The Democrats Abusive Relationship with its "Multicultural Coalition"

To match the Rebublican supremacy among white voters, the Democratic Party relies heavily on support from minorities, especially, African Americans, of whom 88% voted for Hillary Clinton in the recent election. Combined with Hispanic voters, women voters and to a lesser extent other minority groups such as Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and so on, this represents the "multicultural coalition" that Democratic candidates now rely upon to win elections.

Today’s Democratic Party is a coalition of relatively upscale whites with racial and ethnic minorities, concentrated in an archipelago of densely populated blue cities. [...]

The rise of populist nationalism on the right is paralleled by the rise of multicultural globalism on the center-left.

For multicultural globalists, national boundaries are increasingly obsolete and perhaps even immoral. According to the emerging progressive orthodoxy, the identities that count are subnational (race, gender, orientation) and supranational (citizenship of the world). While not necessarily representative of Democratic voters, progressive pundits and journalists increasingly speak a dialect of ethical cosmopolitanism or globalism — the idea that it is unjust to discriminate in favor of one’s fellow nationals against citizens of foreign countries.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, including voter suppression, this strategy of focusing on what many label "Identity Politics" failed Democrats this year as it failed them in the 2010 and 2014 elections.

Indeed, Clinton lost among white women overall, earning only 43% of their votesr. She was especially hard hit by the support white working class women gave Trump (62%). In addition, compared to Clinton's support among African American women, far fewer black men gave the top of the Democratic ticket their votes this year. Indeed, some have been making the argument that African American enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton, and the Democrats in general, was extremely low.

As Sabrina Tavernise explains, turnout in Wisconsin, a high-turnout state relative to the rest of the nation, was the lowest it had been in 16 years. And the decline was concentrated in poor areas. “Milwaukee’s lowest-income neighborhoods offer one explanation for the turnout figures,” she writes. “Of the city’s 15 council districts, the decline in turnout from 2012 to 2016 in the five poorest was consistently much greater than the drop seen in more prosperous areas — accounting for half of the overall decline in turnout citywide.”

The biggest drop occurred in District 15, “a stretch of fading wooden homes, sandwich shops and fast-food restaurants that is 84 percent black,” so Tavernise spoke with voters there to try to figure out what happened. For the most part, the residents there who spoke with Tavernise simply saw no affirmative reason to vote for Hillary. Some saw her as corrupt; others noted that they had not seen their economic situation improved during the Obama years.

“Ain’t none of this been working,” said a barber who had trouble finding health care, is now shelling out $300 a month for a plan he can’t afford, and who didn’t vote.

Black voters are critical at this point for the Democratic Party, but at present one has to ask, what has the Democratic Party done for these people? Establishment Democrats, along with establishment Republicans, support globalization and free trade agreements, deals that are quite profitable for transnational corporations, but which have devastated members of the working class in America, regardless of race or gender. To quote the Milwaukee barber, "none of this been working." And the statistics bear this out. Let's look at the most significant member of the Democratic Party's "multicultural coalition," African Americans.

A large majority of African American are poor or struggling to get by in our current economy. Figures from this US Census Bureau report from 2015 show that the median income for African American households was barely over $35,000 per year ($35, 398). In short, at least fifty percent of all black households earn less than $36,000 per year. Of that number, roughly 21 percent, or one fifth, of black Americans earn less than $21,500 per year. Officially, 26% of all African Americans live below the poverty line.

And when you add in the number of African Americans who earn no more than $62,500, that percentage increases to nearly 78 percent. That is correct, almost 80% of all black households earn less than $62,500 according to our own government. This level of income is the very definition of the working class.

Yet, what have the last two Democratic administrations offered poor and working class African Americans? We all know the legacy of Bill Clinton' presidency regarding the African American community: mass incarceration that disproportionately affected black Americans, and "welfare reform," which effectively killed off the social safety net for the poor, again disproportionately hurting black families. However, the Obama administration has hardly been better Over the past eight years, while Obama was our President, wealth and income inequality widened along racial and ethnic lines.

The wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared with eight times the wealth in 2010, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. Likewise, the wealth of white households is now more than 10 times the wealth of Hispanic households, compared with nine times the wealth in 2010.

The current gap between blacks and whites has reached its highest point since 1989, when whites had 17 times the wealth of black households. The current white-to-Hispanic wealth ratio has reached a level not seen since 2001.

However, African American voters likely feel trapped into voting for Democrats or not voting at all. The Republican party has become the de facto party of white people. Indeed, 63% of all white males this year voted for Trump, with less educated white men giving Trump a 72% to 23% margin over Clinton. He won majorities among white men whether or not they had a college education. Trump also won over 62% of white women without a college education.

