“You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today?” he said. “If you’re a white high school graduate, it’s 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?”
Young high-school graduates just coming into the job market (whether they are white, black, or Hispanic) are not middle class. With a set of skills, hard work, and determination, they may one day become middle class.
According to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, seven in ten voters believe that the Republican party is “out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today.”
What follows is a plan for how the GOP can win back their trust — and a build a conservative majority in the process.
When Americans went to the polls in 2012, the following was true: Work-force participation had sunk to its lowest level in 35 years, wages had fallen below 1999 levels, and 47 million Americans were on food stamps. Yet Mitt Romney, the challenger to the incumbent president, lost lower- and middle-income voters by an astonishing margin. Among voters earning $30,000 to $50,000, he trailed by 15 points, and among voters earning under $30,000 he trailed by 28 points.
And what did the GOP’s brilliant consultant class conclude from this resounding defeat? They declared that the GOP must embrace amnesty. The Republican National Committee dutifully issued a report calling for a “comprehensive immigration reform” that would inevitably increase the flow of low-skilled immigration, reducing the wages and living standards of the very voters whose trust the GOP had lost.
Over the past four decades, as factories were shuttered and blue-collar jobs were outsourced or automated, net immigration quadrupled. Yet the corporate-consultant class has pronounced that an insufficient level of immigration is the problem. A more colossal misreading of the political moment has rarely occurred.
Perhaps the most important political development now unfolding in the U.S. is the public’s growing loss of faith in our political and financial elites of both parties. To open the ears of disaffected voters, the GOP must break publicly from the elite immigration consensus of Wall Street and Davos. Republicans have a clear path to building a conservative majority if they free themselves from the corporate consultants and demonstrate to the American public that the GOP is the only party aligned with the core interests, concerns, and beliefs of everyday hardworking citizens.
Really? Are new college graduates middle class? Only 31% of American heads of household have a college degree. 30% have only a high school degree or less. What is your definition of middle class? How are young American ssupposed to get entry level work when competing against immigrants who will work cheaper and in many cases off of the books?
Yep...it’s an argument the GOP should be making...if they hadn’t sold their soul’s to the cheap labor express.
Maybe if we didn’t try to give those jobs to kids instead of illegals, it would keep some of the busy and keep them out of trouble.
Thus is probably the only place I can say I agree with Sanders. I am somewhat shocked he is that realistic.
