Speaking of cultural condescension…
Check out this exchange from a recent Bulwark podcast about Dems, cultural issues, and WWC voters. Wow - JV Last isn’t pulling any punches. It’s a hill he’ll clearly die on.
Tim Miller: You can't just tell the biggest demographic group in the country, non-college white people, that you don't really care what they think about cultural issues. It's just not a winner, especially with this electorate.
By the way, that non-college white group now includes non-college Hispanics too. They're being assimilated into the American experience.
I'm not saying that you throw trans people under the bus to come back and win elections, but there has to be an ability to speak the language culturally and to try. And they just haven't really tried. They'll say that they tried, they'll check this box, and they'll be a couple of lines in a speech.
But there still is a dominant feeling among that group that the Democrats look down on them, don't care about them, and is that unfair?
Jonathan V. Last: Shouldn't they be looked down on, though?
Miller: Maybe. I mean, sure. Sure.
Last: I'm sorry. I know this is unpopular, but if it is true that there were two gender reassignment surgeries for prisoners and yet these ads were wildly effective with those groups, then why shouldn't they be looked down on?
Miller: You live in a democracy.
Sarah Longwell: Well, yeah. Number one, we live in a democracy. But also because that ad is a stand-in, right?
The stand-in, the gender reassignment surgery, taxpayer-funded is a stand-in for all of the ways that people believe Democrats are culturally out of touch.
Miller: But if working class white people in rural America start voting like black people do, by share of vote, we're going to live in a MAGA autocracy for the rest of our lives. So just as a practical matter — maybe they deserve to be looked down on, maybe they have views that are gross, maybe they have views that are wrong, maybe they're swimming in disinformation.
But that's just the facts of life. And not trying to offer something to them is a mistake, as long as we're in this democratic environment that I guess we're in.
It’s going to be interesting to watch this debate unfold - particularly considering Miller’s point that working-class Hispanics are starting to vote more like working-class whites.