This was a highly emotional election, and we need time to feel our feelings and sort out what it means for us and for the country. Donald Trump is a con man; his game is to manipulate emotions and activists can be as vulnerable as anyone else. Knowing that, we can give ourselves some space to breathe rather than hype each other’s fear. We can also begin to ask, what does his victory mean for social activists on the left?
First, and most obviously, Bernie Sanders was not Trump’s opponent. Many Trump voters liked Sanders for the same reason they supported Trump: He was an outlier who was an alternative to the establishment that has for decades been implementing what billionaire Warren Buffett calls the economic elite’s “class war.”
We activists on the left, even with some disagreements with Sanders, could reasonably regard him as a standard-bearer for us, but that’s not the choice voters made this November. I voted for Hillary without believing for a minute that she was putting forth my politics — or that my politics even got attention in the general election.
What we learn from the vote against Hillary is that many people who are losing the class war don’t like losing, and took it out on a pillar of the establishment. In 2008 and 2012, many white working-class people in the North gave their support to Barack Obama because he was the most credible hope for change, running in each election against a pillar of the establishment. By wide margins they didn’t let the color of his skin prevent them from voting for the chance of a pause in the battering they’d been getting.
For people interested in learning how to make major change in the United States, the electoral arena is only a tiny peephole covered with gauze. Voter participation is low in the United States compared with, say, Scandinavia, and that was true this year, too. Because the election only involves part of the citizenry and is mostly about money, celebrity and manipulation, it tells us little and invites us to make up stories laced with our own fears.
Nevertheless, combing the electoral data can tell us something. Exit polls, for example, tell us that one in five voters who pulled the lever for Trump do not believe he is qualified to be president.
Why vote for someone so unqualified? One answer is because that voter feels certain they know what a second Clinton presidency would bring: unjust policies that further degrade the lives of the oppressed. Here’s the chance for activist empathy, crucial for our having any chance of success in the future: When people so desire change that they will vote for someone they believe unqualified, they are desperate. Activists are used to calling people who are rendered desperate by unjust polices “the oppressed.” If using that name helps us stop othering working-class Trump voters, let’s use that name.
The white working class reading of recent American history may be more accurate than that of many activists. Bill Clinton betrayed the Democratic Party’s traditional working-class base through the North American Free Trade Agreement, destruction of “welfare as we know it,” and subsidizing corporations’ moving industrial jobs overseas. Even when the presidency and both houses of Congress were in the hands of the Democrats, a union movement that worked night and day to get Democratic politicians elected could not get its priorities enacted.
Many in a social class that once believed the Democratic Party was its ally were bound to notice, sooner or later, that the party’s allegiance is elsewhere. I’ve often heard middle-class liberals complain about working-class people voting against their interests, but I’m not hearing them complain that tens of millions of middle-class people vote against their interests – something they do routinely, and did so again by voting for Trump. In fact, the middle class reportedly provided Trump’s most reliable funding during the primary season.
How the Democrats became losers
In 2008, Main Street rose in outrage against Wall Street’s irresponsibility, forcing a defeat in Congress of the first stimulus package. It was a fantastic opportunity for left-of-center organizing, and I looked in vain for signs from organized labor or other Democratic Party players that had the needed organizing capacity.
Later I asked a Washington insider friend who knows what goes on inside the party, “Did you hear of anyone in the Democratic Party even making the suggestion that this was an opportunity to win back the blue collar workers who feel frustrated by Democratic distance?”
He did not. We both knew the Republicans did jump right on the opportunity, gathering anti-Wall Street energy into the Tea Party movement. Years went by: widespread unemployment, replacement jobs at half the wages, people continuing to be thrown out of their homes. Not until 2011 did Occupy happen, and it proved largely uninterested in ongoing organizing, or carrying out campaigns that could engender hope.
Pollsters found years later among Tea Party-identified people a continuing strong anger against Wall Street. The Trump campaign used this effectively, linking (accurately) Hillary Clinton to top financiers. Despite Bernie Sanders’ rallying of significant white working-class support in the primary, Clinton failed to build on that momentum. How could she? Back in the 1990s she and her husband solidified Wall Street’s ownership of the Democratic Party, moving it to the right.
