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Fully 30 years after she was eased out of her job by her own party, Indian admirers of Britains Iron Lady are sending up fervent prayers for Margaret Thatcher Redux. Hacks are flooding the media space with froth as they sing paeans to the dear departed lady. (Their ardent hope is to be delivered soon from the ignominy of too much democracy.) And they dont want their readers to remember that, alone among Britains many Oxford-educated prime ministers, it was Thatcher whom her alma mater refused to award an honorary doctorate. She was still very much in power, and her lobbyists had left few stones unturned in their efforts to secure for the PM that nearly routine honour from Oxford. And yet she was snubbed. And what a snub it was! The meeting of Congregation, Oxfords governing assembly, convened to consider the proposed degree to Thatcher, was the most crowded assembly of that august body that most of those present could remember. And what followed was a wounding blow to the PM:

The No exit at Sir Christopher Wrens Sheldonian Theatre was jammed like a London Tube station in the rush hour long after the Aye door had taken its last voter. Dons and senior administrators decided by 738 votes to 319 against giving Mrs Thatcher the scarlet and crimson gown and velvet bonnet of a doctor of civil law.

For the record, the only other important Oxonian to be denied that honorary degree in the 20th century was Z.A. Bhutto for his dreadful human rights record. Interestingly, Bhuttos report card at the Congregation hustings was way better than Thatchers: 191 for and 239 against. Indeed, in Thatchers case, a banner had even been slung across Somerville, the PMs old college at Oxford, saying, No degree for Mrs Thatcher, an honour denied to the Pakistan PM. About Thatchers abortive degree bid, The Guardian had noted at that time that

(t)he scale of the PMs defeat was due to a huge turnout by scientific and medical dons, who rarely take part in academic debates but have been roused by the effects of government economic curbs on their research.

That memorable put-down, delivered to a sitting PM, has since entered Oxfords folklore. Indeed, in her home country today, derisive references to Margaret Thatcher (a Marmite figure, La Pasionaria of Privilege, .) are far more common than benign ones, even among conservative circles. But in Britains former colony India, time seems to have stood still since Thatchers glory days. So we have a senior English language journalist grandly talking about Narendra Modis Thatcher or Anna moment, even as the Indian PM finds himself besieged by tens of thousands of farmers protesting at Delhis borders against his governments farm sector reforms. The Anna moment, in this journalists book, is a proxy for the Manmohan Singh moment, by which is meant capitulation and surrender: isnt Singh famous for how he caved in to the Anna Hazare movement against corruption? By contrast, the Thatcher moment

would mean when a big, audacious and risky push for reform, that threatens established structures and entrenched vested interests, brings an avalanche of opposition. (Emphasis added)

So Modi has a stark choice to make: either retreat like Manmohan Singh did under pressure, or push farm reforms in Margaret Thatcher style. And how Modi answers this question will determine national politics going ahead.

So far, so good. The scribe is stating his case. It is clear on which side his sympathies lie, but that can hardly be faulted. Indeed, it is a perfectly acceptable opinion piece by a journalist up until this point. But he signs off with an extraordinary flourish:

Our wish, of course, is that he [Modi] will choose Thatcher over Anna. It will be a tragedy if even Modi were to lose his nerve over his boldest reform. (Emphasis added)

This, to me, reads more like a political manifesto than a journalists despatch. (Note how the whole news portal has been deftly subsumed in that clever our wish. The message is: here are a couple of hundred votes to give you strength. Good luck and godspeed!) And this is not all. Elsewhere in the piece, even as he grudgingly concedes that farmers blockading the capital make for really bad pictures, the writer doesnt forget to tell us why this is bad optics: after all, these arent nutcases of Occupy Wall Street. This speaks to visceral contempt for organised mass action, the kind of contempt that underlies the now-famous Hard work versus Harvard witticism. The contempt is targeted in both these smart quotes at a common enemy: the Khan Market Gang (yes, gang with an upper-case G), or the tukde tukde Gang, if you like.

