One of the interesting parts of belonging to this message board is observing the financially privileged defend politicians and policies that harm the vast majority of Americans...and do so with their nose in the air. Some of the posts that I have seen here remind me of the 1%ers drinking champagne from a balcony while Occupy Wall street was marching beneath them. They mock our circumstances and let us know in no uncertain terms that our lives do not matter to them.

The 1% become so sure of their dominance that they hold the rest in contempt.

We sold the jobs to overseas locations where they pay pennies the hour. We demanded all those excessive perks like pension programs, paid holiday and sick leave, employee health insurance, union negotiated contracts and wage levels. We forced the wealthy owners and managers to rip us off. We forced the investors to off-shore the goods and the work.

Yeah it's tough at the top. But someone has to do it, if only to teach we lazy, unproductive slobs a lesson.

I have heard those same words, almost verbatim, from family members directed at me.

"Badge of Courage" material , eh?

The whole thing hinges on the obvious irony that "we" could not have destroyed the economy along the lines implied in the statement.

Economists have over and over remarked, contrary to the mythology of vulture fund managers, US workers were ever more efficient and productive throughout the period when labor costs and worker productivity were offered as excuses for stripping corporate cash flow and off-shoring middle class jobs in manufacturing and services.

Thank you,

Everyone I know is struggling in some way, even though employed. Some close friends lost their home due to an ill timed job loss and bank deceit.

Many of my neighbors have college age children and none are going to even state universities because they can't afford to send them.

elections, not just the presidency. Your issues are not with your fellow DUers. Your issue is with voters in states like Kansas that voted twice for Brownback or Michigan that voted for Rick Snyder or Wisconsin that voted for Scott Walker twice. That's where the problem lie, not on DU.

Until White working class voters, in particular White male working class voters, start voting their economic interests over their racism nothing substantive is going to change.

Democrats in general don't vote in elections other than the Presidential.

Democrats need to be conservative to win.

FACT: Most poor and working class people don't vote at all, and who can blame them? Nationwide, 50% of Americans don't vote at all. It's not because they're stupid. It's because their lives get worse and worse, no matter which party is in power, with the Republicans playing top-down class warfare and the Democrats either playing half-hearted defense ("We shouldn't make people quite that miserable. How about only a little miserable?&quot or rolling over and playing dead ("We had to vote for that because it was going to pass anyway&quot , rarely coming up with bold ideas of their own. Yeah, those bold ideas wouldn't necessarily pass the first time. Neither did abolishing slavery or women's suffrage. But somebody had to start the fight and bring those reforms out of private conversations and into the public sphere.

The Establishment Democrats and the Republicans end up battling for the votes of the soccer moms and office park dads, and given the strength of the fundamentalist megachurches in the suburbs, the Republicans almost always win.

Note that Bernie Sanders won both Kansas and Wisconsin this year. This says that there is an untapped strain of frustrated left-of-center people who have been just waiting for a politician who has a track record of fighting for what he believes in.

knuckling under and started speaking out on behalf of traditional Democratic values.

Here we had a governor that went hot and mean after labor in that state. The Democrats in the legislature pushed back hard, going so far as leaving the state in order stop the bill. Labor groups pushed back hard against Walker.

Yet, the reliable White working class voted him back into office. So, when you complain about poverty and low wages, don't blame the DNC or DU. Lecture the White working class.

At the same time, there are plenty of folks here at DU who really ought to be Republicans in my view based on their views about the economy, income inequality, jobs, trade agreements, etc.

White working class voters are the problem.

Part of the problem was low turnout among Democrats and high turnout among Republicans whipped up by right-wing media. Another factor was repeated polls indicated that more than half the voters objected to recalling a governor who had not committed an outright crime.

This same person thought that calling a recall election was a tactic on the part of the Establishment wing of the party to defuse and co-opt the mass demonstrations that were occurring on a daily basis in Madison. He had contacts among the organizers of the demonstrations, and they were working on and gathering support for a general strike in Madison, where Walker was really hated. However, when the Dems announced the recall drive, the demonstrations fizzled away.

... or just through incompetence, undermined the entire anti-Walker movement.

First he pushed corpo-Dem Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker in 2010, as the candidate of choice in the recall election.

