Wow! Who says election promises don’t produce real change?

Candidate Trump had loudly proclaimed that he would force US corporations to move their Chinese manufacturing jobs back to America. How? By imposing a whopping new tariff on all of the made-in-China products they sell to us.

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Even he must have been surprised, though, when one major American corporation promptly shouted “Yes, sir!” Only one day after Trump’s election, the Steve Madden shoe manufacturer announced it would leave China, where nearly all of its footwear is made. Amazing – a victory for Trump policy even before he takes office! And a morale boost for American workers.

So, where would Madden relocate? Maybe in the hard-hit industrial Midwest, or maybe such former shoe-making areas as New England and the Southeast. But no. In a less-pleasant surprise to Trump, Madden executives said they would not replant their factories in the USA – but in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Brazil.

Despite appearing to succumb to Trump’s anti-China tariff, Madden is making an end run around it, “leaving China” by taking China with it. The corporate trick here is the structural reality not only are US factories located in China, but so are the suppliers of materials manufacturers must buy to make their products. So, Madden can scoot down to Vietnam, thus escaping Trump’s China tariff. But the shoe’s components, from laces to soles, will still be Chinese-made. And contrary to Trump’s bragging, his policy will not create a single Made-in-America job.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Let’s remember that corporations are the most aggressively-selfish elites in our society, and we should not be duped into thinking that running job-creation policy through them will benefit anyone but them.

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As any farmer can tell you, if you want to harvest a crop, you’ve got to get out of the office and go to work in the field.

Why can’t the Democratic Party grasp this basic reality when it comes to producing votes? This year was going to be different. Pressed by progressive rural activists, national party leaders agreed to open a network of get-out-the-vote offices in rural areas of battleground states. SPOILER ALERT: Kamala Harris won fewer votes there than Biden harvested four years earlier.

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What happened? Very little. And too late. Opening a campaign office is hardly the same as being there for the long haul, building trust and nurturing local support. Harris was behind from the start, though, since Joe Biden’s Democratic Party operation had not bothered to hire any rural staffers or even prepare an agenda. Apparently, their idea of a good rural program was Hee-Haw.

The Harris campaign did put out a plan, but in September – just two months before the vote! Also, they had too many “rural strategists” and too few ground-level organizers at campaign headquarters. Those organizers did their best, but were mostly disregarded by campaign consultants. For example, a good list of rural surrogates was recruited, but never used. Worse, Harris herself was absent – she was never scheduled to visit a farm, or even pay a culturally-symbolic visit to a state fair.

This is Jim Hightower saying… The Democrats’ real problem is not any one campaign, but more than a decade of policy and political abandonment of rural communities. Do the “smart” political honchos in Washington think that people out here don’t notice the party’s absence and disregard for them? Again, any farmer knows you can’t harvest a crop if you don’t plant one and cultivate it.

Do something!

Want to get in on rural grassroots politics that are effective and meaningful? Go check out our friends at RuralOrganizing.org!

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Greetings, readers, Deanna here: Welcome to our new mini-series, “Friday Hope Fest.” Back when we were producing the print version of the Hightower Lowdown (yes, we still miss it, too!), we often used our November and December issues of major election years to share stories of electoral success that might not have hit your radars. And in years where we’d felt, ahem, despair and rage at the national results, it really helped to see that the work we truly believe in—grassroots, neighbor-to-neighbor organizing on strong progressive values and solidarity—is not only happening, but is working.

We’ll be spending our Friday posts from now through the end of the year sharing these stories with you, and we also want to hear of wins from your end of the world. And by “win,” we don’t just mean winning races—we want to hear about places that held back against the Republican-leaning national trend, or where a progressive ran in a race that had been uncontested for years, or what-have-you. What’s happening out there?

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How Did These Local Democrats Do It?!

Last night, I joined a RuralOrganizing.org online gathering to debrief the election results. To be honest, I wasn’t feeling up to any of it; I was having a hard time breaking out of the cynicism and paralysis I’d sunk into by the end of last week. Hearing from four organizers who worked on the most recent elections in Republican-heavy districts finally pierced through all of the frustration I’ve been feeling with the hot-takes that are a constant stream of news right now.

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Even in a barrelful of rotten apples, you might think there’d still be a few good ones.

But don’t get your hopes up looking into barrels labeled “private equity investors.” These esoteric, multibillion-dollar Wall Street schemes rig the marketplace so “high-net-worth individuals” can grab fat profits and special tax breaks to buy up doctors’ offices, hometown newspapers, child care centers, etc.

