Giving Workers a Reason to Vote for Democrats

Max German is a former student of mine and I wanted to highlight his essay on how why working people abandoned Democrats. It makes a lot of sense to me. Working people moved away from Democrats because Democrats offered them nothing but hard to understand policies (let’s make a slight change to the Earned Income Tax Credit!) as their communities collapsed around them. Donald Trump at least gave them hate. Can Democrats ever gain those votes back (assuming they are even allowed to by what the Republican Party has become)? I don’t know. But at least we probably should center their concerns in our approach.

The next part of the story is often under told, but just as important — when American workers had their jobs being ripped away from them, the government left them to rot. The same government that enabled these businesses to shift their jobs overseas did nothing to help its workers. No large-scale job retraining, no push to make higher education more affordable to compete in the new economy, no sustained investment in the communities that lost jobs, and no action to demonstrate that the government cared about the people it was leaving behind. It was once a bedrock promise within America that each generation’s lot would rise above the previous one. This is why grandparents and great-grandparents immigrated to America, why moms and dads worked so hard to send their kids to college. But due to the free trade regime, that promise has been broken for many.

Now, white men without a college degree between the age of 45-54 have actually seen their life expectancy decrease. Even more concerning is how they are dying: by suicide, drug overdoses, and alcoholic liver disease. This phenomenon has been termed “deaths of despair” by authors Anne Case and Angus Deaton in their book “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism,” which catalogs the decline in American manufacturing with the rise of despair-related deaths.

But this loss has not only affected white men. Black men, and indeed Black communities, were on the front lines of bearing the brunt of the decline in manufacturing jobs. In effect, Black workers experienced their own death’s of despair much earlier than white workers. One estimate has Black workers losing 494,000 jobs in manufacturing to free trade. The loss of good paying, and oftentimes union jobs, ripped away a vital gateway to the middle class for Black men and their families. Compound these losses with the educational disparities that exist for Black communities, and this puts Black workers at an increasing disadvantage for non-college and high-wage jobs that remain. Latino men were also devastated by the decline in manufacturing, as they were overrepresented in manufacturing industries that were particularly vulnerable like textiles and apparel, plastics, and beverages. Once they drop out of the workforce, Black and Latino workers are less likely to find a replacement job, compared to their white counterparts.

Tracing the decline of the American manufacturing base is a complex endeavor. Some economists say that free trade has had some benefits while others view it as a total boon. Cheaper goods mean they are more affordable, and one study estimates that free trade has led to boosting the purchasing power of the average American household by $10,000 annually. $10,000 is great but what does that mean for the family that lost their primary source of income because the job was shipped overseas? This is the type of thing an economist will spend their entire life studying. Yet this is a situation where Democrats must stop relying on academia and statistics to understand a policy and go deeper by acknowledging the emotional impact that free trade has had on workers. Economists will debate charts and percentages, but workers don’t need a white paper — they can watch the factory gates rusting shut with their own eyes.

The loss of the American worker has been ultimately a profound loss for this country. We have paid a dear price for it: destabilizing and widening inequality, a vicious opioid epidemic, and urban decay. All of these are forces that America and its workers have been at the forefront of battling and all of which show no signs of abatement. But the loss to America goes beyond measurable trend lines, there is a spiritual loss for the country. The pride, purpose, and patriotism that swelled among manufacturing communities, knowing they are playing their role in sustaining an America that is defined by opportunity and prosperity, is gone. America’s most powerful attribute is the simple idea that the middle class is within reach for anyone. For too long this idea was not reality for so many Americans, but every generation’s great task was expanding the American dream to those left out. We have not only failed to do this but we have regressed. Now, many American parents will potentially have had more opportunity than their children will.

Of course I know plenty of LGM commenters who think that we should never speak to these people again, which is sure to undermine Trumpism!