We Must Remember That American Voters Voted For Lower Wages In 1980.

[TheMastersNemesis]

When Reagan said he was going to create a service economy it meant low wages and not benefits. The voters yawned and kept voting in Republicans and conservatives. They refused to support unionism and labor and bought into the free market. Clinton ran as a "new conservative pro business Democrat" so he could win. If he had run as a progressive, pro labor and pro union candidate he would have lost.

Dems I know who run as pro labor or pro living wage get beat badly because they are labeled socialists or communists. We are getting what the country voted for time and again. If Dems did not run to the right or cooperate with the GOP in some way they seldom won. For some reason people have got it into their heads that being pro worker is communist.

Addendum- Now if you say the word union, labor or living wages people go berzerk and call you a Marxist. BTW Obama is hardly a Marxist and too bad he is not at least a New Deal Socialist. He is a Nixon era conservative Republican who has continued too many of Bush's security state policies. And he is still for the kind of free trade that is killing us. And he is neutral on insourcing and unions if you look at the crumbs he throws from time to time.

I was playing golf with a friend and tested him on pensions and he said we cannot afford pensions and health care even though he is on Medicare (had some heart procedures), get Social Security from his private work and a federal pension he qualified for when he went to work for the feds. When I challenged him about giving it up he said it was irrelevant. We can't afford any of the stuff he is on. What the hell is going on when there is such an unreal disconnect mentally. You would think the country is on LSD because there are two other people who are either on disability or have serious health risks where they could not get insurance who have told me the same thing. My friend? is a Dems BTW

I am simply apoplectic.

[The Magistrate]

1. Home Truths, Sir

"The laboring class is necessarily the largest portion of society, and it is nonesense to maintain that what benefits the greater part is injurious to the whole."

[cprise]

2. I think they (I wasn't old enough) were spooked by inflation, gas prices and crime

Liberals were tarred and feathered as bleeding heart "tax and spenders" who were soft on crime and international 'diplomacy'.

I don't think many swing voters had unions near the top of their lists, though I may be wrong.

I do think Carter's big speech about fuel consumption was a big turnoff even to liberal boomers. He told them they were spoiled for wanting to put big cars and other waste (i.e. "freedom&quot at the center of their lives. Actually, I don't think the unions loved him for that; some unions amazingly endorsed Reagan.

In a nutshell, people succumbed to insecurity and fear. They wanted a big, strict father figure who channelled the era of their childhood (1950s) and the CEO-father surrogates he promised to unshackle.

As for unions, they hadn't spread far enough into American life and also abstained from vigorously promoting themselves to new generations; there was next to zero PR aside from cheesy "union label" adverts; little exposure to the narratives and principles of the movement. The tail end of the boomers and the genXers didn't know what to think about unions until St. Ronnie came along to set the tone, and *that's* when anti-unionism really became a trend.

--

Nowadays, our supposed political choices have very little in the way of democratic legitimacy. Exposure, funding and moral/narrative support of national candidates is >90% an exercise of corporate conglomerates. Poor rural people tend to rely more on over-the-air/basic channels for their impressions of history, current events and campaigns... so they receive a wasteland of corporate conservative news and programming.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. I Believe Your Analysis Is Largely Correct.

Failure of the traditional unions to come to the aid of the air traffic controllers was the real strategic error. Traditional and blue collar unions did not consider public unions as ''one of them" so they did not bother to support the air traffic controllers. The Teamsters for some dumb reason supported and endorsed Reagan both times. Lane (lame) Kirkland was weak and took a co existence stance and rolled over on most issues.

Such malfeasance set the stage for decline.

[cprise]

6. And ironically enough, Reagan was stumping for "Solidarity" in Poland

...before long. Of course, it was cynical and at the time stripped of context.

Failure of the traditional unions to come to the aid of the air traffic controllers was the real strategic error. Traditional and blue collar unions did not consider public unions as ''one of them" so they did not bother to support the air traffic controllers.

That reminds me of something I left out: Another failure (of the entire culture, not just unions) was the inability to transition to a more cooperative mode in the workplace, something like codetermination. But at that point you're getting into solidly socialist concepts because union representation on the board is in exchange for a hefty investment in stocks by the government. Absent something like that, a strategy of coexistence with deregulated capital is a losing one.

