A quick look at the geography of election returns shows that some fundamental things have changed. Just to use Pennsylvania as an example, last night Hillary Clinton netted 455,000 votes out of Philadelphia and 95,000 votes out of Pittsburgh compared to the 450,000 and 90,000 that Obama netted in 2012. Romney narrowly carried suburban Chester County in 2012 by about a thousand votes, but Clinton won it by 35,000. Yet, Obama carried the state with 52% and Clinton lost it with only 47.7%.
What changed? Take a look at Somerset County in Western Pennsylvania (site of the 9/11 Flight 93 crash) where 33,000 votes were cast in 2012 and 35,000 votes were cast in 2016. The real difference wasn’t increased turnout. The difference was Romney won 71% and netted 14,500 votes, but Trump won 77% and netted 20,000. This pattern repeated itself in rural county after county in Pennsylvania until Hillary’s better performance in the cities and suburbs was erased and even Obama’s margins were wiped away. You can see similar effects in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere that almost entirely explain the surprising result last night. Clinton met the benchmarks in cities like Miami and Philadelphia but was overwhelmed by a rural white vote that rejected her and the Democrats in unprecedented numbers.
If this is a temporary Trump-induced aberration, it might be survivable, but if it becomes the new normal the left can forget about controlling the House of Representatives or most state legislatures and will leave itself open to more Electoral College disappointments.
At the Washington Monthly, we’ve been grappling with regional inequality for some time. In our most recent issue my brother Phil wrote a piece on the potential for a revival of anti-trust enforcement to revitalize the economies of small town America. It was pitched as an idea to conservatives who might be looking for some policy light at the end of their post-Trump tunnel. In this new world we’re living in, the same ideas can serve a similar purpose for progressives and offers at least a reed of hope for bipartisanship.
Our challenge going forward is to come up with actual policy prescriptions that can prevent what happened last night from becoming the new normal.
This is also a way of meeting the racial challenge presented by Trump’s victory without making allowances for it or saying that it is any way “okay.” If the Democrats take the message that the status quo wasn’t working for these folks to heart and try to do something aggressive to restore small town America, that’s good for everyone and doesn’t leave anyone out. If, on the other hand, these folks are vilified as undereducated bigots, it won’t be long before they feel about us the same way that we feel about Trump. No one needs to sweep any of that under the rug, but that can’t be the response.
These communities used to be filled with privately-owned banks and pharmacies and hardware shops. They can be again with an aggressive anti-trust push.
People need to start thinking about other things that can done, because the Obama coalition doesn’t have the geographical breadth to overcome a rural America that votes against them in these numbers as a matter of habit.
Glad to see some clear thinking. We have been discussing these issuses, in various ways, for a while; but the national party (as represented by the DNC, well known voices and major donors) could care less. Why should they, it doesn’t effect them.
Its going to take a change in national Dem leadership to start pushing this agenda and a rebuilding, on a state level, so that the national party doesn’t become so isolated again.
R
Local parties in red states are badly atrophied. I know. Living the dream as I write this. Building them up again will take time, but it will be worth the effort long term.
Yes, rebuilding will take time. Also acknowledge that the same faces in the same state committee meetings will not be the ones to rebuild. Sander’s activists should be welcomed in. New blood, new faces.
Same on the national level. There has to be a recognition that not all the nation share Calif or NYC values. Some can be accomdated, some can’t, but a respectuful effort should be made to change minds; not write them off or dinigrate them and piss them off.
Also a “listening” tour or some sort of effort as to why the Democratic Party’s former constituency has walked away. I think many would be surprised that the main feeling is powerlessness. Since FDR, the Democratic Party was their voice, no longer. Why? Economic, culturally, etc…
that’s a start.
R
yes. also hope the results show the complete failure of the DNC’s or whoever’s non agenda and tin ear for what the problems are.
It’s core precept that they ought to.
If God-bothering Jim-Crow-light is the way forward, we’re doomed.
Some elections aren’t worth winning, if you do what you need to win.
My state’s DP was rotten to the core. The same families were running the show, and only bothered to visit with their constituents around election time. While we fell behind, we kept getting the same sorry song and dance. Not being listened to is very, very frustrating. New blood is a must. Listening to former constituents is a must. And it will take a long time to rebuild the trust that was lost.
The beginning of the Democratic Response must be to recognize that what you are talking about is exactly what Sanders was saying.
I am NOT going to go into the “Sanders would have won” second-guessing routine…
However, I am going to point out that the hostility, contempt, and scorn that met Sanders’ message and was heaped on so many of Sanders’ supporters (Bernie Bros, anyone? Yearning Maw of White Male Angst? Hello?) compounded the problem: Perception that the Democrats are demographically isolated and relying on “destiny” to win, rather than relying on policies and actions and outreach and coalition building to win.
Saying “we care about the poors” on the one hand, and then participating in Trade Deals, Union Busting, and Corporate Bullshit on the other hand… simply will not fly any more.
The fact of the matter is that this country has a serious demographic/geographic divide, and anyone who can figure a way to bridge that divide… will win.
Otherwise, it’s always going to become a competition to see who can rile up, invigorate, and whip up their core base to a more frothy frenzy.
And on that score, evangelical racism and hatred will almost always win.
Amen, brother.
This should be on the front page here.
Some of the blame goes to supposed “liberal bloggers” who did their best to ignore Bernie in the fall of 2015.
They wanted us all to go away.
They treated us with barely disguised contempt.
They were so damn certain about everything.
If the economy gets as bad as we expect it to under you-know-who (I can’t bring myself to type his name yet), Election Night 2020 may be quite different.
