And he lays the blame at the feet of the Democratic Party, which he says has abandoned working people. “Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here’s why,” in the Guardian:
Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America – one of our two monopoly parties – chose long ago to turn its back on these people’s concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a “creative class” that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps. The working people that the party used to care about, Democrats figured, had nowhere else to go, in the famous Clinton-era expression. The party just didn’t need to listen to them any longer.
What Lewandowski and Nussbaum are saying, then, should be obvious to anyone who’s dipped a toe outside the prosperous enclaves on the two coasts. Ill-considered trade deals and generous bank bailouts and guaranteed profits for insurance companies but no recovery for average people, ever – these policies have taken their toll. As Trump says, “we have rebuilt China and yet our country is falling apart. Our infrastructure is falling apart. . . . Our airports are, like, Third World.”
Trump’s words articulate the populist backlash against liberalism that has been building slowly for decades and may very well occupy the White House itself, whereupon the entire world will be required to take seriously its demented ideas.
There’s some truth there, but it’s not the whole story, I’d say, as revealed in part by the discussion below about Clinton versus Sanders. What do you think?
The Democrats gave up on reaching out to ordinary working people a while ago. You can see for yourself on the Mass State Party “outreach” committees. There are outreaches for just about any demographic you can name with the exception of ordinary working people, the one demographic that the Democrats struggle to win votes with.
There are many examples, but here is one that I think of very often. It was a gathering of campaign supporters in the home of a prominent Democrat. We were all there to support this one particular candidate. My wife grabbed my attention and asked if I would speak with this one woman who had a few questions. She was a woman in her 40’s and this was the first time she got this involved in campaigning. She had just canvassed for a few days and had one question in particular that summed it up for me. In her canvasses, she was covering towns in the suburban Metro West area. She wanted to know, “other than women’s reproductive rights, marriage equality, pay equity, what can I say to the suburban guy out raking his leaves?”
Indeed, what can she say?
…as well as add-on seats set aside for labor people. We often make common cause with the issues advocated by Raise Up Massachusetts, things like higher minimum wage and paid leave.
You don’t get it. The vast majority of working class people in the private sector are not in union jobs with negotiated benefits. A good chunk are self employed. The things you point to do nothing for them.
How’s this – when I entered self employment 30 years ago, your taxes were 10% instead of the full 14%, a recognition that you were both the employer and employer. Now, it’s the full 15%, as if you were 2 people.
And you only benefit once. THAT is what drives people caay.
…though I do think we need to promote policies to make organizing easier. We want to lower taxes on working people rather than the 1%. If you can be more specific about what you want maybe we can talk.
…how does that address the guy in Medfield out raking his leaves?
Does he have kids? We favor strong public schools.
Does he have to commute to work? We favor infrastructure improvements and improved public transit.
Does he pay taxes? Chances are very good our plans work much better for him than the Republican plan.
The list goes on and on. It’s pretty obvious IMO.
Sorry, but none of that goes to the person we are addressing. He’s got zero job security, his wages have been flat for 40 years….and we’ve done squat for him.
…beyond single-payer healthcare? We’re working to unflatten the wages, but of course its going to fall on deaf ears when you are deliberately sticking cotton in them.
It’s really that simple.
…is better able and more likely to accomplish that? If you don’t like how it is being done, what do you suggest? Dukakis campaigned on good jobs and good wages, but I guess we’ll never know how successful he would have been.
But it’s still a laundry list of seemingly disconnected interest groups rather than a simple and easy to digest slogan. These voters haven’t felt like America has been great for them for quite some time, one of the many reasons the hat is working.
I seem to recall you suggested a good three-legged stool some time ago. However, I’m a bit reluctant to reduce government to slogans. To the extent America hasn’t been great that’s frankly on the GOP and has been for my entire lifetime. We HAVE been more reluctant to point fingers I think.
And I found the party willing to adopt it locally. Hopefully the national Democrats can take note, but so far Hillary’s general election plan seems to be Jeb! 2.0 and that is cause for concern.
