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'The Democrats are wholly oblivious to our struggles' (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
On paper, Donald Trump’s decision to choose J.D. Vance as his running mate made perfect sense. The Rust Belt kid turned Yale graduate is an ideal figure to both troll America’s elites and woo its working-class whites. It is the Rust Belt states, after all, a collection of what was once America’s industrial core, that will decide the race. Stretching from the Upper Midwest to the Northeast, this is Vance’s cultural backyard.
The Rust Belt is my backyard, too. And in Erie, Pennsylvania, where I live, Vance’s schtick plays well. Folks here feel left behind — because they are. In their despair, they want a scapegoat.
In 1950, the Rust Belt was home to 43% of all American jobs. In Vance’s lifetime, industrial jobs have plummeted by 35%; in his early adulthood alone, 5 million factory jobs vanished. Deaths of despair filled the vacuum. Suicide in slow motion, the Rust Belt’s white working class leads the nation in early deaths caused by alcoholism, addiction and risky life choices. Before the term was even coined, Vance wrote in his 2016 Hillbilly Elegy memoir: “The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future — that if they’re lucky, they’ll manage to avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll die of a heroin overdose.”
Vance and I share more than a backyard. His biography is mine. I’ve lost my best friend, dad, aunt, uncle, and two first cousins to deaths of despair. My sister will probably be next. Broken homes, poverty, and addiction are, like Vance’s, my family’s narrative themes. I flunked high school. But like Vance, I had a grandparent who helped me survive the post-industrial apocalypse. Somehow, I bumbled into college. Eventually, I earned a PhD.
Today, as a professor, I study American liberalism. And here in the academy, white working-class despair is seen as something best ignored. This comes with a political cost, but don’t take my word for it. As Lisa Pruitt, a professor of law who studies the rural working-class, told me: “Race, ethnicity, and sexuality: It is a competition. Everyone gets a gold medal unless you are white. We need to acknowledge white pain and white vulnerability, or you can’t build a broad coalition.”
But what if Pruitt’s warning is already outdated? Today, the Democrats’ “working-class” problem has metastasised beyond whites. In 2020, Joe Biden won the Hispanic, 55-41, and black, 92-8, working-class by wide margins. Yet Republicans have made real inroads with these voters. The Democrat’s lead with the non-white working class has collapsed to nine points. Two-thirds of all voters are working-class. The math is clear. If the polls of the non-white working class hold, Trump wins in a landslide.
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Subscribe“If the polls of the non-white working class hold, Trump wins in a landslide.”
The question I’d ask the author is do the non-white working class (or the white working class for that matter) vote in significant numbers? Doesn’t matter what they say in polls if they don’t show up on election day.
Otherwise a great article, imo.
Democrats have a natural advantage in the current landscape because they operate as a collection of balkanized interest groups schooled in interest convergence theory. That Theory is basically “Republicans are racist and sexist” so join the Anti-Republican collective.
Republicans don’t see people as a smattering of self-interested groups so they don’t lean into a strategy of helping the “white working class.” They’re just getting a majority of those individual votes because they’re not scolding low income white people about White Privilege.
The Left are full of taxonomizing data harvesters. They’re not focused on just debating the issues and letting people decide. They’re strategic. They’re hyperfocused on pandering to anybody that can get them to 270.
The past 150 years of American politics is basically the Democrats continually shifting their coalitions to maximize votes and Republicans plodding around with a generally straight forward message. Trump being a non-ideologue threw a wrench in that by acting like a Democrat and peeling a large chunk of the Democrat coalition and they will never forgive him for that.
“Trump being a non-ideologue threw a wrench in that by acting like a Democrat and peeling a large chunk of the Democrat coalition and they will never forgive him for that.”
Trump was and still is a Democrat–the JFK kind. He relabelled himself a Republican and took away the country’s Center. The Dems are now just the Far Left, controlled by Bernie Sanders’ Socialist coalition and the old school Republicans, i e., the RINOs are SOL.
I’m a Massachusetts-Democrat-turned-Republican as of about 18 or so years ago. The Democrat Party today is hardly the party of JFK. It has veered so Left that it is unrecognizable.
