There is a thread in DKOS about coal and jobs. In it someone referenced an e-mail the Mahoning County Democratic Chairman sent to the Clinton campaign.
It was prophetic:
More than two decades after its enactment, NAFTA remains a red flag for area voters who rightly or wrongly blame trade for the devastating job losses that took place at Packard Electric, GM, GE, numerous steel companies, as well as the firms that supplied those major employers,” Betras, a practicing attorney, tried to explain to the Clinton high command. “Thousands of workers in Ohio … continue to qualify for Trade Readjustment Act assistance because their jobs are being shipped overseas..
Youngstown is the county seat of Mahoning County, which is home to about 232,000 people. The population was more 300,000 in the 1970s, but then the steel mills closed and the area has never really recovered. Obama won the county by 28 points in 2012, a larger margin than he had won it by in 2008. Clinton wound up carrying Mahoning by just three points. That is largely thanks to a sizable African American population. She lost neighboring counties that had not gone Republican since 1972. Even amidst his 1984 landslide, Ronald Reagan lost Mahoning by 18 points.
Everyone thinks that this is a white rural problem. But Mahoning is not rural, as MaComb in Michigan is not.
When you see shifts this large you know something very big is going on.
One part of the article struck me:
We weren’t offering them anything for their souls. When people are thirsty, they’ll drink dirty water. When people are hungry, they’ll eat bad food to get sustenance…
The messages can’t be about `job retraining.’ These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bulls**t,” he continued. “Talk about policies that will incentivize companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs. Talk about infrastructure … The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers; they want to run back hoes, dig ditches (and) sling concrete block. … Somewhere along the line we forgot that not everyone wants to be white collar.”
There is a good amount of irony in Betras’s e-mail. Clinton had a $30 Billion plan to compensate the coal minors. There were policies she was for that were exactly that. On the last night in Iowa I heard her talk about a small manufacturing plant that had opened outside of Des Moines.
The article quotes a “senior aide” as defending the Clinton campaign:
“But no one took Youngstown for granted. No one didn’t think it was important. … It’s more of the fact that we were unable to tap into economic anxiety (nationally) than that we were not paying attention.
We thought we were going to be able to peel off more suburban Republicans who were going to be so influenced by Trump’s divisiveness. And then we thought the working class would come home,” an adviser explained, “when they heard that Clinton supported the auto bailout and Trump opposed it, when we hammered him for using Chinese steel in his construction projects and when we highlighted how workers in the building trades had been stiffed after working on Trump’s projects. … We weren’t able to accomplish either one.”
I have made the point elsewhere that these policies were never in her advertising, and there is some polling to suggest this failure to connect was decisive. In any event I never really believed the policies where much more than the best intentions of people who really didn’t understand the urgency of the problem.
It is more than possible, probable even, that there was really there was very little Clinton could do about this. Clinton was trapped: she could not move very far away from Obama (who was popular) and as a result was left defending the status quo. But Obama’s popularity was based in part because he was not part of the Status quo. More fundamentally, and I have heard this from pretty senior people, that part of the status quo was gridlock, which in turn made people skeptical that she would achieve of any of what she proposed.
In point of fact in New Hampshire one of her last ads was about her ability to work with Republicans –
In any event I want to draw attention to a review of the Post’s article on the Betras e-mail in Education Week. It noted:
Both candidates in this election promised to spend a ton of tax money on new infrastructure that will provide exactly the kind of jobs that David Betras was talking about: running backhoes, digging ditches, slinging concrete block. Building new airports, roads and bridges will also require a lot of steel girders, pipe and culverts. Glass walls will be needed and steel guard rails. And when all the old bridges are replaced and the new airports built and the work is done, it will be all over. And we will be right back where we are now; the infrastructure program will only delay the inevitable for a small part of our workforce.
But these folks, according to Betras, don’t want to want to run computers. They don’t want to be retrained. They don’t want to give up their way of life. They don’t want to leave the land their family has lived on for generations. To the extent that Betras was talking about the white working class, the data bears him out. Forty-five percent think that life would be better if they had a four-year degree; but 51 percent think that life would be about the same.
This I think is very smart. If you run the numbers on the 1 Trillion dollar stimulus package that Trump promised, it would create 1 million jobs a year. Of course these jobs would only be incremental increases in the first year: in the next nine the money would just support the jobs in the first year.
So that would help. But that isn’t a solution.
The truth is I don’t know what is.
More from the article:
So what, now, is political leadership here in the United States? We can easily say what it is not. It is not promising to get the old jobs back. That won’t happen. It is explaining why no one can bring the old jobs back–that is, by figuratively bulldozing the old shipyards–and then laying out what the people who used to do them will have to do to earn a good living in an increasingly automated, global economy. That is what no political leader has yet done. Only then will it be both necessary and possible to put together the kind of massive education and retraining program the country really needs.