And I’ve been making the same argument here for quite some time. 30% of his support comes from hard core cultural resenters but he is filling union halls in Michigan with the trade message and threatening rank and file loyalty to the party in the general.
We’ve done next to nothing to advance labor in the last two Democratic administrations and it’s understandable its members are tired of getting fucked over. This is the same game plan that elected Scott Brown and Joni Ernst who beat a neoliberal Democrst in Iowa or Scott Walker beating a neoliberal Dem in Wisconsin and winning over working people by 2-1 margins. It’s time to return to the roots as a working class party, one can do this without ditching long standing commitments to civil rights and the rights of women and minorities. But it will always be presented by or opponents as zero sum when we have such little to offer.
I’m paraphrasing here from something I posted a few days ago on Daily Kos about this article in The Guardian (US edition), which was eye-opening for me. It is a collection of emails sent to the newspaper, most of them from educated and seemingly intelligent people about why they are supporting Trump. Most of the writers don’t like Trump, his rhetoric, or his policies. A couple of them even acknowledge he might govern a lot like Hitler. But they’re going to vote for him anyway. As one wrote:
What is motivating these seemingly unlikely Trump voters? For some, it is the belief that the agenda and policies of both political parties have fallen under the complete control of Wall Street. Those emailers would ironically support either Trump or Sanders.
One of the emailers is a 62-year-old licensed attorney with a PhD, who is currently unemployed because he has found it impossible to get a job at his age:
All of this is scary to me, maybe because I can identify with the viewpoints of some of these people. At the same time, I haven’t given up hope in this country as they have, and I am concerned that it would be extremely dangerous to elect Trump president.
In any event, I think it is pointless and ultimately self-defeating to accuse and chastise Trump supporters for being racists. It’s an overly simplistic assessment of his support.
Although I don’t think it was completely intentional, and so there isn’t much point in the accusing tone.
The NewDeal was “Old Left” in that it was specifically focused on the “working class” even if the Marxist class struggle language was toned down a bit, relative to left wing parties in Europe. The NewLeft focused not on economic issues, but on individual rights issues, such as civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights, etc., and right from the get-go (and probably correctly, alas) identified the “working class” as the enemy, rather than the constituency.
Once the Democratic Party shifted from being a NewDeal party to a NewLeft party, the “working class” really didn’t have a home there anymore. And so groups like the Catholic working class became at least partially detached from the Democratic Party, and remain there. They were once the “silent majority,” then “Reagan Democrats” and then, simply, Republicans.
For the Republicans, these groups have been like found money. They don’t have to do a damn thing for them: some noise about abortion, some outrage at “political correctness” and some university professor’s theory of microagressions, and presto! majority support for the purely “1%” policy-making that has been what the GOP is all about for the last 40 years.
The dynamic hasn’t really changed, for Democrats. Sanders is definitely “Old Left” and looks at everything from a real New Deal perspective, but isn’t really embraced by the various groups that comprise the New Left coalition, whose support for Clinton will win her the nomination.
But Trump is doing something different, in my view. He is CLEARLY exposing that the GOP “establishment” doesn’t offer the working class ANYTHING other than lip service. If that establishment contrives to freeze Trump out, through a brokered convention, these folks are going to be pissed off.
That would be an opportunity, no? Here you have a serious but unlikely to be successful candidate for the Dem nomination who actually talks to these very people. Others have marvelled that there seems to be overlap between support for Trump and Sanders; I don’t think it so odd.
And you have a likely nominee who happens to be married to one of the few Democratic politicians of the last 40 years who managed to speak directly to these people, without seeming condescending.
Is it possible to make a party of New and Old Left? I don’t know, but it looks the the opportunity may be about to present itself.
white working class voters, and both Hillary and Bernie are doing that. As Theda Skopcol has written,
I think I understand what CMD is trying to get at with the New and Old Left, but the younger generations are already more astute at recognizing and handling the issues of what might be called today’s New Left–racism, transgender rights, etc. The New Left was a lot about identity. The kids are embracing a type of pluralism unimaginable 30 years. When it comes to social issues, kids tend to be civil libertarians, tolerant of others who don’t intrude on their own personal lives. The coming Democratic Majority will be built on a Newer Deal.
much of America does too, which is leaving the Democratic Party in droves.
