Thread by @eatcookwrite

THREAD
I think this reveals an all too common misunderstanding about what that particular group of working people wants help with.

They are a lot less confused than a lot of people think.
1/22

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1341445964331102214

For starters, we generally talking about blue collar royalty. These aren't so much the front line factory workers, they are the supervisors. The guys taking bets on who many poultry workers were going to get sick at the Tyson plant. 2/22

Not the carpenters and drywallers. The contractor driving around from job site to job site in a $60k pickup truck. These are small business owners without college degrees. 3/22

What do they want help with? Keeping their guns. Or making sure that gun ownership doesn't get emasculated by being regulated like car ownership. 4/22

Because nearly everything on the table would just make gun ownership more inconvenient and a little more or expensive for law-abiding citizens. But it would be penis-shrinking somehow. 5/22

They want help keeping their daughters from getting abortions. 6/22

They want fewer immigrants and to deal with fewer people who don't speak English or speak it with a heavy accent. They aren't necessarily competing for jobs with those folks. They are often supervising them. 7/22

But they feel like their cousin on disability, who they feel like should get back to work, would if there were fewer immigrants working for peanuts. 8/22

They aren't confused about the programs that could help them. Especially the actual low-income Trump voters (Democrats win low-income Whites, but low-income Trump voters do exist). 9/22

In 'Dying of Whiteness', Jonathan Metzl takes to people dying of diseases they could get treated if their states expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. They still opposed expansion because undeserving people, 'those people', might benefit too. 10/22

amazon.com/dp/B07FJ6Z1ZW/

They'd rather die than to support the wrong kind of people also getting help. 11/22

A lot of business owners, certainly a lot of the farmers I know, wanted a trade war with China. They don't seem to especially care that Trump lost. But at least he tried. 12/22

They want help feeling like they matter in the culture. They wanted somebody to yell at uppity Black football players and uppity women. That got that in spades. 13/22

Those that weren't actively committed to organized white supremacy were tired of always feeling like they were five years behind the times in trying to discuss race or gender politics. Trump helped them put that behind them. 14/22

Before the pandemic Trump and the Trump administration actually put their shoulders into pumping up aggregate demand and the economy was doing well, unemployment was low, wages were rising, poverty was falling. 15/22

The distributional aspects weren't great. It was geared towards the rich and the stock market. There was nothing in there to build the productivity and wages of the bottom 40%. (Bill Clinton also gave up on that and threw his lot with Greenspan). * 16/22

But if you are an American small business owner, you aren't looking for much more from the government than high aggregate demand (unless you are a farmer). You are happy that unions are on the decline. You don't want the minimum wage to go up. 17/22

You don't want the Democrats making you buy insurance for your 12 employees. Or raising your taxes to buy it from everyone. 18/22

Starting with LBJ passing major civil rights legislation in the 60s and gathering steam in the 70s was the dawning consensus among much of the White middle class in America, that if ANYBODY could be middle class, then maybe we shouldn't have a middle class. 19/22

Policy-wise that reached its apotheosis with Paul Ryan. Culturally, Trumpism represents the last fortress to hold on to what they have while keeping everyone else out by gutting the programs that form a bridge into the middle class and keep middle-class life 'sticky'. 20/22

They are just betting that they can hold on if the economy is strong while keeping it for themselves.

I don't think Trump fooled them about anything. 21/22

* At the very bottom, the doubling of the standard deduction was nothing to sneeze at. 22/22