In August Jesse Mulligan spoke to Canadian economist Jeff Rubin about his book The Expendables: How the Middle Class Got Screwed by Globalisation.
The ‘expendables’ have made their voice heard in this US election, Rubin told Jesse Mulligan.
“I think the expendables have once again spoken as they did in 2016, and those that ignore the expendables like CNN or the New York Times that were once again predicting a Democratic landslide were dead wrong.
Jeff Rubin Photo: Supplied
“It’s a validation of what’s happened in the last four years and it’s a massive rejection of the establishment.”
He believes President Donald Trump has served this constituency well.
“It is a constituency that historically would have belonged to the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party has long since abandoned that constituency, I’d say ever since Bill Clinton took power, and that constituency has migrated to, admittedly, an unlikely champion.
“A person if I had to guess has never worked an hour in a factory in his life has championed the cause of those that do like no other president in the post war period.”
Joe Biden's failure to secure the Democratic landslide many predicted doesn’t surprise him.
“For the same reason that Hillary Clinton couldn’t capture their votes, because they were part of the Democratic establishment that was very much supportive of the system that basically screwed the middle class.
“I think what’s challenging for the Democratic Party is that they had a candidate both in 2016 and 2020 who could have beaten Donald Trump because he could have gotten the support of the expendables and I’m speaking of Senator Bernie Sanders.
“But in the eyes of the Democratic Party elite, Donald Trump was a better outcome than Bernie Sanders as they did everything they could to make sure that Bernie Sanders wasn’t on the ticket.”
The left wing of the Democratic Party may have to consider if it is their natural home, he says.
“I guess for people of the so called radial left in the Democratic party, the people who coalesced around Sanders both in 2016 and 2020, the question they have to ask is do they have any future in a party that is obviously committed to making sure that their agenda will never become the party’s platform and are we going to see the creation of a third political party in the US, articulating a left wing populist agenda that the establishment wing of the Democratic Party obviously cannot live with.”
Trump’s trade policies have delivered for blue collar Americans, he says.
“If you are a manufacturing worker in the United States, manufacturing employment has increased since Donald Trump’s election, and the reason it’s increased is because of the trade policies that Donald Trump has imposed.
“We’re finding employment gains in industries like auto, steel, aluminium we haven’t seen in the US sector in decades and that is directly related to the trade policies that Donald trump has enacted.
“Policies I might add, although this is consistently ignored in media coverage, but policies that were exactly the same as the policies Senator Bernie Sanders was articulating that made him so objectionable to the elite of the Democratic Party.”
If Biden wins the election as seems likely, this cohort of voters will continue to struggle, Rubin says.
“The same place they went under President Obama and the same place they went under President Bush and the same place that they went under President Clinton they would become forever marginalised, victims of global supply chains where they no longer fit in.
“And that’s why I think you will find that so many of them have voted for President Trump, and I think if given a choice would have voted for President Sanders.
“President Biden will have the same kind of globalist trade policies that have decimated America’s middle class over the last 20 to 30 years and that’s been done by both Democratic and Republican administrations, until of course this Trump administration.”
