Losing the White Working Class, and a Whole Lot More

Thomas Frank’s post at Salon today, Thomas Frank: Ann Coulter and David Brooks play a sneaky, unserious class card, largely is a takedown of David Brooks’ latest piece of hackery. And it’s very good on that front.

But his conclusion is focused less on Brooks and more on how Democrats have lost the white working class. The analysis is spot on:

When Democrats finally get over the impulse to deny and prevaricate and blame others, and instead ask where they themselves went wrong, one place they might begin is their beloved issue of free trade. Take NAFTA, the granddaddy of all trade agreements, whose twentieth anniversary we celebrated this year: There has never been a more obviously class-based piece of legislation. It was supported with uncanny unanimity by members of the commentariat and the professional class, and, indeed, it has worked well for such people. For members of the working class, however, it has been precisely the disaster their organizations predicted.

There’s more to it, and I’d encourage readers to click through and read Frank’s four concluding paragraphs.

But I wonder. Is it only the white working class Democrats have lost by being beholden to corporate America? My guess is no. The white working class may be the only group the Democrats lost to the Republicans. But  for the very same reason they’ve lost an even larger swath of the electorate to “don’t see enough of a difference to bother voting.”