Exactly, the Democrats ‘slice and dice’ the electorate up, pandering to each segment. However, as of late this strategy has gotten them into trouble with Middle East issue, where they find themselves caught between the Jews and Pro-Palestinian factions. This is coming into play when it comes to nominating a VP. Gov. Shapiro, a Jew, would be a great pick but the anti-Zionists will do everything they can to ensure he’s not picked.
Much of black America was impressed by Trump raising his fist after being shot. They will come out to vote for a bad ass president
yes. it does not matter what they say.. the flags on their trucks. the stickers on their cars. etc. if they dont vote it wont matter.. I saw a myriad of support for Trump in my Norcal red area.. but did they vote? nope
Yeah, it’s too bad people just give up in California. I plan on voting for Trump, but I have heard too many people say “What’s the point, California always votes Democrat anyway.” While this is true, the only way to start eating away at that lead is to vote. Maybe next election its only 60-40 dems, then 55-45 dems on the next one, or something like that. Once Republicans see that they are gaining ground, they will focus a lot more efforts out here to try to mobilize people. I see lots of Trump flags, caravans, things like that out here. You just have to get away from the city centers a bit.
The Democrats have very limited appeal to heterosexual white men, who work in the private sector. They mostly seem to want to punish us for things that occurred decades or over a century ago.
They call us rapey, racist, deplorable, toxic, and supremacist, which we find, at best, bewildering, and often enough threatening.
That they’d also very much like to ban speech, guns, gasoline, steak, and most anything we like or use is also less than enthralling.
Trump, on the other hand, seems to only threaten those who break immigration or criminal laws. And seems to be okay with such retrograde and uncouth things as free market capitalism (at least domestically) and a capable military.
Half a century ago the working force was almost all white men.
Now half the working class is women.
Plus the minority increase has lessened whites capacity.
No wonder they are sad losers with Big Chips on their shoulders .
They are naive to think Republicans are going to help them with good job prospects .
If I may, I would like to offer one old guys perspective on why we are where we are and where I think things are gonna go.
The political issues we face today go back to the 1990’s and the end of the Cold War. The republicans were the party of the country club and Chamber of Commerce, the party of the old Wall Street. The democrats were the union, blue collar party, the party of Civil Rights and Women’s rights, the party of the working and middle class. The country was still largely run by the Greatest Generation with the common experiences of the Great Depression and WWII and the Cold War. Both parties were unabashedly patriotic parties that were proud of their country and its role in the world, both confident in our economic and military strength. Both parties were unabashedly religious. The republicans more on the protestant side and the democrats more rooted in the Catholic Church of their working class base. The democrats were more anti-war and the republicans more aggressive in use of military force. We were only 20 yrs from Roe v Wade and 25 or so from the height of the Civil Rights movement. Busing and race riots were still in the consciousness of the nation.
But, between 1992 or so and 2015 a lot would happen that would shatter the direction and makeup of both parties, first in a merging of interests and then a shattering of them.
The root of a lot of our issues go back to Bill Clinton and the 3rd Way Democrats. In my opinion, Bill Clinton sold out the working class and blue collar Joe’s (remember Joe the Plumber?) in order to entice Wall Street and Silicon Valley money to the democratic donor pool. Until then, the republicans had been consistently beating the daylights out of the democrats in fund raising and it cost them. Hence we get NAFTA, over the objections of the unions, and financial reform that killed off the Glass Steagle rules and opened the floodgates to financialization. We now had not one, but TWO parties that were dedicated to neoliberal economics, to catering to the interests of the financial class
.
It was a process, but over time the working and middle class lost all representation of their interests. Great deal for the donor class, they now controlled the policy of both political parties. The first leg of the Washington consensus was in place. Nobody was fighting free trade, outsourcing, offshoring, or H1B’s or more cheap labor pouring over the southern border.
This all went into hyperdrive under Bush Jr. Then, along comes 9/11 and the war on terror, Afghanistan, Iraq and military action all over the globe. Both parties jump in with full throated support. Money pours in from defense contractors who’s interests align with those at the Pentagon, State Department and the IC. Lot of people with career and financial interests in the government being at war. Easier to get promoted if you have combat experience and the military budget is growing. Easier to make connections with defense contractors for lucrative positions when you retire or get out. Easier to get a job with a think tank of major corporation when leaving the IC or the State Department if you were involved with something dramatic overseas. Easier to justify increased budgets and promotions in government when you are showing value somehow.
