In the shadow of Pittsburgh’s downtown, where tech startups, nonprofits, “eds-and-meds” institutions, and homeless encampments have replaced the shuttered steel mills, a quiet revolution is brewing. It’s not happening in the trendy coffee shops of the ersatz Williamsburg that is Lawrenceville or the sleek co-working spaces of East Liberty. Instead, this upheaval is taking place in the McMansions of Cranberry Township, the union halls of Washington County, and the fracking fields of Greene County.
The revolution in question? A wholesale rejection of University of Chicago historian and The Baffler co-founder Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? thesis by the very white working-class voters it sought to explain. Frank’s 2004 bestseller argued that these voters were being hoodwinked into supporting Republicans through cynical culture war tactics, even as GOP economic policies worked against their interests. But nearly two decades later, Frank’s thesis is colliding head-on with the realities of southwestern Pennsylvania’s political landscape.
The story of how Democrats lost their working-class base began well before Trump. Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon made inroads with blue-collar workers by aligning them against the counterculture Left and public-school integration. But it was the 2000 election that marked a tipping in this realignment. That year, Al Gore’s last-minute pivot to populist rhetoric barely kept him competitive against George W. Bush, who finally and decisively captured several formerly Democratic strongholds in the South and border states.
This shift has only accelerated in recent years. Voting data tells a stark story. In 2000, Democrats carried Allegheny County, plus the seven surrounding counties, by nearly 86,000 votes. By 2020, this same region swung to Republicans by 38,000 votes – a staggering 124,000 vote shift in a state all but certain to be decided by razor-thin margins. This wasn’t a fluke or an anomaly; it was the culmination of a long-term trend that has seen traditionally Democratic strongholds like Washington County become reliable Republican territory.
What’s driving this rightward lurch? Contrary to Frank’s thesis, it doesn’t appear to be simple manipulation or false consciousness. Instead, voter surveys and demographic data point to a more complex realignment of values and priorities. […]
— Read More: www.wnd.com
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