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. 

Edsall on Democrats' uphill battle in 2022, 2024, with attention to the white working class

The headline for Thomas Edsall's column is "Democrats are Making Life too Easy for Republicans," and an excerpt focusing on the white working class follows:  

At the moment, there is widespread pessimism among those on the left end of the political spectrum. Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at Brookings, replying by email to my inquiry, wrote that for predictable reasons, “Democrats face an uphill battle in both 2022 and 2024.”

But, she went on, “the problems are much deeper. First, the white working class that used to vote Democratic no longer does.” Sawhill noted that when she

studied this group back in 2018, what surprised me most was their very negative attitudes toward government, their dislike of social welfare programs, their commitment to an ethic of personal responsibility and the importance of family and religion in their lives. This large group includes some people who are just plain prejudiced but a larger group that simply resents all the attention paid to race, gender, sexual preference or identity and the disrespect they think this entails for those with more traditional views and lifestyles.

Messages coming from the more progressive members of the Democratic Party, Sawhill warned, “will be exploited by Republicans to move moderate Democrats or to move no-Trump Republicans in their direction.”

Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, is highly critical of the contemporary Democratic Party, writing by email:

Misguided focus on unpopular social policies are driving voters away from the Democratic Party and are mobilizing Republicans. Democrats used to be the party of the working class, but today they are instead seen as a party defined by ostensibly legalizing property crime, crippling the police and injecting social justice into math classes.

As a result, Westwood continued,

It is no surprise that this doesn’t connect with a working family struggling to pay for surging grocery bills. By abandoning their core brand, even Democrats who oppose defunding the police are burdened by the party’s commitment to unpopular social policy.

The traditional strategy in midterm elections, Westwood wrote, is to mobilize the party base. Instead, he contended, Democrats

have decided to let the fringe brand the party’s messaging around issues that fail to obtain majority support among the base. Perhaps the most successful misinformation campaign in modern politics is being waged by the Twitter left against the base of the Democratic Party. The Twitter mob is intent on pushing social policies that have approximately zero chance of becoming law as a test of liberalism. Even if you support reducing taxes on the middle class, immigration reform and increasing the minimum wage, opposing defunding the police or the legalization of property crime makes you an unreasonable outcast.  (emphasis mine)

In other words, Westwood is blasting purity tests. 

I have highlighted the column's comment about the rural-urban dynamic in a post at Legal Ruralism.  

Sports, social class, and race (Part 1 of 3)

This is part one of a three-part series about sports and the white working class, with an emphasis on professional wrestling. This part focuses on providing a framework to understanding the intersection of sports with social class and race.

In the movie Billy Elliot, a young, working class boy from County Durham in North East England finds that his talent is in the girls-only ballet class, much to the consternation of his hyper-masculine, coal-miner father. Billy's father much prefers boxing, which is more popular in their community and a traditionally masculine sport.

When Billy arrives in London to audition for the Royal Ballet, he is unsure how to communicate with his peers from elite backgrounds, and he ends up punching another dancer in frustration after his audition. The judges are horrified by Billy's act of violence and seem troubled that he could bring the violent mores of working-class County Durham to vaunted halls of the Royal Ballet.  

The thematic contrast between boxing and ballet that underpins Billy Elliot goes beyond a simple contrast between combat and artistry, but also makes clear that sports can reflect the preferences and mores of the social classes in Britain. But why is it that sports are classed? 

Bordieu’s Theory on Cultural Capital and Sports

French sociologist Pierre Bordieu helps explain the classing of certain sports through his theory of cultural capital. His theory posits that the consumption of goods helps reinforce social class because individual consumption tends to reflect the values and virtues of the consumer’s social class.

In the sports context, Bordieu theorizes that the aims of upper class sports tend to exemplify upper class virtues likes artistic quality, health maintenance, and individualism; while lower-class sports exemplify lower-class virtues such as competitiveness, violence, strength, and collective discipline. He uses the example of body building versus gymnastics to show this distinction. While body building produces a large, physical form that outwardly reflects the working-class virtue of a strong body, gymnastics is essentially body hygiene and maintenance, which reflects the upper class virtue of a healthy body.

Bordieu also gives significant weight to the perceived social profits of certain sports. The upper classes derive social profit from certain sports because those sports acquire distributional significance. This means that certain sports acquire significance among the social classes because of how their participation is distributed among the classes. For example, golf is available almost exclusively to the upper classes because it requires a large amount of leisure time and significant economic expenditure. With such a limited subset of individuals who can afford to participate, these sports become a technique of sociability, where the upper classes derive social value from mingling among themselves in a privileged space and differentiating themselves from the lower classes.

On the other hand, the lower classes derive significantly different social profits from their sports. For example, most team sports run counter to the strong individualism reflected in upper class sports like tennis and golf, because athletes derive social profit from collective discipline, sacrifice, and working towards a common objective. Combat sports like boxing or wrestling are truly working class because the violence inherent in their execution are anathema to the virtue of respectability in the upper class. Importantly, with the increased commercialization of sports, the social profits for the working class may turn into an economic profit for a talented few, as playing sports professionally can also be a way out of poverty.

