opinion

Trump's base not the working class but the wealthy



Raymond Pettit is a trustee of the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center Board of Directors.



A year after the brutal Presidential election in 2016, the Trump administration has followed through with many of his campaign proposals targeting Muslims, communities of color, and immigrants.

I wrote last Labor Day about the misconception that working-class anger was directed at immigrants. A year on from the election, has anything changed? Are more working-class people supporting President Trump and his policies?

Along the way to implementing his agenda, President Trump’s approval ratings have dropped sharply. But one thing hasn’t fallen off, the media’s recurrent assumption that his so-called base is comprised of disaffected working-class voters angry about immigrants and cultural issues like the NFL protests. However, these claims about a “blue-collar base” flies in the face of the evidence both nationally and locally. It is time to let it go.

At the national level, according to the most recent Gallup polling, only 26 percent of people making less than $2,000 per month approve of the job President Trump is doing, compared to 36 percent of people making between $2,000 and $4,999 per month, 43 percent of people making between $5,000 and $7,499, and 42 percent of people making $7,500 or more per month. These splits, with wealthier individuals more likely to approve of President Trump, have been consistent since Inauguration Day.

Here in Cincinnati, we have seen working-class people rally around immigrants and other communities being targeted by the Trump Administration. According to Brennan Grayson, director of the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, the city’s Central Labor Council is a leading member of the Immigrant Dignity Coalition – a 25 member coalition that’s confronting deportations of coalition members. The AFL-CIO Labor Council has gotten involved in helping implement Mayor John Cranley's and the City Council’s sanctuary city resolution and have also organized a community center at The Willows, a large housing complex in Springdale where thousands of immigrants live.

At the recent national convention of the AFL-CIO, the first since the Trump administration started, labor redoubled its commitment to immigrant workers in various formal resolutions. This was echoed in various speeches on the convention floor. For example, Eric Dean, general president of the Iron Workers International, remarked that what matters is "not a green card; the only card that matters is your union card."

In reality, working-class communities are the ones most fed up with President Trump’s policies. They know that the administration’s attempts to weaken new overtime regulations, to take tip ownership away from restaurant workers and to roll back OSHA safety standards, among many other attacks on worker rights, will end up hurting them and their families the most.

Bottom line, working-class people still don’t support Trump's policies. Instead, it has been our country’s wealthiest citizens, from Manhattan to Orange County and everywhere in between, including Indian Hill, where President Trump had some of his highest margins of victory in Hamilton County.

This is particularly important to remember now, as the Republican Party introduces tax reform legislation that will actually raise taxes for many working and middle-class families. It seems that once again the Trump Administration will provide benefits primarily for the wealthy and corporations, all the while claiming they represent working-class people.

No wonder President Trump’s base of upper-middle class and wealthy voters have stuck by him.