people only go to grad school to be a billionaire! we're all elites in training. that's just science

most palatable way of using any word ...

"downwardly mobile elites" - make it make sense

I remember a friend from TX saying that I was an "elite" when I was working as an admin + living in an apartment with a roommate in my mid30s, with no car, while he owned a large house, 2 large vehicles, and vacationed abroad every year. But I listened to NPR +worked at Harvard.

I said he was far closer to elite than I was, and we stared at each other in confusion.

Elites = people society likes (because they are decent people) They don’t believe the parentheses part is the reason though, must be something else

Elite is about as informative as woke. Just means "a bunch of people I don't like because I think they hate me."

It may as well mean "moral elite" now, that's how it's being used - not that someone has more power, or access, or status, just that someone acts morally better, and thus has to be taken down.

Downwardly mobile elites are definitionally, not the elite! A blue haired barista with an MFA isn't the elite!

Isn’t that now a basic divide between the two sides? As I told a conservative acquaintance of mine, “Each side hates elites. It’s just that y’all think they are Hollywood actors and university professors. We think they are CEOs and billionaires.”

one last thing here: mamdani's politics are the literal opposite of zero-sum. "our city is rich and vibrant enough for all of us to prosper" is not zero-sum. "perfidious elites are stealing your birthright from you" — the view of salam's political patrons — is.

But he won’t condemn “global intifada” which I assume is cool with you but not many others in a city like NY.

He’s actually the most “abundance” candidate of all the widely-discussed Dems right now, lol

Zero-sum here means "believing in political policy for real".

"So when trump appeals to downwardly mobile, poorly educated, low information angry white boomers...it's embracing the 'forgotten voter' but when Mamdani appeals to struggling working class millennials.. its 'zero sum politics' bsky.app/profile/derc...

Christopher Rufo and Manhattan Institute affirmative action: NYT editors put Claudine Gay in "top 5 featured on the New York Times homepage Dec 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 22, 25" "Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution. That ran on Page 13. Yes, Page 13." bsky.app/profile/orig...

Blue states supporting Red states needs to be a focus of midterms. The irony of maga screaming about student loan forgiveness or universal healthcare when we support them is peak hypocrisy.

You can’t call white trash “downwardly mobile,” it hurts the feeling of flyoverian surplus population.

Ty … truly spot on observation, comment

If you look at his polling: relatively high income but lower than average education, it would suggest that his constituency is largely small business tyrants.

Mamdani’s optimistic vision for the city is taking votes away from politicians who want to maintain the status quo, so that much is zero-sum, I guess? (Except Mamdani is bringing in new voters, so not even then!)

I’m convinced that tax cuts in the top 10% reduce GDP. Lower 9% uses it to retire earlier, top 1% gets sloppier with capital, investing for social status rather than returns. Max GDP not my goal but plow money into education and eliminating means testing cliffs for the bottom 70%, if it’s yours.

You know why we don’t have any COBOL programmers to maintain vital systems? They’re all cycling laps in prospect park at 11AM on a workday after their brokerage account hit $3MM age 52 and they checked out for life. Good for them, bad for GDP.

It’s Nazi Aryan supremacy notions adopted as government policy.

This is the weirdest "every accusation is a confession" yet. The Venn diagram of "knows the phrase zero-sum," "thinks it's bad," and "understands its meaning so poorly that they think it applies to Mamdani's politics" cannot possibly have a big intersection.

Only thing I can think is that he's very specifically targeting the "doesn't like Mamdani and also doesn't like the word zero" demographic.

bsky.app/profile/akge...

All Trump-era Republican politics are zero sum. "You aren't getting the nice things you deserve because (undeserving other) is taking them from you." Sadly. the politics of fear and envy are simple, powerful, and easy to understand.

Investing in the rich sounds like it shouldn't be zero sum ("job creators!!") but in reality it's investing in the poor that expands the pie. Even if you wanna cheer capitalism, we need more people with money to be buyers, we don't need more money invested in sellers.

👏demand 👏drives 👏growth

we know the whole "job creators!" thing is bullshit, and has always been so. we know cutting taxes on the rich does nothing be allow them to pay less tax. we know that raising wages for the poorest by, say, increasing the minimum wage, overall improves the economy for everyone, including the rich.

I keep thinking of those lyrics from Porgy and Bess: "Folks with plenty of plenty/They've got a lock on the door/Afraid somebody's gonna rob them/While they're out there making more/What for?"

It’s pretty straightforward, an elite is someone who likes stuff I don’t. If you would just be cool* and like cool stuff you could be a regular old salt of the earth kinda guy like me, David Duke, Elon Musk, my uncle Jerry “Roll Tide” Golfshorts, Jon Voight, and Colonel Sanders

"Downwardly mobile elites" is a nonsense phrase.

Also...just laughably pot kettle to be calling progressives zero-sum...

I just read that Crisis Rufo and well....it's 5 o'clock somewhere 🤷‍♀️

Their ruse is pretending people with this “elite” cultural position have hegemonic control over everything in public life bsky.app/profile/nste...

So pretending the cultural “elites” (people who believe in liberal tolerance and pluralism) are also the political/economic elites

What a snooty snotty pants this guy is. Who exactly are "downwardly mobile" millennials he disparages so easily. Talk about class warfare.

The word elite has been cannibalized

I make 60k and I like the arts! I am Elite!

They’ve been doing this one for years and it drives me insane. I have a centrist friend who kept throwing the word elite around and finally I asked him what he meant, and he meant undergrads.

Just say gays and hot white woman that refuse to sleep with republicans this shit is exhausting!

It can't be said enough that this warping of the word "elite" is done deliberately to protect the *actual* rich and powerful from scrutiny.

Classic fascistic rhetorical tic for over 120 years bsky.app/profile/saba...

I was going to say “downwardly mobile millennial elites” as a demo is kinda wild. Who is he talking about lol

I think he could make a decent argument that Mamdani risks having his support being entirely an anxious, downwardly mobile *middle* class (instead of working class), but that would require acknowledging the poison at the heart of the Republican project.

Elite is anybody who reads books. A WSJ author would know!

I've always struggled with their use of "elites" because it never made any sense to me. But you've nailed it. Elites are just anyone that I think thinks they are better than me.

As a mb academic, I feel this in my bones. I drive a 14 year old car, but somehow I’m the true face of power in this country

It's been this way for a long time. "Coastal elites" has always been code for "Jews."

A lot of rich, powerful people use the term "elite" to refer to people who are admired or have respect or people will listen to. Basically, people who have things money can't buy.

Elites = people who are having more fun than me. Urban reactionaries have fascinatingly incoherent politics. They clearly like living in a big city but hate all the reasons that big cities are fun to live in. They can't admit that pluralism is good so they have to just make up shit.

I remember Ron Desantis offering this type of definition. I’m like wow, that’s incredibly convenient

The right has been mixing that one in for a while now. It doesn't matter if you work at the same job as them, if you're politically left you're one of the "oppressive elites" and the people on the right are "counterculture and punk"