In America, the enjoyment of sports is a classed affair. Social class is reflected in consumption preferences of fans, as inferred by advertising preferences, also reflects the classing of sports in America as well. While much attention is paid to which $7,000 to $650,000 wristwatch a golfer wears when they win stops on the PGA tour, the focus in NASCAR is on which cheap, working class beer will adorn the winning car, Miller High Life or Busch. Though class and elitism is less baked in than in Britain perhaps, consumption of American sports often has distributional significance, and remains a strong indicator of social class.

American Sports and Race

Another dimension outside of class that affects the consumption of American sports is race. In the past, consumption of certain sports was almost entirely restricted by race. For example, Major League Baseball was a literal white-man’s-game until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1945. The same was true of other major sports leagues as well. For example, the National Basketball Association (NBA) - where today 74 percent of players are Black - did not integrate until 1950.

No explicit color barrier exists in American sports today, but there remain some very large racial disparities in sports fandom. For example, a full 92 percent of National Hockey League (NHL) fans are white, which is second only to NASCAR which boasts 94 percent white fans. Compare these figures to the demographics of fans of the National Basketball Association, where only 40 percent of fans are white and 45 percent are Black.

The fandom of these sports leagues also reflects participation in the highest-levels of the sport. For example, 80 percent of players in the NHL are white, and only 32 out of 800 active players are Black. This year will also be the first time that a Black driver will compete in NASCAR’s full Cup Series Schedule in 45 years. Meanwhile in the NBA, 80 percent of players are non-white.

However, while the NHL and NASCAR are obviously predominantly white sports they don’t always connote wealth. While the NHL has the highest share of fans who make more than $100,000 a year at 33 percent, the solidly middle class NASCAR has only half that at 14 percent. It seems that despite the reputation of hockey as a violent sport suitable for working-class toughs, perhaps a fairer characterization is that of the major American sports leagues, only NASCAR is a truly white working-class sport.

These statistics on race and American sports beg the question: if we are willing to accept that sports are a reflection of social class as Bordieu suggests, are sports also a reflection of race? Is being a fan of the NHL or NASCAR an expression of whiteness, as much as golf is an expression of being upper class?

Based on the extremely homogenized racial distribution of fans of American sports, I would say yes. When being a fan or participating in certain sports remains such a uniformly white experience, it’s hard to ignore the possibility that these sports have acquired what Bordieu would call distributional significance, but in the racial context as well. Participation in these sports helps reinforce distinctions between class and race by showing that someone is white, working class, or possibly both.

Paradise, California: A working class community forgotten

Chico is my home. Although I was raised in Southern California, I have spent every holiday in Chico since I was a child, I attended college there, and I have lived at my Aunt’s Chico home on numerous occasions. In fact, since both of my parents moved out of Southern California, my Aunt’s house in Chico is the only “childhood home” still in my family. So, like anyone who calls Chico home, I will tell you that our town is pretty special. It’s large enough to have the amenities we need, but still possesses a ton of small-town charm—from the historical Victorian homes to the way the downtown street names spell C-H-I-C-O. Big Chico Creek runs through the University, fills the recreational One-Mile swimming pool, and continues to Upper Bidwell Park's deep swimming holes and beautiful hiking spots. Every Thursday there is an unrivaled farmer’s market with live music and an amount of gourmet food trucks that Food Network wouldn’t believe.

Travel directly east of Chico, only a few miles up Skyway Road, and you are instantly transported to a place that looks like a perfectly idyllic set for any Christmas movie. Native sprawling maple and pine trees line the sloping hill where this town sits. Quaint and quirky mom-and-pop shops and classic diners are common and large chain stores absent. Some of the friendliest people and best views in all of Butte County are found here. It’s calm and a little sleepy—but only because people are taking in the surrounding beauty. Everyone drives a little slower in Paradise. But this place no longer exists.

In a few short hours, the so-called Camp Fire wiped out Paradise, leveling roughly 13,000 homes and killing at least 84 people (as of this post, 700 are still reported missing). I have many close friends who are among the thousands of Paradise residents who lost their homes and businesses, and I feel personally shaken by this tragedy. As someone who has spent a lot of time in Paradise, it is unfathomable to me that this beautiful town has been virtually erased from the earth. But my sadness of losing this place I enjoyed visiting is nothing compared to the grief Paradise’s former residents are feeling—former residents who I have always considered to be primarily white-working-class.

I am speaking from personal experience and observation when I make this statement, but as the related blog, What does the Camp Fire and its aftermath reveal about white privilege? points out, the population of Paradise depicted in media coverage area does appear to be primarily white. The US Census Bureau also reports that the town's median income is only $48,831 compared to $67,169 for California as a whole.