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Consider America’s humble-but-beneficial mobile home parks. Homeownership has become so pricey that these affordable manufactured units now make up 10 percent of all single-family home sales. But while the buyers own the houses, they must rent lots from mobile park owners. This has generally been a square deal, when park owners live among the renters, providing decent services at reasonable rates. One such is Linnhaven Center with some 300 mobile home residents in Brunswick, Maine.

But what is home to millions of people has become a quick-buck target for Wall Street’s equity profiteers. Waving cash at longtime trailer park owners, they’ve been snatching up thousands of these lots. Without warning, people’s home places are literally being bought out from under them. The absentee predators then raise rents to drive out residents, clearing the spaces for high-dollar renters or buyers.

But wait, good news for a change! A new law in Maine gives mobile home residents a chance to buy their park, and community cooperatives exist to help arrange financing. That’s what the modest-income people of Linnhaven have now done. Such a big leap is not easy, but give people a fair chance, and they can make it work. As one Linnhaven woman put it, the community effort was much more than a property deal: “[It felt like] a chance to control your own destiny.”

Do something!

Interested in learning more about how mobile home owners can organize together? Check out Resident Owned Communities at rocusa.org.

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The morning after the election, a social media pundit expressed amazement that Democrat Kamala Harris had lost, noting that America is enjoying “an objectively strong economy.”

Indeed, the data shows impressive job growth, rising wages, slowing inflation, etc.  – all indicators of a solid economy. Nearly every pundit hailed this as meaning Harris’s campaign could glide on rising prosperity, while focusing her main message on what a dangerous bumbling buffoon Trump is.

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The problem is that “objective economic data” often deceives. For example, consider economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s sad tale of the six-foot-tall statistician who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of two feet.

Millions of Americans are drowning in today’s economy – even workaday people with college degrees – are struggling to make ends meet and feeling pessimistic about their future. Happy talk by economists, pundits, and politicians doesn’t pay the rising bills for rent, child care, groceries, insurance, medicines, etc. Everything is moving out of reach… except a protest vote. About half of Trump voters say high prices were “the largest factor” in their vote.

Democratic Party officials were dazzled by the soaring Dow Jones Average, ignoring the Doug Jones Average, which showed that Doug and Donna are struggling, anxious, angry… and even open to a bull goose demagog blustering that he’ll “fix” the rigged system on Day One.

Few of these hard-hit men and women actually believe in, agree with, trust, or like Trump – nor are they stuck on supporting him. But they will be, unless and until some progressive party decides to side with grassroots people in an unabashed fight for economic fairness and social justice. To help push in that direction, go to WorkingFamilies.org.

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Okay, the election was a gut punch. And all of us need a moment to catch our breath.

But no more than that, for this is a long-term battle, and we have enormous democratic strength to give us heart and hope for a progressive future. Yes, yesterday’s Trump surge is depressing and dangerous, but the message of that surge is not for progressives to sulk and surrender. Rather, a workaday majority is fairly shouting for the Democratic Party to get out of the corporate boardrooms and Washington salons, standing unequivocally, FDR-like, with that majority, focusing intently on the very volatile, central issues of power and powerlessness in our nation.

Election analysts hurl a blizzard of election statistics at us, but here’s one that I think tells the real story: Despite the intensity and importance of this year’s presidential election, some 20 million FEWER people voted than in 2020. Kamala Harris drew 14 million fewer votes than Biden did back then. And, despite Trump’s grandiose claim of unprecedented popular support, he actually got 3 million fewer votes this year than in 2020.*

A big reason for Harris’ defeat, I think, in addition to the sexism and racism values that still raises its ugly head in our society, is that her campaign focused on how awful Trump is, rather than bringing a clear message of economic hope for hard pressed families. She bought into the establishment’s assertions that “objectively” the economy is doing great. While they exclaim that the Dow Jones Index is booming, most people say: But a boom for whom? Check the Doug Jones Index, and you’ll find Doug and Donna are struggling—and feeling some compatibility with Trump’s constant refrain that “the whole system is rigged .”

And when Harris did strike populist gold with her plan for Medicare to provide home health care  to help families who are struggling with the high costs of care for seniors, people with disabilities, and more, few people even knew she said that, because she didn’t hammer that popular message every day at every step.

Trump’s core message (magnified by X and a gaggle of other far-right media propagandists) is avowedly plutocratic, xenophobic, racist and sexist. But I believe that America as a whole is better than that.

So our challenge is not to try appeasing MAGA extremists, but to buck-up and recommit to the hard, steady work of grassroots organizing, directly challenging what I call the 6Bs: Bosses, Bankers, Billionaires, Big Shots, Bastards, and Bullshitters who’re running roughshod over America’s workaday majority. 

