In the late special election for PA-18 the apparent winner is a moderate Democrat that sounds like he wants to appeal to the more mild-mannered Trump voters. Shades of 2006 when Chuck Schumer recruited a whole slate of moderate Democrats to run for Congress and won the House and the Senate with his moderate candidates.
They say that's how you win elections, by appealing to the mushy middle.
But Hillary Clinton is another matter. She who found a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband back in the 1990s and wrote off half the country as deplorables in 2016 is still going strong. In India last week she declared that she won the coasts of America while the Republicans won the heartland.
Clinton is telling us what Democrats and liberals say to each other when no-one else is listening. They still think it is 1965 and blacks and women lack basic civil rights. And why not? The years 1964-1965 were the miracle years for Democrats, and things have never been the same since.
Civil rights for blacks? But 50 years later, with liberals cheer-leading every step of the way, blacks are still woefully lagging.
Jobs for women? But those meany-jellybeany tech firms won't hire enough women for STEM jobs.
Indian Americans? You know what? I doubt if Indian tech guys really exist for your average Trump voter in a Rust Belt state.
The point is that politics is always about the grievances of the left-behind. That's because the left-behind experience the head-winds of life, and very often they attribute their lack of progress to "the rich," "injustice," not to mention the black guy that got a Fire Department job because inclusion and diversity.
That's why my basic line is that there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. Of course, it may be that there really is justice in a more perfect world, but in the real world the ruling class or the ruling majority writes laws and regulations to benefit itself and its supporters and they call it justice. Anyone that objects is guilty of "hate speech."
Such a situation is the history of the world, and the result can go one of two ways. One way is for the folks on the receiving end give up, and either die out or merge into the majority population. The other way is for the folks on the receiving end to get angry, form a head of rebellion, and determine to end the rule of injustice that the ruling class has lowered over their heads.
In this sense Hillary Clinton magnificently represents the existing ruling class. For this ruling class the whole history of the last century has been one of bending the arc of history towards justice by political means. First the liberal heroes gave the workers the vote, then they gave them wage and hour laws and unions, then they gave blacks and women the vote and now they are allowing gays and transgenders to emerge after an eternal marginalization.
But there is always a counter-narrative, even if the ruling class manages to shut it down. Maybe, the workers would have done better if they hadn't had labor union power to loot the great industrial corporations like steel and auto, for maybe they would still have their jobs. Maybe blacks would have thrived better if they just got civil rights in 1964 and then had to work their way up by picking up the mantle of middle-class culture. Maybe women would be happier now if the sexual revolution and abortion hadn't stripped them of the right to say No, and maybe the whole idea of women getting jobs is a conceit of educated women who want to differentiate themselves from "mere housewives."
Maybe. Or maybe not. But one thing is for sure. Ageing dinosaurs of the ruling class like Hillary Clinton are usually the last to know.
They say that's how you win elections, by appealing to the mushy middle.
But Hillary Clinton is another matter. She who found a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband back in the 1990s and wrote off half the country as deplorables in 2016 is still going strong. In India last week she declared that she won the coasts of America while the Republicans won the heartland.
But what the map doesn't show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.Then she went in for the kill.
Then she turned to Trump's voters: “And his whole campaign — 'Make America Great Again' — was looking backward. You know, you didn't like black people getting rights; you don't like women, you know, getting jobs; you don't want to, you know, see that Indian American succeeding more than you are."In a way this is comical. Used to be that Democrats railed at Republicans for telling everyone to get with the program and board the capitalist train. Because what about the people left behind, particularly "the workers?" Not any more.
Clinton is telling us what Democrats and liberals say to each other when no-one else is listening. They still think it is 1965 and blacks and women lack basic civil rights. And why not? The years 1964-1965 were the miracle years for Democrats, and things have never been the same since.
Civil rights for blacks? But 50 years later, with liberals cheer-leading every step of the way, blacks are still woefully lagging.
Jobs for women? But those meany-jellybeany tech firms won't hire enough women for STEM jobs.
Indian Americans? You know what? I doubt if Indian tech guys really exist for your average Trump voter in a Rust Belt state.
The point is that politics is always about the grievances of the left-behind. That's because the left-behind experience the head-winds of life, and very often they attribute their lack of progress to "the rich," "injustice," not to mention the black guy that got a Fire Department job because inclusion and diversity.
That's why my basic line is that there is no such thing as justice, only injustice. Of course, it may be that there really is justice in a more perfect world, but in the real world the ruling class or the ruling majority writes laws and regulations to benefit itself and its supporters and they call it justice. Anyone that objects is guilty of "hate speech."
Such a situation is the history of the world, and the result can go one of two ways. One way is for the folks on the receiving end give up, and either die out or merge into the majority population. The other way is for the folks on the receiving end to get angry, form a head of rebellion, and determine to end the rule of injustice that the ruling class has lowered over their heads.
In this sense Hillary Clinton magnificently represents the existing ruling class. For this ruling class the whole history of the last century has been one of bending the arc of history towards justice by political means. First the liberal heroes gave the workers the vote, then they gave them wage and hour laws and unions, then they gave blacks and women the vote and now they are allowing gays and transgenders to emerge after an eternal marginalization.
But there is always a counter-narrative, even if the ruling class manages to shut it down. Maybe, the workers would have done better if they hadn't had labor union power to loot the great industrial corporations like steel and auto, for maybe they would still have their jobs. Maybe blacks would have thrived better if they just got civil rights in 1964 and then had to work their way up by picking up the mantle of middle-class culture. Maybe women would be happier now if the sexual revolution and abortion hadn't stripped them of the right to say No, and maybe the whole idea of women getting jobs is a conceit of educated women who want to differentiate themselves from "mere housewives."
Maybe. Or maybe not. But one thing is for sure. Ageing dinosaurs of the ruling class like Hillary Clinton are usually the last to know.
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