I don't understand this self-flagellation: it is our "fault" that people in Red States are mobilizing against the so-called left, and they have never done anything to antagonize us. Politics involves struggle, and failure to struggle simply embeds the status quo that entrenches economic and social inequality. I'm all for finding ways to bring employment back to those communities that have been hollowed out, but I refuse to apologize for my beliefs!
3
Why why listen? I know lots of conservative Trump fans. They never listen to me, and are totally resistant to anything that contradicts their opinions. They are always right, and everybody else is always wrong. Ther is no hope there. Convince people who are open to convincing, but Trump’s base are not those people.
107
Hmm... I find the main tenant of this column a little hard to swallow. Red States/Blue States -- yeah, I sort of get it. But what "conservatism" seems to mean these days is just more wealth for the wealthy and less for the rest of us. They are apparently willing to run up deficits while cutting health care for children, retirement security for senior citizens who have paid into the system. A thought crossed my mind, as I read this column. If we actually made work pay, if earning minimum wage wasn't the road to less health care, less education, fewer choices -- perhaps it would be easier to see who the so called deserving poor were vrs. the legendary deadbeats of the Right. As a liberal, I really only operate with one basic value -- that the society that cannot care for its most vulnerable members will fail. So far on the Right, I see policies that are building up the wealthy so they can stand while we go down the tubes. I imagine that people in Red States will go down the tubes with the rest of our Blue States. So I've got to say, I'm not sure exactly where the argument really is.
63
“The core elements of liberal democracy [create] conditions that inevitably undermine it.” Stenner sounds rather like Carl Schmitt here, which is not necessarily to say she’s wrong. The liberal mind is entirely alien to rural people; there’s a suspicion that liberals are agents of subversion, which from their point of view is right. We shouldn’t romanticize rural dwellers or just blame “neoliberal” policies for their beliefs and their anger.
Under liberalism, you’re allowed to question everything EXCEPT THE TENETS OF LIBERALISM. That some cultures are superior to others is not something one can say. Many wealthy liberals love to visit old English and German villages, but they often fail to see that these are products of homogeneous culture. Liberals romanticize victims and have an odd need to identify them in any conflict. Liberal intellectuals see themselves as standing apart from, and in judgment upon, society: hence their criticism of almost all norms.
The attraction of socialist utopias to people like this shouldn’t surprise us. The Trumpian hillbillies may or may not present a bigger threat to society than leftist academics who feel sorry for them; but both need to be combatted. Liberals can’t expect everyday people to react to outsiders the way we wish they would. And people simply have conflicting values.
We need to confront the world as pragmatically as possible, knowing that neither side is going away. We have to learn to communicate better and to compromise.
42
I’m a quiet liberal in the red south. It gives perspective. Much of the time liberals come across as entirely too sure of their own superiority. The term progressive itself captures our religious certainty that secularism is the superior creed. Again I really am a liberal and I love liberalism but we have gone astray. Smug contempt for fellow Americans is what is being communicated to Red states much of the time. Smug contempt is weapon for the culture war but war never got anything built. Come on liberal America what is your vision?
50
Indeed, a considerable amount of the "illiberal" trends in the world and especially in Europe come from people who want to control their borders, want to preserve social moral consensus, understand marriage is related to sexual differentiation, and do not believe human rights includes killing preborn children. Perhaps if we admitted that this is a conflict of culture and not a divide between the righteous and the benighted, we would not be dealing with the polarization that afflicts politics in Europe and the United States and which threatens to bring down European institutions that have been whipped into their ideological service.
13
Compassion towards others is important, even ideal, but acceptance of ideals that are anti-democratic, anti-knowledge, and insistently pro-white and hypocritical is not. (i.e. Claiming Christian priorities while supporting a known pedophile for the Senate is high hypocrisy.)
The ideas in this article are exaggerations and denials about the extremist right's foothold across America. As Ta Nehesi Coates recently wrote in The Atlantic: " ...Trump won whites in midwestern Illinois (+11), whites in mid-Atlantic New Jersey (+12), and whites in the Sun Belt’s New Mexico (+5). In no state that Edison polled did Trump’s white support dip below 40 percent. Hillary Clinton’s did, in states as disparate as Florida, Utah, Indiana, and Kentucky." Many white Americans are angry that their numbers are diminishing, and with them their dominance. No wall or repressive laws will keep the country majority white, and liberals showing more patience for views they find repugnant will not change that. As distressing as the correlation between the right and racism is-- on moral and practical grounds-- it is no less real. Being polite about it won't stop it, either.
57
Whenever a conservative is riding in my car, i play one of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs...
Sail on, oh mighty Ship of State!
To the shores of need,
past the reefs of greed,
through the squalls of hate.
Democracy is coming to the USA.
Most ask "who is this?"
Obviously their ears are unplugged.
23
One person, one vote.
If all votes counted equally and election day were a mandatory federal holiday and if all people had easy access to polling places, the Republicans would be gone.
Free and fair elections is all that is required to begin to repair the damage the Republicans are doing to our country.
79
The Tax Bill almost irreversibly blows away the New Deal. Trump's followers, motivated by economic and social grievances, will primary anyone who stands up to him. That his actual actions betray his rhetoric doesn't matter. The Republican donor classes is using this opportunity to vacuum up more resources to further game elections, pack the judiciary and manipulate this group (anyone who argues otherwise must also think that targeted advertising doesn't work). I say "almost" because huge calamity can reshuffle the deck. That's what dealt the New Deal in the first place.
21
I am glad Mr Edsall feels he understands what is going on. I find both his comments and those of the Liberals he quotes to be random, disconnected, and illogical. No idea what he is trying to get at.
35
Quite paradoxical: I believe that the authoritarians among us want some of the very same things that Karen Stenner attributes to liberals: "allowing retention of separate identities; maintenance of separate communities, lifestyles and values; strict prohibitions on government intervention in ‘private’ moral choices."
Same concept but with different specific details.
Maybe too far east is west.
14
No one is more intolerant than a liberal. Just look at the news, it's obvious.
Don't ask a liberal to be open minded, it would be easier to teach a dog to talk.
Modern liberalism has evolved from being a political ideology to being a secular religion. Blasphemies will not be allowed. Exhibit A: This comment thread.
31
It all keeps coming back to Scott Pruitt and his side kick Rick Perry. One can be patient about the long arc of history, but the earth, not so much. Our children and grandchildren are gravely imperiled by the anti-science GOP.
42
Thomas, we liberals hear perfectly well. What we hear is the diestruction by the Republican Party of the America that once a force for good in the world and in its own land. Trump and the Republican party are the enemies of that heritage. Enough of us now see the GOP as the unAmerican plutocracy it is We'll begin to take our country back at the mid term elections, and when Mueller reports his findings to the nation. Trump is the most unpopular President in modern history.
27
What is remarkable about Democrat political operatives are the dogmatism and the inability to recognize the legitimacy of points of view that are different from their own. Partly, the blame is also on the ossified Democrat leadership model where seniority takes all. Pelosi is 77 years old and in no mood to step back; so are other Dem committee chairs.
A lot of red state extremism is a reaction to the cultural-political agenda of the left. White nationalists are the response to BLM and immigration partisans, etc.
13
I don’t remember such a blame lecture to conservatives when Obama won twice and Dems held Congress. Trumpeters operate on a different set of (non) facts. Fox fake news and gullible ignorant and/or more angry, bitter conservatives like Kevin, Maureen Dowd’s brother, not liberal outrage bears most of the responsibility for this infection upon the body politic. I refuse to take an iota Of blame for this debacle. I didn’t create the Tea Party. I’m here to fight it. I still think the Hitler analogy is operative and justified given Trump’s behavior and his attempt to destroy institutions and replace them with a cult of personality. Edsal may go quietly. If I go down, it will be fighting not acquiescing or moderating my outrage because somehow I’m to blame.
56
keep bashing TRUMP
dems are dead for DECADES
6
This is mostly academic gibberish, telling us in great verbosity that we liberal Democrats need to be more tolerant of racism, sexism and homophobia, and to welcome a return of coal-based pollution. Oh, and guns and more guns.
I don't think so.
68
Liberals are utterly intolerant of any person or idea that questions or challenges their beliefs.
22
This is the dumbest column I have read in the Times in over 3 years. It is not the left's fault if the alt-right and their supporters willingly, and purposefully, accepted the snake oil served by the con man in chief. I used to care about all American citizens, but I do no more. If the right wants full-tilt tribal all the time, then that is what they will get. They deserve all the bad things coming to them from this administration.
45
Please spare me from the "forces of modernity."
9
Please stop telling liberals what to do and take the time to look inward at yourself and at your Party's actions. The last thing a liberal needs are lessons in empathy from a guy who ignores the needs of the poor or the needs of the state - hungry kids and Russian cyber attacks are ground zero buster. So, I beg you to look in the mirror and realize that right now the liberals hold no sway over Congress, the Supreme Court or the White House. It's all yours and please don't expect the liberals to save you . . . you are part of a radical movement run by Bannon's dark vision. We liberals see your dilemma. Can you?
43
We have crooks in the White House! This is not a red/blue issue.
38
"liberals tend to see this as a thin cover for racism"
Nazis murdering protesters in broad daylight, then defended by the president, is a "thin" cover?
Make no mistake, we do disagree, and we don't have to accommodate racism, mysogyny, and treason. They will lose, plain and simple.
People keep forgetting Trump lost the popular vote, is the most unpopular president in history, and only won through lying, Russia, voter suppression, and gerrymandering. Those tricks can't suppress the inevitable tide of history forever.
Republicans know this and fear it, knowing they are on the wrong side of progress. A temporary victory, however large, is only one battle in a losing war.
39
Reading the comments here is disturbing. The author is asking for a little honest introspection. Hopefully the preponderance of thoughtless knee-jerk responses here are not representative of the overall readership of the NYT.
18
Conservatives need to take their fingers out of their ears.
22
I think this snippet from the NY Times column "Texas Prisons Ban 10,000 Books. No ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ for Inmates" about banning books in Texan prisons sums up the issue about the conservatives:
"prohibited from reading the pop-up edition of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “The Color Purple” and the 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalog.
The publications are among the 10,000 titles banned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a list that includes best sellers like “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “A Time to Kill” and even obscure works, such as the “MapQuest Road Atlas.” Not banned: “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler and books by white nationalists, including David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard."
18
Stunning!!!!!!!
rather than firing off a comment, as I am want to do, Thomas Edsall has convinced me that the proper response is reflection and not talk.
Thank you......
5
Sure, blame the opposition for your own shortcomings. It's a pity party for the poor people who are being FORCED to vote for rich, old, White Pedophiles who give themselves and their sponsors huge tax breaks while ignoring the people as a whole. Yes, standing up for decency and compassion sets your people on edge Mr Edsall, but I'll continue to do it while pressing the blue key in the election booth until the day I die.
17
Edsall counsels we accept fascism.
22
If there is anything that is synonymous with conservatism, it is hypocrisy. I don't need to listen to conservative Trump supporters because they as a whole put the value of the tribe over all else. They are supporting a sexual predator in Alabama and support a rapist in the White House. I see no value whatsoever in listening to anything they have to say as they are morally and ethically reprehensible.
21
"Liberals Need to Take Their Fingers Out of Their Ears."
And, I suggest that they step out of their echo chamber before they take their fingers out.
10
Oh, Edsall, you kidder....
The problem has never been the liberals.
The problem, is the collectivist Progressives who have seized control of the Democratic party and who eradicate all resistance to them within the party.
Liberals have always listened, and there has always been a rather polite sway back and forth between liberalism and conservatism.
Until recently.
Enter the Progressives, who are cold, calculating, and ruthless ideologues who seek to gradually turn this republic on its ear.
It is they, who are doing all the (false) whining, not the liberals. The Progressives have pushed things so far left, that liberals now vote for Republicans.
The Progressives are now, and always have been, enemies of American democratic principles - redefining freedom so that only those who speak the Progressive party line enjoy the protection of the First Amendment. And redefining what citizens may think - as though they actually have the authority to do so. And forcing redistributionist policy on the citizenry.
No, liberals aren't the ones who need to listen. They always have listened.
And the Progressives, will never listen. Ever.
Better to get rid of them, entirely.
Which is exactly what happened on election day last year.
13
The Rorschach test of responses to this article might be just as informative (and certainly an object lesson) as the article itself.
9
Look, at this point? All I know is the US is circling the drain, and it isn't likely to stop anytime soon. When you have people openly discussing whether to vote for a pedophile or a Democrat, or whether a nuclear war is "winnable," one side trying self-righteously to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and the other depraved, you have a country so far down a black hole, nothing can be done but to take cover and have an emergency plan. People Forget...They Forgot...
9
The Democratic party has to focus on restoring democratic ways.
=================================================
This is war! Trump, and the Republican party offer Fascistic domination.
I believe that in order for the Democrats to rise, they must declare war on the extreme Right, period. Fascism is Fascism, period.
I suggest the use of symbols to fight back. For example, Trump has his OK sign, that he makes with his right hand, all the time. Perhaps the Democrats can ridicule Trump by mocking the OK sign, showing it with both hands, or upside down, or what have you.
This is war!
Will the Democrats please wake up? OK, OK, OK?
=====================================
4
Mr. Edsall makes some excellent points. But one of them needs to be held up to the light - "Trump’s 82 percent approval rating among Republican voters." Yes, that shows how divided our country has become--that so many people can still "approve" of someone who is so despicable.
But this number doesn't necessarily translate to election success in 2020, for two reasons. One is that Republican voters are less than half of all the voters, maybe 45% or even less when you factor in independents. The other is that President Trump's approval rating among Democrats is - well, somewhere around zero. When his approval rating was probably a little higher, in 2016, he only received 48% of the popular vote in the election. Since then, his stock has fallen among some Republicans (18%?) and I assume also among independents. So that 82% might only translate to 40% or less of the vote in 2020.
But note, I'm not at all disputing the point of this article - that liberals and the Democratic party need to understand the appeal of President Trump and how he managed to get elected. They need to wage campaigns the address the woes of ordinary Americans who feel they have lost ground and President Trump speaks to them, rather than simply attack Trump and appeal to tribalism. If we can't do that we may add another four years to our nightmare.
12
Yes, the left refuses to take its fingers out of its tears and accept that many authoritarians, all stripes of authoritarians, are genetically predisposed to hatred, intolerance of change, fear of the unlike, and a desire to maintain a rigid morality to disguise their own deepest impulses.
And yes, frighteningly, it's true, the evidence of genetic predisposition gets stronger every day. Which means the only way progressives can deal with incipient fascism is to become master propagandists, as the Republicans have, and disguise what they really believe. Is that what they should do? Well, if they want to win, and stop the fall of the republic, maybe that's what they need to do.
Here's the master on that very subject. The technique will hardly seem new.
“The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
That would be Hitler, Mein Kampf.
12
"Geographically speaking, red counties are virtually nonexistent on the West Coast and on the East Coast north of the Mason-Dixon line."
Did the author look at a map after the presidential election of 2016? Trump won 45 counties in New York Clinton 17. This includes downstate counties of Suffolk, Richmond (NYC Boro), Orange and Putnam. Cuomo won even less in his election 16 counties to Astorino 46. A look at New Jersey will show similar results. Anyone can view New York Times own website to see this.
https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york
Fact is outside of major city limits even in the liberal Northeast exist an almost solid sea of red. This sea will get larger as people finally figure out the failures of the left.
Fake news? Liberal propaganda? Get off your island liberals and read all points of view. You will then realize how closed minded you can be.
14
As a Trump supporter, nothing is sadder and more hilarious than this comment section. I have to feel some pity for the people who won't listen, you're only hurting and diminishing yourselves. All the rest of the country is saying to you guys is "LEAVE ME ALONE." That's it. They're saying "stop trying to make me like you. We don't want to be like you." Of course, it's more complex than that, but in many ways that's all you really need to know if you actually wanted to understand them (you don't).
They don't want to change their speech patterns for you. They don't want to give up their religion because you think it's primitive. They love their country as much as they love their friends and family, they are not cynical and bitter know-it-alls like you, and they can't understand why you are fixated on criticizing our shared culture, our history and constantly apologizing to other people around the world about how horrible you feel being an American.
You are frankly a bunch of traitors, because you would sooner take the side of people from other nations than you would stick up for fellow Americans (immigration debate, for example).
But you won't listen. You just cannot stand the idea that these wretched "deplorables" - who you've spent years using as the butt of your jokes - might be entitled to some respect, REGARDLESS of whether or not they're willing to become more like YOU. Expect more Trump.
17
Heaven save us from this sort of intellectual claptrap. Tell the truth, man. There are a whole bunch of racists, fascists and revelers in ignorance out there. Nothing, nothing will change their minds. Give up talking to them. Mobilize, demonstrate and get the vote out. We can and will win if we want to badly enough.
8
As a liberal in blood-red South Carolina, I can hardly avoid hearing the complaints of the Trump supporters. They usually complain about people getting healthcare "for free," kids getting a decent education in public schools and express fear that they won't be able to carry their guns everywhere and anywhere.
Frankly, I'm pretty tired of it. I'm a live-and-let live sort of person for the most part, but please don't tell me that if you carry a gun you will save lil ole me from some bad guy. Please don't tell me that you are pro-life but don't want to pay those "lazy n-----s" for having more children. I don't want to hear your excuses for not paving the roads, having the highest domestic violence rate in the country and the lowest educational attainment.
Most of all, don't tell what Jesus says, then denigrate your neighbors (or me!) for being different from you.
Sorry, I prefer to work to improve education, race relations (thank goodness Walter Scott's killer got 20 years!) and roads, among other things, all without carrying a weapon.
28
I don't know what has happened to the liberals - too much power for eight years I guess. They profess to be kind, generous, etc - but really if you have a different opinion, they are the meanest people you ever met. Who would want to be one?
They are bullies, truthfully. I'm 100% positive they'll read this and scoff at my uneducated red-state stupidity.
12
I'll unplug my ears if you take off your blinders....
8
In the words of Ron White... "You can't fix stupid"
6
You folks STILL don't know why you lost.
13
This article repeats this so called "normative threat" so many times; but every time, without defining what it exactly stands for, and probably because the authors are afraid to confront their own bias while flailing to explain to us other kinds of biases.
Here is my question: Why exactly is the thereat posed by coarse white supremacists affixed a sanitizing "normative" status to the plain old destruction and mayhem it represents?! Because its perpetrators are white?!
What the heck is normal about them?!
How about you people first deal with your own bias before you flail to teach us about other forms of biases!
2
Trumps core base is the Neo-Nazi, Neo-Confederate, Neo-Putin, KKK enemies of the USA, who he called "fine people" as they marched with torches shouting Nazi slogans. There are not enough of them to elect Trump though.
There is another group of people that would have voted for a Democrat, if the Democrats had helped, or even tried to help them with their economic problems. But the centrist Republican lite Democrats that refuse to stand for anything, leave the Republicans to define the terms of the debate, and refuse to make a good case for why the left is the future.
They defend "free trade" which is putting people out of work, was used to destroy the unions, and which the left base is against, but won't push hard for spending money in them.
If Democrats consistently fought to give working people what they need to thrive, Republican less would fall on deaf ears. But since Democrats refuse to promise things that every other country already does, and instead try to pick off Republican voters by moving right, they offer nothing but a shadow of the Republican policies that put people out of work.
There is no center base. Democrats can only win by growing the left base, instead of attacking it.
10
So there is no mistake: I loathe the very thought of DJT and his fascist ilk.
The people who like to call themselves liberal or progressive can be just as dogmatic, narrow-minded and tribal as any basket of Trumpist deplorables. Any thought that deviates one femtometer from the sacred progressive creed is immediately shouted down with standard the standard exhortations: raciist, sexist, mansplainer, homophobe.
Until the progressive mind is as open and subtle as it deludes itself to be, the populist lowbrows will thrive. BTW, not all Trump supporters are knuckle-dragging prosimians . I know quite a few seemingly intelligent, well-compensated professionals who voted for DJT because they couldn't stand Hillary and CNN. You draw your own conclusions.
11
I've made it simple.... I do not talk to any idiot how voted for Trump period... I find they have nothing to offer. Guy in our church is "big" Trump supporter and just found out that his wife who has MS with extremely expensive expenses and is looking at full time nursing home will not be able to deduct medical expenses! Now he's nuts. "I never voted for that".... yup your sure did....
17
The Democratic party is celebrating its wonderful enlightenment by throwing the brilliantly effective Franken under the bus. Wasn't it great to see a bunch of liberal women jump on the bandwagon to be politically correct? They favor appearances over winning back the country from treasonous plutocrats who allowing the US to become a doppelganger to Putin's Russia. Democrats have forgotten to put forth a clear message that, unfortunately, has to be dumbed down into trite catchphrases like: 'Lock her up,' in order to be effective. This is cold civil war and it isn't going to be won by pasty white women damning their own.
9
Without question,the Democrats have to find a way to reclaim part of the base they once had in blue collar America if they want to regain a place at the table anytime soon. While this did not happen overnight,it has happened. My one suggestion would be to somehow make pro-life voters feel welcome in the Democratic party. My parents were devout Catholics who tended to vote Democratic because of Civil Rights in the 60's and 70's(we are Irish Catholics). This ended after Roe v.Wade and the Democrats became the pro-choice party as a litmus test for its candidates.
This did not have to happen. The party of FDR would have aloud members to "agree to disagree". Not today. While much has changed in America over the past 40 years,on this issue things have remained as divided as ever. Why can't the Democrats show the world what democracy is all about:COMPROMISE AND NOT EXCLUSION!
If this had been the case in 2016,Trump would not be president and the hell we are all living through would never had happened. Without question,this FDR approach would only help with the emerging Hispanic vote.
Wake up Democrats.
5
My ears are wide open, and I've spent decades being called a libtard, a feminazi, an SJW and so much worse. I heard Sarah Palin loud and clear when she talked about "real America," and I know full well that progressives weren't part of her vision.
I also listened to everything Trump said in 2016. I heard the way he mocked Latinos, the disabled, the military, military families, Muslims, women, Asians, LGTB people, African Americans, judges, senators, representatives, the FBI, and others that I can't even remember. And then I heard millions of Americans go to their polling stations and say, "I'm OK with all of that."
I've heard enough.
27
I love how conservatives always seem to know what liberals want and believe, especially when the love to call them libtards and espouse death as the answer. Conservatives cannot even come to a consensus over their own beliefs, they like child predators now? They believe if you break the law and have money you get off scott free? Most people with sound minds want equality for everyone regardless of their creed. color, religion or bank account.
9
RE: For the moment, the left is both stunned and infuriated by the vehement animosity it faces from red America,
Not sure why the left is so stuned. For decades they have attacked America.
Liberal white guilt - solve by busing children across town rather than sending to the nearby school.
Criminals violating the law - take guns away from law abiding citizens
Don't want goverment run health care - you're a racist
etc, etc. etc.
7
I have problems with a couple of the quoted passages:
“Blue America spent the last eight years dictating both economic and cultural changes invalidating virtually every aspect of Red America. Liberals see all that as both righteous and benevolent — we’re both promoting better values and willing to help train them to be more like us.”
It strikes me that Republican congress members, and corporate America, were willing to make compromises with the Democrats on social issues, which they don't really care about anyway, but Obama was not able to get much substantive, economic help for most Americans – that's just not up for negotiation when Republicans seem hell bent on “starving the beast” that is the Federal government. Republicans seem to say "You can have gay marriage, but we'll continue to crush unions, deny decent health care, deny increasing the minimum wage..."
“I don’t think there’s much argument that the modern economy is killing off small towns, US-based manufacturing, the interior of the US generally, etc. ... In any event, while most of us in Blue World see these changes as beneficent, they have had devastating effects on the economies of “red” communities.”
I am a bleeding heart Massachusetts Bernie loving liberal, and even I think this guy is totally out of touch. I don't think any American believes that the hollowing out of the American middle class is “beneficent”. This person does indeed seem out of touch with the reality most of us face.
6
It's the economy stupid!
http://voxeu.org/article/global-income-distribution-1988.
3
"But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force."
Ah! There you have it. We must not tolerate intolerance. Racists and, xenophobes like me must be expunged to defend tolerance, right? Yikes! I shall have to go into hiding.
8
Conservatism underwritten by racism is to be resisted. Period.
9
Here’s what’s true. The NYT runs op-eds like this frequently, askng liberals to understand and empathize with the right, with the deplorables, with the reactionaries. Fox News, Breitbart and WSJ never, ever publish op-eds imploring their subscribers to understand and empathize with liberals. The plea to open-mindedness only exists on the left. The right is winning because they have institutionalized closed minds, and blinkered thinking.
25
So Edsall, like many at the NY Times, thinks the US economy is good.
Not a surprise, but hard to take him seriously on any subject after that kind of error.
The GOP tax increase is not popular.
7
All this reminds me of what some were saying just before the Civil War. To wit:
This country is SO immense--SO diverse--with so MANY competing interests. . . . ..
. . . .that it simply cannot remain one single country. It's GOTTA break apart sooner or later.
Well, of course--it didn't. Six hundred thirty thousand deaths later--it remained a single country.
The so-called culture wars--they ain't goin' away. I myself (liberal in so many ways) am not WHOLLY a liberal. I have a few conservative bones left.
Especially (and here I think you're right on the money) when it becomes a RELIGIOUS issue. Those issues do not propose to evaporate any time soon. And yet. . .and yet. . ..
I am by no means a Trump supporter. I know many like me who are by no means Trump supporters.
Whatever happened to the moderates? In letter after letter I write to The New York Times (and I've written a slew of them), I raise the same plaintive question. The middle-of-the-road people. The moderate Republicans. . . .
. . .and can you believe it? There used to BE moderate Republicans.
Even LIBERAL Republicans! Incredible! They died out with the pterodactyls. A pity.
Your phrase at the close was chilling. "Until Trumpism explodes."
Right. How long will that be? And how much damage will that explosion cause.
I mean--NAZISM exploded too. Eventually.
And the human toll was--CATASTROPHIC.
Well--let's not go THAT way, shall we.
You Trump supporters!
1
Liberals' BLIND ARROGANCE will be their undoing- That's why Hillary lost and why Trump will be re-elected in 2020. I don't like it any more than you do..
10
Totally agree with this, liberals may find us heartless or unethical, but I find them detached from reality.
6
Boy, just based on tone, 93% of the responses below would fit right in with a bunch of Hannity callers.
"" liberals tend to see this as a thin cover for racism, a reflection of troglodyte viewpoints, and in any event unwarranted as
the possibility the left refuses to acknowledge is that it actually isn't.
or, if they do, they don't care.
5
Liberals and people on the left have become too elitist and controlling.
They think they are all that and to believe otherwise is simply unacceptable.
Don't believe me? Just read the following readers' comments.
6
Lawrence Summers has given a similar but more intelligent analysis in his talk at Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL13BnTUeCs&t=1s
2
I must take issue with this idea: "You don’t have to buy the right’s “war on coal” rhetoric to accept that, even if that’s the direction the world is headed, anyway, hastening coal’s demise and shifting federal subsidy policy away from it and into alternative energy sources will have a negative economic effect on certain communities.In addition to the economic setbacks experienced in heavily Republican regions of the country..."
The shift away from fossil fuels to alternative energies is NOT a Red State, Blue State issue. If the author and Schnerer would read the newspaper that they are published in, then they would realize that the benefits of the push for alternative energy is actually quite strong in red states. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/climate/renewable-energy-push-is-stro...
Of course there is dislocation in the transition of energy sources. However, this fantasy that somehow liberals turn a deaf ear to the needs of "Red" communities is just inaccurate and fuels an existing false narratives ("War on Coal" narrative) concerning changes in the energy sector.
7
The premise of this piece is flawed. The undeniable intolerance, corruption and hate on display on the political left is not a momentary lapse. Leftist leaders and their apparatchiks — and the Deep State generally — are authoritarians by design. They don't want a liberal democracy. They want a despotic oligarchy.
8
This was the most balanced political article I've read in some time. I used to live in a very red part of the country before relocating to the Bay Area. I have
found people I enjoyed being with in both places, perhaps because we kept the conversation away from anything relating to politics or the culture wars.
I can see people on the right wanting a stronger national identity, focus on self-reliance, and a justice system based on traditional concepts of right and wrong. Even though I tend to vote liberal, I wonder why these concerns haven't been better integrated into the national media discourse as American society becomes more interconnected with the rest of the world.
6
It’s time 4 pushback from progressives against the tribal nativist right wing as communicated by murdoch’s Fox propaganda. The deadly contail of oligarchs and religious extremist can be stopped r @ least slowed down.
2
Here are a couple of things those spokesmen forgot to mention.
--- Large number of conservatives think liberals are mass murderers.
--- Large numbers of liberals think conservatives want to enslave women
--- Both sides think the other side is willing to ruin democracy in order to get their way.
It's called the abortion issue, and neither of the commentators even mention it.
6
There also is no way of knowing if we can protect a democracy from ruin in the face of fascism, demagoguery, corruption linked to foreign intervention and denial of truth. The United States is becoming more like the authoritarianism -- complete with persecution and human rights abuses -- of countries as varied as Communist China and Zimbabwe during the despotic rule of Robert Mugabe. Do you want to see examples of what unchecked industrial pollution can do to air and water quality? Study China. Want to see how employment and educational opportunities are available only to the well-connected in repressive countries? Take a look at Mugabe's legacy. You are headed that way Americans. Some see it coming. Others of you won't realize it until the transformation is complete. Next, get ready for a future without Medicare and Social Security. It's no secret that's where the Republican Party is taking you. Not surprising that more and more people are investigating their prospects for dual citizenship.
5
Well, it seems like Thomas Edsall just couldn't be satisfied with the shellacking that Democrats administered to the ever-triumphant GOP in state and local elections all of 30 days ago - instead, he has to blather on about authoritarian conservatives and the wonderful success of Trump's GOP during these past 12 months (3% economic growth? A Dow at 24,000? You may want to check with the people at DealBook to see who they credit with that - it's not Trump or Republicans).
Fact is, politicians are terrible at seeing the train coming at them until it's right on their heads. The Obama-led Democrats didn't see it in 2010, writing off Republicans for the previous two years as a bunch of tricorne-hat wearing loons led by used-up hacks like Boehner and McConnell. The Bush-led Republicans didn't see it in 2006, writing Democrats off as cheese-eating surrender monkeys who didn't understand the inherent patriotism and goodness of Middle America. The Clinton Democrats didn't see it in 1994, writing the Gingrich GOP off as extremists pushing unpopular policies. No one ever sees it in politics, until it's too late.
5
I see a reverse arrogance. I get it from my relatives in the small town south. "You on the east coast are not the real America. You in the cities and suburbs are not. You who have an education are not. You who are pro choice are not. You who believe the climate science are not. You who have confidence in the FBI, CIA, NSA, NASA, EPA, NOAA, the CBO, Inspectors General etc are not."
Yes, Democrats need to make the case for "blue values." I too still am confident.
6
What all people need to face is their/our selective self-righteousness. I'm right on "saving the whales" and the environment and whatever but look the other way on late term abortions or deconstruction of children from family of origin norms by a superimposed top-down Postmodern agenda to supplant the nation's of any religious vestiges.
And yet we still have a sense of a need for "values". The Me, Too campaign is a scream at some level for a return to some barometer in the nation for evaluating right and wrong, a jerking-us-back movement to the realization that living in this la la "beyond good and evil" era is not so good for us after all. So is our shock at mass killings which start in the HEART, the conception before the execution. Shock can be a good sign that we are not totally desensitized yet to evil. Yes, the guns are an issue but so is the heart. It's not just mental illness. Evil existed in Nazi Germany, e.g., which was seduced by a philosophy.
Or the inverse. One can be utterly self-righteous about being pro-life while ignoring other issues such as helping protect the environment or feeding the poor. This tunnel vision in Democrats and Republicans is causing a divide and leads to the demonization of "other" without taking the plank of my/our own eyes first.
Could it be that we need to drop the sound bites and trolling and look at matters honestly? First, all of us need to look in a mirror and take off the blinders about ourselves.
1
Where are those of us who say liberal democracy works? Who acknowledge that there will be “towns left behind” in the shift away from coal, say, and therefore have plans to address that?
Friend, I give you Hillary Clinton. And the 66 million of us who voted for her.
If you’d covered her policies, instead of the nonexistent but breathlessly fun “scandals” of emails and the Clinton Foundation, maybe you’d not have to blame us for the current slash and burn in the White House.
6
Northern, liberal, states fund the disgusting racism that you seem to ignore and want us to accept.
It is time to lose this type of argument entirely. Who is paying for those red states? Why should 7 people on a bridge w Trump signs represent anything else but a sickness?
Time to leave the sick south, the sick Midwest to their own financial ends. Enough is really enough. This is not even balanced.
2
The headline says it all. I read at least twenty comments most of them missing the point entirely.
5
Another article in the new trendiness of attacking us liberals. I was one since my teens and have never regretted it. You can cherrypick as many sources and references as you choose for your article, it all sounds lame and cowardly to me. Retire, put a younger person behind that desk. We had it figured out in the sixties and dumb white people are not going to change that.
3
education is the key
the most important factor is how well educated you are
this is why the GOP hates higher ed
keep them uneducated and they vote for you
3
December 7 2017
THINK ON THIS...
