On the Midwest in politics, by A.O. Scott, in the New York Times

A. O. Scott wrote in today's New York Times under the headline, "Will the Real Midwest Please Stand Up?:  The vice-presidential debate, pitting Senator JD Vance of Ohio against Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, shines the spotlight on a complicated region."  Here's a quote that speaks to the implicit whiteness of "Midwest."  

Like “working class,” “Midwestern” too often assumes a default setting of whiteness, and papers over profound political divisions. The region has been a fertile breeding ground for leaders of every factional stripe. Robert M. La Follette, the tribune of early-20th-century progressivism, represented Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate, as did the anti-communist crusader Joseph McCarthy a generation later. In the decades between the Civil War and the Great Depression, Ohio alone, known as “the cradle of presidents,” sent seven of its sons to the White House, all of them Republicans.

* * * 

The Midwest is a curious region, often treated less as a distinct geographical or demographic zone than as a symbol, a synonym for the country as a whole. ... in the cultural imagination “Midwest” is code for the average, ordinary, normal, real America.

Marilynne Robinson ponders the role of U.S. war losses in relation to resentful voters and the rise of Trump

Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson published this piece in the New York Review of Books earlier this summer (publication date shows July 18, 2024, but it appeared online weeks before that--certainly well before Biden decided not to seek a second term).  I'm revisiting the piece now because I think it's really important--really insightful-- in relation to this election season.  The headline is an opaque "Agreeing to Our Harm."  The subhead is a telling "We ignore at our peril the rage that animates Trump voters and threatens Biden’s chances this fall."  In it, Robinson links working-class discontent to the fact that what we might think of as left-behind communities (and she does use that term) are the ones that have supplied most of the soldiers who've been killed in the Iraq and Afghan engagements in the past few decades.   

Here are some salient excerpts: 

[T]here is a baffled cynicism abroad in the country, a sense that we will and must fail at everything except adding wealth to wealth and influencing other countries to their harm. We have the war in Gaza to remind us how suddenly horror can descend on a region, how a provocation can unleash utter disaster, and how the contending pathologies of a few men can destroy lives by the scores of thousands.

A profound alienation has set in, regularly expressed on both sides in contempt—contempt for Trumpists and those who vote with them on one side, and on the other side Trump and his allies’ contemptuous rejection of the entire project we have called America. In contemporary parlance this rejection is called conservatism.

* * * 

More than 4,400 American military personnel died in the Iraq War. Say their average age was twenty-five and their life expectancy was seventy-five years. Then our civilization was deprived of some 220,000 years of productive life—soldiers are healthy and competent people in the vast majority of cases. I am not speaking here of economic loss—our tendency to bring this measure to bear on virtually everything is a disheartening and destructive habit. I am speaking of everything they might have done to enjoy and enhance life, charming us, dazzling us, simply sustaining us in the course of finding occupations and rearing families. The death toll among Iraqis was vastly higher, and a calculation of the cost to civilization of the kind I have made here would be proportionately more unfathomable.

But my subject is the rage and rejection that have emerged in America, threatening to displace politics, therefore democracy, and to supplant them with a figure whose rage and resentment excite an extreme loyalty, and disloyalty, a sort of black mass of patriotism, a business of inverted words and symbols where the idea of the sacred is turned against itself. I will suggest that one great reason for this rage is a gross maldistribution of the burdens and consequences of our wars. If I am right that this inequity has some part in the anger that has inflamed our public life, in order to vindicate democracy we must acknowledge it and try to put it right.

It is taken to be true that the Trump phenomenon reflects the feeling in a large part of the population that they are “left behind.” This view is obviously too smug to deserve the acceptance it enjoys. Why does this movement have no vision of a future, beyond the incarceration of whomever Trump chooses to vilify? Why have its members proposed no reforms to narrow the economic divide? Why is there no response to the ambitious investments President Biden has made, designed to stimulate the economies of struggling areas? A “populism” whose lieutenants have an impressive number of Yale Law degrees and whose idol is a Manhattan moneyman is not to be understood as a flaring up of aggrieved self-interest. 

* * * 

I will suggest that, in the very fact of making no sense, the movement has enormous meaning. Something has enraged a great manyAmericans, and a democracy worthy of the name should make a serious effort to understand what it is. The pocketbook metric we apply to everything is not sufficiently respectful to be of use.

