If Donald Trump wins the presidency on Tuesday, November 8—and wins fairly big—you need look no further than the jobs report immediately preceding the vote.
While many are saying, “It’s the emails, stupid.” Or more accurately “It’s the server, stupid.” And, that’s true. To say nothing of “It’s Benghazi, stupid.” More than anything, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Call it the November surprise. While the jobs report has unemployment ticking down to 4.9%, the real shocker is the stunningly low labor participation number—some 95 million jobless, or a mere 62% with jobs. It’s the lowest since 1977, and lower, for US working age males, than in France, said MSNBC’s Steve Rattner!
The interesting thing is this current economic picture mirrors the economically dismal 70s, which paved the way for Ronald Reagan’s win in November 1980—a win, which, like today, few saw coming.
While Jimmy Carter blamed it on voter “malaise,” Hillary Clinton calls out the “basket of deplorables,” she considers “irredeemable.”
In the 70s, in fact, they were “mad-as-hell-and-we’re-not-
Now Michael Moore points to the rust-belt-mad-as-hellers, calling them the “Brexit voters,” some of whom are featured in the report in Britain’s The Independent about the dying steel town of Weirton, West Virginia, on the border of Ohio.
Films of the 70’s captured the situation brilliantly. Besides the aforementioned Network, films like Save the Tiger (1973), starring Jack Lemmon in his Oscar winning performance, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), also starring Lemmon, epitomized the desperation.
The latter is about an out-of-work New Yorker, Mel Edison, who regularly goes out on his porch and screams, until one day his neighbor above pours a bucket of cold water on him, adding insult to injury, (2:45 minutes). The former features a Los Angeles clothing manufacturer, Harry Stoner, losing his proverbial shirt. After his partner (Jack Gilford) cooks the books, thus allowing them to survive another year—what the government calls “fraud,” Lemmon reminds him—he gets really desperate.
While many might demonize Americans who cast their ballots for Trump, the truth is, they are just responding to reality.
The establishment might be shocked if Trump wins. And, they are surely in denial now. But, they will only have themselves to blame, given their failure to focus on the reality of countless voters’ lives, where desperation is a frequent, if not constant, companion.
This reporting failure, dramatized in Network, was not the case 80 years ago when Dorothea Lange captured, in her iconic photographs, the devastation of the Great Depression for all to see. The furrowed brows. Tattered clothes. Empty stomachs. Desperation. She was working on behalf of the U.S. Government’s Farm Security Administration.
Today, the damage is complete. We are almost entirely devoid of these tangible images in the establishment channels of communication. Instead, far too many are creating our own reality.
Like in the current film Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant, where the protagonist has the idea she can become an opera star.
Only problem is, she can’t sing.
And, the establishment evidently can’t see.
