White working class acting against their own interests?

[Anonymous]

Trump and his supporters are correctly identifying the Clintons and Obama (and GWB) as being worse than useless when it comes to fighting for good-paying jobs for blue-collar workers, since they cravenly served Wall Street, big importers, and the forces of globalization. So Trump comes along and actually makes this connection and the OP has the sheer gall to try to spin this story that Hillary is a better choice? What was Hillary saying about the Asia trade deal when she was SOS? Here's a secret: she was pushing for it hard even though it was obviously anti-blue-collar.

[Anonymous]

Aside from Trump, who hasn't really outlined how he's going to create new jobs other than halting immigration, which republicans have focused on blue-collar job creation? This just isn't a Republican plank.

Most blue collar whites who vote Republican are voting on social issues, not economics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read some article a while ago about how this really poor southern town, predominately white, hated Democrats, but most of these folks were on welfare. This would be what OP is referring to. I'm Asian, well to do, Republic-turned-Independent (thanks Bush), and I don't understand why these folks hate Democrats so much given that most Republicans always want to cut welfare.

It was Bill Clinton that championed "ending welfare as we know it", and actually did it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read some article a while ago about how this really poor southern town, predominately white, hated Democrats, but most of these folks were on welfare. This would be what OP is referring to. I'm Asian, well to do, Republic-turned-Independent (thanks Bush), and I don't understand why these folks hate Democrats so much given that most Republicans always want to cut welfare.

It was Bill Clinton that championed "ending welfare as we know it", and actually did it.

This was one thing that I thought Bill did that was good. He also did a good job at working with Congress.

Didn’t Obama basically gut this plan he put in place?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/obama-to-clinton-welfare-reform-drop-dead/2012/07/14/gJQAM49XkW_blog.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read some article a while ago about how this really poor southern town, predominately white, hated Democrats, but most of these folks were on welfare. This would be what OP is referring to. I'm Asian, well to do, Republic-turned-Independent (thanks Bush), and I don't understand why these folks hate Democrats so much given that most Republicans always want to cut welfare.

It was Bill Clinton that championed "ending welfare as we know it", and actually did it.

Gingrich forced his hand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aside from Trump, who hasn't really outlined how he's going to create new jobs other than halting immigration, which republicans have focused on blue-collar job creation? This just isn't a Republican plank.

Most blue collar whites who vote Republican are voting on social issues, not economics.[/quote]

Source?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trump and his supporters are correctly identifying the Clintons and Obama (and GWB) as being worse than useless when it comes to fighting for good-paying jobs for blue-collar workers, since they cravenly served Wall Street, big importers, and the forces of globalization. So Trump comes along and actually makes this connection and the OP has the sheer gall to try to spin this story that Hillary is a better choice? What was Hillary saying about the Asia trade deal when she was SOS? Here's a secret: she was pushing for it hard even though it was obviously anti-blue-collar.

Trump has not outlined anything, except "get rid of the immigrants" which will not have that much effect on jobs. I happen to agree with him, but don't plan to vote for him. The answers to the job questions are complicated because some industries are really slowing down while others are picking up. The working class people I know don't want to move for better, or any jobs. We are white collar and they seem to think we are stupid for moving for better job opportunities, and tell me so to my face. They was the answers to be simple, and for everything to continue as it always has in their lifetimes.

For example: Hillary is not eliminating coal jobs, the gas industry and cheap gas is taking the place of coal. Coal workers don't like hearing that, or hearing that they may need to move or retrain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read some article a while ago about how this really poor southern town, predominately white, hated Democrats, but most of these folks were on welfare. This would be what OP is referring to. I'm Asian, well to do, Republic-turned-Independent (thanks Bush), and I don't understand why these folks hate Democrats so much given that most Republicans always want to cut welfare.

Why were they on welfare? Because they didn't want to work (love democrats) or because there were no jobs (Trump will fix). Get it?

It was under the Reagan administration when the factory jobs started going down south.. get it? And some of these people are generational welfare recipients. Even if they do want jobs, they don't want to have to work for it, as in get an education. In a free market economy, companies have the right to move their ops anywhere they want to. But, they want the gov't to change the laws so they can have those jobs where you move a widget from point a to point b then push a button; get good healthcare and a pension. So, they want a President, ie, the gov't, to get all those things for them.

So, it's not that they don't like big gov't, it's that they want big gov't when it suits them, but not when it doesn't suit them.

Get it?

Yes, you are correct that the jobs started to diminish under Reagan, then Bush, then Clinton who helped it along with NAFTA, then Bush and Obama. What all those have in common is that they are republican or democrat CAREER politicians. Many of those supporting Trump are not labeling him as Bush III, but rather an outsider who is a successful businessman who has and will create good paying jobs. They want neither democrat or traditional republican.

any who want jobs have high school educations and cannot find decent opportunities. Labeling them as uneducated is a stretch.

