Solidarity: A Lesson for the Democratic Party

In my last post, I defined solidarity as the act of showing unity in the face of a common struggle. Again, this does not mean that one has to agree with every single aspect of another person's ideology, nor does one have to endorse opinions that are problematic. Rather, having solidarity,especially in regards to class, means uniting against the domination of the elites while simultaneously engaging the problematic sectors of one's own class. Engaging those with contrary viewpoints is especially important in political organizing because it is the only way to expand one's base. Generally, there are three possible outcomes when engaging a person politically: support,opposition or indifference. This means that one group will already have similar opinions and that there is no need to overly preach to them. The second group on the other hand, will be too grounded in opposing opinions that they will usually not be swayed by logic or emotional appeal; rather a drastic event in their personal lives needs to occur in order for them to reevaluate deeply held convictions . The third group, which usually is the largest and most important, comprises of people who are indifferent and could be swayed to be a part of the first or second group. In politics, victories are usually won by two of the three groups merging together to beat the first group.

This could be a useful lesson for the Democratic Party establishment and many liberals who are a part of the coastal elite. For example, through out the last year Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, which was made up of the who's who of the Democratic Party, sidelined any rhetoric that displayed a broad based class coalition against the rich and powerful. When class-based rhetoric was brought up,mainly by Bernie Sanders and his supporters, the Clinton camp started a smear campaign against them, labeling them as "Bernie Bros" and insinuating that Sanders and his supporters were all just white men who were out of touch with women and minorities. Despite these claims being blatantly dishonest and erasing the identities of the vast amount of women and minority Bernie supporters, these claims lingered in traditional media partly due to the Clinton campaign's close connections.

Instead of adopting a clear political message, the Clinton campaign and the Democrats as a whole consistently portrayed contradicting images of themselves. For example, Hillary Clinton would claim that she was a moderate one day and a progressive another day. She would try to appeal to Hispanic voters by putting material comparing her to your abuela, while also previously calling for young children fleeing violence in Central America that were apprehended at the US-Mexico border to be deported. Hillary would correctly call out Trump for being a dangerous candidate while also having close relations with Henry Kissinger, a war criminal who is responsible for being the architect of a bombing campaign that dropped more bombs in South-East Asia than all of Europe during World War 2. Clinton would try to appeal to young black voters by going on TV and doing the Nae-Nae while also resembling a deer-in-headlights when a young black activist took her to task for her racially divisive "superpredator" comments. Despite all of these chinks in the Clinton armor, the Democratic establishment still had the hubris to think they were going to string together an ambitious voting bloc that included women, racial minorities and the LGBT community with the assumption that these groups would come out in droves for the Democrats simply because it was obvious that the Republicans were the bad guys. Yet when the results came in, Clinton lost the electoral college and the election had abysmal voter turnout, mostly due to the fact that Clinton and Trump were two of the most unfavorable candidates in history.

For those that live in liberal bubbles and follow politics regularly, it seemed like a no-brainer that a hideous narcissistic demagogue would lose to an establishment insider who had more or less followed the rules of the Washington. She had patiently waited her turn while her husband was in office. She bit the bullet when her husband publicly humiliated her in front of the world and stood by him. She helped build the political infrastructure for her family. She followed in the footsteps of Bobby Kennedy and won a coveted Senate seat from New York. She courted all the key Beltway players, be it key Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs or foreign governments like Saudi Arabia or surrogates of foreign governments like billionaire Haim Saban.

However, the truth is that most people in this country do not follow politics closely, as evident by the routinely low voter turnout, because they are most likely too busy working (the most overworked workers in the developed world). The average American does not have time to scroll up and down PolitiFact to see which political statements are true or false,they don't have the time or interest to read lengthy op-eds  written in the New York Times or Washington Post by writers that are totally disconnected from their daily struggle. For better or for worse, much of  this society would rather watch football to see the week's biggest play or the newest reality show to see the next level of human absurdity; this not unlike the waning days of Ancient Rome when the plebeians, who were similarly overworked by the patricians and equites, would flock to the stadia for the circus and gladiator duels. To win elections, one must be aware of the realities on the ground and the peculiarities of the people.

