Artigo de Dave Lindorf na Counterpunch:
I haven't lived in rural Pennsylvania or in rural Indiana, but I have lived in rural upstate New York, in towns where there are so few Democrats that on some local election ballots, not a single position, from town council to justice of the peace, has a contest. As in China, your option is to vote for the Republican candidate, or to leave that line blank.
(...)Barack Obama is exactly right. In Hancock, NY and Spencer, NY, there are no factory jobs. There used to be in Hancock, but the companies where hundreds of people used to work have long since folded or moved south of the border, courtesy of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) aggressively promoted and pushed through Congress by Bill and Hillary Clinton during the 1990s. In Spencer, there are no jobs because in the free-for-all bidding by companies for tax giveaways between communities, Spencer had nothing much to offer.
(...)In 1992, neighbors in Spencer told me they were voting for George H. W. Bush-a patrician blue blood if ever there was one-because Bill Clinton, if elected "would take away our guns."
Of course, he didn't, and had no intention of doing so, but that didn't matter.
Don't get me wrong-the people in Hancock and Spencer are good folks. I'm pretty sure many of them probably give a higher proportion of their meager incomes to charity than do millionaires John McCain and Hillary Clinton. But Obama is right that in their angst and frustration at seeing the good economic times pass them by, at seeing themselves abandoned by the federal government in hard times, and at seeing candidates promise them everything during campaigns, only to ignore them after winning, they are bitter and frustrated.
And they have a right to be, and they should be.
E, já agora, um texto que acho que já recomendei aqui, Red-State America Against Itself de Thomas Frank, sobre o crescente distanciamento entre o Partido Democrata e a classe trabalhadora das pequenas cidades.
1 comment:
E a boa gente de Spencer começou a ir à missa e a comprar armas depois das fábricas se terem deslocalizado para o México? Fiquei incomodado com o notório e incontido ressentimento do autor quanto ao comércio livre. Provavelmente está desempregado. E haverá boas hipóteses de também ser racista.
Uma refutação da tese do Franks, da autoria de outro académico de esquerda, Larry Bartels (http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/):
http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansasqjps06.pdf
Como não concordo com a assumpção de ambos - a de as políticas económicas socialistas são do interesse dos eleitores com rendimentos mais baixos -, não fiz um grande esforço exegético, mas pareceu-me que a tese do Bartels é empiricamente mais robusta.
(De qualquer maneira, isto é divergir do essencial: o Obama papagueou Marcuse, não o Thomas Franks - isso faz o Howard Dean todos os dias.)
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