The difference between competence and degrees...why the republicans win

[cally]

Our society is increasingly becoming one where you need certifications to succeed. This basically means you need a degree or some schooling. So, folks who know their jobs, know their field, but couldn't afford college or other formal degrees are out of luck.

We've all known, experienced, the situation where the smart, insightful worker has to train the pretty boy or girl with the degree about the job. It's happened for many years but it has gotten worse. Many jobs you once could advance to are not available unless you have the pretty degrees. Once, you could hope to take a job as a secretary and rationally plan that as a way for career advancement. No longer. You need the degrees.

Democrats have promoted education, degrees, certifications as a way to get ahead. We are the liberal elite. Get an education, get your degree, and you will make it. That's the message we've given. We never intended to block off other ways of getting ahead but I think that's what we have done.

In a society that starts disdaining all other levels of achievement, other avenues of success, then Dems are blamed when workers feel disenfranchised. That's what is meant by the liberal elite. We are the liberal elite because if you don't do that and make it somehow it's your fault. We've somehow taken the blame for the need for accreditations in this society.

The other side has made our strengths work against of. We are promoting education and fair wages. But we also promote the dream of success. If you don't make it then it's Dems fault.

[bryant69]

1. I don't buy that this is our message

Instead I think these pressures / conflicts always exist in society and the Republican party is better at playing off of peoples resentments.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[EVDebs]

2. If the Dems are degree elitists, Repubs are monetary elitists

NATION’S IMMIGRANTS ACCOUNT FOR BULK OF LABOR FORCE GROWTH SINCE 2000 WHILE NATIVE-BORN WORKERS EXPERIENCE HEAVY DECLINES

http://www.nupr.neu.edu/01-04/immigration_jan.html

Anyone just starting out or starting over, who has lost his/her benefits and just needs to work...they think 'hey, the Man has been telling me if you just drop (fill in the blank) benefit, you can keep the job (or the union).'

After going through this for the past ten years or so, I can tell you the concentration of wealth in this society is what's killing us, and it's been killing us by degrees (pardon the pun) since 1973. Just look up the purchasing power information since that time...

Now the globalizing corporations are stripping employees of health and pension benefits in order to 'compete' with foreign cheap labor markets. It's all a race to the bottom and both Dems and Neocons play this game.

If Dems woke up (as Pat Buchanan thought they might read "Suicide by Free Trade" www.amconmag.com/2004_04_12/buchanan.html ) Dems might have won in 2004.

[cally]

3. I'm trying to suggest the reputation, not the reality

I think Dems have been painted with the liberal elitist label. We all know that the Repubs in power are the wealthy class and the priviledged class.

[noamnety]

4. I'm not following your assumptions at all

Bush was promoting college degrees as the way to get ahead, the republicans are always pushing that american fairy tale success story.

Dems are blue collar people, trying to make sure people have the basics.

I'm seriously not following your basic premises (dems said if you get your degree you will make it? dems disdained all other levels of achievement?) and I'm not following your logic leading up to your conclusion.

[cally]

5. I'm playing with the idea of why Dems are the liberal

elites. I know the reality that Dems are not but I'm thinking about why the label stuck. Gore and Kerry were both liberal elite. Even both Clintons are and Bill Clintons early life was anything but elite.

I do think that Dems are promoting education for all, economic opportunity for all, so that all can succeed. If we promote that and our rhetoric says that all can succeed if given a chance, how do you feel if given a chance and you don't succeed. Who do you blame?

I'm just thinking this through and trying to understand why so many vote against their own economic self interest.

[noamnety]

6. I think what you're really doing

is repeating their meme, which is without merit. I don't mean that as an accusation, not that you're doing it deliberately, I dunno, maybe you believe it.

"liberal elite" is two separate words. Kerry and Gore were liberals. Bush was elite. If you read Kerry's bio, you know he had a good family name, but not so much family money, his relative paid his tuition at school because his folks couldn't afford it. It's nothing but media spin and repetition.

And I don't know anything in our "rhetoric" that says if you have an education you should succeed. I hear a whole lot more about needing to change our policies with outsourcing, about needing early childhood programs, etc, about the government's role in creating economic opportunities than I do about telling people if they get a degree they'll be all set.

[EVDebs]

7. Cultural indoctrination explains some of it. Horatio Alger

story... Nowadays you can't get entry level anything without a BA degree (the new High School diploma equivalency ) but still employers favor hiring immigrants as the study by Northeastern Univ I mentioned above shows. Hiring immigrants implies they have higher educations than native-born citizens, but the reality is the corporations just want to strip US workers of health and retirement benefits and immigrants are an easy source of cheaper labor. Ask Carly Fiorina, who is touted as someone the parties want for Congress--after she lays off 18,000 in a merger deal now gone sour.

Immigration (with H1B and L1 visas especially) has been too lenient for at least the last 20 years. We just need to slow things down a little, get globalization under control, and get the Chinese off using so much coal (70-80% of their generating). That 3 Gorges dam comes online when ?

WTO, NAFTA, etc, need stronger LABOR protecting provisions. Can Dems/progressives work within the system ? Or do WE (as Ahn-nolds says in CA) need to tear down NAFTA and the WTO to save ourselves ?