Yesterday at TPMCafe, Rick Perlstein kicked off a week-long examination of his new book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. I’ve been asked to join this week’s cafe (a fun departure from writing about politics through a feminist lens), and I recommend checking it out, because the book is wonderful. And very relevant to today’s post topic: “Reagan Democrats“. The seeds of creation for this group of voters means they’re probably more “Nixon Democrats”, a name that would at least show how fruitless getting them back into the fold might be.
Ezra’s post gently puts to rest the ancient Democratic hobbyhorse of lamenting the loss of that percentage of white working class voters that long ago quit voting their economic interests and started voting against uppity black people and women, and against the “liberal elite”. Interestingly, the “elite” label doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to liberals—the lower you go on the income ladder, the more liberal you tend to be statistically speaking:
So why do Republicans win when (because of Republican policies no less), the number of people falling below the cutoff line greatly outnumbers the people falling above it? In part, because the higher you get up the income ladder, the more likely you are to vote. Also, there’s racial issues (gender a bit less, because while women are more liberal than men, they also vote more regularly, so it probably evens out):
(Results from 2006 election poll results.) I’m not sure how we win back the “Reagan Democrats”—white people, men especially, who would rather vote to screw those less privileged than themselves than to lift themselves up. They don’t even have to be most working and middle class white men. You just need a percentage of them who’d rather scapegoat than seek solutions to give Republicans that edge to get to 50 + 1%.
Trying to win over people who vote their resentments hasn’t worked. Look, Reagan won when I was 3 years old. The people who voted for him and are still voting for Republicans aren’t coming back to the fold. Their resentments are calcified at this point, which is why Republicans are still winning by fighting the same battles they fought in the 60s and 70s—sex in the schools, women’s lib, black people out of control. We’ll stop seeing them voting this way when they start dying off. An entire generation has been born and come of age since he won. Time instead to look ahead, where things are getting sunnier if we can actually harness younger voters.
What the Republicans did to change the political landscape was to be opportunistic. How and why that opportunity came up is an interesting story, and one you’ll get more of if you read Nixonland, but if we want to learn something from Republicans, it’s not “Get that resentful percentage of white working class men”, but “See opportunities and grab them.” The opportunities at hand are a younger generation that isn’t nearly as badly saddled with racist, sexist, and homophobic resentments and that has the numbers. The other opportunity at hand is the browning of America—a handful of states have already become minority majority states, and more will come. Focus on getting disadvantaged people to the polls instead of longing for that group of white people that will vote bread off their own tables if they can get bread and water off the table of a black neighbor.
The main reason democrats lost anybody is simple: they take vote for granted.
During the 80’s democrats had ruled congress since WWII. They were only interested in internecine bickering.
And with Clinton and democrat discovering “big money”, they can finally dispense those pesky reagan democrats.
(I am trying to find the voting shift from blue to red in the last 6 elections. It’s very telling. “Dems has no backbone” is really apt. The dems were answering to same money interest as GOP, except the GOP is far better and been doign it longer. So Democratic base erodes.)
Time to toss out all those corporate/big money loving democrats. And get back to basic political principle. It is about voters and people, not “money and machine to get that vote”
Look, Reagan won when I was 3 years old. The people who voted for him and are still voting for Republicans aren’t coming back to the fold.
Indeed. Which is why the term “Reagan Democrats” is outdated - they’re Republicans.
And what squashed said.
“What the Republicans did to change the political landscape was to be opportunistic.”
…and the opportunity presented itself when LBJ got the Democratic Establishment to treat POC as actual people.
Blacks had traditionally been Republican since the Civil War. It was only the slow rise of Republican racism that got them to switch parties. And as a result of that the poor insulted blue-color Democrats (who in many ways would not be recognized as Democrats today) were “forced” to leave the Democratic Party and become Republicans.
It seems like it’s often much easier to completely change your entire political orientation than it is to recognize your own bigotry and change it…
BTW, Archie Bunker would have been a Reagan Democrat…
I’ve always wondered what the hell a “Reagan Democrat” was, other than an oxymoron. To me, they were Repubs who would always be Repubs. If they voted for Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, they’re a Repub and we need to give up on them. They either believe and support the party line or they’re stupid enough to vote against their own self interest. Either way, trying to hold an intelligent conversation with them on the topic is like smacking your forehead on a brick wall repeatedly. It’s useless and painful and it feels so good when you stop.
Mr Ess wrote:
Mr Ess is right, and the reason Mr Ess is right is that Archie Bunker was portrayed as a man who did something really radical: he went to work every day.
The real reason that you see the divide along income lines has less to do with income than it does with the fact many people rightly see the government as being in the business of taking money away from people who work, to give it to those who do not.
The Democratic Party was seen, for a long time, as the party of the working man. But as the government started taking a larger and larger portion of people’s paychecks, people became more and more resentful. The Democrats are seen today as the party more likely to provide higher benefits for those who don’t work.
What the GOP promised, and what George Bush delivered, was lower taxes. You can argue about this program being great or that program being a good idea, but no program beats having more money in your pocket, and on that, the GOP delivered.
The immediate response will be that the tax cuts were “for the rich,” and it’s true that the wealthiest people, who were paying the greatest amount in taxes in the first place, had a greater absolute benefit from the tax cuts. But it’s also true that the tax cuts benefitted everyone who paid taxes, because all of the tax brackets were cut, and the income threshhold for each bracket was raised.
Bill Clinton won in 1992 when he promised, you guessed it, a tax cut. The elder George Bush had broken a “no new taxes” pledge, and the voters deserted him. President Clinton then turned around and raised taxes, and the voters punished him in the 1994 elections.
Now you’ve got two Democrats still running, and both of them are promising middle class tax relief — and there isn’t one person in this room who really believes them. If you want working-class white men — and I am one of them — to ever consider the Democrats, you need to do one thing: take your hands out of their pockets.
I’m also a believer in the idea that demographics are what will force the Republican party to either adapt or die. Young people are more socially liberal than their grandparents–as is generally the case–only now they’re becoming more politically active, in part because politics is being tied in with their social networking. It’s becoming integrated into their lives in a way it wasn’t in my generation–I was ten when Reagan was elected.
The Republicans have also been really bad at appealing to anyone who isn’t white, and that’ll be what relegates them to near-permanent minority status, unless they can pivot away from depending solely on white males to provide them their electoral victories. The white male percentage of the voting population has nowhere to go but down from here.
BadKitty May 27, 2008 at 10:20 am
I’ve always wondered what the hell a “Reagan Democrat” was,
there was a large shift of political mood in the nation. (largely after post vietnam war economic malaise. large section of previously middle class are experiencing downward spiral. As a result to fix the economy from vietnam stagflation.)
this is very real.
See this party ID chart.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/10/14/weekinreview/15kirk_graphic.1024.jpg
Reagan identify this voters discontent and win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Democrat
This is partially the reason why it is important to correctly read public mood instead of making dumb ass social theory. It’s the difference between political winner and a kook.
Bad Kitty asked:
They were working-class whites who were registered Democrats, and who considered themselves Democrats, who had been primarily supportive of more moderate-to-conservative Democrats in state and local elections. They were the people who voted for Democrats for governor and state legislative seats throughout the South and midwest, because those were mostly conservative parties.
One thing to remember: the Reagan Democrats were Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 — and that was an entire generation ago. It isn’t that they became Republicans, but that their children were more likely to register Republican, while many of the actual Reagan Democrats have died.
President Reagan used to say that he hadn’t left the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party had left him. That’s what the Reagan Democrats felt as well.
