Earlier this week Donald Trump gave a much-discussed speech on trade and globalization in Pennsylvania. I am not sure all Democrats understand how heretical the whole thing must seem to your average chamber of commerce member out in the heartland–much less to Wall Street and K Street Republicans. I wrote about that at New York.

[B]y and large, this candidate, who never really embraced systematic thinking, mostly talked of trade policy as something that he would improve via his personal negotiating genius. Uncle Sam might still play the trade game, but he’d no longer be Uncle Sucker, being constantly outmaneuvered by swarthy or sallow foreigners.

But now, in a speech delivered in the Rust Belt state of Pennsylvania, Trump has gone High Protectionist, rejecting not just this or that trade deal, but the whole idea of globalization, which he regards as a politician’s trick on the Folks, who have watched helplessly as Bill and Hillary Clinton sold out their birthright of manufacturing jobs for a mess of Wall Street pottage. Trump sounds like Bernie Sanders on a very bad, dyspeptic day:

“The legacy of Pennsylvania steelworkers lives in the bridges, railways and skyscrapers that make up our great American landscape. But our workers’ loyalty was repaid with betrayal.

“Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization — moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas. Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.

“When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing.

“For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment. Many of these areas have still never recovered.

“Our politicians took away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families. Skilled craftsmen and tradespeople and factory workers have seen the jobs they loved shipped thousands of miles away. Many Pennsylvania towns once thriving and humming are now in a state despair. This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class.”

And on and on it goes. Trump’s narrative of an idyllic, prelapsarian America ruined by globalization has a few holes. It begins with virtuous protectionists George Washington and Alexander Hamilton (you know, the star of that Broadway musical), and then skips far ahead to the Clintons, who wrecked it all with NAFTA and China’s admission to the WTO. You wouldn’t know from listening to him that Ronald Reagan (mentioned by Trump only in connection with a highly uncharacteristic tariff he imposed on Japan) was talking favorably about something very much like NAFTA in 1980; that his successor George H.W. Bush actually negotiated and signed the agreement; or for that matter, that the TPP is as much a product of George W. Bush’s trade diplomacy as Obama’s.

More generally, Trump is ignoring a free-trade tradition in the Republican Party that dates back to the very post–World War II era that he identifies as an American golden age. Yes, Richard Nixon offered protection to the textile industry as part of his 1968 deal with Strom Thurmond (whose South Carolina Republican Party was a wholly owned subsidiary of textile baron Roger Milliken). Yes, John Connally bashed the Japanese during his unsuccessful 1980 presidential campaign. And yes, Pat Buchanan offered very much the same analysis and prescription of America’s economic challenges during his two unsuccessful presidential campaigns (curiously, he somehow saw America as ruined even in 1992, before NAFTA!).

But for the most part, Republican protectionism, rooted in the early 19th-century Whig protectionism of Henry Clay and his “American System,” expired with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, widely blamed for setting off a worldwide trade war that made a worldwide Great Depression significantly more painful. And far from being some Clintonian invention, Democratic support for trade liberalization is probably the longest-standing policy tradition in either party, dating all the way back to Martin Van Buren (his predecessor Andrew Jackson had a protectionist streak often attributed to his important political following in the selfsame Pennsylvania where Trump unleashed his protectionist thunder today).

Bernie Sanders represents an authentic and fairly widespread progressive backlash against the Democratic free-trade tradition, rooted in the labor movement, which obviously lost an awful lot in the demise of many traditional, often unionized, industries. Hillary Clinton’s decision to oppose TPP is a sign of that perspective’s power. But in Trump’s case, he’s reaching far back to a lost Republican tradition that is now the starkest heresy among most economic conservatives. On word of Trump’s speech in Pennsylvania, you can be sure knees jerked violently not only on Wall Street and the editorial rooms of its Journal, but also in chambers of commerce across the land where the pure gospel of free trade has been preached for eons. Trump has now declared that gospel pure evil, and the blowback may make the embarrassment-bordering-on-irritated-hostility that his immigration demagoguery produced in the same circles look very mild by comparison.

It’s really unclear any votes Trump can peel off with this rhetoric will offset that blowback.  We’ll see.

Bernie Sanders has some pointed advice for Democrats in his New York Times op-ed,  “Democrats Need to Wake Up,” including “The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States. Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class…In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.”