“For with God nothing is impossible, and the individual that may give himself as a channel through which the influences of good may come to others may indeed be guided or shown the way. "
—Edgar Cayce Reading 165-24
JJA Manhaattan, N.Y. ( A Register Republican & voted for Hillary Clinton )
1
What an article of hooey from the right wing cry. The "left" is well aware of changing technologies in red States and has tried everything to help them but no, they cling to their false god, guns and abortion.
5
So I am supposed to listen to the people who gave us THIS?
1
Call me whatever you want, librul, latte loving, whatever. But you are plain wrong and insulting my intelligence. None of what DT has done are just or thought out. He's dirty and you don't care. He wins because his party uses him to make noise while they push through implausible changes to our democracy. Bully boy. My ears are just fine and so are my eyes. And I'm not on opoids destroying my family and neighborhood, like so many more percentage wise than do in such rural hills like Alabama. What conservatives have done is dislodge voters through germandeering and voter suppression, undermine decent immigtants who have contributed to our nation even by putting themselves in harm's way in the military, and rigging the system with foreign enemy's help, so that the majority is unable to take the power that is truly the American and democratic way. Now, Blue State liberals are making mistakes they always make. How well did an election based on "good character,' do us after Clinton set up the stage for Al Gore. Stupid is as stupid does.
2
Maybe because I'm European, but aren't you Democrats tired of loosing? You remind me of most left-wing parties we have here: always divided by petty issues, shooting themselves in the foot, while conservatives stay in power.
3
Except the democrats are not losing and actually won so much since nov 2016. Besides the progressive agenda is the one that stays. Obamacare stays. Gay marriage stays. Most of Financial regulations stay. Tax cuts is the only thing the GOP does and the next dem president is gonna increase taxes. What exactly are the conservatives winning?
3
Where are the moderates? They are needed.
The conservatives elected a mean and ignorant person in as president. Ahhaha-before I get replies that President Trump is intelligent and not stupid, please read again that I said he is ignorant.
Ignorant does not mean stupid. It means to not know a lot about something..
He is ignorant because he has no desire to learn about things. He thinks he know everything important already.
1
Edsall mistakenly forgot to capitalize the "d" in "anti-Democratic right."
That one mistake highlights the arrogance of the left. Edsall should listen to himself and take his fingers out of his ears.
2
Yep - when you demonize whites who still make up the majority of this nation, have done a few good things over the years, who don’t have a bone to pick with minorities, and pay the majority of taxes to keep this nation going, you are gonna lose some elections.
4
What a great title for this thoughtful piece.
Unfortunately, from reading the comments here, it seems like a lot of fingers have grown permanently into NYT readers' ears.
3
I have no fingers in my ears. After the election the New York Times published interviews with women who voted for Trump. One woman said that she couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because she had murdered people. How is a person to understand a person who believes such outlandish idiocy?
14
Since the Presidential election of 1964 the Republican Party has been the preferred partisan political party of, by and for the white European Christian American majority culminating in 2008, 2012 and 2016 with 57%, 59% and 58% of the white majority for McCain/Palin, Romney/Ryan and Trump/Pence.
While beginning in the Presidential election of 1964 the Democratic Party has been the preferred partisan political party of, by and for a minority of white European Christian Americans and a majority of black African American Christians and white Jews along with majority of all other ethnic sectarian colored groups.
White supremacy is the base of Republican support. But white life expectancy is decreasing due to alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicide. While the white majority is aging and shrinking with a below replacement level birthrate. White Americans are voting for their perceived colored caste status and against their socioeconomic political educational class interests.
6
Every body blames liberals for everything. It is really absurd to think that the Republican capture of our govt is Ted Kennedy's fault (poster child for liberals).
3
'largely heritable predispositions that cause us to vary in our preference for and in our ability to cope with freedom and diversity, novelty and complexity, vs oneness and sameness."
Oneness and sameness? Has anyone heard of "community" and its advantages? And, no, the kinds of diversity Ms. Stenner identifies are much too complex to allow genuine community. Values matter. This kind of slippery rhetoric on the pages of the New York Times merely serves to obfuscate reality and blow air.
1
"Red counties are virtually nonexistent on the East Coast north of the Mason-Dixon line."
Umm, have you looked at an election map ever? NY state has many red counties. Same with New Hampshire and Maine...
3
There is no "conservative tide," and it would be nice if pundits would stop claiming that there is. All of the special elections for Congress were in red states, so, duh, one would expect Republicans to win. In fact, Democrats came closer than they usually do in contesting these seats.
In fact, the world had changed, and there is no going back to a time when white men had all of the power and everyone else had to bow and scrape before them. You can no longer claim power just because you are a white man. This is what conservatives bemoan. It. Is. Not. Coming. Back. Get over it.
5
Trump supporters are not made by liberal elites, but rather by the kind of rigid, withholding parenting that creates Narcissistic rage in offspring. Paranoia and rage in a toxic soup. Righteous anger and scapegoats.
The GOP are all basically the formerly bullied, who grow up into bullies stealing the candy of the weak.
4
But you need to realise that liberals just cant go about pushing their utopian views on everyone. Please look at the other side of the coin.
Califorina like regulations would choke the existing local economies up here. At the moment, incomes and education levels are significantly lower. If there is an increase in cost due to regulations, new tech would be required. Although thats better in the long run, a generation of people would either be laid off and families would struggle to make ends meet.
The economic problem, especially in a region like mine sensitive to employment swings, needs to be tackled with a short term and long term plan in mind. This is what politicans lack today. Republicans just think short term with the "lets win votes on a party basis" attitude, while liberals look only at the long term "hope it happens" feeling.
FYI, I'm a libertarian, and I've voted Democrat or Republican based on the person running. I hope you learned something from this post :).
1
Edsall is all over the place on this one. Pinker, I used to love you man, but you can never escape our tribalistic impulses. Most people don't go to college nor should they be required to.
2
Mr. Edsall,
I always enjoy your columns and your insights. However, I must push back on this one. I don't accept the premise that the United States is in decline. I don't accept that Mr. Trump's base is suffering, and deserves my sympathy. I have thought a lot about this, and although I have entertained ideas like this since November 8, I now reject them.
I am thankful that I was born in the United States (in 1969) and live at this point in history. We are still the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. More importantly, there is still unprecedented opportunity for each and every American to succeed in life.
As a nation, we have survived a Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and more recently the civil unrest of the 1960s, the resignation of a sitting president, the malaise of the 1970s, and 911.
We will survive whatever trivial complaints are causing the Trump voters to be so angry these days. And we will survive Mr. Trump himself.
To the disaffected Trump voters, I say you are a bunch of ingrates and whiners. Get off your rear ends and take responsibility for your own lives. Quit your incessant whining. Do something to better yourself. You have no idea what real adversity and struggle is.
That used to be a Republican message. And I would identify as a liberal Democrat. But partisanship shouldn't matter here. Be a real American. Embrace the opportunity you are fortunate to have in our great nation. And quit acting like whiny victims.
6
I'll take my fingers out of my ears if they take their heads out of their collective...
Fair enough?
8
So is the suggestion that we liberals have to compromise our values so conservatives don't have to compromise theirs? Or, maybe more accurately, we have to compromise our values because the conservatives absolutely won't compromise theirs? How about we stop trying to save this unhappy marriage and just get divorced? The conservatives can have their own red country in the South, Midwest, and Great Plains and we liberals on the West Coast and in the Northeast can have our blue one. We'd all be happier, and no one would have to compromise anything. Myself, I've already moved on, to Canada, where a society more progressive than that in the United States seems able to exist without spawning a reactionary horde of gun-toting, bible-thumping xenophobes.
9
" ... we can’t just be socialized or educated out of our stances on these issues, as they are the product of deep-seated, largely heritable predispositions that cause us to vary in our preference for and in our ability to cope with freedom and diversity, novelty and complexity, vs oneness and sameness."
Key theme in Stenner's analysis is that these predispositions are inherited.
Where does that leave except to be more tolerant all the way around and not aim for sweeping changes that are bound to alienate large segmenst of eitehr the right or left.
Moderation is the only way forward even if that means the moderates will be tagged with unflattering names from the right -- tree huggers, nanny staters -- and also from the left -- racists, troglodytes, stupid.
Let government do what it's supposed to do: support the general welfare of the greatest number and not be so concerned with the passionately held values by those on either end of the political continuum.
Lady Gaga said it best: "Born this way." No crime in being unable to cope with diversity and no glory in being able to cope with it.
And "love your neighbor" is always the path forward.
4
Robert Frost would love this article: "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."
6
Karen Stenner lists features of the "ideal liberal democracy and then proceeds to list multiple items that red states are fine with but which the left is NOT fine with as it pertains to red state beliefs. "absolutely unfettered freedom and diversity" - what about the Soviet-level suppression of dissent on college campuses, or the ironically named antifas shutting down speech? "retention of separate identies" - perhaps, as long as they aren't what the blue staters stereotypically see as red staters' identities. "strict prohibitions on government intervention in 'private' moral choices" - as long as they don't include traditional Christian values the left is fine with that.
Ultimately the left is as illiberal towards red staters as it claims they are towards liberals. In addition, the attitude of "you didn't go to college and aren't smart and therefore are intrinsically less worthy" and similar attitudes permeate comments sections on "progressive" sites - sending the message "we hate you and think you're stupid, now do and vote as we tell you". And then the left acts shocked that the red staters are alienated.
5
My senators whom I supported, Gillibrand and Schumer, need to take their fingers out of their ears. What they did to Al Franken yesterday was one of the most despicable displays of brutal politics I have seen in ages. With one swift stroke, they have lost my support (I am a lifelong Dem and native New Yorker) and will not get me back until they are out of office. Kirsten is not getting a dime from me or my vote when she runs for president, yes, even if Trump is still in office. I despise Trump with a passion but I always have. What the Dems did yesterday turned my stomach. They abandoned any sense of Justice, and compassion in allowing Al his day in court. They who speak of laws are hypocrites of the highest order. I will never look at either of them in the same light. I have excused their previous behavior because it was a matter of policy. I voted the issues. When it came to Al, this was a choice they had no right to make. They had no right to decide the fate of Al, the people of Minnesota did. Now I understand how the people of Alabama feel. I despise Roy Moore but as a New York Liberal I have no more a right to decide who their senator should be then they do in my state. I can relate to a Roy Moore supporter if you can believe that. Kirsten and Chuck made me see the light. Thanks a bunch. I hope someday you suffer the same slings and arrows you flung at Al today. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
DD
Manhattan
10
Ask Milo Yiannapolis if progressives believe in "unrestrained free expression (of what many will consider offensive/outrageous/unacceptable ideas)."
5
Bunk, pure bunk. Edsall likes to build up "progressives" as angels, while building a straw man out of conservatives. If one subscribes to Edzell's narrative here then one believes that conservatives are racist, knuckle dragging knaves who vote on identity politics disregarding so-called "liberal democratic values".
In the real world conservatives see the so called "liberal democrat values" aka "progressive" dogma as an ideology that has as it's basis Marxism with all economic and political power concentrated in the Federal Government. The "progressive" dogma has it that a centrally controlled economy, as in China, is a preferred economic model - it is an authoritarian model that Edzell here accuses conservatives of desiring. Nothing could be further from the truth, conservatives believe that economic and political power should be distributed to the States and the people, not controlled centrally by "progressive" technocrats.
6
I'm sick of listening to anti-intellectual racist theocratic troglodytes. If you are dumb enough to be conned into supporting Trump, all you deserve is scorn and ridicule. Between Gerrymandering, voter suppression and the outdated and quaint Electoral College, it is only a rigged system that enables a man 38% of the people support to ascend to power in the first place. We need to reform the whole system. Validating the feelings of people who don't like us anyway isn't on my agenda, sorry.
9
In other words, rather than being moral, compassionate, caring, decent, reasonable, rational, logical, scientific, intelligent and telling the truth, one should instead pander to the exact opposite?
Why shouldn't we embrace a sexist, racist, pedophilic, xenophobic, morally bankrupt, lying, intolerant, violent, loud mouthed, ego-maniacal, know-nothing-know-it-all, planet destroying culture?
Is that the question?
6
All this intellectual-post-post-modern-deconstructuralist-mental-gymnastics is a waste of micro-bits. Donald Trump is an incompetent adult whose idea of policy is what color of embarrassing long tie to wear. He daily turns democracy into a pseudo-event (as described by Daniel Boorstin). Nothing is real except what you can get away with each moment. Trump is a Pooka: an Irish specter that appears, causes mischief, and moves on. But mischief is a soft description given the recent violence in The West Bank over his ill advised recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capitol. The cause of Trumpism is deeper than this shallow analysis, based on the economist's theory that people are only self interested, depicts. Our cultural narratives are bankrupt, simplistic, and moronic. They appeal to a comic book mentality. Couple this with politics as Madison Avenue highjinks and an obsession with the "win", and you have a mythos like the Platte River: a mile wide an an inch deep. Trump plays on this mythos as he couches himself as a contemporary Superman who will play culture hero and identify the guilty, vanquish them, then purify and redeem. At the same time he takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
2
What? No needs to debate who's right about bigotry, hatred, climate denial, the list goes on... I'm not seeing traditional conservatism in this current depraved bunch. What I see are cowards propping up a monster to erase the previous presidents legacy, an sooth a small minded minority that elected it.
4
The writer is way over thinking it. The reason why so many white people have fled the Democratic party is that a good deal of the messaging has devolved into pandering to various identity groups, most of whom aren't white. Bill Clinton's message was simple: "It's the economy, stupid." Barack Obama's message was simple: "Hope and change." By not having a clear and an inclusive message, liberals have left themselves to be defined by conservatives, the far right media, and a demagogue. Thus, "MAGA" whipped "I'm with her." KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.
1
'Gee, I never thought about it that way. Perhaps you're right.'
Not. Going. To. Happen.
From either side.
Lost in all the blather: disparaging those who disagree with you is a poor strategy to get them to change their minds.
3
Amazingly, commenters think that doubling down on arrogance and contempt is some kind of solution. I don't mean "solution" in some kind of kumbaya sense. I mean in a tactical sense. It wins nothing other than temporary internal relief.
2
I don't know why the conservative republicans are doing so well except they seem to be unusually good at spin. They take an immoral, illiterate, illspoken man and make him god like. They twist and bend truth to fit their very narrow, very rigid sense of propriety. Trump can walk in on a room of half naked women (or was it girls?) at a beauty pagent. He can cheat on his wife, he can swear. He can shoot a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue and still people will be behind him. He can behave the very opposite of a Christian man. But by throwing around a few bible verses, by quoting God and judgement day, they turn the behavior of a sinner unto the behavior of a god. Is this the very epitome of how they would wish their sons and daughters to behave? I guess. I think. Since it makes literally no sense to me, I can not defend their thinking.
But, I am not sure they actually really represent that much of America. If you really look at the numbers: the number of regestered voters minus those who did not vote,Trump was elected by about 25% of the population. That is not really an accurate representation of Americans. Somehow they have made enough awful noise to make it appear like they are winning. So I need to rise up and make my own noise. Which I am. Everyday. And I will continue to rise up until the change comes about and he, Trump is gone.
6
Hah. It was the conservatives, not liberals, who allowed the Republican party's presidential campaign to become infested with the alt-right.
Was that in the name of "inclusion" and "tolerance for extreme speech?"
When are conservatives and "fence sitters" like Edsall going to come clean?
"Bad liberals", for allowing themselves to be caricatured for their support of free speech?
All the fomenting and yammering this year in the name of "free speech" has been done by the likes of Coulter, Yiannopoulos, and Bannon.
The right needs to clean up its own stables, thank you very much.
Also, when you expose someone as a child predator, and, as long as their GOP, it's "okay", then where does the messaging to change that reality come in?
9
Edsall is absolutely spot on. If you don't believe him then you probably believe that the Civil War ended in 1865 and that it was only about slavery.
3
Ok, I could really engage many of the arguments here, but I would rather relate an anecdote from the summer before the election. I had had a long term business relationship with a gentleman, who I knew to be conservative politically. He was educated, seemed intelligent and well spoken. I didn't engage him in political conversations, but with the rise of Trump we finally got into one. Rather quickly he told me that Hillary Clinton had murdered Vince Foster. At that point , I'm sorry, I was done. How can one engage in any reasonable solution with someone who traffics in illogical myths? Should I have tried to discuss economics or science when he took the conversation to a ghost story, Do I have to understand what would bring a grown man to believe that the wife of the President murdered a man , possibly in the White House, and this was covered up by law enforcement institutions. Again I am sorry, but no.
15
No, conservatives need to get their heads out of their derrières. It's the "poorly educated", as Trump has called them, that need to start understanding the rational thinking, fact based, modern world - not the other way around.
10
Yep, I was greatly impressed by the Department of Education's establishment of a new alternative judicial system to deal with sexual assaults on college campuses after broadening the definition of sexual assault to include any sexual touching where the recipient did not have an opportunity to refuse (no morning wake up kisses).
Likewise, I was totally impressed by the same department's vigorous leap into the bathroom wars -- a particularly silly series of tit for tat exchanges between local and state government.
For a coal miner with no other job prospects more restrictions on coal without any meaningful efforts to bring in alternative jobs or assist him in getting to a new local, does not go over well, regardless of how harmful coal is. He would probably be much more understanding if the feds had helped a new factory come to town.
What self congratulatory claptrap. We are all for good progressive ideals and they are upset about our efforts. They may even have some short sighted points, but in the long run they will die off and good triumphs. Thomas Frank had some useful points in his book "Listen, Liberal", but that work was a serious analysis. It however, did not shy away from putting some of the blame on the Democratic party's historic decisions. I am surprised this wasn't followed by a tirade against the selfishness of Baby Boomers. Oh wait it did mentioned how all these things are "old men's movements". I guess Trump didn't get any woman's votes. Oh well, but it feels so good.
3
At the moment, it might be better to ask whether we liberals in the blue states will ever forgive the red state voters who have saddled us with a human wrecking ball in the White House. You can arrange as many elegant quotes from political theorists as you like, but Trump is poking sticks into as many geopolitical hornets' nests as he can find, and the tax cuts he wants will transform the U.S. into an updated version of 18th century France, just before the French Revolution.
If we're all still alive three years from now, perhaps some of us will be in a more forgiving mood towards the red state voters.
But I rather doubt it.
14
It all comes down to respect and the most central issue of all is abortion. Democrats must respect the sincerity of Republicans who believe that abortion of a fetus is murder. They don't have to enact policies that align with that belief, but they must accept that belief as sincere and speak to it with respect. If Democrats do that and if they don't dismiss all Trump supporters as "deplorable," they will go a long way toward righting our capsized ship.
1
With all due respect to Edsall, he cannot see the forest for the trees. "“Both sides of this increasingly polarized divide see the other as trying to extirpate their way of life.” It's NOT two-sided - because you largely miss the Federalist vs Statist distinction here.
Can you tell me the last time the GOP tried to prohibit CA or another blue state from using renewable power ? Did Republicans try to force blue states to permit guns more broadly ? Did they outlaw unions in blue states ? Did they prohibit CA from increasing its tax rate to 13% and expanding welfare policies throughout the state ?
None of this is true. However, liberals have tried to impose left-wing solutions in almost every area mentioned at a federal level so that red states must accept these dictates. It's NOT symmetric.
I can anticipate the liberal retort - that their way of living is more enlightened, more equal ... or whatever. And they have every right to live according to their views.
This is the liberal conundrum. They claim to be tolerant; but this tolerance stops at the question of accepting other political views. Pinker is typical. "Over the longer run, I think the forces of modernity prevail — affluence, education, mobility, communication, and generational replacement. Trumpism, like Brexit and European populism, are old men’s movements ..."
Notice the word "prevail" ... and his death wish for "old men". Are the left really as Enlightened as they think they are ?
5
Princeton 2015 gives a clear statement of a conservative argument against liberal national policies. But it doesn't explain why Republicans chose, and enthusiastically support, Trump instead of any of the conservative candidates who were actually qualified for the job.
I think one reason is that Trump got to the left of everyone other than Bernie Sanders on trade. This is bitterly ironic since Republicans were able to benefit politically from the globalization agenda that was pushed most enthusiastically by Republicans. Democrats need to figure out how to engage with this issue better, hopefully in a way that doesn't actually hurt the economy.
The other reason is that Trump has tapped into a current of hatred and self-pity that conservative media has been nurturing for years. This is the truly frightening aspect of Trump's popularity.
Mankind's climb out of the primordial muck confirms that evolution works toward greater complexity, greater capabilities, and selects out the primitive. Human history in all its aspects - political, cultural, economic, moral - follows the same trajectory. Those who adapt, survive. Conservatism - backward looking, defensive, preferring stasis - swims against the tide.
1
There is no value in Democrats examining their ideas. Why? Because Republicans LIE, RAGE, and DISTORT - constantly!
They declared War on a Multi-Party, Multi-Cultural nation back in Reagan's day, and ramped up the fight from the mid-Nineties onward. This is a War to Eliminate all other ideas. Republicans are committed to this endeavor: they Unite on Repetitive Messaging in ways that Democrats can barely understand, let alone replicate.
Ideas worth debating would indicate consistent policy, and reasonable understanding of a common reality: the Right has neither. This is a rapid fire takeover, a full out Raid on the resources and institutions of the country. The Core Base has been disenfranchised and yet messaged to, by relentless media, and tribal, special interests, lobbying, sometimes even in their churches. The ship of common reality sailed long ago.
This would be worthwhile, if both sides played by the same rules, but the Double Standards and "Two Rulesets" have made it impossible. Rather than seek reflection and accommodation, the Left needs to reset, retool, and restructure for the War that they continue to lose!
Do not seek to make peace with those who have taken our futures hostage! They want nothing from the Left Wing except its Elimination. When will Liberals Wake Up?
This is a ridiculous, and lazy, op-ed. Why on earth is it in the NY Times? Anyone who lives in "Red" America, or personally knows Trump supporters, knows this is a bunch of intellectual hogwash. Trump supporters are motivated primarily by fear -- propagated by FOX and conservative talk radio -- as well as a healthy dose of racism and misogyny. They almost universally fall prey to simplistic explanations and solutions that "make sense" based on erroneous logic, and which fit neatly into their limited world view. Being geographically separated from the rest of the world has a tremendous impact on their ability to see beyond their own back yards. What we are seeing now is the result of a long-running and tremendously effective propaganda campaign. There is nothing liberals have done to cause a Trump presidency, but there are people who have worked very hard and spent a lot of money to get Trump in power, to serve their own ends; "red" America is just the puppet that provides the means to those ends.
5
The unstated premise of this article is that Blue State Liberals, by being so intolerant of the intolerance of Red State Conservatives, are somehow complicit in the divisions which plague our country. This is the most perverse moral calculus I have ever seen. Trump supporters aren’t angry because of political correctness or the normalization of transgendered people. They are angry because modernity rejects their claim to privilege by virtue of the color of their skin.
2
The number of counterarguments that this set off in my head like klaxons has overwhelmed me, but really 'you first...' covers a lot of them.
1
Stop confusing Democrats with the left. Democrats divide (distract?) us with identity politics, while the left knows the real divisions are economic. It's called a plutocracy and for that the Democratic elite share much blame.
3
Conservatives constantly decry liberals as condescending elites, yet have no shame or compunction about lecturing liberals about how WE need to behave! I guess that means we have to remove our hearts and brains and live as either reptilian predators or sheep accepting the cruel masters of unimaginable wealth as our lot in life.
2
Very good op-ed, thanks Mr. Edsall, it explains why Americans voted for Donald J. Trump. The Democrats need to understand why Americans voted for him, and incorporate those reasons into their future platforms if they ever expect to regain the White House. The Democrat party used to be the party of the working class. I once supported that party. It is longer the party of working class America. I don't know what it is the party of anymore. At any rate, I no longer support it. That's not to say I support the Republican Party, but I do support Trump, the man. Thank you.
3
Interesting thoughts. Not sure I buy the "hereditary predisposition" part. Reactions these days seem strongly determined by circumstance (geography, economic status) rather than simply heredity (either genetic or cultural.)
It's also not true that current events are a wholly, or even mostly, natural phenomenon. These resentments in middle America didn't just spring spontaneously into being, but are being whipped up quite purposefully by the richest and most powerful elements of our society for their own benefit. (See "populist" Trump, who gained power by purporting to represent the common people but will sign a tax bill that enriches himself at their tremendous expense.). In fact, the Obama administration was quite mild in its policy pursuits and was mostly constrained by the other branches of government anyhow.
One factor that was not directly addressed is that, slowly but surely, the identity of being an American is being decoupled from being white and male. Those sorts of massive demographic shifts are inevitably accompanied by social upheaval.
I agree that the best course for liberals is to continue to emphasize the tenets of liberalism that have benefited everyone: the social safety net, support for infrastructure, public transportation, education, scientific research and environmental protection (clean air and water) and above all empathy for those less fortunate.
3
"Many Democrats continue to have little understanding of their own role — often inadvertent, an unintended consequence of well-meaning behavior — in creating the conditions that make conservatives willing to support Trump and the party he is leading."
Edsall lost me at the "— often inadvertent, an unintended consequence of well-meaning behavior —" part.
If he had written "often self serving, and self righteous hypocritical behavior" it might have made the piece more plausible.
7
I don't know that the left isn't listening. I think it is more the case that the left disagrees. Certainly disagreeing with "red" America exacerbates divisions, but what's the alternative? If human nature resists change, humans won't progress...won't, well, change unless pushed to do so. It is hard to argue on the other hand that conservativism is congruent with the interests of most of red America. Indeed, conservativism prevails for many in red America because it is not liberal. (cf. Roy Moore, Alabama.) Rather than fingers in the ears, I think the issue is a big shrug from the left and I'm more ok with that than not.
Pinker's comments about promoting what works in liberal democracy that strikes me as most useful here. Democrats are notoriously bad at branding, messaging, and overall coherence generally. It can be hard to say what they stand for, however I'm not sure it is as difficult to say what they have achieved.
And Pinker is correct, too, that the force behind Trumpism is an "old men's movement". It likely will pass -- or at least morph -- into something different. And to ensure that that something different is something better, I think it is fair to hold firm to democratic and liberal principles and fight on and define the "forces of modernity". Own it! Liberals have not been so good at that.
So, yes, don't stuff fingers in your ears, but back down either.
4
Blame us liberals for cultural changes all you want, but when it comes to the most detested economic issues, you're blaming the wrong side. It was never a progressive desire to give big business laws that helped move jobs off shore. That was a major Republican giveaway. Some Democrats, at the time, participated, but mostly the conservative-leaning. When blaming liberals for what ails red America, don't try to lump in everything that may be causal. Put primary blame for off-shoring jobs where it belongs, with conservative, business-oriented Republicans.
12
There is something deeply wrong with this analysis; it conflates cultural conflicts with CAPITALIST conflicts. To be on the side of education. tolerance for other cultures/ethnicities/genders etc. is NOT the same as accepting the destruction of the American economic system by globalist monopolies. Those pushing for globalism have, in fact, pitted the proles against each other by inflaming what are mostly faux cultural conflicts. This is fundamentally a class conflict, and the sooner the 99% recognize both their common ground and the common enemy, the better.
10
I take issue with some of what's in this article. As a sub title, my fingers aren't in my ears. My party is NOT LISTENING TO ME. I am sick of being told Hillary lost because women like me didn't support her strongly enough. Maybe I didn't do more than vote for her because I felt Bernie was a better choice, maybe that's because Hillary is to far to the right of me. When I speak to my friends and co workers who vote Republican it is clear our values are very close. So how do we as a national of individuals get representation that is closer to what we believe. More Parties and coalition government would help. Two parties is not enough when every family has at least 10 opinions between them. Or no parties. But definitely money out of politics.
7
Hard to know from Edsall's piece exactly what liberals are supposed to do to conciliate Trump supporters. As one of his sources concedes, trade protection and restricting freedom of speech (would that include Trump's vicious attacks on his critics?) would either be bad policy or violate constitutional principles.
In any case, I think the real problem stems from the economic decline experienced by many of these areas. The failure of liberals to use federal power to help places like Appalachia modernize and diversity their economies is a valid charge.
2
To defeat your enemy, first you must know him. If liberals - or as I prefer to be called, "non-conservatives" - want to turn the tide of successive defeats, they do need to open their ears and listen to what the Trump voters are really saying. That doesn't mean they have to agree with them, or necessarily compromise, because frankly these Trumpians are resolute in their beliefs and aren't likely to give an inch. But non-conservatives need to figure out how that can win back the less rigid voters who voted for Trump, who well might not have if there were an alternative that spoke to some of their issues. Bernie Sanders did, and had the Dems nominated him instead of Hilary they likely would've won. And the fact that the DNC and "moderate" Dems still call for the things that Hilary stood for is proof of their tone-deafness that will ensure that they remain in the wilderness.
Ignorance of your opponent is still ignorance.
3
Holding a majority in Congress by the narrowest of all possible margins, winning elections tainted by corrupt gerrymandering, and barely squeaking into the White House not by popular mandate but though an anachronistic quirk of the American electoral system hardly constitute a "truimph of contemporary conservatism." The "strengths" Mr. Edsall lists are cheaply bought pyrrhic victories (of those that can actually be attributed to any real Republican action - the economy was in recovery long before the last election).
We have to stop apeing Republican propaganda and seize the discourse by doing more of what Mr. Pinker wishes we were: making the case that the world is, if not for everyone in every way they would wish it could be, a much better place due to the genuine triumphs of liberal democratic values.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.” — Mahatma Gandhi
6
Claiming the Dow Jones index level and the unemployment rate as being factors directly resulting from the election is a pretty major assumption. Did the author give the President credit for the recent eclipse as well?
Aside from these two points, much of the commentary is pretty much on target. Vast swaths of the country feel they are being left behind. Their anger has been fueled by a populist movement that has not been particularly truthful nor has it shined any measure of light on a single policy initiative other than to exhort their supporters they they will 'silence the Deep State' by stripping down government agencies and repealing environmental and consumer protections.
It's not going to work. The Native Americans that lived through the elimination of the buffalo herds never saw them return, as much as they prayed, and the coal industry as well as manufacturing as it used to be in this country will not return either, in spite of prosperity evangelicalism.
I suspect Congress will right itself once the tax bill comes home to roost inflicting harm on Congressional Republican districts that voters in those districts don't see coming.
Then again we have the possibility of a nuclear war, whereupon no one will win and this country red and blue alike will become fallow territory.
Given the complete lack of preparedness of this President, we may also lose more young men and women who volunteer to willingly fight conflicts they presume to be justified. Many fear that
1
Why should anyone 'assume' America's military adventures to be justified? None of them have been since WW2.
If more of us don't engage and vote, the engaged right stays a minority in power. So, we need to get more of us engaged and voting, not despairing and ignoring politics.
2
The prospects do seem very dismal in the short run, not least because the Democratic party is in the very active process of tearing itself apart by destroying much of its male leadership. I think of myself as center left and have supported candidates of that persuasion for many years but this year I am unable to do it. The party is adrift and has collectively decided to engage in a purge on what would be ridiculous grounds if it were not doing so much damage both to itself and the country.
There is no coherent plan that I have seen to retake the House in 2018, though that would be essential to an early return to government sanity. It is not constructive to call Trump voters names but I doubt that any more effort to empathise with them is going to do much good. The red state small town citizens who voted for Trump are not like their pioneering ancestors who often pulled up stakes and sought new opportunities when things didn't go well where they were. These days, when things don't go well in small towns people often take too many opioids, blame the liberal federal government for their problems, and stay right where they are. When the people start espousing neofacist racism as well, it is a waste of breath to tell liberals to be more sympathetic. Liberals need to put together a coherent social and economic program, stop throwing people under the bus and get organised to win some elections. It should be possible, but I am less optimistic than I would like to be.
2
Isn’t it ironic that the rage at lost jobs and diminishment of US based manufacturing is accompanied by reduced prices. The ubiquitous inexpensive shipping containers exist because we continue to export less than we import. It’s interesting that the Republican wagon is hitched to the idea that what’s good for business is good for all Americans. I don’t agree.
I understand the anger expressed in the last election, I just don’t see how it ‘makes America great again’. America IS great, but boorishness is not, and it is certainly not a way to lead our nation. Appointing antagonistic, unqualified persons to run departments and to destroy institutional memory by promoting retirements and force reductions is not proper. In fact, it may sink to the status of treason as it continues to erode our central government.
Is there room for improvement in many areas? Certainly. However, this administration’s approach to governance appears to be soulless. There must be some better way. If these beliefs cause me to be labeled “liberal”, then I wear the label proudly.
God bless America; she really needs it.
1
Will there be a parallel article written for Trump supporters? I can't stand to read another article like this suggesting liberals are the one's that aren't listening.
Seriously. Republicans of all stripes had a chance to pick a reasonable and experienced candidate. They had a chance to pick one that would solve the problems they SAY are vexing them financially. They chose Trump. I'm not sure what we have to talk about at this point.
6
as a liberal, I hear the naive and counterproductive assertions about american exceptionalism. The continued attempts to undermine reproductive choice. The laughable assertions that low taxes and minimal environmental regulation is strangling this country. The racist dog whistles.
