It seems the whole world is focusing on the Elite 1% this week. First Rasmussen and now Ruy Teixeira in “Why Can’t Biden Move to the Center?” Answer:
The answer is simple: the liberal college-educated voters and activists who punch so far above their weight in the Democratic Party. They are already screaming bloody murder about what Biden has said and indeed the whole general idea of getting tougher in any way at the border.
Fact is that Biden can’t ignore the left and move to the center.
He’s under enormous pressure from the party’s left and “shadow party” (as John Judis and I have termed it) of activist groups, think tanks, foundations, publications and websites, big donors and prestigious intellectuals—college-educated all!—not to move in that direction.
Who is the Elite 1%? Rasmussen’s answer:
The top 1% have postgraduate degrees, live in densely populated urban areas, and earn more than $150,000 a year.
And, as I read today — somewhere — these are the people that teach our kids K thru grad school, and what they teach is what they believe, from climate change to DEI. It doesn’t matter that climate change is baloney, and DEI tears the country apart; the Elite 1% believes in climate change and fighting for the Oppressed Peoples, and that’s all. So it’s not surprising that the Kidz all talk and write and do activism just like they were carefully taught.
But then there is the fact that the Kidz helped elect Javier Milei president of Argentina. Which makes sense, because the whole point of the progressive welfare state is that it hands out the loot to the Elite 1% and to their vote banks in the lower class. So there is hope.
We all rail against the Woking Class and the Administrative State and wonder, darkly, who is the power behind the throne. No to mention far-right conspiracy theories.
But I don’t think we need to try too hard. Rasmussen’s Elite 1% Project shows that the Elite 1% — with graduate degrees, living in gentrified inner cities, earning $150,000 and up — all were educated the same, think the same, live the same, and vote the same.
As Teixeira says about North Seattle,where I live, and its representative, Pramila Jayapal:
Jayapal represents Washington state’s seventh congressional district (Seattle) which has a partisan lean of +67 points (!) Democratic. It also happens to have a median family income of $170,000 (!!), the seventh highest among congressional districts, as well as the seventh highest concentration in the country of adults with college degrees.
What do you think happens when all the people earn the same think the same and vote the same?
Hey, who needs a conspiracy when the Elite 1% all goes to the same church.