Sam Stein reports on a strategy memo provided to HuffPo which indicates that “The RNC Plans to Turn Bernie Sanders Backers Against Hilary Clinton’s VP Pic.” Stein notes, “The goals, the memo says, are to “drive wedges between these top contenders and either Clinton and/or traditional Democrat constituencies, such as labor, environmentalists, and gun control advocates, and other traditional left-wing constituencies;” and “[w]here applicable, frame the choice as an insult to the large, deep base of Bernie Sanders supporters who are struggling with the notion of supporting Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democrat nominee.”

The Upshot’s Nate Silver explains why comparing pre-election polls to exit polls doesn’t work and notes that “pre-election polls always show Democrats doing better among white voters than the exit polls.”

American Bridge, the firm which did such an effective job of providing fodder for attack ads against Republican senate candidate Todd Aikin in Missouri in 2012 is on Trump’s  case in a big way, report Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker in the New York Times. “In 2016, the group is taking every opportunity to do the same thing with Donald J. Trump. It is maintaining an archive of digital video footage, with 6,500 clips of Mr. Trump speaking or being mentioned, going back to the 1980s, and 17,000 hours of footage over all. It has also compiled more than 5,000 pages of research on the presumptive Republican nominee and has 25 trackers monitoring him.”

In their Wall St. Journal article, “Democrats Launch Push to Regain North Carolina,” Colleen McCain Nelson and Valerie Bauerlein preview President Obama’s joint appearance with Hillary Clnton in the swing state.

Thomas B. Edsall discusses “The Changing Face of Urban Power” in his NYT op-ed and explores an under-reported demographic development, “the migration of African-Americans from center cities to the suburbs.”

Maya Rao reports at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that Democratic “Party leaders are urging members to conduct similar sit-ins around the country as they try to sustain the flash of hard-core activism on the gun issue.” More protest against the enablers of gun violence would be good. But why limit it to sit-ins? Might it also be a good idea for gun safety advocates to picket the homes of the politicians who have taken the most money from the NRA?

Isn’t it pathetic when big media laps up spoon-fed tidbits from the Republicans’ Benghazi nothingburger? Erik Wemple nails the lapdogs and their GOP trainers, and dishes out this slam for Politico’s redolent role as their aggregate tipster: “…In his “Playbook” newsletter this morning, Politico’s Mike Allen alerted readers to a crop of pieces on the much-anticipated report of the House Select Committee on Benghazi: “….LOOK FOR embargoed scoops from Politico’s Rachael Bade, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, Fox’s Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge, and Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes…’Playbook,’ in other words, had the exclusive scoop on spoon-fed Benghazi non-scoops.”

As a friend puts it, “This is the best thing I’ve seen since Ramsay Bolton got eaten by his dogs last week on Game of Thrones.”

The following article by John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University and visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, first appeared at cleveland.com:

In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are tied in battleground Ohio. This suggests a very close race in Ohio in the fall.

Economic issues, especially trade, led many former Democrats to cross party lines to support Trump in the Republican primaries. Many who hadn’t voted in recent elections joined them. We’re likely to see a repeat of this in November unless Democrats change their trade policies.

None of this should surprise Democrats, especially those in Ohio.

A new Public Policy Polling survey of registered voters in six swing states — AZ, IA, NH, OH, PA and WI presents findings which are more interesting than the usual horse race polls. As the PPP memo on the surveys explains:

New Public Policy Polling surveys in 6 key battleground states where Republican Senators are up for reelection this year find that voters don’t trust Donald Trump and would rather have Barack Obama picking a new Supreme Court justice than him. As a result they overwhelmingly support hearings on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and are inclined to punish the vulnerable Republican Senators who are holding up his selection.

…-Voters in all six states, by margins ranging from 5 to 23 points, say they don’t trust Donald Trump to nominate a Supreme Court justice. Voters in WI (34% trust Trump, 57% don’t) and in the home of Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley of IA (35% trust Trump, 52% don’t) are particularly skeptical of Trump’s ability to name a Justice.

That puts all of the hand-wringing about Hillary Clinton’s “trust” problem in context. Further, the memo states “voters in all six states clearly say that they *do* trust President Obama with the responsibility of making a Supreme Court selection, especially in contrast to Trump. In the key Presidential battlegrounds of Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin Obama has at least a 9 point advantage over Trump on that question in every state.