I hear all that, constantly, and I reject it. This article suggests I am undermining myself by accepting these as valid points of view. I dont.
That still doesn't give me any influence.
2
It's not that I am stunned and infuriated, it's that I'm sickened and afraid. I literally don't feel safe around Trump supporters or in Trump country. And this whole thing is a bit like telling a victim of abuse that they need to sit down and listen to their abuser explain why they did it.
1
The chief problem here is not deafness but hypocrisy. The organ most involved is the eye; consider Matthew 7:
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Professor Pinker, in his big-hearted way, makes some concession to this:
"We can even recognize these instincts in ourselves, even in Trump’s cavalier remarks about the rule of law." How generous of him.
The "liberal" coasts have enriched themselves at the expense of the center of the country. They have shipped jobs and opportunities to Asia among other regions, and declared that irrefutable economic theory requires this displacement of work and prosperity. They have explained that being most excellent people, they deserve larger rewards than the rest of the population. Since the rest of the population can still vote, difficulties ensue.
Given the constantly changing nature of the relations between segments of the population and between different parts of this planet today's winners might consider whether they will always come out ahead and show a little of the compassion and respect for diversity that they preach, even if it costs them money or dilutes their control over local real estate.
What this article describes is the inherent limitations of the human animal, writ large. Humans are not much different than their simian cousins: troop-oriented; suspicious of strangers; focused on food, comfort, procreation. The thin veneer of civilization and "conscious" thought can't hide that we are mostly self-interested. So it shouldn't be surprising that, over a period of 250 years, rag-tag, abstractly arranged groups of people will segregate themselves into identifiable sub-groups that treat distant neighbors as "the other." Humans are too 'smart' to accept their innate behaviors, and yet not smart enough to overcome them.
1
This column really needs a good edit. Letting intellectuals speak for themselves in email, and then quoting them, sometimes works, but not this time. It's simply too academic. Intellectuals don't like to point out the obvious, even when it's what needs to be said.
Second, "liberal" is a very loose concept, mostly used by people who aren't liberal and are not really interested in what it means. I think this is a problem for liberals, but it's nothing new, Will Rogers said, "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."
Democrats have always been a coalition of strange bedfellows. People who love money have a lot in common; people who love principles, less. Liberals should agree on who they are, but they won't.
I think, however, that Trump and the Republicans have taken enough rope to hang themselves. It may take a while for this to show up, but unless liberals are simply wrong, trickle down won't work, the climate will keep getting worse, seniors will miss Social Security and Medicare, and our foreign policy will result in some truly damaging mistake. Then, the Democrats will say, "I told you so," the swing voters (the necessary target) will listen, and the lazy left will bother to vote.
The Republican base will remain base, but so what? They will be outnumbered. Keep it simple and honest, stick to the facts and focus on the independents. Eventually, that will work. Too bad about what we have to endure until then, but we got complacent.
1
It is not culture but class that drives US politics. The political polarization in America today is a result of our drastic and growing income inequality.
Articles like this one with its pseudoscience contribute to the smokescreen.
2
I agree. And conservatives should take their fingers out of the pockets of the people in this country who actually work only to have their hard earned money handed over to the richest people in the nation. They should also remove their fingers from women's private parts and mind their own business.
3
The irony here is that Trump doesn't represent any particular view in ths great debate. He is, as he has been since his young formative years, a con man. He's just looking for the next mark.
Democrats got a majority of votes in the 2016 election, but lost to Republicans who were far from lockstep in support of Trump.
The Democratic Party is not thwarted by greater power of Republicans or more persuasive arguments of Republicans. Democrats are stymied by their own incurable addiction to self-destructive political correctness, and feeling good about being forever spineless losers.
The first essential step to ridding the country of Trump and Trumpism, and all the fantastically stupid and hypocritical deceit that lies at the core of that rot, is to do away with the disastrous GOP and Democratic Party which were so vital in the creation of President Trump and Trumpism.
1
If you construct a narrative to patch over the holes in your world view, you run the risk of cutting yourself off. There's an assumption that aligning private goals with those of the state produces greater good. That only holds true for the subjugated masses. The reality is the state can and does have values that differ from its people as individuals . You get a chance to change your leader every 5 years but that changes nothing - until now - because the new guy isn't for genuflecting to the deep state.
It might be worth reflecting how different this article would look if the Democrats had put not-Hillary candidate into the ring.
1
Not buying it. I'm not going to apologize to some coal miner that his job was lost because the rest of us wanted to be able to breathe. He can just get over it. Other industries have failed over the decades and centuries. Fairly recently, where did the American textile industry go? And look at the vanishing retail industry. And what about buggy whips and horse breeders? Not so many of them around any more. Is there a reason we need to be particularly sympathetic to coal? Maybe if they'd vote for Democrats, they might get some help with surviving in this brave new world. But they'd rather be poor and proud as Republicans. Swell. Not my fault or problem. Some people you just can't help.
2
But Republicans don't have to be stood up too? Why should we coddle their lies and ignorance? Why should we tolerate hate while having to silence our love and compassion? Republicans should be shunned and shamed. There is no other acceptable path.
1
People respond to what they see and hear, not necessarily what is true. As The NY Times magazine article about Sean Hannity makes clear, he searches for the most extreme liberals and sells
the idea that all liberals are that way. What I see intellectuals often underestimate is the power of the vast propaganda machine on the right. Fox is far slicker than propaganda i see in China, for example. It does little good to change your behavior if what is widely reported is not what you think, say, and do.
40% of Republicans/Fox viewers think the stock market went down under Obama, when it increased tremendously. That is not something you fix with economics!
1
As a marketer of emptied factories in both the Rust Belt and the Bible Belt, I felt like the guy at the end of the Rocky & Bullwinkle Parade sweeping up the tickertape.
1
So we should ignore climate science and keep burning coal just to stop hurting people's feelings in Trump country? As John McEnroe would say "You cannot be serious!"
1
So let me get this right. First "His success with Tax Bill?" Really? A rushed bill that's a stinker and everyone knows it. It may yet fail. And his Gorsuch appointment? That was a stolen seat! That was Obama's pick! The GOP held that seat open a year! They refused to even talk to Garland and Dems should do soul-searching? He has insulted and alienated dems repeatedly. He is a disgrace as a person and incompetent and embarrassing as President. No thanks I will do everything I can to help Dems limit him to one term. Oh wait, that's exactly what GOP said about Obama.
Trump and his administration -- and those who enable them -- are demonstrably monstrous. I'm so sick of any editorial angle that deflects this central fact of our time.
2
The number one problem is the lack of education, naivety, political ignorance (and stupidity) in Red America. They are being manipulated and cheated by their elected leaders. They always vote for the Republicans but their economic condition is far worse than the residents in blue states. Their living standard, their education, health coverage and job opportunities are much lower than the blue states. They got Gorsuch in Supreme Court but he will help the rich and the corporations. They got Tax Bill but this Tax Scam will not help the poor or the middle class. This tax cut will not help overwhelming majority of the residents in the Red States. Why they vote against their own interest? The liberal voters are lazy and are deeply divided. Lot of them look for the purist and that is stupid. The Democratic Party does not have charismatic leaders and they have no unified message or catchy slogans like make America great again. The Democratic Party will be roaming wilderness for very long time. Because they do not learn.
If protectionism is so counter productive, then how did the United States become the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, while employing a regime of tariffs that, at times, was quite high. Tariffs were seen as sound policy when the upper economic strata largely made its money with domestic production. In the post WWII years as the wealthy increasingly received their income from international financial and business activity, tariffs became seen as economically unproductive. Can it be that the economic utility of tariffs is actually measured by their affect on the incomes of the wealthy?
1
re: economic growth of over 3 percent in the last two quarters; the Dow Jones topping 24,000; and the unemployment rate dropping to 4.1 percent.
That can't possibly be attributed to Republicans or Trump. They haven't done anything yet to affect the economy. To the extent that the government influences the economy, the economic positives are due to the Obama administration. It will take years for the negative effects of the Republican tax plan to show.
11
Even the expectation of lower corporate tax rates is driving economic expectations and Dow lunging over 24,000. You are right in that unemployment rate of 4.1 percent is arguable, but even if it is low most new jobs are crummy service jobs in non-manufacturing industries. Over the past 100 years now, the best "job" in America is to put every extra cent into the stock market and let it sit while corporations make you money at lower tax rates. It was a sure winner and remains a sure winner, as Buffett said betting against America has always proven wrong.
2
Pretty clear from the comments, and the folks I talk to, that the left absolutely refuses to take its fingers out of its ears. The sensible approach indicated in the article will not be adopted and the left will continue freaking out, losing all sense of perspective, mistaking ideology for reality, and going down to defeat.
It is definitely NOT the economy, folks; it is the culture. Many of us who yearn for a centrist dialogue feel our culture slipping away like sand under our feet, and we don't like it. And what is replacing it? Multiculturalism and identity politics, which are completely ideological? It's the Kardashians versus Longmire; guess who will prevail.
Our educational system has been devastated from top to bottom by 40 years of so-called "progressive” reforms. It is producing large numbers of people who are illiterate, can't do math, can't compete, and are illogical. Just look at the test scores and the dumbing-down of the culture. An entire generation has been cheated out of an education and the left doesn't care.
So keep freaking out while sensible people abandon you; move as far to the left as you can. You'll lose.
43
It hasn't been progressive reforms that are hurting education. In fact, millennials are on track to be the most educated generation. Unlike many countries the U.S. educates all children regardless of their status. Because we educate all or our children, our test scores when compared to other countries are usually right in the middle. But we are at the top when test scores in other countries are compared with comparable populations of children in this country. What is hurting education is our high rates of poverty and segregation and our disinvestment in our education system over the past 30 years.
5
Identity politics has got you by the tail. You are, and I am, and all of are products of identity, it's just that identity for anyone not white and middle class has taken a back seat in America forever. Who, indeed, has fingers in their ears? And btw, the educational system hasn't been "devastated" by progressive reform, but by a concerted and continuos defunding of public education by small government conservatives for years on top of a lowering of standards for teachers by a system starved for money and new applicants to the teaching profession.
1
It has been school vouchers that have devastated our educational system, and tax cuts like the one the Republicans are pushing through congress right now. Where do you think the $1.0 trillion dollar shortfall is going to come from?
Mr. Edsall sets up a straw man and undermines his argument early on when he quotes Stenner's definition of an "ideal liberal democracy." There is no ideal so why set it up as the yardstick for measuring ways of thinking and defining what liberals are? Many progressives who live in rural America (I live in the Trumpland of western Pennsylvania) are a mixture of "conservative" and "liberal" values. I believe in freedom, but I don't subscribe to absolutes. I celebrate diversity but I don't force it (or anything else) on others. I have no idea why Stenner says "maintenance of separate communities" is a liberal quality, especially after she just got done saying that the definition of a liberal democracy includes absolute diversity. And I, like most other liberals in my area, never advocate for unrestrained free expression without ALSO advocating for responsibility to others and an obligation to govern ones thoughts and actions in order to promote domesticate tranquility (or at least nurture a little neighborliness).
28
I wouldn't say it's a "triumph" more like a last gasp of Conservatism fueled by bigotry and racism promoted by the Republican party to get in power.
30
Doubling down on contempt and knee jerk labeling is not a really smart response. On the other hand, purely from a partisan view, I'd have to encourage you to more of the same.
1
I hope you're right about "last gasp" but thanks to the electoral college & gerrymandering, I see little hope that Republican majorities will be reversed.
"...some of the core features of our ideal liberal democracy...
Actually - sounds more like a prelude to Orwellian totalitarianism...
Recall its rules...
> War is Peace
> Freedom is Slavery
> Ignorance is Strength
Or - just read a 11/26/17 piece in the Observer-Reporter, entitled: "Is it "1984" Yet?"...An excerpt:
"...In “1984,” the state consisted of three components: the “Inner Party”, the true ruling class, which was less than 2 percent of the population; the “Outer Party,” of educated workers, which was 18 percent to 19 percent of the population, and the proles, or working class. This bears an eerie resemblance to the political structure of our country today. We have a small, elite group that seems to control virtually everything with impunity, is seemingly above the law and is beyond the scrutiny of the public. The “Outer Party” is the bureaucracy that surrounds the elite, privileged and powerful. The proles are what the left regards everyone else to be. Useful cogs. Human units. Undifferentiated workers intended to serve a function as defined and assigned by the state...
Look at what just happened - and not a Capitol Cop in sight...
DC was a town of Libertines - until it wasn't...
So - let's add some new rules:
> Depravity is Morality
> Mob Rule is Law is Wisdom and Mercy
9
Basically I think people want to feel like they are heard and their views are not dismissed out of hand no matter what they are. That doesn't mean one has to agree, but at least acknowledge them as legitimate views. Unfortunately the left (of which I consider myself one) simply wants to simply say to the Trump voter your wrong, your ignorant lets move on much who care what you have say or why you are saying it. This also happens in the Climate Change debate where some on the left chosen answer to any argument against it is "Settled Science" no more to say.
16
OK, the science of man induced climate change is real. Anyone who disagrees with that must come up with a clear, rational reason (scientific model) for the changing climate. There has been none that have convinced a majority of climate scientists (over 90%). That should give us all a foundation on which to build responses to the emergency. If you are in denial of the science, you do nothing to add to the debate about what we should do. An entire political party is at odds with science and the rest of the political world on this issue, and that's why those of us on the left that support the consensus model have little patience with those who do not.
1
well an opinion is not a fact unless you can provide factual evidence so I am sorry to my citizens on the right that voted for trump and deny climate change when you are wrong you are wrong
1
Liberal Idea's don't lose because they're unpoppular. They lose because the game is rigged.
Republican elected officials are helped by:
-- Gerrymandering
-- Huge amounts of anonymous Dark Money
-- Voter Supression
-- The archaic nonsense that gives 7 rural, mostly-white states whose population add up to that of Los Angeles -- not California -- 14 Senators while California has 2.
-- The archaic Electoral College, which privileges rural small-state voters over urban-dwellers
-- The idiotic Primary system, which sees the former Confederacy weigh in before California.
-- A 24/7 propaganda machine led by Fox and its Ilk.
-- A Wrongfully-filled Supreme Court Seat.
Liberals aren't losing because they don't have good ideas or support. Liberals are losing because Conservatives cheat and love cheating. AND WILL KEEP DOING SO IF WE LET THEM.
Finally, if Conservatives are so mad the world seems to be passing them by ... well, tough. That's the nature of time, and it's not my fault if your ideology is the equivalent of riding your horse on an interstate highway.
95
Well said. But how did things get this way?
For the past thirty years the liberals have been bringing a plastic spoon to the political gunfight the Republicans have been waging, that's how.
They stood by as Tom DeLay openly targeted the statehouses so as to gerrymander the voting districts and were shocked, SHOCKED!, when the GOP did so. John Kerry was shocked, SHOCKED!, when he was swift boated. The Democrats and liberals were shocked, SHOCKED!, when Clinton was impeached and when Gorsuch stole his seat and when Fox peddles outright lies and on and on and on until they were shocked when Trump used Russian help to steal the presidency.
They allowed conservatives to turn the word "liberal" into a slur. They impotently complain about every new Republican outrage while still foolishly refusing to engage them on the same level.
I'm sick liberal politicians, and I'm a liberal.
2
You eloquently listed the aberrations that I was mentally ticking off as I read the article. I would add to it the increased use of fear and hate mongering to mobilize the right wing vote.
2
Thing is, rigging is allowed, and always has been. That's for instance how JFK won.
2
In the light of the unmitigated, unabashed support of Roy Moore in AlabamA by red state folks I say hogwash. I must understand exactly what about red states and their values? Please!
37
no doubt that in Sweet Home Alabama Doug Jones's prosecution of the Birmingham bombers is not one of his positives.
You need to take your fingers out of your ears. You want me, a liberal, to pay attention to these people who think Trump is doing them good and that their problems are the only ones facing the nation? The mid-size Silicon Valley town I grew up in, in liberal California, is also being destroyed by .1%-ers, and so is New York City, where I live now. People where I grew up work two jobs to live more than two hours away from their hometown, where the streets are prowled by gangs of professional beggars, as well as crowds of homeless people, who should not be homeless in such a wealthy area. Ditto for New York City (although it doesn't seem to have pro beggars right now). So cry me a river, Trump supporters. I've spent several years now being asked to care about your problems, and doing it. It's time for you to care about ours, instead of trying to punish us with a draconian tax law for having voted against your candidate. "One nation indivisible"--isn't that what the pledge of allegiance is supposed to be about? How come I'm being asked to pledge allegiance, and you're just whining and asking me to pay attention to you? We in Blue states are also American and we have just as many problems and discontents as you. Stop telling me to take my fingers out of my ears. Take yours out instead and listen to all America. Seems to me we've been pretty tolerant. When did you last win the popular vote?
70
Hear, hear! Well said.
Re: “Geographically speaking, red counties are virtually nonexistent on the West Coast and on the East Coast north of the Mason-Dixon line.”
Tell that to the Republican county chairs that delivered PA to Trump.
21
This is a well reasoned article but I have read several like this already from progressive publications but I wonder why it is always the left that has to understand the right.
The right never tries to understand the other side instead they just see us as devils that are so horrible a conman and sexual predator with no morals or values is seen as a better leader than a democrat. The people in Alabama will vote for a child molester rather than a democrat.
trump and moore should be behind bars but the right keeps them front and center and as their leaders. How can you ever reconcile with anyone who would vote for a predator or a stalker and molester of children?
I don't think there is a way back for America for a long time.
45
While I agree with you, let's not forget we on the left supported a fellow named William Jefferson Clinton, whose behavior tarnished the White House no matter your party or your beliefs. The problem I as a leftist have with the right is that they profess values they don't follow. Some on the left undoubtedly do as well, you may say, but then they accept the consequences, like Franken and Conyers. Clinton should have. Not for his sexual peccadiloes, which I abhorred but felt would have been irrelevant had he exhibited any discretion, but for lying under oath and generally bringing a taint to the office, different in kind but similar to what Nixon did.
As a liberal democracy, we cannot exist following the strictures of the right--trying to keep dead, environmentally unsound industries alive; trying to re-relegate women to the home and/or positions subordinate to men; controlling people's sexual lives, discriminating against people who don't look and act and think and believe the same way. I will happily call as fellow citizens right wingers who practice their beliefs voluntarily, privately, non-coercively. I will denounce as traitors those who would force their religious, racial, sociological, anti-intellectual or environmentally irresponsible views on me and mine.
Maybe that means we are done as a country. If so, maybe we should be.
The answer to your problems is most likely not more government.....we cannot afford the one we have.....this is the argument that is to be made....there is not enough wealth in the entire world for the governments to do everything they can dream up to do...this is the conservative standpoint.....everything that "conservatives" espouse comes from this fundamental principle....which, by the way, was completely understood by our founders.....in order to give you something, the government has to take it away from someone else....scarcity is the fundamental principle of all economic systems....the only things that appears to be in infinite supply appear to be ignorance and idiocy....maybe malevolence.....
7
Exactly! So since some people through sheer luck (such as our president) have millions or billions of dollars and other people have nothing, lets responsibly redistribute the wealth to make for a more equitable society for everyone.
That's nice.
When they're hit by a nuclear warhead from North Korea, or are poisoned from drinking water, or killed by a defective product or bump-stocked weaponry... they'll change their tune.
Maybe.
17
No they won't. It will be Obama's fault.
All the Democrats have to do is represent the interests of the bottom 80%, communicate this fact, and they have it made. If they could get a fifth of the 54% of the 46% of eligible voters who didn't vote in 2016 to come out and vote their interests, they would win everything in a landslide. There is nothing that Democrats need from Trump's racist, ignorant, deplorable base. In time, they will simply die out, including in the South.
18
Your 'If" clause is the key - get out the vote, easier said that done.
Will not happen, because among the bottom 80% are many Bible-thumping, gun-toting, gas-guzziling, coal-burning, NASCAR-watching 'Mericans that vote red despite logical detriment to themselves in economic terms.
1
I remember vividly watching a "nose in the air" couple in West Virginia tell how great Trump was going to be "...because he would bring back their coal jobs"!
Most of the windows on the "Main Street" behind them were covered with fresh-plywood just for this big TV event no doubt. And stay there they have! Still complaining about America moving away from "King Coal the Polluter" and wondering when those jobs would come marching back to their town.
...
When my military career was abruptly ended by a heart incident I could have put my nose "up in the air" and stamped my foot and wailed and cried....INSTEAD I found a job at better pay in Saudi Arabia which allowed us to buy a historical home my wife had been eyeballing!
...
The Red State deplorables would NEVER EVER consider moving one county over for a job...let alone moving to Saudi Arabia! And Trump and the GOP hold them up as virtuous citizens. AND WORSE the Dems supply them with "entitlements".
...
My ONLY entitlement was: "ROOT HOG...OR DIE!"
14
The bottom line here is that Liberals are as intolerant of opposing views s are their Conservative counterparts. They espouse the opinion that anyone who thinks differently than they do are ignorant and should be ignored. Not the most progressive attitude.
11
As a liberal I celebrate the personal choice of everyone to embrace her/his lifestyle, religion, political view and even ignorance ... just don't impose yours on me.
Except that liberals aren't the ones expecting to have their intolerance codified into law.
And not the attitude of 90% of the liberals that I know. On the other hand, people who would willingly vote for Moore (and it's not just the pederasty, he's good for religious hypocrisy and taking money from charities, too) are indeed ignorant and deserve to be ignored. Like Trump, he would be another self-inflicted wound on the body politic.
If seeking to understand Conservatives and Trump Voters means "Liberals" have to embrace what appear to be Conservative/Trump Voter values - anti-immigrant, homophobic, sexist, hypocritical, yell "fake news" whenever they hear something they disagree with - this building of bridges probably isn't going to happen.
And, while we're at it, why is it the "Liberals" always have to reach out and compromise what they believe in order to find common ground? Why can't Conservatives and Trump Voters turn off FOX, stop screaming "fake news!," put their misinformed hate on pause, and sincerely try to listen to what WE'RE trying to say?
32
Anger is the key to getting people to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Angry red-staters are willing to throw out their health care and social security to protect their guns and "religious" principles. Angry women are willing to throw principled men under the bus in pursuit of at last being heard. Is our anger being manipulated? Cui bono?
19
Obama CUT SS benefits by doing away with the COLA, and Trump said he would not cut SS benefits.
My fingers don't block out the noise sufficiently. I need industrial strength earplugs. No, I'm not breaking bread with anyone who voted for Trump. They sicken me, frankly. They supported a deeply immoral candidate who is now doing real, demonstrable damage to this country. The few among them with a brain are cynically using all of the others as human shields for their reprehensible goals (see, e.g., tax bill, gutting of consumer protections, healthcare, wasting of the environment). And they know it, and they continue to double down on Trump, and they show no remorse. My view is let them have their guns, let them secede. Let them see how well they do without New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Seattle...
27
So, who IS more likely to advance the economic interests of the typical white, working class voter: liberals or conservatives? Only a complete ignoramus could possibly think the latter.
I think Thomas Edsall has misidentified the parties who really have their fingers in their ears.
15
I'm totally confused by "...liberal democracy... does not place any constraints on critiques of leaders, authorities and institutions; and does not allow any suppression of ideas no matter how dangerous to the system or objectionable to its citizens..." Excuse me, but isn't that Trump? who routinely insults leaders and maligns our institutions (Obama is a "sick guy", McCain is not a war hero, Corker couldn't get elected as a dog catcher, the FBI is in tatters, US Intelligence leaders are political hacks), even when some of those authorities are trying to deal with a terrorist act or natural disaster (mayors of London and San Juan)? And who obviously does not suppress or recognize the dangers of the muck that comes spewing out of his mouth (like retweeting vicious hate propaganda to forty-four million people)? I will, however, try to keep my fingers out of my ears if his followers will please do the same.
16
this is a self defeating point of view that is beyond noxious and all too common among self lacerating "liberals." It espouses the nonsensical view that liberals of Democrats are somehow to blame for the nasty slouch into fascism that now characterizes the denizens of red states and the modern day Republican party. It is the Democrats, this point of view tells us, who are actually the reason why why deep red Alabama is on the threshold of installing a pedophile in the Senate; it's Democrats, we are lectured, who at to blame for why a corrupt lying demagogue occupies the White House. How about for once if pundits like Edsall consider the malevolent pervasiveness of right wing media -- Fox News being perhaps the most despicable example -- and it horrendous influence on a public which has long since lost its critical thinking skills, assuming they were ever much in evidence.
24
I only want to know what the right is afraid of. Did they really buy forty years of Republican fear-mongering and race-baiting?
Maybe they should be more discriminating.
10
True. The thing people underestimate is how powerful Trump really is. They thinks they can take on Trump and win. (This paper tries everything to discredit Trump but gets nowhere) Trump comes out the winner every time. AND we are removing the too far Left policies that had us moving toward socialism/ government control. Now we will have Judges that will follow the law and not legislate from the bench. Wow MAGA is really happening and working. Except for the Liberals. Oh well as Obama once said, "elections have consequences". Your penalty for reaching too far left is 7 more years of Donald j Trump. Winning again!!
7
Some winning when he lost by 3 million votes. Since the slavery era EC win all the GOP has done is lose elections in every blue/purple state or barely win in red states that was won in a landslide a year ago.
Remember the GOP is the party that could win the popular vote in only 1/7 most recent elections in over 25 years. And they couldn't even pass any bill.
Whatever trump is doing is at best temporary including the tax bill. But Obamacare stays and in future it will expand. Gay marriage is legal and will stay. No matetr the EPA rules, the market is driving away coal and CA/NY drives the climate agenda. No one will make cars that pollute more when CA/NY wants lower pollution. What exactly are the great long lasting bills that the GOP has passed since Teddy Roosevelt?
We are divided and it is sometimes within families. I suppose that level of education is a major reason and true cliche.
Our disunity worries me. The nation seems to be seriously in decline.
Politics and partisanship are worse than I could have imagined. Our disputes over guns is an important example.
I betcha Poland and Italy are more united than US of A.
1
They discredit Trump by posting screen shots of his Twitter feed.
1
I quote Mr. Pinker:
"The real problem isn’t east coast elites who don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of choices they’ve made and horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe. ... The problem isn’t that I don’t understand these people. The problem is they don’t understand themselves, the reasons for their anger/frustrations, and don’t seem to care to know why."
I have zero sympathy for the troglodytes. They have political power through the moral bankruptcy of the Republican party, through the deceit of gerrymandering, and through an accident of history that looks back to a time when states were enshrined as political entities, a time when their populations were a fraction of what they are now. They will be replaced by the march of technology and reason. I only hope that I live long enough to tramp the dirt down on their graves.
The very idea that it's the liberals with fingers in their ears is so obviously stupid, as if the religious right were so open to suggestion, HA! Mr. Edsall is not helping human progress. In this essay, he's a mere apologist.
17
Flagged for hate speech and ageism.
Liberals don't need to take their fingers out of their ears, they need to get themselves to the nearest polling station in 2018. Apologize to no one. Liberal values will prevail in this struggle, but it can't happen if people sit at home. Don't give Republicans an inch. I do not support their values and never will. Their America is not the America that I support nor will I ever support. The special elections so far mean nothing, nor does the one coming up in Alabama. Dems will not win Alabama or Georgia or Montana for the simple fact that many people in those states represent the very opposite of what Liberals want for the country. Liberals should be proud, stand tall, and fight!
10
Great point, let's just let the right destroy the country and planet. To try stopping them would seem to condescending!
7
Pick on conservatives. They deserve it. We liberals are suffering with a despotic Republican House and Senate, and an out of control commander in chief who's now slurring his words and alarming the globe with his policies.
This nation has gone crazy. And this president did not seem well when announcing the embassy change. Slurred speech. Strange elocution.
Poor reading skills. Odd use of his hands. No wonder Pence is smirking in the background.
Don't blame us. I didn't find your article helpful. A essay more helpful to the progressive cause is overdue. Where are these? All that Hillary slamming took its tool, from just these types of writings. Why did you all ignore her nuanced policies?
I know zero Democrats doing what Stenner alleges. As for Schnurer, no one asks red state Trump supporters to give up their religion. If they decline job training, it's certainly not liberals fault. Those quotes? Gobblebeegook.
Authoritarians don't worry about what Democrats say or think. They mow people down in the street as happened in Charlottesville. This article should have focused on how authoritarian Mr. Trump's administration has been, and how he's wiping out every progressive policy on the books.
9
Boy, this sounds familiar:
'Given the triumph of fascism, it may be time for the Resistance to take a look at the vulnerabilities of their own orthodoxies.'
'Many Resistance members continue to have little understanding of their own role — often inadvertent, an unintended consequence of well-meaning behavior — in creating the conditions that make fascists willing to support Hitler and the party he is leading.'
'For the moment, the German Resistance is both stunned and infuriated by the vehement animosity it faces from fascist Germany, which is made up of districts that are much less Jewish than Resistance Germany.'
'Not only are the values that the Resistance takes for granted heatedly disputed in many sections of the country, the way many Resistance members assert that their values supplant or transcend traditional beliefs serves to mobilize the fascists.'
This will not end well.
7
Isn’t it really a theocracy that is in part being manipulated, man’s dominion over earthly things! The god given right to use the earth and woman and children, and to attack those that don’t have your work ethic or other righteous credentials (fill in the blank). This is part of what is being hyped as always by the greed of those wanting or having power. Follow the greed as the powerful use religion, politics and economic levers to manipulate their “followers’” fear so as to feed their own coffers. Currently all the levers are being pulled, “moral decay”, “public education generates secularism”, “liberal cosmopolitanism globalism is taking away jobs”, “it is your right to mine, drill, cut, burn anywhere and everywhere”… Manage the fear to feed the greed, fear and greed make the world go round.
1
Oh, wow. A very entertaining exercise from a couple of eggheads explaining the election of Trump. I suggest two other reasons, both far simpler.
Number one: don’t forget the process Republicans went through in selecting Trump, where they rejected several superbly qualified candidates. People voted for Trump because they simply detest and are fed up with politicians of all persuasions.
Number two: over Thanksgiving two very dear friends became quite emotional when describing the horrors that will befall our country as a result of the proposed Republican tax bill. These two are veritable poster children for the liberal progressive bicoastal movement: one an executive with what is perhaps the major high-tech company in the world, the other a professor of political science at what is perhaps the world’s most prestigious and certainly left-wing universities. I pointed out that if their fears come true, surely the Democrats will be swept into power at all levels of government and will quickly make things right. They doubted that, because, they said, the people are too stupid to make the right decisions. And that, friends, neatly encapsulates the extraordinarily arrogant attitude of the bicoastal progressive elites. Only THEY are smart enough to be trusted to make all the important decisions for the rest of us.
11
So your experience with 2 of your friends over dinner is to be extrapolated to millions of people living over vast areas spanning two coasts of this country?
And your conversation with 2 conservative friends included a measured, careful consideration of liberal positions that were only rejected in their merits and not because those 2 conservative friends thought they had better ideas? Only liberals judge people to be dumb or unwilling to act in their own best interest? Come on
I’m certainly not “stunned.” It has been apparent for many decades how willfully ignorant many Americans are. The problems are far more simple than what this article lays out. I see two main things dividing our country. The first is that some people believe in facts and some don’t. In fact, many of those that don’t belive in facts are waging a war on facts and reality.
The other issue that divides us is that there are some people who want to force their ideaology on others and the rest don’t. You will see this innaccurrately paraded as “identity politics.” Rubbish. You see, I don’t care if people want to go to church, say “Happy Holidays,” use contraception, have an abortion, or if gay people marry, for example. Many “conservatives” do. They want to force other people to comply with their religious morals. I, however, believe very strongly in the separation of church and state.
11
What religious morals? They support a serial sexual abuser without blinking an eye. The right has no morals. They are purely tribal and have no principals or morals. All they care about is for their tribe to win at all cost, even when the country is ruined.
2
The Democrats have become a hodge podge party that encompasses many elements of which I do not subscribe. I happened to watch the "Women's March" on CSPAN last year and was struck at, other than anger at Trump, there were so few overlapping issues.
Democrats support an array of aggrieved groups, and unfortunately, some of them fail to generate excitement. I personally, am only vaguely bothered by states that forbid transgender folks from being allowed to use the bathroom of their chosen identity. But this is a huge cause for the Democratic platform. Transgender people are less than 1% of the total population.
Using a bathroom, other than the one of your choosing, is not extreme tyranny. You would think it was, if you watched a Democratic rally. Real issues exist beyond trivial ones like this; like economic despair and hopelessnes in swathes of america, and raising the wages of Americans by enforcing immigration laws.
13
You mean real issues like taking away the right of women to deal with her body? Or real issues like going anti-science and be the ONLY country in the world to not be part of climate change action. Or real issues like going against the rights of LGBTQ communities? Or real issues like giving tax cuts to the rich and corporations that are hoarding cash but won't hire.
Democrats offer a platform to train people losing jobs in dying industries like coal NOT just pay lip service while taking away their healthcare as the GOP does. That illegal immigrants are stealing jobs is a myth because when unemployment is the lowest in decades the issue is not about jobs. The issue is about income inequality made worse by giving tax cuts to the rich. Duh! How long can the party pull this con job? Because as it is they are struggling to win the popular vote and have done so only once in over 25 years.
