Weekly Grounding #58
News, links, writing
Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
“Forget the Hype: It’s Still a Working-Class Election”
evaluates the early stages of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign for . Despite the real advantages of a newly energized Democratic base after Biden’s departure from the 2024 presidential race, Teixeira notes that “Democrats still badly trail among working-class voters and have compressed margins among nonwhite and young voters relative to 2020...These double digit Democratic deficits among the working class have been a regular feature of this election cycle. These deficits have been driven by worsening performance among the white working class (recall that Biden in 2020 actually did a bit better among these voters relative to Clinton in 2016) and much lower margins among nonwhite working-class voters. It is difficult to see how Harris prevails without strong progress on this front.”Teixeira continues: “A working class-oriented campaign would appear to be in order. But so far there is little indication that is what the Harris campaign has in mind. A widely-circulated memo from the campaign sees Harris’ candidacy as building on the ‘Biden-Harris coalition of voters’ and mentions black voters, Latino voters, AANHPI voters, women voters and young voters. Working-class voters are conspicuous by their absence.” He concludes: “Thus, instead of a ‘different kind of Democrat’ what voters will likely get is a younger, nonwhite, female version of the same kind of Democrat. Put another way, the Democrats seem content to remain a Brahmin Left party and see how things work out.”
“Trump Is Heading For Defeat”
In contrast to Teixeira’s analysis,
argues that Harris has the upper hand over Trump: “A more relevant question than how much voters are going to like Kamala Harris is what Trump is going to do to win back the populist White voters he lost [in 2020]. Currently, the Harris campaign is doing more explicit outreach to White voters than Trump, who recently framed his opposition to mass-immigration as motivated by a desire to protect the jobs of Blacks and Hispanics. Part of a strategy, it seems, devised by Trump’s campaign manager Susie Wiles, who says they will compensate for losing White ‘Karens’ by winning ‘Jamal and Enrique.’”Interestingly, both Teixeira and Woods agree that Trump’s coalition is increasingly multiracial, but have different interpretations of the electoral consequences of this racial realignment. Woods believes that Trump will continue to lose the working class white voters who helped carry him to victory in 2016: “Trump talked a good game about rebuilding American manufacturing in 2016, but he failed to deliver for working-class Whites in Rust Belt states…In contrast, Biden has pumped billions into these Rust Belt states. Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act is bringing high-paying technology jobs into the American economy, which includes a focus in Georgia and Pennsylvania. In the year after passing the act, construction spending by US manufacturers more than doubled. The Rust Belt is becoming a center of electric vehicle production, with companies like Ford making big investments in EV battery production in these states. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act pumped billions more into these states, giving generous subsidies and tax breaks to green energy manufacturers.”
“She Went to Jail After Jan. 6—and It Opened Her Eyes to the Need for Prison Reform”
At his new Substack,
, tells the story of a January 6th protestor whose experience in prison changed her views about the American penal system: “Danean MacAndrew isn’t your typical criminal justice reform advocate. She’s a long-time Republican voter who has never considered herself very politically active. For most of her life, she had little concern for people who go to prison. But that all changed when she became one of those people after taking part in the January 6th protests inside the U.S. Capitol. The experience opened her eyes to the humanity of people behind bars, and she’ll never be able to look at the system the same way again — and she wants to make sure other people learn from her experience.”MacAndrew refused to take a plea deal due to her conviction that her nonviolent participation in the January 6th protests should not be punished. As a result, she served a 90-day prison sentence at FCI Dublin in Dublin, California: “She recalled the experience of a guard being cruel to her—yelling and cursing—and offered her own idea for prison reform. ‘I think honestly the best thing to do would be to make anybody who’s going to become a guard have them experience three days in prison before they’re allowed to become a guard so they understand what dehumanization feels like, how it feels to be not looked in the eye when you greet someone, how it feels to be seen more as an animal than a human, I think that if the guards would be able to feel the way that feels, then maybe they wouldn’t do that to us,’ she said.”
“Activism, Uncensored: Pro-Palestine Protesters Attempt to Disrupt Netanyahu Visit”
Turning to more recent protests in Washington DC,
offers some excellent video reporting on the demonstrations during Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the capitol. The video (just over 17 minutes long) is worth watching in full, as it illustrates various tendencies and contradictions within the American pro-Palestine movement. While legacy media reporting has pivoted almost entirely to the presidential election, it is essential that independent journalists continue to document the vibrant protest movement against United States government support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.For more on the protests, see my essay, “In Defense of Woke Zoomers.”
“A Quarter-Century Later, Battle of Seattle Protesters Proved Right”
evaluates the legacy of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle at : “Almost a quarter-century later, the goals and messages behind the WTO protest have been proven correct. Corporate globalization has been a disaster for workers, the poor, and the planet. Wealth inequality has increased in almost all parts of the world, including strikingly inside the United States. Meanwhile, in poor nations like Mexico and Bangladesh, sweatshops that often amount to virtual slave labor have proliferated, and the dismantling of tariffs and trade restrictions in favor of neoliberal free trade policies has destroyed domestic markets such as traditional organic farming.”Providing important background for the militarized police response to protests ranging from January 6th to Netanyahu’s visit, Wilbert writes that “The WTO protests also marked a turning point in police tactics. Since the Civil Rights Movement, police had taken a hands-off approach to policing protests via a strategy of ‘negotiated management,’ recognizing that repression would often backfire. But the leaderless structure and radical intransigence of protesters in the Battle in Seattle meant there was no one to negotiate with — a situation that has become normal for mass protests as strategic planning and coordination has become passe. In response, U.S. police agencies have taken counterinsurgency-based approach to mass protests in the 21st century, with heavily armored riot police, sound cannons, tear gas, and armored vehicles being typical. Empires often end up using techniques they originally perfected putting down rebellions in their overseas colonies against their own people.”
The article concludes with a postscript responding to my own article, “We Are All Trumpians Now,” in which I draw on the example of the Battle of Seattle to argue that anti-globalization movement protestors have influenced economic policy under the Trump and Biden administrations.
What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.