Interfaith Theologian

Friday, November 11, 2016

Why Conservatives on November 8th Voted Against the Pace of Progress and Why Bernie Sanders Didn’t Stand a Chance


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.

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