海角大神

Why did the white working class abandon the Democrats?聽

The conventional answer is that Republicans skillfully played the race card.聽

In the wake of the Civil Rights Act, segregationists like Alabama Governor George C. Wallace led southern whites out of the Democratic Party.聽

Later, Republicans charged Democrats with coddling black 鈥渨elfare queens鈥� (Ronald Reagan popularized the term), being soft on black crime (George W. Bush鈥檚 鈥淲illie Horton鈥� ads in 1988), and trying to give jobs to less-qualified blacks over more-qualified whites (the battle over affirmative action).聽

The bigotry now spewing forth from Donald Trump and several of his Republican rivals is an extension of this old race card, now applied to Mexicans and Muslims 鈥� with much the same effect on the white working class voters, who don鈥檛 trust Democrats to be as 鈥渢ough.鈥� 聽

But this doesn鈥檛 tell the whole story. Democrats also abandoned the white working class.聽

Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and in that time scored some important victories for working families 鈥� the Affordable Care Act, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example.聽

But they鈥檝e done little to change the widening structural imbalances in the economy that have hurt the working class.聽

Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ardently pushed for free trade agreements, for example, but didn鈥檛 provide the millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.

They also stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the white working class. Clinton and Obama failed to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them, or enable workers to form unions with a simple up-or-down votes.

I was there. In 1992, Bill Clinton promised such reform but once elected didn鈥檛 want to spend political capital on it. In 2008, Barack Obama made the same promise (remember the Employee Free Choice Act?) but never acted on it.聽

Partly as a result, union membership sunk from聽聽of all workers when Bill Clinton was elected president to fewer than聽聽today, and the working class lost bargaining leverage to get a share of the economy鈥檚 gains.聽

The Obama administration protected Wall Street from the consequences of the Street鈥檚 gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout, but let millions of underwater homeowners to drown.聽

Both Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify 鈥� with the result that large corporations have grown far聽, and major industries more concentrated.

And they turned their backs on聽. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general-election campaigns. And he never followed up on his reelection campaign promise to pursue a constitutional amendment overturning 鈥淐itizens United v. FEC,鈥� the 2010 Supreme Court opinion opening the floodgates to big money in politics.聽

What happens when you combine free trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate market power, and the abandonment of campaign finance reform?聽

You get an economic structure favoring the wealthy and a political system favoring the powerful 鈥� while workers without college degrees suffer declining real wages and dwindling job security.

Why haven鈥檛 Democrats done more? True, they faced increasingly hostile Republican congresses. But they controlled both houses of Congress in the first two years of both Clinton鈥檚 and Obama鈥檚 administrations.聽

In part, it was because Democrats bought the snake oil of the 鈥渟uburban swing voter鈥� 鈥� so-called 鈥渟occer moms鈥� in the 1990s and affluent politically-independent professionals in the 2000s 鈥� who supposedly determined electoral outcomes.聽

Meanwhile, as early as the 1980s they began drinking from the same campaign funding trough as the Republicans 鈥� big corporations, Wall Street, and the very wealthy.聽

鈥淏usiness has to deal with us whether they like it or not, because we鈥檙e the majority,鈥澛犅燚emocratic representative Tony Coelho, then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, when Democrats assumed they鈥檇 continue to run the House for years.聽

Coelho鈥檚 Democrats soon achieved a rough parity with Republicans in contributions from corporate and Wall Street campaign coffers, but it proved a Faustian bargain.聽

Nothing in politics is ever final. Democrats could still win back the white working class 鈥� putting together a coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, blacks, and Latinos.

This would give them the political clout to restructure the economy 鈥� rather than merely enact palliative programs papering over the increasing concentration of wealth and power in America. 聽聽

But to do this they鈥檇 have to stop obsessing over upper-income suburban swing voters, and end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy.聽

Will they? If not, a third party might emerge that does it instead.

This article first appeared at .