The notion that Reagan was not a friend of the working man is a fraud. I was there. He was. Members of real unions - of real workers such as truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, etc. - were Reagan supporters. He was the first populist and detested big government. The real Republican party is continuing on that path. Real Republicans detest the "elites" - of business, government or the universities. Those elites detest the working man. Just look at the contempt they heap on the Canadian truckers or the Walmart shoppers they revile as Trump supporters. We will continue to recapture the Republican party. No more favors for billionaires. Or large corporations, especially the rapacious health care "insurers." The Republican party will continue to evolve along Reagan's "big tent" model, embracing all those - regardless of creed, color or national origin - who want to join us in putting America - and Americans - first.
I'm not sure you and I would agree on everything, but I was around for Reagan's elections too. We had a name for his blue collar supporters - Reagan Democrats - and the number of them rocked the political world in 1980 and '84.
I recall reading an article (Time or Newsweek) about the frustration of union bosses who were trying to convince their members to vote Democratic , or against Reagan, for his 2nd term. This quote, from a union worker, has always stuck with me: "I don't know what to tell you...With him (Reagan) we stand tall."
If you'd been at the 1986 celebration of the centennial of Lady Liberty in New York, you would understand every thing about that union worker's comment. It was a magical celebration of our country Led by the President and Mrs. Reagan. Everyone was proud to be an American.
My parents were lifelong Democrats. My dad was the precinct leader in our precinct, a perpetual delegate to the state convention, and in 1976 he was an alternate delegate at the national convention in NYC (he was determined to prevent Ted Kennedy from becoming the nominee). He was also a local USWA union leader--I spent a lot of time at the union hall in my childhood.
My parents voted for Reagan both times (so did I, in 1984: the first vote I ever cast).
My mom, lifelong Conservative and Catholic, knew Ted Kennedy to be the devil. Instead of telling me sweet bedtime stories, she'd tell me about Chappaquiddick. It's still unbelievable that actually happened, with the press lending him and his family cover. The Lion of the Senate? Puh-leeze. More like Satan with a neck brace.
Absolutely. They were not a major factor in 1980, but they were big in 1984 and 1988. Like Eisenhower in 1956 and Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984 won virtually in a landslide, taking over 40% of the Jewish vote and close to half of the Hispanic vote, to name two major Democratic voter blocs.
For younger Americans, it's hard to convey how much damage has been done by the Baby Boomers' takeover of American institutions since the 1990s and, for example, their "identity politics" propaganda. Those old enough to remember will know what I'm talking about. The transformation of the news media Batya presents in her book is one very important aspect of this trend with roots in the rise of the college-credentialed class since the 1960s.
In the House, these centrist-conservatives were known as the “Blue Dogs” or “Blue Dog Democrats”.
On the other hand, and notwithstanding his infamous stump speech denouncing the nine scariest words (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”), President Reagan famously expanded the federal government. In the end, our government is only as good as the people who elect it.
Actually, the federal government, except for the Pentagon, shrank in Reagan's first two years, when the Republicans and conservative Democrats (remember them?) were dominant in Congress. The federal govt didn't start to expand again in a major way until the last two years of Bush Sr., then Clinton, then Bush Jr. The expansion was different from the 1960s and involved many more mandates, contractors, and other indirect instruments.
Reagan had the Senate for his first couple of years, and with them he enacted a massive downsizing of government, except for the military. He declared a hiring freeze that lasted years. Even when the Dems took back the Congress, he still had enough popular support that they could barely get anything done without his signature.
I so hope you're right. The Republican Party is SO MUCH BETTER now than it was "before Trump". The young people that joined the party were/are so impressive. I am so glad that the Never Trumpers, the Lincoln Project and their ilk are gone. I do hope Trump is replaced, but the people he brought in greatly improved the party.
Just as one has to be at least 35 to be president, I propose an upper age limit for the Presidency (And Congress?), perhaps 65 or 70 so that if elected to two terms the president would not exceed say 75 to 80 while in office
Actual explanation: You started to notice that what Democrats are telling you isn't true, but you haven't yet accepted that that was happening a long time ago, too.
Reagan was very effective in his fight against big government and in his support of the workers. Remember, he fired the air traffic controllers who sought power.
And yes, this is a battle of classes, elites vs. working class. No one says this, everyone creates the division along race, gender, etc…. But the reality is, class is where this current cultural battle is being waged.
I agree with you about Reagan But the class thing was the traditional socialist gambit and it did not work well here because we really do have mobility both up and down - people make fortunes, people lose fortunes. And we had many methods to do so. Thus the need for division by other identifiers.
Several authors have discussed the phenomenon of todays culture where they concluded as I did, it is about class and they use other identifiers to hide their intent. Just look at the corporate America woke. They side with the various oppressed identity groups to carry favor and improve their bonafides, as well as to protect themselves from attack, and at the same time, they continue polluting, harsh labor practices, predatory pricing and other undesirable activities in order to achieve their profit targets.
I agree with your comments about corporate America feigning wokeness. And I'll clarify that class struggle has historically not worked here. I fear we are in uncharted territory though.
That's correct. The Reagan era was full of ambivalence about free trade and immigration. For all the support these had (much of it borrowed from Democrats, who were back then much bigger supporters of free trade and immigration than Republicans), there was still a significant strand in the Republican party of "national conservatism" descended from the nation-unifying Unionism and Whig Party of the 19th century and the Civil War. This definitely included strong support for the "working man" and his ability to support a family on one income. Thus the strong Republican support from the 1850s until the 1970s of tariffs and restrictions on immigration. It was not until the high inflation of the 1970s that American wages became disconnected from productivity and American families lost the ability to support themselves on one income.
(To give one, very important example, the extreme financial imbalances of the early 80s -- high if falling inflation and high US interest rates -- led to an overly strong dollar, putting American manufacturing at a big disadvantage. A major effort was undertaken to talk the dollar down -- the Plaza Accord -- and Reagan agreed to import quotas on Japanese and German cars, an example of "national conservatism" at work. The Japanese and German companies got around these, in part, by investing and building factories here, bringing their capital and hiring Americans. This move was possible only because Japan and Germany, once enemies, are part of the US-led geopolitical order -- not just trading partners but allies with common political and legal concepts. Compare with something similar if attempted by China -- arousing suspicion because apparently economic moves are rightly suspected as having an ulterior, hostile political agenda along with just economic motives. China has never accepted the US-led liberal international order, a point I hope everyone gets now.)
To bring it closer to our time, American manufacturing and the working class, while battered by the high inflation of the 1970s (a result of the Great Society, the Vietnam war, and abandonment of the gold standard) and the early 80s recessions, held their own through the early 1990s. It was the rise of neoliberalism and the US dollar-dominant world financial system after 1992 or so -- accompanied by NAFTA in 1994 and then China's entry into the WTO in early 2001 -- that really demolished American manufacturing. In the 1970s and 80s, during the Cold War, it had to compete with fellow developed countries like Germany and Japan, with similar labor standards and part of the US-led geopolitical system. Not so after 1994, when suddenly American companies and workers had to compete with countries not only much poorer, but bedeviled by corruption or repression. Don't mistake it: the neoliberal elite today wants to use Chinese-style repression to turn us into something like parts of Latin America.
This was perceived correctly in the early 90s by certain figures like Ross Perot (a Democrat and the true avatar of Trump -- Perot encouraged Trump to run multiple times) and Pat Buchanan. The reaction then of the Republican establishment to both was horror. Thus the Republican leadership gradually lost touch with its base. It's amazing that this period lasted as long as it did, from 1992 through the 2012 election. But it was doomed to end eventually, and it did with the rise of populist figures like Steve Bannon and Trump, and the revamped Breitbart.
Under Ronald Reagan the war against the middle class started and shamefully continued under presidents of both major parties. As a result there is hardly a middle class left in the US now. Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class. The American political landscape has deteriorated equally and now, when American democracy is on its last legs, Americans can increasingly only choose between some crazy ideologues on the left and some crazy cultists on the right. Sanity and common sense are on steep decline in both major parties. What America desperately needs now is a new political force that can unite the few remaining reasonable people from both parties who get cancelled by wokeness in one party or purged from party ranks because they do not blindly follow their cult leader in the other party. That's the sad state of affairs. Unfortunately there is no such political force in sight right now, so my prognosis for the future of this country is quite bleak. Ronald Reagan was the president who started this all by attacking the unions and therefore causing the decline of the American middle class. And Donald Trump is the president who will most likely complete the destruction of America. I do not believe that Joe Biden is even remotely able to turn things around and stop him. I don't think he even fully understands the peril American democracy faces.
Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class? Where do you live? I am neither. No one I know is either. I know vast swathes of people who are neither. I can name city after city full of neither. Our political system is failing, as you say. And we do have some loss of opportunity at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. But no middle class? That's nuts. We are a mostly middle class nation.
I agree with you. IMHO the Libertarian party is the only feasible answer we have at this point based on name recognition alone. Our 2 party system is what's destroying our country.
What exactly is a “real worker” as opposed to I guess a “fake worker”? Are accountants and lawyers fake workers? What precisely makes a trucker’s work “real” but a lawyer’s work fake?
Attorneys have the bar, which artificially controls the labor pool of attorneys. Accountants have their certification stuff which has the same effect. Doctors have the same stuff. They all organize, just in a different way. Labor unions act as a different method of raising labor prices of their particular occupations.
With that all said — your response doesn’t actually explain what makes occupations that are run by unions more “real” than those that aren’t.
I don’t follow. I didn’t write anything about government workers.
Are you referring to a distinction between labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by the government, such as teachers and labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by private companies, such as miners?
And are you ridiculing the notion that government employees actually work? And suggesting that workers of private sector unions do?
Perhaps if the fed didn’t bail out General Motors and the California government weren’t captured by various private sector unions, I’d be more sympathetic to your sentiments.
I feel like today there is an unholy incestuous relationship between government and unions, whether “private” or “public”, that is more harmful than helpful to the general public and at times even members of the unions themselves.
“Big government” and “big union” are often the same entity.
They don’t organize to confront / negotiate with the management of their employer. True. Sometimes. Teachers unions, for example, have a very similar relationship to their “employer”, the government, that doctors have to their often “employers”, the government and insurance companies.
And I think you are a bit idealistic about the purpose to maintain reputation and integrity of professions. How is that working for lawyers these days?
In my younger years I went to massage therapy school so that I could become certified to be a massage therapist. I spent months learning about pseudo scientific theories and studying legitimate science that had no relevance to the actual work of a massage therapist. Unfortunately I suspect that is the norm for associations and certifications that control the labor of professions. I do like to believe that med school has a lot less bullshit though. Yet, the bullshit certainly does still exist, and one of its effect is artificially raising labor prices.
