Workings class Democrat supporters don’t go to political rallies while elite Republicans don’t go to their rallies. It’s really that simple. Also just because someone wears cammo and work boots doesn’t mean they’re a struggling working man.
It is telling how Matt is looking at aesthetics as class signifiers. GWB didn’t suddenly become a simple country boy just by buying a ranch and talking folksy.
It’s really dumb considering I know he’s been to Bernie rallies (I met him at one in Virginia), which are chocked full of working class people who look nothing like chuds.
workers (the proletariat)
I agree with everything you said but I’d argue there are still non-proletarian forms of the working class left.
There are, proletarians are workers under capitalism. There are non-capitalist modes of production: handicraft/artisinal production as well as peasantry and subsistence farming. They’re workers, but not proles.
They stated: " but the two main classes under capitalism are always workers (the proletariat) and capitalists (the bourgeoisie)."
This is why most Trump supporters, and a lot of the country, said their economic situation had improved in four years. On first glance, it seems like material analysis can’t explain Trump’s resilience in 2020. You look deeper and you start to understand.
The exit polls showed a third of people made 100,000 or more. Trump also has a lot of boomers who might not have the same income but have retired comfortably. This is the main contingency of Trumps support. The material conditions of this pandemic do affect people, but these people are insulated. They aren’t affected by the depression, and the virus is killing African Americans overwhelmingly. To them, wearing a mask or having your business shut down is the worst consequence of this pandemic. Biden could never beat Trump with these folks, but the dems will still try and blame socialism when they fail.
Why didn’t Biden win the working class? Well he did. By a decent margin. But it wasn’t enough for a comfortable victory. These were pretty historic lows in coalitions that are needed for democrats to win. Why? Because Biden’s campaign offers no better vision to our material reality. The virus is out there. He can’t start a lockdown, Trumps petit bourgeois would start a riot. If he did, the capitalist system would flounder again like it did in the spring. All of this would be fine if you did UBI and rent forgiveness on a national level. Moratorium on mortgages and loans to businesses so nothing goes out of businesses and is ready to open again when this ends. But Biden won’t do those things. And if he will, he won’t campaign on them so people won’t know. Imagine if Biden campaigned on $15/hr in Florida? Instead, he goes completely negative on Trump and offers vague promises like build back better.
This is simply not true, there are some of us who support revolution even though it doesn’t align with our material interests out of a sense of either empathy or by the realization that our privileged positions are precarious.
I know three, my wife (AP nurse), a girlfriend in marketing and me (retail exec).
We don’t really “count” because we’re ultimately class traitors. Discounting that, the sentiment holds. Also “six figures” absolutely is still working-class in high cost-of-living areas; just because it isn’t starvation wages doesn’t make it PMC or petty-bourg territory. I don’t know if Taibbi was going for that level of nuance, though.
If you earn a wage or salary from someone much wealthier than you who runs their own company you are working class, whether you take home five or six figures. The crucial thing to remember is that the six-figure type of working class is shrinking rapidly, and may soon cease to exist or be subsumed into the non-working emergent capitalist class that “earns” its income through a combination of stocks, savings, and inherited wealth.
