By David Bloviator
Political Editor
with A.J. Liebling, Meta-Content Generator
So 20 Democratic contenders for the 2020 Presidential nomination debated sort of on TV this week, and some of them did well for themselves. We're much too busy to crown winners and losers (besides what else would Chuck Todd think about at Supercuts?), but we did note a divergence of views as to whom the Democrats should target in their appeal.
Should it be for example voters of color (29,000,000 voters or 13% of the 2016 electorate)? Should it be young voters 18-34 (65,000,000 or 29%)? Should it be Hispanic voters (26,700,000 voters or 12%)?
Those masses of voters must have seemed like pretty tempting targets, which might explain why most of the contenders stressed issues likely to appeal to those large and somewhat overlapping groups, like racial justice, climate change, protecting the rights of immigrants, and forgiving student loans.
But what do a bunch of Senators, Congresspersons, Governors, and others with experience in running and winning (or at least in the case of Marianne Williamson sitting under crystals) know? If you want to know whom the Democrats should be appealing to, the answer is no further away than the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, where a squad of entitled clueless white men will tell you whom Democrats should be reaching out to.
Any guesses?
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| The key to the White House? You're looking at him! |
Wait for it . . .
It's them. If you could climb up David Brooks's moral mountain you could see that the Democrats miserably failed in their duty to appeal to the key voting bloc for 2020: David Brooks.
Lest you think that he's just being a tad solipsistic, he provides rock-solid evidence that he's the key demographic to the 2020 election in the form of a Gallup Poll in which 35% of voters describe themselves as moderate. Since he describes himself as a moderate (why?), he concludes that he speaks for over a third of the electorate. (This is the kind of syllogistic reasoning that leads him to conclude that all men are Socrates.)
But does he? He rubbishes Democrats for supporting Medicare for All and attacking Republican plutocracy, although polling other than the two surveys he cherry picks show rather strong majorities for the sorts of policies that Democrats articulated during the debates (other than outsourcing domestic policy to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, which, to be fair, is not such a terrible idea):
- 82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington. . .
- 59 percent of Americans—and 43 percent of Republicans—think corporations make “too much profit.”
- 82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem. Even 69 percent of Republicans share this view.
- 66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly.
- 72 percent of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important, . . to reduce poverty. . .
- 96 percent of Americans—including 96 percent of Republicans—believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the U.S. political system.
- 80 percent of Americans think some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. . . .
- 76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes. . . .
- 87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.
- 67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.
Workers’ Rights
- 61 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—approve of labor unions.
- 74 percent of registered voters—including 71 percent of Republicans—support requiring employers to offer paid parental and medical leave.
- 78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.
- 60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all
Americans have healthcare coverage.”
The Never U Bum Republicans meet to decide
whom they can stand to vote for. - 60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”
- 58 percent of the public favors replacing Obamacare with “a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.”
- 64 percent of registered+ voters favor their state accepting the Obamacare plan for expanding Medicaid in their state.
- 63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.
- 59 percent of Americans favor free early-childhood education.
- 76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change. . .
- 59 percent of voters say more needs to be done to address climate change.
- 65 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26 percent say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”
- 64 percent of Americans think an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities makes the country a better place to live. . . .
- 76 percent of registered voters—including 69 percent of Republicans—support allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (Dreamers) to stay in the country. 58 percent think Dreamers should be allowed to stay and become citizens if they meet certain requirements. Another 18 percent think they should be allowed to stay and become legal residents, but not citizens . . . .
- 58 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Now former Harvard Salient writer Ross Douthat attempts to refute these numbers by noting only a minority said yes to every progressive position put to them, from which he concludes, insanely, that a candidate supporting all these positions will lose, because a voter who agrees with the Democratic nominee on only 5 out of 6 positions would rather vote for a crooked lying bigoted rapey Russian stooge who agrees with none of them. Obviously.
His solution is for Democrats to retreat on some issues (like climate change or protecting vulnerable groups from persecution by religious bigots) to win on others. There's a great way to inspire the base! But really nobody gave a toss what Ross said in college and he doesn't seem to be breaking his streak.
Let's revert back to the happily-remarried Perfesser. In fact he can point to no significant group (off the Op-Ed page) that shares his aversion to social welfare legislation, his lack of interest in remedying America's shameful legacy of racial and sex-based discrimination, his utter indifference to the coming climate catastrophe, and his tendentious belief that the problem of inequality is not the plutocratic 1% but the upper 20% who pay to keep deep thinkers like him in sopprassata, (This of course isn't true, but we can't follow him up and down every f***in' mountain when we have other white men to deal with) while still objecting to the Rapist-in-Chief.
Turning now to third horse in this Op-Ed troika of overpaid white men whining, let's see what Bret Stephens had to say. Surprise – he agrees with Dave and Ross! In fact, he knows that the Democratic Party will be viewed thusly by the great masses who agree him, although in his case he at least identifies those stalwart voters as “Republicans” and not “moderates:”
. . . a party that makes too many Americans feel like strangers in their own country. A party that puts more of its faith, and invests most of its efforts, in them instead of us.So the Democrats will rightly lose because they do not understand the pain of white men tormented by hearing a language other than Spanish as they wait for their latte. We work in Coolidge Corner and in addition to Spanish we hear from four to six other languages on the street every day yet we soldier on, unaware that such speech constitutes an unforgivable imposition. In fact we think it makes dreary old Boston seem rather cosmopolitan, like world-class cities where you can hear many languages in the Metro and the Underground.
They speak Spanish. We don’t. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn’t. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes. They willingly got themselves into debt. We’re asked to write it off. They don’t pay the premiums for private health insurance. We’re supposed to give up ours in exchange for some V.A.-type nightmare. They didn’t start enterprises that create employment and drive innovation. We’re expected to join the candidates in demonizing the job-creators, breaking up their businesses and taxing them to the hilt.
As the formidable Parker Malloy has pointed out, once you get past the racism, you confront Bret's other fallacy: that his xenophobia and contempt for those who are not white males is broadly popular in the absence of Russian election interference:
They know this, which is why they start to huff and puff and hold their breath, threatening that the right-thinking folks like themselves won't vote for a Democrat who lets immigrants speak their native language on the streetcar. As Complete National Disgrace David Brooks says: “I could never in a million years vote for Donald Trump. So my question to Democrats is: Will there be a candidate I can vote for?”
The correct responses to this plea are:
1. We don't give a f***; and
2. Anyone who votes for anyone other than the Democratic Presidential nominee on Election Day 2020 is acting in a manner that results in the re-election of a Russian-controlled corrupt sex criminal and has therefore permanently forfeited his right to be taken seriously as an ethical, or indeed any other kind of, thinker.
The only good news is that despite such a fate he will still be able to cash his paychecks from The New York Times.
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