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The Democrats’ Hermetically Sealed World
I was barely 16, a high school junior growing up in a small conservative farm town in Oklahoma. I was weirdly interested in politics, especially for a teenager. Not long after President Nixon won a massive landslide in the 1972 election over his challenger, US Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), I remembered a quote from Pauline Kael being bandied about in the media. At the time, she was the film critic for the New Yorker. I’ve kept it all these years.
Nixon’s landslide should have surprised no one. McGovern’s campaign was a mess almost from the start of the Democratic National Convention when he gave his acceptance speech so late that almost no one watched it. He was forced to ditch his first running mate, Senate colleague Thomas Eagleton (D-MO), over psychiatric treatment (electric shock) reasons for Kennedy family icon and our nation’s first Peace Corps director, Sargent Shriver. That didn’t help.
And that was just for starters. McGovern’s far-left positions over the Vietnam War (immediate withdrawal) and welfare (a guaranteed annual income) were radical at the time. Polling never had it close. Nixon carried every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, capturing 520 electoral votes – even McGovern’s home state of South Dakota. Nixon won the popular vote by over 23 percentage points, even as his party lost two Senate seats (okay, 1966 was a GREAT year for the GOP) and gained only 12 House seats. Voters didn’t like McGovern, but they didn’t trust Nixon, either. Americans like their checks and balances (see: 2020 election, a Biden “win” with a 14-seat GOP House pickup).
But somehow, all this escaped Manhattan resident Kael. She was long famously quoted saying, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
Later, in 2011, New Yorker film editor Richard Brody offered what many consider a more accurate version of Kael’s retort. It is no less damning: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
Pauline Kael has nothing on disgraced ex-FBI agent, now Georgetown University professor and MSNBC contributor Peter Strzok, who once texted his FBI paramour, Lisa Page, “’Just went to a Southern Virginia Walmart. I could smell the Trump support.” The olfactory gifts of some Democrats are unique.
The lesson is obvious. When one never ventures outside their bubble, they believe everyone thinks as they do. They’re surprised when reality shows up, like the mayhem guy from the Allstate commercials. It can happen to any of us.
And those who haven’t learned that lesson are doomed to repeat it in about 9 days.
Our political world has turned upside down over the past 50 years. During the first congressional campaign I worked on in northeast Oklahoma, it wasn’t long ago that Republicans were seen as the party of the wealthy, the elite, the erudite – “country club Republicans,” they were called. Democrats were the working class party, the “little guy.” I got a big dose of that just 12 years later while working to elect St. Sen. Bill Cabaniss to the US Senate in 1990. He challenged the last Democratic US Senator from Alabama not to switch parties, the late Howell Heflin.
It wasn’t a good year for the GOP, which lost a net one seat that year, but Cabaniss was ahead of his time. The erudite St. Sen. from tony Mountain Brook, the most affluent community in Alabama, a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, wasn’t one to connect to working-class voters then. We tried.
An old-fashioned populist Democrat, Heflin killed us when the conservative-leaning Democrat mentioned that Republicans had encouraged him to switch parties. “I’m not one of THEM,” he slow-drawled. The mannerly Cabaniss, who would have made a great US Senator, would later serve as US Ambassador to the Czech Republic during the Bush 43 Administration. It’s hard to find a Democrat in Alabama these days. No one is concerned about GOP nominee Katie Britt’s election on November 8th.
Alabama’s next US Senator, Republican Katie Britt. She succeeds Democrat-turned-Republican Richard Shelby. She served as his chief of staff.
As a newly-minted Democrat-turned-Republican campaign operative in 1978, I struggled to figure out how to pitch my candidate to working-class voters. I cheered whenever I saw my candidate’s bumper sticker on the back of a pick-up truck (we lost, by the way, but not by much). Today, that congressional seat – eastern Oklahoma’s second district – is solidly Republican and about to send its representative to the US Senate, one former mixed martial arts fighter and plumbing company owner Markwayne Mullin.
Political signage on pickup trucks has evolved over the past 50 years.
Most college-educated voters, which comprised about 15 percent of the electorate back then, voted Republicans. Non-college-educated whites voted Democratic, along with black and other minority voters. Today, that’s flipped on its head. College/indoctrination center-educated voters now lean heavily Democratic in their blue bubble while “working class” voters – white, Hispanic, and increasingly black – are moving en masse to the GOP. And many suburban voters turned off by Trump are moving back.
Comedic Democratic consultant Paul Begala underscored this point last May on Bill Maher’s late-night television show.
“Don’t tell anybody that we Democrats have a lab,” he told Maher. “Two labs, actually, secret labs, one in Berkeley and one in Brooklyn, where we come up with ideas to completely piss off the working class. And it’s working wonderfully.”
