One upside of the Bernie Blackout: Sanders is not facing a frontrunner's backlash

[Wanderfound]

@kennykb

And yet, there’s a widely spread narrative that Trump rose to power on the support of often-progressive disaffected industrial workers who chose fascism over yet another centrist.

And yet, when you look at the demographics of the 2016 election, the three key predictors of Trump voting were (1) whiteness, (2) maleness, and (3) wealth.

All groups of white people voted majority Trump, but working class whites voted for Trump at a lower rate than any other economic group. Overall, the working class (which is very much not white in the USA) were the base of the strongest opposition to Trump’s election.

Fascism is a middle class pathology, based in the suppression of the working class and the defence of fading privilege. It comes from above, not below.

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OTOH, there is one way in which the “working class rejection of neoliberalism gave us Trump” narrative is true; the shittiness of the establishment Democratic party is the primary cause of low turnout among working class communities (of all races, not just white).

As I posted elsewhere:

Given the state of gerrymandering, voter suppression and the electoral college, the Democratic base alone is insufficient for victory.

But that does not mean attempting to appeal to soft Republicans; the tiny numbers of potential Trumpist defectors are massively outweighed by the huge population of non-voters. Most of whom are to the left of both parties, particularly when it comes to working-class economic issues.

Any attempt to appeal to soft fascists, or the continuation of policy driven by corporate cash, is going to keep those voters at home.

If middle class America continues to refuse to support the interests of working class America (which includes most of Black America), then working class Americans are not going to save the American empire from destroying itself.