WHO ARE THEY?

Perhaps what this writer has described in the last few postings might give the reader the impression that the typical Trump voter was, in this last election, a member of either the southern conservatives or of the white working class in the rustbelt states. 

This is not the case.  These identified groups merely represent those voters who made the difference, especially those who would have usually been turned off by Trump for religious reasons or because they are blue collar workers who traditionally have voted Democratic.

          The religious crowd, especially in the South, held their collective noses and voted for the perceived “sinner.”  As for the working class, Donald Trump just spoke to them with his promises of “draining the swamp” and bringing back all those jobs that have been lost to cheap labor markets or automation.  These people will see whether Trump can fulfill his promises.  But these are not the typical Trump voters.  So, the question remains:  who are they?

          George Packer reports on polling information that identifies them.  Here is what he writes:

In March, the Washington Post reported that Trump voters were both more economically hard-pressed and more racially biased than supporters of other Republican candidates.  But in September a Gallup-poll economist, Jonathan T. Rothwell, released survey results that complicated the picture.  Those voters with favorable views of Trump are not, by and large, the poorest Americans; nor are they personally affected by trade deals or cross-border immigration.  But they tend to be less educated, in poorer health, and less confident in their children’s prospects – and they’re often residents of nearly all-white neighborhoods.  They’re more deficient in social capital than in economic capital.  The Gallup poll doesn’t indicate how many Trump supporters are racists.  Of course, there’s no way to disentangle economic and cultural motives, to draw a clear map of the stresses and resentments that animate the psyches of tens of millions of people.[1]

          This description is not of a group of dyed in the wool racists or any other related characterization.  Circumstances for these people change and right now, conditions, for them, meant they supported Trump.  Again, Hillary Clinton’s message was not focused enough to draw their support along with all the other negative images her opposition was able to drum up against her.

          She also did not help herself, referring to them as deplorable.  Yes, she walked that back – as Romney tried to walk back the 47% comment four years ago – but a lot of the damage was done.  These people frame their politics nationally, if not locally.  They are not globalists even if the realities of their economic conditions are.  They feel, with good reason, that their monocultural world is disappearing and they don’t like it.

Yet, what will stop all that?  Trump and his “make America great again” language?  This writer does not believe so, but then he was wrong about the election.  As a matter of fact, there is good reason to believe that if Trump has his way – whatever that is – these people’s conditions will worsen, the gap in income and wealth will grow, and the political atmosphere will continue to be more divisive.

In the meantime, the citizenry would do well to remember these voters, as well as all of us, are partners in this federated union.

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[1] George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61, 60.

REPUBLICAN MOVES

In the last several postings, this writer has reviewed political developments prior to this last election that led to the results the citizenry faces today.  To date, this blog has described how the Democratic Party, if only rhetorically, turned its back on its traditional base, the white working class (WWC).  In this posting, the writer wants to briefly describe what has been taking place on the other side, that being the Republican efforts since the 1960s.

All of this is meant to aid civics teachers who want to make sense of the current political landscape.  The assumption is that while the most recent election does not spell a transformational change, it does promise to be quite unsettling to what Americans have come to expect of their political universe.  While they might have voted for change, what is in the offing might be a tad different from their expectations.

The variance of expectations is mostly due to how Republicans have sold themselves to frustrated whites.  The “make America great again” slogan can be read as code to recapturing a time in which public policy catered to the whims of the white population.

In the last posting, it was pointed out that this current disaffection reflects both economic and social complaints:  economic loss of jobs and minority claims for equality.  The goal:  recapture a time before there have been significant changes in both our economic conditions and in the civil rights status of many minority citizens. 

These changes are judged by many to be the causes of their problems.  The common wisdom among the unconnected[1] is that such programs as welfare exist only to get minority votes at their expense.  This whole area of concern has a strong racial component.