Okay, if work that isn’t real isn’t fake what is it? The alternative to “real” is…?
Humans can survive without fuel and clothing. And we can certainly survive without truckers or cashiers or coal miners. We can live without farmers. Every modern occupation is expendable. Humans evolved hunting and gathering our food and carrying children our backs.
What is particularly physical about the work of truckers btw? Some truckers only drive and other people actually load and unload the goods they transport. Are those truckers less “real”? Is the work of a dentist less “real” than a warehouse worker because the dentist burns less calories in their labor?
And what tangible stuff do truckers produce? They move stuff with a vehicle, they don’t “produce” anything.
Do I care? No, not really, but it’s nonsense, and I tend to point out nonsense when I come across it. Especially nonsense that has a hint of moral evaluation.
Tangible work vs intangible work has more sense than real and… unreal work. But tangible and intangible work doesn’t actually map to the the occupations people typically apply to real and unreal. Truckers for example, they are using a machine to move physical objects. If I program a machine to move physical objects, using a machine (a computer, with keyboard) —how is that not “tangible” if what the truckers do is tangible? Something like teaching guitar… that is much more “intangible”.
Labor that requires a lot of physical exertion — eg professional mixed martial arts, shipping dock hands, life guards and infantry — vs labor that does not, Eg trucking, cab driving, and programming could be sensible categories. But people aren’t going to stress those from a political perspective, as they don’t map to the political divisions in the labor force.
The "real" decline in unions started in the late 1970s, when union power had rendered us uncompetitive in world markets for all sorts of manufactured goods - particularly automobiles. Compare the 1980 Chevy Citation with the 1980 Honda Accord - all you need to know.
You are absolutely correct. They priced themselves right out of the market. And, leading up to this, they had extensive help from the Kennedy administration which "collaborated" with big business and big labor to set wages and prices. This was one of the biggest leaps in the U.S. away from capitalism and toward corporatism.
The PATCO debacle occurred AFTER the wave of union power had crested. It simply crystallized the absurdity of unchecked (particularly public) unions in the eyes of the public.
The dems are the party of our modern day robber barons—Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey. They are elitists who feel entitled to look down their noses on fly over country. That is bad enough. But now big media and big dem government have merged. And they want to control our thoughts. What we are allowed to know. They wield this power to intimidate and silence. See: Joe Rogan. They have taken over education and destroyed two generations of kids.
The Republicans are floundering for an identity, and it is sitting at their feet. They are the party of free speech, “we will decide how are kids are educated”, and “stop bankrupting the country with freebies”. They want legal immigration and a stop to the crime and chaos on our border, a stop to the drug trafficking that is killing kids.
Not masks. Not remote school, not pornography in school libraries, not $200,000 worthless college degrees, not illegals flown to communities in the dark of night, not more taxes so people get more freebies and don’t have to work.
Not arguing with you personally, but the republican party has historically(and today) endorsed illegal immigration as it gives them cheap labor. Watching then Speaker Paul Ryan and the rest of the 'republicans' actually fight Trump for border wall funding was infuriating. God bless Trump for exposing both parties for the frauds they are.
AMEN. Trump was the type envisioned by Madison in the Federalist. Nor a process politician such as Ryan or Rubio, but a public-spirited citizen whispers aside his personal affairs for a limited time to serve his fellow citizens. He wasn't a narcissistic politician with a sense of entitlement, looking forward to a position on K Street after decades of swilling at the public trough, like Boehner, Ryan, and, eventually, McCarthy.
Oh yeah, both parties are full of elites and wannabe elites that, whether they acknowledge it or not, rely on cheap domestic labor in all types of service industries (restaurants, hotels, maid services etc.). Where I live the wine industry is absolutely reliant on immigrant labor (undoubtedly much of it illegal) to allow the owner class to stock up on Teslas, etc. and the wannabe owner class to feel entitled paying $100/bottle for watery pinot while mocking the non-immigrant working class.
Should maids and busboys make as much as skilled labor? I don't think so. I think the idea is to get an entry level position, gain some skills, and move up.
Certainly didn't intend to suggest that, just that illegal immigrant labor helps depress wages for the non-illegal, and that the owner class likes it that way
"Owner class"? Most companies of any size are corporations. Corporations are owned by their shareholders. Shareholders can be ordinary people like you and me buying those shares for investment purposes. Or they can be employees with 401ks for example that are part of a fund which invests in corporate stocks.
Corporations are "owned" by their shareholders. The shareholders rarely actually determine policies. The executives get huge salaries plus shares, so a significant fraction of the company's income does not go to the real shareholders.
Unskilled labour should pay well enough to keep a person out of poverty.
If someone working 40 hours a week is on food stamps, then the taxpayer is ultimately subsidizing that worker's wages, which is an indirect gov't handout to the employer.
Walmart and McDonalds shouldn't be able to rake in billions of dollars in profits, while taxpayers subsidize their payroll costs by providing welfare benefits to their workforce.
Unskilled labor still needs to get done, like driving trucks.
Currently, unskilled labor is kept cheap via mass immigration. I guess you wouldn't mind that, since nobody should be doing those jobs anyway according to you.
It's a thing - their employees are paid so little that they can't make rent. And instead of Walmart or whoever paying more, those employees end up receiving welfare cheques to make up the for the fact that their paycheques don't cover their rent.
Which means in a roundabout way, your tax dollars are subsidizing Walmart.
The best argument for raising the minimum wage is that it reduces corporate welfare.
Labor for what? It is illegal to employ illegal aliens and most large corporate entities, who OI assume is meant by the "them" you believe to be receiving cheap labor. Although I suspect it is received bythe previously referenced robber barons because they are on the left and know there are no repercussions for criminal behavior for leftists. Reagan granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in reliance on Democratic promises of immigration reform. I have spent my entire adult life waiting for that.
My response to your comment was driven by the attempt to attribute to only Republicans a desire to exploit cheap labor. And it is indeed illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers. To do so subjects the employer to civil penalties for an infraction, increased civil penalties for continued infractions, and criminal liability for illicit hiring practices.
I have always loved my name. I am told it is the French spelling. La ti da. 😉
Lynne — I thought the bipartisan (the gang of eight)Senate bill that reformed immigration in 2013 that passed the Senate was a pretty good bill. Unfortunately, Speaker Boehner wouldn’t even take it up in the House. Since Rubio drafted it, and Lindsay Graham drafted it, and Schumer, I would bet it would get plenty of support in the Senate if reproposed. And, with a much more supportive House, maybe pass this time. However, keep in mind, reforming immigration takes one more issue off the table which both parties use to keep campaign contributions coming in. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/guide-s744-understanding-2013-senate-immigration-bill
Agree, and I think the Youngkin effect is starting to shape how the Republican Party will be able to attract conservatives, moderates and classic liberals who care about free speech, education, strong economy and ending Covid mandates.
I take what Rubio says with a huge grain of salt. He came into the Senate on the wave inspired by the Tea Party, but did nothing to carry out his promises. He is up for re-election in 2022 in a state which loves Trump so he now talks a populist game. Let’s see what he actually does, I would not hold my breath.
But the rest of the article is spot on. Unfortunately, with McConnell, Graham, Romney, Thune, etc. running the show, the Republicans will not play a winning hand. The flip of the parties’ base in the past few decades is amazing and Trump had the vision to see this, but the old guard is too corrupt and set in their ways.
The Democrat Party needs a real come-to-Jesus moment. The progressives like AOC and The Squad, the grifters, such as the Clintons, all combined with the self-serving tech billionaires, have forced the party of the little guy to completely lose its way. They are utterly destroying the Democratic party. There articles all over the Internets about this phenomenon, and all say it spells disaster come November. Let's hope so.
Please. The leader of the 'party of the little guy' can't remember what he had for breakfast by 9am each morning, and the next two in line both hail from San Francisco, a city that serves the purposes of tech and finance bros who 'work from home' and drug users who sleep in tents outside city hall and shoot up in the open with the blessing of government. Although in Nancy's case she's probably too busy front running the stock market to notice (or care).
Whatever issues the Republicans have (and they exist), at least they are going to get there on looking out for the working class. The Democrats have abandoned the working class for generations to come. Plain as that.
My point is there's no come to Jesus moment coming for the 'party of the little guy.'
They hate the little guy and they are quite at peace with their hatred of the little guy. Their only goal is to hold onto 20% of that vote by running cons like "even though I left Scranton 70 years ago and have disdain for anyone not paying my crack smoking son (the kind of crack that would get you 20 years in prison under the sentencing scheme that I shepherded through the Senate, but will never apply to my crack smoking son) for influence peddling schemes, I'll always be Scranton Joe to you" so they can squeak across the finish line in the states that decide elections.
Which, given how complicit the media is and how gullible some voters are, can be a successful scam. Hopefully people wise up. The only party ripe for the kind of change that would help the working class is the Republican party, for better or worse.
Recently read a wonderful bio on LBJ(Caros magisterial work) in it FDR and LBJ were working to get affordable power to the poor and rural people. Now 90 years later compare that to the energy policies of the current democrat party where they are purposefully increasing the cost and access to power in the vain hope of reducing global temps 0.1 degree in 80 years
LBJ was one of the most corrupt politicians in this country. His Great Society programs did more damage to the black population of this country than anything other than slavery. Read Thomas Sowell for enlightenment.
Oh definitely. Terrible human being but he did get the civil rights bill through. Wonderful bio by Caro and he is no fan of the man. Love Sowell as well
Yes, I'd read that article earlier this a.m. and this jives nicely.
One thing I can say is that politicians can always smell which way the wind blows, to mix my metaphors. So many Republicans slowly figuring out where the future lies; many will never be able to make the switch because they are, and will always be, the country club set. That's the American Dream, to them.
Dems held the figurative moral high ground with real people for a long time, but clearly decided money is better, embracing any new thing is progress. Now, their base is captive, unable to change their minds about right v wrong; unable to reconcile what they see with their own eyes of the leadership corruption.
I welcome the shift, and think it's seismic. Yet, I maintain a huge distrust of the existing politicians and their ability to accept and embrace it.
My parents belonged to the country club and were, I suppose, part of the “set.” My dad was also a really hard worker. Stereotypes….are just really lazy sometimes.
Yeah, I suppose. Mine didn't, but he was a really hard worker, too. Born in '21, working the coal mines to support his family at age 13 after his father died of black lung, self educated electronics technician working on the space program until that died and the industries went away. Life long Republican, tho', even though they didn't really want him in the club, because the other side was God-less.
