by Lance Selfa
Nancy Fraser is Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor at the New School for Social Research, president-elect of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, and holder of an international research chair at the Collège d’études mondiales, Paris. Her new book, Capitalism: A Critical Theory, coauthored with Rahel Jaeggi, will be published by Polity Press in autumn 2017. Fraser’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and was cited twice by the Brazilian Supreme Court (in decisions upholding marriage equality and affirmative action).
NOTES
Introduction
1.“Resistance and Reaction in the Time of Trump,” editorial, ISR, 104 http://isreview.org/issue/104/resistance-and-reaction-time-trump-0.
2.Nate Cohn, “Why Trump Won: Working-Class Whites,” New York Times, November 9, 2016; George Packer, “Head of the Class,” New Yorker, May 16, 2016; and Joan C. Williams, “Why the White Working Class Voted for Trump,” Harvard Business Review, November 18, 2016, are a few examples of literally hundreds of articles in this genre.
3.Eric Sasson, “Blame Trump’s Victory on College-Educated Whites, Not the Working Class,” New Republic, November 15, 2016; Nate Silver, “The Mythology of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support,” FiveThirtyEight, May 3, 2016, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/.
4.Brent Griffiths, “Sanders Slams Identity Politics as Democrats Figure Out Their Future,” Politico, November 21, 2016, www.politico.com/story/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democrats-identity-politics-231710; Craig Mills, “Here’s Why Democrats Must Not Abandon Identity Politics,” Daily Beast, December 12, 2016, www.thedailybeast.com/heres-why-democrats-must-not-abandon-identity-politics; Michelle Goldberg, “Democratic Politics Have to Be Identity Politics,” Slate, November 22, 2016, www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/democratic_politics_have_to_be_identity_politics.html; Shuja Haider, “Safety Pins and Swastikas,” Jacobin, January 5, 2017, www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/safety-pin-box-richard-spencer-neo-nazis-alt-right-identity-politics.
Chickens Coming Home to Roost for the Democratic Party?
1.Jim Tankersley, “How Trump Won: The Revenge of Working-Class Whites,” Washington Post, November 9, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/09/how-trump-won-the-revenge-of-working-class-whites/.
2.Jill Filipovic, “The Revenge of the White Man,” Time, November 10, 2016, http://time.com/4566304/donald-trump-revenge-of-the-white-man/.
3.Alec MacGillis, “Revenge of the Forgotten Class,” ProPublica, November 10, 2016, www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the-forgotten-class.
4.Helena Bottemiller Evich, “Revenge of the Rural Voter,” Politico, November 13, 2016, www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-rural-voters-trump-231266.
5.Nate Cohn, “Why Trump Won: Working-Class Whites,” New York Times, November 9, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/upshot/why-trump-won-working-class-whites.html.
6.Nate Silver, “The Mythology of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support,” FiveThirtyEight, May 3, 2016, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/.
7.Konstantin Kilibarda and Daria Roithmayr, “The Myth of the Rust Belt Revolt,” Slate, December 1, 2016, www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/the_myth_of_the_rust_belt_revolt.html.
8.Nate Cohn, “Why Trump Won.”
9.See, for example, Richard Fording and Sanford Schram, “‘Low Information Voters Are a Crucial Part of Trump’s Support,” Washington Post, November 7, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/07/low-information-voters-are-a-crucial-part-of-trumps-support/?utm_term=.a61c954832d5.
10.Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, “Be Happy for Coal Miners Losing Their Health Insurance. They’re Getting Exactly What They Voted For,” Daily Kos, December 12, 2016, www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/12/12/1610198/-Be-happy-for-coal-miners-losing-their-health-insurance-They-re-getting-exactly-what-they-voted-for.
11.Mark Lilla, “The End of Identity Liberalism,” New York Times, November 18, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html.
12.Bryanna Cappadona, “Here’s What Bernie Sanders Had To Say About Transgender Bathroom Rights,” Boston.com, May 27, 2016, www.boston.com/culture/tv/2016/05/27/heres-bernie-sanders-say-transgender-bathroom-rights.
13.William H. Frey, “Five Charts That Show Why a Post-White America Is Already Here,” New Republic, November 21, 2014, newrepublic.com/article/120370/five-graphics-show-why-post-white-america-already-here.
