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The working class story is about culture, not economic anxiety

In the New York Times today, Jonathan Weisman tells the story—well, a story—of how Democrats lost the white working class. It's all about economic anxiety.

Maybe so, but even Weisman himself acknowledges the obvious:

  • It started in 1968 with "hardhats for Nixon." This was long before de-industrialization. It was all about Vietnam and the counterculture.
  • Next up were the "Reagan Democrats" in 1980. This may have had some connection to inflation and oil shocks, but it was mostly about social issues like abortion and the political resurgence of fundamentalist Christians.
  • Newt Gingrich turned the South solidly red in 1994. This was, obviously, the final act in a long-running shift of Southern white voter loyalty due to racial resentments against Democrats.
  • Donald Trump solidified things in 2016, mostly thanks to his outrage over the "invasion" of illegal immigrants. This too is largely a social issue, as even a brief look at a map confirms:
    Illegal immigration isn't an economic issue in the Midwest or most of the South, where support for Trump was strongest. There are hardly any illegal immigrants there. They're mostly in California, Texas, New Jersey, and New York City, none of which have changed their political allegiances lately.

And of course there's this:

No matter how you measure it, this is no great shakes. Even the gains since the end of the Great Recession are modest at best.

At the same time, they don't show any great instability or loss. That came 40 years ago in the Reagan era, which really was pretty disastrous for the working class. More recently, even with NAFTA and China, working class wages have been pretty steady. And for what it's worth, you can also just ask people:

Dissatisfaction goes up a bit during recessions and recovers during good times. Aside from that, it's been steady within a band of 2-3 percentage points.

So I continue to have problems with the economic anxiety story. I'm not dead set against it, since financial anxiety can manifest itself in lots of different ways. Still, the bulk of the evidence really seems to point much more toward cultural issues than economic ones.

118 thoughts on “The working class story is about culture, not economic anxiety

  1. Goosedat

    Earning a thousand dollars a week is the source of economic anxiety in the US. No one in this class vacations in Europe nor are they able to take their families to Disneyland.

  2. MarkHathaway1

    Nixon gave us "racism" and "the war on drugs".
    Reagan gave us "no unions" and "globalization to remove the middle-class".
    Bush (both) gave us "constant fear from abroad"
    Trump gave us "callous disregard for anybody", "breaking up immigrant families", "holding cells like dog cages for immigrants", "she's going to start a nuclear war", "constant lies to eliminate Truth".

    When there is this kind of massive tsunami, it's hard to blame Dems for anything or for any force to counter the billionaires feeding the tsunami.

    However, Dems have won the presidency and the popular vote, so we can confidently say, the people are not so easily swayed to that Rightward extreme.

  3. Doctor Jay

    I do not think you can easily separate cultural issues from economic ones. That is because cultural issues are always pitched to bring economic benefit to certain groups. Jim Crow laws benefited certain groups, and propagated beliefs among groups much larger than that that kept the system stable. For instance.

    Meanwhile, I can recall being in my forties and thinking that I was not living as well as my parents were when they were in their forties. It wasn't just a matter of my income. The condition and quality of where I lived, and how I spent my leisure time, and how much of it I had, were all factors.

  4. Massive Gunk

    I would avoid this analysis as much as possible. It's dangerous. Cultural and economic factors don’t operate in isolation, they’re connected and often amplify each other. Economic struggles can shape cultural perspectives and deepen anxieties. Cultural tensions can worsen economic divides. Eg. in the 1980s, the decline of industrial regions didn’t just devastate incomes, it destroyed community identities that were built around manufacturing. That led to resentment against globalization and so-called cultural elites.

    It’s important to recognize that these dynamics are incredibly complex, and this analysis simplifies them far too much.

    1. jdubs

      It's not clear at all that the decline of the industrial economy CAUSED resentment against 'cultural elites' in the past. Your blind assertion is identical the current assertion that inflation/bad economy caused the current resentment.

      It was only 8 years ago that we were pretending that the slow recovery from the housing bust caused the resentment that Trump rode into the White House.

      Many/most minority Americans over a certain age can remember resentment being a strong force at all times in US politics with the resentees being at fault for whatever was going on at the time. Although there is a big difference in how the two parties have courted this resentment over time.