The semantics of this discussion matter. The Left and its academic apologists need to acknowledge that the Left's desire for authoritarianism is equal to that of the Right. Calling the Left "non-authoritarians" only propagates the self-deluding self-righteousness. The Left must acknowledge that it has no tolerance for "unrestrained free expression" of any ideas that it considers "offensive/outrageous/unacceptable." Gone are the days, for the Left in particular, of defending another's right to express offensive ideas. Can you imagine the ACLU today defending the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois? No, in fact, most liberals would cheer and defend people who engaged in violence to suppress such a march. Members of the Left increasingly, openly express the proposition that open intellectual discourse--when it does not accept their core principals as a starting point--must be suppressed. Let us remember that one side's definition of "intolerance" is invariably seen by the other side as an equal and opposite form of intolerance.
10
"Can you imagine the ACLU today defending the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois?"
Yes.
Conservatives hate liberal democracy and seek to destroy it. So liberal democracy should stop being liberal democracy to keep the conservatives from destroying it. Makes perfect sense.
I will never empathize nor make common cause with racism and bigotry. I have spent my whole life fighting against them, and will continue to do so until my last breath.
3
"...would be better even for them if only they’d let it, by giving up their benighted religious views, accepting job training in the new technologies, and preferably moving to one or the other coasts or at least the closest major city."
The proof is in the numbers. They would be better off. Blue states are healthier, more prosperous more educated, and produce more.
We could actually shorten the conversation and details and say "O.K. keep doing things your way and just figure it out , pay your fair share into the pot (i.e. Bankrupt Kansas/Brownback), that way as we stop can funding your failed life views.
Not even funny or ironic that the new tax plan these people just got through is taxing Blue Staters even MORE to pay for the Reds.
They only et one thing right over the Liberals - they know when to vote.
4
So the problem is a failure by liberals to perfectly thread the needle with how they convey a politics of equality and fairness to a hostile audience, not the spreading of malicious, bigoted lies by right-wing media, the purchasing of the entire GOP by the wealthy since Citizens United, gerrymandering, ridiculous false equivalencies by media like NYT or network news, election interference, or voter suppression. Sounds fair.
2
Why should we spend time understanding these people who offer nothing but disdain for our worldview?
2
Maybe it's people's conservatives views that are their problem. If folks see a changing America leaving them behind --that's called being a conservative. Change is a given. It's not like the world has become more conservative over the centuries. You can either get on board or be left behind. It's not like there are a bunch of liberals steering the ship in this direction. It's just human nature and human relations combined with a developing economy that's the driving force. If you have a country founded on small "l" liberalism how do you stop that? Hey all of you free-wheelin' creative types stop what you're doing!
Wow, talk about stepping to the plate and striking out.
1. Trump is corrupt. That’s the issue.
2. That long list of ‘liberal views?’ That’s reality. Not opinion. That’s where humans society has gone. It’s not going back.
3
It's actually much simpler.
Wages stagnated under Obama. Under-employment was widespread. The ACA is a cruel joke--the only beneficiaries are low-income folks, whose health care is subsidized, while insurance companies keep making astronomical amounts of money and the health care industry keeps making astronomical amounts of money while most folks keep paying more and more and getting less and less. The stock market stagnated during Obama's final two years--the S&P went up barely 50 points between Nov. 2014 and Nov. 2016, it's gone up by more than 500 points since Trump got elected. Student loan debt threatens to keep a generation in poverty. Adding insult to injury, Clinton pranced around the country, saying what a great job Democrats had done and promising more of the same and blaming the GOP for any problems--just elect more Democrats and we'll win this fight, whatever this fight might have been about.
People vote with their pocketbooks. It's as simple as that. Democrats controlled the White House and the Congress not so long ago and they failed to deliver. In fact, with ACA, they made matters worse economically for a lot of folks--if they'd gotten Medicare for everyone while they controlled the government (and don't blame R's for that failure, it's a lame, tired excuse), we wouldn't be here.
Like Clinton once said, it's the economy, stupid. That's why Clinton lost and Trump won. Trump stinks, but folks with D's behind their names pushed him into the White House.
8
Spot on. I would only add that Obama cut SS benefits by essentially doing away with the COLA, which was put in place by the Ford Administration.
You're partly right in that Edsall's analysis surely goes light on economic explanations. But your comment glosses over important recent history, I.e. the crash for which you can hardly blame Obama. If your argument is that a more radical critique and reversal of laissez faire capitalism by Obama and the Dems, including throwing some bankers in the klink, would have defeated Trump, then I'm with you. But the hokum that Trump will deliver for the working class can only be sold through a massive right wing media effort and by somehow defining that working class as white.
O wow. It's our fault. And by the way, except for urban areas, rural counties in New York State are red.
2
You know what is missing from this - and a multitude of other bizarre analysis by leftists of what Trump supporters think - actual analysis of who Trump voters are and what they believe. I think this author has made a better attempt than most but clearly failed - any presumption that it is Trump voters who are authoritarian and not the leftists who literally want to control what others think and believe (not just do) is about 19 million miles from reality.
Here's a place for you to begin if you really are trying to understand us - the NYT exit poll from the 2016 election. Guess what - Trump won all of the income categories from $50k per year and up. Clinton won the downscale vote. Trump won with white college educated voters and he split overall with those with more than a HS education. For the first time in decades a Republican won those with just a HS education but face it people - Obama won that category in a rout both times; Trump just stole a few of your voters.
So what does this mean? First, Trump voters are more successful than Clinton voters. Yeah, income reflects success. Especially when Trump voters live in much lower cost of living areas than Clinton voters. If they earn more than you AND have less expense, they have something going for them. What else? Trump voters are older - and, yes, wiser - than Clinton voters.
When you start with an open mind towards the notion that Trump voters made the better choice, then you might get the analysis right.
10
Liberals do need to recognize that nearly one third of the country consists of rabid Trump supporters, but they really can not do much about it. These people are indeed the 'deplorables' and it is impossible to educate them or reform them. Their karma (and Trump's karma) is the only think that can cure them. And that karma is coming soon.
2
T.B.E.
Good one.
Two books I can suggest to all;
Nixonland
What's Wrong with Kansas?
The US today is basically living in Nixon's Kansas.
1
Great. A much needed article. Nail on the head, ....so to speak. thnx.
2
You make a few decent points here (which others have said better many times by now), but If you think that Donald Trump is a popular or successful president, it's you who needs to take your hands off of your eyes.
1
As a conservative I can only say to the Democrats: "Please please, take the advice of the commenters here and not that of Mr. Edsall."
7
I can't help but notice that the most liked comments illustrate the title perfectly. It's okay to disagree, but I'm mostly seeing knee-jerk dismissal.
7
Staten Island, by Zip Code, is one of the reddest of the red regions north of the Mason-Dixon line... A pocket of redness in blue NYC, I love my hometown, rampant Trumpism notwithstanding....
I am tired of being told to listen.
Liberals are always being asked to listen, be flexible, and respect conservative folks....when will they ever do the same?
Tell your conservative friends to try it out, for once.
8
As Southerners, we have always been different from the northeast. In fact, identifying as Southern and the unfortunate results began the initial and ongoing Balkanization of the country with everyone now self-identifying into groups and subgroups by ethnicity, religion, education, white collar/tech collar/blue collar, sexual orientation and identification, income, single parents, vaxx/antivaxx, red state/blue states, kids/no kids, open carry-concealed-carry-no carry, tax/flat tax/no tax, Dad jeans, boxer/briefs, #metoo. The Democratic Party continually supports ever more “self-identification”, and while this may be liberal in the libertarian sense of freedom, it also erodes the contiguity of our identification as Americans.
The Right has chosen to cleave to the white, heterosexual, and Christian, which is easier for its adherents to grasp, even with its unfortunate strains on the farthest wing.
Meanwhile, those of us who stand in the gap trying to hold the reigns are being pulled apart by by two teams hauling in opposite directions.
Self identifying as a Southern, white, male, hetero, educated, white collar, agnostic, concealed carry, Dad jeans, Independent.
3
I couldn't get past the second paragraph. Touting the "strengths" of eviscerating regulatory agencies, throwback policies, the stolen SC seat, and economic growth that has nothing to do with the current administration and everything to do with stability (good for business) that was set in motion by the previous President.
Interestingly, he fails to mention the "strengths" of causing bloody riots in Jerusalem (just the latest "win"), the various indictments and guilty pleadings by 'inner circle' cohorts and his children (who shouldn't be in any appointed office), the gutting of State, various lawsuits, and the daily rants, chaos and disgusting waste of taxpayer funds on weekend golf outings to his private clubs where he profits at taxpayer expense, or the 20 or so women who have found the courage to say "he sexually assaulted me" or the tape where he admits he did it. Then there's the whole money laundering and support of Russia problem.
But hey, what's treason, lying, and deliberate assault compared to 'mishandling emails' and making paid speeches?
Now if this piece had put something else in that paragraph, I might have read it, because at the end of the day, the point that both sides need to listen to each other does make sense. Turning down the noise so that we can hear each other is the problem. The WH fool immersed in his folly doesn't care -- unless it profits him.
3
"In any event, while most of us in Blue World see these changes [Globalization's off-shoring of jobs] as beneficent, they have had devastating effects on the economies of “red” communities."
Although the Times has been trying to get its readership to accept globalization's bargain - cheap TVs in exchange for the decimation of the middle class - I suspect most people understand that it didn't have to be this way.
The rules of globalization were written by and for the wealthy - and we're talking exponentially more wealthy than the average Times reader - which explains why Germany, facing the same forces of globalization, managed to retain 20% of its work force in manufacturing, and why the US is down to 8.6%.
Centrist, corporatist Democrats and their pundits seek to move their base to the right, accept the hollowing out of the middle class, embrace all the other negatives of globalization (Krugman's ode to sweatshop labor) and be good little sheeple.
5
You mean 10 million undocumented workers are hired illegally by American CEOs that get a free pass from law enforcement. The right LOVES cheap non-union labor!
3
I'm sick of these editorials asking liberals to look inwards to understand their racist and uneducated fellow citizens still living in the last century. I could care less about them. The only thing that has changed is that more liberals are living in cities lessening their electoral college power and the GOP has successfully gerrymandered the state elections. The majority is easily in the liberals favor but more and more we are becoming an apartheid ruled by the minority. Understanding the Trump voter will not change any of these challenges.
2
Yeah those “conservatives” will be feeling really great when they start seeing their medical bills in the future. I bet they’ll feel like winners when they can’t afford to send their smartest kids to college because there’s no assistance. And if they’re like me, in the middle of their lives, I’m sure they’ll love working well into their 80s because social security - which they paid into for DECADES - is gone. Stolen by the Kochs.
The truth is liberals are fighting for everything. Republicans must really enjoy being lied to.
2
Providing health care for poor children is not "orthodoxy". It is "life saving". Opposing CHIPS on grounds that "my tax dollars are used for lazy welfare recipients" is both "orthodoxy" and "lazy".
Yes and no. My grandfather thought Jackie Robinson was trying to extirpate his way of life. Wrong. Culture changes, get used to it. Is work often undervalued, marginalized, unfulfilling? Absolutely. Is this acceptable? No. And there is no reason to think Republican "conservatives" and the Liar-In-Chief care about this at all.
So, "For the moment, the left is both stunned and infuriated by the vehement animosity it faces from red America?" says a lot about the narcissistic nature of the left these days. It's all about them, and apparently they aren't comprehending what they read in this paper, which shows the very opposite of what Mr. Edsall said, because the real "vehement animosity" is from the left towards red America. Not only that but they also look down at their allegedly "less educated, deplorable" neighbors.
These so-called "progressives," who pat themselves on the back for the number of degrees they have, also ignorantly believe the "low educated" are ñot as intelligent as they are. Well, if you don't learn anything else in college, you better learn human beings are born intelligent, and are roughly equal in intelligence regardless of the level of education. So, yes, the "less educated," the ones you look down your noses at, do know how to handle the likes of you when it comes to politics - just as they know when you are insulting and belittling them - and you wonder why they, not you, rule today? It's a mystery to you - but it's no mystery to them. So, the next time you are tempted to get on your high horse, think about that.
2
Liberals need to lay off the hyperbole and hysteria. Present alternatives to the proposed Republican legislation instead of "it's literally the end of the world" or "millions of people will die if this passes".
2
I will be honest, as the lives built on religion, ignorance, and lies fall apart, I am not going to be understanding about lies, ignorance, and religion.
The people who refuse to learn basic science, basic morality, the value of all humans, including female and pigmented humans have no sympathy from me. I won't support them, their way of life, their culture, or their bigotry.
If this makes me an elitist, so be it. I became an elitist not with money, but with brains. You can be an elitist too. All you have to do is love all people, welcome those in need, and make decisions based on empathy and reason, not fear and greed.
4
While the points made in this editorial are worth considering and no doubt do/did motivate Trump supporters, they certainly do not explain the ignorance, blatant racism and ethnocentrism that Trump plays upon to keep support of his base. Nor do they explain the utter spinelessness of the Republican party who are willing to support child molesters simply to win. There are valid criticisms of the democratic party, of neoliberalism and how globalization has harmed many economically, but the ignorance is that Trump is not going to make the lives of these people better. Pure ignorance on their part and in their ignorance we all suffer.
1
Thomas, I posit that you rely too much on reductionism to set a bar you can clear. Stenner's characterization of liberal ideals and goals is fundamentally flawed, so all the analysis based on that is fallacious.
But, as long as we are oversimplifying things, please allow me to see if I understand what you are saying. Of late, liberals have taken political measures to protect themselves from persecution and exploitation stemming from hundreds of years of cumulative conservative bigotry. Naturally, conservatives complain that their inherent right to dominate, persecute and exploit those who are different from them is being infringed. And, the liberals are to blame?
3
Is this anything more than validating the FOX news propaganda about why all of their listeners should hate liberals? I've been hearing from them hate for everything liberal for the last 20 years. The great divide is not caused by liberals, (whatever that is), but it is caused by FOX news.
3
I missed the paragraph where the author blames liberals for voting for Obama and thus sparking the Tea Party (sorry, I meant "Trumpism") movement. Yes, race really does play that large of a roll in our society.
4
What an outrageous piece of claptrap - equivalent to blaming the victim. Let's leave aside the ridiculous assumption that "liberals" are a monolithic entity, whereas "conservatives" (radical extremists - American Taliban) are just folks in need of understanding. We're supposed to reach out to the poor put-upon radical extremists because they're too willfully ignorant to "believe" in climate change; or in racism; or that the civil war was about slavery; or in any parts or interpretations of the Constitution that don't happen to fit their worldview; or that they are "populists" whose main source of information is propaganda funded, disseminated and abetted by billionaires who have nothing but contempt for the very people they use to divide and conquer. Throughout the history of the world it has always been thus - the plutocrats align themselves with the reactionary forces of violence and intolerance in order to subdue the masses - that is exactly the playbook that has been used in the Middle East for the last 100 years, and it is exactly what is happening in the US today. The lack of recognition and understanding is on you, Mr. Edsall.
3
"Progress is impossible without change. And those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything."
_________The late George Bernard Shaw
1
Wow! Talk about over intellectualizing something We in America have for the past 40 years "Dumbed" down education and what we have is probably the most anti-intellectual mad as President. I remember the movement in the 70's about making education "more Relevant" So we got rid of music, art Phys Ed Theory classes etc. Coal has been dead for 50 years and instead of teaching new skill for the 21st century to these workers government and unions repeatedly preached higher wages would make things better. Republicans want to live in the 1950's. Except for minorities who wouldn't want Ozzie and Harriet. Dumbing down American Education has finally produced the fruit we now are eating.
2
The real problem we is Washington has become the nation's largest geriatric ward. It is insane that anyone over 80 is still serving in Congress. They are stealing opportunities for younger legislators to move up the ladder, that is shameful and short-sighted.
I hear liberals defend liberal democracy all the time, and that plays into the right as well. "Poverty has been reduced" says the liberal, and the right winger zaps back: "Those lazy louts don't deserve it. Take it away!" The liberal says "Environmental regulations have slashed pollution in our cities!" and the right winger says "Regulations have harmed business and growth and caused our good jobs to go to Mexico." The list can be extended.
This is the second editorial in a week that says the left or liberals are playing into the hands of the right. Nothing the left does, short of outright mass organization over time, will not play into the hands of the right. Making strategy to please the right will get us nowhere.
I couldn't disagree more with the premise of this piece.
We Liberals, Progressives, Thinking Human Beings are supposed to try to understand and perhaps even empathize with people who oppose basic fundamental goodness towards long-oppressed folks such as people of color, gays, women?
No thank you. And the irony is that these Trump supporters often cloak themselves is Evangelical Christianity. They use the Bible to back their despicable views...with of course the old trope of finding passages that they think justify eveything from slavery to mysogyny. They ignore the clear, indisputable fact that in the end, in the last full measure, Jesus Christ sided with the poor and oppressed, the forgotten, the diseased.
As Winston Churchill so perfectly said, "The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance my deride it, but in the end, there it is."
1
I find it astonishing that so many people indignantly ask why it is the left who is always asked to listen, understand, and empathize––astonishing because I was a Democrat who became disillusioned with the shockingly illiberal, intolerant, fingers-in-the-ears behavior and thinking of the left. Anyone who disagrees with a progressive is shamed into silence. Anyone who dares to dissent is a bigot. No one can beat well-educated, well-heeled liberals for their caustic, condescending condemnation of anyone who lives in so-called Middle America. Stereotype away! Put everyone in the same deplorable basket! If you really don't think that a vociferous segment of the left is not bullying everyone else into cowed silence and submission, I would respectfully ask that you take your fingers out of your ears, remove your hands from your eyes, and look into your heart of hearts.
3
I notice that neither of these spokespeople mentioned abortion, and the way liberals "won" it by removing it from democratic control. ( Read any liberal article on abortion, and I guaranteed that you won't see the word "democracy"). That is the big flash point in politics, not "multiculturalism".
Yes and no. One thing the Virginia and NJ elections opened up was the exurban move away from the GOP. That’s why the Governors-elect out-polled the pollsters. And “losing” the 3 House races? The Democrats came close to winning all 3...including Mick Mulvaney’s seat in South Carolina. I fear that the folks in the small towns and minor metro areas may have voted themselves into irrelevance. They chose a sketchy billionaire who is a master of playing to the audience in front of him. A man who sold them down the river the second he took the oath of office. Their problem isn’t liberal philosophy, it’s economic destitution leading to de-population. Liberals aren’t going to adjust to get their votes. And, if the exurban shift is nationwide, they might not have to. Come back on Wednesday November 7, 2018 and tell me what you see.
Yep the roosters are coming home to roost for the Democrats. Obama, Comey and Holder have caused more harm to the FBI than I imagined. They corrupted it. IRS and Lois Lerner is an example. Yet nothing was done. No win for the Democrats in 2018. Republicans are setting this up all wisely.
1
Indeed, let’s be sensitive to the feelings of the reds even as they hand their fates over to those will make their lives worse and who have no use or respect for them. However, my sensibilities receive no consideration from those who are quite comfortable voicing illiberal beliefs even questioning the legitimacy of the former President using the most vulgar racist language.
Liberals are more sympathetic to non-Liberals that critics make out. As a liberal and a Southerner, I know this first-hand. But what is difficult is not finding common ground: it is that one group lies about everything and holds their adherents in a cult-like thrall. When facts mean nothing, there is no persuasion.
1
Ture. These cultural differences have moved from one kindly being tolerant of certain things into a (ruthless and self-serving) dictatorship of positions that many people resent, both inside and outside the blue states.
Whaaa? "an’t just be socialized or educated out of our stances on these issues, as they are the product of deep-seated, largely heritable predispositions"
Democrats are too liberal and too politically correct. Republicans are far tougher and better coordinated. Republicans communicate on a 7th grade level and taken deception to a new level. Just listen to the cheerleaders on Fox. Roy Moore will win and Democrats don't have a chance. We have been Trumped!
First, well written column. I enjoy your style.
Second, Obama was very middle of the road. He did everything he could to not antagonize racist America. He did less for blacks than LBJ...by a very wide margin.
The one group he really did make history for is the LGBT community. But that touched off the Evangelicals. Adding them to the racists was just enough to tip the electoral college.
As for the 'liberals have to draw some moral lines' argument, they do. That is a false argument. To borrow from (and respond to) the Evangelicals' false assertions, the liberals do not endorse marriage to dogs, or to up to nine wives, or whatever else they like to say. The line is pretty clear. But maybe the liberals need to do a better job explaining that to the red state residents, the rural communities, and now the reds (sympathizers with the new totalitarian Russia led by Putin which is a world leader in anti-gay sentiment).
Stenner says: "These ... fundamental fault lines of human conflict ... are unlikely ever to be resolved or settled because we can’t just be socialized or educated out of our stances on these issues, as they are the product of deep-seated, largely heritable predispositions ... " That sounds like absolute nonsense. On what basis does Stenner assert that inclination to authoritarian political positions is genetic? Does she actually believe that there is selective breeding going on that's leading to higher concentrations of genetically authoritarian folks in Kansas? Please do provide further information ...
So... what do you propose should be done, and who do you propose should do it? Specifics please.
I don't care who's to blame. I care how we fix it.
I am tired of reading opinions blaming the liberals for the stupidity of the Trump voters. Hilary promised free higher education and potential for upward mobility, the Trump folks voted instead for return of the coal jobs. Enough said!
We can argue that the stock market rise, GDP growth and lower unemployment are all due to Obama policies, but does Mr Edsall really believe that the higher stock market and tax cuts to billionaires benefit the coal miners?
The irony of the current political situation is that the majority of those who benefit the most from Trump economic policies are liberals who voted against him, while many who will be harmed by reduction of social programs in poor rednstates voted for him.
1
"Blue America spent the last 8 years...."
Huh? In what way?
Just basically, Congress is where laws and budgets are made. The GOP controlled Congress 6 of 8 years under Obama, 6 of 8 years under Bush and 6 of 8 years under Clinton. 6 years of the last 25.
The GOP is the Establishment, they make the rules, they have the most influence for over two decades.
Just because one can say rubbish does not make it factual.
1
The right were mobilized by a disinformation and divide-and-conquer campaign authored by Russia and characterized by lies and distrust of the free press, aided and abetted by the willful ignorance and outsize influence of the conservative media. There's hardly anything legitimate about the other side that we could engage with reasonably. They are misinformed, lied to, unable to reason, moral hypocrites, and not self-aware. If liberals are supposed to take their fingers out of their ears, I'd like to know what conservatives ought to do for their part.
Is Mr. Edsall a fool, or does he simply argue in bad faith?
- Victories in all three contested special elections for the House of Representatives this year;
These were special elections to replace Trump appointees. Trump only appointed congressmen in safe districts. The GOP underperformed in all of these races. They lost big in the 2017 open seat elections.
-Trump’s 82 percent approval rating among Republican voters
This is actually a poor showing among one's own party. Trump is the least popular president in history at this point their presidedencies among the population as a whole.
-His success with the current tax bill.
Don't count your chickens yet, it ain't signed. It's also a horrible bill that no one should be proud of.
-His swift evisceration of key regulatory policies.
Like what? Maybe you wouldn't brag so much if you had to mention that these regulations are things like keeping the air clean or paying overtime.
-The Gorsuch appointment to the Supreme Court.
Literally any Republican would have filled this stolen seat, this is a direct consequence of the election, not a demonstration of an effective administration.
-Economic growth of over 3 percent in the last two quarters; the Dow Jones topping 24,000; and the unemployment rate dropping to 4.1 percent.
Anyone who can read a chart can see that these are continuations of Obama trends from when he turned the economy around after the Bush bust.
6
Sorry, Mr. Edsall. it's not our fault that the Amalgamated Horse Buggy Whip Company went out of business and "I ain't going to go work in Henry Ford's new-fangled factory. NoSireee.
1
"There is no telling how long it will be before the movement Trump has mobilized will have run its course. Nor can we anticipate — if and when Trumpism does implode — how extensive the damage will be that Pinker’s “forces of modernity” will have to repair."
I'm afraid Trumpism will not run its course but will grow like a cancer, fast and fatal. We're in dangerous waters and the iceberg is authoritarianism/fascism, and it will be cheered on by rural ignorance and "Christians." Liberals didn't cause any of this, but can only be faulted for being naive and reluctant to fight harder.
The Progressive vision of "liberal democracy" has nothing to do with liberalism. It borders in many cases on neo-fascism - demands that a narrow elite control the economy, culture, and undermine even the concept of nationhood. They vision an elitist economy benefiting only those with advanced degrees then flood the remaining job market with millions of third-world peasants knocking the bottom out of the general labor market. We do not want to be Blue State anything with its crime, mass homelessness, high poverty rates, massive income gaps, and you looking down your nose when we oppose being treated like garbage. You elected Trump.
2
Wrong, but well written by a distinguished analyst. Our current situation is due to a long term strategy by the wealthy right wing conservatives and their owned republicans (and many democrats.) Powell wrote the memo planning the takeover of all of the political power levers by the wealthy right wing. He was rewarded with a seat on the Supreme Court. Then the radical Medicare enemy Reagan was elected and killed the fairness doctrine, appointed activist judges, etc. Their activist radical SCOTUS destroyed campaign finance laws. All broadcast opinion is owned by them. They took over all of talk radio. They are finishing up net neutrality now. And they have exposed their ‘Christian’ churches, and got them to spew their messages all the time. They have demonstrated their lack of patriotism by bowing to an enemy dictator. They created the DLC to place democrats in name only as their candidates. And it worked. What is the joining of corporate and government power? The Secty of State is an oil man who previously had his own foreign policy. Generals rule everywhere. All honorable institutions are under attack. Meanwhile the liberals and intellectuals have been busy analyzing why these poor racists are so unhappy. Now watch out. Their evangelical churches are exposed as full of hatred (they voted for Trump). Their debt hawks are exposed as all liars. They own everything. It’s too late now. Democrats bring encounter group pillows to street fights. People need strategies to survive.
Go back and look at the pictures of Robert F. Kennedy visiting the poor of our inner cities; the poor of Appalachia; and the poor in South Africa. If Hillary Clinton had spent August of 2016 visiting the "invisible people" in communities throughout our nation instead of fundraising with the fat cats she would be President today.
1
I was a liberal for 4 decades. I voted for Trump. I remain very happy I voted for Trump, & liberal Democrats continue to not only give me no reason to return, they unknowingly argue for me to embrace non-establishment Republicans.
"Non-establishment" is key & is one of the biggest things this article misses. I am just as against establishment Republicans like Bush as I am against Clinton. Actually, I think they are almost identical. Both are products & drivers of the political-corporate oligarchy.
I think an unaccountable centralized gov't aligned with oligarchic world/corporate interests is dangerous to our democracy & to middle & working class. Advocating unfettered illegal migration into our country is something that benefits *only* the upper classes & those elites who wall themselves off while patting themselves on the back for their righteousness while smearing anyone who disagrees with either lies - saying we oppose immigration when we don't - or with smears - saying we're racist. They have zero rational justification for this, so they resort to lies & smears. The media is owned by corporate interests so plays a big part here.
Which brings me to the assertion that liberals' 'core features' include "unrestrained free expression & open criticism of leaders.' Hahahaha! What repels me from liberal ideology is precisely that they *don't* have this 'core feature.' They have become a social-media shame-driven, smear-driven pseudo-religious collective. No thanks.
3
"Geographically speaking, red counties are virtually nonexistent on the West Coast and on the East Coast north of the Mason-Dixon line."
Please check your statement against voting results. While I enjoy the company of my fellow liberals here in Upstate, I was dismayed looking at the sheer volume of "red" counties after the last presidential (read- un-presidential) election.
I would *love* to do IQ tests of all the supporters in the photograph.
2
This is why we need to impeach trump. But of course the spineless Democrats in Congress do nothing and let him reign without check.
This was a meaningless column because it ignores the reasons that the Republicans and their followers dislike progressive ideas.
The main problems are that:
Most public school systems hardly teach civics
Many Red State Evangelists, being so-called people of faith, are uninterested in facts or knowledge; and instead have blind faith in the lies of the GOP and the Anti-Christ Trump
Many Red State voters are bigots and racists who believe the Confederacy was right in advocating bigotry, and who are still waging the Civil War against the USA's better interests.
The Democrats main problem, is their leader are mostly too old and stale (I am 66 and realize this), in particular Nancy Pelosi. Harry Reid was too old, but had the good sense to retire. it's good that the ancient Congressman John Conyers is retiring, and a shame that the younger Al Franken can no longer run for President let alone had to resign from the Senate.
Hopefully either Senator Elizabeth Warren or Kirsten Gillibrand will be elected President in 2020.
2
So called "contemporary conservatism" a la Donald Trump, is not conservatism at all--it is Nativism of the worst sort, sprinkled liberally with misogyny, racism, sectarianism (we poor Christians are sooooo persecuted), protectionism, and reverse Robin Hood-ism (steal from the poor to give to the rich) that I have to laugh at this columnist. Watching so-called Republicans bedeviling the FBI and the Special Prosecutor, when many are the same noble legislators who egged on Kenneth Starr and the FBI to investigate everything short of what Bill Clinton had for lunch. Moliere would have delighted in the satirical fodder this provides. Myself, I watch and dread the Amerika my daughter (who is seriously considering leaving) will live in. The buyers' regret is growing severe. Contemporary Conservatism my, um, foot!
2
A message to all liberals out there: Never compromise your ethics. morals and standards to reach an agreement with those that denigrate, discriminate, or oppress people based on race, sex, religion, or orientation. Conservatives always blame liberals and want them to compromise. Dont.
1
This article is a long way of saying "some people don't like change." I love the NYTimes, but, I kind of feel that the title is click-bait. This was well written and researched, but contributes nothing to the conversation that hasn't already been done ad nauseam. Additionally, any time an article starts with the word "Liberals" I should know better than to read it, so honestly, shame on me for falling for this.
I wonder at the effort to lay the blame for our political polarity at the feet of intolerant liberals who refuse to acknowledge the good, decent, god-fearing beliefs of conservatives. It sounds vaguely familiar to the blue collar lament that none of what's happened to them is their fault in any way, shape or form... but instead is the result of a conspiracy of elites, who hate them for their freedom.
I am well insulated in my little liberal silo, but I can tell you that none of us in here have a problem with your belief in god, your opposition to having an abortion yourself, your refusal to marry someone of the same gender, your decision to not go to college, your choice of employment, your particular attitude toward the family that lives next door.
What we have a problem with is your determination that we also must believe in your god; that we not be allowed to make our own choice about abortion; that our marriage to the person we love is not as valid as yours; that education and intelligence makes us snobs, while your lack of the same makes you "genuine"; that your job, no matter what it entails, must be preserved at all costs; and that racial and ethnic differences are things to be wary of.
But most of all, we have a problem with the fact that you voted for and support a man who is the standard of intolerance and ignorance, and who trades in the currency of hatred. This is not a conflict between political positions. It's a conflict between ideologies of humanity.
2
I don’t have my fingers in my ears, & I clearly hear and see the outrage of the Red, & to me it affirms my progressive positions.More than anything else this is a battle between the Secular & the Religious .What the religious deem holy, I deem bigotry.Not to bake a wedding cake for a Gay couple because of religious beliefs, is bigotry, more so it is unlawful, to discriminate against American Tax paying Citizens.Singing God Bless America in an Elementary Public School is cruel & callus to those children that are brought up without a belief in a mysterious force, which must be frightening to a child.
I realize I’m in a minority, which is where I’m most comfortable.We are the mutants that evolve into the majority, maybe not at the present, but it is inevitable.
2
What we're witnessing in modern America is a simple battle between the forces of reason v. the forces of religion. Granted, not all the people who voted for Donald Trump were religious, but the hatred and bigotry of their votes were the direct offshoots of Christianity.
There exist in America a patriotic idea that good will prevail, which is not born out by the facts. There is a good chance that religion (in its many forms) will win out, and we have no idea where that will lead us. Reason has gone with the wind.
See: RevolutionOfReason.com
TheRogueRevolutionist.com
2
The people who need to take their fingers out of their ears are not liberals.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, haven't you noticed that liberals are under attack by unicorn hunters on the left as well?
We are people who stand for listening, for caring, for doing what we can in all places and in all circumstances to help.
Liberals, forsooth!
4
To me this analysis makes the case for the U.S. dividing into two or more smaller countries. I agree with these analysis, which seem to suggest that a nation needs to have a set of shared values for a democratic way of life to endure, and America is just too disparate to achieve this. Why not divide into smaller countries where those of us who support such things as universal healthcare and a strong, progressive tax structure, as well as equal rights, have that embodied in the fabric of our nation, while the red folks pursue their approach on their own?
4
The only reason why Trump has had " victories " starts with his election. He is a reality TV star and celebrity. He's very effective at it, has easy name recognition and his own media machine exists in Fox News, Breitbart, Info Wars, News Max and on. The stock market was headed up long before Trump. The same for unemployment.