True progressivism has had to endure many downs, but it’s the ups that define us. So the fight continues, with renewed vigor. See you there. 

* Number of votes is as of midday on November 6th, 2024.

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In bold type, nearly every newspaper urges readers to “VOTE! TAKE A STAND!”

But in this year’s truly momentous national election, we saw such giants of corporate media as the Washington Post, LA Times, and USA Today cower from taking their own stand on the presidency. Worse, the papers shamefully insisted that ducking their duty was itself a principled stand. Readers are smart enough to make their own decisions, they barked piously. Well, yes, but are you?

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And who, exactly, are “you.” Take the Washington Post, a paper with a rich history of courageous journalism. But it wasn’t the paper’s knowledgeable reporters or editorial staffers who elected to be silent this year. Rather, one guy – Jeff Bezos – unilaterally chose to mute the paper’s voice.

Bezos, the gabillionaire founder of Amazon, bought the Post a decade ago, promising not to impose his financial self-interest over the staff’s journalistic integrity.

But that was then. Today, the notoriously weaselly Bezos is drawing some $13 billion from federal taxpayers, and he’s eager to get more. So, realizing that the next president can determine who gets those piles of money, Bezos abruptly stopped his paper from endorsing Harris, putting his financial principle above journalistic principles. The Post would’ve exploded, however, if he had dictated a Trump endorsement, so Boss Bezos tried the backdoor maneuver of no endorsement.

The Post exploded anyway. Star reporters either resigned or howled at the crass sell-out, while more than 250,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions. As one reader posted about the billionaire’s self-serving manipulation: “If you don’t have the guts to run a newspaper, don’t buy one.”

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Many people feel that America’s political campaigns have become vapid PR hustles with little connection to the real-life concerns of workaday people. Luckily, Adam Swart says he has the fix for such voter malaise: Just add a more professional level of vapidity to the process, he says, and you can reduce the need for having actual voters involved in campaigning.

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Swart is a for-hire politico who’s been hailed as a “visionary” and a “business rockstar” for launching an outfit he calls: Crowds on Demand. His entrepreneurial concept is as simple as it is devious. Rather than the tedium of strategizing and organizing people into grassroots campaigns, just pay his COD team to stage a “movement” – you know, like Hollywood would do. Indeed, Swart’s operation is even headquartered in the center of Hollywood make believe, Beverly Hills.

But let him sell his own product. He says he can create and staff a turn-key political front group for clients. “We provide everything,” exclaims COD’s website, “including the people, the materials, and even the ideas… We can help you plan the strategy and execute it.”

How happy – if you’re a corporate schemer needing to win or defeat a proposal, but you don’t have any grassroots base of support, Crowds On Demand promises to fake it for you. “We can set up protests, rallies, demonstrations… and even create non-profit organizations to advance your agenda.” It’s basically an Astroturf campaign operation, but with even less turf and more plastic.

If there is one thing the American majority would agree on today, it is that the last thing our political system needs is more PR trickery, issue fakery, and political hustlers. How about we give a little more honesty a try?

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Happy Friday, Lowdowners! DZ, your friendly neighborhood nerd, here. It goes without saying that we’re all feeling the pressure intensify exponentially as we head into this final weekend before the election. We’ve loved seeing all the different kinds of organizing happening, and we want to hear from you: How are you spending the next five days? From actions you’re taking, to candidates you’re supporting, to ways to find joy and soothe your souls, what are you up to? If you’re looking for things to do, keep reading below—we’re looking at Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Swap Your Vote. Leave your suggestions in the comments so we can read and share!

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Over at In These Times, has written about the importance of organizing older folks as the fight for good care nationwide gets more and more intense. He’s been organizing with a community in Wisconsin, where a county-owned care facility has been threatened with privatization.

Nationwide, more than 10,000 people turn 65 every day, and the number of people over 85 is expected to double by 2040. For those who are serious about organizing working-class people, that must include older people — and lots of them. Millions of seniors in the United States have been working-class their entire lives, and millions more have slid into poverty since they retired. A movement of working-class people that does not include them is missing the mark by a country mile.

If you want to join up with the folks George is organizing with to make phone calls to senior voters in Wisconsin, you’re in luck! They’ve got phone banks going every day, multiple times a day, until Tuesday. Sign up with them here.

Sign up to call WI senior voters here

Calling Pennsylvania

There are still a few more times that the Pennsylvania Democratic Party has available to call rural voters there—we’ve been hearing some great stories from friends joining up with these events. Tonight’s event is hosted by none other than , the executive director of Blue Missouri and writer behind .

