On working-class and rural whites--and Democrats' cluelessness about them--in Politico

I published this today in Politico.  The headline is "There Is a Major Rift Dividing the White Working Class—And Democrats Are Clueless." 

Here's an excerpt: 

Ever since J.D. Vance became the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio, journalists and pundits have been preoccupied with how Vance’s politics have shifted since the 2016 publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. The book brought Vance fame and a platform that he used, among other things, to criticize Donald Trump. Since then, Vance’s positions on polarizing issues like immigration have lurched to the right and he sought — and won — Trump’s endorsement. Vance now also dabbles in conspiracy theories and has taken on a belligerent, Trump-like tone.

What the pundit class isn’t talking about, however, is an important consistency between 2016 author Vance and 2022 politician Vance. In his memoir, Vance pitted two groups of low-status whites against each other—those who work versus those who don’t. In academic circles, these two groups are sometimes labeled the “settled” working class versus the “hard living.” A broad and fuzzy line divides these two groups, but generally speaking, settled folks work consistently while the hard living do not. The latter are thus more likely to fall into destructive habits like substance abuse that lead to further destabilization and, importantly, to reliance on government benefits.

Vance has not renounced that divisive message. He no doubt hopes to garner the support of the slightly more upmarket of the two factions—which, probably not coincidentally, is also the group more likely to go to the polls. While elite progressives tend to see the white working class as monolithic, Vance’s competitiveness in the Ohio Senate race can be explained in no small part by his ability to politically exploit this cleavage.

As a scholar studying working-class and rural whites, I have written about this subtle but consequential divide. I have also lived it. I grew up working-class white, and I watched my truck driver father and teacher’s aide mother struggle mightily to stay on the “settled” side of the ledger. They worked to pay the bills, yes, but also because work set them apart from those in their community who were willing to accept public benefits. Work represented the moral high ground. Work was their religion.

* * *

Democrats can fruitfully borrow a page from how Trump communicated with workers. First and foremost, tell workers that they and their labor are seen and appreciated. A key theme of 2016 election coverage was that many working-class white and rural voters felt overlooked. Tracie St. Martin, a union member and heavy construction worker who supported Trump, summed up the disgruntlement, “I wanted people like me to be cared about. People don’t realize there’s nothing without a blue-collar worker.” (St. Martin, of Miamisburg, Ohio, was quoted in a ProPublica story reported by MacGillis aptly titled “Revenge of the Forgotten Class.”)

Don't miss the rest.   It's pretty good, if I do say so myself.  

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism. 

Pennsylvania Senate candidate Fetterman publishes op ed on inflation's impact on working families

Fetterman tweet dated June 17, 2022
A voter got this photo of him shopping at Costco, 
the discount warehouse store

John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for Senate, published this a few days ago in the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat under the headline, "Domestic solutions: High prices not a random problem."  Here's an excerpt, which is striking in its specificity and furthers his "everyman" image: 

Across Pennsylvania, people are getting squeezed. We’re paying more at the grocery store, more at the pump and more almost everywhere.

My opponent, millionaire celebrity Mehmet Oz, doesn’t feel a change in price when he’s filling up his gas tank – if he even pumps his own gas at all (they don’t let you do that in Oz’s native New Jersey). He doesn’t have to worry about his gas or grocery bill, and doesn’t even notice if it’s more than it used to be.

When I fill up my Dodge RAM, it’s costing a hell of a lot more than it did a year ago.

When Gisele and I go shopping for groceries at Giant Eagle, almost everything we buy costs more.

All of our families are dealing with this. In May, the Consumer Price Index saw the largest jump in consumer prices in 41 years, with inflation at 8.6% compared to the previous year. Inflation is hitting families across the commonwealth.

But what’s happening isn’t just random. It’s plain wrong.

Just last week, gas prices hit a record high of $5.07 per gallon in Pennsylvania, an outrageously high price that is impacting families across Pennsylvania.

But the truth is, if it wasn’t for the greed of oil companies, prices likely wouldn’t be this high.

In fact, the last time a barrel of crude oil cost as much as it does now was in July 2014, but at that point, a gallon of gas only cost about $3.54. Oil companies don’t need to be charging this much for gas – they’re just doing it to make excess profits.

Johnstown, in western Pennsylvania, has a population of about 20,000 and is in Cambria County and part of the Johnstown-Somerset metro.  Perhaps Fetterman sought to place this in a small-town newspaper to further and illustrate his campaign slogan, "every county.  every vote."  Or maybe this is the only paper that would run it. (I note that his wife, Gisele, got her op-ed advocating the availability of contraception in the Pittsburgh paper).   Either way, I'm happy to see a candidate taking his message about inflation straight to the people in a local newspaper. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.