Obama Should Answer Bitterness with Green Industrial Policy for Pennsylvania

There's been much talk about the white working class in recent days, but few white working class voices in the debate. Carl Davidson is white working class to his core, an early leader of Students for a Democratic Society, one of the key organizers of the 2002 Chicago anti-war rally at which Barack Obama spoke. Carl repairs computers and trains inner city working class youth for high-tech employment. He did some work on Obama's computers back in Chicago. Carl recently moved home to Western Pennsylvania and now does local organizing as webmaster for progressivesforobama.blogspot.com -- Tom Hayden

By Carl Davidson

When I heard Hillary Clinton and John McCain claiming, against Barack Obama's recent observation, that there was no 'bitterness' among working-class voters in Western Pennsylvania, I burst out laughing, 'they've got to be kidding!'

Unfortunately they weren't, and now the cable news punditry and right-wing talk radio has a new diversionary cause of the week to dump on Obama in lieu of serious discussion of policy and programs.

I'm born and bred in Beaver County, Western PA, which, in 1960, was the most blue-collar county in the entire country-steel, strip mines, and everything related to both. My grandfather died in the mill, Jones & Laughlin Steel, crushed by a crane, and another cousin met the same fate a few decades later. My parents are both in the Pennsylvania Bowlers Hall of Fame (and Barack would do well to stick to basketball!). After a long stint in New York City and Chicago, which were irresistible in my youth, I'm now back home, living in Raccoon Township.

Take it from me. There are a lot of bitter voters in these mill towns and the townships outside them. If they don't express it to the coiffured media, they do to each other. It's easy to see why. The towns are mostly empty, ravaged by deindustrialization. And the brown fields where the mills once stood are so poisoned grass won't even grow. After sitting empty for years, the first new structure to go up not too long ago on one near here was a new prison.

Does this mean it's a clear path for Obama? Not at all, it's a rough climb, full of difficulties. But he's doing better than anyone expected. None of the polls are that trustworthy, because some tell the pollsters the 'right' answer, while others, such as new youth voters with only cell phones, are hard to find. Obama's closing on Clinton, now by a five point spread. The more people see him, the more they like him. But both Democrats run neck-to-neck against McCain in November. This is not a 'safe state' for anyone, anytime.

'White male identity politics' is the unpredictable elephant in the room. I've talked with older blue collar voters who claim John Edwards was their runaway favorite, but are now leaning to John McCain, in spite of their hatred for the war. White workers generally split three ways, roughly proportional, between the three candidates.

Younger working-class voters, male and female, white or black, are not so caught up in it, and they are Obama's ace-in-the-hole. If his campaign can get them to the polls in droves, he can win it. That's the long and short of it, and if you can get here to help, please do so. Everything counts.

The bitterness runs deep, favors no single candidate, and comes in several varieties. Retired steelworkers here had their pensions stolen by speculative capital, winning only part of them back by hitting the streets. There's also another kind of bitterness in Pennsylvania's demographics. It's now one of the oldest population areas in the country. My young nephews and nieces, even with some local college degrees or courses behind them, have a hard time finding work. Many young people have moved away to Florida or California, leaving older relatives behind. Here in Raccoon, they're now shutting down the elementary school, claiming 500 pupils doesn't justify the expense to keep it open. It means an hour on the bus for youngsters from a perfectly good school, and, yes, many parents are bitter.

Aliquippa is the nearest town to me, known as home of Mike Ditka and Tony Dorsett. In my youth, it was a bustling blue-collar town of 20,000-some 10,000 workers in the mill, a mixture of Serbs, Italians and African-Americans. Now it's down to 6000, mostly poor and Black. They were the hardest hit of all, lacking the rural family homesteads to fall back on. Now joblessness, crime and addiction take a very bitter toll on the families still there, with nowhere to go.

Does this mean it's all bleak? No, not at all, although Hillary Clinton is just dissembling, or worse, to assert that there's no bitterness, only resilience and hope, in these towns. People here like to pull themselves up independently whenever they can, like the Scots-Irish and Germans who predominated here in the 1800s. Their class solidarity means they'll accept a hand-up, and offer one, too. But they don't like hand-outs at all, unless you're at death's door, which is why their anti-'Fat Cat' populism also contains antipathy to some features of liberalism. It's also why Obama gets a standing ovation when he tells college students he'll help, but challenges them to give back, with community service work.

This blue-collar populism runs the political gamut-left, center and right. You can get colorful examples in the hot debates in the interactive pages of the online edition of the largest daily paper, the Beaver County Times. Pick any topic or candidate -- you'll get fierce denunciations of the rich man's war for oil, combined with warnings against Hillary' 'socialism', claims that Obama's a secret Muslim, and despair that McCain's a clone of Bush.

In this lively public square, Obama or any candidate would do well to discern the main themes. Don't get me wrong. People here are open and friendly. They don't expect you to agree with them, or vice versa. But they do expect authenticity, so when you get out organizing, speak from the heart, and don't put your head higher than anyone else's, and expect the same in return.

At the top of their list is stopping the war now, since it's preventing any solutions to anything else. Next, do something about health care -- single payer is best, but either Obama's or Hillary's plan rather than nothing. Then debt relief and fuel prices, although no miracles are expected here.