14.Nate Cohn, “How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump,” New York Times, December 23, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html.
15.Robert Dreyfuss, “How the DLC Does It,” American Prospect, December 19, 2001, http://prospect.org/article/how-dlc-does-it.
16.Feliz Solomon, “Hillary Clinton Called for Strikes on Syrian Airfields Shortly before Trump’s Announcement,” Time, April 6, 2017, http://time.com/4730416/syria-missile-attack-hillary-clinton-assad/.
17.Daniel Strauss, “Clinton Haunted by Coal Country Comment, Politico, May 10, 2016, www.politico.com/story/2016/05/sanders-looking-to-rack-up-west-virginia-win-over-clinton-222952.
18.Mitt Romney, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” New York Times, November 18, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html.
19.Nate Cohn, “How the Obama Coalition Crumbled.”
20.Christian Parenti, “Listening to Trump,” CommonDreams, November 21, 2016, www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/21/listening-trump.
21.“Election 2016: Exit Polls,” CNN Politics, November 23, 2016, www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls.
22.See, for example, Akhil Reed Amar, “The Troubling Reason the Electoral College Exists,” Time, November 08, 2016 [updated November 10, 2016], http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/.
23.Sean McElwee, “The Income Gap at the Polls: The Rich Aren’t Just Megadonors. They’re Also Dominating the Voting Booth,” Politico, January 7, 2015, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/income-gap-at-the-polls-113997.
24.Sean McElwee, Why the Voting Gap Matters, Demos, October 23, 2014, www.demos.org/publication/why-voting-gap-matters.
25.Linda Qiu, “Bernie Sanders Said Poor People Don’t Vote,” PolitiFact, April 24, 2016, www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/24/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-said-poor-people-dont-vote/.
26.Maria Murriel, “Millions of Americans Can’t Vote for President Because of Where They Live,” Public Radio International, November 1, 2016, https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-11-01/millions-americans-cant-vote-president-because-where-they-live.
27.Jean Chung, “Felony Disenfranchisement: A Primer,” The Sentencing Project, May 10, 2016, www.sentencingproject.org/publications/felony-disenfranchisement-a-primer/.
28.Sean McElwee, Why the Voting Gap Matters.
29.Ron Fonger, “Weaker Democratic Support in Detroit, Flint Made Trump Stronger in Michigan,” MLive, November 9, 2016, www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/detroit_flint_voting_muscle_we.html.
30.Sean McElwee, Why the Voting Gap Matters.
31.Lauren McCauley, “Pro-Clinton Probe of 2016 Reveals That, Yes, Democrats Have a ‘Wall Street Problem,’” CommonDreams, May 1, 2017, www.commondreams.org/news/2017/05/01/pro-clinton-probe-2016-reveals-yes-democrats-have-wall-street-problem.
32.Erik Sherman, “America Is the Richest, and Most Unequal, Country,” Forbes, September 30, 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth-inequality/.
33.“Declining Trust in Government Is Denting Democracy: According to a New Index, America’s Democracy Score Deteriorated in 2016,” Economist, January 25, 2017, www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-20; Elena Holodny, “The US Has Been Downgraded to a ‘Flawed Democracy,’” Business Insider, January 25, 2017, www.businessinsider.com/economist-intelligence-unit-downgrades-united-states-to-flawed-democracy-2017-1.
34.Bu
siness Week quoted in Ken Silverstein, “Labor’s Last Stand: The Corporate Campaign to Kill the Employee Free Choice Act,” Harper’s, July 2009, https://harpers.org/archive/2009/07/labors-last-stand/2/.
35.Kim Moody, On New Terrain: How Capital Is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War in the United States (Chicago: Haymarket Books, forthcoming).
36.Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, “Economic News Release: Work Stoppages Summary,” February 9, 2017, www.bls.gov/news.release/wkstp.nr0.htm.
37.Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, “Union Membership Rate 10.7 Percent in 2016,” The Economics Daily, February 9, 2017, www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/union-membership-rate-10-point-7-percent-in-2016.htm.
