Matthew Yglesias is a Disingenuous Bootlicker

Editor's note: frankly I'm not entirely sure how I ended up writing an entire essay in response to a single Matthew Yglesias tweet; what I can say is that this article started out as a Mastodon thread that got too long - please forgive me in advance if it's a little choppier than normal, Yiggy certainly brings out the rage poster in me on a semi-regular basis. 

Readers searching for recent examples of my regular writing are encouraged to check out the November 12th edition of The Skinny and my most recent theory discussion "A Working Definition of Neofeudalism."

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How much can you really say in a single tweet? It turns out that if you're a high-profile Vox blogger posing a journalist, the answer a lot. 

Today we're going to be re-examining on an issue I've discussed in the past; primarily because the crushing inhuman technocratic nature of noted Vox brain genius Matty Yglesias has made this topic relevant again and I think its importance is self-evident. Ready? Alright, let’s talk about "how to attract "red state" voters without doing bigotry and discrimination.

First let's take a look at the mindbogglingly awful and disingenuous tweet that sparked this discussion, published by Vox editor, contributor and co-founder Mathew Yglesias on November 13th, 2019 at 6:32 PM:

 

I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time addressing Yglesias's disingenuous whining about Twitter mobs, the myopic "pragmatism" that made him believe his statements wouldn't actually count as an "unpopular" opinion in light of his (and his company's) leftward shift post-2016, or the fact that Matty is genuinely an inhuman, soulless monster -  the guys over at "Et tu, Mr. Destructo?" featured the definitive deconstruction of Yiggy's machine brain repugnance a long time ago:

Destructo Salon: Does Matthew Yglesias Enjoy Murder?

What I would like to talk about however is the fact that despite (or perhaps, because of) his Harvard education, big-brained boy wonder Matty Yglesias is completely f*cking wrong about how to win back Senate seats currently held by the GOP and in fact, there's actually a pretty damn good chance he *knows* that he's wrong and is just trying to manipulate you on behalf of what passes for an elite political-media class in the United States.

Unfortunately, explaining precisely why Yiggy is either wrong, lying or some perverse combination of both is a multi-stage process that requires cutting through Matty's false pragmatism; bear with me while I unpack this by examining the assumptions and implications behind Yglesias's argument.

First and foremost it must be noted that despite the author's mocking tone about "complaining" the GOP is in fact "an anti-democratic menace to the basic rule of law" and they do control the Senate.

Secondly, we know (or at least can infer) that when Yiglesias talks about "concessions to conservative cultural views" he actually means social issues that don't mean much to affluent white pundits, but drastically affect inequality in society - things like women's reproductive rights, addressing racialized police violence, equal rights for LGBT people, migrant deportations, whether or not 17 year old kids in bike helmets who protest against fascism should be shipped to Gitmo as terrorists, etc.

In other words, and as many others have pointed out already, Matty Yglesias is suggesting that Democrats toss marginalized people who (when you include, I dunno, all women) make up the majority of the party's base, under the bus - ostensibly in order to recapture the Senate from the GOP and stop them from torching the Constitution and obliterating the beloved "checks, balances, norms and standards" liberal elites fetishize even though such ideas have done nothing at all to stop Trump (or Bush before him.)

Older readers will of course recognize the "logic" behind Matty's tweet from the era of Clintonian "triangulation" and anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past eleven years will detect the strong odor of neoliberal worship of "bipartisan compromise" -- which is typically coded language for "screwing over our labor class base on behalf of rich people almost as badly as the Republicans would and then calling it progress."

Of course typically liberal "thought leaders" will suggest capitulating to the GOP on economic issues to preserve progress on social inequality issues; before ultimately knifing those marginalized people anyway and furthering the Democratic Party's seemingly ceaseless shift to the right (for just two examples, see Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill, or the record number of migrant deportations undertaken under Obama's administration) - Matty however, ever the bold pragmatist, says the quiet part out loud.

As to which "concessions" to "conservative cultural views" must be adopted, and which groups of effectively trapped Democratic Party supporters must be abandoned, Yglesias has little to offer. Presumably we stubborn fools can infer however that if we just toss some carefully calculated combination teenage school shooting victims, athletes who protest racial injustice and trans folks who have to use the bathroom to the wolves, a Democrat majority Senate that stops GOP fascism is within reach.

Now the most obvious problem here is that everything Yglesias is suggesting is selfish, appalling and morally wrong. Since a significant number of other commentators have already covered that topic in detail however, I'm going to simply remind folks that it's pretty easy for Matty to bloodlessly suggest offering "concessions to conservative cultural views" when absolutely none of those concessions would affect him or anyone in his social circle, in any significant way. In other words Matthew Yiglesias is hot garbage and so is his tweet.

More importantly however, there is absolutely no evidence that the strategy Matty is suggesting would work, or for that matter has ever worked. Contrary to Chuck Schumer's prediction, the Democrats did not pick up "moderate Republicans" by running a pragmatic triangulating neoliberal like Hillary Clinton in 2016. In the two previous elections, Barrack Obama won by promising hope and change even if he delivered far more of the first, than the latter - not by conceding "conservative cultural issues."