I’ll tell Dana the same thing I tell the rightwing whacko’s* that say the same thing to me about paying taxes: Stop wasting our tax money on wars and defense and start spending it on what matters - people. Helping them, not killing them, that is.
*Not calling you a whacko, Dana. There are a few whackos that I argue with on a local newspaper’s board who tell me the same thing. When I push them hard enough on their argument, though, it’s always really about racism and classism.
I think you’ll see a great many Reagan supporters vote for the Dem this fall. Reagan sold his supporters on the idea that higher spending funded by deficits were better for the economy than the “crowding out” effect of a higher taxes/higher spending approach the Dems stick to. Truth be told, both are economically unsound, but 20 years of Republican deficits hasn’t improved the lot of these voters. They understand the failings of the Reagan policy long term now, and they saw a respite and reversal of this approach during Clinton’s years. Granted, there was an economic bubble (internet) that didn’t come home to roost during his presidency, but the actual experience of these voters is that Repubs are no more fiscally responsible than the Dems. It’s more clear than ever under W. There’s no communicatable end game in deficit spending. McCain has very little to say to these voters, and I expect many will cross back to the Dems.
Dana May 27, 2008 at 10:28 am
The real reason that you see the divide along income lines has less to do with income than it does with the fact many people rightly see the government as being in the business of taking money away from people who work, to give it to those who do not.
There is some truth that pre 80’s approach to large government was not working. That incorrect policy and heavy regulation are not conducive to economic growth.
But regarding average working people, it’s more about lack of economic growth, and not having money rather than if the government is working or not. People couldn’t care less as long as they got their cheap entertainment and toys.
Bill Clinton recognize this and extent the Regan paradigm. He jacks up wealth creation engine.
Bush of course take all that to the absurd. hence we are back to Nixon stagflation and price instability. A lot of money but price is rising so fast, nobody has enough money.
Give it until december when the full force of war and inflation turns into stagflation. Unemployment will explode, specially if the rumor Bush plan to bomb Iran before August is correct.
Just remember Bush/current GOP increase the size and scope of gov beyond anything before. That will crimp economic growth soon enough one way or another.
www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE28Ak01.html
The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC’s elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds’ stated mission is to spread Iran’s revolution of 1979 throughout the region.
For all the ignorant blather about “librul Massachusetts” and “Democratic state”, there are a whole ton of Archie Bunkers around here who would be officially Republicans if they weren’t so conformist as to do what they are told by the various local and union machines. These folk not only don’t know what “democracy” looks like, they fear and attack it at every level of government when it rears its head.
The democrats around here are so afraid of losing them to the republicans, they bowl right-of-center in many cases and then use their strongarm to completely rig the systems of who gets on the ballots and gets support to marginalize those on the left who would form effective independent or additional parties. It was truly amazing how they dealt with credible left-wing third-party candidates for Governor and attorney general by noxious rule-changing attempts.
The right wing of the Demublican party has somewhere to go - the Republicans. The left wing gets sacrificed, and the machine works double time rig the system against third parties in order to force them back in.
Woof! Woof!
It amazes me how much people like Dana identify the shift of the tax burden from the wealthier to the poorer with these types of sentiments. The Democrats did it! The Democrats take your money and give it to the welfare queens!
Talk about fighting the battles of the past, and giving up on those long lost. Dana was lost decades ago in the Republican 80’s.
And I’m not even going to start in on his closeted racism . .
many people rightly see the government as being in the business of taking money away from people who work, to give it to those who do not.
Yes, and when working people find themselves unable to work, they will be glad they live in a rich country that offers that sort of safety net.
You know what happens in America when you lose an arm in an industrial accident? You (hopefully) get to go on disability and have at least half a prayer of continuing to put food on the table and a roof over your head.
You know what happens in countries that don’t have social welfare programs, when you lose an arm in an industrial accident? Your family starves. Or maybe, if you’re very, very lucky, you are able to wring a pittance out of wealthier people by begging.
The only people who bitch and moan about paying taxes for social welfare programs are people who take them for granted.
And that’s where their vicious, seething hatred of Obama comes from. It’s an intense fear of brown people, whether black, Hispanic (aka “illegals”) and “Mooslims”. We can’t be giving money to American brown people when we need it to kill the Middle Eastern ones.
Meaning, the top 1% who rely on capital gains taxes. Perhaps that’s your tax bracket, but I saw no benefit from Bush’s tax cuts. Not in my paycheck, and not at the pump or the grocery store. I’m certainly not seeing it in the streets or bridges.
Reagan, like Nixon before him, exploited fears of race. They are welcome to Archie Bunker. I’d rather have Meathead on my side.
From my perspective it’s mostly identity politics.
I’m in the rural South, and the Repubs have become the party of the fake History and Heritage, of a noble Civil War, of the white man, of the religious and scared.
It was “US, the Real Americans and Real Men against Hippies and Gays and Blacks and Northerners and Libruls and…. No one can tell some of these guys that the UN isn’t gonna come in and try to take their guys, and make their kids gay, if the Democrats get in.
The whole ‘political correctness’ scam was to make bigotry and it’s expression acceptable, and to encourage it. There was a culture of grievance nurtured in the Lost Cause/Jim Crow South, and it was ready made to accept the Nixonian framing.
I work with guys who call Obama a n-gg-r and say ’someone ought to shoot him’. They hate Mrs Clinton, too, but she’s been vilified a ball cutting lesbian murdering Commie B-tch so long it’s hard to sustain the two minute hate. The new guy, now, they can be ignorant and bigoted about, at the same time.
uhh, should have read “take their guns..’
And here is a great Ezra Klein post:
“Sure, 10 percent of Americans may think that Barack Obama is a Muslim, but as Ben Smith notes, 22 percent believe Bush knew about 9/11 in advance, 30 percent believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, 23 percent believe they’ve been in the presence of a ghost, and 18 percent believe the sun revolves around the earth. In other words, it’s always going to be the case that a certain minority of the country believes wildly untrue, and potentially even vicious, things. The question, politically speaking, is how big a minority, where do they live, and do they vote? Frankly, my hunch is that Barack Obama’s candidacy is more in danger from voters who believe him a black man than voters who believe him a Muslim.” - http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=05&year=2008&base_name=minority_beliefs#comments
Vir -
Just to help with the math (and I am no Bush fan)if your family made $40k last year and you have 3 dependents total, filing jointly you would have paid $1,532 in federal taxes vs $2,408 before the Bush tax cuts. It results from a combination of child tax credits, the introduction of the 10% bracket, and the higher 15% bracket top end. That is a savings of 66%.
If you made $120k under the same family and filing scenario you would have saved $3,914 (compared to the $875 for the $40,000 family) due to the tax cuts, which represents a 16.5% savings.
Dr. T,
Sweet spot mathematics is crap, no matter how you try to disguise it as something else.
The irony is that the poorer (red) states need the revenue of the richer (blue) states, and that most people on welfare are white. But let’s forget about all that, shall we.
Some people who vote Republican seem sure that they’ll be rich someday, and they need to vote for people who’ll be nice to them when they’re rich. Which will be any day now. Yup.
I thought that this had been pretty thoroughly covered already.
1. The white / male / south swung sharply Republican after the passage of Civil Rights and Great Society legislation in the late 1960s. These new laws were an assault on white / male / southern privilege.
2. The rise of the religious right and the ability of the Republican party to get them to the ballot box.
3. The constant undermining of ‘right to vote’ civil rights law enforcement and the disenfranchisement of voters of lower socio-economic status.