Then he pushed the primary for the recall back, allowing Walker's team to saturate the airwaves with ads before our side even had a candidate. Many of those ads did feature people saying the governor should not be recalled when no crime had been committed. The state party never pushed back with the fact that Wisconsin, unlike Ohio, could not have a referendum to nix a bill. Our state constitution gave us only the recall of elected officials to effect such changes.

Then he pushed for the recall election to happen in June, 2012 instead of waiting until November when we could have tagged onto the Presidential election and traditionally larger turnout.

After Walker won the recall, Tate abandoned the 30,000+ recall Walker volunteers, who instead of becoming the engine that drove progressive politics in Wisconsin for a generation, became disenchanted. They received not even a single email from the state party thanking them for their efforts in collecting over a million signatures, not a single message stating the party would continue the fight. What they got instead, was another corpo-Dem (Mary Burke) pushed on them to lose to Walker yet again.

Either gross incompetence on the part of the state Democratic Party or deliberate sabotage of a popular movement.

Poor people across the racial spectrum do it. Constantly. In all fairness though, it's nextto impossible for the poor to not vote against themselves, since it's so very, very rare that a politician comes up who actually addresses those interests and needs - and being poor means you can't seek office yourself..

vote for economically progressive policies and politicians. It's the White working class, in particular White working class males, that vote against progressive economic policies.

They tend to vote Democrat more than Republican, mostly because the Republican party is actively hostile to nonwhites. This does not translate into economic progressivism though, because both parties favor neoliberal policies, and favor the upper middle class and wealthy. Thus poor people of every race usually have no choice but to vote against their economic self-interest, becuase the other option is not voting at all... Which may in part explain the usually low turnout among poor voters.

Explain Florida. Pull the demographic voting patterns from those state elections and see for yourself. There's not enough votes for economically progressive candidates to win in a lot of states because of the mentality of White working class voters.

If you look at those areas of the country that do elect economically progressive politicians, WA, Oregon, VT, CA, NY, Mass., MD, etc., you will see that it's a coalition of COLLEGE educated Whites, AAs, Latinos, and other ethnic groups. That's the progressive coalition in America in a nutshell. Where White working class voters out-number those groups, you will see regressive pols win elections.

This explains why WA and NY have a $15 min. wage, and states like KS are going broke.

won handily in deep south states with significant majorities among POC.

It's not just white working class that "vote against their economic interest."

It's people who don't have the time to do research because they're kept too busy just struggling to survive.

It has a lot to do with trusting that our representatives will actually represent us, because we voted for them.

That's as far as I will go on that subject here.

WA, NY (state not city) and KS are all pretty close in racial demographics

And then there's the Primary, where a majority of nonwhite voters favor a more fiscally conservative candidate.

The point, Yavin4, is that there are few options for the poor when it comes to voting. You have neoliberal Democrats and neoliberal Republicans.

Wendy Davis ran against Greg Abbott, a hard-right Republican, in a state with a lot of poor people and a poor social safety net.

So what was her big campaign point? Reproductive rights.

An important issue, no doubt, but as her marquee issue? In a state where poverty and ignorance reign?

The stance appealed to educated women and to those who had personal experience with those issues, and they seemed enthusiastic, but it was as if she forgot that most of the women in Texas are either fundamentalist Protestants or Roman Catholics. There is no way most of them would vote for a "pro-abortion" candidate. I have no doubt that most Catholic priests and every fundamentalist preacher ranted against her.

Now what if she had campaigned on raising the minimum wage, bringing public services to poor neighborhoods (I've heard reports that city governments don't bother to pave streets or extend sewers to the poorest neighborhoods), and other bread and butter issues and backgrounded reproductive rights, she might have done better.

What plays well in Austin may be a turn-off in Amarillo.

I'm a white working class (recently retired on minimal SS), female in Texas. I could tell you all the reasons why you are wrong, but I doubt you would listen.

I won't even pretend to know what demographic you fit into. I do know however that you are spewing talking points, that in no way resemble me, my family or my community.

Thank you Scootaloo.

I can not tell you how many times I have encountered people here in Texas who have said they wish they had voted for the candidate that cared about them rather than the candidate they were told could win.

The Democrats running the party are as right wing as they come on economical issues. They only pay lip service to working people while they're campaigning then its back to business as usual. What really has to happen is to get rid of Citizen's United and change the election financing laws so that they aren't beholden to their big donors just the same as the republicans.

