In addition to the naive and self serving nonsense we've heard about why Democrats have gotten thumped so often and for so long there is a more honest and thoughtful body of work. The recent post of Timothy Burke that I've pointed to a couple of times already, Down In the Dumps, where he explains why he speaks plainly and sincerely about issues that interest him rather than avoiding subjects that might damage his liberal causes, and won't resort to lies and political strategies, is one example.

I write as a liberal sack of garbage not because I think that I am writing to Gentlemen and Ladies on the other side, and thinking they accord me the same respect. I write it because the only way to win a rigged game is to play fair and hope that the onlookers will eventually notice who cheats and who does not. I write as a sack of garbage because I believe first that you cannot take arms against a vast sea of your fellow humans and either hope or wish to win.

In Why DOn't They Listen to Us? - Speaking to the Working Class Lillian Rubin says much the same and more, at length. As her humorous title suggests the working class DOes listen, and plainly hears what clever strategists thought was concealed, as well as the unspoken message communicated by lies of omission and commission. As Timothy warns, the onlookers will notice, have noticed for decades.

The spectators are watching: if we start to match them lie for lie, cheat for cheat, cheap shot for cheap shot, we walk right into the caricature that’s been drawn of us.

What Timothy evades and Rubin states is that it's not a caricature, or not just a caricature, but an accurate if simplified analysis of the mind and behavior of the increasingly degenerate left-liberal cohort. Matching lie for lie, cheat for cheat, cheap shot for cheap shot started long ago. It's a chicken and egg argument about who started it. Though there is merit to the ideas of left-liberalism, left-liberals fail to advance them, indeed they discredit them.

Back then there was a saying that "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged on his way to the subway." When I first heard it, I was outraged by those flip words; now it seems to me that they weren't entirely wrong. So today I wonder if a conservative isn't a working-class guy who heard the "liberal elite" (as the right has effectively labeled us) tell him he had nothing to fear when experience told him otherwise-not just on crime but on a whole slew of issues that have turned the country into a cultural and political battlefield...

Whether on welfare, race, or identity politics, we kept silent when we might have built bridges. We resisted talking about the role of Aid to Families with Dependent Children in the rising rate of illegitimacy in the African American community and called those who did racist...My argument is simply that our opposition to the reform of AFDC, even after it became clear that its unintended consequences had created a whole new set of social problems, left us with little influence either with policy makers or the general public in the debate about how to change it.

On race, too, we failed to speak out at crucial moments and to face up to self-evident truths. For decades the left has argued that the antisocial behavior of significant numbers of African American youth (dropping out of school, getting pregnant, gang behavior, drugs) is a direct result of the painful realities under which they live and the hopelessness and helplessness their plight generates. Once again, we're not wrong, but we're not wholly right either...

A decade ago, I wrote about the emerging movement of European-American clubs and warned that in these groups we could see "the outlines of things to come" (Families on the Fault Line). The clubs themselves faded away, but the consciousness of self as "other," an idea that had been alien to whites of any class until identity politics came to dominate political life, took root and evolved into what we see today: America's white working and lower-middle class claiming for itself the status of another aggrieved group, only this time the largest in the land. And unlike earlier working-class movements of discontent, it isn't the bosses or the corporations or even the government that are the target of their anger, it's us, "the liberal elite."

Rubin is still constrained, self-censored both to evade the condemnation of her intended audience - degenerate left-liberals - and by her own inability to grasp the essence of her claimed allegiances. She is angry and spiteful, crippled by her hatreds of the "radical right", blinded by her prejudices against "conservatives".

It doesn't matter whether people are conservative or progressive, not to a real leftist. What matters is whether they are able to rule themselves and treat one another fairly. It is oppressive institutions that leftism opposes, not the temperaments of any of the people. Those differences are eternal and it's just plain stupid to attempt to draw lines, to pick some arbitrary point on the continuum of temperaments from conservative to progressive and say that all those the the right of that point are enemies. It doesn't matter if the oppressive institutions are those erected by conservatives or progressives. Working-class malcontents are perfectly correct to be angry with "the liberal elite", even more so than the bosses and corporations, since they are more oppressive.

The working class does listen, has listened for a long time, and picked their poison. The left-liberal establishment is worse that the right-liberal establishment from a working class perspective. It does no good to focus group new talking points, dress up in costumes, reframe the debate or otherwise press onward with the same brain dead ideas and attitudes tarted up in lemony fresh, market tested, packaging. The left will continue to lose because working class people are far too smart to fall for that crap.

This is a gut check. Left-liberals need to look in the mirror and see who they really are. They are elitists. They do wish to oppress working class people. They do despise the unwashed hordes, and see no reason to consider their views. They fear nothing more than that these troglodytes will rule themselves. There's little truly "left" about left-liberals.

But there is a real and decent left still, one that champions democratic and egalitarian values and seeks to extend full suffrage - a piece of the action - to all. They understand the value of an enlarged social mind that includes all the members of society, its ability to make superior governance decisions and so increase the well being of all. This left understands the evolution of culture, the mechanisms involved in cultural sharing and enrichment when diverse sub-cultures interact and over time morph into new configurations that are still clumpy, with distinct groupings, but different from the initial groupings. They don't have simplistic notions of homogeneous blending to eliminate cultures and create the culture. How boring, how inhuman!

The real left has no chance against the "power left" or the "power right". But it is possible to influence both by patiently speaking out again and again, reminding them of their failings. The right, during its long winter of discontent during the new deal era when a sort of bastardized socialism crept into US governance, listened and learned a little. Now it's the faux-left's turn. There is little evidence that they have understood their situation yet, but the words of Burke and Rubin hint at a partial awakening that may increase.

Update:

SIAW seems to have related ideas, though at some distance, perhaps due to the heavy baggage they are still lugging about.

It [As We See It, later expanded into As We Don’t See It] ... provided marvellously thought-provoking and, even now, very useful guidelines as to what has gone wrong with labour and socialist movements over the years, and what might yet go right, if only the libertarian and democratic impulses of socialism from below can, somehow, be resuscitated. We salute Comrade Pallis/Brinton and those who worked with him - and if you haven’t read As We Don’t See It, or need a shot in the arm from re-reading it, here it is.

SIAW quotes a graf...

Meaningful action, for revolutionaries, is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self-activity of the masses, and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others - even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.

... and voices qualified praise.

...we still admire and respect the superb intransigence and clarity of the statement, even as we worry about its implication that any and every action can be neatly slotted into a classification that has just two classes (can’t an action have both meaningful and harmful aspects, simultaneously?). On the one hand, the pamphlet didn’t inspire us to join Solidarity, nor did it answer all our questions about socialism and capitalism and the whole damned mess (some of which, we’re both glad and sorry to say, we haven’t found answers for anywhere else either). On the other hand, it helped to save us from undergoing the quasi-religious process of conversion-devotion-disillusionment-reaction that so many former members of leftist sects have been scarred for life by, and that most present members of those sects are unwittingly undergoing this very minute.

It's broken, but still a useful spell to ward off a type of mental fog.