THIS.
No, it isn’t. But let us remember that all of that never was possible for working-class whites at any time in American history before the post-WWII boom, when America dominated global manufacturing and American industrial labor was highly unionized and the New Deal settlement still obtained. It was possible from then until the mid-'70s, when it all started to go away. And yet somehow we’ve come to think of it as what’s “normal.”
Two false assumptions here:
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That it’s not a zero-sum game, that you can be both pro-minority and pro-working class whites. But sometimes, it is. When you embrace, for example, racial quotas for college admissions at a state University, and the like, you are doing so at the expense of poor whites (rich whites go to better high schools and this have higher SATs, and have the option of private college). Sometimes there really are a finite number of dollars, a finite number of seats, etc, and when you take away something from “white people,” it’s almost always going to affect the least powerful and least influential whites, and breed resentment. When you beat the drum about “white privilege” and how easy “white people” or “white men” have it – and if you’re being remotely honest with yourself, you know liberals do this all the time – you shouldn’t be surprised when a white guy who grew up in a trailer park with neighbors on meth figures you don’t care about him and his problems. Bernie Sanders’ line the other night wasn’t a mere slip of the tongue: it was one of those “gaffes” where a politician makes the mistake of saying what he really thinks.
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You’re comparing Republicans and Democrats, and asking why the white working class would move from the latter to the former … but a major reason why they are angry is precisely because they don’t think either party cares about for them. That’s why Trump is popular and is bringing out people who otherwise wouldn’t vote, and why so many of them are uninterested in leaving him for anyone else. Scroll down to the second chart here. Where does Trump poll highest? Places like upstate New York, Michigan, and Appalachia, none of which are safely “red” or “blue,” and all of which are full of poor whites.
Finally, I’ll repost this from another thread, FWIW:
I think this is extraordinarily insightful, and in particular the part I bolded. There’s definitely a huge current of feeling that government is allowing the plutocrats to plunder the economy without repercussion, while simultaneously giving the poor and/or minorities entitlements and special treatment, presumably from the taxes that they pay.
And among this set, free trade agreements are seen as license for cheaper foreign labor to replace domestic labor, even if prices do go down on things. I mean, if you’re a car assembler in Michigan, why in the world would you think that NAFTA-enabled automotive assembly plants in Mexico are a GOOD thing? That’s a direct threat to your livelihood, comparative advantage, lower car prices, and higher GM/Ford/Chrysler profits notwithstanding.
So Trump’s “Let’s Make America Great” slogan speaks directly to that mindset; it’s sufficiently vague that it lets you fill in your own values for what makes America great again; in these folks’ case, that’s good paying blue collar jobs mostly. Plus Trump isn’t your typical slick, double-talking politician- a lot of his schtick is being the exact opposite. All of this adds up to Trump basically speaking their language in a way that the Tea Party leaning Republican establishment or the (in Trump supporters’ eyes) poor/minority pandering Democratic establishment doesn’t even come close to.
It’s a Rorschach blot slogan. It’s anything voters want it to be.
QFT.
This thread has more good, quotable comments than any other thread in a long time.
These angry voters don’t care that the previous generation lived in the sweet spot of history where one could maintain a comfortable lifestyle on a blue collar job. They don’t care if it wasn’t possible before WW II. They just know that they are worse off than their parents and there seems to be no way out of it and they really want to blame somebody.
No, no one does – but there might be some few who think it. 
This really hit the nail on the head for me. I think it’s really easy for the Democrats message to get lost on poorer whites because they bundle their economic message up with their social equality message. If they were able to better articulate a difference between the two then a lot of Trump supporters would likely switch to Bernie.
That’s ridiculous. Someone needs to generate the real wealth in this country. How else can we enable the tax and spend political class. The sad thing is that the simple electorate really believes that the political class cares about anything other than power.
The cognitive dissonance the left will willingly adopt when pro corporate Hillary governs economically conservatively while tossing progressives a bone with social justice lip service will be humorous. But at least Hillary will have the (D) behind her name.
That is nothing liberals or progressives would deny, and is entirely irrelevant. As for the “political class,” to the extent it exists, the problem with it is not that it is power-hungry, which any political class will be by definition regardless of politics, but that it is an almost wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-real-wealth-generating ruling class, the 1% and Wall Street – and, it doesn’t have to be that way, definitionally or otherwise.
The left – while griping a lot about him – has, for obvious art-of-the-possible reasons, more or less consistently supported Obama for seven years without any humorous cognitive dissonance; don’t see why it would be any different under Clinton.
