By Justin Gest
27 Oct 2016
http://in.reuters.com/article/us-election-workers-commentary-idINKCN12Q07FThey thought this was their moment.
After decades of feeling politically marginalized, a significant bloc of white working-class Americans saw Donald Trump as their long-awaited standard bearer. True, Trump was imperfect, with all his unfiltered arrogance, but he seemed to understand their plight and exasperation.
The Republican presidential nominee’s spiraling demise, however, likely spells continuing political exile for his most frustrated supporters.
"I am your voice," Trump memorably asserted at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, speaking directly to a substantial portion of the American public he calls "the silent majority."
One key reason this constituency has felt silenced is that both Democrats and Republicans, over the past 30 years, were cautious about making direct appeals to white working-class constituencies in national elections.
Both parties stopped short of Trump’s overt nativism and bigotry because they can turn off growing ethnic and minority voting blocs. They also avoided direct support for Trump’s economic protectionism because it worries the centrist business lobby. Democrats and Republicans both likely calculated it was not worth alienating ascendant constituencies to attract one in decline.
Consider: Barack Obama won both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections with more than 50 percent of the vote, despite double-digit defeats among white voters without college degrees. Before the 2016 cycle began in earnest, the party establishments viewed working-class white voters as, at best, a destabilizing force on attempts to assemble broad, centrist coalitions and, at worst, a diminishing, enigmatic afterthought.
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