When neither party has anything to offer the working people, many just don't bother to vote.

bargaining. They even pushed hard for a recall vote of Scott Walker. Dem. governors in states like CA, WA, and NY passed and signed legislation raising the min. wage to $15. Prime examples of Democrats offering something substantial to working class voters.

So, your statement:

As does your statement it's all white poor people and non-white vote for progressives. They may vote for Dems, but then not all Dems are progressive.

There are certain people high up in the Democratic Party who would rather see a Republican in power than a progressive Democrat. The voters are simply following their lead.

and they voted against it. I really don't know what more you wanted those WI Dems to do.

...

It was the Clinton's in cahoots with the Bush's that handed us Texans this awful Government we have.

Shame on Cecile Richardson for being on board with the very people who brought her mother down.

helping the working class and poor.

This is what some in the AA community think:

Bash Hillary all you want, but neither Hillary, Barack, DWS, the DNC, the DLC, nor the corp. media is the problem. I know. It's difficult for some people to look at the data trends over multiple decades and multiple election cycles and see the results for what they are. I know. It's easier to believe in conspiracies or cabals or some secret organization.

Fact of the matter is, that since the 1964's Civil Rights Act and the 1968 convention, White working class, non-educated males have voted against Democratic candidates, including very liberal/progressives ones, in local, state, and national elections unlike the working classes in other racial demos.

That's the issue. That's problem. Until you can accept that, no progress will be made.

But non-whites voting for Dems doesn't mean they are voting for progressives or even particularly liberals when it comes to economic issues.

No progress can be made until you realize "Dem" doesn't necessarily mean progressive not even liberal and hasn't for a while. It ain't 1968 any more. Things really change in 1980.

than having an honest discussion about the aggregate effects of decades of neoliberal betrayals and the entrenched systems that keeps these measures in place.

i find it sad that so many Ds are comfortable scapegoating white working class americans with this race-baiting horse shit. this rhetoric is no different than Trump's, it's just serving a different Master.

There are things we can change as members of a party, and some we can't. This messaging that DWS and the DNC has embraced about the "un-educated" whites in "flyover states" is abhorrent, but what's really awful about it is that it masks what people can actually DO to change things.

you want to bellyache about "uneducated" whites? let's not make going to college an ordeal that you have become a sharecropper to CitiBank for, for the rest of your life. Kids who forego college are making the rational decision that they can't afford it, and can't mortgage their future. this situation came about as a matter of policy, and it will be changed as a matter of policy. it's not racism, and it's a lazy, sloppy, dangerous lie to make it about that.

building amongst the conservative wing of the Dems, along the lines that economic progressives are actually just poor, uneducated, racist white people, which is supposed to paper over the fact that comfortably ensconced elites who don't mind at least nominally supporting racial and gender equality are actually quite strongly opposed to any across-the-board measures to level the playing field.

They are terrified of ideas like universal college education or healthcare or a strong social safety net, because these things actually threaten their privilege.

It's not going to work, but it is kind of nauseating seeing it attempted with such arrogant glee, as though people will never catch on.

…..rich country. Shameful.

Very, very awesome!




It's easy to talk of compromise when you are not the one being compromised.

Eloquent expression of what so many feel. And absolutely right on. Have heart -- we are going to win this thing; but the guillotines may have to come out first.

Make the lives of the corporate sellouts unbearable.

The only politicians that escape the onslaught of anger will be the progressives looking out for the vast majority of Americans who KNOW they are being ripped off, and robbed by their owners.

You speak for the silent uncounted and unrepresented (except for a few) people. There are more and more living in cars, trailers and on the street, who have to face floods, fires and extreme temperatures and the real world.

Fear is why people don't face death, poverty or illness until it is upon them. People in the US are kept in a state of puer aeternus--the eternal child, or in a state of juvenile arrested development. When you don't grow up, you don't develop a sense of social responsibility. In this society, people are enabled to be adult children with tons of money, power and weapons--who display no greater wisdom than bullies in a playground, or spoiled kids who don't know how to feed themselves, clean up their own messes or even share their toys or food.

Fear is what drives people not to look directly at death and poverty--because without this money and all the props it buys, that is where REALITY exists.

