« I don’t know if I see a unifying figure on the horizon. »
Bruce Springsteen is another left-wing rock star but he’s one who has his roots in the kind of blue-collar world that helped Trump win the 2016 election. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Springsteen was asked about the up-coming 2020 election and said that, at the moment, he doesn’t see anyone on the left who can beat Trump. From CNN:
“I don’t see anyone out there at the moment… the man who can beat Trump, or the woman who can beat Trump,” Springsteen said of the potential 2020 Democratic field. “You need someone who can speak some of the same language [as Trump] … and the Democrats don’t have an obvious, effective presidential candidate.”…
Dismiss Springsteen as just another liberal rock star if you will (and he is!), but also remember that Springsteen’s roots are in a working-class, blue-collar community — and that he has spent his entire life writing about and trying to explain the hopes, fears and anxieties of those communities to the country and the world.
Trump spoke to those fears and hopes in a very direct and real way during the 2016 campaign. He won the White House thanks to victories in the industrial Midwest — Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio — that was hit the hardest by the rapidly changing 21st-century economy and the crushing blows it dealt to the manufacturing sector.