“Labs, you say, actual labs,” Maher pressed Begala for more.
“And they all have PhDs right in pissing off the working class,” Begala continued. “Somehow, in my lifetime, the Democrats have gone from being the party of the factory floor to being the party of the faculty lounge.”
Jack Metzger is a retired Humanities Professor from Chicago’s Roosevelt University. He penned a short essay that underscores this point. While the percentage of college-educated voters has grown, they are still outnumbered. And Republicans are filling the void. We’re about to see just how much in a few days.
How Big is the Working Class — and Why Does It Matter?
Jack Metzgar Oct 29, 2022
Americans without bachelor’s degrees outnumber college grads 2 to 1. But if you and most people you know and have ever known are college graduates, you might not realize that most Americans are not like you and your cohort. As a result, you’re likely to think your class of people is much, much larger than it is.
That misunderstanding is crucial for American politics in the early 21st century. As David Shor and others have pointed out, most political operatives and activists – and perhaps especially Democrats — are college grads who seem to assume that most voters are like them.
Likewise, most network and cable TV reporters and commentators also often seem to assume that almost everybody has been to college. They might get the right answer on a true-or-false question if somebody asked, but nobody does. And, thus, there is a feedback loop among the political and pundit class: they don’t realize that they are engaged in a public inter-class conversation that is code-restricted to those who have graduated from college – and maybe even only to those who have graduated from the most elite schools.
For the past two decades, Ruy Teixeira and a handful of other progressive Democratic analysts have been banging their heads against this wall, trying to convince Dems to pay more attention to working-class whites, defined as whites without bachelor’s degrees, and now raising alarms about the erosion of Black and Hispanic working-class voters as well. Teixeira’s latest effort on the coming mid-term elections shows how the political class shapes issues based on unconscious or semi-conscious class bias: focusing on abortion, Trump’s corruption, gun control, and January 6th – issues top of mind among the college-educated – to the exclusion of economic issues, including inflation and its effects on real wages, that matter most to working-class voters of all colors.
I sympathize with Teixeira’s frustration with the class tilt of Democratic Party professionals and most of the media, but I think he presents too uniform a view of the party, one that may be accurate in the D.C. – New York corridor but much less so across the country. President Biden has repeatedly emphasized working-class issues, for example, as have several Democratic Congressional candidates, like Tim Ryan in Ohio.
But the party can’t ignore issues like abortion and Trumpian corruption for both principled reasons and because it is a cross-class, multi-racial coalition that cannot work without all of its parts.
Democratic data firm Catalist makes the challenge clear: Democrats are still a mostly working-class party, as 58% of Biden voters, all colors, did not have bachelor’s degrees. But the other 42% of the coalition did, and Democrats cannot ignore either group’s interests. The picture gets more complicated when we factor in race. Catalist groups Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and “Others” together as people of color (POC), and they made up 39% of the Biden coalition.
Read the rest of this piece at Working-Class Perspectives.
“Somehow, in my lifetime, the Democrats have gone from being the party of the factory floor to being the party of the faculty lounge.” Paul Begala
Joe Biden: “Our economy is strong as hell.”
Americans:
How delusional are many Democrats? Take this MSNBC appearance featuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on October 23.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on this week’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” that the Democratic Party would win majorities in the midterm elections.
Discussing aid to Ukraine, Capehart asked, “Let me get your reaction really quickly. Do you think that comment which was made by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy about a blank check, is that a disqualifying comment for someone third in line to the presidency?”
Pelosi said, “Was I not clear? We are going to win this election.”
Capehart said, “No, I understand.”
Pelosi added, “”It may be. I mean, I don’t know if this is disqualifying, but it – people should take that into consideration if they care about democracy. Democracy is on the ballot, not just because of the support for Ukraine, but because of trying to nullify elections, voter suppression, overturning elections because they don’t like the outcome.”
She added, “But again, democracy on a ballot, we want it to be strong. The planet on the ballot, we want it to be safe. Our values on the ballot, we want them to be respected, and we fully intend to win. Take it to the bank.”
She predicted the same thing just before the 2010 midterm elections.
The GOP picked up 63 House seats that year.
Here’s the thing to watch for. Will the Democrats’ course correct after their debacle, or will they double down?
A course correction would require a spoonful of reality medicine sans sugar and humility not often found in Democratic leadership circles (or many Republican ones, for that matter). The more likely reaction, especially from progressives, is to blame their leaders for not more aggressively pursuing their agenda. The recriminations will be delicious, and watch for progressive Democrats to double down and shout out their more based colleagues, many of whom will be seeking new jobs after November 8th.
