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« Intersectionality | Main | What is the working class? »

It's not even the message...

...it's the policy.

Nancy Pelosi has been on the talk shows repeating her refrain that, "It isn't about our message. It's about our communication of it." It all just seems to me to be abstracting things away until there's nothing you need to fix.

Matt Stoller has an interesting write-up about Pelosi (and all the Dem leadership) bases her policies on charity and pity.

Basing your politics on pity, however, is condescending. Charity is important. But charity in place of politics is not democracy. It is aristocracy. And too many Democrats operate, unknowingly, in this frame of mind.

Democrats should see their role as enabling freedom for all, not alleviating suffering for the disadvantaged. When Pelosi sees poverty or discrimination, she sees the people being affected as unfortunate victims who need and deserve a helping hand. Poverty and discrimination are unfortunate. But more fundamentally, they represent a lack of freedom ― freedom that someone, or some system, has taken from you. You are not free if you can't afford to see a doctor. You are not free if you cannot access a good education because of your race or income. You are not free if your landlord can cheat you because you're poor. You are not free if you are a family farmer being driven under by meatpacking monopolists.

...

This issue, as venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, put it, is deep. "Pelosi, and the rest of the party learned everything they know about economics from Trickledown'ers," he said on Twitter. "Thus, they think there is a trade-off between growth and fairness and cannot articulate an economic story distinct from Republicans, except with pity."

By fnord12 | June 26, 2017, 10:40 AM | Liberal Outrage