"At least 33 of those 50 companies have resumed donating to election objectors."
In capitalist societies, the business community is the pivot that decides whether democracy lives or dies. US business is ready to let democracy backslide in exchange for tax cuts and deregulation.
Here's Hacker and Pierson on the Conservative Dilemma. Do you take the L and compromise with mass interests (who tend to be sort of economically populist) or do you coalition with the rightwing culture warriors who threaten democracy?
Corporate leaders like to say "we're just giving them money for the economic policies. We don't like their illiberalism!" But that's not how politics works. You're funding the whole agenda.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Fascinating that Tough On Crime local politicians are trending Black. (Despite the public opinion debates on Defund, Black ppl are still least likely to hold Tough On Crime attitudes.) @LaFleurPhD's analysis suggests that Black politicians gain most from racial dogwhistle appeals
Racially conservative voters really seem to like the moral cover that it gives them when it's a Black politician saying the racially conservative stuff
This @l_eckhouse paper on public opinion doesn't get enough attention. There was a 2020 liberal shift among Dems, including white Dems, but overall no racial group has more progressive criminal justice attitudes than Black people, and that fact seems lost
The real shit is that there's not much Biden can do. He's not doing the wrong Messaging™ or "too close to activists." Problems facing center-left parties are long term & structural.
Best hope for Dems was to use policy--but we learned that 2 pivotal senators don't want that.
Globalization, deindustrialization, destruction of labor, increased immigration, & conservative parties' use of racial/cultural resentment are putting center-left parties in a bind. It's extra bad in US due to geography of districts.
So the only real options are 1) to break the filibuster & pass big reforms of democratic institutions, labor organizing, etc., and 2) start long overdue but slow-moving organization-building in state/local party orgs, labor unions, community orgs, etc.
My @jonathanchait critique. Piece is A+ on centrists. Some good points on lib foundations. But
-most of the "left" funders' $ still goes to normie liberals
-unpopular funders abound, but Chait singles out race
-conflates race & class politics
-neglects goal of social mvmts
1) From reading the piece, you'd think that Democracy Alliance, Ford, Planned Parenthood, etc are out there giving most of their $ to radical justice protests and the left flank of Dems.
Vast majority of their campaign $ goes to normie Dems in swing districts like MJ Hegar in TX
The vast majority of their organizational spending goes to legal advocacy (voting rights, gerrymandering, even Trump impeachment), GOTV, liberal think tank issues (reproductive rights), and community organizing that you'll never hear about on the news.
It’s strange—the moderate Biden wing leads the party, vocally opposes defund, condemns property damage in protests, pursues Bidenist legislation, excludes the AOC wing in campaigning, and then still blame them for the party’s popularity problems. Seems weird.
Maybe they weight a couple Cori Bush tweets more heavily than all the other things I just mentioned, I dunno
I watched and read the latest Carville, Bill Maher, etc. and I'm like, why do people who say "twitter isn't real life" only seem to be able to point to stray tweets here and there or an occasional MSNBC gaff as the evidence for left/wokeness hurting the Dems?
There are conservatives and libertarians in my department, and I spend a lot of time with them in seminars and meetings. I like them. But I don’t define those concepts in the narrowest of partisan terms.
Here are more comprehensive thoughts. I hope people opining on this clarify their arguments. I think many argue from implicit #2, that academia should reflect the ideological distribution of the mass public. That’s fine but be clear that this eliminates free traders
More generally, labor markets in capitalist societies will not produce many jobs designed to change institutions (especially markets, themselves). So people invent ridiculous narratives of their wage labor or investments as politically revolutionary.
There's variation across industries on this, but it applies to non-profit and public sector work, too (my own included). "Changing the world" on issues unsupported by markets (e.g., solving climate or civil rights) comes from collective political action, not our job descriptions
Another reason for the rise of ridiculous "my job making clickable ads more clickable is solving society's pressing problems" narratives is the emergence of new crises of climate and inequality precisely after the neoliberal turn undoes the demos and renders politics inert