Yesterday, in this blog and also on my Facebook page, I opened up an exploration regarding why and how some of the less well-to-do segments of US society seem to be voting against their interests, according to the blue Democrats.
I’m pasting here some additional comments that I added to the Facebook threads.
An internet stranger on a Democrat friend’s feed commented that my thoughts about looking deeper and getting curious might be “all good in a world of magical thinking.” And that trying to reason with “those people” is like reasoning with a drunk; that they have imbibed the Kool-Aid for decades etc. etc. And she said good luck with that.
My first response was to feel very offended at what I perceived as condescension coming from this person. But before firing off some sort of snarky reply, I just took a deep breath. And remembered the whole idea of what I was trying to do.
And I wrote:
I don’t need “luck.” I have research skills, and I talk with people. [Note added later: talking with people is actually part of research. It’s often overlooked.] Magical thinking is something I’m definitely not into. I’m into practicality. And, in the past 24 hours, it’s actually become pretty clear to me how it came about that these red voters departed from the Democrat party. It’s not rocket science. All I did was refresh my memory about some of the Democrat policy shifts (which may have been well-intentioned but didn’t turn out the way they were intended), and also look back on the experience of prior generations of my own extended family.
Are things irreparably broken? No! It’s amazing what one can accomplish just by listening. I’m not into crying over spilt milk. Everything is an experiment. Government leaders try different policies, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.
When people are in fear of losing their livelihoods and being economically insecure, it’s hard for anybody to keep a level head. This goes for anyone of any political ideology. (ADDED LATER: Especially when this fear is based in actual reality, as has been amply documented. Whole towns losing their economic base when a factory shut down in the wake of NAFTA etc.)
On a meta note: Comments from Internet strangers can feel jarring. Because we’re not getting to hear each other’s voices or look at each other as we speak. If anything about this comment I am making in response to your comment feels threatening or unkind or attacking, or lacking in empathy toward you and whatever your circumstances are, please know that is not my intention.
And a bit later I added a further comment:
Adding to this comment. So, the Democrat policy shifts in the 1980s – mainly embracing supply-side economics; and lowering trade barriers — ended up creating economic hardship for people. And the hardship fell on people selectively. One of the best ways I heard it summed up was in one of the articles I linked, where they said a small community could be devastated when the textile factory in its town closed down and hundreds of residents lost their jobs; meanwhile millions of people all over the country enjoyed marginally lower prices on clothing.
So the policy shift created economic hardship and insecurity, and fears of more to come.
So then what do people do when they have economic fear and hardship? Well, experience and history shows that there is a tendency to reach for the seemingly comfortable solution of an authoritarian strongman. Tough on crime, tough on immigration. Xenophobia runs high; immigrants get blamed for everything. And the whole root is a deep-seated insecurity about the very roof over one’s head.
We also cannot underestimate the emotional impact of how betrayed the miners and textile workers and auto workers and all must have felt at this shift in policy, to global competition and trickle-down economics. Neo-liberalism.
This is obviously extremely simplified and generalized, but this is what I see as the pattern that has caused the departure of working-class people from the Democrat party.
That’s the end of the comments that I replied to the individual with.
Here’s another observation that I posted on my own page this morning:
And – I’ve been exploring this issue for a long time, but my burst of reading and exploration over the past 24 hours or so has helped me put together some puzzle pieces that had been puzzling me for a long time.
To wit –
— How it is that the Democrat party can drift so far right, and yet the perceived by the right as being more left than they’ve ever been;
— How it is that many of my Democrat friends are unable to process feedback from a lefty, saying that their party has drifted very far right.
All of this is not about shaming anyone or beating anyone up; it’s about troubleshooting so we (USA) don’t end up continuing to go down the road toward seeking more and more authoritarianism and intolerance.
Oh and here’s yet another aspect, in regard to income inequality and effects of the financialization of the economy:
A lot of wealthy people have 401(k)s. Even some in the middle class have 401(k)s nowadays. So a lot of people are actually benefiting from insane corporate profits.
