This is precisely the thought process that brought us to the current situation. Democrats decided to try to get along with white working class voters for 50 years to advance economic and social justice together. But it turned out those voters had never been convinced that social justice was important at all, so they happily turned around and voted a white nationalist into office along with large majorities to ensure he can enact his agenda.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree if you think the Democratic Party over the last 50 years was some sort of great champion of economic justice. I look back and see a party that has gradually given up on broad economic justice and instead has followed a program of "right-wing economics, except not being as blatant of an asshole about it". Hence the slow rightward drift of our economic policy in this country over the past 50 years.
That's kind of why any broad, universal, simple to understand programs that would benefit all people (including the minorities they claim to care so much about) are frowned upon, while modern Democrats love proposing means-tested, complex, segmented programs that preserve large corporations like the ACA and then
act shocked that people don't praise them for it.
And of course, unions haven't been a key part of any national Democratic policy in a long time, which one would think would be a minimum standard for "progressive" economic policy.
Their policies have still helped in some ways, but it has still left a ton of people behind. And even when it does help people, they have a hard time communicating that fact because their obsession with "wonkiness" inherently makes things more politically difficult for them. Sure enough, a part of the group that's left behind is the "white working class" that gets so much press, but it's not just them. The working class
in general has been left behind. And in a lot of cases, it's been Democrats doing the harm, not just Republicans, because the modern Democratic Party has fallen under the spell of that economic ideology as well, the ideology often described by everyone's favorite n-word, neoliberalism.
Sure enough, immensely important gains have been made in other aspects of civil rights (often by dragging the national Democratic Party along due to grassroots movements, and not because of any visionary leadership by national leaders themselves), which is why Democrats are still able to appeal to women/minorities, but it's happened at the same time as increasingly widening inequality and economic hardship.
So the answer to "why wouldn't I try that" is mostly "because the historical record on it is not convincing."
Depends on if we're talking about campaigning or governing. Campaigning on economic justice has been tried successfully by Democrats, even if they don't always govern that way (Clinton and Obama come to mind).
Those Democratic voters who are okay with white nationalism are exactly the people I'm talking about. Preventing Trump from getting to the White House is a political question for them. It's an existential question for me. That's why we lost.
It's not like "right-wing appeals to white nationalism in elections" somehow just started in 2016, and it's not like Democrats have only been losing in 2016. Trump's a buffoon who took more advantage of it, but that's a matter of degree, and not kind. And it doesn't explain the lower turnout for Democrats in general, even before 2016.
Black and brown folks (who make up a large percentage of non-voters, and a not-insignificant slice of Trump voters) weren't convinced by "we gotta stop the white nationalist!", so what's the political strategy for convincing them to turn out?
My end goal is for my family to be able to live safely in America. Elections are kind of secondary to that.
Judging by the reaction to the
election of Donald Trump, and how it's generally seen as
uniquely terrible within liberal circles, it seems that elections actually are kind of important for that, no?
My argument hasn't changed since the elections. I said then that Trump was a moral choice, not a political choice. I still believe that. The fact that large numbers of Americans made the wrong moral choice does not change my view, it merely sharpens the importance of communicating it.
Maybe too many people ignoring the fact that it is a political choice and just assuming everyone is automatically up to date on how racial oppression works is the mindset that allows Republicans to run away with elections in this country?
Of course, I'm not making an argument for abandoning morals or abandoning antiracism. I'm making an argument for
fusing those morals with a better politics instead of saying things like "Trump is not a political choice".
That said, people make wrong moral choices all the time, and it doesn't make them irredeemable. But absolution is not free. It requires contrition and confession. My expectation, mostly unfulfilled, is that people who claim to be allies would hold that line rather than working hard to give people forgiveness they haven't earned.
Who is saying anything about "forgiveness"? I'd rather build enough solidarity to win elections and keep people like Trump out of power. And solidarity is not the same as friendship or love, either.
You seem to be boiling this all down to people's individual moral choices, when this has more to do with systems of power leaving large portions of the population behind (and causing them to either abandon the political system entirely, or be seduced by demagogues).
That isn't me "forgiving" them, it's showing why the current strategy by the national Democratic Party isn't working. And it lets down the very people they claim to care so much about. So I don't know why "uh, more moral condemnations!" is seen as the only way forward for some people.
Conflating "white nationalism" with "racism" is deeply and dangerously incorrect and is another part of why we lost. I understand that most Americans have at one time or another considered or actually voted for a racist. One whole party is racist and the other one spends a lot of time faking it, so that's kind of inevitable. Electing somebody who explicitly campaigned on using the state apparatus to directly oppress people of color because they are people of color is different. I had hoped that people understood that distinction and cared about it. One of those assumptions was clearly inaccurate.
A Democratic president that numerous liberals swoon over is directly using the state apparatus to at best tweak around the edges to help some folks here and there, but not do anything to attack the core of what's oppressing people of color, and at worse, is
already actively oppressing people of color.
So if the entire message someone has is "yeah, but Trump will be worse!" for a lot of people that's not gonna be super convincing, because things are already so terrible. Which is why you have so many people who either 1) voted for Trump anyway because at least he was saying something different, despite acknowledging that he's also saying terrible things (and black and brown folks and possibly a majority of white women voted for him too!) or 2) didn't vote at all.
It's not about giving up and waiting -- it's the exact opposite.
My point is, before asking what we can do in order to win elections in America, it is necessary to first ask the question of whether it is safe for people of color to live in America, as it is currently constituted, at all.
It hasn't been safe for people of color to live in Obama's America, Bush's America, Clinton's America, Reagan's America, etc. If you're waiting on it to be safe for people like me before trying to win elections...uh, we'll be waiting a while.
This isn't a "both sides are exactly the same in every way" argument, but pretending like somehow these things uniquely started with the election of Trump in 2016 seems...odd. And I'd argue that the fact that a lot of people can plausibly say "Democrats haven't helped me either" is precisely the reason for the consistently low turnout in national elections, and what allows Republicans to still gain so much power in 2016.
And the losses by Democrats also didn't just start in 2016, as they've been bleeding seats for years now. So that's more evidence that this isn't solely a Trump/white nationalism thing.