Farmers arrive in a tractor to attend a protest against the newly passed farm bills at Singhu border near New Delhi, India, December 14, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

And this is not a solo journalist waxing eloquent about the Thatcher/Modi likeness. Others are piping up, all of them in the same strain: this is the Modi governments make-or-mar Thatcher moment, and Modi can let go of this propitious moment only at his own i.e., his reforms peril. A quick scan of the last few days opinion pieces in various news media gives me access to another journalistic tirade on another news portal against protests from a select group of farmers, who have received a megaphone from the domestic and international press, as well as opportunistic support from opposition parties, which finally see a possible wedge issue to use against Modis government. (Megaphone, indeed! What happened to the sundry media platforms who were proving to be so loud a megaphone in the protesters hands that these same protesters were obliged to boycott them wholesale?) And this writer proudly reminds us that the Modis Thatcher moment tagline had occurred to him as early as March 2015 when he penned a learned essay on this same subject. He also closes his recent piece with this fond wish:

Modi in 2020 is a seasoned, powerful leader. Lets hope he fulfils the promise of the moment.

Amen!

Neither of these men deems it necessary to argue their i.e., Modis case. It must be self-evident to all but the Gang, so. But probe it a little and you will know that they are Crusaders against that pernicious phenomenon called subsidies. I remember having once watched the better-known of these two journalists in a TV discussion in which he frankly confessed that he found subsidies vulgar, antediluvian. Of course, he was referring only to the poor mens subsidies those attached to food and cooking gas and by no means those which are reserved for the rich ( tax breaks, for example, which are meant to unleash corporate animal spirits).

So, can we take a quick look at their iron-clad case against the one subsidy that is troubling their conscience most at this point? We will necessarily need to compare these subsidies with those given by rich countries to their farmers. Surely, developed (and efficient) economies dont entertain such antiquated, fossilized handouts as subsidies? And if they do, these must be no more than a trickle while the privileged protesters at Delhis borders wallow in a whole sea of them?

In a study compiled by professor Bharat Rameshwaram of IIT Delhi in March 2019 for the Fifteenth Finance Commission, he puts annual Central government subsidy to farmers at Rs 1,205 billion: made up of fertiliser subsidies (Rs 700 billion), price support (Rs 240 billion), credit subsidies (Rs 200 bilion) and crop insurance subsidy (Rs 65 billion). Parallelly, there are subsidies offered by the state governments which together work out to Rs 1,140 billion: power subsidies (Rs 900 billion), irrigation subsidies (Rs 175 billion) and crop insurance subsidies (Rs 65 billion). In addition, the state governments in 2017-18 had announced farm loan waivers of the order of Rs 1,220 billion. In all, then, farm subsidies add up approximately to Rs 3,500 billion, or to 2-2.25% of the countrys GDP. They also form about 20% of aggregate farm income, annually. Another study by the Centre for WTO Studies (part of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade) estimates Indias per-farmer aggregate domestic support in 2018-19 at $282 (roughly Rs 20,000).

Also Read: Are the New Agriculture Ordinances an Extension of the WTOs Agenda?

Let us now place that number beside per-farmer subsidies provided by some other economies: $5,357 (Australia), $8,588 (EU countries), $11,437 (Japan), $13,010 (Canada), and $61,286 (the US). For China and South Korea, the numbers are $1,065 and $5,369 respectively. Even Brazil ($332) and Thailand ($367) provide more substantial support to their farmers than India. Those challenging the whole concept of subsidies can derive strength for their case by looking at Bangladesh ($11) and Indonesia ($139), but will a comparison with such countries give them comfort?

A closer look at the US numbers will do no harm. Why analyse an outlier, you ask? Well, isnt the US the neoliberals Mecca for all seasons? Indeed, the senior journalist we are referring to here had made quite a name for himself when, in 2003, he publicly counselled Vajpayee, Indias PM then, to send Indian troops to Iraq as part of a George Bush-Tony Blair-Vajpayee coalition. His rationale was simple: if India could once prove her bona fides as a serious democracy by joining that holy war, no one would ever again manage to drive a wedge between her and the US. Alas!Vajpayee was less than enchanted by the advice. But surely Modi can be trusted to do what Vajpayee couldnt?

