r/TrueReddit • u/UnscheduledCalendar • 1d ago
Politics The Point of Politics Is to Convince People, Not Grandstand
https://jacobin.com/2025/08/left-politics-maximalism-socialism-reform8
u/nighthawk252 1d ago
Me reading the “Family Abolition” section of this article: https://xkcd.com/2071/
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u/your_not_stubborn 1d ago
The point of politics is to win elections so you can influence policy and yeah people need to be reminded of that.
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u/UnscheduledCalendar 1d ago
Submission statement:
The article describes the importance of convincing people to support socialist policies rather than focusing on grandstanding with unrealistic demands. The article emphasizes the need to strategically center issues that can garner support from a majority of people, such as universal healthcare and tuition-free college.
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u/Jammer_Jim 1d ago
That's pretty funny, coming from Jacobin.
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u/hucareshokiesrul 1d ago
Yeah I did a double take when I saw that
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u/BeeWeird7940 1d ago
Maybe they’re turning over a new leaf.
I listened to a debate between Curtis Yarvin and some academic/technocrat/liberal elite. If anyone is unsure what’s at stake, just listen to what Yarvin has in mind. It is chilling what kind of ideology we’ve allowed to get this close to the White House. Every liberal/leftist/social justice warrior needs to listen to this man speak. We might already be too late. As Trump fills our streets with military, it might be all moot at this point.
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u/SueDunham76 1d ago
What an enormously reactionary take. He's stopping crime. Most gripes with Trump come from imagining what he's thinking and so far you've never been right once.
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u/NoamLigotti 1d ago
He's stopping crime.
Yeah, that's right — if one is credulous enough to believe everything he says and not remotely question it.
And if China sent its military into its cities for "stopping crime" you'd think that was fine too, right?
And you think Duterte's repression in the name of "stopping crime" was fine too, right?
Surely you love how Singapore and Saudi Arabia try to stop crime. Surely you love how Stalin and Mussolini tried to stop crime.
The guy who likely participated in and certainly covers up sexual slavery of girl minors on a billionaire's private island: yeah he's stopping crime.
The perpetual liar and blatant authoritarian who says as president he has the right to do whatever he wants: yeah trust that guy.
And sending military to stop communists — what's wrong with that? McCarthyism
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u/BeeWeird7940 18h ago
In that debate I referenced, Yarvin praised Pompey for destroying organized piracy in the Mediterranean through brutal tactics. He also laid siege to Jerusalem, and ultimately slaughtered 10,000-15,000. All in the name of law and order. Yarvin just has one little twist. Law is no longer the rule. We should be ruled by “the sovereign,” and we are the subjects.
The dictator always starts with “law and order.” Then just drops the “law” part.
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u/SueDunham76 15h ago
Benevolent dictator is the preferred method of governance. Democracy is for chodes.
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u/TheSameGamer651 1d ago
Part of the problem here is that the Left (not just in the US, but throughout the Western world) is dominated by white collar workers. Deindustrialization shrunk the working class while simultaneously growing the professional-managerial class of college educated white collar workers. So the left isn’t really a labor movement anymore— it’s mainly urban professionals. They live in their bubble of wealthy, educated friends. Politically, they ascribe to social and cultural progressivism (like on issues of family and the police, as the article mentioned), but on economics, they benefit from the current status quo. Globalization provided them their jobs. They blame the 1% because they can pretend that they are working class when in reality, they’re part of the top 10%.
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u/Few_Map2665 1d ago
So, I think we've got to do a better job of defining who is "the working class" here? If it's just on income then the fact that the Republicans won the $30K-$70K/year income range this last year was an anomaly, and even in 2024 the Dems got the lowest-income voters. In addition, working-class voters who belong to labor unions or some minority groups also tended to go with Kamala/Walz.
Now white working-class voters absolutely go for Republicans (as does the white vote in general historically). Why do they do this?
So the left isn’t really a labor movement anymore— it’s mainly urban professionals. They live in their bubble of wealthy, educated friends.