I think there is a fair amount of truth in this. But who will ever believe the politician who says this? The history of the last 40 years is that we DON”T do this. In fact I would argue the scale of problem dwarfs the proposed solutions by so much as to render the political programs offered to date basically worthless.
I was taken by something Shaun White said:
Recently, I’ve asked the crowds where I am speaking two key questions about the Democratic Party. The response that I get is always the same – mass laughter or audible frustration.
The first question is, “If I asked you, in just a few sentences, to sum up what specific policies the Democratic Party stands for, what would you say?”People have no genuine idea. They know some things the party stands against, but it’s genuinely hard to be sure of what they stand for.
The other question is, “What exactly is the strategy of the Democratic Party to take back the government from conservatives across the country?”
That one always gets the most laughs. Nobody has any idea. Not once has somebody stood up and said, “Hey, I know the strategy.” Hell, I don’t know it. I don’t think one exists. Whatever the strategy was this past election, it didn’t work either. And again, I don’t just mean in the presidential election. Democrats lost all over the place in national, state, and local elections.
If there IS an answer, it is a solution born out of policy. A solution that describes how in gods name to stem the catastrophic collapse of communities all across the Midwest of this country.
Such a policy, when articulated, will I hope also be a political answer as well.
It is literally true that this policy is something every Party to the left of center in the industrailized world is look for.
When you hear one that makes sense let me know. Because I was a big Bernie supporter, but in the end he didn’t have a solution either. What he offered was to slow the pace of change, and to make sure all had access to the things life requires.
But that isn’t really a solution either. Make no mistake: it would be vastly superior to the status quo. But restoring jobs that give a sense of independence and self worth?
This is a great diary. Interesting that Clinton had a policy that ‘failed to connect’ while Trump didn’t have a policy but connected.
What about a Universal Basic Income?
Thank you.
I think UBI may be a trap – the goal is to create jobs that give people a sense of independence. Now in fact this may be impossible. Indeed you can argue they very idea of economic independence is outdated.
I don’t and will never understand the campaign that was run. Bill Clinton ran on addressing economic anxiety. I was on staff for a competing campaign in ’92: Clinton was incredibly knowledgeable and detailed in his campaign. It was about as policy orientated a campaign as I have ever seen.
And yet 16 years later Hillary ran in some ways the opposite campaign.
We should probably settle for just creating jobs, not make-work ones, which give people a sense of self-worth as they recognize they are making important contributions to society.
I’m intrigued by the UBI idea, even if it’s an old one. But instead of just doling it out w/no conditions, I would require a minimum 40 hours/mo for those able-bodied under-65 and currently unemployed/semi-employed, to work in a number of available areas. Community gardens helping to produce food (or for those who have a patch of land to work, donate food grown), working in nursing homes, elderly in-home nurses/assistants, community policing and cleanup, helping at homeless shelter, maintaining local parks and forests, teaching assistants and school security, building low-income housing, etc. Ideally, guaranteed health care would be included in this program.
As for Hillary’s campaign, I applaud you for trying to understand what went wrong, and maybe those efforts will lead to better candidates and campaigns for our side. The effort is worth it, no doubt badly needed. Meanwhile, some of us will focus our attention on supporting efforts to call attention to voter suppression and legally to undo them.
And also trying to move our party away from the neocon/lib interventionist camp. Hillary’s embrace of the Rbt Kagans and Victoria Nulands and Samantha Powers — the way Hillary and seemingly a majority of the Dem Party have gone all Scoop Jackson in FP in recent times — is a sober reminder that something else, vitally important in these times, has gone awry with our liberal politicians.
I like the guaranteed jobs approach myself. But would suppport UBI as long as it was UNIVERSAL, not a poverty program.
Did you see this? He sees it through a racial filter and I see it more through a class filter, but it is one credible answer to the “voting against their own interests” charge that comforts liberals.
“Americans with good jobs live in a socialist welfare state more generous, cushioned and expensive to the public than any in Europe. Like a European system, we pool our resources to share the burden of catastrophic expenses, but unlike European models, our approach doesn’t cover everyone.
Why are economically struggling blue collar voters rejecting a party that offers to expand public safety net programs? The reality is that the bulk of needy white voters are not interested in the public safety net. They want to restore their access to an older safety net, one much more generous, dignified, and stable than the public system – the one most well-employed voters still enjoy.
“When it seems like people are voting against their interests, I have probably failed to understand their interests.”