So, what more do we know about what the US does for its farmers? An article published by Taxpayers for Common Sense on September 3, 2020 sheds some light. Direct US government payments to farmers during the current year are of the order of $37.2 billion. Plus, the Commodity Credit Corpn is spending another $14 billion. Together, these subsidies ($51.2 billion) form 43.8% of net farm income of the country. (Contrast this with Indias 20%.) And this is far from being the whole story. The HEROES Act passed in May 2020 provided additional COVID-19 funding of $16.5 billion to agriculture. And, in the second tranche of the COVID-19 funding by way of the HEALS Act which awaits Congressional approval another $20 billion in direct payments (cash subsidies) to the sector have been proposed. If this corpus is released, aggregate US farm sector subsidies this year will top $88 billion (or, Rs 6,600 bn, approximately, or roughly twice the government support to farming in India.) And that sum will cater to a community whose size is a little over 1% of Indias farming roll strength. Vulgar? Of course not. Its the US, stupid!

And yet, at the WTO, the developed economies regularly give India a piece of their collective mind on her undue support to agriculture. How this scandalous state of affairs persists to this day indeed, how much more heat is likely to be turned on India on this count in the coming years by the rich countries is a story for another day. But there can be little doubt that Indias governmental support to agriculture is a measly fraction of what richer countries routinely give to their own farmers.

A farmer works in his field. Photo: Jignesh Mistry/PAIGAM

So, are our anti-subsidy crusaders ill-informed? I dont think so. Their problem is not informational, but ideological. To these zealots of neoliberalism, all support to the ordinary citizen is odious, and poor subsidies are pure sacrilege. Such subsidies, they are convinced, create the culture of dependency (Thatchers words) while subsidies to the wealthy are productive support. No amount of additional information will disabuse neoliberals of these prejudices.

Margaret Thatcher once famously said there was no such thing as society: there were only individuals and there were families. In much the same breath, she added, (P)eople have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations. Her epigones in India, as elsewhere, have learnt these lessons by heart. As more farmers join the ongoing agitation in and around the national capital, therefore, we can be certain to witness more smarmy invocations of the spirit of the woman who had helped introduce to the UK what one commentator memorably described as casino capitalism.

Anjan Basu can be reached at basuanjan52@gmail.com.

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Farmers Protest: Why Are Some Liberals Invoking the Legacy of Margaret Thatcher? - The Wire

The proposition seemed tailor-made for one of the nations most diverse and liberal states. California officials asked voters to overturn a 24-year-old ban on affirmative action in education, employment and contracting.

The state political and cultural establishment worked as one to pass this ballot measure. The governor, a senator, members of Congress, university presidents and civil rights leaders called it a righting of old wrongs.

Women and people of color are still at a sharp disadvantage by almost every measure, The Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial endorsement.

Yet on Election Day, the proposition failed by a wide margin, 57 percent to 43 percent, and Latino and Asian-American voters played a key role in defeating it. The outcome captured the gap between the vision laid out by the liberal establishment in California, which has long imagined the creation of a multiracial, multiethnic coalition that would embrace progressive causes, and the sentiments of many Black, Latino, Asian and Arab voters.

Variations of this puzzle could be found in surprising corners of the nation on Election Day, as slices of ethnic and racial constituencies peeled off and cut against Democratic expectations.

We should not think of demography as destiny, said Professor Omar Wasow, who studies politics and voting patterns at Princeton University. These groups are far more heterogeneous than a monolith and campaigns often end up building their own idiosyncratic coalition.

Asian-American Californians opposed the affirmative action measure in large numbers. A striking number of East and South Asian students have gained admission to elite state universities, and their families spoke to reporters of their fear that their children would suffer if merit in college selection was given less weight. That battle carried echoes of another that raged the past few years in New York City, where a white liberal mayors efforts to increase the number of Black and Latino students in selective high schools angered working- and middle-class South and East Asian families whose children have gained admission to the schools in large numbers.

