Politico on class versus diversity issue

[jimbogumbo]

Highlights a Rudy Teixera: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/07/15/capital-city-ruy-teixeira-american-enterprise-institute-00045819

[marshwiggle]

Highlights a Rudy Teixera: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/07/15/capital-city-ruy-teixeira-american-enterprise-institute-00045819

Preach it!

To hear Teixeira tell it, CAP, and the rest of Washington's institution-based left, stopped being a place where he could do the work he wanted. The reason, he says, is that the relentless focus on race, gender, and identity in historically liberal foundations and think tanks has made it hard to do work that looks at society through other prisms. It also makes people nervous about projects that could be accused of giving short shrift to anti-racism efforts.

"I would say that anybody who has a fundamentally class-oriented perspective, who thinks that's a more important lens and doesn't assume that any disparity is automatically a lens of racism or sexism or what have you ... I think that perspective is not congenial in most left institutions," he says.

Maybe someday the people he left behind will also realize water is wet.

[kaysixteen]

Teixeira is not wrong, esp about the part about the Democrats not likely going to be able to actually win enough seats in Congress to enact their agenda, if they continue to hemorrage traditional white working class voters, esp men, folks fed up with the hard-left secular progressive agenda that, quite frankly, has nothing to offer people like them, and often looks down, *hard* at people like them as well.

[Parasaurolophus]

Teixeira is not wrong, esp about the part about the Democrats not likely going to be able to actually win enough seats in Congress to enact their agenda, if they continue to hemorrage traditional white working class voters, esp men, folks fed up with the hard-left secular progressive agenda that, quite frankly, has nothing to offer people like them, and often looks down, *hard* at people like them as well.

I mean, they don't currently have enough seats to enact even their moderate agenda, so...

[kaysixteen]

And yet, they do not seem to realize this.   Like it or not, the white working class, bamboozled for maybe two generations by now by GOP plutocrats using culture war lies, does not value the same cultural norms as the denizens of the faculty clubs at Harvard and Berkeley.   Both of these groups need to realize that they need to change certain things about their current political goals and policies, or those plutocrats and culture warrior dupes/ fellow travelers, will ride to victory again.   The faculty clubbers, well, you can guess what I think they need to change, and they need to emphasize their economic plans, and, in easy and as non-condescending as possible terms, to explain to the lunchpail crowd how such an economic agenda would mean progress for them.

[Wahoo Redux]

Teixeira is not wrong, esp about the part about the Democrats not likely going to be able to actually win enough seats in Congress to enact their agenda, if they continue to hemorrage traditional white working class voters, esp men, folks fed up with the hard-left secular progressive agenda that, quite frankly, has nothing to offer people like them, and often looks down, *hard* at people like them as well.

This is the thing, though.  IMO, Kay16 is right on.

I quickly gave up trying to discuss this dynamic with other "liberals" (whatever that is supposed to mean) like myself.

[Parasaurolophus]

The faculty clubbers, well, you can guess what I think they need to change, and they need to emphasize their economic plans, and, in easy and as non-condescending as possible terms, to explain to the lunchpail crowd how such an economic agenda would mean progress for them.

While I won't deny that it's important to explain to people how your policies will materially benefit them, I'd add that it's important that you also actually do stuff to materially (and unequivocally) help people, so that you can point to the last time you had power and say "See? We did all those things for you, and we want to do more." If you give up because one of your senators refuses to play ball, you're not exactly giving people reasons to keep turning up for you.

I rather suspect that you lose the "lunchpail crowd" when you talk about all the means-testing that means they won't see a cent (e.g. partial student loan forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities). It's not just that it's too many words, it's the wrong words. Though I'm sure they play well in focus groups.

[marshwiggle]

I rather suspect that you lose the "lunchpail crowd" when you talk about all the means-testing that means they won't see a cent (e.g. partial student loan forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities). It's not just that it's too many words, it's the wrong words. Though I'm sure they play well in focus groups.

Given that many of the "lunchpail crowd" have no interest in university, focusing on things like Pell Grants which will be of no interest (and will cost them taxes) shows how out-of-touch they are.