When I calculated the loss of lives America suffered in the Iraq War, I might have implied that this immense loss was suffered by us all, and in a sense it was. But in a deeper sense it fell disproportionately on a part of the population described in other contexts as men without college degrees, men without higher education or training. And their families, and their communities. They accepted the inducements the military offers and were caught up in a war of frivolous choice. Many of them killed and died. Like the rest of us, on religious and other grounds they can be assumed to be deeply reluctant to take human lives. Their own deaths, without need or purpose, would be profoundly bitter for everyone who loved them.  These fine young people entrusted their lives to authority they assumed would not make casual use of them, and when all was said and done, no one was prosecuted.

It is true that these men without college degrees often vote for Republicans. The Presidents Bush are seen in retrospect as exemplars of political civility, and perhaps they would be a little embarrassed by the crude thing their party has become. It is hard to imagine a purer example of privilege than father-son  presidencies. Still, the Tea Party found a home for its “populism” there and opened the way for the kind of postpolitical disruptiveness now so strongly associated with the Republicans. Among their masses there is a disillusionment verging on nihilism that experiences itself as patriotic. 

* * * 

And now we all talk about an elite, elitism. It is a meaningful issue, despite and because of the general pointlessness of the rhetoric that surrounds it. Billionaires and their offspring can be excused from this disfavored category if they are conspicuously crass or ignorant. Insofar as the potent term is securely linked to any group, it is associated with the highly educated and their institutions and with people whose politics are liberal. There is nothing more American, historically, than education. It has had a glorious development in this country, starting in the seventeenth century. It has been thought of as something good in itself, an enhancement of life for those inclined toward it and with the means to pursue it. Unfortunately, perhaps, it has also been proved to have many practical benefits. Its dimensions as a cultural presence have been shrunk to accommodate that irksome metric—education is, materially speaking, a sound investment. It confers many benefits and advantages, including even increased longevity.

* * * 

If elitism is a thing that is deplored in academe itself, this looks like a fig leaf on the foolish and discreditable rise in the cost of higher education. This hostility to the universities traces back to the social polarization that associated them with privilege and immunity rather than with the humane value of learning for its own sake. Because of the system of student  deferments, universities became associated with draft dodging. To the degree that they had ever conferred social advantage, this was compounded by the immunity they offered from the stark claim the government was making on the lives of the population as a whole. They were largely and appropriately centers of resistance to the war, an opposition that could not entirely mitigate the appearance, or the reality, that some lives were being treated as having more value than others. The struggles for minority rights and women’s rights should have taught us that an inequity is also an insult, and that a sting can persist long after a law has been repealed.

* * *  

A population more likely to provide troops for the military would have a livelier awareness of the fact that they are deployed all over the world, in places that are or at any time might become very dangerous. This might yield a different definition of globalism. On the other side, that regrettable gift for forgetting is a factor, forgetfulness of the weight of this burden.  

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.   

On rural and white working class identity as favored in higher education admissions? The case of J.D. Vance

Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times must have had this in the pipeline because it was published moments after Joe Biden announced he would not seek or accept the Democratic nomination for President--leaving Kamala Harris his heir apparent.  Indeed, not long after he said he would not run, Biden endorsed Harris.  The headline for Polgren's column is "If Kamala Harris Is a D.E.I. Candidate, So Is JD Vance."  Here's the lede: 

Ever since speculation began that Vice President Kamala Harris might replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, there has been a steady, ugly chorus on the right. The New York Post published a column that declared that Harris would be a “D.E.I. president,” and quickly the phrase ricocheted across the conservative media ecosystem.

Polgreen goes on to make the argument that J.D. Vance, Trump's selection to be Vice President, is also a D.E.I. candidate.  Here's how the argument goes: 

Vance’s entire business and political career has flowed from his life story, which is embedded in identities he did not choose: Born a “hillbilly,” of Scottish-Irish descent, he grew up in poverty, son of a single mother who was addicted to drugs. Overcoming this adversity, these disadvantages, lies at the core of his personal narrative. His ascent would hardly be so remarkable if he started from a life of middle-class comfort. But no one is portraying Vance’s elevation to the Republican ticket as the outcome of some kind of illegitimate identity politics, nor is Vance perceived as having benefited from a political form of affirmative action.

