Francis Wilkinson, Columnist

Trade Is the Scapegoat for Political Failure

Liberals who side with Trump on the issue are missing the larger picture.

May 3, 2017 at 5:00 PM UTC

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.

Scapegoater in chief.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images

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Writing last week in the Guardian, Thomas Frank identified the Democratic Party’s “enlightened Davos ideology” as the source of both the ascendance of Donald Trump and the despair of Midwestern manufacturing towns.

The notion that the Democrats have little to offer the working class is not exclusive to Frank. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent spoke with Democratic pollsters about their survey and focus-group research on working-class voters, including voters who switched from supporting Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.