Since there is no Left in this country worth mentioning, I'll restrict my remarks to the Democrats and the missed political opportunity of a generation or two, stretching back at least to the Reagan years.
In politics, narrative (who controls it and how it's disseminated) is everything. For reasons that continue to elude me, the Democrats throughout my lifetime have ceded the narrative to the GOP. Rather than make a strong, consistent case that the interests of white working class voters overlap and often mesh with those of black and Hispanic voters, they allowed the Republicans to get away with crying "class warfare" every time the Democrats tried to raise the issue. Rather than say, "You're damned right. This is about socio-economic class and it cuts across gender/race/ethnic lines," they ran as fast as they could away from any position that might be seen as legitimately "leftist" and retreated to a 'safe' position to chase the votes of the very groups who weren't likely to side with the GOP in the first place, thus helping the conservatives brand them as special interest, identity politics leftists anyway. It's perverse.
Meanwhile, they allowed themselves to be pulled rightward on issue after issue (think Bill Clinton's triangulation) -- again, because they allowed the GOP to control the narrative. This is how a Donald Trump can come along years later and say, "Look at these terrible free trade agreements that have gutted our manufacturing base and sent your jobs overseas." Many of the people who voted for Trump and the down-ticket GOP candidates either don't know or don't care that those same trade agreements had the blessing of conservative think tanks, conservative politicians, and the corporate players who contributed to their campaigns. They just look at who was sitting in the big chair at the time of the agreements being adopted (Clinton) and who is now President during their season of pain and discontent (Obama) and draw the conclusion that the Democrats don't give a damn about them. They're not entirely right, but they're not quite wrong, either. The Democrats should have been their champions. Instead, they played a game they couldn't win, with rules of engagement set by their opponents.
The GOP has long had a serious problem, knowing that their appeal was severely limited if one looked at the issues in terms of class instead of group identity (racial, ethnic, religious, etc.). Couple that with long-term demographic trends that also don't favor them, and they smartly realized that the way to victory was paved with Democratic weakness and waffling. They played a long con, and the Dems not only rose to the bait but swallowed the damn hook.
In politics, narrative (who controls it and how it's disseminated) is everything. For reasons that continue to elude me, the Democrats throughout my lifetime have ceded the narrative to the GOP. Rather than make a strong, consistent case that the interests of white working class voters overlap and often mesh with those of black and Hispanic voters, they allowed the Republicans to get away with crying "class warfare" every time the Democrats tried to raise the issue. Rather than say, "You're damned right. This is about socio-economic class and it cuts across gender/race/ethnic lines," they ran as fast as they could away from any position that might be seen as legitimately "leftist" and retreated to a 'safe' position to chase the votes of the very groups who weren't likely to side with the GOP in the first place, thus helping the conservatives brand them as special interest, identity politics leftists anyway. It's perverse.
Meanwhile, they allowed themselves to be pulled rightward on issue after issue (think Bill Clinton's triangulation) -- again, because they allowed the GOP to control the narrative. This is how a Donald Trump can come along years later and say, "Look at these terrible free trade agreements that have gutted our manufacturing base and sent your jobs overseas." Many of the people who voted for Trump and the down-ticket GOP candidates either don't know or don't care that those same trade agreements had the blessing of conservative think tanks, conservative politicians, and the corporate players who contributed to their campaigns. They just look at who was sitting in the big chair at the time of the agreements being adopted (Clinton) and who is now President during their season of pain and discontent (Obama) and draw the conclusion that the Democrats don't give a damn about them. They're not entirely right, but they're not quite wrong, either. The Democrats should have been their champions. Instead, they played a game they couldn't win, with rules of engagement set by their opponents.
The GOP has long had a serious problem, knowing that their appeal was severely limited if one looked at the issues in terms of class instead of group identity (racial, ethnic, religious, etc.). Couple that with long-term demographic trends that also don't favor them, and they smartly realized that the way to victory was paved with Democratic weakness and waffling. They played a long con, and the Dems not only rose to the bait but swallowed the damn hook.