Finally there's creating new jobs and new wealth. This is probably most important strategically, but people have been spun so many promises, they're cynical, and Obama was right to point it out. Still he should look deeper here, and more often.

What gets people's attention are 'high road' programs like the Apollo Alliance, new 'green' industrial jobs building the infrastructure of energy independence. All those wind turbines and wave generators and whatnot have to be built somewhere, and what blue collar Pennsylvania, white and Black, knows how to do very well is build things that create high value and new wealth.

This is what gets people's attention, not rebates, handouts and McJobs. Obama's a natural on this subject, and he'd best spend less ad money on how's he's not in thrall to lobbyists, and spend more as an advocate of green industrial policy that would give these mill towns real hope for change.

Carl Davidson is a peace and justice activist, a 'Solidarity Economy' organizer, and webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama'.

Comments

[PioneerKing]

Thanks Tom! Hillary will be all over this, since she hasn't had an original idea she will appropriate this one as her own.

BTW Clinton wins PA by 23%; IN by 18% and NC by 15%

[jdm58]

Thanks for the view from rural Pennsylvania. Good luck, and I hope that "green jobs" come there, and elsewhere soon. There is far more than just the economy at stake. Not ONE question on Global Warming in last nights debate. A sham.

[outnow]

It is amazing that blue collar workers could change from supporting a populist, progressive candidate like John Edwards to supporting John McCain. The explanation must be that some of these workers are against women or blacks. That is really the downfall of the working class in America - the prejudice and the ignorance. The right wingers use Guns, Gays and God, and the workers of the state of Pennsylvania fall all over themselves to vote to outsource their own jobs and to perpetuate the system of foreign wars for resources.

The movie, The Deerhunter was on cable TV. It depicts a culture of violence that only gets worse in Vietnam. Most working class white people don't like abortion or affirmative action. Do these same God-fearing people ever consider that killing people in Southeast Asia or in Vietnam is murder? These same people never attacked the U.S. The real problem is that they see minorities as being too much competition for them. Just wait until the Chinese worker replaces their jobs. I agree with Obama that clinging to a rifle or a prayer book is no substitute for voting intelligently - that means not voting against one's own economic interests. It hurts us all. All humanity is severely harmed by the policies of the GOP. If that takes education to understand, don't be too proud, take some courses in political science and economics. Your livelihood depends on it. Don't vote for the GOP under any circumstances.

[godsbreath64]

No doubt. Thank you for your coherence. When will the DNC approach THEIR lessons of '68? Why do we the people always have to?

I hope Obamma gets this. He is not campaigning against a person, but for americans in the corporate cross-hairs of the grand exortion party. I hope and even pray he doesn't fumble this silver spike. Slay the ugly war/prison beast, already.

They need to face they nominated the illicit Commander in Cheif by proxy. The minion could even pick his own socks by himself. They are entitled that credibility now.

Thanks.

[billflannigan]

Excellent suggestions- too bad the MSM is too pre-occupied with stories that they create.

[godsbreath64]

Don't be dissin' the counter republic (an) lap-media now. There are generations of bloodline pundits set for life, before life itself, for all we ate in '08 >: =/

We got the slab of Cheney smirking before the fallen, C-SPIN bumpin' (enough) Rove,.... big money, honey , when so chummy :`)


Really though, great piece.


Peace and pizza

PS Tom, what became of Steven Max?

[Guitarsandmore]

!!!!! Former supporters of John Edwards are now voting for John McCain?!?!?!
If you are voting on the issues, how could you possibly make the jump from Edwards to McCain; they are extreme polar opposites!

Could it be, no! Could it possibly be that they are just voting for the white man? If that is in fact the case then your voters are not putting much thought into their choices. You have my condolences for living in such an uninformed state with prehistoric constituents. Perhaps you should consider relocating as so many of your neighbors have done.

[godsbreath64]

We are? Cool, thanks. I had no idea.

I am SO excited. Madame media's great, great grandchildren are set! Penne vania >; = /

[CarlDavidson]

Don't get so, well, 'elitist' about the matter. I assure you that 'white male identity politics' is alive and well in every state, in cities and elswhere.

Next, I mention that perhaps half of the white blue-collar workers here will break from it and go with Hillary or Barack, and the younger generation in larger numbers.

But my point about those jumping from Edwards to McCain is still true, though they're conflicted over the war. Of course some are just straight-up McCain voters. This is not a safe state.

People vote both issues and identity, though sometimes they're not so aware of the latter.

We got millions and million of people in this country who think they're 'white,' when it's a social construct that hardly exists in biology, but was created as a tool between 1640 and 1690 to make English bondservants think they had more in common with their masters than the African bondservants.

Once in an argument with a former partner, she said to me, 'Carl, the main problem with you is that you think you're a man.' That shut me up, and I pondered over it for nearly a year before I finally figured out what she meant, and she was right. It helped that I'd figured out 'whiteness' earlier, but the pull of identity is strong.

So 'know yourself', especially if you're going to organize outside your normal comfort zone, and do it, as suggested, without putting your head higher than anyone else's.

[rinpochet]

Great article! And of course, makes so much sense. I live in California and don't see the ads that are out there, but trust your word on this. I have heard Obama speak out on it but as an ardent supporter and contributer, would love to see him put money into ads on this issue, and quickly.

He understands the issue, now he needs to put the money behind it.