Fighting for the little guy

Democrats need a bigger tent. They need to be the jobs party.

Fighting prejudice and protecting minorities is not enough. 

Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and then Franklin Roosevelt gave Democrats a tradition. They were the party of opportunity for the little guy oppressed by big money interests. Democrats won with that message and the coalition it created, the Solid South plus northern urban factory workers.

Democratic decision One. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson put into place a massive realignment of political geography and coalitions by signing the Civil Rights Act. He understood what he was doing, switching the white South into the hands of Republicans, the party that resisted and resented that change.

Democrats understood the enemy of equal opportunity to be prejudice and discrimination. First blacks, then women, and more recently Latinix, homosexuals, and immigrants. They were the party of inclusion, diversity, and anti-racism. 

The image of the archetypal Democratic voter changed from a white, urban, unionized factory worker, into something more diverse. Democratic thinking was that inclusion was additive, not competitive for their white worker base. A great many white Americans did not perceive it that way. They saw the new people as competition in jobs, they were culturally unfamiliar, and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and increased immigration, ripe to be called a threat.

Facebook comment:
that's why we love you--
waited my whole life for a president like Trump

Republicans became a white person's party of social conservatives. Trump added an economic message to this, critical of free trade and offshoring of jobs. The one-two punch worked. Their current defense of Trump repeatedly invokes the notion of self defense against woke liberals and foreigners.

Democratic decision Two. In the aftermath of Watergate in 1974 Democrats had a landslide year. Democrats had seen government corruption in Watergate and a fruitless war in Vietnam, sold and waged dishonestly by the government. That Watergate wave was elected with the help of young anti-war activists, open to the idea that the government lacked credibility, people embittered by the nomination of Humphrey in 1968 and the loss by McGovern in 1972. (People like me.)

Democrats stopped being the anti-corporate party. Corporations were no worse than government and, besides, markets were supposed to create just outcomes. Carter de-regulated transportation, Reagan de-regulated military contractors, Clinton de-regulated the financial industry. Glass-Steagall was repealed and banks got too big to fail. 

If mergers, takeovers, and buyouts met the test of lower prices for consumers they could take place, even if they reduced competition. Let the markets do their work and let corporations do what corporations do. It turns out that what they did to get lower prices is focus solely on the stockholder and ignore the needs of communities and employees. Cut costs. The result was reduced competition, anti-union activity, and movement of factories off shore. 

The stock market went up. GOP went up. Stockholders were thrilled. Employees were not.

In that economic environment white native born employees saw inclusion of new people in shrinking environment of family wage manufacturing jobs. It did not feel additive. It felt like a threat. For a fuller story in the Atlantic: Click here.

From Sanders website

Amid criticism, Obama saved GM. He won the Upper Midwest. Now Democrats face Trump, who openly talks to economic concerns of those workers.

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer, and Andrew Yang are speaking directly to the issue of the economic system: jobs and economic security for Upper Midwest workers.

Biden and Buttigieg are not, at least to my ear. I have heard them many times. They are speaking of fixing what is wrong with Trump, and restoring a better America, but the word jobs is not in the center of their message, nor are concrete proposals to address job concerns. I have listened for it. I consider this a problem for them.