I always knew Sklansky would have an account here!
I also supported the candidate favored by lawyers when I was a high school student and when I was a college student studying marxism, before I ever considered going to law school. My outlook on politics is much more informed by philosophy and history than law. To the extent it’s informed by law, it’s awareness of the large disconnect between policy goals and actual implementation of the legal means to achieve them.
Lol. The US is a fucking shithole if you’re a member of the PROLETARIAT and not a bougie, elitist, smell-your-own fart Simp type.
But since you want specifics…
Approximately 23 million people are paid between $7.25 and $11 an hour. 42.4% of working Americans make less than $15 per hour. (Then you can pay Inso’s landlord 50% of your monthly wages to pay off his mortgage).
Public education is a complete clusterfuck. Average cost of college for the 2017–2018 school year was $20,770 for public schools (in-state) and $46,950 for nonprofit private schools , only including tuition, fees, and room and board. K-12 has had funding cut so much that schools in my state had to go to a 4 day school week in many districts, all while paying teachers starvation wages. All this for the 26th ranked public education system in the world.
The United States prisoner rate (number of prisoners per 100,000 people) is 737, the highest in the world. The population is overwhelming black and brown (and poor. prolly deserve it) and is incarcerated at a ridiculous rate for non violent drug offenses.
The increasing political polarization (thanks Rupert Murdoch!), idiotic gun ownership and violence oh and Health Care! But you know, gotta make sure we prop up the insurance industry making record gains in our for profit healthcare system. The Health Care system alone is a fucking disgrace and makes me ashamed to be American.
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Ok, great, but your point there about supporting Warren and not a candidate favored by waiters making you a “class traitor” was ridiculous. Words have meaning, especially to mathematicians and philosophers. If you think something else in your past makes you a class traitor for some other reason, ok, whatever, that’s not what you posted or what I responded to.
And when I suggested that you might be a class loyalist it had nothing to do with being informed by the law, but by being biased by being a wealthy lawyer. Like if I suggested that coal barons voted for Trump it wouldn’t have anything to do with the act of extracting coal, but with the act of protecting their class interests.
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So, assuming Bernie is done in politics, what’s the plan now for the just and virtuous to seize power and implement universal goodness? Is it rebirth of the union movement, for the waiters or the world to unite and demand 20% tips, for the dialect of history to reveal itself in the unfolding of the plandemic?
(I support the first two but don’t think they’d get us very far.)
Are you asking me? I’m voting for Biden. I presume you’re doing the same. So our plans are identical. Something else about my posting is offending or scaring you.
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I see this debate as going back to Hobbes/Rousseau and, in a more concrete version, Hamilton vs Jefferson. I am strongly on the Hobbes/Hamilton side of things. Most of Hamilton’s opponents aruged he was a monarchist lacky and elitist who cared nothing for regular people. In his defense, he laid the foundation for the US. To my mind, good ole ordinary Americans are how we got Trump.
Btw, a couple of days ago Matt Ygelsias tweeted out some quotes from Marx saying that Lincoln was a simple, decent guy who shared the virtues of regular folks, but it was Andrew Johnson who would show the true power of class conflict when he seizes and redistributes the wealth of plantation owners.
<$50K: 52/41 Clinton
$50K+: 49/47 Trump
Source, and if you think about it, it’s a weird claim to be pressing where the loser won the popular vote, but I guess Republican talking-points look pretty good if they allow you to shit on the poors.
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Hillary won by 8 points with people making <$50k/year and Hillary and Trump split people making >$100k/year evenly. Some people will never absorb this information.
Trump won because too many white protestants hate Mexicans.
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That’s interesting?
I’m not a Marxist.
Now how about you actually answer the question. We are talking about trends over time.
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I see any situation where Trump exceeds 15% as damning of “ordinary Americans.” They cling to their guns and religion and conspiracy theories and “heritage” or they put their ignorant faith in Comrad Putin and the glorious Russian people, or they are the slightly taller and possibly one shade darker Hutus, and someday they will have enough power to kill us all (if not through the ballot box, then through the inexorable march of technology).
I want to amend this slightly. The primary reason Trump won is because of Parties and Party Loyalists. The biggest block of Trump supporters by far were just people who more or less unthinkingly vote for a Republican no matter who it is. He won the primary because out of 17 candidates he was the man for the white protestant racists and they made up a big enough block to dominate a fractured field.
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Blaming poors for Trump is the most on brand thing I could imagine. I wonder if poors would make better choices in the voting booth if they were healthier, better educated and had a more equitable share of the surplus of their labor? Nah, better stan for a senile rapist who will ensure the status quo remains for Simp’s social class. The elites in power have done a phenomenal job the last few decades for them.
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The question wasn’t directed to you you. I thought you were a anarchist sympathetic leftist democratic who has too much sense to actually believe that stuff but would like them to be viable.
I wouldn’t have thought it needed to be explained because it’s so damn obvious, but every Dem candidate including Mayor Pete has a higher favorability rating among people of color in that poll. Not hard to understand why in a country where blacks vote 90/10 Dem and whites vote 60/40 GOP.
This is basically true. Same with Pete Wilson in like 1996. How’d that work out? It basically destroyed the GOP in CA.
No no, I meant the ball’s in your court regarding the demographics of Sanders voters. You can present some evidence to support the idea that they’re predominantly white males, or you can mumble some ineffectual snark and slink away like normal.
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