The occupy movement, Bernie Sanders supporters, progressives and socialist movement are made up of people who have taken the red pill of the actual world and broken out of the illusion matrix this moneyed class has created. Climate change will wake the rest up shortly, it won't be long.

anyone who is not having some economic problems. You have explained very well.

May we all get out there and vote and see if we can do something about the neglect our government has been doing for at least since 1980. And that our party has been a part of since 1992.

Well said.

We used to be middle class. It's exhausting to live on the edge.

it seems that they still don't get it.

Did they not hear of Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton who pulled the rug out from under the working poor. They even gave him another chance and elected him again, and he did more damage.

Apparently they still do not believe that the Democratic Party decides who runs and gets elected. There have been only a few outliers that have made it past the DNC guards, who fight for the people. And, even some of these people have been corrupted once they smell the big bucks to be made in higher positions in government.

Blaming white males is such a dodge, since they are the only group that you can bash and get away with it. Your condescension toward the poor is all there to see. If only they had voted? They have voted for decades and it's gotten worse. Their choices, evil and less evil. And if all goes to Party plan, that will again be the same choice.

And, let's talk voting. How many people have lost their right to vote because they don't have a permanent address? How many are so overwhelmed by just surviving that voting is the last thing on their mind. How many people have given up voting because no matter how or who they vote for, it never matters. The average person on the street cares about having a roof over their head and food to eat, not who sits on the Supreme Court. Does that shock you? If you were poor and understood what it's really like, you wouldn't be surprised at all, and you wouldn't even consider the lesser of two evils.

Z

so fooled by Bill Clinton. Before 1980 we pretty much had a party that could be trusted to represent us. We were still living by the values of the party of FDR.

Then we found ourselves in the nightmare of raygun and trickle down. We understood we did not want anymore Rs.

When Bill Clinton the smooth talker came along we THOUGHT that he is a Democrat. We trusted him because of that and he used the same old slogans. We thought we were getting the old party back in power. We did not for the most part see the pictures of him setting with GHW Bush and George Wallace. We also did not see the pictures of him and the southern governors standing with their backs turned to the black prisoners as they promised to be tough on crime. And we absolutely did not understand the use of dog whistles. We were completely fooled and many of us also never realized that everything had changed. That the party was no longer on our side.

Many of us are just now learning what Bill and Hillary and all of our traitor congress persons are doing to us.

We are no longer fools - our eyes are open.

How many don't get time off, and/or don't have transport to get on lunch to vote?
How many can't afford to(or keep the job if they do it) give up 1-2 paid hours get to, stand in line at, vote, and get back to work?

but then you have those who say well, you can always vote absentee. I guess they don't understand the planning it takes to get that to happen. Most of the poor that I know, don't have a plan for their lives because they are always living by the seat of their pants. If ANYTHING goes wrong, it's a scramble to get things moving along again.

What is not understood is that voting is a luxury for some people. And, when you are dealing with just trying to keep the basics going, luxury is just not on your mind.

Z

it's pinned now

i thought it made such a good use word 'poorsplainin' and then went into detail so well it deserved it

again..thanks

... has been very successful lately.

It's even a physical problem now that cities have
found a way to price them out to the suburbs
and exurbs.

Raging against a tide does not prevent the tide but one can always cut off ones nose to spite their face, I suppose.

rather than talk about the very real issues in the well written OP. What a complete fail.

to the nth degree. Well said.

And seeing some of the posts from obvious Hillarians, they don't and never will get it. They are RW Authoritarians and like their kindred spirits (Republicans) they cannot relate to a reality like yours until (and unless) it jumps up and bites them in their own personal ass. If it's not happening to them, it doesn't exist. I used to think this was only a condition that occurred republicans. Apparently, not any more.

Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Good post.

Thank you.
I stand with you.

K&R

.. doing IT stuff for a company that has been flying in folks from India so we can train them. People just have no idea the extent to which we are all being sold down the river. Yesterday we had a video conference with our "team" in India .. it was three of us and a room full of people on the other end, every one of them replacing Americans who had built the company up from almost nothing and then let go. It is atrocious and none of our politicians seem to have a clue as to what is happening, nor what to do about it. They all just say we "need more education". But I am training people who supposedly have degrees in computer science but do not even know how a file system works. At this point I am just hoping I can make it to social security eligibility age before I get let go from yet still another company even though all my reviews have been exemplary. I am flat out exhausted from the stress.

Excellent post, dragonfli.

