speech. the israeli prime minister pected to speak about the ongoing war against hamas. he will be the rst foreign leader ever to address congress in a joint meeting four times. wave coverage of his remarks from the house chambe wednesday 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, online on www.cspan.org and our free video app , c-span now. today, financial industry executives and consumer advocates testify on fraud protecti within the zell network system in the banking industry as a whole. watch the senate homeland security and governmental affairs subcommittee hearing ve at 3:30 p.m. eastern on c-span 3 , c-span now or online at www.cspan.org .

since 1979, in partnership with the cable industry, c-span has provided complete coverage of the halls of congress from the house and senate floors to congressional hearings and committee meetings. c-span gives you a front row seat to how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions and completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. welcome back. we are joined now by author of how the heartland went red. also an assistant professor of government at harvard university. welcome to washington journal. >> thank you for having me. i'm excited to be here. >> your research and your recent book focuses on how it places the political behavior.

what prompted you to study that aspect of it? >> i really did not set out to study place, per se. i was interested in trying to better understand and explain white working class politics. as you know, the white working class is a really important part of the electorate, also because of the geographic distribution in a couple of key swing states. i felt like, often times, when we talk about this group, which is a lot, we tend to talk about them as if they were a monolith, the white working class.. there is a lot of there and that by trying to understand and explain that, we could better understand where it comes from in american politics and where we are going.

to do that in my book, i found it is very similar to white postindustrial cities in the u.s., all had been part of the democratic coalition. one turned to the right in the u.s. 70s. another still voting democratic say. in the 18 months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, i spent several months living in those communities and collected hundreds of hours, interviews and community members to try to understand what was shaping their politics. i talked to folks, working- class voters, middle-class voters. what i found is it is the place that was helping to explain why similar people in different communities were thinking about politics differently and also helped explain why, within each community, different kinds of

people were thinking the same way and then that conformed to another intuition i had which is that the narrative people have about their lives. that actually, -- often times we think that people are voting the wrong way i hope that by spending time in the communities and listening to people, i could better understand what are the forces shaping those narratives. what i found -- it is important -- sometimes they visited were

in minnesota, indiana, and wisconsin. can you tell us more about them and some community forces in particular that shape their political direction? >> absolutely. i focus a lot in the book on both churches -- these organizations have been the central to civic and political life against the historical heartland. this is certainly true in all of the communities i studied. it has changed a lot. we have known for a long time they have declined in the u.s. the starting point in my book has been across geography. for that reason, i argue that these local contacts are very important to understanding politics in the heartland because different communities have different organizational resources and that really matters. we make that more concrete if we take, for example, the

community in indiana. it is a place where they are still really active, well resourced and they coordinate with each other and local nonprofits and local governments to try to address social problems as they come up . the residents i spoke to in that community really feel like they live in a christian community that takes care of themselves and they don't need more organization. for them, the republican party really makes sense. in the wisconsin town i studied, it is a bit of an outlier. it is still voting democratic. we still have these politically engaged unions, which is pretty rare. there, those unions are still electing folks to office to try to pass policies for organized labor and a lot of the residents there think of themselves as a community that has been disadvantaged by big structural economic forces and

they believe that more government distribution will help them in the community. for them, the democratic party makes sense. like i said, this community is a real outlier, partly because it is still voting really democratic when other largely white cities have turned to the right and partly because of the organized labor movement. that community really tells us something about both the power of the labor movement in shaping contemporary politics. it is strong enough to keep that one town in a democratic fold but it is the overwhelming decline that explains a good part of the reason why a lot of the industrial heartland has turned to the right. that was clear in the third and final community i studied in minnesota where they are present but struggling to provide that role of leadership that i saw in indiana and wisconsin. folks there really feel like

the community is dying and under threat of extinction. as republicans, particularly under president trump, articulated the narrative of immigration and socialism and china as a threat to that small town way of life, that focus on the value. that narrative has really resonated with some of the folks. >> i want to follow-up on your point in labor unions. you recently wrote that the strength of labor activism directly correlates with support for the democratic party and that has implications for democrats' efforts to make inroads with white working- class voters. can you explain more about that? >> sure. as i said, there is a real power to the organized labor movement but it is also vicarious because of the decline. the power comes from this

