David Goldman/AP Photo
The registration desk at an Atlanta polling site, July 2014
I have long argued that hardcore Trump support, especially among the white working class, reflects three decades of diminished life horizons, compounded by the anxieties of lost status—as women, blacks, Hispanics, other immigrants, and LGBTQ people have belatedly and deservedly gained some respect and opportunity.
Those gains are especially galling to once-privileged straight white men, because they arrived in parallel with lost economic well-being. It’s hard to tell a factory worker who once made $30 an hour at GM and who is now making $7.75 at Walmart to appreciate that he is privileged.
Trump was brilliant at turning the entire basket of resentments into white nationalism, to divert attention from the fact that white men and other groups should share common a resentment of Wall Street, not each other. The election will literally turn on whether economic issues can be restored to their rightful place at the center of national debate.
But after three years of Trump, that will not be so easy, even if the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren and contrast true pocketbook populism with Trump’s racist and economically fake brand. For Trump keeps pursuing policies that screw his base, and his base doesn’t seem to care.
This week, the White House released plans to make it easier for states to opt out of Medicaid as a guaranteed program, in favor of a limited block grant. A lot of white working-class voters are on Medicaid. Will they notice?
In West Virginia, the heart of Trump country, the Republican state government has taken advantage of a Trump policy that allows states to require food stamp recipients to work at least 20 hours a week, or lose their food stamp benefits. Nationally, according to the administration, about 700,000 people will lose benefits. A lot of these are Trump voters, too.
The administration is also making it harder to qualify for disability benefits under Social Security. Picture an older white guy on disability. Sure looks like a Trump voter.
The Trump administration also watered down an Obama-era rule liberalizing overtime benefits. And I haven’t even mentioned the upwardly-tilted Trump tax cuts.
Too few voters seem to be connecting these dots. But that’s where leadership can make a difference.
As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, the president’s approval rating throughout 2019 hovered around 44 percent nationally, but was about 70 percent in majority working class counties. And some of the strongest Trump states did worst in recent economic growth—West Virginia came in 48th, North Dakota 45th and Kentucky 40th.
Those states will not likely go Democratic, but key swing states in the upper Midwest did not do much better. Michigan ranked 43rd, with Wisconsin and Ohio not doing much better, at 39th and 36th respectively.
If Democrats are ever to make a convincing argument that Trump is no friend of the working man and woman, it will need to be in those states. Can they?
Some commentators have argued that cultural leftism and “identity politics” have become so identified with the Democrats that they will continue to alienate socially conservative white voters no matter how compelling Democrats are on the pocketbook issues. If a Democrat is for abortion rights, gun control, a rhetoric of racial and sexual justice, and environmentalism, it supposedly doesn’t matter what her views are on the economy. In an era of tribal politics, the Democrat simply belongs to the wrong tribe, and her economic message will be discounted.
This argument is seductive, but overstated. The 2016 election in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was so close that Democrats only need to win back a tiny fraction of Trump voters and they will win the election. And without a compelling stand on pocketbook issues, watering down support for racial justice or reproductive rights will gain the Democrats little.
There are just enough Democrats who win in swing states by putting pocketbook issues first—yet without backing off the social justice issues—to show that this can be good politics. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is Exhibit A. Montana Governor Steve Bullock is Exhibit B. These progressive Democrats are not unicorns, and we need more to follow their example.
That’s why it makes political sense for the Democrats to nominate a populist economic candidate such as Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Any Democrat will be tarred with the brush of being a cultural lefty—soft on immigrants, gays, and minorities; ignoring the rights of the unborn and gun owners—even if they try to disavow it. Only if the message on economics is compelling does it stand a chance of breaking through the cultural prejudices.
Democrats also need African Americans and Hispanics to turn out big time. Disdaining their aspirations as mere “identity politics” is a lethal wet blanket in those communities.
It isn’t easy to thread this needle, but it is necessary and possible given compelling leadership.
