Grassroots community org
1/18 very belated
this is true bottom up vs astroturf
hmmn, really is just activist?
esp after defeat, the answer is always BUILD A MOVEMENT? // REPAIR COMMONS?
msnbc organizer said dnc wd not give 10 to 15k for x or y, but spent billion on ads that did nothing?
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AN NO LNX
Betrayal of the American Dream: How Democrats lost FDR’s middle class
Thom Hartmann November 13, 2024
The great lesson of the election of 2024 is that, to a large extent, class has replaced race as the single most potent political dividing line.
In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took office and began a great experiment. Was it, he asked, really possible to create a society where more than half of a democratic and capitalist nation could enjoy a middle-class lifestyle? On the day of his inauguration the best estimate is that only about 15 percent of Americans had reached that economic milestone.
Back at the founding of our republic, several philosophers and economists suggested it was possible for a majority-middle-class society to emerge on this continent. Adam Smith (of the 1776 Wealth of Nations fame) wrote a book Theory of Moral Sentiments arguing that if a nation were to intervene in the marketplace in “moral” ways that uplifted working class people, such a society could emerge.
Thomas Paine similarly argued in Agrarian Justice for a number of progressive reforms including what today we call Social Security, a guaranteed minimum income, free public education, and the inheritance tax.
NOW READ: The truth bomb too many Democrats need to hear
But from the beginning of America until 1933 most of these dreams were unrealized.
As Smith had intimated in Theory, unregulated capitalism would always produce the outcome Charles Dickens later wrote about in the 19th century: A top 1% that owns about 80% of the nation’s wealth, a middle 3%-5% professional class (doctors, lawyers, small business owners), and around 95% of the people representing a desperate working class living in abject poverty.
(In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge was the middle class; his company was so small it had only one single employee, Bob Cratchit, who represented the bottom 95%. The 1% don’t even show up in most of Dickens’ stories.)
FDR, though, with help from Francis Perkins, his wife Eleanor, and economist John Maynard Keynes thought he could tame capitalism and the capitalists themselves (he accusingly called them the “Economic Royalists”) and set out with his New Deal programs — legalizing unions, minimum wage, unemployment insurance, Social Security, government subsidies for the working poor, etc. — to create a vast American middle class.
This was the beginning of the modern Democratic Party, and the middle class was its great accomplishment; by the time Reagan took office about two-thirds of us were in that group with a single paycheck earning enough to buy a house, a car, take an annual vacation, put the kids through school, and retire with dignity.
Reagan broke with FDR’s policies that he’d once supported (in exchange for the promise of riches and a career from his second wife’s father), and took a meataxe to the New Deal. He busted unions, cut the top income tax bracket from 74% to 25%, and embraced free trade, allowing American manufacturing companies to go offshore in search of cheaper labor.
The result is that only 43% of us are in the middle class today. Adding insult to injury, it takes two full-time workers to get where a single paycheck could in 1980.
This was the beginning of the downfall of today’s Democratic Party, which has been buffeted by the twin winds of Reagan’s neoliberalism from the right and so-called “woke” identity politics on the left.
Trump and his Republican buddies cynically attacked Democrats for their embrace of Reagan’s policies, claiming that the shrinking of the middle class was because Black people and women were competing with white men for all those good jobs and Hispanics were diluting the labor market. At the same time, they argued, Democrats had gone too far in embracing marginalized minorities, particularly (in this election) the Trans community.
Ironically, Kamala Harris never once mentioned the Trans community while campaigning over the past three months, but Trump and the GOP relentlessly beat her over the head with a Willie Horton-like ad about giving free surgeries to Trans immigrants in prison. In this regard, the group using identity politics for political purposes was the Republican Party.
But the biggest lesson of this election is that class has supplanted race and other identity markers as the issue that motivated voters. Working class people in or aspiring to the middle class — including Hispanics, young white men, and to a smaller extent African American men — rejected economic policy (like Harris laid out) and racial, gender, or age cohort identity in exchange for the promise of good jobs and lower prices.
Sure, there was still a lot of identity politics at work: Trump’s anti-Trans ads are the best example, along with his relentless insistence that our nation’s immigrant population are mostly murderers, rapists, and thieves. And it may have been decisive on the margins.
But at its core, what we’re seeing in America is a realignment around class (its own form of identity politics). The middle class and its aspirants that had been supporters of the Democratic Party since the 1930s are now in the pocket of Republicans.
Part of this is the result of a massive, 40-year-long propaganda effort by billionaire-built media empires including talk radio (also in Spanish), three rightwing TV networks, Sinclair radio and TV, social media, and tending-right newspapers. Part is because in 2010 five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized billionaires owning politicians and overwhelming elections with the “free speech” of their money.
But most substantially, as Bernie Sanders pointed out last week, it’s the result of the timeless class struggle between working people and what the GOP calls “the elites” (college-educated, upper-income professionals). The former broke big for Trump, the latter for Harris. And millions of minorities, particularly Hispanic men, rejected identity politics for the GOP’s class struggle pitch.
This dynamic is almost identical to the class struggle that brought FDR into power in 1933 and got him elected four times to the presidency, except that the party labels are now — hopefully temporarily — reversed.
The challenge for Democrats is to engage in their own class warfare, particularly since a good chunk of the Party (like the so-called “Problem Solvers Caucus”) are still on the take from big corporations and billionaires.
