Robert Reich: Who Lost the White Working Class?

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34718-focus-who-lost-the-white-working-classThe conventional answer is Republicans skillfully played the race card.

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

Why did the white working class abandon the Democrats?

Later, Republicans charged Democrats with coddling black “welfare queens,“ being soft on black crime (“Willie Horton”), and trying to give jobs to less-qualified blacks over more-qualified whites (the battle over affirmative action).

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 – with much the same effect on the white working class voters, who don’t trust Democrats to be as “tough.”

All true, but this isn't the whole story. Democrats also abandoned the white working class.

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 – the Affordable Care Act, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example.

But they’ve done nothing to change the vicious cycle of wealth and power that has rigged the economy for the benefit of those at the top, and undermined the working class. In some respects, Democrats have been complicit in it.

[malaise]

1. +1,000

and that's true across the globe. So called progressive parties have sold out to the neo-liberals

[PeteSelman]

2. Absolutely, and Reich was also a part of it.

Last edited Thu Jan 21, 2016, 10:22 AM - Edit history (1)

With his "rich, white construction workers" comments after he had served in the Clinton administration. The administration that first turned it's back on its labor base by passing NAFTA.

Many of my colleagues, who are not rich but are part of what remains of the once great middle class, haven't forgotten it.

If neither party is actually going to be for labor, these guys are going to go with the identity politics, no matter how absurd it may be.

[laundry_queen]

3. +1 nt

[bread_and_roses]

5. Whoa! I didn't know that!

Or if I did, I'd forgotten ....

Your last sentence is on-target for sure. I would add that when TPTB do not address - do not even acknowledge - the reality of the wealth transfer and unrelenting attack on workers and labor it opens the space for demagogues to enter - to scapegoat "the other."

[pampango]

6. Well said. "... it opens the space for demagogues to enter - to scapegoat "the other."

People understand that it is our 1% that is behind the "wealth transfer and unrelenting attack on workers and labor". When we are unable to elect people who will deal with the 1%, it seems to be human nature to look elsewhere for a 'solution' and we turn against 'the other' who have little power to protect themselves.

[MADem]

8. You didn't know it because it's not true. It happened during the OBAMA administration, it

was in context to the economic stimulus, and he wasn't talking about Joe Lunchbox, he was talking about successful upper echelon workers who were making a good living and didn't need any more money.

See video I've posted elsewhere. Facts do matter.

[MADem]

7. EXCUSE ME???? He was in the OBAMA administration when he said that.

It was in the context of the Economic Stimulus. IN 2009!!!!!!!!!!!

Jeez, don't facts matter at all anymore?????

PROOF:

[PeteSelman]

11. Obama hadn't been inaugurated yet when this happened.

Reich was never a part of the administration. He was an economic advisor speaking to a house panel.

I mistakenly wrote that he said this while he was in the Clinton administration and I will amend that.

The fact remains that statements like this further drive the blue collar worker away from their traditional political position. Things like NAFTA had already done so while Reich was indeed a member of the Clinton administration.

[MADem]

17. Then it happened in the BUSH ADMINISTRATION. Clinton had nothing to do with it.

The attempts to repeatedly marry anyone named Clinton to any sketchy comment made by any person they interacted with is getting lame.

According to Dobbs, it was a panel of DEMOCRATS--maybe you can do the homework on that, too...?

The fact remains that dragging up shit from 2009 and acting like it has currency today (what WAS that comment all about? A dig at Reich? He's not a player these days) is what is divisive. Even Lou Dobbs, that fascist old reprobate, opens the segment by whining that NOBODY COVERED IT.

So why do you bring it up?

And--on edit--he was on Obama's Transition Advisory Board, which is probably why he was in that room in 2009 in the first place:

http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/11/07/obamas-transition-economic-advisory-board-the-full-listn

[PeteSelman]

18. Because the people I work with remember it.

We don't forget much in my business. We remember the DLC abandoning labor, we remember NAFTA and we remember when people who are supposed to be on our side disparage us.

[MADem]

19. Robert Reich is on Robert Reich's "side."

He has been for a long while. He's so busy stuffing Clinton AND Obama under the bus he has little time for anything else.

[MADem]

19. Robert Reich is on Robert Reich's "side."

He has been for a long while. He's so busy stuffing Clinton AND Obama under the bus he has little time for anything else.

[stillwaiting]

4. The very fact that almost all elected Democrats Don't Even Point Out the fact that

wealth and income inequality continues to widen should tell anyone all they need to know.

And, THAT is why we need a political revolution within the Democratic Party per Bernie's vision.

This country does NOT need two political parties serving Wall Street's and Big Business' interests over average Americans' interests.

Fuck That Shit.

[IkeRepublican]

9. Another 1000+

Very big issue for me; Reich hit the nail in the head, as he does many times.

That is why I'm sick and tired of this "old white guy" labeling coming from the Democrat outlets.

It is divisive, racist and just flat out dick-head; hands the white vote on a silver platter to the Repukes who couldn't give a shit about anybody's background and glad to pull the rug out from everyone. The way to get rid of racism and elitism is to understand we are all one people instead of cherry picking. Cherry picking is the seeds of racism itself.

[MillennialDem]

10. We need to elect Bernie and enact some of his reforms, or the US will definitely have a

violent revolution or a coup in the relatively near future (30 years). This level of inequality is not sustainable.

[sulphurdunn]

13. We've already had a coup.

Corporations have taken control of the country. Their weapon of choice was money.

[MisterP]

12. but laborers are so uncouth! not like those smart IT, Wall Street, and Hollywood types!

[sulphurdunn]

15. It is dangerous

to confuse higher order intelligence with low cunning.

[WillyT]

14. K & R !!!

[FLPanhandle]

16. Republicans/RW media have painted the Democrats as anti-white.

Republicans say Democrats as focused on illegal immigration, BLM, Affirmative Action, "White Privilege" topics that are viewed as taking away what little opportunities remaining to working class whites and their children.

Democrats haven't done anything to keep jobs onshore.

[joeybee12]

21. Unfortunately that's true...knr