38.The figure on the percent of young workers who belong to unions comes from Charity Jackson, “18 to 29 Things You Didn’t Know About Young Workers,” Working America, March 12, 2015, http://blog.workingamerica.org/2015/03/12/18-to-29-things-you-didnt-know-about-young-workers/. The estimate of the favorability of unions among younger workers comes from Elizabeth Bruenig, “Even Conservative Millennials Support Unions, New Republic, May 1, 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/121688/pew-releases-new-labor-survey-millennials-supports-unions.
39.Andy Kiersz, “America Is No. 1 in Low-Paying Jobs,” Business Insider, September 23, 2014, www.businessinsider.com/oecd-low-wage-paying-jobs-by-country-2014-9.
40.Paul Mason, “The Strange Case of America’s Disappearing Middle Class,” Guardian, December 14, 2015, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/14/the-strange-case-of-americas-disappearing-middle-class.
41.Steve Benen, “Poverty Goes Down, Coverage Goes Up, and America Gets a Raise,” MSNBC, September 13, 2016, www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/poverty-goes-down-coverage-goes-and-america-gets-raise.
42.Prairie News Service, “ND Child Poverty Data Highlights Local Racial Disparities,” KFGO, September 20, 2016, http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2016/sep/20/nd-child-poverty-data-highlights-local-racial-disparities/.
43.Kristi Tanner, “Michigan Posts Its Largest Income Gain since the Recession,” Detroit Free Press, September 15, 2016, www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/09/15/michigan-posts-its-largest-income-gain-since-recession/90308316/.
44.Claire Zippel, “As DC Has Grown, So Has Its Racial Prosperity Gap,” Greater Greater Washington, September 22, 2016, https://ggwash.org/view/42944/as-dc-has-grown-so-has-its-racial-prosperity-gap.
45.Andrew Woo, “How Have Rents Changed Since 1960?” Apartmentlist.com, June 14, 2016, www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-1960/.
46.Tom Gerencer, “The Exploding Cost of Childcare in the U.S.,” MoneyNation, September 1, 2015, http://moneynation.com/exploding-cost-childcare-u-s/.
47.Andrew Siddons, “Deductibles Rise in Employer-Sponsored Health Plans,” Washington Health Policy Week in Review, September 19, 2016, www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletters/washington-health-policy-in-review/2016/sep/september-19-2016/deductibles-rise-in-employer-sponsored-health-plans.
48.Georgetown University, Center on Education and the Workforce, McCourt School of Public Policy, America’s Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots 2016, June 2016, https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/americas-divided-recovery/.
49.Neil Irwin, “Why American Workers without Much Education Are Being Hammered,” New York Times, April 21, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/upshot/why-workers-without-much-education-are-being-hammered.html.
50.David R. Howell, The Collapse of Low-Skill Wages: Technological Change or Institutional Failure?, National Jobs for All Coalition, February 1998, http://njfac.org/index.php/us13/.
We Got Trumped!
1.Charlie Post, “The Republicans Have Been Trumped,” Jacobin, October 14, 2016, www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/trump-gop-republicans-tea-party-populism-fascism/.
2.Center for Responsive Politics, “Hillary Clinton,” www.opensecrets.org/pres16/industries?cycle=2016&id=N00000019; Center for Responsive Politics, “Donald Trump,” www.opensecrets.org/pres16/industries?id=N00023864&cycle=2016&type=f&src=b.
3.Gregory Wallace and Robert Yoon, “Voter Turnout at 20-Year Low in 2016,” CNN, November 12, 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/.
4.This data is drawn from the running total on Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (website), uselectionatlas.org.
5.Voter participation by demographic group for 2008 and 2012 is drawn from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University, http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2008/ and http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/. Data for 2016 is drawn from CNN Exit Polls, www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls.
6.Sabrina Tavernise, “Many in Milwaukee Neighborhood Didn’t Vote—and Don’t Regret It,” New York Times, November 20, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/many-in-milwaukee-neighborhood-didnt-vote-and-dont-regret-it.html?_r=0. Matt Karp points out that similar shifts took place in other predominantly Black areas of major cities like Detroit, St. Louis’s northwestern wards, West and North Philadelphia, and East Flatbush in New York: “Fairfax County, USA,” Jacobin, November 28, 2016, www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/clinton-election-polls-white-workers-firewall/.
7.US Census Bureau, “Income and Poverty in the United States, 2014,” www.census.gov/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.html.