If anyone should take their fingers out of their ears it should be the people who voted for him. They fell for a gigantic con job and refuse to listen to what's really happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
5
That liberals demonize and villainize their opponents is the most off putting part of their message for a swing voter like me. It’s innately hypocritical and embarrassingly self righteous. I can just as easily be persuaded to dislike many of the things conservatives represent, yet their message seems more internally consistent.
I often feel alone in how much I can’t identify with the smug self certainty of those who are convinced of their political moral superiority. It seems to me a critical mind should hold all viewpoints with a kind of careful skepticism, while believing the “other’s” deeply held “truths.” Ask any red state conservative whether they are a racist or if there’s another reason for their political beliefs, they’ll likely give you lots of other reasons. Ask any liberal whether they just want to confiscate freedom and kill jobs, they’ll likely give you a host of other reasons for their liberalism. Personally, I love the ideals presented by both sides, and dislike the things they refuse to acknowledge. I’m perpetually thrown from the arms of one to the other based on their ideals/denial— whichever is more strongly presenting.
Believe your beliefs, doubt your prejudice.
1
This is ridiculous. The fact is that more Americans voted Democrat for President and for the House than they did Republican. the first problem to address is gerrymandering, which would address the House. The cards are so stacked against individuals that it's hard to see how to fix the influence of large corporations over individuals, but that would be next.
2
Ten states on the coasts -- California, Washington, Oregon, New York, and the six states of New England -- combine for one-third of the U.S. GDP and control the majority of North American shipping. If they seceded, then the Republican interior could see how it fares on its own.
6
Honest to God, I've heard about all I want to hear about understanding Trump voters, taking responsibility for why Trump voters hate people like me, etc. It seems that this topic has been covered ad nauseum. (Where are the stories about disappointed Hillary stories and why oh why do they feel the way they do?) Frankly, with the tiki torch hate parades and the myriad myths of the far right, I call on ALL people to respect facts and one another, and figure this thing out. What is going on now in the White House is a disaster.
4
It's a bunch of baloney. Liberalism means wanting others to have opportunity, including decent public schools, college access, medical care, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The GOP wants to dismantle the main pillars of a civilized society, and in doing so, bankrupt the middle class. I was born in the Midwest, raised south of the Mason-Dixon Line, lived in several places (including the deep South) as a military spouse, and now live in the northeast. We are all Americans. "Real" Americans don't just inhabit red states.
5
A key requirement that liberals and conservatives once cherish - is respect. Until we ALL get back to opening our minds and hearts we're doomed to continue this tearing up of our country.
1
As liberals like Pinker, Paglia and Kirsten Powers have written, the impulse to authoritarianism is not owned by the Right. The Left is just as culpable. Our problem in this country isn't just that the Right is out of control; rather, today's tyranny comes from Right and Left. Both sides are more than willing to pervert the justice system and deny science in order to advance their ideologies. While the Right starves the poor, leaves the sick helpless, and further empowers the aristocracy, the Left squash opposing speech, stomp on the federal-state legal structure, celebrate procreative dysfunction, and re-frame massive sexual identity crises as expressions of identity. The tyranny on the Right and the Left is real.
Chris
Give examples of how the left is denying science. I see it regularly on the right for the last 20 years and now the earth will probably wipe us out - good riddance.
1
The ignorance and the susceptibility to propaganda of the Trump Kool-Aid drinkers id deafening. Education and the development of rational critical thinking is what is essential for a vibrant and effective democracy. A number of the rural, high school educated Trump supporters keep yearning for the old days. Forget it. They are gone. The world is moving ahead and Trump's pandering to the coal miners and other disappearing industries in a tactic of the incompetent who is unable to effectively deal with other astute foreign leaders while surrendering USA's place in the economic world. His disdain for intellectualism mimicking the narrow vision of his followers will soon reap dirty air, diseases for which there is no effective drug, huge profits for corporations at the expense of the middle class population and increased authoritarianism and gradual loss of personal freedoms. It is difficult to resolve issues when the right, supported by the evangelical closed-mind followers refuses to look at and acknowledge facts.
2
Mark Lilla makes a different and (to my thinking) a better point about the democratic party, in critiquing the habit of viewing everything through the lens of identity politics. Rather than risk falling into divisive frames of race or gender, perhaps it's enough to make the point that fellow *citizens* are being mishandled by the police, that fellow *citizens* are being sexually victimized. Because no class of person should be victimized. To put the emphasis on identity risks blaming *men* or *whites* or – better yet! – *white men.* Is this sounding familiar yet? (The same could be said of need-based scholarships. Minority students already stand to benefit disproportionally – due to the effects of past discrimination! – yet because the criteria are racially universal, the scholarship (and the funding) doesn't become a divisive issue or perceived as racially redistributive.) But the Dems want to make a moral point. Okay, but recognize that the people you're preaching to... aren't going to vote for you! You can preach and have the satisfaction or you can win elections.
I found this column very confusing and difficult to understand, especially the first half. From what I understand, I may be sympathetic to the author's basic point, but I found the column so incomprehensible, that I'm not sure as to what the basic point is.
Perfect example- how many people will the rush to driverless cars and trucks disemploy?
No individual is a utilitarian. And most communitarians are conservative.
"Most Democrats continue to have little understanding their own role-often inadvertent, and unintended consequence of well-meaning behavior--in creating the conditions that make conservatives willing to support Trump and the party be is leading..."
Really? Is it liberals' fault, that "well-meaning behavior" such as simple common courtesy; respect; decency; and consideration has been contorted into being looked upon as "PC?"
Is it liberals' fault that conservatives are so ignorant, they buy into FOX News, talk radio, and websites that they foolishly believe is the antithesis of all that "fake news" from mainstream sources? Is it an "unintended consequence" that conservatives, through their own gullibility hung on the words of a fake conservative, for whom they elected POTUS, and only now are at least some of them wising up to the fact that they have been. had?
America was never intended to be nation exclusively comprised of scholars, thinkers and "eggheads." But, the general dumbing down of this country, exacerbated by a compulsive liar who knew better, practically promising "pie in the sky" to those not smart enough to know better, and only now, at least some of them are waking up to the awful reality that their lives will be worse, not better, cannot be blamed on liberals, who for all their perceived misguided do-gooding, just might have been able to make those die-hard conservatives lives a little better.
3
What about "creative destruction," that lovely economic-theory euphemism for "hosing the poor"? I thought that Adam Smith's invisible hand was responsible for the destruction of red state industrial economies. Why are we blaming Democrats for that? It was Republican deregulation, and the Republican war on unions, that caused this downward spiral.
I thought the Right was all about unfettered indivdual choice, and living with the consequences of your actions. Shouldn't coal miners and steel workers who won't move to a new place and get job training doing something new have to face the consequences of their personal choice? I thought it was a violation of "creative destruction" to prop up dying industries like coal with federal tax money.
Or maybe the hypocrites on the Right are just...power-hungry hypocrites?
2
Blah blah blah
The world evolves, people evolve, communities evolve. We can either fight it or embrace it.
The only difference today is the pace of change and the speed of communication.
1
So we have to change in order to make things right? Republicans got to this disgusting level of discourse and undignified behavior on their own. Liberals don't need to do anything except keep on fighting the malevolent forces that keep Republicans in power. Time and demographics are on our side.
2
It's always the most ignorant and intolerant that demand the most tolerance from everyone else.
As a friend of mine recently noted, Conservatives are upset because:
There aren't very many "conservative" actors because Hollywood is conspiring to keep "conservatives" out. And how the "mainstream media" and "activist judges" all have a "liberal bias". And how "conservative" students are being discriminated against on university campuses because the universities won't invite white supremacists as guest speakers, and "liberal" professors won't give equal classroom time to the opinions of "conservatives" who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old. And how "conservative" scientists are being silenced for offering the "equally valid" theory that global warming doesn't exist. And how "conservatives" are being "bullied" for their "Christian values" because they aren't allowed to discriminate against people they hate. And how the government is discriminating against "conservatives" by not allowing them to impose their religious beliefs on other people who do not share them. And how rich old white Republicans are a "disadvantaged minority" because of the scourge of "multiculturalism". And how rich white Republicans are being "taken advantage of" by "welfare queens" who all drive Cadillacs and have big color TVs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
He's one of the smartest people I know.
5
Who runs the agribusnesses that blights the farm communities? Who finds a million ways to thwart affordable healthcare, to coddle the mythical race of job-creators who actually send manufacturing straight to Asia because that happens to suit them? Why, big fat Republicans, that's who.
I don't know how Trump voters have been fooled-- I suppose Fox news fooled them. Who knows what Mr. Edsall's problem is?
2
How on Earth does it make any sense to blame liberals for the cognitive dissonance that Republican voters feed on? Trump and the rest of his crew lie daily about things that are easily checked and verified and a huge portion of the electorate just doesn't care.
2
Stealing a Supreme Court appointment from President Obama can hardly be considered a "victory." It's more like a criminal act.
6
If we liberals have our fingers in our ears, as the author claims, how in the world do you characterize the conservatives? These people have turned their backs on facts, reality, and knowable truths. We are constantly reprimanded by the conservatives to "understand" the plight of the Trump supporters. Their "plight" seems to be they have continued to rely on the Republican Party to bring them decent jobs and wages; instead, they have gotten culture wars, while the GOP has made itself rich. They have put their faith in a Party that dog whistles it's okay to blame the immigrants and minorities for their situation. Along comes Trump with a bullhorn to tell them all the racist, sexist, homophobic impulses they have are justified. Please do not lecture us about being more tolerant of their intolerance.
1
Few things are more distressing than Democrats' commitment to the same old cadre of the same old pols.
Time to wake up; they need to change their tune if they're ever to prosper.
The last people they need to listen to are Conservatives at any level.
What ought to happen is for Democrats to untangle the lies, half truths, and slander hurled at them by a vastly superior and well funded Conservative machine. Decades of calumny found home among a willfully helpless and despondent Republican base.
What have Democrats done wrong, except a dramatic shift to the Right and hungrily slurping up Republican leftovers at the political money trough?
What the Right calls elitist, identity politics is no more than groups of people who want what The Base wants: security, healthcare, benefits that assure no one goes cold, hungry, or uneducated in the richest nation on Earth. And a seat at the table.
Democrats below the airless top want corporations held responsible for their behavior and for their share of the national cost of doing business.
What Democrats need to do is school their constituencies to grow up and talk to one another. We can't help women, black people, unemployed people, sick people if we try to help only women or only black people or only sick people, one at a time to the exclusion of everyone else.
We're on the sinking, stinking ship of corporate and rich-guy America. We'll make nothing better until we work with each other to move our country where it ought to go.
I understand that Trump voters hate me. But I find it hard to turn the other cheek when they are carrying guns, both figurative and literal.
1
I usually have great respecty for Edsall's work, but entirely missing from this article is an acknowledgement of neoliberalism. This article unfairly conflates a liberal, blue-state cultural worldview with an embrace of the economic model of corporate-led globalization that over the past 40 years has so massively increased economic inequality and hollowed out so many communities both in Trumpland and outside of it. As progressives have been arguing for decades, it's inequality, stupid. A truly redistributive economic program won't eliminate this cultural divide, but it would (have) render(ed) it far less pernicious to our democracy. The Democratic Party has been deeply complicit in creating the nightmare that we're all now living, and the best hope for us all is for Democrats to move decisively left on *economic* issues. Among other things, that means not silencing the Sanders/Ellison/Warren wing of the party, but listening to and welcoming it.
This is not that complicated. It really is racism all the way down. Remember the modern conservative movement is not a response to Roe v Wade it was a response to Brown v Board. Modern conservatism is white supremacy.
2
GOOD GRIEF!
How utterly condescending...
"The prototypical Trump voter sees a changing America leaving him behind; part of this is economic, part of it demographic, part cultural. I think liberals tend to see this as a thin cover for racism, a reflection of troglodyte viewpoints, and in any event unwarranted as the world these folks are resisting would be better even for them if only they’d let it, by giving up their benighted religious views, accepting job training in the new technologies, and preferably moving to one or the other coasts or at least the closest major city."
As is this entire article, including the pompous analysis from "experts", themselves willfully or ignorantly blinded by the veil of their politics.
One could point to the divisive focus on RACE or the inferred moral superiority of secular liberalism VS religious conservatism - or simply the general and COMPLETE mischaracterization of Trump supporters.
I have yet to see an honest discussion of these issues by EITHER liberal or conservative ideologues, TRAPPED in their hypnotized partisan bubbles...
The author, like all those trapped in these bubbles, is guilty of perpetuating PRECISELY what he seeks to expose...whether he is cognizant of it or not...
Any attempts by either side to understand or simply characterize their polar opposites, that is POLITICIZED with the unwillingness to "legitimize" them by even an iota for fear of having to go further, is doomed.
1
Dream on, Edsall. It will be a very SHORT victory indeed.
I am often confused by the way the word ''liberal'' is used in the US. The divide between what is conservative and ''liberal''.
I think language and definition of concepts and ideas is very important to frame the debate in society and for individuals. Make it a black and white, right and left debate.
For most of the world, ''liberal'' is not left wing or associated with socialism or progressism.
I think it may comes from the ''libural'' kind of insult expression coming from the right-wing media in the last decades to portrait the opponent. Just the way to pronounce it and make it sound kind of weak or I don't know.
Liberal in France means right-wing capitalist. Liberal in most part of Canada means centrist policy.
I think you guys in the States use the word liberal in too mamny ways that make no sense and kind of means anything and everything depending on who is talking.
4
First thing; Liberals and Democrats get more votes in America.
As for the rest...
"Consider some of the core features of our ideal liberal democracy: absolutely unfettered freedom and diversity; acceptance and promotion of multiculturalism; allowing retention of separate identities; maintenance of separate communities, lifestyles and values; permitting open criticism of leaders, authorities and institutions; unrestrained free expression (of what many will consider offensive/outrageous/unacceptable ideas); strict prohibitions on government intervention in ‘private’ moral choices."
Aren't you describing CONSERVATIVES???
The limited government, President Obama with a bone through his nose, "states rights', government can't tell US who we have to bake a cake for or whether or not out children can have guns (even after one shot the other)... ??
Authoritarianism on the Right? Trying saying one thing you may agree with Trump on in any given campus faculty lounge (how about his Jerusalem speech as test -- or better yet uncontrolled illegal immigration), and see how tolerant and open-minded the progressive Left is then to any alternative idea that may threaten their own carved in stone beliefs.
As long as we exist in the context of a massive conservative propaganda machine, our very liberal existence will continue to trigger this hateful reaction. We can cannot make people put down their propaganda crack pipes. If it were possible to overcome this hate by love and respect, making sure people's views are heard and respected, then Obama would have been the most popular president in history. If anything his foolish belief that you can earn Americans' respect any other way than as a fighter is what got us here - a lack of credibility that liberals will stand up for themselves politically.
1
The future of the Democratic Party is with the college educated and minorities. We need to make peace with this and stop trying to diagnose conservative voters. If you voted for Trump (for whatever reason), then good, stick with the Republicans, I don't want you back.
1
Lots of good stuff in here, and I generally love Edsall, but this column makes a huge mistake in omitting the role of race. No, I'm not one of those "all Trump voters are racists" people, but rather a political science professor well-familiar with the extensive empirical findings with how racial resentment among non-urban white voters is a huge driver of Republican attitudes and voting choices. A lot of what is characterized as liberals winning on "economic" issues is seen by many conservatives through a lens of economic redistribution to "others" where other is frequently defined by race and immigration.
2
Mr. Edsall, you quote Schnurer: “The prototypical Trump voter sees a changing America leaving him behind; part of this is economic…”. I’d say a big part of it is economic. Opportunity in the Unites States has evaporated except for the highly educated or economically well connected. Then you quote Schnurer: “the modern economy is killing off small towns, US-based manufacturing, the interior of the US generally…”. So true, I come from there. The thing is, the US economy is not the product of liberalism. It has been on a 30 year march to laissez faire capitalism and oligarchy, coupled with an increasing retreat from investment in the common good. This has been a constant Republican project which ramped up strongly with Ronald Regan and has gone beyond anything one could associate with traditional conservatism. It has sadly had the tacit support of some parts of the Democratic establishment, but it is not liberal. It is being achieved using the most up-to-date tools of propaganda and deception. This is the threat which needs to be confronted. We cannot do it by trying to ease the social anxieties of the ignorant Trump voter.
"Investment in the common good". Those are the words I was searching for. The rich pocket every bit of advantage from globalization. Some - most - of that advantage should be invested in the common good instead. Thank you for clarifying for me!
It is not true that the West Coast and the North Atlantic Coast are
vastly blue.
Once you get outside of San Francisco Bay you find plenty of people
who voted for Trump, likewise in the smaller towns in the Northeast,
or at least refused to vote for Hillary.
Liberal Elites can tell themselves that they are "Cosmopolitans, Progressives, Well-Educated" and thus believe their jobs will never be exported, but they are
only being misled by their own propaganda.
As China and India produce more and more professionals, the Liberal Elite
will see their fortunes dim. After all, they cannot farm, they cannot dig, they
cannot labor 12 hours a day in the fields, they can't even live off the land.
Your fellow elites - bankers/doctors will not "give you a break" when you salary stops and you will find it very hard to compete for manual labor jobs when the Immigrants you avidly allowed to cross the border are harder workers.
But you view us in "Red-State Land" as ignorant fools,
but in reality we work harder than you, care about each other and
our neighbours more than you do and if worse comes to worse -
we grow food - what do you do that is so important that people
cannot do without it ?
Trump is the Canary in the Political Mine that you insist on
ignoring to your own peril.
2
Oh, come on. Liberals are not to blame for Trump voters. Or if we are, it's because we favor principles that challenge white, male, christian, conservative privilege. That white conservatives have chosen to follow Trump is their business and we need to cease fetishizing them as somehow the 'gold standard' in American political culture. Millions of Americans aren't white, male, conservative, christian, or straight. I'd much rather have liberals attend to their interests than those of people who made their choices long ago. It isn't up to us to save Trump voters from themselves.
3
Obvious conclusions without useful alternatives. Who doesn't know this by now?
Liberalism starts with outrage and blame whereas conservatism starts with appreciation for what we have and taking personal responsibility to improve society and one's life. I was a liberal 30 years ago, but now I'm a conservative because it has become clear that the left wingers want to destroy the concept of America.
Elite liberals are quick to throw out traditions and religion, and advocate for moral relativism, but they are also the ones who send their kids to the best schools they can find (usually mostly white, incidentally), don't have children out of wedlock, respect law enforcement, put their families first, and work hard to improve their standing. In other words they live an incredibly conservative and traditional lifestyle, but look down their noses at conservatives. And what's the result of the elitists' promotion of garbage leftist values and the idea that the government is here to solve our problems?--the result is that the poor people and historically oppressed people who could really benefit from living their lives according to traditional conservative values destroy themselves and their families. Just look at America's cities and explain to me how liberal policies help poor people!
Trump supporters are accused of regressive tribalism, but what's more tribalistic and regressive than identity politics? We are ALL American, we are a creed-based country, not a race-based country, like those of the EU.
Love,
a Trump Voter
1
Jonas
Seriously
when those at trump rallies were screaming to lock her up and when trump encouraged his followers to take a fist to protesters; you are saying that conservatives start with appreciation?
Appreciation for whom exactly -
Not the Military - who are filled with stupid people who get captured by the enemy
Not for anyone who doesn't have white skin - Mexicans are rapists
Blacks are lazy and Muslims are terrorists
Not for women and children who can be preyed upon by white republican politicians and the base will keep voting these predators into congress.
Not for Women who have children - getting rid of Chip and hesitance to poor mothers
Not for Public Schools - we have a secretary who doesn't believe in studying for anything
Identity politics is what trump followers are all about as only white men are considered worthy of being american.
Democrats have tried to help the poor in the cities but taking away their benefits and health care is all republicans. The rich are too wealthy and this new tax bill will just transfer more wealth to them.
Trump Voter please move to russia where everyone is made to believe everything their president says - you love dictators well he is one of the best.
1
I personally have taken my fingers out of my ears, and extended the middle ones to Trump supporters.
6
Generally agree with theme but the author has a huge blind spot when he states that "red counties are virtually nonexistent... on the East Coast north of the Mason-Dixon line." If you look at the 2016 election map by county of that region, it's mostly red. 46 of NY's 62 counties went for Trump, as did nearly all the counties in Maine and Pennsylvania. What this shows is that 'red' and 'blue' states are nowhere near as internally monolithic as 'conventional wisdom' suggests.
2
The fingers in their ears now helps me to understand why the liberals on TV need to feel they have to preach so loudly from their self-proclaimed morally pure soapboxes every night in their holier than thou manner. I just assumed it was of their arrogance, but I now stand corrected. Yet as I lifelong Democrat and now knowing that, I still can't stand the present self-righteousness of the party I grew up with. Apparently they really believe that any trace of humility is a fatal weakness, making Al Franken's announcement today painful to watch them have to swallow.
1
"The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."
- G.K. Chesterton
"Historically, the Republicans have been geniuses at throwing away advantages."
- Mark Hatfield, US-Sen-ret.
"Tell a liberal he's wrong and he's liable to say something like, 'Well, you may have something in what you say, let me think about it.'
You tell a conservative he's wrong, and he'll punch you in the nose."
- Molly Ivins
2
Cheryl
Thanks for the Molly Ivins quote - I really miss her humor right now.
If Democrats and liberals want to actually win elections and thus have the requisite power to advance our platform, we'd do well to listen.
If the goal is merely to continue feeling smugly superior and avoid all cognitive dissonance, I've got to assume one is in a pretty comfortable perch to sustain all that losing - and the likely years if not decades of losing to come.
Don't like the idea of compromising much if at all on your principles?
Here's a tip: stop relentlessly insulting, ridiculing and condescending to your fellow Americans. Doing so is a beyond obviously terrible way of trying to assemble the necessary majorities to actually get anything done.
That might sound condescending in itself, but our pattern of failure - as we continue to demean and dismiss people who also have votes - speaks for itself.
1
Even Trump has taken to using "liberal" in disgust. I for one am proud of being liberal. Of course I was a teen in the sixties and thought "conservative" meant old and close minded. This is ridiculous of course because conservatives can be progressive. For my part, I am happy to wear the badge of "liberal." Liberals stand up for the poor, the minorities, the environment, consumer protection, labor laws, and much more.
1
Edsall should really be ashamed of this article and I believe someday he will be. The reasons Dems are losing is that they no longer provide policy issues for the 70% of Americans who have less than $1,000. A recent study showed that Hillary's campaign was historically devoid of policy. She didn't even mention NAFTA in her autopsy book. This after getting hit over the head with it by Trump every week. Issues like health care, trade, re-industrialization, education, and labor take a back seat to identity politics, who groped who and touchie feelies like this piece.
Let's think about how the secular transition fits in here. Religious beliefs decline with increasing exposure to ideas on new media and with more promotion of them; with increasing education, etc.
Rural America now sees this creeping liberal trend where atheist can easily spread their ideas on the internet and social media.
At the moment red Americans where I live are frightened and putting up "In God We Trust" on their courthouses all over NC. They do not understand this transition.
An interesting correlation is that countries with a high Human Development Index (high life expectancy, high educational levels, high per capital income, etc.) are the least religious. You can imagine how factors associated with a high Human Development Index (HDI) could cause a drop in religious belief and activity as generations proceed.
Of Interest, the “top ten” countries with the highest HDI, in order, are Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Singapore, Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland and Canada.
Plenty of data has been collected on this topic and can be seen summarized here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtAR_OGzlcg
This secular transition away from religion works by generational replacement and there is “no way back.”
1
"Not only are the values that the left takes for granted heatedly disputed in many sections of the country, the way many Democratic partisans assert that their values supplant or transcend traditional beliefs serves to mobilize the right."
Amen. Unsaid is that the way 'many Democratic partisans assert their values' is by vilifying, in very personal terms, those that disagree with them. Rather than arguing their position, Democratic partisans throw out terms like racist, sexist, fascist, homophobe, etc to avoid engaging. Basket of deplorable, anyone?
2
Hogwash. Get rid of the artificial construct called the Electoral College - which sets anti-democratic conditions for elections and, along the way, Red and Blue states - and you'll find a different reality. One that more faithfully reflects We The People.
3
So let me get this right: liberals--or what this term is meant to mean here, which is anyone pretty much starting in the center politically and moving to the left--are responsible for the ruinous hatred OF liberals and liberalism that has been said, printed, broadcast, tweeted, and otherwise spread by right-wing media relentlessly for about the last 35 years? Riight.
5
So, liberals only have to buy off the red working class in the interior of the USA. That shouldn't be a problem since they can get the money from taxing big corporations ... especially big international corporations. Furthermore, if they through more money at education in the middle of America, they will deplete the ranks of said red working class.
This whole article is off-kilter -- Bernie Sanders, a socialist, is the most popular politician in the country and Trump's ratings are among the lowest in recent history. Almost 3 million more people voted for Clinton than Trump. The problem isn't liberals with fingers in their ears. The problem is voter suppression, gerrymandering, legalized corruption and vote buying through the lobbying system, and the lack of a publicly funded election system that permits too much secret money to be in play. The voters want candidates to the left of the liberals, to the left of Clinton, and if the Democrats satisfy that demand Trump and his troglodyte supporters will be left in the dust despite the rigged system the Republicans have been putting in place
4
We've taken care of everything, the words you read, the songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure to your eye.
It's one for all and all for one, work together common sons
Never need to wonder how or why!
-N Peart-
Pinker asks where are the liberals defending environmental progress, the reduction in poverty, affordable food, clothing, consumer goods, global safety...
And one must ask Are we as a country so blind to the progress of the last 10 years, the last 50 years, the last 72 years, that these success stories need a public defender? He may not be wrong...but that truth feeds the narrative that red America is an illiterate America, a not-curious, not-reflective America.
Education - for all kinds - is the way out of our cultural political blinders. And, of course, we know who is waging war on education in today's America.
It is possible to have a few neurons that work, and to love this country and
to be religious. That doesn't sell newspapers, nor make Breaking News headlines.
1
"There is no telling how long it will be before the movement Trump has mobilized will have run its course."
I can tell you exactly how long it will last - until the next economic depression, which with this irresponsible tax bill, has a much more likely potential to occur. Remember who had to come in and clean up that mess the last time?
1
A lot of interesting food for thought in this article. However, it's hard for me to understand why the author in calls the right "anti-democratic," and the left the defenders of liberal democracy. I used to be a liberal but the left's response to Trump is making me see things very differently. It seems the left is anti-democratic, with attempts to remove or delegitimize a duly elected President, and news media that has become full on propoganda (in the FOX News model). Liberals seem willing to restrict freedoms of all kinds, including free speech (see liberal college campuses), and happy to see squelch Christian religious practices and expressions - (though not Muslims'). Liberals have become highly illiberal politically and lack tolerance for anyone but fellow progressives (a dangerous kind of tribalism indeed). The assumption baked into this article (but never unpacked) that liberals are defenders of democracy while the right is anti-democratic is the kind of liberal assumption that drives voters to Trump. I think the right sees it as the exact opposite.
1
The biggest problem that I see in this analysis is the ultimate smug certainty of the rightness of the liberal internationalist position and the essential "barbarians at the gates" argument that what liberals really need to do is exhibit some tactical "compassion" and "empathy" for the other side rather than examine whether some liberal biases or assumptions are simply fundamentally flawed. The argument seems to call for more skillful patronizing of the other side.
2
The piece is absurd because it ignores the responsibilities and obligations of citizenship. Many Alabamians claim to know and respect Judge Moore, despite the fact that he has twice been removed from office. All a citizen need do is read a court decision in which judges found cause to remove Moore from office. The July 1, 2003 decision involved Moore's placement of a monument in the rotunda of the court house depicting the ten commandments. In an address at monument's installation, Moore claimed that the ten commandments express God's sovereignty over the affairs of men and are the foundation of America. Yet in his brief describes the monument as a "decorative reminder of the moral foundation of American law." The court sarcastically remarked that if Moore's position were to be adopted the walls of the court would be adorned with sectarian religious murals and the building topped with a cross, or a menorah or a Buddha. The court concluded: "In the regime he
champions, each high government official can decide whether the Constitution requires or permits a federal court order and can act accordingly. That is the same position taken by those southern governors who attempted to defy federal court orders during an earlier period [such as Ross Barnett and George Wallace]." To put it gently, decision reveals Moore to be a constitutional illiterate and a fraud. Why should liberals bear the burden of teaching citizenship to slothful Alabamians?
This article is just another example of the Washington meritocracy in its hermetic bubble. Nerver mind trying to convince Republicans or far right conservatives, They will always hate you anyways. Why not try to give the 50% that never votes a reason to get out and exercise its democratic right? Because the donor class, aligned with the meritocracy, neither cares not wants to concede anything to fly over America. Too bad. The future has huge challenges but the current political leadership, dems and establishment media included, are happy to keep moving backwards while the world moves on. Sad.
As a libertarian I would tell Karen Stenner that she should not expect non-authoritarians to rally to the Blue flag. If the ideal liberal democracy stands for "separate communities, lifestyles, and values" and "open criticism" and "unrestrained free expression" that is not what we've seen Democrats promote when they have power - whether national, state, or on campuses. If they did, Christians wouldn't feel besieged and fighting for religious liberty to maintain their "separate values". Free-marketers wouldn't be forced to buy overpriced health insurance. Critics wouldn't be labeled racists if they criticize liberal totems. Political correctness and safe spaces wouldn't be a thing. Because progressives have acted like authoritarians against anyone who doesn't embrace their ever-shifting ideology firmly enough (see for instance Brendan Eich), those folks who believe in due process and rule of law no longer trust them to adjudicate a diverse society fairly. In fact the "oneness and sameness" Stenner labels Red staters with is the functional goal of progressives - that everyone think like them. Those who do not are benighted racists, misogynists, homophobes. Diversity is not having different skin colors or sexuality, those are cosmetic differences, it's thinking differently, believing differently, and living differently. Accusing Iowa or Kansas of being uniform is laughable coming from denizens of Brooklyn, Georgetown, or San Francisco.
1
I read these op-eds to try and obtain some kind of insight into how a “business man” such as Trump, could ever be elected President of the United States. Instead it only reaffirms my progressive, liberal ideals. Trump only provides false hope to “Red” communities. It’s only a matter of time; rural “Red” communities will see that electing Trump was not the answer to their desperate woes. I only hope it will be sooner rather than later.
1
The majority of Americans are in a cult. That has more to do with the current political situation than what is proposed here. The GOP has a stronger cult system. Nearly all Americans are clueless as to reality. The members of the cults have been promised a life after death that is only better if they suffer in this life. So, they vote for suffering.
A good thoughtful article, however, the so-called liberal ideals that drive the authoritarians mad do not necessarily need to have the adverse economic impacts that caused the middle of the country to economic ruin.
This is just due to bad policies and incorrect economic ideas. For instance, the loss of manufacturing in small towns. If law and policy had mandated that before a company can close up shop and expropriate jobs to foreign countries, it must first give its affected workers the opportunity to arrange financing and buy the business, we would not have the economic devastation that now exists in these towns.
Arguments between left and right have gone on since before the progressive era, and resulted in much improvement in the lives of people in the entirety of the country. The right began to win thanks to a conscious, concerted, quiet effort beginning in the 50s' 60s, and 70s to push an extreme Libertarian agenda. Thanks to lies, subterfuge, infiltration of academic institutions by "scholars" with understated agendas, and lately superbly effective gerrymandering and renewed voter suppression efforts, the right has at last succeeded in bamboozling enough of the electorate to win control again. Read all about it in "Dark Money" and "Democracy in Chains".
Generational replacement is probably the most important phrase here. Massive change has made people unable or unwilling to change how they work and live unable to fit into the current society, a society that always had at its core the rights of the individual to live at respectful variance to the whole. The situation is similar in broad outline to the Luddite crisis near the end of the Industrial Revolution. But a new economic updraft changes the prospects for all. Currently we're in the midst of a shift to sustainability which is opening up millions of new jobs in new industries that don't require college and can easily be performed in red states. The key to solving our impasse is to begin talking again. One fragment of one party refuses to discuss, to negotiate, and insists on winning with only its own votes. The next tactic should be to invigorate a conservative wing of the Democratic party. Within the party the back and forth discussion could serve as a model for the rest of the political discussion. It would be highly attractive. The GOP is in a box, unable to act. The litany of accomplishments at the beginning of the piece is embarrassingly small bore and represents only one potential piece of legislation still taking shape. Liberals currently have freedom of movement, they are not hidebound and can invent their next iterations. I would much rather be one.
To echo Wanda from Kentucky, the proposition that "Blue America spend the last eight years dictating both economic and cultural changes invalidating virtually every aspect of Red America" is preposterous. If this author analyzed every single thing Obama did, or tried to do, he would find a conservative corollary, with conservative justification, in our history. Everything Obama proposed was moderate, such as allowing states the flexibility to adhere to the Clean Power Plan, while Reagan regulated pollution that was destroying the ozone layer of the atmosphere. Or, Obama allowing the private marketplace to play the major role in improving the health insurance status of millions of Americans, while the Heritage Foundation conceived of this plan in the first place. If Mitt Romney had run and won instead of Obama chances are he and the GOP would have passed some version of the ACA and called the individual mandate to purchase insurance in the private marketplace the taking of "individual responsibility" for the cost of their healthcare. I think it is a slim minority of Republicans in this country whose values are diametrically opposed to liberals; and I believe the next elections will prove this.