But having a President who will somehow get companies to bring back manufacturing jobs is not capitalism. It's gov't inserting itself. So, all those Trump supporters who hate that gov't is getting too big, meddling, are saying that they do want the gov't to meddle, but only if it benefits them.

The days of good jobs for low skilled workers are gone. Do people want us to go back to the 50's when these types of jobs were plentiful? In order to get a good paying job these days you either need a college education or some training in a specific field. What is the definition of "poorly educated" -- not having a HS diploma would fit into this category. So, these folks want good paying jobs with benefits but not have to even finish HS? That is what I call entitled, and this is partly what's killing America.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump and his supporters are correctly identifying the Clintons and Obama (and GWB) as being worse than useless when it comes to fighting for good-paying jobs for blue-collar workers, since they cravenly served Wall Street, big importers, and the forces of globalization. So Trump comes along and actually makes this connection and the OP has the sheer gall to try to spin this story that Hillary is a better choice? What was Hillary saying about the Asia trade deal when she was SOS? Here's a secret: she was pushing for it hard even though it was obviously anti-blue-collar.

Trump has not outlined anything, except "get rid of the immigrants" which will not have that much effect on jobs. I happen to agree with him, but don't plan to vote for him. The answers to the job questions are complicated because some industries are really slowing down while others are picking up. The working class people I know don't want to move for better, or any jobs. We are white collar and they seem to think we are stupid for moving for better job opportunities, and tell me so to my face. They was the answers to be simple, and for everything to continue as it always has in their lifetimes.

For example: Hillary is not eliminating coal jobs, the gas industry and cheap gas is taking the place of coal. Coal workers don't like hearing that, or hearing that they may need to move or retrain.

This is one piece of it. A large part of the decimation of the coal industry are the policies of the left.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/04/heres-why-central-appalachias-coal-industry-is-dying/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know quite a few white working class people. They do see how the policies behind some of the Democratic agenda is designed to help. They just feel, from a practical perspective that they are getting screwed and that that particular demographic is being left out.

I'll just give one example and respond to what's written here by some of the posters.

I know a guy, mid-50s I don't know if he graduated high school or has a GED. No college. Born and bred in Northern Virginia. Started out as a kid making minimum wage scrambling around construction and the like. Became a heavy equipment operator and eventually owned his own small business. No help. Just hard work and opportunity. Through his own fault, he lost the business, divorced, etc. No problem. start again.

He started as an hourly employee at a grocery store. Through the store he got health insurance. (He had always known the value of insurance and had always had it and provided it to all his employees). Cost 12 bucks a week, pre-ACA. This came through for him with 2 major medical issues. Fine. He's grateful.

He got promoted. That promotion got him a 4 dollar an hour raise. And his insurance (employer/union) went from 48 to 75 dollars a month. Pre-ACA. OK. The policy was a bit better and he fully agreed that the higher paid union workers should help out the lower paid.

After the ACA, he is paying 400 a month for the same insurance. This is hard to stomach. Lower income, hourly worker and your monthly insurance premium gores up more than 4 times? As a result of a law that was intended to help him? Can you see why this might not be seen as a great victory?

Someone mentioned "racial resentment". I think that is shorthand for postulating that white working class are all racists. Sure its an issue. But it is throughout the entire white demographic pyramid. Is he?

He grew up working class. In a mixed race neighborhood. His son-in-law is a working class black man and his grandchildren are mixed race. I don't think it would be ok to call him racists.

He doesn't hate Muslims or immigrants or gays or transexuals He does not like terrorists. And while he has a great deal of compassion for the US born children of illegal immigrants, he doesn't get why the parents get a break. Surprise, a lot of white working class people have been "judicially involved" (that's currently the "proper" term, isn't it?). And what they see is the fact that they didn't get a break from the justice system, why should they.

Oh. And they see the potential for abuse too. They ask, what is to prevent people from coming specifically to give birth? And then trying to stay?

Its a good question. And while it has been discounted as a problem by those in favor of amnesty. It just doesn't happen that often. I am not sure that's accurate. The New York Times had a long article a couple years ago documenting this a a trend in China. My own personal experience living overseas? I saw dozens of younger people. Lawyers, bankers, doctors and other professionals who were British, Australian, from every European country who would time their pregnancies and annual leave in order to give birth while vacationing at Disney World. Of course, the idea for them wasn't necessarily to remain immediately. But it gave their children a future choice. And it opened options for them to move to the US, as I understand that employers have an easier time sponsoring a foreign professional if a family member is a US citizen. Like it or not, and as disliked as we may be, US citizenship is still coveted.