The United States as a body of citizens is much more progressive than the last 30 years of its democratic history would suggest. GOP dominance of the executive branch is the consequence of the GOP’s superior ‘ground game’.
Voting has a large cultural/identity aspect to it. Since the Republicans made themselves out to be “the party of white men” and the Democrats out to be “the party of everyone else,” it’s always going to be extraordinarily difficult to overcome those barriers.
If the Democrats somehow got to a point where they were winning the majority of votes of whites or white men, the Republicans would be effectively annihlated as a significant political force. As it is, since we have a 2-party system, each party will always manage to attract 40-some-percent of the electorate. Southern whites, the wealthy, and socially conservative working class white men need to vote for someone. It just so happens that they way things have broken down that they’ve made their home with the Republican party. That’s going to be true as long as the Democratic party is the party that supports women’s rights, socially liberal policies, and attracts the votes of African Americans by huge margins.
Meanwhile, suburban white-collar middle class workers are more sociall liberal and have their economic and identity interests further and further in line with the Democrats, rather than the Republicans, so clearly there are opportunities available there. There’s little point in trying to refight a battle that was lost 30 years ago.
Brian - What are sweetspot mathematics? I didn’t grab the numbers from some article on the New Republic. Here’s the calculator I used. I picked 2 random numbers. Put in any numbers you like - but I don’t believe this properly captures the AMT so I believe it overstates the savings for higher income filers:
http://www.smartmoney.com/tax/filing/index.cfm?story=bushtaxcut
Yay Amanda! You are the best lightning rod for stupidity in the interwebs!
Lots of BS to dissect here and no time. And it has been dissected before.
1. Isn’t government is robin hood with a pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-wellfare, bias…a big scheme to make the world safe for laziness ?
NO:http://pithingcontest.blogspot.com/2006/04/do-you-get-what-you-subsidize.html
in fact the largest recipient, as a class, of government money for which taxpayers receive little of value in return is the defense industry.
2. liberals are lazy freeloaders:
NO: the vast majority of families and individuals fit well to this rule: the less money you have to get by on, the larger the percent of that money you got as wages. now revisit the chart on income VS political leaning that Amanda put up.
There’s a scene from “The Wire” where a white voter makes a racist comment to a white candidate in front of the candidate’s black campaign manager.
Neither of them makes any comment to the voter, but after the voter walks away, the candidate apologizes, and the campaign manager says that he never saw a vote he wanted to throw back.
The moral is that if you are a Democrat running within a point or two of a Republican for president, and Archie Bunker is in your camp or on the fence, you don’t win the election by telling him to shove his ballot up his privileged white ass.
A universal franchise means that stupid people’s votes are as good as anyone else’s.
The electorate will let candidates tell them they can have the cake and eat it too, without pressing for details on how this will be accomplished. People will be in favor of both tax cuts and social programs without grasping the internal inconsistencies of that position.
People will have gross misunderstandings about policies, and about candidates. They’ll vote based on prejudice about race, or about age, or for whichever guy is taller.
Do you think people who financed consumer purchases with home equity loans are capable of weighing the merits of competing health care proposals? Seeing the candidate pounding shots with the regular stiffs or chowing down on the deep-fried local delicacy means more to voters than plans for social security reform.
Until you disenfranchise everyone who has ever rented furniture or cashed a paycheck at a casino, you’re going to live with stupid people voting for stupid reasons. And if you don’t want to lower yourself to pandering to their stupid concerns, then you have to reconcile yourself to losing elections.
Let’s be really clear about why these “Reagan Democrats” voted for Reagan. He went around talking about “states’ rights” which is the code word for racists. The people he attracted were racist democrats who were tired of the federal government using their tax dollars to help those “uppity” black people.
Doesn’t a lot of the resonance of the GOP’s anti-”liberal elite” rhetoric come from the lingering effects of Vietnam? While rich people could have the draft dodged for them (c.f. G.W. Bush), upper middle class folks at least had the resources to dodge the draft (go to Canada or whatever). What could Joe Sixpack do besides just go to ‘Nam and get shot at?
And if you have to go to war, you might as well support it and be resentful of those with the luxury of protest.
Liberals and Democrats are very much perceived as a party of the upper middle class and even if people think “oh the GOP is just a party for rich folk”, they might also thus perceive the Dems. that way. The question is not how we Dems. can get back some small fraction of bona fide Reagan Dems. but how we Dems. can win the votes of the “both sides are equally bad” crowd — whether they be “independents” or Nadar voters.
The key is a commitment to economic liberalism, ain’t it?
But it’s also true that the tax cuts benefitted everyone who paid taxes, because all of the tax brackets were cut, and the income threshhold for each bracket was raised.
Ah, yes, the anti-tax jihadists. California used to have the finest public schools in the nation, but then the anti-tax fanatics pushed Prop 13 through and gutted the property tax system that was funding those schools and much of our infrastructure. Now we have crumbling infrastructure, crumbling schools, and an outdated 911 system, all of which are (barely) supported by passing a new bond measure every year that only puts us further into debt.
All because a bunch of nutjobs would rather have an extra $100 in their pocket at the end of the year than have a decent school for their children. And even that hasn’t really worked out since sales taxes keep going up and up to pay for what property tax money used to and our “freeways” are now turning into tollways. Rather than getting a package for your tax money, you’re “keeping” that money only to spend it on “extras” that used to be included.
If nothing else, California has now proved that you get what you pay for, and if you only pay enough for crappy public schools and poor infrastructure, that’s what you get.
Reagan was only capitalizing on the groundwork laid during the Nixon/Nixon ascendancy (i.e. LBJ) years. Those were very liberal times in America, but Joe Six-Pack (1967 version)was feeling left behind by the cultural/sexual revolution that, he ruefully felt, was the provenance of privileged elitists. Nixon and his cohorts (including a very young Pat Buchanan) brilliantly recognized this and capitalized on it, cleaving the Democratic base and essentially claiming half of it.
As I said, the real fruit of their labors was claimed by Reagan, a far more likeable and charismatic figure than the paranoid and resentful Nixon. Also a far more conservative figure … by winning over these Joe Six Packs, he was then able to skew the entire political compass to the right.
That’s what a Reagan Democrat is … not a stupid term at all, but a very useful one. The good news is that Bushco more or less burned down the house and yes, indeed, we can at least Hope (ugh) that they will now come back to the Democratic fold.
[/didacticism]
I didn’t grab the numbers from some article on the New Republic. Here’s the calculator I used. I picked 2 random numbers.
Why use random numbers instead of your own numbers?
I used the numbers from my 2007 tax return and showed a massive savings of $211. Whoo. Too bad I ended up having to pay $613 because one of my two jobs screwed up my withholdings.
Regarding the tax issue, it strikes me that apologists for the Republicans are consistently unaware that tax brackets apply to marginal income. One could just as easily cut taxes on the 0-100k bracket and have everyone reap the benefits of a tax break on that income that they’ve received, while income above 100k would be taxed at the same rate. When you cut marginal rates at the very top, the only people that benefits is those who are making income in that bracket.
Tom has it. The whole “Reagan Democrat” bit was just the last of the racist Democrats realizing that the Democratic party was no longer racist The party did, in fact, abandon them and I think that’s a good thing.
Reagan blew all the racist dogwhistles he could and was rewarded with votes from racists, including racists who had previously voted Democrat.
LBJ was too conservative in his famous quote, we didn’t lose “the South” for just a generation so far its been lost for going on three generations and no sign of it ever returning.
