Kirsten Powers

As soon as the news broke that President-elect Donald Trump had secured a deal to save roughly 1,000 jobs slated to move to Mexico, the carping began.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow tweeted, “Trump does a still-secret deal to save 1k Carrier jobs — media fawns. Obama saved 1 mil+ jobs with auto bailout — ambivalence #BarSetTooLow.” Think Progress, the blog of the Democratic think tank Center for American Progress, ran a story headlined, “Don’t be fooled by Trump’s deal to save some Carrier jobs,” and blasted the tax incentives Trump offered to keep the jobs. Sen. Bernie Sanders fulminated in The Washington Post that it is “not enough to save some of these jobs” and carped about tax breaks for Carrier.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged that he was happy that the jobs were saved, but then dismissed the notion that this was particularly meaningful compared to what President Obama has achieved. “I guess what I would observe is that if he is successful in doing that 804 more times, then he will meet the record of manufacturing jobs that were created in the United States while President Obama was in office,” Earnest said. “[t]he President-elect is talking about protecting jobs, and the metric I’m using is actually creating jobs.”

Is it any wonder really that white working class voters don’t feel connected to the Democratic Party? While it’s true that picking up the phone to keep some 1,000 jobs is not in itself a policy to reinvigorate the manufacturing sector — after all, 85% of manufacturing jobs have been lost due to automation, not globalization – dismissing “saving” jobs as lacking meaning is tone deaf, at best.

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For that matter, complaining about tax incentives that, when broken down over ten years, equal about $700 in tax credits per employee per year is a bizarre argument coming from a party that claims to want to use the government to better people’s lives. If this is “corporate welfare,” then it’s the kind of corporate welfare Democrats should support: rather than giving someone a hand-out, the government is helping people keep their jobs as well as their sense of purpose, all for a relatively small cost.

Perhaps just as problematic is the inability of too many Democrats to understand the power of symbolism. The complaints that Trump got credit for the Carrier deal, but Obama didn’t for the auto bailout (a debatable claim), completely miss the point. As the maxim goes, “a million deaths is a statistic, but one death is a tragedy.” This is true of jobs as well. Trump gets this.

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On CNN Sunday, Washington Examiner reporter Salena Zito discussed the time she spent with Carrier employees to get their feedback on the Trump deal. While none of the employees she spoke to voted for the Manhattan billionaire, “What was remarkable to them is they thought someone finally sees them and hears them and puts value on their work,” said Zito. “And they felt dignity in that, and dignity in their work. That was really important to them. ... They respected what [Trump] did and they respected that they were a symbol of the working class. They are making a decent living, giving them the ability to send their kids to college, to own a home. ... [They felt] that someone saw them for the first time. “

Robin Maynard, a Carrier employee for 24 years, told CNN in another interview, “I feel like [Trump is] looking out for the blue collar workers. ... I feel like he’s looking out for us little guys down here and wants to protect the jobs and keep them here in America.”

President Obama should have picked up the phone a year ago to incentivize Carrier to keep these jobs in the U.S. Democrats can keep lecturing people about how their feelings are invalid should they so choose. But they shouldn’t be surprised when white working class voters continue to move away from them.

Kirsten Powers, author of The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, writes often for USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter @KirstenPowers.

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