Dean Baker
Truthout, November 6, 2018
I have followed politics closely since 1968. I have seen many unpleasant political figures. I have also seen many clear dog whistles to racists, with the racism lurking just below the surface.
When Richard Nixon talked about being tough on crime, everyone knew the race of the criminals whose specter he was invoking. The same was true of Ronald Reagan with his racist stories about young Black men buying steaks with food stamps. And when George H.W. Bush ran an ad featuring Willie Horton, a convicted murderer, no one thought he was talking about prison reform.
But, these politicians felt a need to at least put a thin veneer over their appeals to racism. That is not the case with Donald Trump and today's Republicans. The racism is there for all to see, mixed in with a huge helping of anti-Semitism.
Blatant racism and anti-Semitism is on display as the election approaches with Donald Trump hyperventilating about the prospect that a few thousand people from Central America may seek asylum in the United States. But there is a long list of actions and words that tie Donald Trump and the Republican Party to racists and anti-Semites.
The list begins with Trump's efforts to ban Muslim immigrants in the first days of his administration. It includes failing to mention Jews as victims of the Holocaust. Trump also couldn't bring himself to condemn the Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, chanting "Jews will not replace us."
Trump openly encourages his audience with chants of "lock him up" in reference to George Soros, whose major "crime" is being a progressive Jew. In the last weeks the president has made up ever more absurd claims about the risks posed by a group of people (the so-called "caravan") that is coming up from Central America through Mexico and intends to seek asylum at the border.
I realize from my Twitter feed that alarmism is spreading about what it would mean for the US to absorb the asylum seekers from the caravan. A few numbers may help counter that alarmism.
I have seen all sorts of estimates of the size of this group, but let's say it is 5,000 people. That's more than any estimate I have seen. Based on past precedent, the vast majority of these people will be denied asylum, but let's say that the impossible happens and all 5,000 get asylum.
We are a country of 330 million people. Five thousand people getting asylum amounts to less than 0.002 percent of the US population. To put that in a slightly different perspective, if you had $10,000 in the bank, the asylum seekers, relative to the US population, it would be less than 16 cents out of your bank account. And, these people are excluded from most government benefits, so there is no credible story about taxes being changed in any noticeable way.
In short, the only issue here is racism. Trump and the Republicans are saying, "Don't worry about your wages, your family's access to health care, your kids' ability to go to college, we are going to keep white people safe from people emigrating from Central America."
And it's not just that Trump and the Republicans are not offering help to working people, they have made it very clear they want to make things worse. Their health care plan is all about removing the Affordable Care Act's protections for people with health issues like cancer or heart disease.
They also have made it very clear that they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this explicitly last month when he argued that the large budget deficits caused by the GOP tax cut will make it necessary to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Of course, the vast majority of the benefits from the tax cut went to the rich. So, this is yet another part of the upward redistribution story we have been seeing for the last four decades.
Trump and the Republicans are trying to present themselves as a populist party, but they offer nothing but racism and bigotry to ordinary workers. This is a sharp contrast with right-wing populists in other countries whose parties combine xenophobic and racist appeals with platforms supporting public benefits like Social Security and Medicare.
In countries where right-wing populists have come to power, like Hungary, they have pursued policies that led to large gains in living standards for white workers at the middle and bottom of the income distribution, even while stoking sentiments that have increased discrimination and violence toward workers of color.
By contrast, Trump and the Republicans are looking to reduce the meager benefits that ordinary workers now have. (Our Social Security system is stingy by international standards, and the US stands out as the only wealthy country without national health care insurance.)
So, Trump really has nothing to offer to his working-class supporters in terms of improving their standard of living. All he can tell them is that Jews will not replace them.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Democrats will hold the majority in the House when Congress convenes in January. The results of yesterday's election are encouraging and represent historic progress—with a record number of women winning seats in the house, including key victories by diverse candidates across faiths and ethnicities. And importantly, Democrats won the popular vote in the House by a 9.2 percent margin despite today's 3.7 percent unemployment rate, which should have provide great advantage to the incumbent party.
It is nevertheless important to note that with Republicans in control of the Senate and the White House, it is unlikely that policies that promote a just economy for working people will become law. Still, House Democrats have the opportunity to advance long overdue reforms. It is critical that they focus on an agenda that serves our nation's workers. This must include House Democrats working to raise workers' wages, restore workers' access to justice on the job, and promote workers' right to collectively bargain.
Workers deserve a fair minimum wage. At $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum wage is now more than 25 percent below where it was in real terms half a century ago. House Democrats must advance legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024, indexing it to the national median wage thereafter, and phasing out the tipped minimum wage and other subminimum wages. Given inflation expectations, $15 in 2024 would be around $13.00 in 2018 dollars, an appropriate level for the federal floor. The Raise the Wage Act introduced this Congress included all of these reforms. The House must work to pass similar legislation in the new Congress.
Workers should not be forced to sign away their rights as a condition of employment. The use of mandatory arbitration and collective and class action waivers—under which workers are forced to handle workplace disputes as individuals through arbitration, rather than being able to resolve these matters together in court—makes it more difficult for workers to enforce their rights. These agreements bar access to the courts for all types of employment-related claims, including those based on the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the Family Medical Leave Act. This means that a worker who is not paid fairly, discriminated against, or sexually harassed, is forced into a process that overwhelmingly favors the employer—and forced to manage this process alone, even though these issues are rarely confined to one single worker. Congress must act to ban mandatory arbitration agreements and class and collective action waivers. The Restoring Justice for Workers Act introduced this Congress includes all of these reforms. The House should work to pass this important reform in the new Congress.
Workers must have strong collective bargaining rights. A recent poll found that 60 percent of adults have a favorable view of labor unions. However, as of 2017, only 10.7 percent of wage and salary workers were union members. This disconnect is the result of decades of fierce opposition to unions and collective bargaining, with employers exploiting loopholes in outdated labor law to defeat workers' organizing efforts, while corporate lobbyists have blocked attempts at reform. We know unions are a significant force for a fair economy by examining the impact of their decline since the 1970s. As unions have declined, inequality between middle- and high-wage workers has grown. Congress must work to revitalize workers' right to join a union and collectively bargain. The Workers' Freedom to Negotiate Act introduced this Congress includes many critical reforms to our nation's labor law that would help to restore collective bargaining rights and provide workers a meaningful voice in the workplace. The House should consider this legislation in the new Congress.
The current legal and political framework favors corporate interests dedicated to rolling back worker protections and advancing business practices that leave fewer and fewer workers covered by existing laws. Democratic leadership in the House has the chance to show our nation's workers that they will fight to change this rigged system and promote policies that work for our nation's workers. Legislation has already been developed that would provide important reforms. A Democratic majority in the House can and should advance an agenda that includes these legislative initiatives and use their power to ensure that our national debate involves workers' voices.
