Republicans thought they found a working class hero to replace "Joe The Plumber" from 2008.
Democrats thought if Republicans liked him, he must be bad. And evangelical. And racist. And Q-Anon-friendly.
Both sides revealed why frustrated working class Americans are open to angry populist messages from either party, or neither party.
Oliver Anthony's song, Rich Men North of Richmond, went viral. The leadoff question in the GOP debate invited candidates to comment on why the song resonated with Americans. Anthony says he was misunderstood. He said he was mostly angry with rich business executives north of Richmond, not the bad choices made by working people. He said he mostly liked Democrats, but they were attacking him and Republicans were praising him. He said his real target was privileged, out of touch, oppressive elites.
Michael Trigoboff observes that elites come in different forms. Financial elites send jobs to China, keep wages as low as possible, lobby to avoid paying benefits, and generally and see to it that the rich get richer. Cultural elites shame the great mass of "deplorables" for thinking what they think, liking what they like, and being who they are. They work with their hands. They get sweaty and dirty. Cultural elites say they should have gotten a better education. Trigoboff is now retired from work as a Computer Science professor in a community college. He taught classes to people struggling to reposition themselves out of dead-end work. He lives near, but outside, Portland, Oregon.
Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff
We have a “two-party system” in this country, but the two parties now represent different segments of the American elite. Republicans are the party of financial elites. Democrats, who used to be for “the little guy“, are now the party of cultural elites. Neither party represents normal, non-elite Americans.
This has opened up a huge, gaping space in our politics for populism. It’s why voters who do not have a college degree are gravitating away from the Democrats and toward the Republicans, including members of minority groups who the Democrats thought they owned. It’s what gave Donald Trump the opportunity to take over the Republican Party from financial elites like low-energy Jeb!.
When enough people are fed up with the elites, votes will matter more than money or cultural clout. Republicans will not be able to spend their way out of being engulfed by the populist wave. Democrats will not be able to use their cultural clout to scare people away from populism with words like “deplorable”.
Eventually, one party is going to ditch its elites and line up with the populists. Right now, it looks like it’s going to be the Republicans. But it could be the Democrats, if they’re capable of catching a clue; if not, they’ll never know what hit them.
In the meantime, populism is starting to develop its own cultural messages. This song is one of the latest:
Rich Men North of Richmond
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare
Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Oliver Anthony's lyrics attempt to aim the anger working people justifiably feel when they can't make a living wage toward traditional targets of the far right: immigrants, LGBTQ people, and what Reagan called welfare queens. Of course those queens are mythical creatures. Anyone who has gotten SNAP (food stamps) knows you can barely buy rice and beans for three weeks with them, never mind cookies, and actual people on welfare are lucky if they can stay in housing. There are dangerous hate-mongering trends in country music today, fed by the major right-wing corporations who own them like Sinclair Broadcasting and IHeartRadio. Dems need to focus on living wages, affordable childcare, and affordable housing, and call out hate when we hear it, as in this infuriating song.