Cole Stangler
You’re right to emphasize the differences: the Democrats have always been a big-tent coalition whereas these French left-wing parties have had a more definite focus on labor. My interest, here, is in the people who make up these electorates rather than the political ideologies themselves, and if we look at the Democrats historically, there is a working-class base that goes back to [Franklin D. Roosevelt] and into the 1960s.
So what happened? My book is in the style of reporting, not sociological number-crunching, and I’m talking to people on the ground and showing what they look like. When we talk about class dealignment, we could consider different ways of capturing this trend. Is it about people’s jobs? Their educational qualifications? Their income? But however you frame it, I think the trend is real, and it’s an important part of the story I’m telling.
An essential part of the decline of the working-class vote for the Left in both France and the US is deindustrialization.
We should remember that there have always been working-class people who vote for right-wing parties. There’s nothing inherently new about that, especially when we look at the more socially conservative and religious. But an essential part of the decline of the working-class vote for the Left in both France and the US is deindustrialization. It has ravaged the social fabric of communities in both countries, and that has profound effects on their politics.
In the book, I report on parts of the US that have turned to [Donald] Trump, which also evoke parts of northern and eastern France, which were once left-wing bastions but have now shifted toward Marine Le Pen’s far right. One of the many things going on here is that people used to vote for left-wing parties but now hold them responsible for failing to honor their promises to protect jobs. We saw…
Auteur: Cole Stangler
