Blue-collar Whites are the forgotten class of America. Hated by Democrats and ignored by Republicans, their interests are of no concern to the major parties as they continue to fall over themselves in the pursuit of America’s rising tide of color.
Their jobs are gone or threatened, their benefits are cut, their neighborhoods overrun, and their way of life destroyed. There’s hardly any issue pushed by either the GOP or Democrats that in any way would benefit the lives of working-class Whites. And it’s not like they are lacking in issues. Charles Murray’s Coming Apart centered on the decline of the White working class and how it is now beset by a plethora of issues including depression (economic and mental), single parent households, and skyrocketing substance abuse. But their problems prompt no outcries or calls for immediate solutions from our political and media elite. That’s why large swaths of the working class stay home on Election Day.
But that’s also why there are now new calls for the Democrats to reclaim their heritages as the party of Workingman, regardless of color. The Democrats, recovering from a brutal election, are looking for ways to win back blue collar votes to their side. Are they calling for a halt to immigration and eliminating affirmative action? Yeah, right. Instead, the authors behind a piece outlining an appeal to the workingman just want to emphasize a quaint “middle-out” economic approach that manages to benefit all of the various elements of the Left (“minorities, unmarried and working women, Millennials and more secular voters, and educated whites living in more urbanized states”) while appealing to those Whites they can no longer count on. Sounds like pure fantasy, but it’s no worse than what Republicans propose.
The “middle-out” proposal simply calls for further empowering technocrats and the managerial elite to handle our economy and “invest” more in the so-called “middle-class.” Thus, magically, we’d get an economy that works for everyone! That’s a tall order when there’s no call to cut subsidies for the urban poor and you’re giving more power to a managerial state that already has unprecedented authority over society. It’s not just Wall Street that doesn’t care about laboring rubes, it’s also the managerial elite that doesn’t give a shit about their economic prospects. Why you should we give them even more power and expect different results? This is just another milquetoast, bloodless idea that sounds good only on paper—but will never transfer results into reality. You cannot have an economy that works for everybody when you live in a Balkanized, multiracial, continental strip mall. The interests of non-Whites and Urban Elves trump that of Whites in flyover country, according to the technocrats bolstered by this plan.
There’s also the plan’s whimsical notion that the working class is coming to love diversity and is now down with cosmopolitanism. This assumption bases itself on a poll that asked two vague, probably misrepresented questions on diversity to working folk. However, later on in the article the authors admit the Democrat Party needs to step away from racial politics (it is indeed entitled “Beyond Identity Politics”) that alienate Whites and favor non-Whites. This is also sounds like the working-class might, in fact, have a problem with diversity. It also fails to address why these people stopped voting Democrat in the first place.
Luckily, a professional Black journalist was able to shoot down this notion that the working-class will be won over by the Democrats with economic tomfoolery—with the simple assertion that they see it as the party for Black people—that also (correctly) ascertains why they became Republican voters. After the party sided with the race rioters in the 60s and pushed busing and integration into White ethnic neighborhoods, their old demographic began to look elsewhere to voice their political concerns. The Dems became the party of color and that’s why the working-class left—not because the party moderated its economic agenda.
But it is true to a lesser extent that the Democrat embrace of cultural progressivism and economic moderation has ruined their appeal for the people who would rather have cultural conservatism and economic progressivism. They would rather have the party to be populistic than technocratic. And this was the Democrat calling card ever since the days of Andrew Jackson. They lost it when they became the party of the Colored Man and backed busing and forced integration—measures that hurt lower-income Whites for the benefit of Blacks and the progressive delusions of upper-class White liberals. The party’s previous appeal to working men knew no geographic divide as they equally won over the White ethnics of the North and the Scots-Irish of the South. This was not because the Democrats were the “White People’s Party” of its day though—it was due to the party having the image of fighting for the common man against the wealthy and powerful. For Southern Whites, the powerful were represented by the North and the various elites that wanted them to integrate and enfranchise Blacks. For Northern Whites, the powerful were the factory owners that kept them at low wages and in poor housing.