I stayed away from this site for most of yesterday because of the face of you know who was plastered at the top of the FP and I can’t bear to look at him. (Gonna be a long four years of avoiding that face for me.)
Depending on a major negative event while the opposition is on the hotseat (worse attempting to manufacture such an event at such a time) to discredit the opposition enough to win back power in the next election is the game that both national parties have been playing for decades. It’s one reason why we’re in such a mess with no available and positive exit doors. Democrats today don’t get that had their predecessors played that same game back after electoral games in 1930 and 1932, the GOP would have roared back in six to eight years.
One of the most insightful articles on this point was written by Kevin Baker and published in Harper’s in July 2009 – Barack Hoover Obama. Did DC Democrats take notice of it? That would be not just no, but hell no. They held onto the Presidency for an additional four years, but lost the House decisively in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. To deliver, FDR and his team had to either sideline or woo onto their team many of the Democrats that were in power at the time. Had to literally reject much of what those older Democrats espoused. Obama did quite the opposite and Bill Clinton cozied up with Republicans and DINOs while throwing liberals under the bus.
At the end of the day, I’d concede political gains for a non-horrible outcome from this upcoming presidency.
I’m not counting on either.
What a change from the thinking that a black-latino-asian coalition could totally ignore white working people which was expressed loudly here this year.
But you are really talking about bamboozling the voters aren’t you? I don’t think it will be that easy. They’ve been fucked too deeply too long.
Yes, by the very people they just elected
“These communities used to be filled with privately-owned banks and pharmacies and hardware shops. They can be again with an aggressive anti-trust push.”
I don’t know how to reach people who, like the folks in Kentucky, vote for someone who promises to take their health insurance away.
I don’t know how to reach people like the folks in Kansas who voted for the guy drowning their state in the bathtub.
I don’t know how to reach these people when we’re probably several generations from being able to implement such policies, by which time it’ll be moot because humanity will be nearing extinction with most of the rest of life on this planet because of climate change.
Maybe it’s just an acute case of post loss letdown, but I don’t hold out much hope for humanity right now.
Maybe whatever form of intelligent life that comes after us will be able to discern what went wrong form our fossils, but that’s a very long time coming, if ever…we do have the possibility of turning this place into another venus.
I’m thinking more Mars than Venus.
Let us just hope the next dominant species never evolves opposible thumbs.
Hillary had some substantive proposals that would have helped the rural working class – a minimum wage increase, opiate treatment, and (for the Appalachians) a wind energy proposal to replace the coal jobs. She didn’t push them in the very limited time she actually had to speak to the nation – her acceptance speech and the debates – and of course the media wasn’t going to talk about policies that help people.
Part of the problem is that economics is very unfavorable to small towns. You can’t have good jobs there, because these days both husband and wife work and it’s almost impossible to get two good jobs in different fields in a small town. So the workers can’t live there and the jobs can’t come. In addition chain stores suck money out of a town – a local store recycles most of its money back into the town, but a chain store buys from abroad and sends its profits to shareholders around the world. On top of that is the suburban development pattern which is very expensive to maintain. We should try, but I’m not sure it’s possible to support good lives (by current standards) in small towns anymore. How to handle that is a thorny problem.
My small town of 3,000 in rural Illinois had 2 small factories in the late 1980s that employed over 300 people. With families included, you had over 1,000 people supported by good paying jobs. GONE, to China and Vietnam. Multiply this hundreds or thousands of times over throughout large parts of this country. It didn’t have to be this way.
Town I’m in had thousands of textile jobs when I moved here. All gone and they even tore down the post Civil War mill bldgs for the bricks and wood superstructure. All during the Clinton Admin and finished under Bush.
The training for replacement jobs never materialized. Nor did the jobs around here. Only now climbing out of the hole due to Tobacco Commission money. Think of the tens of thousand of towns like this. Thnk NC and what a few votes from those towns would have meant.
R
yes, indeed
Yeah, but even if the factories had stayed they’d be automated now with a lot fewer jobs. As a monopsony employer the factory would have driven wages down to near the minimum. That’s been the story of manufacturing for decades – fewer and fewer jobs for the same output. It’s the same path trod by farming.
Coal mining is the same way – even if Trump somehow gets the Appalachian mines reopened they’ll be doing mountaintop removal instead. Far fewer jobs, and with the overhang of unemployed miners they can pay a pittance.
Plus this was mostly before the chain stores sucked all the money out.
It used to be that way, but it doesn’t work anymore. Even with 50% tariffs and massive subsidies for coal mines it’s not going to work.
Coal has gove through the mechanization convulsions before, in the 80’s. Then the Union allowed two tier employment contracts (Union and nonUnion with lower wages).
Now, Union gone. Mines closed. Reopening in areas with much lower wages. Peabody/Patriot bankruptcy ruling (Republican appointed judge) showed way for companies to get out from under health and pension obligations. Now wages low, no health care, no pension, no disability except state benifits. You are on your own.
R
Agree on some of this, but a new robotic arm in the factory doesn’t layoff 300 people overnight. You know what does? Moving it to Mexico. It’s hard for workers to resent a robot, they definitely resent wholesale moves.
Moving the factory creates more resentment in the short term, but in the long term the depressed wages and lost business and the same and have the same effect whether done all at once or bit by bit.
Perhaps, and that’s a very academic approach to it. But the folks in my old hometown remember exactly what happened 20 years ago and they still resent it. Telling them it would have happened incrementally anyway is a losing argument. Trump exploited this.
You talk as if you really believe in the “invisible hand” of the market place. Economics is a powerful force, sure, but it’s shaped and directed by politics, law, policy, social attitudes. Different politics, different laws, different policies, different social attitudes, different stuff happens. Look at Sweden.
