On Letting The Poors Eat Cake and Drive Electric Vehicles
Photo by Francoisghebaly, CC BY-SA 4.0
I really wish the Republicans (as in those holding offices or running for office) would stop with their awful platforms on social issues. Stop making life harder for trans kids, sticking their noses into women’s medical decisions, subtly (and not so subtly) endorsing white supremacist views, and worshiping at the altar of the grotesque that is Donald J. Trump. I wish they would stop, because I am not happy with the way things are going right now and if it weren’t for those things I might vote for a few of them.
As it stands, even though inflation has me worried and gas prices have me grumbling and the grim outlook on things changing any time soon leaves me with a sense of dread, I still can’t vote for the other side. Not as long as they spend their time gutting social programs, railing against “CRT”, treating women like incubators, and generally making life harder for marginalized groups and the poor. Not as long as horror shows like Lauren Bobert, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are welcomed among their ranks and treated as if they are representative of mainstream GOP.
But damn, Democrats. You are not helping. Shrugging your shoulders about the price of gas and suggesting we all buy an electric vehicles – average cost to buy new (and good luck finding used): over $56,000 as of December 2021 – is not helping. Frankly, you look like the out of touch elitist assholes the right accuses you of being. Does owning an EV cost less in the long run? Maybe; maybe you will save 3 or 4 thousand for the price of fuel over the course of a year – but that assumes you are able to make the huge monthly payments and your electric vehicle has not been repo’ed – and assuming you could even qualify for the financing to buy it in the first place. You see, poor people don’t have much money. That’s actually the definition of poor.
“So, take public transportation! Or walk! Or bike!” you suggest.
If that’s your response, I invite you to live in West Virginia for a while. Not in the capitol or in Morgantown where WVU is, but in what makes up the rest of West Virginia. The hills and hollers and mountains and places practically in the woods, miles and miles and miles from grocery stores and doctors’ offices and places where people work. Also consider that West Virginia is chock full of elderly and disabled people who could no sooner walk to the store and back than they could climb Kilimanjaro. And when the store is far away, you tend to buy a lot at once to, you know, save gas, so that’s a lot more groceries than one can carry home on foot. Or on a bicycle, which if you choose to ride on the narrow windy roads of West Virginia, you are brave or stupid or both.
“What about public transportation?” Only if you live in or near one of what passes for cities in this state. There aren’t many.
“So move, ya dumb poors!” you say.
About that: moving costs money. And here is a well-kept secret that may shock you: West Virginia has the highest rate of home ownership of any state in the union at 78%. How can that be, you ask, since we are all so poverty stricken? Because a lot of us live on our ancestral lands, long ago owned outright, passed down generation to generation. There is a reason why, around here, you often see a house on a plot of land with a mobile home or two situated nearby; a lot of people don’t move away from home here. They may move out, but they stay on the land, or move back when their parents pass on and leave them the house. Moving to a place where you have to pay rent or get a mortgage is a ridiculous suggestion when you can stay in the place you feel you belong for the low low price of just paying the property taxes.
Maybe West Virginia is a special case and other places have more means of mobility. But I know we are not the only ones to whom these helpful suggestions sound out of touch with reality. Poor people are the ones who will suffer, not the wealthy conservatives who refuse to buy electric vehicles out of stubbornness or political conviction, as it appears many on the left seem to believe is the case.
I can’t help but consider whether the apathy toward soaring gas prices and a refusal to do much about it is just a backhanded way of pushing “green” energy on the unwilling. Personally, I would love to see more use of renewable resources. I’m not much of a “friend of coal”, which I have been open about. I would love to see electric vehicles become more practical and inexpensive, and cleaner energy sources integrated in significant ways. But right now, we need to meet people where they are, which for many is in a place where travel by private, gasoline powered vehicle is really the only feasible option. You can’t force a person who drives a 15 year old car because they can’t get a loan or afford a car payment to suddenly see the light and buy a Tesla or other electric vehicles.
“Why should we subsidize their bad choices,” you ask? Now you sound like a Republican.
I went looking for a quote from any Democratic politician saying the solution to high gas prices is to buy an electric car. Imagine my shock when I couldn’t find one. This Pete Buttigieg appearance seems to be the genesis of this manufactured controversy, and, as near as I can tell, all he’s doing is touting them as a good solution to reducing oil consumption. https://whyy.org/articles/former-biden-rival-buttigieg-touts-electric-vehicles-in-visit-to-presidents-home-state/
This post could have been vastly improved by supplying a citation or two. Happy to have my mind changed.Report
I’m not suggesting that there’s anything sinister or dishonest going on here, but “Former Biden Rival” strikes me as a really weird way to refer to the Secretary of Transportation in a story about doing Secretary of Transportation stuff.Report
It’s also true – many of his cabinet are former rivals, including his Vice President.Report
You could almost call them a “sporting club of rivals”, or some such phrase.Report
Funny how you put the qualifier of “Democratic politician” on there. Almost like you’re setting up the sample group to eliminate the vast majority of the people expressing the sentiment to thereby allow yourself to handwave it away. So then if you don’t have a perfect, tailor made example emanating right from the mouth of Pete Buttigieg, your default becomes “this isn’t real!”
Well hey bro, in the past week, I’ve seen roughly 4 zillion blue check pundits, left-wing activists, Democrat-voting friends/neighbors/family members, total strangers in various organizations I’m a part of, and Stephen Colbert expressing this exact sentiment. If you haven’t, you may want to pop ur bubble, because it’s grown too thick.
Beyond that, you know what I know? It is that Em doesn’t make shit up, and if she sees this happening, and reports on a trend, for y’all to clutch your cravats and pretend as if “bitchez be cray”, claiming that a person who has historically written some of the best researched articles on this site over the past few years is somehow exaggerating or outright inventing this out of wholecloth, just speaks to how deep in denial you are about what your movement has become. For the rich, by the rich, screw the people.
I am so sick of how this insular, up their own butts, downright incestuous group of commentors continually chooses the side of denying actual reality when some of us try to explain to you what is actually happening in our country.Report
I saw this movie before. Last week when the partisans circled the wagons to deny Defund the Police & BLM. Even when you point out members of congress and specific municipalities, it morphs into “not representative”.Report
I was one of the happy partisans who engaged in that debate and when the names actually got tallied, as I recall, the number of Democratic politicians who’d actually ever endorsed or espoused “Defunding the police” came down to not even half of the left wing fringers in Congress. They couldn’t even nail down poor Uncle Bernie as espousing defund the police without wildly misconstruing what he said. So that movie didn’t turn out the way you seem to remember it turning out.Report
Again, do any these people have names?
I mean, I’ve seen 4 zillion Republicans talking about how poor people use their child tax credit for drugs.
Well, actually it was Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
But nevertheless!Report
Is it worth going and finding examples? Or are you just going to play “no true scot”, or tell her that she’s only found, like, twenty or thirty, and there is certainly a Silent Majority who believes no silly things of that sort?Report
Maybe we should find out.Report
Here’s a supercut that happens to be floating around twitter.
“Those quotations are taken out of context!”, will be the counter-argument, I’m sure.
I mean, if “okay, I can see how that might look bad” wasn’t on the table, “out of context” is pretty much the next best play.Report
You realize that not one single person in that clip said that poor people should buy electric vehicles.
Instead there was a lot of warmed over Reagan talking points about ending subsidies and letting the marketplace work to reflect the true cost of fuel.
Are massive distortions and price controls Republican ideology now?Report
Are massive distortions and price controls Republican ideology now?
I have no idea what Republican ideology is.
In the moment it seems to be something like “We should say something like ‘Vote for me and I will choose the massive distortion that will benefit you instead of the massive distortion that will benefit the cocktail party circuit’ and people will vote for us! And then we can pass more tax cuts for corporations that move overseas AND DO NOTHING ELSE!”Report
That’s about right.
FWIW somewhere around 1979 when I was a starving student, I remember being furious with the liberals who passed all sorts of emissions regulations forcing us all to keep our cars well maintained.
And I fumed that these people were out of touch with poor college students.
