Sunday Musing July 9 2017

Whoa, there was a lot to think about in today's NYT op-ed section.  I will have to email RedStateVT one of them because I don't think he reads this blog anymore and I know he is not blogging anymore. It is a piece on what has become of conservatism written by a Conservative.  I found it fascinating for its insight into what is necessary to win elections and have sufficient support to enact policies.  Trump won the election but didn't campaign on the GOP policies that they want to enact and now they cannot implement them because democracy does work, albeit in a very messy manner.  In this author's mind one problem the GOP has is that they won the tax issue in the 1980's and cutting services further undercuts this issue for the GOP today.  So he thinks Conservatives need to find a positive message to unify around.

I don't take a great deal of comfort in that so I will go to my Indivisible Meeting today.

Link to "Can Conservatives Find Their Way"

I would like to point out that Democrat's need to find that positive message as well.  Donald Trump won the election because he gave a sufficient number of voters in a sufficient number of states hope.

This is exacerbated by the rise of Consumerism which has a distasteful side effect of something I know RedStateVT and I agree on.  The rise of the Kardashian culture.  A fashion columnist  highlights the similarity between consumerism and politics today.  Trump mastered that.

Link to Politics as a Consumer Decision

And finally a writer discusses the interaction of class and racial identity when it comes to personal decisions and certain realities that are confused in the political discussion as well as in the lowest personal level of navigating society.

Link to "Who Do We Think of as Poor"

This author has some fascinating facts that the GOP needs to ponder as they develop policies for their rural voters

"It’s tempting to say I thought anyone who worked couldn’t be poor. That’s naïve. Real wages for the two-thirds of Americans without a four-year degree have dropped since 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile the cost of a degree has roughly doubled over the past three decades. Today, half of American jobs pay about $37,000 or less each year, a quarter pay about $23,000 or less, and a family of four qualifies for SNAP at $32,000 or less. No wonder just over half of all SNAP families work, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. In America, “real” poverty is not about a lack of work, but a lack of compensation."

"It’s also tempting to say I balked at food stamps because of the culture in which I was raised: rural, white and working class, in a state that went to Donald Trump. Most poor families I knew as a kid avoided food stamps; they believed in bootstraps, not getting help. But to say this was only about independence is to claim an innocence I didn’t entirely possess."

"The truth is there was a shameful idea woven into my conceit of self-reliance, something so ingrained in American culture I’d never thought to say it out loud: I didn’t really think I was supposed to get food stamps because I was white."

"Having an implicit belief that poverty didn’t really happen to white people did me more harm than good, and nearly prevented me from seeking help I needed. It also ignored reality. While it’s true that blacks and latinos disproportionately live in poverty, if you analyze who gets food stamps, they are most likely to be white."

The author goes on to highlight "that urban poverty is dominated by people of color while rural poverty is dominated by white people."  But most people in the media who cover poverty are urban and college educated.  This skews their coverage in certain ways that focus the poverty issue as a problem of color and while I know the Democrats don't see it that way, it has an effect on voters.

"Covering poverty as if it is predominantly a black issue is a problem. It’s a problem because it can suggest that black suffering is a natural fact rather than a manufactured problem we should correct. It’s a problem because it fosters resentment against communities of color from economically struggling whites, who have some reason to feel their hardship is played down. And this all creates a political problem: the obliteration of the common ground that being poor can help illuminate across racial lines."

Politics is a bloody complicated process as every voter has a different mix of issues that will drive their voting decision.  It is the politician's and political parties task to discern which mix of issues will gain them sufficient support to govern and implement policies.  I believe this is something that both the Democrats and Republicans have lost sight of and that is why we have a President Trump.  The Electoral College matters and Congress matters.  

As much as I hate to say it because the Electoral College gave us both Bush II and Trump, the founder father's of this country really believed in the power of collective majorities made up of individuals and that is what they empowered in the Electoral College and Congress.

Lots to think about in today's paper.

P.S.  Somewhere in the last few days I read an article on Legislative District Reform.  It basically promoted the idea that a certain number of Legislators be elected on a wider basis than the gerrymandered districts that promote partisanship.  In many states that would force certain politicians to focus on the middle of the political spectrum more than they do now.  The article has a path to create this process, but I don't recall it.  Since what I am really feeling sorry about in all these articles today is the decline in the class of professional politicians who focus on the middle, I think this idea might have merit.