The Politics of Losing

by Rory McVeigh

  Women were entering the work force as well, one more source of unskilled factory labor. To keep them on their side, especially in the voting booth, the men of the Klan encouraged the formation of the Women’s KKK (WKKK).21 But at the same time they worked to keep women out of the labor force and at home, subservient to their husbands. Sociologist Kathleen Blee’s in-depth study of the WKKK reveals how the women, while sharing the prejudices of the Klansmen, gained some degree of autonomy through their participation in the WKKK.22 Klanswomen developed their own creed, one which displays the tension between traditional gender roles and women’s new opportunities outside the home: “We believe that under God, the Women of the Ku Klux Klan is a militant body of American free-women by whom these principles shall be maintained, our homes and children protected, our happiness insured, and the prosperity of our community, our state and nation guaranteed against usurpation, disloyalty, and selfish exploitation.”23

  But more than these, it was immigrants who were the wellspring of unskilled labor, and the Klan lobbied aggressively to keep them out. Because the immigrants were predominantly Catholic and Jewish, Klan leaders could frame economic troubles as cultural attacks. Catholics, they claimed, were on a mission from Rome to undermine American values. Klansmen were instructed to “file an immediate protest against any acts of favoritism to the foreigner.” In doing so, they might “discourage the continued influx of immigrants, for when news of the failure of the foreigner to prosper as the proverbial green bay tree reaches the shores of southern Europe and other continents, immigration in such alarming numbers will naturally cease.”24

  To shore up their slipping economic positions, the Klan practiced what they called “Klankraft.” Klansmen were to prefer other Klansmen in all trade and employment. They also organized boycotts of Catholic and Jewish merchants. A chapter in Noblesville, Indiana, regularly coded businesses as either “right” or “alien,” and they read an updated list aloud at every meeting.25 A “right” business should receive Klan patronage; “alien” businesses were targets for boycott. This often destroyed the livelihoods of Catholic or Jewish victims, but to the Klan leaders it was nothing less than their American duty. “Klankraft,” wrote a Grand Dragon from the Oklahoma Realm, “is the motive power embodying the divine and cardinal principles necessary for the resurrection of that real, genuine Americanism of which our forefathers undoubtedly had the vision when they drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”26

  An advertisement appearing in a Boulder, Colorado, Klan newspaper, The Rocky Mountain American, in which storeowners hope to capitalize on the Klan’s “trade with a Klansman” campaign.

  Source: This ad is featured in Brian K. Trembath, “The Rocky Mountain American: The KKK’s Colorado Newspaper,” May 14, 2015, Denver Public Library.

  “[Klan members] affected business in the county because there was enough of them that they would ostracize a Catholic,” recalled a former Klanswoman. “For instance, Kelly had a grocery store. Well, it hurt their business terribly because people wouldn’t go there, because the Klan would tell you not to. If you had an empty house in [a small town], why, you were told not to rent it to a Catholic.”27

  The Klan of the 1920s was unquestionably an organization of deep-seated bigotry, strong belief in white supremacy, religious intolerance, and xenophobia. Its popularity, however, was in large part because of how effectively it wielded these prejudices in the service of reversing the economic fortunes of its members: native-born white Protestant Americans.

  GLOBALIZATION AND THE TRUMP BASE

  While the Klan’s rise in the 1920s was a reaction to conditions confined within the domestic economy, Donald Trump found his core support among those who felt they were on the losing end of a newly global economy. Today markets are international, and goods and labor flow freely across borders. Globalization, and its mixed blessings for American workers, is nothing new. But the years directly preceding the 2016 presidential election gave those Americans who were ill suited for the global economy good reason to feel neglected. Trump appealed to them directly, challenging and even shirking Republican orthodoxy—in particular the party’s commitment to free trade—with an agenda that merged white nationalism and economic protectionism.

  There are winners and losers in every economic restructuring.28 The kinds of manufacturing jobs that once provided stable income and benefits for men without college degrees in the post–World War II boom are increasingly scarce. As expected in a capitalist economy, manufacturing enterprises locate (and relocate) where cheap labor is available—both inside and outside America. The free flow of capital undermined the capacity of labor unions to bargain on behalf of workers, further eroding the livelihoods of American workers.29 With these changing circumstances, what scholars call a dual economy has emerged. One sector—the primary sector—is composed of jobs that require skill and offer attractive compensation and opportunities for advancement.30 The secondary labor market, on the other hand, is full of low-skilled jobs, unstable employment, and low wages.

  As was the case with the Klan, when and where these transformations and their consequences happened mirrored the growth of Trump’s constituency. Beginning in the early 1970s, the jobs that required college degrees, often in high technology or the government, exploded. Traditional manufacturing jobs moved out of central cities, and those without the education they needed to prosper in the new economy were put out of work entirely or took work in the growing service sector—like the fast-food industry—with its low wages, fringe benefits, and irregular hours.31 And as was the case in the 1920s, even professionals and small-business owners not directly affected by unemployment lose revenue when they’re situated in stagnant economies.