It should not be a surprise that a narcissistic scumbag, a sexual predator reality TV star was able to get millions of Americans to vote against their interests by using his sole talent: being a good marketer. Similar to Obama's 2008 campaign, Trump was able to capture the role of the outsider; someone who has the perception of being successful in his own realm (obviously with lots of handouts from daddy) and has not gotten his hands dirty in backroom deals. This message resonated with a significant enough portion of middle and lower income white people away from the coastal regions who were largely left out of the economic recovery after the 2008 recession. Obviously, the white middle and lower class was not the only group left out of economic growth, there's good evidence that black people of the same economic class have been lagging as well. Yet unlike with black Americans, there are not the same racial barriers against white Americans in joining the Republican Party. In contrast, many economically insecure white Americans actively delve themselves in racist rhetoric as sort of a

crutch against their diminished social status.  It is important to note that many of the perceived qualities of Trump are just perception, he has had a long history of leveraging his wealth to influence politics. Regardless of the facts, as this election cycle has paid little attention to them anyway, the election of Trump is just the next chapter of American absurdity as seen on TV.

A crucial lesson from this election cycle was the importance of narrative, because the average voter will cast their vote with their gut feelings, even if they might disagree with whomever they're voting for. This is evident by the large amount of former Obama voters who cast their vote for Trump. Similarly, white women were expected to support Clinton in the election especially after Trump's leaked off-the-record admission of sexually assaulting women, yet white women ended being a key demographic that voted for Trump. In interviews with these aforementioned groups, there are a variety of reasons they state for voting Trump. Some of them are tinged with racial animosity and nativist sentiments, but just as common are distrust of the establishment and economic uncertainty. Many of Trump's voters admit that he was far from a perfect candidate, but their rage at the establishment, which Hillary was a part of, was the reason for their vote along with his simple clear campaign message of redemption for those left behind in the recovery after the last recession. In comparison,some Democratic strategists were worried that their candidate lacked a clear message months before the election but these voices were drowned out by the Clinton loyalists.

As the days have passed from the election and people have gotten a chance to truly see Trump starting to navigate his way around the office, more and more of his voters are starting to regret the choices they made last November. Aside from just anecdotal evidence on Twitter, it is clear that Trump is massively disliked because he has historically low approval ratings for someone who just won an election. For example, many of the coal miners that heavily supported Trump in Appalachia are now worried that they will lose their healthcare coverage due to Republican plans to overturn the Affordable Care Act. This concern is not limited to just Appalachia, but rather throughout the country. In another example, a lifelong Republican challenged Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about his plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act. For those on the left, this evidence shows that now is the perfect time to organize and build a broad-based movement to push back against the neoliberal policies of the last 4 decades. As stated before, there are are three possible outcomes when engaging another person politically. With this much disillusionment among Trump voters, especially those who are furious at the political establishment and economically precarious, there is a good chance of building a left movement based on much needed economic redistribution, genuine plans for racial justice, strong support for LGBT rights, continued support for women's rights, environmental sustainability and anti-militarism. All of these principles were a part of the Bernie Sanders campaign in some form, which is why he was massively popular with young people of all races and genders, independents, and the white working-class. Sanders' popularity with the white working-class and struggles with black Democrats often led Clinton supporters to smear the Sanders camp as racist, but the fact is that age had much more to do with this than race. Older black women are the biggest group within black Democrats, and older women in general overwhelmingly supported Clinton, probably because of a sense of loyalty from the 1990's. In contrast, young black voters were more likely to support Sanders compared to Clinton.

