[lbo-talk] Perlstein on the "Wal-Mart voters"

[Shane Taylor]

Perlstein wrote:
> The reason [for the anti-Bush sentiment] is economic
> near-devastation. Unemployment around here has
> increased by half in the last three years. In Rockford, it
> approaches 12 percent. Factories are closing as
> production is shipped off overseas. (The mantra of "high
> tech" is unlikely to impress Rockford; one of the most
> wrenching recent production shutdowns was at the plant
> that produced a motor for the Segway scooter.) "Service
> jobs" have replaced some of the work. But where they
> materialize, with rotten hours, pay, and benefits, they end
> up destroying families instead of saving them. And it
> makes these people livid, because it all seems so stupid
> and unavoidable. 

[....]


> Judy -- whose company will probably have to shut down
> next year -- moves the critique to the terrain of family values:
> "The moms that used to have a factory job with me and
> who go home at the end of eight hours and 10 hours and
> take care of their children and have decent day care, now
> they're working two jobs at Wal-Mart with no health benefits." 

[....]


> Here's a riddle: What do shuttered factories manufacture?
> Democrats. Or at least they might, if the national Democratic
> Party had the balls to do what needs to be done.

What is to be done, anyway?  I don't mean the Kucinich-like shtick about
ending NAFTA.  Bob Pollin recently had an excellent point on NOW: this is
the reality, we have to deal.  But how?  Industrial policy?  Beefed up
unemployment insurance?  What?

-- Shane

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