By the way, you said that the left and the right changed over the past 20 years so that there is no “by default” association of the left with the masses any more. Why do you think so? It sounds like an unusual position to me.
I think the political right tries harder than it used to to appeal to those masses. The left says to the masses “Unlike those bastards on the right, we are going to look out for your economic interests”. The right says to the masses “Unlike those perverts on the left, we are going to respect your values”. (Of course I am caricaturing in both cases, and of course both sides say a little of both those things, and of course the Left/Right dichotomy is a simplification, yadda yadda yadda.)
So, if Team Blue claims to act in the interests of the masses and Team Red claims to share the values of the masses, which one is acting more hilariously/hypocritically if it criticizes its opponents for ignoring the opinions of the elites?
Well, people like Thatcher or Reagan were popular—notably, with the masses—and they predate the shift that you are talking about.
In the US context that would imply that during the Clinton years the Republicans decided they needed to “appeal to those masses” and the result was the success of Bush Jr. That doesn’t look terribly persuasive to me—Bush wasn’t that appealing to the lower classes. The rightist rants for family values and against the degeneracy of the left were also pretty standard fare for more than a couple of decades.
In the UK context this means that after Tony Blair came to power the Tories decided they need more mass appeal and again, I don’t see much evidence for this suggestion. Just like Bush, Cameron was a fairly standard conservative leader.
By the way, you said that the left and the right changed over the past 20 years so that there is no “by default” association of the left with the masses any more. Why do you think so? It sounds like an unusual position to me.
I think the political right tries harder than it used to to appeal to those masses. The left says to the masses “Unlike those bastards on the right, we are going to look out for your economic interests”. The right says to the masses “Unlike those perverts on the left, we are going to respect your values”. (Of course I am caricaturing in both cases, and of course both sides say a little of both those things, and of course the Left/Right dichotomy is a simplification, yadda yadda yadda.)
So, if Team Blue claims to act in the interests of the masses and Team Red claims to share the values of the masses, which one is acting more hilariously/hypocritically if it criticizes its opponents for ignoring the opinions of the elites?
Well, people like Thatcher or Reagan were popular—notably, with the masses—and they predate the shift that you are talking about.
In the US context that would imply that during the Clinton years the Republicans decided they needed to “appeal to those masses” and the result was the success of Bush Jr. That doesn’t look terribly persuasive to me—Bush wasn’t that appealing to the lower classes. The rightist rants for family values and against the degeneracy of the left were also pretty standard fare for more than a couple of decades.
In the UK context this means that after Tony Blair came to power the Tories decided they need more mass appeal and again, I don’t see much evidence for this suggestion. Just like Bush, Cameron was a fairly standard conservative leader.