What we lost wasn’t “the South” but rural America. Democrats win in cities, Republicans win everywhere else. Look at an election map broken down by county, rather than state. You can find major population centers simply by looking for the blue areas.
There are only two ways for Democrats to achieve big victories: 1) get out the vote campaigns in cities, and 2) somehow, by some miracle, convincing rural voters to stop screwing themselves.
Obviously we should pursue both approaches, but the idea that focusing on the second, at the expense of pissing off the urban base, is stupidity pure and simple. I’d love it if we could convince rural Americans to vote in their own best interest instead of voting to keep down the uppity [insert disliked group here]. But in the meantime we need to be focusing on cities.
Dana: I have a certain amount of sympathy with what you’ve got to say. It’s a limited amount of sympathy, true. But it’s there.
All the same: don’t you think that electing John McCain to punish Mike Stivic for being a smartypants is kind of a stale move at this stage of the game? I’m just asking.
Mnemosyne,
I agree, we saw a less than $300 break on our taxes from those Bush tax cuts. At that point we were childless with two working married adults, pretty firmly in the middle class.
“All because a bunch of nutjobs would rather have an extra $100 in their pocket at the end of the year than have a decent school for their children.”
Actually, the nutjobs will bitch like crazy about how bad the schools are (if they still have school-age kids), but if they improve their schools with tax money, somebody else’s school might get better too.
This Will Not Do!
So it comes down to yet another variation on the old Welfare Queen trope…
But lets be honest here. The America of today is built on “Red” states getting more services than they pay in taxes, while “Blue” states pay more and get less. But the Red States complain more about taxes and vote for more Republicans.
But don’t DARE look at this disparity and think of it as a form of welfare for Red States…Oh No! (Start countdown to first troll claiming we would all starve if Red States didn’t get their Protection Racket money…)
The white men in those states, as Dana so nicely put it, “[Do] something really radical: [They] went to work every day.”
But those Blue State, Latte-Sipping, Liberal, Coastal Elites apparently don’t work at all (according to “Reagan Democrats” and Republicans).
So the conundrum at the heart of The American Experiment is:
“Real Americans” living in “The Heartland” are good, hardworking honest (white) folks. It just so happens they don’t produce enough to cover all the services they get without tapping Blue States.
But the slacker Liberals and Welfare Queens in Blue States, who hardly work at all, get dinked on services and still produce enough to support their Red State brothers.
And the Red States HATE Blue states on top of all that.
Isn’t economics in modern America cool? (…only if you’re a wingnut…)
don’t you think that electing John McCain to punish Mike Stivic for being a smartypants is kind of a stale move at this stage of the game?
By the time I get into my 50s (20 years from now), I highly doubt I’ll be supporting the Green party to “stick it” to a Democratic candidate whom I’m convinced represents the DLC and the supporters of the Iraq war. Some people, however, form a set of political beliefs in a crucible of a specific era and keep reliving that era over and over again. It allows a political movement to remain influential across many years (how many people were still voting for Democrats well into the 80s because of FDR?), and it’s not rational, but it works.
The point Amanda is trying to make, however, is that the usefulness of the Reagan Democrats to help form Republican dominance is coming to a close. The tipping point happened long before it became obvious, with Proposition 187 in California which suddenly motivated lots of Latinos to register for the Democrats in the face of Republican demagoguery. I give credit to Rove for making an attempt to head off this looming disaster, but the Republican “brand” as being “the party of white men” was never going to accept many changes. Combine this with the fact that the service-industry, health-care, and technology jobs have seen the most growth are the ones most closely associated with Democrats, and the scales tip in the Dems’ favor, without having to resort to going back to the drying well of white male working-class social conservatives.
Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush didn’t “lower” taxes, they deferred them to future generations by running up huge budget deficits.
If you believe that, then you must believe that taking a cash advance on your credit card is the same as income. The only people who got more money from the Reagan and Bush tax cuts were the Chinese and Saudi banks who hold so much of the US debt obligations.
“One could just as easily cut taxes on the 0-100k bracket and have everyone reap the benefits of a tax break on that income that they’ve received”
Bush did cut the rates the tax brackets below 100k. A new 10% rate was introduced benefitting all filers, the top of the 15% bracket was raised, and the existing 28% rate was reduced to 25%.
Also, keep in mind that Reagan raised taxes significantly on payroll taxes, which caused the burden on middle class tax payers to rise significantly. This was done as a means of masking the effect of the income tax cuts.
As I said, talking with Republicans about taxes results in the realization that they actually have significant misunderstandings about how taxes actually work.
It is simply an undeniable fact that taxes were raised in 1982, 1983, and 1986, though the 1986 tax increases could be said to have been accomplished via “closing loopholes.”
However, this gets back to my earlier point: the Reagan Democrats were formed by the creation of a believeable narrative that led those voters into the Republicans’ circle. Dana lived the narrative, accepted the narrative, and believes the narrative. It’s part of his identity and culture, as surely as it was for the Republican Coolidge shopkeepers or pro-McKinley midweswtern factory workers. That narrative is now so old and so irrelevant to a large number of voters that trying to outflank the Republicans to get these voters back after having lost them 30 years ago is a waste of time.
Income tax rates are unbelievably low compared to other points in this country’s history. The fact is that taxes are too low to run a country as big and complex as ours. They’re far too low to run a superpower. Americans who get that worked up about taxes, when they already pay too little, are showing themselves to be whiny little children. They don’t care about the basic survival of this country and, ultimately, they don’t care about their own survival. With more and more tax cuts, our debt is only going to get larger. One day, huge amounts of our budget will be paid to debt service, taxes will skyrocket, and services (including entitlements: Social Security and Medicare) will be slashed or eliminated. If I weren’t going to suffer under those conditions as well, I’d almost welcome seeing American voters finally get their comeuppance.
You can bemoan the “Regan Democrats” all you want, but you can’t discount one fact: The Democratic Party needs their votes if they want to win the White House.
You can take the votes of all the minorities and LGBTXYZs in the country, and their numbers pale in comparison to the white voting population (which is around 65% of the overall population). Sure, not all whites are conservatives, but white conservatives are the largest single voting block in the United States by far. And even some minority groups (especially latinos) are susceptible to Republicans like McCain, because of their conservative moral beliefs.
You can complain about Republicans pandering to these people all you want, but Republicans are very shrewd when it comes to politics. They picked the right group to pander to, politically speaking, because it is the largest group. Therefore, it gives the Repubs a built-in voting block that is consistant from election to election that the democrats can’t match.
I think we liberals screwed up with the acceptance of identity politics by minorities. It was empowering for democrats and mimorities until white people figured out that they could play that game too.
Amanda,
One problem with the tables is that they don’t control for other factors: if African-Americans wind up disproportionately in lower economic brackets, then that has to be accounted for (ditto age–younger workers usually make less money than older ones). That’s why I find the ’statistics’ presented in most publications to be incredibly frustrating; they don’t take into account other factors.
Death to bar graphs…..
Erika, when I stack my taxes and health insurance costs and retirement savings and future college costs against my SIL-elect’s from Alberta, Canada, I can honestly say that the Canadians are getting a much better deal.
Especially when you consider that she is a daycare provider and part-time custodian who doesn’t worry about retirement or college costs for her four children, and I’m a PhD who wonders how the hell I will ever manage all of this.
So much for the “social welfare state will hurt the everyman” thinking. The “everyman” and “everywoman” are provided for in Canada, they are blindfolded and screwed here in the US.