Obama and Clinton as Sec State kept up the Bush policies with the exception of Iran. We got into Libya, Syria, kept our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, now both parties are pro-war neoconservatives on foreign policy. But who is doing the fighting, the dying, the being maimed and crippled? It was the sons and daughters of the working and middle class as it always is. Young men and women from patriotic families with a military heritage, working class kids trying to get some experience and the GI Bill, kids that could not find a job. It was not the sons and daughters of Wall Street titans or Silicon Valley investors or of college professors. No, it was the sons and daughters of plumbers, farmers, trades people and the poor. So, if both parties are now neoliberal on economics and both parties are now neoconservative on foreign policy, how do they differentiate themselves in elections? Answer: Social issues.
So let’s get everybody spun up about abortion and race and gender. Let’s push every emotional button we can on every potential social issue that creates fractures to exploit in peeling off enough voters to take power. But the whole time NOBODY is paying attention to the basic economic needs of the working and middle class who continued to see their jobs disappear, when their very towns did not disappear, when that was not happening they were watching their wages and benefits decline while the cost of housing and other necessities like food and health insurance kept rising faster than inflation overall. Never mind the spiraling cost of a college degree which was being touted as the only hope for good life and stable income.
Into this mix we now throw a cultural transformation of the democratic party from reflecting the values of middle class, middle America, to those of a coastal elite with luxury beliefs. The democrats became the party of a college educated, laptop class, of elites that have nothing but contempt for those of the working or middle class. They sneer at patriotism as being gouache. Remember Obama’s comments about clingers to God and Guns? Hillary and her basket of deplorables? Remember her telling coal workers she would put them out of jobs or telling people they needed to learn to code? This was the time that the term “flyover country” came into being. A whole swath of the country just not worth seeing or listening to. A bunch of retrograde barbarians to be tamed and managed, not consulted.
The culture of the democratic party became that of San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston, and DC, its values those of university sociology professors, Hollywood and wealthy socialites. Arrogant and exclusive and insulated by wealth.
But before I get to 2015 and the appearance of Trump, there were TWO major events that occurred that really drove home the divide between the working and middle classes and their two political parties. The first was China entering the WTO under Bush Jr. which put free trade, globalization, offshoring into hyper drive. The second was the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 and Obama’s actions and lack thereof. In short, the big banks got bailed out, or more accurately their investors got bailed out, as compared to what was done for those middle and working class people who saw their jobs, any wealth they had, wiped out, who saw waves of foreclosures that vulture investors would then capitalize on. This was only exacerbated when the Obama administration refused to prosecute bankers out of fear of undermining the confidence in the banks.
This last started something else…Two tiered justice system. That Obama failed to prosecute bankers I think galled a lot of average people. Then comes Hillary and her email server. Now, I work in classified spaces and have been cleared at a high level for over 2 decades. I cannot even begin to express the fury that a lot of people, particularly in government or government contracting felt over that deal. We have all had friends lose careers, some driven to bankruptcy defending themselves, some faced jail time, for far far less egregious security violations. And we all knew that she did it to avoid FOIA and congressional oversight. But then she is not the only senior government official to get a slap on the wrist for violations that would have destroyed any of us that did anything remotely like what they have done. That is just two examples, but I am sure if we were to go back to pre-2015 and Google search we could find many more examples. People saw this and realized that if you are rich, powerful, or well connected, the rules do not apply to you.
Between 1992 and 2015 voters swung right, then they swung left in cycles trying to shake loose the Washington Consensus and get change and their pains addressed by an indifferent or even hostile government. There was a vacuum in the US political system, an empty place that provided no representation for the working or middle classes.
Enter Trump. As Michael Moore said, Trump was the biggest FU the voters ever sent to DC. He talked about the issues that these working and middle class voters had been screaming about for a decade. He mocked the political correctness that so irritated them. He was and is, unabashedly patriotic and unashamed of it. Both parties hated his guts and it felt good to piss them off. They liked his policies even if they did not like the man. Trump’s policies always polled 5 points or more popular than the man.
