Why dropping ID pol in favor of class is harder for left than right; Why only finance can save Dems from libtards

Below is an expanded version of a comment to a recent post about the interplay of class and ethnicity in the Democrat primary system. Naive Marxist theory would predict the clustering of groups by class, and perhaps secondarily by race, and yet it was the exact opposite way around. Whites of both elite and working class status lined up behind Bernie, and non-whites of both classes lined up behind Hillary.

That is largely true this time, except for the rift among whites along class lines, with working-class whites sticking with Bernie and professional whites defecting to Warren. Non-whites remain unified across class lines behind their machine candidate, Biden, and will easily defeat the deeply divided white camp of the electorate. Biden, a status quo candidate during a time of realignment, will then flame out to whichever GOP-er replaces Trump as the nominee.

This raises the issue of how Democrats, leftists, populists, or whoever, can undo the focus on identity politics in the Democrat primary system, given how entrenched it is. Basic sociological theory tells us it will be far harder for Democrats than for Republicans, because although both sides have identity politics to distract from class issues, it is easier to put aside those on the right, compared to those on the left.

I detailed these distinctions during the last primary season, and didn't see anything like it at the time or since. Most people with morally liberal brains just don't get any of this stuff, even if they have a PhD in sociology. If it has to do with in-group vs. out-group dynamics, they're color-blind to it (see Haidt's typology of morally liberal vs. conservative minds). So I'm reviving it now, and expanding on it a bit to reflect what's transpired in the meantime.

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I hate being right so early. From way back in February 2016, the shift from ID pol to class will be easier on the right than left.

Reason: left-wing ID politics are about ascribed status, right-wing ID politics about achieved status. People stick to their ID guns more when the identity is beyond their control, an innate core of who they are.

In addition to evangelical Christianity, I'd add gun owner and non-urban resident to right-wing ID pol that are based on achieved status. They choose to own guns or not, and choose to live in rural or suburban places. They're not born into it, and it's not beyond their control.

Of course, this only applies to the electoral base of each party -- Trump defeated right-wing ID pol during 2016, but in office the GOP elites took over, buried economic populism, and threw meaningless right-wing ID pol to the rubes instead.

For Dems, it would be the opposite pattern. It's a daunting challenge for them to kill off ID pol during a primary, and focus on class instead. But if they successfully did so, they'd have an easier time doing economic populism in office (e.g., under a Bernie admin -- or FDR admin).

I think it's going to come down to the informational sector elites, who control the Democrat party, getting sick of being the opposition rather than dominant party, and defunding and otherwise shutting down left-wing ID pol during their primaries. Definitely not the media / entertainment cartel, since they massively profit from culture war content. And probably not the info-tech cartel, since they're neck-deep in ID-pol-motivated censorship.

Most likely would be the senior faction of their elites -- the finance sector. Sure, they're all personally woke, and their brands have been crafted to be woke as well. But they don't make profits from catering their services to culture war libtard rubes, and they do not have a mass audience interface like the social media platforms, so the big banks don't need to engage in culture war censorship. None of that cultural BS affects how much Goldman Sachs will make by bringing some phony tech bubble startup to its IPO. None of that impacts how low or high the central bank will set interest rates, how much quantitative easing they'll be doing, etc.

Of all the major Democrat coalition members, the ones who keep the most silent on culture war crap have been the finance crowd. It's amazing how little you hear of the typical libtard crap on MSNBC's sister network, CNBC, or on Bloomberg (let alone more culturally conservative Fox Business). That is true for all the major propaganda narratives of this cycle -- Me Too, Russiagate, impeachment, and imagining Nazis / fascists / white nationalists under every bed and in the rapid ascendancy.

The banks have incredibly stronger powers to wield -- they can make it so their targets can't hold any banking accounts, can't get loans, can't send or receive funds, can't even cash their paycheck without going to a payday loan shark. Compare that to the limpdick shit that the social media companies can do -- kick you off Twitter, oh no, it's the end of the world. Or slandering you on a libtard cable news segment -- oh no, please, not the hatred of over-40 wine moms.

And yet the banks have largely (not to say completely) refrained from using that power against cultural conservatives, Trump supporters, Bernie supporters, anti-Establishment types of any stripe. People already have such a low regard for bankers, they don't want to draw the public's ire any more by politicizing their business activities -- beyond the obvious of supporting one party over another, or one candidate over another. Not materially casting out huge swaths of the population for holding taboo ideas.

From a related post, Bernie's followers should bring back the New Deal coalition of big banks and labor unions, squeezing the professional-managerial class strivers from either side.

So far, there's little sign of improvement among the various groups in the Dem base -- they're pretending 2016 did not happen, and are right back to whites vs. non-whites as the first filter, and then professional vs. working class as the second filter (distinguishing Warren from Sanders among whites).

I don't pretend to be certain that there actually is a way out of this mess that the Dems started with the ID pol phenomenon. They obviously weren't planning ahead. But if there is, it will come from the working class and the finance elites, not from the broad professional class or the media or the tech sectors.

Aside from Dem elite intervention, the only solution is a hostile takeover of their primary by Trumpian populist Republicans -- they flood in and vote for Bernie in massive numbers, not giving a shit about Pocahontas or the right-hand man of My Cool Black President.

That needed to happen between '16 and '20 -- and it has not. So there will be no shift to class, away from ID pol, and we'll get another awful GOP admin after Trump leaves. Populist rhetoric, elitist policies, and right-wing ID pol to keep the rubes from grumbling.

In the meantime, Bernie supporters on the left should re-orient their efforts away from the media and tech world, and toward the non-culturally motivated finance sector, as well as organized labor and the broad working class (except for urban non-whites who are locked in to the Democrat machine candidate).