people who actually get shit on neoliberal policies are the kinds of people we should be reaching out, not some shithead named Dave Bavelhoff who owns a jetski repair shop.
people who actually get shit on neoliberal policies are the kinds of people we should be reaching out, not some shithead named Dave Bavelhoff who owns a jetski repair shop.
We shouldn't fetishize reaching out to them at the cost of reaching other working-class and lumpen people. It's quite obvious that we can and should pick up people in extra-marginalized and specially-oppressed subgroups, and will in all likelihood pick up more of them naturally anyway since the lived experience of identity-based oppressions tends to accelerate their radicalization.
Instead we should let the regretful and remorseful ex-chuds come crawling to us, the ones demonstrating willingness to put in the effort to change. My post from this morning included the qualifier that the least-committed chud-adjacent people who could have easily swung succdem if circumstances were different are the most likely to apologize and supplicate to the left. We shouldn't be under the illusion that someone still deep in the rabbit hole is gonna join the left if they don't crawl out of it most of the way themselves first.
Wake me up when we get so close to the halls of power that we can make the other half of the working class that we miraculously didn't need to get us there grovel on their hands and knees back to us.
Easily less than a third of the working class are Trump supporters, and among those maybe half are committed reactionaries. The core class interest of fascism is a petty-bourgeoisie (and to a lesser extent some lumpenproles) in crisis in the absence of effective socialist leadership. Among the Trump supporters we'll much more easily peel off many of the West Virginia coal miners and small Midwestern farmers/farm workers towards socialism before we win over the used car dealers, small business tyrants, and "beautiful boaters" most likely to have the disposable income to travel to DC.
To build the basis for a workers' party and to eventually reach a dual power situation we'll need the participation and cooperation of a lot more of the former, whose class interests can readily align with Marxism if they can chuck out the racist culture war bullshit, than the latter who are more likely to stubbornly support a fascist program even as socialist politics are ascendant. We won't start off by winning over most of the Republican-voting workers since socialism tends to grow most readily in environments where workers are closely gathered in large numbers (i.e. usually in large cities, which Dems by and large control locally even in a lot of GOP-controlled states).
But as the profile of socialism grows stronger its reach can extend into suburban and later exurban territory, and the red scare propaganda becomes less effective in the face of real material successes resulting from class struggle in the cities, the GOP-voting lesser-evilists will waver from that position and more confidently make demands for the shit they actually need and which socialist programs can or want to deliver, demands like medicare for all, increasing the minimum wage to a living wage and keeping it growing as the cost of living increases, and massive changes to the agriculture and energy sectors to make an ecosocialist green new deal possible.
No one comes crawling to fringe groups. As I said before people overemphasize how common it is for people to go from chud to leftist and it's dumb to focus on these people. But you don't have to make someone your comrade immediately, there is lots of things in between. When someone who is shit happens to support something that is good, you encourage that.