These numbers suggest that lower earning whites gave Trump the margin he needed to win the critical states necessary for his electoral college victory. College educated whites, men and women alike, were much less likely to vote for Trump. The argument that has been made repeatedly by Democratic apologists is that these working class Trump voters were motivated primarily by racism and sexism. Yet, that analysis is shallow and disingenuous. In 2008 and 2012, Obama captured a higher percentage of these same white working class voters than Clinton did in 2016.

Clinton underperformed Barack Obama's 2012 results among not only non-college educated whites, but also white men; black men and women; Hispanic men and women; Asian men and women; men and women of other races; every age group except voters over 65; liberals, moderates and conservatives; Protestants, Catholics, adherents of other religions and those who claim no religious affiliation; married men and unmarried men and women; union and non-union households; self-identified Democrats; straight people; people who think undocumented immigrants should be given legal status; and people who think the country is going in the right direction. [...]

It's true that in 2016, non-college whites swung to the GOP by a 15-point margin relative to 2012. But Clinton underperformed Obama among voters of all races who make less than $30,000 per year by an identical margin.

What was the critical difference between Obama's opponents in those years, McCain and Romney, and Trump this year? McCain and Romney promised traditional Republican establishment economic programs: more trade agreements, lower taxes for the rich and less regulation on big business. The GOP's racial appeals to whites, particularly in 2008 when Palin was on the Republican ticket, was just as heavy handed, if not more so, than Trump's rancid rhetoric regarding Muslims and illegal immigrants. The big difference between the GOP nominees who ran against Obama and Trump was his populist economic message, one that most prominent establishment Republicans did not embrace.

The current leadership of the Democratic party, beholden as it is to large corporate donors, and especially the TBTF banks on Wall Street, pays lip service to the growing income inequality that their own economic policies helped bring about. Yes, they did adopt their "most progressive platform" ever, but no one believed Clinton would follow through on the platform concessions she made to Bernie Sanders to gain his endorsement. Her choice of Tim Kaine, a prominent free trade Democrat, as her running mate was a clear sign to voters she had no intention of abandoning policies backed by her corporate donors. She never made the Democrat's "progressive economic" agenda a prominent part of her campaign, relying instead on running attack ads against Trump that highlighted his racist and sexist remarks and behavior, but never directly challenged him on policy grounds.

In any case, she was a tainted candidate from the start, one favored by, and in the pocket of, Wall Street and other big corporate donors to her campaign and the Clinton Foundation that insist on globalization and austerity, the misery of the masses be damned. Establishment Democrats, through the DNC and their contacts in the media, did everything they could to install her as their candidate, and block Sanders popular insurgent campaign based on a progressive economic message. The Democrats ignored economic appeals to counter Trump, and ran arguably the least popular candidate in its history. They relied on big turnout from women and minorities, assumed to be the party's natural constituency, to put her over the top. Instead the opposite occurred.

Now, Bernie Sanders is furiously mounting what at times seems like a one man campaign to radically alter the Democratic Party into one that emphasizes economic injustice over favoring Wall Street and large transnational corporations. Unfortunately, the early signs are that the Democratic elites are doubling down on their failed neo-liberal doctrines of the past that emphasize "globalization" and free trade policies, and that reject reject progressive economic alternatives. The election of Chuck Schumer as their minority leader in the Senate is one example. I expect whoever is ultimately chosen to head up the DNC will also be someone acceptable to the current powers that be within the party.

If Dems persist in trying to generate electoral victories in this old, narrow and divisive manner, it won't matter how badly Trump and the Republicans perform in office, because there will be no real alternative offered to the American public in 2018 and 2020. Just more of the same "New Democrats" trying to triangulate their way back into power. I don't think the elites in the Democratic party, even now, realize that ship has sailed in the wake of this year's election.

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The wealth of white households was 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared with eight times the wealth in 2010, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. Likewise, the wealth of white households is now more than 10 times the wealth of Hispanic households, compared with nine times the wealth in 2010.

The liberal idea of "Multiculturalism" appears to be a nebulous, idealistic fantasy that has nothing to do with kitchen-table reality.
Is it any wonder that union members have left the Dems?

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gulfgal98's picture

The bottom line is people vote their pocket books.

When the Democrats failed to deliver, the voters either gave up or went with the Republicans. This entire election fiasco and those of the last six years is directly attributable to the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton who gave the voters nothing to vote for. "We're not as bad" is not a winning strategy especially when the candidate at the top of the ticket is seen as being in the pocket of Wall Street.