Poll respondents said they trusted Obama more than Trump for selecting the next Supreme Court justice by the following margins in each state: AZ+1; IA+10; NH+14; OH+11; PA+9; and WI +17. In addition, “More than 60% of voters in each of these states supports hearings for Garland, by margins ranging from 38 to 46 points. That includes overwhelming support from critical independent voters, and even plurality support from Republicans in 4 of the 6 states”

The PPP surveys indicate that Republican senators in these six states are in trouble — “5 of the 6 have negative approval ratings and the one exception, Chuck Grassley, still has his worst approval numbers in years with them coming in only narrowly on positive ground at 43/40. Voter unhappiness about obstructionism on the Supreme Court issue could be what flips all these toss up races into the Democratic column and gives them control of the Senate next year…”
Even better,

One other thing serving as a drag on these vulnerable Senate Republicans is the unpopularity of their leader, Mitch McConnell. McConnell’s approval rating is under 15% in all six states, and being tied to him has the potential to damage the political standing of the members of his caucus. His net approval ranges from -26 at best to -45 at worst in this set of states.

Gratifying though it is to see Mitch McConnell paying a price for his obstructionist “leadership,” there are as many as five other swing/battleground states, including FL, MI, NC, VA and ME, and some of them show close margins in the presidential contest and/or senate races.

But the margins in the six states of the PPP surveys are nonetheless impressive and indicate that the public is tiring of the GOP senate leadership’s obstruction of an exceptionally well-qualified nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Put that together with the fallout following Speaker Ryan’s refusal to allow votes on popular gun safety measures, and the GOP looks even more like an elitist political party that thwarts the democratic process to block even moderate progress.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, Leo Hindery, Jr. and Michael Wessel (author notes below), is cross-posed from HuffPo:

Last week’s Brexit vote was just the latest example — albeit a giant one — in this wild political year when workers have been sending the clear message that status quo economic policies are unacceptable. Politicians here in America and in Europe ignore the concerns of workers at their great peril. For the Democratic Party in this country in 2016, the lessons are especially clear.

In the 35 years since Ronald Reagan became president, we’ve seen a steady erosion in the attention political leaders have given to the economic and political concerns of the working class. From the dramatic decline of union membership to the excessive deregulation of Wall Street; from trade deals that enrich multinational corporations but not American workers to a lack of antitrust enforcement that’s allowed near-monopolies in too many sectors; from a lack of significant wage increases for all but the top 10 percent of Americans to ever-escalating inflation in the costs of health care, groceries and college, our political system breakdown and our persistent “trickle down” sense of economics have combined — and conspired — to weaken the well-being of most American working people and retirees.

And now they’re angry, in ways that once hardly seemed imaginable.

A ridiculous huckster and nativist named Donald J. Trump is only days away from officially being the Republican Party nominee for president. And in the United Kingdom, Brexit has just validated that working class anger isn’t only an American phenomenon and concern.

The Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign need to understand that this reality matters, and that — in spite of some national polls showing a significant lead right now — beating Donald Trump in 2016 will be no easy lift. For all the people Trump has offended over the last year and for all of his racism and misogyny, for all the mistakes he has made in recent weeks, he is in a near tie with Secretary Clinton in several key swing states, and is still within striking distance nationally. And don’t forget that Trump outperformed his polling numbers throughout much of his primary run.

Democrats at all levels are going to need a big turnout of our base, as well as a message that appeals strongly to working class swing voters.

The good news is that the Democratic Party Convention platform being developed in advance of Philadelphia is a sign of things moving very much in the right directions. On a wide range of economic issues, the current draft sections of the Party platform are more responsive to working families’ concerns than we’ve seen in decades. There is great language on toughening up our trade deals and making them more focused on workers and their continued fair employment and less focused on just further enriching big business. There are calls for a new Glass-Steagall Act, for breaking up “Too Big to Fail” banks, and for a Financial Transactions Tax. A $15 minimum wage indexed for inflation is demanded, as is, importantly, a new large-scale jobs program to include major spending on infrastructure through a new infrastructure bank with a ‘buy domestic’ demand and worker protections.

Read more…

The following article by William A. Galston, senior fellow, governance studies at Brookings, is cross-posted from Brookings.

Although a few political analysts have been focusing on the white working class for years, it is only in response to the rise of Donald Trump that this large group of Americans has begun to receive the attention it deserves. Now, thanks to a comprehensive survey that the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) undertook in collaboration with the Brookings Institution, we can speak with some precision about the distinctive attitudes and preferences of these voters.

There are different ways of defining the white working class. Along with several other survey researchers, PRRI defines this group as non-Hispanic whites with less than a college degree, with the additional qualification of being paid by the hour or by the job rather than receiving a salary. No definition is perfect, but this one works pretty well. Most working-class whites have incomes below $50,000; most whites with BAs or more have incomes above $50,000. Most working-class whites rate their financial circumstances as only fair or poor; most college educated whites rate their financial circumstances as good or excellent. Fifty-four percent of working-class whites think of themselves as working class or lower class, compared to only 18 percent of better-educated whites.