BINGO!
This is the bromide the New Dems drag out–the market did it.
It’s actually faster and cheaper than the move to Mexico. Even to a higher-labor-cost country.
(Family history. Plastics factory, SE Mass. The next-gen automation was in an Ontario plant.)
Or moving it to China like Motorola did with their cell phone factory in Harvard IL (near the WI border). Harvard was a sleepy agricultural town before Motorola built the plant in the ’90s. That whole town died because builders built houses and business expanded to serve the new workers who were suddenly destitute. They lost their jobs and their credit because the houses were unsalable and the owners couldn’t pay the mortgage without jobs. Do you think those workers and their families didn’t listen to trump about trade deals? All Hillary listened to was Goldman-Sucks (sic).
but even if the factories had stayed they’d be automated now with a lot fewer jobs.
Poland Spring every five years doubles its output and halves its workforce. And those are just about the last manufacturing/production jobs around here (ME/NH border) — jobs you can’t outsource.
For 60 years manufacturing productivity improved without harming manufacturing employment.
This is because there was a rough equilibrium between the DEMAND for manufacturing goods and EMPLOYMENT in those industries.
As productivity enabled larger output, larger demand consumed that output because of wage growth.
Economics act as though this started happening in 1979. It didn’t.
What changed was the larger demand was partially supplied by supplies outside of the US.
True also of Ohio, Indiana and other Midwestern states.
Most of us probably remember the TV ad of the Illinois workers who built the platform used to announce the closing of their plant.
Rural areas have also lost family farms to agri-business. Many of these food producing corporations receive huge tax breaks. There is a web site you can go to to see who (or what) in your county gets government handouts for not growing crops, price supports, etc. It’s a real eye opener.
your just wrong about small towns. and proposals for coal and opiate treatment – nothing against that, but the issue is small businesses that contribute to a thriving small town.
She didn’t have a proposal up on that, true. But the things I mentioned aren’t small potatoes. For that matter, neither is Obamacare, which makes it possible for the rural poor to afford medical care. Could we do and propose more? Sure. But there was already a lot there.
They can afford $12,000 deductibles? The Medicaid expansion was good. The rule changes were good. The exchanges and their shit policies were just that – shit.
My company is set up for us to purchase our insurance on the NYS exchange. I have a zero deductible plan. It’s better and cheaper than we had available before Obamacare. You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
Doesn’t it depend on your state? Many areas in the country have no Medicaid supplement for the poor. Others are now down to one choice of insurance company. IMHO, if something isn’t done to improve it, Obamacare will go down on its own.
We know people who aren’t poor enough for Medicaid or old enough for Medicare who have not bought insurance through Obamacare because they simply cannot afford it. Even with Medicare, supplement policies aren’t cheap. Others have had HUGE hikes in their premiums.
It’s true that the parts of the country that blocked the medicaid expansion just straight-up screwed their citizens. But that’s not on Obamacare, which didn’t allow for that. It’s entirely on the Robert’s court utterly ludicrous decision and the Republican states that took advantage of it.
As for premium hikes, I’ve seen big premium hikes since the first year the exchanges opened. My insurance is still cheaper and better than what was available to our company on the small group market.
I realize the Medicaid exclusion is on the Court, but it’s still there as part of our health insurance system and deeply affects a lot of people.
Small businesses > fewer economies of scale.
You can sustain that in cities, with high-value-added retail-and-service.
But small-town small business is as dead as Kelsey’s nuts, unless subsidized.
Who pays for it? Big firms.
Our ‘locally owned’ small-town groceries are both owned by Delhaize Group, d/b/a the old familiar names.
There are chain Delhaize stores in the same town that cross subsidize the old familiars, in exchange for TIF district financing deals and planning permission.
The moment those aren’t needed any more the stores kept open essentially as a bribe are gone.
She was a bad campaigner. instead of saying “I want to put coal miners out of work” she should have said “I want coal miners to have new better safer jobs”. But that didn’t happen because to her and the rest of her Park ridge crowd, coal miners are just one step above the apes having (sort of) the power of speech.
It was an appeal to the coastal elites to the detriment of those who work with their hands or communities that rely on those jobs. It empahsised their values and not others. Of course she tried to walk in back. I was in coal country when a lady told me about the comment. I didn’t believe any national candidate would be dumb enough to say such a thing. I was wrong. Hell, Bill Clinton got booed in Prestonsburg, KY. Sanders won.
As we found out, there are more of them in the center of the country than on the coasts.
R
IOW, Real Americans.
Food for thought
I hadn’t seen this piece but it’s exactly what I’ve been saying all along. It’s exactly why I supported Sanders and it’s also why, after Hillary got the nomination, I managed to rationalize that Hillary HAD to embrace Sanders and Warren or the country would simply be ungovernable. None of this is rocket science, but it must seem very retro to the oh so brilliant policy wonks of today.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be already too late.
Nice article. I remember reading somewhere that she was trying to make it an “experience” and “qualification” election. At the time, I had my doubts about that. Plus, releasing a white paper every week made no news and no difference.
What really threw me for a loop, was after the convention, when she disappeared and let Trump take the airwaves unchecked. I thought she was “Kerrying” herself, in the sense she was ceding ground to him, taking hits, while raising money. I assumed, after 2004, no Democrat would ever let charges fester for weeks. Well, she did and I couldn’t believe it. It wouldn’t be until after the first debate that her poll numbers would rise.
I’m giving this election to AG, who called it. I also want to throw some credit Marie3’s way. Clinton, like Kerry, was not a great candidate. Neither was popular but in the end, she was the less popular one where it mattered.
