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hillary clinton
Revenge of the Deplorables?
Think about it this way, maybe it's the Democratic Party which has become deplorable to the working class.
Nov 20, 2024
Did the working class, especially its white members, elect Donald Trump again because they are basically racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic? Are they craving a strongman who can protect white supremacy from a flood of immigrants and put the woke liberals in their place? Didn’t Harris lose primarily because she’s a woman of color?
More than a few progressives, as well as the New York Times, believe these are plausible explanations for Harris’s defeat. I’m not so sure.
The working class started abandoning the Democrats long before Trump became a political figure, let alone a candidate. In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the working-class vote; In 1996, Clinton 50 percent; In 2012, Obama 40.6 percent; and in 2020, Biden received only 36.2 percent.
This decline has little to do with illiberalism on social issues. Since Carter’s victory, these workers have become more liberal on race, gender, immigration and gay rights, as I detail in my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers.
These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.
Furthermore, my research shows that mass layoffs, not illiberalism, best explains the decline of worker support for the Democrats. In the former Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, for example, as the county mass layoff rate went up the Democratic vote went down. The statistical causation, of course, may be off, but the linkage here between economic dissatisfaction and flight from the Democratic Party is straightforward.
Did the Working Class Give Trump 1.9 Million More Votes?
Trump improved his vote total from 74.2 million in 2020 to 76.1 in 2024, an increase of 1.9 million. Did the white working class support him more strongly this year?
No. According to the Edison exit polls, Trump’s share of the non-college white vote dropped from 67 percent in 2020 to 66 percent in 2024. (For 2020 exit polls see here. For 2024 see here.)
In fact, the largest increase for Trump this year came from non-white voters without a college degree. Trump’s percentage of these voters jumped from 26 percent in 2020 to 33 percent in 2024. These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.
The Defection of the Border Democrats
Perhaps the most astonishing collapse of the Democratic vote is found in the Texas counties along the Rio Grande. Take Starr County, population 65,000, most of whom are Hispanic. Hillary Clinton won that county by 60 percent in 2016. Trump won it this year by 16 percentage points, a massive shift of 76 percentage points, almost unheard of in electoral politics. Trump won 12 of the 14 border counties in 2024, up from only five in 2016. Interviews suggest that these voters are very concerned by uncontrolled border crossings, inflation, and uncertainly in finding and maintaining jobs in the oil industry.
(I hear whispers among progressives that Hispanic men just don’t like women in leadership positions. Yet just across the Mexican border, Hispanic men seemed quite comfortable recently electing a female president.)
The Big Story Is the Overall Decline of the Harris Vote
Harris received 73.1 million votes in 2024, a drop of 8.3 million compared with Biden’s 81.3 million votes in 2020. That’s an extraordinary decline. Who are these voters who decided to sit it out?
So far, while the final votes are tallied and exit polls are compiled, it looks like they are a very diverse group—from young people upset about the administration’s failure to restrain Israel to liberals who didn’t like watching Harris go after suburban Republicans by palling around with arch-conservatives Liz and Dick Cheney.
Personally, I think many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them. Harris was viewed as both a member of the establishment and a defender of it, and the establishment hasn’t been too considerate of working-class issues in recent decades.
Many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them.
Harris’ highly publicized fundraising visit to Wall Street certainly made that clear. And in case we missed that signal, her staff told the New York Times that Wall Street was helping to shape her agenda. It’s very hard to excite working people by arguing, in effect, that what’s good for Wall Street is also good for working people.
The John Deere Fiasco
For me, the symbolic turning point was the Harris campaign’s pathetic response to the John Deere company’s announcement about shipping 1,000 jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. Trump jumped on it right away, saying that if Deere made that move, he would slap a 200-percent tariff on all its imports from Mexico. If I were a soon-to-be-replaced Deere worker, that would have gotten my attention.
The Harris campaign responded as well, but not in a way that would convince workers that she really cared about their jobs. The campaign sent billionaire Mark Cuban to the press to claim such a tariff would be “insanity.” He and the campaign said not one word about the jobs that would soon be lost. Trump promised to intervene. Harris promised nothing.
The sad part is that the Biden-Harris campaign could have at least tried. They had the power of the entire federal government. They could have cajoled and bullied, waved carrots and sticks. In short, they could have easily made a visible public effort to prevent the export of those good-paying jobs by a highly profitable corporation that was spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street and it’s CEO. Here was a chance to defend jobs against overt greed. Instead, they essentially told working people that Harris wasn’t willing to fight for those jobs.
But Didn’t the Working-Class Abandon Sherrod Brown?