The PRRI/Brookings study finds that in many respects, these two groups of white voters see the world very differently. For example, 54 percent of college-educated whites think that America’s culture and way of life have improved since the 1950s; 62 percent of white working-class Americans think that it has changed for the worse. Sixty-eight percent of working-class whites, but only 47 percent of college-educated whites, believe that the American way of life needs to be protected against foreign influences. Sixty-six percent of working-class whites, but only 43 percent of college-educated whites, say that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. In a similar vein, 62 percent of working-class whites believe that discrimination against Christians has become as big a problem as discrimination against other groups, a proposition only 38 percent of working-class whites endorse.

This brings us to the issue of immigration. By a margin of 52 to 35 percent, college-educated whites affirm that today’s immigrants strengthen our country through their talent and hard work. Conversely, 61 percent of white working-class voters say that immigrants weaken us by taking jobs, housing, and health care.

Seventy-one percent of working-class whites think that immigrants mostly hurt the economy by driving down wages, a belief endorsed by only 44 percent of college-educated whites. Fifty-nine percent of working-class whites believe that we should make a serious effort to deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries; only 33 percent of college-educated whites agree. Fifty-five percent of working-class whites think we should build a wall along our border with Mexico, while 61 percent of whites with BAs or more think we should not. Majorities of working-class whites believe that we should make the entry of

Syrian refugees into the United States illegal and temporarily ban the entrance of non-American Muslims into our country; about two-thirds of college-educated whites oppose each of these proposals.

Opinions on trade follow a similar pattern. By a narrow margin of 48 to 46 percent, college-educated whites endorse the view that trade agreements are mostly helpful to the United States because they open up overseas markets while 62 percent of working-class whites believe that they are harmful because they send jobs overseas and drive down wages.

It is understandable that working-class whites are more worried that they or their families will become victims of violent crime than are whites with more education. After all, they are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher levels of social disorder and criminal behavior. It is harder to explain why they are also much more likely to believe that their families will fall victim to terrorism. To be sure, homegrown terrorist massacres of recent years have driven home the message that it can happen to anyone, anywhere.

We still need to explain why working-class whites have interpreted this message in more personal terms.
The most plausible interpretation is that working-class whites are experiencing a pervasive sense of vulnerability. On every front–economic, cultural, personal security–they feel threatened and beleaguered.

They seek protection against all the forces they perceive as hostile to their cherished way of life–foreign people, foreign goods, foreign ideas, aided and abetted by a government they no longer believe cares about them. Perhaps this is why fully 60 percent of them are willing to endorse a proposition that in previous periods would be viewed as extreme: the country has gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is prepared to break so rules if that is what it takes to set things right.

Aaron Blake reports at the Fix that “…We have some bad news for the Trump campaign. Sanders supporters aren’t just rallying around Clinton; they’re doing it rather quickly. And it’s a big reason Clinton just extended her lead over Trump into the double digits, 51 percent to 39 percent…A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Sanders backers, who polls have shown were reluctant to jump over to Clinton and even flirted with supporting Trump, are coming home faster than we might have expected.”

Having read George Will’s columns for decades, I’ve been wondering if this might happen. Will believes Trump’s policies are not genuinely conservative and Trump’s utter lack of integrity, gravitas and general rectitude are repulsive an old-school conservative like Will. But in a way, Speaker Ryan’s character flaw sealed Will’s departure, as indicated by the video clip below. There may be soon others. Thomas B. Edsall discusses polls showing that a growing percentage of Republican rank and filers say they may sit out the 2016 presidential election.

“Clinton’s campaign is advertising heavily in eight swing states with soft-focus spots designed to rehabilitate her image. These three Rust Belt states [MI, PA and WI] are not on the list, despite the campaign’s organizing presence on the ground here, raising concerns among allies who fret that she cannot afford to take any of them for granted….The key for Clinton in the Rust Belt, her allies say, is to discredit Trump and to demonstrate that she has concrete proposals to better their lives — all while connecting emotionally with people’s anger.” — from “Democrats see danger signs in states where Clinton has not fully engaged” by Phillip Rucker and John Wagner of the Washington Post.