My grandfather in the Pittsburgh steel mills and my 2G grandfather who helped build the Pennsylvania Railroad in SW PA & fought in Gettyburg. My point is: my dad was a 1st generation college student who didn't have to use his body as a tool and wore a tie to work. His parents saw that as progress. And if he wanted to hang out at his club (outside Scranton, ironically) and have a drink & a dance with his wife on the weekend, then good for him.
Yes, I understand your point, because it was my original point, too. I think we may agree.
Our parents, and us, have supported that party because we were able to build a great life thru hard work and thrift and judicious life choices. And to pass that on to our families.
If my use of the term "country club set" offended you, I sincerely apologize. I don't want to offend you, or anyone. But it's a pretty common description of stereotypical "fat-cat" Republicans, widely used for many years now, valid or not, and lately, it applies equally to Dem "fat-cats", too.
I'm sure your parents do not belong to such, but we wouldn't have to look too hard to validate the stereotype. They would be the same ones who participated in emptying out our industrial base, manufacturing, etc.
Now, the shift seems to be happening, where the Republican Party appears to be addressing those "working class," "blue collar" Americans who are struggling just to have a job, let alone, flourish as we once did.
I welcome that change; I think it is best for America and for the party.
Dana, you didn't offend me nor should be afraid to speak out. I am a conservative instructor at a very liberal, pricey college; I teach critical thinking and academic research skills. One huge point I seek to impress upon my students is this myth that being offended is the worst thing that can happen to you. Actually, the worst thing that can happen to you is you graduate without having been offended. Because that means you haven't learned anything.
The mines? Really? I worked in the coal mines during my college summers. I was probably the unsafest miner in the whole place, all the more so because I didn't think I was unsafe in the least. We had an underground fire and I ran TOWARD it because I wanted to see it. God. Getting to adulthood is mostly luck, I think. After graduate school, I read black lung x-rays for years. Bad, ugly disease.
I worked in Armco #7 at Montcoal, WV. Later sold to A.T. Massey to be called, "Upper Big Branch." Yes, THAT UBB. Lost my best friend in the 2010 explosion that killed 29.
Armco was a wonderful company to work for. We had terrible flooding one year, and they donated huge earthmovers, engineers, and operators to channel out Coal River, fixing the problem for decades. (Can't do that now, you might make the river muddy and choke a fish.) I went to college on an Armco Steel scholarship. Very different from A. T. Massey under Don Blankenship. Google him up sometime.
The Democrats strongest talent is smearing those who oppose them so there was an appearance that Republicans are about corporate greed and are thus against the working person. (I won't even get started on the environment.) It was not true and people, largely due to a loss of confidence in legacy media and career politicians, are seeing that the emperor has no clothes. Actually the emperors.
McConnell, Romney, Bush, Cheney, Chamber of Commerce, Nixon, Buckley, etc... maybe the Dems didn't have to work so hard to advance the stereotype.
Until Trump (thankfully!) I don't remember many of our leaders fighting for us, our jobs, our towns, our industries. But, they were pretty good at the social issues that divide us.
I have a hound dog named Buckley! When she barks, she doesn't move her lower jaw. It sounds like she disapproves but all could be solved with a single malt on the patio.
He reminds me a little bit of JP, in that he could totally burn you with some wry, off the cuff remark, but you didn't feel it for three minutes. Buckley's cuff, of course, all Brooks Bros.
McConnell is out for himself, he epitomizes what is wrong with federal government and has far more in common with Pelosi and Schumer than he does with working, taxpayers citizens. He is a power broker - nothing more, nothing less. Bush/Cheney are representatives of the military/industrial complex which I am a proponent of in theory. However I think the Clinton's compromised the integrity of our national forces and agencies to such an extent we should all be concerned. As for Bush/Cheney I think they are ends-justify-the-means/lesser-of-two-evils guys and I do not believe either embody wise leadership. (IMO Bush's 911 response was very short-sighted and created the policing problems which created the 2020 backlash which resulted in the current lawlessness). Nixon is definitely a Bush/Cheney precursor. Romney stands for nothing so is not worthy of comment. I have never given much consideration to the Chamber of Commerce but I see no problem with a pro-commerce organization. Commerce is good. It has evolved over thousands of years and has arguably created the modern world. Buckley is a has been.
The Dems are the party of the woman-hating Translets, and they seem perfectly willing to die on the TransSword. Let them. Meanwhile, I'm politically homeless. I contacted my Republican state/Congress reps asking their stance on women's sex-based rights vs/ the deluxe-class Trans citizens. They can have my blue vote if they publicly denounce this insanity.
I have (had, anyway) a lot of Democrat friends, and I have to tell you: I'm completely baffled by those who still, after a year of Titular President Biden, still hew the party line.
Trump is no Shirley Temple, but the hatred! There was an article a couple of days ago that somewhat solves the mystery. It said that there is an entrenched cabal in Washington, bound together by membership in The Swamp, where they can access untold power and money earned by someone else to feather their own nests. They play this little kabuki of being at odds with each other, but it's not real.
The only person who can really threaten them is the president, but he's no problem because to get that office you have to kiss the right behinds, make the right deals, grease the right palms - for decades. Then they have things to hold over your head should you get out of line. Trump, having never held office, had none of that, so when he went rogue, it was terrifying. Hence the "Trump is Hitler combined with Satan" line. Keep repeating, and a large portion of the weak-minded will begin to believe it. They do. Ask them and they can't explain why; it's because HITLER!!
At least that was the article's thrust. I think it explains a great deal.
A few quick points: (1) The idea that Trump just blustered without delivering on his policies is absurd. His policy successes, despite the bluster and character flaws, are why he retains a strong following.
(2) Where is this pro-corporate Right she speaks of? Almost all the big corporations have gone woke-left.
(3) It seems to me that this author is late to the party. The rift between private union workers and their Democrat-donating bosses started years ago. Has this phenomenon dawned on her only recently?
(4) The legislation Rubio is sponsoring will appeal to myriad blue-collar workers who aren’t in unions. Private union membership has dwindled to less than 10 percent in the trades, partly due to dissatisfaction with their bosses’ left-wing politics.
(5) As most people know, the real union muscle now resides in public sector unions, most prominently the SEIU and NEA. Those public-trough unions will fight this legislation tooth and nail.
True. Any "need" for a union now is distinctly different than what was necessary during the time of Sinclair's "The Jungle". There are no worker's rights that need to be protected, OSHA over-reaches with that now (as evidenced by their vaccine mandate). Conventional unions are in place at places like Boeing, that recently gave us the 737 MAX debacle. Adversarial unions like those at the automakers ran those businesses out of the country. Trade Unions still provide the largest source of training for skilled labor. And unions in the sense of a "commonwealth" where employers and employees can work towards shared goals represent a good change in the us vs them mentality.
I have observed unions doing more harm than good to local workers, due to the fact that union elites get paid well, regardless of what they do.
During the Recession, a new union agreement with a large local plant was being negotiated. The negotiators (outsider union elites) decided to play games with the company: they repeatedly showed up at meetings unprepared and their demands for the new agreement were sufficiently unrealistic (especially considering the Recession) that they tried hard to keep the press from reporting on what the demands were.
The company ended up imposing a Lockout, based on the bad behavior of the negotiators. But the negotiators didn't change their approach. After all, they were getting paid handsome salaries, while the local workers were getting a pittance from the union to man the picket lines.
After nearly a year of this, just as the statutory deadline was approaching that would enable the plant to shut down for a day and reopen as a non-union shop, the negotiators finally got their act together. But there are a lot of people in our town who have never fully recovered from the lost wages of that year.
Yes, looking objectively President Trump was a good to very good President.
His foreign policy was very good, clearly opposing the 3 major countries that were (and are) the main opponents of human rights and freedom, Russia, Iran and Communist China. He was the first President who supports LGBTQ rights, and did so for a long time before becoming President. He is the first President to have a Jewish family, and he moved our embassy to Jerusalem, under the law passed and signed by Clinton, but repeatedly delayed until Trump. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where all people are free (although Bahrain is improving women's rights) He led the negotiations that led to five majority-Muslim countries recognizing Israel.
He was a strong supporter of women's rights, ending the Obama deal with Iran that released at least $$50 billion to the Iranian regime, almost all of which was used to suppress women's rights. Probably the worst attack on women's rights by the US in the last 50 years, maybe ever.
He improved the conditions of the lower and middle class, especially blacks, who reached the lowest unemployment on record in 2019. He signed the tax reform law of 2017, which primarily helped the middle class (indeed the wealthy actually pay a higher rate due to the limit on the SALT deduction), and he brought a lot of money back to the US as the tax law brought our corporate tax rate down to a level similar to that in other countries.
He was a real friend of normal people, regularly talking with them before and after events.
The images of AOC wearing her "Tax The Rich" gown and the DeBlasios (aka Mr. & Mrs. Thieves) attending the Met Ball sans masks are etched in my brain. This is what the Democratic Party looks like; no consequences for cheating the public; do as I say, not as I do; I can get my hair done but you can't; I can eat indoors but you can't. The list goes on and on.
Of course they are not the party of the working class because they are the party that is discouraging working! They want dependence on government to dole out checks and cheese with amounts and quality also under their control. They will own their own homes a la Bernie and Elizabeth Warren but lambast folks who have worked, paid their fair share of taxes and achieved their version of the American Dream. By the way, Comrade Sarandon sold her Greenwich Village Townhouse at her asking price of 7.9 million dollars.
The Worst part about AOC's obnoxious dress was the masked worker kneeling at her feet. That tells you everything you need to know about how the champagne socialists view the working class.
If working class people loved their unions in Alabama rah rahing for the fat slob, self-proclaimed governor of Georgia before, wait till they poll those members after the fat slob exercised her royal prerogative to spend the day unmasked around a classroom full of masked seven year olds.
2022 Democrat Party: Rules are for the proletariat, not the politburo.
The Democrats clearly have contempt for blue collar workers. To them we are the deplorables. Trump touched a nerve. He IS a blue collar man. He understands work and workers and has a deep, abiding respect for people who work with their hands. Under him the economy for the working man thrived. (I use "man" in the traditional English manner to encompass men and women for those who are woefully under educated).
The Democrats clearly have contempt for people with darker skin. All their programs have been designed to destroy this segment of the population. The latest from President Biden is a new program to hand out crack pipes and set up shooting galleries all around the country. What??? This puts the Federal government in the position of chief promoter of drug addictions.