But in 1979 I also sneered at those who pleaded for financial assistance for bus passes or whatnot.
IOW, massive subsidies for me, market force for thee.
One of the people in that clip stressed how we need to get people to understand just how expensive private automobiles really are, and always have been.
The true cost has just been massively subsidized and hidden.Report
One of the people in that clip stressed how we need to get people to understand just how expensive private automobiles really are, and always have been.
Yeah, the Secretary of Transportation, I believe.
Who is picked by the Executive, if I recall correctly.Report
The gap between lib pundit/blue-check sentiment and Dem elected sentiment can get pretty big, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
And I agree, the attitude Em is describing is consistent with a lot of mainstream normie Dem voter sentiment (not just blue-checks or leftist Twitter randos), and pretty far from Dem elected messaging because this is one place where Dem electeds tend not to be deliberately trying to alienate voters who have few options but to use cars.[1]
I’m taking a more speculative tone here because I’ve been deliberately enthickening my bubble by avoiding Twitter for the last six months, though I fell off the wagon pretty spectacularly in recent weeks.
[1] In a lot of suburbs it’s also really hard to get by without driving, tooReport
To begin with, I’m far from rich. Second, what the hell does anyone care what a bunch of pundits/Twitter randos say about anything? Feel free to wallow in whatever the victimhood du jour is. Me, I’m going to live my life looking for documentation for any assertions while still paying through the nose for gas.Report
ah yes, the usual “well nobody IMPORTANT is talking about this”, which somehow doesn’t seem to apply when it’s not-liberals doing the talking.Report
Thanks for proving my point.Report
“I really wish the Republicans (as in those holding offices or running for office) would stop with their awful platforms on social issues.”
Just gonna leave that there.
You made this about politicians, likely to insulate Republican voters from the consequences of their support for their leaders and these horrible, awful laws.Report
Um, Kristin didn’t write the piece we’re commenting on.
Em did.Report
My error. I thought that was a comment from Em. My apologies. I would delete this comment if I could.
I was reading on my phone and scrolled too quickly. My fault entirely.Report
I should go farther and directly apologize to both Em and Kristin. A total fish-up on my part and an unfair one to both of you. I’m sorry.Report
I was insulating myself from any thought that I might be turning Republican by making it a point to state that this one particular issue does not entice me to join the opposition, and why.
I’ll be back to respond further when I’m not busy with my day job.Report
Em,
Only respond further if you feel it necessary. I’m the one who screwed up here, conflating two different perspectives from two different people and drawing a conclusion that could not be attributed to either one of you. Regardless of what I agree or disagree with in the piece, that was wrong — both factually and against the spirit of discussion here.
Your approach in the OP was a reasonable one and doesn’t require further explanation from me, but obviously you are free to respond as feels right to you.
Again, my apologies to you and Kristen.Report
bro
you said what you said, and you meant itReport
https://www.outkick.com/bidens-solution-to-high-gas-prices-buy-an-electric-car/Report
I agree that a lot of democrats aren’t paying attention to the necessities of rural America. I agree that we are a long way off from EVs being useful for the poor of WV or farmers in the Mississippi delta. And I agree that politicians are tone deaf – it’s how republicans landed on Trump.
But as Slade noted above, they aren’t saying what you accuse them of. The Administration has said repeatedly they want gas prices to come down – it’s why they have done two strategic petroleum reserve release in the last year. They have also said – rightly – that they have little control over those prices. And they have pointed out – correctly – that moving to a less carbon burning economy would mean things like Putin’s war are less of a threat to American picket books.
Does that seem tone deaf – no more so the trucker convoys burning up diesel to protest mandates that are no longer in existence.Report
Thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this and saving me the effort. The callousness coming from leftists on this issue is insanely tone deaf and really flies in the face of the whole “but we’re the ones who care about the poor” angle.
I fully agree that it’s because aesthetically, they just don’t like those stinky old cars, and realistically they’re so out of touch they have literally no clue how this WILL affect them in their ivory towers. It will eventually, but in the meantime hundreds of thousands of families will be economically set back for decades because of this. Regardless of whose “fault” it is, that’s the reality.
I have a full breakdown on the reasons why telling poor people to “just move” is elitist BS here: https://ordinary-times.com/2020/09/08/hit-the-road-joad/Report
The “just move thing” as currently constructed is an insult. Much like “just leave America if you don’t like it is an insult.
Doesn’t have to be however. The federal government could have provided moving help in both pandemic relief bills. It should have done so in the Infrastructure Bill since a good many of the tradespersons needed to build those projects don’t live where the money is being spent. They still could in BBB. I have high hopes the will remain entirely consistent and not do so.Report
If you have high-speed internet, every place is the same.Report
We’ve already been told that learn to code is a shibboleth for I hate the poors.Report
Not any more.
It’s now hate speech against journalists.Report
PorqueNoLosDos.gifReport
I think it’s because one cannot plausibly maintain that “Saying X to someone without status is just good advice and saying it to someone with status is hate speech”.
Certainly not if the whole “punching up/down” rule has been very recently championed.Report
no no no, bro, you’re supposed to say “nobody is saying this”, you’re supposed to say “you can’t find any examples of actual pundits”, you’re not supposed to defend the thingReport
You just told me to below dude. Get consistent with what you want will ya?Report
What is the benefit of a luxury belief if no one else knows you hold it?Report
I don’t think moving support is the right policy answer here.
I have a general bias against the government supporting specific behaviors on the part of individuals this way. For some people who are struggling in economically depressed areas, moving probably would be a good answer, but for many more it wouldn’t be, for a wide spectrum of reasons. Making moving cheaper is going to only help a fraction of rural poor and rural not-so-rich people, and “willingness to move if there were some assistance” is not a great proxy for “overall economic wellbeing”.
The other, not-at-all orthogonal reason why it’s a poor policy response is that moving is a very high risk endeavor for most people. Even if someone has a job and housing lined up in their destination city, if one or both of those fall through that person could be in extremely deep shit. I don’t recall what fraction of homelessness strikes people who recently made long-distance moves, but I’ve seen stats in the murky past that indicated that it’s not small.
Anyway, if you haven’t read Kristin’s linked piece it’s worthwhile.Report
I have. My point is that moving is something that government can support. So is bringing new business and its concomitant training to local areas. You will notice, however, that WV, Mississippi, and many other semi-rural to rural states refuse to do this for renewables.Report
Yeah I think my overall knee-jerk is that poor people need money, be they rural, urban, or somewhere in-between.
If some of them use that money to move, awesome.
If some of them use that money to stay, also awesome.
But I have neither the ability nor the desire to figure out which is better for any specific economically struggling individual.
However, if we really want to make moving to cities easier, it makes more sense to enforce density and up zoning in cities at the state and/or federal level. That will probably help people living in rural areas who want to move to cities for work, but it would help a whole bunch of other people too.Report
Agreed on your last paragraph.Report
A lot of discussion about “what the poor should do” in order to cope with life’s travails (joblessness, inflation, poor skills, dangerous communities, ad infinitum) centers around things that are quite difficult to do if one is poor. This happens because most non-poor people lack a real sense of what it’s like to live in poverty.
Switching to electric cars or public transportation isn’t something I’ve heard suggested to the poor as a solution to high gas prices. I have heard it suggested for middle income folks. I think most people aren’t really thinking about the poor at all when they talk about this.
Honestly, the solution to high gas prices and the multiple negative impacts they have on the poor isn’t to somehow magically lower the price of gas. Lowering the price of gas isn’t an unalloyed good anyway. If we want to help the poor who face much harder times due to rising energy costs, the solution is to get more money into the hands of the poor.
There are lots of ways to do it. A guaranteed minimum income, a reverse income tax, or a per-child parental subsidy would all help; some more efficiently than others. Expand medicaid in states that haven’t done so, put a cap on the maximum copay for medical care and prescription coverage, make SNAP (food stamps) more widely available. Provide more financial and practical support for caregivers of disabled family members. Provide free lunches in schools without means-testing. Give the poor a housing allowance, as an entitlement. Develop subsidized savings programs and make banking less expensive and more available. The list goes on and on.