This spelled opportunity for Republicans.  Beginning with the sixties and President Johnson signing the civil rights laws of that time, the GOP captured the southern states from the Democrats.  Whereas it used to be the solid South for the Dems, they have ever since been solid red states.

But then there came opportunities in the previously strong manufacturing states of the Midwest, commonly referred to as the “rust belt.”  There, jobs began to be either transported to cheaper labor sites in the South or foreign countries, or eliminated by automation.  In response, the GOP was in the position to promise better job creation with business-friendly policies.

Their spiel was:  workers could get back their jobs if they lowered taxes for corporate America and the rich – this would free up money for investment – and get rid of regulations.  If implemented, jobs would pour back to these areas.  They cite Ronald Reagan’s “trickle down” policy and the eventual boom to the economy during his administration.

What is not mentioned is the stimulus effect that federal defense spending had on the economy.  What is also glossed over is what happened to the national debt.  It mushroomed under Reagan and it also shot up because of George W. Bush’s version of Reaganomics.

Bush’s efforts did not have the job creation of the Reagan years and ended – due to regulation easing – in a ruined economy.  The Trump plans also promise the same with a promised explosion in defense spending, infrastructure spending, and a lowering of taxes and elimination of regulations.  What can go wrong?

Well, this may be a question civics teachers might ask their students.  Perhaps this time, the nation will experience the promise of supply-side economics and there will be a significant uptick in jobs – hopefully so.  Defense and infrastructure spending might do the “job.”  But there are other concerns.

Now that the GOP is in full control – the only check on conservatives is that they do not have a filibuster proof Senate – there is little to stand in their way of fulfilling their wish list.  What is included in that list?  An overall word that describes what they want is “privatization.”

They want to privatize just about all government services so that their true constituents – the business class – can reap a potential profit windfall.  At the state level, with Republicans gaining control of most statehouses, there has been a rush to privatize, for example, prison systems.

This has resulted in significant incidents of reported prisoner abuse.[2]  Most citizens are unaware of this problem.  What is promised at the national or federal level will affect the welfare of many citizens and will be experienced not behind hidden places, like prisons, but in broad daylight.

Take plans to privatize Medicare.  There, if Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s plan is adopted, beneficiaries will be given a voucher and then individually deal with insurance companies and medical facilities.  The plan is seen by commentators as part of replacing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).[3]

Given that among the elderly, in the upcoming years, there will be the last of those who benefitted from dependable pensions programs – and instead will be on undependable 401 plans – the future for the elderly seems precarious.  But that is not all the GOP might affect.

Of course, the Republicans will continue to be against upping the minimum wage and still be against policies that protect and advance organized labor.  While their leader, Mr. Trump, has come out against open trade – he promised to negotiate better deals (whatever that means) – his party is firmly in favor of continuing current trade policies.  This, if Trump is serious about his promises, will probably be a bitter fight within the Republican ranks.

The bottom line is that in two years, the WWC will probably not be any happier than it is today.  In addition, because it is usual that a sitting president’s party loses support in Congress in off-year elections, the Democrats can situate themselves to begin their comeback in 2018.

One will see.  In the Senate, many Democratic seats will need to be defended – not a good sign for them.  But if things don’t get better for the WWC, given the promises of this election, who knows what will happen?

But as important as 2018 will be, 2020 – a census year – election will be more so.  If the Democrats can gain control of statehouses and with the result of the census, they will draw the new legislative and Congressional boundary lines.  This current control is what has given the Republican Party such an advantage in the 2010s.  One can be sure that the pros of both parties are well-aware of this potential gain or loss and will strategize accordingly.

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[1] A moniker used by George Packer.  See George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61.

[2] See, for example, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/09/12255/violence-abuse-and-death-profit-prisons-geo-group-rap-sheet , accessed November 29, 2016.

[3] See, for example, http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/26/503158039/paul-ryans-plan-to-change-medicare-looks-a-lot-like-obamacare , accessed November 29, 2016.

CLASS OR RACE OR BOTH?

