When I was growing up in 1950s Minnesota, the dominant political party was the DFL - the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. It had been formed in 1944 by a fusion of the national Democratic party and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party. It adopted the views of academic liberals, including support of the New Deal progressive reforms, and it took stances against antisemitism and racial discrimination. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Minnesota senators in Washington were from the DFL (Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey). The overall focus was on the working man, especially the farmers.
The graphic I've embedded above, from the Minnesota Star Tribune, illustrates a major change. Minnesota - like Wisconsin - is still a state of farmers and laborers, but the DFL support now is located in the urban area of Minneapolis-St Paul and the exurban areas there. (It's the same in Wisconsin, with a "blue dot" in Madison and another in Milwaukee, and the rest of the state pink or red.)
I think the change began about during the era of the Clinton administration, when the national party (and presumably the DFL) began to morph from a farmer/labor focus to a more "modern" approach by embracing the high tech of Silicon Valley and the high finance of investment banking. I think the common "working man" has been largely ignored. There are of course dozens of other factors at play.
I'd welcome comments from readers who live in Minnesota and are more in tune with the local vibe.
Not a Minnesotan, but this is a microcosm of a nation-wide realignment. Whatever value the Democratic party once provided labor, manufacturers, and farmers before is long gone.
ReplyDeleteYes.
Deleteso true
DeleteUnfortunately, yes.
DeleteA bit of a jinx to name it DFL
ReplyDeleteNot from Minnesota, either, but this result is hardly surprising. Democrats have been giving token lip service to the working class for the past decades, since, at least, Clinton, while sucking the corporate and billionaire class teat. They really expected to sell the lie over and over again and never be questioned or doubted? Add the inflationary knock-on effects of Covid, the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Armenia, and plain old corporate greed, and you had the perfect storm. One, sadly, Trump read and successfully tapped into. If it had been a traditional Republican presidential candidate, I'd be sitting here and crowing, 'you deserved it, idiots!' But, Trump is anything but traditional. Democrats may have truly doomed our country because they bet on the stupidity of the public, but Trump doubled that bet and won.
ReplyDeleteRead "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank. Published all the way back in 2004, it explains everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F_(book)
ReplyDelete