by Gregg Robinson
It has been said that history repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. In the case of the current presidential campaign, I would reverse that order. And I am not merely speaking about the impact of a second Trump presidency, but the tactics of the Harris campaign as well.
As many progressives across the country have argued, and particularly Jim Miller in the pages of this blog, the ability to appeal to working-class voters in the key Midwest swing states depends on two things: first, a commitment to economic populism; and second, a willingness to speak to the anger that working-class people of all ethnicities feel about how the economic policies of the last half century have hammered their communities. Let me add a few data point to Jim’s piece.
The Harris campaign seems to feel that it is too risky to focus on divisive “class-war” issues, and instead has oriented toward positive messages like the “Middle-Class Economy,” which they believe contrasts with the negative racism and authoritarianism of Trump. This approach in combination with issues like reproductive rights and an outreach to communities of color, should produce the kind of victory seen in the past Obama campaigns. However, this approach ignores those angry blue-collar workers in the Rust-Belt states as Jim and a recent survey by the folks at Jacobin have pointed out.
This approach also misreads the success of the Obama campaigns. Yes, he was able to pull together a coalition of women, people of color, and working-class voters in the Midwest, but this was not because he was a “nice”/reassuring African American, but because of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Any Democrat running against an incumbent Republican administration in that context would have won given those economic conditions. The economic winds this time around with inflation still on the minds of many working-class voters are not so favorable.
Harris also seems to feel that that picking a working-class Vice Presidential candidate from the Midwest has been enough to satisfy working-class communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. While Tim Walz is a genuinely attractive working-class spokesperson, where are the policies that he can push that speak to the class interests of blue-collar workers throughout this area? Where are the demands to not just marginally increase taxes on the rich, but to bring back the blue collar unions that were the heart of working-class communities, to reproduce the wages that once made American blue-collar workers among the highest paid on earth, restore the manufacturing base in Midwest communities, etc.? Equally important, where is the response to the anger accumulated over decades at economic and trade policies that have shipped their jobs to China, emptied their cities of their children who have gone in search of opportunity elsewhere, and filled their graveyards with “Deaths of Despair.”
This refusal to speak to working-class anger has ceded the issue to Trump. Those in charge of Harris’s campaign seem to believe that there is an opening to the “civilized” portion of the Republican Party behind by the racist rage of Trump, but antagonistic to economic populism. They hope they can attract more white middle-class women in the suburbs turned off by the roll back of reproductive rights, but uncomfortable with class rage. But this means working-class people of all ethnicities are increasingly seeing their anger spoken to only by the likes of Vance and Trump.
The one thing a grifter like Trump can sense is when there is an opportunity to sell something to a vulnerable population. The appeal to racism and hostility to the status quo is not merely because of the intrinsic racism of American culture, but because this hostility to business as usual is the only place where a worker of any ethnicity can find someone angry about the current economic environment. Trump has been happy to fill this populist vacuum with his brand of authoritarian hatred of out-groups.
One example of this populist missed opportunity is the increased involvement of the billionaire class in the election process. The direct support of Trump by the likes of Elon Musk, but also the supposed “neutrality” of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and their owners’ interventions in the endorsement process of their papers could be an opportunity for the Democrats to call out the billionaire class. These are the same billionaires who have destroyed small bookstores, unionized grocery stores, and shipped their jobs to the anti-union south. But Harris has bit her tongue in order to keep her own Silicon Valley billionaires onboard.
This has allowed Trump to appear to be the one that is bringing these over-privileged elites to heel. With Musk literally jumping to kiss his ring and Mark Zuckerberg now speaking of Trump as a “bad ass,” Trump is showing that he is not controlled by these icons of the business elite, but the other way round. In a curious way this means that Trump has turned class resentment upside down. Unlike the Democrats, who have seemingly capitulated to the interests of the billionaires in Silicon Valley, Trump has made them grovel to him in such a way that you can almost hear the cheers coming from those deserted factories and drug-hammered Rust Belt communities.
Finally, the attraction of economic populism can be seen in more than just in left-wing editorials or in polls, but in places like Ohio and Nebraska. While Sherrod Brown is in a struggle to hold onto his U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, it isexcruciatingly close in a state that supports Trump by double digits.
Even more dramatic is the example in Nebraska where labor leader Dan Osborn has made a serious run to depose a right-wing Republican incumbent in another totally red state. In both cases it has been the economic populist message that has made the difference where nothing else has worked. It is this dual message of taxing the rich and also attacking the misery the billionaire class has inflicted on working-class communities that has created a competitive race where the current Democratic Party messages have fallen on deaf ears.
I hope I’m wrong, but if Harris loses, then the election was handed to the authoritarian Trump not just because of working-class racism, but because of Democratic Party fear of alienating billionaires. It would be comforting to believe that at least after this loss the Democratic Party will have learned its lesson for next time. But with an even more authoritarian second Trump presidency there may not be a next time.
Gregg Robinson is a member of the San Diego County Board of Education, a long-time activist, retired Grossmont College Sociology professor, and a member of the AFT Guild, Local 1931 Retiree Chapter.