In this, the Congressional Progressive Caucus can be a great force to reclaim working people, rejecting both Reaganism’s hold on the Democratic Party (both Clinton and Obama embraced neoliberalism, and Biden’s rejection of it is largely unknown) and the notion that voters will always respond to race and gender rather than class.
If Democrats are to regain the working class as a solid and permanent constituency (which they owned from the 1930s to the 1990s), in other words, they must amplify Biden’s and Harris’ fights for higher taxes on billionaires and lower taxes on working people, universal healthcare and free college, reasonably priced housing, raising the federal minimum wage, protecting the right to organize, increase Social Security, and turn billionaires and greedy CEOs into an identifiable group voters can rightfully loathe. Attacking Republicans on the Supreme Court and their Citizens United decision is also vital.
As Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear wrote for The New York Times yesterday:
“I won re-election 12 months ago by five points in a state that Donald Trump just carried by 30 points. … The focus of the Democratic Party must return to creating better jobs, more affordable and accessible health care, safer roads and bridges, the best education for our children and communities where people aren’t just safer but also feel safer.“
This doesn’t mean Democrats have to abandon allies representing racial, religious, and gender minorities as some are suggesting; that would be both a betrayal and political suicide.
But it’s way past time for a significant recalibration, particularly at the grassroots/working class level. As Pete Davis writes in The Nation:
“Instead of funding itself primarily through membership dues, the [Democratic] party offers fancy events for the wealthy and ceaseless, disrespectful texts for the rest of us. Parasocial relationships with celebrities and famous politicians are emphasized over real relationships with fellow neighbors and local chapter leaders.
“When you go to Democrats.org, clicking ‘Take Action’ does not direct you to a page with your local Democratic committee’s meeting times and locations. The bolded call-to-action button on the party homepage is ‘DONATE,’ not ‘JOIN.’”
Thus, as Trump rolls out his cabinet and policies — which will primarily benefit the morbidly rich and giant predatory corporations — Democrats must pound on the class warfare aspect of what the GOP is really up to.
The Democratic Party has done it before and held power for half a century; they need to do it again. With gusto!
NOW READ: The truth bomb too many Democrats need to hear
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https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/florida-felon-voting-rights-restoration-campaign-threshold-getting-november-2018
A grassroots campaign to amend Florida’s constitution to restore the voting rights of upwards of 1.5 million Floridians who have been convicted of non-violent felonies and completed their sentences is poised to qualify for the November 2018 ballot.
By Wednesday, the Florida Department of State has certified more than 745,000 petition signatures of the 766,000 needed to get on the ballot. The proposed constitutional amendment also has to meet signature thresholds in 14 legislative districts and has done so in 12 of them, campaign organizers said.
“In total, we submitted well over 1.1 million petitions to the supervisors of elections offices all across the state, from Pensacola to Key West,” campaign manager Jackie Lee said on a conference call Tuesday. “And all the petitions, we think, where we needed to verify, were also all in by December 29th, to ensure that we could make the ballot. We all know they needed to be verified by February first. So because of all of your hard work, we had them in on time. We’re... actually even excited to submit a couple right after that date because they kept on coming in from all around the state.”
The felon rights restoration effort is one of America’s most important electoral initiatives in 2018. More than 10 percent of Florida’s voting-age population, 1.7 million residents, have lost their voting rights under the nation’s most punitive felon disenfranchisement law—a statute that has its roots in the Old South’s racist Jim Crow culture.
“This amendment restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation,” the legal petition states. “The amendment would not apply to those convicted of murder or sexual offenses, who would continue to be permanently barred from voting unless the governor and cabinet vote to restore their voting rights on a case-by-case basis.”
Florida is the third most populous state, with slightly more than 20 million people. In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 1.2 percent, which was slightly less than 113,000 votes, to win its 29 Electoral College votes. Should 60 percent of Floridians—the threshold for passage—who vote next fall approve the constitutional amendment, it could deeply alter the state’s politics as well as its criminal justice system.
The campaign’s organizers, led by Desmond Meade, a former felon who became a lawyer, are casting their effort as a redemption-steeped crusade to give a second chance to all of those who have done their time for non-violent crimes. In a teleconference organized by Floridians for a Fair Democracy Tuesday, he repeatedly emphasized this was a moral crusade and avoided any discussion of the political consequences.
“I want to make sure we are oriented right back where we started from,” Meade told the 150 activists, including clergy, on the call. “When each and every one of you made a decision to be involved in this campaign, it was based around people. It was based around the personal stories of your family members and your friends who were looking for second chances in Florida. And I think it is this orientation that has not only gotten us this far, but will take [us] across this finish line. It’s not about anything else. It’s not about politics. At the core of this, it’s about everyday all-American citizens, who just want a second chance.”
Meade’s framing, which reflects his life story, has resounded because Florida has so many ex-felons who cut across society. Only 30 percent are black, campaign organizers said, and a great many were victims of overzealous drug war prosecutions. Evidence of that deep resonance can be found in the fact that nearly a quarter-million of the petition signatures gathered were collected from volunteers, not paid circulators.
“We are very confident with moving forward with the campaign,” said Lee. “As of right now before the call, we are at 745,000 verified of the 766,200 that we need. So we are approaching that overall number and we are also verified in 12 of the 14 [legislative] districts that we need. So we are marching forward.”
Emphasizing Redemption, Not Political Power
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