As far as I'm concerned, based on my thoughtful analysis of the American polity, there is no reason for leftists to be any more reluctant to talk to a working-class Trump voter than a working-class Biden voter--about policies. For me, neither has any more reason than the other to be peremptorily excluded from conversation because of the foolish electoral choice I think s/he made.
Despite DiMaggio's repeated concern about this, whether votes are "sent" to the Democrat or Republican is not the main issue. Neither candidate and neither party has any claim, by any leftist metric, to be substantially better than the other. The Democratic Party is not an essentially more "progressive" institution than the Republican; its job is to be, and it is, the most effective obstacle to any serious progressive reform. The current Democratic president is a proudly reactionary politician who has done more damage during his career to the multi-racial working-class, to black people in particular, and to millions of people throughout the world than his predecessor has or is likely to. By any leftist metric. By far.
I presume DiMaggio and the Shortstops disagree with that (though they may not want to try making that case too loudly), because if you read his piece with that in mind, you see that it's all about Trump vs. the Democrats and who votes for which.
In his previous essay, DiMaggio correctly skewers "The narrative that the Republican Party is the true representative of your average joe and jane." But he then suggests that the Left-Fielders believe and promote that narrative. That's a patently false proposition, which he, with intentional or careless illogic, derives from their (or at least some of theirs) strong stance that the Democratic Party is no more the representative of the working people than the Republican, and that leftists should-really must-stop thinking it is.
None of those left pundits believes that the Republican Party is the "true representative of your average joe and jane"; they address why so many average joes and janes could believe it is. What are the material and social and ideological conditions that make such a ridiculous and dangerous paradigm possible?
The answer is not because of anything those pundits say, but because of all the devastating policies, delivered with all the smug attitudes, by Democratic presidents and politicians, and their allied media. Those politicians, policies, media, and attitudes are the conditions of possibility for absurd American "billionaire populism"; they are what the Left-Field pundits are targeting, to the vehement dismay and disapproval of DiMaggio and the Shortstops.
They are right to do so, and they are being effective, which is why there is such vehement opposition. Glenn Greenwald is a persuasive voice on the Democrats' dangerous dance with authoritarian censorship, Matt Taibbi is a trenchant voice on media smugness and hypocrisy. And Jimmy Dore opened and exposed the "progressive" can of worms with his Force The Vote campaign, which refused to back off, for the sake of Democratic Party amity, from asking congressional nominal leftists to do what was eminently possible and what they had promised. People on the left are persuaded by them, which is why the Shortstops are so insistent that you not listen to them, and why field managers like Keith Olbermann want to shut them down entirely.
The Left-Fielders are punching at "the libs" to expose the conditions that make reactionary populism possible, while DiMaggio and the Shortstops are punching at those pundits, in order to deflect attention from those conditions and defend the Democratic Party.
In the current US politico-ideological climate, what other voices, besides the Left-Fielders DiMaggio ridicules, are doing a better job of exposing those conditions and of, precisely, speaking to and for "groups" left behind by two plutocratic political parties? DiMaggio and the Shortstops want us to reject those voices, and listen instead to....? (Besides Neil Postman.)
Watch this clip of Bernie Sanders fumbling around under Krystal Ball's questioning about why he won't challenge Biden:
If elections are what you're interested in, you have just watched the capture of Congress by those nasty Republicans next year and the victory of the next fake-populist Republican president in 2024--probably not Donald Trump, and maybe not a Republican, or even white. (There's a new mayor of New York I'd like you to meet.) Krystal Ball's (not very harsh) questions are not responsible for that; Bernie Sanders's (non-) answers, and the refusal to implement social policies that would benefit the majority of people those (non-) answers represent, are.
If you are interested in the nature of the American polity, you have just watched a lesson in the unified mission of the two see-saw parties to make sure that nothing fundamentally changes in the U.S. capitalist-imperialist system, and the submission of the most progressive politician we've seen in decades to it--via his submission to the Democratic Party.
And the Democratic Party will graciously hand over power to the Republicans because that is their job: to get progressives to go along with fundamentally changing nothing, while blocking the necessary changes and taking their turn going down on the see-saw. Until they conjure up the next "fascist" ogre. Rinse and repeat.
It is not Krystal Ball's exposure of this pathetic game that deserves vehement denunciation; it's the game and the players exposed.
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