Sometimes the best information after a loss comes from the front-line folks, and in politics that’ll be the candidates, win or lose. Soon-to-be former Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has a view that needs to be considered:
Why? Brown says the political shift in his state began with a signal event: the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, the first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
“Workers have slowly migrated out of the Democratic Party,” he told [interviewer Jennifer Rubin]. “It accelerated as more and more jobs were lost. And I still heard [about NAFTA] in this campaign, especially in the Miami Valley, Dayton, where we still won, [and] up there in Mahoning Valley, where we didn’t win.”
Workers came to view Democrats “as a bicoastal elite party,” he explained. “We were too pro-corporate. They know Republicans are going to shill for corporate interests. They expected Democrats would stand up for them, and they don’t see that nationally.” [WaPo]
The NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) issue is painfully funny, because I recall President Bill Clinton (D) stealing the entire free trade issue from the Republicans way back when, and that theft quite probably contributed to the Republicans’ hatred of President Clinton and his subsequent impeachment over trivial issues involving a blowjob. The real point is that the Republicans, if Clinton had not been involved, would have heartily endorsed NAFTA.
But yes, it does seem like the Democrats have lost the back of the workers, despite President Bidens efforts to boost unions during his term.
But although he himself will no longer be there come January, Brown insists that Democrats can — and must — win back the votes of working-class Americans. Those voters may disagree with some of the party’s stances on social issues, such as guns, abortion, crime and immigration, but will return to the fold “if we stay on economic issues and do it right.”
“We have to sharpen our message. I don’t look at politics left and right. It’s who’s on your side,” he said. “Work really binds. I mean, what do we have in common? The term ‘dignity of work’ really cuts across all lines.”
What American voters face.
(Yes, I know I’ve used this several times. It’s a favorite.)
For workers, the jobs that don’t require college degrees, that take the workers down into mines and forty stories up tacking together buildings are very important – and the Democratic Party, steered by legitimate or illegitimate leaders more concerned with exotic ideologies, and burdened by a lack of knowledge concerning how liberal democracies work, managed to steer the Party onto the rocks of madness and leave American voters with a Party that feels autocratic and facing another Party that feels … autocratic.