And yet he almost certainly did. Race is not the only kind of diversity that gets noticed and embraced. Elite institutions love up-by-your-bootstraps Americans, and that archetype is all over Vance’s life story. A promising white candidate from a county that sends few students to an elite college like Yale would get a strong look, even if that person’s grades and test scores were less impressive than other applicants’.

* * * 

Vance benefited from one of the most powerful forms of affirmative action that elite universities practice to attract low-income students: need-blind admissions.

* * * 

The sort of affirmative action that helped Vance gets easily overlooked; it’s less visible than race, making it easier to ascribe the achievements of white men to merit alone.

Polgreen goes on to note Vance's slim résumé.  She points out, "This champion of forgotten America made his fortune by writing a best-selling book that portrayed the rural white community he came from as lazy and undisciplined, responsible for its poverty and misery."

Then Polgreen turns back to Harris and the comparison she makes to Vance: 

Kamala Harris and JD Vance, despite their political differences, have a few things in common... They both come from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the halls of power. And now they are both engaged in the core work of politics — translating their stories into power.

This is a provocative thesis, and Polgreen may be right about Vance:  He may well have benefitted from a variety of affirmative action although, as she points out, we know nothing of his numerical metrics, e.g, LSAT score or undergraduate GPA.  But Vance entered Yale well over a decade ago, and I"m not at all sure that any of the benefits he may have enjoyed by virtue of his background are alive and well today.  In my world, I don't see any benefit to being a working-class white in higher education admissions.  Indeed, I see a lack of understanding of the working-class white struggle in that context--and an assumption that these students are retrograde in their political values and therefore not welcome, let alone favored.  

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.

Postscript:  Here, a week later, is Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post making a point similar to Polgreen's on identity politics and, one might say, what's good for the goose is good for the gander: 

Harris’s main qualification, at [the point when she was picked to be Biden's Vice Presidential running mate], was that she was easily the safest choice. Absent her identity, it’s hard to imagine she would have been anywhere near Biden’s top choice.

But you know what? You could say the same for almost every vice-presidential pick in recent memory. Would JD Vance be on Donald Trump’s ticket if he weren’t a rural White guy from Ohio? Was Sarah Palin chosen for her vast policy experience? Would Barack Obama have chosen Biden if he hadn’t felt he needed a validator for White working-class voters?

Further postscript:  On August 2, the New York Times Matter of Opinions titled its episode, "‘Mountain Dew and Racism’: Identity Enters the Election."  The first few comments, which I found disjointed, follow:

Carlos Lozada:  Wait, we’re going to talk about identity politics in this campaign and not talk about —

Lydia Polgreen:  Childless cat ladies? 

Carlos Lozada:  — JD Vance and women and parents?

* * * 

Lydia Polgreen:  Well, surprise, surprise. It didn’t take long for Kamala Harris’s identity to be politicized now that she’s running for president. Just this week, Trump questioned her racial identity at a Black journalist conference, insisting that she wasn’t really Black.

Archived Recording from Black journalist conference: 

Trump:  I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know. Is she Indian, or is she Black? 

Interviewer:  She has always identified as a Black woman.  She went to a historically Black college.

Trump:  I respect either one. But she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way. And then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went she became a Black person.

Interviewer:  Just to be clear, sir. Do you believe that she is — 

Trump: And I think somebody should look into that, too...

Lydia Polgreen:  And at the same time, race and gender seem to be animating Harris supporters. Have either of you guys seen merch for White Dudes for Harris? Have you stocked up? Or Carlos, maybe the Latinos for Harris is more your speed?

Here's more on the reference to Mountain Dew--specifically on J.D. Vance's assertion that Mountain Dew is considered racist by the woke left.  

Democrats aren't neglecting rural voters in Wisconsin, and it may be making a difference

The Washington Post reported a few days ago under the headline, "In Wisconsin, Biden tries to hold on to White voters without degrees." As if often the case in reporting and in our national imaginary, the white working class (here, those without college degrees) gets conflated with rurality.  This article discusses both.  Bottom line:  the Wisconsin Democratic Party is not neglecting rural America--and has set up offices in many nonmetropolitan counties, but Joe Biden is still focusing his attention on urban areas.  