Wow. Food for thought, indeed, and written in April of 2015.
It turns out the republicans have been the smart party all along. They obstructed Obama to wait on full control…and it worked. They obstructed the Supreme Court….and it worked.
But where they have been smartest is to define all democrats as liars who never tell the truth, and all republicans are to be trusted…no mater what they say.
So there is no appealing to fly over country. Nothing they propose will be believed.
And as a sweetener, the Supreme Court is going to eviserate voting rights in the cities.
.
Maybe the Democratic party should try to appeal to Americans instead of winning with illegal voters and fixed big city voting systems? Just a thought.
illegal voters?
You have data/facts on the ground to support your statement? As a vote canvasser in primarily African-American neighborhoods, I never encountered what you did. Certainly if there were rigged voting systems that were not rigged to favor Democrats or minorities.
You’ve made some good points with your commentary over time, but sometimes you just go overboard. Just saying that it detracts from some of the useful ideas & informed opinions you have.
Illegal voters? Please.
Machine politics and jerry-rigging the system? Yeah, I’ll go with that. Sanders should have won. I disagree that he lost “hugely” in a fair election. That’s not true.
Stick with reality. I like a lot of what you say, but find some of it just ridiculous. You might not care, but just putting in my 2 cents worth.
Maybe the Democratic party should try to appeal to real Americans….
Needed a small edit.
Not sure what your point is here Davis but between smarmy condescension of non-Hillary progressives and now, apparently, Trumpkins you’re walking a fairly narrow plank.
If by smart you mean destroying the norms of a functioning democracy to get power, you’re correct.
I’ll be the fly in the ointment:
“These communities used to be filled with privately-owned banks and pharmacies and hardware shops. They can be again with an aggressive anti-trust push.”
What if they can’t? I’m not trying to be snarky; I actually think some of our structural problems are much harder to solve than any amount of political will can account for.
I think some of them are as well mainly because of automation. The example I always give is look at the opening credits to “Laverne & Shirley.” All of those line jobs in that distillery? Are now gone and not because of globalization but rather because they have been automated out of existence and that has happened across industries
Ds and Rs alike need to get real about that barrier instead of saying all of the jobs went to China. some did but the majority have simply been modernized out of existence.
With that backdrop we need to figure out what opportunities are out there for our rural citizens. I think most of them will involve clean energy in one form of another but we need to dig deeper on that.
Automation is another good point about job loss. It’s happened across most work places in one form or another, and it only looks to become more of a reality over time. Driverless cars? Forget about that Uber/Lyft gig. Robots of various kinds? Lots of white collar, as well blue, jobs go bye-bye.
Who’s going to stop that? Trump? Why? How?
There’s been talk at Naked Capitolism and other websites about how socieites/nations/whatever need to consider that effects of ongoing automation taking jobs that will never ever come back, no matter how well educated you are.
Who’s talking about that? I don’t believe I heard Trump discuss this, nor did Clinton. Trump talked about getting jobs back from China and re-opening steel mills and manufacturing plants. Nice ideas, but I’m not so sure that’s feasible anymore.
Unless or until those in power really step up to the plate to grapple with these issues, we’re pretty much left to run in place and hope we just stand still.
Robots or not, there still seem to be a lot of manufacturing jobs in Vietnam, Malaysia, India and China. One assumes automation is a worldwide phenomenon. What is happening to jobs in those countries?
There’s more manufacturing in the US today than there ever has been. There just aren’t many manufacturing jobs. And that has zero to do with trade policy.
Exactly. Automation is the primary macroeconomic force affecting employment
I don’t know that that’s settled –
https:/www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/04/29/dont-blame-the-robots-for-lost-manufacturing-jo
bs
However, let’s say this is true, who had a message, however deceitful, aimed at these displaced workers? Once Bernie was out of the way the only candidate addressing their job loss in a bigly way was Trump.
I’m not sure how to take that Brookings article- they seem to conclude automation should have caused even more job losses than we actually see.
If you look at the state of manufacturing and employment you see steady long term growth of US manufacturing output and a steady decline in manufacturing employment. I’m not sure how to reconcile those two facts without the explanation of automation.
I’m also completely at a loss to why people think protectionist plans to benefit manufacturing is going to provide rural employment opportunities. Businesses like to locate near people.
You are aware that McDonald’s is classed as a manufacturing company, aren’t you? So all those “do you want fries with it” jobs are manufacturing employment and the sales are counted in the manufacturing sector of GDP. I don’t know about Burger King and Wendy’s but I wouldn’t be surprised if their lawyers didn’t pull the same tax dodge. You see the workers “assemble” the hamburger from component pieces. Only a lawyer could swallow that. it’s on a par with the political rights of corporations.
You are aware that you’re completely and utterly full of shit, aren’t you? Food service jobs are not classified as manufacturing jobs, period.
http://www.bls.gov/bls/naics.htm
That’s a good question and a valid concern. I agree. The destruction to small town (and even big city) USA has taken place over decades. There has been a very concerted effort to bring us to this point. Voters have long pointed out very valid issues, concerns and data about what’s happening to decimate our economy.
It’s not going to be turned around overnight, and frankly, I’m not sure how it can be turned around at all, never mind completely.
The world has changed radically. I heard Trump voters waxing lyrical about Trump will take us back to the 1950s when everything was apparently (not so much) glorious (if you were white and maybe not even then). I even heard voters saying that Trump would return to us “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” (literally said that).
Even with the BEST will & intention – which is questionable – realistically there’s only so much that Trump, himself, can do. He made huge promises, most of which simply cannot be kept, no matter how much he might have (questionable) sincerely meant them.