In the years after World War II, the western democracies that had not already done so adopted universal social safety net programs. (We did not.) Instead, nine years later Congress laid the foundations of the social welfare system we enjoy today. They rejected Truman’s idea of universal private coverage in favor of a program controlled by employers while publicly funded through tax breaks. This plan gave corporations new leverage in negotiating with unions, handing the companies a publicly-financed benefit they could distribute at their discretion.
https:/www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/03/13/unspeakable-realities-block-universal-health-cover
age-in-the-us#129fa394186a
The safety net for poors was means tested and used for public shaming. Now it is used to extract rents!
V. interesting, and I think half-true. It’s a piece, maybe a big piece, of the puzzle in terms of explaining the anger. And it’s a great way of framing how much government spending goes toward the economically-comfortable. But the key question remains: if economically-struggling Republican voters “want to restore their access to an older safety net, one much more generous, dignified, and stable than the public system” why the fuck did they vote for Trump?
There’s no logical connection there, because people aren’t creatures of logic. We are desperate to have our non-economic interests served. Voting against my economic interests because I subordinate them to other interests is not just common, it’s the default. And while that’s a great article, the constant focus on economic rationality makes me despair a little.
Because Trump promised to make America great again. Translated as “good jobs again”. Because Trump promised to stop out-sourcing jobs overseas. Because Trump claimed that (paradoxically at the same time) Mexicans were taking their jobs and sucking their tax money from welfare. Clinton, meanwhile, claimed the economy was great and promised to continue the Obama economy that those voters hated.
That’s not the translation I heard.
And what would lead a group of voters to believe Trump’s wild, unfounded, snake-oil, abusive, unhinged rock-candy-mountain promises instead of Clinton’s boring and inadequate ones?
So many reasons:
#4 is an example of #2.
#1 implies that they couldn’t tell that he was far less trustworthy than she, despite all the evidence.
#3 is saying that they preferred Racist Lies to Fairy Tales. Which I think is probably the case.
You have obviously never worked a day of manual labor in your life, much less unending decades of it. You know nothing of my people. Dismiss us as racists, believe in the Fairy Queen. One day you will realize how wrong you are.
It’s interesting how something can be both obvious and untrue. (And ad hominem, too! Very convincing.)
Maybe the reason I know nothing of your people isn’t because I only did manual labor for three years, decades ago; maybe it’s because I’m a Jew.
And yes, if someone supports a candidate who promotes racism, they are racist. That’s the definition. Doesn’t matter what’s in their heart.
Sorry, a good many, maybe as high as 10% of my fellows were Jews. True, in college, many more of my fellow students were Jews.
So you confirmed that you don’t understand, have never been in those shoes and don’t give a big rat’s ass about the “animals” that are.
Ad hominem? How about branding about a hundred million people that you don’t know as “racist” because they are sick of being screwed.
I did see the Forbes piece. It was VERY good.
I think what it missed is that in the US the standard of living was pretty well spread out – Unions made sure of it.
What I do think the pieces is described in the Hillbilly Elergy – and maybe the single most important thing the left tends to miss.
What I try to say here is that people want a sense of independence. This idea itself may be nothing more than nostalgia. That is what I found interesting about the Education Week article.
Americans with good jobs live in a socialist welfare state more generous, cushioned and expensive to the public than any in Europe.
All done with tax policy.
NO! They live in a capitalist welfare state and a manager can take it away on a whim. If you are non-white or female or gay (or the trifecta) you can sue for discrimination when fired not for cause. If you are a white male, your employment was at will. This burns, believe me. I never felt insecure, so it never bothered me. When I fired for only working the minimum required free hours, it felt like a rock being taken off my shoulders. But I’m more self-confident than most.
I like it, but the people we are talking about want jobs, not welfare.
I think UBI is unfairly tarred as ‘welfare.’ Or see as just this check that lazy-ass people cash before lounging on their couch.
But if money starts moving into these destroyed communities, it doesn’t just sit there. It is spent in local businesses. Which then hire more people. More businesses open. It’s seed money. I don’t think it’s a panacea, but I do think that dismissing it was ‘welfare’ or a ‘trap’ is shortsighted.
I agree with you, but many working people don’t. There needs to be an education campaign.
Ironically, I do believe that Clinton could work with Republicans better than Trump. That’s not a slam. She’s a politician. He isn’t.
That’s the answer. We can’t run a trade deficit forever without draining our lifeblood.
“What exactly is the strategy of the Democratic Party to take back the government from conservatives across the country?”
There is none and there won’t be. Because it would hurt the bottom line of Goldman-Sachs.
After all these years, you must realize, as I do, that the Democratic Party is also an enemy. The (R) party is obvious, but the (D) party is just as big an enemy.
I don’t accept that the Democrats are the enemy.
I do think there is systemic problem in it.
The right questions. Now, why are Republicans given a pass on answering these same questions?
The economic situation seems increasingly to me to be a case of the decisionmakers for the economy saying they don’t want workers and don’t want to pay workers. And then wondering where their sales are going.
