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We are on the cusp of a Democrat class war
After 2024, divisions within the party may tear it apart
The recent sparring between Starbucks’s longtime CEO Howard Schultz and Senator Bernie Sanders reflects a conflict within the Democratic Party that is likely to get far more intense in the years ahead. Sanders accused Schultz, a self-described progressive who once considered a presidential run, of conducting “illegal union busting” at the coffee chain’s shops — something that the Starbucks CEO vehemently denied.
Schultz is finding out the hard way that liberal intentions are not enough to prevent his employees from seeking better wages and conditions. This dilemma mirrors that of his gentry progressive allies, who represent the Democrats’ increasingly affluent, well-educated base. They are now primary funders of the party and it is their agenda that has come to achieve dominance.
The Democratic merger between the corporate Left and traditional Leftism is clearly unnatural. The old Leftists like Sanders, and publications like The Nation, have become alarmed by the growing power of the oligarchic elites within the party as well as the accelerating movement of working class voters to the GOP. Given that all ten of the nation’s wealthiest congressional districts are now solidly Democratic, they have a point. As the radical publication Jacobin complained: “The Democratic base is getting richer and whiter.”
The gap between the interests of investment banks, C-suite executives and elite professionals and that of working, even middle-class voters, is simply too large. Born out of fears over Trump and the MAGA movement, there may be a truce between the two factions in 2024. But, over time, economic issues will sunder this alliance, as is already happening with the growing presence of socialists on city councils in places like Los Angeles and New York. There’s even a growing socialist movement among woke employees in Silicon Valley.
Among Leftists, there’s a natural hostility to the oligarchy’s excesses. After all, if the world is on the verge of apocalypse, and must adopt “net zero”, the issues of redistribution become greater. It is therefore not great advertising to their own party, let alone the world, when wealthy Democrats fly their private jets to discuss the “crisis” in places like Davos.
Besides, people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez do not distinguish between good billionaires and bad ones, but instead believe that billionaires should not exist at all. The red-green (or watermelon) contingent generally agrees with the view of Barry Commoner, a founding father of modern environmentalism, that “capitalism is the earth’s number one enemy.”
This division suggests that a new, more radical anti-capitalism may be ascendant — no doubt to the horror of Schultz and other moguls. It reflects a trend that is occurring across the Western world, with over half of respondents (56%) in a recent Edelman survey saying that they now believe that capitalism does more harm than good. Politically, this has resulted in younger voters drifting towards ideologically extreme candidates: in 2016, Sanders won more young votes in the primaries than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton combined.
Although Joe Biden is likely to hold much of this coalition together, particularly against Trump, the radicalisation of younger voters cannot bode well for Schultz, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and similar corporate lords. Issues like January 6th, gender, race and climate may not be enough to hold the gentry Left and the progressives together but, soon enough, this alliance will not withstand the rising issues of class and labour that will define the future of politics throughout the West.
Democrats could well also tear themselves apart over reparations.
There are plans afoot in California to give Blacks 5 million dollars in reparations.
Good for Blacks born in California like Meghan Markle , and I imagine her descendants will also be eligible.
But not so good for the traditional Democrat working-class voter who will have to pay taxes to finance that.
I think that it was John McWhorter (although don’t quote me on that) who said that African-Americans have already had reparations, only it was called affirmaive action. This was paid for disproportionately by Asian-Americans, though..
Crazy. I demand reparations for my Irish ancestors at the hands of the English! Monty Python got it 100% correct in that wonderful skit of theirs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
I demand reparations from the English who booted my Irish ancestors out and from Russia which stole my family farm in Latvia in 1914!!!!
I just demand reparations!
Everyone should demand reparations from the Scandinavians who ravaged the British Isles and beyond.
Interesting that they think $5M is a reasonable number. One could much more easily use the difference in average household wealth between Black and White households, which is $100,000 and divide that by average Black household size, let’s say 2. The equitable number would be much closer to $50,000 than to $5M.
There has never been the class consciousness in the United States that there has been in Europe and the Old Commonwealth, and it has declined in those places under American influence. But when the tide turns there, then it will turn everywhere. The failure of the woke movement to take economic inequality seriously, and therefore to include vast numbers of its victims, may well be the turning point.
Exactly! Whilst the Left continues to tell poor whites in de-industrial, opioid ridden hell holes to check their privilege they will go populist right.
