@blatham,
blatham wrote:Quote:"Limousine liberal" doesn't strike me as a right-wing conception
Note I said "conceptions/cliches/talking points". There's a rich tradition of populist left voices poking fun at rich liberals who (it's presumed in this framing) aren't involved in political activism and who just ride along, selfishly, on their good fortune. But in the last several decades in America, the term has had far greater currency on the right as a propaganda device and ad hominem
I don't doubt the term has currency among the right especially, I just see little suspicious or counterintuitive about a socialist using it either. It's not just about "rich liberals who aren't involved in political activism and who just ride along," no? Doesn't it also apply to wealthier/upper-middle class liberals who are on board for all the feel-good liberal-sounding stuff, but balk at any "scary" radicalism that might put their comfy privilege at risk? And/or who are all about liberal, lefty-sounding policies as long as they're not going to experience any material discomfort over it themselves?
Huh. Now, through Google, I'm reading
this NY Times article. Mostly underscores your point, though I feel it's got something to confirm both of our takes. On the one hand, reviewing Steve Fraser's book about the "limousine liberal" notion, it describes how the specific label has a history of being used by the right against liberals, after having been test-driven by a Democratic politician. (You probably know all of this already, and were arguing from that knowledge.) On the other hand, the author ties in this review with one of Thomas Frank's leftist-populist critique of Democratic liberals, directly comparing the two and their overlap in rhetoric and sensibility:
Quote:Frank is hardly the first critic to remark upon a disconnect between the lives of wealthy liberals and the grittier constituencies they supposedly serve. As the historian Steve Fraser demonstrates in his wide-ranging new book, the idea of the “limousine liberal” has a long and messy history all its own. [etc.]
If someone were to genuinely shift, politically, from a stridently conservative world view to a much more hybrid sensibility where a lot of left-populist views and policy preferences got mixed in, even as the more visceral preoccupations of their old political identity survived, they could seamlessly hold on to the perception of "limousine liberals". They could even keep applying it without it ever seeming particularly out of place for their new-found beliefs and allies. Just sayin'.
That Thomas Frank book sounds awesome, by the way. Talking visceral responses, I'm totally on board for his message. Ever more so as I get older, too.