Dana, the people spanking you are 100% right. If you check the historical record, the entire notion that it was illegitimate to take money from “people who work” and give it to “people who don’t” began and was 100% fueled by racism. As long as racist white people can be assured that black people aren’t getting a piece of the pie, they are all about social welfare programs. It was the Civil Rights Act and the idea that Democrats were anti-racist that turned the tide against them.
Get this: Nixon actually considered getting rid of welfare by creating a minimum wage. Basically, if you made less than X dollars a year, you were written a check bringing you back up. That was wealth redistribution beyond the level of what any “tax and spend” liberal could come up with. It didn’t really matter, because resegregating the schools was the major conservative issue at the time.
Conservatives in Nixon’s time were initially on the fence on gun control, too. They wanted whites to have them, but they weren’t so enthusiastic about the Black Panthers arming themselves.
Dee Dee, you’re incorrectly assuming that all white people vote conservative. Not really. I’m white and a liberal. We can build the coalition by including white people who aren’t racists. “Reagan Democrats” is the racist white vote, plain and simple. Can we build a coalition without pandering to racists? I think yes, increasingly so.
he white voting population (which is around 65% of the overall population)
Considering that only about 40% of the US population is registered to vote, how does the white voting population make up 65% of the total population of the US?
Candidates would not attempt to curry various minority voting blocs if they didn’t matter at all.
Also, weighing in on whether we need white racist voters, again, since less than half the population votes, it seems to me that all we need to do is go out and organize the many, many non-racist folks out there (of all persuasions, white, minority, whatever). A certain part of me is confident that this will finally happen this year, since the Obama campaign has been registering a lot of new voters who are at least non-racist enough to vote for a black candidate.
“I think we liberals screwed up with the acceptance of identity politics by minorities. It was empowering for democrats and mimorities until white people figured out that they could play that game too.”
White people have “played that game” far longer than anyone else in America, especially Southern White Males.
And somehow, I don’t really think you’re a genuine part of “we liberals”. But thanks anyway for the concern trollery…
Mr Ess is right, and the reason Mr Ess is right is that Archie Bunker was portrayed as a man who did something really radical: he went to work every day.
The real reason that you see the divide along income lines has less to do with income than it does with the fact many people rightly see the government as being in the business of taking money away from people who work, to give it to those who do not.
Which is to say, the people who buy into the “shrink government” rhetoric are stupid.
US Gini coefficients (from Wikipedia, US Census Bureau):
# 1967: 39.7
# 1968: 38.6
# 1970: 39.4
# 1980: 40.3
# 1990: 42.8
# 2000: 46.2
# 2005: 46.9
# 2006: 47.0
Comparisons of Gini (CIA calculations, Wikipedia again):
US: 45 (2007)
UK: 34 (2005)
France: 28 (2005)
Canada: 32.1 (2005)
Germany: 28 (2005)
Translation - in the US the rich are richer and the poor are poorer than in other Western nations, and this is getting worse as time goes on. If the government was really levelling the field, you’d expect to see teh opposite.
You’re a dupe, Dana. What else is new?
“Dee Dee, you’re incorrectly assuming that all white people vote conservative.”
S/he said that “Sure, not all whites are conservatives,” but otherwise I agree with the criticism.
So? What your point? Look, once upon a time, I was a Republican. I used to piss and moan about those lazy welfare mothers sponging off the rest of us.
Eventually, I grew the fuck up and started using my brain for something other than gooey, white packing material.
The reality is that in a civilized, compassionate, first-world country, some people will fall through the cracks and yes, indeedy, the taxpayers should do something to keep those folks from starving to death. See, starving people get desperate and dangerous. Keeping people fed and a roof over their heads serves the greater good.
And no, throwing them in jail isn’t the answer. Keeping someone in jail costs much more than welfare.
Further more, despite what Rush Limbaugh may tell you, the evil welfare mother isn’t living large in a McMansion in the hills. Welfare doesn’t pay much at all.
And by the way, a lot of folks who benefit from so-called welfare programs, do go to work, every stinking day. Ever heard of the working poor?
Fat lot of good those tax savings do the average family when the dollar’s value is in the crapper, fuel costs are sky high (and driving everything else to the roof), health insurance costs keep rising, and the Administration has cheerfully mortgaged our future to China to pay for their little war. Our fucked up economy has already devoured any supposed tax savings.
As a blue collar union member and Catholic living in a major city in the northeast, I should have been a natural Democrat. However, beginning in 1968, I always voted Republican because I found the Democrats’ policies to range from merely foolish to positively revolting.
wait. Union member? And you love repug policy? I am surprised your job hasn’t been shipped to somewhere in south asia yet.
If I am the power that be. I would approve all republican policy based on age. So current baby boomer will get all their GOP goodies they want until they retire. Put them all in Florida somewhere until they all die. Let the boomer eat their GOP policy they vote for.
The rate of inflation alone would kill them pronto in 5 years after they retire. Nevermind cost of health care or energy. Then major hurricane would probably finish them off.
I wonder if how rightwing baby boomer can think they will take care of themselves after they retire. Do they really think stock market will grow fast enough to cover their lifestyle?
“However, beginning in 1968, I always voted Republican because I found the Democrats’ policies to range from merely foolish to positively revolting.”
Thanks, Archie. BTW, did your Gloria marry her Meathead or not? Ever tell your Edith to “stifle” herself?…
Bismarck, I’m betting that “from merely foolish to positively revolting” is code for “my feelings were hurt” and that your comment, translated with that substitution as a key, might read: “Because I found that my face was bruised by blows launched by my social and economic betters, I decided to cut off my nose, just to demonstrate my disgust. It’s true that this plan of mine did not help me and did not help my social and economic equals, but at least nobody could accuse me of complacency under the goad. A real man chooses self-mutilation over self-identification as a weakling; and while he’s at it he nicknames himself after a German Chancellor, so there.”
Bismarck has plenty of company here in MA, he’s just far more honest with himself and doesn’t tow the Demublican line out of mindless conformity.
Meanwhile, my father may or may not still be registered as a Republican, but he’s an Oregon Republican if he is - votes a sensible conservative line and has no use for the wingnuts and Reaganites who ruined his party.
Not a German Chancellor, a creampuff bekabot!
From one of the greatest comedies of all time …
Colonel Ehrhardt: “They named a brandy after Napoleon, they made a herring out of Bismarck, and the Fuhrer is going to end up as a piece of cheese!”
I find this notion that the party shouldn’t be as inclusive as possible, coming from Obama supporters, to be amusingly hypocritical. And unfortunately, typical.
The fact that you’re all so willing to write off the white middle class, which is what we’re really talking about here, is incredibly elitist and self-destructive. Further, it ignores two facts: Many of those Reagan Dems are gone, while others have come back to and stayed with the Democratic Party.
The funny/sad part? Many Republicans think that DEMOCRATS are naive and uninformed, that we shoot ourselves in the foot by voting for other Democrats and hit the rest of the country with the ricochet. They’ve done their level-best to disenfranchise huge swaths of voters; do we really want to follow in their footsteps?
“The fact that you’re all so willing to write off the white middle class, which is what we’re really talking about here, is incredibly elitist and self-destructive.”
Nobody is “writing off the white middle class”. That’s ridiculous on the face of it.
“Reagan Democrats” do not represent all white, middle-class voters. They are a specific subgroup.
Catering to their desires would require abandoning much of the progressive philosophy of the Democratic Party (such as it is - many of us think the Democratic Party is virtually in the canter of the political spectrum).
Democrats, as currently constituted, will never appeal to racists, culture-war-obsessed, throwbacks as well as Republicans. And they shouldn’t.
“Further, it ignores two facts: Many of those Reagan Dems are gone, while others have come back to and stayed with the Democratic Party.”
