From Liberals to Trump: Where Now the Forgotten Man and Woman?

Supporters of President Trump watch as pro-impeachment demonstrators march in downtown Los Angeles in 2019. Credit: the Los Angeles Times.

Miss Manners, he is not, but sometimes Donald Trump is inadvertently truthful.

During an October campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump told voters, “You know, before the plague came in, I had it made. I wasn't coming to Erie. I mean, I have to be honest. There was no way I was coming. I didn't have to.” Perhaps because he sensed a lost cause, Trump had become a soothsayer: the die had been cast in the hard-hat swing county of the 2020 election’s hinge state. In 2016, Trump shocked the political world by winning the staunchly Democratic, blue-collar county. In 2020, Joe Biden eked out a win by 49.9% to 48.8%. His 1,424-vote margin, out of more than 138,000 cast, was symbolically and substantively crucial. With Biden taking Pennsylvania by only 81,000 ballots, Erie County encapsulated Biden’s appeal to the state’s hard-hat, white working class, an appeal that wasprove decisive in a razor-thin race. The day before Trump's event in Eric, there was an more telling rally. The “Erie Trump & Back the Blue Train” featured a few dozen MAGA-flag bedecked trucks, rolling through downtown on a Saturday afternoon with honking horns and hooting-and-hollering at pedestrians. But where Trump signs and MAGA hats had littered Erie in 2016, the truck rally left little more than a collective shrug. Largely oblivious to the rolling Hard Hat Riot, most Erieites tuned into the Steelers-Browns football game instead. So what changed?

How Liberalism Lost the "Forgotten Man"

Donald Trump understood Hard Hat Riots. A creature and product of 1970s New York City, Trump lived and worked blocks from the iconic melee on May 8, 1970. Construction workers, in their hard hats, brawled with anti-war protesters in the streets of lower Manhattan. The clash embodied the class war raging within the Democratic Party. With working class whites pitted against educated liberals, the conflict undid the Franklin Roosevelt coalition and boosted Ronald Reagan into the White House. The single largest demographic in the American electorate, the white working class, or as Trump calls them, his “base,” is now the linchpin of the Republican coalition. And so the Trump Presidency, the 2020 election, and the last 50 years of American political history has been one long Hard Hat Riot. For half a century, New Deal liberals had appealed to the white working class via Franklin Roosevelt’s rhetoric. Declaring the New Deal was dedicated to the “Forgotten Man” at the “bottom of the economic pyramid", FDR pushed tangible benefits to the nation’s dispossessed. The potency of the Forgotten Man long pre-dated the Great Depression: resentment pointed at the halls of economic, cultural, and political power pulsates deep within the American DNA. From the 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion to the People’s Party Revolt of the 1890s, the Forgotten Man [and Woman] have periodically erupted and disrupted the reigning political order. FDR’s formulation was simply one more iteration on a familiar, populist theme. From 1932 through the mid-1960s, liberals channeled populist resentment at economic elites and reaped the electoral rewards. But then changed domestic priorities, altered tone, and the displacement of their representatives sent working class whites from the party of Roosevelt. New Politics liberals sought a new “coalition of conscience” that would replace working class whites with an alliance comprised of themselves, the poor, the elderly, Hispanics, and African Americans. Leading this charge was George McGovern who brought this new-fangled coalition together in 1972 to win the Democratic nomination. He then lost in the second-biggest electoral landslide in US history, with a paltry 37.5% of the popular election vote. In 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988, the GOP rode the white working class vote to sweeping victories. Liberals assuaged their bruised political egos with the soothing “Backlash” lullaby, singing to themselves that working class whites fled the Democrats solely out of racial animus. Seared in race and bigotry, Backlash politics was that and more, taking on the youth revolt, anti-war protests, and spiraling crime rates. Convinced that the party of Roosevelt had turned its back upon them, the white working class Democratic elites ignored their concerns, with the 1970 Hard Hat Riots only one of the manifestations. Throughout the 1970s, crime, urban riots, and public sector strikes regularly beset New York City. In an era of generalized soaring homicide rates and lawlessness, violent crime doubled from 1965 to 1969. Assaults upon subway commuters were commonplace. Working class residents saw their neighborhoods engulfed in the turmoil as their property values plummetted. Entrenched in ethnic enclaves and embracing the racist norms of the day, they blamed outsiders, African Americans, the civil rights movement, and liberal social norms for their predicament. In the midst of the disrupt, a fresh-faced young developer named Donald Trump took over his family business and moved it to Manhattan where he enjoyed a front row seat to his city’s political class war.

