Voters on both sides fearing the destruction of their way of life

Last weekend my friend and debate partner asked what I knew of and thought of the group No Labels. I had heard about them and knew this is a group trying to claim they were non-partisan or moderate, or something like that. But my sources (mostly Daily Kos) called the group Republicans, with all the freight that has acquired these last few decades, pretending they’re not. My friend agreed with me. This group could be trouble. The question before us is whether they would pull Republicans to their cause or pull independents or centrist Democrats. Joan McCarter of Kos reported on the No Labels appearance in New Hampshire, featuring Sen. Joe Manchin, the guy who calls himself a Democrat but blocked key parts of Biden’s first two year agenda. The talk was a lot of blather about “common sense,” meaningless both-sides pabulum on abortion, vague explanations of why they really aren’t a party embarking on a campaign, and gosh of course not denials they’re funded by rich people in their effort to oust Biden and his threat of higher taxes. They claim they won’t allow the nasty guy back in office as they say they won’t be spoilers but won’t say how they will avoid that. In a pundit roundup Greg Dworking of Kos quoted Jill Lawrence of The Bulwark in a piece titled Joe Manchin is Attacking Democrats As If He’s a Republican.

My theory based on the evidence to date is that ultimately, when Manchin announces his decision at year’s end, he will tell us he is running for re-election. But first he will tease state and national Republicans with the prospect of an open Senate seat and/or a bipartisan No Labels ticket that polling shows would drain votes from President Joe Biden and elect the GOP nominee. If that is Donald Trump, it’s no stretch to predict disaster will follow.

Yeah, Manchin is doing all he can to keep the spotlight on himself and to be the spoiler, the one controlling events. It’s a very superior attitude. In another roundup Dworkin quoted Aaron Zitner and Simon Levian of the Wall Street Journal:

The animating force in the Republican presidential primary, many voters and policy leaders say, is a feeling that American society—the government, the media, Hollywood, academia and big business—has been corrupted by liberal ideas about race, gender and other social matters. Democrats, in turn, feel that conservatives have used their political power in red states and in building a Supreme Court majority to undermine abortion rights and threaten decades of work to broaden equal rights for minority groups. That has turned the next race for the White House into an existential election, with voters on both sides fearing not just a loss of political influence but also the destruction of their way of life.

Back in March NPR host Ayesha Rascoe talked to sociologist Matthew Desmond, author of the new book Poverty, by America. His main point: The rich – really anyone who isn’t poor – benefits by keeping people poor. Desmond said:

We consume cheap goods and services. We invest in companies that have a record of union busting and exploitation. We protect lavish tax breaks that accrue to the wealthiest Americans, and that starves anti-poverty spending. And then we have the audacity to ask, how can we afford to drive down poverty in this country? - even though the country does a lot more to subsidize affluence?

Over the last 20 years evictions are up. The number of homeless school children is up. Those living on incredibly small incomes is up. Those living on just food stamps is up. But people so miserable should shame us in a nation with this many resources. The amount of money allocated to the poor is quite good. But the amount actually reaching the poor is much smaller. For the TANF program only 22 cents of each dollar reaches a needy family. TANF is distributed as block grants and states have a lot of discretion in how they spend it – like for Christian summer camps, anti-abortion centers, and sports stadiums. Republicans like to complain about welfare dependency. Not surprisingly, data doesn’t support that claim. However, there is a problem of welfare avoidance – about 20% of people who qualify don’t take the benefit. They’re terrible at being dependent. Desmond didn’t say why they don’t sign up. There is a mindset, some of it baked into how these systems work, that this is zero-sum and divisive. Why do they get money when it comes out of my taxes? But we should reject that.

A recent study showed that if Americans in the top 1% of the income distribution just paid the taxes they owed – not paid more taxes, or, you know, had a higher rate, just paid what they owed, stop evading what they owed, we, as a nation, would raise an additional $175 billion a year. OK, that's almost enough to lift everyone out of poverty. ... If a lot of us decided, look, I'm really investing in these companies that treat their workers right, I'm going to show up at my zoning board meeting on Tuesday night and I'm going to stand up and say, no, I want affordable housing in my community, and if I'm going to write my congressperson and say, what you're doing is too small, we have more resources, reach for something better, all this poverty around me is unacceptable – and if we did that to virtue signal, you know, I could live with that for now.

Another $175 billion would lift most people out of poverty? How big is the military budget this year? Back in 2012 I read and wrote about the book A Political Reading of the Life of Jesus by George W. Baldwin. I first learned about the advantages of keeping some people poor – the inexpensive goods and services – and all of us who aren’t poor are complicit in it (how many people switch to Walmart because of the low prices that kill off other stores in their area?). This book also got me thinking over the last decade about another aspect of what’s going on. We want other people to be poor so we look better in comparison. We’re too invested in the social hierarchy, which then mandates someone must be lower than ourselves.