There’s more: Democrats actually won 5.9 million more votes in the Senate in 2016, but the Rapeublinazis are still in charge because representation is solely based on geography, much like tDUMP lost the popular vote by 3 million ballots, but was installed in office by the (s)Electoral College against the will of the people.

Hmm... against our will... I’m seeing a pattern here.

Our failed political system is now an open fraud and a sham.

Racist voters may also be modified by other adjectives.

Word.

I'm getting a big ol' tax cut next year which is about the only benefit of Trump.

So please keeping calling poor white trash, poor white trash. The more you push the working class to the right, the less taxes I pay.

Chuck, don't forget that many, MANY self-called "Whites" have at least one POC ancestor: if DNA testing were mandatory - I am all for that - then MILLIONS of U.S. citizens currently benefiting simply for being recognized by everybody from the feds to their neighboors would be FORCED to change their ways . . . . 23andme.com . ;D.

And angry black man diatribe on angry white men. Fitting.

@1
You're right.
Clearly this dangerous experiment in democracy has failed and it's time to bring back monarchy.

And here again with #4 we see this notion expressed that political outcomes are determined by what liberals say on the internet.

If only the GOP leadership thought such silly things, the world would be a better place.

Outstanding. Best column in a very long time Charles. Not only your best work, but the best work for anyone at The Stranger (and Dan Savage has been killing it lately).

This is the blackest day for this country that I personally remember since the assassination of JFK.

This is the blackest day that I personally remember this country has seen since the assassination of JFK. The mask and gloves are off.

@7 - Trump and his grifting cronies/family are working on it. The only good thing about a monarchy is that the peasants tend to chop off the monarch's head at some point.

@1: If you’d bother to recall American History, you’d know the Senate was created to give states with low populations more equal footing to the states with large populations. So, to the extent population is irrelevant in the Senate — feature, not bug. The Electoral College resulted from a similar compromise.

Don’t like it? Petition for constitutional amendments. We tend to enact a new one every ten years or so.

@16

The electoral college wasn't a power-balancing compromise, it was a communications protocol designed on top of overland interstate travel in an era before paved highways or internal combustion, never mind electric communications networks.

It was taken advantage of as an avenue of political abuse almost immediately, and efforts to abolish or reform it date to the eighteenth century, before even the 12th amendment changes.

And the Senate was very much designed as a secondary body; it was never meant to be as powerful as the House. Its importance today would have surprised the original ratifiers of the constitution.

The Failing New York Times needs to be reminded that:

A.) Every Justice seated before 1914 was confirmed by senators who collectively won zero popular votes.

-and-

B.) Justices are not supposed to represent the will of the majority (that’s the legislatures job) they are supposed to interpret the Constitution and laws as written.

Just like Chuck to springboard off of a deeply flawed piece of garbage “journalism” into an equally mindless rant.

If you don't like the way our electoral system works, or how the Senate is chosen, then there's a simple prescription: vote. Four million people who voted for Obama in 2008 didn't turn out to vote in 2016. They, not the "oligarchy," are responsible for Trump and Kavanaugh. If people who lean Democratic in their outlook voted in the same numbers as Republicans, you couldn't amend the Constitution to do anything you want.

Charles, I always appreciate what you write and how you write it. It is refreshing and challenging. However, due to my own errors or the errors of the interwebs, I was unable to access the "Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict" pdf that you provide a link to. :(

I don't understand why people like Mudede and Sawant come to this country if they hate it so much. I believe they should be free to immigrate into the country and I value their opinions as contributions to free speech debate. I'm not afraid of their speech. I just don't get why they came here. The way they describe our society, Zimbabwe and India must be far superior. Why would they have left these workers' paradises to come to the racist and violent country they disparage so much?

1

So when are you moving to Canada?

17

Mused is a typical Marxist, did you expect anything else?

@22 They came here to have the privilege and ability to cultivate their nagging skills. Only in America do you have the time to concern yourself with nihilistic philosophies like: Intersectionality; Resentment.

I like how Charles feels the need to invoke whatever hip scholars have impressed him this week to make the wholly unoriginal and unremarkable point about the GOP and racist white resentment. There's a reason Seattle's voters gave a whopping 9% of our votes to the current President, and why our legislative districts haven't sent a Republican to Olympia in well over a quarter-century. Marxist ideas have nothing to do with it.

It is great to see someone who gets paid well to contribute nothing of any value (ok, maybe he does sometimes provide some laughs) complain for so long (and so bitterly) about the hand that feeds him.

