Is Casar's populist prescription right?

I originally meant for this newsletter to just be a quick plug of the Casar story along with some other stuff about the District 7 runoff, but I guess it turned into a lengthy rant about national politics. Oh well. Enjoy.

Greg Casar has only one term under his belt on Capitol Hill and he's already scored a high-profile perch as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The 97 members of the group elected him to replace outgoing chair Pramila Jayapal of Seattle.

The Progressive Caucus is pretty self-explanatory: it's a group of liberal Democrats who try to work together to advance a progressive agenda in Congress. They were a key force in shaping the size and scope of Biden's signature legislative accomplishments (the climate bill, the infrastructure bill etc).

Naturally, as Democrats ponder how to recover from last month's defeat, the media is wondering what Casar thinks the antidote to Trumpism is. In every article I've seen him quoted in, he clearly states that the party's central message should be class-based economic populism, but the extent to which he is willing to criticize some of the left's cultural impulses varies.

In an interview with the Austin Chronicle, for instance, he said that instead of surrendering on certain culture wars, notably transgender issues, Democrats need to remind voters that "the reason [Republicans are] doing that is so they can give donors another tax break and keep your taxes high."

But talking to NBC, Casar appeared to go further, conceding that progressives need to be more cautious in how they approach polarizing cultural issues.

Casar laid out his vision for the future, saying that Democrats need to return to their roots as the party of the working class. That means welcoming voters who disagree with the left on cultural issues and not being “seen as preachy or disconnected.”

....Casar believes the median voter stands to the left of the Democratic Party’s mainstream on economic issues, and he admitted that, at least today, the median voter is more culturally conservative than his party. He said the solution is to lead without getting too far ahead of where that voter is on social issues.

....“I think we should lead the country, but we should never be more than an arm’s length ahead,” Casar said. “If we get more than a couple arms lengths ahead of the country, then you’re vulnerable to attacks from the Republicans.”

Well, it's hard to argue with any of that. Economic populism has always been Casar's top focus, but I think that he, like many other progressives, saw discourse about racial and LGBTQ justice as key pillars of progressive advocacy and a logical response to Trump, the avatar of white male grievance. Moreover, they likely viewed complaints about "wokeness" or "PC culture" as little more than a niche grievance of the privileged.

Perhaps nothing better captures this delusion than a conversation I had on Election Night with a local Democratic politico, who dismissed my concerns about signs in the betting markets that Trump was going to. The betting markets are just a bunch of white men, she explained. "We're going to win because this country is not just white men."

Well, you know the rest of the story. Trump got huge boosts in support among Hispanics as well as meaningful increases in support among Blacks and Asians. Clearly, many of those who the racial justice discourse seeks to defend are either turned off by it or indifferent to it. Despite incessant warnings from the left, they clearly don't believe that their race or ethnicity makes them uniquely vulnerable in Trump's America.