With the importance of the white working class in the election of Donald Trump, was this election a product of racist sentiments or of a class struggle?  Has the coalition of the Democratic Party become one of higher income professionals and inner city blacks which has thrown the interests of working, Midwestern whites to the curb?  This writer’s response to these questions is that yes, the election was both an expression of racism and of class struggle.

          As pointed out in the last posting, Democratic strategists and policy makers such as Lawrence Summers had ignored the blatant economic demands of the displaced workers hit by foreign and domestic cheap labor and the effects of automation.  The reasons for this neglect are not so clear.  Was it a matter that what was called for was just beyond the ability of any politician to address and remedy?

          Of course, along comes Mr. Trump who promises solutions, but at what cost?  If his solutions call on, in effect, freezing those manufacturing facilities that exist and somehow forcing the ones that left back to the Midwest, then those policies would be either so un-capitalistic and/or unconstitutional that one wonders how the feat will be accomplished.

          It would be un-capitalistic in that it would call for trade wars.  A way to freeze existing plants and foundries is to slap tariffs on imported goods.  The thing is, that would most likely be met with tariffs from the other countries involved.  Hence, international trade would be highly curtailed and that would raise our prices and make our economy very unproductive.  It would also limit the economy by hurting existing exports.

          What is needed is a vast retraining program and its accompanying governmental investment that, up to now, this government, when run by either party, has been unwilling to do.  And it would also call for employment program(s) that would supply the needed income while such retraining was taking place.  Again, a strong government effort.  Conservatives, who basically have controlled the policy making organs of government (Congress and legislatures), are ideologically antagonistic.

          If there is one thing that unites all conservatives, it is the idea of smaller government and these problems call for, albeit for a limited period, a much bigger government – the type of effort characterizing the New Deal of the 1930s.  And that is the class side of this concern.

          As for the race side, here is where government, as in the words of Hillary Clinton, is not so effective in changing minds or hearts.  What government can do is put laws in effect making discrimination illegal and it can place resources in the grasp of targeted groups experiencing the deficiencies in the system – but not change hearts.[1]

          Secretary Clinton had the plans, but she was deficient in communicating them, plus all her accumulated baggage (mostly placed there by Republican efforts to discredit her).  The point was the challenge for a more dual view:  attacking the inequities of class and the racism that exists against blacks and immigrants.  What was missing was the language which “Working Together,” as a slogan attempted to capture, but fell short.

          Why?  It fell short because the nation abandoned a federalist view some fifty or sixty years ago, and assuming that a slogan can rekindle the type of collaborative inclinations that once existed is unrealistic.  Building bridges, not walls, is dreamy for people who feel and understand the collaborative nature of our constitutional makeup.  The res publica is simply not there and that is part of the problem that cannot be fixed in a political campaign.  It calls for a concerted effort.

          Some have been vocal for a dual message – meeting the class challenges and the racism, especially held among the affected white working class – but that order cannot be met or addressed when there is an opposing side countering with messages more resonant with the existing electorate.  What is heartening is that the collaborative side received more votes, albeit poorly distributed to make the difference needed in the Electoral College.

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[1] George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61.

A WORRISOME VIGILANCE

Globalization:  who has won and who has lost?  This past election has put the issue of globalization front and center.  Apparently, the results have pointed to disgruntled voters among the white working class (WWC) and their demands for more equitable treatment.

One of their reported complaints is the results accrued from several decades of a shift toward a more global economy.  Simply put:  this shift is characterized by markets opening to global competition by doing away with tariffs and other restraints.  This move has been further advanced using the web and other communication advancements.

          Along with communication there has also been deregulation of finance.  With a relatively few calls and other moves, any entrepreneur can identify and establish working relationships that lead to an entire array of products being produced by cheap labor.  That puts American workers in competition with workers who are more than willing to work for a few dollars a day.