What this means for activists in the next two years
The alienated white working-class people who cast their protest vote for Trump remain without a home, since neither party intends to meet their needs. The Republicans will at least talk to them, inviting them to vent their frustration at scapegoats (“the Mexicans”). We can offer something better. It’s time for a crash program by activists to design hard-hitting direct action campaigns that cast our issues in terms that address their needs for economic security and self-respect.
Peace activists can do this; the Jobs with Peace Campaigns of the 1980s reached beyond the choir and involved working-class people through neighborhood associations and unions. School reformers can do this; campaigners already involve working-class parents and demand well-funded schools that are seven-day-a-week community centers building skills, solidarity and self-respect. Climate justice advocates need to make jobs central to their campaigns, as does Earth Quaker Action Team with its Power Local Green Jobs demand in Philadelphia, targeting a fossil fuel-dependent electrical utility.
At this point, activist campaigns aren’t massive enough to shift macro-economic decision-making. For one thing, we give away too much energy to the co-opting welcome of the Democrats. However, we can build the scale of our movements by frankly admitting that alienated white working-class people are right: Both major parties are together destroying the country on behalf of the 1 percent. It may be hard for college educated activists to admit that the cynical working-class view is more accurate than the belief of graduates of political science courses. However, the sooner the humility arrives, the better. With humility comes the chance to scale up our campaigning and take the next step in the living revolution.
What you miss as you advocate for poor white people is that had you listened to poor black and brown people, you would have addressed all of the same issues.
The problems of poor white people and the problems facing poor people of color are the same. Communities of color simply felt the economic squeeze earlier and harder.
What you also miss is that a large part of what drove Trump’s message to the White House was racism. White voters were told, again, that they could blame all their woes on people of color and immigrants. Don’t look at the man in the counter who holds are the cards. They literally voted in the same Republican party operatives who have blocked jobs bills and lowered taxes only for the wealthy. Donald Trump promised more of the same.
Poor Trump voters, voter in fear of change. Wealthy Trump voters stand to gain even more wealth as they fail to raise wages and pay little or no taxes.
But the one thing both of those voting groups has in common is that they benefit from white supremacy and white privilege. Both of which Trump’s campaign promised to protect.
If you want to work to change those voters, start by building a respect for education and work to reduce fear of inclusion in white people.
They didn’t vote for a philosophy. They voted to maintain the greatest amount of goods and power in white hands. And their vote of Donald Trump, should he attempt to enact the changes he promised may bring about the very thing they wanted – a break down of the government.
But it will never stop change.
Excellent comment! Yes, poor white people have historically been fed white racism instead of included in a truly just economy that allows everyone to thrive.
They will always be rigged as long as we have the Electoral College because poor white people don’t understand the Electoral College is easy to manipulate.
Adding these insights to what George wrote expands our understanding and hopefully deepens our empathy. Thank you.
http://markcrispinmiller.com/
The numbers were rigged.
and they will always be rigged as long as we have the Electoral College
and faith based voting machines
I have been a member of the Green movement/party since the 1980s, mainly because I believe that common sense, along with the science of the past 70 years, teach us that perpetual economic and population growth cannot continue in a limited ecosystem. We must have systemic change or perish.
In this country I have come to believe that the single greatest political bar to such change is the Democratic Party. It promises one thing and does the opposite. Its history says that it works for the underdog, and it still has some good and far-seeing leaders. In my own state of Minnesota the Democratic/Farmer/Labor Party (DFL) has produced people like Paul Wellstone and Keith Ellison — a hard act for Greens to follow.
But in this election, as is many previous ones, the voters have been sold out. The Democratic National Committee managed the nomination of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, even though it was clear by then that Sanders had a better chance of beating Trumpism than Clinton did. — And the DNC got exactly what they deserved. The vote was a great, blind, furious howl for change. The tremors of it felt around the world may produce more and different change than any of us expects.
Mr. Lakey:
“Not until 2011 did Occupy happen, and it proved largely uninterested in ongoing organizing, or carrying out campaigns that could engender hope.”
Seeing all those beautiful young people trying to show the world by example how we can live together in mutual respect and peace gave me hope, although I fully expected the local authorities and the Obama administration to crush their movement, as they did. Much more hope than “progressives” who voted for Hillary Clinton, who epitomizes the elite establishment that wreaks so much destruction on the world.
