Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
Wow! Who says election promises don’t produce real change? nnCandidate Donald Trump had loudly proclaimed that he’d force U.S. corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all the made-in-China products they sell to us.
Even he must have been surprised, though, when one major American corporation promptly shouted, “Yes, sir!” Only one day after Trump’s election, the Steve Madden shoe manufacturer announced it would leave China, where nearly all of its footwear is made. Amazing — a victory for Trump policy even before he takes office! And a morale boost for American workers.
So, where would Madden relocate? Maybe in the hard-hit industrial Midwest, or maybe such former shoe-making areas as New England and the Southeast. But no. In a less-pleasant surprise to Trump, Madden executives said they would not replant their factories in the USA — but in Vietnam, Cambodia and Brazil.
Despite appearing to succumb to Trump’s anti-China tariff, Madden is making an end run around it, “leaving China” by taking China with it. The corporate trick here is the structural reality that not only are U.S. factories located in China but so are the suppliers of the materials manufacturers must buy to make their products. So, Madden can scoot down to Vietnam, thus escaping Trump’s China tariff — but the shoe’s components (from laces to soles) will still be Chinese-made. And contrary to Trump’s bragging, his policy will not create a single made-in-America job.
Let’s remember that corporations are the most aggressively selfish elites in our society, and we should not be duped into thinking that running job-creation policy through them will benefit anyone but them.
As any farmer can tell you, if you want to plant, grow and harvest a crop, you’ve got to get out of the office and go to work in the field.
Why can’t the top political strategists, donors and consultants of the Democratic Party grasp this basic reality when it comes to producing votes? This year was going to be different. Pressed by progressive rural activists, national party leaders proudly declared that they would open a network of get-out-the-vote offices in rural, red areas of battleground states. SPOILER ALERT: In states that Joe Biden won, Kamala Harris won 104,000 fewer rural votes than Biden harvested four years earlier.
What happened? Very little, too late. Opening a campaign office is hardly the same as being there for the long haul, building trust and nurturing local support. Harris was behind from the start, though, since Biden’s Democratic Party operation had not bothered to hire any rural staffers or even prepare an agenda. Apparently, their idea of a good rural program was Hee-Haw.
The Harris campaign did put out a plan — but in September, just two months before the vote! Also, they had too many “rural strategists” and too few ground-level organizers at campaign headquarters. Those organizers did their best but were mostly disregarded by campaign consultants. For example, a good list of rural surrogates was recruited but never used. Worse, Harris herself was absent — she was never scheduled to visit a farm, or even pay a culturally symbolic visit to a state fair.
The Democrats’ real problem is not any one campaign but more than a decade of policy and political abandonment of rural communities. Do the smart leaders think people out here don’t notice the party’s absence and disregard for them? Again, any farmer knows you can’t harvest a crop if you don’t plant one and cultivate it.
Even in a barrelful of rotten apples, you might think there’d still be a few good ones.
But don’t get your hopes up looking into barrels labeled “private equity investors.” These esoteric, multibillion-dollar Wall Street schemes rig the marketplace so “high-net-worth individuals” can grab fat profits and special tax breaks to buy up doctors’ offices, hometown newspapers, child care centers, etc.
Consider America’s humble but beneficial mobile home parks. Homeownership has become so pricey that these affordable manufactured units now make up 10% of all single-family home sales. But while the buyers own the houses, they must rent lots from mobile park owners. This has generally been a square deal, when park owners live among the renters, providing decent services at reasonable rates. One such is Linnhaven Mobile Home Center, with some 300 mobile home residents in Brunswick, Maine.
But what is home to millions of people has become a quick-buck target for Wall Street’s equity profiteers. Waving cash at longtime trailer park owners, they’ve been snatching up thousands of these lots. Without warning, people’s home places are literally being bought out from under them. The absentee predators then raise rents to drive out residents, clearing the spaces for high-dollar renters or buyers.
But wait, good news for a change! A new law in Maine gives mobile home residents a chance to buy their park, and community cooperatives exist to help arrange financing. That’s what the modest-income people of Linnhaven have now done. Such a big leap is not easy, but give people a fair chance and they can make it work. As one Linnhaven woman put it, the community effort was much more than a property deal: “[It felt like] a chance to control your own destiny.”
The morning after the election, a social media pundit expressed amazement that Democrat Kamala Harris had lost, noting that America is enjoying “an objectively strong economy.”
Indeed, the data shows impressive job growth, rising wages, slowing inflation, etc. — all indicators of a solid economy. Nearly every pundit hailed this as meaning Harris’ campaign could glide on rising prosperity, while focusing her main message on what a dangerous bumbling buffoon Trump is.
The problem is that “objective economic data” often deceives. For example, consider economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s sad tale of the 6-foot-tall statistician who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of 2 feet.
Millions of Americans are drowning in today’s economy — even workaday people with college degrees are struggling to make ends meet and feeling pessimistic about their future. Happy talk by economists, pundits and politicians doesn’t pay the rising bills for rent, child care, groceries, insurance, medicines, etc. Everything is moving out of reach ... except a protest vote. About half of Trump voters say high prices were “the largest factor” in their vote.
Democratic Party officials were dazzled by the soaring Dow Jones Industrial Average, ignoring the Doug Jones Average, which showed that Doug and Donna are struggling, anxious, angry ... and even open to a bull goose demagogue blustering that he’ll “fix” the rigged system on Day One.
Few of these hard-hit men and women actually believe in, agree with, trust or like Trump — nor are they stuck on supporting him. But they will be, unless and until some progressive party decides to side with grassroots people in an unabashed fight for economic fairness and social justice. To help push in that direction, go to WorkingFamilies.org.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
