My father-in-law grew up eating blood soup. He hated it, whether because of the taste or the humiliation, I never knew. His alcoholic father regularly drank up the family wage, and the family was often short on food money. They were evicted from apartment after apartment.
What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
Pundits and political analysts point to the white working class (WWC) as the voting bloc that tipped the 2016 Presidential Election in Donald Trump’s favor. Did Trump know something about this group that progressives and members of the Republican establishment were not privy to? No, says Joan C. Williams, but he was able to appeal to their values such as straight talk, masculinity, and economic independence, in a way that experienced politicians didn’t consider. Class politics drove the 2016 election, and it was cluelessness about the needs of the WWC that drove Trump’s victory. If Democrats want to connect with this group, they need to consider how economics, geography, and the WWC’s relationship with the classes adjacent to them—the poor and white collar workers—influence their values. Not doing so poses additional risk in an already unpredictable political climate.