Hardest hit have been those workers in what used to be strong labor union areas of the country such as the northern midwest states.  This development was described in the last two postings.  They are the big losers of globalization, but who has won?

          Well, of course, workers and, in turn, countries who previously were described as under- developed nations have made significant advances during this globalization period.  For example, poor Asian countries have been able to close the gap between themselves and Western developed nations.  Within those countries, middle and upper class groups have been particularly favored by these developments.

          On the other hand, middle class and working class people in the US and other western countries have not seen real wage increases:

Thus while many relatively poor people did well during this latest globalization episode, those somewhat richer may have more complaints. People around the 80th global percentile, with incomes ranging from $13 to $27 international dollars per day, saw few improvements. Their incomes were stagnant or barely increasing.[1]

And this trend stretches back to the late 1980s.  Add to this the effects of the Great Recession and the WWC has lost its patience.

          The US is not the only place where this frustration is being seen.  In Great Britain recently, the electorate voted for Britain to leave the European Union (commonly called Brexit).  Comparable popular movements are currently gaining strength in other European nations; for example, the nationalist candidacy of Marine LePen in France.  This undermines the more international trend that has occurred ever since the end of World War II.

          Generally, this trend was seen as an antidote to the forces that led to that disastrous conflict in which over 50 million (some estimate more than 80 million) people were killed.  This human toll was accompanied by vast capital destruction.  The accepted truth after such an experience was:  what is needed is a set of international, peace seeking institutions such as the United Nations.

In this spirit, such collaborative organizations such as the European Union have been set up, but this has also led to opening up the free trade agreements that have led to the current economic conditions.  Along with these organizations have been policy changes that eased the way to encourage these international markets.

For example, in the US, there was the repeal of the Glass-Seagall law that prohibited commercial banks from investment banking.  This allowed these commercial banks to engage in derivative trading.  Some argue that such practices helped develop the conditions that led to the financial crisis of 2008 (some argue that they didn’t).  But either way, a name associated with that development is Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration.[2]

This is a quote from an article in which Summers tells how his and Robert Rubin’s policies were developed during the nineties:

In July, [George Packer] went to see Summers at his vacation home in Massachusetts.  When [Packer] arrived, [Summers] had just pulled up – in a Lexus – after a morning of tennis.  [The two of them] sat on a terrace overlooking Cape Cod Bay.  Summers described numerous trips that he had made during his years at Treasury to review antipoverty programs in Africa and Latin America, and in American inner cities.  “I don’t think I ever went to Akron, or Flint, or Toledo, or Youngstown,” he admitted.  To Democratic policymakers, poverty was foreign or it was black.  As for displaced white workers in the Rust Belt, Summers said, “their problems weren’t heavily on our radar screen, and they were mad that their problems weren’t.”[3]

This, this writer believes, captures the conditions that have befallen the Democratic Party and speaks volumes as to why there is a president-elect Trump.

          More concretely, the attitudes that are being catered to are those that are antagonistic to internationalism and domestic minorities.  In a word, they would be nationalist attitudes.  Nationalism can be summarized by the saying:  “my country, right or wrong, my country.”  It is an ideology that places the value of national interests above such values as fairness or equality.

In the extreme, it would be a fascist ideology as that espoused by Benito Mussolini in Italy or Juan Peron of Argentina.  When those ideas and values associate nationalism with a national stock or race, then one reaches Nazism.  One needs to be careful with such language and the president-elect has not made an authoritative policy decision yet.  So, one should not make accusations, but observations are legitimate; they indicate vigilance.

          One can therefore ask: is this what the nation is now facing?  The Trump “movement” has admitted that it is not for globalism, but is for giving nationalist interests higher priority.  And in their target sights are multiculturalist policies, programs, and initiatives.  This is what they call identity politics.  Their battle cry rails against political correctness; in doing so, the language becomes a weapon.  That language can debase sensitivities that promote equality of treatment.

