Gavin Newsom addresses the nation

[Zoo_View]

Of course racism was a key part of Reagan’s strategy. No one’s denying that, least of all me.

But having lived through those years, you know the idea that only racism can explain his mass appeal is way too tidy. And, most important to this discussion, it lets Democrats off the hook for decades of failure to offer an emotionally resonant alternative.

Reagan didn’t just dog whistle: he spoke to people’s anxieties about inflation, crime, and national decline in a way that felt strong and coherent, even if it was rooted in lies.

If we write off every disaffected voter as just racist or duped, we’ll never win them back. Some were, absolutely. But many were just looking for hope and strength.

You should read more about the 1976 Republican Primary in North Carolina.

Reagan’s campaign AND political career were dead in the water until Jesse Helms and Tom Ellis saved it in the 1976 NC Primary.

 

[mpaer]

You should read more about the 1976 Republican Primary in North Carolina.

Reagan’s campaign AND political career were dead in the water until Jesse Helms and Tom Ellis saved it in the 1976 NC Primary.

A lot of defeats in our life in NC politics.................

 

[Zoo_View]

I will say, I accidentally sent an earlier version of a reply I typed out to Snoop. My edited reply differs a good bit, but the idea is still the same.

At any rate, I’ll try to respond to your post.

I appreciate that you at least partially agree there’s value in engaging conservative or right-leaning voters, even if it’s not always about flipping them. But I think your post ultimately reveals the limits of the framework you’re working within, especially the way it flattens conservative voters into caricatures and substitutes a moral diagnosis for a political strategy.

You say it’s not “convenient” to reduce MAGA to hate and xenophobia because it’s based on what you see and what the studies say. But you’re not treating these studies as data points to think with, you’re using them as moral proof texts. You’re assuming that correlation is destiny, that because racial resentment correlates with Trump support, it must be the core driver for every voter in that camp, and that it therefore forecloses serious political engagement.

What makes that even more contradictory is that you then turn around and say we should be appearing on Fox News to “plant seeds.” Why would we plant seeds among a population that, by your own account, is incapable of recognizing human decency or responding to anything but grievance? Either these voters are emotionally reachable or they’re not. You can’t write them off as morally depraved and politically unreachable in paragraph two and then tell us it’s “low cost” and “worth a shot” to try to reach them in paragraph one.

What’s going on here isn’t really a political strategy so much as it’s branding. You want Democrats to appear open-minded and decent to people who, in your telling, are beyond reason. That’s not a political plan. That’s reputational damage control for professional-class liberals who are uncomfortable being seen as aloof. You’re not trying to win anyone over, you’re trying to feel better about not winning them over.

And that ties into the larger problem: liberalism still doesn’t know how to process the emotional power of populism. You treat MAGA as a mass psychosis rather than as a political formation that has emotional, cultural, and economic resonance, much of which has grown in the vacuum created by decades of bipartisan neglect. You mention jobs as an “empty promise” and then act like grievance politics came out of nowhere. But maybe the promise of jobs isn’t empty to people who watched their towns collapse while both parties gave them NAFTA and Walmart.

You say, “What positive thing does MAGA offer?” The answer is belonging. Narrative. Identity. A sense of being seen. It’s not just “hate” any more than the appeal of Obama was just “hope.” The left will never understand how to defeat that until it understands how it works. And that begins with refusing to treat half the country like they’re too poisoned to ever matter politically.

People’s political identity isn’t genetically hardwired. If we cede that emotional ground to the right, they will keep winning it.

NAFTA nor Wal-Mart killed the Southern Textile industry……it was dying in the late ‘70’s and early-mid ‘80’s. So was the furniture industry.

At best, automated textile mills would replace the mills of the ‘50’s, ‘60’s, and ‘70’s. If automation replaced the workers, the mills are still there; the jobs are gone.

Democrats offered training to displaced mill workers (textile, steel, furniture, etc.); Republicans offered grievance. Poorly educated mill workers wanted their jobs back; their jobs were gone.

I’m familiar with it. I had a great class at UNC with Dr. Chris Clark, we covered the 1976 NC primary and the roles of Helms and Ellis in helping revive Reagan’s campaign. That moment was clearly pivotal. But I think the broader point still stands: Reagan didn’t build a national coalition just on the fumes of the Southern strategy. His message resonated far beyond the South, including with many traditionally Democratic working-class voters in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and parts of North Carolina.

