The Extremist Wings Of Both Parties

[betsuni]

52. I was just reading something about this.

Before 1973 there were lots of good paying manufacturing jobs, increased wages, low economic inequality, union membership, LBJ had improved the social safety net.

"So what caused Trump's White working-class base to leave the Democrats? The short answer is the culture war. Not economic insecurity. And that war was started by the radical left. I was part of that, and everybody saw it happening. The counterculture made the news for years. ... Political radicalism was even more culturally upsetting to the White working class. Often this is excused by citing the radicalism of the civil rights movement, but this is wrong for two reasons -- that movement was not radical in the usual sense, and it did not upset and polarize the country. ... it rejected the dark side of radicalism that separates radicalism from liberalism, and it appealed to traditional American values. Then came the true radicalism of the '60s, beginning with Stokely Carmichael, who attacked MLK Jr. for being moderate or worse ... . ... After 1968 the anti-war movement went radical... .

"Sanders' economic theory says that between '64 and '72, the White working class, which was doing great economically, should have been swinging left, toward McGovern. But 20 million headed the other way. ... His theory predicts that restoring good jobs, rising wages and increased taxes on the rich, like we had before '73 would bring back the white working class. Yet, when we had all that, that was when the largest slice of the working class left the Democratic Party.

"Culture-war theory says that between '64 and '72, the White working class, which was then deeply offended by left radicalism, should have been swinging right, away from McGovern. And it was. ... McGovern was ridiculed as the candidate of 'Acid, Amnesty and Abortion.' This was an attack on the counterculture, the draft dodgers in Canada and the women's movement. Nixon implicitly blamed the largely-Black urban riots on the Black Power movement. ... They knew that culture-war issues were more powerful than a booming, low-inequality economy. Radicals don't get it."

Steven Stoft