The Atlantic: The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Ignored the Working Class.

[pnwmom]

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/hillary-clinton-working-class/509477/

But here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost.

She detailed plans to help coal miners and steel workers. She had decades of ideas to help parents, particularly working moms, and their children. She had plans to help young men who were getting out of prison and old men who were getting into new careers. She talked about the dignity of manufacturing jobs, the promise of clean-energy jobs, and the Obama administration’s record of creating private-sector jobs for a record-breaking number of consecutive months. She said the word “job” more in the Democratic National Convention speech than Trump did in the RNC acceptance speech; she mentioned the word “jobs” more during the first presidential debate than Trump did. She offered the most comprehensively progressive economic platform of any presidential candidate in history—one specifically tailored to an economy powered by an educated workforce.

SNIP

The more frightening possibility for liberals is that Clinton didn’t lose because the white working class failed to hear her message, but precisely because they did hear it.

Trump’s white voters do support the mommy state, but only so long as it’s mothering them. Most of them don’t seem eager to change Medicare or Social Security, but they’re fine with repealing Obamacare and its more diverse pool of 20 million insured people. They’re happy for the government to pick winners and losers, so long as beleaguered coal and manufacturing companies are in the winner’s circle. Massive deficit-financed spending on infrastructure? Under Obama, that was dangerous government overreach, but under Trump, it’s a jobs plan by a guy they know won’t let Muslims and Mexicans cut in line to get work renovating highways and airports.

SNIP

The long-term future of the U.S. involves rising diversity, rising inequality, and rising redistribution. The combination of these forces makes for an unstable and unpredictable system. Income stagnation and inequality encourage policies to redistribute wealth from a rich few to the anxious multitudes. But when that multitude includes minorities who are seen as benefiting disproportionately from those redistribution policies, the white majority can turn resentful.

[brer cat]

1. Excellent read, pnwmom.

Thanks for posting. K&R

[pnwmom]

2. You're welcome, brer cat.

[JHan]

3. Thanks for sharing it in its own thread... it's a great comprehensive piece.

[Gothmog]

4. This is a great article

Thank you for sharing

[hueymahl]

5. Good article and analysis. Thanks.

I do take issue with its conclusion/premise (the author kinds of works both ends), i.e., that it is a myth that HRC ignored the working class, because in a sense, that is exactly what she did. No, she did not ignore them in the sense that she had comprehensive policies that, if enacted, would help them and all americans. But politically, she allowed herself to be painted by the republicans as a politician that pandered to the working class but really aligned herself with the ultra-wealthy. In this sense, she failed in her outreach to that segment of the population which is easily interpreted as "ignoring".

Ultimately, as great a person as she is and as great a president as she would have made, she was just not a very good politician.

[pnwmom]

6. It is the media that failed, not HRC. The media spent far more time

focusing on Rethug claims about her emails than about any of her policy positions.

And there were times the media covered DTs rallies and skipped covering HRC's on the same day. I'd read people here complaining that she wasn't out there, when she was -- the media just wasn't covering her.

[hueymahl]

7. Lots of blame to go around.

tRump did a better job of manipulating the media, that is for sure.