While there are still some awful Republicans in the ranks, they are slowly being replaced by America First candidates. President Trump is doing all he can to find and encourage these Americans to run for office. It's a new breed, and they come from the working classes not the Ivy League.
Marco Rubio understands workers and hard work. His parents escaped from Cuba and had to take lower level jobs to support the family. His father worked as a bartender and his mother worked as a maid. Marco went to college on scholarships he earned.
He comes up for re-election this year. I intend to support his campaign and vote for him. My yard sign is ready to go.
"He IS a blue collar man. He understands work and workers and has a deep, abiding respect for people who work with their hands. " Absolutely correct. He worked with them from the start of his career and he listened to them. Obama and Biden have no interest at all in them.
Trump will endorse Marco. President Trump has great respect for the Constitution unlike the current occupant in the White House. President Trump went through the Courts every time he was blocked and he abided by the decisions. This president issues executive orders that are unlawful, and allows his agencies to do unconstitutional and unlawful acts against Americans. If you disagree with these statements you have not been following the (real) news.
Two of the original Constitutional mandates for the federal government are secure the border and establish a military. Biden has abandoned the first and is actively dismembering the military. In light of that I find your comment about Trump and the Constitution rich indeed.
While the elitists on the left force pronouns, trans into women's spaces/sports and defund the police messages, more the working class turns their backs on the D party. The working class is looking for a healthy economy, safe streets, affordable food and the freedom to live as they wish. The current D party is absolutely against those principles because they live in their own echo chamber. They are absolutely unwilling to see things from a different point of view. They tried to cancel Rogan because of the n-word not realizing that on the street in working class and poor neighborhoods everyone utters that word, not in a racist way (for the most part), but it's part of the street culture. A culture the left knows nothing about and the mask has fallen off and a lot of people are waking up.
And if you had told me ten years ago that we'd be on the same page (roughly) regarding the end of the iron grip of health "insurance" companies on our health care I'd have laughed in your face. But here we are. Together in the fight for working Americans.
The party switch happened a long time ago. Yet we are still fed the same worker vs. bosses fairy tale by the ignorant media and their puppet masters in academia. Unions represent a low single digit percentage of the working class out side government. They stopped trying to organize real workers 50 or more years ago. They simply see the numbers of Amazon workers and salivate over the fees and friendly headlines. The politicians take money from both sides. There is no one left to represent the majority of workers. The Unions just want a piece of the Amazon action that politicians have been getting for more than 20 years. The journalists act as though this is meaningful to the average citizen. It's not. They know that their costs will go up either way. The money to pay off the politicians and fend off the unions has to come from somewhere. To paraphrase Dylan 'the politicians don't need you and man they expect the same.'
For most of my youth the unions were closed shops to any one who wasn't related to a union member. They could have opened their schools, which are excellent, to all and garnered some loyalty and skilled members; but original thinking is not expected or much allowed in most union halls. They could have encouraged more technical training be funded by all the politicians they own; but they didn't. They never will. Because that would be competition for them. Also because they have more money now than they can legally handle.
The average worker and skilled tradesman has no use for unions and unions have no use for them.
The majority of workers were abandoned by the unions and their politician pets decades ago. Their votes have been going to conservative candidates for decades. Trump just formalized the arrangement.
The Democrat party platform is no sane persons wish list. Many of the contractors I know are competing with crews of under paid, hard working, legal and illegal immigrants. Some have stopped competing because they can't afford to do what they love anymore. The democrat J-School grads tell them to learn to compete. They tell them snidely to learn to code then get panty-twisted angry when they are told the same after their phony baloney leftist broad sheet is closes.
Most article on this topic act like this party switch is just starting to happen; showing how out of touch the average self described "well educated" journalist is. BTW the average plumber, electrician, carpenter and tier 3 IT guys and gals do more logical thinking, troubleshooting and math in their heads in one day than the average soft science, "well educated", college graduate does in a year. So please find another therm to describe the former.
If the hard Right means safe streets and good schools, strong military, great jobs and general prosperity... and respect for 1A and 2A freedoms... then I'll happily take it, warts & all. The Left has delivered nothing but misery and servitude.
How about laying off a few Diversity Deans or Equity Emperors so the public schools have more money for textbooks and teachers? Or allowing people with life experience who haven't been through the brainwashing camps known as education majors to become teachers? Not much chance of improvement until the party of the teacher unions is thrown out of power.
Cuts to public education? What republican state has cut public education? And it’s public education that has given us the dreadful state we are in now and the totalitarian treatment of masking children and your statement that the USA is hopelessly evil.
Cuts to public education. That’s just a knee jerk media driven Pavlovian response to trying something different like funding the child for school choice not the public school.
“Cuts to public education”? Seriously? What has the public education establishment done over the past twenty years to justify the untold billions we shovel their way? These people have failed American children, yet they have the unmitigated gall to demand even more $$$. Bah!
Thanks for the well-written article. I wish republican leadership would follow this playbook and stop disappointing. Maybe the polls divided the supporters of democrats as lawyers, professors etc in the past, but this administration did a good job showing all of us that their ridiculous policies have uniformly made everyone's life worse. No one will be able to escape this wave of crime in our cities, drug abuse in our society, despair in our children and public shaming at our work place for being the wrong race and censorship everywhere. This new brand of democrats have been exposed for the malicious frauds that they are. Republicans just need to make that message loud and clear.
The Woke praise BLM / Antifa rioters who destroy and kill based on media-influenced lies, and they demonize and jail protestors who demand their freedoms and rights be protected.
Although the Canadian Conservative Party (the official opposition) doesn't really resemble the Republican Party - it is noteworthy that they literally ousted their leader for not supporting the Freedom Convoy. They have also been blasting Prime Minister Trudeau daily for the rhetoric he has been using against the protesters. The NDP - supposedly Canada's socialist party - have been attacking and criticizing the Freedom Convoy. Strange reaction by socialists to an uprising of workers against invasive government overreach! In many ways the Liberal Party of Canada has been using the Democrat playbook - vilifying the truck convoy as racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic (all these were in one Justin Trudeau tweet!) and getting their compliant mainstream media friends - particularly the state broadcaster the CBC - to vilify and attack them. The divisiveness being sowed by the Prime Minister, the Liberal Party and the NDP is sad - and the media as usual - particularly the CBC - have disgraced themselves. There is an opportunity here for the Canadian Conservative party here - although it will be harder to pull off in Canada.
That Liberal caucus member who came out publicly against Trudeau for trying to stigmatize the protesters instead of acknowledging their concerns deserves major props.
It's not every day a Liberal bucks the party line and sides with the working class.
Trump not only campaigned on helping the middle class - his policies actually achieved that result. The FACTS for Trump's first three years in office (pre-Covid), according to CENSUS BUREAU statistics:
*Lower-income families gained the most. Despite the endless chants about how President Donald Trump’s policies benefited only the rich, the truth is that lower-income families made the biggest gains in his first three years in office.
*The bottom fifth of households saw their incomes climb 10% under Trump. Those in the next fifth saw incomes rise more than 9%.
*The top 5% of households saw their share of total income drop.
Those are the facts. Trump's policies lifted the lower and middle classes for the first time in decades.
And all the while, the Democrat Progressive Caucus is focused on CRT, Defunding the Police, Forcing schoolchildren to wear masks, etc. Is it any surprise working people are embracing the GOP?
What these stats actually show is that a healthy economy is good for working America. Trump's contribution to that happy situation was less do to his policies than to the fact that, compared with the commissars and apparatchiks of the increasingly progressive Democratic Party, he left well enough alone—admittedly, no bad thing.
This is actually very easy to accomplish given the weird obsessions of today's Democratic Party. The Republicans just need to go all in on meritocracy and equality of opportunity, and mean it. They should throw massive resources into equalizing the early playing field, focused on better nutrition, safety, family life and education for kids of all ethnicities and income brackets. That's a much better way of making up for past racism and unfairness than arguing about whether it should be Black or black or Latino/Latinx. Then dismantle all the govt/education/corporate bureaucracy aimed at moving minorities along regardless of merit and penalizing whites (except those profiting from the equity bureaucracy).
I'm 100% convinced that there isn't any inherent difference among races, but they become undeniably different in many ways due to childhood upbringing and access to resources. Equalize everything at the beginning, go full on meritocracy at adulthood and that's a win win that virtually every group and class can get behind.
The notion that Reagan was not a friend of the working man is a fraud. I was there. He was. Members of real unions - of real workers such as truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, etc. - were Reagan supporters. He was the first populist and detested big government. The real Republican party is continuing on that path. Real Republicans detest the "elites" - of business, government or the universities. Those elites detest the working man. Just look at the contempt they heap on the Canadian truckers or the Walmart shoppers they revile as Trump supporters. We will continue to recapture the Republican party. No more favors for billionaires. Or large corporations, especially the rapacious health care "insurers." The Republican party will continue to evolve along Reagan's "big tent" model, embracing all those - regardless of creed, color or national origin - who want to join us in putting America - and Americans - first.
I'm not sure you and I would agree on everything, but I was around for Reagan's elections too. We had a name for his blue collar supporters - Reagan Democrats - and the number of them rocked the political world in 1980 and '84.
I recall reading an article (Time or Newsweek) about the frustration of union bosses who were trying to convince their members to vote Democratic , or against Reagan, for his 2nd term. This quote, from a union worker, has always stuck with me: "I don't know what to tell you...With him (Reagan) we stand tall."
If you'd been at the 1986 celebration of the centennial of Lady Liberty in New York, you would understand every thing about that union worker's comment. It was a magical celebration of our country Led by the President and Mrs. Reagan. Everyone was proud to be an American.
Then the Bushes got in….
Ah yes, the New World Order ... remember that? :)
My parents were lifelong Democrats. My dad was the precinct leader in our precinct, a perpetual delegate to the state convention, and in 1976 he was an alternate delegate at the national convention in NYC (he was determined to prevent Ted Kennedy from becoming the nominee). He was also a local USWA union leader--I spent a lot of time at the union hall in my childhood.
My parents voted for Reagan both times (so did I, in 1984: the first vote I ever cast).
My mom, lifelong Conservative and Catholic, knew Ted Kennedy to be the devil. Instead of telling me sweet bedtime stories, she'd tell me about Chappaquiddick. It's still unbelievable that actually happened, with the press lending him and his family cover. The Lion of the Senate? Puh-leeze. More like Satan with a neck brace.
Absolutely. They were not a major factor in 1980, but they were big in 1984 and 1988. Like Eisenhower in 1956 and Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984 won virtually in a landslide, taking over 40% of the Jewish vote and close to half of the Hispanic vote, to name two major Democratic voter blocs.