Just saying…
It didn’t happen because of some ether in the air. It was a deliberate strategy of corporations that was facilitated by the politicians they bought.
WalMart was instrumental in devastating Main Street and who was one of WalMart’s BFF?
Are you referring to Hillary? She was on the board, yes, and had a lot of friction with the other board members because she was so much more liberal than they. She spent her time trying to make it less sexist, with some success. What exactly is wrong with that?
That’s the part of the relationship that has been released for public consumption and approval. But it’s the entire relationship with industries and specific large corporations (in both parties) that I’m referring to. The bidness supplies the bucks for their capture politicians to run and win elections and the politicians then reward their bidness partners through god knows how many mechanisms, both small and large.
OK, so you admit that specific insinuation was bogus. Can you come up with a real one or is this just another “I know she’s guilty so I don’t need facts” like we’ve been dealing with in the RW media for two decades?
Thanks ~booman~ for the port in the storm. We are going to need it.
The wonks versus the believers.
The wonks are a very real problem. In politics the problem is well described in the Washington Post this morning. The Clinton campaign built on the myth from ’12 – this idea of a room full of smart nerds who built algorithms that brilliantly directed the Obama campaign. Trump cared not a wit for any of that. He didn’t really even care that much about political advertising. He was all theme – policy didn’t matter.
Honestly Anti-trust regulation is not a fricken answer to the problems of rural america in either political or economic terms. Do you honestly believe rural Americans want Walmart broken up? Have any of the wonks who came up with this idea talked to, you know, actual people in rural America to know if this idea has any resonance?
I am guessing rural folks will defend Walmart – they shop there for a reason.
We have to stop with this stuff. We have to start listening to them. What THEY say their problems are.
Not guys from think tanks in Washington and Harvard, though they have a role.
Because I actually don’t think we really understand these people very well at all.
I am CERTAIN we didn’t understand them before November 8th
” … Do you honestly believe rural Americans want Walmart broken up? … “
Walmart competes with Amazon in addition to the local bicycle shop. The bike shop competes with Amazon as well.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-10-29/business/9003300512_1_wal-mart-officials-poor-wal-mart
-dairy-queen
That was 1990. Today, 26 years later, Hearne has still not recovered.
Although it is truly rare for a Walmart to close, you can see from this story what it does to local businesses.
Yeah, 26 years ago I had never heard of online retailers like Amazon etc. Walmart is not the only low cost competition the local small shops have, I did not even have internet access in 1990.
They can’t afford to buy a bike at the local bike shop.
Not if to make the nut, the local bike shop has to sell bikes that start in the $600-900 range.
Bad example, but here is my point – exiling Walmart does not do much for Mom and Pop shops that still must compete with online retailers like Land’s End, Amazon etc. People just buy from Land’s End or whoever, still cheaper than the local small shop
Essentially this is offering nostalga.
Pharmacies need to tie into information systems that connect to the insurance formularies. Walmarts infrastructure gives them economies of scale.
I am guessing rural folks will defend Walmart – they shop there for a reason.
And what choice do they have?
There’s information out there about socks manufacturers. A lowly consumer good. The industry was mechanized along ago, and irrc ended up in AL the sometime in the twentieth century. The one component of the product that couldn’t be automated was sewing together the toe. The last large US sock manufacturer was heartsick that he had no choice but to move the plant to Mexico or Honduras because it cost him 5 cents to sew the two and it could be done for a penny abroad. What American consumer wouldn’t willingly pay an extra dime for a pair of socks to keep that plant in the US? The problem is that that dime gets stepped on multiple times throughout the supply chain and by the time it gets to retailers it is turned into a dollar or more. Same thing exist wrt the “penny a pound organization” of tomato pickers in FL.
And yet S.F., Oakland, Albany voters pass soda tax
A penny an ounce tax on sodas is just fine, but four cents a sock for US sock seamstresses is too much. We have totally messed up priorities.
THEY say the problem is Somali refugees and the like. How do we come to grips with that?
I think the only way to overcome this is to build a grassroots movement of worker solidarity that crosses racial lines. Maybe it can be done with the young people today. Not with their parents and grandparents I fear. But this cohort voted overwhelmingly for Dems, and they need jobs now, and under a national Kansas-style regime they are REALLY going to need jobs. If the political left can actually fight for them and produce some results, maybe there’s hope for the future.
The young today that aren’t children of the upper and upper-middle class are not going to stay in the Obama coalition if they are left to twist in the breeze. They’ll tune out politics or turn to the angry side.
If you are going to scuttle Walmart, you’d best insure that minimum wage goes up to $15 (and NOT in the yr 2050 or some such!). Offshoring’s cheap prices are a wage subsidy, in effect.
We just lost to a policy vacuum. I’m not sure there’s any reason to think that new policies will help us.
More important I want to say thank you to everyone here, even the people with whom I strongly disagree. It’s a community. Flawed and weird and virtual, but still a comfort on days like this.
Re:Policy Vacuum-
I’m not sure that is correct. The policy stated, in very loose terms, is that the US economy is suffering from too easy trade treaties, too easy international capital flow, too accomodating foreign policy, too much acceptence of corrupt political practices.
Reagan did the same thing with “welfare queens”, young bucks buying steak, etc… (true or not) All reflecting a precieved need for welfare reform. Some of which I still hear in White Appalachia about other’s relatives and their drug use/unemployment.
Anyway, that’s what I got out of Trump. Some of which I can agree with, if not for the crazy parts of the messenger.