Busting that mindset is not something that any party in the current system wants to do because it affects their largest donors.
Citizens United (the organization and the decision) has made that contradiction irresolvable.
That is why too many people are waiting for the system to finally collapse on itself. They don’t see other alternatives emerging.
Lots of Democrats don’t like it, but tying Barack Obama’s hand behind his back for the get-go has turned out to be a suicidal policy of the Democratic Congressional caucus. And to the extent that Obama offered it pre-emptively as practical and realism, he shares in the catastrophe.
Because the policy looks like the New Deal policies that most established politicians see as idealistic, politically dangerous, or worse. Taxing rich peoples money instead of cutting poor people’s spending (government and personal); stiff regulation of efforts to work around taxes; strict enforcement of fair competition in the economic sector; busting of large enterprises into smaller enterprises that (1) are forced to compete on a level playing field and (2) are small enough not to generate massive inequality through size alone. And if that’s not enough economic spinach to eat, restrictions on natural resource extraction are more necessary to eliminate “externalities” that amount to shifting of costs for rich corporations to everyone else and rewarding the CEO for that brilliant act of theft.
It might take devolution of federal to local power and then winning the argument about what needs to happen at a local level. After all, corporation laws and common comemercial code are state laws. Fragmentation of those 50-state models and dramatic change in corporation law at the state level likely are the policies that will restore trust in government (executed fairly). And massive devolution of the Federal tax code would have the effect of reducing the military graft that is the rock on the leg of the economy.
Permanent total war without the managed economy that allows warfaring states to emerge from the end of war with savings and economic infrastructure continues to sap the economy while consumers take the blame from the media.
“That is why too many people are waiting for the system to finally collapse on itself.”
I think this is really the position of many people on the left.
But I question that. Is the system really in crisis? Not if measured by corporate profits that are near all time highs. Stock market: headed up. The top 20%: doing fine with rising incomes.
So the system is being run by the rich and it is benefiting the rich.
So where exactly is the crisis? And failing that, if in fact the system doesn’t collapse, how do you change it?
Devolution to smaller authorities sets them in opposition to each other. How many times have you read about the state granting tax credits to corporations so that a plant will be located in xyz.
The logic of the system always seems to drive the debate right. Scarcity leading to envy and racial division leading to more scarcity.
We cannot afford (Insert government program here) because the businesses will move.
I think the problem is we are accepting too much of the current system as given and fixed, and as a result we live ourselves with weak policy and political agenda.
That was also true in April 1929.
Is that some thing to base a prediction on?
I don’t see an imminent crisis.
The only thing you can say for sure about the stock market is that it will vary.
Disclosure: I’m 80% in but watching daily. My bank recently gave me the choice of paying a $25 monthly fee or taking an interest reduction from 0.1% to 0.01% Bye-bye to that big %4 a year interest. The 20% is in cash to cover three years needs (four if dividends aren’t lowered. The rest is riding on Black at the Casino.
Market may look good now, but what happens after idiotic republican economic theories crash the economy? Of course the Banks and sundry billionaires will be bailed out but the rest of us are going to remember how we survived when we were poor.
There will not be a huge change at the macro-level in the sense that the deficit will likely be somewhat constant.
The biggest threat is likely to come from the Fed tightening, even as the GDP now forecast from the Atlanta Fed shows slow growth.
https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow.aspx?panel=1
A recession in the next few years is probable, but that is not the same thing as a systemic crisis that destroys capitalism.
I am short the Pound against the Euro and have been for a while. I am considering going long on the Euro against the dollar given the current election polling.
Curious that the Fed sees inflation as nearing 2% and the Social Security COLA sees it as tenths of a percent.
The Fed has put the hammer down, so no more rosy job reports for Trump. He has headwinds now.
You write:
That is the crisis, fladem. This has always been true in every human society, but…as happens from time to time in every society…the rich get too greedy. When that level of greed reaches a certain point, a reaction sets in. It is not necessarily “reactionary” in the current use of the word, but definitely a pullback in some direction, away from any system that has been set up to benefit the rich.
We are reaching that crisis stage now.
You say below that you do not believe the Democratic Party is the enemy. If you consider the over-rich “the enemy,” then it is without any doubt whatsoever owned by the enemy, and as a result will not in any way take effective measures to alleviate this problem. The anti-Sanders inside game that played out during the primaries is ample proof of that, as is the continued presence of its major players in positions of power within the party establishment.
One of the real villains in all of this…for decades, now…has been Donna Brazile. She is a fine example of bureaucracy in action. It flatters its bosses and fights change with all the clomp, clomp, clomping power at its disposal. The fact that she is still there…still in the news, still clomping along…is sufficient argument all by itself that the Democratic Party is a lost cause. If someone who seems to mean to change things in a positive direction does manage to get nominated to be the Dem candidate for 2020…I am speaking particularly of Elizabeth Warren, here…that candidate will have been forced to make so many concessions to the corporate-owned power players in the party that he or she will enter the race crippled for the outset, and whomever the Republicans nominate will again win.
