It started when they convinced working people unions were to blame
1970's and 80's they started closing factories and shipping the jobs to 3rd world countries - mostly with oppressive governments.
And they started the constant drumbeat of lies convincing workers of 2 things.
Unions were to blame.
Education was the economic savior.
A lot of low skill, white men who lost jobs to brown people and women, either through quotas intended to help remedy past racism, or to people half a world away, suffered economically. The mantra that unions were to blame became easier and easier to believe. And with it, the Democratic Party. Blacks, Foreigners, unions, Democrats and women were blamed for the suffering, not the rich white men in power who sold away our futures.
At the same time these same families invested heavily in college education for their children. A little bit of aid, but mostly loans bought the paper that promised to give their family a better economic future. Next target - the liberals who supposedly control colleges - who got blamed for the backbreaking debt those loans created. Who got blamed for the better future that never materialized.
In the middle of all that Bill Clinton signed Nafta... seen as handing away the futures of lower skilled workers to the Mexicans.
If you want to understand the people who voted for Trump you also have to ask yourself where was the Democratic Party for the last 30 years. There was a moment somewhere in the past we dropped the ball and ended up in this place. If we'd done our job the 99% would be thriving and Trump would have been laughed off the stage decades ago.
Please understand, I'm not blaming the Democratic party. But the fact remains my party has been the backstop to protect "the little guy" from the predator class..... and that has not happened as well as it should have...
Where we go from here I don't know. But blaming our fellow victims because they see the cause of their suffering a little differently is not productive. This is true for our side as well as the Republican side of working people.
Having real conversations is a start. "Do they deserve what they get?" type of rhetoric... not so much. Trump voters are my family, my friends, my coworkers. And so are Bernie voters and Hillary voters and Stein voters.
It is said the best way to get rid of an enemy is to turn them into a friend. We may not get them all, but we can get enough.
= new reply since forum marked as read
First of all, I agree with much of what you are saying. I would only observe:
1) The notion of demonizing unions began long before the '70s. It really started with the dominant "anti-communist" ideology of the post-WWII era, which glorified the notion of the autonomous individual being the source of all good, and anything that would force them to give up even a smidgen of their complete freedom for anyone's common good, including their own, as merely a step away from Stalinism. From there, it was only a short jump to depicting unions as "anti-American." (Note that, in the Oscar-winning classic On the Waterfront, produced and written by those who had "named names" and who were trying to paint their actions as moral and patriotic, the "corrupt" union is basically a stand-in for the Commies.)
2) Mentioning NAFTA inevitably brings up the Clinton administration. As much as some here may want me tombstoned for saying this, I think the failure of the Clintons, along with many others in the Democratic Party at the time, is that they learned the wrong lessons from the "Reagan revolution" (which witnessed, of course, Bill Clinton being ousted as Arkansas governor). Instead of seeing it as a temporary swing of the pendulum, caused by some unique historical circumstances (OPEC-based stagflation combined with the blow to our national morale from Iran and Afghanistan), they concluded that it was "proof" that the American electorate was naturally conservative, and that the only salvation for Democrats was to "run to the center" -- but not understanding that the electorate could not simply be plotted on a left-right line, but a two-dimensional grid that also ran up and down. Too many Democrats concluded that the only way to become more "moderate" was to totally buy into the myth of the wonders of the global capitalist system, one that not only moved them to the right, but "up" in the vertical axis toward the interests of the economic intelligentsia. This, ironically, allowed Republicans to undercut them with a faux populism that, while still as far to the right (or more so), presented themselves as a "common people's" alternative to the "elitist" Democrats.
3) Finally, we should be clear as to what happened last November (and I don't mean "losing the electoral vote while winning the popular vote"
. Contrary to the myth already being spread about 2016, Trump did not win by appealing to the "working class." In fact, Trump's power base remained among those of high-income; results show that, the poorer the demographic group, the more they voted for Clinton. What Trump accomplished was to peel away just enough of the working class (and in just the right states) to combine with his affluent base to tip the scales. Democrats don't need to "win over the Trump demographic" as a whole (which would be virtually impossible), but we need to be able to retake that "just enough" percentage. More to the point, we have to show that we stand for something. All the time I was growing up, it was self-evident that Republicans were for the rich, while Democrats were for "the rest of us." Unless we're willing to take a strong stand for that rest of us, why should we expect anyone would be willing to listen?
