How the Midwest Was Lost

by Thomas Frank in the NYT:

Guest Essay

The Elites Had It Coming

Nov. 9, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET

... 

Just think of all those ebullient Democratic proclamations in the 

’90s about trade and tech and globalization and financial innovation. 

What a vision they had: All those manifestoes about futurific “wired workers” or the “learning class” … all those speeches about how Democrats had to leave the worker-centric populism of the 1930s behind them … all those brilliant triangulations and reaching out to the right. 

When I was young, it felt like every rising leader in the Democratic Party was making those points. That was the way to win voters in what they called “the center,” the well-educated suburbanites and computer-literate professionals whom everybody admired.

Well, those tech-minded Democrats got exactly what they set out to get, and now here we are. At the Republican convention in July, JD Vance described the ruination visited on his working-class town in Ohio by NAFTA and trade with China, both of which he blamed at least in part on Mr. Biden, and also the human toll taken by the Iraq War, which he also contrived to blame on Mr. Biden. Today Mr. Vance is the vice president-elect, and what I hope you will understand, what I want you to mull over and take to heart and remember for the rest of your life, is that he got there by mimicking the language that Americans used to associate with labor, with liberals, with Democrats.

By comparison, here is Barack Obama in 2016, describing to Bloomberg Businessweek his affinity for the private sector: “Just to bring things full circle about innovation — the conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying.”

I hope Mr. Obama finds his silicon satisfaction. I hope the men of capital whose banks he bailed out during the financial crisis show a little gratitude and build him the biggest, most expensive, most innovative presidential library of them all. But his party is in ruins today, without a leader and without a purpose.