Liberals have a duty to save Trump loyalists from the brink of destruction

In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the New Deal. It would run until 1939 and encompassed a series of public works and relief programs specifically targeted at rebuilding the ravages of the Great Depression. Among its infamous changes was the foundation of the Social Security Administration, minimum wage laws, and it eventually spiraled out into things like Medicare and others. The New Deal saved a dying class of Americans who were quickly being left behind by the modern world. Many had grade-school educations; they were carpenters, tradesmen, and laborers. Without Roosevelt’s New Deal, they would have been economically extinct, relegated to a short-life of extreme poverty. It was Roosevelt’s New Deal that cemented the Democratic Party as the party of the working class. He lifted working people up, and what followed were the worker’s unions, manufacturing jobs and decent salaries that built the American middle class into a force to be reckoned with. Despite Roosevelt’s liberal stance on social issues, many socially conservative workers voted for him each of the four terms he ran. Not because they were social justice warriors, but because Roosevelt had saved their asses, and they knew it.

Then, decades later in the 1990s, Bill Clinton abandoned all that with NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). NAFTA sent many of the New Deal inspired manufacturing jobs overseas and encouraged American industries to import cheaper steel, textiles, and consumer products from China and Japan. It also encouraged American companies to outsource their labor, sending it off to forieghn lands with low standards of living. It was sold to the American people in the form of cheap consumer products, often manufactured to sub-par standards. With the stroke of a pen, Clinton outsourced a generation’s prosperity. By turning its back on the working people supported by Roosevelt’s 1933 actions, the Democratic Party of the 1990s morphed into something new. No longer the party of the working class, they embraced social reforms like gay marriage, minority rights, immigration reform, and gender rights. All are noble pursuits, that if paired with feverish support of workers rights could have propelled the Democratic Party forward. Instead, Democrats of the 90s hedged their bets with intellectual elites, the rising tech sector, science and technology based industries, and wealthy urbanites. Sadly for the democrats, there are far more working Americans, than ivy-league intellectuals.

Since Clinton’s two terms in office, the Democratic Party has consistently failed to court the working class. Instead, areas that were once blue (due to Roosevelt’s new deal) turned red. Areas that once could have been courted into supporting new social ideals with economic incentives, turned inward, often seeing social changes as the cause for their economic angst. Democrats doubled down on the idea that racism, sexism, bigotry, and homophobia were the cause of the societies’ angst, while in many cases forgetting that the old-world democrats of 1933 ever existed. Since Clinton’s signing of NAFTA, democrats have tilled the fields of economic unrest, and paved the way for the presidency of Donald Trump. They did this by ignoring the working class they once uplifted, and often belittling, attacking, and downgrading their plight as they fell far below the poverty line. Needless to say, those families that once voted blue now largely make up the 74 million votes cast for Donald Trump in November’s election.

Trump positioned himself perfectly as the champion of those left behind by the new age of democratic policies. He attacked China, the country the working class sees as the ultimate beneficiary of the sacrifice Clinton made with NAFTA in the 90s. He rallied against the political establishment, the very people that tossed the American working class under the bus. Trump tricked them into believing he was one of them; a builder, someone who works with his hands, someone who knows the plight of the American worker. His wealth was merely the result of his work ethic, nothing more. Worse, Trump inspired the ire within the working class that they had been betrayed. They had been betrayed, they knew that, and they were eager to get revenge on the monsters who betrayed them. Trump’s cardinal sin however was further betraying the working class, and pouring his vast amounts of legislative power into further enriching billionaires just like him, all while stoking the idea that minorities and the LGBTQ community were the cause of working America’s plight. He gave merit to their belief that public schools sought to radicalize their children, and that higher education would turn them into anti-patriots.

As of right now, working America is angry. They believe their one shot at reestablishing the ideals of Roosevelt’s New Deal was stolen from them in a bogus election. That kind of hate, built up over decades of constant betrayal, didn’t go away on January 20th. For these Americans, Joe Biden represents the very force that betrayed them decades ago. Kamela Harris represents the progressive force that constantly tells them they’re racist, sexist, bigotted, homophobic, and in their minds, wants to rob them of their guns and their faith. It’s easy to poke fun at these notions, but much harder to empathize with them. These Americans were betrayed, their trust was broken, and without desperate and swift action, things will only get worse.

So what can President Biden do to begin weaving the delicate wounds of society back together. First, he must recommit to the working class. Raising the minimum wage is a start, but declaring a living wage is much better. Penalizing companies for shipping potentially good paying manufacturing jobs overseas is another step forward. Getting working Americans the training they need, free of any charge, would be another positive step, along with incentives to equalize their income in line with their state’s median. Passing legislation that encourages companies like Apple to move product manufacturing back home, and passing economic policies that balance high wages with competitive product costs. Trump’s economic policies with China were actually a step in the right direction, but tweaking them so they benefit the American worker, and not the American executive would be a wise step forward. Ensuring working Americans have health care is vital, and without that any other progress will be very difficult.

Bundling progressive measures to eradicate racism, sexism, and homophobia with radical measures to help the working class is a win-win that can bring two separate sides together. Roosevelt did this with the New Deal, Biden can do it with another. Ironically, Biden has a partner in this endeavor whose vision is just what America needs, Bernie Sanders. While Sanders calls himself a socialist, he’s anything but. Social Security was once considered socialist, as was Medi-Care and minimum wage. Sander’s views on the working class could usher in a New New Deal, one that lifts Americans out of poverty, trains them for the jobs of today and helps them realize an economically liberated future. If Biden did this, many of our problems with hatred, race, and inequality would evaporate. People would support him and the democratic party with the same gusto they did in 1933. He would be, and could be, the hero of both the working class and oppressed minorities. But the blade has to cut both ways, and the Democratic Party has learned that you sacrifice the worker at your own peril.

Poverty and racism are often intertwined. Lack of education and opportunity often fertilize feelings of insecurity, which eventually fuel feelings of racism. All of this is interconnected, and all of it can be eradicated when you welcome working people back into the fold of liberal policies. Apologize for the democratic betrayal of the working class, then dedicate the entire weight of your diverse administration to fixing it. Let the white working class see people of color taking action on their behalf, and in time, racism will become a thing of the past.

That kind of commitment from the government, with the citizens' commitment to listen and empathize before we judge, might just bring Trump’s 74 million voters back from the brink of white nationalism and hate. We can’t liberate their minds with social media posts and memes that disparage, mock, and belittle them. We can liberate their minds with swift action that lifts them out of poverty and onto a path to something better.