In a footstool, a Dan Wesson revolver in .357. Each with a set of shooting "ears" next to it, and a magnetic flashlight attached to the barrel. The dog will wake me up, and if the criminal gets in he will see an old man in his underwear wearing headphones, holding a gun, the flashlight set on strobe. The old man will say as calmly as he can: "By the time I count to three, you will will be face down on the floor. Whether you are still alive depends on what you do right now." Laugh if you want, but that's how it will go.
The sheriff in our 55%-45% Republican rural county will look at the details, and then he will shake my hand and invite me to a steak dinner. The county prosecutor will be there and he won't charge me. Other way around: They will thank me for solving a problem. Why? Because what's mine is mine, and if you or your friends think they will take it, they should think again. Don't like that? Think I'm a bloodthirsty killer? Fine. Think what you want, but don't try to take what's ours. Thieves are slavers, and I will not be someone's slave. Hate me now.
There's a reason why your blue cities and blue states are stagnating.
I don't hate you, and crime is very real, and serious, and should be dealt with through robust policing, no disagreement there--the quotes are there to denote that its *mere existence* is far too nebulous a justification to warrant the extreme measure of deploying the military to a domestic civilian environment. That is something reserved for exceptional crises and exceptional circumstances. If the existence of crime alone justified military deployments to a US city or town, then you could justify permanently occupying every city and town in the country. We've seen what that looks like--it's ugly and we had to fight two world wars to stop those types of governments from conquering Europe. Crime should be dealt with through local policing, by officers who know their town or city, like your sherriff--it shouldn't be outsourced to the military.
Applying it to your example: if troops from the US military were combing the landscape of your rural county and stationed outside your house, and all your neighbors' houses, and your sheriff was replaced by an army colonel, and when you asked him why his battalion was deployed there he merely said "we heard there was a robbery somewhere", and that he wasn't sure when or if they would leave, I doubt you (or your average normie, for that matter) would be happy with the situation.
And remember--it's Trump's military now, but if it's made a precedent one day it could be president AOC sending in troops to your town to 'stop racism' or for some similarly ridiculous reason.
But that is not what is happening. DC is under federal control, and the exception. The NG stands on the street deterring crime by their presence and freeing cops to go into areas of the city, that need more attention.
In other cities, the National Guard is there to protect federal workers and property. They are not stationed in front of houses and the military have not replaced the police force.
Dems are far more concerned with academic possibilities, than reality of much of the US. People are attacking ICE agents. Elderly widows in urban areas who cannot safely leave their homes alone at night. Open drug use. So many young women that share a slight resemblance violently murdered, the Dem Congressperson can't keep their names straight.
Dems are so consumed with their mythical slippery slope they ignore what actually would have to transpire for Dem nightmares to materialize. We have Courts. Trump, unlike Biden, does not defy SCOTUS. Moreover, the military and ICE are heavily minority in many places. In Texas more than 1/2 of ICE agents are minorities and they always have been. The notion they are grabbing Hispanics off the street without cause is ridiculous. They and their families and friends, are often the Hispanics on the streets.
It's true that in DC's case legality isn't an issue, since as you said there are special laws to put DC under federal control. But, again, military deployments in civilian environments are meant for exceptional situations, not to do things local police can do. Whether it's legal or not, it's still a bad idea.
I think you can be concerned with the slippery slope *and* recognize people's concerns about issues like crime. You could, and should, do more than one thing at a time. And if you truly want the federal government to assist a city with a crime epidemic, providing additional funding and infrastructure to its police force is a far better long-term solution. But you should also be honest about the state of things--a single assault (the pretext for the DC shutdown) does not constitute a national crisis, and crime has been falling in places like Chicago. Portland is not a 'warzone', and the president shouldn't be directing the military to act based off what he sees on television.
Same with ICE. It's true a lot of the time ICE agents are just doing their job, but there's also stuff like this going on: https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated
That's the type of thing you do when you militarize a federal entity and send it into a city with little knowledge of local conditions to takeover the functions of local law enforcement. Again, the best solutions for crime (including illegal residency) are local ones. Using the BBB's funds to bolster the immigration enforcement capacity of local police (and reform the asylum system) is a far better long-term solution to problems of illegal immigration than constructing a de facto paramilitary force which will inevitably be abused.