So a lot of people who identify as middle-class are unknowingly rooting for something that is actually messing up things for the working classes.
With one hand, everyday people are boosting corporations, while with the other hand we are trying to survive the cutthroat world in which the corporations operate.
Further Exploration:
(As time permits, I’m going to copy-paste the magazine article links I shared on my post yesterday. And will include a few excerpts of what I consider the real take-aways.)
— “Workin’ man blues: How the Democrats lost the white working class.” (Deseret News; by Mya Jaradat. Published: April 30, 2023, 8:45 p.m. MDT.) https://www.deseret.com/2023/3/30/23452288/working-class-democrats-politics-socioeconomics/
“Though there were differences between how much centrist Democrats embraced Reaganomics and neoliberalism, by and large, they moved the needle of the party’s economic policies to the right. ‘Once they did that, economically, there is no difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party … Clinton was closer to Reagan than he was to the Democratic Party of Roosevelt.’
“There is still much working-class resentment around the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Clinton signed despite wide opposition from labor unions. …
“The Democratic Party has taken up the mantle of speaking out about racism, but analysts say that this has come at the expense of addressing the issues that many Americans are most concerned about.
“When you see progressives say things like, ‘It’s all about race,’ they effectively deny that something economically significant has also happened. And that’s sort of like saying (to the white working class) ‘The economic pain that you’re feeling isn’t real …
(The article also goes on to point out that the Dems alienated some Black people and immigrants with this narrative as well, as people do not like being portrayed as victims. They prefer the narrative of hope; of the American dream being attainable by all.)
— Why and Where the Working Class Turned Right. A new book documents the lost (and pro-Democratic) world of Pennsylvania steelworkers and how it became Republican.
BY HAROLD MEYERSON JANUARY 8, 2024. https://prospect.org/politics/2024-01-08-why-working-class-turned-right/
— Why so many blue-collar workers drifted away from Democratic Party. Christy DeSmith, Harvard Staff Writer; October 26, 2023. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/10/why-so-many-blue-collar-workers-drifted-from-democrats/
— “How Democrats Alienated Their Working-Class Voter Base.” Yaakov Kornreich; August 23, 2023. https://yated.com/how-democrats-alienated-their-working-class-voter-base/
— “Democrats are replacing Republicans as the preferred party of the very wealthy.” (Lee Drutman; vox.com; June 3, 2016.) https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2016/6/3/11843780/democrats-wealthy-party
— This piece by Laura Carlsen in the opinion pages of the New York Times from 2013 provides a good overview of how NAFTA free trade agreement harmed Mexico and in the end came back to haunt the USA. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/24/what-weve-learned-from-nafta/under-nafta-mexico-suffered-and-the-united-states-felt-its-pain
“Nafta has cut a path of destruction through Mexico. … As heavily subsidized U.S. corn and other staples poured into Mexico, producer prices dropped and small farmers found themselves unable to make a living. Some two million have been forced to leave their farms since Nafta.
“At the same time, consumer food prices rose, notably the cost of the omnipresent tortilla. As a result, 20 million Mexicans live in “food poverty”. … Transnational industrial corridors in rural areas have contaminated rivers and sickened the population and typically, women bear the heaviest impact. … The agreement drastically restructured Mexico’s economy and closed off other development paths by prohibiting protective tariffs, support for strategic sectors and financial controls.
“Nafta’s failure in Mexico has a direct impact on the United States. Although it has declined recently, jobless Mexicans migrated to the United States at an unprecedented rate of half a million a year after Nafta.
“Workers in both countries lose when companies move, when companies threaten to move as leverage in negotiations, and when nations like Mexico lower labor rights and environmental enforcement to attract investment.
“Farmers lose when transnational corporations take over the land they supported their families on for generations. Consumers lose with the imposition of a food production model heavy on chemical use, corporate concentration, genetically modified seed and processed foods. Border communities lose when lower environmental standards for investors affect shared ecosystems.”