A machinist named Tim carried his steelworker union card in his wallet for years after the factory closed, just to remind himself who he was. Tim grew up in a union household. His dad had been an autoworker; his grandfather, a coal miner.
“We always voted Democrat because they looked after the little man,” Tim told me. “My father went to his grave and I can guarantee you he never voted for a Republican.”
Tim had such faith in Democrats that he didn’t worry when President Bill Clinton pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement over the finish line in 1993. Nor did he worry when Mr. Clinton normalized trade with China in 2000. But then the factory where Tim worked moved to Shanghai. And the next one moved to Mexico.
By the time I met Tim, he loathed the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Democrats had gotten in bed with the corporations, while no one was looking. Tim felt betrayed, and politically abandoned — until Mr. Trump came along….
About 55 percent of voters who expected to support Mr. Trump during the 2016 primaries identified as working class, according to a 2015 study by the Public Religion Research Institute. Fewer than a third who backed other Republican candidates identified as such.
Back in the day, it used to be a question–Who lost China? Today the same question should be posed to Democrats: Who lost the Working Class? Whoever did is responsible for breaking this country apart in a way from which it's unlikely to recover.
If you still need convincing, this article written in October excerpted above makes the case (indirectly) I've been making here since Clinton faced off against Sanders in 2016. I hold every Democrat who voted for Hillary over Sanders responsible for Trump. HRC was the worst possible candidate to run at that time, and her losing to Trump gave right-wing populism a much stronger foothold than it had before. In 2016, these former Rust-Belt Dems were winnable; they are now most likely lost to Democrats for good.
It's not like they have any love for establishment Republicans, who they know couldn't care less about them. Trump won them by giving haters of the Republican and Democratic establishment a channel for their hate, and with that an identity that will prove resilient against any attempts by Dems to win them back. And now it doesn't depend on Trump. It's an identity shaped not by Trump love or Republican party loyalty, but by Liberal hatred. Trump has been until now a convenient cipher through which to channel that hatred. Others will emerge to do it more effectively later. The Republican Party has one defining, identity shaping dynamic now–Liberal hatred. And anybody who wants a future in the GOP understands that. Whoever hates Liberals more wins. You don't need to have any policy proposals or any other beliefs or principles.
The liberal-hating energy Trump has intensified and channeled for the last four or five years is very powerful but is not now being effectively managed because of Trump's pathologies and incompetence. That energy isn't going away when Trump goes away. Who will find a way to channel it? Biden? He's a soothing presence for people in the reality-based community, but he's a fixture of the Liberal establishment. He's not winning the alienated working class back in any significant way.
2016 was likely the Dems' last chance. It's now not a matter of former Rust-Belt Dems rationally deciding which Party will actually do more for them policy-wise. They see themselves, rightly, as betrayed by a Dem party dominated by Neoliberal ideology that has come to represent the interests of Wall Street, celebrities, the affluent educated, atheists, and snowflakes, and that's a branding problem someone like Biden won't overcome with a few nice speeches. They have come define themselves as against the Libs, which is to say, the Dems.
The argument that the future of the Dem party is with Blacks and Browns has been ridiculously short-sighted and only added fuel to the us-against-them, grievance-and-identity-politics fire. If the Dems think they have the eternal loyalty of Blacks and Browns, that's delusional. It's not that they'll vote Republican–though more will who see themselves as having pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps: "I didn't need any damn handouts or affirmative action". Such is a huge defining American egoism that Republicans have trademarked that does not depend on race or ethnicity. The rest just won't vote at all because they are smart enough to understand that the party of Wall St., celebrities, the affluent educated, atheists, and snowflakes is not a party that takes their interests seriously either.
Biden's only hope–and so the only hope for those of us who have remained relatively sane in this mad moment–is to get some important things done, and that all depends on what happens in Georgia next month. It would be ironic indeed if the Dems win those two senate seats because Trump cultists in a state run by Republicans won't vote for Republicans in what they have come to believe is a rigged system.
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