These would all help the poor significantly more than trying to address the cost of gasoline directly. But none of these are on the table.
We search for solutions to the increasing cost of gas because that’s a problem that affects *us too*, the non-poor. And hey, if it ends up helping the poor, we can even feel good about helping ourselves…Report
The maddening irony of all these suggestions is they help “us” too in as much as they generate economic activity and growth. They don’t pump money into stocks however, and since that’s how the kleptocrats are “paid” for their “work” they aren’t in the least bit interested.Report
I look forward to Chip, Phil, Kazzy, and Colucci burning down the comments section to explain to the author how she’s nothing more than a mindless Republican right-wing idiot who’s just repeating the nonsense that somebody said somebody said on Twitter. No doubt there will be dozens (if not hundreds) of posts where they tell her that her impressions are useless crap that’s just clogging up the front page of the site with garbage and they simply cannot understand how the site operators continue to let dumbasses like her keep posting here.Report
You will notice that I e already disappointed you by mostly agreeing with her.Report
except for the bit where you said “But as Slade noted above, they aren’t saying what you accuse them of”Report
That pretty much corresponds to the meaning of “mostly.”Report
“I agreed with everything except for the whole reason that you wrote this post” yeah okayReport
It’s almost as if understanding the argument your critiquing is important.Report
I’m also going to spoil the fun by proposing a solution, that of giving buttloads of cash directly to poor people to help them buy gas.
When we did that during the pandemic the rate of poverty actually fell.Report
Isn’t Biden already talking about another stimulus for that very reason?Report
This is the one thing the government can do to affect the price of gas, and it’ll worsen already bad inflation.Report
Look no further than David’s comment below and be satisfied with your prognostication skills.Report
Re: Electric / hybrid.
I just bought a new truck, a 2022 Toyota Tundra. I would have happily paid extra (about $5K, I think) to get a hybrid version of that truck. Thanks to chip shortages, etc., the hybrid trucks were backordered for more than 12 months.
Hell, even the next trim level up (I got an SR5, next up is Limited, then Platinum) was a 6 month wait.
As it was, I had to wait 3 weeks. I couldn’t even buy used, because the only Tundra they had on the lot was from 2018, and someone had already put money down on it.
The used car market is still nuts right now, even more so than the new market (on the plus side, I got a solid value for my trade-in!).
Electrified cars aren’t going to solve this issue until the chip supply issue is worked out.Report
It’s funny because it never really occurred to me that chip shortages would be a short term barrier to electric vehicle adoption–which doesn’t mean they aren’t. Of course, maybe my problem is I think that the chip shortage (now well into its second year) is going to be a short term problem in and of itself.Report
My measure is “can you get a PS5 from Amazon?”
Still can’t.Report
That’s my measure too!Report
Mine is, “Can I order a Raspberry Pi 4?” Still can’t.Report
Yeah. The chip thing is a bottleneck for so much stuff that it’s difficult to explain.
If the chip thing gets acknowledged as a long-term problem, that might help it become a short-term problem again, but there are a lot of people who see it as a short-term problem… including, unfortunately, the Secretary of Transportation.Report
Feels like it’s been a short term problem for quite a long time already.Report
It’s getting there. And when you work for a federal agency and can no longer buy certain tech if it contains chips from China it gets interesting.Report
Last I read (and this may be wrong, or the facts have changed since I read it) is that the fabs all shifted to the chips for small, transportable devices. Tablets, phones, laptops, etc. I can’t get a PS5, but I can get a Nintendo Switch (small, transportable). Couple that with fabs shutting down for lack of labor &/or quarantine protocols and there isn’t enough fab capacity to meet the demand.
Not sure when the fab capacity will get back to normal, or when the market will warrant the shift back to vehicle ICs. But electrified vehicles need more chips than low end* gas/diesel.
*By low end, I mean low trim level. The more options on the vehicle, the more systems that need chips. I wouldn’t be surprised if top trim level / luxury vehicles needed more chips than a base level electric.Report
In my (real life) circle, I am the degenerate atheist liberal.
My liberal views are tolerated and, mostly, avoided. When discussions of church show up, I tend to enjoy having them and remembering my Southern Babtist upbringing and tweaking the various evangelical-types with whom I work. They are used to being mocked by the left and even the far, far-left. I had a fun conversation with one of my bosses who explained that he grew up as a fundamentalist Southern Methodist. I saw him steel himself for my next comment.
“Methodist? You guys let out early.”
I saw a comment on twitter the other day that said “I am begging you guys to talk to some actual conservatives. Not ‘conservative *FOR HERE*’. Those people are liberals. Talk to an actual real-life conservative.”
There’s a lot of jockeying for position among those of us who are fighting to make it from the top quintile to the top sextile.
It’s easy to forget the people we clawed past, let alone the people we didn’t have to.Report
I do have some conservative friends, but they are the rich kind of conservatives. Thusly, not a one of them is bitching about the price of gas. Mostly, they’re not even concerned with politics other than voting. They vote R, and I vote D, we cancel each other out and then get together for poker and golf. We give each other sh*t for our choices, but we still like each other.
Since my friends are on the wealthier side, the price of gas is immaterial to them. It could be $10/gal. and they wouldn’t drive one mile less. Me, I’m already feeling it. What I don’t feel the need to do is to whine about how nobody cares about me, and what are you politicians gonna do about it. There isn’t fish all any politician in this country, from Joe Biden down to the loon on the local school board, can do about the price of gas. For God’s sake, I’d expect more of the crowd that espouses self-reliance for any problem, except for those that affect them, seemingly.Report
I, for one, recommend against doing this if you have been able to avoid it so far.
At least if you are trying to avoid deepening partisan hostility on either side of the divide.Report
I interpreted “talk to” as “talk with” rather than “talk at”.
But I totally see how starting with the latter interpretation would inevitably lead me to that conclusion.Report
Oh, the stuff you’ll say to them can def create problems, but the stuff you hear them say?
That can really amp up one’s antipathy for Team Red.Report
“I’m begging you to get out of your bubble and talk to a real [black person/ gay person/ trans person/ poor person/ immigrant]”
Said no one, ever.Report
The problem, of course, is that there are so many people out there who have pleasant interactions with those with whom there is a significant power imbalance that they assume that these people are “friends”.
“What do you mean they aren’t my friend? I say hello to them every morning when they make my Trenti iced coffee two-pumps sugar-free vanilla!”
And they think that just because this interaction is pleasant that they have friends who are poor.
Hey, that barista is better educated than you are!
SMGDMFHReport
Are you kidding? I see that all the time. You don’t actually understand the problem until you talk to someone who lives the experience…being an ally means listening…I mean, are you kidding me? Your side ritually recites that conservatives hold to crazy positions until they find out a family member is gay, or had an abortion, or whatever. I can’t believe you’re making this claim.Report
Chip doesn’t understand the person he used to be? Well maybe. Self-awareness is a rare commodity.Report
I actually don’t disagree with Em’s post, other than its focus on Democrats.
Is there a vast swath of Americans who are callously indifferent to the concerns of the poor?
Absolutely! And this swath is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans.
Whenever Em or Andrew write about the attitudes towards Appalachia, it always feels familiar to me, because those same ignorant stereotypes and callous indifference is held towards the urban poor where I live.
According to those very same out of touch elitists who cavalierly tell poor people to get an electric car, the cities are urban wastelands, hellholes of crime and dysfunction and the people who live there are unworthy of our compassion or assistance.
How many times have we heard, right here on this blog, that poor people should just get married and work hard?
When was the last time you heard a politician talking about the urgent need for better bus service (not train service, bus service)?
Although Em didn’t offer any examples of “OutOfTouch Democrats” I did. I mentioned Joe Manchin of West Virginia ands his ignorant callous comments about West Virginians using their child tax credit for drugs.
What makes his comments noteworthy, is look at how they were received in the press and the general public.
Was their shocked outrage? A little, and mostly on the left.
Mostly though, the media and the public shrugged in indifference, with many people agreeing with him.
