I found this little bit of cultural analysis from Keith Preston at FreedomSLUT (posted by Brad Spangler) which explains why the political left seldom makes much headway in American culture or politics. While the author uses a lot of Marxist references and jargon, it is still a pretty good essay and makes some excellent points.

The paleo-left in America is deeply ensconced in the heart of academia’s elite universities and colleges, and so they tend to reflect their ruling class cultural prejudices and biases.

These type of academic revolutionaries are well represented by Noam Chomsky the famous “anarchist” philosopher-king who is himself a decades long tenured professor at a tax supported state institution (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and a multi-millionaire author of anti-state and anti-authoritarian books and articles. Yet Dr. Chomsky himself lives in a very nice upper class suburb of Boston far away from the ignorant and unwashed toiling class that he supposedly venerates. Go figure.

Why I Choose to Collaborate With the "Criminal" Underworld by Keith Preston

“It is not merely coincidental that the two population groups most ignored or even despised by the Left establishment are poor and working class rural whites (whom they view as bigoted, racist, religiously fanatical, xenophobic, jingoistic, uncultured dullards) and the urban lumpenproletariat (whom they regard simply as criminals). The Left establishment is the party of cultural Marxism, eternally obsessed with left-wing identity politics ("racism, sexism and homophobia" and all that), the purpose of which is the advancement of the bourgeoise elements within the traditional minority groups. Nothing could be more subversive to the class struggle. This should be obvious enough as each of the left-identitarian factions have been severely coopted by the forces of bourgeoise [sic] liberalism. The contemporary strategy of the ruling class is to wage war against its authentic class enemies under the cover ideology of totalitarian humanism, with its triple banners of Equality, Health and Consumerism. Within this framework, poor and working class whites are attacked (along with other traditional cultural groups) for their alleged opposition to ‘equality’, meaning the program of state-managed multiculturalism and coercive integration relentlessly pursued by the left-wing of capital whose power is now almost fully consolidated (whether in its left-liberal or neo-conservative variations). Similarly, and in a very overlapping manner, smokers, drug users, gun owners and others are attacked for their alleged threat to ‘health’, ‘public safety’ and other liberal-bourgeiose [sic] therapeutic statist pieties that evoke images of both the Jacobins and the Nazis. Lastly, class war in waged against both the rural and urban poor in the name of ‘urban renewal’, ‘development’, ‘property values’, ‘gentrification’ and other manifestations of consumerist totalitarianism.”