Faced with an impotent labor movement that tails after an ever-rightward-moving Democratic Party, it is not surprising that a minority of older, white workers are attracted to politics that place responsibility for their deteriorating social situation on both the corporate “globalists” and more vulnerable workers [...]

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Trump and his nationalist populist ideologues from Breitbart and the “alt-right” added a fourth element to the Right’s narrative — the role of globalizing corporations and free trade. Given a choice between an elitist neoliberal who refused to speak to the realities of their lives (and rejected Bernie Sanders’s social-democratic program as “unrealistic”); and a populist demagogue who offered an
illusory solution to their problems, it is not surprising that some white workers embraced Trump.