Frankly, even the supposed "holy grail" of neoliberal triangulation (the two elections won by Bill Clinton in the 90's) may have had a lot more to do with running against stiff, aging and openly despised white plutocrats (George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole respectively) than Clinton's mythical appeal to a "white working class voter" he openly betrayed - just as quickly and easily as he also betrayed the Democratic Party's African American voters with racialized mass incarceration, bank deregulation and austerity measures.

This stands to reason of course because adopting "culturally conservative" positions typically has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging marginalized people you're feeding to the sharks not to vote for you, while alternately it's pretty much impossible for a Democratic Party politician to successfully out-perform a "red state" Republican if all either of them are really offering is different flavors of racism, bigotry and discrimination - although some (Joe Manchin) have certainly tried.

Looking at recent examples of this strategy in relation specifically to the U.S. Senate, it seems pretty clear that for every narrow Doug Jones victory in Alabama over a widely-despised child molester, there's a Claire McCaskill or Heidi Heitkamp loss to wholly unremarkable GOP candidates because it's pretty much impossible to beat outrage, apathy and voter suppression in the long term by out-sh*tlording the kind of professional revanchist loon the GOP churns out for Senate races on the regular.

In other words, there's no demonstrable reason to believe that tossing marginalized people under the bus is going to give the Democrats control of the Senate, so it really doesn't matter how urgent and important the reason Matty wants the Democratic Party to get in touch with its cracker side is - although it certainly is important to retake the Senate; it's very hard to imagine Mitch McConnell ever voting to stop Republican corruption, criminality or cruelty so long as he's running the Senate majority.

Yglesias of course knows all of this and has written numerous articles discussing not only the devastating toll of adopting these "conservative cultural views" as policy, but also the numerous ways in which the Democratic Party makes it easier for the GOP to win elections - from failing to properly fight voter suppression to abandoning issues that matter to labor class voters across a broad spectrum of demographic groups.

So why is he telling you to go right on social issues to win the Senate?

The obvious answer to that question is because Matty Yglesias is a dead-eyed elitist maggot piece of dogsh*t who maintains a sycophantic relationship with centrist power in America.

As I've written many times and numerous polls bear out, the way to flip so-called "red state" voters is to offer them broadly popular programs and policies that materially improve their existence - as evidenced by Bernie Sanders' ability to easily win over Fox News audiences by explaining his Medicare for All plans.

Look, the fact of the matter is that in a barely-concealed white supremacist, openly patriarchal country like America, a significantly massive portion of the voting population is going to be at least a little bit reactionary, but it does not automatically follow that "red state" voters value "conservative cultural views" more than they value a living wage, ending the forever wars for oil, and not fishing their kid out of the morgue because there was no funding for opioid addiction programs.

Are there some people for whom gun rights, structural racism and treating women like baby ovens are more important than wages, healthcare and surviving a rapidly escalating, global mass extinction event? Sure, we call them "lifelong Republicans" and they're neither a majority of voters, nor particularly likely to vote for a Democrat no matter how many "conservative cultural views" that candidate makes concessions to - half these folks genuinely believe liberalism should be outlawed; they're fascists.

For the majority of voters however, even white voters in battleground states, debt relief, good jobs and free healthcare are far better incentives to vote Democrat in Senate elections than meek acquiescence to inequality, revanchism and fundamentalist rule - as an added side bonus, none of these economically populist policies are going to drive away minority voting demographics because surprise, economic justice helps marginalized voters too!

This is how you build the kind of broad-based voter coalitions that can carry Democrats to power in vital swing states as well as peeling off GOP voters over time in traditionally "red states" simultaneously.

Furthermore, Matty Yglesias knows all of this - he's seen the polling, he knows that a left wing populist economic platform (like Bernie's) is wildly popular across a broad enough spectrum to crush the GOP in the Senate or for that matter, anywhere else in the halls of American power.

Yiggy simply doesn't care because the kind of elite (often liberal) capitalist who'd have to start paying their fair share in taxes to fund those types of programs, explicitly *pays* Matty not to care and to employ all of his dark powers of rhetoric to convince you not to care. Does Yiggy actually want to stop the GOP from burning the American political system to the ground? Sure, but only if it can be done without harming billionaires and elite Dem Party donors - otherwise, forget it kiddo.

This isn't strategy, it isn't pragmatism and Matty Yglesias isn't your friend; if labor class Americans want to stop the GOP in the Senate, the solution is to dump soulless myopic pundit-class remoras like Yiggy, not our commitment to justice, equality and the separation of church and state.

If Yglesias wants to make himself into a meme, that's his business - but don't let rich, greedy liberal influencers convince you that "being a bit more racist" is a winning game plan against the fascist creep.

 

- Nina Illingworth


Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

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