  When manufacturing jobs began to move out of the cities in the 1970s, they typically went to communities where cheaper labor was available and where union power was weak.32 Manufacturing jobs in the South and in rural towns boomed. By the year 2000, the percentage of workers employed in manufacturing was three points higher in rural America (17 percent) than urban America (14 percent).33 “With their history of poverty and underdevelopment, Southern states are motivated to be business friendly,” writes Joel Kotkin, a professor of urban studies. “They generally have lower taxes, and less stringent regulations, than their primary competitors in the Northeast or on the West Coast. Indeed [in 2013] the four best states for business, according to CEO Magazine, were Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee.”34

  Although these jobs offset the withering agricultural sector, it also meant that low-paying farm jobs were replaced with low-paying manufacturing jobs.35 At the same time, rural communities saw tremendous growth in low-paying service-sector work in fast-food and big-box retailers like Walmart and Target. In regions once dominated by farming, by 2000, two-thirds of rural Americans worked in the service sector.36

  The nature of the new economy meant that the modest benefits that arrived to rural communities from manufacturing would be short-lived. Manufacturers could find even cheaper labor overseas, and competition encouraged them to replace human labor with machines.37 The jobs that required skills and college degrees stayed concentrated in cities, where there were highly educated workers to fill them. Without enough work to go around, rural towns were suffering, some even dying.38 Sociologists found that in 2012 almost a quarter of the rural population was underemployed, working part time when they could not find full-time work.39

  Coal-mining West Virginia is, perhaps, the clearest example of a state where residents have watched the changing economy pull the rug out from under them. Demand for coal has been in decline for decades, as the nation has transitioned to cleaner and more efficient energy. Yet just between 2011 and 2016, coal producers lost over 90 percent of their market value.40 Much of this decline in demand for coal can be attributed to extraction of natural gas through fracking and the transition to wind and solar energy. To the extent that coal mines remain in operation, they employ far fe
wer workers, in large part because automated technologies have replaced human labor. In 1979, coal mining employed about a quarter of a million workers. In 2017, that figure stood at close to fifty thousand.41 And unemployment figures don’t capture the total devastation in coal-mining states. Many who remain in West Virginia are too old or too ill to work, or they have given up searching for meaningful employment altogether. In 2015, it became the first state in which fewer than half of the working-age population actually worked.42

  This sort of hardship goes hand in hand with social pathologies. In Littleton, West Virginia, the population has dropped below two hundred and, as of the 2010 census, was the poorest town in the state, with a per capita income of just $6,000. Like much of rural America, Littleton now suffers a severe heroin epidemic. “Everybody around here is drug heads, drug addicts,” said one resident, “and that’s all they’re ever going to do. It’s gotten a lot worse, the last ten years.” Another added, “It’s real sad because there’s no jobs around here. There’s no opportunities. Something needs to change around here because if it doesn’t, then a lot more people are going to end up in the graveyard.”43

  Campaigning in Charleston, West Virginia, 150 miles south of Littleton, Trump promised, “If I win, we’re going to bring those miners back.” As president, he has stripped environmental regulations that he claimed were killing mining jobs in the state. He signed an executive order in November 2017, which, among other things, removed the moratorium on leasing federal lands for coal mining.44 Will this be enough to revive the coal economy, especially with the rise of cheaper and greener energies?45 Trump’s attractiveness to voters in coal country is clear: Even if they’re unsure whether he can resurrect their economy, they appreciate the attention.

  In Waynesberg, a coal-mining town in southwestern Pennsylvania, the career center offers over a hundred federally funded courses to prepare workers for a range of occupations, but enrollment is low. “What many experts call false hopes for a coal resurgence have mired economic development efforts here in a catch-22,” Reuters reported. “Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce. The stalled diversification push leaves some of the nation’s poorest areas with no clear path to prosperity.” Still, they hold out hope. “I think there is a coal comeback,” said a resident of Waynesburg, “I have a lot of faith in President Trump.”46

  In places like Littleton and Waynesberg, they put their faith in Trump when they voted for him. In Wetzel County, home of Littleton, almost 98 percent of the population is white. Waynesberg is in Greene County, which is 92 percent white. Trump received 71.6 percent of the vote in Wetzel County and 68.4 percent in Greene County. It’s not race alone that produced these lopsided tallies. Obama performed much better than Clinton in both counties in 2012. But in 2016, white voters like these felt they had found a champion in Donald Trump.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF COLLEGE

  Whether a town fares well in the global economy depends largely on whether they have educated workers who can attract the jobs that pay well. Educated Americans are concentrated in cities, and so are the jobs tailored for them. Rural problems are exacerbated by what sociologists call brain drain: the most talented young people from rural towns migrate to the cities for better lives.47 In 2016, when a group of sociologists looked at school curricula and the labor markets in blue-collar communities, they found that the curricula offered relatively little to prepare students for college (advanced-placement courses or high-level math), which, in turn, decreased the likelihood that the students would attend and graduate from a four-year college.48 The cycle goes like this: The school offers only those courses that prepare students for the local blue-collar economy, even as the town struggles to hold onto those blue-collar jobs—and cannot attract the jobs that require college degrees.