You can’t lose what you never had. Real “Reagan Democrats” were Republicans in disguise. The fight for civil rights and protests against the Vietnam war just gave them an excuse to leave the Democratic Party. They then joined the party that has the same effed-up notions they already had.
If any have “come back” to the Democratic Party, fine, as long as they gave up their bigotry along the way…
semidi: someone has to vote for Republicans.
The 2-party system works in such a way that there will always be 40% of the population voting one way or the other. It just so happens that southern whites and socially conservative northern whites have decided to come down in favor of Republicans. Nothing wrong with that. The question is whether the Democrats have a winning coalition of their own instead of neurotically worrying, “why don’t these people like us?” The don’t like us because their feelings about social policy and civil rights is different than the Democrats’ and more important to them than economic issues. It’s natural, if you are a blue collar white person, to get upset that the Democratic party, which you agree with, isn’t able to attract the majority of votes of people like you, but I think one has to become at peace with the fact that political coalitions aren’t always about us.
Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention. What’s being discussed here is writing off people who want to roll back the clock to before the 1960s, primarily due to racism, but sexism and homophobia are factors as well.
You seem to be saying that the white middle class is nothing but a pack of racists. How insulting.
The idea is that courting these people is quixotic at best–they’re essentially the Republicans’ core constituency at this point. Anyone bringing forth serious proposals to court them should consider the 1990s, where the Democrats abandoned their working-class roots (you know, unions and such) and found that it essentially gutted their party, turning them into pale reflections of Republicans. If you’re proposing that the Democrats should throw everyone but white middle class voters under the bus (and make no mistake, that’s what it would take), you’re either profoundly ignorant or just concern trolling.
Well said. The way the newsfolk obsess over which way white dudes will vote this time makes me think we’re back in the 19th century. Votes from people who are not white and/or not male count exactly as much. I wish I could tack that to every talking head’s teleprompter.
You mean like the white middle-class in Oregon that voted strongly in favor of Obama? We are talking about those Democrats (mostly from Appalachia these days) who had no trouble going on TV and saying that they wouldn’t vote for a black man EVER. Who needs those people? Let them go to the party of racists and bigots. If Archie Bunker won’t vote for a black man then the Democratic party should not join him in his racism and say, “OK, we will only nominate a white person.” We should be saying. “Screw you. Go join the republicans.”
It is actually much simpler than that.
I simply disagree with the policies of the Democrats:
Surrender in Vietnam & Iraq
The Great Society programs
Radical homosexual agenda
Requiring employers to hire on the basis of race
Compulsory union dues and fees
The appointment of judges who believe that the U.S. Constitution as written means whatever the judges want it to mean in any given situation
Taxpayer funded abortion
High taxes
The promotion of class envy
Undermining private property rights under the guise of concern for the environment
I know that many Republicans are just as guilty of promoting these foolish and unjust policies, but the Democrats have made these policies the center of their philosophy.
“Surrender in Vietnam & Iraq”
The cool thing about that is if we had stayed in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have ad to worry about Iraq.
But not because Iraq would have been a friendly Western-style democracy.
If we hadn’t left Vietnam, we’d still be fighting there and wouldn’t have the money or the manpower to molest Iraq…
Oh, and you wouldn’t have to worry about McCain being the Republican candidate because he’d still be a POW…
Surrender in Vietnam & Iraq
Richard “Peace with Honor” Nixon was a Democrat? Funny, I never heard that before.
The Great Society programs
Yeah, let’s long for the good ol’ days when you could go ahead and starve the n*ggers without anyone complaining that it was cruel or something.
Radical homosexual agenda
Those horrible radical homosexuals who want to get married, have kids, and settle down in the suburbs. I mean, whoever heard of a straight couple wanting something so bizarre and radical! And let’s not even get started on letting those homos think they can have jobs.
Requiring employers to hire on the basis of race
There haven’t been quotas in this country for 30 years. What you’re really complaining about is that employers are no longer allowed to not hire someone because of the color of their skin. Boo hoo.
Compulsory union dues and fees
Typical Republican, wants to feed off of other people’s money while not spending a dime of their own. If you’re not willing to pay for union protections and union healthcare, don’t join a union. Otherwise, you’re being a leech and taking advantage of other people who are willing to pay for those protections.
The appointment of judges who believe that the U.S. Constitution as written means whatever the judges want it to mean in any given situation
You mean like the judges who decided that they can jump in and shut down a state’s recount rather than allowing that state to follow its own constitution to settle the matter? Gotta agree with you there — get rid of those radical activists like Scalia and Thomas who want to reject 50 years of jurisprudence and ignore states’ rights.
Taxpayer funded abortion
The Hyde Amendment has banned that for 40 years. Where the hell have you been, in a cave?
High taxes
Because the last thought of those people who died in the bridge collapse in Minnesota was, “Oh, thank God I didn’t have to pay taxes to keep this bridge maintained!”
The promotion of class envy
Class envy = n*iggers and women getting uppity and not staying in their place.
Undermining private property rights under the guise of concern for the environment
But undermining private property rights for the benefit of corporations is a-okay. After all, Scalia and Thomas helped decide it so.
“The Great Society programs”
Hey, no worries! They’ve just about been completely eliminated. Be sure to thank the Republican Party the next time some unemployed guy robs you to feed himself and his family…
“Radical homosexual agenda”
Um, since when did a human being wanting to be treated like a human being become a “radical agenda”?
“Requiring employers to hire on the basis of race”
…it was SO much better with Jim Crow, right Bismarck?
“Compulsory union dues and fees”
Damn those Unions and their attempts to get workers treated as something more than human Dixie Cups…
“The appointment of judges who believe that the U.S. Constitution as written means whatever the judges want it to mean in any given situation”
Yeah! Bismarck wants judges “who believe that the U.S. Constitution as written means whatever the judges want it to mean in any given situation”, but are Republicans instead!
“Taxpayer funded abortion” Well, since there hasn’t been a “taxpayer-funded” abortion in 30-years, I don’t think you have to worry…
“High taxes” It’s you own damn fault if you think cutting Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Paris Hilton’s taxes is so important - and then turn around and screw the rest of us to make up the difference…
“The promotion of class envy” Hey, rich people are our social betters, right? Otherwise why would Jesus make sure they were so rich? So it’s only natural that we would envy them…
“Undermining private property rights under the guise of concern for the environment” How fucking dare those goddam Americans want clean air, water, food, etc…
“I know that many Republicans are just as guilty of promoting these foolish and unjust policies…” Damn right…
“…but the Democrats have made these policies the center of their philosophy.”
I guess we will just have to disagree with you. And the last 8-years haven’t down much to bolster your case…
Core membership (payment of dues or fees to the exclusive bargaining agent) can be required as a condition of employment. The following are excerpts from the NRLA:
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT
Also cited NLRA or the Act; 29 U.S.C. §§ 151–169
[Title 29, Chapter 7, Subchapter II, United States Code]
Sec. 9 [§ 159.] (a) [Exclusive representatives; employees’ adjustment
of grievances directly with employer] Representatives designated
or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of
the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive
representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective
bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment,
or other conditions of employment: Provided, That any individual employee
or a group of employees shall have the right at any time to present grievances
to their employer and to have such grievances adjusted, without
the intervention of the bargaining representative, as long as the adjustment
is not inconsistent with the terms of a collective-bargaining contract or
agreement then in effect: Provided further, That the bargaining representative
has been given opportunity to be present at such adjustment.