I wonder whom Democrats will elect as their new leader for the 118th Congress. It won’t be Nancy Pelosi.
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They will double down. They will not correct course. They will swing for the fences. Take your pick. But it will be with purposeful, vile malignancy. Just as they knew what they would do on 21 January 2021, they know what they will do beginning 9 November 2022 if not stopped unequivocally. Even then they will not stop working behind the scenes, out of view, below the radar, in the weeds – to take back power even bigger and stronger and faster.
Good article, Kelly. People are sometimes astonished to discover that the people they personally know are not a reliable cross-section of the entire country.
I’m intrigued by the reference to “Trump’s corruption”. Is this a thing?
I agree 100% but how did they, meaning Democrats, get to this place? I’m trying to think back if there was a switch that flipped for this party. Gore in 2000? Obama’s extreme second term? Hillary denied? Or is it truly the long march through the institutions?
Yes, they’ve pretty much been a party of extremes. Quick timeline off the top of my head: the party of slavery morphs into the KKK morphs into Jim Crow southern Dixie-crats morphs into communist/socialist ideologues. Their only break from this trend seems to be Bill Clinton’s perceived reasonableness and JFK ‘s all-American façade by standing up to the Ruskies. Why did neither of the latter alter the course of Democratic thought and policy?
I keep coming back to the fact that they “got lucky” by being in power for the Civil Rights Act. How a self-expressing racist (Lyndon Johnson) gets to inherit the goodwill behind the Civil Rights Act, which in reality set into motion the current destructive path of the family and particularly black culture that thrived when systemic racism was real, is beyond me (see The Moynihan Report & anything by Thomas Sowell). Signing that act seemed to erase the memory of a century+ of extreme anti-black Democratic policies.
Our two party system needs two reasonable parties to balance each other. When Democrats are this bad (insane, hateful, delusional, pick-your-adjective) it doesn’t hold Republicans accountable. And when Republicans show no courage to defend their values, we get our current version of Democrats Gone Wild.
It can happen to any of us. Our family has considered college education to be very important for three generations. But as a result we generally hang out mostly with college educated people, and it’s hard for most of us to believe the statistics showing that most people do not have a college education.
My brother is a nominal conservative who has lived his entire life in affluent suburbs, much of it an area of California long considered conservative. But after the 2016 elections he could not fathom how anyone could vote for Donald Trump. At the time I had lived about 15 years at the edge of a smallish urban area of western New York. Being at the edge, where the suburbs ended and the rural world began I had rural neighbors and learned a lot about agriculture and other hands-on economic activities. Donald Trump was very popular among my rural neighbors. Only after I conveyed to my brother some of the features of the lives my rural neighbors lived, and the concerns they had as they ran their businesses did my brother begin to recognize how limited were his experiences.
Now living in Texas, again at the edge of suburbs and beginning of rural, I enjoy the variety of people I see and know, both high-brow intellectuals and hands-on doers. Bankers, retired retail executive with modest ranching operation, longhorn cattle breeder, oil driller (he’s one of those who’s made and lost a fortune twice), geologist in the oil business, retired police, college professors, etc.
Yes, it’s not just on the left. I have a Republican friend who told me that not only did Donald Trump really carry Minnesota in 2016 (but was cheated out of it, of course), but Trump even carried Minneapolis. My friend even believes that Donald Trump won the black vote in Minneapolis. I suppose most people my old friend associates with are Republican, so he just cannot believe that in other parts of Minnesota, Democrats are the overwhelming majority. Just as I’m sure there are people in Minneapolis who cannot believe that there are Congressional seats from elsewhere in Minnesota held by Republicans.
Once again,
Same here, I grit my teeth , they throw that line out as if it’s self-evident, no examples needed.
‘And when Republicans show no courage to defend their values, we get our current version of Democrats Gone Wild.’
Too many Republicans are vaguely embarrassed by their own supporters, they think their job is to moderate the Democrats craziness rather than fight it. Anyone who talks about ‘reaching across the aisle’ should have his arm chopped off.
That’s true. Historically it’s been more of a left wing attitude because it’s easy to exist in the popular culture in Amercia and never intersect with a conservative idea (beyond liberals characterizing conservatives). Whereas if you are conservative, it was impossible to exist outside of left wing popular culture, which gave us a greater understanding of them. Now with the internet, conservatives have built bubbles for themselves as well. I’ve run into what you described more often in the last 6 years than ever. Many conservatives don’t understand just how dominantly Democrat our major cities are. They don’t understand scale (your small community is the population of 1 city block in NYC). Democrats live in even larger bubbles. It’s frustrating. It makes it difficult to align on reality.
