How is that “abandoning” them? It’s everybody’s environment including the white workers’ – whose employment problems have practically nothing to do with environmental regulations. This isn’t about preserving nice places for yuppies to go hiking, it’s about not exhausting resources, and keeping carcinogenic toxins out of the air and drinking water – and, nowadays, about cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. There was a time when Pubs understood and embraced this – Teddy Roosevelt got the whole “conservation” ball rolling, and the EPA was Nixon’s baby.
But that is still more clout compared to other demographic groups. Consider many of the socially conservative legislation that has come out in recent years concerning abortion and gay marriage. It’s not middle-class yuppies being catered to by this stuff, and it’s not blacks and Latinos either.
Think about what it means to be a coal miner. There are no environmental regulations that improve the life of a coal miner that beat just getting out of the damn mine and going to work for McDonalds instead. A good job will always trump health.
It’s not that coal miners don’t support environmentalism. EVERYONE supports environmentalism. But there are always limits based on personal circumstances, such as the rich liberals in Massachusetts not wanting a wind farm ruining their view. Coal miners would kinda like to keep their good union jobs. But the Democrats aren’t really with private sector unions anymore beyond the right to unionize. The jobs unions do tend to be kinda dirty, and Democrats’ long term goal is to get rid of most of their jobs.
Regulations didn’t kill coal mining employment, it was declining on its own.
I think the Dems absolutely blew it with the TARP and bailouts and etc. Remember it is about perception not reality. Here is the perception:
Dems spent an assload of money on bailing out banks and wall street aka too big to fail. Remember the Occupier movement was taxpayer rebellion for a couple of weeks before being annexed by TeaBags. Where was the $$$ for Main St.?
Home still got repoed. Obama personally came to evict me, turn the deed over to the bank and gave them a big check. Oh and now I can’t buy a house without a 680 FICO and 10% down and nobody is lending for anything else either.
Underemployed but not unemployed so I get fucked over by working.
So who can lower middle-class trust not to fuck them over? Obviously not Republicans and apparently not the Dems anymore. Ergo, Trump.
Democrat’s goal is to get rid of the union workers jobs, or union organizers and tough guys jobs?
Same difference. And Moidalize, good point about the decline of coal, but that’s not a guaranteed long term development. It’s a short term economic development due to high oil prices and fracking, which at this point is reversing itself, which will make coal more attractive again.
So why are they angry?
Right – stuff that costs the rich businessmen no money. What they really need would, but the pols won’t give them that.
Even if that happens, the industry wouldn’t need to ramp up employment very much to increase production. Strip mining is very efficient.
Yes, but the problem is this conclusion doesn’t follow rationally. Trump may be “anti-establishment” but he’s about the furthest thing from Main St one could possibly get. It’s also clear that fiscal conservatism is not what made him a household name; just the opposite actually. He has a track record of gambling with real estate, dumping money into half-baked business ventures, and building casinos that profit off “taxing” people who love wasting their meager earnings at the slots.
So what would cause someone to think a Trump White House would function any differently than one of his casinos? He has made a fortune out of taking sucker’s money and giving them nothing but bells and whistles in return. Why can’t his supporters see this? That’s the million dollar question.
Everything you posited about Trump supporters could be said about poor, undereducated minorities who are also struggling economically. But even after factoring out his racially divisive rhetoric, they don’t see Trump as their guy. Could it be because the Trump image only appeals to people who idealize rich, ruthless, tough-talking white men? I think so. “Rich and ruthless” scares the beejesus out of me personally because the description harkens back to darker, less enlightened days. But someone who takes a more nostalgic eye to the past will obviously feel different.
The Democrats’ goal is to protect the environment, even, perhaps, at the cost of some jobs if that is strictly necessary. In no other sense whatsoever is what you wrote there true. Dems are not at war against “dirty jobs.” They are not aiming at a future where everybody works in offices and nobody in mines or factories – though, come to think of it, such a future might well be desirable if achievable.
I’m not an expert on the technical aspects of energy exploitation, so I’ll defer to you on that. However, while the jobs are important, just going to get the coal is a big boon to local economies, not to mention that much like the auto industry, a lot of other companies upstream make the equipment, which also employs a lot of people.
The problem with renewables is that by design they are even less labor intensive. In most respects, that’s a feature, not a bug. But that kind of technological change is leaving a lot of people behind, and it’s a lot harder for people to swallow when it’s not a “shit happens” situation, but an actual government goal to get rid of their industries. Raging against globalization is something people do but it’s not easy to find a real villain. When the government is actively seeking to make you go away, then you’ve got a very tangible villain to hate.
Trump’s a charlatan, thus my fear that if he doesn’t deliver, what comes next? I think the idea here is that the establishment politicians have proven they will just lie to people, and even the ones who are sort of outsiders and newcomers will do the same. So now we’re down to people who aren’t politicians at all, so who do they turn to after Trump? A general with an ambition to run things himself and enough fellow officers from the region to maybe take a shot at DC?
On an “optimistic” note, Trump may actually mean what he says on trade, since unlike other issues where he’s changed his views a lot, he’s been a pretty persistent critic of our trade and immigration policies for a long time. So in terms of the policies the working white class thinks it wants, he may actually come through. That seems to be a large part of what immigrants here and foreign leaders abroad fear, is that he’s serious, whereas with other candidates it’s mostly campaign talk. But then we just have another problem. What happens when we kick out enough immigrants that white people get their jobs and we protect our industries enough that some of those jobs we’ve lost to outsourcing come back? It’ll only be a small percentage and will hurt our economy in the medium term, as well as lower the standard of living of the very people we’re supposedly trying to help.
I’m sure there are some “dirty jobs” which are not environmentally problematic, but such a high percentage are that it’s hard to not see Democrats waging war on such jobs, from manufacturing to energy exploitation to transportation. But at least you can see why private sector union rank and file see it that way.
Sanders. But for cultural reasons they can’t see that.
“Apres moi, le delYUUUUUGE!!!”
Sanders is only mad at one part of the problem(the rich) and he has also jumped on board the “kill fossil fuels” bandwagon. He’s also abandoned his previous hawkishness on immigration.
And what’s the other part? Not immigration.
Go to any factory or warehouse where goods are supposedly “Made in America”. You’ll find less American labor there than you’d like to see.