          It is this backdrop that places Trump’s appointment of Steve Bannon, as Chief Strategist, in context.  Yesterday, the alt-right group associated with Bannon and the news service he headed, Breitbart News, supported a conference where Nazi salutes were noted and “heil” (or was it “hail”) was shouted.[4] 

This seems beyond mere symbolism.  It also follows a pattern:  blame a foreign element for the problems that a group is facing.  This is the formula often used by nationalists to gain support among disgruntled or disaffected groups such as the WWC.  Hitler used the Jews.

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[1] “The Tale of Two Middle Classes,” Branko Milanovic, YaleGlobal, July 31, 2014, accessed November 21, 2016, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/tale-two-middle-classes .

[2] Later still, he was Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration.

[3] George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61, 54.

[4] Shaun King, “The Alt-Right Movement Goes Full Nazi As Steve Bannon Prepares to Enter the White House,” New York Daily News, accessed November 21, 2016, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-alt-right-full-nazi-bannon-lands-white-house-job-article-1.2882385 .

A DRIFT TOWARD WHAT?

The size of Hillary Clinton’s popular vote advantage in this last presidential election indicates that the nation isn’t particularly at odds with the party that has occupied the White House these past eight years.  What it more accurately indicates is that a significant segment of the usual coalition that has supported that party is disaffected with it.

In the last posting, that segment was identified and named as the white working class (WWC).  And this is not the first time in our more current history that that portion of the electorate has shown its disaffection.  To place context as to what just happened, a stroll down that history is useful.

          This current leadership of Democrats has mostly ignored the growing estrangement of the WWC.  Going into the 1960 election, the traditional coalition of voters that made up the Democratic Party was clear and understood by all.  It consisted of labor, leftists, urban interests represented by big city political machines, and those who found it difficult to meet the economic challenges of the day.

It was the party that grew out of the New Deal programs which FDR instituted to meet the devastations caused by the Great Depression.  Some of those included Social Security with its old age pension, unemployment provisions, and welfare, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

In addition, the Dems favored pro-union legislation such as the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and minimum wage.  All of these provisions, with the exception of the right to work provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, seemed to have institutionalized a set of protections for the working class.  Those battles that created these protections, in the minds of many, were over.

          Of course, there was an opposing coalition.  This was made up of small business people, white collar workers and professionals (from bank tellers to local lawyers and doctors), pensioners, executives of minor to large corporations, and those who derived income from rural interests, such as farm owners.  They made up the bulk of the Republican Party.

Add to this mix an earlier version of alt-right, the members of the John Birch Society, and one has the mix of people who were represented at the Republican National Convention of 1960 in Chicago.  They had just witnessed a rewarding decade, the decade which expressed a continued sentiment: “we like Ike.”

          This reflected a clear division within the electorate, but then along came the Vietnam War that disrupted things.  And to understand that disruption, one needs to appreciate the challenges the Cold War had stirred up during the fifties.  Without getting into the details, that decade saw a conservative shift in the general tenor of the nation’s politics.

Because of China’s fall to Communism, during Harry Truman’s term, the Republicans had been able to tag Democrats as being soft on Communism, a growing menace which was equated with the rise of Nazism during the thirties.  The accepted belief was that Communism had to be stopped wherever it threatened to expand.

          One of the resulting hot spots where this menace was being observed was Vietnam.  Since 1954, that nation had been divided into two parts – North and South – one Communist, the North, and the other supported by the US.  Communist insurgents, the Viet Cong, were mounting an armed movement to depose the government of the South and reunite that nation.

The details are complicated, but slowly, during the sixties, that conflict escalated to a full-blown war.  Under the administration of Lyndon Johnson, the US became further entangled in the conflict.  By 1968, the US had a half a million troops in Vietnam with no end in sight.  That year, the Communists launched the Tet Offensive which indicated to many Americans that there was indeed no end.

The casualty rates were rising to alarming levels with over 300 Americans being killed per week (the rate of Vietnamese being killed was many times higher).  And all of that resulted in a growing anti-war movement that came to a head at the Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1968.