And during the pandemic, recall how common it was to hear people lamenting that restaurants couldn’t reopen because “no one wants to work anymore”.
Were the people saying that all elite Democrats? Of course not. Sneering at the poors is a favorite pasttime of Americans of all political persuasions.Report
People from rural areas absolutely refuse to believe that we are the ones who subsidize them instead of it being the other way around. They imagine that they can cut off food shipments to the cities and it would hurt us more than them (they seem to not think that we can import food via our ports, plus it never occurs to them that there are non-white farmers who do not share their resentments).
I always find it curious to listen to people who complain that cities are too expensive, bland, and corporate these days and then hear people discuss cities like it is still New York in the late 1970s and everything is covered in graffiti and all burnt out buildings.
The other thing is that a lot of West Virginians seem quite proud of how hard scrabble their state is in ways which are not quite logical.Report
They imagine that they can cut off food shipments to the cities and it would hurt us more than them…
My brother-in-law, an actual successful family farmer in Kansas, says he asks his neighbors who claim they can cut off the cities — ie, not sell their crops — how the local bank will respond to them not selling the harvest, not making the loan payments, etc. He describes his own situation as “land rich, cash poor” and says no one is sitting on the kind of cash that it takes to start planting next spring if they don’t sell the crop this fall.Report
It would be interesting to hear the replies. My father-in-law is also a (retired) farmer. He hires for the planting and picking, but the crops are his. He’s already sold this year’s crop, and he’s now looking to sell next year’s. Farm economics are weird.Report
The other thing is that a lot of West Virginians seem quite proud of how hard scrabble their state is in ways which are not quite logical.
This doesn’t seem particularly illogical as a source of pride[1]. People are generally proud of succeeding in the face of adversity.
[1] To the extent that it makes sense to describe an emotional reaction like “pride” in terms of logic.Report
I join in Chip’s appraisal. This strikes me as a good example of Murc’s law in action. Republicans have no agency and are creatures of pure evil that can not be held accountable for their actions. I will direct all my ire to Democrats.
We have a Manchin and Sinema problem that I like. There are also some corporate Democrats in the House but they are generally not as problematic. Manchin is the best the Democrats can hope for for a West Virginia state-wide office holder and we must grin and bear that he has not left the 1980s in terms of politics. Sinema is an unfortunate mistake and needs to be primaried out in 2024. She is also deluded.
That being said, the good people of West Virginia used to elect people like Byrd and Rockefeller, not the most liberal Democrats but solid ones who knew how to bring home the bacon. At some point, they decided that it the real problem was imaginary phantoms that bougie-boho liberals in San Francisco and Brooklyn spent massive amounts of free time laughing at them.* They decided to adopt a politics of resentment and vote for the political party who caters to the cultural resentments of rural whites in order to aide and abet in a continuing series of tax cuts for the wealthy. This is on them. It is not on liberals in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Venice Beach, where ever.
And at some point, you need to face the facts. Coal is not coming back. A project like the Green New Deal and some kind of WPA/CCC might bring well-paying jobs to West Virginia and also clean up the environment but a lot of West Virginians have decided that it is “coal mining and black lung or bust.” This is stupid machismo. Coal is dead. It is an environmentally destructive source of energy. We need to move away from it. I don’t understand the pride of “My grandfather was a miner who died from black lung. My dad and uncle were miner’s who died from black lung. I would rather starve to death than be anything but a miner who dies from black lung.” It is not the job of liberalism to cater to this resentment. Catering to this resentment hurts the commonwealth of the United States over all.
*I lived in Brooklyn from 2006-2008 (2005-2006 was in Manhattan). I have lived in San Francisco since 2008. I went to grad school for theatre and then law school. I know lots of bougie-boho people. Trust me, the time we spend snarking on rural whites at dinner parties is zero.Report
And at some point, you need to face the facts. Coal is not coming back.
Report
That 2nd part is interesting in light of the 1st. I guess they’re learning being dependent on an antagonistic country for its power supply is not a good idea.Report
Exactly. Spinning that situation as ‘coal is inevitable’ as opposed to ‘closing down all of your nuclear capacity to buy gas from Russia is foolish’ is certainly a choice I guess but…Report
My argument is not “coal is inevitable” as much as it is something more like “the fact that coal is never coming back is in dispute”.
Report
Sure. But, to read Saul charitably, I think it is reasonable to say ‘coal doesn’t have to come back.’Report
That’s not how I read “And at some point, you need to face the facts. Coal is not coming back.”Report
It’s probably more accurate to say that “coal jobs are never coming back.”Report
There are a lot of things that I thought I’d never see again that keep bubbling back up.
Stuff that we declared victory over, even.Report
I know.
Bowler hats are a good example.Report
“There are a lot of things that I thought I’d never see again that keep bubbling back up. Stuff that we declared victory over, even.”
McCarthyism, for example.Report
Indeed.
“When I take power, Communists will not be allowed to hold jobs. Their children won’t be allowed in schools. They won’t be allowed in bars or restaurants. People who’ve been pushing Covid tyranny will be sent to work camps.”
Nationally syndicated radio host Jesse Kelly
I might be spared because I’ve already denounced Stalin. But I am in favor of Covid vaccinations, so it may be the gulag for me.Report
If we can impute words to Saul’s post, I’d go with coal as a long-term solution to modern power generation problems is a no-go.Report
I agree with the motte. The motte is great!
It’s the bailey that I’m disagreeing with.Report
Electric vehicles run on over 20% coal.Report
The question is whether that needs to always be the case. I don’t think there’s a technological reason it does but there do seem to be a lot of politicians who want it to be.Report
No reason it has to stay true. I agree. Five or more likely thirty years from now we could be using minimal coal (in the West), or operating genuinely clean coal plants. But today, if someone is saying that they like electric cars because they hate coal, they don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t think there even are coal passenger trains anymore, so the only way a person could be burning coal for their transportation is if they drive electric cars.Report
You are correct about the percentage of coal still burned in the US for electricity (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3). And no, “Clean Coal” is nowhere near as successful at scrubbing the air as the power companies would like us to believe.
That said, scrubbing the air at a couple hundred power plants is still much easier, and likely to significantly reduce emissions, then scrubbing millions of tailpipes.Report
“ And at some point, you need to face the facts. Coal is not coming back. A project like the Green New Deal and some kind of WPA/CCC might bring well-paying jobs to West Virginia and also clean up the environment but a lot of West Virginians have decided that it is “coal mining and black lung or bust.” This is stupid machismo. Coal is dead. It is an environmentally destructive source of energy. We need to move away from it. I don’t understand the pride of “My grandfather was a miner who died from black lung. My dad and uncle were miner’s who died from black lung. I would rather starve to death than be anything but a miner who dies from black lung.”
”
The piece I linked to from a few years ago makes my stance on the coal industry pretty clear, I think.Report
tl;dr
Republicans support awful, evil, harmful policies but Democrats on Twitter who can be smug and out-of-touch are THE REAL PROBLEM.Report
Not what I said at all.Report
It’s not hard to get to Kazzy’s take on this, at least it wasn’t for me. The circumstances you describe (reluctance/inability to move, lack of public transport, etc.) seem kind of unique (maybe?) to WV. Certainly, the land ownership thing. So, maybe that’s where we diverge.
To ascribe the nefarious goal of underhandedly pushing green energy via a short term price shock seems a bit of a stretch.Report
I take issue with suggesting I’m saying “Dems are the REAL PROBLEM.” That’s an extremely broad generalization to infer when I am talking about one specific issue.
I am a Democrat. I am a liberal. This is one issue, and I don’t like how my party/fellow Dems are handling it.Report
The nuance of liberals criticizing their own is indeed lost on some people.Report
In part, this comment followed from my errors above and is not an accurate or fair summation of your piece. Again, I apologize. If I could delete it I would but as it stands, I said these words and deserve the criticism I’ve received. You are correct: that is not what you said.Report
Americans seem to treat low-gas prices as an innate and god-given right. They continue to purchase large and gas guzzling vehciles instead of more fuel efficient ones. Americans parents of all ideologies seem to think that they need a mini-van or SUV to ferret around their children and a sedan will not work. The problem is that climate change is real and even without the current prices, gas prices will eventually need to get higher.
