A recent analysis in the New York Times shows how the loss of work, income and pride for working class men in the Midwest has led to electoral shifts in the now well known swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The article and the data it displays show clearly how the working class of those states have lost ground over the period between about 1980 and 2023. That downward mobility, the article argues, is a key factor that has caused many working class men to stop supporting the Democratic Party, and to begin supporting the reactionary Republican Party.
In the period between 1945 and the 1970s, many working class men were able to get only a high school education, yet get a unionized job work at a nearby factory and work for decades at the same factory, earning a decent salary and at least health care and pension benefits. During the mid 1970s and after, that all changed. Many of those jobs have since disappeared from the region, and incomes for factory workers have declined consistently since then, with higher paying jobs going to workers with higher levels of education, particularly in STEM fields. The capitalist class (the 1%, Wall Street, big business, corporate America, etc.) found cheaper places and ways to produce, and developed whole new fields of tech-based work that relied less on manual labor.
This has led, slowly, to some sections of the working class, particularly white men, to support Trump and his Republican Party because they perceive that he recognizes their suffering and expresses their anger at the system that has led to their losses. And when compared with the Democrats, that seems like the better option.
The problem is that both political parties have overseen the destruction of those jobs and the way of life that some workers look back to with nostalgia. If you trace the declining conditions for working class people back just to the 1980s, we see that seven different presidents – 4 Republican and 3 Democrat – have been in office as conditions have steadily worsened for millions. Although Ronald Reagan began the direct attacks on the working class by breaking the PATCO strike of 1981, both parties and all the presidents since have actively contributed to the immiseration of the working class and the downward mobility of significant segments of the middle class.
That’s because both political parties completely support the capitalist system, and they are simply letting capitalism do what it does. The capitalist class pursues profit above all else, and that means cutting our wages, making us work longer or harder for the same amount, laying us off, or replacing us with technology. And they rely on the both the Democrats and the Republicans to oversee their system for them.
Working class people shouldn’t look to the Democrats and Harris to solve our problems, they are a party of big business just like the Republicans. But neither should workers look to the Republicans or Trump, who now like to say the words “working class” as they continue to give big businesses more ability to screw workers over.
Neither party offers hope for working people. Neither should receive our support.