Now let’s see what he can do. I don’t think we are screwed so much as progressive policies have been set
back. He will run into institutional opposition and if he tries to bull his way through, it will bite him on the ass. The interesting thing will be his
ego against Republican Congress. If they try to get him to rubber stamp and someone mentions how unpopular some of those bills are…. he might give
them a 2nd look.
R
I don’t think any of that matters because how many of his voters actually give a shit if he enacts them? His voters aren’t going to check what’s happening with trade treaties or capital flow. It’ll be tremendous, whatever happens. The best. And the fact that your life is still shit? There’s a handy scapegoat for that, too.
Maybe I’m wrong. I was expecting Clinton by 7, so wrong is what I am. But I think that if we want to win we need to forget about policy and start thinking about personality.
Rate the last 7 Democratic nominees for President based on perceived personality/charisma?
Mondale Loss
Dukakis Loss
Clinton Win
Gore Loss
Kerry Loss
Obama Win
Clinton Loss
Notice a pattern? All had great policy proposals. What is the missing ingredient?
We need our own demagogues, dammit!
We need to win. The Big Dog and Obama were demagogues?
You can’t count on lightning striking every eight years or so. You want a reliable, repeatable product you can pull off the shelf whenever.
IOW, demagogues. Anyone can do it. Ward heelers have for a century and a half.
I think we do need someone who will go head to head with them, if for no other reason than to keep the game honest, or more honest.
Demagoguery is part of the job description for a politician in the same way that woodworking skills are required for a carpenter.
I readily admit this could be well off base. But look at any map. Small patches of blue around the metro areas swallowed up by red. Why? To me the progressive policies were not making a difference to anyone out there. I doubt personality wins anymore. When you make $8 an hour in six shit jobs for the last five years charisma don’t mean shit.
Obama won on his vast experience? His policy proposals?
I take your point. But he, like Trump, used hope and change and came around after a disastrous war and a financial collapse.
BTW, I hate this aspect of presidential politics. Since being one the 3 or so people to vote for Walter Mondale in 1984 I’ve seen smart, accomplished Democrats go down in flames because they were perceived as nerdy wet blankets.
This is interesting: https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/796201122386087936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“Clinton is getting crushed in the counties where unemployment has improved most since 2010.”
They only voted for the nigger in ’08 because they were desperate.
Now they have the luxury of indulging their prejudice.
Could be.
If they see some movement in the economy of their area, some hope for a better future, then yeah, they will care.
Carrier making money and still moving to Mexico to enhance shareholder value? If Trump stops that, then its 300 jobs in that community and a month of free publicity.
the problem is that the economy has been structured to reward behavior like that, over decades of GOP and Dem admins. Changes to that system would go a long way and can Trump stand up to the pressures? Can a Dem Congress? They haven’t so far.
I think we need a total break with the past Democratic Party practices and policies. That means giving up the easy money flowing from millionaires and Wall Street. Can they do it?
R
You think there’s a chance that Trump will stop Carrier moving to Mexico? He’ll get the free publicity without bothering. He did tremendous work keeping jobs in the US. He saved 245,000 jobs last month. Financial courage. America is winning again.
And do you think that no Democrat has done that sort of thing for communities? They have (not enough!), but it doesn’t stick.
Trump’s appeal is wholly emotional. (Including ‘nativism’ and ‘xenophobia’ as emotions.) Do we need a demagogue? No, though I’d take one if she came with guillotines. Do we need someone–preferably someone charismatic–who connects emotionally, who makes emotional arguments instead of policy proscriptions? Yes.
We do really well with people who rationally weigh policy arguments. But we need a majority in the Electoral College.
“Do we need a demagogue?” FDR was called a demagogue and yes, I think we need an FDR.
Are you confusing policy ideas with the effects of actual policies?
New policies that have good effects will help everybody.
How that can be done is another story.
My bad. I mean I’m not sure there’s any reason to think that new policies will help us win. I definitely think new policies may help us as individuals, families, states, a country, and a planet.
I just don’t think that this conflict is playing out in an arena of policies. I think that’s a pretty big misapprehension that Democrats, and lefties in general, seem to have. Of course, I had zero doubt that Clinton would win yesterday. So what do I know?
I think Michael Moore was about the only commentator, Republican or Democrat, that thought Trump would win.
And you know, that’s just crazy old Michael Moore.
New policies don’t help us win for the simple reason that the Democratic Party has blown it’s creds with the working class.
Ditch the working class. Now there was a clever policy. And whose policy was it?
Has the Republican Party blown its cred with the working class? Why or why not?
Those votes didn’t just disappear. They went somewhere. Were they attracted by policy proposals that have a real chance of improving lives?
Not the white working class. A steady diet of red meat and bogeymen will do that for you.
The Democratic Party could get a 60-40 Senate overnight. All it takes is the guts to take the people who made the boat and toss them to the sharks.
” All it takes is the guts to take the people who made the boat and toss them to the sharks. ” I don’t understand your reference. Care to expand?
Turn our backs on the party base – PoC and women.
On some level, the votes really did just disappear.
6 1/2 million of them, from Clinton’s side.
Trump shed a million of his own.
When you account for population growth, this might have been one of the lowest turnout elections of our lifetime.
As I said in another thread, while getting my hair cut I heard men and women, young and old, say how disgusted they were with ALL the candidates.
Partly it was that triangulation shit, brought to us by “Blue dress and cigar” Bill.
Yep, he got his relevance back by signing NAFTA, granting China MFN trade status, and other such shenanigans.
Funny, though. You listen to his SOTU address, and he sounds just like Trump.
“After years of neglect, this administration has taken a strong stand to stiffen the protection of our borders. We are increasing border controls by 50 percent. We are increasing inspections to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. And tonight, I announce I will sign an executive order to deny federal contracts to businesses that hire illegal immigrants.”
