When the country elected Donald Trump President in 2024, I thought that people chose him because of economics. It was a known fact that 30% of American families live paycheck to paycheck and many of these families lack a sense of security. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the economy has been changing. Good paying middle class jobs disappeared from the American economy when corporations moved overseas to take advantage of cheap labor in countries like Mexico, China and elsewhere. And the American middle class began to shrink. So I assumed, “It’s the economy stupid.”
But a closer look at voting patterns in 2024 and how they changed over the decades doesn’t support this notion. The Democratic Party has lost the votes of working class white men who did not have college educations. They had always been the backbone of the Democratic Party but the change affected the Republican Party also, because white men with college educations were at the same time moving away from the GOP to the Democratic Party.
An even closer look suggests that economics might not have been the driving factor…it seems that in 2024, white working men, who were financially struggling, continued to vote Democratic. But white working men who were doing well economically began migrating to the Republican Party. So some voters who had always voted Democratic switched to voting for Trump who offered what? Tax cuts, Immigration reform, tariffs and an end to abortions.
American democracy depends on the rational ability of voters to choose what best serves their own interests. If people think Trump’s conservative policies would fail, then they should vote against him. In the first few months of 2025, we began to get a glimpse of what was on his agenda. So far, he has been gutting agencies like FEMA, USAID, the Department of Education, the Nuclear Security Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He has also instituted a drastic anti-immigration policy that dragnets children, families and even American citizens.
American voters expect to make decisions after reading or hearing news reports, internet posts, newspaper and social media. If information is politically shaped without balancing arguments, then the public can be denied the tools to evaluate political arguments. Elections have consequences but the American electorate expects to have a voice in future elections. Today we are hampered in getting and sharing information vital to rational decision making. The failure to replace the Fairness Doctrine during the Reagan Administration and the unlimited spending made possible by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, during the Obama Administration have created serious roadblocks.
“Citizens United” allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money during a political campaign without the limitations that the broadcast media faces. This freedom is believed to be how “dark money” came to influence elections. Corporations and organizations are no longer required to reveal the source of their funds or their contributors. Instead, the public has difficulty evaluating information that is left “in the dark.” In short, the public is denied one of the tools needed to detect bias or falsehoods spread by those who wish to fool the voters.
The Fairness Doctrine was designed when the airwaves were limited and just a few national broadcasters were granted licences. When national broadcasters, like NBC, CBS or ABC, presented news with a certain bias, they were required to make the public aware there might be an opposing view. That requirement was eliminated during the Reagan Administration and when Congress tried to legislate a Fairness Doctrine, it was vetoed by President George H. W. Bush.
(This requirement would not have applied to newspapers or today’s social media because those platforms have unlimited space for opposing messages.) Nevertheless, the notion that fairness requires that people be informed of other points of view has faded.
Elections will always have consequences. How did our current political climate come to be? Voters became convinced that the government failed to appreciate the economic difficulties of the working class. Political voices were rarely challenged for truthfulness or accuracy.
by Jimmy Purcell