I’ve mocked the astroturf ‘open the economy’ protests as much as anyone and while it’s true they’re full of nazis, dipshits and religious cranks, its ALSO true dems have failed to fight for a robust social democratic alternative for suffering people so we should still worry...
this message may have some organic normie appeal down the road regardless of how phony their PR scaffolding may be now. I think this was the point that jacobin article was trying to make but did so awkwardly (w/ some odious ‘poor white people forced to become nazis’ framing) but
I DO think dunking on these protests for categorically being bourgeois greedy deplorables without at least acknowledging that the democrats have offered so little by way of an alternative ‘help’ narrative is a bit pat and not terribly productive.
Even if most of the protests are legit, intractable, unchangeable racists or wackos who should be written off SOME are not and many more to follow may not be. Politics, to me, is the practice of making sure these “winnable’ people avoid the dark side.
Thus far dems have offered little material help beyond social shaming, some precarious UI & a token $1200 payment. In this environment—just as post crash 2008-–if the left offers no populist counter-narrative, the right will pick off many of these angry, ‘winnable’ voters.
What, even is Pelosi & Schumer’s ask? They’re not fighting for $2K/month, massive debt cancellation, they’ve supported none of the urgent & aggressive social programs needed to reduce suffering. In this leadership void, the right is offering **something** even if deadly & cynical
Many of these ‘winnable’ people are drowning, the dems have thrown them nothing, the GOP is tossing them barbed wire to grab on to. Yes the barbed wire is more dangerous than nothing but politics is mostly the theater of Doing Something and dems rn are failing at Doing Something
Mock the protests ofc, point out theyre astroturfed as was the Tea Party but we can’t ignore, for some, “back to work” is a catchy Help Narrative the leadership of our nominally progressive party has sorely failed to match. We should couple this mockery with pleas to do so imo