For younger Americans, it's hard to convey how much damage has been done by the Baby Boomers' takeover of American institutions since the 1990s and, for example, their "identity politics" propaganda. Those old enough to remember will know what I'm talking about. The transformation of the news media Batya presents in her book is one very important aspect of this trend with roots in the rise of the college-credentialed class since the 1960s.
In the House, these centrist-conservatives were known as the “Blue Dogs” or “Blue Dog Democrats”.
On the other hand, and notwithstanding his infamous stump speech denouncing the nine scariest words (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”), President Reagan famously expanded the federal government. In the end, our government is only as good as the people who elect it.
He was dealing with a Democrat congress. And much of his expansion was of the military to end the rot of the Ford and Carter years.
Actually, the federal government, except for the Pentagon, shrank in Reagan's first two years, when the Republicans and conservative Democrats (remember them?) were dominant in Congress. The federal govt didn't start to expand again in a major way until the last two years of Bush Sr., then Clinton, then Bush Jr. The expansion was different from the 1960s and involved many more mandates, contractors, and other indirect instruments.
Reagan had the Senate for his first couple of years, and with them he enacted a massive downsizing of government, except for the military. He declared a hiring freeze that lasted years. Even when the Dems took back the Congress, he still had enough popular support that they could barely get anything done without his signature.
And the rot of the USSR
I so hope you're right. The Republican Party is SO MUCH BETTER now than it was "before Trump". The young people that joined the party were/are so impressive. I am so glad that the Never Trumpers, the Lincoln Project and their ilk are gone. I do hope Trump is replaced, but the people he brought in greatly improved the party.
I don't want him "replaced." He has a role. But it is as an elder statesman and not president. Enough of the septuagenarians.
Just as one has to be at least 35 to be president, I propose an upper age limit for the Presidency (And Congress?), perhaps 65 or 70 so that if elected to two terms the president would not exceed say 75 to 80 while in office
I agree with you on upper age limit. But, I think 80 is past the line.
I miss him, for realz.
Actual explanation: You started to notice that what Democrats are telling you isn't true, but you haven't yet accepted that that was happening a long time ago, too.
Reagan was very effective in his fight against big government and in his support of the workers. Remember, he fired the air traffic controllers who sought power.
And yes, this is a battle of classes, elites vs. working class. No one says this, everyone creates the division along race, gender, etc…. But the reality is, class is where this current cultural battle is being waged.
I agree with you about Reagan But the class thing was the traditional socialist gambit and it did not work well here because we really do have mobility both up and down - people make fortunes, people lose fortunes. And we had many methods to do so. Thus the need for division by other identifiers.
Several authors have discussed the phenomenon of todays culture where they concluded as I did, it is about class and they use other identifiers to hide their intent. Just look at the corporate America woke. They side with the various oppressed identity groups to carry favor and improve their bonafides, as well as to protect themselves from attack, and at the same time, they continue polluting, harsh labor practices, predatory pricing and other undesirable activities in order to achieve their profit targets.
I agree with your comments about corporate America feigning wokeness. And I'll clarify that class struggle has historically not worked here. I fear we are in uncharted territory though.
I agree.
Main Street not Wall Street.
That's correct. The Reagan era was full of ambivalence about free trade and immigration. For all the support these had (much of it borrowed from Democrats, who were back then much bigger supporters of free trade and immigration than Republicans), there was still a significant strand in the Republican party of "national conservatism" descended from the nation-unifying Unionism and Whig Party of the 19th century and the Civil War. This definitely included strong support for the "working man" and his ability to support a family on one income. Thus the strong Republican support from the 1850s until the 1970s of tariffs and restrictions on immigration. It was not until the high inflation of the 1970s that American wages became disconnected from productivity and American families lost the ability to support themselves on one income.
(To give one, very important example, the extreme financial imbalances of the early 80s -- high if falling inflation and high US interest rates -- led to an overly strong dollar, putting American manufacturing at a big disadvantage. A major effort was undertaken to talk the dollar down -- the Plaza Accord -- and Reagan agreed to import quotas on Japanese and German cars, an example of "national conservatism" at work. The Japanese and German companies got around these, in part, by investing and building factories here, bringing their capital and hiring Americans. This move was possible only because Japan and Germany, once enemies, are part of the US-led geopolitical order -- not just trading partners but allies with common political and legal concepts. Compare with something similar if attempted by China -- arousing suspicion because apparently economic moves are rightly suspected as having an ulterior, hostile political agenda along with just economic motives. China has never accepted the US-led liberal international order, a point I hope everyone gets now.)
To bring it closer to our time, American manufacturing and the working class, while battered by the high inflation of the 1970s (a result of the Great Society, the Vietnam war, and abandonment of the gold standard) and the early 80s recessions, held their own through the early 1990s. It was the rise of neoliberalism and the US dollar-dominant world financial system after 1992 or so -- accompanied by NAFTA in 1994 and then China's entry into the WTO in early 2001 -- that really demolished American manufacturing. In the 1970s and 80s, during the Cold War, it had to compete with fellow developed countries like Germany and Japan, with similar labor standards and part of the US-led geopolitical system. Not so after 1994, when suddenly American companies and workers had to compete with countries not only much poorer, but bedeviled by corruption or repression. Don't mistake it: the neoliberal elite today wants to use Chinese-style repression to turn us into something like parts of Latin America.
This was perceived correctly in the early 90s by certain figures like Ross Perot (a Democrat and the true avatar of Trump -- Perot encouraged Trump to run multiple times) and Pat Buchanan. The reaction then of the Republican establishment to both was horror. Thus the Republican leadership gradually lost touch with its base. It's amazing that this period lasted as long as it did, from 1992 through the 2012 election. But it was doomed to end eventually, and it did with the rise of populist figures like Steve Bannon and Trump, and the revamped Breitbart.
Excellent exposition. Nicely expressed.
Under Ronald Reagan the war against the middle class started and shamefully continued under presidents of both major parties. As a result there is hardly a middle class left in the US now. Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class. The American political landscape has deteriorated equally and now, when American democracy is on its last legs, Americans can increasingly only choose between some crazy ideologues on the left and some crazy cultists on the right. Sanity and common sense are on steep decline in both major parties. What America desperately needs now is a new political force that can unite the few remaining reasonable people from both parties who get cancelled by wokeness in one party or purged from party ranks because they do not blindly follow their cult leader in the other party. That's the sad state of affairs. Unfortunately there is no such political force in sight right now, so my prognosis for the future of this country is quite bleak. Ronald Reagan was the president who started this all by attacking the unions and therefore causing the decline of the American middle class. And Donald Trump is the president who will most likely complete the destruction of America. I do not believe that Joe Biden is even remotely able to turn things around and stop him. I don't think he even fully understands the peril American democracy faces.
Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class? Where do you live? I am neither. No one I know is either. I know vast swathes of people who are neither. I can name city after city full of neither. Our political system is failing, as you say. And we do have some loss of opportunity at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. But no middle class? That's nuts. We are a mostly middle class nation.
If we dont have a private jet, we are lower class.
I agree with you. IMHO the Libertarian party is the only feasible answer we have at this point based on name recognition alone. Our 2 party system is what's destroying our country.
What exactly is a “real worker” as opposed to I guess a “fake worker”? Are accountants and lawyers fake workers? What precisely makes a trucker’s work “real” but a lawyer’s work fake?
I’m not a fan of occupational tribalism.
I was referring to the difference between public and private sector unions. Attorneys and accountants don't usually organize in my experience.
Attorneys have the bar, which artificially controls the labor pool of attorneys. Accountants have their certification stuff which has the same effect. Doctors have the same stuff. They all organize, just in a different way. Labor unions act as a different method of raising labor prices of their particular occupations.
With that all said — your response doesn’t actually explain what makes occupations that are run by unions more “real” than those that aren’t.
Government "workers?" Come on Jeffrey. Stop dancing on the head of a pin.
I don’t follow. I didn’t write anything about government workers.
Are you referring to a distinction between labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by the government, such as teachers and labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by private companies, such as miners?
And are you ridiculing the notion that government employees actually work? And suggesting that workers of private sector unions do?
Perhaps if the fed didn’t bail out General Motors and the California government weren’t captured by various private sector unions, I’d be more sympathetic to your sentiments.
I feel like today there is an unholy incestuous relationship between government and unions, whether “private” or “public”, that is more harmful than helpful to the general public and at times even members of the unions themselves.
“Big government” and “big union” are often the same entity.
"And are you ridiculing the notion that government employees actually work?"
With the exception of police, fire and sanitation (sometimes), yes. Are you claiming they do?
They don’t organize to confront / negotiate with the management of their employer. True. Sometimes. Teachers unions, for example, have a very similar relationship to their “employer”, the government, that doctors have to their often “employers”, the government and insurance companies.
And I think you are a bit idealistic about the purpose to maintain reputation and integrity of professions. How is that working for lawyers these days?
In my younger years I went to massage therapy school so that I could become certified to be a massage therapist. I spent months learning about pseudo scientific theories and studying legitimate science that had no relevance to the actual work of a massage therapist. Unfortunately I suspect that is the norm for associations and certifications that control the labor of professions. I do like to believe that med school has a lot less bullshit though. Yet, the bullshit certainly does still exist, and one of its effect is artificially raising labor prices.
Okay, if work that isn’t real isn’t fake what is it? The alternative to “real” is…?
Humans can survive without fuel and clothing. And we can certainly survive without truckers or cashiers or coal miners. We can live without farmers. Every modern occupation is expendable. Humans evolved hunting and gathering our food and carrying children our backs.
What is particularly physical about the work of truckers btw? Some truckers only drive and other people actually load and unload the goods they transport. Are those truckers less “real”? Is the work of a dentist less “real” than a warehouse worker because the dentist burns less calories in their labor?
And what tangible stuff do truckers produce? They move stuff with a vehicle, they don’t “produce” anything.
Do I care? No, not really, but it’s nonsense, and I tend to point out nonsense when I come across it. Especially nonsense that has a hint of moral evaluation.
Tangible work vs intangible work has more sense than real and… unreal work. But tangible and intangible work doesn’t actually map to the the occupations people typically apply to real and unreal. Truckers for example, they are using a machine to move physical objects. If I program a machine to move physical objects, using a machine (a computer, with keyboard) —how is that not “tangible” if what the truckers do is tangible? Something like teaching guitar… that is much more “intangible”.