During all the time I have spent in Paradise at friend’s houses, restaurants, yoga studios, coffee shops and the like, mostly everyone I encountered was white skinned and appeared to be working-class status based on appearance, mannerisms, and career (if I was privy to such information). Residents I knew worked jobs in retail sales, customer service, or construction and lived rather modestly, which was the norm in Paradise. The houses in Paradise were often old and small with signs of wear when compared to Chico homes and the mostly local restaurants and businesses in Paradise fit the same bill. I never saw extravagant cars driving down Pentz road, mostly only pickup trucks and dated sedans. And although the town was home to a large number of retirees, it was never considered an affluent place. In fact, the retirees who chose Paradise were often on fixed incomes.

So, hearing of the 27,000 residents who lost their homes and were displaced as a result, I worry whether they have the means to get back on their feet. One former resident—a friend of mine whom I will not name—lost his home and all of his belongings in the Camp Fire. As a restaurant manager, he is solidly working-class. He and his wife are now staying with family in Chico while awaiting assessment from their insurance company. They currently face unforeseen expenses as they attempt to replace basic necessities with little savings. Prior to the fire they lived paycheck to paycheck and they don't have a nest egg to help them bounce back or rebuild.

Others are not as fortunate to have family to house them. While driving through rainy Chico on Thanksgiving Day, I witnessed hundreds of tents on the side of the road, cars filled with people’s belongings, and campers in parking lots. None of these people are 'homeless'—they are families, home owners, renters, and business owners who lost their houses and have nowhere else to go. The 'tent-cities' seen throughout Chico are evidence of how devastating the Camp Fire has been for this working-class community. I do not recall seeing similar 'tent cities' after the fires in Napa, Sonoma, or even the more recent Woolsey fire in Southern California.

Something that struck me as revealing was the media coverage following the Camp Fire. Shortly after the fire in Paradise started, other fires broke out in the Southern California communities of Thousand Oaks and Malibu. It then seemed as though the news coverage turned its focus much more towards the Southern California fires—which were threatening upper-class communities and many celebrities’ homes. Obviously any fire that threatens homes and lives is one that warrants media response. I question, however, why more attention was given to the potential losses of Kim Kardashian’s, George Clooney’s, and Courtney Jenner’s homes than was given to the homes of working-class Paradise residents who may never afford to rebuild.

Particularly, I was notified of news stories all over social media of the loss of Hollywood sets like the 'western town' used to film HBO’s west world and the 'Bachelor Mansion,' a family home used frequently by the Bachelor/Bachelorette ABC franchise. But I found no stories regarding the loss of 'Debbie’s,' a family owned diner which served the best biscuits and gravy in Butte County, of 'Positve-I,' an aerial yoga studio committed to community, or of 'Juice and Java' a 25-year-old coffee shop that introduced Northern California to 'Norcal Nitro Coffee'. I am certain that ABC and HBO will easily rebuild their sets, but it is unlikely that Butte County will ever see these businesses again.

And Paradise wasn’t only forgotten by the media. On Twitter and Facebook, Hillary Clinton posted a photograph—which I recognize to be from Chico—along with this comment:

The wildfires in California aren't just one state's crisis. With 77 reported dead and 993 missing, they are a national crisis. To pitch in to a United Way fund for those affected by the wildfires in southern California, text UWVC to 41444. pic.twitter.com/8PjFpuAYXv

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 19, 2018

Southern California. As of November 19, these were the statistics from the Northern California Camp Fire, and I am certain that photo was taken at the “tent-city” outside of Walmart I recently visited in Chico. Yet, Hillary uses this information to ask her millions of followers to make donations to Southern California wildfire relief.

Also showing a disinterest to this tragedy last week was President Trump. After shockingly blaming California for the fire, Trump visited Paradise and toured the ruins of the formerly beautiful town. Yet in an official White House statement, the President called it "Pleasure," Twice. He never apologized for his error. In fact, after his visit Trump did not post a single tweet regarding the fire or its aftermath—which is shocking considering how much time he apparently has to tweet.

I also find it appalling that the administration released only a choppy 4-minute video titled “Remarks on Northern California Wildfire Disaster” from Paradise and did not once mention the town’s name or what has been lost. However, the administration released a 17-minute “Statement on the Malibu Fires” where Trump forgets Paradise’s name and states with great confidence that:

We are in Malibu, a certain section of Malibu that was lovely. You don’t get much better than this.

In the video, he seems (almost) concerned with what was affected by the Malibu fire. This is interesting since Paradise was home to many white-working-class voters Trump appeals to while Malibu is home to many celebrities who fervently oppose him.

Why did Malibu get this much attention with only three lives lost, but Paradise seems almost forgotten? Malibu is one of the richest cities in America and will clearly be able to rebuild. Celebrities could even afford to hire private firefighters to protect their Southern California homes. Conversely, Paradise residents are living in packed shelters and tents in a Walmart parking lot. Malibu will survive, but I seriously doubt this working-class community and former residents will ever be the same.