Some people think that people leave the Democratic Party because people ‘don’t like parties anymore.’
It’s not true. People leave parties when they view the parties as doing jack shit for them, and unfortunately millions of struggling and middle class families across the country have correctly identified that today’s Democratic Party establishment doesn’t care about them, and/or has actively made their lives worse.
This is what makes identity politics so dangerous. If there’s 50 different issues that define virtually 100% of what most Democratic Party voters care about, people like Hillary Clinton run in primaries thinking all they have to do is check off 30 of those 50 boxes and they’re golden, screw all the rest. Especially in their self-perpetuating narrowing of the party. It’s great for primaries, not so hot for general elections, and with each general election it’s left us with considerably fewer dedicated voters than the one before it.
And those 30 boxes the Hillary Clintons of the world are checking off are periphery issues, the ones Wall St doesn’t really care about (or may even support), while the 20 other issues are the ones destroying the economy and the environment, or the ones that are privatizing schools and prisons, or involve making lots of bombs to drop on lots of people in the Middle East or god knows where else.
This is why identity politics isn’t good enough, and why we should be extremely wary of any candidate who employs it. We need candidates who speak to unifying themes that brings people together, and that puts the central issues that unite us at the forefront — and right now, there’s no more important issue than the economic security of American families.
Hillary can and I think probably will lose to Trump, should she be our nominee. Maybe that’s what our party needs to have happen to it to actually send the neoliberal nitwits packing once and for all, damnatio-memoriae style.
But, no, should Hillary win the primary and lose the general, I’m sure the establishment — after having spent months trying to decry progressive causes, impinge the integrity of a true progressive warrior for social and economic justice, and insulting millions of his supporters at every stage — will sing a nice song of how it was all Bernie’s fault that Hillary lost for having the audacity to challenge her at all, and their response to this election will be to make it even more impossible for outsider candidates to run for our party’s nomination.
The arithmetic is what it is; HRC will be the nominee. You’re going to root for TRump in an effort to “send the ‘neo-liberals’ packing”? (To be fair, that is not much different from my own view toward breaking the power of certain local Democratic Party legislative figures)
To the extent that I have seen the term “neoliberal” used these last few months, it seems to come from super-angry opposition to free trade deals, and a sort of non-specific anger at “Wall Street” that seems to be a hangover of the Occupy movement.
Maybe there is a Sanders-Trump majority in favor of protectionist economic policy. Unfortunately neither Mr. Sanders nor Mr. Trump care to discuss what the costs of those policies might be.
I’ll fight damn hard against Trump, Cruz or whoever the GOP throws at us.
Like I knocked on lots of doors and rang lots of phones for Martha Coakley (twice), John Kerry and many others who were similarly uninspiring, and suffered from many of the same problems.
Believe me, I hope I’m wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. But while I certainly think it’s possible for Hillary Clinton to win, I think it’s going to be a very, very tough fight. Trump, unfortunately, has a lot of strengths as a candidate in the exact areas that Hillary’s weak in. We’re going to need very, very high turnout among Democratic-leaning voters and I’m not seeing any indication that Hillary is capable of driving that, and Trump’s rightwing populism seems as likely to eat into Dem-leaning voters as Hillary’s reasonableness would be able to eat into Republican-leaners.
I said what I said because I’m sick of our party not learning from its past mistakes. If we do lose, I want to learn something from this, and nominate a much better candidate next time — one who actually has a universal message that speaks to the economic uncertainties of the majority of America, and who has a long record that backs it up. Doing otherwise has proven an albatross for our party.
The idea that the Democratic Party could nominate someone who could lose to Trump should be a stark lesson for all of us. There are many, many other directions our party could have gone in who’d be trouncing Trump, and I bet there are more than a few prominent Democrats out there today who see what Bernie Sanders has been able to do to Hillary Clinton in a clean campaign, wishing they had run.
I misread your tone then. My apologies.
I love everything you wrote here, there is much to criticize cynically about the status quo and much to hope for in building up new foundations to replace it.
