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The main reasons for the collapse are structural: geology (the state’s southern coalfields are increasingly uncompetitive as the easiest-to-mine coal is gone), the increasing use of natural gas for power generation nationally, and a weak market for coal exports. But the drop in coal production and …

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 vul…

Trump’s populist nationalism appeals to elements of the older, white middle class who fear sliding downward into the working class. Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, a study of Southern Tea Party and Trump supporters, reveals people who believe they are “hard workers” who “p…

What made Trump unacceptable to the Republican establishment and their corporate backers [...] Trump champions an economic nationalism that rejects central tenets of the bipartisan neoliberal agenda that has impoverished segments of the middle and working classes. Capital was uneasy with Trump’s st…

[...] polling by its nature is flawed. It does not provide a neutral snapshot of voters’ understandings of politics. Instead, polls reflect the dominant narratives at a moment in a way that naturalizes key controversies.

[...] People don’t exist in a vacuum; polling itself shapes the narratives …