Here are the excerpts with the word "rural" in them: 

Wisconsin Democrats attribute part of Biden’s relative strength with White voters without degrees to a rural progressive tradition that has faded but not disappeared — and part of it to tenacious organizing, including in rural areas where many of those voters live.

* * * *

Biden’s campaign is relying on an existing base of volunteers who know how to reach voters who might be willing to back him. Local Democrats send out 1,000 to 1,400 handwritten postcards each election to reach voters in rural areas whose doors are hard to knock on, Sandy Rindy said.

* * * *

Biden’s strategy: Out-organize Trump

Biden’s strategy for winning Wisconsin is built around state Democrats’ year-round, volunteer-run door-knocking operation. Most of Biden’s campaign offices are in counties Trump won in 2020 but where Biden outperformed given the underlying demographics.

Biden lost rural Lafayette County, where he has an office in tiny Darlington, by 14 points in 2020. But he ran 19 percent stronger there than one would expect based on the share of its population that is White and does not have a bachelor’s degree, according to a Post analysis.

“When you’ve got a Democratic Party office in a small town, it’s much easier to get people engaged,” said Tanya Bjork, a senior adviser to Biden’s campaign in Wisconsin who has worked on the past four presidential campaigns there. “And getting more people engaged means more doors and more phone calls and more conversations.”

Biden has campaigned in only one county Trump won in Wisconsin, and some Democrats grouse that they would like to see more of him in rural areas.

“Tammy Baldwin wins, but she works the state,” said John Waelti, a retired economist who writes a column for the Monroe Times. “She always has hard hats and farmers in her photos. When Biden and [Vice President] Harris come, it’s Milwaukee and Madison.”

Most of Biden’s 11 trips to Wisconsin since taking office have been to Milwaukee or Madison, although he’s traveled twice to Superior, a city of about 26,000 in northern Wisconsin where the infrastructure law he signed is funding the rebuilding of the John A. Blatnik Bridge. 

“It’ll be up to their campaign to bring [accomplishments like the infrastructure law] from the macro level of visionary policy to benefit generations to come to the micro level,” she said. “What did it do in Green County?”

Baldwin said she has encouraged Biden to campaign across the state.

Rural resentment over neglect (perceived or real) was a theme first associated with Wisconsin after the 2016 election.  It was described in Kathy Cramer's book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. 

You'll find lots of related content here on the Legal Ruralism blog under the labels rural politics (446 posts) and rural vote (571 posts).  

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.

Gluesenkamp Perez invokes rural and working-class folks in relation to stance on a secure border

A. Martinez of NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez today regarding "centrist Democrats" stance on border security.  That is, they want the Biden administration to tighten it, partly because of the scourge of fentanyl and its consequences in districts like hers.  Twice during the interview she came across the phrase, "rural and working-class" communities.  In the latter mention she adds, "and the trades."   

This quote provides further context: 

GLUESENKAMP PEREZ:  You know, these policies like Title 42, I mean, I think it's been one of the fundamental mistakes around immigration, is to debate whether or not an immigration policy is, you know, motivated by racial animus. By the way, I think a lot of them are, but a lot of people in rural and working-class communities like mine, we come from communities that have been hollowed out by fentanyl, and so we're watching our cousins, our neighbors, our coworkers overdose and die, and we are demanding operational control of the southern border. That can't wait for a perfect immigration policy to come along.  (emphasis added)

MARTÍNEZ: Did you think that the way Donald Trump's administration used Title 42 was an effective way to stem immigration?

GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: I don't think it's a question of stemming immigration. I mean, immigration itself is not the problem. The problem is that the U.S. does not have operational control of the southern border, and so a lot of Americans, a lot of American politicians have had this real focus on the very visceral images of the humanitarian crisis of the southern border, but what they're not seeing is what it's like to live in a country that is being run by a cartel. And so Biden needs to exercise his existing authority under Remain in Mexico, and Congress needs to give him back the presidential expulsion authority under Title 42.

One of the interesting things about the first long quote is how she suggests that immigration policy is influenced by racial animus--but also that there are other considerations, like the devastation being wrought by fentanyl, which Gluesenkamp Perez suggests is coming across the Southern border.  In other words, we can hold both of these notions--perhaps both of these truths--simultaneously:  some people advocating greater control at the Southern border are acting on racial animus, but they also have legitimate concerns about what is happening at the border, including fentanyl that may be coming through that border.  