In my experience very few liberals have heard a conservative view from a conservative. It is the news or friends telling them what conservatives think.
Fewer voters are buying Biden’s working class promises because he committed the classic blunder, over promised and under delivered.*
For the sake of this discussion I’m going to assume his huge “investments” work. Regardless, nothing in government or the economy happens overnight. In year 2 of his administration, he was reduced to pissing on our heads and proclaiming from the podium, “It’s just rain. And once my programs come into effect, you’ll all have umbrellas.”
Deep down in a remote part of my heart, I rejoice at the flailing of a man who personifies hubris. He has exalted himself and he shall be humbled. Though he may not be self aware enough to know it.
* I bet you thought I was going to write, “never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”
I have all kinds of hope for Katie Britt here in Alabama, the main one being that she is not really all that Trump-y, despite having to kiss the Donald’s ring in ads.
What IS is with the concern about ‘knee-bendin’,’ ’n’ ‘ring kissin’’?
Trump is the de facto party leader but has no control over what any elected official does.
Presenting a united front is how this stuff is done.
It’s just a way of showing their distaste that he still has political influence, I think.
Yes, exactly.
A united front is so important. And with the Dems screwing up royally, Republicans have a historic chance to change the landscape. That’s why Trump cannot be the GOP nominee. Many, many conservatives, like me, will not go along with him. Let’s not blow this.
I just don’t get you Suspira. Under Trump we were safer and richer though some of the tweets were dumb and annoying poor Americans became less poor and we avoided another war while still having terrorists scared of us.
Logically any conservative should support Trump even if they don’ like him very much. How you feel about him personally isn’t relevant.
Ah, if only voters were not, you know, human beings. I contend that people do not want to vote for someone they dislike. It’s why Trump won in 2016. Hillary Clinton is so unlikeable that voters decided to give Trump a go. But Trump is not very likeable, either, so in 2020, they went with good old Joe. We don’t know who will be the Dems standard bearer in 2024, but Biden seems unlikely and Harris has all of Hillary’s appeal, coupled with being a terrible speaker. All we have to do is find someone slightly more likeable and we’re in. That person is not Trump, whose popularity only occasionally exceeded his disapproval numbers.
It’s not like Trump is the only person the GOP could possibly run for president. We are spoiled for choices.
This is why I am against humanity and democracy. Not only should we make sex robots but we should make robots who are more moral and logical than us and then rule over us. That or we genetically engineer a better race of people than what we have.
Personally me and my associates are trying to fuse the DNA of Ayan Hirsi Ali and Dr. Bastiat with Korean sweat glands.
Good luck, Dr. Frank…er, Castaigne! This would indeed create an improved species.
You must have a different concept of ‘united front’ than I do.
‘ a united front is so important —-we will not go along. ‘ !!
WE have wanted a fighter for decades but we went along with Dole, Bush, McCain, Romney but when the time came for moderates (or whatever they are ) to go along with us they backed off and said NEVER.
When I think of the faux-conservative stuff we’ve been given for decades it makes me feel even more disgust for alleged conservatives who attack Trump; you are why we can’t have nice things.
A key difference is that one can admit that Dole, McCain, and Romney lost presidential elections and shouldn’t be run again. If a Republican says that Trump actually lost the 2020 election and we should select someone else next time, they are regarded as some sort of ingrate.
Could you not get behind a candidate other than Trump? Will Trump stalwarts refuse to vote for, say, Ron DeSantis if he were to get the nomination?
As long as I am not expected to Mitt or Bush.
We will unless said candidate builds his campaign on trashing Trump. Some distancing is necessary and expected, but if said candidate invokes ‘Trumpism’ and otherwise allies with the left’s poison, he’s gonna lose votes.
And by the way: yes, I do speak for the entirety of Trump stalwarts. They take orders from me.
Okay, we’re getting somewhere (especially as you’re the generalissimo of the Trump Army!). If we can settle on someone who isn’t named Romney, Bush or Trump, we would be in a very strong position. Truly, I think this is the way forward.
This is the thing – I already have voted for Romney and voted twice for Bush. I think voting a second time for Trump if he is wins the primary is not too much to ask of conservatives. Sure, try like hell to get someone else up for the general, but if it’s Trump, why would you not vote for the guy who will govern conservatively and prevent the nation from going even farther left?
Edit: I need to take that back. I voted against Bush because I was a dem then.
I agree with that. I absolutely want another Republican nominee in 2024 but there isn’t a Democrat who has a chance of securing the Democratic nomination who would have worse policies than Donald Trump.