The heroes of the party all fought against the forces of power that were hated by the common man. Jackson fought the National Bank. William Jennings Bryant fought the robber barons. George Wallace fought the federal government’s intrusion into segregation. The populism of the party always attracted Middle American Whites…until they abandon populism in favor of managerialism. Wallace was the last major populist in the party before his demographic fled to the Republicans. Democrats replaced their concern for the White workingman with an ideology more fit for Urban Elf centers rather than ethnic neighborhoods. However, it’s still an ideology that benefits non-Whites of all stripes with steadfast cheerleading for welfare, affirmative action, and mass immigration.
But the White exodus to the Republican Party hasn’t made the GOP into the party of the common man. The Republican economic policy is still designed to benefit the wealthy and they still demand cuts to well-liked government programs, such as Medicare, that benefit Whites across the board. They also support mass immigration for cheap labor and attack 47% of Americans as “takers.” The GOP’s slide towards libertarianism—an ideology that emphatically rejects the culture and economic interests of working-class Whites—only means the Grand Old Party isn’t about to embrace genuine populism anytime soon. The Republican Party has won over the lower-income Whites through its transformation into the generic White People’s Party—a party that on the surface appears to fight for the interests of White America but in reality only fights for Israel and the 1%. They are able to convince healthy-minded Whites to vote for them through macho rhetoric and figureheads that present a breath of fresh air from the low T White males associated with the Democrat Party. Working-class Whites respect men that who hew to traditional notions of masculinity and the GOP have mastered this appearance since Ronald Reagan. They’d rather vote for a man than a pansy—even if his policies resemble Reagan’s.
So they are a class without a party, staying at home in a time of chaotic elections where they could prove the decisive vote—if they just showed up.
In the last 50 years, only two figures have managed to tap into this class and make them politically active: Wallace and Pat Buchanan. Both combined economic populism with cultural conservatism that appealed to the sensibilities and desires of America’s forgotten demographic. They fought against the elite and were hated back by the elite for their respective attacks. Mocked by the media and labeled fascists, they rallied around them enthusiastic supporters who had had enough of changing racial demographics and threatening cultural intrusions to vote and support their political campaigns. They both appealed to the descendants of yeoman farmers in the South and the descendants of 19th century immigrants in the North. They both had the potential to create mass movements that could’ve changed this country—but they each failed to do that and their successes faded away after their campaigns ceased.
While there is much to admire in Wallace and Buchanan, we should not succumb to the temptation to strictly follow in their footsteps. Both spent immeasurable amounts of their time campaigning trying to demonstrate they were not White Nationalists. Wallace truly wasn’t a fighter for White interests and only adopted the issue of segregation after losing his first Alabama’s governor’s race to a stronger opponent. The man who wrote his famous “Segregation Forever” speech later denounced him as a phony and ran against Wallace for governor in 1970. Buchanan never built a faction within the conservative movement and has a long habit of endorsing Republican tickets—no matter how awful they are. Buchanan is the perfect representation of the cognitive dissonance of the working-class that continues to vote Team Red in spite of the party doing a piss poor job of representing their interests. How the GOP is able to maintain their lead on this demographic is its ability to delude White backlash into impotent rage against “big government.”
The working-class backlash was transformed by Republicans into a purely economic agenda that employed racial dog whistling to keep this class voting for them. None of their social issues were resolved and their economic status worsened. In any case, Whites—whether white-collar or blue-collar—will continue to vote Republican unless the party meets an untimely end. At the same time, that doesn’t mean Whites will be happy with their choice. The authors of “Beyond Identity Politics” were right to claim that this demographic is taken for granted by the elephants.
The Forgotten Class will stay forgotten and other population groups will be pursued. They have no interest groups on their side and the demographic picture paints a grim future for their prospects. Courting them is only a short-term idea for the Left who sees them as a necessity for the upcoming Presidential election in 2016. After that, they will be discarded and used as favored targets to bash everything considered backward in the country.
This also makes them the demographic most likely to listen to our ideas. Everyone else has already given up on them and moved on to other groups. They have no place in this country anymore—and that may make many of them try to forge a homeland of their own. If we want to succeed in the long-run, we will have to win over this class and tailor our message to appeal to their concerns. They are now the Forgotten Class, that’s why we need to remember them.
As their alienation continues to increase, their desire for a new outlook will only grow. Let’s make ours the one they choose.