This duality is something I suggested in this recent publication regarding why many rural residents support Trump:  they may both experience economic distress and racist impulses.  It does not have to be an "either or."  Also, as I have suggested elsewhere, if we are going to use terms like "racial animus," we should define them--that is, we should develop a shared definition.  That has not happened.  In fact, I have not seen any media outlet--or any academic--take that task seriously.  

Prior posts featuring Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez are here, here, here, here, here and here.   More still are here (including those on right-to-repair).  

Meanwhile, here's a report on Americans' broad support for enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.  

Recent coverage of (white) working class voters in the run up to 2024

Here's a Feb. 21, 2024 New York Times column by Thomas Edsall titled, "Does Biden have to Cede the White Working Class to Trump?"  Here's an excerpt:

“For Victory in 2024, Democrats Must Win Back the Working Class,” Will Marshall, the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute, wrote in October 2023. “Can Democrats Win Back the Working Class?” Jared Abbott and Fred DeVeaux of the Center for Working-Class Politics asked in June 2023; “Democrats Need Biden to Appeal to Working-Class Voters” is how David Byler, the former Washington Post data columnist, put it the same month.

However persuasive they are, these arguments raise a series of questions.

First, is the Democratic attempt to recapture white working-class voters a fool’s errand? Is this constituency irrevocably committed to the Republican Party — deaf to the appeal of a Democratic Party it sees as committed to racial and cultural liberalism?

Edsall includes this interesting quote from Yale's Jacob Hacker and colleagues:

even as Democrats have increasingly relied on affluent, educated voters, the party has embraced a more ambitious economic agenda. The national party has bridged the blue divide not by forswearing redistribution or foregrounding cultural liberalism but by formulating an increasingly bold economic program — albeit one that elides important inequalities within its metro-based multiracial coalition.

I wouldn't mind some clarification of what they mean by "elides important inequalities within its metro-based multiracial coalition."   Does that mean socioeconomic and racial inequalities are elided in metro areas?  And if so, what does that mean for nonmetro residents?  

Edsall doesn't answer that question but does move on to this: 

With Democrats’ strongest base concentrated in cities, the need to remain competitive, Hacker and his co-authors wrote,

has made the Democrats’ growing reliance on prosperous metro areas (i.e., suburbs) both necessary and consequential. The party’s base has long been in cities, but the party has dramatically expanded its reach into less dense suburban areas that are economically integrated with major urban centers.

Interesting, but still no mention of nonmetro areas.  

Frances Lee of Princeton suggested that the strategy described by Hacker could prove problematic: 

To the extent that the nation’s political discourse is driven by highly educated people, there is danger that opinion leaders are falling increasingly out of touch with the rest of the population.

William Galston of Brookings also commented negatively on Hacker's vision of the Democratic Party strategy (in a way that sorta' implies the strategy does omit rural folks, and highlights the growing cross-racial coalition among working-class folks--a coalition moving toward Trump and Republicans): 

The lines between the white working class and the nonwhite working class are eroding. Donald Trump received 41 percent of the non-college Hispanic vote in 2020 and may well do better this time around. If this turns out to be the case, then the old Democratic formula — add minorities to college-educated voters to make a majority — becomes obsolete.

Then comes Edsall's column one week later, titled "The Red-Blue Divide Goes Well Beyond Biden and Trump."  Here's the lede: 

One of the major reasons white non-college voters turned to Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 is the fear of lost white hegemony — that the United States will become a majority-minority nation sometime in the near future.

All I can say is that I would love to see one empirical source cited for this proposition.  Surely there are several, but I'd like to see just one for this bold and very damning proposition.   

Here's another piece, this one from The Liberal Patriot, on the non-white working class "bailing out on the Democrats."  Speaking of Obama's 2012 Presidential victory, Ruy Teixeira writes:  

Obama carried nonwhite working-class (noncollege) voters by a massive 67 points, while losing white college graduates by 7 points. That means Obama did 74 points betteramong the nonwhite working class than among white college graduates.