Labor that requires a lot of physical exertion — eg professional mixed martial arts, shipping dock hands, life guards and infantry — vs labor that does not, Eg trucking, cab driving, and programming could be sensible categories. But people aren’t going to stress those from a political perspective, as they don’t map to the political divisions in the labor force.
Indeed! He was the "first populist" in my lifetime. That's one reason why Trump reminds so many people of Reagan.
The "real" decline in unions started in the late 1970s, when union power had rendered us uncompetitive in world markets for all sorts of manufactured goods - particularly automobiles. Compare the 1980 Chevy Citation with the 1980 Honda Accord - all you need to know.
You are absolutely correct. They priced themselves right out of the market. And, leading up to this, they had extensive help from the Kennedy administration which "collaborated" with big business and big labor to set wages and prices. This was one of the biggest leaps in the U.S. away from capitalism and toward corporatism.
That is when environmental protections kicked in.
You're absolutely right. The combination was deadly for U.S. manufacturing. Between the unions and the EPA, we had no shot.
The PATCO debacle occurred AFTER the wave of union power had crested. It simply crystallized the absurdity of unchecked (particularly public) unions in the eyes of the public.
The dems are the party of our modern day robber barons—Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey. They are elitists who feel entitled to look down their noses on fly over country. That is bad enough. But now big media and big dem government have merged. And they want to control our thoughts. What we are allowed to know. They wield this power to intimidate and silence. See: Joe Rogan. They have taken over education and destroyed two generations of kids.
The Republicans are floundering for an identity, and it is sitting at their feet. They are the party of free speech, “we will decide how are kids are educated”, and “stop bankrupting the country with freebies”. They want legal immigration and a stop to the crime and chaos on our border, a stop to the drug trafficking that is killing kids.
Not masks. Not remote school, not pornography in school libraries, not $200,000 worthless college degrees, not illegals flown to communities in the dark of night, not more taxes so people get more freebies and don’t have to work.
Not arguing with you personally, but the republican party has historically(and today) endorsed illegal immigration as it gives them cheap labor. Watching then Speaker Paul Ryan and the rest of the 'republicans' actually fight Trump for border wall funding was infuriating. God bless Trump for exposing both parties for the frauds they are.
AMEN. Trump was the type envisioned by Madison in the Federalist. Nor a process politician such as Ryan or Rubio, but a public-spirited citizen whispers aside his personal affairs for a limited time to serve his fellow citizens. He wasn't a narcissistic politician with a sense of entitlement, looking forward to a position on K Street after decades of swilling at the public trough, like Boehner, Ryan, and, eventually, McCarthy.
Oh yeah, both parties are full of elites and wannabe elites that, whether they acknowledge it or not, rely on cheap domestic labor in all types of service industries (restaurants, hotels, maid services etc.). Where I live the wine industry is absolutely reliant on immigrant labor (undoubtedly much of it illegal) to allow the owner class to stock up on Teslas, etc. and the wannabe owner class to feel entitled paying $100/bottle for watery pinot while mocking the non-immigrant working class.
Should maids and busboys make as much as skilled labor? I don't think so. I think the idea is to get an entry level position, gain some skills, and move up.
Certainly didn't intend to suggest that, just that illegal immigrant labor helps depress wages for the non-illegal, and that the owner class likes it that way
"Owner class"? Most companies of any size are corporations. Corporations are owned by their shareholders. Shareholders can be ordinary people like you and me buying those shares for investment purposes. Or they can be employees with 401ks for example that are part of a fund which invests in corporate stocks.
Corporations are "owned" by their shareholders. The shareholders rarely actually determine policies. The executives get huge salaries plus shares, so a significant fraction of the company's income does not go to the real shareholders.
Unskilled labour should pay well enough to keep a person out of poverty.
If someone working 40 hours a week is on food stamps, then the taxpayer is ultimately subsidizing that worker's wages, which is an indirect gov't handout to the employer.
Walmart and McDonalds shouldn't be able to rake in billions of dollars in profits, while taxpayers subsidize their payroll costs by providing welfare benefits to their workforce.
Unskilled labor should get skilled and engage in upward mobility. It is very satisfying.
Unskilled labor still needs to get done, like driving trucks.
Currently, unskilled labor is kept cheap via mass immigration. I guess you wouldn't mind that, since nobody should be doing those jobs anyway according to you.
As far as I am aware, neither Walmart nor McDonalds is demanding food stamps for anyone.
That demand is coming from elsewhere.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/11/18/walmart-store-holding-thanksgiving-charity-food-drive-for-its-own-employees/?sh=675ef4542ee5
It's a thing - their employees are paid so little that they can't make rent. And instead of Walmart or whoever paying more, those employees end up receiving welfare cheques to make up the for the fact that their paycheques don't cover their rent.
Which means in a roundabout way, your tax dollars are subsidizing Walmart.
The best argument for raising the minimum wage is that it reduces corporate welfare.
Labor for what? It is illegal to employ illegal aliens and most large corporate entities, who OI assume is meant by the "them" you believe to be receiving cheap labor. Although I suspect it is received bythe previously referenced robber barons because they are on the left and know there are no repercussions for criminal behavior for leftists. Reagan granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in reliance on Democratic promises of immigration reform. I have spent my entire adult life waiting for that.
My wonderful mother was named Lynne with an e...
See Bobbie's response below. It is not illegal to hire illegals.
My response to your comment was driven by the attempt to attribute to only Republicans a desire to exploit cheap labor. And it is indeed illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers. To do so subjects the employer to civil penalties for an infraction, increased civil penalties for continued infractions, and criminal liability for illicit hiring practices.
I have always loved my name. I am told it is the French spelling. La ti da. 😉
Lynne — I thought the bipartisan (the gang of eight)Senate bill that reformed immigration in 2013 that passed the Senate was a pretty good bill. Unfortunately, Speaker Boehner wouldn’t even take it up in the House. Since Rubio drafted it, and Lindsay Graham drafted it, and Schumer, I would bet it would get plenty of support in the Senate if reproposed. And, with a much more supportive House, maybe pass this time. However, keep in mind, reforming immigration takes one more issue off the table which both parties use to keep campaign contributions coming in. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/guide-s744-understanding-2013-senate-immigration-bill
Agree, and I think the Youngkin effect is starting to shape how the Republican Party will be able to attract conservatives, moderates and classic liberals who care about free speech, education, strong economy and ending Covid mandates.
I take what Rubio says with a huge grain of salt. He came into the Senate on the wave inspired by the Tea Party, but did nothing to carry out his promises. He is up for re-election in 2022 in a state which loves Trump so he now talks a populist game. Let’s see what he actually does, I would not hold my breath.
But the rest of the article is spot on. Unfortunately, with McConnell, Graham, Romney, Thune, etc. running the show, the Republicans will not play a winning hand. The flip of the parties’ base in the past few decades is amazing and Trump had the vision to see this, but the old guard is too corrupt and set in their ways.
I fear you are correct.
Republicans need to step up and speak and act courageously. I am underwhelmed so far
Perfect timing. A super article on Unherd this morning also addresses and amplifies this very concept.
https://unherd.com/2022/02/how-the-left-betrayed-the-truckers/
The Democrat Party needs a real come-to-Jesus moment. The progressives like AOC and The Squad, the grifters, such as the Clintons, all combined with the self-serving tech billionaires, have forced the party of the little guy to completely lose its way. They are utterly destroying the Democratic party. There articles all over the Internets about this phenomenon, and all say it spells disaster come November. Let's hope so.
Please. The leader of the 'party of the little guy' can't remember what he had for breakfast by 9am each morning, and the next two in line both hail from San Francisco, a city that serves the purposes of tech and finance bros who 'work from home' and drug users who sleep in tents outside city hall and shoot up in the open with the blessing of government. Although in Nancy's case she's probably too busy front running the stock market to notice (or care).
Whatever issues the Republicans have (and they exist), at least they are going to get there on looking out for the working class. The Democrats have abandoned the working class for generations to come. Plain as that.
Like to hear the Republicans loudly and vociferously speak out against the disgustingly corrupt insider trading by our “leaders”!!
My point precisely.
My point is there's no come to Jesus moment coming for the 'party of the little guy.'
They hate the little guy and they are quite at peace with their hatred of the little guy. Their only goal is to hold onto 20% of that vote by running cons like "even though I left Scranton 70 years ago and have disdain for anyone not paying my crack smoking son (the kind of crack that would get you 20 years in prison under the sentencing scheme that I shepherded through the Senate, but will never apply to my crack smoking son) for influence peddling schemes, I'll always be Scranton Joe to you" so they can squeak across the finish line in the states that decide elections.
Which, given how complicit the media is and how gullible some voters are, can be a successful scam. Hopefully people wise up. The only party ripe for the kind of change that would help the working class is the Republican party, for better or worse.
Even the people in Scranton don't buy that BS.
Recently read a wonderful bio on LBJ(Caros magisterial work) in it FDR and LBJ were working to get affordable power to the poor and rural people. Now 90 years later compare that to the energy policies of the current democrat party where they are purposefully increasing the cost and access to power in the vain hope of reducing global temps 0.1 degree in 80 years
LBJ was one of the most corrupt politicians in this country. His Great Society programs did more damage to the black population of this country than anything other than slavery. Read Thomas Sowell for enlightenment.
Oh definitely. Terrible human being but he did get the civil rights bill through. Wonderful bio by Caro and he is no fan of the man. Love Sowell as well
Yes, I'd read that article earlier this a.m. and this jives nicely.
One thing I can say is that politicians can always smell which way the wind blows, to mix my metaphors. So many Republicans slowly figuring out where the future lies; many will never be able to make the switch because they are, and will always be, the country club set. That's the American Dream, to them.
Dems held the figurative moral high ground with real people for a long time, but clearly decided money is better, embracing any new thing is progress. Now, their base is captive, unable to change their minds about right v wrong; unable to reconcile what they see with their own eyes of the leadership corruption.
I welcome the shift, and think it's seismic. Yet, I maintain a huge distrust of the existing politicians and their ability to accept and embrace it.
My parents belonged to the country club and were, I suppose, part of the “set.” My dad was also a really hard worker. Stereotypes….are just really lazy sometimes.
Yeah, I suppose. Mine didn't, but he was a really hard worker, too. Born in '21, working the coal mines to support his family at age 13 after his father died of black lung, self educated electronics technician working on the space program until that died and the industries went away. Life long Republican, tho', even though they didn't really want him in the club, because the other side was God-less.
Sometimes, they're accurate, too.
