[lbo-talk] Tea Party: less than meets the eye

[Alan Rudy]

No, the way Democratic whites express their displeasure is by not voting.
The way independent whites express their displeasure is by not voting or
voting Repug.  I'm not sure black voting is up as a percentage of the black
population, though it was in 2008, no?  In part, because O is black -
though, again, many many leaned to Clinton early on, and in part because his
rhetoric was less neoliberal and more idealist.

In terms of your second paragraph, you're comparing apples and oranges - the
character of the working class, the government, the economy and the planet
is just a tad different, no?  I teach the kids of the American working
class, what they haven't been taught, are sure is true and aren't interested
in learning sometimes makes me feel hopeless... and these are students at a
decent mid-major university.  What makes teaching a joy, sometimes, is
filling in the gaps, blowing up received "wisdom" and thereby stimulating -
in a few - much greater inquisitiveness.

On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com>wrote:


> Alan Rudy: And Democrats have facilitated this development by embracing
> neoliberalism... voila, a huge contradiction at the heart of Obama's
> politics.
>
>
> Somebody: So, if whites are upset at Democrats for enacting neoliberal
> policies their way of protesting is by voting for even more ruthlessly
> neoliberal Republicans? Meanwhile, blacks, who by all measures have suffered
> more in the last generation than whites, continue to overwhelmingly support
> the Democratic Party.
>
>
> Let's face it, if you are right, you paint a picture of the white working
> class as hopelessly infantile and ignorant. Why should the workers need an
> Obama or some other man on a white horse to raise their class consciousness
> anyway? At the turn of the 20th century, when both Republicans and Democrats
> were conservative by contemporary standards, workers somehow managed to
> organize unions, the Populist Party, the I.W.W., the Socialist Party, etc.
> Americans today have far more civil liberties than they did back then but
> they can't be bothered to even assemble a liberal version of the Tea Party.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319