1
The unfortunate fact is that Red America that wants to go back to immediate post World War II has been captured by 1% who deceive people in red states with rhetoric and Orwellian language while resdithibuting wealth to the wealthiest Americans. If Red America believes that fighting free trade, immigration and civil rights are vital important than having better health care, economic opportunities, and better future for their children they should continue to blindly support people like Trump, McConnell and Ryan.
It's not quite to academic as Mr Edsall portrays. What middle class folks don't like about Democrats -- or the so called "liberals" -- is that they don't actually advocate for the working middle class. Obama and Pelosi teamed up with the GOP and extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich for example. That didn't do anything to help the middle class. True, it helped the rich Democratic donors. But that's the problem, DC Democrats care more about their wealthy donors than they do about the working middle class. True, they throw some bones to various minority groups, poor and not poor, but that's done just for show. Gives them an opportunity to say their helping somebody. But helping the fringe problems is doing nothing to address the problems in the middle: overly complicated and super-expensive health care; the homeless making a walk down the street unsafe; excessive taxes on the middle class like the gasoline tax, property taxes, federal and state income taxes, and sales taxes. If DC Democrats ever want to regain power, they'll have to ignore their wealthy donors and start advocating for the middle class.
Yes. We liberals need to listen to Trump's supporters. I am certain there are valid reasons for allowing open carry in all states, defunding our nation's public schools, cutting Medicaid and Medicare, cutting Social Security (eventually), giving billions of tax cuts to millionaires, leaving the Paris Accord, increasing military spending, building more nuclear weapons, and defunding the ACA.
2
One of the few moments of civilized dialogue in the whole 2016 campaign was Bernie Sanders in front of the students of Liberty University. The students listened quietly. He spoke quietly. He was eloquent and honest, stating that there were areas where he and much of his audience could probably never agree (abortion, for example). But there were areas of convergence: Sanders spoke about problems of jobs, the decline in manufacturing, the problems of globalization, the decay of middle class life. He emphasized that these things affect all ethnic groups; we should focus on what unites us, not fall for rhetoric that divides us. He listened to them; they listened to him. Perhaps no minds were changed, but later on, some of the students protested the university president's presenting his support for Trump as if it were support by the whole university. So: it takes communication and dialogue. Obama had that in 2008 and 2012 -- he won rural counties by getting out and seriously listening. So what went wrong? I'd say there are too many powerful Democrats who have lost a certain ability to "listen without prejudice". Sadly - with few exceptions, Republicans appear to be even more willfully deaf and blind. So - we are stuck.
One of the memes of Trump nation regards their "Second Amendment Rights"
yet I would bet that not one in 10,000 of these folks knows that when the Anti-Federalist tried to include self defense and hunting as part of the Second Amendment those provisions were voted DOWN at the Constitutional Convention, by the majority faction led by James Madison.
1
"The prototypical Trump voter sees a changing America leaving him behind.."
It's a myth that there is a "prototypical Trump voter." Plenty of educated, upper class people, Men & Women, voted for Trump. They love their stock market gains and could care less about a coal worker from W Va.
I remember an episode in Berkeley politics from forty-five years ago that illustrates Edsall's point. A meeting of left Democrats was divided over some issue that now seems trivial. Someone roused the crowd with the question: Do we stand for social change or not? Most everyone agreed we did, and the matter was settled. Having been a union member and housing activist, I kept quiet. Most of the union members and housing clients I knew were not interested in social change. They were just interested in being included in the American dream.
To me, that experience illustrates how long it has been that liberals and progressives have been out of touch with average Americans. We propose policies of social change to bring new people into the American fold. However, we cannot provide the continuity of home or income that would give people security that further social change will not take their home or income away (mostly because of Republican attacks on the social safety net).
I believe that the reason for this dynamic is that ultimately, older Democrats are actually economically conservative, too. I think that many of them believe in capitalism, and presume that if we just reform it enough it will serve everyone. Fortunately, younger people are not biased against socialism, but it will be a long time before our country can adopt the type of economic policies we need to restore a full social safety net and have an equitable economy.
4
These comments prove Edsall’s point.
2
Um, where are their fingers? Not in their ears. The fingers of the right hands of Dems are outstretched to their large donors. The fingers of their left hands are lifting up illegals and pushing down American workers.
2
Strange that the economic statistics you present (low unemployment, high stock market, GDP growth rate) are all Democratic deliverables. Mr. Trump has benefited from the momentum of the Obama economy. Yet the Democrats are mute on this point, their major strength. No wonder they lose elections.
18
Not mute at all but they are censored from Conservative Media. I challenge you to tell me Cable Fox News is as inclusive as MSNBC. Sure MSNBC has a position with it comes with a fair amount of counterpoint. Can anyone seriously say that of Fox News
Blaming the loss of US industry on technological progress is eliding the fact of the conscious bipartisan policies that made offshoring possible. It’s not like factories don’t exist anymore; they just were allowed to move to countries without legal or environmental protections for their citizens. Considering the ongoing jobs deficit, the continued suppression of wages by the donor class, and the perpetuation of their economic advantages by a pliant government, it’s difficult to envision an emergence into the just world of plenty that Pinker describes. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that someone could be that out of touch.
12
One way the donor class suppresses wages is to support massive immigration, to increase the size of the labor force and reduce its bargaining power.
1
And US taxpayers built the container ports here that made it possible.
Don't tell me that corporations aren't freeloading on us already.
Thank you. I needed this. The coal thing is annoying for two reasons. First, jobs, not revenue or production has been declining for most of the past 37 years, long before I could blame Obama for anything. Next, during and even before this time, there are those the 'got' and those that never had much, living side by side, in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. If you worked for the mine or the railroad, you were doing fine or great. But with this idea of bringing back coal..... nobody is talking about those people in these areas that never had much. And from what I have witnessed, this sadly includes their neighbors. The Coal Country's economy is a lot more complicated than a handful of mining jobs.
9
Edsall incorrectly turns progressive liberalism into Randian individualism, a grievous error. And whatever the grievances Red America may have, it does not then justify placing a demonstrably narcissistic, serial lying, historically and politically ignorant, sexual abusing con artist in the White House to address their frustrations.
29
I must say that the characterizations of liberals by your commentators both ring true and hollow for me, a liberal from flyover country. I recognize many of the blind spots of my coastal progressive friends, but I don't see them manifesting so strongly in my local liberal friends.
I suspect much of the problem lies in the dominance of the coasts (particularly New York) in our mainstream media landscape and the power those media outlets have to define the subculture of liberalism.
I'm not the only one to notice this. Thomas Frank is a prominent critic of elite, coastal liberalism from a Midwestern populist progressive perspective, and liberals would indeed do well to heed voices such as his.
24
G
I live in Portland, OR but to call me an elite liberal because I live on the west coast is laughable. I grew up lower middle class and yet I am extremely liberal because I believe in clean air and water so we don't get poisoned by corporations who without constant vigilance and regulation will poison us all if it gives them any profit to do so.
1
Let's not forget the power of one particular media outlet that strongly defines and informs (misinforms?) conservative culture...
I happen to work about a 5 minutes walk away from it's headquarters here in NY.
Those who feel alienated, feel this way because the left has shown them essentially zero respect. I understand why, because the flow and energetic "state-of-being" of love unity and respect and openness (which is not experienced by those of only one political party) feels so natural and correct when we are in it, that anybody who threatens to take this natural and beautiful state of being away from them is seen as deplorable and their actions abhorrent. So the reaction of anger and hostility on the part of the left towards the right is understandable because those who threaten this freedom-that-is-endowed-upon-us-by-our-being-birthed-into-this-world, are seen as trying to take away from someone the very essence of their life itself. The best way to engage with, disarm, and prepare the groundwork for mutual understanding of the right is to respect (without necessarily liking or approving of) the validity of the opinion or viewpoint of those who are feeling alienated by the changing world and the left that is perpetuating it. And to work with them in a loving and supportive way, rather than jamming change down their throat that they are not prepared for. In the face of this many people on the right, who are fundamentally honest and good people (within their framework of what potential viewpoints have been presented to them) will begin to see the benefits of unity (which is not homogeneity) that those on the left understand inherently.
4
Interesting article. One way to sum it up: technology moves at a much faster pace than policy (and politicians), and policy often moves at a faster pace than moral mandates (in the aggregate). If only politicians would stop pandering to us with propaganda and discuss issues like adults they purport to be. Combine the growing disconnect between education and required knowledge and skills for most careers with the vastly unequal educational opportunities starting with elementary school, and the capitalist engine keeps pressing harder on the accelerator. Mr. Lovins once said that markets make for a reliable servant, but they are a horrible master, and an even worse religion. There are demographic issues, but it seems that many vote with their wallet. The national unemployment rate is a (nearly) meaningless statistic when on its own. The article hits one thing square: the 1% mantra gets lost among the many good, hard-working, underemployed people in America.
11
This article makes the mistake of equating 'liberalism' in the classical sense of the word with (John Locke, Adam Smith, etc; unfettered exchange of ideas coupled with global capitalism), with 'liberalism' as it is often defined in the modern political discourse. The author describes red-state voters as resenting a global economic 'liberalism' which has left it behind, when of course republican politicians and republican donors are the biggest supporters of unrestrained global capitalism (unless it is campaign season, when they pretend to dislike NAFTA). The farthest 'left' on the political spectrum (exemplified by Sanders voters) is much more protective of workers' rights and preserving the country's cultural heritage (which sometimes requires tax dollars) than today's political "right", whose only practical goals are to remove constraints on business and the accumulation of wealth.
The article also overstates conservative dominance in the country. Democrats still outnumber republicans and regularly win in the popular vote in both congressional and presidential elections. The real political problem does not like with the attitudes of liberals, but with a political system which grants disproportionate power to resentful minorities living in areas most likely to be left behind by a modern economy. Unfortunately, this situation is only likely to get worse as people continue to migrate to urban centers.
22
Peter, I agree 100%
Actually it all comes down to money. My money that I go to work for. The Dems want more of my money and ever more spending, the Republicans want lower taxes and less spending.
8
Then why are the Republicans propose to take more of my money than the Democrats had? I am in the middle class by anyone's reckoning, and I'm going to be slammed.
5
Look at the GOP tax reform bill carefully. Unless you are wealthy or a corporate leader, you are NOT going to get more than a token tax cut. Even the childcare credit is tokenism; the working poor get no childcare benefit. Middle class tax cuts are small and will expire. Corporate tax cuts are huge and are permanent.
Estate taxes will be either eliminated or greatly reduced, and this will benefit the heirs of the rich, who have benefited from the very low carried interest tax loophole all along. So if you think the GOP will serve you better, you must be very rich.
Uh no, quite the opposite. We had a balanced budget at the end of Clinton’s term, which blew up under Dubbya because of his wars. Look at the current tax proposal: it hits you and me and those worse off than the two of us right where it hurts: everywhere. If money is your ultimate measure, have a closer look. The current plans are made to eviscerate working people. If you are a billionaire, I apologize for misleading the conversation.
1
I think this all misses a larger point. If the Democrats propose no guiding vision, they will lose to a group that will -- even if the
Free college is a guiding vision. Free college below a certain income level to study in certain programs is not. The problem with Hillary Clinton (aside from her sleazy husband) was that she was too prosaic when it came to policy, which made her abysmal at selling her policies. This was why she made a great Senator and a flawed candidate for president.
Don't assume that the fault lines are permanent in American politics. They are defined by our leaders. Trump made immigration a bigger issue than it was with his rhetoric. It is within Democrats' power to re-frame the dialogue in their favor -- but they need bold, powerful rhetoric to do it. And corporate Democrats won't fit the bill.
6
Nothing is free; it will raise taxes and Republicans want lower taxes.
And what you fail to grasp is most of those low information voters deride education as fancy pants posturing and do not want a college education. So many of them said to me things like - "What, you're going to college and not getting a job" I lost count.
1
Bravo to Mr. Edsall on a well researched and written column. I have no hesitation in saying that I am not a supporter of Mr. Edsall's progressive political views and typically only scan his column as it is too one sided for my conservative constitution. But today Mr. Edsall concisely pulled together the conservative's view of liberalism through Steven Pinker. At least someone at the NYT has the courage to write openly, honestly and without bias about conservatism. Rationally understanding each other is the first step towards closing the gap which divides us.
8
I am a moderate liberal, but I can see that the left has moved too quickly on many cultural issues. There is a definite smugness and self-righteousness in the expectation that everyone would immediately embrace gay marriage, transgender bathroom rights, etc. After the 2016 election, I can remember reading an article about workers in one of those counties in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan that tipped those states to Trump. The person complained that the Democratic party was talking more about transgender bathroom rights than every other issue, including the economic pain of so many small communities. He viewed that as Democrats turning a deaf ear to his central concerns for his survival. I can understand that. We need to do a lot better than that.
1
The economic picture isn't as rosy as Edsall makes it sound. Measures of income inequality are higher for the United States than for other developed countries. And income inequality has increased significantly in the U.S. since the 1970s. The share of income of the bottom half of wage earners in the U.S. is about 12%, down from 20% in 1980, and the Trump tax cuts are certain to exacerbate the situation. Job gains are below the average of Obama's last six years. GDP, measured on a year-to-year basis is only 2.3%. Trump is basically crowing about the same numbers that he decried during the Obama administration. Now, as then, many are being left behind. Imagine how many more will be left behind if Trump and Ryan et al succeed in destroying the social safety net provided by programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
12
The issue is when they go low we must go lower. Winners don't take the high road. If they won't play fair why should we?
2
Time for a movement to remove the Electoral College. One person= One Vote. Real Democracy.
15
And the party that benefits from the current system won't give it up until we pry it from their cold dead hands, to paraphrase one of the causes near and dear to them.
I think many comments dance around the fact that this article is somewhat incomprehensible - "troglodyte viewpoints" as an example (what does that mean?). Here's my take on some of the big differences between red and blue - reds believe more in "America First", in less free trade, in protection for our current and past economic strengths (as they see them); that too much change is ruining the country; that there is too much government "coddling" of the poor, who don't deserve any government benefits and breaks; that "affirmative action" gives some an undeserved break; that there is too much emphasis on a "melting pot"; that many immigrants today are a "bad thing", especially those from Islamic countries; that gay marriage is strange; that where they live is being "hollowed out" economically; that America is headed in the wrong direction. This is not just a liberal issue - they also don't like many Republican values either, except for the fact that their Republican reps say they believe what they do, and Dems don't. It isn't that liberals look down on red staters, it's that they fundamentally disagree with their many of their values and perspectives. Those of us who live in big cities learn to adapt to change, appreciate good government, often prosper, and cross paths with many diverse peoples every day get a different perspective than those who live in small towns and cities. These divergent experiences and perspectives are going to be very difficult to reconcile.
8
This is all a moot point. The problem is the electoral college without which Hillary Clinton would be president. More people agree with blue state ideology.
15
The electoral college is not necessarily a problem It depends on your point of view. For example, should votes at the United Nations be country by country, or should people across the world cast votes individually? Does a body that represents a geographical group speak for that group, or do the people speak individually? It depends. If a "state" is to mean anything in a political sense, there must be some things that come from the state. Indeed, there is some sense in having the state relate to the federal government and not the indivdiuals. After all, we are the united STATES, not the united PEOPLE.
3
A bare plurality agree with Blue. Give it a rest. It's a center Right country, don't kid yourself.
1
I have been a liberal most of my life. That said, liberals can and are often wrong. I have never read as much self-righteousness as I do in these comments. There will not be a coming together of the two sides in this country, there will not be a kumbaya moment. There may not be a civil war, but only if we are lucky.
7
Jefferson vs. Hamilton. Rural vs. city. National vs. Local. Its as old as the country. The issue today is we have a stark angry divider as a leader who fans the flames with a twisted glee instead of one who finds common ground between us.
Even taking what you say on face value, how does it help me understand that the GOP legislators just passed a tax bill that even their own constituents don't like?
To put a fine point on it, why are the Kansans, who just got rid of this kind of mess at the state level, not calling their congresses men day and night?
10
"Democrats who yearn for President Trump to be taken down should examine this list of Republican strengths: victories in all three contested special elections for the House of Representatives this year [1]; Trump’s 82 percent approval rating among Republican voters [2]; his success with the current tax bill [3]; his swift evisceration of key regulatory policies [4]; the Gorsuch appointment to the Supreme Court [5]; economic growth of over 3 percent in the last two quarters; the Dow Jones topping 24,000; and the unemployment rate dropping to 4.1 percent [6]."
[1] All three were in safe GOP districts. The smallest swing of the three was six points towards the rather lackluster Ossoff.
[2] While Trump's overall approval rating has been fairly stable, particularly among republican voters, there has been a significant shift from "Strongly Approve" to "Approve". Further, his approval rating among independents is terrible.
[3] Multiple polls show the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has a roughly 30/50 approval/disapproval rating among Americans. Since September, trust on taxes has gone from an even split between the two parties to +8 in favor of Democrats.
[4] Because who wants the ability to file class action suits against big banks?
[5] That was McConnell's victory, not Trump's.
[6] So far Trump has merely managed not to break the economy. Obama was the one that fixed it. As for the stock market, does anyone really believe jumping by 25% in a year is anything other than a bubble?
13
You may be right, but that's not what people see or believe. Clinton gets credit for a good economy that was entirely the dot-com bubble that burst on Bush.
1
Re [4], who wants to breathe clean air and drink clean water?
I disagree with this article completely when it asserts that there is "conservative dominance". The Republicans have rigged the system with their "Redmap" gerrymandering, which allows them to win even when they lose, and retain control! Republicans have also pursued voter suppression laws to make voting harder, not easier, and to affect Democrats predominantly.
And then there is the little matter of Russian intervention in the 2016 election, which unquestionably tilted the playing field in favor of an obscene candidate who could not have won otherwise (with a little help from the antiquated Electoral College as well, and Comey).
The author then touts Republican success with the tax bill, which hurts the very people who voted for Trump and blows up the deficit. Definitely nothing to be proud of, and how hard is it when they have one party rule. It took two years during the Reagan administration, following normal procedures, versus two weeks using secrecy and Republicans only this time.
He also touts the Gorsuch appointment to the SCOTUS. The Republicans stole that seat by ignoring President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland, which was unprecedented. Easy to do if you are willing to break all the rules.
"Swift eviseration of key regulatory policies" like the Paris Climate Agreement and the TPP, really?
I remember unregulated growth under Bush just before he crashed the world economy.
So, we have a corrupted system and you're telling me that I should listen to them?!!
15
It's kind of funny... when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, even then, the preconception of the typical republican was that they were white, wealthy, intelligent, religious (but not zealously so), college educated (even Ivy league educated), successful business people.
While this does still describe a (shrinking) subset of the republican party today, many of these descriptors are entirely wrong.
6
Seriously? They are still affluent and white. And mostly male. But they are no longer intelligent, or caring, and whatever religious standards they announce are utterly self-serving and have nothing to do with scripture. It’s easy to invoke Christ when you serve none of his commitments.
That would describe my father very well -- he was a lifelong Republican but I am sure he never foresaw being bedfellows with neo-Nazis.
Here is my opinion, not as fancy as the article. It’s all religion, resulting from a fundamental fear of death. In the 80’s prosperity preaching linked with the Republican Party and it was a match made in heaven. Now is is easy for them to get behind their beliefs and whoever is on “their team,” no matter what (hence Trump and Moore). Pro-life and homophobic beliefs aren’t just related to their own personal decisions, their will (God’s will) must be imposed on all. People also can ignore thoughts about their eventual death by believing that the rapture with happen, relieving them of that final act. Religion enables one to avoid independent study and reflection on deeper matters - it’s all been figured out for you, and you even get a leader - the local preacher or priest, who can provide answers to truly unanswerable questions. One can also be absolved of personal responsibility, and can avoid having to consider impacts of personal actions on the future since it is believed that Jesus will swoop down and take care of everything eventually in the end times. Religion encourages avoidance of higher education because of those “evil liberal professors.” The only way our society will grow is when older religious people go to their big reward and younger people avoid buying into it. Christianity has been destroyed by the Republican Party, which is comprised of people the very opposite of a loving, caring, giving, and forgiving Jesus.
8
Absolutely, positively. Eliminate religion and, ironically, we will have an earthly paradise.
Trump is not a conservative. For example, conservatives traditionally support free trade. Republicans, in general, have gone along with illegal immigration (helps break the unions). Trump keyed in on these two issues---unfettered trade with a 2 billion population China has devastated thousands of towns and millions of people. And, being against open borders. Being against open borders is not being a racist, it is being in favor of a democracy that enforces its own laws.
9
Unless and until we force our elected representatives to compromise, our broken politics will never be repaired. And that compromise will require two things:
1) Overturning gerrymandering. The only real incentive for pools is to keep their jobs. The status quo is driving all players away from the center to the Left and Right fringe. Compromise is invitation to a primary challenge. We need the opposite.
2) Accpeptance of Compromise. 50% of America is not going anywhere. No matter where you sit without respect for the Other we’ll never find success. Half a loaf...is half a loaf! Everyone hates something about their roommate, but the rent doesn’t pay itself. We need to be pragmatic and stop allowing ourselves to be constantly demogoged.
3
The failure of liberal philosophy to speak to conservatives is not a significant reason for Trumpism. The main reason is the bleeding of the non-rich by the rich. Since both parties are deeply corrupted by the wealthy, there is no political remedy. So, public frustration and rage must look elsehwere for expression. And that's where, aided by exploitation by predatory politicians, what would otherwise be conflicts tolerated in a diverse society then become all out war. If liberal-conservative differences weren't there, some other difference would be exploited.
Under such inflammatory circumstances, more 'empathy' by liberals to conservatives is not going to make much headway. Better to focus on taking the money out of politics and start economically improving people's lives.
5
I for one am not the least bit interested in moving back to a patriarchal, religious, dictatorial status quo. Yes, compromise is part of the process. But pretending lies are true and that religious books "trump" science is something I am not going to put up with. The world and humankind is evolving. We can't pretend that moving back into brute force, strict capitalist, and religious dogma rule is OK. It is deevolution.
1
The economic woes of the Red-States cannot be rested on the Democratic porch: coal, steel, automotive, etc.
It was GOP economic policy that enabled corporations to shift jobs across the oceans for lower wages and booming bottom lines, share-buybacks, and increasing dividends. We did not see spurred economic growth wherein corporations expanded manufacturing, added jobs or increased wages. Didn't happen - yet we are moving to retry that failed policy.
When the sub-prime lending fiasco exploded, over 12 million people lost their jobs, moved onto the unemployment rolls while at the same time, millions of graduates were flooding the job market and the US was also assuaging its own pain of being in a war that created millions - not hundreds or thousands - millions of refugees. But hundreds sought refuge here. Red-States see those refugees - not the millions of graduates and underemployed people as the problem.
While the coal industry slowly imploded and a Democrat suggested that new industries could replace coal but it would take some "reschooling," I cannot believe that Red-State families would prefer to be coal moles rather than work above ground in solar or wind industries. Did Red-States see that as a bad thing.
The bottom line - it IS the economy stupid. It is that simple factor that the Democrats cannot seem to harness to their favor. When people can live in homes they own and put food on family tables, those other issues melt away.
5
Get rid of the electoral college and progressives will take the future. Representation by population. The belief in science education, reason and logic, not regressive religious dogma are the way of the future. It's just a matter of how long it will take.
4
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That's a false statement when applied to New York State, supposedly the archetype of Blue America.
If you look at the 2016 New York State Presidential election map, you'll be shocked to find that it's largely red. Trump seems to have won most of the counties. But he lost the state because Hillary won the much more heavily populated urban areas and the suburbs nearest to them.
3
"the forces of modernity prevail" is just a pretentious way of saying we control the schools and media and we will indoctrinate each successive generation to our liking.
3
No it is not. If you believe that the earth is flat, and that the sun revolves around the earth, so be it. There is nothing pretentious in the claim that exploration and resulting knowledge can lead to better lives for all. Not infallible knowledge, but a curious and investigating enquiry. Modernists admit that there is much more to be investigated, and that very little is absolute. Indoctrination is the easy chair of the uncurious. Happy resting.
1
The problem with recognizing that liberals are partially to blame for the angry Trumpers is that there's just not much liberals can do about it. Trump's answer to the angry complaints of those left behind by the economic recovery are blunt, simplistic, and ultimately impractical. He claims we can bring back small town America by building a wall to keep out immigrants, shutting down trade with the rest of the world, and cutting all manner of regulations on business. The reasonable person knows that none of these things will reverse history and return us to the 'good ole days' anymore than deregulating coal mining will encourage energy producers to not use cheaper natural gas.
What, then, will bring back those golden years of high paying factory jobs and small town industry? Most likely nothing will, and that's the problem. Liberals may have cheerfully gone along with globalization and the urban influx of the last several decades, but the reason we did so just because it aligned with our worldview. It's simply the way the world is moving. Assigning blame to the practical folks who got college degrees, moved from rural America to urban America, and now work in booming urban industry is ridiculous and unproductive. What can liberals possibly do to about it that hasn't already been suggested? We offer solutions such as retraining, college assistance, encouraging rural folks to get into tech - but instead, they prefer Trump. You can't help those who won't help themselves.
4
The Republicans offer racism and religion in exchange, for the country. They, the Republicans, use the country to take our wealth for themselves and their financial supporters. One day in the future, racism and religion will become unimportant and we can improve our lives with better healthcare and education.
That day will be when marriage erases race and and prayer is understood as an act of desperation.
3
I wonder if the people in those killed-off towns have examined at all the reasons why their young people are leaving. If they really loved it there, they would probably stay and found a business, start a farm, raise a family, go to work. Are they waiting for some outside force to come in and employ them?
My cousin grew up in a small town in Kansas where "we had no gay people." "No, dear, they've all come to New York," I answered. Young people have cellphones. They can see a world where they can be free to be who they want to be. Their parents disapprove, but they desperately want to be free. Gay people are not going back into the closet. Women are not going to choose to stay home and "bake cookies," as Hillary once so haughtily said. Their churches want them to believe God made the world in seven days and the internet can confirm that is hogwash. They are taught in school that there is no climate change, but the young people can see that is nonsense. Young people don't want to work in the coal mines, and unlike in other eras, they know they can go somewhere else. My fingers are not in my ears; I just would rather shoot myself than live in a country which was so narrow-minded.
2
Why would I need to listen to Red State partisans?
They spoke loud and clear...and showed their true colors...when they left their Evangelical churches and their worshipful, Biblical ways and went out and voted for a man who said some of the most vile things about women imaginable. And it was on tape!
Nothing they can say can explain away such a transgression.
I will repeat what Winston Churchill said, "The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."
4
I don't buy it. The key missing component in this analysis is the for-profit "conservative" media demagoguery, a media that has been getting rich by exploiting real cultural clash to feed a red America in decline a false narrative that liberal progressives are the cause of their woes. That specious narrative, hooking their audience on simplistic, self-righteous, tribal anger against a liberal boogey man, sells vastly more advertisements and is immensely more profitable than the honest alternative of explaining the realities of the 21st century economy, what essential freedom and tolerance look like in a 21st century society, or what actually made America great in the first place. Red America's intense tribal anger didn't come out of a reasonable view of progressive policies or progressive attitudes or progressives themselves and the magnitude of it didn't spring forth spontaneously from real culture clash. It came out of relentless, manipulative, deceitful, immensely-skilled, "conservative" media demagoguery, pure and simple. A demagoguery which, just like Republican policies themselves, aren't actually solving red America's problems. Don't blame blue America. Blame red America's media enablers, getting rich by destroying our social fabric.
5
I wish I had written that.
It’s true that most liberals, me included, had our bubble burst with the election results that year.
It’s true that our conservative citizens, particularly in the middle of the country, have grievances that might not have been addresses over the past 8 years of the administration.
But it’s also true that Donald Trump is not the right person to solve any of these things, he’s just a selfish opportunist that is exploiting the country’s divide. Anybody that believes he’s the solution to anything is living in their own bubble.
We can debate debate Red/White differences all we want, while Orange will continue to be a primary driving force in tearing us apart, not uniting us.
1
There is white, male privilege; there is bigotry; there is nativism; there is nationalism. But most of all there is strong anger. This is due to economic dislocation which cannot be solved. Their savior has proven to be so inept at negotiations and planning out a cogent plan of action that he will never get an agenda in place to begin to solve the problems he discussed during the campaign. Soon Medicaid and Medicaid will be cut to pay for a rich man's tax cut.. No, my ears are unplugged and my eyes wide open and what I see is demagoguery masquerading as populism. The only winners will be the rich.
2
I think the points that Edsall makes are important. Beyond the liberal condescension towards Trump supporters (ignorant, Bible-thumping yahoos), there is a naive belief that demographics will take care of things in the long run. That is, America will be a majority minority country so of course minorities will vote, and vote in droves for Democrats (or at least, not for Trump and the GOP). Both presumptions are foolhardy in the extreme. For all their moral and ethical vacuity, Republicans are steadfastly strategic.
1
But this doesn't really explain Trumpism. These same factors did not affect the outcome of the McCain and Romney campaigns. How liberals and honest conservatives long for a President McCain or Romney, honorable and decent men who must be angry that they didn't reach out to the deplorables a bit more.
If an ideal liberal democracy truly promotes "allowing retention of separate identities...unrestrained free expression... and strict prohibitions on government intervention in 'private' moral choices", then the modern Democratic party and progressive movement have failed miserably in realizing those ideals. Progressives are quite open minded -- as long as you agree with them. To wit, gay marriage and the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court case. Legalization of gay marriage and protection of private moral choices isn't enough, apparently. No, anyone who adheres to traditional moral notions of marriage and declines to celebrate and participate in the complete abrogation of traditional sexual morality is excoriated. That is but one example of what has turned off wide swaths of flyover America and many on the coasts as well. Progressives are constantly insisting on the need to "have a national conversation" about everything from gun control to immigration, but in true totalitarian fashion insist that the outcome of those "conversations" meet their pre-ordained conclusions. The left's noxious combination of moral relativism and maniacal insistence on doctrinal purity and inability to listen to, let alone tolerate, traditional views turns people off.
3
I have a fear that the U.S. is going to end up very tribal, with open carry gun laws, anti-abortion, anti-
birth control, anti-female, minimal public education, no environmental protections, rampant corruption, and a military run government, something like El Salvador.
It feels like everything that #45 does is out of spite. He governs out of spite for liberals, not out of love for the people.
2
So liberals shouldn't try to win with superior ideas? Instead they should force themselves to lean into the fires lit by resentful, emotional right-wingers and hope to learn something from the experience?
Right-wingers, meanwhile, get a free pass to keep one hand on the Bible and the other on a teenager's behind, to wave their guns around, to discriminate because of their "faith," and to double down on their pro-rich class war and destruction of America's wilderness.
Why isn't anyone asking them to get their fingers out of their ears? Why aren't Hannity and Alex Jones taking a moment to say "hey, maybe we should listen to what the other guys are saying for a sec?"
I'd rather get organized and beat them at the ballot box. I don't care what motivates the nihilism of the right wing. I just want them out of government.
5
It's always funny how these many esteemed thinkers can talk about basic issues of change without addressing the elephant in the room: human nature, and the limits it imposes.
Pinker, more than anybody, has no excuse not to address those issues. Yet he writes here as if there are no constraints to "progress" imposed by human nature.
Who can take Pinker, or any of the others, seriously? Their views are steeped in willful ignorance.
So, what I see in these comments is a confirmation of what this article talks about. Neither side listens to or respects the other. As a former Republican, I am NOT a supporter of that party's current inexcusable party line. I am a conservative Christian, college educated woman who deeply resents being called a troglodyte because I believe in God and don't support unconditionally everything liberals stand for. Respect is what has been and still is what is missing. True listening is what is missing. Blanket condemnation on both sides is in oversupply.
Normative threat is a good thing, though. Just because something has been normalized doesn't make it the best possible option.
Liberals have turned their backs on what an older generation saw as the core issue: economic equity for honest work. Liberals are blissfully ignorant of the complex networks that deliver their groceries and creature comforts; in embracing techno-utopia, they marginalize physical labor. From their childhoods of relative comfort and indulgence, liberals insist that personal actions have no consequences (unless liberals say otherwise with regard to non-liberals). Liberals underestimate the disdain of first generation immigrants of every hue who hold a more self-reliant and socially conservative perspective. Liberals have enabled the individuals among them who are no less authoritarian in their outlook and tactics than their red state counterparts so that in some blue state work places, it has become impossible to have reasoned, professional, and pragmatic discussions about how best to meet our mission to the people we serve; rather than seek to right historic wrongs equitably and with integrity, these so-called progressive individuals and their spineless allies, in believing that the ends justify the means, emulate the very bad faith that they criticize.
And the result of all this is that corporatists and their 21st century medievalist allies (Bannon, Pence, Moore et al) are laughing all the way to the bank. They have convinced Trump voters to aim their rage not at their puppet masters but to an all-too-easily caricatured Liberal bogeyman.