“Let me be very clear about this: We are still a nation of immigrants; we should be proud of it. We should honor every legal immigrant here, working hard to become a new citizen. But we are also a nation of laws.”
Bill Clinton, blazing the trail that Trump would follow 20 years later. What a world we live in, eh?
Here’s my thoughts:
I don’t give a shit what you folks think about my comments. Most of you hate me, which is fine. But many of my comments over the years have been shown to be accurate, while the rest of you have a pretty sucky track record.
I’m the messenger. Deal with it.
I forgot to note in the comment above that these are the notions of rural voters in my opinion.
You have an awfully high opinion of yourself. Calling yourself “the messenger” when others of us have also been discussing these issues for a while.
And again it your neverending insistence of using illegals to the detriment of actual constructive discussion on these issues is your issue and not one any of us should have to deal with.
Whatever, dude or dudette – not making assumptions here.
Yes, I actually do have a pretty high opinion of myself. Many of my comments have been actually born out by events. Yours? Not so much.
When you deliver the message, and the message is correct, people try to shoot you. If you weren’t so wrapped up in being high and mighty and politically correct, you would have understood that the comment about the “messenger” refers to “don’t shoot”. I merely deliver the information. You spend all your time calling me a racist. Hey, knock yourself out. If I don’t get called a racist at least once a day, it’s been a sad, lonely day, eh?
I have no once called you a racist. I have said your dogged insistence of using “illegals” in these conversations does nothing to foster the conversations you claim to want to have.
So he should use the term “immigrant” which would mean that all immigration is opposed, while he doesn’t actually oppose legal immigration? Or should he use the term “undocumented” which means they had papers but lost them?
“Undocumented” has no implication of losing papers. No idea why you claim that.
Calling people “illegals” is intentionally provocative whether you’re doing it or Donald Trump is doing it. I have no idea why you would use that term unless you’re trying to anger people.
“Illegal alien” is the term that used to be used.
The republicans are the party of hypocritical evangelicals who wrap it all in religion. I would rather be the party of lesbian, et al.
We are not good at getting our ideas across, I agree. But we spend far too much time dissing each other than needed.
The democrats are the party of hypocritical “Progressives” who despise anyone that works with their hands.
Kind of funny in a weird way. My spouse used to move in academic circles with a lot of lesbians, whom I referred to, in what I thought was a jocular fashion, as anarcho-lesbian feminists. My spouse eventually told me to quit using that phrase. Fine, it was stupid of me to begin with.
You’ve taken my stupid sort of labelling and put it on steroids.
I’ve got no interest in hating you. I’d rather understand you. Let me ask: are you trying to persuade people? To belittle them? Something else? I’m trying to be serious here, so if you reply, please do so in that spirit.
There is absolutely no doubt that the Democratic Party has lost lots of white working class support. The Party does, of course, get lots of non-white working-class support. So your statement that the Democratic Party hates manual workers just doesn’t stand up.
It’s hard if not impossible to tease apart the roles of class and race in this discussion.
I know you’re licking your wounds and trying to make your readers feel better, but I don’t see any of that happening. Not now, not ever.
Hate to say it, but me either.
Damn! More bad news. Looks like known-crook Daryll Issa managed to win in the CA 49th against solid challenger Doug Applegate. 51.09% v 48.91%.
GAH!
That’s a ray of sunshine. In 2014 Issa won with 60.2% of the vote.
A teeny tiny ray of sunshine bc yes, Issa barely pulled it off. But damn! Wish Applegate had managed to take that one.
Two years is only twenty-four months away and enough time to add 3 points to his 2016 total. If done right, Trump in the WH could be enough to motivation liberals to show up in massive numbers for the midterms.
That’s about the least cynical thing you’ve said for ages. Do you feel like a storm has finally broken? That the spell that held Democrats in thrall to Mammon has been loosened? I kinda’ do. The sh*t really hit the fan at high velocity.
Recommended, click and read on:
What a great link and thread. Powerful statement:
Sooner or later we will get a chance to reset the pins.
Longtime lurker. Commenting only because Martin brought up Somerset.
My parents were born and raised in Somerset, the county seat of Somerset. My remaining grandparents still live there.
I visited the 9/11 Memorial with my maternal grandmother. She railed against the incredible $30 million the federal government spent on the place–that largely ignores the local impact of the event. The displays largely feature artefacts from the NY wreckage. Additionally, much of the grounds aren’t completing, so many years later. From what I gathered, this disgust at tremendous waste isn’t uncommon locally. Somerset is a very, very small town and county.
My paternal grandparents, when I last visited last September, both stated disgust at how bully-like and mean Trump was acting in the primary. They’ve lived in their house on a quiet street in that quiet town for over 50 years. She was a special ed assistant, he was a radio engineer and on-air personality who was eventually forced out due to automation. My grandpa sent an email about two months ago proudly boasting a picture of a Trump/Pence sign in his yard.
Somerset is a dying town. There’s not a lot going on there. The PA Turnpike goes right through town–and as such, it’s a major drug hub. The opioid epidemic, often discussed by Martin, is wrecking the youth of Somerset. There was a murder last year in an apartment across the street from my paternal grandparents’ home, on that quiet street three blocks from the high school. There’s not many opportunities in the area.
And it’s been an abundantly white town since forever. When the two prisons opened in the county, the families of prisoners moved there, which brought more diversity and issues, which many of the townfolk didn’t take kindly to.