We can do something meaningful about climate change or we can have low gas prices and/or coal-mining jobs. We can’t do both. Higher gas prices will hopefully encourage Americans to purchase more fuel efficient vehicles and/or drive less and/or push for more transportation alternatives.Report
Scroll upward to Oscar’s comment: we are also seeing an explosion in the price of fuel efficient vehicles at the moment.Report
Obviously there are post-pandemic supply-chain issues but this is not the first time people have freaked out about high gas prices in my lifetime or even this year. Adjusting for inflation, 2008 is still the high mark for gas prices in the United States. High gas prices always seem to trigger many Americans feeling that low-gas prices are their good given right.Report
In hindsight, I wish we had raised the gas tax 2 cents a year every year after the Arab oil boycott, bringing in revenue and creating incentives to economize with time to adjust.Report
Or we could just…. build electric SUVs and run the grid on cleaner and cleaner tech as it becomes available and scales? Again not a solution for today but maybe one down the road.Report
Two vaguely related thoughts…
After watching this year’s Super Bowl commercials, and reading the announcements from the auto companies about their future R&D efforts, the electric SUVs are clearly on the way. Myself, I suspect some of that is today’s overall build quality has gotten so good that the car companies are concerned and asking the question, “How do I motivate new car purchases five years from now?”
Interesting point that came up in the SCOTUS oral arguments in West Virginia v. EPA a couple of weeks ago: the Biden administration pointed out they were not arguing to have Obama’s Clean Power Plan rule reinstated, because the industry has already met that rule’s 2030 targets. As I type this, 44% of my local electricity is being generated by hydro, wind, and solar. The local power authority is joining the Western Energy Imbalance Service market next year to increase the amount of renewable power they can purchase from farther away. Two years after they have another 250 MW of their own solar power (with storage) scheduled to come online. They’re not a big player, so that will be significant.Report
If reports are to be believed they are already selling mid-sized electric SUVs in Asia. The production capability just has not yet been brought to Europe or America. That said I’ve already started seeing some VW ID.4s driving around here and there. They’re well reviewed and comparatively sized to a Ford Escape (obviously more expensive, but new tech always starts that way). Plus every other Toyota you see now is a hybrid. One of our cars is a Camry hybrid, to hopefully offset our big gas guzzler some.
And yes, many states and industries are setting their own targets regardless of what the federal government does. Doomsayers notwithstanding the changes are very much on the way. I think it would be great for the feds to really put their fingers on the scales for the technology but even if they don’t it’s a matter of when, not if, and how much preventable damage we do along the way.Report
There is a German company (Mahle? Mahler?) that is developing an electric induction motor with no permanent magnets and no brushes. The magnets are electromagnets that are powered wirelessly. This results in a motor with very little wear on the mechanical parts, and the ability to be efficient over a much wider range of operating conditions. This is the kind of advance that will make electric SUVs and trucks workable.Report
There’s also a steady stream of battery work with solid electrolytes. Today’s lithium ion batteries are the result of a decade of little things that eventually added up to an improved battery. Solid electrolytes look like the same thing could happen. A bunch of little things and then — viola! — there’s a battery that holds 50% more energy, charges twice as fast, and doesn’t catch fire.
The Briggs cartoons haven’t played it up, but a bunch of them were drawn in an era when the same thing was happening with ICE engines. People saying, “Damn! Look at this giant leap, and I’m stuck with a two-year-old car.”Report
We currently have batteries that can take really high tech stuff to the literal bottom of the ocean in unheated pressure vessels, run that stuff for hours to days, and then get it back to the surface. Seems to me most of the battery issues are solvable.Report
Be sure to let me know when the multi-million dollar grant for my personal transportation vehicles is approved :^)Report
It’s always a question of scalability. How much does that battery tech cost, and can the production of it scale such that volume brings the cost to something reasonable.Report
I understand why Republicans would want to connect a long term goal that in the bizarro world of American politics is considered left wing to the pain of the current moment but this whole take strikes me as pretty non-substantive. The strategic benefits of minimizing consumer reliance on the vagaries of the world oil market seem obvious. It is not a solution for today, but there’s every reason to try to make it one for tomorrow. I’m all for hating on limousine liberals but since when is trying to plan for the long term a frivolous value?Report
1. When your party didn’t advocate for it first.
2. When it impacts your biggest donors.
3. When it helps poor people, and specifically poor people of color.Report
Number 1, sure maybe, and number 2 absolutely. Number 3 is the kind of dumb thing limousine liberals say to make sure solidarity for solving a really hard problem is that much harder to achieve.Report
The Republican House Speaker in the Mississippi Legislature – just this week – reiterated his objection to federally funded Medicaid expansion in Mississippi (from Obamacare) because he doesn’t want to find more ways to get people on Medicaid, he wants to find ways to get people working so they don’t need Medicaid. He’s conveniently ignoring studies that show Mississippi would get around 9,000 additional permanent jobs in the medical field (most of which would likely go to poor people) who would pay enough taxes to cover Mississippi’s required 10% contribution to the Medicaid expansion.
He’s intentionally shooting down long term economic growth because it requires giving government fund to poor people whom he believes are poor because of the morality of their economic choices. That’s not limousine liberals blocking anything. And it is declaring that planning for and executing things with long term value are frivolous because of whom that planning benefits.Report
What does that have to do with the OP?
To be clear I’m pro Medicaid expansion. To also be clear, I do not think how one feels about Medicaid expansion is relevant to this topic nor do I see how trying to create some tenuous connection to it helps solve a problem.Report
I see it this way:
As feeding
As ideology and thus tactically directive. One of the ways I see that tactic being played out by Republicans at the state level is when the good policy thing is resisted because
You pushed back on that with
So I gave you another example of how this plays out when Republicans control legislatures. I’m commenting on means and methodology.Report
I guess if I squint I can kind of see what you’re getting at but don’t think any Normie voter is going to look at the world that way.Report
Yeah, what does Medicaid have to do with poor people?Report
We’re talking about energy costs and what to do about it. Stay focused. I promise you we can and will derail into a list of tangential grievances shortly.Report
I’m pulling this out because it’s a bit of a tangent and also because I’m taking a bold stand against indentation. @Philip H:
One thing I periodically wonder aloud about is why elites like, say, the MS House Speaker, rarely get tarred with anti-elite sentiment, or indeed even get noticed much at all.
My theory is that “elite” is a designation that, in popular political rhetoric, refers to people who are cool and fashionable and hip, and can thus be assumed to look down on the uncool and unfashionable and unhip, rather than having much of anything to do with political or economic power, social connections, or even genuine accomplishment.
(That’s actually the best case; a lot of the time “elite” is just a gross dogwhistle of one sort of another.)Report
Notice how Donald Trump – whatever he’s worth in actual dollars -is almost NEVER called Elite or Elitist.Report
Part of Donald Trump’s appeal was that he basically lived very gaudily. Before his fall from grace, Garrison Kellior had a good column noticing it. UMC bougie-boho asthetics are not only alien to Trump’s core base but they are also often actively repulsed by it. “Why do you spend all this money on this crap?” might as well be the cry. A Florida paving contractor with two houses and a big boat is never elite. A social worker with an interest in contemporary art and a large amount of student debt is elite. A moderately successful lawyer in Portland whose furniture comes from Design within Reach or Room and Board is elite. The Oil Barron whose mansion is decked out in Louis XIV furniture is not elite.Report
“My theory is that “elite” is a designation that, in popular political rhetoric, refers to people who are cool and fashionable and hip, and can thus be assumed to look down on the uncool and unfashionable and unhip, rather than having much of anything to do with political or economic power, social connections, or even genuine accomplishment.”