Register for the PA Rural Phonebanks

“A Dating Site to Defeat Fascism”

Over at , Micah Sifry has a great post about some reasons he’s still feeling optimistic about the outcome of the election. We’re intrigued by the idea of Swap Your Vote, where activists are, by hand, matching people who live in swing states and want to vote for a third party candidate with people who are willing to change their votes in exchange in a non-swing state. And while I’m one of those people that supports long-term organizing to get rid of the Electoral College, I also believe in harm reduction wherever possible. So, their tagline, “Outwit the Electoral College,” really resonated with me. From Micah’s post:

Obviously, SwapYourVote has a very political goal—to elect Harris, defeat Trump while providing voters a way to pressure Harris on issues like America’s support for Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza and the climate emergency. Rae Abileah, its co-creator, says, “As a Jewish-American I was raised with a vigilance against rising fascism, and I can’t just stand by as I witness the ongoing starvation and death of children in Gaza.” She adds, “I know we must defeat Trump (and Netanyahu) but it’s also so hard to bring ourselves to vote for a Democratic party that continues to send weapons to Israel. I wanted to find a middle path that would be both strategic and connective.” 

Here's her key argument: “Our communities are embroiled in a bitter fight over this election, and we want to help unite progressives toward a winning strategy. Voting is not a love letter, it’s choosing our opponent, and Harris would be far more receptive to pressure from the Left than Trump would be.” 

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Here’s a progressive idea I picked up from the unlikeliest of sources: Corporate CEOs!

For decades, these chieftains of our economic order have been steadily implementing a very visionary process for establishing corporate wage levels. The essence of it is this: Let the workers set their own pay! Since the 1970s, when the idea began taking hold in Corporate America, pay levels have zoomed up by more than 1,000 percent.

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Well… not for you. This set-your-own pay movement has only been available to top corporate executives, whose median paychecks now top $16 million a year! But since it’s been a boon for this test group, I say it’s time to expand the no-hassle compensation concept to all employees. This would greatly boost grassroots purchasing power, economic growth, and fairness for all.

“Omigod no!” squawk corporate apologists, rushing to say that, technically, CEOs do not directly set their pay. Rather, the bosses have attached their earnings to their corporations’ ever-rising stock prices. Thus, astronomical rewards go to those who obsessively focus on jacking-up the price of their own stock, even though that’s a selfishly-narrow and false measure of a corporation’s performance.

Also, stock price is no indicator of a CEO’s worthiness. Even bosses who’re blockheads can still get a boost simply because they’ve rigged the system to hitch a free ride on inflated stock value.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Still, if it’s good enough for them, why not an equal deal for working stiffs, who actually deliver the products and services that give a corporation some true value. I say, each worker should get the same percentage increase in pay that the top honcho takes. It’s a very simple process… and it’s only fair.

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Our pal invited Hightower to speak at this fantastic rally on Zoom tonight—do not miss the opportunity to discuss the implications of a changing (to put it lightly) care industry that likely won’t have care at its core anymore if private equity has its way. He’ll join activist Dora Gorski, Ai-Jen Poo and John Nichols at 7pm CT; register here for FREE. From the organizers:

The population of Wisconsinites who are 75 and older is growing quickly and is projected to reach 574,000 by 2030. Many families are already feeling stretched to the limit between caring for their children and caring for older parents. We need more high quality care options, not less.

In Wisconsin, the races for U.S. Senate and President are neck-and-neck. We'll talk about the track records and policy proposals of the candidates in these races who are leading on senior care – including Kamala Harris’ proposal to expand Medicare to cover vision, hearing, and in-home care.

“What Else Can I Do?”

Over the weekend, Democrats knocked on more than 300,000 doors in rural Pennsylvania, and we’re hearing that those rural Trump margins are actually being cut into! Since this is (another) election that will be decided in those margins, everything we can do to get out votes, especially rural votes, in swing states is worth doing.

One of the most important things you can do is keep reaching out to people you know, especially in battleground states. As our friend Jaclyn Friedman said:

In this last week, the absolute most effective thing you can do is talk with your friends and family—people you already know—about whether they have a plan to vote. You'd be surprised how many people aren't sure if they'll vote or not, and you can make a huge difference by just reaching out.

You can use apps like Reach or Empower where you can join other people also doing the same thing (informally called "friendbanking" -- you'll get a script and some training and support if you do it this way. Or you can just reach out to everyone you know.

That said, we also love to support work being done specifically to reach out to rural voters, and the PA Democrats have the goods on that front. There are events most nights this week to reach out to rural Pennsylvania voters, hosted by some really great folks—comedian Trae Crowder, Missouri badass , and more. More info and registration are here.

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