Pew Research Center
That’s a graph that looks at party leaners, and ignores the choice many are increasingly taking — not voting at all.
Here’s a better look.
Democratic registration is at a historic low and going down fast, while the GOP party registration rate is stable/recovering.
You may think all that matters is the leaners — and, hey, great, we’re winning Presidential elections. But the rest of our democracy? It’s been a bloodbath for democrats, and while gerrymandering is a great part of the blame, apathy in non-Presidential election years is another (and the reason why gerrymandering is the problem that it is).
We’re simply not giving people a huge reason to get excited about being a Democrat, or voting for Democrats. Demographics have made it such that more often than not we may win Presidential elections in the 2000s and beyond, but when we aren’t exciting people and building up the party infrastructure and activist base, we’re not going to win state legislatures, we’re not going to win Congress, we’re not going to win nearly as many Gubernatorial seats as we should, etc.
It’s true that Democratic registration is down (as actually Republican registration is as well). More people are registering (and identifying) as independents. But the fact is that there are few true “independent” voters that swing from election to election. Even many self-styled “independent” voters vote for one party exclusively, which is why asking people how they lean is more accurate than looking at registration rates. The “myth of the independent voter” is a real thing, due to the fact that most independents are actually strong partisans. Indeed, it has been Republicans that have lost more partisans to “independent” status than Democrats, something the linked article mentions.
It’s harder to evaluate the claim that people are less excited then before, but I’d note that voter turnout in presidential elections has risen pretty dramatically since 2000, which would seem to push back against the idea that people aren’t excited. It’s true that midterm elections have seen lower turnout (as it always has in the U.S. since the 1800s). While a problem for Democrats, it probably has more to do with the make-up of the current Democratic coalition (Latinos and young people have huge midterm election drop-off) than generic lack of excitement.
but when you don’t have an active, committed party, it’s hard to organize in the off years.
Republicans vote in the off years in very high numbers. Democratic-leaning independents don’t. And that’s been killing us in mid-term elections.
Party loyalty and excitement is important, but it’s not going to happen unless everyone’s happy with the party’s performance.
I’m not going to say this is the be-all, end-all issue at the moment, but we should be very concerned about our party’s declining numbers when the GOP’s numbers aren’t declining. We can’t have a Democratic Party without Democrats.
…who does not see standing up for workers, minorities, and women as mutually exclusive. If anything all of that is on the same theme of supporting demographics traditionally marginalized from society’s debates. Nor do I see where we have abandoned workers. Last I checked WE were still the party that favors raising wages, expanding access to health care, a fairer tax structure, more access to government services, public education that lifts all boats, etc. The economy has consistently done better for everyone in the last several decades under Dem rather than GOP presidents, including job growth. Frankly, if you can’t answer the question at the end of johntmay’s comment above, you aren’t trying very hard. This implied not-a-dime’s-worth-of-difference hand-wringing isn’t helpful.
…that nor is it mutually exclusive to support workers and creative professionals. Capital is the fruit of labor and ultimately you can’t be both pro-jobs and anti-business. Maybe we can do better with communicating, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with our stances.
With Bernie Sanders in the race, saying it’s the economy that drives Trump support lets people off the hook too easily. If you support Trump you are supporting someone who has completely disqualified himself from the 21st century presidency based on his hateful comments, no matter how much you agree with everything else he says or how strongly you personally disagree with the hate.
I guess one way to solve the problem of reaching the old working class constituencies of the New Deal is to denounce and excommunicate them, and that way there is no need to reach them. I suppose that certainly has been the preferred approach for the last few decades, though the tactic seems to have fallen short on winning legislative majorities.
…denunciation and excommunication into my comments you are greatly misunderstanding me.
Also, identify the Democrats in this photo:
I think anyone in that photo old enough to vote in 1944 voted for FDR, and probably Truman. Everyone else in the photo had parents who voted for FDR and TRuman. I suspect that all the guys in white helmets who made it to 1972 voted for Nixon, and that everyone else in the photo voted McGovern.