I haven’t yet found any comprehensive demographic data about Brown and his working-class support. We do know, however, that he ran well ahead of Harris. Brown lost his Senate race by 3.6 percent in Ohio compared to a Harris loss by 11.5 percent.
Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.
Brown knew that he was carrying a heavy load as a Democrat, especially because of the passage of NAFTA, which was finalized during Bill Clinton’s presidency. As Brown put it: “The Democratic brand has suffered again, starting with NAFTA…. But, what really mattered is: I still heard it in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.”
Brown, as a loyal Democrat, was stuck with that dubious brand, and with Harris, as she was clobbered in Ohio. Tom Osborne, the former local labor leader and a refreshing political newcomer, shed the Democratic Party burden by running as an independent in Nebraska. He lost his Senate race by 6.8 percent compared to 10.9 percent for Harris. Brown did better than Osborne but it’s highly likely that both did much better than Harris with working-class voters.
Maybe the Democratic Party Has Become Deplorable to the Working Class
Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.
- Biden’s ego kept him in the race at least a year past his sell-by date and the Democratic leadership did not have the nerve to act until he completely lost it in the June debate with Trump. (A few of us urged Biden to step aside in November 2023).
- Harris was anointed without going through a rigorous primary process. She failed miserably at that in 2020, and she probably was not the strongest potential Democratic candidate this time around either.
- Refusing to run on a strong progressive populist platform pushed much of the working-class to Trump. The Center for Working Class Politics survey of Pennsylvania showed that a strong populist message was the most popular among working class voters, and that the Harris focus on democracy was the weakest issue for that group. But the Harris campaign doubled down on the democracy issues late in the campaign and paid the price.
- The failure to say anything at all about mass layoffs and stock buybacks was nothing short of political malpractice.
- And placating Wall Street was flat out deplorable.
Will the Democrats learn from this debacle and change their ways? I’m not optimistic. They are the defenders of the liberal elite establishment and have grown very comfortable (and prosperous) in that role.
We may not have all the data we desire or need as yet, but we know this much: something has to change. And that change is not going to come from the old guard of this deplorable Democratic Party establishment.
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Klippenstein, Musk, the Vance Dossier, and a Double-Standard on Leaks
Musk’s Twitter is keeping certain information out of the public view—information that just happens to damage the presidential ticket he supports.
Oct 01, 2024
Ken Klippenstein, an independent reporter operating on Substack and an investigative alum of the Intercept, announced (Substack, 9/26/24) that he had been kicked off Twitter (now rebranded as X). His crime, he explained, stemmed from posting the 271-page official dossier of Republican vice presidential candidate’s J.D. Vance’s campaign vulnerabilities; the US government alleges that the information was leaked through Iranian hacking. In other words, the dossier is a part of the “foreign meddling campaign” of “enemy states.”
Klippenstein is not the first reporter to gain access to these papers (Popular Information, 9/9/24), but most of the reporting about this dossier has been on the intrigue revolving around Iranian hacking rather than the content itself (Daily Beast, 8/10/24; Politico, 8/10/24; Forbes, 8/11/24). Klippenstein decided it was time for the whole enchilada to see the light of day:
As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable. I’ll let it speak for itself.
“The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Donald J. Trump,” Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, responded when I asked him about the hack.
If the document had been hacked by some “anonymous”-like hacker group, the news media would be all over it. I’m just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combating foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement that alleged Iranian hacking (9/18/24) was “malicious cyber activity” and “the latest example of Iran’s multi-pronged approach…to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”
Where’s the beef?
The Vance report isn’t as salacious as Vance’s false and bizarre comments about Haitians eating pets (NPR, 9/15/24), but it does show that he has taken positions that have fractured the right, such as aid for Ukraine; the report calls him one of the “chief obstructionists” to providing assistance to the country against Russia. It dedicates several pages to Vance’s history of criticizing Trump and the MAGA movement, suggesting that his place on the ticket could divide Trump’s voting base.
On the other hand, it outlines many of his extreme right-wing stances that could alienate him with putative moderates. It says Vance “appears to have once called for slashing Social Security and Medicare,” and “is opposed to providing childcare assistance to low-income Americans.” He “supports placing restrictions on abortion access,” and states that “he does not support abortion exceptions in the case of rape.”
And for any voter who values 7-day-a-week service, Vance “appears to support laws requiring businesses to close on Sundays.” It quotes him saying: “Close the Damn Businesses on Sunday. Commercial Freedom Will Suffer. Moral Behavior Will Not, and Our Society Will Be Much the Better for It.” That might not go over well with small business owners, and any worker who depends on their Sunday shifts.
