I wasn’t exactly a red diaper baby, but my parents’ politics were decidedly pro-labor. I remember listening to the Songs of the Red Army boxed album and Paul Robeson songs on my 45 record player as a child, just as I listened to the Sons of the Pioneers. Along with my mother’s milk, I was nourished with a respect for working people. And so I am totally bereft as I look at the election returns and see how working class voters and their families broke for Trump in my area….and led to Hillary’s defeat in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.
I saw it coming. This is what I wrote to Kossacks in August, in support of another Kossack, Dartagnan, who objected to anyone calling people “hillbillies” and “white trash.”
My mom was born in coal country, literally in the glow of the coke ovens in Leisenring #4, Fayette County, PA. Years ago, I took my aunt back to the towns where they were born and lived. It was her 90th birthday, and she said she wanted to see the places one more time before she died.
The building on Main Street in Dawson where my Aunt was born in 1909 was still standing in 1999, and still occupied. The little general store that Grandpa had in Leisenring until the mid-1920’s was still standing and still operating. We stopped and had a soda. Aunt Frances showed me the spot on the railroad tracks in Dawson where the train stopped in the fall of 1916, and President Wilson gave a campaign speech. It was the one and only time in her life she ever saw a President in person. On that trip, it seemed like these coal and coke towns were frozen in time.
Our part of coal country was settled by Scotch-Irish, but we had plenty of “skis,” “itches,” “hunkies,” and “slavs.” These were towns where Frankie Yankovic had played the union halls, and where people worked like hell in hellish conditions. Everyone had a family member with respiratory problems, usually black lung. There were too many people maimed or disfigured from workplace accidents. Most joined the UMW and other unions, and the area was strongly Democratic. The one thing that united the fractious population was a universal respect for work, and a disdain for “loafers” and “parasites.” It was all about work, God, guts, and guns. Still is. Especially work.
Families have lived in these towns for generations. The kids join the Army and go off to war and some return home. Some kids move away to find work. Most folks own their own homes. So long as there is work to do, they will go on with their lives and tend to their families. But when the coal industry began to automate, the jobs started to disappear. When globalization led to the closing of manufacturing plants in some of these areas, entire towns went into a death spiral. People whose entire lives were based upon work found there was no work for them. Both political parties supported the trade deals that were passed at a time the economic decline in Appalachia accelerated. And the Democrats supported environmental protections that were widely seen (correctly) as anti-coal. While the Republicans opposed those protections, they were still seen as globalists. So when Trump spoke against the “bad trade deals,” the people who have seen their way of life ruined over the past thirty years cheered him on. He was telling both parties to go to hell, and they were shouting, “Amen.”
There’s nothing new to all this. Mom and Aunt Frances both told me stories of the night in 1923 or 1924 when the Klan came to town and burned a cross on one of the hills. Distrust of outsiders — and government — goes back to the Whiskey Rebellion in our old neighborhood, when the villain of the peace was none other than George Washington. The first Tea Party was in Boston, against the Brits. The second was in Appalachia, against the Feds.
The old song, “Which Side Are You On?” still rings true in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, where the working class hates politicians and environmentalists and liberals even more than we dismiss them. They know you better than you know them. How many of you have ever had to shower AFTER work every day? How many of you know anything about septic systems or leach fields? How many of you have worked with your hands and made things, or have a toolbox and can fix plumbing and electrical problems in the house? How many of you take off work the Monday after Thanksgiving because it’s deer season, and, following that, how many of you have ever eaten venison?
There is a giant disconnect between the Democrats’ urban base and the farmers and ranchers of the west, and an even bigger disconnect with the folks of Appalachia. For decades, they have seen their way of life slipping away as mines and factories have shut down. We may all struggle to survive — in one way or another — but their struggle — and their daily lives — are so different from ours.
Dartagnan, if I could give your post a thousand recommends, I would do so. The Dems are going to get slaughtered in Appalachia come November, but what is happening in coal country is an American tragedy. The people who lived there helped build America and have given their lives in disproportionate numbers that our nation might live. Now, it is time to realize the full scope of the Appalachian tragedy, and find a way to help put idle hands back to work, rebuilding their cities and towns, creating a future for their young people, and restoring all that is good about the mountain way of life. A good start would be, as you say,to stop demeaning them in speech and thought.
Make no mistake, Hillary lost Pennsylvania in the region where my Mom was born. I first saw the scope of the disaster when CNN had a live shot of the long line of voters outside a polling station in North Strabane Township, in Washington County just after 6pm. They reported it had been that heavy all day. I later learned that the turnout in these pro-Trump areas was 10% higher than even the most optimistic scenarios the Trump campaign had imagined.
Donald Trump carried every single county bordering Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), counties that once formed a critical part of the Democratic party’s labor vote. These counties were union strongholds in my youth, with the cities and small towns hosting factories that provided parts and goods to the steel mills and factories of Pittsburgh and the Mon Valley, and other manufacturing centers. When the mills shut down and the manufacturing base shrunk, the small town factories closed, and the towns lost their economic raison d’etre. The area is now beset with heroin deaths and premature mortality among those of middle age who have stayed. Population has declined sharply since the 1970’s, and jobs and hope have been replaced with despair and anger. The election results bear that out.
Washington County (Washington PA) 61% Trump 58k T — 34k C
Westmoreland County (Greensburg PA) 64.1% Trump 116k T — 59k C
Cambria County (Johnstown PA) 67.5% Trump 40k T — 17k C
Lawrence County (New Castle, PA) 62% Trump 25k T — 13k C
Beaver County (Beaver Falls, PA) 58% Trump 46k T — 30k C
Fayette County (Uniontown, PA) 64% Trump 34k T — 17K C
And, what’s more, she lost Ohio in similar counties — like Mahoning (Youngstown) and the other formerly Democratic counties of northern Ohio that once formed that state’s manufacturing belt. And she lost Michigan in similar areas.
As I said, I saw it coming. On August 9th, I drove Route 30 - the historic Lincoln Highway — from Breezewood to Latrobe, and counted dozens of Trump signs and only one Hillary sign. The people I knew in the area warned me there was going to be a tsunami for Trump, and their predictions wavered only slightly with revelations about Trump’s sexual history. They warned me.
There is no question that there is an element of racism among the white working class vote in what has become Trumpalachia, just as issues of race affect so much of our society. And there is also no question that these workers — who have seen jobs outsourced — strongly oppose additional immigrants who would compete for the remaining jobs and might drive down wages in that competition. But to dismiss these people and their communities by saying they are racists and xenophobes will only make things worse. The problem is far, far more complex than that.
The Democratic Party must do an autopsy of this election, to determine what went so terribly wrong, and to chart a way forward. My suggestion is they start with the white working class vote. Tom Vilsack has stayed on as Secretary of Agriculture to try to get the Administration and Congress to address the plight of small town America — especially small manufacturing towns. He’s made it clear that it’s been a hard sell. Job one should be to come up with a realist plan of action to restore private sector jobs and hope to these smaller manufacturing towns of America.
And I would urge my fellow kossacks to look beyond the name calling. Calling them hillbillies, rednecks, or racists or saying are too stupid to know what’s good for them gets us nowhere. Too many members of the white working class feel deeply that they were betrayed by both parties and their votes for Donald Trump absolutely cost us the election. We ignore them — or dismiss them — at our own peril.