How Democrats lost the working class.
The party of More Free Stuff may have shut down the federal government but Blaska’s Policy Werkes will soldier on even if, like those generals summoned to the Hegseth/Trump endurance test, we sit on our hands, stone-faced and cold sober.
Paul Fanlund visited his hometown of Rockford IL so we don’t have to. The publisher of Madison’s Capital Times sorrowed over the “block after block … of small and mostly neglected houses that suggested occupants … live paycheck to paycheck.” Mr. Fanlund exposed this glimmer of enlightenment:
It might behoove comfortable Madison progressives — I include myself — to restrain our judgments about why people in other places do to see things culturally and politically quite like we do.
Rockford IL, Fanlund observes, “was among the prominent casualties in the collapse of the American manufacturing economy.” True, that. We pose to The Capital Times two impertinent questions:
Q: Who is the governor of Illinois? Answer: your Ideas Fest headliner, J.B. Pritzker, whose state — not just Rockford — is losing workers, jobs, and corporate headquarters. This Democrat wants to be President.
Q: Who is working to bring back manufacturing jobs to these shores? Answer: Donald Trump. Argue tariffs all you want but there’s a reason why he’s won over blue-collar workers.
Democrats keep fighting the wrong battles
The closing line in a letter to the editor in Sunday’s New York Times triggered another propulsive Danny Thomas coffee spit here at the Werkes.
Democrats cannot allow Republicans to define the debate. Until they confront how the GOP has manufactured and exploited the culture wars, they will keep fighting on ground tilted against them.
Let’s unpack that, shall we? The letter was signed by the communications director at something called Democracy Defenders Action. It’s run by Norm Eisen, another progressive who stroked the already converted at Idea Fest.
Republicans have “manufactured” the culture wars? MAGA tricked kitchen-table America to oppose boys in the girls locker room? Turned parents against kindergarten drag queen story hour? Gave Defund the Cops a bad name? Norm Eisen’s group was responding to a NY Times piece: “How Democrats lost the working class,” which observes:
One president after another, Republican and Democratic, led administrations into a post-Cold War global future that … left many pockets of the American heartland de-industrialized, dislocated and even depopulated. … Democratic policies focused on people as consumers instead of as workers, counting on those people whose jobs were eliminated to find their way to jobs newly created — an assumption that was often flawed. … There was a “disregard for the … dignity of work.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Norm Eisen’s organization does not suggest how Democrats might win the culture war— only that they keep fighting it. Someone tell Norm Eisen that Woke had an election. It lost, jobs won. BTW: Rockford’s Winnebago County voted 57% Trump.
10 responses to “It won’t sell in Rockford”
Hamas, Pocan, and high buildings don’t mix.
Hamas and Mark Pocan and high buildings don’t mix well.
The leaders of the Democratic Party are in denial. I can’t vote for a Democrat now because most the candidates they put up are too far left. They have left their mainstream members to cater to bizarre special interest groups.
Karma Mr. Fanlund. It’s called karma.
Also Google hubris and nemesis.
So where are all these jobs that trump is bringing back? I’m not seeing all the factories he said are being built. You want to learn about trump’s great economy? Talk to the farmers and ranchers.
Drove from South Carolina to N”Awlins two weeks ago. New construction all over the place.
Yeah; homeless camps and detention centers.
They are building the stage for a BAD BUNNY concert.
I read Fanlund’s little travelogue–the tone was reminiscent of Margaret Mead encountering the strange beliefs and customs of a primitive tribe somewhere in the Trobriand Islands. You could almost feel the shudder of revulsion that went through him at finding himself among (gasp!) lower-middle class Trump voters (as scarce as whooping cranes in Madison). It must have cost him every ounce of energy to write those words you quote–a bare acknowledgement that such places and people deserve to exist. And there was that palpable sigh of relief at finding himself home again amidst the fair-trade coffee shops and trendy boutiques of Madison. One of the many indicators of progress (and therefore superiority) he cites in singing the wonders of Madison is the forest of construction cranes punctuating the skyline. I beg to disagree. Every time another luxury high-rise goes up, the quality of life here goes down. All in all, a predictable elitist paean to the wonderfulness of Madison by someone too blinkered to realize that there are plenty of people who might look at this town and go, “Thanks but no thanks.”
Ah Madison, 72 square miles of fantasy, surrounded by reality.