And THIS is the biggest mistake both parties have made with Trump. They think Trump is a cult of personality called MAGA. He is not. What he is is the only vessel available for a movement that detests both parties and their policies. He talked about fair trade that benefited them and not Wall Street and how China was a great threat when most of DC, Silicon Valley and Wall Street loved them for being a potential market and source of cheap labor and refused to see that we were empowering an authoritarian regime with money and advanced manufacturing and technology IP. He was against more wars that their sons and daughters would have to fight and was about making deals and not being the world’s policeman. In short, he said screw Obama’s “manufacturing is never coming back”, Hillary’s threat to kill coal jobs, the Bill Krystal and Mitch McConnel desire for more wars, and made it ok for people to just speak their minds without having to feel guilt tripped for slipping on some elite sensitivity. He told them that they were ok and valuable and not unseen or unheard, that flyover country and it’s values are really the heart of America. He was flat out unafraid which they respected and wish they could be.
Trump poured in to fill that vacuum the democrats had created.The aftermath of Trump’s election. Imagine you are one of those working class, blue collar, voters that just sent that FU to DC. Now imagine that when that FU, in the form of Trump, shows up and the entire DC establishment you hate, the media that you do not trust, turns around and sets up a “Resistance” to undermine everything you sent him there for? What you hear is that the establishment and its media support are not gonna listen even now, that they are telling you to get back in your place and they have to power to make that happen. Now imagine you are those same people, and all the elites and the big media pundits are calling you racist, Nazi, ignorant losers in the game of life, and that MAGA and those who support it must be destroyed. What would your reaction to that be? Rage? Fear? What that did was link those voters to Trump on a near permanent basis, his enemies were now theirs as well. When the media come flat out and say what was assumed but never said, confirmed for everyone, that the rules of standard journalism did not apply anymore and that all that mattered was getting rid of Trump and his followers, what would your reaction be? Contempt and disgust and complete distrust?
Trump destroyed the republican establishment of the Mitt Romney, vulture capitalists, and the Mitch McConnel neoconservatives and bible thumpers. (Think he ever thought he would be booed at a republican convention?) He brought into the party voters that neither of those men would ever consider worthwhile. He brought the working class, he brought more minorities and he promoted more women. He turned his back on the traditional republican donor class, the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable class. His life was made easier by the fact that those entities had turned to the democrats and alienated the traditional, Ted Cuz, Marco Rubio types. Both of those latter two have made clear statements while Trump was out of office that the future of the party is multi-racial and working class/middle class. They have surrendered the monied interests to the democrats because they know that the democrats will give the money guys what they want and be aligned with them culturally. Note too how the party is far less attentive to the religious right. Just as Bill Clinton and Obama did with the working class, they are asking themselves where else are they gonna go? The democrats?
But another factor at play is that the republicans are turning over generations faster than the democrats. GenX and Millenials are stepping up. Yes, they are still conservative but these generations care a LOT less about things like gay marriage or abortion, they are less traditional and more pragmatic. They have grown up in a multi-racial/multi-cultural world and are comfortable with it. Multi-racial marriage and gay marriage are normal to them. This generation of republicans has seen the effects of globalization and unchecked corporate influence and distrust both. The Bush generation republicans are dead.
Apart from Harris herself, most of the democratic leaders are old, very old, and their views and the battles they want to fight are the battles of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, not the issues of today.So, where does that leave us? Well, the parties have been going through a realignment for most of the last 30 yrs. Its been a long process. But as things stand today the democrats are the party of big money and elite luxury positions. They are the party of the Martha’s Vinyard set, the Malibu set, the Zuckerburg and Beezos set. The party of hedge fund bundlers and social justice warriors that are not much more than useful idiots to the monied guys and foot soldiers for the party and the children of the professional class. The SJWs are the moral cover for the monied interests running the party. Have the democrats done ONE thing in the last 30 yrs that was a real threat to the economic interests of Wall Street or Silicon Valley? No. Are they likely to? No. Lina Kahn maybe? But the donors are pushing Harris to get rid of her. Sure, they will TALK about it, but it is all just gaslighting. It was not the democratic voters that got Biden to step down, it was the money drying up in a donor revolt. The party is run by the donors and the donors are not going to countenance any real action that threatens their interests. They will toss the SJW’s overboard in a heartbeat if it impacts their bottom line. We have seen that already with ESG policies and now DEI.