Winner winner chicken dinner. Or it means people like (((me))). Also known as (((rootless cosmopolitans)).) The thing that a lot of people on the left find are to deal with is non-material politics and/or that a lot of people might see white supremacy as being in their material interest. There are tons of reasons why people refuse to confront this. It could mean dealing with horrible realizations about one’s own friends and family. How do you confront that your nearest and dearest might be perpetually racist/bigoted and nothing will change it? It is also politically a hard concept to deal with because it means dealing with white supremacy as a perpetual force in politics in this country. This can be physically and psychologically exhausting/depressing as a concept.
But basically you are correct in your best case scenario and worse case scenario and we have seen it here. “Elite” has been throughly hijacked in the United States to mean college-educated, bougie-bourgeois, middle-class or above (maybe) person who lives or near a bigish city and whose cultural tastes lean towards middle-brow and up. At the very least, they know more about prestige TV and K-dramas than the Masked Singer or the Kevin Costner rancher drama or CSI. There have been times in OT when posters have claimed that the public school teacher with three roommates who occasionally goes to see Dance concerts at the Joyce is elite because he or she has “cultural captial” and this might snag them a spouse in I-banking, finance, tech, law, medicine.
It is sometimes a conservative trait to rue the days that white-collar men no longer marry their secretaries because it is seen as class sticking with class. No one seems to wonder if the secretaries used to be in the same class as the former junior executives but were stuck being secretaries because of sexism at the time.
There are a lot of butthurt resentments in this country.Report
Watching Perry Mason re-runs and other shows from that era reminded me that a lot of secretaries in those shows lived in apartments that would be unaffordable on a secretary’s salary, were unusually attractive, and were well-stocked with bullet bras and tight skirts. I probably missed the significance the first time around.Report
TV has never been great at depicting financial realty (see: Friends but at least Friends tried to state it was a rent-controlled apartment kept in the family). But yes, you might be reading too much into it or it could be subtle signs that the women had means independent of their incomes. There is a scene in The Last Disco where Chloe Sveigny and Kate Becksindale’s characters need to admit that they still receive allowances from their dads and do not entirely live on their publishing assistant salaries.Report
I had a somewhat, er, different explanation for their funding.Report
In publishing and things like working for art museums, an allowance from dad is really literally that. They want a certain class of people working in those industries so they keep entry level salaries low enough to only attract people that have to get subsidized by mom and dad.Report
I think the problem is that people blur the terms “elite” and “elitist”. When people complain about “elites”, they usually mean both.
elite: a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society
elitist: relating to or supporting the view that a society or system should be led by an eliteReport
Alright. I’m done with this bullshit about how ‘vague impressions of people on Twitter’ is somehow the same as ‘Democrats’.
But since I can’t seem to stop that the normal way, I’ll do that the other way around and start writing articles about how the Republicans positions are whatever I see right-wing randos on Twitter taking.
Don’t worry, some of those randos will have blue checks. In fact, far exceeding the journalistic requirements of this site, I actually will probably cite them directly instead of just vaguely waving my hands towards them.
Let’s do this.Report
Your insult is duly noted. Thanks for reading.Report
The idea that Em Carpenter is a crypto-Republican is absolutely wild. Just fucken balls-to-the-wall bananas.Report
“She doesn’t agree with me on a couple of things. Therefore she is not on my side. Therefore she is on the other one.”Report
Said none of the liberals here.Report
I’ll let us get back to the issue of whether thinking that Em might be a crypto-Republican could be justified, then.Report
Jeebus Jaybird you really can’t give up trolling can you? Even Em – whom I hold I high esteem as both a well written critic of modern politics and a clear eyed policy thinker (I know nothing about her lawyering skills) – you are so desperate to troll us you even keep up the faux question asking about what some people might say over Em.
I don’t know how to help you bro, but you are sliding down a really bad slope.Report
Phil? Are you aware that I was responding to Pillsy?
I was agreeing with his point.
Do you think that the observation that he was making is ill-founded?
Because, from where I sit, his observation is accurate and I not only agree with it, I disagree with people who disagree with it.Report
I did a careful search over the article and the entire comment thread and found absolutely no one calling Em Carpenter a crypto-republican or even a straight up republican. Did someone do that and have their comment deleted or delete/edit it themselves? If not then wouldn’t Pillsy’s statement be accurate but a non-sequitur?
I mean, sure, the idea that Em is a crypto-republican is as ludicrous as the idea that she’s a martian or a cat at a keyboard pretending to be a human writer on the internet.
But since, as far as I can see, no one has accused Em of being a Republican (crypto or otherwise) I don’t see the salience of Pillsy’s original comment.Report
That is how I interpreted this comment.Report
It doesn’t seem radical to me, however intemperately DavidTC worded it, to suggest that an author talking about an unpopular position the Democratic Party takes would be well served by referring to actual Democratic Party politicians talking and acting on said position rather than hanging their hat only on the excrement that oozes out of the festering pipe that is twitter.
I think David is in error with his rejoinder though. With the modern GOP being what it is I suspect he’ll need to sojourn far, far, far out into right wing twitter before he’ll find opinions that’re so out there that he can’t find a quote from Trump or one of the Trumpkin GOP Senators or Congresscritters also espousing it.Report
That was exactly my take on his comment. The article he proposes cannot be written.Report
It’s the whole thing about how she’s deliberately attempting to insulate Republicans against criticism and nutpicking and whatnot.
If that sort of thing is what is being interpreted as the “crypto”, then Pillsy’s point is salient.Report
I have to confess- as a hater of Twitter myself; I do find it pretty grating that left wing fishin Twitter is credited as being more representative of Democrats writ large than the actual words, policy positions and laws espoused by actual Democratic party politicians. So my sympathy lies with those pushing back on it.Report
It isn’t just twitter.
It’s Facebook too.
These posts are made by real life people who apparently hold these views. Why does where they are espoused matter? And anyway my post was not so much about official policy but about making ourselves look really bad in the culture war.Report
Oh well if it’s also some fools on Facebook too then you’re golden Em!!
More seriously though; I liked your overall post and was nodding along even as I grimaced and on further analysis, I think that my grimacing and 90% of the heat you’re suffering in the comments from this excellent post is over one word: Democrats.
I just went back and re-reviewed your article and you literally only used that word once too. It only really took using it once, though, because when you used it a lot of our minds went to the Democratic Party instead of the more nebulous concept of left wingers who happen to vote Democratic. Partly that’s just literal reading and partly because even a charitable reading then brands Democratic voters as being represented by the “lol, just buy an electric vehicle” eco crowd when in reality the Democratic Party is dominated by middle aged women (especially African American women) who have very practical desires and goals. If the people you are scorning in your post actually dominated the Democratic Party we wouldn’t have Grandpa Joe as President but Julian Castro or maybe Harris or especially Jay Inslee who basically ran as a 100% eco warrior (eliding, of course, that all those others would likely have lost to Trump).
I ask this earnestly, Em, would the articles points have been harmed at all if that one incident of “Democrats” had been replaced with, say “environmentalists” or maybe “left wingers” instead?Report
Maybe.Report
I don’t think she is a crypto-Republican but plenty of Democrats seem to buy into the “smug elitist” nutpicking too and I am pushing back against that.Report
What I said was “Frankly, you look like the out of touch elitist assholes the right accuses you of being.”
The crowd handwaving at the gas prices and offering impractical advice like I wrote about feed into that trope.Report
Report
Irony is dead.Report
I think the fundamental problem is simply being ignored — there ain’t enough cheap oil to go around.
We can — and do, even though it’s quite a bad idea long term — expand oil production when prices get too high. But the problem is that expanded production is expensive. You don’t extract from shale or tar sands when oil is 30 dollars a barrel. You’d lose money.
There’s no magic solution. Gasoline prices WILL skyrocket with each supply disruption, however small. Gasoline prices WILL jump up during economic expansions (as demand jumps up). They will be slow to come back down to boot.
That’s peak oil for you. We don’t have enough of the cheap stuff to go around during good times, and it doesn’t take a lot of disruption to not have enough of the cheap stuff during not-so-good times.
Moving as much as possible away from relying on cheap oil IS the only solution. Everything else is just slapping a bandaid over the problem and hoping it’s someone else’s headache in two years.