In the next two presidential elections, that differential steadily narrowed as Democrats did worse among nonwhite working-class voters even as they improved among white college graduates. In 2020, Biden carried the nonwhite working class by 48 points (19 points less than Obama did in 2012) while carrying white college graduates by 9 points (16 points better than Obama). That cut the Democrats’ positive differential between these two groups almost in half, down to 39 points.

Now it’s Biden running for a second term and, astonishingly, that positive differential may have entirely disappeared.

Working-class wages v. the pressures of globalization.

David Brooks wrote yesterday in a New York Times column headlined, "The Cure for What Ails Our Democracy."  I'm featuring a short excerpt here that differentiates between Trump the person and Trumpian populism, saying the latter is in a legitimate struggle with liberalism "over how to balance legitimate concerns."  Another issue he highlights:  the need to protect working-class wages from the pressures of globalization. 

Sure, there are some occasions when the struggle really is good versus evil: World War II, the civil rights movement, the Civil War. As Lincoln argued, if slavery is not wrong then nothing is wrong. But these occasions are rarer than we might think.

I think I detest Donald Trump as much as the next guy, but Trumpian populism does represent some very legitimate values: the fear of imperial overreach; the need to preserve social cohesion amid mass migration; the need to protect working-class wages from the pressures of globalization.

The struggle against Trump the man is a good-versus-bad struggle between democracy and narcissistic authoritarianism, but the struggle between liberalism and Trumpian populism is a wrestling match over how to balance legitimate concerns.

UAW leader conflates rural(ish) and working class as declares class warfare

I was fascinated to hear over the weekend an audio clip by Shawn Fain, leader of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), that did something you hear more and more these days:  conflating the working class--here, specifically the striking UAW workers--with rural concepts like rednecks.  Here's what Fain said:  

They look at me and they see some redneck from Indiana.  They look at you and see somebody they would never have over for dinner or let ride on their yacht or fly on their private jet.

* * * 

They think they know us, but us autoworkers know better. We may be foul mouthed, but we're strategic. We may get fired up, but we're disciplined. And we may get rowdy. But we're organized.

The NPR story continues: 

Fain was also eager to reassure UAW members that the union's unprecedented strike strategy is working. The union struck all three companies at once, but started with just a handful of plants.

While making these comments, Fain was wearing a t-shirt that said "Eat the Rich."

I very much appreciate what some would characterize as Fain's open class warfare.  I think it's necessary.  And I think it's honest.  And I believe he is accurate in stating that the corporate leadership of GM and the other automobile manufacturers would not, in fact, rub elbows with the UAW's rank and file.   

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.

Maine Democrat Jared Golden doubles down in opposition to student loan forgiveness

The Portland Press-Herald (Maine) reported last week on U.S. Congressman Jared Golden's provocative statement opposing student loan forgiveness.  Golden, a Democrat, is a three-term incumbent from the state's second district, which leans Republican and includes vast rural areas.  Golden's career and politically pragmatic stances are discussed in three prior posts, which also provide more information on the demographics and economics of his congressional district.  

Golden's mid-August Tweet responded to a report from the Maine Beacon that Golden, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had received a donation from Sallie Mae after he was one of two Democrats who joined Republicans in May to oppose Biden's student-loan relief program.  (The other was fellow leader of the "yellow-dog coalition," Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, of southwestern Washington State).  Golden's Tweet led with 

I've always held the opinion that working class Mainers shouldn't foot the bill for someone else's choices. Once again, radical leftist elites prove they don't understand Maine.

It then included this text:   

Sadly, this is what the radical leftist elites are learning about "democracy" these days:  silence and destroy anyone who disagrees with your views or goals.  I stand by my vote and my opposition to forking out $10,000 to people who freely chose to attend college.  They were privileged to have the opportunity, andmany left college well-situted to make six figure salaries for life.  The Twitterati can keep bemoaning their privileged status and demanding handouts all they want, but as far as I’m concerned if they want free money for college, they can join the Marines and serve the country like I, and so many others, have in the past and many more will in the future. If they want a career and hard skills without college debt, they should join a union and enter an apprenticeship. But if they choose to attend college, they can pay back their loans just like working-class people pay back home mortgages, car loans, and many other expenses that people choose to take out loans for.

