Friday, May 24, 2019

Democratic Party's Class War over Middle-Class Voters

The Democratic party is going from being the party of formal entitlements for the poor to the party of the informal entitlement of the affluent.

There is a class war going on inside the Democratic party.

That's a comforting bedtime story Democrats tell themselves but the reality is that the parties have traded places in a different way: The Republican party, once the political home of business elites and educated suburbanites, has become the party of farmers and rural communities, and the party of less educated whites; the Democratic party, some of whose affiliates still formally call themselves the "Farmer-Labor party," are today what the Republicans once were: The party of Big Business, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, the party of moneyed elites, and the party of educated white professionals, particularly those in the most affluent communities.

Hence the new Democratic focus on "The middle class," by which Democrats do not mean the middle class, exactly - the terminology mainly serves to communicate to upwardly mobile voters that the Democrats no longer see themselves as the party of the poor, as the welfare party, though they'll take those votes, too, where they can get them.

What this means for traditional Democratic party constituencies should be obvious, too.

That's the dilemma for the Democrats as it goes from being the party of formal entitlements for the poor to the party of the informal entitlement of the affluent.

The emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib - a callow social-media performer and a Jew-hating weirdo, respectively - is one indication that there are many Democrats who are not willing to see the party of little old liberal white ladies evolve into the party of rich and respectable middle-aged white men in nine or ten spendy ZIP codes, the Nancy Pelosi and Randi Weingarten party morphing into the Beto O'Rourke and Jack Dorsey party.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democrats-class-war-middle-class-voters-entitlements/

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