by Mike Smith Recently, Democrats announced their new leadership team in the U.S. Senate. This new team included Sen. Bernie Sanders. His new assignment is to try and convince those working-class Americans who abandoned Democrats in the recent election to support Democratic candidates in the future. The hope is that a populist senator like Sanders will be able to identify and address the core concerns of middle-income Americans. But, as Sanders embarks on his new assignment, he needs to recognize the mistakes the Democrats made during the last election.
For example, attempts to label Donald Trump’s working-class supporters as racists — as some Democrats tried to do — exhibits a lack of understanding of what motivated these voters. Democrats didn’t suffer losses because working-class Americans are racists. Democrats lost because they never adequately addressed this group’s economic frustrations. Senator Sanders seems to understand this. In a recent speech Sanders rightly explained that pocketbook issues played the biggest role in the middle class flocking to Trump, not racism or bigotry. As President Obama was touting the benefits of such things as the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and free trade — typically a Republican political stance — Trump hammered away at the pitfalls of this agreement, as well as other trade agreements and the sins of free trade — typically a political position many Democrats support.
To the working class, these trade agreements have resulted in the demise of good-paying jobs and have caused them economic uncertainty. Trump seized on this dissatisfaction and promised changes that protect working-class jobs, while Hillary Clinton did not, or at least she didn’t at the outset of her presidential bid. Later in her campaign, she was forced to reverse herself and oppose these agreements. But in flip-flopping, Clinton came across as insincere.
Democrats thought that promising a higher minimum wage would be enough to coax working-class Americans to vote for them. No doubt a higher minimum wage probably had some positive impact in attracting working-class voters, but perhaps only marginally, because this group’s interest isn’t in working at minimum-wage jobs. Rather, they are more interested in keeping or obtaining higher-paying and longer-lasting jobs. The promise of a higher minimum wage simply missed the mark with the working class.
What Senator Sanders and many Democrats still fail to recognize is that working-class Americans don’t necessarily hate the rich or even begrudge them money they have earned. They understand that many of those who are now rich worked hard for their money and perhaps took enormous risks to accumulate wealth. The hope of many working-class Americans is that they too may be wealthy some day. As a result, a political strategy that promotes class warfare by pitting the rich against the working class wasn’t as successful as Democrats had hoped. Instead, working-class Americans are upset mostly with a political and economic system that seems to benefit elites at the expense of all others.
Certainly, some in this elite category are rich, but it is not a category that is made up exclusively of the rich. The perception is that these elites want to maintain the status quo and therefore protect only themselves, and this is what angers Americans, not wealth. Donald Trump is a very rich man, but his wealth was hardly a factor in this election. What mattered most to many angry Americans was shaking up the status quo. Hillary Clinton was seen as part of the problem and not the solution, whereas Trump, as an outsider, was able to tap into this voter anger and their desire for change.
Lastly, here’s some travel advice for Senator Sanders: Spend most of your time in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, and skip Democratic strongholds in the Northeast or the West Coast. Midwesterners need to be convinced that Democrats understand their economic needs. If Democrats can ease the economic uncertainty of working-class Americans, especially with those located in the Midwest, then their chance of election success is enhanced.
Bernie Sanders has his work cut out for him, but what U.S. Senate Democrats recognized is that he is the right person to be delivering the message. The ultimate question is this: Will he be able to deliver a message that connects with those working-class Americans whom he’s trying to bring back to the Democratic Party?
Mike Smith is the host of the radio program, Open Mike with Mike Smith, on WDEV 550 AM and 96.1, 96.5, 98.3 and 101.9 FM. He is also a political analyst for WCAX-TV and WVMT radio and is a regular contributor to Vermont Business Magazine, The Times Argus and Rutland Herald. He was the secretary of administration and secretary of human services under former Gov. Jim Douglas.