The System is Rigged-- A Bipartisan mood that helps Trump. White blue collar resentment isn't just about race. It is also resentment over privilege and elitism.
It helps to understand Donald Trump if we look back at George Wallace.
Trump is up 5 in Iowa. Trump is now campaigning in Michigan, not Nevada. He will be there the Monday night before the election, the time and place for his goal line stand. This signals what the Trump campaign thinks to be their path to victory: blue collar whites in the rustbelt. Those blue collar whites, many in industrial unions, are supposed to be Democrats, the heirs to the historic FDR constituency. But there Trump is, figuring his best chance to win is making a presumed Democrat into a Trump voter in a blue state.
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| "Stand Up for America" |
Some of it is race. The Archie Bunker white resentment vote I have discussed in this blog--that silent white whale under the surface of the political waters, is present. Only 11% of white Trump supporters think blacks have a disadvantage over whites in America.
Read the Pew Research report
Back in 1968 I attended a big rally for George Wallace on Boston Common. A lot of the people there looked like me. Young, collegiate, long hair; we were lookers, political tourists, not fans of Wallace. The majority of the people there looked like the Boston men and women who operated the subways, clerked, and were policemen. Especially policemen. Age 30-65. Stout. Ethnic Irish. Working people. In 1968 George Wallace won five southern states and got 10% of the general election vote in Michigan. In 1972 he carried Michigan's Democratic primary election.
Read the Pew Research report
Back in 1968 I attended a big rally for George Wallace on Boston Common. A lot of the people there looked like me. Young, collegiate, long hair; we were lookers, political tourists, not fans of Wallace. The majority of the people there looked like the Boston men and women who operated the subways, clerked, and were policemen. Especially policemen. Age 30-65. Stout. Ethnic Irish. Working people. In 1968 George Wallace won five southern states and got 10% of the general election vote in Michigan. In 1972 he carried Michigan's Democratic primary election.
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| 1972 Dem. Primary. Michigan voted for Wallace |
George Wallace spoke against crime, not blacks. He spoke against unruly protesters. He called for law and order. People who wanted to hear a racial message heard the racial message. George Wallace spoke directly against the privilege and arrogance of the elites, including the college students in the crowd. He said the two four-letter words those people don't like are s-o-a-p and w-o-r-k. He mocked the arrogance of those rich, privileged college kids and tried to get them to do unlovely, unruly things for the TV cameras. Long haired college kids won Wallace votes.
George Wallace attacked the condescension and snobbery of the liberal elites, the privileged Ivy League students and their ivory tower professors, the people who would refer to "rednecks". Yes, George Wallace said, those good common sense men and women have necks that are red because they are out laboring in the sun, doing hard important work, while the elites vacation on Martha's Vineyard. Wallace attacked the biased and liberal New York Times and Washington Post.
Trump uses the same argument, attacking the same people, those special interest powerful snobs who make the rules but don't have to play by them. Hillary exemplifies the elites under attack: Wellesley, Yale Law, wealth, the ties to Wall Street, the revolving door of government and special interests. The attack on "crooked Hillary" includes the notion that she is getting away with crimes that others would be prosecuted for doing. Her "private e-mail server" exemplifies her sense of privilege, of not having to play by the rules.
This message has bi-partisan and crossover appeal, exacerbated by the Wikileaks emails, all of which create a fog of apparent connection between Hillary Clinton personally, the Clinton Foundation, and the Clinton campaign. In a campaign event in Iowa a Sanders supporter tricked the Clinton campaign into giving him a speaking spot. Until he was escorted off the stage he used it to criticize Hillary Clinton: "The only thing she cares about is pleasing her donors, the billionaires who fund her campaign. . . . She is so trapped in the world of the elite that she has completely lost grip on what it is like to be an average person. She doesn't care."
This blog has observed that Hillary Clinton's great strength is that she is a highly successful practitioner of politics as it carried out in America, with connections to donors, to powerful stakeholders, to fellow Democrats, to people in government. These connections are now the center of the anti-elitist charges levied against her. She is accused of being what she undeniably in fact is: a member of the political and economic elite, with access to comforts and legal advantages that most other people do not. This is why the "clear the swamp" message has largely supplanted the anti-immigrant message in Trump's speeches. He is not aiming first and foremost at Mexican rapists and Muslim terrorists. He is aiming at Hillary and her friends.
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| Trump finishes in Grand Rapids. Hillary rushes back to defend the state. |
The white working class people of Greater Boston knew how they felt about those snooty Boston Brahmins. They resented them. The white working people of Michigan in 1968 and 1972 showed how they felt about race and privilege by voting for George Wallace.
Donald Trump is not new in America and his clearest antecedent is not Adolph Hiltler. Donald Trump is part of a tradition that had been significant in the Democratic Party until the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s moved the south from Democratic to Republican. Donald Trump is the heir to the Richard Nixon and George Wallace southern strategy of linking the solid south with their tradition of racial politics to northern working class resentments of the liberal and privileged elites. Following the incident on the stage in Iowa Bernie Sanders weighed in with tweets, trying to repair the damage:
"I do not believe that most of the people who are voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist."
Then he added:
"Some are, but I think most are people who are hurting, they're worried about their kids, they're working longer hours for lower wages."
Then:
"Our job is to reach out to Trump voters and tell them we are going to create an economy that works for all of us, not just a few."
Sanders is saying it may partly be about race, but not just about race. It is also about the exclusion of working people from the elites, and Hillary's job will be to reach out to them. \
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Podcast, on I-Tunes
Donald Trump is not new in America and his clearest antecedent is not Adolph Hiltler. Donald Trump is part of a tradition that had been significant in the Democratic Party until the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s moved the south from Democratic to Republican. Donald Trump is the heir to the Richard Nixon and George Wallace southern strategy of linking the solid south with their tradition of racial politics to northern working class resentments of the liberal and privileged elites. Following the incident on the stage in Iowa Bernie Sanders weighed in with tweets, trying to repair the damage:
"I do not believe that most of the people who are voting for Mr. Trump are racist or sexist."
Then he added:
"Some are, but I think most are people who are hurting, they're worried about their kids, they're working longer hours for lower wages."
Then:
"Our job is to reach out to Trump voters and tell them we are going to create an economy that works for all of us, not just a few."
Sanders is saying it may partly be about race, but not just about race. It is also about the exclusion of working people from the elites, and Hillary's job will be to reach out to them. \
# # #
Podcast: We predicted the growing difficulty for Hillary:
Peter Sage and Thad Guyer go back and forth on whether the polls are merely a worrisome trend for Hillary, or a real disaster. Peter says that Trump's Hotel ribbon cutting was a triumph: early and below budget. Thad talks about the models that predicted this was likely to be a good year for the party out of power. And preview of coming attractions: what the losing party needs to do to remake its party.
Podcast, on I-Tunes
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