About 30 years ago, I had an internship with a think tank that focused on rural economic development. One project involved trying to get welders in the mountains of North Carolina to buy state-of-the-art welding equipment co-operatively and house it in a central location. They targeted welding companies in a fifty-mile radius of Waynesville and were having difficulty getting the support they needed from the communities.
As I sat in a meeting listening to the researchers discuss the struggling project, I couldn’t help but feel like they had no idea about the people or businesses they were trying to reach. I’m not sure what they thought a welding business looked like in western North Carolina, but I’m pretty sure most of those welders were fiercely independent mountain men with arc welders set up in shops behind their houses or just down the road. They were fixing broken logging and farm equipment and maybe making furniture or folk art to sell on the side. They weren’t likely to drive five miles, much less fifty, on curvy mountain roads to use any sort of shared new technology, no matter how much more efficient and effective it might be. That defeated the whole point of the lifestyle and businesses they had built.
I had similar feelings reading an article about a report released by the House Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with the DCCC. They found that white working class voters still have a favorable view of Donald Trump and prefer Republicans to Democrats by ten points on the generic House ballot. Most troubling for Democrats, those voters give Republicans a 35-point edge on the question of which party will “improve the economy and create jobs.”
One Democratic strategist called the findings “sobering.” The report’s authors talked about finding the right messages to reach these voters with a focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs.” First, though, Democrats need to focus on trust, trust, trust, because that’s what they’ve lost with the white working-class, especially those who voted for Obama but switched to Trump.
Democrats certainly need to hear the message in the report but for those living in areas with heavy white working class communities, nothing in it is new or surprising. Democrats can’t message their way out of the predicament they’ve created. They need to find leaders who live in those communities and have a track record of service to make the case for better policies that will help families and offer hope for the future. With the right candidates, the right message will follow.
Nationally, Democrats need to find an economic message but not just for the white working class. They need an overarching message that appeals to a broad audience that includes African-Americans, Hispanics and young people of all shapes and colors. To too many Americans, Democrats have become a party of causes instead of people.
It’s true they need to offer solutions to the economic problems facing middle class families but they’re probably not going to come from Washington think tanks or super PACs. The answers will come from people who understand the culture and context in which these folks live. Otherwise, Democrats will be like those researchers I worked with 30 years ago who offered a bunch of mountain welders help they didn’t want or need.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
North Carolina as with the rest of South has never been a skilled labor state or region. Agriculture was the big business of the region; that sentiment still runs true to those that cling tenaciously to that mind set and those ideals. Working on the ground planting and harvesting is not a skilled trade by any stretch of the imagination and it pays just as dismally as the task at hand is. Nothing surprising there either. It is firmly ensconced in the antebellum mindset that ran the South and North Carolina from the foundation of the plantation through the latter part of the twentieth century. As proof of the veracity of that observation, look back to the pre-WWI years. The great migration of African Americans north to take skilled labor jobs in manufacturing rather than working in the fields of the South. They were able to improve their family situation, and thrive much more so than if they had stayed.
North Carolina has always found labor unions and that concept distasteful to put it mildly and fought it legislatively (and still do). You can yay or nay that idea as you will, but it also ignores the fact that unions also use journeyman apprenticeships to bring new people into skilled trades and allow them to learn the technical knowledge necessary to become a plumber, electrician, carpenter, machinist, and yes, welder. As often as not, those skills, where they exist in the South are usually passed down within familial confines; outsiders need not apply. Sure, many of those skills are obtainable through the community college system here. Terry Sanford had the foresight to see there was a demand for that type of training. How many people had the time however to devote to a formalized classroom environment when their counterparts in other regions of the country were able to obtain those skills on the job, learning and earning at the same time.
