For Democrats, it’s all about the workers.

Douglas Rooks
| Reviewer

Amid investigations into what happened to national Democrats on November 5th, the topic of working-class or blue-collar voters supporting Donald Trump comes up again and again.

It’s presented as if it’s something new, but it’s not. In fact, we can pinpoint the moment when labor dissatisfaction with Democratic candidates reached critical mass.

It was Ronald Reagan’s landslide election in 1980, with a massive swing in favor of a candidate who promised to bust unions, cut taxes on the rich, and cut domestic programs that opened the way for the middle class through housing, low-cost housing. college and good public schools.

That’s how the Reagan Democrats were created, and they haven’t gone away—and the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to understand what it will take to bring them back.

This may be easier than we think, although that doesn’t mean it will be easy to do.

For the Democratic Party has become disconnected from the common people who loyally supported it throughout the first two centuries of the Republic.

The Republicans, and the Whigs before them, have always been the party of business, representing capital, corporations, billionaires, whatever example you want.

But while Republicans can rightfully be considered the party of the 1%, Democrats are, at best, the party of the top 10%.

Joe Biden was the first openly pro-union president since Harry Truman, and even Biden could do little for wage earners because his party still can’t unite behind unions.

The need to do so has been delayed for 11 presidential election cycles because Democrats sometimes win—barely. Reagan’s victory over Walter Mondale was the last truly decisive result, although George H. W. Bush had a significant margin in 1988, the nadir of democratic success.

From then on we had mostly bores. As for Trump’s recent triumph and Electoral College victory, it looks unconvincing.

As mail-in voting results began to emerge in Western states, his poll rating fell below 50% of the popular vote, the fifth-highest result of the 59 presidential elections.

However, the reckoning can no longer be delayed. Democrats, having lost, must change.

The most important change is attitude. The widely noted division—college-educated voters favor Democrats and high school graduates vote Republican—is entirely artificial.

The real division, as always, is between workers and owners, labor and capital, Main Street and Wall Street. If Democrats don’t support workers, they will never be able to govern with a solid majority again.

Consider: During the pandemic, many were shocked by what “essential workers” had to go through—dealing with a life-threatening virus every day or losing their jobs, even while their children were unable to go to school and their lives were in turmoil.

Since the coronavirus subsided, we have forgotten about them.

What would help these essential, mostly low-wage workers more than anything else? Obviously, a union is the traditional way to escape sweatshop work, life-threatening threats and impossible schedules.

However, forming a new national union is now more difficult than ever, and this has not happened. The Amazon and Starbucks workers who voted to unionize don’t have contracts, and with Trump back, they never will.

The giant industrial plants that employ millions of Americans are long gone, but the workplaces where unions should be needed—hotels, restaurants, service workers of all kinds—have no representation.

All the benefits go to corporations (including non-profits), which in most states have unlimited ability to stage the terrible events that will happen if a union is formed, while organizers, if they can reach workers at all, must do so away from the workplace place among those who have little free time.

Democrats’ first priority should be to roll back decades of Republican efforts to disempower unions and make organizing campaigns fair and democratic.

Finally, there is the problem of condescension: people with higher education look down on those who work with their hands rather than with their heads. This is real and apparently deeply rooted.

Ultimately, all work is valuable and equally worthy of respect. Most Americans, even wealthy ones, need a plumber more than a financial planner.

Protecting vulnerable populations is a vital function of government and remains a bipartisan issue. But Democrats won’t succeed until they understand, as Gov. Joe Brennan has often said, that the best form of prosperity is good jobs.

Once that is established, core programs to provide housing, alternative transportation, good public schools, and free community college can become vital support rather than the sole focus of Democratic platforms.

Celebrating work is a patriotic thing, and if it includes a little criticism of capitalism, so be it. If this cause becomes central to Democratic campaigns again, they will succeed.

In the meantime, we can adapt the wonderful slogan: “Workers of America, unite!”

Douglas Rooks worked as an editor, columnist and reporter in Maine for 40 years. He is the author of four books, most recently a biography of U.S. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, and welcomes comments on the site [email protected]