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[Valhelm]

Pretty cool article by Jacobin about the elitism and classism that underscores a lot of liberal discussion about poor white voters.

...the voters of West Virginia — one of the poorest and whitest states in the country, a place that repeatedly elected a former Klansman to the Senate — asserting their material interests. In the ongoing Clinton coronation, they were about as welcome as a case of black lung. But it isn’t just the Sanders campaign zombie that liberal pundits are desperately trying to stamp out. It’s the white working class itself.

Somehow liberal pundits have gotten it into their heads that white workers — perhaps thanks to Fox News’s racist dispatches — are just an aggrieved, pissed off, outnumbered minority. But their particular disgust is just a stand-in for a more generalized anti-working-class politics. No matter how you slice it, the working class — while not quite Wes-Anderson-movie-white — is really damn white.

While the Economic Policy Institute projects that the US working class will be 49.6 percent “non-hispanic white” by 2032, 77 percent of all minimum wage (or below) workers today are white. Half are white women, who it should be noted joined young working-class women of color as an enthusiastic core of Sanders’s base. And as Tamara Draut shows in her new book Sleeping Giant — which stresses the diversity of the new working class — 63 percent of all workers without a bachelor’s degree are still non-Latino white.

Instead of acknowledging the size and importance of this part of the electorate, Democratic Party elites have simply constructed a new narrative to suit their interests — a narrative that was on display after West Virginia. Following Sanders’s win a significant chunk of the punditocracy came to the conclusion, mostly by abusing the hell out of exit polls, that a vote for the Jewish socialist was actually a vote for white supremacy. After decades of being told white workers would never support socialism because they’re racist, we’re now told that they support the socialist candidate because they are racist.

The Sanders program is a recognizably working-class one: higher minimum wage, free college for all, labor unionism, and a re-regulation of finance with steep taxes on the one percent. And his actual politics go far beyond that. He preaches the necessity and righteousness of class war, calls out our oligarchs by name and — in the case of his Immokalee farmworkers advertisement — asks us all to question “who benefits from this exploitation?” This politics puts Sanders considerably to the left of every major Western social-democratic or labor party leader, short of Jeremy Corbyn. Howard Dean and Bill Bradley he is most certainly not. The Clinton program — which is the kind of politics that’s defined the Democratic Party and American liberalism for decades — is also a class program. But to paraphrase Adolph Reed, it’s a politics that few would recognize as a working-class one. Despite off-the-charts wealth inequality, Democratic Party liberals have been concerned not with an egalitarian reckoning to unite the have-nots against the haves but with inclusion: bringing different “interest groups” into the professional class while managing everyone else’s expectations downward.

The working class is central to a meaningful progressive politics because they have the numbers, the economic incentive and the potential power to halt capital in its tracks — to check the power of our ruling class and build a truly democratic society out of this miserable oligarchy we all find ourselves stuck in today. It becomes clearer every year, particularly with Sanders’s popularity, that the American ruling class has made out like bandits simply by keeping portions of the large (and potentially powerful) working class from uniting in a single political party behind even a social-democratic program. And that such a scenario would be nothing short of a disaster for them. It’s obvious that this kind of popular politics will never be built if segments of the working class — much less a majority of it — are written off. So when I hear liberal pundits saying that white workers are morally compromised beyond hope or on the way to irrelevance, I tend to get a little suspicious.

It's Jacobin, so there's some reductionism and a definite Sanders slant, but the author raises some true and very concerning points about the ways in which the party of the worker has ignored the largest working-class demographic in this country. While I think the white working class has a lot to answer for, such as their bad habit of blaming people even more disprivileged people for their own misfortune, Democrats' condescension is alienating a huge amount of voters and helping far-right populists succeed.

I'm concerned by the Democratic party's general blindness to the growing income gap. This is one of the most troubling issues in our country, but the solutions brought forward by American politicians are half-hearted at best. Obviously, the GOP is unimaginably worse when it comes to wealth disparity, but the Democratic is failing the workers it's supposed to represent. As the Democrats are poised to champion federal politics for the forseeable future, it's vital that poor white voters have some say in their own governance.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

40% of West Virginia Bernie voters supported Trump over Bernie in the exit polls. This is not "abusing" the exit polls, it's knowing how to read.

The writer is a moron. Hillary is viewed as Obama's third-term, WV Dems hate Obama because he's black, hence they voted against Hillary, not for Bernie.

Note that the writer of the article also defended Jill Stein attacking Hillary for being a bad parent.

 

[Quixzlizx]

Democratic Party liberals have been concerned not with an egalitarian reckoning to unite the have-nots against the haves but with inclusion

Maybe Jacobin would prefer a party that espouses some sort of workers' revolution?

 

[Coriolanus]

Maybe Jacobin would prefer a party that espouses some sort of workers' revolution?

Is this your first contact with jacobin?

 

[kirblar]

White working class- much of the working class nowadays is not white.

 

[StMeph]

This politics puts Sanders considerably to the left of every major Western social-democratic or labor party leader, short of Jeremy Corbyn.

Is the article suggesting somehow that Bernie Sanders is more socialist than politicians of western socialist nations like the countries of Scandinavia?

 

[Quixzlizx]

Is this your first contact with jacobin?