Sec. 8. [§ 158.] (a) [Unfair labor practices by employer] It shall
be an unfair labor practice for an employer—
(3) by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or
any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership
in any labor organization: Provided, That nothing in this Act [subchapter],
or in any other statute of the United States, shall preclude
an employer from making an agreement with a labor organization (not
established, maintained, or assisted by any action defined in section 8(a)
of this Act [in this subsection] as an unfair labor practice) to require
as a condition of employment membership therein on or after the thirtieth
day following the beginning of such employment or the effective date
of such agreement, whichever is the later, (i) if such labor organization
is the representative of the employees as provided in section 9(a) [section
159(a) of this title], in the appropriate collective-bargaining unit covered
by such agreement when made, and (ii) unless following an election
held as provided in section 9(e) [section 159(e) of this title] within
one year preceding the effective date of such agreement, the Board
shall have certified that at least a majority of the employees eligible
to vote in such election have voted to rescind the authority of such
labor organization to make such an agreement: Provided further, That
no employer shall justify any discrimination against an employee for
nonmembership in a labor organization (A) if he has reasonable grounds
for believing that such membership was not available to the employee
on the same terms and conditions generally applicable to other members,
or (B) if he has reasonable grounds for believing that membership was
denied or terminated for reasons other than the failure of the employee
to tender the periodic dues and the initiation fees uniformly required
as a condition of acquiring or retaining membership;
Core membership (payment of dues or fees to the exclusive bargaining agent) can be required as a condition of employment.
Yes, it can. That’s because if you work at that job, you are receiving the benefits of it being unionized. When the union negotiates with the company to get their workers a raise, you get that same raise. When the union gets a new health care package for their workers, you get it too.
You want the financial benefits of being in a union without having to pay for those benefits. How does that not make you a leech?
The following is testimony from a hearing before
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE RELATIONS
APRIL 18, 1996
That is an argument that organized labor regularly trots out in defense of maintaining its
coercive power is the “free rider” issue. The defenders of compulsion plead that since they are
forced, by federal labor law, to represent everyone in the bargaining unit, it is only fair that
everyone represented, including nonmembers, should bear the cost of representation. On the
surface, that appears to be a point well taken. An examination of the legislative history of the
Wagner Act of 1935, however, reveals that the provision that requires the representation of
nonmembers [Sect. 9(a)] was included in the law at the insistence of American Federation of
Labor President William Green. The Roosevelt Administration was strongly opposed to this
provision, but William Green and other labor leaders succeeded in persuading Congress to
include the provision in the law. Since that time there have been several attempts by the U.S.
Congress to relieve labor of this “burden.” The latest being (H.R. 1341) submitted by
Congressman Dick Armey in 1993. To my knowledge, not a single union supported that effort or
any previous effort to eliminate that requirement. Union leaders routinely engage in this
spectacular hypocrisy without reservation.
Yep, getting young people to vote is the right strategy for Democrats (and one of the major reasons why an Obama candidacy is so important.)
This is also one of the reasons that the “not wussing out on gay rights will cost us the elections!” concern troll is such nonsense; young people skew way leftward on gay rights and there’s more to be gained by showing them that you have a spine on the issue than there is to be lost by alienating older bigoted swing voters if you do the footwork of actually building a coalition of progressive young voters.
“That’s because if you work at that job, you are receiving the benefits of it being unionized.”
Nonsense. When I was a teenager I had to join the Foodworkers Union to get paid minimum wage. Zero benefits and union membership was required for even part time highschool kids who worked 20 hours a week for Caldor. My mother in law is an English as a Second Language teacher in MN. She does not belong to the laughable Teachers Union here and makes just as much money as those who are in the union and has identical retirement and health benefits. Unions absolutely served a purpose in this country when there were little to no labor laws on the books, but their modern purpose is to spread pain rather than allow corporations to flex their payrolls with changing economic conditions. Northwest mechanic friends of mine were HOSED by their union. Every single one of them lost their jobs because the union wouldn’t surrender some jobs, and Northwest hired outside employees to come in and replace everyone. Within 2 years the new empoyees were making as much as my friends used to make. They all took paycuts and found new employment - some of them had 20 years on the job and had no threat of losing their gigs at NWA. The union did it to them.
The NEA is one of the biggest problems with public schools in this country, The Teamsters are corrupt and mob influenced, and the AFL-CIO hasn’t won a major negotiation in 15 years. Unions are a joke.
Dick Armey, co-drafter of the Contract on … er, With America, tried to bust unions by getting that provision removed? Gee, that’s a shock.
Sorry, I’m still not seeing the hypocrisy in insisting that if workers want to benefit from the bargaining power of the union, they need to pay for that privilege. Can you find someone who’s not a flat-tax and Social Security privatization fantasist like Armey to back up your contention that workers should be allowed to leech off of union benefits without paying union dues? Otherwise, I’m writing you off as yet another free-ride Republican who wants everyone else to pay for his lifestyle.
In other words, your mother has leeched off the benefits of the union without paying in. She gets the salary that union teachers get without having to lift a finger. And you’re proud that she’s cheating her fellow teachers to get something for nothing?
They’ve been made into a joke by the union-busting the Republicans have engaged in since Reagan broke the traffic controllers’ union in 1980. Ever since then, they’ve been on a desperate course of trying to continue benefiting their members despite a hostile administration and a hostile court system. Weak as they are, they’re still the only thing standing between workers and corporations.
Union members died to bring you the 40-hour work week, pensions, vacation time, and worker’s compensation insurance, so show a little goddamned gratitude.
Mnemosyne
Step one of the process is for the union to force everyone, even those employees who reject union representation to accept the union as it as their exclusive representative as defined in section 9-a of the National Labor Relations Act. Step two is to claim that since the union is bargaining on behalf of workers who have rejected union representation, the workers who are being represented against their wills must now pay for the unwanted “services” of the union.
If you can’t see the injustice and hypocrisy in this, I am writing you off as an opponent of individual liberty.
Gee, the way you talk, you’d almost think that unions just busted in and took everyone’s paychecks out of their hands instead of, you know, holding elections and going with the majority vote.
That’s how democracy works. Personally, I loathe George W Bush, but I still have to pay my taxes to finance his useless war. That’s what I get for living in a modern society. If your workplace unionizes and you don’t want to be a member of that union, you’re going to have to find a new job. It sucks, but it’s pretty funny to see the same group that tells people who don’t like Bush that they should leave the US whine when they have to find a new job because they didn’t like the union election results.
If you want individual liberty, you have to work for yourself. There’s no such thing as individual liberty in the modern corporation. If your employer wants to monitor your e-mail, they can (and probably do). They can put a hidden camera in the restroom. They can fire you for smoking.
And you think the worst possible infringement on your individual rights in the workplace is not all of the indignities your employer puts you through, but being made to join a union. Geez, get some perspective.
Mnemosyne
Would you approve of the National Rife Association being able to compel all gun owners to pay dues because it claims to represent all gun owners’ rights?
Bismarck, that doesn’t even make a little bit of sense. You join the NRA. The analogous question there is, “Would you approve of the National Rifle Association being able to compel all National Rifle Association members to pay dues because it claims to represent all of them, and because the membership voted to require dues?”. Clearly yes; if you don’t want to pay your dues, you’re no longer a member. Even if you, as a pre-dues member, voted against the provision.
Backporting your analogy to the union situation, you’re asking “Would you approve of a union being able to compel all workers in an industry, whether or not they’re actually represented by that union, to pay dues because it claims to represent their rights, whether or not they had any vote in the matter?”. The answer, of course, is no.
