Today in the New York Times, Bill Clinton wrote an article about Middle East peace. Embedded in the article was a sentence stating that we are in an age of globalization. He wrote this as if this is a widely accepted statement.
But could the Tea Party vote primarily be a diffuse rejection of globalization and an attribution of that policy as the cause of unemployment? Globalization has a moral and ethical component, but when its implementation displaces the American worker's security, it becomes the target of opposition. This is another reason why the Democratic Party would benefit from heeding the advice of labor unions.
The Republican grassroots, as opposed to corporate interests, view globalization as the Democrats' attempt to equalize the economic conditions of workers worldwide. Of course, if this policy maintained the American standard of living and raised the standard of living elsewhere in the world it would be very popular. Under Clinton, since American were prospering, no one paid very much attention to it. But the opposite is occurring, Globallization is driving hundreds of thousands of Americans into homelessness. While Americans are a generous people who want to have a charitable attitude towards others, individuals who have lost everything can start to feel less charitable.
This is why the Tea Partiers' arguments have become so xenophobic and why they can vote for someone like Jan Brewer. It also explains why the independents caused the pendulum to swing away from Whitman and Fiorina in California. In a highly multicultural state like California, it is unlikely to accept the hatred and xenophobia. These voters correctly exposed the role of the Republican executive candidates in outsourcing and layoffs. After the massive layoffs of American workers at Hewlett Packard over the last decade, the California workforce, with 12% unemployment, was astute enough to diagnose where the problem was without descending into xenophobia.
On a career blog I read about two people who attended a tea party meeting in an unidentified state. He said that the meeting was led by a medical doctor who talked about nothing except the opposition to regulation and taxes. He reported that the attendees wanted to talk about immigration reform, and when the leader did not include this subject, they all booed him and left. It should also be noted that on career blogging sites even the Republicans consider Richard Trumka as a hero because of the AFL-CIO's report on the violations of immigration law in the hiring of IT workers.
The racist sentiment against President Obama is another example of a diffuse reaction to globalization. It's unlikely that many of these people would care about Obama's race if they could reliable maintain a nice apartment and a decent car. For them, Obama is just the personification of a movement they don't know how to analyze, but that is making them poor.
To the degree that globalization is resulting in the displacement of the American workforce, those who voted Republican will become disaffected when they see that the Republican agenda will still not address their concerns or protect their jobs. But the Democrats have another responsibility: to support development and properity in other countries in a way that doesn't occur at the expense of the American worker. This is why the gloablization age touted by Clinton is the subject of skepticism and doubt.
The Tea Party grass roots and our grass roots are worried about the same problems. But the difference is in the attribution of the causes. We identify unchecked corporate power as the