You're talking about composition of the labor movement yes, but in terms of priorities organized labor was a big one in the last four years, so I think it's unfair to describe the left as just a bubble of urban professionals.
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u/TheSameGamer651 18h ago
That’s changing as well. Republicans made their biggest gains with nonwhite working class voters, particularly Hispanics in 2024. Sure, it wasn’t enough to win them, but the gap between how the white working class and the nonwhite working class vote has shrunk. There’s two waves of Trumpism if we’re being honest. The first is white working class voters that zoom to the right in 2016 (some of the biggest swings to the right that year were in places like North Dakota, Ohio, Iowa, and West Virginia for instance). But those gains hit a ceiling, so while those voters stay Republican, they don’t really get much redder in the next two elections. The second wave is in 2020 and especially 2024 where nonwhite working class voters mainly in urban centers zoom right (with some of the biggest rightward shifts in 2024 occurring in states like New York, New Jersey, Texas, and California). Meanwhile, white voters were the source of Democrats biggest gains in 2020 and 2024.
It’s also worth noting that Harris won union households just 53-46%. There’s two things going on here, 1) union leadership is bluer than their members, especially private sector unions and 2) most unions today are public sector unions, meaning their members are college educated bureaucrats— again the Democratic base today.
This compositional change means that even though Democratic leadership remains committed to labor, they have a difficult time winning organized labor support when working class voters of all races perceive them as catering to upscale urban professionals— and they’re not entirely wrong either.
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u/Few_Map2665 4h ago
That’s changing as well. Republicans made their biggest gains with nonwhite working class voters, particularly Hispanics in 2024. Sure, it wasn’t enough to win them, but the gap between how the white working class and the nonwhite working class vote has shrunk. There’s two waves of Trumpism if we’re being honest. The first is white working class voters that zoom to the right in 2016 (some of the biggest swings to the right that year were in places like North Dakota, Ohio, Iowa, and West Virginia for instance). But those gains hit a ceiling, so while those voters stay Republican, they don’t really get much redder in the next two elections. The second wave is in 2020 and especially 2024 where nonwhite working class voters mainly in urban centers zoom right (with some of the biggest rightward shifts in 2024 occurring in states like New York, New Jersey, Texas, and California). Meanwhile, white voters were the source of Democrats biggest gains in 2020 and 2024.
All true in the 2024 election, yep.
Now you should probably take the following with a grain of salt, but it looks like his working-class support has been eroding after the high of last Novemeber. Presumably this includes non-white working class although the article doesn't go into detail. I'm not sure what this means about the future of working-class MAGA, but it does mean that there's the potential for gains.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-polls-working-class-2102951
It’s also worth noting that Harris won union households just 53-46%. There’s two things going on here, 1) union leadership is bluer than their members, especially private sector unions and 2) most unions today are public sector unions, meaning their members are college educated bureaucrats— again the Democratic base today.
The first part's definitely true, although the fact that Harris still won the union vote in the disaster that was 2024 still shows how valuable the political education they provide is.
The second one is also a good point in that there is a split among unions themselves, although I'm suspicious of the terminology here. How are we defining "bureaucrats"? That just seems like a way to devalue the work that these folks do. Kamala got endorsement from the American Federation of Teachers, Comms Workers of America, Service Employees International, and Food and Commercial Workers. Not all of these groups include college-educated workers, much less "bureaucrats" although they certainly are different from say the Teamsters.
So there's a split, but I don't see the point in simply saying that the Democrats don't have the "real" unions. There's nothing good coming out of that.
This compositional change means that even though Democratic leadership remains committed to labor, they have a difficult time winning organized labor support when working class voters of all races perceive them as catering to upscale urban professionals— and they’re not entirely wrong either.
True except for the very last part - how are they "not entirely wrong"?