Sorry, but there it is.
I am sure that you can gin up some “data” to support your position, but it will be just as flawed as was the data that said HRC would mop the floor with Trump.
That “May 2016 e-mail that predicted the loss of PA, OH and MI” to which you refer?
How about my own post two months before that? PermaFix Backfires!!! Blows Itself Up Real Good!!! in which I wrote:
Or…How about this from Ross Perot, twenty-five years ago!!!
From the NY Times coverage of the 1992 presidential debates:
He called it. he nailed it!!!
You continue to defend one of the two-headed, Uniparty entities that managed that change.
Thus…it is you who is the enemy.
Part of it at the very least, even without understanding your own part.
A well-meaning, self-justifying eenemy. The most dangerous kind.
Thanks for all of your good work, podna.
Look where it got us.
Thanks loads.
AG
It’s the story of the goose with the golden eggs. Republicans are impatient of waiting and want ALL the eggs NOW!
First of all I’d like to speak in support of the comment above praising your diary. You’re doing good, solid, (and as far as I can tell) original research. It would be worth the time it would take to pull together all your post-election analyses, edit them down, and publish them.
To your point:
Rising income inequality and growing wealth among the top 20% is a hallmark of neoliberalism. I think everybody on this thread knows that, no surprises there for us; it’s the system operating as expected. The only people who are shocked by talk of that sort are the liberals who just can’t seem to wrap their heads around the neoliberalism analysis that’s been commonplace since — hmm… 2008, maybe?
What happened in 2008 that could have changed things? The global economic crash introduced a legitimacy crisis for neoliberalism not unlike stagflation introduced a legitimacy crisis for Keynesian liberalism back in the 1970’s. As with liberalism before it, neoliberalism won’t recover; the “success” that you point to (profits, stock market) only makes the situation worse. That’s your crisis. It is huge, and growing.
So then, who’s paying attention to coming up with a paradigm to replace neoliberalism? Certainly not the Democrats, nor the liberals more broadly; at this point they’re no more able to understand neoliberalism than fish are able to understand water. The best they can do — exactly as you point out — is wait around for the system to collapse on itself while pretending loudly that it is doing no such thing.
The short answer to the question is, “the left” — which let’s define for the moment as “the people who
can
understand that neoliberalism is a thing” because trying to get more detailed than that is a job of its own. But if you accept that neoliberalism is having a legitimacy crisis then drawing a line between people who do vs. people who don’t see that as a fact is useful for a first approximation.
So what’s the left up to? Trying, as fast as we can, to pull together program and organization. On program, Tarheel’s thumbnail hits a lot of the key points:
I’d bolt on some “green jobs” stuff but you get the idea. On organization, if you want to contend for power (and we do) you have to electoralize this stuff; if you want it to be meaningful rather than symbolic you have to electoralize it outside of the Democratic Party.
Thank you.
Let’s differentiate between two crisis: one economic and the other political.
In economic terms I am not convinced the system is headed for crisis. If the strategy is to wait for it to collapse on its own it may be a long wait.
So this means change will have to come from politics. Here there is unquestionably a growing crisis in legitimacy. The challenge is to formulate a left of center diagnosis and treatment.
So we get to what the answer is. WRT to Tarheel’s program I am far from convinced.
The political crisis is caused by economic wage stagnation. I am not convinced what he proposes gets you there.
What I believe people want are jobs that convey a sense of self-worth and independence.
To me that means focusing on policies that create labor scarcity. What would that mean if I were king?
I would move to single payer as well, but the focus is on increasing the relative value of labor.
Robert Gordon years ago had an idea called wage led growth. Something like that is what I would pursue.
To your point is this prediction from a definitely NOT Socialist guy (I think he’s a billionaire but has the brains to worry about the proles with pitchforks)
https:/www.janus.com/insights/bill-gross-investment-outlook?utm_campaign=Bill_Gross_Investment_Out
look&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Salesforce&utm_content=Markets
This link originally spoke to income inequality and how the economy will collapse unless we stop the upward flow of wealth. That seems to have been scrubbed. But it still has this
It might take devolution of federal to local power …
Only if individuals in communities accept the responsibility and do the work required. That requires collectivism. That ship probably sailed well over a hundred years ago when unions recognized that workers could be mobilized for better wages and not much else.
Also, local power has a really bad history in the U.S. Packed with corruption, racism, sexism, etc. People don’t seem to value equality and fairness.
