What's the matter with Alabama? - By Jennifer Rubin

[DonViejo]

By Jennifer Rubin December 4 at 10:15 AM

This analysis could well apply to President Trump’s base:

Conservatives generally regard class as an unacceptable topic when the subject is economics—trade, deregulation, shifting the tax burden, expressing worshipful awe for the microchip, etc. But define politics as culture, and class instantly becomes for them the very blood and bone of public discourse. Indeed, from George Wallace to George W. Bush, a class-based backlash against the perceived arrogance of liberalism has been one of their most powerful weapons. Workerist in its rhetoric but royalist in its economic effects, this backlash is in no way embarrassed by its contradictions. It understands itself as an uprising of the little people even when its leaders, in control of all three branches of government, cut taxes on stock dividends and turn the screws on the bankrupt. It mobilizes angry voters by the millions, despite the patent unwinnability of many of its crusades. And from the busing riots of the Seventies to the culture wars of our own time, the backlash has been ignored, downplayed, or misunderstood by liberals.

That surely could have been about the 2016 president-elect, but it’s actually from a 2005 paperback edition of Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” If you thought pairing white grievance and irrational fear that Christians are under assault with trickle-down economics was new, then go back and read Frank’s book, which posits that red America votes against its economic interests because Republicans have cleverly manipulated the culture wars, casting the white working class as victims of evil elites.

There could be no better example of the powerful combination of white victimhood and anti-populist economics than Trumpism. Donald Trump ran against the press, globalism, “happy holidays” greetings, illegal immigrants and political correctness (a battle that cast racist rhetoric as “telling it like it is”) — all the enemies of a white working class wallowing in resentment. He now crows about the Senate’s passage of a tax bill that would “deliver 62 percent of its net tax cuts in 2027 to just the top 1 percent of households, the Tax Policy Center (TPC) estimates — and that’s without accounting for its effects on health coverage.” (The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities adds, “If we consider the impact of the bill’s mandate repeal, we estimate that those in the top 1 percent would receive tax benefits of $40 billion, even as those in the bottom 99 percent would see losses of $30 billion. In essence, households in the bottom 99 percent would see large net losses under the bill in 2027, to pay for large tax cuts for the very top.”)

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/12/04/whats-the-matter-with-alabama/?utm_term=.c29cf47564f4

[dalton99a]

1. "Moore is 'one of them'... white nativism goes a long way in Alabama"

Great article

[n2doc]

2. Could it be, perhaps, the result of over 30 years of demonizing Democrats?

Hmmm? To the point that people in Alabama would vote for anybody other than a Democrat, no matter how upstanding a person they might be?

And you Ms Rubin, have been part of that crewe. Look in the Mirror.

[RandomAccess]

3. You're exactly right -- and here's how it happened

And I don't agree Rubin was part of this, though perhaps you have some support for that claim?