As others have mentioned, my generation had it relatively easy. When I was in college, and in grad school, I never had to worry about finding a job, and the way I proceeded back then would be suicidal now. My father couldn’t go to college (Depression) but worked his way up to a very good white collar job. That would be nearly impossible today.
A lot of people today live in fear. Of becoming homeless, of losing medical coverage (less today than 10 years ago) and of not making it. We mostly don’t have the social safety net people do in Europe. My son-in-law is from Germany and I think he still has a hard time comprehending what could happen to those who fall off the employment wagon.
A lot of residents in that leafy suburb might be in debt up to their ears. Their house might finally not be underwater with respect to a mortgage. They may be afraid that one layoff will make them lose it all.
Trump doesn’t even promise lower taxes to the rich. Most politicians, left or right, at least propose something, and it is often easy to shoot down. Trump just says he will yell at Apple until they bring jobs back. Some people want confidence, even if there is no way of it happening. It is how con men work. I know the secret which will give you 20% returns a year, guaranteed. Take classes at Trump U and you can make a fortune in real estate. Romney is right - Trump is a con man, and an excellent one, and knows exactly what those living in fear want to hear.
Trump voters are frustrated when politicians fail to adopt “common-sense” solutions - what seems exasperatingly obvious to them - (“deport illegal immigrants!”, etc.) and vote for guys like Trump who do finally voice that opinion, which to them seems like a breath of fresh air. Finally! What took so long?
If we want to understand why some working-class white people don’t rush into the arms of the Democrats, this would be a good place to start. Verily, the Republicans favor fewer regulations on big business such as oil companies. The Democrats favor more. There may be some small exceptions, but generally this is true. And that’s one reason why working class people often loathe the Democrats.
Because regulations are often not good for working class people. They may not be economic Nobel Prize winners, but they get the general idea. For example, Hillary just promised to more or less regulate hydrofracking almost out of existence. (A reverse from her prior position.) So suppose Hillary did that. What would be the consequences for the working class?
First, many people would lose their jobs. This is obvious. The oil and gas industry provides many jobs. It’s one of the few that provides high-paying jobs to uneducated people. If Hillary harms the industry, some of those people will lose their jobs and won’t find others, at least not other high-paying ones.
Second, everyone would pay more for oil and gas. That’s basic economics. Reduced supply leads to higher prices. Poor and middle class people spend a fair chunk of their income on fuel. Higher fuel prices hurt them badly.
But what about the benefits of regulation? Democrats will tend to say that regulation is necessary for safety, for health, for fairness, etc… Working class people may not believe them, and for good reason.
Oil isn’t the only industry where this happens. Under the Obama Administration, there have been thousands of new regulations on all kinds of shit. (Not being figurative here; they literally regulated shit.) Thus there are a great many working-class people with good reason to hate the Democrats.
(It goes without saying that Trump has no workable solutions to these issues, but he does know that working-class people are angry and he knows how to exploit that anger.)
And yet who is harmed when a tanker runs aground? Or an oil rig blows up in the Gulf of Mexico? Or a fracking well contaminates a towns drinking water with carcinogens? Or some worker loses their hand in a piece of machinery? Not the executives or Wall Street bankers or even the middle management white collar types.
It’s a similar phenomenon to free trade. The benefits of free trade such as more and cheaper products are less visible because the benefits are disbursed throughout the entire economy and there is nothing to compare against. But the loss of a factory has a very visible effect, even though it is much more localized.
Like ALL Republican generalizations, this is completely wrong. Call me crazy, but I’m willing to pay more for oil in exchange for not contaminating an aquifer and not creating earthquakes. The anti-regulatory lunacy created a great comedic moment as West Virginia legislators passed a bill to legalize raw milk and promptly got sick drinking some:
Yeah, but are you the guy living in rural Texas (or wherever) who suddenly has enough money to not be nearly impoverished because the gas companies are paying him to drill for gas on his land? Are you the rural county judge who finally has enough money to actually pay for any of a dozen things that have needed doing for decades?
It’s not nearly as cut and dried as you seem to make it. I bet if you asked the people in the counties west and southwest of Fort Worth, they’d have less stark ideas about fracking than you do. Are they stupid for valuing 100,000 new jobs and a boatload of money that’s flowed into their communities as a result of natural gas production in the Barnett Shale? I don’t think so. Their priorities are just different.
This is one reason why there’s a lot of anger- you get people telling them that they’re essentially stupid, and that they should want to voluntarily forego something that’s actually improving their communities in many ways through increased cash flow, in favor of something that’s effects are much more subtle in most cases, and not necessarily even impacting them.
“Common sense” is what tells us the world is flat.