What is the solution to Democrats connecting with those blue-collar people again? Well, it’s not with a better ‘message.’ As foul, obnoxious, and out and out insane as what is currently coming out of the White House at present, those blue-collar income brackets are eating up it up by the tweetful. Why? While they might not agree with what is being said, they wholeheartedly agree with how it is said; difference. It’s blunt, straight to the point, and there is never any doubt what Donald Trump and the rest of the circus clowns are thinking if they do, in fact, think. That message, as incongruous as we condemn it to be resonates because it isn’t buried beneath a ton of smarmy language we learned in college. It’s perfectly all right to be intelligent and educated; what you can’t do is go around rubbing peoples’ noses in it. It’s offensive and they’ll resist and resent you at every turn. They have to believe that you have them and what they are concerned about at heart. Democrats as I have said along with many others right here, took on every special interest and social issue that popped up and left the working classes to their own devices. We improved the social awareness and civic rights for a lot of people. That approach however has cost Democrats all three branches of the Federal Government and has rendered a Republican controlled legislature that runs rough-shod over people in favor of corporations. The great irony of that is, they still get elected because Democrats are still riding the peace train (it’s a metaphor and not literal).
I agree completely that Republicans have developed a great skill being the victim, bending the truth so that it looks like a modern art sculpture. They have become the working man’s friend…in the eyes of the working man. Scratch the surface or look at the policies they implement and laws they pass and the truth is otherwise, but the true believer doesn’t care. The only thing that Republicans care about is winning. That was evident with the recent vote on healthcare. Republicans don’t care that their legislation is worse that ACA, that it kicks millions off healthcare. That the tumultuous legislative environment in Congress is leading to rising healthcare prices and more companies withdrawing from the market. That the current HHS head is still waiting for Donald Trump to tell whether or not they are going to subsidies to the insurance companies to keep premiums low for poor people. I don’t think they will continue to pay them. They will help ACA “implode” and blame it on Democrats going into the next election cycle.
Now, it’s tax reform. Tax reform isn’t going to help the working classes. It’s only going to help the upper classes and corporations. It’s going to hurt poor and struggling families because it is going to drastically cut funding for domestic programs and create alternative funding strategies like “fees.” Which is going to be interesting to watch as Donald Trump leads us toward our next conflagration. Republicans cut revenues and increase spending then lament the debt ceiling, the deficit, and the out of control spending. Yet it is them doing it.
Until Democrats have a strong policy to keep those boats from sinking and show how the Republican wave is causing them to sink, Democrats will continue to flail about without a life jacket. I wonder how long we can tread water?
Agreed: messaging will not solve the Democrats problems. Agreed: work at a local level engaged with local people is essential. Since when is it necessary to give up adroit and smart communications for serious, thoughtful local work? Please note, I said “smart” which frankly, means more straight talk, not slogans.
Agreed: racism was and is much in evidence in the recent presidential campaign and throughout the Obama years, and we cannot create brains where there is no inclination to use them. However, racism will not die out of its own accord, and unless we want to deny the right to vote to some portion of the US citizenship, we cannot “let them go” — we have to outvote them. It is called organizing, and anyone who has ever done it, will vouch for how hard it is. Personally, I think it is best done by peers, or at least someone who can be seen as somewhat like those whose support is being sought. I also suspect that we older folks will have to get off our duffs, remove ourselves from our computers, and do a lot more volunteering. Every campaign I have been near for 20 years has been overly dependent on young women and men either still in college or barely out, plus the long term political consultants. That was not always the case.
But make no mistake, the white, financially comfortable people who voted for Trump, will not face their sexism or racism. They do not think they have those failings. They don’t obviously hate, and they did not as far as I can see, believe most of the fake news. I’m not even sure it reached them. They also do not believe that Obama was a good president; translate “strong.” Trump may lose them given his chaos and incompetence, but I’m not so sure. Those voters are swing GOP folks and Independents. I am not sure what will move them. Those I know astound me, and even months after they voted for Trump, I am shocked, appalled and angry that they helped give us this mess. Someone, however, has to reach at least some of them if Democrats are win elections at any level.
PS. LBJ would probably not be a success today since his ability to persuade was significantly enhanced by the use of “pork” to entice votes he needed. “Pork” is mostly gone (thanks largely to John McCain) and the arm twisting is much, much harder now. I do think LBJ’s time in Congress gave him knowledge that was very valuable in the WH. Not sure how he would handle a world of social media. Interesting to consider.