My grandfather in the Pittsburgh steel mills and my 2G grandfather who helped build the Pennsylvania Railroad in SW PA & fought in Gettyburg. My point is: my dad was a 1st generation college student who didn't have to use his body as a tool and wore a tie to work. His parents saw that as progress. And if he wanted to hang out at his club (outside Scranton, ironically) and have a drink & a dance with his wife on the weekend, then good for him.
Yes, I understand your point, because it was my original point, too. I think we may agree.
Our parents, and us, have supported that party because we were able to build a great life thru hard work and thrift and judicious life choices. And to pass that on to our families.
If my use of the term "country club set" offended you, I sincerely apologize. I don't want to offend you, or anyone. But it's a pretty common description of stereotypical "fat-cat" Republicans, widely used for many years now, valid or not, and lately, it applies equally to Dem "fat-cats", too.
I'm sure your parents do not belong to such, but we wouldn't have to look too hard to validate the stereotype. They would be the same ones who participated in emptying out our industrial base, manufacturing, etc.
Now, the shift seems to be happening, where the Republican Party appears to be addressing those "working class," "blue collar" Americans who are struggling just to have a job, let alone, flourish as we once did.
I welcome that change; I think it is best for America and for the party.
Again, I'm sorry if I offended you.
Dana, you didn't offend me nor should be afraid to speak out. I am a conservative instructor at a very liberal, pricey college; I teach critical thinking and academic research skills. One huge point I seek to impress upon my students is this myth that being offended is the worst thing that can happen to you. Actually, the worst thing that can happen to you is you graduate without having been offended. Because that means you haven't learned anything.
NO APOLOGIES. Speak, sister.
The mines? Really? I worked in the coal mines during my college summers. I was probably the unsafest miner in the whole place, all the more so because I didn't think I was unsafe in the least. We had an underground fire and I ran TOWARD it because I wanted to see it. God. Getting to adulthood is mostly luck, I think. After graduate school, I read black lung x-rays for years. Bad, ugly disease.
Where did you work? My dad used to sell group insurance to the miners in Beckley WVa. The stories he could tell.
I worked in Armco #7 at Montcoal, WV. Later sold to A.T. Massey to be called, "Upper Big Branch." Yes, THAT UBB. Lost my best friend in the 2010 explosion that killed 29.
Armco was a wonderful company to work for. We had terrible flooding one year, and they donated huge earthmovers, engineers, and operators to channel out Coal River, fixing the problem for decades. (Can't do that now, you might make the river muddy and choke a fish.) I went to college on an Armco Steel scholarship. Very different from A. T. Massey under Don Blankenship. Google him up sometime.
There is no shift nor a need therefore.
The Democrats strongest talent is smearing those who oppose them so there was an appearance that Republicans are about corporate greed and are thus against the working person. (I won't even get started on the environment.) It was not true and people, largely due to a loss of confidence in legacy media and career politicians, are seeing that the emperor has no clothes. Actually the emperors.
Maybe so, Still I wonder.
McConnell, Romney, Bush, Cheney, Chamber of Commerce, Nixon, Buckley, etc... maybe the Dems didn't have to work so hard to advance the stereotype.
Until Trump (thankfully!) I don't remember many of our leaders fighting for us, our jobs, our towns, our industries. But, they were pretty good at the social issues that divide us.
I have a hound dog named Buckley! When she barks, she doesn't move her lower jaw. It sounds like she disapproves but all could be solved with a single malt on the patio.
LOL. ...or a joint on the open ocean.
His interviews with Malcolm Muggeridge and Mortimer Adler are priceless.
He reminds me a little bit of JP, in that he could totally burn you with some wry, off the cuff remark, but you didn't feel it for three minutes. Buckley's cuff, of course, all Brooks Bros.
McConnell is out for himself, he epitomizes what is wrong with federal government and has far more in common with Pelosi and Schumer than he does with working, taxpayers citizens. He is a power broker - nothing more, nothing less. Bush/Cheney are representatives of the military/industrial complex which I am a proponent of in theory. However I think the Clinton's compromised the integrity of our national forces and agencies to such an extent we should all be concerned. As for Bush/Cheney I think they are ends-justify-the-means/lesser-of-two-evils guys and I do not believe either embody wise leadership. (IMO Bush's 911 response was very short-sighted and created the policing problems which created the 2020 backlash which resulted in the current lawlessness). Nixon is definitely a Bush/Cheney precursor. Romney stands for nothing so is not worthy of comment. I have never given much consideration to the Chamber of Commerce but I see no problem with a pro-commerce organization. Commerce is good. It has evolved over thousands of years and has arguably created the modern world. Buckley is a has been.
The Dems are the party of the woman-hating Translets, and they seem perfectly willing to die on the TransSword. Let them. Meanwhile, I'm politically homeless. I contacted my Republican state/Congress reps asking their stance on women's sex-based rights vs/ the deluxe-class Trans citizens. They can have my blue vote if they publicly denounce this insanity.
Amen. I don't understand why women are being thrown completely under the bus on the trans issues.
Good on you!
Please God let’s say it’s so we have to turn this around these Democrats are demented we are being run by a bunch of madmen and women unfortunately
I have (had, anyway) a lot of Democrat friends, and I have to tell you: I'm completely baffled by those who still, after a year of Titular President Biden, still hew the party line.
Trump is no Shirley Temple, but the hatred! There was an article a couple of days ago that somewhat solves the mystery. It said that there is an entrenched cabal in Washington, bound together by membership in The Swamp, where they can access untold power and money earned by someone else to feather their own nests. They play this little kabuki of being at odds with each other, but it's not real.
The only person who can really threaten them is the president, but he's no problem because to get that office you have to kiss the right behinds, make the right deals, grease the right palms - for decades. Then they have things to hold over your head should you get out of line. Trump, having never held office, had none of that, so when he went rogue, it was terrifying. Hence the "Trump is Hitler combined with Satan" line. Keep repeating, and a large portion of the weak-minded will begin to believe it. They do. Ask them and they can't explain why; it's because HITLER!!
At least that was the article's thrust. I think it explains a great deal.
A few quick points: (1) The idea that Trump just blustered without delivering on his policies is absurd. His policy successes, despite the bluster and character flaws, are why he retains a strong following.
(2) Where is this pro-corporate Right she speaks of? Almost all the big corporations have gone woke-left.
(3) It seems to me that this author is late to the party. The rift between private union workers and their Democrat-donating bosses started years ago. Has this phenomenon dawned on her only recently?
(4) The legislation Rubio is sponsoring will appeal to myriad blue-collar workers who aren’t in unions. Private union membership has dwindled to less than 10 percent in the trades, partly due to dissatisfaction with their bosses’ left-wing politics.
(5) As most people know, the real union muscle now resides in public sector unions, most prominently the SEIU and NEA. Those public-trough unions will fight this legislation tooth and nail.
True. Any "need" for a union now is distinctly different than what was necessary during the time of Sinclair's "The Jungle". There are no worker's rights that need to be protected, OSHA over-reaches with that now (as evidenced by their vaccine mandate). Conventional unions are in place at places like Boeing, that recently gave us the 737 MAX debacle. Adversarial unions like those at the automakers ran those businesses out of the country. Trade Unions still provide the largest source of training for skilled labor. And unions in the sense of a "commonwealth" where employers and employees can work towards shared goals represent a good change in the us vs them mentality.
I have observed unions doing more harm than good to local workers, due to the fact that union elites get paid well, regardless of what they do.
During the Recession, a new union agreement with a large local plant was being negotiated. The negotiators (outsider union elites) decided to play games with the company: they repeatedly showed up at meetings unprepared and their demands for the new agreement were sufficiently unrealistic (especially considering the Recession) that they tried hard to keep the press from reporting on what the demands were.
The company ended up imposing a Lockout, based on the bad behavior of the negotiators. But the negotiators didn't change their approach. After all, they were getting paid handsome salaries, while the local workers were getting a pittance from the union to man the picket lines.
After nearly a year of this, just as the statutory deadline was approaching that would enable the plant to shut down for a day and reopen as a non-union shop, the negotiators finally got their act together. But there are a lot of people in our town who have never fully recovered from the lost wages of that year.
Yes, looking objectively President Trump was a good to very good President.
His foreign policy was very good, clearly opposing the 3 major countries that were (and are) the main opponents of human rights and freedom, Russia, Iran and Communist China. He was the first President who supports LGBTQ rights, and did so for a long time before becoming President. He is the first President to have a Jewish family, and he moved our embassy to Jerusalem, under the law passed and signed by Clinton, but repeatedly delayed until Trump. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where all people are free (although Bahrain is improving women's rights) He led the negotiations that led to five majority-Muslim countries recognizing Israel.
He was a strong supporter of women's rights, ending the Obama deal with Iran that released at least $$50 billion to the Iranian regime, almost all of which was used to suppress women's rights. Probably the worst attack on women's rights by the US in the last 50 years, maybe ever.
He improved the conditions of the lower and middle class, especially blacks, who reached the lowest unemployment on record in 2019. He signed the tax reform law of 2017, which primarily helped the middle class (indeed the wealthy actually pay a higher rate due to the limit on the SALT deduction), and he brought a lot of money back to the US as the tax law brought our corporate tax rate down to a level similar to that in other countries.
He was a real friend of normal people, regularly talking with them before and after events.
Many more examples.
The images of AOC wearing her "Tax The Rich" gown and the DeBlasios (aka Mr. & Mrs. Thieves) attending the Met Ball sans masks are etched in my brain. This is what the Democratic Party looks like; no consequences for cheating the public; do as I say, not as I do; I can get my hair done but you can't; I can eat indoors but you can't. The list goes on and on.
Of course they are not the party of the working class because they are the party that is discouraging working! They want dependence on government to dole out checks and cheese with amounts and quality also under their control. They will own their own homes a la Bernie and Elizabeth Warren but lambast folks who have worked, paid their fair share of taxes and achieved their version of the American Dream. By the way, Comrade Sarandon sold her Greenwich Village Townhouse at her asking price of 7.9 million dollars.
The Worst part about AOC's obnoxious dress was the masked worker kneeling at her feet. That tells you everything you need to know about how the champagne socialists view the working class.
If working class people loved their unions in Alabama rah rahing for the fat slob, self-proclaimed governor of Georgia before, wait till they poll those members after the fat slob exercised her royal prerogative to spend the day unmasked around a classroom full of masked seven year olds.
2022 Democrat Party: Rules are for the proletariat, not the politburo.
Given her, ummmm, girth, she ought to take COVID more seriously ....
The Democrats clearly have contempt for blue collar workers. To them we are the deplorables. Trump touched a nerve. He IS a blue collar man. He understands work and workers and has a deep, abiding respect for people who work with their hands. Under him the economy for the working man thrived. (I use "man" in the traditional English manner to encompass men and women for those who are woefully under educated).
