Woke White Educated Liberals vs. the Working Class

     “If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are right now.” 

          Senator Bernie Sanders, 2007, on Lou Dobbs' show on CNN

Politics have evolved. The big divide in the Democratic party isn't Bernie people vs. Hillary people, nor is it Bernie/Warren people vs. Biden people. The new divide is over education levels, and it was revealed in the disappointing Hispanic vote for Democrats.

Today a comment like the one Bernie Sanders made in 2007 would be understood to be an archetypal Republican talking point.  He sounds Trump-y. By 2019, when Democratic candidates for president were jostling for attention in New Hampshire, Iowa, and in televised debates, leading Democrats could barely admit to any enforcement of national borders. Some of it was increased Democratic identification with victims, be theyracial, ethnic, religious, gendered, or immigrant. Democrats were on the side of the oppressed. They were nudged to that position by their most politically engaged supporters, coming primarily from the ranks of prosperous, urban, White, educated, and highly ideological political activists. 

Barbara Jordan, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Barack Obama are all on videotape saying that too-fast immigration was unfair to the working people who are here. They said immigrants working on and off the books drove down wages. Meanwhile, it was business-interests aligned with Republicans, up to and including Ronald Reagan, who would speak in favor of immigrants. 

Democrats and Republicans switched. Republicans spoke of immigrants as irredeemably "foreign" coming as they were from Latin America and Asia--not northern Europe. Democrats saw immigrants as another group facing discrimination--their mission to fix. Republicans decided Democrats were motivated by trying to stack the vote with future Democrats. Democrats thought Republicans were motivated by racial animus.  Click: Immigrants to Texas become Texans

Reality is scrambling the presumptions of both parties. It turns out that Black Americans supported White centrist Biden, not the vanguards of progressive thinking on race. A great many Hispanic voters--who Trump openly insulted as criminals, rapists, and "not the best"--supported Trump.

Democratic thought leaders at the point of the progressive spear are out of sync with working people. Democratic support for more immigration seems like a pro-Hispanic policy to the thought leaders--and a mixed bag of job competition and social upheaval to many Hispanics. Democratic prescription that "everyone should get college or advanced skills training" sounds reasonable to prosperous educated people--and impossible and unrealistic for many working people. The Democratic policy goal of cancelling college debt sounds reasonable to the first group--and a screwing to people who didn't go to college. Democratic support for #MeToo, for "social justice," for "racial equity, not equality," seems progressive to some elites, and unfair and dilettantish to people who don't know or care about the difference between not being racist and being anti-racist.

Democrats have allowed their brand to be dominated by the people speaking to values of progressive, urban, academic, politically correct people. They are the most media savvy people, and they say the most interesting things--interesting to the media, to fellow Democrats, and especially to Republican message-makers who cherry-pick and caricature those positions. Biden is president, but AOC is a more vivid, charismatic voice. Antifa, too, became a voice.

Events in Portland, Oregon became a national symbol for Democrats. In Portland  two groups of people mingled in those protest crowds after George Floyd's death: Black and White protesters showing their concern over policing, and a second group of more-woke-than-thou White radicals. This second group wasn't worried about bread-and-butter issues of jobs; they were worried about staking out the high-ground of the political avant-guard. They were more royalist than the king.

Click: Washington Post

Images of Portland exemplified not only Democratic ineffectiveness in providing an orderly, safe community, but it shined a spotlight on the growing split within the Democratic coalition. The White antifa group could taunt the police, get arrested, and be released immediately. They could get away with setting fires in urban neighborhoods to make a point. Democratic officeholders would tut-tut but not do anything effective to stop them. Meanwhile, working people saw privilege.

Yes, Biden said the right things, but it was the weakest of political communication--just words. People wearing black, setting fires and getting videotaped doing it while chanting "Police are pigs!" were more vivid branding, and the fact that it continued night after night was persuasive body language that it was tolerated by Democratic officeholders. They were proving the very point of their protests, that there were two justice systems in America, one for the privileged and one for the poor, and Democrats weren't really going to change it.

On immigration and on justice, Democrats of the urbane progressive left remain out of step with working Americans. Democrats did not win in November. Trump lost. There is repair work to do. Joe Biden became president because he was the Democrat least associated with those point-of-the-spear leftist Democrats. He has the best chance of stitching together the real divide in the Democratic coalition, that between ideological, educated Whites, who dominate Democratic branding, and working people of all races and ethnicities.