Trump made America’s old working-class conservatism new again

One of the great unsolved mysteries of American politics that routinely perplexes pseudo-intellectuals and academics is why has America’s working class refused to embrace socialism to the same extent as their European and Latin American brethren?

In the typical fashion of the ivory tower intelligentsia, scapegoats were conceived.

{mosads}They claim the proletariat revolution never spread to these shores, not because of the economic and political destitution of socialism, but because the American working class bought into the great and evil capitalist lie.

What is this lie? Well, it can be best explained by American author and alleged communist sympathizer, John Steinbeck:

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

This is the patronizing progressive mindset that in modern parlance characterizes working class voters as “too stupid to know what’s good for them” and, thus, its members must be told what to think and believe.

For generations, the left has paraded this line of thought as an excuse for their own failure to win over the hearts and minds of the American public. Modern Pelosi-Democrats carried on this great tradition in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s upset victory in the presidential election.

But this contemptuous attitude was not born overnight.

You see, leftism in this country did not spring out organically from the working poor themselves. Instead, it was imported into the halls of coastal academia via successive waves of primarily German emigres fleeing their own failed socialist revolutions in Europe. Leftism was unique in America as being the domain not of the working poor but the Europhilic elites.

This is the real reason leftism was held at bay in this country for so long.

The notion of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” is not some fantasy of a blue collar carpenter, it was at one point actually a reality. Climbing the economic ladder was not only possible, it was the norm. This massive wealth generation, brought about by our free enterprise system, was always a thorn in the side of would be socialist central planners.

How could the left successfully argue for the expropriation of the means of production when that very capital was simultaneously employing and raising the living standards of millions of Americans?

They realized early on that unlike the serfdoms and monarchies of Europe, the American free market system was too resilient and prosperous to take down in one fell swoop. They instead opted for a more ‘centrist’ approach to their ends.

They would successively corrode the foundation of American capitalism from the inside with an endless series of new taxes, regulations, and bureaucracy, with the aim of stifling industry into submission.

These initiatives were always presented to the people as a way, not to replace the system, but instead to “improve” it.

These “fixes” ended up destroying the industrial heartland of this country. As the factories left for more hospitable shores, the infrastructure decayed, and cities crumbled, the American worker was left gutted both economically and spiritually.

Now, the left has given up all pretense of being the champions of the working class.

“Bill Clinton had railed … for months,” Politico reported, against the Hillary Clinton campaign’s disinterest in the working-class, “wondering aloud at meetings why the campaign was not making more of an attempt to even ask that population for its votes.”

But why, after all, would the left want the votes of Americans they consider “deplorables,” voters who worry about their jobs leaving and their communities dying? That job loss, the left claimed, was a consequence of the times, and backwards Middle America ought to get used to it, along with 71 new gender options.

It was from this political vacuum that Donald Trump was able to win the White House. An inspiring and uplifting message of jobs and return of industry is what won the blue collar voter, over the Democrats’ promises of more EPA regulations and mass migration.

Trump’s simple embrace of down-to-earth mannerisms and speech rather than lecturing from a pedestal was a resonating change of tune from years of out of touch Republican candidates.

This new breed of working class conservatism is the only path forward for Republicans. They can embrace it and continue to win “big league,” or they can scoff at it as nothing more than a one cycle anomaly.

But only one of those paths will lead to electoral and ideological victory. 

Gavin Wax is a former New York State director for the 2016 Ted Cruz presidential campaign, and a small business entrepreneur. His work has appeared in The Daily Caller, The Federalist, and Newsmax.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.