The 'Springsteen paradox' that explains why Trump won Michigan

[portlander23]

The 'Springsteen paradox' that explains why Trump won Michigan
Michael Luongo
CNN

My first clue that something was up was the Bernie Sanders rally I attended at the University of Michigan. Several thousand people (compared to the much smaller number who showed up for Hillary Clinton's rally in nearby Detroit around the same time) filled the Crisler Center. Not all of them were students; in fact, many of the students hadn't even been born in 1994 when NAFTA, one of Sanders' immediate targets for criticism, was passed. But many of the people I saw that day had driven hours from the conservative western side of the state to hear Sanders' populist message. They had lived with economic devastation (much of it caused by NAFTA and the Great Recession) and for many of them, the memory of the first pink-slip remains vivid. So it wasn't a surprise to me that Sanders won the Democratic primary and despite fivethirtyeight.com's predictions, I wasn't shocked that Donald Trump won Michigan.

In the Internet age, it's easy for those of us who never interact with blue-collar workers to ignore how seemingly simple things we do harm them in ways invisible to us. Journalists are as culpable as anyone. Despite our own industry's instability, we celebrate the disruptions of Uber, Airbnb and other apps that can lead to the loss of thousands of jobs, replacing them with precarious piecemeal work and leapfrogging over decades of progressive worker-protection legislation hard won by unions and community planning regulations meant to keep neighborhoods affordable for the working class.

It's easy now for journalists to engage in well-deserved self-flagellation for not having a better understanding of what happened in Michigan. But I wasn't the only one predicting Trump's strong performance here. The London Review of Books wrote on how Michigan's Democratic US Rep. Debbie Dingell had been warning Clinton she was bound to lose the state unless she did more to solidify her position. (She didn't, as we know now, declining to campaign in a "safe" state once she had won the nomination.) But this isn't just about failing to predict an election outcome. The Springsteen paradox speaks to an empathy gap that needs to be closed.

We need to understand how the things we celebrate, or simply accept as economically inevitable— from apps to cheap clothes, imported food and toiletries — hurt American workers by shipping once seemingly untouchable jobs to Canada and Mexico. If you doubt me, take a look at the label of your Colgate toothpaste and your Oreo cookies the next time you're at the grocery store. Living on the coasts, far from the center of American manufacturing, we might be blissfully unaware of these things, but the laid-off workers in the Midwest certainly are not.

[HassleCat]

1. We need to create jobs.

If that requires government inventing things for people to do, I am perfectly fine with that. That's what Roosevelt did. We also need to put more tax dollars into infrastructure projects that create construction jobs. We need to back unions and fight against right-to-work legislation. We need to disconnect ourselves from financial interests that export jobs. That last one will be the most difficult.

[Blue Shoes]

8. Obama made jobs, just not ones for people in swing states.

Swing states relied heavily on old industry and outdated manufacturing. Things that aren't coming back, ever. We just didn't market the democratic party well enough or in the correct ways. Honestly, lying about bringing abck those jobs probably would've done it.

[elleng]

2. 'Michigan's Democratic US Rep. Debbie Dingell had been warning Clinton

she was bound to lose the state unless she did more to solidify her position. (She didn't, as we know now, declining to campaign in a "safe" state once she had won the nomination.),' about which I posted here several times.

[Coventina]

3. Meh. Doesn't excuse them for voting for an outspoken racist endorsed by the KKK

And I say that as someone who does NOT live on either coast.

[MarvinGardens]

4. This brings up an issue that we all should think about.

Automation. Many more jobs will be replaced with machines in the future. To all reading this, think about what you do. Is your job one of them? I can see about half of my job being automated once the machines are smart enough. Other jobs in my field have already been lost to automation. This could cause a long term structural unemployment problem.

[portlander23]

7. Yep

Automation is a big deal and we don't have anyone talking about answers. While this is a threat though we don't want to downplay this simple labor problem here. Technology always impacts jobs - the chainsaw cut down on the number of loggers you need. But it also leads to chainsaw manufacture, maintenance, etc. It's not necessarily an even trade, but it's not a straight loss either.

On the topic of labor, the reason why we used to have a stronger working class was because of artificial constraints on the labor market. Having to hire in the country, minimum wage, limits on the working day, etc. All of these things drive up the value of labor. When you allow companies to seek the cheapest (i.e. most exploitable) labor across the globe, these constraints start to break down and the value of labor drops. We've seen this with deindustrialization, but there's no reason knowledge workers won't be the displaced blue collar workers of the 21st century.

[Raine]

5. Interesting, thanks! nt

[TwilightZone]

6. Uh, hello? Trump was the one shipping jobs overseas...

and using cheap labor to build his shit. That's kind of the point we've been trying to make for months now.

"In the Internet age, it's easy for those of us who never interact with blue-collar workers to ignore how seemingly simple things we do harm them in ways invisible to us."

Uh, never? You should think about getting out more. Or saying hi to your refuse workers when they pick up your trash.

"We need to understand how the things we celebrate, or simply accept as economically inevitable— from apps to cheap clothes, imported food and toiletries — hurt American workers by shipping once seemingly untouchable jobs to Canada and Mexico."

Well, no shit. And the rest of the world, too, just in case you think NAFTA is the only agreement we have with anyone regarding trade. Newsflash: some of those jobs have been gone for decades and aren't coming back.

Just because the author is blissfully unaware of how the rest of the world works doesn't mean the rest of us are.

Funny - the point of the article seems to be that liberals are out of touch. The author then proceeds to prove it.