A Liberal Denial

Stunningly, New Politics liberals denied reality. The original progenitors of “fake news", liberals routinely denounced FBI crime statistics as inaccurate, racist canards. Mayor John Lindsay echoed these sentiments. Possessing Hollywood looks and a reserved seat on the late night Johnny Carson Show, Lindsay ignored the hue and cry of his white working class voters. Aspiring for national office, even the Presidency, Lindsay was challenged for the 1969 Democratic nomination by the city comptroller and political nobody Mario Procaccino. Diminutive, squat, and proudly working class, Procaccino labelled Lindsay’s high-minded ethos, which dismissed working class concerns, “limousine liberalism”. Alliteratively compelling, the term damned liberals as out-of-touch elitists. Democratic voters agreed and stunned the political world by giving Procaccino the nomination. Taking the baton from Procaccino was the Democrat Mayor of Donald Trump’s heyday, Ed Koch, who entered Gracie Mansion in 1978 on a law-and-order platform. Presiding for three terms over a city awash in racially-charged crimes, riots, and incidents, the mayor understood that the white working class buttered his political bread. Foreshadowing Trump’s racial demagoguery, the Mayor said of the black youths arraigned --- and exonerated 13 years later --- in the Central Park Five case, “We always have to say 'alleged,' because that's the requirement." Across the US, conservatives took copious notes and followed the “limousine liberal” line of attack.In 1974, Richard Nixon, battered by Watergate, performed yo-yo tricks at the Grand Ole Opry. A decade later, Reagan campaigned for re-election with the First Lady of Country Music", Tammy Wynette, who implored working class Southerners to “Stand By Your Man". In 2004, George W. Bush launched his re-election campaign at the Daytona 500, stock car racing's premier event. The appearances were awkward and strained but they still sent an indelible message to those who felt betrayed by liberals: conservatives “got” the white working class. Still, Republicans never fully won their vote with Backlash politics. To eclipse the working class's historic devotion to the Democratic Party, conservatives required issues and substance. That came in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan capitalizing upon a flaccid economy and volatile Cold War. “Reagan Democrats" joined a Republican coalition that offered recovery, law and order, and a renewed conflict with the Soviet Union. The GOP also helped propel the deindustrialization that wrought havoc across working class communities, but Reagan Democrats doggedly stuck with the GOP that was risking their jobs hurting their pocketbooks. The Republicans were tapping into and exploiting social concerns, with Democrats --- Bill Clinton aside --- speaking in culturally foreign dialects. A product of the white working class, even Clinton struggled to appeal to this demographic. FDR’s class-based “Forgotten Man” rhetoric had been replaced by business-friendly growth liberalism. A Kennedy-era experiment to make peace with big business and woo middle class voters, this growth liberalism funded its liberal programs with “responsible” budget deficits. Propelled by the Democratic Leadership Council into the White House, Clinton made growth liberalism his economic policy and created what had been unthinkable: “Wall Street Democrats". Working class whites increasingly believed federal programs were intended for the undeserving poor and connected elites. Fueling this distrust was the dearth of white working class descriptive representation. The 20th-century Democratic Party had long balanced its rural and urban wings. For every fancy-pant urbanite party leader like Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and John Kennedy, there was a white working class bumpkin such as Champ Clark, Sam Rayburn, and Carl Albert. By the 1980s, the party had ceased this cultural balancing act. Descriptive representation matters, and rightly so, to women and ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities. But the reality cut both ways.

