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    There was a big demo in Cheltenham. No question of the sympathy for the miners, in all sorts of areas.

    I was just meaning that the strikes make it harder for politcians of the right to appropriate miners like Trump has.

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      Also, because everyone to the right of centre poured such scorn on the miners in the 70s and 80s that no one would believe it if a Farage or a Redwood suddenly sympathised with them.

      Also, because beating miners was so indelibly associated with their Great God Thatcher, who can never be criticised, there's just no room for them to be able to be nice about them, even by their own spectacular current standards of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance.

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        As Ursus points out, the US media/political obsession with coal mining is utterly off the charts compared to the number of people employed in coal mining. If they wanted to do something useful, they'd look at how to bring decent infrastructure and new industries to former coal mining towns, but that's actually difficult. So instead the media write, and politicians follow, misty eyed panegyrics to former glories, thoroughly ignoring how shit the actual job was.

        In fact, someone a couple of pages back asked if the Democrats were asking why they lost in 2016, rather than just blaming it on the Russians. And a lot of the analysis has basically been that the Democrats haven't done enough to appeal to coal miners, or the handful of other actual white working class undereducated. The argument seems to go: if only we were a bit more racist and protectionist and reactionary, if only we were more socially conservative and didn't talk about treating women or black people decently, if we only spent our time talking about how to subsidise dying and high polluting industries, then we'd have won.

        Well, we might have won over enough voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan to swing those states. But we'd have probably lost millions of others, elsewhere. And it sure as shit wouldn't be a recipe for the future, and would be sending the left down the same cul-de-sacs as the right, appealing to a smaller and smaller, and ever reducing, demographic.

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          Yeah, that's it, E10.

          Funnily enough, I've just come across some Redwood, talking about Tower Colliery (which was closed by British Coal, then reopened by miners who bought it out.

          "At the end of the dispute I tried to get the government to offer the miners the right to work a pit the Coal Board claimed was uneconomic for themselves, as I was suspicious about some of the pits the Coal Board wished to close. I wanted a magnanimous aftermath. John Moore the privatisation Minister worked up some proposals but they got into the press before they were fully thought through or cleared with the PM, so the whole idea was lost. It was not until I was in the Cabinet myself that I was able to help one group of miners do just that, at Tower Colliery. They demonstrated that free of Coal Board control it was possible, at least in their case, to run the pit for longer."
          Sure, it was true of Tower, but I'm not entirely convinced otherwise....

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            They're not really interested in miners though are they? they're interested in supporting Coal companies, and vaguely lying about the number of jobs they're bringing back.

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              I am not so sure about that, TAB. It is one key play into the Rust Belt problem, and the sad reality that so many people cannot get past the idea that the boat has long since sailed rather than there being a chance of recovery. For coal there is also the play on China consuming huge amounts of coal so there is a clear way "they" are taking "our" jobs, which resonates really well with people.

              There have been attempts to make this play on clothing and other manufactured items, but for some reason those never quite seem to have stuck the same way as coal has. Probably because coal is such a base material, along with the recent fortunes made by fracking suggesting there is a boon in natural resources and somehow it isn't working for the coal towns.

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                https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...orm-republican

                Interesting ideas of how states can get around the changes to state tax deductibility.

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                  Originally posted by San Bernardhinault
                  And a lot of the analysis has basically been that the Democrats haven't done enough to appeal to coal miners, or the handful of other actual white working class undereducated. The argument seems to go: if only we were a bit more racist and protectionist and reactionary, if only we were more socially conservative and didn't talk about treating women or black people decently, if we only spent our time talking about how to subsidise dying and high polluting industries, then we'd have won.
                  That's some straw man.

                  The argument most progressives who are annoyed at the Democrats make is: if only the Democrats weren't in the pocket of corporate America, they might actually be able to make an economic case that truly connects with working and middle class voters (whether they be white, black, latino, straight, gay, trans, etc, etc).
                  Last edited by anton pulisov; 28-12-2017, 18:53.

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                    Yeah I've not come across too many "the Dems need to have done more to appeal to more white working-class racists" arguments from Clinton's leftish critics. Not least because black working-class turnout wasn't high enough for the Dems last year

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                      Have you not heard myriad versions of this among the many "this is why we lost" pieces? It's so often stated that "we lost because we didn't appeal to uneducated white working class men." That they get put off by the PC language, that talking too much about gay rights and trans rights and minority rights puts them off, and we should instead talk to the economic concerns of these people.

                      I have heard versions of that many times. And while it's not explicitly saying "we should be a bit more racist and a bit more anti-gay", that's certainly what it's code for.

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                        Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
                        Yeah I've not come across too many "the Dems need to have done more to appeal to more white working-class racists" arguments from Clinton's leftish critics. Not least because black working-class turnout wasn't high enough for the Dems last year
                        It's not so much that "we need to appeal more to white working class racists" as "we need to stop talking about race, and gay rights, and trans rights, because the white working class man finds that terribly uncomfortable, and literally solely focus on the white working class".

                        And more often than not "focus on the white working class" really means: More Trumpian Protectionism, and lots of talk about saving our factories from those horrible Chinese and Mexicans.

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                          Sb is right. There were way more articles about the need for the Dems to get more racist and less concerned with rights for all, than articles about how the democrats needed to actually stand for something. the bigger the circulation media outlet, the more likely you were to hear "Time to amp up the old racism."

