Left-patriotism. I feel like this is circling around our conversations. What does it look like, how do we redefine it?
Right now the Dems have a problem: the left-wing does not possess the verbal and memetic political vocabulary to reach most citizens in rural America. And it's our job as storytellers to build that out because the future of our country depends on it.
The white rural voters and voters with a high school diploma consistently elect people who are against their class interests b/c the voters do not read or process policy. In fact, the average person has never read policy. They move according to how ppl and parties make them feel. So these people are, in fact, voting for their priorities (feelings) at the expense of their personal finances.
This was a conversation I had with a cleaner in June 2024:
Sarah (Handy cleaner who was tidying up) asked me if I was going vote? I said yes and she made a face. To be clear, Sarah is a working-class woman of color. She has 2 kids and works 6 days a week.
"I don't know who to vote for...I don't know about Kamala," she frowned in disapproval. I nodded and listened. Hey, I am not a paid campaign staffer so when ppl approach me about the election in this manner, I feel like they really want to express themselves. So I listened.
She thought that Trump was all right and was suspicious of a woman being president. She said that women were too emotional and not stable. When I casually brought up Trump's insane emotional tweets, she laughed and said, 'he's such a gemini.' Ok, I smiled. Then she talked about her signs and how she has a lot of women friends and how she didn't feel comfortable with them being president.
Without trying to push Sarah in any direction, I did bring up Project 2025 and what she thought of that. She said it made her very nervous. I pointed out that in Project 2025 America, women would have less rights over their body, it would be harder for POC to vote, and it would be harder to kick out a president if you didn't like them. That -and that alone- seemed to rattle her. Sarah wasn't buying the 'Kamala hype' and seems like the type of working-class woman who is mistrustful of other women.
In a highly unscientific sampling, I have run into other working-class women who either don't like Hillary or don't like Hillary and Kamala. And usually the abortion issue is what gets them to side a bit more with Dems, especially when it's framed as rights over their body.
Kamala was a better candidate and more qualified, but she did not have the visual vocabulary to talk to working-class ppl b/c the Dem party did not build the infrastructure to do that. And a common vocabulary is a more important political infrastructure than a call center or donation texts. Btw, two years later and Sarah is struggling mightily. She's lost her car, is trying to scramble for money, and she doesn't connect any of these present-day situations to past decisions or leaders she supported.
When I talk about the need for left-wing patriotism, it's for ppl to have a common verbal and visual language for progressive politics that is robust, American, and Christian (if need be). And it needs to be something else: that may be uncomfortable for lefties: masculine-affirming. Men want it and, in fact, most working-class women respond to it too. When the right-wing came up with their perverse political rebranding after the civil rights movement, the most enduring thing they created wasn't trickle-down economics or less taxes for the rich. It was a new visual and verbal language of patriotism: John Wayne combined with Jesus Christ. It's absurd and totally contradictory, but it stuck b/c the image involved God, country, Hollywood star, and masculinity. Behind this perversity, they were able to ram through tax cuts for the rich, cuts on public funding, destroying the health care system, making ppl stupider, poorer, angrier... b/c ppl were voting for their ideal American cowboy/savior/star: John Wayne Jesus. But but...John Wayne was a fake cowboy and racist and blah blah. Doesn't matter. John Wayne is apart of the American visual vocabulary. Republicans just took that and tweaked it with Jesus for Evangelicals and sold it to working-class whites and ppl in the South: Hollywood cowboy Jesus.
The best thing DC Republicans did for Clinton in 1992 was to call him Bubba. They thought they were insulting him but, in fact, they were defining him in a way that was relatable to black and white working-class ppl: a Bubba. A lovable redneck who liked too much junk food, drinking, and women. That's a relatable visual. Bubba loves his momma, McDonald's, beer, fried food. Bubba snuck off and ate snacks, bought illegal fireworks at a roadside tent. Clinton was actually an Ivy League Rhodes scholar who happened to be from Arkansas. But Bubba stuck to him. If the Dem party is ever going to become the default party again -like it was in the past- they're going to need to scale the walls of white supremacy and xenophobia. And it's not going to be by lecturing ppl or telling them about awesome policy. It has to be with muscle Jesus or Bubba or plump Betty Crocker. It has to be through redefining what patriotism looks like for lefties in words and memetic infrastructure. This means a patriotism that can cover immigrants, LGBTQIA, working-class whites, and rural America in a simple and maybe even contradictory meme. Remember, Clinton is an Ivy-educated lawyer...but ppl identified with him playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall and eating McDonald's and having a Southern accent. Ppl will accept an obvious contradiction if it speaks to a larger thing of 'this is what it means to be an American in the 21st century.'
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