"This would be in your best interest if you were smart enough to have the same interests as us" is pretty much "Let them eat cake!"

[Hibush]

I don't think the American Enterprise Institute is offering advice to liberals with the intention of being helpful. It is with the intention of reinforcing a false narrative of being out of touch. The techniques explicitly includes a number of things that are true and then contextualizing to give a false overall impression that ends up making the target audience fall into their framework.

It is a really  effective technique. We should employ it in classrooms to indoctrinate students into believing that things like deadlines and rubrics exist!

[apl68]

I don't think the American Enterprise Institute is offering advice to liberals with the intention of being helpful. It is with the intention of reinforcing a false narrative of being out of touch. The techniques explicitly includes a number of things that are true and then contextualizing to give a false overall impression that ends up making the target audience fall into their framework.

It is a really  effective technique. We should employ it in classrooms to indoctrinate students into believing that things like deadlines and rubrics exist!

I've seen similar critiques aired on a number of occasions in the likes of NYT, though, by columnists who generally professed themselves to be liberals.  There is some actual internal critique going on there.

[marshwiggle]

I don't think the American Enterprise Institute is offering advice to liberals with the intention of being helpful. It is with the intention of reinforcing a false narrative of being out of touch. The techniques explicitly includes a number of things that are true and then contextualizing to give a false overall impression that ends up making the target audience fall into their framework.

If a think tank is only trying to communicate with a "target audience" who presumably already agrees with them, what purpose does it serve? It would be much cheaper to just hire some kind of marketing agency if someone just wanted their own view presented publicly. That would reach many more people much more quickly and economically.

[jimbogumbo]

I don't think the American Enterprise Institute is offering advice to liberals with the intention of being helpful. It is with the intention of reinforcing a false narrative of being out of touch. The techniques explicitly includes a number of things that are true and then contextualizing to give a false overall impression that ends up making the target audience fall into their framework.

If a think tank is only trying to communicate with a "target audience" who presumably already agrees with them, what purpose does it serve? It would be much cheaper to just hire some kind of marketing agency if someone just wanted their own view presented publicly. That would reach many more people much more quickly and economically.

Think tanks typically are trying to influence the general public, as well as donors, policy makers and politicians of all stripes.

[mamselle]

The good ones try to develop a more nuanced sense of the truth about an issue, evaluate grantworthy and/or grantfunded aspirational projects, and project a long-range trajectory for theoretical as well as practical tentatives in the given field.

The marketing firm is maybe taking the sexiest of those ideas, framing them as soundbites and visuals--if they're any good--or coming up with unanchored jingles to tickle the ear, if they're not.

Have worked for shorter and longer times at each one. The "good" marketing folks, like the think-tanks, were truly cool folks.

The sloppy marketing bunch, not so much.

M.

[Hibush]

I don't think the American Enterprise Institute is offering advice to liberals with the intention of being helpful. It is with the intention of reinforcing a false narrative of being out of touch. The techniques explicitly includes a number of things that are true and then contextualizing to give a false overall impression that ends up making the target audience fall into their framework.

I've seen similar critiques aired on a number of occasions in the likes of NYT, though, by columnists who generally professed themselves to be liberals.  There is some actual internal critique going on there.

By internal critique, are you referring to a new activity or the perennial internal critique within the left?

[Hibush]

I don't think the American Enterprise Institute is offering advice to liberals with the intention of being helpful. It is with the intention of reinforcing a false narrative of being out of touch. The techniques explicitly includes a number of things that are true and then contextualizing to give a false overall impression that ends up making the target audience fall into their framework.

If a think tank is only trying to communicate with a "target audience" who presumably already agrees with them, what purpose does it serve? It would be much cheaper to just hire some kind of marketing agency if someone just wanted their own view presented publicly. That would reach many more people much more quickly and economically.

The coordination of message and framing is remarkably consistent among think tanks, some media organizations and marketing types. So the integrated approach is the most effective of all. Even AEI, which is the voice of big business, sings in remarkable harmony with some anarchists that claim to threaten their system.

Is there anything comparably sophisticated or coordinated on the left? Or does the old Will Rogers quip still apply?