The cynic in me wants to ask who is surprised. The wealth, well educated lot are simply doing what they have always done and buying power, influence and a place at the table.
Notionally democracy is one person one vote but a few (million) dollars/pounds/euros etc. buys a lot more. Maybe not more votes but certainly great influence in policies and regulations.
I’m willing to buy the notion that corporate Democrats and socialists make for unstable coalition partners and ultimately have irreconcilable policy prescriptions, but I don’t think the working class fits into the dynamic much. For all their talk of taxing the rich, Medicare for all, and collective bargaining, the leaders, influencers, on-the-ground activists, the readers of and contributors to The Nation and the Jacobin are overwhelmingly bourgeois intellectuals temperamentally and rhetorically hostile to many of the values, aspirations, traditions, and aesthetic tastes of working-class people. The fight for the soul of the Democratic party is between high-minded philanthropists and dorm room radicals who, though deeply polarized on the color of the bricks, both are zealously driven to pave the path to Hell and bus the working class along it.
Well summarized
My observation from down here on the front lines:
The hinge is real estate. Too many of those bourgeois intellectuals are also home owners in up-scale neighborhoods. The near certainty of getting stinking rich in ten or twenty years seems to be enough to make a tin-eared narcissist out of anyone. My own extended family has suffered from this for years now. To have dinners like we used to is unbearable; the conversation is hellish.
Democrats all, but we’re like different species.
Politics worldwide has become polluted with the a “lib-virus” This has nothing to do with classical Liberalism, which I and many millions of sane thinking people adhere too. It is pernicious and is killing many more millions than the faux covid that ignored all sound liberal values and brought us to this juxtaposition.
Should Trump have been president, an emphatic no in my opinion, however another Clinton or heavens forbid the clown that now parades itself as their president is scraping the barrel.
Corporations have been systematic in devolution of good governance. Their influence was proven during this scamdemic and the Charlie who ascended to the crown, knighted them. Fauci was fawned on as a hero, to the extent that the inglorious “barbie-doll” Hanoi – Jane painted his portrait. Go figure!
I don’t know how to counteract them as it would take another revolution (or world war) to rid us of all these “Carpetbaggers”. They exist everywhere.
The rich like Bezos and Zuckerberg ect control the MSM so its easy for them to keep the majority of the Dem voters in line
At this point, talking about political positioning in 2024 is like two bald guys fighting over a comb. If we get to ’24 in one piece, it will be the last election.
Very prescient! In South Africa 2024, could also be it’s last election. Cannot see the ANC wanting to give up or share the power.
As a minority, that does not bode well – my “struggle credentials” notwithstanding, will not hold water.
What are you talking about, the Donald has an amazing head of hair
2024 is nine months away and we will get there in one piece. Given your sense of reality, maybe it would be best if you did not vote.
The four things holding the left together in the last paragraph are all chimeras. So good luck with that.
“We are on the cusp of a Democrat class war”
Oh I do hope so
From Koktin’s lips to G*d’s ear.
Does the photo remind anyone else of Statler and Waldorf?
“Although Joe Biden is likely to hold much of this coalition together …” The animatron Biden reminds of the dead legionaires in the old movie Beau Geste that the evil Sgt. Markoff propped among the parapets of the fort.
Good riddance.
What is so very sad about this is that the absolute best centrist Democrat is Joe Biden. But an American public assessment that he is too old is a very real factor.
The Democrats are going to find another centrist who is accepted as being Presidential. Someone our Vice President Harris has not risen to the task of developing a Presidential aura.
Elizabeth Warren is cut apparently cut from the same leftist cloth as Bernie.
How about Hakeem Jeffries?
No, he is way too ideological. America needs practical solutions that bring people together, not yet more tedious grievance narratives that bore voters to death.
America needs 30 years without Democrats and nutty ‘progressives’. Send them all north to Canada.
Oh, God no ! You’ve sent enough of them already. I would like to send a bunch back, starting with Elizabeth May,
You are delusional and downright scary. The Democrats have devolved and are not worthy of the sobriquet “Democrats”. They are not Liberals by any classical liberal measure.
Biden and family make Trump’s clan look like extremely well adjusted people.
They also make the Trump clan look honest
Do you have a Democrat centrist in mind who seems presidential? I don’t think there are any. Also, Biden is not only too old (as is Trump) but also has too much dementia. He is a puppet for the woke left.
Biden a centrist?? He’s a sock puppet for the loony Left of his party. C’mon, man!
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