‘Took a deep breath’
Are the findings in the Vance dossier the story of the century? Probably not, but it’s not nothing that the Trump campaign is aware its vice presidential candidate is loaded with liabilities. There are at least a few people who find that useful information.
And the Washington Post (9/27/24) happily reported on private messages Vance sent to an anonymous individual who shared them with the newspaper that explained Vance’s flip-flopping from a Trump critic to a Trump lover. Are the private messages really more newsworthy than the dossier—or is the issue that the messages aren’t tainted by allegedly foreign fingerprints? Had that intercept of material involved an Iranian, would it have seen the light of day?
In fact, the paper (8/13/24) explained that news organizations, including the Post, were reflecting on the foreign nature of the leak when deciding how deep they should report on the content they received:
“This episode probably reflects that news organizations aren’t going to snap at any hack that comes in and is marked as ‘exclusive’ or ‘inside dope’ and publish it for the sake of publishing,” said Matt Murray, executive editor of the Post. Instead, “all of the news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy or not.”
Double standards for leaks
There seems to be a disconnect, however, between ill-gotten information that impacts a Republican ticket and information that tarnishes a Democrat.
Think back to 2016. When “WikiLeaks released a trove of emails apparently hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman email account, unleashing thousands of messages,” as Politico (10/7/16) reported, the outlet didn’t just merely report on the hack, it reported on the embarrassing substance of the documents. In 2024, by contrast, when Politico was given the Vance dossier, it wrote nothing about its contents, declaring that “questions surrounding the origins of the documents and how they came to our attention were more newsworthy than the material that was in those documents” (CNN, 8/13/24).
The New York Times and Washington Post similarly found the Clinton leaks—which were believed at the time to have been given to WikiLeaks by Russia—far more newsworthy than the Vance dossier. The Times “published at least 199 articles about the stolen DNC and Clinton campaign emails between the first leak in June 2016 and Election Day,” Popular Information (9/9/24) noted.
FAIR editor Jim Naureckas (11/24/09) has written about double standards in media, noting that information that comes to light through unethical or illegal means is played up if that information helps powerful politicians and corporations. Meanwhile, if such information obtained questionably is damaging, the media focus tends to be less on the substance, and more on whether the public should be hearing about such matters.
For example, when a private citizen accidentally overheard a cell phone conversation between House Speaker John Boehner, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican congressmembers, and made a tape that showed Gingrich violating the terms of a ethics sanction against him, news coverage focused on the illegality of taping the conversation, not on the ethics violation the tape revealed (Washington Post, 1/14/97; New York Times, 1/15/97).
But when climate change deniers hacked climate scientists’ email, that produced a front-page story in the New York Times (11/20/09) scrutinizing the correspondence for any inconsistencies that could be used to bolster the deniers’ arguments.
When Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Michael Gallagher wrote a series of stories about the Chiquita fruit corporation, based in part on listening without authorization to company voicemails, the rest of the media were far more interested in Gallagher’s ethical and legal dilemmas (he was eventually sentenced to five years’ probation) rather than the bribery, fraud and worker abuse his reporting exposed.
Meet the new boss
There’s a certain degree of comedy in the hypocrisy of Klippenstein’s suspension. Since right-wing billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, he has claimed that his administration would end corporate censorship, but instead he’s implemented his own censorship agenda (Guardian, 1/15/24; Al Jazeera, 8/14/24).
The Independent (1/29/23) reported that Musk “oversaw a campaign of suppression that targeted his critics upon his assumption of power at Twitter.” He
personally directed the suspension of a left-leaning activist, Chad Loder, who became known across the platform for his work helping to identify participants in the January 6 attack.
Al Jazeera (2/28/23) noted that “digital rights groups say social media giants,” including X, “have restricted [and] suspended the accounts of Palestinian journalists and activists.” Musk has likewise fulfilled censorship requests by the governments of Turkey (Ars Technica, 5/15/23) and India (Intercept, 1/24/23, 3/28/23) officials, and is generally more open to official requests to suppress speech than Twitter‘s previous owners (El Pais, 5/24/23; Washington Post, 9/25/24).
Meanwhile, Musk’s critics contend, he’s allowed the social network to be a force multiplier for the right. “Elon Musk has increasingly used the social media platform as a megaphone to amplify his political views and, lately, those of right-wing figures he’s aligned with,” AP (8/13/24) reported. (Musk is vocal about his support for former President Donald Trump’s candidacy—New York Times, 7/18/24.)
“Twitter Antisemitism ‘Skyrocketed’ Since Elon Musk Takeover—Jewish Groups,” blasted a Newsweek headline (4/25/23). Earlier this year, Mother Jones (3/13/24) reported that Musk “has been retweeting prominent race scientist adherents…spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers.”
