The November Surprise: Back to the 70s

By Mary Claire Kendall

If Donald J. Trump wins the presidency on Tuesday, November 8—and wins fairly big—you need look no further than the jobs report immediately preceding the vote.

While many are saying, “It’s the emails, stupid.” Or more accurately “It’s the server, stupid.” And, that’s true.  To say nothing of “It’s Benghazi, stupid.”  More than, anything, “It’s the economy, stupid.” 

Call it the November surprise.  While the jobs report has unemployment ticking down to 4.9%, the real shocker is the stunningly labor participation number—some 95 million jobless or a mere 62% of working age adults with jobs. It’s the lowest since 1977, and lower, for US working age males, than in France, said MSNBC’s Steve Rattner! 

The interesting thing is this current economic picture mirrors the economically dismal 70s, which paved the way for Ronald Reagan’s win in November 1980—a win, which, like today, few saw coming.

While Jimmy Carter blamed it on voter “malaise,” Hillary Clinton calls out the “basket of deplorables,” she considers “irredeemable.”  

In the 70s, in fact, they were “mad-as-hell-and-we’re-not-going-to-take-it-any-more” voters—many dubbed Reagan Democrats, immortalized by Peter Finch in Network (1976). 

Now Michael Moore points to the rust-belt-mad-as-hellers, calling them the “Brexit voters,” some of whom are featured in the report in Britain’s The Independent about the dying steel town of Weirton, West Virginia, on the border of Ohio. 

Films of the 70’s captured the situation brilliantly. Besides the aforementioned Network, films like Save the Tiger (1973), starring Jack Lemmon in his Oscar winning performance, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), also starring Lemmon, epitomized the desperation. 

The latter is about an out-of-work New Yorker, Mel Edison, who regularly goes out on his porch and screams, until one day his neighbor above pours a bucket of cold water on him, adding insult to injury, (2:45 minutes).  The former features a Los Angeles clothing manufacturer, Harry Stoner, losing his proverbial shirt. After his partner (Jack Gilford) cooks the books, thus allowing them to survive another year—what the government calls “fraud,” Lemmon reminds him—he gets really desperate.  

While many might demonize Americans who cast their ballots for Trump, the truth is, they are just responding to reality. 

The establishment might be shocked if Trump wins.  And, they are surely in denial now.  But, they will only have themselves to blame, given their failure to focus on the reality of countless voters’ lives, where desperation is a frequent, if not constant, companion.  

“Migrant Mother,” 1936 (Dorothea Lange, photographer). Library of Congress FSA/OWI Collection.

“Migrant Mother,” 1936 (Dorothea Lange, photographer).

Library of Congress FSA/OWI Collection.  

This reporting failure, dramatized in Network, was not the case 80 years ago when Dorothea Lange captured, in her iconic photographs, the devastation of the Great Depression for all to see.  The furrowed brows. Tattered clothes. Empty stomachs. Desperation. She was working on behalf of the U.S. Government’s Farm Security Administration.

This reporting failure, dramatized in Network, was not the case 80 years ago when Dorothea Lange captured, in her iconic photographs, the devastation of the Great Depression for all to see.  The furrowed brows. Tattered clothes. Empty stomachs. Desperation. She was working on behalf of the U.S. Government’s Farm Security Administration.

Today, the damage is complete. We are almost entirely devoid of these tangible images in the establishment channels of communication. Instead, far too many are creating our own reality. 

Like in the current film Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant, where the protagonist has the idea she can become an opera star. 

Shuttered steel mill in Weirton, WV. Credit: Andrew Buncombe, 

who writes: “The steel mills today employ fewer than 1,000 people.” 

In their heyday, they employed 15,000.

Only problem is, she can’t sing.  

And, the establishment evidently can’t see.  

*******

Note: This piece was published in Daily Caller on November 7, 2016, the day before the election in which Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton, becoming the  45^th President of the United States, which this author also predicted in “Donald Trump: 45^th President of the United States.”




Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based writer and author of Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends. She served four years in the George H.W. Bush Administration.