when someone shows you who they are believe them

remember, the 1980s was the era of reagan and bush senior, of death squads in central america, the destruction of unions, the willie horton ad, the stoking of racist resentment to shift from "the war on poverty" to "the war on crime". this was their strategy, as atwater admitted

see this thread for an extensive account of what obama represents https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1240579583616749568

btw that atwater clip is very instructive as to how ruling class ideology works, infecting the very use of language, as chomsky notes. "tax cuts", like "welfare", become coded ways in which to signal racism and classism by the professional media class, conservative and liberal

atwater is rare bc he admitted it. see the transcript: they can no longer say the n-word, so instead make it more abstract, say "tax cuts", which is read as hurting black people, and I would add also the poor. and who pushed "tax cuts" and "welfare reform"? clinton and obama

this is part of the neoliberal agenda. a common misconception is that neoliberalism is anti-statist as proclaimed in its rhetoric. but the aim is not to shrink the state, its to increasingly transform it toward serving elites. that's what "tax cuts" and "welfare reform" are about

a leading scholar of neoliberalism, philip mirowski, makes the same point in this excellent piece: https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP23-Mirowski.pdf

note mirowski's crucial point, adopted from gramsci, that markets are products of the state. and see also wacquant on the massive expansion of the punitive wing of the state as a result of the neoliberal revolution, contradicting its "small state" rhetoric
https://libcom.org/files/Lo%C3%AFc%20Wacquant%20-%20Punishing%20the%20Poor.pdf