Election night, 1992. The results are trickling in and the State of West Virginia is called for  Democrat Bill Clinton, a solid Democratic Territory. This is the same West Virginia that gave  Donald Trump his second-largest margin of victory in the 2020 election. The political conversion  of a once solidly Democratic group of voters in less than 30 years speaks to the growing  dilemma for Democrats as they lose the support of working-class voters in the Rust Belt. 

The Rust Belt was once a thriving center of American Industrial might. In the aftermath of the Second World War, this region encompassing the Midwest and much of Northern Appalachia was an industrial powerhouse that supplied half of all American Jobs. Although America had prospered due to its industrial might before, namely in the late 1800s and early 1900s, much of the wealth from the manufacturing was concentrated in the hands of the white collar management and factory owners. However, this was not the case with the rise of the Midwest in the 1940s and ‘50s. The proliferation of the economic prosperity of the 40s and 50s among different socio-economic groups, in contrast to earlier eras of economic prosperity, can be attributed to the Wagner Act. 

The Wagner Act was signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal Coalition allies to protect the  rights of workers to organize and form unions. Before the adoption of this legislation, unionizing could prove difficult for non-skilled workers, such as those in the steel, textile, and automobile industries. Management used blacklisting, discriminatory firing, and strike-breaking to discourage non-unionized workers from organizing to demand better rights. The inability to collectively bargain allowed companies to pay unskilled workers low wages, leading to the wealth inequality of the late 1800s and early 1900s. After the institution of the Wagner Act, union membership grew to almost 30% of the working population of the United States. 

The increased power of labor post-Wagner gave workers the ability to collectively bargain for better rights and wages that helped cause the working-class boom of the 40s and 50s. These working-class Americans, many of whom were now union members living in the Rust Belt, emphatically cast their votes for the Democrats: the champions of labor interests. 

The post-Roosevelt Democratic administration continued his pro-labor policies. In the 1940s, President Truman vehemently opposed the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibited the practice of  closed-shop unions that required all workers to join a specific union. Although the Republican Congress Overrode his veto and passed the legislation, his work opposing it solidified the  Democratic party’s union credentials. In the 1960s, President Kennedy used the Fair Labor Standards Act to increase the minimum wage, and Johnson further increased it to $1.60. 

The actions of these Democratic presidents created a loyalty from working-class voters that would last a generation. Workers concentrated in the industrial center of America—the Rust  Belt—felt that the Democrats had their fundamental interests at heart and turned out in large numbers to help deliver their states to the Democratic candidate on a national and local level. However, the economic decline of the region’s post-1950s boom would cause many of these  working-class Democrats to reconsider their partisan affiliation.

Although these workers maintained their partisan affiliation with the Democratic party, signs of  discontent were apparent in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 and 1984 landslide victories, where working class Reagan Democrats were key to his win. The Rust Belt, which was accustomed to the uncompetitive market of the post-World War II world, suffered from increasing competition from domestic and foreign firms. The lack of competition had created complacency on these companies’ parts that stifled innovation and adaptation to more efficient methods of production. 

As many industrialized nations recovered from the onslaught of the Second World War and picked up their manufacturing pace, the large firms that had dominated American  manufacturing—GM, US Steel, Chrysler, and Ford—could not keep up with the competition.  These companies had to downsize many of their plants due to lagging sales, as they now had to  rival other firms for consumers. 

The loss of these jobs, coupled with the pushback against industrialized labor in the 1980s,  resulted in lower wages and fewer jobs. These workers who saw their good-paying jobs disappear began to resent the Democratic acquiescence to the anti-labor/pro free trade forces harming their jobs. However, the resentment towards the Democrats for not  standing up for labor was temporarily halted with the election of Bill Clinton. 

Bill Clinton came into office as a proponent of free trade and the rights of the working class.  Clinton argued that maintaining a good working class and the United States’ ability to engage in free trade were not opposed but could work together to create a stronger American economy. The Clinton administration opened America to free trade with other countries through trade agreements like NAFTA while also proposing the allocation of more money to retrain low skilled working-class Americans to find other jobs. Although this proposal won  significant support from working-class Americans, the bill sputtered out of energy in the halls of  Congress, and many working-class Americans lost their jobs due to an increase in trade,  relegating them to the inadequate job training programs already in place. 

These working-class Americans often received enough training to find lower-wage work in the  service industry that allowed them to barely make ends meet. The loss of their jobs, along with the empty promises and lack of assistance from their former champions caused many of these working-class voters to become apathetic to the political system. Although the core Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania would continue to throw their support behind Democratic presidential candidates into the 2010s, the cracks were already beginning to show. West Virginia, a state solidly in Clinton’s column in 1992, threw off its Democratic label and gave its five electoral votes to Republican George Bush. 

The West Virginia 180 is emblematic of the growing issue the Democrats face in this region.  Coal was the lifeblood of the West Virginian economy; as the United States demanded less and the Democrats began talking of the new alternative methods of energy production, they did not provide the working-class West Virginian, who had worked in a coal mine his  entire life, a means of getting retrained to find a good job to replace his dying profession. The  job losses and the Democratic callousness in replacing them alienated the voters of West Virginia and those across the Rust Belt.

The working-class voters of the Rust Belt no longer see the Democrats as champions of their rights. To them, the Democrats are all talk and no results, all tip but no iceberg; creating a toxic elitist image that the Democrats can’t seem to shake in the region. The tipping point came in 2016 when then-candidate Trump’s claims to restore American jobs appealed to this group of voters who felt that the Democratic party had abandoned them. 

This feeling of abandonment cemented the switch of once loyal Democrats into the Republican  fray. Although Biden was able to win back some Rust Belt states in the 2020 election,  Democrats are continuing to hemorrhage these voters to the detriment of their hopes of  governance. One-time swing states like Ohio have rebuked even extremely moderate Democrats  like Tim Ryan in the 2022 senate election because they can no longer trust the Democratic party to act in their best interests. 

Without the support of working-class voters in post-industrial states, the Democratic party’s chances of  power in all three branches of government are significantly reduced. In no place is this more apparent than the Senate. The Seven Democratic Senators of the rustbelt are critical for the Democrats to maintain control in the closely split Senate. These states are also critical in helping deliver the house or presidency to a party, as was the case in 2016. 

Although President Biden and many Democrats have tried to bolster their reputations with  working-class Americans in this region, we must wait until the 2024 election to see if the  Democratic party has been able to rid itself of its toxic image in the Rust Belt. Therein lies the Democratic Dilemma: how to regain the trust and support of working-class Americans in the  Rust Belt.