There IS no practical, short-term advice. And nobody wants to hear “We all need to spend money and invest in a world in which gasoline prices will keep trending upwards and tend towards spikes” because that’s depressing and elitist, apparently.
Yeah, it sucks for people stuck in 14mpg trucks they bought in 1998. But we can’t travel through time and make them get a better truck, we can’t buy them a new truck, and we certainly can’t wish really hard and keep gas at 2 bucks a gallon through sheer force of will and American exceptionalism.
The only thing you can do is what Biden has done — release reserves to try to smooth over transient spikes a bit.
But no amount of deregulation, opening up federal lands, waving the flag, wishing really hard, dick waving, hand waving, bombing of foreign countries, or general sloganeering is going to get past the fundamental problem: We done drilled all the cheap stuff, and what’s left ain’t enough to go around.
So it gets more expensive, and real sensitive to supply/demand changes.
That’s reality. There’s no wishing it away.Report
And nobody wants to hear “We all need to spend money and invest in a world in which gasoline prices will keep trending upwards and tend towards spikes” because that’s depressing and elitist, apparently.
I think “we all need to spend money and invest in a world in which gasoline prices will keep trending upwards and tend toward spikes” is a step in the right direction from where we are now.
This reminds me of the kerfuffle over what Clinton said way back when.
And the response of “JESUS SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE SAID THAT!” got the response of “oh, so you wanted her to lie? You think she should have said what Trump said? You aren’t being serious!”
When, really, the argument should have been something more like “Change is coming and it’s coming quickly. Our choice isn’t whether change comes or not, it’s whether it’ll hit us like a truck or not.”
And so saying something like “we need to spend money and invest in a world with high gas prices” might work and would, instead, come across as depressing but realist.Report
That would have been better, and it wouldn’t have mattered.Report
Given the razor thin margins in MI, WI, and PA, I’m one who thinks stuff like “maybe fewer mistakes might have mattered”.
I also think that avoidable mistakes in the present should be avoided.Report
Given those razor-thin margins, anyone can ride any particular hobbyhorse and claim to have won the Derby.Report
Avoidable mistakes just can’t be avoided, I guess.
It makes you wonder about the motivations of the people who think they can.
Has free will even been proven?Report
Sure they can. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t.Report
ROFLMAO at throwing out some clinton chum to get all worked up about. Gonna be 2042 and some dudes will be posting clinton clips.Report
Greg, my argument now, as it was then, is not “Saying something like X would be good. Saying Y? Saying Y was bad.”
And the counter-argument comes “You’re saying that they shouldn’t have said Y?!?!?!? SHOULD THEY HAVE *LIED*?!?!?”
When, no, they should have said something like X instead.
My Clinton clip was me remembering the last time we had the argument over whether a politician should avoid making a mistake.
And, yes, how it turned into the “that wasn’t a mistake! Are you saying she should have lied?!?!?” versus “everybody makes mistakes in this imperfect world in which we live…” debate.
For the record? I’m not sure that the messaging to this point on the whole “high prices” thing has been particularly good.
There have been mistakes and those mistakes have been avoidable and, get this, they’re even resulting in criticism from people who can usually be relied upon to yell “BUT WHAT ABOUT TRUMP?” the moment a crumb of criticism wanders in the direction of Democrats.
For what it’s worth? I think JS’s proposed messaging is not bad.
Certainly not when compared to the actual messaging out there.Report
Hate to break it to you but clinton isnt’ going to run again.Report
But you know what is going to happen, Greg?
A democratic politician will make the argument Y. And argument Y might have a kernel of a truth but its delivery will be a real stinker.
And some people will argue against Y.
And others will come up and ask “What? Are you saying ~Y? Are you saying that this politician ought to have *LIED*?!?!?!?”
And the response will come “They could have said X instead of Y and it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as bad.”
And then the other person will bring up Donald Trump or something. Perhaps express incredulity that someone could possibly disagree that the proposition at the kernel of argument Y isn’t true.Report
I’m more just making fun of the raging hate on some people have for the clintons.
Which is helpful in this case because your response is meaningless.Report
I disagree that my saying “holy crap, that was tone deaf and cost her votes!” indicates raging hate.
Like, to the point where I wonder at the motivations at the people yelling “NO IT DIDN’T DO YOU WANT HER TO LIE?”
But it does make me expect more stuff like “Don’t argue Y” will get more counter-arguments of “BUT ~Y IS A LIE! DO YOU WANT THEM TO *LIE*?!? WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MUCH HATE?!?!?”Report
What’s very telling is that in response to the current problem of gas prices, which one might think is a golden opportunity for the opposition party, no one has stepped up with a plausible suggestion for how to fix it.
Sure, you might hear some perfunctory mumblings about drilling, or opening this or that pipeline, but no one seems to be taking any of that seriously.
Because the only real solution involves things which are unpopular, so the only other ideas involve magical thinking and underpants gnomes.Report
Keystone being the common example: “If only those Evil Dems hadn’t cancelled a pipeline that wouldn’t be complete and wouldn’t actually lower prices, prices would be lower! MAGICALLY”
All oil ain’t the same, the market is global for any particular variety of it, and the relative expensive of getting it to and from a refinery is not a huge factor in the final cost.
The cost of getting it out of the ground is.
And the only magic in the world that will get a company to extract oil that costs 60 dollars a barrel to extract when oil is selling at 30 is called “paying them at least 40 dollars a barrel to do it”.
And if we’re going to go to blatant subsidies, we might as well do it for something that can make things CHEAPER over time not more expensive.Report
Thoughts on “Elitists”;
As others here have pointed out, “elite” is both an economic and cultural classification. E.g., a guy driving a $90,000 Lexus is elite, while a guy driving a $90,000 pickup truck is proletarian.
An actor who has a bit part on CSI but earned $30,000 for the year is elite, while the owner of a car dealership in rural Ohio making $200,000 per year gets interviewed by the NYT as a profile of “Heartland Americans”.
Thoughts on “out of touch”;
The unspoken suffix whenever someone says “out of touch” is “with the common people.” Its assumed that being out of touch with the billionaires at Davos is perfectly acceptable, but being out of touch with a farmer in Iowa is not.
But this assumes the existence of a category of “Common People”, people who are authentic and who form the core identity of our society.
You could say, “You are are out of touch with immigrant farmworkers” or “You are out of touch with drag queens” but I don’t really see that much as an accusation.
“Out of touch” usually references people who are rural and white and middle class, who have cultural tastes and norms that are just assumed to be universal while other cultural tastes and norms are considered some exotic niche.
Which I think comes back to Em’s complaint and much of the rage and fury on the right. For anyone over the age of 30, the world we grew up in was very solidly centered on the culture and norms of white suburban and rural people.
Government policy makers, like even the Commerce Secretary of the Reagan/ Bush/ Clinton administrations just assumed a “regular person” lived in a single family house in a suburb or maybe a house on a rural road, that they drove a car and shopped at a regional mall and either went to church or were nominally religiously affiliated. And all policy and regulations sort of revolved around making these sorts of people happy and contented.
A Pete Buttigieg doesn’t necessarily envision such a family, and his policy makers don’t craft policy with them in mind.Report
I made a good point above about the blurring of “elite” and “elitist”. Elitism has nothing to do with the resale value of your vehicle, as you note, but it is about whether you give the benefit of the doubt to the beliefs of the masses. It doesn’t matter what color those masses are, and yeah, minorities like home ownership too. Until we have a majority drag queen country, the people who promote drag under the supposition that their moral code is superior to the masses’ are elitists.Report
So people who complain about the popularity of pornography because they believe it’s immoral are elitists?
I don’t think I’ve heard them described as such ever, though I’m not quite old enough to remember the tenor of discussion when McKinnon and Dworkin were more salient anti-porn advocates. Perhaps things were different back then, and if so, it would raise as many questions about your thesis as it answers.Report
They once were, back in the 80’s and 90’s, though now they’ve re-rebranded as salt of the earth proletarians.Report
I’ll have to think about that, but my first thought is that “the masses” would have the same reaction to such people as they have to the elitists: you know, they tell us what to do, but you know they’re secretly even worse.Report
I think the underlying emotion overlaps substantially, but the label, and attendant stereotypes differ.Report
It would be interesting to look at the number of gay, lesbian and trans people, versus the number of evangelical rural white people.
