Clinton did campaign on a jobs and retraining program specifically for these people. But how can you compete with someone saying they'll hand-wave away your problems and return your old way of life?
> Clinton did campaign on a jobs and retraining program specifically for these people.
To the extent that's true, she did an incredibly poor job of communicating it, and it was certainly not a visible, central theme of her campaign.
And, it probably didn't help politically (whether or not the association is warranted) that her husband also, in living memory of many voters, made similar promises tied to NAFTA, with little substantuve result in that area (and then cut pre-existing long-term safety net programs to rub salt in the wound.)
As an outside to the whole affair, i felt the overarching theme of the Clinton campaign was "mutated" gender politics.
But for most people outside the beltway and campuses, the economy and their daily expenses were a more pressing issue.
Thus that the Democrats decides to hitch their horse with Clinton, even though her campaign focus seemed off target or ill focused, and she already had a negative reputation from the Obama years, and being the wife of a former President, effectively sunk the campaign from the word go.
Even afterwards it seems like the main way Democrats can find to attack Trump is on trying to tar him as a misogynist. Of all the things that the guy can be attacked for, that is what they decided to focus on???
I think the retraining is a neoliberal dog whistle for 'these people deserve their current lives'. If the objective is to run a campaign that's consistent with (or an affirmation of) elite coastal values, then harping on retraining is exactly the right thing to do.
If you want to want the most votes, you have to appeal to the most amount of people. Making coastal elites the outgroup is smart because there aren't that many of them and they probably support one of their own anyway.
> I think the retraining is a neoliberal dog whistle for 'these people deserve their current lives'.
I have to agree with you here. You see this implied in comment threads like this one too, that they're making choices that are ultimately causing their own situation.
Contrast this with similar articles involving impoverished people in urban environments, especially those with other skin colors, and the difference is stark.
I think Democrats have largely written these people off, and they've lost a lot of political power because of it, and they're still running around and looking for fault everywhere else but in their own politics.
From an impoverished rural perspective, "the government will bring you jobs" and "the government will provide retraining programs" are exactly the wrong messages and goes to show how out of touch Democrats are with these voters. From these peoples' perspective, the government is the source of many of their troubles. The government gives them a disability check that isn't enough to live on, and then threatens to take it away for any of a vast number of reasons; the government shut down the companies that gave them jobs; the government provides all kinds of programs for other people, but not for them (e.g. affirmative action). The moment a politician says, "the government can fix your problems, and I represent the government", they lose this audience.
If you want to know what I would do to make these lives better, it'd be campaigning for universal basic income.
Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in seconds. An alternative would be to heavily subsidize housing, food, gas, healthcare, medicine and do that disguised as an attempt to bootstrap a local self-sufficient economy. It'd actually be a lot more socialist than UBI but politics is the art of the possible and not all state transitions are allowed.
Unfortunately, that would be labeled "socialism" and made political suicide in seconds.
If you think that's true then it is, right?
I have dissident rightist view points. I hang out with dissident rightists. I've never once heard them say that UBI is worse than the status quo, and I think pairing UBI with reduced low-skill immigration is something 95% of them could get behind.
Sure, the Paul Ryans and Pelosis of the world might gnash their teeth over UBI but it's something that nearly everyone outside the status quo supports.
The article had a quote that some starting coal mining salaries were up to $150k, but after a 2.5 year apprenticeship for solar install, workers can make $25/hr.
Better than minimum wage, but isn't it hard for somebody with a family to train for two years without a salary?
This is a hard truth: Trump had the populist vote (mostly lies IMHO) and Clinton ceded it to him.
What Democrats needed was to nominate a better populist. I doubt Sanders would have won WV, but I think he might have done better than Clinton in red-areas of states she should have won like Florida or Michigan.
