The Fruits of Exclusion
Trump's madcap Presidency is grabbing most of the headlines these days. Most, but not all - the Democrats' internal disarray in the wake of their Biden-Harris disaster is too big to ignore or paper over. The fracture between liberals and leftists, one I've been pointing out for years, is threatening to get wider as the likes of Sanders and AOC seek to double down on progressive promises while the moderates and political tacticians try to distance the party from the Left's excesses.
Working class men, for decades a reliable and important part of the Democrats' voting base, abandoned the party in favor of Trump's MAGA message.
Party strategists want them back.
Thing is, they want to get them back without changing the behaviors that lost them in the first place. It's another iteration of "we need to deliver our message better" instead of an admission that the message itself is at fault.
What is that message?
It starts with the core of modern woke-progressive thought: the oppressor-oppressed duality. In their worldview, all interactions are about power. Those that have it invariably use it against those that do not. That this runs directly contrary to the free marketer's notion of voluntary and mutually beneficial interactions - a notion that not only works, but works so well it elevated human living standards everywhere it was embraced - is of no relevance. If you have the power, you are the oppressor, and you must either abase yourself or be abased by culture and/or government.
It's a zero-sum worldview that's disconnected from reality, but it makes wealthy urban elites and privileged young people feel good about themselves while giving them an excuse to look down on everyone else, so it persists.
Its exclusionary nature so contradicts the "party of inclusivity" message the Left chants incessantly that only Orwell's doublethink can explain how their heads don't explode.
To straight working class men, it boils down to, "you are the source of all things bad, but we expect you to vote for us anyway."
It's a message that begins with the young. The War Against Boys has beaten at least the last couple generations of young males into silence and withdrawal, and the denigration never lets up. Life has been made a minefield for them, but the Left doesn't care - and many consider it just deserts and a penance for the behaviors of those of previous generations - real and fabricated.
No wonder seven million able-bodied working-age men have dropped out of the workforce.
No wonder men are opting out of dating and pursuing marriage.
No wonder MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) is a thing.
Per the Left, everything about the average American male's lifestyle is wrong, problematic, and in need of change. Relationships have become minefields, with #metoo not only convincing women that men are predators but enormously increasing the risk of accusation and life/career destruction. The Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light fiasco illustrated the disregard that the Best-and-Brightest have for Joe Lunchbox. Now that Joe Lunchbox gravitated toward the more positive MAGA message, those Best-and-Brightest suddenly realized that there are a lot of Joe Lunchboxes out there and that their votes matter.
Working class men are just one of many constituencies the Left has turned off with its fixation on oppressor politics. Female athletes, parents of daughters, and many women in general are rebelling against the insertion of trans persons into women's sports, and traditionally women-only spaces such as locker rooms, rest rooms, rape crisis centers, and prisons. The Left's response is to slur them with the TERF label and call them bigots, but still insist that they vote Team Blue. Blacks are waking up to the "for granted" treatment (Trump won a bigger share of the black vote than any other GOP Presidential candidate since Ford) the Democratic Party has given it since the 1960s.
I covered this matter before, about two years ago. Before the Dems' political debacle in November 2024. Today, the attitude remains the same, but the landscape has changed. It changed because the toxic seeds of exclusion the Left has been sowing for years have germinated. The product of those seeds is not what the Dems expected.
Will they change their ways? Will they change the message? Much depends on who wins the battle for the heart of Team Blue.
Excellent post Peter! One of your thoughts truly capsulizes the Democratic Party’s failure -
“It's a zero-sum worldview that's disconnected from reality, but it makes wealthy urban elites and privileged young people feel good about themselves while giving them an excuse to look down on everyone else, so it persists.”
This is a relatively small group of self appointed superiors who have become wealthy and now want the power to tell everyone else how to live. The woke ideology is repulsive to normal people and until the leadership of the Dem Party realizes their issue, admits their mistake and strips power from those who created the problem, there will be continued shrinkage of the party.
Either power, money or both are almost always at the core of political issues and this one has both in spades. It is rare for the powerful to willingly give up their power and it is also rare for those who think they’re the smartest people on earth to admit an error. The most powerful contingent in the Dem Party seems to be the AWFLs (affluent, white, female leftists). Many are single and those who aren’t typically have few offspring, leading me to conclude that their shrinkage will continue until the Dems become irrelevant in most parts of the county. It can’t happen soon enough.
Perfect description: ‘…only Orwell's doublethink can explain how their heads don't explode.‘