We have discussed many times how the liberal elite’s agenda for the Democratic Party is at odds with the working class, which was once a reliable voting bloc. There were many issues that Clinton confused with these voters who torpedoed the Democrats’ dreams of keeping the White House and taking back Congress. In addition to her total neglect, many Trump supporters in these regions voted for the president-elect because they believed the Democratic Party cared more about bathroom laws than about jobs, According to to James Hohmann from The Washington PostHe also added that, like Bill Clinton, Hillary’s campaign received warnings from other Democrats that their messaging could cost them the election:
In May, the longtime chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party sent a private memo to Hillary Clinton’s campaign leaders warning that she was in grave danger of losing not only Ohio but also Pennsylvania and Michigan if she didn’t quickly change her message on trade. His advice went unheeded.
“I don’t have to say that working-class voters are, to put it mildly, not very enthusiastic about HRC’s positions on trade and the economy,” David Betras wrote in his 1,300-word op-ed, referring to her struggles in the last primary.
Donald Trump’s protectionist message has already resonated strongly in this Rust Belt epicenter. Gov. John Kasich may have won Ohio’s Republican primary as the favorite, but Trump beat him in more than a dozen counties along the Ohio River. More than a quarter of the people who voted in Mahoning County’s Republican primary in March were previously registered Democrats. In fact, Betras had to kick out 18 members of his Democratic central committee for defecting to Trump.
More than two decades after its passage, NAFTA remains a red flag to area voters who rightly or wrongly blame trade for the devastating job losses that have occurred at Packard Electric, GM, GE, numerous steel companies, and companies that supplied these major employers,” Betras, a practicing attorney, tried to explain to Clinton’s leadership. “Thousands of Ohio workers…are still eligible for Trade Readjustment Act assistance because their jobs are being moved overseas.”
The local chairman now believes Clinton could have won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan if she had focused on economic issues and not been distracted by the culture war.
“Look, I’m as progressive as anyone else, okay? But people in the heartland thought the Democratic Party cared more about where someone else went to the bathroom than whether they had a good-paying job,” he complained. “‘Stronger Together’ isn’t going to get anyone a job.”
Betras also noted that Clinton lacks credibility on trade, given her support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and her comments on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, where she described it as the gold standard. As Frank Luntz noted in the third presidential debate, Trump’s economic rhetoric scored high, even with Hillary voters, and trade was the then-GOP candidate’s robust suit. If he wanted to win this election, he would continue to bring up trade. Betras also told Hohmann that a) not everyone wants to do white-collar work where they live; and b) when these voters hear about retraining, their blood pressure goes up. He said Democrats should talk about manufacturing, trying to bring back some of those jobs, and invest in infrastructure. They should also discuss ways to protect their pensions. None of that happened. The publication also found many factory workers in the area who were Democrats voted for Trump because they wanted change and supported his position on trade. But they noted, as many observers have, that if they fail to achieve their goals, these voters could easily turn away from Trump and the Republicans.
It’s fair. The GOP is the dominant political force in the country. They control Washington. They control the countryside. Only infighting and total incompetence could account for a defeat where every voter would have a good reason to vote Democratic in 2018. The point is to hope that Trump and a Republican Congress can right the ship.
Still, I’m not sure Clinton would have won if she’d focused on the economy. Remember, she doesn’t trust trade, has deep connections to Wall Street, and is paid more for a single 20-minute speech than most Americans make in a lifetime. Yes, Clinton fared well among working-class voters in her 2008 campaign and in her home state of New York, but that was almost a decade ago. A lot has changed — and the more information about the Clinton Foundation and its email server has been uncovered, the more her ratings and her trust and integrity ratings have fallen. Maybe a change in the “Clinton Protector Pension” message might have changed things, but then again, voters didn’t trust her, so why should they believe that Mrs. I Get $300,000 for a Speech would care about them? It’s tough to present yourself as a working-class hero with a history like that. Republicans would also criticize her for being someone who will say anything to win an election, echoing the attack on Obama in 2008.
Second, let’s just be clear. Clinton ignored these people because her campaign believed they didn’t matter. Furthermore, ignoring cultural issues would certainly irritate her urban base, where bathroom bills, abortion, etc. are issues they need to hear from a Democrat. There would certainly be questions about why Clinton shifted her focus to voters she didn’t care about or who didn’t matter to her, because who really cares about the daily routines and struggles of rural rednecks. Well, they’re still Americans, they still have jobs, and metropolitan elites are still insufferable snobs. Unfortunately, I don’t think Democrats are taking action to effectively reach these voters. Clinton was wiped out in these counties. Out of 490 counties in the Appalachian region, Clinton only won 21 of them. Do we spend money on people who may or may not be able to return, or do we double down on the college-educated women and people of color who dominate the country’s urban areas? The latter is much more appealing to the left; they have the infrastructure in place, and the rural political apparatuses for Democrats are virtually extinct. At the same time, they also have to recognize that Clinton’s loss was entirely her fault, and that perhaps the assumption that Clinton would be accepted as Obama was just ridiculous.
In the end, Clinton has somewhat lost her cultural front in these areas, without the liberal snobbery and dismissiveness that were hallmarks of her campaign with this voting bloc:
Glenn Holmes is the Democratic mayor of nearby McDonald Village. He was just elected to an open state House seat with 60 percent of the vote, even after Trump won the district. Holmes, who is African-American, said it was about more than trade. Many Democrats in his district voted for Trump because they believed Clinton wanted to confiscate their guns, supported late-term abortion and would not stop untested Syrian refugees from coming into the country. “I was able to speak more specifically to the concerns and calm them” than Clinton could in the context of the national race, the 58-year-old explained in an interview. “Was Trump engaging in misogyny and fear-mongering? Of course he was. There was fear. He saw it and he captured it. He won. It worked. Democrats didn’t engage with the concerns. They ignored them and thought people would see through it. But that just sent the message that they didn’t care.”
Clinton has been miserable in her responses to the Second Amendment. She later said she would not support overturning D.C. v. Heller, but not before refusing to say that owning a firearm is an individual right under the Constitution. She has also made clear that she believes late-term abortion is permissible, despite the overwhelming majority of Americans opposing the brutal practice.
On the Syrian refugees, the warning for Democrats to stop acting like snobs came again from one of their own, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, who said that mocking the Republican Party’s position on possible terrorist ties to these people portrays the party as terribly detached from reality and she wasn’t sedate about national security policy. But even if that had been brought up, and Clinton had become more adamant about vetting refugees, her email server, which was unauthorized and unsecure, would have undermined her because that could have compromised our national security.
It also doesn’t aid the optics when your candidate is under investigation by the FBI; although I think the class divide (working class/elite), the geographic divide (rural/urban), and Clinton’s inability to effectively message both areas (because she’s a terrible activist) were fatal. Obama messaged every group he touched, which was clear with his Florida operation. Ultimately, these voters want work, they want change, and all they got from Clinton was deafening silence.
