Manchin Betrayal Provides Opportunity for Democrats to Prove They Represent White Working Class
A perception abides that the white working class, particularly white working-class males as a group, constituted a strong pillar of support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, indeed that they were pivotal in his victory.
While this perception that support among a white working class was key to Trump’s 2016 victory has been largely disproved, what is not disputable is that Trump and the Republican Party have in fact put great effort into branding themselves in terms of this myth that they are the party of working-class America.
Trump, of course, claimed in his 2016 campaign to represent the “forgotten American,” lavishing workers with promises to bring back coal mining jobs and to stop the corporate relocation of jobs outside the United States, promises quickly proven false just shortly after his election.
On election night in 2020, Republican Senator Josh Hawley tweeted, “We are a working class party now. That is the future,” signaling a political direction echoed in a March 2020 Republican strategy memo titled “Cementing GOP as the Working Class Party.”
Of course, Trump’s own businesses practices and treatment of his own employees make abundantly clear that one would be hard-pressed to find…