8.Kevin Uhrmacher, Kevin Schaul, and Dan Keating, “These Obama Strongholds Sealed the Election for Trump,” Washington Post, November 9, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/obama-trump-counties/?tid=ss_mail; Loren Collingwood, “The County-By-County Data on Trump Voters Shows Why He Won,” Washington Post, November 19, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/19/the-country-by-county-data-on-trump-voters-shows-why-he-won/?postshare=6041479586306602&tid=ss_fb-bottom.
9.Konstantin Kilibarda and Daria Roithmayr, “The Myth of the Rust Belt Revolt,” Slate, December 1, 2016, www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/the_myth_of_the_rust_belt_revolt.html.
10.Eric Sasson, “Blame Trump’s Victory on College-Educated Whites, Not the Working Class,” New Republic, November 15, 2016, https://newrepublic.com/article/138754/blame-trumps-victory-college-educated-whites-not-working-class.
11.See Christian Parenti’s excellent analysis, “Garbage In, Garbage Out: Turns Out Clinton’s Ground Game Sucked,” Jacobin, November 18, 2016, www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/clinton-campaign-gotv-unions-voters-rust-belt/. Also see Karp, “Fairfax County, USA.”
12.Quoted in Jim Geraghty, “Chuck Schumer: Democrats Will Lose Blue-Collar Whites but Gain in the Suburbs,” National Review, July 28, 2016, www.nationalreview.com/corner/438481/chuck-schumer-democrats-will-lose-blue-collar-whites-gain-suburbs.
13.Karp, “Fairfax County, USA.”
14.Much of the following draws on Post, “The Republicans Have Been Trumped”; “Why the Tea Party?,” New Politics 14, no. 1 (Summer 2012): 75-82, http://new-pol.org/content/why-tea-party; and “Whither the Republican Party? The 2014 Election and the Future of Capital’s ‘A’ Team,” Brooklyn Rail, December 18, 2014, www.brooklynrail.org/2014/12/field-notes/whither-the-republican-party. Eric Sasson makes a similar point in “Blame Trump’s Victory.”
15.Michael A. McCarthy, “The Revenge of Joe the Plumber,” Jacobin, October 26, 2016, www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/trump-small-business-whites-xenophobia-immigration/.
16.Some left-wing commentators, like Sasha Breger Bush in the most recent issue of Dollars & Sense (“Trump and National Neoliberalism,” January–February 2017, http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2017/0117bregerbush.html), argue that Trump’s victory marks a move by segments of the capitalist class away from “globalism” but not neoliberalism. However, her case in “Trump and National Neoliberalism” is not based on an analysis of the actual positions taken by any capitalist political advocacy organization.
17.While he correctly points to Trump’s ability to win the vote of the Christ
ian right in 2016, Mike Davis mistakenly labels this a “cynical covenant,” underestimating the populist radicalization of these layers of the population. “Not a Revolution—Yet,” Verso Blog, November 15, 2016, www.versobooks.com/blogs/2948-not-a-revolution-yet
18.For the European populist right, see F. Leplat, ed., The Far Right in Europe, (London: Resistance Books, 2015).
19.Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
20.Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: New Press, 2016).
21.Philip Bump, “Donald Trump Got Reagan-Like Support from Union Households,” Washington Post, November 10, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/10/donald-trump-got-reagan-like-support-from-union-households/.
22.Johanna Brenner and Robert Brenner, “Reagan, the Right and the Working Class,” Against the Current (Old Series) 2 (Winter 1981): 30.
23.“Why Do White Working-Class People Vote against Their Interests? They Don’t,” Nation, November 16, 2016, www.thenation.com/article/why-do-white-working-class-people-vote-against-their-interests-they-dont/.
24.See Richard C. Longworth, “Disaffected Rust Belt Voters Embraced Trump—They Had No Other Hope,” Guardian, November 21, 2016, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/21/disaffected-rust-belt-voters-embraced-donald-trump-midwestern-obama; Rick Rommel, “In Western Wisconsin, Trump Voters Want Change,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 27, 2016, www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/11/26/western-wisconsin-trump-voters-want-change/94436384/. For an excellent analysis of Trump’s appeals to working-class voters, see Christian Parenti, “Listening to Trump,” Jacobin, November 22, 2106, www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/trump-speeches-populism-war-economics-election/.
