Can Bernie Sanders Win Back Iowa’s Working Class?

[cal04]

If he can’t, Donald Trump’s brand of right-wing populism looms large.
http://www.thenation.com/article/can-bernie-sanders-win-back-iowas-working-class/

(snip)
The Republican front-runner has come to a Newton forum on “job creation” sponsored by the local NBC affiliate. When the moderator asks the audience how many worked at Maytag or had family members who did, two-thirds hold up their hands. Although Trump will make news later in the day by telling a reporter he “would certainly implement” a database to track Muslims in the United States, for now he’s trying to show a more sympathetic side. It isn’t easy—at one point, he compares the 1980s farm crisis to a slowdown in the Manhattan property market. He lies without shame or self-consciousness, claiming President Obama “actually said the attack in Paris was caused by global warming.” And it’s hard not to hear ominous overtones in his promise “If I win, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas.’”

Still, if he doesn’t exactly answer the woman who asks “How are you going to ensure working families can afford childcare?,” he doesn’t dismiss the question. And though he rejects a plea to endorse equal pay for women—“If you say everybody gets equal pay, you get away from the American dream and into a socialistic system. Maybe we should have Bernie Sanders up here”—his garbled syntax in response to a query about government subsidies for wind power suggests support. When Nancy Brown calls Obamacare “a joke,” he nods, waits for the jeers to die down, then says: “People are hurting. There’s no question about it.”

(snip)
Sanders and Clinton both have offices in Ottumwa. Chris Laursen, a member of UAW Local 74 at the John Deere plant, is a Sanders precinct captain. “I feel like we still have a lot of work to do,” he says. “I hear a lot of ‘I love what Bernie is saying. I just don’t think he can win.’ I remind people that they can vote for who they really like in the caucus and always vote for the Democratic nominee in November. I ask them, ‘Who is the last presidential candidate who picked up a picket sign and walked the line with union workers?’”

(snip)
If Sanders does well enough—in Iowa and beyond—to keep up the pressure, and his campaign succeeds in mobilizing a constituency to demand radical economic restructuring, that might matter more in the long run than whose name is on the ballot in November. Because if Sanders can renew the terribly frayed connection between the ballot box and the lunch box, he will already have accomplished a stunning victory. “Can a people-power movement trump establishment politics?” Espy asks himself. “Sure. But it’s an uphill fight.”

(rest at link)

[libdem4life]

1. "Who is the last presidential candidate who picked up a picket sign and walked the line with union

workers?"

Another well-turned phrase... "if Sanders can renew the terribly frayed connection between the ballot box and the lunch box, he will already have accomplished a stunning victory."

Both bear repeating...as I just did.

[WillyT]

2. Jesus...

“We’ve replaced the jobs, but not at that level,” he says. “Maytag was a three-generation company. You didn’t have to go to college. You could start at Maytag at $18 an hour. Today, that doesn’t happen.”

Nancy Brown’s husband worked at Maytag for 34 years. His union contract stipulated that he would receive health insurance for the rest of his life as a retirement benefit. But Whirlpool eliminated his coverage. Stories like that bring the candidates to Newton. Bernie Sanders drew some 350 supporters to the high school in September. Hillary Clinton, who has a paid organizer here, came in July. Yet The New York Times’s account of her house party, which described the town as a “farming community,” only mentioned Maytag as the name of a local blue cheese.

From OP article.