Golden's statement provoked lots of strong reaction on X, formerly known as Twitter.  One of those responding was Tiffany Bond, an independent who has twice challenged Golden in the past.  Bond broached the matter of the implications of Golden's position for rural Maine, writing:  

What the hell is wrong with you, Jared?  Rural Maine will have no dentists, doctors, lawyers, teachers or anyone requiring a professional education. You don’t understand rural Maine.

The Maine People’s Alliance account responded  “Really? I’m not sure the ‘Twitterati’ are the ones not understanding Maine right now.”

Academics responded, too.  History professor Heather Cox Richardson wrote, 

Heavens!  Did you really write this or have you been hacked?!? You always seemed a centrist voie of reason that represented your Maine district well.  What's with this "radical leftist elitists"?!? 

And University of Maine political science professor Amy Fried posted a few responses:

This language is divisive and nasty.  There is a real debate to be had about helping people go to and graduate college and if there are benefits to be gleaned by the whole society.  You've done nothing to contribute to that.  Just awful.  Don't think of running statewide, ever. 

An account holder called bre kidman's awkward blue check wrote: 

Yikes, bub.

Did you draw the short straw on making the cringe statement to get that Sallie Mae money for the team? You know college educated Mainers aren't making 6 figure salaries.

JS there are classier ways to quit Congress than slamming your constituents when they're down.

Then, from the same account: 

Also, real quick math question: how much money did Maine voters spend getting you elected to a job with a low six-figure salary?

The tone of Golden's statement--though not the substance--is in sharp contrast to the statement of another "rural" politician, former Montana Governor Steve Bullock who wrote in a New York Times op-ed in December, 2021: 

To overcome these obstacles [facing the Democratic party in rural America], Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month.

Note that Bullock held himself out as representing what rural voters generally think, which is not necessarily the same as saying he would side with them on either student loan relief or climate change policies.  That is, we do not know what he thinks or what side he would land on faced with policies to ameliorate student debt or climate change.  What is clear is that Bullock's tone is more conciliatory than Golden's, that it leaves room for nuance and discussion.  Bullock's op-ed criticizes his fellow Democrats who are urbancentric in not thinking about rural concerns, but he does not call his fellow Democrats "radical leftist elites."  That's a pretty big difference.  

I blogged about Bullock's op-ed and the response to it in this post.

In any event, I'm curious to see how Golden's stance on student loan relief plays out when he's up for re-election next year.  I suspect there are rural and working-class Mainers on both sides of this issue.  For example, those trying to earn degrees or who are concerned about the cost of their children's educational aspirations may not agree with Golden. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism and First Gen Course Blog.  

Will Democrats turn to "class" in the wake of Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action and student loan?

Jonathan Weisman wrote in yesterday's New York Times under the headline, "Supreme Court Decisions on Education Could Offer Democrats an Opening." The subtitle is, "The decisions this week on affirmative action and student loans give Democrats a way to make a case on class and appeal to voters who have drifted away from the party."  Some excerpts follow:

[I]n striking down race-conscious college admissions, the Supreme Court has handed the Democrats a way to shift from a race-based discussion of preference to one tied more to class. The court’s decision could fuel broader outreach to the working-class voters who have drifted away from the party because of what they see as its elitism.

The question is, will the party pivot?

“This is a tremendous opportunity for Democrats to course-correct from identity-based issues,” said Ruy Teixeira, whose upcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” looks at the bleeding of working-class voters over the last decade. “As I like to say, class is back in session.”

* * * 

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist pressing his party to expand its outreach to the working class, said adding a new emphasis on class consciousness to augment racial and ethnic awareness would fit well with Mr. Biden’s pitch that his legislative achievements have largely accrued to the benefit of workers.

Infrastructure spending, electric vehicles investment, broadband expansion and semiconductor manufacturing have promoted jobs — especially union jobs — all over the country but especially in rural and suburban areas, often in Republican states.

“By next year, Democrats will be able to say we’ve invested in red states, blue states, urban areas, rural areas,” he said. “We’re not like the Republicans. We’re for everybody.”

As I have argued elsewhere, I hate that these issues are often framed as if we have to choose between race and class--between helping people of color and helping the socioeconomically disadvantaged.  

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.  

Community college grads can outearn their "elite university peers"

Teresa Watanable reported last week for the Los Angeles Times under the headline, "The most lucrative majors? Some community college grads can outearn their elite university peers."  An excerpt follows: 

While UC and top private campuses are flooded with applications, students' post-graduation earnings can be as much — or more — with degrees from the more accessible California State University or California Community Colleges, depending on the field, data analyzing California institutions showed.