And the Democratic party as a whole as learned nothing. Witness: Chuckie Shumer - Senator for Wall Street elected as the minority leader in the Senate.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Presidency and it continues downward

Meanwhile, everyone on min wage in 2015 earned a total of about $14 billion
Wall street bonuses for 2015: about double that.

People know somethings up. They may not know the ins and outs of the law or economics, but the people have heard the bullshit before and have been immunized.

Sure, some people voted for trump. But so many voted to stick it to the establishment, and just like with Obama, they are going to find out that they just got another establishment con man.

At this point, it will probably take bloodshed to get change. As the economist Mark Blyth often says, the low lying beaches of the Hamptons are not a defensible position.

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I believe in America. I believe in an American ethnicity. I hate the terms European-American, African-American, Asian-American. I want us to all be AMERICAN.

These ethnic identities are making racial problems worse. Instead of mixing and becoming one, we're stuck on ensuring that these old ties from countries we long left are more important than they should be.

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Socialism? Homogeneous groups are more supportive of redistributive programs.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

The Southern Racists wanted to exclude domestic and farm workers because most who work those jobs are black or brown people. They've only had access to these and other social programs in recent years despite the fact they've always paid into them.

That kind of crap has been around since colonial times and anyone who has tried to end it has either been killed or incarcerated. Bacon's Rebellion, 19th Century Abolitionists, The Tulsa Riots, MLK, Malcolm X, Labor Unions, just to name a few.

People are also heavily propagandized to keep it that way, i.e. 'Welfare Queens/Moms'. How we put an end to it I'll never be able to figure it out.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Americans aren't homogeneous.

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Yaldabaoth, Saklas I'm calling you. Samael. You're not alone. I said, you're not alone, in your darkness. You're not alone, baby. You're not alone. "Original Sinsuality" Tori Amos

I'm pretty sure that that research is highly debatable at best. Based on my observations, it isn’t actually true at all, and there is nothing in socialism that requires homogeneous societies. If you believe this, then I am sorry to say that you may have been hoodwinked by class enemies and class traitors, because the claim that socialism requires a homogeneous society is racism masquerading as a critique of socialism -- the absurd notion that racism and other forms of bigotry exert such a powerfully malevolent influence that their mere presence is sufficient to stop socialism in its tracks. Socialism has successfully developed even in fractious, divided societies, whether the basis of division is race, ethnicity, religion, class, or some combination of those. The evidence indicates that such divisions need not be a major obstacle to developing socialism in those places.

For example, socialism is functioning perfectly in the state of Kerala in southern India, and has been for about forty years at least now. Kerala has a per capita income one tenth that of Brazil’s, and yet boasts universal education and universal health care and a unionization rate of nearly 100%. Kerala has several large minority groups (Muslims and Christians) who do not typically vote for the Indian Communist Party (which introduced and maintains social democracy in Kerala), and yet this diversity did not prevent socialism from taking root in Kerala.

While it is true that Finland is ethnically homogeneous, to merely pay attention to ethnicity is to ignore the very deep divisions that existed in Finland when the Finns started building social democracy there. Finland had been under foreign rule since the 1200’s, and their various masters were very cruel. When Finland finally got independence after World War I, the country immediately descended into a vicious civil war between the Whites (the local collaborators and bourgeoisie who now sought to make themselves the masters of the country) and the Reds (the socialist/communist types who wanted to build a just society and weren’t about to bow and scrape for another set of masters, even if these particular masters spoke Finnish instead of German, Russian, or Swedish). The Whites won on the battlefield, but the Reds won at the ballot box within ten years. In summary, Finland at the time that socialism began to be built there was a deeply divided, deeply impoverished, post-colonial society in which the infant mortality rate was on par with that of the Somalia and the Central African Republic of today. In short, for seven hundred years it had been a hellhole that might as well have been run by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for all the war, famine, disease, and death that its people suffered at the hands of their oppressors. And yet, those same people managed to overcome those divisions and those difficulties and build one of the finest social democracies in the world in less than a century. Oh, and then there were also the two wars that Finland had to fight against the Soviet Union to prevent itself from being conquered again.

There are probably other examples to draw from, but those are the ones that are most familiar to me. The point is that socialism doesn't require homogeneity to succeed. Homogeneity might be helpful, but its absence is not an insurmountable hindrance.

All of the information I have related comes from the blog "The Persistence of Poverty," which I highly recommend. The author of that blog goes into even greater detail on these matters.

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I've been working on my own that lays out why pursuing a "demographics driven majority" is a foolish strategy. I may simply abandon it since you covered this so well.