‘Chilling effect on speech’
Now Musk’s Twitter is keeping certain information out of the public view—information that just happens to damage the presidential ticket he supports. With Klippenstein having been silenced on the network, anyone claiming X is a bastion of free speech at this point is either mendacious or simply deluded.
Klippenstein (Substack, 9/26/24) explained that “X says that I’ve been suspended for ‘violating our rules against posting private information,’ citing a tweet linking to my story about the JD Vance dossier.” He added, though, that “I never published any private information on X.” Rather, “I linked to an article I wrote here, linking to a document of controversial provenance, one that I didn’t want to alter for that very reason.”
The journalist (Substack, 9/27/24) claims that his account suspension, which he reports to be permanent, is political because he did not violate the network’s code about disclosing personal information, and even if he did, he should have been given the opportunity to correct his post to become unsuspended. “So it’s not about a violation of X’s policies,” he said. “What else would you call this but politically motivated?”
Klippenstein is understandably concerned that he is now without a major social media promotional tool. “I no longer have access to the primary channel by which I disseminate primarily news (and shitposts of course) to the general public,” he said. “This chilling effect on speech is exactly why we published the Vance Dossier in its entirety.”
UPDATE: Klippenstein (Substack, 9/29/24) reports that his publication of the Vance dossier is being censored not only by X, but by Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google as well: “The platforms said that the alleged Iranian origin of the dossier — which no one is calling fake or altered — necessitated removing any links to the document.”
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'Unhinged' Trump Floats Imprisoning Political Foes
The Biden campaign called the felonious former president's threat to jail Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton the "latest proof that he will do anything to regain power, preserve his own freedom, and seek revenge."
Jun 05, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden's reelection campaign on Wednesday slammed an "unhinged" threat by former President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee—to imprison political opponents including the president, First Lady Jill Biden, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In a Tuesday Newsmaxinterview, Trump said that it is "very possible" that Democrats could face prosecution if he returns to the White House next January.
Claiming his conviction in New York state last month on 34 felony charges related to the falsification of business records to cover up hush money payments during the 2016 campaign was political persecution by Democrats, Trump said, "Does that mean the next president does it to them?"
"And wouldn't it be really bad like, as an example, Hillary with the hammering of her cellphones and all of the things she did, but wouldn't it be terrible to throw the president's wife and the former secretary of state—you think of it, the former secretary of state, but the president, the president's wife, into jail?" he asked.
Trump, while arguing he didn’t jail Hillary Clinton because it would’ve set a bad precedent, alludes he may need to jail political opponents:
“Wouldn't it be terrible to throw the president's wife…into jail? ... It's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them.” pic.twitter.com/OZKFBpp0jL
— The Recount (@therecount) June 5, 2024
"Wouldn't that be a terrible thing? But they want to do it. So, you know, it's like it's, it's a terrible, terrible path that they're leading us to," Trump added. "And it's very possible that it's gonna have to happen to them."
Earlier this week, Trump denied ever calling for Clinton to be locked up, a claim belied by the many times he repeated his "lock her up" mantra during and after the 2016 campaign, when she was the Democratic nominee.
Responding to the Newsmax interview, Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said, "Reeling and increasingly unhinged from his own felony convictions, Trump raising plans to jail his political opponents is just the latest proof that he will do anything to regain power, preserve his own freedom, and seek revenge on anyone who opposes him."
Trump still faces 54 federal and state criminal charges across three cases related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents and attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, including by fomenting the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.
"Trump is pledging to rule as a dictator on 'day one,' punish his enemies, embrace violence done on his behalf, and warns of a 'bloodbath' if he loses," Singer added. "The warning signs are clear for all to see. Trump is a danger to our Constitution, a threat to our democracy, and so consumed by his own failed, diminished state he has gone off the deep end."
Trump has reportedly also sought advice about how he could jail journalists if he is reelected.
Trump's threat to jail his foes is relatively tame in comparison with what some of his prominent supporters want to do to Democrats. Laura Loomer, a far-right anti-Muslim activist, said following Trump's conviction that "we actually used to have... punishment for treason in this country."
"Should Democrats be in jail? No question. When Donald Trump gets elected, should he start locking them up? No question. Should there be lists of Democrats who need to go to jail? One hundred percent," Loomer—who came close to winning her 2022 congressional race—said during the "Timcast IRL" podcast.
"Not just jail, they should get the death penalty," she added.
Loomer's "Timcast IRL" episode was subsequently removed from the podcast's website and social media platforms.
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