This has been a huge issue that has afflicted the Democrats for generations now, and obviously isn’t easy to solve. So if you have the answer, say what it is!
Securing the support of cops who like to beat up protesters? We’re the better party for unionized public employees, but beyond that I don’t want to coddle racist or authoritarian attitudes.
Bob, I think you cut Frank off too soon.
I can admit that. I think we’ve all been admitting it, for years. Voters are angry, and they have a right to be angry.
But “some of the blame” doesn’t quite get to “at the feet of the Democratic Party.”
vote, but we aren’t going to get them all.
Many Trumpistas are racists. They are nativists. They are authoritarian. They want Muslims deported. They are pissed at the GOP establishment. They bought a lot of lies from the party establishment.
Hard to blame all that on “neoliberalism.”
Why not vote for Ted Cruz then? Cruz embraces all the authoritarian rhetoric from being just as tough on immigration, carpet bomb ISIS, consciously pro-cop, pro gun owner, pro men at work women in the home, strongly anti gay and anti choice. He checks off all of that, with far more consistency and credibility than Trump. It’s why he keeps winning caucuses where
more dedicated activists are coming out for.
He loses primaries to Trump where unenrolleds have come out in large numbers or Nevada which has looser rules on requirements and where Trump’s hype crushed the Cruz ground game. Precisely because of the populist economics leaving entitlement alone, backing tough policies on trade, negotiating prescription drug prices and replacing Obamacare with something simpler and universal like single payer.
This is filling the union halls in Michigan and the Midwest,
not strictly nativism or appeals to authority.
People I know who disagree with Obama’s polices are labeled racists. People whose religious upbringing has taught them gay marriage is a sin are termed bigots. People whose jobs have been taken by illegal immigrants are called nativists and haters. Folks that believe that laws which have been passed, should be enforced, are all of the above. That guy raking his leaves… he is called all of those by Democrats and he’s tired of it. He is voting for Trump.
p.s. I am not that man but I know him.
conversation. I’m not saying it’s strictly nativism or authoritarianism. We’re talking about people–extremely complex at best. Percentages of Trump supporters are racist. All of us have racist attitudes to some extent. Most people don’t vote for a single reason. I’m objecting to Thomas Frank’s over-simplification.
I’ve know three Trump supporters well. One is demonstrably racist, though she wouldn’t agree to that description. She’s also hard-core conservative. One is dumb as dirt. The other is very conservative. All tend toward an authoritarian way of thinking. Obviously, I can’t generalize from this sample, but knowing these people personally and then knowing the research, I can see the pattern.
Also, there are reasons that guy raking leaves is voting Trump, not Bernie.
. . .Obama had done something to keep gas prices from skyrocketing and tried to get unemployment down to something like 5%, people wouldn’t be going after Muslims and Mexicans.
of the Great Recession. It’s true.
But while unemployment is down, a big part of the reason why it’s down is the way we count unemployment (or, to be more accurate, choose not to count unemployment). A lot of people are no longer “unemployed” because they’ve gone on so long without a job because of the economy that the government no longer counts them. Most of these people want jobs, but short of some dramatic change to our economy or to other policies, are basically unemployable and will be for years or the rest of their lives.
And many of the people who have found jobs have found jobs that they’re earning a lot less at, or have worse benefits at, or have to work with a great deal less job security than they have before. People feel insecure, their incomes are reduced or flat, and it’s tough to say that they should be jumping up for joy even if they’re a little better off today than they were at this point in 2008.
No denying the Democrat party represents their interests, and most people here on BMG think they’re just swell.
I would say that when presented with specific examples (their kid’s teacher, say) they might be less agitated, but in general they think public employees:
1. Get paid pretty well for hours worked
2. Have great health insurance that doesn’t cost them a lot
3. Don’t have to worry about losing their jobs
4. Don’t have to worry about retirement
I can say that I wouldn’t work the public sector because I’m doing fine in the private sector, but we’re talking about “working people” and when they think Democrat, they think friend of the public sector.
Instead of stoking resentment like the other side we need to fight back to make sure private sector employees have access to the benefits you describe. We WANT the best and brightest to serve the public so I think it’s good to compensate them well (though I’m not convinced they always are).