Theres more texture to California blue politics than you might think, said Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University and policy director for Mitt Romneys 2012 presidential run. Identity politics only go so far. There is a sense on affirmative action that people resent being categorized by progressives.

Latinos, too, appear sharply divided. Prominent Latino nonprofit and civil rights organizations endorsed the affirmative action proposition even as all 14 of Californias majority-Latino counties voted it down.

Latinos make up more than half of San Bernardino Countys population, although significantly fewer turn out to vote. More residents there voted on the affirmative action proposition than for president, rejecting it by a margin of 28 percentage points. In rural Imperial County, in the southeastern corner of the state, 85 percent of the population is Latino. The voters there who gave Joseph R. Biden Jr. a nearly 27-point margin of victory went against the affirmative action measure by 16 percentage points.

The results suggest that Democrats may need to adjust their strategy as the complexities of class, generation and experience, and the competing desires of these demographic groups become clear. Since the dawn of the 21st century, it has become commonplace for party leaders to talk of a rising demographic tide that is destined to lift the Democrats to dominance. That liberal coalition is seen as resting on a bedrock of upper-middle-class white voters, alongside working- and middle-class Black, Latino and Asian voters.

In broad strokes, that narrative held. Black voters, along with a shift in the white suburban vote, played a pivotal role in delivering Georgia to the Democratic column (although so closely that a statewide audit is taking place). So, too, Black voters in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia voted overwhelmingly for Democrats as did well-to-do majority-white suburbs and gave Pennsylvania and therefore the national election to President-elect Biden.

In Arizona, Latino voters piled up large margins for Mr. Biden and tipped the state narrowly into the Democratic column for the first time since 1996. Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic congressman from Phoenix who is a former Marine and a Harvard graduate, noted that several decades of aggressive tactics by Republican governors and white sheriffs had stirred activism among the young Latinos who dominate politics there.

The Republicans caught Latino lightning in the bottle in Florida and South Texas, but not here, Mr. Gallego said. We are very politicized. Its just important that white liberals dont impose their thoughts and policies on us.

Aside from those successes, however, the election presented complications wrapped one inside another for Democrats. In Texas and Florida, in California and in Colorado (where New York Times exit polls found that roughly 40 percent of white voters and 38 percent of Latino voters cast ballots for President Trump), the assumption that people of color would vote as a liberal Democratic bloc often proved illusory.

John Judis is a liberal writer and scholar who in 2002 co-wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority, which became a seminal text for those who saw the Democratic Party as a political tide rising. He has since backed off that a touch.

People of color is a term thats been adopted by the cultural left as a way of arguing that if these groups proportionately voted Democratic in the past, they will do so in the future, Mr. Judis said. I dont see how you can make the argument.

Viewing the Latino vote as monolithic fails, of course, to capture the often sharply varying politics and ethnicities of people hailing from nearly two dozen countries on two continents. The same is true when examining the behavior of Asian-American voters.

Philadelphia offers a snapshot: A record number of Latinos in the city, which is heavily Puerto Rican and Dominican, turned out and buoyed Mr. Biden. Yet exit polls also found that Latino voter support there for Mr. Trump leapt to 35 percent this year from 22 percent in 2016. In Milwaukee, an analysis by Urban Milwaukee reported an uptick in the Latino working-class vote for Mr. Trump, although a majority still favored Mr. Biden.

Along the Rio Grande in Texas, where some Mexican-American families, known as Tejanos, have roots that extend back four centuries, the vote margins shifted dramatically in 2020. Latino turnout soared, almost entirely to the benefit of Mr. Trump. Although Mr. Biden obtained more total votes in the four counties of the Rio Grande Valley than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, his margins of victory fell sharply.

The reasons offered for these results include poor field organizing by the Democratic Party, the cultural conservatism of some older Tejano families, and the fact that many in these often-dense counties find good-paying jobs with the Border Patrol.