But I do think the Democrats should also talk about these better solutions *while* criticizing the bad ones Trump and (most) of the R's are providing. It should also be recognized that it is difficult to do so when you're A.) out of power and B.) there's a new act of overreach practically every other day.
The feds are using the Nat'l Guard to defend federal property. We don't have any federal property in our county. All the rest is your paranoia and love of illegal aliens talking. The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of the military for policing. By the way, where were "progressives" when the Nazi governor of NY put the National Guard in the subways? LOL
The president and GOP leaders are saying otherwise--they claim the DC shutdown, and the proposed deployments to major cities, is to crackdown on crime, not just for the narrow purpose of defending federal property. (and in DC the assaults that were cited as a pretext for beginning the deployment didn't happen on federal property) They haven't provided specifics beyond that. (and they haven't recognized that crime has been falling, not rising, in the cities they propose to deploy to.) Since there's always crime going on, even when the crime rate in a city is exceptionally low, that's an excuse for an open-ended deployment.
And sure the Posse Comitatus Act says the military can't do policing, but if the executive branch merely needs a thin pretext to make something a "national crisis", then it's a toothless law. If the executive can simply declare 'crime in American cities' a national emergency requiring a military response, it can feasibly use the military to supplant local police, because (according to it) the military's there to serve a 'national' function.
You may not have federal property in your county, but if the executive can declare 'crime in America' (or even just 'crime in state X') as a national crisis that authorizes a military response, then so long as there is crime in your county--of any sort--they'll have an excuse to send in the troops. And it's not realistic to say 'no crime of any sort will ever be committed in my county'. Even counties in which crime is rare will still have a crime occur on occasion.
I don’t know, things today feel an awful lot like they did a year ago, with one party giving voice to the primary concerns that determined the 2024 election and the other continuing to ignore them and, worse, claiming the issues don’t even exist (societal impacts of Biden’s illegal immigrants, crime in our big cities, Leftist political violence, etc…)
I also think you need to account for the ‘stickiness’ of the Trump/GOP convert. Switching from Democrat to Republican, especially in the Trump era, is not a decision one easily comes to. As we all know, doing so earns you instant admonishment and ridicule from the left, including friends, family, coworkers, etc. (if you’re vocal about it). It’s a ‘crossing of the Rubicon’ of sorts. Once you’ve crossed that line, it becomes very difficult to cross back. To do so rejoin those who hate you and to validate their hate. This drives one further down the path of ‘fuck me? No, fuck YOU!’ and, in my opinion, with good cause.
Democrats have not changed a single thing since their 2024 electoral ass whooping. They’ve doubled-down on the ‘war on democracy’ and ‘Trump/MAGA are fascists’ arguments, which America resoundingly rejected in 2024. It’s to the extent now where they’re in open rebellion against the federal government over deportations, an issue most Americans agree is valid at the very least, if not vocally supportive of. What are these people to think of the riots taking place at ICE detention centers, the doxing of federal agents, the ambush-style attacks on ICE, the attempted murders, the bounties? Shockingly, Democrats have not distanced themselves from this. They are too weak, they lack any governing principle, and have no clear party leader.
If the 2026 elections were to occur this Fall, Republicans would gain seats in the house. I don’t see that changing based on the Democrats current trajectory.
I like to analyze this through the lens of Martin Gurri's five wave theory of communications. The educated class flourished in the Age of Gutenberg with printed books they could argue about and Mass Media they could control. The last 100 years has been the age of the administrative state with lots of jobs for educated class. But with independent media and populist nationalism the age of the educated seems to be coming to an end.
Interesting polling no doubt, I've been slicing and dicing it since it came out. I like that question about "do you consider the other folks to be fellow Americans or the enemy" LOL Watch out for those non voters he he.
I couldn't understand the difference the poll of No College vs No BA, I'd guess they include BS within BA, but what about an associates or some college as they sometimes ask. Those results would be different. I guess I should read the fine print, probably there somewhere.
Male/Female divide is also striking.