Conceptually, this is apt:
Community requires constant tending along with being pro-active about traditions and practices that will ultimately destroy it. The Amish have had a good run, but their high birth rate combined with the dwindling supply of affordable additional lands have made them far less self-sufficient from the wider economy even as they continue to live simply.
Capital flees as soon as the something more profitable and/or better and easier comes along. Natural resource based communities are hit harder and sooner than manufacturing based communities. But the money (profits and capital) eventually ends up in a few hands and more desirable places to live.
Devolution to states works if you don’t have freedom of movement between states. As long as people are free to move, the seemingly smart thing for a state to do is to enact policies that ignore public school education of the young, and encourage the immigration of high-wage labor and emigration of the poor. This is just a variation of the tragedy of the commons.
Ahhh, yes. Overproduction crises. Wasn’t neoliberalism supposed to fix all of this for us?
“Paging Dr. Marx. Paging Dr. Marx. Dr. Marx, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Paging Dr. Marx…”
I think the fundamental problem is one of framing. Today, Reps and most Dems accept the fundamental frame that the economy has changed, and they differ only in whether to ignore those who cant deal with the change or give some token support to adapt them for the change. Under this frame, Hillary’s approach makes total sense.
In reality, the economy hasn’t changed as much as they claim it has. Products still need to be made, and the unleashing of rules about trading of 17th derivatives isn’t critical to a modern economy.
The accepted frame is created by billions of dollars of “think tanks”. Who is going to point out that these frames are just legalized corruption that we would be denouncing if done in a 3rd world country? Some academics might, but they too are corrupted by today’s grant system.
“These jobs are never coming back”
Employment in industry
Germany:
United States
EU as a whole:
The decline in industry (data from world bank, may not be the same as manufacturing employment) is to your point presented as inevitable. The US decline is roughly similar to that in other countries, but it started from a lower base.
By this measure nearly 1 in 3 jobs in Germany are in manufacturing. Part of this, of course, is because Germany makes Mercedes and BMW’s and unlike the Japanese are less likely to offshore their manufacturing (although the do to some extent)
The US de-inustrialization appears to have started before NAFTA, and interestingly declined at roughly the same pace as it did in Europe.
But industry plays a larger role in other countries than here.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.IND.EMPL.ZS
Asian competition was a strong force in the Agricultural Equipment Industry and the Construction equipment Industry back in the early ’80s. Chicago was once THE television town, with Motorola, Zenith and Admiral producing equipment. I worked my way through college building and testing televisions at Motorola. Now you can try to do it building burgers at McDonald’s (a “manufacturing” company – look it up). The television jobs went to Asia. The PC was invented in the USA (no, not by IBM). Now cases, motherboards, video cards and hard drives are all made in Asia, primarily China. They were made here during the expansion that gets credited (wrongly) to Bill Clinton’s neoliberal policies.
Those jobs in the USA and Europe didn’t disappear. They moved to Asia.
We still make some IC’s: Intel makes CPU’s here. ASICS are made her too.
This is not disagree with your larger point – they are in Asia.
Foxconn has an incredible number of jobs in South China. They are, I believe, the main manufacturer for Apply.
Some IC’s may still be made here. Most are made in Asia. AMD uses a two-stage process. The bare chips are mad in Dresden Germany and flown to Indonesia to be put in cases and packaged for shipment to the USA. Some years ago (I think in the ’90s) Germany offered huge tax breaks and maybe financing to build industry in East Germany. The States do the same, i.e. Texas and Michigan had a bidding war over a GM assembly plant. GM built both plants, but as B body production dwindled, closed the Michigan plant and converted the Texas plants to pickup trucks. I had two ’93 Buick Roadmasters (bought both used, it was a $30,000 car), a sedan made in Arlington TX and a station wagon built in Willow Springs MI. Quality was the same, superb. Both ran for nearly 200,000 miles with no engine or transmission repairs needed. Now people buy monster trucks made in Osaka.
As the USA blusters about war with China over the Straits of Taiwan, the Chinese must be laughing their heads off since they are the sole suppliers of chips and other electronic items vital to both the US Navy and Air Force (probably the Army too). A Pacific war can never be fought anymore. It would be like WW II with all the components sourced from Japan. Japan, BTW, is the only quality source of electrolytic capacitors having bought secrets from Sprague years ago. The Chinese had an industrial spy that thought he had the formula but it was a honey pot. That’s why Gigabyte (China) advertises “all Japanese capacitors”. Consider that as Japan withdraws from the US television market. I hope Samsung buys capacitors from Japan.
Addendum: Since Sprague gave up the ghost in 1993, two years after the death of the founder, the technology transfer must have been done earlier. I should reveal that I have been an advocate of the DoD running it’s own electronic production facilities since the 1970’s.