Among computer engineering majors, for instance, San Jose State graduates earn a median $127,047 four years after graduation. That’s nearly the same as UCLA’s $128,131 and more than USC's $115,102, as well as seven other UC campuses that offer the major, which combines software development with hardware design. Cal State graduates in that field from Chico, Long Beach, Fresno, Fullerton, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Luis Obispo earn more than $90,000 annually. 

“It really pays to look at outcomes and not be blinded by the brand name,” said Martin Van Der Werf of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “The best brand name doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to result in the highest life earnings.”

Itzkowitz said Cal State is a particularly good deal. The CSU annual base tuition is only $5,742, compared with $13,752 at UC and $66,640 at USC, although such variables as financial aid and housing costs affect the actual out-of-pocket expenses. Even if Cal State increases tuition, which some officials are proposing to address a $1.5-billion budget gap, the price would still be thousands lower than UC.

“The CSU system itself has really been shown as a pillar of producing economic mobility for students,” he said. “It enrolls a more economically diverse student body. And it also has been shown to produce strong economic outcomes for lower and moderate-income students. They're really at the top of the list of affordability and outcomes.”

New York Times newsletter again talking class and the Democratic Party

Here's an excerpt from David Leonhardt's newsletter, which begins by asserting that the Democratic Party's biggest challenge today is to win over working-class voters.  Leonhardt is skeptical that working class voters' drift to the Republican Party boils down to racism--at least not to racism alone: 

If the Democrats’ struggles were really all about racism, several heavily Mexican-American counties in South Texas would not have swung to the Republicans this year. Nor would Trump have increased his vote share in the New York boroughs of Queens and the Bronx by about 10 percentage points versus 2016. He appears to have won a higher share of the vote in the Bronx, which is only 9 percent non-Hispanic white, than in affluent Manhattan, which is 47 percent white, Dave Wasserman of The Cook Political Report pointed out.

This pattern leaves Democrats needing to attract a lot votes in traditionally Republican suburbs to win many elections. That’s a narrow path to victory. 

Here's Leonhardt's response to the question what Democrats can do: 

Many working-class voters, across racial groups, are moderate to conservative on social issues: They are religious, favor well-funded police departments and support some restrictions on both abortion and immigration. On economic issues, by contrast, they tend to back Democratic positions, like a higher minimum wage and expanded government health care.

For Democrats to do better with the working class, they probably need to moderate their liberal image on social issues — and double down on economic populism.

Here's a related New York Times April essay by Doug Sosnik on the so-called diploma divide. 

Center for Working Class Politics on the most successful Democratic Party candidates

David Leonhardt writes in today's New York Times newsletter under the headline, "How Democrats can Win Workers" and the subhead, "Teachers, Not Lawyers."  Here's an excerpt:  

About 60 percent of U.S. voters do not have a four-year college degree, and they live disproportionately in swing states. As a result, these voters — often described as the American working class — are crucial to winning elections. Yet many of them are deeply skeptical of today’s Democratic Party.

Republicans retook control of the House last year by winning most districts with below-median incomes. In nearly 20 Western and Southern states, Democrats are virtually shut out of statewide offices largely because of their weakness among the white working class. Since 2018, the party has also lost ground with Black, Asian and especially Latino voters.

Unless the party improves its standing with blue-collar voters, “there’s no way for progressive Democrats to advance their agenda in the Senate,” according to a study that the Center for Working-Class Politics, a left-leaning research group, released this morning.

The class inversion of American politics — with most professionals supporting Democrats and more working-class people backing Republicans — is one of the most consequential developments in American life (and, as regular readers know, a continuing theme of this newsletter).

Today, I’ll be writing about what Democrats might do about the problem, focusing on a new YouGov poll, conducted as part of the Center for Working-Class Politics study. In an upcoming newsletter, I’ll examine the issue from a conservative perspective and specifically how Republicans might alter their economic agenda to better serve their new working-class base.

A key point is that even modest shifts in the working-class vote can decide elections. If President Biden wins 50 percent of the non-college vote next year, he will almost certainly be re-elected. If he wins only 45 percent, he will probably lose.