The republicans are further along in their transformation. They are now a national populist party more than a conservative one in the traditional sense. Social issues are less important to them. Apart from what I have previously said about this, you have to include the impact of Roe being overturned. The republicans were the dog that caught the car with that one and they have figured that out. Sure, Roe is gone but they fast found out that a lot of republican women who previously could count on it being there and so could ignore that part of the party platform came out of the woods and said “not so fast”. Politicians like to win and if supporting the elimination of abortions is gonna cost them votes they are gonna step away. That too is gonna be a process that runs state by state but it will be settled there and that is where the battles are gonna be for as long as they last. But do not be surprised if the republicans propose a national bill that would not ban abortions but would actually set a floor for when states can ban them. It would surprise me not at all to see them propose a national minimum of 10 weeks unquestioned and then for the life and health of the mother or incest which would align almost perfectly with where the American people are according to the polling. They would leave the rest to the states. They are also a party less interested in undercutting the social safety net. That is partly political pragmatism and partly a result of the new generations coming up who have seen the economy change so much in their lifetimes and who no longer trust big business. They do not trust the government much either for that matter but ya gotta go somewhere. They are a lot less interested in policing the world and are much more willing to be pragmatic about living in a multipolar world, they are not interested in changing the rest of the world, just preserving the corner of it that is the US. This is a party now more interested in coexisting with hostile powers and autocrats than engaging in wars with them or in regime change. The exception to that might be Iran.
The election? Well, despite the makeover the media is trying to do with Harris and despite Trump’s regular ability to offend, I am putting my money on the Orange Man to win. Rich people can afford to vote on luxury beliefs and on being “inspired”, working people have to be pragmatic and vote their economic interests, they have to be transactional voters. At the end of the day, the first 3 yrs of the Trump presidency were some of the best for working Americans in years. There were no new wars. The border was secure. NAFTA was renegotiated and the Abraham Accords were signed. China was exposed for the creature it really is and tariffs and technology transfer restrictions put in place. Trump was right on NATO not pulling it weight and to question whether it makes sense as it is constructed today. He was right about European dependency on Russian energy. He was right to call BS on the Paris accords, not because the idea of the accords was off but because of the unfair burden it put on the US. He was right about the source of the Covid virus. Yep, he got a bunch wrong too, but on the stuff that matters today he kinda nailed it.
The Biden years have been a disaster. From Covid school shutdowns, to the shifting policies and information on the vaccines and the virus itself, to masking, shutting down the economy, to stupid things like 6’ social distancing. Inflation is out of control due to the excessive money printing. (Yes, the republican house owns that too). That inflation then pushed the fed to jack up rates. From the looks of todays employment data, the downward revisions to previous months data, and things like McDonald’s earnings and the number of low and middle income people at risk of defaulting on car loans among others, it looks like we may already be entering a recession. What is scary is that we may well be looking at deflation instead of just disinflation and deflation will wipe out 401k’s and home values and push cars deeper underwater and the same for homes purchased at the high prices of the last few years with higher rates.
Meaning? Repossessions and foreclosures that will be snapped up for rentals by companies like Berkshire Hathaway that is sitting on $200 billion in cash. It is just now August. This recession could be well underway in the public mind by November. The b***h is that we have no room in the budget to go all Keynesian to fight that recession. Two other stats that I think will matter? More Americans believe Biden and the democrats are a greater threat to democracy than Trump. A huge majority of the population thinks the country is on the wrong track.
Wow, I did not set out to write and essay. Hope I did not waste your time or mine! Just did a brain dump. Sorry.
Rather long but worth it.
Whew, I nearly ran out of wind toward the end, but a great piece.
Very good…
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Hi Daniel.
This is one of the best comments I have ever read! Truly, I’ve been trying to find something that simply but precisely explains what the heck happened to the democratic party and you’ve explained it here perfectly. I really do hope you’re right, that the majority of Americans realize the threat they have now become to democracy.
p.s Robert Malone posted your comment, that’s how found it.
D@mn bro! That was probably one of the best summations for “how we got to where we are” I’ve read.
Have you tried getting in touch with your local Republican headquarters?…I suspect you’d rise through the range pretty quickly. They DESPERATELY need some new speechwriters!!!
Yes, they are all sad, dumb, racist losers! This sums up perfectly the elite Democratic attitude. Hence the working class are looking for someone else to vote for.
Republicans, however, might just get out of the way and stop punishing us for how we were born.