Many voters, too, worried that Mr. Biden and the Democrats would impose a new coronavirus-driven shutdown, with dire consequences for the many thousands who own and labor for small businesses. Prof. Omar Valerio-Jimenez grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and teaches history at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Several of his old friends and cousins voted for Mr. Trump.

They faced this challenge: Do they continue to open our stores and restaurants and churches, which lets us pay our bills, he said, or do we quarantine and not have the money to pay our bills?

Muslim voters also confounded Democratic strategists with their support for Mr. Trump reaching 35 percent, according to The Associated Press. This, too, is a constituency difficult to pigeonhole, as it encompasses Africans, Arabs, South Asians and Europeans.

A sizable number of Muslims have experienced Donald Trump and to the surprise of Democrats they said, We want more of that, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution said.

Analyzing vote shifts is a tricky business, particularly when trying to gauge why some Latino, Black or Arab voters moved from supporting a liberal Democratic candidate like Mrs. Clinton in 2016 to voting for a populist authoritarian Republican like Mr. Trump. Some analysts pointed to the appeal among male voters regardless of color or ethnicity of Mr. Trumps masculine persona. Others mentioned the performance of the national economy, which had hummed along until the plague arrived.

There were small, intriguing changes in the Black vote as well. The Timess exit polls in Georgia found that 16 percent of Black men voted for Mr. Trump. (Compared with 7 percent of Black women there.) And to chart the votes along the so-called Black Belt in Mississippi, which includes 10 counties along the Mississippi River, was to find that although Mr. Biden won handily, his margin in nearly every county was two to three percentage points smaller than Mrs. Clintons.

The unanswered question is whether the 2020 election will be a one-off, the voting patterns scrambled by an unusually polarizing president who attracted and repelled in near equal measure. If it signals something larger, political scientists noted, some Latino and Asian voters might begin to behave like white voters, who have cleaved along class lines, with more affluent residents in urban areas voting Democratic while a decided majority of rural and exurban residents support Republicans.

Then there is California, where the sands of change blow in varying directions. In 2018, Democrats swept the Orange County congressional seats. In 2020, the Republicans have rebounded and taken at least two of those seats.

The Republican candidate Michelle Steel, who is Korean-American, came out against the affirmative action proposition, a stance that proved popular with her Asian-American constituents, as well as many white voters. And on election night, Ms. Steel rode that support to a narrow win against the incumbent Democratic congressman, Harley Rouda.

This is the challenge for liberal Democrats, Professor Wasow said. In a diverse society, how do you enact politics that may advance racial equality without reinforcing racial divisions that are counterproductive and hurt you politically?

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Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other Ideas. - The New York Times

Now that Biden appears to have won the presidency, liberals are telling us, like they do every time we switch from a Republican president to a Democratic president, it is time for our nation to Heal and come together.

I suppose they mean we must all support the killing of babies before and even after they are born, the government is more important than God, handouts are more important than jobs, and that we should support rioters and looters and defund the police.

Well, they can count me out. The division in this country the past four years was caused by liberals, not conservatives, who made up a fake Russian collusion story and who rioted and looted in liberal-controlled cities.

One thing I will do is say Biden is my president, no matter if I support his policies or not, unlike the whiners and crybabies of the past four years who said over and over Trump is not my president!

Thank you and have a great day.

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Voice of the People: Deep division caused by liberals - Kankakee Daily Journal

The American voters chose to give the Democrats the White House, but denied them a mandate. Even if Democrats somehow squeak out wins in both Georgia Senate races, the Senate will then pivot on Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Not only does this take much of the liberal wish list off the table, it also makes deep structural reform of federal institutions impossible. There will be no new voting rights act in honor of the late Representative John Lewis, no statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and no Supreme Court packing. For that matter, the filibuster will not be eliminated, which would have been the essential predicate for all of those other changes as well as expansive climate or health care legislation. Anything that Democrats want to do that requires a party-line vote is forlorn.