That week demonstrated how anxious, frustrated, and angry many Americans were over the war.  Add to that the earlier assassination of the Democratic frontrunner, Robert Kennedy, along with race riots (the Martin Luther King assassination), high crime rates, and things were seemingly getting out of hand.

Richard Nixon, the Republican, won over Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate who had not won any primaries during the months leading up to their convention.  Humphrey, who coming into the election was the sitting vice president, had not committed himself to end the war.  Nixon, the Republican, promised a secret plan to end the war.  There did ensue, after the election, a de-escalation of the war and finally in the mid-seventies, the US cut its losses and pulled out.

But that left the Democratic Party in disarray and needing a reorganization.  A committee was set up and the result was a nominating process heavily reliant on primaries and a stripping away of power of the old machine structures that had controlled the party up to that time.

That newer system has since been tweaked, but it has mostly survived until the present day.  What it did do was shift the center of power away from labor unions and urban politicians.  The shift did not filter down to the working class, but to another set of elites.

What emerged was a more professionally oriented power structure that was led by a young group of politicians such as Gary Hart and Bill Clinton.  Collectively, they were labeled the neo-liberals.  They represented the interests of the professional classes – the middle class – and favored such policy that addressed educational opportunities, deregulation of finance, and the opening of international trade.  Bolstered with the advent of the computer and its promises of democratizing education, the neo-libs shifted the focus of the Dems away from the laboring class.

In terms of policy, the new focus left the working class off the radar screen.  Opening trade to cheaper labor markets here and abroad along with automation would, in the ensuing decades, devastate the manufacturing sector of the traditional manufacturing states of the northern mid-west.

With those changes, the long-held strongholds of Democratic support in states like Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin weakened and was lost in this election.  This result was foreshadowed in the 1980 election when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter.

In those states, one sees these disaffected working class voters taking out their frustrations with the Democratic Party.  Along with the more traditional Republican states, like the solid South, Clinton didn’t have a chance despite her overall vote totals.

It is unfair to say that Clinton did not, in her platform, address the needs of the working class.  She did, but she did not sufficiently communicate that concern.  The disaffected, what George Packer calls the “unconnected,”[1] placed their trust in the rhetoric and ill-defined promises of Donald Trump.  Whether their trust is well placed, time will tell.  But as for the Democrats, there is some rearranging to be done.

Currrently, conversations are being conducted in trying to determine what exactly should the face of Democrats be and then presented to the nation.  Should the party stray away from the more professional class – the educational elitists – whom they have courted of late and return to their labor base?  Or should they attempt to meld the interest of the technologists, engineers, financial experts, global traders, and other professionals with that of the working class?

What is clear from this election – and that of 2000 – that it is not enough to win the most votes.  It is this context – the historical overview presented above – that a civics student needs to get a handle on in order to understand what is going on nationally with the current political arena.  Political observers need to hold on to their hats because this whirlwind is not over and the upcoming years promise to be different from anything the nation has seen before.

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[1] George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61.

W W C

This last election has exposed another deprived or challenged population within the American socio-economic fabric.  That is the white working class (WWC).  It is this class that much attention has been given to of late; it is being given credit or blame for the success Donald Trump experienced last Tuesday.

Certain attributes are being attached to those who make up this class.  A civics teacher who wants to explain or have his/her student inquire into this past election should present and define who these people are and what role they played in putting Trump over the 270 Electoral votes needed for victory.

          It seems that there were enough of these people in key, usually Democratic states to give Trump and his party the edge.  Again, the margin was large enough in too many states to throw the election in the direction of the Republicans not only for the presidency, but for the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Nationally, more people voted Democratic for each of these bodies than voted Republican, yet the Grand Old Party won all three.  As the students of one of the high schools where this writer taught would say to the female teachers, “That ain’t right, Miss.”