We can have our guys get two pensions calculated off needless overtime AND support the minimum wage, A win-win!
Is that during an austerity governorship the ‘Dems’ defend the perks without sparing a time for the working man. Which in the long run could make us look like the state I just fled in about 20 years if we aren’t careful. One of the many reasons I’m throwing rocks on the outside, and to the folks doing that from the inside believe me the view is just fine from out here.
MA is just not there yet. When the pension and OPEB liabilities begin to get funded at the numbers necessary, and there’s no money for anything else, people will start howling. The problem is, as Illinois has found out, there’s no opportunity to cut as this is all guaranteed by the state constitution.
The only real opportunity for savings is to screw the new employee, which MA has already done.
…but aren’t those essentially promises made to the employees which really ought to be kept?
…aren’t pensions paid from paychecks similar to Social Security and therefore already part of the EARNED compensation? We really shouldn’t just say sorry, we’re taking away your hard earned money after all.
crystalized
so the government entity must make up the difference. I’m not arguing right or wrong (and the law determines that the promises must be kept anyway) it’s just that it will consume larger and larger shares of budgets as time goes on.
I don’t understand the claim that Democrats are the party of the “professional” or “creative” class. Draconian imaginary property laws are bipartisan. Taxes are highest on highly skilled professionals. Attacks on net neutrality and other forms of censorship and surveillance are bipartisan. The stock market is inflated and volatile, making individual investing more difficult. Just a few issues I could think of that effect the “professional” middle class and maybe less the blue collar workers. (I really can’t claim to know what the latter are concerned about though.) On all these, and so many other issues, both parties in power primarily represent the capitalist class unless there is a massive protest.
The owners and management are Republicans.
Brady and the unionized players are Democrats.
The guy picking up the towels in the locker room, who is basically ignored by both, just hopes the team doesn’t get moved.
Here’s some context, to help us in our thinking:
Imagine it is 1968. Richard Nixon introduces the notion of a ‘silent majority’ ushering into the body politic the toxicity of the paranoid style.
Imagine it is 1980. It’s ‘morning in America.’ After an election in which the Republican candidate won 488 electoral votes, that priest-king of the high church of anti-federalism spoke to a whole nation, many of whom are newly minted “Reagan Democrats.”
And thus spake he: “Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem.”
From that time forward, to this present pass, every Republican candidate, in every race, win or lose, has made iteration on those two themes: paranoia and government-as-problem. When they have lost, they complain bitterly about how liberal the media is. When they win, they have actually broken things. And they have never scrupled to point the finger at the Left for the breaking.
While I think it’s true that the progressives and (white) working people have parted ways, it’s unclear who initiated the split and why. Frank is, in essence, railing against Clintonism and the unlamented DLC of the late ’80’s and early 90’s. And there is much in there to rail against, to be sure… But whether Clinton and the DLC deliberately abandoned the (white) working class or felt that the (white) working class had already abandoned the Democrats forcing them to triangulate is a question that Frank never seems to consider.
It is also unclear whether or no the (white) working class can peacably exist in the same party (never mind the country) with the (black) working class and the (hispanic) working class. After all, policemen are decidedly working class and they, it seems, can’t seem to control their trigger fingers when it comes to black men… As for the (hispanic) working glass, well Mitt Romney is running for office, for pete’s sake… That, too, is something that Frank, et al, don’t seem to want to consider. They would rather wave away the racism as an unfortunate character flaw that surely cannot withstand the sheer force of rationality and good intentions.
Say what? Trump is new? Trump is just ‘articulating’ (*snort*) a backlash that has suddenly emerged, all by it’s lonesome…? And, it is news to me, that Trump alone has monopoly on demented.
It is worth noting that Donald Trump ran for president once before, on the “Reform Party” Ticket in 2000. He didn’t win, though. He didn’t even place. The Reform Party that year nominated Patrick J Buchanan. In 1992, Buchanan gave a speech at the Republican convention that, in the words of the immortal Molly Ivins, said “probably sounded better in the original German.” Maybe everything old is, in fact, new again…