  While discontent from the global economy has been brewing for years in these towns, it reached fever pitch during the recovery from the Great Recession. Although the economy added new jobs and unemployment declined under Obama, that recovery was uneven. Those who benefited the most were those who could take advantage of the sorts of jobs that became available. From 2010 to 2016, jobs that required postsecondary education showed strong gains across most sectors of the economy, especially in sectors like healthcare and social assistance, which added 1.2 million new jobs, and in professional, scientific, and technical services, which added 1.1 million jobs.49 The Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University reported that those with college degrees enjoyed a robust recovery that almost completely bypassed Americans who didn’t graduate college.50 From January 2010 to January 2016, the population of those with at least a bachelor’s degree enjoyed a net gain of 8.4 million jobs. Those without college degrees gained a measly eighty thousand—less than a hundredth of those gained by the college-educated. And these eighty thousand jobs are nothing compared to the 5.6 million they lost in the recession.

  FIGURE 4.3 The role of college education in the economic recovery from the Great Recession.

  Source: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data, 2007–2016. Employment includes all workers age eighteen and older. The monthly employment numbers are seasonally adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau X-12 procedure and smoothed using a four-month moving average.

  STRAIN ON PARTY ALLIANCES

  The embrace of Trump’s white nationalist rhetoric has two roots. First, white Americans, especially rural white Americans, felt their economic foothold slipping. Second, the Trump campaign offered a way to align their preferences for economic policies with their preferences for policies that preserved other privileges. If the anger that Trump harnessed was directed only at the Democrats, an unorthodox candidate like himself would have difficulty securing the Republican nomination. But his core supporters were almost as angry with traditional Republicans as they were with Democrats. Trump’s aggression toward fellow Republicans made him the vehicle, rather than the target, of that anger.

  Trump’s rise within the Republican Party showcased the breakdown of an alliance that first solidified during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Republican Party capitalized on white resentment by arguing against policies designed to relieve racial inequality. In March 1972, soon after segregationist George Wallace won a lopsided victory in the Florida Democratic primary, Republican president Richard Nixon announced his opposition to busing—transporting black students to white schools in an effort to integrate them—in a special televised broadcast. “I am opposed to busing for the purpose of achieving racial balance in our schools. I have spoken out against busing scores of times over many years. And I believe most Americans—white and black—share that view. But what we need now is not just speaking out against more busing, we need action to stop it.”51 This was a jarring break from party strategy just a decade earlier.

  Under Eisenhower, Republicans had supported civil rights legislation, and in this way they lured Northern black voters away from the Democrats’ New Deal coalition. In the 1956 election, about 39 percent of Northern black voters went for Eisenhower. And because black voters in the North were concentrated in populous states that affected Electoral College tallies, Republican strategists thought capturing the black vote could establish the Republicans as the dominant national party.52 But as the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and federal intervention dismantled Jim Crow, the backlash against the civil rights movement changed this calculation.

  In 1968, Eisenhower’s former vice president, Richard Nixon, faced Hubert Humphrey, who had been Johnson’s vice president, in a close contest for the presidency. George Wallace, a Southern Democrat and the governor of Alabama, ran on the ticket of the newly formed American Independent Party and found an audience waiting to receive him. Old-school Southern Democrats, whites who were alienated by the national Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement, rallied to his campaign.
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br />   In Houston, he received thunderous applause while delivering promises like this: “So if you want to waste your vote in November you can vote Republican or Democratic, because they don’t think like you do, they don’t think like I do, and not a single one of these parties—including the one meeting in Miami [the Republican National Convention] has told you that they will turn back to you your domestic institutions, which includes the public school system of Houston, Texas. And when I become your president, we’re gonna turn back lock, stock, and barrel to the people of this city and this state the right to run your schools in the manner you see fit.”53 In the end, Wallace carried Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. He won forty-six electoral votes and nearly 14 percent of the popular vote. Nixon won the popular vote by a hair’s breadth, but with a landslide in the Electoral College.

  Nixon saw Wallace carving up the American South for the Independent Party and seized an opportunity to bring his constituency into the Republican fold through his “Southern strategy.” Through the carefully coded language of “states’ rights,” the Republican Party signaled that they would resist implementation of federal civil rights legislation in the South, without sounding like racists themselves.

  Lee Atwater, a strategist for Ronald Reagan and later chairman of the Republican National Committee, explained the Southern strategy like this. “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites….‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’ ”54