AHC: Switch characterizations of poor and rich on social and cultural issues in USA

In America, poor Americans tend be snubbed as backwards and hyper religious traditionalists by both conservatives and liberals of more wealth (though this is a negative and a positive for the latter group). Vice versa, many poor Americans of all political affiliation tend to view the rich and well educated as ivory tower elites when it comes to social issues. I understand I'm generalizing, but generalizations are indeed broad. Find a way to have social conservatives be normally associated with the rich and social progressives to be associated with a poor, with a PoD later than 1900, and the same social issues of today being at the forefront (abortion, gay marriage, etc).
If I'm not clear enough, please do tell me BTW.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Increase class consciousness among Americans, keep socialism and progressive ideals at the forefront of politics and then go from there.

Also, a move to more latin Christian Democracy, and somehow get the idea of "love the sinner, hate the sin," to be widespread.
 

d32123

Banned
In America, poor Americans tend be snubbed as backwards and hyper religious traditionalists by both conservatives and liberals of more wealth (though this is a negative and a positive for the latter group). Vice versa, many poor Americans of all political affiliation tend to view the rich and well educated as ivory tower elites when it comes to social issues. I understand I'm generalizing, but generalizations are indeed broad. Find a way to have social conservatives be normally associated with the rich and social progressives to be associated with a poor, with a PoD later than 1900, and the same social issues of today being at the forefront (abortion, gay marriage, etc).
If I'm not clear enough, please do tell me BTW.

Poorer Americans actually typically vote for more socially liberal candidates.
 
You need to have a much more class conscious America where the workers are locked into struggle with a capitalist class linked to previous feudalism and aristocracies, and where the churches are regarded by the majority of workers as strongly supporting capitalism against the workers and hence as being an enemy force. The workers turn away from religion and become either Marxist atheists or lip-service Christians who baptize their children but never go to mass (like the communist mayor Peppone in the Don Camillo satires). Then you also need to see the evolution of American power politics to where either a Labor Party or a Socialist Party plays the role that the Democratic Party plays in our own system, and where the second strongest party among the masses is a communist party. In other words, the U.S. would have to be like France and Italy (and look where it got them--disaster). It might also work if there was an extremely strong Socialist or Labor party (without strong communists) as in the UK or Scandinavia.

Finally, you have to erase the unique American tradition of Great Awakenings, tent revivals and evangelism, etc.

In other words, you'd have to erase American history (and geography) as we know it and start with an aristocracy drenched society in the U.S. with no great frontier or backwoods. Can't be done without ASB intervention, and even if it could be done it might produce a worse society than the one we have.
 
The class contrast over social issues has always been there but was deepened by the social developments during the 60s. To prevent the rise of right-wing populists playing on blue-collar insecurities about inner-city riots and hippies, you'd have to either:

a) Do away with most of the divisive cultural issues of the 60s, by preventing involvement in Vietnam and directing all that money towards fighting poverty in the ghettos (hopefully thereby butterflying the rioting). If these cultural issues are introduced into the American mainstream more gradually, without the apocalyptic and violent divides of that decade, working-class Americans may be more willing to accept them.

b) Have the left keep a eye on economic issues during this period. At the time, right-wingers such as Nixon were willing to be economically centrist or liberal while saving the conservative rhetoric for thrashing the hippies - thereby winning over the blue-collar vote. Liberals, by contrast, were seen as spending most of their energy on Vietnam and civil rights. (The term "limousine liberal" was coined to describe the 60s-era mayor of NYC, John Lindsay, who was seen as very soft on crime and unconcerned about the working white people whose property was destroyed by rioters). If the "movement" of the 60s is a movement for economic justice as well as social change, the two may become associated in the mind of the public.

In the TL I've been working on for a while, a serious economic downturn begins in 1968, and the New Left and New Politics begin to focus a lot of rhetoric on the massive military spending going on and pointing out that the Nixon administration is "robbing hardworking Americans" during a recession. This is coupled with an anti-veteran backlash by conservative thinkers (long story, but it makes sense in context), which alienates patriotic working people, and a strategy by the Socialist Workers Party (who have a lot more resources for various in-TL reasons) to infiltrate the UAW, which already had a lot of young radical members in OTL.

All of that combines to cause lower-class Americans to take the movement of the 60s a lot more seriously, and stunts the efficacy of right-wing fearmongering on social issues.
 
Poorer Americans actually typically vote for more socially liberal candidates.

Because socially liberal candidates tend to be fiscally liberal as well. I'm talking about taking the "they cling to guns and religion" and the "those ivory tower elites" and throwing those out.
 

d32123

Banned
Because socially liberal candidates tend to be fiscally liberal as well. I'm talking about taking the "they cling to guns and religion" and the "those ivory tower elites" and throwing those out.

Most of it's just cliches. Rural poor whites and Evangelical Christians tend to be socially conservative, but the urban poor and poor minorities tend to actually be more socially liberal than the average American though they definitely care more about fiscal issues for obvious reasons. If you want to get rural poor whites especially in the South to get more socially liberal you're going to need to curb racial tensions and improve education. I cannot stress the racial tensions part enough. Unions have historically been weakest in the American South due to a lack of unity between poor whites and poor blacks. Without unions, the church becomes the dominant force of politics in the region and puts forward a socially conservative agenda.
 
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