“It may be hard for college educated activists to admit that the cynical working-class view is more accurate than the belief of graduates of political science courses.”
If it’s an accurate viewpoint, then you are misusing the term “cynical”. I’ve noticed that those who support the establishment often use that term to reflexively dismiss critics of their leaders.
Despite all that, your call for empathy is welcome, and I don’t doubt that you are well-intentioned. I’m afraid that I don’t have much hope in this country, though. We should just give the whole damned thing back to the natives.
The Occupy Wall Street movement morphed into the Bernie Sanders campaign. They did not dissipate. They were largely the same people. AND they are not going away anytime soon.
This is an analysis with insights worth chewing on. Then one digested – take action. I think massive, country wide trainings in nonviolence is a place to start.
Although it was always morally wrong for western powers, including but not limited to the US to get involved in conflicts in the Middle East in order to have access to cheaply produced oil, it at least made sense in a selfish way. Now that we don’t need that oil, it’s time to say ‘a plague on both your houses’ and concentrate on modernizing US infrastructure. Hillary has so many commitments to leaders in other countries that she could not change policy even if she wanted to, and as the last Blackberry user in the US is obviously not flexible enough to want to. Trump, as a newcomer, can get out of agreements that he was not involved in making
Sorry, but the US is still entirely dependent on oil.
Food delivery trucks aren’t going to be solar powered, due to physics, not politics.
The idea that the US isn’t dependent on oil is pleasant disinformation to distract from the fact that fracking and tar sands delayed rationing for a decade or so.
Now that fracking is starting to subside, due to debt and depletion, the economic shock is starting to unfurl. Trump’s alleged electoral win is likely to fuel lots of scapegoating as energy declines. Protests can be fun but are a poor substitute for practicalities, for Transition Town type initiatives, relocalization of production to use the remaining fossil fuels wisely.
I’ve used solar panels for 26 years, they’re great but not as concentrated as digging up fuels that accumulated over a hundred million years.
“Not until 2011 did Occupy happen, and it proved largely uninterested in ongoing organizing, or carrying out campaigns that could engender hope.”
Umm, I would suggest all activists research the fates of groups like Occupy – as well as the Tea Party, Anonymous – and currently even Black Lives Matter. They went the same way the Black Panthers, anti-war, and other civil rights groups in the 60s did….
This commentary leaves out the fact that so many Americans are not only racist but also terribly sexist xenophobic and homophobic. And many women have come to accept sexual harassment and assault as the norm. Many of my neighbors cheered Trump on every time he made a vile comment about anyone who wasn’t a heterosexual white male. That said many in the country have gone way overboard in negativity directed towards white males. So that needs to change too.
Too many people blame free trade agreements without first looking at their own shopping choices. People prefer to shop cheap Chinese goods at Walmart than to insist on buying American. For years I have simply stopped buying things that were made in countries that were not democracies. And I ask to see the manager at many stores and say I want to see more American products. For years I have also declared Christmas to be a made in the USA event. Even if this means I often have to make the gifts myself or give gifts of local food. Rather than blaming our government people should look at how they contributed to the problem. People want lots of cheap imports rather than living a simpler lifestyle with fewer more expensive items made in the USA. For my kid I searched diligently for made in the USA and if I couldn’t find it I made it or bought second hand.
So I would like to see working class people stop whining and complaining. If they refused to shop at Wallmart and insisted on American products then manufacturing in the US would have stayed robust.
I was once at a party and bemoaned having to buy something at Wallmart. I was berated as elitist. Until I explained that the reason was because I didn’t want to buy Chinese goods I wanted only American. Although all my working class family members still were pretty nasty towards me because of my anti Wallmart comment.
They want lots of cheap goods in the stores but well paid jobs and then blame the government rather than looking at their own behavior.
GOOD FOR YOU! You have the kind of thinking my Nat’l Equal Rights Amendment Alliance, 501c3 has worked for nonstop for 16 years, for free, in 10 states because we need just 3 states to ratify ERA so it goes into the US Constitution. There, it makes SEX DISCRIMINATION A VIOLATION OF THAT CONSTITUTION!
ps: FYI, America’s women workers sacrifice 20% of their wages to their employer simply because of their genitalia! Yes, they DO!
