Author of Redneck Reverie: The Rationale for the Trump Phenomenon has interesting insights

[egbertowillies]

Author Cliff Oxford gives a cadre of reasons why rural voters are hard for progressive to reach and why they vote against their interests.

https://politicsdoneright.com/2021/01/cliff-oxford-on-why-progressives-dont-reach-rural-voters/

[jmbar2]

1. Some interesting points

He explains the redneck viewpoint persuasively.
- In the 1980s, Reagan made it OK to kill unions with the Patco strike
- Clinton's passage of NAFTA started the process of offshoring US jobs.
- Rural workers went from being comfortable to living in squalor, and associate their losses with the liberal elite.
- They resent being told, on top of that, to support gay marriage, diversity, etc. Being lectured to when they feel their lives were stripped away from them.


The author's recommendations
- Progressives should propose subsidizing the difference between working class wages and a living wage.
- Provide universal basic income
- If progressives were to go to rural and redneck areas with concrete ways to improve their lives, the authoritarians won't be so appealing.

[panfluteman]

2. Yeah, That's a Pretty Good Summary

Yeah - I think that there may be a universal tendency for working class blue collar types to gravitate towards authoritarian leaders, no matter what their particular brand of politics might be. Conversely, the artists, intellectuals, intelligentsia and creative types usually have an aversion to authoritarianism. When I was living in Romania after the fall of communism (the Pan Flute is native to Romania, not South America) it was mainly the working class, blue collar types who said that "Ceausescu a fost un om bun", or "Ceausescu was a good man". At least under communism, they had a stable job and income, didn't have to hustle so much for a living, and had their summer vacations every August. Everything was thrown up in the air and became a lot more uncertain with the fall of communism. The creative intellectual types were overjoyed to finally be free of the stultifying communist yoke and muzzle, and to finally be free of persecution. You can probably draw similar polarities in the political life of many countries.