At The New York Times Sunday Review Frank Bruni spotlights “14 Young Democrats to Watch.”
He doesn’t address all of the counter-arguments, but HuffPo’s Earl Ofari Hutchinson makes a strong case for Clinton picking Elizabeth Warren for her running mate: “Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is Hillary’s best bet for VP. Why? Despite the relentless lampooning, ridiculing and name-calling of Trump, and the smug writing of his political obituary, the election will be a close run up. The big GOP donors and handlers, the hate driven passion to beat Hillary, Trump’s skilled fear mongering and pander to bigotry, the never-ending media fawn over him, and GOP dominance in the majority of the state’s legislatures and state houses will insure that…The fatal mistake is to assume that simply painting and then writing off Trump as a kook will be enough to scare millions to storm the polls to defeat him. Clinton’s campaign is a political textbook study in business like organization, precision, and professionalism. But it’s not a campaign of passion…Its passion that pushes people, especially young people, and minorities, out the door and to the polls on Election Day. These voters made the White House a wrap for Obama in 2008 and 2012. But Clinton is not Obama, and in the handful of swing states that will decide the election, the numbers and turnout will mean everything.”

Writing at The Upshot, Brendan Nyhan cautions “Don’t Assume Donald Trump’s Supporters Believe All His Words.” As Nyhan observes, “Many don’t take his promises literally — for instance, only 42 percent of Republicans believe Trump will succeed in making Mexico pay to build a wall. A number of these voters instead support him because he would move policy in their preferred direction, albeit not nearly as far as he suggests. (Some might not even want him to succeed in carrying out those proposals — for example, a March poll found that 37 percent of Trump supporters disagree with his plan to deport all illegal immigrants currently in the United States.)”

Bloomberg View’s Albert R. Hunt explains why the 2016 “Ballot Is Expected to Offer Stark Choice on Economy.”

At The American Prospect Peter Dreier offers “Three Strategies to Beat the NRA: Gun safety advocates who until now have relied largely on traditional lobbying need to broaden their strategy to include partnerships with gun owners and civil disobedience.” Dreier makes a compelling case that “The Orlando massacre may be a turning point in galvanizing a stronger movement for sensible gun control. Three strategies–traditional advocacy, mobilization of sensible gun owners, and civil disobedience–point the way. Even as we grieve, we can move forward. We can stop the madness.”

In the reaction to the British vote to leave the European Union, there have been a lot of loose analogies made between the US and the UK I discussed one of them at New York:

Anyone who has been watching the run-up to the Brexit referendum in Britain, in which controversy over EU-mandated immigration policies has been a central issue, might have been surprised by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s initial reaction to the results:

A lot of the message that has come back from this is that many communities are fed up with cuts, they are fed up with economic dislocation and feel very angry at the way they have been betrayed and marginalised by successive governments in very poor areas of the country.

So Brexit is about budget cuts and Tory social policies? Really?
Now, part of what Corbyn may be reflecting is the left’s traditional tendency to view cultural phenomena as by-products of economic dynamics — what critics call “economic reductionism.” You can see a glimmer of that in the reaction to Brexit by Bernie Sanders, a pol who is often accused of economic reductionism:

“What this vote is about is an indication that the global economy is not working for everybody,” he said. “It’s not working in the United States for everybody and it’s not working in the U.K. for everybody. When you see investors going to China and shutting down factories in this country and laying off, over a period of many years, millions of people, people are saying you know what, global economy may be great for some people but not for me.”

Not a word about immigration, even as an economic issue.

Unike Sanders, Corbyn and other Labour leaders have to be very careful in talking about this subject. On the one hand, nonwhite immigrants are a strong Labour constituency. On the other hand, white native British working-class voters appear to have overwhelmingly voted for Brexit in Labour’s northern English strongholds. And Labour is far more dependent on white working-class support than are our own Democrats. For one thing, the U.K. remains a much “whiter” country than the U.S.; as of the last census, 87 percent of the British population was white. And so Labour has not been able to make up for white working-class defections with a large minority voting population. There’s also more competition in the U.K. for the higher-income, higher-educated voters who have been gravitating to the Democratic Party in the U.S.: The Lib Dems and Greens are serious parties, as are the regional nationalist parties, and the Tories are (or were in the last two national elections) a lot more moderate than their American counterparts.

That is not to say Brexit, or even anti-immigrant sentiment, is all about race, by any means. The immigrants most associated with EU policy are typically Eastern European (about half of the immigrant population of the U.K. is now nonwhite, and half is white, according to some estimates). But many British people fear the EU will force the U.K. to accept countless Middle Eastern migrants as a by-product of the Syrian nightmare.

In any event, Labour must balance a diverse coalition anchored in a white working class that increasingly resents diversity. It simply does not have the demographic luxury to champion diversity and acceptance of immigrants the way most Democrats — notably presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — have done.

So it’s safer to talk about Tory austerity and economic inequality. Corbyn’s rap has the added advantage of expressing some truth. It’s just not the whole truth.