Perhaps it’s just me, but liberals do seem to have a penchant for cataloguing all the campaign missteps and micro-mistakes of a losing Democratic nominee. As if errors aren’t made by the winning campaign.
Maybe some of that “analysis” was appropriate in the aftermath of the 2000 election because GWB was also a ridiculous candidate that won. However, Gore lost by a single state, had been outspent by the competition, and received brutal media coverage. Those last two variables were intertwined with a Democratic Party not hell bent on electing Gore. IOW, Gore overcame real and significant disadvantages; just not in one of several locations where he had participated in creating the disadvantages and went for the one where he had the least control over the disadvantage.
What drives me bonkers is the myth that HRC’s campaign and Bernie, etc. failed to make Hillary a better candidate. Jimmy Dore went there in his latest rant. Against one of the worst opponents (possibly ever and possibly chosen by liberal elites), this was the golden opportunity to finally cement the center. A landslide win that would drive a stake in the heart of the rightwing and permanently leave the left of center with no place else to go.
Worked far better left of center than right of center. She did get urban/suburban bourgeosie voters that a just a little bit too racist to have voted for Obama. Albeit not enough in critical states where too many traditional Democratic voters chose not to vote for a “Rockefeller Republican.”
Her — I’m like a Republican — campaign in the south reduced the GOP margin from that of 2012 in many states:
Arizona: 9% to 4%
Georgia: 8% to 5%
Kansas: 22% to 21%
Kentucky: 30% to 23%
Louisiana: 20% to 17%
But overall she did worse in most states. For example:
Arkansas: 24% to 27%
Missouri: 9% to 19%
Montana: 14% to 20%
States where “Rockefeller Republicans” had never existed in any numbers and those that did have long since either switched to shifted right.
What I hear in all this “Clinton could have been a better candidate” is that she could have lied better. Except that’s harder to do when one has a long record.
I think the GOP did some navel gazing after 2012.
Jimmy Dore is effectively saying the same thing as Greenberg found in his work on Macomb.
The GOP looked at and rejected the prescription after the 2012 election. One could view that rejection as setting up their vulnerability to a candidate like Trump (and no, while they appreciate the win, they dislike him).
What they didn’t do is in their post-election analysis is focus on how to make Mitt a better candidate. He had his chance (like McCain and Dole) and they accepted that he was a loser. That’s where Dore went in that presentation which is a continuation of the efforts during the primary to make Hillary a “better candidate.”
Republicans did get away with (just barely) replicating Reagan in 2000. His sell-by date has now passed and regardless of their efforts, they couldn’t turn any of the 2016 wannabes into Reagan 3.0. Democrats suffer from the same delusion — that voters want Clinton 2.0. (or 3.0 depending on how one counts Obama).
What was the rationale for Hillary’s campaign? “It’s my turn?” As if she’s owed it for some undefined reason. Just enough voters in certain states smelled a rat — or that they had been sold out — to hand the crown to Hillary.
Talk around or deny it anyway you want but the problem for the Democratic Party is Clintonism. It didn’t sell well the first time around and only sold the second time by hiding the core affiliation and giving good speech. Made us feel so good about ourselves to vote for an AA president. In 2016, voters were also expected to feel good about themselves for voting in a woman and ignore that she’s a warmongering, corporatist elite. A difference was that there were no AA leaders in ’08 preaching that AAs would go to hell if they didn’t vote for Obama.
Conceptually, there is a faction of warmongering corporatist Republicans that would be fine with Hillary as POTUS, but they’re too blinded by partisanship to recognize that. Our two party system (with relatively low primary voter turnout) precludes us from getting a valid read on the real splits among the general electorate. In addition to that, the winner take all system means for many a choice between nothing or less than nothing from their perspective.
Whether consciously or not, both Trump and Sanders figured out that as a third party independent candidate, they wouldn’t be able to sufficiently crack the rigid partisan voting habits of 80% of the electorate to have a chance to win. Neither would have gotten the media attention through the one year primary season to get the necessary traction before the general election. As long as one or both of the two major parties held a contested primary, that’s what would have been the focus of public/media attention.
Clinton and her campaign did the best they could with her as the candidate. That it devolved into Putin-Russia was because she had nothing else left to offer the voters that hadn’t pre-purchased. It was supposed to resonate better with anti-Russia Republicans than it did. A stale candidate offering a stale emotional appeal. (One that Obama has successfully mocked in 2012. How crazy is it that Democrats expected it to sell for them in 2016?)
What a crazy theory! Those were the most anti-Clinton Republicans of all. They considered her to be a Communist, crazy as that sounds to us. Like the right wing in the ’50s/’60s that considered Eisenhower to be a Communist (including Stephanie Miller’s father, but we can’t pick our parents).