          So, what are these attributes that characterize the WWC?  It seems to be a group of people who have been hit with one or more of the following developments:

·        they are generally people without a college level education;

·        they can be former small business owners that, due to the Great Recession, have lost their businesses and the capital that set up those businesses;

·        they have lost their jobs due to work being exported to a lower-wage foreign country or to sections of the nation that have “right to work” laws (often being southern states such as South Carolina) or to automation.

          Many of them are products of families that can vividly remember better days.  Those days saw people similar to them, perhaps their parents or grandparents, being union workers who worked in busy factories or foundries.  Oh yes, those grandparents, by the way, represented the generation that won World War II – the “Greatest Generation.”

They also remember a social setting populated by people mostly like themselves – white and of Anglo-Saxon or Germanic stock or perhaps Scandinavian.  Now what they see is increasing numbers of people whom they perceive as not being similar to them.

          These others – intruders – can be blacks or Latinos, Asians, and/or Muslims from the Middle East.  The smells are different or the accents are un-understandable.  Among “these real Americans” are older ones who have seen their children move to where the work is only to be probably struggling far from home.

They also see themselves aging too quickly, perhaps with health problems, and with financial challenges that deprive them of planning a better future.  And then along comes the Donald with his travelling show promising greatness again.

          Yes, the Clinton refrain that America is still great and getting better might be true, but it is not true for these people.  And this is not the first time this dynamic reared up and showed itself.  Ronald Reagan, with another quip of a saying – morning in America – promised a better future, only to see an acceleration of the disparity in income and wealth.

Many mark Reagan’s terms as the time when that disparity became serious.  That’s when the one percenters began to seriously gobble up just about all new income and own too much of the nation’s capital.  The plunge for the WWC in economic and social standing did not start eight years ago – although the Great Recession augmented the problems – but can be traced to the early 1970s.

          And one more thing can be said about them:  they are not the only ones hurting.  There are also the usual suspects:  inner city blacks and other minorities.  So, a civics teacher or curriculum that is guided by federation theory would find such conditions ripe for study.  That theory finds such conditions as immoral.  Why?  Because they are reflective of an inequality caused not by acts of those affected, but by structural factors beyond the victims’ control.

          From the above description, one can detect a host of more specific issues.  There is the plight of unions and the whole justification for their existence.  There is racism: the conditions that create it and encourage it to grow.  There is globalization:  its pluses and minuses.  There is the democratic quality of our electoral process including the justification for the Electoral College.  There is automation and the threat it poses to jobs. 

More generally, there is the nature of Americanism:  what is it, what is its justification, what is its promise?  And there is nationalism:  what is it, what are its dangers, and how nationalistic is the incoming president?

          This writer recently attended his fiftieth high school reunion.  One question he asked at the get-together was:  given that this election cycle had an avowed socialist and not so subtle nationalist running for president and receiving a lot of votes (this was before the two major candidates were determined), are the elites of the nation taking note and willing to change course?  At the time, he believed that neither Trump nor Sanders had a chance.  He was fifty percent correct.

          And that brings up another issue:  how powerful are the elites?  How much can one see the elites as a singular force?  How much is the system rigged against the interests of the clear majority of the nation?  Are the critical theorists right?  Do we need a revolution or, in more acceptable language, a transformation?

This writer still holds the belief that we need serious tweaking including some transformations, but that overall, the system works.  After all, most voters did not vote for a revolution; they voted for the establishment candidate.

WHY?

While this blog has been mostly dedicated to the scope – the content – of an ideal civics curriculum, the writer wants to begin a series of postings about this last election.  Through most of this campaign cycle, he has not bolstered the positions of one side over the other; he might have used perceived shortcomings of one candidate to exemplify a point, but he avoided suggesting for whom the reader should vote.

