Biden is wrong. It was mostly racism. [View all]

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Roll Call ‏@rollcall 1h1 hour ago
Biden: “So much for it all being about racism” http://bit.ly/2gHymFj

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said the Democratic Party is not “showing enough respect” to white working-class men while rejecting the notion that racism prompted that bloc of voters to help elect Donald Trump.

The vice president said his party lost the White House, failed to capture the Senate and picked up fewer House seats than expected because it has lost its connection with a segment of Americans who are “scared to death” about a “loss of wealth” that occurred with the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.

...Biden noted that many had voted for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 and 2012.

“So much for it all being about racism,” he said to a silent room.

read: http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/democrats-must-show-respect-working-class-whites?utm_content=buffer870c0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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Joe Biden makes a critical error here which seems to happen every losing Democratic election cycle. Biden looks at a minority of voters who helped tip the election away from Hillary in key states and concludes that we didn't do enough as a party to appeal to them. Never mind the majority of actual working-class Americans who responded overwhelmingly to Hillary in the election.

from the Atlantic:

...here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost.

She detailed plans to help coal miners and steel workers. She had decades of ideas to help parents, particularly working moms, and their children. She had plans to help young men who were getting out of prison and old men who were getting into new careers. She talked about the dignity of manufacturing jobs, the promise of clean-energy jobs, and the Obama administration’s record of creating private-sector jobs for a record-breaking number of consecutive months. She said the word “job” more in the Democratic National Convention speech than Trump did in the RNC acceptance speech; she mentioned the word “jobs” more during the first presidential debate than Trump did. She offered the most comprehensively progressive economic platform of any presidential candidate in history—one specifically tailored to an economy powered by an educated workforce.

What’s more, the evidence that Clinton lost because of the nation’s economic disenchantment is extremely mixed. Some economists found that Trump won in counties affected by trade with China. But among the 52 percent of voters who said economics was the most important issue in the election, Clinton beat Trump by double digits. In the vast majority of swing states, voters said they preferred Clinton on the economy. If the 2016 election had come down to economics exclusively, the working class—which, by any reasonable definition, includes the black, Hispanic, and Asian working classes, too—would have elected Hillary Clinton president.

The more frightening possibility for liberals is that Clinton didn’t lose because the white working class failed to hear her message, but precisely because they did hear it.

...my take on the election:

Trump had a lurid and prevaricating campaign appeal which would have been an anathema to his republican predecessors. I'm not talking about the types of campaign rhetoric that came from Sanders during the primary that Hillary's 'Wall Street connections' meant that she couldn't or wouldn't represent the working class. Whatever the truth is about Hillary and that nebulous campaign meme, 'Wall Street connections' couldn't be all that important to anyone who voted for this ruthless capitalist who's demonstrated nothing but antipathy to the people who've worked for him over the entirety of his privileged life.

Trump appealed to the insecurity of some white Americans who have been convinced their share of the nation's economic benefits are being unfairly threatened by blacks, immigrants, and anyone else who dare assert their rightful role in our country's economy. The often-bigoted, demagogue left no dog-whistle behind as he promised to restore these psychologically-displaced souls to their assumed place of prominence in society.

Of course, Hillary Clinton ran a different campaign than Sanders or Trump, but she also ran a markedly different one than Barack Obama. Hillary certainly did reach out to the working-class in her campaign. While white working-class voters may well have questioned her embrace of the Obama economic record, Hillary also enmeshed her own economic proposals with a pragmatic, yet populist appeal which echoed the progressive bent of the rival Sanders and O'Malley campaigns.

In an August address in Warren, Michigan Hillary outlined her economic plan and views:

"...there are common-sense things that your government could do that would give Americans more opportunities to succeed," she said. "Why don’t we do it? Because powerful special interests and the tendency to put ideology ahead of political progress have led to gridlock in Congress."

"How can you not be frustrated, and even angry, when you see nothing getting done? And a lot of people feel no one is on their side and no one has their back and that is not how it’s supposed to be in America. If I am fortunate enough to be your President, I will have your back every single day that I serve. My mission in the White House will be to make our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top."