The Democrats clearly have contempt for people with darker skin. All their programs have been designed to destroy this segment of the population. The latest from President Biden is a new program to hand out crack pipes and set up shooting galleries all around the country. What??? This puts the Federal government in the position of chief promoter of drug addictions.
While there are still some awful Republicans in the ranks, they are slowly being replaced by America First candidates. President Trump is doing all he can to find and encourage these Americans to run for office. It's a new breed, and they come from the working classes not the Ivy League.
Marco Rubio understands workers and hard work. His parents escaped from Cuba and had to take lower level jobs to support the family. His father worked as a bartender and his mother worked as a maid. Marco went to college on scholarships he earned.
He comes up for re-election this year. I intend to support his campaign and vote for him. My yard sign is ready to go.
I do think Hunter is well qualified to run the crack pipe program
Good way to keep him gainfully employed if his painting gig dries up.
"He IS a blue collar man. He understands work and workers and has a deep, abiding respect for people who work with their hands. " Absolutely correct. He worked with them from the start of his career and he listened to them. Obama and Biden have no interest at all in them.
"He IS a blue collar man."
Oh my lord, thank you for that. I needed a Tuesday morning lol, and this filled in nicely.
Trump's mindset is blue collar. He respects and appreciates real work.
While I appreciate the good that the Trump presidency brought, I take umbrage that he defends the Constitution. Really?
And if (when) Trump again calls Rubio “little” again (maybe because he isn’t kissing the Ring) Rubio will be out.
Trump will endorse Marco. President Trump has great respect for the Constitution unlike the current occupant in the White House. President Trump went through the Courts every time he was blocked and he abided by the decisions. This president issues executive orders that are unlawful, and allows his agencies to do unconstitutional and unlawful acts against Americans. If you disagree with these statements you have not been following the (real) news.
Two of the original Constitutional mandates for the federal government are secure the border and establish a military. Biden has abandoned the first and is actively dismembering the military. In light of that I find your comment about Trump and the Constitution rich indeed.
I did not state anything about Biden.
No, you made patently untrue claims about Trump violating the Constitution.
Thank you for your follow up to my comment. I appreciate your insight.
I agree 100% about the Biden Administration. I am perhaps a RINO if I am not wholeheartedly pro Trump.
But I am wholeheartedly anti whatever you call the state of the current administration.
While the elitists on the left force pronouns, trans into women's spaces/sports and defund the police messages, more the working class turns their backs on the D party. The working class is looking for a healthy economy, safe streets, affordable food and the freedom to live as they wish. The current D party is absolutely against those principles because they live in their own echo chamber. They are absolutely unwilling to see things from a different point of view. They tried to cancel Rogan because of the n-word not realizing that on the street in working class and poor neighborhoods everyone utters that word, not in a racist way (for the most part), but it's part of the street culture. A culture the left knows nothing about and the mask has fallen off and a lot of people are waking up.
The D's are the party of tech trillionaires and soft liberal fools. The other 99.9% of the country has moved on.
It's true and very sad to see the D party implode.
And if you had told me ten years ago that we'd be on the same page (roughly) regarding the end of the iron grip of health "insurance" companies on our health care I'd have laughed in your face. But here we are. Together in the fight for working Americans.
The party switch happened a long time ago. Yet we are still fed the same worker vs. bosses fairy tale by the ignorant media and their puppet masters in academia. Unions represent a low single digit percentage of the working class out side government. They stopped trying to organize real workers 50 or more years ago. They simply see the numbers of Amazon workers and salivate over the fees and friendly headlines. The politicians take money from both sides. There is no one left to represent the majority of workers. The Unions just want a piece of the Amazon action that politicians have been getting for more than 20 years. The journalists act as though this is meaningful to the average citizen. It's not. They know that their costs will go up either way. The money to pay off the politicians and fend off the unions has to come from somewhere. To paraphrase Dylan 'the politicians don't need you and man they expect the same.'
For most of my youth the unions were closed shops to any one who wasn't related to a union member. They could have opened their schools, which are excellent, to all and garnered some loyalty and skilled members; but original thinking is not expected or much allowed in most union halls. They could have encouraged more technical training be funded by all the politicians they own; but they didn't. They never will. Because that would be competition for them. Also because they have more money now than they can legally handle.
The average worker and skilled tradesman has no use for unions and unions have no use for them.
The majority of workers were abandoned by the unions and their politician pets decades ago. Their votes have been going to conservative candidates for decades. Trump just formalized the arrangement.
The Democrat party platform is no sane persons wish list. Many of the contractors I know are competing with crews of under paid, hard working, legal and illegal immigrants. Some have stopped competing because they can't afford to do what they love anymore. The democrat J-School grads tell them to learn to compete. They tell them snidely to learn to code then get panty-twisted angry when they are told the same after their phony baloney leftist broad sheet is closes.
Most article on this topic act like this party switch is just starting to happen; showing how out of touch the average self described "well educated" journalist is. BTW the average plumber, electrician, carpenter and tier 3 IT guys and gals do more logical thinking, troubleshooting and math in their heads in one day than the average soft science, "well educated", college graduate does in a year. So please find another therm to describe the former.
Very well said.
The most odious thing about the Left is their elitism, self-righteousness, and moral superiority disguised as compassion and tolerance.
They've been exposed, and I think their run is going to be over for a generation.
My concern is that we will swing hard to the Right, and I don't want that either.
If the hard Right means safe streets and good schools, strong military, great jobs and general prosperity... and respect for 1A and 2A freedoms... then I'll happily take it, warts & all. The Left has delivered nothing but misery and servitude.
How about laying off a few Diversity Deans or Equity Emperors so the public schools have more money for textbooks and teachers? Or allowing people with life experience who haven't been through the brainwashing camps known as education majors to become teachers? Not much chance of improvement until the party of the teacher unions is thrown out of power.
School choice.
Perfectly said! Thanks.
Cuts to public education? What republican state has cut public education? And it’s public education that has given us the dreadful state we are in now and the totalitarian treatment of masking children and your statement that the USA is hopelessly evil.
Cuts to public education. That’s just a knee jerk media driven Pavlovian response to trying something different like funding the child for school choice not the public school.
“Cuts to public education”? Seriously? What has the public education establishment done over the past twenty years to justify the untold billions we shovel their way? These people have failed American children, yet they have the unmitigated gall to demand even more $$$. Bah!
Wait, what is an anti-LGBT bill? You mean like keeping boys out of girls’ sports?
I don't want thst either. That is why we need to be very careful who we support. We should not be afraid to speak out.
30 trillion dollar doubt, and rising.
The new GOP slogan: "I can't afford to be a Democrat any more."
Ha ha, need a bigger bank account. Maybe voting Democrat should require a means test (on the high end, that is).
Thanks for the well-written article. I wish republican leadership would follow this playbook and stop disappointing. Maybe the polls divided the supporters of democrats as lawyers, professors etc in the past, but this administration did a good job showing all of us that their ridiculous policies have uniformly made everyone's life worse. No one will be able to escape this wave of crime in our cities, drug abuse in our society, despair in our children and public shaming at our work place for being the wrong race and censorship everywhere. This new brand of democrats have been exposed for the malicious frauds that they are. Republicans just need to make that message loud and clear.
The last paragraph is basically everything:
The Woke praise BLM / Antifa rioters who destroy and kill based on media-influenced lies, and they demonize and jail protestors who demand their freedoms and rights be protected.
We live in the upside down.
Agree. Cats are barking and dogs are meowing :)
Although the Canadian Conservative Party (the official opposition) doesn't really resemble the Republican Party - it is noteworthy that they literally ousted their leader for not supporting the Freedom Convoy. They have also been blasting Prime Minister Trudeau daily for the rhetoric he has been using against the protesters. The NDP - supposedly Canada's socialist party - have been attacking and criticizing the Freedom Convoy. Strange reaction by socialists to an uprising of workers against invasive government overreach! In many ways the Liberal Party of Canada has been using the Democrat playbook - vilifying the truck convoy as racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic (all these were in one Justin Trudeau tweet!) and getting their compliant mainstream media friends - particularly the state broadcaster the CBC - to vilify and attack them. The divisiveness being sowed by the Prime Minister, the Liberal Party and the NDP is sad - and the media as usual - particularly the CBC - have disgraced themselves. There is an opportunity here for the Canadian Conservative party here - although it will be harder to pull off in Canada.
That Liberal caucus member who came out publicly against Trudeau for trying to stigmatize the protesters instead of acknowledging their concerns deserves major props.
It's not every day a Liberal bucks the party line and sides with the working class.
Trump not only campaigned on helping the middle class - his policies actually achieved that result. The FACTS for Trump's first three years in office (pre-Covid), according to CENSUS BUREAU statistics:
*Lower-income families gained the most. Despite the endless chants about how President Donald Trump’s policies benefited only the rich, the truth is that lower-income families made the biggest gains in his first three years in office.
*The bottom fifth of households saw their incomes climb 10% under Trump. Those in the next fifth saw incomes rise more than 9%.
*The top 5% of households saw their share of total income drop.
Those are the facts. Trump's policies lifted the lower and middle classes for the first time in decades.
And all the while, the Democrat Progressive Caucus is focused on CRT, Defunding the Police, Forcing schoolchildren to wear masks, etc. Is it any surprise working people are embracing the GOP?
FACTS, SCHMACTS!! You'll never reach a progressive that way! Now lies, contempt and empty virtue-signalling, they work like a charm on the woke!
What these stats actually show is that a healthy economy is good for working America. Trump's contribution to that happy situation was less do to his policies than to the fact that, compared with the commissars and apparatchiks of the increasingly progressive Democratic Party, he left well enough alone—admittedly, no bad thing.
This is actually very easy to accomplish given the weird obsessions of today's Democratic Party. The Republicans just need to go all in on meritocracy and equality of opportunity, and mean it. They should throw massive resources into equalizing the early playing field, focused on better nutrition, safety, family life and education for kids of all ethnicities and income brackets. That's a much better way of making up for past racism and unfairness than arguing about whether it should be Black or black or Latino/Latinx. Then dismantle all the govt/education/corporate bureaucracy aimed at moving minorities along regardless of merit and penalizing whites (except those profiting from the equity bureaucracy).
I'm 100% convinced that there isn't any inherent difference among races, but they become undeniably different in many ways due to childhood upbringing and access to resources. Equalize everything at the beginning, go full on meritocracy at adulthood and that's a win win that virtually every group and class can get behind.