On November
9th, many progressives and liberals believed that social progress came to a
grinding halt. We might never know for sure who voted for Trump and why those
votes mattered. Monday morning quarterbacking has its drawbacks, but it should not be jettisoned completely. The reflective soul is the soul that can self-correct. And so the question of whether Bernie Sanders would have made a better
candidate will be a question left to reconcile in the next four years. But if some commentators’ comments that I’ve been
hearing now are correct, it may very well be that working class whites were more than one-dimensional voters. While jobs were important, they also were fighting in
this election cycle against the bruising pace of progress in the last eight years that
had left them feeling outside and without a voice. The question of whether
Bernie Sanders, who was more progressively and social liberal than Clinton,
would have somehow overcome this steep and sizeable hurdle, is a question we
might ponder in retrospect. Certainly there is a feeling that working class
whites were standing by Sanders. But to suggest that the defection from the
Obama coalition and movement to Trump was only an economic one, given that job
growth and economic growth has been consistent for the past 73 months, is hard to
accept. The cold hard facts are these. Manufacturing, the kind that existed in
the previous century is most likely not coming back. This is not my personal
opinion but those who I know working closely and intimately in the labor
markets and looking at the numbers. Our economy has forever shifted from a
manufacturing infrastructure to a services-oriented infrastructure. With that,
the jobs of the future have many workers feeling unqualified, certainly
untrained, and feeling left out.
This is why
I think the white working vote is more than an economic decision. When that
steel worker looked at that steel plant closed down in his neighborhood, his
first thought might not have been, a sense of lost economic opportunity, but a
loss of nostalgia. It is a more incongruous
sentiment that perhaps cannot be articulated as well as a rubber-stamped label,
but it is a real one. But at least they are not alone. Their candidate ran on
an abstract slogan: Make America Great Again, which was a nostalgic dog whistle
with a variety of meanings depending upon who was listening. Nostalgia is
abstract. It’s a feeling of a better place and a better time.
And it is
for this reason why Bernie Sanders may have fallen flat. The main charge
leveled against Sanders was his radical social progressivism. Trump may have
been able to launch a smear campaign on charges that Sanders was a communist or
a socialist and would concentrate wealth and capital within the masses. On the
other hand, the Clinton gamble was that her centrism was a middle of the road
bridge for Republicans and Democrats. This certainly proved true. It is hard to
imagine the military complex or those like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell
coming behind Sanders. It may be argued that these were not the most important
things for voters, except that Hillary won the popular vote, and that is at
least some hard evidence that her appeal, thanks to her opponents many
missteps, made her a more unifying choice.
Despite his
attention given to the white working class, one wonders when faced between a
Trump and Sanders candidacy, if Sanders would have amplified the sense of
nostalgia that Trump had tapped into and built his campaign on. And let’s be
clear. Sanders’ campaign was a clarion call mostly to young whites,
African-Americans, Latinos, and those who could not rightfully claim a share in
a nostalgic American vision.
But it is
hard to see that social conservatism was not a factor in many people’s decision
to stick with Trump. At least, the protests currently being carried out by so
many suggest that this was the point of fissure between the two parties. If
social conservatism in this cycle looked more appealing, then Sanders did not
stand a chance. The pace of progressive agendas over the past eight years
created an increase of hate groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Center to
the tune of 400 percent. White America was suffering while all attention was
being showered upon minorities. Even more offensive, was the feeling that White
American citizens were being ignored for illegal immigrants. If we can gauge
voter issues by rallying cries (something Trump spokeswoman Kellyann Conway
said we should do), this was no doubt the most popular issue. “Build the Wall”
was the cry heard everywhere. And while this was directly related to jobs, the
buy-in to a Bernie Sanders presidency would have had to have been a slick
negotiation that downplayed the relevance of illegals as a negative influence,
while building up job opportunities for White America, and unfortunately Trump
and his campaign were just too good at preying upon the fears of this group.
There was enough anecdotal evidence, enough stories by middle America about
immigrant labor taking their jobs.
If Bernie
Sanders will run next cycle, and every indication is he will, I will most
likely back his candidacy unless ,of course, some untapped talent rises through
the ranks in the next four years offering a more palatable and practical
vision. But just as Clinton was accused of not channeling the more progressive left, Bernie will have to
find that middle ground centrism that Clinton won in the popular vote and expand it.
While many blacks, Latinos and far left progressive who sat this one out, voted
for Johnson or Stein, will likely come back to the fold, it is not so certain
that the white American middle class will be attracted to his message,
especially if a PR campaign can make imaginary gains within the Trump’s administration. There is some good
evidence out there that had more people voted and more Millennials backed
Clinton, she would have had an overwhelming victory. This is something I think
we can bank on. But if the power of the white American middle class really was
that strong, and if Clinton lost out as much as she did with the Obama coalition,
some of whom defected to Trumpland, then Sanders will have to find a
middle-of-the-road approach that may look different than Clinton, but requires
a bit more slack when it comes to the breakneck speed of progress. Voters
considering Sanders as a real choice from the other side will have to have
assurances that that progress in sweeping them up, will also not sweep them
away in radical progressive agendas. We can certainly blame Clinton’s loss on her campaign ignoring
Wisconsin, Michigan, and other places in the Rust Belt. But we need to ask if
Sanders recognizes the value of the centrist vote, how his own voters will react.
It's a delicate balancing act. After all, many excoriated him for supporting Clinton, even though she quickly
absorbed a number of his policies into the Democratic Platform as a token of gratitude. The anger felt by
Sanders followers was just too hot and the damage too great to matter. Will those same voters be
inflexible as the next Democratic candidate tries to be all things to all
people? These are the real delicacies of our current political reality (but they always have been). Campaigns are written in poetry but governing is done in prose. And
only time will tell.