With all the evidence presented above, the talking point that the white-working class is a lost cause for Democrats seems a little lazy. There is no doubt that an enormous percentage of Trump supporters are hideously racist and sexist. As for the others who weren't, it is extremely disappointing that Trump's dog whistles and his many of his supporters' behavior weren't enough to turn them off from voting for him. But many of these people, especially the white-working class also supported Sanders, a candidate who clearly said black lives matter, who unequivocally supports women's rights , who had support from many prominent black celebrities and nominated militant black activist Cornel West to the DNC platform committee. An explanation for this phenomenon is that politics is the process of determining who gets what. In supporting Bernie, many of these people who probably hold many racist beliefs chose to overlook his support for racial and women's policies that were distasteful to them because of the personal benefit they saw in Sanders' economic populism. This also why many of these voters supported Obama in 2008 and 2012; they were attracted to his economic populism. Obama's hard- hitting campaign ad from 2012 is exemplifies his populist campaign strategy. The same phenomenon can also explain how Peter Thiel, a gay billionaire, consistently supports Republicans because the financial benefits for him outweigh their anti-gay agenda. Accordingly,laying blame only on racism and sexism for Clinton's loss in 2016 seems like a convenient excuse to cover up the numerous flaws in the Democrats' campaign strategy.

Going forward it is imperative that the many disillusioned Trump voters are actively engaged and informed of the material consequences of a Trump presidency, such as attacks on public education and the elimination of health insurance coverage for millions, and are presented with radically different alternatives. Some starting points for these alternatives could be advocating for a more progressive and re distributive tax system, free publicly-funded education from the primary to higher-secondary levels,repealing anti-worker legislation and strengthening labor unions, universal basic income, moving from the heavily privatized health insurance system under the Affordable Care Act to a single payer system where Medicare benefits are extended to all Americans. Along with these economic issues, the push for justice for victims of institutional racism (which many times inter-laps with economic issues), systemic gender discrimination and LGBT discrimination should be advanced as well.
However, it seems like Democratic elites have not learned their lesson and instead of working to make up lost ground, they're too busy celebrating coal miners losing health insurance, supporting milquetoast centrist candidates that refuse to take basic stands against the influence of the wealthy, and joining Republicans in defending pharmaceutical companies. Following the leaders of Clinton camp,the trend of castigating lower class white folks and all of middle America seems to be a popular trend among upper class coastal Clinton supporters on social media, with this post by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Melinda Byerley exemplifying the class contempt. Almost all of these people are white, well off and looking for a source to feed their superiority complex. It would a be a faux pas for them to publicly show their class contempt against people of color because they wouldn't be able to maintain their liberal status, so they conveniently use poor white people as an easy target. In the post, Byerley chides Middle America for its social backwardness, but if this brand of elitism persists, the resentment between the so-called flyover country and the coasts is only going to increase. Not to mention, blaming the Middle America for all the ills in this country totally exonerates the racism and inequality that takes places on the coasts. Most of these people have no interest in actually doing the hard work of organizing and changing attitudes on the ground, mostly because it would be a drastic change from their cozy upper-class lifestyles. Instead, they want to absolve themselves of blame and hop on their lifeboats while the whole ship is sinking.

To clarify, nobody expects historically persecuted minority groups in this country to be on the front lines in engaging racists and changing hearts and minds. That effort should be lead by ideologically committed white leftists.The racial privilege of white leftists means they are in a safer position to reach out to the white working class. Likewise, I am in no way minimizing the viciousness of prejudice in this country; as a brown kid with a funny name growing in the Midwest during the height of the War on Terror, I have had my chance to experience how ugly racism can be. Therefore, it should be the utmost priority of those seeking a more just future to smash out fascism and other reactionary movements at their base and not allow them to grow any larger. This will not happen by alienating the entire white working-class. To take a lesson from history, the Black Panthers allied with the Young Lords, a working class Puerto Rican organization, and the Young Patriots, a working class white organization to form the Rainbow Coalition. As a result of their cross racial working class alliance, the Young Patriots decided to drop Confederate imagery from their organization in solidarity. This is not to say that black people need to take the initiative to reach out confederate flag wielding white people, but rather that exposure to class based solidarity along with strong anti-racist ideology can be effective in combating racism.