1
Liberals need to stop coming across as condescending know-it-alls who feel they have to lecture the rest of us (and I do live in a rural area of CA with a GOP representative in Congress) on the "Correct" or "right" path. What works in the Bay Area doesn't sell in Rural counties North of Sacramento, the East side of the Central Valley-or the east side of the Sierras, using CA examples. Get out of your bubbles, realize that a liberal utopia shoved down everyone's throat whether they want it or not is not a good idea, and see how those of us in "red" counties or House districts see things. Don't come for our guns-or tell us what kind of guns we should and shouldn't have-direct real money to attract more businesses to rural areas-real jobs with real money, stop looking down on those who don't want to go to college and have a technical school lead them to a career, realize that not everyone can own a "green" car/truck/SUV, etc.
Stop being snobs and get into the rest of the country.
A lot of JBR's comments-and he's posting from Berkley, are very valid, IMHO.
2
I've lived in Massachusetts for 18 years, but lived previously in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Indiana, and Michigan. My politics are far left, but I understand the mentality of non-coastal people. The rampant condescension of East Coasters, Californians, etc., against the rest of the country is relentless. It is also based on ignorance--I've often been asked by Bostonians if there are trees in Michigan No wonder so many people were sufficiently alienated as to vote in a Fascist for president.
4
Sorry, but this is bunk:
"A system like our ideal liberal democracy, which does not place any constraints on critiques of leaders, authorities and institutions; and does not allow any suppression of ideas no matter how dangerous to the system or objectionable to its citizens..."
I'm not assuming Stenner is a right-wing ideologue. It's just that right-wing ideologues keep saying that the left is trying to shut down free speech--when we're trying to stop hate speech.
So, which is it? We don't allow suppression of any ideas or we're against free speech?
Stenner is an academic and there's no serious academic I know who says anything so demonstrably inaccurate and unsupported by observable facts.
3
“Not only are the values that the left takes for granted heatedly disputed in many sections of the country, the way many Democratic partisans assert that their values supplant or transcend traditional beliefs serves to mobilize the right.”
The same could’ve been said for women’s rights 100 years ago, the rights of blacks 50 years ago, and he rights of gays 20 years ago. Do you still want to make that argument?
4
This is an important piece that merits reading + then thinking about, hard. Here's just one thought, sparked by Michelle Goldberg's column today about the near monopoly on the liberal side of the social divide of sexual harassment claims that lead to some consequences. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/opinion/franken-trump-sexual-harassme... Where are ANY 'red state' like comparable or consequences? To tell liberals to take their fingers out of their ears in this context, is to ask them to hear exactly what?
Mad Tsar Trump is an acceleration of an anti democratic process long underway. But our media has to start dealing with the First Cause --both parties must compete vigorously for big money from corporate megadonors. This sets in motion policies that remove representation for our taxation and blocks reform. Why nothing here about campaign finance?
One of Trump's worst effects is that for many, even the Gop ‘establishment’ looks good by comparison. We’ll welcome with relief anyone ‘better than Trump? And even give Dems too much leeway? Do they wear halos compared to mad Tsar Trump?
BUT with Dems also tethered to a big money election system that our media doesn't even criticize, will we still end up with this?:
1.unfair and inadequate taxes.
2.‘small govt’ that can’t protect us,
3. health care and education as high profit centers
4. Downward living standards and upward insecurity.
2
You need get no further than that first quote to understand the fundamental difference between right and left, in one of the areas in which traditional conservatism aligns with what you call Trumpism. (Trump is not, and never has been, a conservative.)
The left views “multiculturalism” and “diversity” as unalloyed goods; conservatives regard both as indisputably evil. (And there is no such thing as a “libertarian leftist”, as the very nature of the left is collectivist, not individualist, as libertarianism requires,) Conservatives have no problem with people ordering their lives as they see fit, but see American government as an entity designed to produce Americans, not hyphenated Americans whose first duty of loyalty is to their particular “identity” group.
Conservatives see “identity” – other than as Americans – as outside the realm of legitimate governmental interest. If one wishes to consider one’s “identity”, and (say) march behind an Irish flag on 3/17, fine. But that should be subordinate to, and hugely less important, than marching behind the American flag the other 364. One’s sex and one’s sex partners are NOT political statements. Contrary to the fems, the personal is NOT the political.
“Diversity” does not make us strong; it is, by definition, divisive. Government’s role is to create the unum from the pluribus. In this, as in so many other areas, the left has it precisely backwards.
1
The problem is that both right and left think that they are right. (Okay, that was a joke, better to say that both sides think that they are correct.) And in a sense, they are. Both right and left have a valid, though differing, way of looking at life.
It's like my family. My wife likes to spend money and enjoy life. I like to save money and be prepared for an uncertain future. We differ in our basic outlook, but both philosophies are valid.
Steven Pinker claims that liberal policies have led to good things. I could easily make the opposite argument. Cause and effect does not apply to our complex political system.
What's the best solution? To stop fighting and start cooperating. To work things out in our government just like my wife and I work things out in our family. To seek compromise instead of conflict.
But history shows that's not how the world works. Thankfully, things work out pretty well anyway.
3
I’m black and therefore an automatic Democrat. However I voted Gore, Kerry, Obama, Romney Trump. I don’t think I’ll ever vote for the Democrats again and after their shameless & cynical railroading of Franken yesterday I feel very comfortable with my decision.
The party and liberals have gone off the deep end. They seem to move from one bout of hysteria to another. I have my qualms with Trump but he’ll do.
4
No. Liberals have been proven right over and over again. Eventually the lies are exposed. Don't blame us for this fiasco.
4
The author quotes an expert saying that the liberal Democratic Party espouses “unrestrained free expression.”
Given the complete shut down and silencing of conservative speakers on the west coast at liberal universities this past year, I would hasten to add “as long as they agree with us.”
3
Sorry but this information is misinformed. Yiannopoulos (representing Breitbart) has spoken on campuses across the UC and Cal State system. In every case, the Presidents of those "liberal" universities erred on the side of diversity and free speech.
1
Supporting freedom of speech ticks off people who don't want to hear some things - oh jeez, maybe I should stop supporting freedom of speech! Thanks Thomas!
2
I think it’s simplier. Blue America stood by while manufacturing communities experienced near ethnic cleansing. Jobs and money flowed to the rich educated connected. Wages and employment plummeted in industrial cities. Those left behind faxes distain and blame. Would you be angry?
5
“... fingers out of their ears...” A rather delicate way of putting it. Actually it’s the resting place of the head that’s the greatest problem...
You seem to forget several important points:
Gorsuch was confirmed for SCOTUS because R's gamed the rules by changing the number of votes needed.
The Senate tax bill was passed again because R's gamed the rules to allow a simple majority.
Regardless of the numbers, Trump is thoroughly reviled by a majority of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world. He's also potentially facing a little treason charge - which again Congressional R's will and continue to ignore at their own peril.
Trump has potentially lit a powder keg under the Middle East that makes W's little excursion look like a day at Coney Island.
Trump has no legislative victory (and I don't consider the tax bill a victory for anyone apart from the Adelson's, the Koch's and the Mercer's) to speak of. He has an endless slew of executive orders, many of which would not withstand legal scrutiny if so challenged.
Plus, R's have finally thrown in and backed a known pedophile for a Senate office.
In short, by any set of fair rules, Trump and the rest of the R's are what poker players would call low-down dirty cheats.
The question is, will the rest of the country choose to stoop to that level? Well, many R voters seem to have done just that. How much farther down will our country allow ourselves to be dragged? When we finally hit bottom, will he have the will to rebuild ourselves out of the R cesspool? And if we do decide to rebuild, what will it take to over come 40 years of R power that has left us here?
9
My vision of America is simply different from the Red states'.
I see a country that can work together to solve even the most bedeviling problems - and not huddle intransigent based on religion and insular culture.
I see us exalting in our follow Americans' joy and happiness, not contingent upon their sexual orientation.
I see a nation that can make smart decisions based on dispassionate research and fact, not dictated by words in a book.
And most of all I see everyone having the freedom their lives as they see fit with ample room to swing their arms -- up to the point where they hit another person's nose.
I see a lot of nose-hitting coming out of Red states.
As someone else pointed out in this string -- the future of this great country is California, not Kentucky. Couldn't have said it better.
10
Understanding the another's point of view can help phrase your own argument in terms that may resonate with the listener. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them. If Red state voters say they are interested in jobs, morals and freedom, focus on how a liberal agenda can help those issues. Don't give up trying to communicate. I would like to see plain talking Democratic politicians articulate how their policies address these issues. If you don't understand the other's concerns, how do expect to formulate a dialog that they can understand.
I am reminded of a joke I heard long ago. When a Republican's wife walks into the bedroom and sees him in bed with another woman, he says, "It's not what it looks like." When a Democrat's wife walks in and sees her husband in bed with another woman, he says. "Let me explain." There lies the difference.
It is PRECISELY this sort of argumentative style that so infuriates much of our country. There's a reason an extremist like Trump continues to resonate with sound-minded, logical, hard-working people who might otherwise be more open to political candidates with a moderate base.
Put simply, the arguments of the ENTIRE article offer viewpoints dripping with thinly veiled attacks on the very "red" state voters they claim to understand.
The article basically states a few points: 1.) the "blue" staters "get" that us poor, uneducated, filthy white rural folks are just a bunch of closeted racists that don't understand the "progress" that's been made on our behalf. Thanks, "blue" staters...that sounds a whole lot like the logic folks used in the 1960's when they argued that African-Americans don't "understand" the progress being made on their behalf. Misguided then and now. 2.) all of this is "largely heritable" (Stenner). By that logic, if our beliefs and political choices are heritable...then being a racist, or being LGBT, or being anti-abortion or pro-choice, is heritable and not really influenced by our own thoughts and choices. 3.) Pinker says Liberalism = 90% reduction in the death rate in warfare and a heroic stoppage of nuclear war? Little wonder "red" staters are angry...many of whom fought in the very wars "blue" staters claim to be preventing and making less dangerous. A collection of spineless idiocy.
4
This is total nonsense. It is not the Democrats fault that these people have been brainwashed by Fox. Why on earth are they allowed to call it news anyway.Shouldn't there be some standard that does not allow an organization to label it news if it has a certain number of lies per hour...minute. It would be harder to document how often they just don't report news they find unsupportive of their pro trump narrative, but it could be done. Please legislators .... stop Fox..introduce legislation that will impose some standards. I'd like to say before it is too late but I fear it already is.
6
But part of the argument is that liberal support of unrestricted speech allows Fox and hate-talk radio to try to take over the spectrum, which the right, including the neo-liberals, then support as just another corporate success. We let the fairness act die. We will probably lose all federal support for public broadcasting, after which rural red-state children won’t even have Sesame Street to show them a multi-cultural, multi-racial world.
To argue that we liberals in blue states should honor the ideas and actions of conservatives’ supporters who appear to be in thrall to racist ideologies, and are willing to excuse grossly aberrant behavior like child molestation on the part of their flag bearers, all for the political prize, is beyond idiocy.
It also overlooks the fact that the system, with its legacy of slave state insistence on the Electoral College has resulted in conservative coalitions gaining ascendency without a popular vote mandate in 40% of our national elections since the turn of the century.
I would much rather turn to convincing the largest potential voting bloc, non-voters, to get up off their duffs and exercise their mandate, because the polls of all potential voters do not support this current ascendency of a minority conservative, rural base.
9
A bit verbose and esoteric but I think going in the direction of what I have been preaching here to liberals for the last year or more.
You don't have to stop being progressives, just don't put it at the top of the list. Listen to what the people want.
I disagree with you re Trump"s "success". His approval rating is historically low, the Trump Dow bump is bogus, The low unemployment rate is a continuation of Obama's eight yrs., Only 25% of America supports his tax plan, less support Trump care. Trump is a rabble rousing, bigot, pathological liar, admitted sexual predator ego maniac demagogue too boot.
The republicans are ripe to be ousted in the congress in 2018.
The problem is if they nominate identity obsessed, never met a war, Wall Street banker, trade agreement I didn't like candidate like Hillary, instead of progressive populists they can blow it again in 2018 and even 2020.
Learn from history or forever be condemned to repeat its worst results.
3
Unfortunately, as Lord Keynes noted ... “in the long run we’re all dead.” That would be us along with them. We can’t afford to let climate change deniers, among their many retrograde views and actions, dictate this outcome.
Therefore, we must RESIST every day in every way ... fullstop!
1
big difference:
you and I expect to be dead; religious conservatives believe they will go on to live forever in Paradise at God's elbow because they deserve it and you don't.
No one forces anyone to support racists. trump has always been a birther and a racist which is why his core support him PERIOD.
Until people stop making excuses for that republicans will continue to hide behind their racism.
7
I am a former liberal and now an ardent Trump supporter. Why? Because I got sick of liberals thinking that they are superior to everyone else. I got tired of them mocking anyone who has a different opinion from theirs. They do not own this country. They share it with millions of people who they think are beneath them. And it makes me sick.
6
I'm a liberal and concerned about the extremes I see in the behaviors and coddling of university student. Among my liberal adult friends, I don't see these attitudes. How did you experience this superiority and mockery? I'm not trying to start an argument. I'd like to hear about your experience.
What makes me sicker is one of the biggest Trump supporters in America, Alex Jones, on the radio calling for another Civil War in America, saying all liberals should be killed ... and Trump supporters agreeing with him. If you want hate speech, that's it times a million. Sorry, I can't support the death of our own citizens because they think differently, and we're still recovering from the first Civil War. To me, that's far worse than someone being elitist to someone else. I will not ever support another Civil War in our country; Trump supports do. Enough said.
That's funny. What you're describing sounds to me exactly like the willful ignorance of our President's supporters, who believe (despite a complete lack of evidence) that they are the ones who represent "American" values. Perhaps it's time for a Second American Revolution.
I couldn't get past the first paragraph lol. The great successes of Trump? The Tax Bill. which a real stinker and everyone knows it may yet ail. The appointment of Neil Gorsuch, wow that wasn't even his to pick! That was Obama's pick! The GOP holding that seat open for a year and not even hearing Garland was disgraceful!. And Key regulatory acts, you mean permission to dump in West Virginia rivers? Or maybe you mean opening up public sacred lands in Utah for big oil. As far as working with Trump, he has insulted and alienated Dems on a daily basis. Trump is a disgrace as a person and a bumbling incompetent President. I think Dems should continue the fight against him not soul search.
6
The segmentation of our nation’s citizenry is destructive of the fundamental tenet of that same nation’s founding, being a UNITED group of states. If we remain entrenched in our respective red and blue camps, God help us or the next generation in bringing us together again as The United States of America. We have many other needs as well, and in my opinion, all of them, including our segmentation, can be remedied at least in part by the institution of a universal service for young people between the ages of 18 and 24. I speak from experience as a draftee for military service during the Vietnam War. I didn’t want to serve but I was called and so I did. Nothing broke me of my biases like that conscription into service. My fear of those who look and think differently than I were erased and my eyes and heart were opened to the diversity of our country. I’m convinced that our nation’s survival requires an assertive change to rebuild our human bonds as well as our cities, roads, schools, etc.
1
The greatest false equivalency spread by the MSM in my lifetime is the one perpetrated by Edsall here and is the 3rd or 4th one of this type I've read this week in various publications: that because Democrats embrace diversity, they DO NOT embrace white people.
This false equivalency, pound on day by day in the MSM is the root cause of the myth of Democrats not able to win the white vote.
News flash, sir: Whites have not voted in the majority for the Democrat for president since LBJ in 1964.
When whites would rather vote for a child molester so that "Chuck and Nancy" don't get another seat in Congress, rest assured, the problem is not the Democrats.
And what, exactly, did Democrats dictate over the past 8 years? They didn't dictate; Republicans abdicated.
Edsall here sounds like a fossil out of the 1950s arguing that restaurant owners should decide who they will serve and if a black person doesn't like it, then he can go to another restaurant that wants his business. After all, can't ram that cultural change down the segregationist's throat; that would be elitist.
The Democratic Party did not leave white people; white people left the Democratic Party.
11
It would be interesting for these political and economic theorists to consider going outside their fields for a moment to learn more about human nature than what their disciplines tell them. Basically they are proclaiming doom because they are missing a deep understanding of culture, which one might explore by studying some of the best regarded anthropologists, and sociologists work on the nature of knowledge and society. Without insights from such areas, all we can get is expressions about ideologies, which are correctly seen as deeply-held prejudices. A study of culture could help us realize that we are not captives of culture; rather, guided by it. And culture changes because we choose to change our beliefs and thus our behavior and language.
2
I agree; good commentary. And I am a liberal living in a small Northern Minnesota town that voted for Trump. Good people here voted for him; I've been trying to understand this. One thought has been that "regular people" don't use or understand the mechanisms for "getting their way," whereas the wealthy, educated, and those interested in government and these mechanisms, use them for their own benefit........to the detriment of those "regular people."
2
Trump is a horrible president. He has no education and shows it.
Whether or not Democrats can fix this problem is not well understood.
As for our conservative brethren, I would like to see more compensation for the impacts of globalization. Today, and even more so in the future if we don’t stop the republicans, I would like to see the globalization windfall applied to supporting and encouraging craftsmanship. We. seem to be in a race to the bottom in terms of quality. I don’t know how to change that. I don’t think worshipping corporations is going to pay off.
3
"Voters in red America are 44 percent less likely to be college graduates ..." So? Why is is a valid point or for that matter, a point at all? I didn't graduate from college, yet I've been successful. I even read the New York Times.
6
"RickG": your comment equates with Oklahoma Republican Senator James Imhofe's holding up a snowball on the floor of the Senate to refute global warming. Statistics say better educated people, in general, get better jobs, have higher incomes, and live longer lives. Just because there are a few people without a college education who have been "successful," as you describe yourself, does not refute this fact.
1
It's not a binary factor. Some thoughtful, intelligent and successful people (like yourself) didn't go to college.
Conversely, some narrow minded, dull and unsuccessful people did.
1
Since we now seem to be involved in open Blue/Red warfare, I'd like to see the next Democratic presidential administration pass an amendment to stop money flowing from Blue States to Red State Welfare.
14
Perfect....thank you. Interesting brand of personal responsibility, isn't it....the "conservative" way...
You’re right. Every thing is my fault. I should stop thinking for myself.
2
Actually, to the extent that all this is anyone's "fault," it's precisely those who refuse to think for themselves (i.e. the President's base) who are to blame.
A perfect example of this is that rather than fight the GOP over massive tax cuts for the rich and resulting cuts to Medicare and Medicare, upcoming changes to Social Security, and the ravishingly of public lands for the benefit of just a few, the so-called Democratic leaders are focusing on protecting Dreamers in the budget funding fight. The one place they have real leverage.
I strongly support DACA, but the President has already said he does, too. This is an easy compromise for him to make, and make himself look good.
When are Pelosi and Schumer going to start playing hardball on behalf of all Americans, and not just try to score a point or two on the board. They are losing this fight and, because of their lack of vision and imagination, we are all losing too.
10
I don't think your characterization is fair. They have had many things to advocate for including against the tax cut.
1
Also instead of "fighting against tax cuts for the rich and resulting cuts for Medicare and Medicaid" Dems should frame it differently -- fight FOR tax cuts for the middle and working classes and FOR making Medicare more generous. Fight FOR increasing SS payments by raising amount of income taxed. Fight FOR things that matter to red America because the secret is red America doesn't have anything against government -- they just see government as benefitting groups other than them and then they feel resentful. Even Bernie -- who I like very much -- is starting to sound like a broken record. Put forth a POSITIVE vision of what Dem ideas would "Feel" like to red America -- more secure retirement, lower deductibles and co-pays, more support for having children, more support for starting a small business or learning a trade. Dems don't talk that way and they need to.
2
Meh. New line is that these people who support Trump just want anyone who breaks rules. I felt like that in high school. A society only has rules. I have no idea how to educate these people. other than to keep trying to educate them on the facts of democracy..
4
Very thoughtful essay. I've long worried that politics has become religion in the sense that both the left and right have become camps of true believers where blue disavows red and vice versa. The polarization has a positive feedback, exacerbated by social media's encouragement of the cocooning of thought. Its easier to dismiss each other than to care for each other, regardless of our differences.
Having grown up in the Rust Belt but having escaped it by virtue of what was an excellent public school and university system, I see the value of moving forward economically and socially. That said, there must be room for everyone here or as Lincoln noted, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
4
Read "Dark Money." We're all being played by the Koch's and their allies in greed and power.
16
Wrong. That "Oligarch thing" doesn't play after this election. That book is old hat.
The Kochs had NOTHING to do with Trump winning. They didn't want to touch him with ten foot pole. Nobody did. Near the end of his campaign Hillary had huge sums of money over him.
He got in with a concise message (bad one) and a twitter account. A few million dollars. Not even that much T.V. advertising comparatively. It was true Democracy at work (unfortunately) without money.?trings being pulled (other than Putin!). That lesson is being lost on people esp. after all the uproar on Citizens United.
The Left could have easily done this if they weren't divided and splitting hairs. Hillary adopted many of Bernie's stances. Didn't change small minds. Too late.
2
The only way to turn rural America around in the long run is by improving the education system. Unfortunately the red states are generally against this. They just want things to go back to the way they imagine they were in the 1950's, and that isn't possible.
Additionally, neither party puts American students first. They both put special interests first. We know how to improve education in this country, but the GOP won't spend the money on education, and Dems would squander most of the money, if they got the chance.
Until we can get a focus on spending funds where needed, and also clearing out the bureaucracy when it impedes providing students with a better education where there is a tangible improvement in the ACT/SAT math and English scores of the average public school student, this country is losing a huge opportunity and all Americans will pay the price for that.
Unfortunately, this critical issue is not being discussed by either party.
1
Liberals are interested in self-actualization. Conservatives' priority is rearing the next generation. The liberal project is liberating for the intelligentsia, toxic for most of the population. Red American instinctively understands that.
3
Liberals are interested in liberty. They believe in truth, justice, and the American Way. Many conservatives share traditionally those concerns albeit with different priorities among them or different takes on how to secure them; those differences have been where the debate has mostly been for generations.
But Trumpists, or nationalists, or alt right, or whatever you want to call them are different. They question basic premises of the American republic like equal rights, due process, judicial independence, and the separation of church and state, and celebrate illiberal causes like ethnic nationalism, authoritarianism, and censorship of the press. They depart from core American values, and that is the problem.
If conservatives' priority truly is 'rearing the next generation' then why are the soi-disant 'conservatives' in the present GOP-led Congress doing their best to gut education, slash medical assistance for children, and imperil the ability of parents to earn a family-supporting wage?
It seems to me that 'conservatives' only care about the next generation when they're unborn. Once they enter the world, it's 'nature red in tooth and claw.' What's nurturing about that? Red America is already poor, stupid and uneducated. And if it truly understood what the priorities of 'conservatives' were, I doubt it would be as "understanding" of the con-job that the present-day GOP is pulling.
Conservatives are literally killing the next generation (me) - they're climate change deniers, remember?
The conservative “wave” is a mirage based on gerrymandering, proven voter suppression (see Milwaukee 2016) and naked obstruction (see Merrick Garland).
Yes, Dems need to wake up, but not to the “reality” of some phony GOP wave. They need to literally wake up—as in get out of bed and vote. If every registered black voter in Alabama actually voted next week, we would have another Dem senator. Of course it won’t happen. We snooze on.
27
The dominance that Trumpism is exerting politically over the values of the Liberal Democracy is somewhat circumspect, since it has been facilitated over the past two decades by voter suppression and gerrymandering in order to obtain the desired results. Add to that the electoral college voting system that favors the less populated states, which are almost all deep Red, and you have an explanation as to how an unhappy illiberal minority is able to control the federal government.
20
While there is some truth to the thesis that 'liberal democrats' don't understand the Trump phenomenon, the idea that the Democrats stopped supporting the working class is true, in response to loss of jobs and the like the Democrats came up with platitudes like 'job retraining' and "new technology" when those are exactly that, platitudes. Trump as much of a lie as it was offered specifics, he of course parroted the party line that the EPA cost jobs, taxes, etc, but then talked about tariffs and forcing jobs here, and reviving coal...while Hillary came up with a 60 point plan.... The reality is rural and middle america has been dying for centuries, today 15% of the population is rural....coal died because the market made it die, and alternative energy is taking over by the same forces, solar and wind power even without subsidies are cheaper than even gas for example.
The reality of red state America is that they look back to a 'golden age', usually the 1950's, when whites were the majority, where good jobs could be had in their own town pretty much for the asking, where women and blacks and minorities and gays knew their place, where their own biases and prejudices were everyone's..and that is inexorably going away, no matter what Trump and the GOP try to do. The jobs aren't coming back, we aren't going back to the 1950's..and as it says in the article, it is a matter of time when Trump nation disappears.
8
First, rural America has NOT been dying "for centuries". The US is less than 400 years old, and the industrial revolution took place less than 200 years ago. But beyond that, why do you think people are evil or wanting decent jobs and safe neighborhoods? Why?
1
It's funny how this first comment I saw makes the case for the thesis of this article. The prejudice behind the second paragraph is exactly the kind of thing Trump voters would rally behind. It's easy to wax philosophical about jobs not coming back, small towns dying economically, etc. when you are not the one that has to explain to your kids why your six figure job is suddenly gone and you don't know how to replicate that income. I would also point out the part of the article that (briefly) mentioned how much larger a % of rural people serve in the armed forces. A little understanding would do a world of good on both sides.
2
It's unbelievable to me how deluded progressives are. It never ends and I hope it never does for my sake, my families sake, for our presidents sake and the sake of generations of Americans. Democrats will make up complete poly dribble to try and understand their so called reality. Liberalism has nothing to do with an open society or cosmopolitanism or enlightenment and it's that very elitist view of the world that my hope is...will destroy liberalism forever.,
1
A simplified analysis will better show who's right and who's wrong. The small town less educated rural Reds have less experience with change and so adaptation does not come easy, as it does to a Progressive who welcomes and makes change.
Adaptation is the key success factor in business and life and evolution. If you can't adapt, you will die off. If you argue with reality, or with natural selection, you will lose every time. So we must embrace change and ignore those who want to dig in and bring back coal.
Change is here to stay, and it's accelerating, so Progressivism is good and Neanderthalism is bad. One is the progressive future whereas the other is an obsolete past. The past is obsolete by definition.
But not just the Reds, I'd further argue that Democrats are also stuck in a Neanderthal past and are a dead party. With accelerating change you need to be an exponentially-thinking Progressive - the linear-thinking "Better Deal" Democrats are obsolete. They may have good hearts but if they can't keep up what good are they?
3
"about a third of most western populations lean toward authoritarianism"
What pundits conveniently forget, in their hurry to brilliantly analyze the new "shift to the right", is that the shift is not the choice of the majority.
It is a result of gerrymandering and voter suppression, very effectively practised by the right wing. A minority are "taking the country" to the right while a strong majority wants to go the other direction entirely.
Rather than fret about troglodyte Trumpkins and what has fostered their fearful worldview, Progressives should focus more on getting all citizens equal access to the vote, and to have their votes count equally.
14
"Blue America spent the last eight years dictating both economic and cultural changes invalidating virtually every aspect of Red America." Really? While it is true that the assault on the left by the alt right has been very effective in foisting this myth on America, in fact there is little that supports it. There is no tyranny of the left. The problem is that the words of the US Constitution have been applied to a broader swath of America than the right would like. That is not tyranny of the left. That is America! Corruption and/or a form of capitalism that benefits only the rich have done much to put the country at its present impasse - hardly hard left issues. The Democrats have for the past 86 years since the Great Depression have been working for the betterment of the American people. It is not always pretty or done well but it does not bear responsibility for the resurgence of hatreds and bias that is still felt it much of the country.
14
Dear Thomas Edsall,
What are you thinking?
Yes, by following terrible leaders, there are many who have been left behind. They are being taught by a few very wealthy people to hate and blame via a well funded propaganda effort.
Repeal of common sense, cause and effect, and fact based reasoning abetted by an aggressive lie machine in service of a very few who want to asset strip the many is a core problem limiting the ability to gain an informed electorate.
One problem is that goods can now be produced with very little human input--no matter where they are made. Services are harder to export (plumbers, mechanics, teachers...) but every town and region must have something they can "export". "Hand-made" goods are not valued enough to fund a modern standard of living for those who produce them. We are awash in consumer goods, but no longer have an efficient mechanism to allow these goods to be available to many because they have no means to earn sufficient capital to purchase.
The "county map" from the last election is telling--those places in economic decline for many of the residents voted for Trump, and represent the vast majority of the land area--and a decreasing minority.
Moving to a renewable energy base could provide a vast number of jobs installing and maintaining wind and solar "farms", for example. The alternative is abandoning large stretches of our landscape to a few farmers, ranchers, and tourist support. Its the local economy, not the liberals.
6
I am a white guy in my 60's who lives in Dallas - think purple city in a bright red state.
That which divides us is largely, in my view, the relatively recent focus on a few social wedge issues as political weapons.
Such focus started on the right - Guns, God, Gays, Reproductive Rights, not to mention all the racial dog whistles - and have since been mirrored on the left. These days one can't be a proper Dem without being pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights nor can one be a proper Rep without supporting the opposite views. None of these issues address the pocketbook needs the respective parties traditionally represented, pro-capital in the case of the Reps or the pro-labor Dems.
So long as the political parties weaponize social wedge issues it it difficult to see how their followers will reach common understanding any time soon.
8
Please don't forget that Dems love to mock and insult working class whites, and working class whites know it.
The whole thing is really about immigration. Democrats were driven from power from federal, state and local governments because they favor open borders which, in the long run, will make America exactly like Mexico. Most people don't want this, and drove Democrats from power.
Democrats' other policy preferences, however, are actually pretty popular.
6
There have never been open boarders. That is a myth.
Progress and change won't stop, no matter what red states may wish. But to the extent that liberals need to listen to, and address, the needs and perceived issues of the right, Mr. Edsall is quite right. Too often the liberal establishment projects an image of elitism. What it needs to do is return to its roots, and address everyone's fears the way FDR did. Liberalism has much to offer red states, but the Democratic Party is doing about as bad a job of selling its message as possible - whatever it is; even this liberal doesn't know.
2
Disagree that Trump mobilized the reactionary movement of the GOP - the Tea Party was active enough in 2009 that David Brooks warned about a coming anti-elite takeover of the GOP, and as David Brock pointed out, the GOP/right was practicing internal enemy politics after USSR collapsed, with liberals (and gays etc) as the enemy. That said, people want security (meaning strong leaders like Putin etc) and instead the world is rapidly changing, with changes accelerating as T Friedman notes in his latest book - the nations resisting the changes will fall behind and suffer (like Russia). The "2 kinds of people in the world" argument applies - people who fear change (create headwinds for progress, as Pinker says), and people who embrace it. I'm the latter and most liberals are likely also. The term "Liberal" itself means open to change. The 21st century presents new challenges for humankind that require changed attitudes towards national economic strategies; population strategies; global environmental challenges no one country can address; blue collar jobs requiring high tech skills; globalized labor markets; etc. The right/GOP generally does not offer solutions for these challenges, and so become demagogues - pandering to people's fears in order to get their own way. Bigly unpatriotic, and unhelpful.
2
As a liberal in a blue city in a sea of red -- where Confederate monuments hailing red heroes were hauled down by a blue mayor at the end of his two terms as a thumb in the eye to his political opposition, claiming they were on the side of oppression and hate while he was the clear-eyed champion of love and progress -- I can easily see the liberal dynamic that we are right and you are wrong and we will do what we want no matter how it makes you feel.
I'm with Pinker: "Over the longer run, I think the forces of modernity prevail — affluence, education, mobility, communication, and generational replacement." There is always a regretful reaction to fast-moving change. Aren't we big enough to show compassion for those who are losing their world as they knew it? If only to help ease them into the future.
No city clung more tenaciously to the antebellum world than New Orleans in the last century. We're moving well into the future now. I'm confident America will, too. Wait for the fever to pass.
2
I don't think gloating over the deaths of seniors is "showing compassion".
That's really a bizarre misreading. I'm 62. Am I a senior?
Who's gloating over the deaths of seniors?
This is a great article, but it does not mention that there is a larger struggle between Labor and Capital that is at play here. Most of Labor does not understand that Labor is Capital's highest cost and this is the reason the Capital/business has offered jobs to all immigrants (low cost labor) that can get across the border and they ship factories overseas to low cost labor markets. Capital's one main goal is to maximize profits and many times this is in conflict with the priorities of this country's citizens such as health, safety, clean environment, endangered species, etc. The priorities of the citizens (most are labor) are provided thru the Government by regulations that temper Capital's disregard for Labor's priorities. Capital has stated many times the conflict they have with regulations and maximizing profits. Therefore, they need to influence the maker of regulations i.e. the Government, but how do they do it when they have no votes. They appeal to a vulnerable group of Labor by pandering to their fears (intolerance), predispositions (rural vs urban), and hot buttons (God, guns, religious beliefs) in order to get the votes so they can influence regulations and increase/protect their profits. This article does not address how this dynamic between Capitol and Labor is a big contributor to our present polarization.