In response to this disappointment, a number of left-of-center commentators have concluded that democracy lost in 2020. Our constitutional order, they argue, is rotten and an obstacle to majority rule. The Electoral College and the overrepresentation of small, mostly conservative states in the Senate is an outrage. As Ezra Klein has argued, our constitution forces Democrats to win voters ranging from the far left to the center right, but Republicans can win with only right-of-center votes. As a consequence, liberals cant have nice things.

The argument is logical, but it is also a strategic dead end. The United States is and in almost any plausible scenario will continue to be a federal republic. We are constituted as a nation of states, not as a single unitary community, a fact that is hard-wired into our constitutional structure. Liberals may not like this, just as a man standing outside in a rainstorm does not like the fact he is getting soaked. But instead of cursing the rain, it makes a lot more sense for him to find an umbrella.

Liberals need to adjust their political strategy and ideological ambitions to the country and political system we actually have, and make the most of it, rather than cursing that which they cannot change.

There are certainly some profound democratic deficits built into our federal constitution. Even federal systems like Germany, Australia and Canada do not have the same degree of representative inequality that the Electoral College and Senate generate between a citizen living in California versus one living in Wyoming.

There is also next to nothing we can do about it. The same system that generates this pattern of representative inequality also means that short of violent revolution the beneficiaries of our federal system will not allow for it to be changed, except at the margins. If Democrats at some point get a chance to get full representation for Washington, D.C., they should take it. But beyond that, there are few if any pathways to changing either the Electoral College or the structure of the Senate. So any near-term strategy for Democrats must accept these structures as fixed.

The initial step in accepting our federal system is for Democrats to commit to organizing everywhere even places where we are not currently competitive. Led by Stacey Abrams, Democrats have organized and hustled in Georgia over the last couple of years, and the results are hard to argue with. Joe Biden should beg Ms. Abrams (or another proven organizer like Ben Wikler, the head of the party in Wisconsin) to take over the Democratic National Committee, dust off Howard Deans planning memos for a 50 state strategy from the mid-2000s and commit to building the formal apparatus of the Democratic Party everywhere.

This party-building needs to happen across the country, even where the odds seem slim, in order to help Democrats prospect for attractive issues in red states (and red places in purple states), to identify attractive candidates and groom them for higher office and to build networks of citizens who can work together to rebuild the party at the local level.

A necessary corollary of a 50 state strategy is accepting that creating a serious governing majority means putting together a policy agenda that recognizes where voters are, not where they would be if we had a fairer system of representation. That starts with an economics that addresses the radically uneven patterns of economic growth in the country, even if doing so means attending disproportionately to the interests of voters outside of the Democrats urban base. That is not a matter of justice, necessarily, but brute electoral arithmetic.

That does not mean being moderate, in the sense of incremental and toothless. From the financialization of our economy to our constrictive intellectual property laws to our unjust tax competition between states for firms, the economic deck really is stacked for the concentration of economic power on the coasts. Democrats in the places where the party is less competitive should be far more populist on these and other related issues, even if it puts them in tension with the partys megadonors.

We also need to recognize that the cultural values and rituals of Democrats in cosmopolitan cities and liberal institutional bastions like universities do not seem to travel well. Slogans like defund the police and abolish ICE may be mobilizing in places where three-quarters of voters pull the lever for Democrats. But it is madness to imagine that they could be the platform of a competitive party nationwide.

That doesnt mean that we should expect members of the Squad not to speak out for fear of freaking out the small town voters that Democrats like Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia represent. But it does mean recognizing that, unlike the more homogeneous Republicans, the Democrats have no choice but to be a confederation of subcultures. We need to develop internal norms of pluralism and coexistence appropriate to a loose band of affiliated politicians and groups, rather than those of a party that is the arm of a cohesive social movement.

The Democratic Party has a future within the constitution the country has. The question for the next decade is, will we withdraw into pointless dreams of sweeping constitutional change or make our peace with our country and its constitution, seeking allies in unlikely places and squeezing out what progress we can get by organizing everywhere, even when the odds of success seem slim.

Steven Teles, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, is an author, with Robert Saldin, of the book Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites.