Can you see how your hypothetical doesn’t match up to the reality?
I enjoy debating people to sharpen my analogies and whatnot, but I’m surprised so many people replied to someone who thinks that the Democratic party stands for “Surrender in Vietnam & Iraq”. I can’t imagine why Bismarck would be so darn concerned about us winning his oh so important white-dude vote. If only we would support endless warmongering, make the poor a bit poorer, bust some unions, make sure gay people stay closeted and scared so as not to give him the wibblies, and presumably feed ten thousand innocently adorable kittens to Great Cthulhu, we’d get his vote.
Bismarck, wouldn’t it be easier just to vote Republican? It sounds like they’re exactly the party for you. Are there points you disagree with them on? Can you name three? (And no fair naming positions you’re further to the right on.)
“Bismarck, wouldn’t it be easier just to vote Republican?”
He did. He will. And that’s that.
The only thing that will change any of that is if the Rethugs break apart in the wake of the Cheney/Bush Tornado of Political Destruction.
In that case, Bismarck and many of his fellow travelers will go with whoever is proposing the most draconian Reichwing political strategy.
I would bet that Bismarck and his Archie-Bunkerite friends would have made really “good” Germans back in the day…
“Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis.”
grendelkhan,
You seem to be ignoring the fact that the employees in question have not joined the union. They merely work for an employer that has a collective bargaining agreement with a union - a private organization! It is private like the NRA and the Knights of Columbus - neither of which does the state grant the power to compel payment of dues or fees. What other private organization has such power?
I worked for a unionized employer for thirty-seven years, the first twenty of which I was a voluntary union member. However, when the union started using its resources to work against my interests, I choose to disassociate myself from it. Nevertheless, I was forced to finance activities that were harmful to me. That is unjust.
Do you not believe that individuals have the right to associate as they see fit?
MikeEss,
My father was the Archie Bunker of the family - he remained a Democrat.
No; they’ve all joined the company as employees, though. They all voted on the bargaining agreement. You keep trying to imply that someone snuck up on the employees and forced them into the union, but, again, they voted on it. The question of whether or not to unionize a shop is all-or-nothing for the workers in question. (If it weren’t, the company would have an incentive to preferentially hire non-union employees, and individual employees would be forced into not joining the union, no matter how good their benefits were.)
Because of this, some workers who wanted to join a union will be unable to if their coworkers vote against it, and some who didn’t want to will be have to either join or quit their jobs if their coworkers voted for it.
As someone who was in a union, do you really need this explained to you?
Did you offer to give back all of your benefits? What about the benefits that couldn’t realistically be split? (As I have no knowledge of the specifics of your job, I’m reduced to hypotheticals.) If the union made a factory get safer equipment, would you go out and find old, unsafe equipment to work on so you wouldn’t be freeloading?
Of course not. There are things that can’t be split or given back because they apply to everyone. The job you worked at was a union shop. If you want to work in a non-union shop, your choices are (a) convince your coworkers to boot the union, or (b) find a non-union job. Just like if you want to join a union but there’s none at your workplace, you either (a) convince your coworkers to join a union or (b) find a union job. The symmetry is rather lovely.
As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, you have plenty of options in these situations, including advocating against the union or finding another job. The only option you don’t have is freeloading off the union by benefiting from their collective bargaining while not paying in.
Really? Did he talk about “surrender” in Vietnam, “radical homosexuals”, “requiring employers to hire on the basis of race”, “taxpayer funded abortion”, “class envy” and the “underming [of] private property rights”?
I’m a bit fuzzy on what makes you not an “Archie Bunkerite”, as MikeEss put it, and I’m quite curious as to (a) why you think the Democratic party would want to court you, as it would entail junking pretty much every other constituency they have, and (b) where you, as outlined above, disagree with the current platform of the Republican party.
Why?
Does everyone loose their individual rights when they accept a job?
What does an individual do who has been employed somewhere for a number of years and his co-workers later decide to unionize? You want force him/her to quit and find another job. That is unjust.
Did you know that this situation is unique to the United States and did not obtain here until the enactment of the Wagner Act in 1935? Even FDR was opposed to monopoly bargaining. This join or starve to death mentality is Stalinist!
Unions still have the option of not becoming the monopoly bargaining agent and representing only its members. Germany has a strong union movement based on volunteerism.
Samuel Gompers himself opposed compulsion.
Your suggestion is not legal due to the section 9-a status of the union as monopoly bargaining agent.
I want to see this provision of U.S. labor law repealed.
Pretty much, yeah. Unless the job’s requirements are actually discriminatory (such as age, weight, or gender requirements), your employer can pretty much require you to do whatever they please. They can fire you for not wearing enough flair on your uniform. They can insist that you be able to lift 50 pounds to be in your position, and the courts will back them up.
Where is this communist paradise where employees can freely wear, do, and say whatever they want at work?
If your company switched to a computer system that you couldn’t master despite training, they would be fully within their rights to fire you (again, unless they did not make accommodation for a disability covered under the ADA). Your employer can eliminate your position entirely and have security escort you out the door. Your company has a whole lot more power over you, your day, and your lifestyle than you seem to realize.
It’s so funny to me that you’re railing against unions and envisioning corporations as warm, fuzzy places that would serve ice cream and sunshine for lunch if only it weren’t for those damn unions.
“I simply disagree with the policies of the Democrats:
Surrender in Vietnam . . .”
Wow. I’d say Bismarck simply has to be a parody troll, but given the things I’ve seen . . .things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate . . . er, hang on, where was I . . . oh, yeah, given the things I’ve seen online these last years, and in RL as well, I have to wonder. if so, they’re a master of the genre. What talent! Quality infotainment.
“Undermining private property rights under the guise of concern for the environment”
If you’re not a lovely piece of performance art though, one comment on the above. Opinions can differ about the first part (undermining private property rights) - as to whether or what degree private property rights are actually being undermining, and if so, whether or not this is actually a bad & unreasonable thing. The second part, however (under the guide of concern for the environment), is simply wrong. There’s no “guise” involved (I dunno ’bout dolls. Perhaps if they’re biodegradable and eco-friendly). What’s being done is done out of genuine concern for the environment. One may differ on questions of necessity, effectiveness, etc. (and one would be wrong, but that’s one’s right) - but pretending that massive support for sane environmental regulation is really just cooked up by some anti-individualist cabal is up there with imagining that global warming is an elaborate hoax cooked up by elites and the UN, or that the Civil Rights Movement was a commie plot.
Which, granted, may be your position - I’m a bit afraid to ask . . .
Gah, I used the s-word and got caught by the spam filter.
bekabot: and while he’s at it he nicknames himself after a German Chancellor, so there.”
Either the German chancellor who created universal health insurance in Germany to defuse the threat of s*******t revolution, or a herring. Your choice.
Did you notice the part right after that where I explained why that was impossible in practice, because some of the union’s benefits aren’t even divisible that way? Or why allowing the employer to discriminate against union members is a bad idea? You seem very, very upset about the idea that the union elected by your coworkers could do something that you don’t approve of, but not at all upset at the idea that your employers, who you have absolutely no say in appointing or promoting, could do the same.Why is it a threat to invidividual rights when a union does it, but not even worth a mention when the company does it–even if the latter case threatens all workers, and the former case only union members, and even if there’s a democratic way to change the union leadership while there’s no such way to even advocate for such change in the company without losing your job? You appear to be holding unions to a standard that no actual situation lives up to, because you’re crabby that your coworkers voted against you.
I’m also still awaiting those positions where you’re to the left of the Republican platform. Three, please.