Now that this long and tiring campaign season is over, the reader might be left with the question:  why did the election turn out as it did?  In any event, the next series of postings will look at this question.  It will rely on an article published in the journal, The New Yorker,[1] for the facts on which these postings will be based.  So, on this Veterans Day, a look at what happened might be a good way to begin what some are anticipating as being “interesting times.”

Many are familiar with the Chinese (apocryphal) saying that it is a curse to live in interesting times.  The nation might be on the verge of finding out.  The pundits on TV have mentioned a host of factors stretching from bigotry to emails.  As with any event of consequence, chances are there are a multitude of reasons.  This is particularly true if the event in question is about an election in a nation of over 300 million people.

Some parameters should be stated up front:  Donald J. Trump was elected by a quarter of all eligible voters.  He received less than fifty percent of the vote, came in second in the popular vote, and there were significant third and fourth party candidates (taking about 5% of the votes cast).

          Another point should be made, one concerning why this blog is looking at this question.  The reasons for the results of this election are a rundown of those conditions that reflect two central claims this blog has made over the years:

·        One, the nation has, since World War I, adopted a natural rights construct as the prominent view of governance and politics.

·        Two, the problems that will be reviewed will illustrate how much the nation has turned away from the construct that was in place prior to World War II.

          For returning readers, the refrain that describes the older construct will sound very familiar, but for new readers, a quick word on the central concepts of the older construct would be helpful.  The older construct was labeled as traditional federalism and it holds that a polity of choice – one that is not the product of force or accident – is formulated by its participants coming together and forming the polity through the instrument of a covenant or compact.

The US is the product of a compact, the US Constitution.  Part of that compact is the belief that those who comprise the “citizenry” of the compact are equal and viable partners in the provisions of the compact.

In short, many of the reasons that will be described in the upcoming postings have undermined and are undermining the very quality of that equality.  It is the opinion of this writer that a review of these reasons can be the basis for a civics course, one based on federalist ideas and ideals.

He will write about these reasons in terms of how they affect the underlying qualities of a federalist union.  The claim is that such effects are placing the system in danger.  For example, the very fact that Trump did not receive most of the popular vote is placing, again, the very prudence of an Electoral College in question. 

The Electoral College is a product of our federalist foundation.  If the results of elections were to be determined from a purely popular vote basis, the resulting politics would tilt to an extremely urban bias, relegating the interests of the rural regions far behind.  This is counter to the congregational quality of a federal union.

That is, central to a federal system is the notion of an equality among its citizens and its states – those are who formulated the compact in the first place.  A resulting tilt, as just described, would be un-federalist in nature.  Perhaps our nation has grown beyond a federalist union; this writer does not agree.

And the construct that should be used in any civics course that looks at the current challenges would be better served with what this blog has offered: a revised version of federalism, liberated federalism.  The newer version places even more concern on these reported incidents of inequality.

A focused question, then, is:  why did Trump capture the vote of the downwardly mobile white voter?  He won both the male and female white vote despite all the controversy over his reported incidents of abusing women.  The writer of the cited article, Packer, asked the candidate Hillary Clinton about the support the Republican candidate was receiving weeks before the election.

Here is what she had to say:

It’s “Pox on both your houses,” … It was certainly a rejection of every other Republican running [for president].  So pick the guy who’s the outsider, pick the guy who’s giving you an explanation – in my view, a trumped-up one, not convincing – but, nevertheless, people are hungry for that … Donald Trump came up with a fairly simple, easily understood, and to some extent satisfying story.  And I think we Democrats have not provided as clear a message about how we see the economy as we need to.[2]

And yet, she emphasized, as her ads kept repeating, how untemperamental her opponent was to be president with little highlighting of how she was going to right the economic disparity of the last thirty of so years.  She might have had the policy proposals written out, but she did not communicate them to those who needed to know and feel them.  This election has rendered an interesting story; hopefully, the upcoming postings will capture its intrigue.

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[1] George Packer, “The Unconnected,” The New Yorker 92, no. 35 (2016):  48-61.

[2] Ibid., 48.