The Limit of Rage Politics

In 2016, Trump’s rage politics fit an electorate that seethed with resentment. A globalized, deindustrialized economy convinced white working class that economic and political elites privileged themselves and others in a rigged system. Purged by the Democratic Party of the common man but let down betrayed by the Republican Party of Reagan, working class whites embraced the newest iteration of Backlash Politics. Reared on New York City’s potent version of that politics, Trump brought the Hard Hat Riot 2.0 onto the debate stage and into Presidential politics. But his campaign was more than World Wrestling Federation glitz and glam. Beneath the lies and showmanship were bits and pieces of substance, policy, and issues. Railing against immigration, de-industrialization, and endless wars, he promised working class whites jobs, economic security, an enhanced social safety net (minus Obamacare), and an end to far-flung globalism. E The combination of Hard Hat Riot 2.0 and those positions drew the white working class to his standard and helped his insurgent capture of the GOP nomination. In Erie in 2016, prim-and-proper Trump/Pence lawn signs in the suburbs were conjoined with makeshift signs at industrial parks and rough-and-ready displays at rural crossroads. Obama fatigue and Trump's martial charisma brought together a creaky coalition of reluctant Country Club Republicans, wary evangelicals, and enthused working class whites. Rage politics brought Trump into the White House. But fury, loathing, and contempt would meet their match. They could not tame a pandemic or shift the political conversation from such an all-consuming medical-cum-economic emergency. Trump’s fatal mistake in 2020 was premising a re-election campaign solely upon Hard Hat Riot animus. Had the long ballyhooed “infrastructure week” become the president’s $2-trillion reply to COVID-19, he could have tilted the electoral map against Biden. But rage politics blinds its purveyors as well as its consumers. Trump stumbled into the 2020 race drunk off the scorn of elites. Oppositional to the extreme, he offered zero policy proposals and stage-managed a Republican Convention, which had no official platform. Long-winded, rambling rallies became even more so. Trump bumbled into telling the truth in Erie. He not only took votes for granted, he felt a campaign stop in a minor-league Rust Belt city was beneath him. And so he narrowly lost Erie and Pennsylvania. In 58 presidential contests, a mere five elected incumbents have lost their re-election contests in one-on-one campaigns. Trump was only the third to lose since 1888, in the second-most lopsided defeat since 1988. Trump’s feckless mendacity was both the apogee and the cul-de-sac of Hard Hat Riot politics. Bravado, audacity, and faux outrage worthy of a professional wrestling cage match amplified white working class turnout and made significant inroads with non-college Hispanic and African American men. But finding neither ideas or vision, Republican college-educated suburban men and women fled the president in droves. Down ballot, these anti-Trump suburban voters helped keep GOP losses to a minimum in Senate and State races, and the party gained a handful of House seats. But the White House was lost decisively.

Where Now the Forgotten Man and Woman?

2020 ain’t 1972, 1980, or even 2016. But the long Hard Hat Riot endures. Large elements of the white, and a small, but not insignificant, fraction of the Hispanic and Black working class sees itself as the Forgotten Man and Woman of American politics. History, Mark Twain tells us, does not repeat itself so much as rhyme. And 2020 is consonant with 1968. Then, the Roosevelt coalition fell asunder. Now, Reagan’s assemblage has finally come undone. Today, a multi-racial working class holds the keys to realignment. To win, conservatives require more than Trumpian bread and circus. Rage politics is all spectacle and style. It is the high calorie bomb, fast food of American politics, filling you your belly with junk and bile that leaves you perpetually hungry. However, try as one might, you simply can’t make a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme nutritious, and you can't use rage politics for a sustained majority. For Democrats, a return to the past is in order. Substantive, class-based Forgotten Man and Woman politics was once the foundation of a majority party. The 2020 election highlights a multi-racial working class coalition hungering for a standard bearer. Defunding the Police, Green New Deals, and Medicare for All constitute the white progressive’s imagined policy dreams of the working class. To be sure, most working class voters seek to end police brutality, address climate change, and access to healthcare. But they want the meat-and-potatoes of jobs and economic security as their first course. And these policies need to be offered in a sweat-of-the-brow parlance that stresses earned benefits and equality of opportunity not result. The Forgotten Man and Woman of American politics don’t want European-style social democracy. They yearn for an equal shot at the American Dream. To make this pitch, politicians with actual working class roots and middle American resumes, need to be on the ballot rather than just in focus groups. To build an enduring majority and send Trumpism to the margins, Democrats need a leader to go to Erie. Not just go there but speak its language and, thus, earn its respect and votes.

Jeff Bloodworth is Professor of History, Co-Director, School of Public Service & Global Affairs at Gannon University.