I was being sarcastic because, as a non-communist, I couldn't care less about Jacobin's opinion of the Democratic party.

Sorry it didn't get across.

 

[Valhelm]

White working class- much of the working class nowadays is not white.

This is the kind of attitude that the article is criticizing. As it stands, an outright majority of working-class people are white, and white workers are going to a plurality for at least a century. Liberals have done a poor job responding to this demographic, and this disregard pushes these people to the right.

Is the article suggesting somehow that Bernie Sanders is more socialist than politicians of western socialist nations like the countries of Scandinavia?

Ideologically speaking, Bernie Sanders is a socialist. He advocates for Scandinavian-style social democracy, which is a soft form of capitalism, because legitimate socialism is pretty much impossible to achieve in the American political climate.

 

[Quixzlizx]

This is the kind of attitude that the article is criticizing. As it stands, an outright majority of working-class people are white, and white workers are going to a plurality for at least a century. Liberals have done a poor job responding to this demographic, and this disregard pushes these people to the right.

I think there is a chicken and egg problem here. The Southern Strategy was so successful that Democrats were pushed toward identity politics to a certain degree.

 

[Dennis]

After decades of being told white workers would never support socialism because they’re racist, we’re now told that they support the socialist candidate because they are racist.

Nailed it.

The smug elitist media needs to read that quote over and over again until it sticks in their prejudiced minds.

 

[kirblar]

This is the kind of attitude that the article is criticizing. As it stands, an outright majority of working-class people are white, and white workers are going to a plurality for at least a century. Liberals have done a poor job responding to this demographic, and this disregard pushes these people to the right.

Marginal voter theorem explains this.

The Southern Strategy and barely-disguised racism that people like G. W. Bush warned about has essentially excluded minorities from the GOP. The growth in these voter groups was not surprising or unexpected.

This action by the GOP forces them into the Democratic party by necessity. Over time, as they expand and make up a greater % of the Democratic party, they are going to essentially push out white voters who flip to the GOP, because the most important part of the party is the 51st vote (out of 100.) The ones who are 52/53/54 (who are going to be white) are going to find themselves without leverage, where the GOP offers them a more attractive option.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Nailed it.

The smug elitist media needs to read that quote over and over again until it sticks in their prejudiced minds.

40% of Bernie voters in WV support Trump over Bernie.

 

[ezrarh]

I think there is a chicken and egg problem here. The Southern Strategy was so successful that Democrats were pushed toward identity politics to a certain degree.

I was about to say, a lot of the white working class Democrats moved away from the party because it started enacting civil rights and do helpful things for minorities. Why should the party try harder to cater to them when they were the one who ran away in the first place due to racism?

 

[Slayven]

Most of the shit Democrats want to do will overwhelming benefit whites over minorities percentage wise and in raw numbers, what some of them want is be catered specifically too, like the GOP has been doing the last 60 years.

How is that working out?

 

[Dr_LucienSanchez]

Yep, despite people poo-pooing the article because it's from Jacobin, this is a real (and massive problem) with the Democratic party. Thomas Frank recently released a book that basically goes over all this quite nicely.

 

[Rentahamster]

After decades of being told white workers would never support socialism because they’re racist, we’re now told that they support the socialist candidate because they are racist.

That's kinda funny.

 

[Valhelm]

I was about to say, a lot of the white working class Democrats moved away from the party because it started enacting civil rights and do helpful things for minorities. Why should the party try harder to cater to them when they were the one who ran away in the first place due to racism?

I think the Democratic Party can definitely appeal to working class whites without pandering to their racism. European labor parties have been doing this for decades.

 

[kirblar]

I think the Democratic Party can definitely appeal to working class whites without pandering to their racism. European labor parties have been doing this for decades.

European countries have had a resurgence in Tump-esque candidates with racist/xenophobia mixed with support for welfare states, no?

 

[kittenbreath]

I think the Democratic Party can definitely appeal to working class whites without pandering to their racism. European labor parties have been doing this for decades.

Race isn't nearly as germane to European politics as it is to US politics. In Europe, the states with the most comprehensive welfare programs tend to be those with the most homogeneous populations.

 

[Mii]

I think there is space for both point and counter point in this thread to be right.

Yes, the white working class vote is angry and afraid.

Yes, it's opportunities, particularly in the rust belt and the old manufacturing core of this nation, have dried up.

Yes, they can be looking to blame someone for their malaise. That could be incorrectly placed on minorities and the metropolitan areas.

Yes, they can prefer Bernie over Hillary because Bernie wants to rein in free trade.

Yes, they can prefer Trump over Bernie because Trump has been even tougher on his stance on Free Trade AND has given them people to blame. They prefer the black, Hispanic, Muslim, feminist, and foreigner boogeyman over the 1% boogeyman.

"Trump is part of the 1%, but he feels like one of us. He must have our best interests in mind. How could Hillary? She just cares for those who came out okay after the crisis, the Obama voters that live in the cities."

Yes, the Democratic Party has done a terrible job trying to solve the problems outside of the metropolitan areas.

Yes, the new GOP under Trump has a more tangible and sound-bite-able set of changes that these voters like.

Is it really impossible for all of this to be true?