[zbdent]

5. I was just 1 year away from being eligible to vote, and the true reason Reagan won

was because Iran held 52 of our people hostage, and the Soviet Union, still as powerful as the U.S., was poised to attack us if "we" did any kind of overt action toward Iran. Carter was seen as weak, and this situation in the Middle East led to the second "oil crisis" in the US in less than a decade, and, *gasp* gasoline actually getting up to $1 a gallon.

Lots of Republicans, free from the burden of actually having to face being involuntarily called up for duty in the military forces (due to the Vietnam conflict) now found themselves more than able to LOUDLY support doing something militarily.

[cprise]

7. If crime and oil weren't such big issues already

then the hostage crisis (which embodied both of the former issues) might not have cast such a large shadow.

OTOH, I don't recall anyone in my family wringing their hands over the hostage crisis.

[Bluenorthwest]

12. Do you really know people who wring their hands? So sick of that phrase.

Don't you remember the nightly 'America Held Hostage-Day 123' reports? ABC did 'America Held Hostage' for the duration. That show turned into Nightline after the election/crisis.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167519/

Video here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/iran-crisis-america-held-hostage-9049607

[cprise]

15. OK then, 'agonize'

I do remember those reports. I can't view that one because ABC transmits their video from web tracking servers and I have those blocked.

In any case, it was indeed a 'show' hamfistedly belied by the hyperbole in the title. They even called Iran "a country gone out of control". If I framed that quote and hung it on my wall today, even the most died-in-the-wool neocon would know my perspective on that.

My take is the spectacle certainly had an effect, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a deeply felt concern or change in priorities, especially to audiences of that day. I'm sure people would respond to it more strongly today, however.

[pampango]

4. Well said, TheMastersNemesis. Conservatives and republicans conducted a long-term campaign

to sell right wing ideas even when they were out of power. Since 1980 they have seen the benefit of so much money, time and effort into disparaging liberals and their beliefs.

As you said, the consequence of that is that now it is very difficult for a outright "progressive, pro labor and pro union candidate" to win a national election. Your golfing friend is a good example of why that is true.

We need to do what republicans did. A long term campaign - not tied to specific elections - to convince middle class voters that conservative policies benefit the rich and not them.

Until we are successful at that, as conservatives were in the past, it is political suicide to run for national office as a "progressive, pro labor and pro union candidate", while it is not to run as a conservative, anti-labor and anti-union candidate. A progressive national candidate can run in the meantime. Unless your golfing friend and millions more like him, vote for such a candidate, the campaign may end up as part of the long-term strategy rather than actually getting the progressive elected.

[moondust]

8. A century of anti-collectivism propaganda and demonization.

Anybody think the big capitalists didn't hear about the guillotines in France and the Bolsheviks in Russia? They knew exactly what could happen to them if the "workers of the world (were to) unite" and it wasn't pretty. It had to be avoided at all costs.

One of the lingering residual effects of the 20th century propaganda wars is that a lot of Americans were apparently brainwashed into believing that anything other than laissez-faire capitalism is EVIL, whether you call it communism or socialism or collectivism or cooperativism or Marxism or Leninism or unionism or something else. It's all "the other." Us vs. them. Black-and-white simplicity.

Reagan attacked both unions and government--the two obvious ways of leveling the playing field and avoiding a plutocratic slide back into feudalism or slavery, which now seems likely if not inevitable.

[bemildred]

9. Not me. nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. Nah, they voted against change. The blacks, the women, the gays, and the hippies all

scared the shit out of them. So, in the spirit of time-honored American tradition, they fell for the first huckster to come along and tell them what they wanted to hear. And like almost every victim of a confidence scheme, rather than admit they got taken, they convinced themselves that it was a good idea.

Gullible, selfish, mean. The American way.

[Bluenorthwest]

11. That's a very cynical way to frame the Republican fraud, you blame the people.

Reagan was a former Union President. He most certainly did not run on a platform of lower wages and no Unions, to claim that is what people voted for is to claim the Republicans ran an honest campaign. He ran on a set of lies and contrived rhetoric. Main slogan 'Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?'.
He did not run on Union busting and low wages, that is not what the voters voted for, they voted for being better off than they were.

[TheKentuckian]

17. +1

The argument is just a sales pitch to explain why maintaining and expanding the Reaganite status quo is not only A-OK but is the only option. Offering a choice is painted as suicidal so we are left largely to arguing better management of the same policies.