What about the rest? Why so angry about "civil rights"? It really isn't racism or homophobia as far as I can tell. It's more a feeling of being completely left out. They are hourly workers. They make 15, 20 , 25 dollars an hour. They see affirmative action and diversity initiatives. And no one focuses on them. Instead, they are called stupid. Redneck. Racist. The beneficiaries of white privilege (try explaining that to a white working class family).

All in all, they really don't want much more than to be able to work.

I don't know anyone in the white working class who is against birth control. Or having it provided for free. Most have single other relatives and see what a strain it can be. Oddly, working white people like to have sex for fun too. They do understand.

I don't know more than a handful of working white who are anti-abortion. For the same reasons they are not against birth control.

They are for states rights. But this is less a result of some "redneck" notion than it is experience. They come from neighborhoods where there is a lot of "under the table" community support. People help each other fix houses, cars, plumbing, childcare, etc. It is a true barter economy. It is unspoken that when I look after your kid today, your husband the plumber will stop by this weekend and help us install the hot water heater. Nothing is asked, no money exchanges. It just happens.

As a result, a lot of working class people don't trust a bunch of policy wonks in Washington preening themselves with their HYP degrees that they earned after attending Cranbrook or Exeter or Sidwell pronouncing what is good for the white working class. They hate the condescension "We know what's good for you; you are a stupid rube! My Masters in Public Policy from YALE let's me tell you that. Now sit down and do as you're told.

To me, it really isn't that the white working class are against what the Democratic social platform is. What they hate is feeling left out and and being condescended to . . .as do you and I. So at the end of the day, it is a total marketing failure by the Democrats. Stop telling them what to do. Stop talking down to them. Put as much focus on how they are being screwed as is put on the poor children of illegal immigrants. Put the focus on them. After all, there a ton more white working class voters than there are transgender voters, AA voters or immigrants. And that doesn't mean skew the program, it means change the tone of delivery. Know your audience and speak to them Stop speaking AT them.

You should be writing op eds for the NYTimes instead of the out-of-touch people who do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read some article a while ago about how this really poor southern town, predominately white, hated Democrats, but most of these folks were on welfare. This would be what OP is referring to. I'm Asian, well to do, Republic-turned-Independent (thanks Bush), and I don't understand why these folks hate Democrats so much given that most Republicans always want to cut welfare.

Why were they on welfare? Because they didn't want to work (love democrats) or because there were no jobs (Trump will fix). Get it?

It was under the Reagan administration when the factory jobs started going down south.. get it? And some of these people are generational welfare recipients. Even if they do want jobs, they don't want to have to work for it, as in get an education. In a free market economy, companies have the right to move their ops anywhere they want to. But, they want the gov't to change the laws so they can have those jobs where you move a widget from point a to point b then push a button; get good healthcare and a pension. So, they want a President, ie, the gov't, to get all those things for them.

So, it's not that they don't like big gov't, it's that they want big gov't when it suits them, but not when it doesn't suit them.

Get it?

Yes, you are correct that the jobs started to diminish under Reagan, then Bush, then Clinton who helped it along with NAFTA, then Bush and Obama. What all those have in common is that they are republican or democrat CAREER politicians. Many of those supporting Trump are not labeling him as Bush III, but rather an outsider who is a successful businessman who has and will create good paying jobs. They want neither democrat or traditional republican.

any who want jobs have high school educations and cannot find decent opportunities. Labeling them as uneducated is a stretch.

But having a President who will somehow get companies to bring back manufacturing jobs is not capitalism. It's gov't inserting itself. So, all those Trump supporters who hate that gov't is getting too big, meddling, are saying that they do want the gov't to meddle, but only if it benefits them.

The days of good jobs for low skilled workers are gone. Do people want us to go back to the 50's when these types of jobs were plentiful? In order to get a good paying job these days you either need a college education or some training in a specific field. What is the definition of "poorly educated" -- not having a HS diploma would fit into this category. So, these folks want good paying jobs with benefits but not have to even finish HS? That is what I call entitled, and this is partly what's killing America.

Some people, genetically, just are not academics and never will be. They can be very nice people, very talented with physical work, but just never will write essays on "catcher in the rye". What should those people do? Just crawl under a rock and die?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many people want to be self-reliant - even if they aren't now. They have an optimistic outlook and don't want the government putting them the a box that is reliance on government. Many that rely on the state for food stamps, housing and other benefits find themselves in a vicious circle where it is too hard to jump from poor to middle class because they will lose their benefits in the interim.

The Great Society has been an ongoing failure and has trapped many in a cycle of poverty. These people have to rely on government largess to survive and the system makes it very difficult to escape. We also seem to have failed to have done much about teen pregnancy and especially out-of-wedlock births which are a huge part of the problem. Single motherhood is no longer stigmatized and is more of the norm now. Single Moms have learned how to game the welfare system by keeping the Dads out of the picture, while in fact they are doing themselves a disservice.