Trump went to an Ivy League school—the University of Pennsylvanian—as did Vance—Yale. Vance’s book claims that many of his family members are losers. Many Republicans in the Senate and House went to Ivy League schools. Republicans are elites as much as Democrats. I think the essay is excellent, but did Trump do anything to help the blue color worker? Biden did. The Democrats lost the working class , but the Republicans haven’t done much either.
Well yes he renegotiated the North American trade agreement vis the USMCA terms to be much more favorable to American workers. He imposed tariffs on cheap Chinese goods which increased competition plus the availability of goods.
He terminated the silly Paris Agreement that imposes a bunch of pointless job killing requirements on US businesses. Oh and he enforced immigration law which not only freed up jobs but kept down prices by reducing total demand On an overwhelmed system.
Biden overwhelmed the public welfare system and then sought endlessly to bail out his core constituency of Gender Studies Activists. He imposed vaccine mandates. He pushed an all of government diversity and equity program that also applies to federal contractors. He forced the auto industry to reconfigure their whole fleet to build EVs when there is almost no demand.
Everything he did was inflationary and hurt regular people. Keep up the fight White Knight. You’re on the right side of History.
I’m doing much better under Biden than under Trump. Trump tried to destroy the ACA, the only health insurance available to me at the time. No debt, mortgage paid off nearly 8 years ago. I’m from a working-class background. I financed a BS and an MA from two different Big Ten universities largely myself. Either of my two cats would make a better president than Trump. Unlike Vance, I remain a lifelong moderate Democrat.
And an avid viewer of MSNBC is my guess. The cats thing is telling. A single white woman without children by any chance?
More power to anybody who loves higher gas and food prices. More illegal immigrants being supported by their taxes. More crime. More drugs and more sex slavery.
Go for it. To each his / her own.
If you’re a “lifelong moderate Democrat” I’d say you have more in common with Trump and Vance than Harris and Walz…..
The lowest two income classes, especially blacks also experienced the highest wage gains under Trump than they had experienced in decades.
Just because one went to an Ivy League School doesn’t mean you can’t identify and empathize with a large part of the country that is ailing. We’re talking Smith, MIT, Harvard and Yale in our household. The Democrat Party has profound problems and blind spots, too many to mention here. But perhaps the most egregious has been the undemocratic election machinations at the national level going back decades. Most egregiously, the manufactured nomination of electing a mentally- challenged Joe Biden in the first place, who subsequently chose a VP based on skin color and sex with little regard to competency. The Democrats’ and their quest for power and what they’ll do to get that, are doing a grave disservice to the USA.
None of this matters EXCEPT policy of each potential President and his/her party.
Every voter is finally going to say:
“Are you better of today or during Trump Presidency. ”
If you are happy with the last 4 years, vote Kamala . If not vote Trump.
Very simple.
Just because your family members are losers doesn’t mean you want the government to abuse them for political gain.
If one looks at the rates of deaths of despair it becomes clear that a form of social murder is occurring. Why support old political norms which are being used to obliterate our way of life.
Excellent essay that shows us why the Dems have abandoned the working class. They don’t know any and have met very few. I’m absolutely shocked that only one Dem has ever worked a blue-collar or service job. I suspect the numbers aren’t much better for Republicans either, but this disconnect is scary.
One thing I find a bit irritating is the sudden regret of Vance as VP, simply because he has been dragged through the mud by the regime media. Wake up. Any Republican would be demonized by the regime media, no matter who it was. The latest controversy is speculation that he wears eye liner!!! WTF. Harris has been the Dem candidate for two weeks, has yet to conduct a single interview, but not a whisper of concern from her allies in the regime media.
Yes well-said as always Jim, I’d add that the irritation about Vance regret is reflected in the author’s silly reference to the “sexist” cat lady remarks. In context that comment is mostly unassailable; the author’s decision to give it significance shows his own bias.
Word.
If the MSM hates on a politician it means he’s an enemy of progressives and has my support. JD Vance will one day be president.
Hillary Clinton described the hierarchy of the Democratic Party’s opinion of their base. Deplorables. She, Kamala and Joe all look down on the American working class.
What did JD Vance or this author do ?
Work a summer college break blue collar job !o!
Now they are experts on Labor ????
Myself 40 years as a House Painter;
Republicans do not treat you any better,
only focused on their own success,
and are just as oblivious to the workers conditions.