Or the number people support full equality for them and those who don’t.
Who are “the masses”, again?Report
color, race, color, race, whatever
There is an interesting question here, though, about shifting opinions.Report
“Out of touch” could also be in reference to economic realities. The whole, “How much does a banana cost anyway, like $10*?” If the cheapest EV in the current US market is $40K, that’s a cost that is still out of reach for many people. The used market is also very much a sellers market, which means even used ones are out of reach. Couple that with the fact that used EVs are that many years closer to the dreaded battery replacement money sink, and even if they could afford to buy an EV, they probably could not afford to own it for very long.
*Yes, I know that is satire from Arrested Development.Report
Omnibus response:
Thank you for reading and commenting and thank you to those of you who did not forget my established history when they read this.
I never intended to suggest that it was merely or even mostly capital D Dems espousing this attitude, (though the White House did take the opportunity to hype up EVs and green energy when tweeting about the gas prices.) I was talking to my rank and file friends who feed into the bullshit elitist rhetoric when they make these suggestions. The division comes from the ground up, not the top down.
Do I really think that what’s happening is some nefarious plan by the government to force the acceptance of EVs and green energy? No, but I think they are seizing the opportunity to try to do so. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing if changes happen in the long run. It’s just that when families are feeling the pain from the price of gas, a lecture on how they should buy something they can’t afford or upheave their lives or other impractical advice is not helpful and it makes us (libs, dems, the left, what have you) look bad.
Also: yes West Virginians are proud of what we overcome. On top of living in an economically depressed place where it’s difficult to thrive, the rest of the world thinks we are stupid, backwards hicks. Overcoming all that is a source of pride.
My liberalism meets in an uncomfortable place with my Appalachianism sometimes. It can be hard to reconcile.Report
To reiterate in isolation what I mentioned in passing in a previous comment, I think the overall article was great!Report
Concur!Report
Well, in all honesty, the “administration” not just the current administration, has been pushing EVs for quite some time now…..higher emission requirements, tax credits on EVs, etc. when they are just not ready for prime time.. Be that as it may, have you seen the price of ICE vehicles? The prices have been rising quite a lot, thanks in part to more safety mandates, more pollution controls, and ‘Merica’s ever love of SUVs over station wagons and sedans. The average car loan now exceeds 7 years IIRC. Even the upper middle class finds that to swallow.Report
Just going to say that there is something called public transportation in the form of buses, light rail, subways, and commuter trains. Rather than assume Americans must simply drive everywhere, we can spend money on making public transportation much more reliable and pleasant, this will involve being harsh to homeless people who like to use them as shelters, and make communities more walkable again.Report
Also too, reflect our discussions here at OT about the urgent need for greater density in housing development versus subsidized car-centric sprawl.
We’ve lived a car-free existance here in downtown for nearly 6 years now.
I take Ems point that it doesn’t work for everybody, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that a car-centric society is a choice we made that can be unmade.Report
Should this choice be put up for a vote?Report
Always has been.Report
You also need stores for the daily sundries to be in walking distance. That being said, I think unmaking car-centric suburbia is going to be a lot harder and more expensive than you think. Suburbs were built to stay the same rather than organically evolve from village to to city.Report
Yes, the current constructed environment of suburban houses, shopping centers, office parks, all connected by freeways and four lane boulevards is just about a hundred years old now.
So it will take decades of concerted effort to undo the damage. State general plans, city general plans, zoning requirements, long term transportation plans and funding all need to be drastically revised.Report
The more important version of the question is, “Can the suburbs be made energy-efficient enough and carbon-free quickly enough to matter?”
Now that the Census Bureau has finally made it possible to measure density more realistically, we have discovered that different parts of the country have very different suburban densities. In the western region, suburban density runs almost twice that of the rest of the country (for good reasons, when you look at the details of the geography).Report
I addressed that. It doesn’t exist in most of West Virginia.Report
It can be built. In West Virginia it will basically be buses, so you don’t even need to spend a lot of time and money setting up the system. Just make sure the routes are easy to understand and the frequency is very high.Report
But it can’t be built quickly. Even busses, assuming the city has the tax base to support them, it takes time to buy enough busses, and often, urban areas have to have major street work done to allow busses to navigate.
And rail is an order of magnitude more time consuming.Report
Yea I don’t think there’s really a tax base to support it outside of close in suburbs of decent sized metros. Also just way too many issues of path dependence. We’d be better off focusing on cleaning up the grid and making sure there are good incentives to convert to private EVs. Speeds of transition are just going to vary, no realistic way around it.
Even in places where it will work with the advent of remote work I think we need to be more forward thinking all around. Mass transit as it operated in the 20th century may be on its way to obsolescence. Which doesn’t mean we don’t need any form of it, just that it needs to be rethought.Report
Maybe something like California’s High Speed Rail project could be used as a template to hook up WV’s major metropolitan areas with Washington DC and New York and Boston to allow WV to become a bedroom community for people who want to keep a little more money in their pockets. You could raise WV taxes and these people would *STILL* be paying less than they would in Boston.
Win-win!
Use that tax base to pay for electric buses.Report
The dirty secret is that a significant chunk of eastern WV already is a DC exurb and/or weekend tourist destination. Nevertheless the least justifiable public works project I can think of for the region would be some kind of connection. We can’t even seem to build or maintain the ones that make sense, much less the ones that don’t.Report
HSR likes straight, flat, and no at-grade crossings. Look up how many miles of tunnel California is going to bore to get theirs just from the LA basin to the Central Valley. How much of it is going to be elevated to avoid the crossing problem.
Occasionally you see maps for a proposed national HSR network in the US. One of the things I do before actually reading it is to thumb through and find their national map. If they include a route that’s a straight line from Denver to Salt Lake City, I don’t read it because it will be a waste of time.Report
Plus if we assume that climate change really is a big problem, which I do, and that gas and oil is a big contributor to this than we can’t have low gas prices and deal with climate change.Report
Well, I honestly don’t pay much attention to this discussion, though I’m not surprised there are people who suggest poor people drive electric cars or walk or take the bus. It’s generally easier for people inside the boat to imagine what people outside the boat should do, since they don’t have to deal with the real repercussions of whatever it is they suggest.
I guess it went the other way for me. I am poor, for the record- I make less than $2,000 a month cad, or less than $1,570 USD, which until recently was enough to live where I live and now I’m finding is not. At any rate, I decided about three years ago that a car was too expensive to be useful and, since climate change is real and serious anyway, why not sell the car and walk to work and back (about an hour and change each way, very doable)? I was told by many many people inside the boat that I would be helpless and miserable and deeply regret it and miss the freedom and autonomy. And the punchline is I never miss it. Once every eight months I think it might be nice to drive somewhere and then forget about it.Report
Related:
Are free buses a tool for social justice? Boston wants to find out.
Boston isn’t the only place experimenting with free public transportation. More than two years into the coronavirus pandemic, the concept is having a moment across the United States, thanks partly to federal recovery funds and a desire to lure back passengers. Nationwide, ridership remains just 63 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).
After showing its worth during the pandemic, momentum builds for free or reduced-fare transit
After Kansas City, Mo., stopped collecting fares on its transit system in 2020, it experienced a smaller drop in ridership than other cities during the pandemic and security incidents declined, an analysis found. Albuquerque, Richmond and Olympia, Wash., are also running public transportation without fares. Los Angeles recently implemented two years of free fares for students through 12th grade.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/14/boston-free-public-transit/Report
I don’t have any problem with this per se except that it continues the American trend of seeing public transport as a social service for various marginalized communities instead of a general service for everyone. This is a tendency in American public policy that I think is will meaning but hurts in the long run. The focus should be on increased service and reliability and routes that go to more than a downtown core.Report
It didn’t used to be that way everywhere:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/traffic-atlanta-segregation.htmlReport