But it’s also because, from a liberal perspective, the Democratic Party should be the natural home of the white working class. After all, the Democratic Party is the one that stands up to big business. The Democratic Party is the one that stands up for Medicare and other entitlement programs. The Democratic Party is the one that rejects generous tax breaks for the 1%. The Democratic Party is the one that stands up for the workingman. And yet the Democratic Party seems unable to earn the support of the very people it claims to champion.
There's no real mystery here. These are self-congratulatory Democrat stereotypes, and precisely none of them is actually true. You might start there to appreciate why the working class - I did not say "white" - has departed the Dems in droves.
The Democrat party does not "stand up to big business", its very engine runs on big business donations and cozy crony capitalism. Neither does it "stand up for the workingman" - ask the coal miners of West Virginia about that. It has, in truth, rejected their former supporters in preference to trendy, "expert"-driven utopian policies on the environment, on hiring, race preference, and job-threatening illegal immigration. They didn't leave the party, in Reagan's memorable words, the party left them.
Many liberals like to view themselves as champions for the working class, but many working class citizens from all backgrounds seem to disagree. And as someone who works in a warehouse that employs a lot of minorities, I can confirm that these views are not exclusive to the white working class. While white working class and minorities may not agree on issues like trade or police reform, they aren’t far apart on issues like trans-gender rights, abortion, military intervention, or “welfare queens” (I’ve personally heard minority members of the working class complain about how people on welfare have better lives than they do.) I’ve often wondered how large a coalition a Trump-like candidate without his racial dog whistles and conspiracy theories could form.
Discard the silly premises about dog whistles and conspiracy theories and the author will stumble on the answer: that "Trump-like candidate" is currently occupying the White House. That's how far.
This is maddening - the author has described a perfect appreciation of the problem and still he doesn't know what it is. I too have heard non-white working class members complaining bitterly about illegal immigration because they're taking their jobs, stupid! And who the hell cares about men in women's rest rooms when the government is killing their jobs? And what working class women care about vaginas in the White House when the government is killing their husbands' jobs, and they're having to break into the piggy banks to put shoes on their kids for school, where the government educators are telling their kids that their country sucks? Hell yes there's a problem with the working class, and it's that they're fed up with this crock of crap that's being passed off as pure cream butter.
What needs to happen to the Democrat party - and it won't, which is why I'm safe saying it - is to boot the activists and the acolytes and the social theorists and the grifters and find a candidate who can convince the voters first that he or she loves America, as she is, warts and all, and not as some future vision the present is going to have to be burnt to the ground to effect. There is absolutely no one, not a single soul, on the Democrat side of the house who could convincingly take that position at this time or would dare to. And that's the problem.
That was an AMAZING post, Bill!
Cut clear to the chase and succinctly put. Brilliant!