      1. Massive Gunk

        The decline of the industrial economy disrupted both incomes and community identities tied to local industries. This disruption shows how economic struggles and cultural anxieties are intertwined rather than existing separately. Trying to explain voter behavior by choosing between 'culture' or 'economic anxiety' oversimplifies the issue. Both factors are deeply connected, and ignoring this interplay by shifting to a critique of causation makes it harder to fully understand the political loss under discussion. IMO.

        1. jdubs

          Maybe. But we can't understand what happened if we simply assume that everything is intertwined so everything is the true cause.

          The complex tapestry of 150 million decisions and the hundreds of data points and experiences that influenced those voters might be interesting and true. But it isn't actionable or helpful.

          The lack of identifiable economic struggles for most voters is an important point that cannot be overlooked in an effort to present the full tapestry.

  5. spatrick

    My God we're going to be having this debate until we're all dead and buried because it's been going on for the PAST FIFTY YEARS! Hell I was born in 1972 in the aftermath of George McGovern's defeat so this discussion has basically been with me in my entire lifetime!

    I urge you to find the book: The Liberals' Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party by Bruce Miroff. It was written in 2005, just after John Kerry's defeat. It is an outstanding book on George McGovern's 1972 campaign because it aptly explains the Democrats dilemma when it comes to the working class and why it has been a problem for the party all these years. I would also urge you to find an read the book Staying Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by historian Jefferson Cowie, also an outstanding book written in 2010 which explains labor politics and culture in the 1970s and the labor reform movement of that time. Both these books explain what the hell is happening here very well. I would also recommend Katherine Cramer's The Politics of Resentment for a more modern perspective written about the clash in the state of Wisconsin over Act 10 in 2011 written 2012.

    The bottom line is that all of these things were historically inevitable. The wonder is the Democratic Party ultimately has survived at all given the forces invested in tearing it apart. Working class alienation goes way back, well before I was born and traces itself to reasons that had nothing to do with the workplace conditions at all whether it was the Vietnam War to the Civil Rights Movement, unless some older working man who got shot at Iwo Jima popping off at a long-hair in the plant opposed to Vietnam (even if he served there) or the craft unions where George Meany got his start fighting affirmative action. Or that workingman's kids being bussed or his formerly lily-white neighborhood being integrated or seeing an increase in crime. Hell, you can watch reruns of All in the Family on You Tube and discover all this shit!

    The social forces created by the largest mass-educated generation in U.S. history in combinations with attempt to address both defacto and dejure in all parts of the country in the 1960s on top of an unopular war that killed nearly 60,000 on top of all that had to change the character of American politcs. Had to! There was no way to avoid it and especially affected the majority party of the United States, the one that had the broadest representation in the country of all races, regions and backgrounds. Someone asked a protestor at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in a documentary why the Democrats? "Because we were the children of the Democratic Party". Indeed they were and many of them had white-ethnic names too! And they were the first in their families to go to college. I think Tom Hayden said it best in talking about being alienated from his father, (he came from an old Irish family) "If the older generation had dealt with the problems of civil right and did not get us involved in Vietnam, there would not have been any demonstrations from the young." But that didn't happen.

    One thing should be said about the Republicans that's very important to this story. Eugene McCarthy, when he ran for President in 1968, had a lot of Republican support. A lot. More than people realize. I mean it was whispered around Wisconsin at the time that then Republican Gov. Warren Knowles' own wife was a secret McCarthy supporter and worked on his campaign in the state unbeknowst to him but a lot of young, moderate to liberal Republicans, the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, professors, the fellows at the country club, you know the upper-middle class "elites" which I guess now is crime to be a part of, supported McCarthy he was port in the storm to sail to instead of Johnson (who they hated), Nixon (who they hated even more), Humphrey (who they held in contempt) and Wallace (who they thought a menace). This support for McCarthy in '68 transferred to George McGovern in '72 and transferred over to Democratic candidates for Congress in '74 that wiped out any Republican in any liberal district in the country after Watergate. Thus, the GOP became more conservative as time went on because there was nothing to stop its drift to the right, especially as the moderate Left moved from the GOP to the Democrats, especially in the early 70s.