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                            I've seen (not read, had enough of that) hundreds of the sort of articles SB alludes to, all saying the Trump voters concerns need to be addressed. The same sort of thing The Guardian push hard with UKIP by sending John Harris to nod his head at racists.

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                              I'm lucky enough not to have read as much on all this as some of you, clearly. That said, AP's point - that there are other ways of attracting poorer voters – has validity, and that the Democrats failed to use them:
                              The argument most progressives who are annoyed at the Democrats make is: if only the Democrats weren't in the pocket of corporate America, they might actually be able to make an economic case that truly connects with working and middle class voters (whether they be white, black, latino, straight, gay, trans, etc, etc).

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                                Yes, I should have said I don't agree with it.

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                                  Moore’s challenge has been rejected and Jones has been certified as the new US Senator from Alabama
                                  Last edited by ursus arctos; 28-12-2017, 19:57.

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                                    I don't think anyone is disputing that there are sensible ways to connect with actual working class and poorer voters.

                                    But the Coal-Mining Fetish Thinkpieces almost never go anywhere near that ground, and instead just hark back to halcyon times where every white man had a job, and it was the same job his dad had, and everyone felt rich in community spirit even if they basically all died at 60 from lung disease if they hadn't already died in mining accidents. These were the Good Old Days where nobody ever mentioned Teh Gays and Teh Bllacks, and everything was good. And the Democrat Autopsies which follow those Thinkpieces basically take the same ridiculous attitude, and think that appealing to the few hundred thousand white male Rustbelt Trumpers that would have swung the election wouldn't also have lost millions of other voters elsewhere, in this election and way into the future.

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                                      Clinton lost fairly handily to Sanders in the rust belt. It surely wasn't because Sanders was more racist and sexist than Clinton. Sanders wouldn't even know how to do that if he wanted to.

                                      In fact, it was Clinton who was desperately playing the race card by smearing Sanders as an old white man who is out of touch with black people. I guess being the wife of the first black president allowed her to get away with that, I dunno.

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                                        Sanders went low himself with his "trade deals did this" rubbish.

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                                          Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                          It's not so much that "we need to appeal more to white working class racists" as "we need to stop talking about race, and gay rights, and trans rights, because the white working class man finds that terribly uncomfortable, and literally solely focus on the white working class".

                                          And more often than not "focus on the white working class" really means: More Trumpian Protectionism, and lots of talk about saving our factories from those horrible Chinese and Mexicans.
                                          Yeah, exactly this.

                                          And I think overdone promises about "bringing jobs back from China" are likely to blow up in the face of whoever makes them.

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                                            yeah, it has to be remembered that Bernie sanders talked an absolutely massive mountain of bollocks. Saying something different to Hilary Clinton didn't make it remotely accurate. It was a bit closer to being on the right track, but it was also dangerous populist nonsense.

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                                              I'm curious about these articles from the left that claim that Clinton wasn't racist enough. I haven't seen them, but I fully admit that I might not click on them because they don't appeal to me.

                                              Who is writing those articles that say that Clinton was not racist enough? What do we mean by "left"? Democratic party insiders who respond to racism by suggesting racism-lite? This would be pretty similar to the centrist social democrats in Europe who have chosen to respond to working class discontent with neoliberalism with subtle immigrant blaming. The Lodewijk Asschers and Chukka Umunnas of this world, the type of people who do whatever the focus groups say.

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                                                Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                                                yeah, it has to be remembered that Bernie sanders talked an absolutely massive mountain of bollocks. Saying something different to Hilary Clinton didn't make it remotely accurate. It was a bit closer to being on the right track, but it was also dangerous populist nonsense.
                                                I think Clinton's overall platform, a fair bit of it responding to Sanders, was pretty good. I wish I could have been sure she'd have done it, mind.

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                                                  The Lodewijk Asschers and Chukka Umunnas of this world, the type of people who do whatever the focus groups say.
                                                  I don't know if I'd say that's particularly true of Umunna. On the Labour Right and responded poorly to Corbyn, but he generally seems to know his stuff.

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                                                    Originally posted by antoine polus View Post
                                                    I'm curious about these articles from the left that claim that Clinton wasn't racist enough. I haven't seen them, but I fully admit that I might not click on them because they don't appeal to me.

                                                    Who is writing those articles that say that Clinton was not racist enough? What do we mean by "left"? Democratic party insiders who respond to racism by suggesting racism-lite? This would be pretty similar to the centrist social democrats in Europe who have chosen to respond to working class discontent with neoliberalism with subtle immigrant blaming. The Lodewijk Asschers and Chukka Umunnas of this world, the type of people who do whatever the focus groups say.
                                                    As I said. They're mostly codified. But you can find a massive list of "Democrats need to ditch identity politics" articles if you just google it.

                                                    It all comes with two utterly ridiculous assumptions:

                                                    1 - you can't appeal to white working class men, and also fight the corner of other groups who're even more oppressed and under-represented.

                                                    2 - white working class voters are so racist and pathetic that they get really upset if you fight for anyone else, and refuse to vote for a party that's busy also trying to stop homophobia or police killings of black kids.
                                                    Last edited by San Bernardhinault; 28-12-2017, 21:13.

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