That Reagan Democrat phenomenon wasn’t just about racial backlash, though that was part of it. It was also about a sense of decline, inflation, and national uncertainty. Reagan offered a story that felt emotionally coherent and strong, even if it was grounded in harmful ideas.

”The fumes of the Southern Strategy…..”

You think the Southern Strategy was dying in 1976-1984?

You think it was limited to the South?

 

[Calheel]

Although I do think Jon Stewart could be a dark horse candidate. He is 2x the debater that Gavin Newsom is and he has the advantage of actually believing what he says.

And see, this is why I think Jon Stewart would be a good President. He sees Gavin for the fakey fake he is, too

 

[hedge]

What NAFTA and Walmart represented wasn’t the beginning of the collapse, but a bipartisan endorsement of a model that said: “This is the future. Get used to it.”

Sounds like each new generation of iPhone. Or people...

 

[hedge]

What I’m arguing is this: when people say they want their jobs back, it’s not always a literal demand. It’s often a longing for dignity, stability, community, identity.

You left out the most important thing: Money. That may not be all that everybody cares about, but it's very big part of what most people care about (which actually dovetails back into my quip about people voting for anybody who promised to direct deposit $10K into their checking accounts). All of the other things you mentioned fall into place when you've got money. And I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. It might be a good thing. How to get it, though?

 

[Zoo_View]

You’re right that the decline of the Southern textile and furniture industries began before NAFTA or Walmart entered the picture. Automation, globalization, and shifts in capital investment were already transforming those sectors by the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

The timing and political management of that decline still matter. So does the story people were told, or not told, about what was happening to them.

What NAFTA and Walmart represented wasn’t the beginning of the collapse, but a bipartisan endorsement of a model that said: “This is the future. Get used to it.”

Democrats offered job training, sure…but for what exactly? For service jobs at half the wages? A PowerPoint and a training voucher are not a political vision.

Republicans, meanwhile, offered a story. A bad story, often grounded in scapegoating, but a story that acknowledged loss, and assigned some emotional meaning to it.

What I’m arguing is this: when people say they want their jobs back, it’s not always a literal demand. It’s often a longing for dignity, stability, community, identity. A time when they felt useful, needed. We can’t just dismiss that as backward or irrational.

As for the “fumes of the Southern Strategy line…,” I think we might just be using the term differently. When I say Reagan’s coalition wasn’t running purely on the “fumes of the Southern Strategy,” I’m referring specifically to the Goldwater-to-Nixon era model: overtly racial appeals aimed at disaffected Southern whites, later repackaged in coded language.

What Reagan did was build on that foundation and expand it into a national emotional narrative that fused coded racial grievance with themes of economic individualism, national decline, and patriotic renewal. That’s what made it so potent. It wasn’t just the dog whistles; it was the story.

Lee Atwater said it best. By the 1980s, the coded language had become so abstract,”cutting taxes,” “small government,” “welfare reform,” that it didn’t just appeal to the South. It could sell in the Midwest, in the West, in the suburbs. And it brought in voters who didn’t think of themselves as racist, but who still responded emotionally to that broader narrative.

If we flatten that into just “hate and racism,” we miss how the emotional power of that message shaped American politics for decades and how a lot of working- and middle-class voters ended up inside that coalition not because they were committed bigots, but because the left had stopped telling a competing story that spoke to their lives.

Thank you for educating me on how Lee Atwater changed wording of the Southern Strategy.

I didn’t know they could no longer shout, “N****r, N****r, N****r,” when Reagan or Helms ran for office. I didn’t know that “school busing,” “welfare queen,” “welfare reform,” “food stamps,” or “states’ rights” weren’t racist code words.

I always thought that speaking at Bob Jones University or the Neshoba County Fair, especially about states’ rights, sent “I am with you” signals to racists and bigots. I didn’t realize it’s been about expressing sympathy to the white working class because jobs are doing what they’ve done for centuries - move to areas with lower costs.

 

[hedge]

when people say they want their jobs back, it’s not always a literal demand. It’s often a longing for dignity, stability, community, identity. A time when they felt useful, needed. We can’t just dismiss that as backward or irrational.