"This is personal for me. I am the product of the American middle class, I was born in Chicago, I was raised in a suburb. But my grandfather worked at the Scranton lace mill in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for 50 years. And because he worked hard, my Dad was able to go to college, and eventually start his own small business – and then send me out into the world to follow my dreams."

"No matter how far those dreams have taken me, I have always remembered, I’m the daughter of a small-business owner and the granddaughter of a factory worker — and proud of both."

"So here’s what I want. I want every American family to be able to tell the same story. If you work hard, you do your part, you should be able to give your children all the opportunities they deserve. That is the basic bargain of America."

As solid and compelling as that appeal may have been, candidate Clinton went even further. Hillary took a leap ahead of her opponents (and history) and offered a full and unapologetic voice to the needs and concerns of the black community. Most notably, in a historic speech in Harlem, the first for any presidential candidate, Hillary directly challenged the white community to accept that a majority of black lives and livelihoods have consistently lagged far behind white American's opportunities, successes, and well-being, and that white economic gains had often come at the expense of their black counterparts.

"We face a complex set of economic, social, and political challenges," Hillary spoke. "They are intersectional, they are reinforcing, and we have got to take them all on. So it’s not enough for your economic plan to be break up the banks. You also need a serious plan to create jobs, especially in places where unemployment remains stubbornly high. You need a plan to address the generations of underinvestment and neglect."

"Now even if we succeed on raising taxes on every millionaire and billionaire in America, and believe me, I do intend to succeed at that, we still need to face the painful reality that African Americans are nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage. Something’s wrong when the median wealth for black families is just a tiny fraction of the median wealth of white families. And when gun violence is by far the leading cause of death for young African American men, outstripping the next nine causes of death combined, there is something deeply wrong..."

"We have to begin by facing up to the reality of systemic racism. Because these are not only problems of economic inequality. These are problems of racial inequality. And we have got to say that loudly and clearly..."

If there was one message the white working-class got from Hillary in this campaign, it almost certainly was that black lives were going to matter in her presidency. Hillary challenged white Americans to acknowledge their economic successes and take heed of those who have been left behind in the recovering economy. More importantly, Hillary insisted that white Americans should recognize and appreciate the role race plays in the failure of the black community to fully benefit from the economic recovery.

"For many white Americans," Hillary said, "it’s tempting to believe that bigotry is largely behind us. That would leave us with a lot less work, wouldn’t it? But more than half a century after Rosa Parks sat and Dr. King marched and John Lewis bled, race still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind."

That seemingly obvious reasoning should be commonplace in our political debate, but these truths have been overlooked throughout our nation's history. Black economic gains have always lagged behind those of white Americans, certainly not just during the Obama administration. In the present economy, blacks have experienced the slowest economic recovery of any group of Americans.

Yet, Trump convinced enough white Americans he shared their abhorrent view that blacks and immigrants were responsible for their economic distress, enough to make the difference in his campaign.

This isn't the first I've wondered when the time will come for elected officials to take my own interests, progressive Democratic interests, into account. It seems like every election cycle, no matter the outcome, there's always a push to accommodate conservative voters like it was heresy to disregard them. Indeed, this very election produced calls from Democratic and republican quarters to focus even more on whatever concerns white working-class voters may have, even though it appears the Trump WH will do little else.

I'm still waiting for an election cycle's end where the consensus was that we need to seriously address the needs and concerns of groups of Americans who have consistently done worse in our economy - namely, black and Latino Americans, respectively. They are our party's most dependable voters, yet there's always a push to look beyond and above them when the appropriations start. We never get around to their communities; never get around to issues which disproportionately affect them. Instead, they're scapegoated as obstacles to whatever politicians expect for the majority.

Arguably, black Americans are deserving of the most attention when considering the effects of 'economic anxiety' over the pace of recovery, but some politicians and others have reverted at the end of this election to handwringing over the economic condition of folks who have, overall, reaped the lion-share of any vestiges of recovery from the record lows that marked the Bush recession. It's not hard to imagine whose needs, interests, and concerns will struggle to take precedence in the next economic debate.