22

How does critique = hate? I am critical of this country because I believe in its ideals and feel we don't live up to them. We never have. We can do better for everyone.

Maybe Charles feels similar.

For all the claims of the extreme left of how racists run the country and everyone who they don't like are Nazi's one needs to ask them a simple question: Why do you let Nazi's run around and not shoot them? That's what you do to Nazi's; you kill them. So maybe it's time for these self righteous leftists to put up or shut up.

YOU are the racist Charles. So ironic none of you see that. You are OBSESSED with race... to the point you don't care about the content of one's character, but you care about the color of one's skin... or what they have between their legs. You are a disgrace to the free world.

"Why do you let Nazi's run around and not shoot them? That's what you do to Nazi's; you kill them." --fdrLOLgop

Wow. Never thought I'd hear a far right tighty whitey call for assassinations -- on fucking Verminazis.

But there you have it.

I’m down with shooting nazis, as long as we can shoot Marxist’s too. It’s a win-win for humanity

30: We all care about the content of character. Kavanaugh is a person of demonstrably suspect character, as is virtually everyone appointed by this president. The same can be said of virtually every GOP presidential nominee since Gerald Ford.

And there is no reason for anyone to suppose that any of the people who are privileged by our slavery-influenced political system are of superior character to those disempowered by it. We're not better off as a nation, in any sense at all, by the fact that, to be elected president of the United States, you generally have to be elected president of the Confederacy. People in small towns, the Mountain West and the South have NO intrinsic claim to moral or personal superiority over anyone else, and have never been victimized in any way by the people whose say in politics is reduced by the Senate and the Electoral College. And I've lived most of my life in small population, heavily white, largely small town states, so I know exactly the hell what I'm talking about on this.

@4, @23, @24, and @32: STFU already. Your ignorance is beyond pathetic.
@33 AlaskanbutnotSeanParnell: How could you possibly forget Tricky Dicky, Richard Milhouse Nixon? Every member of the Greedy Oil Party SINCE Nixon's August 9, 1974 resignation has been out to screw the U.S. public ever since.

@36: 44 years, folks--that's over four decades' worthless of RepubliKKKan plotting and scheming to send a once great country down in flames--all for The Mighty Korporate Dollar.
Willie Nelson has it right: We must send a message to this evil empire and VOTE 'EM OUT!

32

Ask Marx.

36

Angry and alone is no way to go through life. Sad.

So it's all the fault of "racist white voters"? Uh, nearly twice as many people sat out the 2016 election as voted for either Trump or Clinton. Maybe if there were someone/something to vote for, more right-on people like Mudede would vote and win elections.

@31, spineless coward...probably why your side keeps losing

@34- You are right about the traitors (or, as you put it, the Confederacy). Should have cut them loose in 1861 and been done with them. The deep South has been a financial drain and the source of profoundly un-American ideas ever since.

“have to be elected president of the Confederacy”

Wait, how did President Obama win then?

29 & 41

"Why do you let Nazi's run around and not shoot them? That's what you do to Nazi's; you kill them. So maybe it's time for these self righteous leftists to put up or shut up." ---FDR?LOL!GOPee.

43:

Don't let facts ruin Charles' narrative. He's worked hard to establish himself as Seattle's only Marxist intellectual.

"Article on confirmed, researched, observed and even admitted racism" = *Altright comment squad respond : "Deeerp, thats stupid! Only cucks and libtards call people racist, you dumb n-words! MAGA! Hail Trump!"

Like motherfucking clockwork.

The funny thing about half of the "Anti Marxist" altright comments is 99% of this kids would not so much as say peep if they came in contact with a black person in real life.
"How do you know that for sure?" - You ask?
I'm black and have yet to see one of these MAGA-ist try to make one of their bullshit online arguments in person at a bar, on the street, at a bus stop, in a classroom or at work. Nor has any black person I know. Oh well.

@48 Pretty sure you’d call the cops and scream “hate crime” if anyone so much as contradicted a black person in public in Seattle.

48

What does Marxism have to do with “black”?

@48

You know, now that you mention it, I can't say I remember any bar-room conversations in which a black man claimed that constitutional representative democracy can't be explained without racism.

Maybe the bars I hang out in are just cutting people off too soon?

@50

"Im sure youd call the cops if..."

That statement alone proves you dont know any black people, nor have you ever had a substantial conversation with a black person. Especially in greater Seattle.

@51

Read up.

@48 This constitutional representative democracy cant be explained without racism. Unless you think some folks are really 3/5ths of a person. Or you dont know how the electoral college came into existence.

