Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
After a…very long slog, looks like the primaries and caucuses almost here. Just kidding! There’s another…debate, and a couple more months. Many of us in Iowa are ready to be done with them, for sure. A question going into the Iowa caucuses: For each of the first four states, which are ‘must win’ for which candidate?
Let’s find out.
You might have the idea I think and talk a lot about class. It’s true. But I tend to write about class in general. For example, I’ve argued against using ‘class’ as a marker of socioeconomic status (SES) and in favor of using it as a marker of certain relations of economic power. On the other hand, I haven’t written a great deal about specific classes, like the working class. I’ve said a bit about what the working class isn’t, namely Trump’s base. But a bit less about what it is.
Let’s remedy that. Specifically, let’s zoom in on the working class. Who’s in it? Is it smaller than it used to be? Did deindustrialization defeat it? And, if so, do we now use ‘working class’ as a marker of identity rather than economic relations?
I’ll work through some of these questions.
In recent weeks, Julián Castro argued against Iowa and New Hampshire’s position as the first voting states in the presidential nomination system. Why? He said Iowa doesn’t reflect America’s diversity. By contrast, Elizabeth Warren took a big pass on that question. She said she’s ‘just a player in the game‘.
A couple of questions: Is Castro right? What kind of system might be better?
In a two-party system, parties become a bit of everything. This raises the question: What, exactly, is the Democratic Party? Who or what drives it? The blog 538 took a couple of cracks at this. Most notably, Nate Silver wrote about the ‘5 Corners‘ of the Democratic Party. And that’s what I’m going to look at in this post. His colleague Perry Bacon Jr., in a post on Democratic Party politicians, wrote about the party’s ‘Six Wings‘. Does Silver (or Bacon) get it right?
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