This probably isn't the time or place to discuss rationality in contradistinction to feelings and longings and needlings, is it? I don't even know what the thread title is...

 

[hedge]

What Reagan did was build on that foundation and expand it into a national emotional narrative that fused coded racial grievance with themes of economic individualism, national decline, and patriotic renewal. That’s what made it so potent. It wasn’t just the dog whistles; it was the story.

Sounds like Gone With The Wind...

Speaking of that, this scene from Gone With the Wind popped in my mind the other day when you were talking about politicians needing to be able to at least seem sincere, and meet people "where they are" with material reality, or materiality. Something about material, anyway (I swear I tried but I just never could get into Marx)..

 

[hedge]

Lee Atwater said it best. By the 1980s, the coded language had become so abstract,”cutting taxes,” “small government,” “welfare reform,” that it didn’t just appeal to the South. It could sell in the Midwest, in the West, in the suburbs. And it brought in voters who didn’t think of themselves as racist, but who still responded emotionally to that broader narrative.

What was the broader narrative they were responding to? The abstract coded language about small government, etc., or the fusion of coded racial grievance with themes of economic individualism, national decline, and patriotic renewal? I'm trying to remember if I've ever thought of myself as responding to a broader narrative. I mean obviously that could be happening without one consciously realizing it. Interesting phrase, that. Responding to a broader narrative. Seems to pinpoint something in the program of most religions and cultures. Or families, for that matter...

 

[hedge]

And see, this is why I think Jon Stewart would be a good President. He sees Gavin for the fakey fake he is, too

He's onto somethihg there with people wanting their politicians to be charaters of some kind..

 

[Kingpin]

My issue with Newsom was the televised primetime address to the nation -- something that is the domain of presidents. I would have had no objection to Newsom making a speech at a rally or calling a press conference -- which are normal things for governors to do.

How many times do people have to tell you it was an address to Cali and not the Nation? That the national media after the fact picked it up and amplified it is predictable given the circumstances. And I’m sure he knew that could happen and glad it did. It was a great speech. If you read the transcript without knowing who delivered the speech you would love it. Your hatred of Newsom blinds your judgement

 

[Mundial]

And see, this is why I think Jon Stewart would be a good President. He sees Gavin for the fakey fake he is, too

When Stewart is running as a candidate and actually offering a plan, I will consider his views until then he is just another clever comedian.

Newsom with a win in court by the way. He’s fighting.

 

[hedge]

It ran on fear, pride, dislocation, nostalgia, and a desire to matter. That’s why it worked and why it still works.

I wonder if that will work for AI?

 

[Zoo_View]

I wasn’t trying to “educate” you, I was building on the example you raised to make a broader point about how the strategy evolved. I know you already know this stuff. So do I. I just thought it was worth unpacking for anyone else reading. No hard feelings.

To clarify, I’m not disputing that Reagan and figures like Helms used coded racial appeals, or that speeches at places like Bob Jones University or the Neshoba County Fair sent clear signals. I’m building on that by looking at how those signals evolved into something bigger: a national narrative that combined racial coding with themes of patriotic renewal, economic individualism, and national decline. That’s what made it more potent and more durable.

On the economic side: yes, jobs have always shifted, but they don’t just move like weather patterns. Political choices helped accelerate that movement.

The problem wasn’t just the economic transformation, it was the absence of a compelling political story from the left that explained it, validated people’s losses, and offered a path forward.

Appreciate your post.

I hate to say it…….you can’t tell a truthful, logical, rational story about jobs moving to cheaper locales without a Trump or Pat Buchanan screaming, “They stole yer jerbs!”

The jobs had left or were leaving before the trade agreement.

The mill workers or coal miners don’t want re-training. They want their old jobs…….which are GONE FOREVER.

Trump and the GOP will lie and say, “We’ll bring back yer jerbs.”

How does one campaign against that lie?

Also, “they” stole yer jerbs!

They equals them, immigrants, brown people, elites, commies, socialists, leftists, Democrats……….When you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Democrats and center/left Americans have an extraordinarily difficult row to hoe.

 

[Zoo_View]

Totally agree it’s a tough road, and I appreciate your response(s) as well.

You’re absolutely right that we can’t lie and say the jobs are coming back exactly as they were. That ship has sailed. But we also can’t lead with a shrug and a training brochure. Like I said, people don’t just want a job; they want purpose, dignity, identity. If we don’t speak to that, someone else will.

