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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

> There are tons of working class liberals

You are correct, but with the rise of nationalism as an appealing ideology, there are fewer white working class liberals (AKA blue collar) than there were in the past. These people were decisive in the 2016 election, and were a big reason that swing states had close elections in 2020.

Many of them have abandoned universalist progressive economic ideas because of the loss of economic security they experienced with globalization.

Also, unlike the capitalist and professional classes, the nationalists are often OK with strong safety nets, as long as these benefits are limited to their tribe. They are really neither conservative or liberal. There are other political dimensions involved.

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> there are fewer white working class liberals (AKA blue collar) than there were in the past.

This could be because of increased migration into the US and a billion other reasons that have nothing to do with nationalism.

>Also, unlike the capitalist and professional classes, the nationalists are often OK with strong safety nets, as long as these benefits are limited to their tribe. They are really neither conservative or liberal. There are other political dimensions involved.

Agreed

> This could be because of increased migration into the US and a billion other reasons that have nothing to do with nationalism.

As voting numbers go, migration only comes into play if you interpret "fewer white working class liberals" proportionally, but I meant it in an absolute sense: that blue collar white Americans have shifted Conservative independently.

There is pretty good evidence of the nexus of race and occupational class in recent voting patterns [1][2]. This coupled with the fact that this population overwhelmingly supported economically liberal candidates in the past indicates a major shift, balanced partly in the other direction by the shift of the white professional class toward liberal voting tendencies.

If the argument is that migration into the US (which is mostly non-white [3]) is encouraging the white working class less liberal, then that is pretty well describing nationalism.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/how-occup...

2. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examinati...

3. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...

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