3
Mr. Edsall has, apparently, taken his fingers out of his ears. But it doesn't seem to have helped him find a suggestion about what policies we should promote, or how to better argue for progress.
1
In a sense I agree with this article. I my humble opinion the deems need to put forth an economic plan that address' job growth for all (not just part time jobs or city jobs), infrastructure repair (that will create more jobs) and address the red state areas of how tolerant 'we' are to their values as well. Until the deems can take back power, they are being marginalized by a pack of lies the GOP feeds to the red states.
3
The problem with this is that the left has answers to the problems that have plagued red states -- whereas, the right actually doesn't, and devotes time, energy, and money to attacking the left while not offering fixes.
So, for example, you have a prolonged decline in manufacturing in a red state -- the left would say that there could be jobs and job training programs that could get people working again. There could be boosts in minimum wages, and encouragement of union jobs and organizing. There are ways that good government could remediate these problems.
The right, conversely, says that there should be no minimum wages, no unions or collective bargaining, no job training or job creation programs -- and argues, instead, that "they" are taking "your" jobs (they can be immigrants, gays, women, environmentalists, scientists, etc.), and that government must be shrunk into oblivion.
The voters in red states have been snookered by the right -- they vote against their best interests, and in so doing, they get angrier, but only at the targets chosen for them by the right-winger politicians who have been playing them.
The only thing the left can do is put their ideas into practice -- the practice persuades, which is why good governance is something the right-wing always, always fight against. They never want there to be examples of well-run programs, because it opens the door for their own end as a political force. So, they try to keep everybody from getting anything done.
7
The issue is race. With identity politics the Democrats forgot the white identity. This made people fearful, and those who will never benefit from Republican policy, voted for Republicans. Until the Democrats become truly inclusive, they will continue to loss ground. The Democrats are no different than Republicans, amplifying differences through identity politics widens separation. Instead of figuring out how to divide us up, they should reach for our commonness, if any is left.
1
It wasn't very long ago that the Republican Party was faced with the prospect that it was dysfunctional and dying. The post-mortem began before Trump's victory.
But remember these facts as well. Three million more Americans wanted Hillary for President than the Republican.
Trump's electoral vote was decided by just 77-thousand voters in three states. Republicans have not swept the recent special elections-- Virginia went for the Democrat and it wasn't even close.
Trump's disapproval rating is the lowest in history.
Republican success in recent years has been helped in large part by gerrymandering.
The majority of Americans who bother to vote are old. 67 percent of millennials identify with the Democratic party.
Trump and his red state white cowboys are experiencing their last stand. The sell-by date is expiring. This dangerous and disturbing time will one day be but a blip on the radar.
1
There is no longer a level-playing field for Red states and Blue states. What we actually have is a tyranny of the minority by Red states. Take the Senate case where Montana has equal number of senators as California or New York, or the lopsided representation of the Red states in the House through gerrymandering. Another problem, I believe, is the distancing of the Red stated from enlightenmen values and toward religious dogma and intolerance. The underlying cause may be economic malaise.
4
Thank you for making my day Mr. Edsall. I have shared your article with my three kids and I look forward to vigorous discussions around the dinner table.
2
This past year we've been inundated with think-pieces like this. I'm concerned because they treat empathy and introspection like a uniquely liberal obligation.
It is most certainly not, nor is the Republican party a national movement which is misunderstood but fundamentally symmetrical to the Democrats.
Consider how each movement handled a shocking electoral defeat. While easy to forget now, many conservatives saw the 2008 election in much the same terms as liberals viewed 2016. Fox News even predicted a McCain victory. In the wake of Barack Obama's victory, what public reflection did Fox undertake? Where was the Republican movement to understand coastal and urban voters? Instead of the introspection currently widespread on the left, movement conservatives reacted to Obama's win with outrage.
Anecdotally, I have been a journalist for over six years. I get many critical e-mails from liberals, but only conservative readers send me threatening ones.
There is value to understanding this cultural moment and our fellow Americans, certainly. Liberals should try to understand conservatives better, but that needs to take place in the context of a movement that rarely shows an interest in understanding them. The predominant themes from the conservative movement are focused on blame, grievance and (to a large degree) retribution.
Empathy can't fix that. Only personal responsibility on the part of the Republican movement, both leadership and rank-and-file, can do so.
6
It's worth noting that the premise of this opinion is deeply flawed. Donald Trump is in office based on an election system that allows someone to lose a popular vote by ~2 million votes and still be elected president. Based on numbers alone the liberal message is moving voters to the polls even with a less than ideal candidate such as Clinton.
3
Would we be talking about this had there been a better educated constituency, better planning for industrial obsolescence, and a fiscally transparent political system.
1
Not only do liberals need to start listening, they also need to
start talking in a different language, one in which their
thoroughly alienated but economic oriented voters speak. This
corresponds to some fraction of trump
voters who are not utterly lost in their dreams of yesteryear returning.
Two examples. Obama should have conducted a national tour
to promote the Paris agreement and educate the country
why it was essential. It should have been obvious at the time, that the denialist strategy
of insinuating doubt was working and needed rebuttal. The failure to do this was a fundamental failure of communication on his part.
Second failing was the absence of a coherent thought out middle class and main street oriented tax plan, one insistently promoted in red, blue, and purple zones, by the democrat minority that would have, at the least, functioned as a constant media reference point and contrast to what trumpicans were intending to impose for the benefit of the rentier class. Even if the congressional effort was stymied, the publication and promotion of
such a plan need not have been. This would have provided an alternative media presence and reality to which
trumpicans would been forced to respond. This was a policy and
political failure of the most fundamental sort.
It is astonishing that the leaders of the party who insisted on
adopting this strategy of rope a dope passivity remain in their
positions for which they are so poorly suited.
3
Wonderful work, Mr. Edsall. Thanks so much.
3
The asserion that many people who live in democracies really want to live in authoritarian states is painfully obviously true. But aside from suggesting that these people move to authoritarian countries, what the solution? It isn't going to be enough to simply acknowlege that they are freaked out by freedom. They won't be happy until no one is free, and we can't abide that. It seems impossible.
Bottomline is that liberals are the majority in America. Only problem is structure of our government is not designed for 21st century. Direct democracy would enable the People to run this country. In 1776 it was long rides on horseback between states. Now communication is instant. We do not need the Political Aristocracy that games the system for re-election. The people need control over elections including the financing. In a Parliamentary system Trump would be kicked out already.
The author writes:
"Many Democrats continue to have little understanding of their own role — often inadvertent, an unintended consequence of well-meaning behavior — in creating the conditions that make conservatives willing to support Trump and the party he is leading."
This was obvious the moment after the re-election that the Democrats re-elected Nancy Pelosi as their leader in the House of Representatives and was further echoed in Hillary Clinton's recent book. They just don't get it. They need to clean house and actually start spending time in the Central and Mountain Time Zones getting to know real people.
2
If people in red states don't like the economic conditions, they should look to Trump and the GOP to help them, since they mostly voted Republican. They voted despite the GOP's complete disregard for regular working people (as in the immoral tax bill). As for the larger economic trends, don't people in red states realize that capitalism does not remain the same over time; products, industries, jobs change. Democrats and Independent voters do not control the global economy, (despite Trump's wild conspiracy fantasies). For 40 years, the GOP has sold people baloney, like giving money to the rich makes everyone better off, and now they wonder why things are not going so well. No Democratic administration will have an easy time trying to work with the GOP on actual economic and social problems, when the GOP has famously made it their objective to obstruct anything Democrats want to do. The red states don't like social changes like gay marriage and abortion; ok, I can understand that. But the rest of us are supposed to accept mental patients and everyone else having concealed weapons and machine guns? Compromise means both sides have to show flexibility; one side could let up on trying to undo Constitutional protections against a forced state religion; the other side could take more interest in what needs to be done to improve the red state economies.
The question one should ask is not whether we, as liberals, should accommodate or appease the delusions of illiberal ethnonationalists and communal sectarians, but, rather, one should ask whether a union based on such accommodation or appeasement is worth preserving at all. We should not be so quick to compromise away our own ideals and values for a multicultural, multiethnic, equitable, and forward-looking country in exchange for political power, political continuity or even, if it should come to that, territorial integrity.
Stenner nails it.
Liberal democracy, like any system, has become full of contradictions as time has gone on.
The country is going to have to reshape its values, or tear itself apart again.
"the triumph of conservatism" = the triumph of Dark Money = the demise of the middle class
and this article is symptomatic of Stockholm Syndrome.
I have been listening with my fingers out of my ears for more than 20 years, with the level of nonsense rising exponentially in the last 5. I gave up taking "them" and their nonsense seriously and after trying to listen sympathetically, the first few weeks after the election.
I've lived in rural communities all my adult life, mostly teaching in public schools. I know and respect many of these families, but when it comes to politics and the related cultural issues, nonsense is not, and never will be, an argument. It is a recipe for disaster, which is where our country seems to be headed.
4
One of the most succinct and important takes on parochial "wisdom" I've heard in a long time. At some point, acceptance of nonsense has its boundaries too...
3
The solution, to the extent one is possible, has to come from the bottom up. Americans have exhibited a fundamental decency towards each other that is being eroded by a commander in chief who has absolutely nothing in common with the people who support him.
Yes, political correctness has gotten out of hand. But that doesn't change the fact that coal isn't coming back, jobs in China aren't coming back and any politician who tells this story is lying.
Even if one's anger is justified, there has to be more to life than getting even.
A fascinating piece as usual, and dead-on about the inability of many to understand how liberalism contributed to the current disaster. But I was more than a little confused by Stenner’s description of “our ideal liberal democracy.” Whose ideal is that?
Granted it has been over 25 years since I moved on from my PoliSci degree to a career in practical politics and NGOs, but I don’t recognize that utopia from either theory or decades of civil engagement practice. It sounds more like an illiberal right caricature to me.
1
Signicant numbers of progressives pretend that Americans are the biggest victims in history and have never been poorer. Many progressives pretend that bothersome student loans are the equivalent of developing world starvation, or that only owning 1 or 2 cars is a crime against humanity, or that the buying and selling of stuff across human-made borders is the greatest evil in history. This narrative helped Trump win the electoral college.
If it weren't for the electoral college, this opinion piece wouldn't exist. 3 million more Americans voted against Trump than voted for him. Regardless of why Trump supporters like the guy, whether they truly believe he's good for the country, to stick it to liberals, or whatever, they are the minority.
There are genuine red and blue state problems, like opioid addiction and a lack of good jobs in some areas, that affect some Americans. But based on what I've read those aren't the people who voted for Trump. Two-thirds of Trump voters had incomes above $50k/year, and a full 1/3 had incomes above $100k/year.
So, Trump supporters seem to be benefiting from the liberal democracy and economies that were in place under Obama, Bush, Clinton -- and would have likely continued under HRC -- yet they voted for Trump anyway in spite of what many of them acknowledge are huge flaws. America hasn't left the Trump voter behind economically, so it must be cultural.
The American they see on TV and in the White House doesn't match what they see in their own neighborhoods. The places Trump won were predominately white. So, it is primarily about "unfettered freedom and diversity." Trump supporters don't want people who are "diverse" having the "freedom" to participate in their society.
This reminds me of the North's inability to compromise on a certain peculiar institution prior to 1860.
In the third to last paragraph, I think you mean to say that in terms of support for Trump, Brexit, etc. that (it being an old man's movement) "supports rises with age", not that support falls off with age.
Its not conservatism anymore, its billionairism. Billionairism has enabled, via Citizen's United/Mercer/Koch brother/Murdoch/Russian help, the momentary takedown of working people in America.
We actually don't need to move to the right (in fact just the opposite), we just need the Republicans to continue, for a short time, their masquerade of being the Party of "populism" (meaning nativism) exactly while they: devastate health care for millions; mine the economy and the future with a tax plan and military budget that will bankrupt us shortly (therefore threatening social security and medicare); remove common sense environmentalism (making the field of oncology a growth industry); pioneer depravity (e.g., Trump, Milo, Judge Moore, etc.) as a public figure lifestyle choice; recreate (as they seem driven to do like programmed robots) the economic conditions for Great Depressions/ Recessions; add another Forever War or two (to deflect from impeachment), etc..
In short order, say by 2018, when enough people have been hurt and Republican magical economic thinking has proven to be its usual disaster, the pendulum will quickly and massively swing back and the repair work can commence.
You know Thomas...there are so many of us...all we need to do is vote next time. You Trumpsters are the perfect catalyst. Think treason Thomas.
Liberals don't need to look in the mirror.
White Americans age 35-64 with a high school education or less who vote for Trump and Republicans do. They are dying faster than any other group and they're being killed by the Republicans they vote for.
Return to Case and Deaton's Deaths of Despair study. This subgroup of white Americans is dying mainly because they vote for politicians who take away everything that makes their lives worth living and who also take away the health insurance that would help them when they turn ill, physically and mentally. Whites in other countries are not dying at these rates. But it is only recently that Republicans realize their voters are literally dying so we now see the billions being poured into opioids - though not similar money poured into job training, re-training, public education, or American infrastructure work which would provide jobs. This subgroup is also a reluctant but heavy user of Obamacare - and this subgroup will suffer disproportionately when it is gone.
These are the people who need to look into the mirror and realize they are assessing blame everywhere except the Republican Party. Some of them can change. If they don't change, there is no Republican in America who can stop Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. For all the noise this subgroup makes and all of the pundits strangely defending them, it's still sounding like the last gasp of one group in an American survival of the fittest.
6
I find it odd that only Liberals need to take their fingers out of their ears. Those of us on the Liberal/Progressive side daily see the destruction of so much that we value or hold to be quintessential American values, but nowhere on the right do I see any attempt to include, listen to, or empathize with our fears and concerns. On the contrary, all I see is name-calling, vilification and the rush to ram through complex legislation that will have a fundamental effect on our country and our lives - and if these words and actions are not anti-American and anti-democracy, I no longer know what is. Perhaps the right should remove its fingers, as well as take off its blindfold.
1
Whose fingers are in whose ears, again?
Victory! Victory! Look at all our winning! But at what costs? On whose dime?
How much of that 3% is being reflected in those small towns? How much of those 24000 points? Certainly, they won't be seeing the gains from the tax bill, which may well be a literal death blow in some. Their own corporate masters have already spoken on these matter, and they've nonetheless willingly handed them the reins.
So whose 'way of life' is truly being protected? Why is a crippling unwillingness to rationally evaluate their own decisions being heralded? Why is future-blindness being effusively championed? Where is the 'party of responsibility' when it's their turn to be responsible?
The only argument that shakes out from this in the end is that it's somehow the responsibility of the American left to become more adept at hiding their real feelings and policy goals to keep the right from shoving their policy forks into the electrical sockets. Impossible. Implausible at best. How do you save someone from themselves?
Why do WE need to meet THEM and not the other way around. Instead, we should be working to make this a country where 1 person = 1 vote vs. what we have now where rural white areas get a disproportionate share of power.
Your message, in short, is that there is next to no hope that we might truly make America--understood generously as founded on the ideals [if not in every respect the reality] of liberal democracy--"great" again. Trump knows how to drain the enthusiasm for such an inspiring project. Such an accomplished demagogue!
Yeah, I just don’t buy it. Here’s why.
Objectively, the Republican base is misled. Start with climate change, go on to tax policy, then immigration, then economic policy, then a host of other topics, and you’ll find that Republicans believe lots of things are just not true. They watch Fox News, which tells them things that just aren’t true and fails to tell them things that are true.
Sure, there would be differences even if everyone were on the same page vis-a-vis the facts, but these differences would be far less stark than they are today.
Don’t tell liberals to take their fingers out of their ears. Tell people who watch Fox News to put their fingers in their ears.
They certainly do. If we liberals don't take our fingers out of our ears we will soon be toast.
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This opinion piece is well stated. As an older White man in a rural red county within a blue state I believe the essay articulately summarizes modern American Democratic politics. I strive to embrace many of the values of a JFK Democrat not a Republican but am reluctant to accept the path forward blazed by the modern Democratic party. I do not trust it. It appears to have little tolerance for ways of life outside its glitzy central city headquarters. It has little loyalty. The modernity it embraces often seems to be that of Robespierre. We feel exclusion, dismissal and a constant righteous indignation from within the walls of the central cities. I pine for embracing modernity in the spirit of problem-solving and being taken seriously and respectfully as a denizen of a rural community bearing the brunt of many "liberal" environmental and safety initiatives. The party can heal itself, but it needs to embrace rural needs, understand them from rural perspectives, and chart a path forward inclusive of all Americans. Recently it has not done the heavy lifting, it only appears to engage those who resonate an intolerant, narrow perspective of American value. With less observance of due process and respectful inclusion in Democratic party practice, my fear is that eventually a righteous central city can ignore others and impose whatever they wish because they claim it is good for us. For many it could be a perfect tyranny -- an evolution to Napoleon.
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In attempting to rise above the Left's smugness, Edsall doesn't try hard enough, and in his final paragraph falls right back into it bigly. Predictable. I recommend to him a year of visiting small-town rural America and learning something about values there.
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I come from small-town rural America. There are fine people there, who live their lives with good values. However, through parochialism or anti-intellectual prejudices, many of them aren’t accustomed to rising to the level of abstraction that you need to understand the bigger picture. When things go wrong, the local factory closes, etc., they often don’t realize who’s actually doing this to them. They’re like people who run in the wrong direction from a fire—in this case toward the agents of plutocracy rather than rising against them.
While you addressed Edsall, I'd like to reply. This mid-sized city liberal grew up in a small town and will not be going back. The constant pressure to conform to everyone else's limited set of cultural and moral values was suffocating and repulsive to me even when I knew of little else.
Since the election I've had debates (ONLY in my head) with my 80 year old Republican Step-Mother, damning her for the tactics of the GOP and Trump.
She is a lovely human being. We've always gotten along and know where we differ politically. Now we NEVER talk politics for fear a real riff might ensue.
It baffles me how she, a smart women, is unable to make the connection between the good lifestyle she enjoys and the fact she is a recipient of a California State Teacher's Pension and an excellent Health Care Plan, and
yet, vehemently opposes Teachers Unions, the ACA, and bemoans having to pay California State Taxes, the source of funding for her great CA Pension .
Pre-Trump she'd regale me with the fact that she didn't have to pay State Taxes in Washington (Her 2nd home) and is well informed about the teacher pensions her counter parts receive in WA which are paltry by comparison to the largess of California's that she's been benefiting from since retiring.
Pence and Ben Carson are her kind of guys solely based on their stands on Abortion and Sanctuary Cities. The likelihood they would ax her Pension and Health Care, if they could, completely seems to evade her. Go figure. I can't.
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Several of the Stenner quotes fascinated me, but I want to focus on this one:
Consider some of the core features of our ideal liberal democracy: absolutely unfettered freedom and diversity; acceptance and promotion of multiculturalism; allowing retention of separate identities; maintenance of separate communities, lifestyles and values; permitting open criticism of leaders, authorities and institutions; unrestrained free expression (of what many will consider offensive/outrageous/unacceptable ideas); strict prohibitions on government intervention in ‘private’ moral choices.
I consider myself to be a good ol' fashioned American liberal, but I object to many of the items on this list. It is my impulse to argue that these are characteristics of what might be "leftists" and not liberals. Am I off base? If these are core liberal assumptions, then no wonder we are viewed with skepticism by the reasonable and scorn by the irrational.
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I'm curious which ones you object to and why? There are several on the list that are difficult for me to accept wholesale but I find all of them to be beneficial to society. The problem is if you accept limitations who gets to judge where the limits are? I don't trust the judges will reliably side with me so I'd rather be free of them and risk some occasional things I disagree with.
This piece is a diversion. The basic problem is a hijacked government controlled by a few bonkers billionaires. These wealthy weirdos fund disinformation, election campaigns for sycophants, and media domination by propaganda. They seek to establish a “Christian” Theocracy which views the “good” people as the deserving rich, and views the poor as lazy sinners who can be set right by a dose of strong medicine (no handouts).
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This strawmans a lot of liberal beliefs and behaviors. Edsall and Schnurer never specify how the "blue America over the last decade declared war on the 'red way of life.'" Was this when President Obama increased health coverage for many white, rural Americans? Was it when the economy recovered (albeit slowly and unevenly) from a massive recession?
Presumably Edsall means gay marriage, generic rhetoric about inclusion, and limited environmental regulations — notwithstanding the fact that EPA rules did not cause the decline of coal mining.
The "war on coal" example exposes this argument's flaws. Democrats want to price carbon and reduce emissions to fight climate change, an existential global problem. Clinton proposed aid to communities impacted by these necessary economic shifts — but she spoke awkwardly about "putting coal miners out of business," a phrase that both the GOP and the media intentionally misinterpreted in portraying her as, just like Edsall does more broadly here, elitist and out of touch. Since then, Trump has offered coal country nothing but a megaphone to "channel their anger" against groups they despise and wrongly blame for their problems, which, not incidentally, aren't being solved. And this is the fault of the left?
Both parties bear responsibility for the decline of small-town economies. Only one party, the Democrats, believes the government can and should adopt policies to promote their recovery.
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Well said.
Frankly, I am sick and tired of the alt-right’s condemnation of caring, patriotic, and educated people, i.e. Democrats. I busted my butt, spending 10 years of my life and money I didn’t have (yes, I worked my way through college), getting a graduate degree. Why? Because I wanted to give back to Society. I sacrificed plenty.
Now we have a party whose supporters vilify the very virtues that make our nation a great one and our people knowledgeable and resilient. The educated learned to question authority, challenge spurious assertions, and hold those in power to account for their actions. The “right,” rather than critically evaluate our government, uses terms like “politically correct” and “liberal elite” to disparage and denigrate those virtues.
We will not submit to this institutionalized ignorance and disdain for reason and logic. Don’t blame us for casting deaf ears. Our ears have, and will continue remain open, as long as conservatives recognize that intelligence and learned behavior is not a threat but a way forward.
ALl of this is interesting. However, the special benefits and rights which the Southern and smaller states have historically obtianed now leave the coastal states where most of our populace lives, at a severe disadvantage in the actual process of voting. In the last election, merely having more votes than the GOP candidate did nothing in the way to help the Democrat to win the election. If-or as long as-red states or Southern and small states can exercise an electoral superiority without having more votes then Democrats, any and all arguments about liberal or conservative politics are moot.
No parliamentary democracy has such problems. In 196o, a similar problem seemed to be arising as the Republican candidate and his supporters suggested that it was never made clear precisely which person get the most votes. Since then, at least, the GOP has done it's absolute best to ensure it never loses national elections simply because it doesn't have the majority of votes.
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Some Germans thought they would win right up to the final battle for Berlin. If you want to see the future of America, come to California not Kentucky.
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I much, much, much prefer Kentucky or Kansas.
Oh please. Not another one of these articles. Hey Mr. Edsall: when will you write a piece lecturing red-state Americans on the need to deal with facts and reality. When will there be a scolding about the damage it does to a democracy when people refuse to educate themselves about the threats of authoritarian rule. I can't wait for your ruminations to them about what it means to turn a blind eye to everything this country was built on, which is what these people are doing. If liberals' biggest sins are trying too hard to insist that all Americans are treated equally and being doctrinaire about accepting the facts of global economic change and trying to figure out the best way to deal with them, then sue us. I'm sick to death of hearing about how it's all the DONOR blue states' fault that red states are miffed. A break me a freaking give, Yoda might say.
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You have exemplified the point of the article by failing to actually read and understand it. It's about how attitudes of the left galvanize opposition on the right precisely because they are dismissive, as you have exemplified. It is not a piece about who is right or wrong in their beliefs, but you can learn that for yourself if you actually read it.
The sooner we liberals recognize that we are just big bags of chemicals and electricity strolling around mindlessly like the chimpanzees that we are, the sooner we can successfully create the circumstances to manipulate other big bags of chemicals to agree with us. Also, we need to keep in mind that the average IQ is 100.
4
As an American currently traveling in Germany, I see a lot of parallels between what is happening in America today and what happened in Germany in the 1930s. I tend to be pretty independent but considering what Hitler's plan to make Germany great again did to the world, I'll take the liberals over conservatives right now. That said, yes, we need to listen to one another and not close our minds and hearts to people in need whether young or old, rich or poor, religious or atheist, white or brown, etc. Elitism doesn't help anyone. But, turning a blind eye to a pathological liar, sexual assaulter, and authoritarian dictator wanna be isn't going to be good for anyone in the long run. Bernie has been every bit as much about helping people who have lost out economically... but he really means it.
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In the past, change occurred slowly enough to allow acclimatization for the more rooted side. Now you have one side still changing but slowly (red America) and another (blue America) changing very rapidly. There's no common ground, no middle.
Trump may not have been the best for red America but it's easy to see why those voters sure won't going to vote for Clinton.
Eventually, I think this country will have to partition itself into different regions that are more or less autonomous so that each region is still a "liberal democracy" in terms of civil rights but with different kinds of glue holding it together: faith, religion, family, in those red area and globalization, cosmopolitanism in blue areas.
5
I'd like to hear examples of situations where a society changed in some significant way without bloodshed or revolution of some kind (I'm not being glib either, I'd like to know). The pattern I've noticed is that traditional cultural values are those that serve the existing power structure. When circumstances change and render them less useful the existing power structure tends use their power to entrench their values in the hopes the shifts are temporary rather than evolve to fit the new circumstances long term. They get continually more desperate and aggressive until the changing circumstances finally overwhelm them and they break and recede within a generation or two.
As a Google definition has it, populism is "the belief in the power of regular people, and in their right to have control over their government rather than a small group of political insiders or a wealthy elite." While this is in accord with the general understanding of the "Trump base," it by no means encompasses "the conservatives" who voted him into office This warily triumphant segment of the American electorate also includes wealthy longstanding Republican members of the corporate and investment classes; military hawks who endorse America's readiness to go to war wherever and whenever it deems necessary; suburban, upper-middle-class parents determined to gain as much financial worth as possible in order to send their children to good colleges; and first-generation entrepreneurs and small businessmen from many different countries who believe passionately in American individualism and free enterprise. It is this by no means monolithic body of Americans who are turned off by the Democrats' criticism of traditional American "rights" (e.g. gun ownership) and their insistence on inclusiveness and sharing. And it is to them that the Democrats must address new messages and policies that align self-interest with that of the country as a whole.
4
Quite right. Its hard for someone who has watched farm after farm go out of business. watches local factories and stores close forcing young people to leave to feel much sympathy for the democratic doctrine of inclusiveness does not include them and their plight. Its made worse by some of the remarks, "clinging to their guns and religion" or casual comments about the rural and especially southerners.
But its not limited to the US and to the Right. Bernie Sanders also reflects dissatisfaction with the liberal order of things. Brexit received massive support in the Northern rural parts of the UK while being rejected in the urbanized south. Don't forget the Alternative for Germany which recently got into the Bundestag. All these are manifestations of dissatisfaction with the established system. All including the real conservatives need to meet the needs and aspirations of the non favored and increasingly left behind portions of the populations.
I’m seeing several liberal authors argue that liberals have to be more thoughtful and understanding of the key values of conservatives, and how moving the US toward more liberal values is threatening to them. I agree with that, and believe it is crucial to try to understand why people on the other side feel the way they do.
But I’m not seeing the same concerns from conservative authors about their loyalists needing to be understanding of the other side. I admit I don’t spend as much time with conservative-leaning media as with liberal-leaning, but I try to - in keeping with the goal of understanding why the other side feels the way they do.
Does this same attempt at consideration exist on the right, and I’m overlooking it? Or is there a fundamental imbalance between the two sides, where the left - with its empathy and open mindedness - is expected to compromise, but the right - with its autorotation ideals - is given a pass on compromise? I’m not offering a conclusion, as I just don’t know.
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"try to understand why people on the other side feel the way they do."
Um, because they hate:
Black People and non-whites
LGBT
Issues of importance to women (reproductive rights, equity, etc.)
Non-christians (in some bizarre view of what "christianity" means)
So, when we "try to understand" in the context of what liberals/progressives/democrats ought to do to embrace these "values" please let me know who and what is on the chopping block.
1
Adult citizens who are Trump voters willingly, knowingly, and actively voted for dishonesty, laziness, corruption, racism, and misogyny. They deliberately voted for a man who mocks the disabled and brags about committing sexual assault. No liberal made them support these things.
Trump voters own every ounce of responsibility for this disaster, no excuses. "You broke it, you bought it."
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Postulation about the "authoritarian personality" goes back over 60 years, and there is overlap between this trait, education, career, culture, region and political affiliation. But political affiliation has not always been this way; or the voting blocks aligned as they currently are. Populism and Fundamentalist Protestant religious fervor once belonged to the Democrats as they championed the farmer over the banker. Irish, Italian and Polish immigration into the ranks of labor added this block of Catholic voters to the Democrats. Shifting economic interests (as the needs of blocks of voters changed), affected the political alignment. With the growth of mass-media the political machines died. Today political affiliation has more to do with personality, group cohesion, spirituality and sense of choice than pure economic interests. This may change as Trump "populists" find this rhetoric missing from the tax-bill or the evaporated infrastructure initiative. How this sorts out is anybody's guess. But the country, the world and technology in general has never been here before so I would not look to the past for guidance.
3
If Blue America made some effort to understand Red America we might not be in the current mess. Self righteous support for unlimited illegal immigration has infuriated the majority of citizens, just as it has in Europe. Instead of showing sympathy for those who have lost their unskilled jobs or seen wages driven down by the flood of low paid foreigners, progressives call them racists and 'celebrate' anyone who sneaks into the country and must work for a pittance. Progressives would swallow live coals before denigrating any aspect of any other culture but gnash their teeth in fury at 100 million citizens who own guns and cherish that right. Progressives are filled with outrage on behalf of 'people of color' but scathing in their contempt for the 'white privilege' of impoverished rural whites.
And then progressives are stunned when all those deplorables vote for the first candidate who pretends to notice and care about their concerns and values. Liberals used to be smart - why are progressives so foolish?
20
@JBR
The arguments that you make are largely emotional, they do not stand up to a factual analysis, and emotion is what drives the red staters. The textile industry has largely disappeared in the South--formerly a source of good jobs--because that work has been transferred to Asia, not because of immigrants. (Trump-branded apparel is also manufactured in Asia. It's still smart to vote for him?) In what industries have wages been driven down because of "low paid foreigners"? Were Americans clamoring to do farm work, but were driven out of it by Mexicans? And how have those foreigners pushed Americans out of joining the unions that pressured manufacturers in the past to pay a living wage? Explain how twenty school children could be shot to death, and all that could be done about it is to offer "thoughts and prayers," and to resist any effort to restrict gun ownership, although the research is definitive that more guns in a society equal more gun deaths.
Liberals are stilll smart: they aren't arguing against climate change and evolution because the facts don't support alternative arguments. They also note the disasters that have befallen the economies of Louisiana and Kansas as a result of the "conservative" belief that tax-cuts equal economic growth. Is this you example of Republicans being smart? Oh, and George W. Bush also cut taxes, but we still had the Recession of 2008. Liberals are smart enough to notice these lessons, but apparently not Republicans.
Evidence for your claim that "Blue America" supports "unlimited illegal immigration"? Oh, right, there is none, it's just a figment of the conservative imagination.
As if Red America is making the slightest attempt to understand the Blues... Please stop the hypocrisy.
The unpleasant truth is that today's white non-college educated working class person is not your grandfather's white non-college educated working class person.
Eighty years ago, there were many very intelligent people who did not attend college because of financial circumstances or because of discrimination against their race, religion or gender. Henry George, arguably the most brilliant American economist of the 19th century, left school at age 14. President Harry Truman was not a college graduate.
Today, with many exceptions, someone under the age of forty who was never interested in college probably is not very smart. That makes them vulnerable to the lies that got Trump elected. Even some with college educations are not able to understand that NAFTA and trade agreements in general increase employment and standards of living and that immigrants are not responsible for slow economic growth. Democrats can never hope to lie better than Trump.
Trump would have no hesitancy in stating after any tax bill is passed something to the effect that: "The middle class got a giant tax cut and the rich did not, don't believe anyone who is telling you otherwise, especially the fake mainstream media, your accountant or H&R Block..."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4126478
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"Someone under the age of forty who was never interested in college probably is not very smart." Here are two alternate takes: Some attend college because there are no jobs for them in a place like NYC, and they believe college will tide them over to a better future that unfortunately never arrives (but that does leave them with student loan debt). Elsewhere, those under 40 don't need to attend college because skilled trades are in demand and pay well enough to start a family and buy a modest house in what liberals call flyover country. If I had a chance at a do-over at my age, I now know which I would have chosen.
3
"Today, with many exceptions, someone under the age of forty who was never interested in college probably is not very smart."
You have nothing on which to base this statement. Lies DID get Trump elected, but they were the lies from the left and from Hillary. You are still suffering from the cognitive dissonance so prevalent on your side. You are in disbelief that an intelligent person, having seen and heard all the same things you have, could possibly come to a different conclusion than the one you did. Well, my friend, you had better wrap your mind around it.
Mr. Edsall conveniently leaves out race - as usual
15
I appreciate much of what is stated by the various authors that Edsall quotes (as he himself acknowledges "at length"). However, if one of my community college students submitted an essay that was sewn together to this extent from block quotes by three different authors, he would not pass the assignment.
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