This is a Nonsequitur. Nothing follows. Its just a bunch of standalone statements.
What did he do?! Read Vance’s autobiography.
Stopping immigration would and did have an immediate positive impact on wages and working conditions. This is a silly comment. And by the way, read JD Vance’s book. To say that he doesn’t have skin in the game shows your ignorance rather badly.
Hillary referred to Trump voters as, “irredeemable deplorables”. She’s a callous person. Trump has targeted dozens of individuals with targeted nicknames but he has never besmirched the electorate at large as have Hillary, Obama and Biden.
It’s not so different here in the UK.
Labour long ago gave up on working people, unless you work in the feather bedded public sector. There, the money and pensions just keep flowing. But for typical working class people, they are more or less the enemy, though for historical reasons, many still vote for them.
Things are bubbling and boiling, and they won’t end well. When you can’t change things with a vote, eventually things just break.
The problem is that at some point the republican has to put his money where his mouth is. Being a hardliner on cultural issues only gets you so far, in the end the economic conditions of the forgotten working class, they have chosen to represent, have to improve as well. This most likely means a radical break with the party’s neoliberal Reaganite legacy in favor of some New Deal’ish policy. How likely is that? The party is still supported by same conservative neoliberal think tanks (see also Project 2025) and still funded by oligarchs who’s class interests are antagonistic to the working class. In many countries we see that once the “populists” are in power they have a hard time to actually deliver much to their working class voters.
Not that the democrats are much or any better in this regard of course, and that is precisely the big problem. The whole underlying system will have to change in a way that will seem very radical to many. But that is because 40 years of relentless neoliberal indoctrination has produce a paradigm that is actually very extreme. As the author, I suppose, also tried to suggest, it is far from mainstream liberalism.
Always remember, the first Trump admin was obstructed, every step of the way, by both sides of congress. He also was challenged to find admin appointees who would execute a new vision. So you are absolutely correct. It was disgusting to see only the tax cut get through. And the Supremes. All other possibly productive policies were choked off by congress and admin state.
Vance’s recent “cat lady” rhetoric, for instance, is as stupid as it is sexist.
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It’s not stupid or sexist. It’s just an accurate description of the state of affairs in the country.
Democrats even tout that”women, especially black women are the backbone of the party” and it shows. To their exclusion, black men have been noting this as well in essays and interviews and they don’t like it. That’s one of the effects of pandering to certain slices of the electorate snd not to others.
Late to the party, folks. Republicans have for a considerable time been moving from the academicized elites of the Left with their outrageous claims of the only brains on earth, to a robust, working, including many educated professionals with reality brains, constituency for a considerable pre-Trump period. To be fair, the Republicans missed it, too! But Trump pointed out who they had become, starting with the Tea Party.
Some still resist leaving the cocktail set but most have looked around at what actually matters and joined up. You can pretend it’s a pretense, but it isn’t. The sane, working realists from all walks, farmers to the rare professor, lawyers, scientists, doctors, small business owners, entrepreneurs, to plumbers, and lawn services are not going away. They are not divided into racist, gender obsessed, angry avengers. They gather by basic values. The old ones like religion, family, neighborhood, commonsense and yes, pride and meaning.
They are ripe for leadership. As much as JD is the new pariah, it’s the Left kidding themselves that he isn’t real. He is. And oddly, so is Trump. The people may not win this time, but soon. That’s a promise, and a threat for some.
I like this. Trust in the people! When I say “The People”, I mean that big majority of Republicans and Democrats who stand for common sense and reality. Okay, maybe it’s not such an obvious majority of Democrats anymore but I still think that common sense will prevail, it’s just taking some people longer than others to realize that we are getting too far off course. There are a lot of people on both sides that are ready for this back and forth to start to calm down a bit.
Very good point about the Democratic obsession with the White House.
My father, who was a reporter (not a ‘journalist’!) and feature writer in NYC, always told me that I was wasting my time reading the international and national news; the local news is what actually mattered to us. And he was right.
The Dems are missing a valuable opportunity. The only thing I ever hear from them is “We need your money” (which is far more comical than they know). They don’t really seem to like other people. The GOP, I’m told, still has coffee-klatches, bake sales and picnics; which sounds like a much better idea. You can bring the kids, meet some new people, hear some new jokes, etc.