On paper it wasn’t crazy at all. At a minimum her opponent wasn’t in the anti-Russia camp and anti-Russia sentiment has long been higher among GOP voters than Democrats. But my guess is that it wasn’t a part of her original campaign plan. Generic strong on defense for the GE is what she was going with.
The Russia-Putin piece was added much later. Don’t expect we’ll ever hear the real inside story on this. (But the timeline is interesting and suggestive.)
Again, the results of politicians talking to each other and not the voters.
Don’t disagree with that. But Trump didn’t talk to voters either.
I wrote a much longer and detailed response to your prior comment but decided not to post it. There are key elements and objectives to the HRC campaign and along with unexpected developments over the course of a year and a half that I think explain what may now look like bizarre conclusions and/or choices. It’s sort of like the CRP plumbers operation. None of that is understandable without appreciating that Nixon needed/wanted a landslide win without giving up his undisclosed desire to win the Vietnam War.
Consider making it a diary, Marie. Please.
It would require a lot of work to whip it into shape. While most of the assumptions and speculations are reasonable and range from neutral to positive, several problems with that:
Finally, differentiating between serendipitous and luck of the draw acts/moves and planned and purposeful acts/moves isn’t at all easy. Over a period of time, the organic surfaces and becomes part of the whole.
An example. While Bernie supporters could recognize that the 2016 primary debate schedule limited competition and thereby favored HRC because of her name ID, it still fell short of proof that DWS/DNC was fixing the primary. The DNC e-mails revealed that it was being fixed, but I’m not aware that they specifically disclose that the debate schedule was part of the fix.
It didn’t seem odd through the summer ’15 that Trump was dominating the campaign coverage — he was being provocative and outrageous and that attracts eyeballs. What did feel odd was that after his schtick had been seen and he wasn’t adding to his early poll numbers (suggesting habituation to the novel and interest beginning to decline) that a Trump obsession in the media set in (including right here with daily if not more frequent FP Trump posts and would guess that it was overwhelming in the FP posts and diaries at joints like dKos). But the speculation (except among the instantaneous Trumpsters and AG) remained that Trump wouldn’t be the nominee. So, why was he dominating the coverage and discourse? And who was going to snatch nomination away from him?
In real time, Republicans (outside the Trumpster faction) didn’t want him because they surmised that HRC would decimate him. Democrats did want him for the same reason. Was anyone driving the bus? Or was it all unfolding in perfectly normal fashion as everybody played their ordinary roles?
Was the flipping of the switch from a mix of positive and negative coverage by the media to almost exclusively negative coverage after he secured the nomination more normality? Or a tell? 90+% of the subsequent media endorsements aligned perfectly with what we saw in the Democratic primary. Normal or tell?
When Bernie supporters pointed out the disproportionate coverage for HRC compared to Bernie, their response was always that HRC’s coverage was negative. Some was but most of it was positive. And once Bernie got more than a minuscule amount of coverage a large portion was negative. (Who else other than Bernie got several negative WaPo columns in 48 hours?)
Was the “pied piper” discourse in the Podesta files wishful speculation or was something more purposeful and planned afoot? When doubt exists, go with the conservative interpretation — fewer errors are made that way. Plus, in real time and before that “pied piper” email was public, did any of us speculate that team Clinton had played a role in Trump’s nomination? How many didn’t blow off Trump’s comment that WJC had encouraged him to run? Didn’t seem to matter if it was another Trump whopper or Bill just talking smack to Trump.
But maybe it does matter.
If you go back up to the diary I think you find your explanation. They overestimated the number of moderates/upscale GOP that they could peel off. The underestimated the problems they had with WWC voters who had voted for Obama.
I well remember the last convention night: a parade of generals talking about strength. Khazir Kahn – a great speech – targeting Trump’s basic lack of decency.
And you know it should have been enough. But they misread the electorate, and as a result it cost them dearly.
As I have said before, I do not believe they really thought they were in serious danger, and that is why they focused on the states they did.
They did not defend their most likely path to 270: because they never seriously doubted they would get there.
Don’t disagree that they expected to win. Although you didn’t state it as such, a generic “strong on defense” for the GE was in place before she entered the race. Also don’t reject that groupthink overconfidence can be blinding.
However, a billion dollar miscalculation is bunk. It was a hard-wired campaign that couldn’t lose and the general election efforts would be about turning the win into a landslide win.
Thanks for your diaries, fladem and for posing the questions. imo, regions differ so much, detailed analysis is required. this nytimes article gets at the reasoning of many T voters and what happens when he fails them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/us/burying-their-cattle-ranchers-call-wildfires-our-hurricane-kat
rina.html?_r=0
I post this link because you rightly ask what to do; this is an instance with the question
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/us/burying-their-cattle-ranchers-call-wildfires-our-hurricane-kat
rina.html?_r=0
[link still not working I guess]