Of course even if the fairy tale was 100% true, I'm not one to give a damn about what voters in an election over a generation ago "decided" to the extent that it over rules today. If they could choose that path, we can choose ours.

Lots and lots of Americans that had no vote in 1980 at all (you can be pushing 50 today and could have been too young to vote) and despite the electoral landslide and soon folks that weren't even born yet will start being old enough to be President and then there was a huge minority that didn't vote for Reagan at the time.

Why is that election permanent but others before and after must bow to that one? Nothing in the constitution justifies such.

Just a new number in apologist bingo, "the voters chose this in 1980".

[silvershadow]

13. Where we are now is mostly due to all that happened during that era, before and after. It is sad,

and the ones of my Dad's era, who began union work in the early 60's when things were booming, just barely escaped with his bennies intact- a lot of the guys he worked with gave up everything for a few thousand dollars on a buy-out, and thought they were gonna get rich by opening a deli, or some such.

Others were forced to move south in order to save their jobs, uprooted their entire families and relocated. Anyhoo, I often wonder if Dad's generation was just so grateful to escape with a pension and bennies that would likely never be again, that they are of the "I got mine" mentality, and gave up the fight. I mean, they were beaten down hard during that era, so much so that by the early 90's it took the likes of Ross Perot to point out the obvious.

Still, after all these years, not only have we not dealt with NAFTA, but we have expanded the globalization idea to CAFTA, PAFTA (or whatever the heck it's gonna be called, forget), and think we are going to help our economy? It's just nuts. Without some older folks really stepping up to the plate and guiding the younger ones, I don't see the unions making headway, and it saddens me, because it was the actual *MAIN thing I was hoping for with his first election, and was very actively spearheading a union drive from the ground up leading up to and during that election season. Without strong unions, and without proper trade policies, in another 30 years this country will be third world with a better coat of paint and a few plants for curb appeal.

It always seems that those who are the most disconnected fall into basically those who still have theirs, because they are connected to the few places that still have decent bennies, like government workers, public safety, etc, as sad as it is to say that. I see some of it from former co-workers, whom for example are Republicans, and even others I would dare to say. My view is the heart of the Democratic party is struggling between what it used to be, and where they are trying to take it. (Just my two cents, if you're interested...I seem to be on a blacklist for some reason around here anymore)

[liberal_at_heart]

16. and don't forget about the TPP. I agree with you about the democratic party being in a struggle

between what brought them victory(going along with trickle down economics) and where those who are suffering from the trickle down economy want to take the party from here. It will be interesting to see what happens. I hope for the Americans people's sake those who are against trickle down economics win. I plan on doing my part by only voting for the most liberal candadite possible. I voted straight democrat for 19 years and I just won't do that anymore.

[reformist2]

14. I think the older generation, especially older white guys, are hardwired to espouse Reaganism.

It's really not worth the effort to persuade them, imo. You'll get more bang for your buck trying to persuade the younger generation that what they already suspect - that they've been screwed financially - is indeed true.

[1-Old-Man]

18. And I think that is nonsense - being and old fart (and white) myself

and most of the people I associate with are old white guys and to a man they detest Reagan, his policies, and the continuation of his policies as much as I did and do.

[reformist2]

20. Statistically speaking, you and your friends are outliers. Not at all representative.

[Yavin4]

21. Blue collar Dems elected Reagan as payback to the social progress movements of the 60s and 70s

Reagan was supposed to put Blacks and women back in their place.

[TheMastersNemesis]

23. It Seemed That A Lot Of Blue Collar Union Guys Voted Reagan

Reagan played the race card and a lot of union workers went for it. Now the GOP plays the gun and religion card as well as the race card (they will take your job) and they go for it. The problem is that the GOP is the one who has taken and will take jobs away. Dems have had to go along with corporations more or less because they have less union money and they are competing with the GOP for corporate dollars as well. And even in our district in Colorado our rep has to be moderate conservative even among workers. Even workers seem to vote against you if you get too pro union. It is goofy.

[HiPointDem]

22. +100 He's essentially saying 'after i die, we can't afford it'

[Initech]

24. Electing Reagan was the biggest mistake we ever made.

And so is people voting against their best interests.