Maybe you are going to the wrong bars, I agree.

@53

Well your bars certainly do sound more fun. Care to recommend any watering holes around Beacon HIll or Columbia City? I'd love to eavesdrop on that kind of conversation while I'm putting a few away.

@54 What are you, a outofstate Seattle U student? Do you go to Columbia city or Beacon hill bars on the regular? I cant think of a single person, black or white, who lives in either of those places who doesnt just bus/walk a little farther to cap hill. Whats wrong with a few off MLK or Belltown? Or North Tacoma or 75th in Everett or Lynnwood for that matter? How about any bar in downtown Bremerton on any given Thursday or Friday night?

Lets not bullshit. You dont know or associate with any black people. It's ok to admit it. In fact, thats the first step towards genuine self reflection and recovery.

53

Lolz......the fact that every Marxist nation has been a disastrous failure is all the reading up I need to do.

The rest of your screed is just noise.

@56

Um, what the hell? I asked because that's the part of town I live in. I thought that would be obvious, but holy crap I guess not.

There are a few bars around here where I spend a lot of time, and more where I drop in once in a while. None of them have an exclusively white crowd, but the mix varies from one night to another and one bar to another. I've never heard anything remotely like an angry Mudede-style political diatribe in any of them, but I'd definitely get a kick out of it if I did.

Kinda sounds like you don't really have any recommendations at all, though. Good grief.

@48: You are confused why people don't start arguing about Marxism with any random black person and assume all black people are Marxist?

You are confused as to why strangers do not walk up to you and start aggressively arguing politics?

Are you a human? Have you ever met another human?

@59

Eh, give the guy the benefit of the doubt. We can't ALL be paid Russian trolls, can we?

He's just a little worked up, and lashing out on the internet in a way he'd never act face-to-face. It's a behavior not tied to any particular ideology, it seems-- my guess is that it's got a lot more to do with what you might call an "unexamined sense of masculinity," if you don't mind a bit of jargon swiped from feminist crtitical analysis.

One of they key between the United States and Charles' native Zimbabwe is that the United States is currently obsessed with how many angels can dance on the head of an intersectionally woke pin, while Zimbabwe is currently concerning itself with tedious, yawny stuff like food security, hyperinflation, political violence and other such tedious stuff.

However, Zimbabwe did pretty much solve the "white privilege" problem in politics when almost all the whites fled the country, and the country became a de facto one party state, so there's that. Pros and cons.

43: Obama won because the economic collapse caused by right-wing ideas-especially financial deregulation-briefly overruled Confederate thinking in enough white voters to get them to let go of their pointless fear of peoples of color. If Obama had made his presidency a clear challenge to corporate power and economic inequality, he might have sustained that, but he ditched working-class people of all races once elected-that's why he chose Rahm Emanuel, a man whose sole distinction was his connections with billionaires, as chief of staff and "gatekeeper". Doesn't discredit the point that, in general, you have to win the votes of bitter vindictive white Southerners who still want to erase the Sixties and put everybody who isn't white "in their place" if you're want to be elected president. That's why Bill Clinton was a big death penalty advocate-it was never about fighting crime, it was about showing the white South he was just as cool with killing n_____s as "#41".

62: Nothing would have been better if more whites had stayed, or if Zimbabwe had remained Rhodesia. It could never be legitimate to have white minority rule on a black continent.

@62 I don't disagree. However, eliminating white privilege in politics doesn't suddenly lead to utopia, either.

@65: Agreed that eliminating white privilege in politics doesn't suddenly lead to utopia. To my knowledge, nobody is actually arguing that it would. But getting white voters to break the habit of refusing to see people of color as working people, as basically decent and law-abiding people(at least to the degree that whites can claim to be, and we can't always make that claim, to be fair) is a precondition to making the changes which need to be made in this society. The Bill Clinton years are a reminder of how horrible it is when the supposedly more-progressive party decides that it has to appease white backlash views in order to win the White House. Obama, in many regards, was barely better at all on that(look at the obligation he was made to feel, until his presidency was nearly completed, to never express anger about continuing racism, including continuing violent police racism. Look at how often he was told that he couldn't do anything which could actually be seen as a gain for African-Americans or other peoples of color. Look at how he was told, over and over again, that he had to "support the police"-which was always code for telling him he had to defend the cops every time they killed anybody who was black.

If the Democrats are to sustain any victory, or if any party on the left is to take their place, they are going to have to reject the "defer to white sensibilities" thing-they are going to have to organize the emerging working-class multiracial majority.