FYI, now the trump-style stalking groping, trafficking and RAPE are defined as sex discrimination that ERA would Fix!
Link arms with us so that America can share solidarity with the nations that already HAVE ERA-like wording in their charters/ constitutions.
PS Some of those nations experienced a big leap in Gross Domestic Product as a result===USA could get in on that IF/ WHEN those Republicans relent and allow ERA to be heard in front of their legislatures—-because ERA WOULD pass!
(they are afraid of ERA because it would stop corporate theft of 20% of women’s wages AND esp., since corporations fully Intend to keep an Underpaid Underclass, Big Business is deathly afraid of the huge lawsuits they’d lo$e for continuing that greedy practice beyond 2 years the Constitution allows for correction of that slave=labor practice!
WE ARE LOOKING FOR CHANGE LIKE THAT FOR THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS ESPECIALLY, US FEMALES. BUT FOR MALES, TOO, AS WE WORK HARD FOR THEIR SEX-EQUAL TREATMENT THEY DON’T EVEN ADMIT TO!
If you are reeeeally tired of Talk and Want ACTION, LOOK TO US , the Natl ERA Alliance , Inc., along with our 2 other find NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS WHO ARE OUR PARTNERS IN ERA PASSAGE. Goal: get 3 more states ratified, take ERA before US Congress and get ERA PASSED…SandyO@PassERA.org
Yes I could not agree with you more
THIS IS THE FIRST OF DOZENS OF OTHER RECAPS AND OPINIONS OF THE DISASTROUS ELECTION OF A CRUDE DUNDERHEAD, THE FIRST TO SUGGEST ACTIONS AND ACTIVE GROUPS TO ACT WITH.
ONLY THING IS, I AM LOOKING FOR A GROUP WITH READY-TO=ACT ACTIONS, A GROUP EXPERIENCED IN MORE THAN COAL MINING. I want immediate, organizaed ACTIONS I can participate in. No more whining, no more talk..I AM READY, POSSESSED BY A NEED TO ACT FOR CHANGE TO IMPROVE AMERICA IN MANY WAYS!
i AM NOT GIVING UP AFTER 16 YEARS OF NONSTOP GRASSROOTS LOBBYING 18/7 FOR FREE TO PASS THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT so that Sex Discrimination against male and female alike IS MADE A VIOLATION OF THE US CONSTITUTION, STRONG AND UNBOUND.
THO I am ready to admit that many or most American males do not recognize sex discrimination (see studies by AAUW and YWCA), Even Their Own, I say we need to improve males’ especially about What Sex Discrimination IS and that it’s no laughing matter, male OR female , as it has life-changing consequences for the victiim…and too many of us females ARE the victim.
Concomitantly, we must be working on School Boards’ curricula so that they are Heavy in Critical Thinking and scientific/political skepticism. WE MUST START GROWING A VOTING CLASS THAT SEEKS OUT THE ISSUES AND CHECKS FOR EVIDENCE OF CLAIMS BY CANDIDATES AND THEIR SURROGATES.
Otherwise, all your work and ours is for Naught!
Show me your Specific Plans before I invest our few $$ in you.
WE NOW HAVE A MAJOR NATION IN CHAOS DUE TO A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FOSTERED BY THE UNKNOWING, Many of whom voted by flipping a coin, I understand from a Nevada poll watcher !
I deeply appreciate this sentiment and I understand it’s practicality, but my current frustration is the trump voters I know are not poor, working class, uneducated, or disenfranchised. I’m not sure how to interact with them at this time, so I’m avoiding it until I can remain calm.
My brilliant, I thought, lady cardiologist looked up some site online that determined from her preferences that she was a Republican and should vote for Trump. She did, and had no regrets!!! Esp. none about his promise to reduce taxes on her wealth (well-earned), even when I said that the rest of us would have to pick up the bill for everything else. I said that includes Me; she didn’t blink an eye, even about ending Obamacare and Social Security and Medicare that Paul Ryan is adopting.
Those voters don’t deserve our sympathy. Whole swaths of them are the super-rich, just voting their own greed without any wondering about how those poverty level folks will make out.
