Few communities in America prospered as much as Texarkana during President Joe Biden’s four years in the White House, and few communities were more ungrateful than the voters of that region, which is anchored around twin cities spread across the Texas-Arkansas border.
In 2024, in spite of economic growth under a Democratic president at rates unheard-of in decades, residents of Texarkana turned around and cast a higher percentage of their ballots for Trump than ever before.
Texarkana serves as a case study in the uphill struggle of the Democratic Party to win — and win back — working class support.
Thomas Edsall
If any body tells you that the Dems lost in ’24 because of the cost of eggs, show them this article. Politics is 20% policy and 80% culture, and the Dems are losing—have lost?— the culture war.
If Donald Trump and J.D. Vance decided to provide Medicare for all, institute a $50K UBI, and raise the marginal tax rate to 90% on the most wealthy to pay for it, Populist America would buy it. It’s not the policy, but who’s proposing it that matters.
But that won’t happen because Trump is a kleptocrat being accepted for now by the 1% as a useful fool tool to enact its agenda.
The 1% owns the GOP, the Supreme Court, Kristen Sinema Dems, and corporate America. The only counterbalance to that kind of concentrated power lies in people power, and the culture war is the 1%’s primary strategy to prevent the people from organizing against its interests. Trump is a powerful weapon in that ongoing effort.
He’s not the problem, the 1% is. If we had a real Left in this country, and not a phony identitarian one, it would not play the 1%’s game. This phony Left is as much a pawn in this game as the MAGA Right is. It’s exasperating.
I truly value your process and the way you are working on this in "real" time. I bounce around trying to figure out what thing or things have led to this moment. Poor educational system? Cultural capitalism? Founding fathers who created a system that is now showing its age and flaws? Natural historical cycles, including the decline of our western civilization? Instantaneous communication with which humans are not able to adapt? An attention span that is cultivated by social networks to be unable to think beyond the present moment? Whatever the reasons, I am fearful we are not collectively going to be able to transcend them and make way for progress as a species. Please keep your thoughts coming. I have found them to be useful in helping me get out of cognitive and emotional ruts. And certainly working on ideas is better than giving up.
You are so right, Jack. But what cultural values do the left have to offer that will rise above what the right is offering? That is where I am confused and exasperated. DEI is something I value. Three equal branches of government I value. Those things don't seem to matter to a large number of people. Especially the ones who would benefit the most from policies that reflect them. Rather humbling and confusion.