Poor whites are as much of the problem as anyone else and I have no idea why they sometimes vote conservative, but it doesn't really matter - there is no party that is looking to change the system and no clamor for people to change this self-destructive behavior.

It's all very sad.

The Pew Research Center, citing a number of studies, reports the birth rate among teenagers in the United States is at an historic low — since 2007, it's fallen 42 percent across all racial and social demographics. And while the Pew numbers reflect live birth data, and don't include teens who became pregnant but who had an abortion, a rise in abortions doesn't seem to have played a role. The Guttmacher Institute reported that teen abortion rates are at their lowest point since abortion became legal, and they have remained constant since 2007.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read some article a while ago about how this really poor southern town, predominately white, hated Democrats, but most of these folks were on welfare. This would be what OP is referring to. I'm Asian, well to do, Republic-turned-Independent (thanks Bush), and I don't understand why these folks hate Democrats so much given that most Republicans always want to cut welfare.

Why were they on welfare? Because they didn't want to work (love democrats) or because there were no jobs (Trump will fix). Get it?

It was under the Reagan administration when the factory jobs started going down south.. get it? And some of these people are generational welfare recipients. Even if they do want jobs, they don't want to have to work for it, as in get an education. In a free market economy, companies have the right to move their ops anywhere they want to. But, they want the gov't to change the laws so they can have those jobs where you move a widget from point a to point b then push a button; get good healthcare and a pension. So, they want a President, ie, the gov't, to get all those things for them.

So, it's not that they don't like big gov't, it's that they want big gov't when it suits them, but not when it doesn't suit them.

Get it?

Yes, you are correct that the jobs started to diminish under Reagan, then Bush, then Clinton who helped it along with NAFTA, then Bush and Obama. What all those have in common is that they are republican or democrat CAREER politicians. Many of those supporting Trump are not labeling him as Bush III, but rather an outsider who is a successful businessman who has and will create good paying jobs. They want neither democrat or traditional republican.

any who want jobs have high school educations and cannot find decent opportunities. Labeling them as uneducated is a stretch.

But having a President who will somehow get companies to bring back manufacturing jobs is not capitalism. It's gov't inserting itself. So, all those Trump supporters who hate that gov't is getting too big, meddling, are saying that they do want the gov't to meddle, but only if it benefits them.

The days of good jobs for low skilled workers are gone. Do people want us to go back to the 50's when these types of jobs were plentiful? In order to get a good paying job these days you either need a college education or some training in a specific field. What is the definition of "poorly educated" -- not having a HS diploma would fit into this category. So, these folks want good paying jobs with benefits but not have to even finish HS? That is what I call entitled, and this is partly what's killing America.

Some people, genetically, just are not academics and never will be. They can be very nice people, very talented with physical work, but just never will write essays on "catcher in the rye". What should those people do? Just crawl under a rock and die?

Since there are no good jobs for those people who may great at using their hands, they will just have to be on welfare for life, seek more government programs championed by the left, apply for Obamacare and thank him for it, and consistently vote democrat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should just ask.........

“Wouldn’t you want the government to take better care of you so you don’t have to worry about taking care of yourself?"

+1. Indeed. Wouldn't you want to not be a republican so you're not putting in power the wealthy business owners who profit from your apparent ignorance and blind allegiance? Wouldn't you want to be a socialist? I'm not from the US and I have to give the GOP a slow clap every time I think of what they've pulled off in the last 35 years.

Donald Trump is a wealthy business owner who has created tens of thousands of jobs. When he profits, so do the people who work for him. In a capitalist society, you can't hate companies but want jobs.

Blue collar workers for the most part do not want handouts, they want jobs. That is why they buy into Trump's message. They do not view themselves as poor, but rather displaced due to bad trade deals and unfair global competition. Many, believe it or not, have the old fashion view that government handouts are charity and it embarrasses them. They want good jobs. Hillary has never created one, other than for attorneys representing her.

You know that Trump was indicted for hiring illegal immigrant workers, right?
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/13/nyregion/trump-says-he-didn-t-know-he-employed-illegal-aliens.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Explain this to me: If you are being left behind by globalization and not doing well financial, wouldn't you want an expansion of overtime pay? Wouldn't you want the Affordable Care Act in case you lose your job or don't have benefits at your job? Wouldn't you support the initiative to make college affordable so that your children will not experience what you did? Wouldn't you want the tax code to ask more of the rich so that you, the poor, can enjoy greater benefits? Why are the "poor, white working class" folks supporting politicians (like Trump) who publicly spouse policies that will not benefit you?

Typical arrogant, elitist socialist/liberal, thinking they know what's in the best interests of those perceived to be beneath them. Perhaps the best interests of the working class is to get government out of their lives.