WHAT HAS AMERICA TURNED INTO ! Scares me. Feels like we’ve been dropped into a 3rd world nation with Chief Tyrants corralling us .
IS it possible, I mean really possible, that trump’s Nov 28 case against him for fraud and racketeering maybe COULD put him in jail? Anybody betting that FBI has ANY cajones to do That?
I see no need to empathize with white nationalists. However, dismissing the concerns of those who voted for Trump was a foolish move.
‘Oh how the trillionaire Deep-State oligarchs of the world must laugh at popular ignorance of what real power is & where it really lies.’
ELECTORAL ILLUSION
Considering: 1) analysis by statisticians about the impossible disparity between: pre-election, exit-polls & computerized voting results with absolutely no overt means of verification over the past several elections & primaries, 2) Delisting of massive numbers of Hispanic, Black & other non-white voters, 3) Planning which expects poor areas to wait many hours in voting lines, 4) Absolute control of all US MSMedia by a few families, 5) Unlimited, hidden & uncontrolled financing by oligarch networks of the election process, one must assume then that the USA doesn’t have real elections, which reflect the will of the people.
COLONIALISM IS A DELIBERATE GRASP FOR WORLD DOMINATION
Ongoing research is showing, previous Finance-Media-Education-Military-Industrial-Legislative-Complex regimes since the USA’s white, moneyed, slave-&-land-owning, sexist & genocidal conception, never did have elections. USA, Canada & the rest of the colonized Americas & world is conceived as an oligarch world power grab by spoiled impetuous European aristocracy. This is not the ‘billionaire’ level which Bernie talks about but at the hidden unspoken ‘Trillionaire’ (# seconds in 32,000 years = $) level.
TRACES IN BANKING
Given such absolute control, then our only assumption is that the 3 ‘trillionaire’ oligarchs who own the US-Federal-Reserve, Bank-of-England & Bank-of-International-Settlements, have decided that; Donald Trump is their choice & for whatever their purpose determined. Hillary did not suffice. Every other indicator (media-hype, declared-results, public-theatre etc) is a controlled illusion meant for ongoing public deception.
PUBLIC KEPT IN THE DARK
The public is deliberately confused by absolute secrecy for the deepest levels & only allowed some information about billionaire sub-lieutenants & their submissive multi-millionaires. All wars are conceived & executed by trillionaire oligarch masters through their trickle-down network. Present extractive-exploitive artificial industry & a ‘Jetson’ like vision of a bubble-world on a dead planet with lots of toys for the few remaining by institutionalized oligarchs is the extent of their ecological & economic understanding.
LIFE HATING
Considering that all indications by oligarchs through their media & education programs, are that there are too many people on earth for oligarch liking.
‘INDIGENOUS’ (Latin ‘self-generating’)
The way out of this violent colonial set-up, prescribed by all humanity’s worldwide ‘indigenous’ (Latin ‘self-generating’) ancestors & 1st Nations here, is for each of us to join through our families, intergenerational interdisciplinary 100 person multihomes, neighbourhoods & work-places in collaborative mutual-aid. ‘We must become the change we want to see by implementing our own essential-services with local resources wherever possible. India employed this ‘Swadeshi’ (Hindi ‘indigenous’ aka ‘self-sufficiency’) to throw off British empire control. The Haudenosaunee call this their ‘Kaianerekowa’ aka Great-Good-Way-of-Kindness’. Nguni peoples of southern Africa call it ‘Ubuntu’ = ‘human-kindness’. 70% of us live in multihome (apartment, townhouse & village) economies of scale with an average of 100 people
https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy
Thank you, George! This eloquent article brought an eerie parallel with Germany in the 30’s into focus.
My post-war generation tried to figure out why so many common Germans went along with the extreme response of Hitler’s National Socialist Democratic Workers Party. They were hard-working people, who had been blamed and shamed and disrespected for a long time, until someone appeared to listen to them and funneled their anger and frustration. The price everyone paid was horrible.
I agree with your message that we must reach out with compassion to everyone who feels unheard and unsupported. And I want to add an urgency because it only took a few years in Gemany for things to get out of hand.
We don’t have much time.
Our base lesson was “Oppose the beginnings!” (Wehret den Anfängen!).
So let’s not waste any time!