I mean yeah, nobody is perfect about labor issues since nobody is perfect about anything but the Biden admin, whatever its faults, took labor issues and concerns very seriously. I'd say that was one of the big pluses of his presidency. What else can Dems do at this point to convince union members that they're being heard?
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u/TheSameGamer651 4h ago
I didn’t mean bureaucrat in a derogatory sense, I probably should said white collar worker instead. The point being that even within union workers, we see the same educational divide that we see nationally. And public sector unions in particular also comes with this weird dynamic where they endorse and finance candidates that will serve as their bosses. And Republicans do attack that quite effectively— Trump fires all these federal workers and busts their unions, and he then turns around and sells it to his blue collar base by saying that their just leeches on the system and are protected by the Democrats that they pay off.
And that argument is believable to his base because they see a Democratic party that draws its donors, politicians, and activists from academia, the entertainment world, and major governmental and nongovernmental organizations. I wouldn’t say that Democrats need to go on some anti-intellectual crusade, rather they can’t let those academic types be the face of the party. It doesn’t matter if they espouse pro-worker rhetoric, because their social cues are foreign and off putting to the working class. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Democrats need to move to the right, rather they need to change the messaging that makes seem like the party of “egghead intellectuals.”
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u/NoamLigotti 1d ago
Not even the white working class so much as the (mostly white) blue collar working class.
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u/ideamotor 23h ago edited 3h ago
The title doesn’t make (literal) sense because grandstanding is inherently political and it actually does work to convince people within the side that already agrees with you directionally. A major reason for extremism within a party is because of people seeking political power within that group, most often to the detriment to the larger group. Think about that when you see all this criticism of Democrats by Democrats, those making those criticisms are likely seeking political power by trying to convince others (this statement itself also does just that).
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u/Amadeus_1978 1d ago
If it can’t be expressed in a 30 second sound bite, forget it. Politics are now a team sport and substance only matters to the brains people. Most of whom don’t vote. Look at where we are currently if you don’t believe me.
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u/Few_Map2665 4h ago
Honestly, that's Donald Trump's electoral superpower. He's been able to mobilize otherwise unengaged people to vote for him, even if it consists only of going to the polling place, checking off his name for President, then leaving.
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u/Exciting_Turn_9559 1d ago
I suppose giving the fascists what they wanted really was the only way to convince them that their ideas were wrong, stupid, and self-defeating.
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u/bahwi 1d ago
A good take from Jacobin that twists, turns, and does the impossible to push a candidate known solely for grandstanding....
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u/Hothera 1d ago
Bernie Sanders is routinely ranked as one of the least productive Senators. It was a conscious choice to prioritize grandstanding over policy too. Before he ran for President, he was actually relatively productive (see the 113th Congress).
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u/Neckwrecker 1d ago
I'm sure the list of most productive senators is full of wonderful people making our lives better. Hard for Sanders to meet that metric when 90% of the Senate is some level of evil.
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u/CaptainSparklebottom 1d ago
Bro, it is super easy to win. Just start addressing the material concerns of the working class in a meaningful and impactful way and follow through on it. If people feel like their lives are getting better under you, they will vote for you. If you keep trying to give nothing but platitudes and broken promises, then you will be met with only your Loyalists who are disappearing and getting smaller. The working class was abandoned and turned on one another, as opposed to addressing the inequality that is eating most of us alive, with more falling into the jaws every day, yet the rich get richer. The propaganda gets thicker and more go deeper into their delusions.
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u/Few_Map2665 1d ago
Just start addressing the material concerns of the working class in a meaningful and impactful way and follow through on it.
The Biden administration is an excellent counterexample of this theory. We were better off at the end of his term than the beginning, and voters responded by kicking the Democrats out of the Presidency and congress in favor of the guy spreading lies about immigrants eating pets and promising massive tariffs and deportations.
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u/Bawbawian 20h ago
I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit especially coming from this publication.
literally them and commondreams before every single election in the last 15 years have turned against Democrats in the last few months of the election so they could do just that grandstand and virtue signal.
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