Incidentally, "abusive" is the correct word. The demographics driven strategy is also more than a little bigoted, as it assumes bloc-like voting out of thoughtless habit instead of out of giving thought to the alternatives.

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Democrats haven't produced results for black people.

At the same time, the other side of the relationship is largely managed by black elites who use scolding lectures to shake down the party for their own personal benefit. Sure, they're alienating whites, and yeah, they're ignoring the fact that older black voters are simply not that supportive of the progressives they expect to have their backs. But hey, what does that have to do with getting a little something something for yourself, a nice little cozy position in government or the party or on tv? That's what it's all about. Everybody does it.

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And they haven't been for a long time. Calling Trump voters "uneducated" is a Democratic elite thing, Along with dismissing us as "flyover country."

The latter slur is one reason not to get rid of the electoral college. It keeps us in "flyover states" relevant in national elections. Otherwise, all issues would be only those of interest in New York, Calufornia, and Texas.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

figures are the incomes of the HIGHEST earners along with the pittance the prols are being paid. They're as reliable as the monthly bullshit numbers the Labor Dept. puts out.

EDIT: changed BLM to labor dept and took out extra 'once a month'.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

sojourns's picture

From the existing leadership?

One may as well try to get an evangelical preacher who's whole heartedly been at it for 50 years to suddenly come to believe that there is no hell and that Jesus was a carnival barker. Never going to happen.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

dervish's picture

for the DNC to change its ways. There are contracts to be had and money to be made, even if they don't win. The well-connected Dem. elite will have to be dragged out of their positions physically before they'll ever leave.

As you stated so well, they won't ever embrace an economic doctrine of fairness, but neither will they ever accept advocacy for peace. They seem welded to the PNAC ideas that the US is exempt from international law (the real meaning of "exceptional"), and that it is desirable for the US to reshape the world in its preferred image, and that these happen without consequences.

For just as long as these failed ideas dominate the Dem. Party, so will the party lose every election.

If that's the case, perhaps it's good riddance.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

You've got it. The vested interests make out better losing in support of the established elite than winning in support of the rest of us.

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gendjinn's picture

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Saw this article in Common Dreams called Appeal to the Working Class? Don’t Bother, Says Krugman byJim Naureckas. Apparently, Krugman thinks economic appeal is useless.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/27/appeal-working-class-dont-b...

But from Krugman’s point of view, it doesn’t matter that Clinton mostly chose not to make economic arguments to the voters; his larger point is that economic arguments don’t really matter in politics:

The fact is that Democrats have already been pursuing policies that are much better for the white working class than anything the other party has to offer. Yet this has brought no political reward.

But here is something which the Clinton campaign arrogantly took for granted as they saw the world through their "identity coalition":

No, the real secret to Trump’s success is that while he did poorly among voters of color, he did less poorly than Romney did—he was beaten by 7 fewer points among African-Americans, 8 less with Latinos and 11 points less with Asian-Americans. This is despite running a campaign that echoed white supremacist themes and was openly endorsed by neo-Nazis. Why? As Christian Parenti, a progressive journalist who watched weeks of Trump’s speeches, related (Jacobin, 11/22/16):

Contrary to how he was portrayed in the mainstream media, Trump did not talk only of walls, immigration bans and deportations. In fact, he usually didn’t spend much time on those themes…. Choppy as they were, Trump’s speeches nonetheless had a clear thesis: Regular people have been getting screwed for far too long and he was going to stop it.

What gets me about Hillary's poor(er) showing among minorities was that Bernie's poor showing among African American primary voters was taken as proof by Hillary supporters that Sanders and his supporters were racists. And it remains an argument that Bernie couldn't beat Trump because Bernie could not connect with African Americans. In fact I believe given the numbers we have seen, Sanders would have taken white voters away from Trump plus gaining better African American voters. (As a side point, I thought the choosing of Kaine would depress the African American vote.)

The article points out that only 9% of Clinton's TV ads focused on the economy and more than 3/4 on personal attacks. Trump spent like 34% on ads involving the economy, jobs, and trade. Wikileaks counted the most mentioned subjects during the debates was Putin/Russia. That was all Hillary making personal attacks on Trump. Like that worked in the end, but expect the dems to keep pressing that button. "Why aren't I 50 points ahead!!!!!" she yelled.

But nothing will change in how the democrats will reconstruct their coalitions in two and four years and manage their messages and policies. In fact, I could see moderate independents viewing the dems more negatively if in fact Trump comes through on some of his populist promises.

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Lily O Lady's picture

GOP. Turns out they were looking in a mirror.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"