It’s a fact of human nature, but it’s a huge problem in this primary. It’s a much bigger problem than it ever has been because we don’t all agree on who the tribes actually are. Older people still think that the tribes are democrat versus republican. Younger people (by younger, I mean those under 50) know that the tribes are actually rich vs everyone else. It’s not even rich vs poor anymore. If you make low or mid six figures, you’re part of the “everyone else” tribe, especially if you’re in NY, SF, or LA when a stock market dive and a layoff can bury you financially.
Tribalism is what makes people blame W for the 2007 economic crash, when Bill Clinton’s decision to let banks take your money and gamble it away in risky “financial products” like subprime mortgages was really the problem. He killed Glass Steagell on his way out of office and that’s why Nancy Pelosi had to give banks your taxpayer money with no strings attached to keep them from folding. She had to mitigate Bill Clinton’s giant fuck up. But it was an understandable mistake, since it’s not like Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar in economics or anything.
And because the financial industry funds campaigns for both democrats and republicans, it never occurred to our legislators to give the same amount of money directly to homeowners so that they could keep their homes and inject cash into the economy from the bottom up.
Tribalism is why Trump’s “lock her up” thugs have no problems with his family using private emails and encrypted messaging apps to conduct “government” affairs. Personally, I was outraged when W used private emails and lost them (oopsie). My outrage and concern didn’t evaporate when Hillary did it, and they’re still present while the Trump crime family does it.
Tribalism is why people were outraged when W created a mass surveillance program to capture everything all Americans do with technology, but suddenly didn’t care so much when Obama continued and expanded that program (Edward Snowden is a traitor!)
Do you see how we’ve fucked ourselves with this republican vs democrat tribalism? We get much of the same shit from both parties, and are somehow okay with it when it’s our party fucking us. Tax cuts for the rich are bad unless Obama makes 82% of W’s tax cuts permanent, in which case, they’re good!
This game has been going on for forty years. Prior to that, we had one party who protected corporate interests, and another party who fought for the working class. That all ended when Bill Clinton put up a “for lease” sign and created the DCCC so that lobbyists could funnel money to the democratic party. Anyone remember this?
That was when Bill Clinton put the “government is bad” rhetoric into overdrive, effectively dismantling the democratic party’s decades long message that government is best suited to provide essential services to the public.
Most people don’t know all of this stuff and haven’t chronicled every vote that has made their lives harder, but they do know that something has gone horribly wrong in America. Nearly half of Americans don’t want to be associated with either party.
I was at a friend’s house a few weeks ago. He’s convinced himself that Bernie can’t win the general. He’s bounced from Biden to Bloomberg, and I’m guessing back to Biden again. He told me that he wished that there were more candidates running. When I pointed out that at one time, there were 29 people running I realized that what he was actually saying is that he wished that an Obama or a Clinton was running.
I’ve made this point before, but democrats have to run a preternaturally charismatic candidate to win the presidency. Republicans win by running actual human garbage. This is not winning. We need magnetic personalities to trick us into thinking that neoliberalism is going to finally work for us. Obama ran on hope and change. He promised to fundamentally change the system. And then his first hire was Rahm “never let a good crisis go to waste” Emmanuel. His second hire was Tim Geithner, a Larry Summers disciple.
I know we’re not allowed to say anything bad about Obama, but can anyone honestly believe that Trump would have happened if 95% of the gains of the recovery hadn’t gone to the top 1%? Does anyone think that one of Hillary’s big problems might have been that she was pretending that things were great under Obama and promising not to change anything? Tens of millions of people lost their homes and their jobs. Obama comes in and a few years later, those people were able to get jobs back (for a lower salary). Bank Of America took their homes and destroyed their credit, and they’re supposed to be happy about what Obama did for them?
We have to keep it real here, sans the tribalism. America is not working for working people. It doesn’t matter who controls the house or the executive branch. It’s been 40 years of flat wages and the rich getting richer. Much richer.
And now we have the establishment creating a narrative of viability for Joe Biden, who is promising to get us back to the Obama era. The man has run for president three times, just won his first primary a few days ago, and we’re being told that he’s got the best chance against Trump? Seriously? I am terrified that we’re going to make the same mistake that we made in 2016. Not a slightly different version of that mistake, but precisely the same one. The older people who don’t understand who the tribes actually are letting the establishment convince them that Biden has the best chance of winning is actually going to depress voter turnout. I cannot see a single demographic group that Biden is going to turn out that Hillary didn’t. There’s no new, strong coalition behind him like there was for Obama and [vomiting in my mouth] Trump. Biden isn’t as polarizing as Hillary, so maybe he won’t have the same undervote surge that happened last time, but that still makes for a razor thin margin. For those not familiar, undervoting is when people take time out of their day to show up and vote, but they’re so disgusted with their choices, they leave (usually) the top of the ticket blank.
Old people are making a giant mistake in not understanding that most people under the age of 50 aren’t seeing the same tribes they are. I was sounding precisely the same alarm bells during the 2016 primary, but boomers did what they’re doing now, and falsely blamed Bernie voters and Russia for Trump. Conveniently, that narrative means they didn’t make a mistake. And when we get a second Trump term, they won’t have made the same mistake again.
I am genuinely terrified.