“Cat ladies” are those ladies who were always looking for the “perfect guy”, taller than she, and richer; better-looking than she, younger; oh, and she’s got to be in charge. Never finding him, she stayed single and is now mother to her cats. Sorry, but it’s her fault, kids.
Really. This single “cat lady” lost her late husband to complications of frontotemporal degeneration 2.5 years ago, 8 days after his 66th birthday. He was a private-pay long-term care resident for 6 years, 4 months. I don’t need a rich guy; I’m financially secure on my own. I’m open to marrying a guy who treats me as an equal, as my late husband did. At 5’3″ tall, it wouldn’t be hard to find a taller guy.
What JD was getting at is the ‘feminization’ of the Democrat Party. He’s not wrong.
my animal trainer friend who used to be animal control said the cat ladies were the cruelest to their cats. hoarding them and keeping them in filthy condition a hazard to both cats an the ladies
In inflation adjusted dollars, wages hit their highest point in 1973. Since then we’ve had stagflation in the rest of the 1970s, some improvements, but not enough to hit the 73 high water mark.
The most incisive political statement… not only for class relations in the USA but also in the many ‘populist’ surges elsewhere. Perhaps even in the outbreak of violent protest in the UK.
Technocratic solutions such as censorship of ‘the internet’, lawfare, or Facial Recognition Software are aimed at taming the rude mechanicals – and fail to address or even exacerbate the ‘left behind’ feelings.
“We don’t prioritise city councils or mayor races that have the jurisdiction.”
Umm no, every major American city is run by Democrats. Its not that they dont prioritize, its that their policies–DEI, open borders,…etc.–are cancerous to the working class.
“JD Vance’s recent cat-lady” – he made this comment in 2021. He was not a Senator (elected in 2022) at that time. He was a private citizen seeking to raise his profile. The whole “cat-lady” thing, which is pretty accurate, is taken out of context.
The cat lady comment was spot on. If you’re a professor in an American college now, you would have to say it’s “stupid and sexist”. Oh my, such a hateful accusation. You left out ‘racist’. The whole essay reminds me of a Barack Obama with his claims to black suffrage. What a joke.
The Cultural Marxist Democrats are obsessed with the White House and will DO ANYTHING to gain and hold political power. They destroy America! They lie, cheat, steal elections, commit violence, and worse!
Progressives imitate Leninists: They have become rich, powerful, and famous by posing as advocates of the poor, the dispossessed, and the marginalized. And they maintain their position, not by SOLVING problems, but by expanding the market of “problem-solving.” Well, enough! The mask has been removed.
I doubt that single barren women with cats and causes have that much political clout in the US. It’s probably about equal to the trans people who are .003% of the population. The news media owned by the plutocratic left can huff and puff all they like, but numbers count in those elections that are not stolen by the Democrats. Unless they are stupid — not always a sure bet — the Republicans will be closely watching vote counts in the counties and precincts that decide which way the electoral college goes.
Let’s just assume for a moment Trump/Vance win. Does anyone actually think they’ll change much for the folks referenced by the Author?
We forget Trump had 2 years with total control of Congress and WH. Much change? He spent more time looking at Twitter than he did working policies through the legislature that actually did something for these folks. It’d be the same again. His tension span ain’t getting any better and he’s one of the v Rich so he ain’t hurting himself or those like him.
He may technically have had control of Congress for 2 years but de facto he had no such thing. Paul Ryan and the other RINOs hated him just as much as the Democrats because he didn’t follow their Neocon playbook. The National Review hated him then and still does.
The Clinton’s and the Democrats sold out to Wall Street in the mid 1990’s. Tech and the media were brought into the fold and Clinton started the trend if you were a senior bureaucrat or military officer, you had to bend the knee to get ahead and thousands did and are continuing to do so. It is almost risk-free, take the FBI Agents Strock and Lisa Page. They just received a 1.2 million bribe, err, settlement from these very Bureaucrats. Look those clowns up and you will know DC and Dems have created a sewer out of the swamp. They have jived Black folks since the 1970s, watch the movie Bullworth, with Warren Beatty. He gives a great rap version of how the Dems play lip service with absolutely no intention of following through on their promise to 99 percent of blacks, The ones that bend the knee, no problem, you are taken care of. This is starting to come home to roost, not only with the blacks, but the hispanics, and even Asians. Let us hope so.