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Our Political System Is Unfair. Liberals Need to Just Deal With It. - The New York Times

Liberals never learn. At a time when the erosion of public trust is more dangerous than the plague swirling around us, you would think they would be careful about displays of hypocrisy. Instead, the same technocratic elites who rail about the sin of privilege and criticize Donald Trumps unraveling of the social fabric are telling us by their actions: Do as I say, not as I do.

The latest example comes to us by way of Gavin Newsom, Californias Democratic governor, who was photographed maskless at a Nov. 6, birthday party for a lobbyist. In so doing, he violated his own state guidelines. Newsom apologized, but the incident only underscored the widening social distance between the elites and the plebesand the sense that lockdowns are for the little people, while parties, salon visits, and swanky dinners are for me, but not for thee. Hypocrisy, thy name is Newsom.

And Newsom isnt the only Californian who thinks hes above the rules. Sen. Dianne Feinstein was recently spotted walking around the Senate maskless, and Nancy Pelosiwho drew controversy for visiting a hair salon in Septemberwas forced to cancel a dinner she was planning to welcome newly elected House Democrats after the event caused an uproar.

This is a trendand not just in the Golden State. These conspicuous displays of hypocrisy reinforce the notion that progressive elites think theyre better than the hoi polloi lumpenproletariat who are forced to follow their guidelines. The public might have rejected Trumps handling of the virus, but its easy to see why average Americans, who have to comply with COVID-19 regulations, feel disgruntled by such decadent displays.

Its almost as if the perpetrators are unaware that cultural aggrievement is the most potent force in modern American politics, and that, for a lot of Americans, complying with COVID rules means shuttering a business, postponing a wedding, or never getting to say goodbye to a loved one in a hospital. And, for many of us, it will mean not seeing family members this Thanksgiving.

Now imagine doing all of these things, and then seeing Gavin Newsom and California Medical Association officials enjoying themselves at the French Laundry.

During times of crisis, leaders have to ask others to sacrifice. But this only works when they earn the credibility to do sowhen followers believe that the leader has their best interest at heart and is sharing in the sacrifice. Never mind enduring any real hardship, Californians cant even count on Gavin Newsom to stay home and watch Schitts Creek on Netflix. And this sort of let them eat cake! imagery is even more galling coming from members of a political party fond of lecturing others about their privilege.

So why is this happening? In some cases, of course, the problem is simply that elites view themselves as being above the rules. In other cases, there is more than mere class snobbery at play; theres also political snobbery. More specifically, there is the sense that progressive causes (like protesting the police or celebrating Joe Bidens election) are exempt from the rules, because, after all, the cause is so goodso importantthat the ends justify the means. A Trump rally, for example, is dangerous and irresponsible, while street celebrations for Joe Biden are not just tolerated, but commended.

Case in point: This spring, conservatives protesting Michigans harsh lockdown policies were criticized for not social distancing. Now, some of these protesters behaved in ways that were unbecoming. But the subsequent behavior of liberals did little to quell their sense of victimhood and unfairness. Thats because, in early June, as the Detroit News reported Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who's voiced concerns about other demonstrations potentially spreading COVID-19 in recent weeks, participated Thursday in a civil rights march in Highland Park with hundreds of people who did not follow social distancing rules. (Dont worry, we are assured by the experts that protests probably did not cause a COVID spike.) To be sure, protesting police violence is legitimate and important, but so are a lot of other things weve been asked to curtail.

A more recent example occurred when D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser traveled to Delaware to celebrate Joe Bidens presidential win. The problem? Delaware was on her list of states considered high risk for COVID-19. She skirted the rules by insisting that attending Bidens victory party was essential travel. Right.

So traveling to spend her last Thanksgiving with your grandma makes you irresponsible and dangerous, but traveling to celebrate Bidens win is essential travel? You can go to a conference in Hawaii, but you cant schlep to Cleveland for a family reunion?

To the laymans eye, theres a lot of hypocrisy here. But why shouldnt progressive politicians enjoy these perks? They are our betters, arent they?

Excerpt from:
Gavin Newsom Is the Face of Privileged Liberal Hypocrisy - The Daily Beast