2016 Postmortem

.... racism is part of the mix, while not being the dominate part.

These white working class voters are voting in what they perceive as their self interest. They are ambivalent about race, and can, in fact, be racist, but that is not the source of their motivation. They just want to be paid.

I worked a summer job in US Steel's second largest plant in the early 70s. Lorain, Ohio. I've worked in other factories and blue collar occupations as well. Many of the steel workers were white guys of east European background. We also had in this plant the largest Puerto Rican population in the US outside of NYC. There were also quite a few African American employees. All union steel workers. 7000 jobs. Most were lost in the mid 80's, but globalization is many decades old history, not the result of NAFTA.

The US auto industry peaked in the early '50s, and slid in numbers ever since, slowly. The turning point was when Packard went out of business ..... anyone remember Packard?