    Guess what? A political party can't stop people from voting for it and if a group of people join that party who are college educated (especially with masters and Phds) and have jobs in industries that more based in high tech, service, science, professional, financial and informational fields because it finds the party it once belonged to offensive, what can it do? Tell people not to vote for us because not "working class" hmm? Yes it can enact policies or take attitudes that may well affect groups of people, classes, races, genders or others and one can argue that some of those policies, whether banking deregulation or lack of strong support for organized labor proposals like card-check elections, did hurt the working class ultimately even if not intended. I think the Biden Administration was an attempt to make amends for this since, well hell you could say the Carter Administration if you want to. But it hasn't developed enough to change these trends that are over 50 years old and it will take time to change old perception and let alone new ones since 2020 (crime, "abolish the police", "woke", the border etc.) that's hurting it even among working class voters of color who used to vote for it strongly. Even Democrats who have been elected President or in other offices have struggled in gaining majorities of working class votes. Jimmy Carter certainly did in '76 and that's why he nearly blew a 39-point lead in the polls to Gerry Ford. Bill Clinton benefitted from a divided opposition in both cases and Barak Obama from Republican failure which the Dems will have to wait for when it comes to Trump's second term. And party failures, whether inflation, or the hostage crisis, Biden's age, opioid epidemic, the sluggish recovery from the Great Recession or the fact that the Gore campaign and the party lost Appalacia due to the Kyoto Treaty of 1997 and the Tobacco Company settlements of the late 90s, haven't helped. And that's on top of the prejudices the party has been fighting against all this time as well and cannot be ignored.

    Other various thoughts:
    - The South did not go completely Red in 1994 although the start began at that time. Dems elected governors in Missouri in '96, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina in 1998 and Mississippi and Louisiana in '99. 9-11 and the wars that followed wrecked the party in the South in the 2002 mid-terms and never recovered outside of Georgia and North Carolina and Virginia. Final nail came in Tea Party election of 2010.
    - In 1955, 35 percent of the American workforce was unionized. Even by '68 that number had dropped considerably. Non-union workers as a whole aren't going to be as supportive of the Democratic Party and liberals as union workers and anyone who thinks there's going to be a revival remember this, as Matt Yglesias points out, a majority of AFL-CIO workers are college educated.
    - Most favored nation status to China was a big destroyer of manufacturing in the U.S. since 2000, far more than NAFTA and before that the 1979-83 recession and 20 percent interest rates both in manufacturing and farming. But even more so than all these: automation and that's been going on since the 60s. Factories and mills aren't going to employ 5,000 people anymore. They don't need them.
    - You can see why DEI initatives were popular with Obama's strongest base of support and that is the black upper-middle class. If you're in the black (or even Hispanic) working class chances are you work with other black or brown people in a barber shop, beauty salon, restaurant, auto body shop, etc. For the black upper middle class, you largely work in a white world and are mostly surrounded by white co-workers, some of them friendly and well-meaning, some perhaps hateful but most often clueless. The money's is nice but the wear and tear on your dignity often times doesn't make it worth it so of course as companies diversify these DEI programs expanded for that very reasons. It had nothing to do with "woke" The problem was, the people putting together these programs or administrating them were as radical as hell because they largely came from an academic field also quite radical so the attempt to try bring harmony to the work place largely backfired.
    - "Illegal immigration isn't an economic issue in the Midwest or most of the South, where support for Trump was strongest." Not true. Go to any town in the Midwest or South that has a food processing plant in it and chances are it will have a significant (over 10 percent) foreign-born population. And it doesn't take much change in communities that once upon had no non-white faces in them to begin to roil them. Austin, Minnesota, classic example. Hormel strike of 1985-86 busted union, bitter feelings and cheap wages meant Hormel couldn't find local (a.k.a. white) workers so they recruited foreigners who worked a lot cheaper than what the company offered before the strike ($8.50 an hour). Yeah, one more recommendation, buy documentary "American Dream" from 1990. Learn a lot from it.

    The larger point is this: Economic, social and cultural forces all work together in conjunction on people's mindsets, thoughts, feelings, anxieties, vibes, what have you, just as much as how much money is in the pocketbook or wallet. That's been true since the 1960s and it's just as true now. As I've said before, working for Pat Buchanan in 2000, at that time, we might as well have been yelling at clouds and I had conservatives calling me a racist on forums like Free Republic.com. One year later and it's 9-11. Believe me, those people who are on Free Republic who once eschewed Buchanan, are hardcore MAGAs now.

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