This seems emblematic of some much of the Rust Belt and the Midwest. Forced diversification of towns mixed in with lack of economic opportunity leads to resentment. And this was Murtha’s district–and he was widely viewed as corrupt. So, add to that resentment and disgust and distrust of Washington politicians, and you get last night.
Thanks for your insights. I grew up in different parts of PA, and I had relatives, at one time, who lived in Somerset. So I have a feel for the place.
What you describe is what it’s like in many many many small towns all across the USA. And yes, conditions like that make it ripe for what happened yesterday.
I doubt that Trump will do much of anything for these small towns and the people left behind in them. But Trump did speak to them, and as mentioned, he stayed on message and was out on the campaign trail constantly. I do have to give Trump that. In the end, the voters responded to it.
I would love to be wrong and witness Trump actually make things better in these dying and decaying towns, but color me skeptical. That said, I truly don’t feel that Clinton anything to appeal to these voters. Sanders did. Clinton didn’t.
The rest is history.
Sounds like my town, founded as a blue-collar village in the ’50s, expanded with white collar workers in the go-go ’90s. Now starting to get panhandlers who were NEVER there before. About two years ago the first pawnshop opened. More of the great Obama economic expansion. Soon it will be bail bondsmen.
The government is now controlled by Trump and friends. And his friends also control most of the state and local governments. So anything that gets done will likely have his name on it. We start at a disadvantage. And it is rather certain that if you tell people in the shire to have patience we are going to go after the corps like Walmart and AT&T for anti trust violations they will just mock you.
Bernie was no friend of big corps or Wall Street. He wanted to deal with poverty, the minimum wage, inequality, trade, health care, social security, jobs, infrastructure and educational opportunities. But that would cost trillions they said (I recall the Big Dog mocking him) and was totally unrealistic. ( I deny it would cost that but that is not for here.)
In the end he tried to start up a way to get people elected to office to help move it forward. That is likely where we need to start – – at a local level. We need to build a constituency that we advocate for – out there in the county side. That may start by showing up at the local democratic club house and announce “here I am” and go on from there. After all it is very likely some of those people are old fellas looking for some help. Maybe this is a small scale Occupy.
One failing I noticed about Hillary: she was too slow to start and not persistent. (maybe that is two) Trump was on the trail every waking moment, and he kept hammering his message. We may have to become a pain in the ass of the ruling party.
Didn’t the democratic machine (remember Tammany?)in NY start as a group trying to help each other. There’s an idea in there.
In 2018, and again in 2019 as the warmup for the 2020 presidential race begins–assuming we still have elections then–folks in the Rust Belt are going to look around and notice that not one damn job that went abroad has come back. How can the Democratic Party talk about that? What are the Democrats going to propose as an alternative to what they’ll accurately be able to call the failed Trump agenda and the broken Trump promises?
Oh–and retraining is not the magical mantra. Folks with roots in a place don’t want to move unless it’s their choice.
We have the stench of neo-liberalism all over us. We need to burn our clothes, have our lice-powder treatment, and come in out of the cold. Let the socialists have a turn. They already showed the way and many of you spent all your energies extinguishing their enthusiasm.
Let’s find something Trumpkins might support (ban on civil forfeiture for non-Federal agencies, crackdown on pay-day loans and loansharking, mortgages (yeah, like four years too late), maybe MERS chain-of-title problems, real nuts-and-bolts working family financial stuff and, you know, advocate for the people without access to influence as the Left party has been meant to do since the beginning of democracy (emphasis added). Let’s dare the House to vote against these things, little piecemeal bills that we talk about incessantly. No vision, no inclusive message; just useful little life hacks brought to you by f*cking Democrats. It used to be this way.
We turned it into a business and it should be burned to the ground, DLC, DNC, Schumer D-(Wall St), all of it… Not in anger. A celebratory bonfire. We have some house-cleaning to attend to.
They’ll do so with a smile, and both middle fingers up.
Really? I’ll bet there’s something they need which fits squarely in a Left regulatory framework. We need to sell it as a ‘right’ being restored to the public, perhaps. But here’s the point, we need a force multiplier, obviously because we are in a minority, but the obvious fissure between the legislative leadership and Trumpkins is over their economic plight versus what they call the ‘donor class’ by which I suppose they mean the Chamber of Commerce. Let us set our slender charge in that fissure.
The map says we have some heavy-lifting to do anywhere outside of metropolitan areas; ’tis a sea of red. Let’s start doing the lifting. Let’s be the party that solves one or two of these financial problems. DWS’ association with the pay-day lobby was political self-harm. In what alternate reality did that become OK for a Democrat? It must stop; those Democrats are not coming with us.
This article from The Atlantic addresses Booman’s point about antitrust quite directly. There is an interesting discussion of how, in the author’s view, the anti-trust perspective and actions of the Democratic Party were undermined in the 1970s by the post-Watergate generation of congressional representatives,, starting with deposing Wright Patman as chairman of the House Banking Committee.
Excerpt:
Americans have forgotten about the centuries-old anti-monopoly tradition that was designed to promote self-governing communities and political independence. The Watergate Babies got rid of Patman’s populism for a lot of reasons. But there was wisdom there. In the 1930s, Patman said that restricting chain stores would prevent “Hitler’s methods of government and business in Europe” from coming to the United States. For decades after World War II, preventing economic concentration was understood as a bulwark against tyranny. But since the 1970s, this rhetoric has seemed ridiculous. Now, the destabilization of political institutions suggests that it may not have been. Financial crises are a regular feature of the U.S. banking system, and prices for essential goods and services reflect monopoly power rather than free citizens buying and selling to each other. Americans, sullen and unmoored from community structures, are turning to rage, apathy, protest, and tribalism, like white supremacy.