Barack Obama was absolutely correct when he said in a recent interview that the GOP had convinced rural and working class whites that they are victims. If the Democratic Party is to succeed at attracting support from working class voters, it is essential that the party leadership make a greater effort to understand where that sense of victimization comes from, and make an effort to describe how Democratic Party policies are likely to produce more positive outcomes for working class voters.
In this article I will present what I believe is the root of that sense of victimization. The root of modern day GOP propaganda involves a blame-shift, where labor unions, environmental regulations, and Democratic Party policies are blamed for the loss of working class factory jobs in America. The root of working class anxiety, the “economic insult” described in earlier essays in this series, is the loss of steady employment, and the substitution of far lower paying “Gig” and retail jobs. The real cause of that job loss has been the rotation of points of production and consumption among different countries.
Click here to read the rest of this essay at the Otter Globe & Intelligencer