Then my dad died and I wasn't poor any more.

I had to turn in my poor card.

That's why I don't post here. Yeah, I know all about being poor. It's just no longer appropriate to claim it.

I've not been truly poor (knock on wood), but I'd like to think I have some empathy.

that so many people in my neighborhood are living, if you can call it that, in what used to be motels on the main street in my area.

These places are tiny. I cannot imagine spending my day in a small cubicle in a crowded office somewhere and then returning to one of these tiny rooms with, I suppose, an attempt at a kitchen in one corner right close to the bathroom, a couch, a TV and a small table. It is no wonder we have a drug problem in this country.

I read today that the City of Los Angeles is going to refurbish old motels into housing for homeless veterans. That is a good thing because at least people have a bed to sleep in at night.

But overall, we need a little more working together to make life good for each other. Living in a motel room may be bearable for a single adult, but for a family???

Bernie is our only hope when it comes to changing the attitudes of Americans toward each other so that we can all have dignity in our lives.

Some refer to this as the bad transmission problem. So many families who are dependent on their cars are just one bad transmission from being completely screwed. Too many better-off families have no real sense of how sketchy life in the USA has become.

I find this to be an appropriate descriptor.
Is there a version of the invective 'uncle tom' as it applies to class?

(or precariats in denial) and Chicago's cemeteries
white-collar, but 60-70-hour weeks here

I have an idea for you to get rich: WRITE A BOOK! You express your thoughts and feelings so comprehensibly and passionately, it would really sell big time. The fact that you sometimes write under the stress that Bernie described so well is astonishing, really.

But in the very near future, I hope the bad day you're having today turns around for the better. And quickly.

Not too long ago I was living on a shoestring, paying more for childcare than rent, having to budget which days to eat.

And that was before the crash.

The Democrats don't even dare mention the poor any more. They might lose corporate support. And never mind talking about meaningful policy that actually helps the poor and working class. Heaven forbid! The republicans might object.

Many Democrats have no problem with their candidates and leadership making huge, obscene amounts of money at the corporate trough, then entering government and doing corporate bidding--in the name of helping the average person. For some Democrats it is a sign of success and to be praised.

Meanwhile the earnings of everyone but those at the top continue to decline.

They feel the need to sell the "The economy is great!" myth because there's a (D) in the White House, even if it's not reality.

It's a shame, really. The rhetoric is great politics, while meanwhile the people starve.

It's tough world out there. I don't see how a lot of people manage to get by.

I keep thinking *this* will be the year that the poor and working class rise up, realize they have a tremendous amount of political power and then vote.

Sadly, what I keep seeing, as a person who was born in a rural place and grew up poor, is so many misplaced priorities by the people still there, including most members of my family.

Independent fundamentalist Baptists sects rule there. If people bother to vote at all, they vote based on race, abortion, guns... it's never for the candidate who has the potential to help them. And the members of these fundamentalist churches pat themselves on the back about how patriotic they are.

Trump's lies appeal to them. They want to make America Great Again, and post about it on Facebook. I'm not sure what they want, really, or what a great America looks like to them. None of them seem to be able to explain it.

Thanks for this post. I am on ssi trapped in the suburbs. I see stupid people making
Believe they are more well off than they are all the time. But the truth seeps iwhen the
Suv looks beat up and so many lawns lay untended you know the stress of poverty has
Come home to roost. When people are hostile and food carts carry much less in the store
Reality is sinking in these middle class people are finding out what poverty feels like
And as they fall maybe thier eyes wi open before they land on the cold hard ground of
What its like to be stranded in the burbs no money no car housing in danger and realize
What fools theyve been.

they might be older people or they might be younger people, but they are all witness to what is happening in their world and are speaking out in some fashion.

Will it matter this year or maybe 10 years from now, who can predict, but we cannot continue on the same path of diminishing a large segment of our population and expect them to always go along.

Maybe things need to get worse before they get better, sometimes through our own volution or maybe through unintended consequences.

Through all this turmoil and hardship we are just pawns to the elite and this has been going on for decades. The millennials want change and some of us boomers look and say we have seen this same game played for our entire lives.

Even if you did everything right you are just one major hardship from being on a shrinking ship.

Wishing for a better tomorrow

Nails it once again. Thank you!

read it right here on DU! no need to poorsplain to them!