Gluesenkamp Perez is seen as an expert on Democrats' difficulties with blue-collar and rural voters -- but what I notice in this interview, and what even Klein himself notices, is the undisguised contempt she has for her own party. There are many reasons to criticize the Democratic Party, but I believe that persistent unfair stereotypes of Democrats are, to a great extent, responsible for the party's low approval ratings, and for many of their electoral losses. In tight races like the 2024 presidential election, Democratic Democrat-bashing of the kind Gluesenkamp Perez regularly indulges in seriously hurts the party's candidates.
Klein begins the conversation with some questions about Trump's tariff plans. It doesn't take Gluesenkamp Perez long before she's bashing her party. She says:
One thing that’s weird is watching the Democratic Party suddenly become the defenders of the stock market and Nasdaq. That’s a weird thing to me.I share her contempt for Democrats who are too cozy with Wall Street, but that's not what's happening here. Wall Street sometimes does well when ordinary Americans are struggling, but at this moment Wall Street is shaky because it believes the tariffs will kill jobs and be rocket fuel for inflation. At this moment, the concerns of Wall Street and Main Street roughly coincide. And while I'll sure that many of Gluesenkamp Perez's constituents don't have any retirement savings, millions of non-"elite" Americans do, and those savings are in retirement accounts that have been hammered since Trump's tariff "Liberation Day." Democrats who point all this out are not expressing contempt for ordinary people.
Later in the interview, Gluesenkamp Perez says,
I’ve talked to folks from home who used to be a part of the Democratic Party and left. They were like: Yes, we can never be correct enough for you, and the Republicans are having a kegger.Is this something these voters have experienced firsthand? Or is it something they're told over and over again by the media -- both right-wing and mainstream -- and by centrist Democratic politicians as well as Republican politicians? It's a poisonous stereotype, and it doesn't reflect the way Democrats, up to and including the party's presidential candidates, actually run. But Gluesenkamp Perez piles on.
Much of her bashing doesn't cite the Democratic Party specifically, but tracks perfectly with current stereotypes of Democrats and Republicans. Here she expresses contempt for a former employee:
I used to run this bike shop, and I will never forget teaching a physics major how to hold a wrench — like: Move your hand back.She says this while talking about older appliances that lasted longer, condemning "overspecialization that has deprived the underlying value itself," which, I guess, is a garbled way of saying that somehow this poor kid represents a world in which corporate America built a business model around planned obsolence. The kid, presumably, just wanted a summer job or temporary job while looking forward to gainful employment in a position that required the skills and knowledge connected to that study of physics. And what's wrong with that? Sure, we should probably all know how to use a wrench, but this kid is being turned into a symbol of elitist contempt for blue-collar America, and that doesn't seem fair.
Eventually we get a fusillade of Democratic/liberal stereotypes, although the party name isn't mentioned. Gluesenkamp Perez says:
Political activism can feel really glamorous and correct. And it’s like: How could you worry about these small things when the world is on fire?So liberal protestors are protesting in order to be "glamorous and correct," and because "it feels good to get flipped off by" someone who's Republican-coded -- and these self-indulgent libs care more about "a fuzzy animal" than fentanyl addicts.
But I would argue the way you put the fire out is by actually going and building community.... It is your relationships with your neighbor and knowing the name of your mail carrier. And talking to folks at day care drop-off and having the time to do that.
... I was talking to somebody who was saying they’re going to protest Tesla every day. A lot of their family are Trump voters, but they don’t want to talk to their family. They’re like: That’s not the forum for that. But man, it feels good to get flipped off by guys driving F-350s.
... I think that when you have all of your wants and needs met, it’s easier to empathize with someone somewhere else — or a fuzzy animal — than it is to have compassion for your neighbor who has got a fentanyl addiction or your neighbor who is rolling coal or who has the wrong lawn sign up.
All of which is fascinating, because when right-leaners become worked up about an issue involving the outside world, Gluesenkamp Perez recodes their anger as a kitchen-table concern:
For a while I was getting a [expletive] ton of letters about Hunter Biden’s laptop from people who are mad he wasn’t being investigated. And I think it’s easy to dismiss that as silly. But if you lift up the hood on that, what a lot of those folks are saying is that they feel like there’s a legal system that works better for you if you have a different last name or you have the right lawyer.Or maybe, for right-wingers, it feels good to get flipped off by a person driving a Prius.
To his credit, Klein pushes back when Gluesenkamp Perez attacks liberal protesters:
Sometimes I hear you say things, and you seem really frustrated with Democrats specifically. I take the point that sometimes it can be easier to empathize with a panda a world away than the person right next to you — or at least that’s what I think you’re saying.Klein doesn't quote Pastor Niemoller here, but he shouldn't have to. Gluesenkamp Perez is looking at protest by liberals about subjects that don't directly affect them and describing those protests as indulgent, but what's the lesson of history? That if first they came for a group to which you don't belong and you don't speak up, they just keep coming for other groups, and eventually those groups will include you.
But we’re disappearing people to Salvadoran terrorist prisons with no due process. The tariffs will hurt a lot of these people — the same people you’re talking about.
I would not say the Trump administration has been amazing on fentanyl or even strategic about it.
And there is a lot of fear. When I’ve heard the argument: Look, we should be worrying about the people next door, not people being shipped off to Salvadoran prisons, the way I often respond is — I’m Jewish, and I think I bring my own kind of assumptions to this conversation. But I look at history, and I look at other countries, and I feel like when the disappearance machine begins running, if people don’t stop it, it can start going really far. If regimes begin to realize they can use disappearance as a tool, who that eventually comes for is not clear.
Maybe liberals didn't apply this logic to an economy that came for blue-collar workers. Maybe we should imagine that the fentanyl dealers came for rural America. But I don't know any rank-and-file liberal who wants these workers underemployed and drug-addicted. Maybe we don't know what they need, but we were hoping Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act would put blue-collar people to work. We want drug treatment to be widely available and fully funded.
But it's just too easy to stereotype us all as self-indulgent elitists. The spread of that stereotype -- and the apparent unwillingness of the party's leaders to challenge it -- is, in large part, why we got Trump. Voters who don't even hear contempt from Democratic candidates think they're hearing it, because both Fox News and Democrat-bashing Democrats like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez tell them they're hearing it.
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