The challenge for Democrats isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to tell a truth that feels like it matters. One that names the forces that gutted these communities, validates the anger, and offers a real vision of shared renewal. That’s not easy. But “they stole your jobs” works emotionally because it tells a simple story of loss and betrayal. We need stories that can match that resonance without feeding the same scapegoats.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I think something like this could be a powerful political message for the left:

“You didn’t fail, the people in power did. They made decisions that hollowed out your town, your industry, your future. They told you it was inevitable. But it wasn’t. And it still isn’t. We can build a country where working people matter again, where investment flows to our communities, where the work we do is respected, and where no one is disposable.”

That’s not a promise to turn back the clock, It’s a promise to fight like hell for a better deal going forward. People need to feel seen, not managed. They need someone who will say: your pain makes sense, and your life should be worth more than this.

Despite his flaws, Bernie Sanders came closer than anyone in recent memory to tapping into this. He talked about betrayal, not by immigrants or outsiders, but by billionaires and political elites. He connected Wall Street greed, corporate offshoring, and austerity politics into a coherent story. It resonated because it didn’t deny people’s pain or try to manage it with technocratic fixes; it honored it and named a villain.

Bernie didn’t come close to explaining how to fix things. The closest Bernie came to a fix was blaming free trade…….so, was Bernie’s fix tariffs?

Bernie was a new version of the angry vitriol of “They stole yer jerbs.”

 

[Kingpin]

Totally agree it’s a tough road, and I appreciate your response(s) as well.

You’re absolutely right that we can’t lie and say the jobs are coming back exactly as they were. That ship has sailed. But we also can’t lead with a shrug and a training brochure. Like I said, people don’t just want a job; they want purpose, dignity, identity. If we don’t speak to that, someone else will.

The challenge for Democrats isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to tell a truth that feels like it matters. One that names the forces that gutted these communities, validates the anger, and offers a real vision of shared renewal. That’s not easy. But “they stole your jobs” works emotionally because it tells a simple story of loss and betrayal. We need stories that can match that resonance without feeding the same scapegoats.

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I think something like this could be a powerful political message for the left:

“You didn’t fail, the people in power did. They made decisions that hollowed out your town, your industry, your future. They told you it was inevitable. But it wasn’t. And it still isn’t. We can build a country where working people matter again, where investment flows to our communities, where the work we do is respected, and where no one is disposable.”

That’s not a promise to turn back the clock, It’s a promise to fight like hell for a better deal going forward. People need to feel seen, not managed. They need someone who will say: your pain makes sense, and your life should be worth more than this.

Despite his flaws, Bernie Sanders came closer than anyone in recent memory to tapping into this. He talked about betrayal, not by immigrants or outsiders, but by billionaires and political elites. He connected Wall Street greed, corporate offshoring, and austerity politics into a coherent story. It resonated because it didn’t deny people’s pain or try to manage it with technocratic fixes; it honored it and named a villain.

Agreed. For this to happen we will need a 2008 sea change in politics. Saying that and making any substantive changes requires a compliant Congress. Without a super majority. The obstructionist Pubs will make that politician look like a liar, unfortunately

 

[McAdooSmackinYou]

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I think something like this could be a powerful political message for the left:

“You didn’t fail, the people in power did. They made decisions that hollowed out your town, your industry, your future. They told you it was inevitable. But it wasn’t. And it still isn’t. We can build a country where working people matter again, where investment flows to our communities, where the work we do is respected, and where no one is disposable.”

Dems say this all the time. Then Rs find a woman with testicles and the working class chooses to vote for the ruling class responsible for hollowing out their towns. Then you blame the Dems

 

[Calheel]

How many times do people have to tell you it was an address to Cali and not the Nation?

You are going to be really bummed when you learn the truth about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, too.

By the way, what is the title of this thread?

 

[McAdooSmackinYou]

It’s in every milquetoast speech at every convention.

Harris consistently talked about how policies impacted working and middle class families. Maybe she didn’t mean it but you suggest that doesn’t matter. She conveyed that she cared. Why didn’t these mythical salt of the earth people yearning for meaning and belonging hear it? In your eyes it can’t be because they are stupid racist or misogynist, so what was it?