Excellent analysis except for what you think is the solution. What sort of message will overcome this eight years of ignorance?
OH pshaw! Meep, meep, meep! Whine whine whine! Why don’t we just admit that we’ve been too holier than thou, too above all that, to get down in the trenches and do a little work selling ourselves, our policies and our accomplishments?. I am so reminded of how very badly Mr. Obama did at the beginning of his re-election campaign when he just couldn’t be bothered to make an effort. The last good democrat politician was LBJ. Everyone else has been a dud. If politicians don’t sell themselves and their programs, they lose. Democrats allow Republicans to control the narrative without resistance, then complain. What idiots we are. The title of Mr. Krugman’s latest should have been “Who Ate Democrat’s Brains”
Working people need to understand who their enemies are, who is trying to take food out of their mouths and who is keeping them from improving the quality of their lives.
In “The Usual Suspects,” Verbal Kent told detectives: “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Republicans have pulled a trick nearly as great as the Devil’s, maybe greater. After the collapse of the world economy in 2008 while Republican policies were in control of the U.S. economy, Mitch McConnell and his henchmen on the right made a decision to oppose any policy which would improve the economy so that the black guy would not get credit for it. They prevented measures which would have created jobs, then complained that the Obama Administration had not created enough jobs. The perpetrators posed as victims. The real victims, their constituencies, did not understand who was causing their misery. They blamed those who were, ineffectively, attempting to bring solutions, and the victims failed to blame those who were causing them pain. It was as if the Republicans set the house on fire and told the inhabitants to shoot the firemen when they arrived. And they did that.
Millions of homes were foreclosed upon. Savings were cut in half, and the Congressional GOP leadership worked hard to make sure the pain remained. The black guy did it, they said. That was a big lie.
Incredibly, the message was not that Republicans were keeping people from feeding their families, paying their mortgages and improving their lives. The message was that Democrats and Obama failed to make jobs available. Part of the problem was civic ignorance. People did not hold Republicans accountable, when they were in the majority in Congress, for their deliberate hindrance, perhaps because the electorate did not comprehend that the obstruction came from the Republican Congress.
Many Americans believe that the president is able to wave his hand and change the world with a magic gesture like a sorcerer because their civic ignorance allows them to believe that the president has powers he does not have under our Constitution. They do not know that our Congress is in charge of fiscal policy – who pays taxes and who receives government injections.
Democrats were not good a getting the message out to the American public that the source of their economic woes came from failed Republican policies which caused the mortgage crisis to begin with and continued their misery was a result of Republican failure to take remedial action. Republicans were excellent at avoiding the responsibility for their failed economics by placing blame where it did not belong.
Racism helped the Republicans because so many Americans were willing to believe that the black guy caused the problems and could not solve them. There was, in those policy failures, a vindication of white supremacy. A white guy would have done it better.
There are segments of our population who believe that health care is easy and can be provided cheaply and better, that the economy didn’t recover because the Muslim terrorist Communist dictator in the White House wanted to prevent people from paying their mortgages and truck payments and that Hillary ran a child prostitution ring in the basement of a pizza parlor in Georgetown.
The solution? Don a red cap and beat up people of color and non-Christians. I do not think it is possible for Democrats to craft a message which will reach the darkest reaches of ignorance and hatred, and I don’t think they should try. The information-free minds of many Trump supporters were the fertile fields upon which thousands of Russian government operatives wrote bizarre scenarios that made no sense, could not stand up to minimal scrutiny but which millions of virulent haters of Obama believed.
Our pornographic White House with its despicable language, violent messages, its truth-free statements, and its abandonment of American values does not give Trump supporters pause. They march into the arms of a Russian dictator; they condone sexual perversity; they accept lies as truth and they do not accept facts at face value.
These are lost Americans. What outreach is possible? They must return to America because there is no middle ground. There is no such thing as a half-Nazi or half-racist or half-traitor. We must let them go. They are not American anymore.
They would still sign up for Trump University.
Tell it, brother!