historically and politically contingent link between the democratic party that was born during the new deal era, right? it is contingent. unions have not always been a progressive force in american politics. in the 19th century when it first began, they were a domain of white men and often they viewed immigrants and women and people of color as a threat, cheaper labor. i think that is not the most effective form of working-class and political organizations. think about the 99% versus the 1%. that kind of organization starts dividing the issue of women and people of color and white people and it gets smaller and smaller and less powerful but what is more important for a contemporary project is that if the labor movement were to take on that exclusionary vision again, to represent the white working

class, then i don't think that it would have a home in the contemporary democratic party which has a much more diverse constituency. similarly, democrats have not always been a friend to organized labor. it really began in the 1930s with fdr and his response to the great depression and a lot of folks have argued that they have failed to live up to their promise of supporting organized labor in the decades that followed. i think that those links between the democrats and organized labor have historically been very strong but for them to persist, it requires both the inclusionary vision of working-class globalization and a version of the democratic party that is willing to support organized labor in the mobilization. the democrats, under president biden, have made that a priority. >> the republicans are also maintaining this priority with

former president trump picking, as his vice presidential nominee, j. d. vance. senator vance made a direct appeal for the so-called working-class voters in his acceptance speech at the republican national convention. here is a portion of that. >> president trump's vision is so simple and yet so powerful. we are done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to wall street. we will commit to the workingman. we are done importing foreign labor. we will fight for american citizens and their good jobs and their good wages. we are done buying energy from countries that hate us. we are going to get it right here from american workers in pennsylvania and ohio and across the country.

we are done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade and we are going to stamp more and more product with that beautiful label, made in the usa. >> stephanie, was this kind of messaging effective, do you think? >> i will say, it was probably effective for certain people in certain places. here is why. i will take you back to that minnesota town where i described, where they experienced this widespread civic decline. that is because they had this particularly industrial crisis. the population has declined 20% since the 1980s. that is devastating, terrifying

and it makes people, like i said, feel like they're community is dying. showed up at the ymca to swim one morning and answered the older man asked, what was i doing here? i said i am studying the town. he said, why? you want to know what it is like to live in a dying town? that kind of sense was the omnipresence. this idea that there is a party out there that is listening to that feeling of threat and trying to articulate a narrative that appeals to that fear is effective. in a lot of ways, i think that senator vance is good at conveying and articulating that native because he lived it. the town he grew up and experienced that kind of postindustrial crisis, that kind of decline. he can really articulate that narrative quite authentically. the only challenge with senator vance as a running mate is that

that was not always the narrative that he told about his own. if you read his book, he has a culture of poverty that is these postindustrial communities, making people a little bit lazy, a little bit unambitious, making them make bad decisions and that is one of the reasons it challenges most communities. i think that he has now flipped to articulating the southern narrative about immigration and socialism and china as a threat in those communities and that seems to be more effective. however, it is not what he was always saying. in a lot of ways, he learned the same lesson i learned, which is the narrative people tell about their own lives and what matters is the politics. he changed to articulate this new narrative that resonates. in that way, he is an effective politician. >> if you want to take your questions to stephanie about working-class voters, our

number is 202-784-8000. let's start with mark in las vegas, nevada on our line for democrats. i have two questions. these small towns have a shrinking population. i imagine they tend to skew older. with their claim, they don't want or need federal money, how many of them are on social security federal money, how many of them are on social security and medicare and how much of their roads are supported by the federal government. how much of the regulations protecting their water and all come from the federal government? and how do we break through to

them that this idea of self- sufficient --. and the other is, how much they are sucked into the propaganda for right- wing radio and fox news and sources, that like j.d. vance are feeding them a story that really doesn't -- that doesn't accord with reality, okay? thank you. >> sure, thank you for the question. two things here. one of the things that i try to do in my research is take people where they are at. when you talk about the fact that the federal government is really supporting all of us in our lives every day whether through roads or social security or medicare, sure, that's absolutely true and i think, when elizabeth warren was a candidate, she made this clear claim that the schools that taught us, the roads that took us to work, we were all

benefiting from and participating in and giving back into this big civic and federal government tied together polity, but when you meet people in their everyday lives, and a lot of scholars had already made these arguments, those forces often aren't visible to them. what is visible, particularly in this community that i studied in indiana, is those churches and the nonprofits. and often, people are participating in that local civic society and policy in ways that make them feel like they are doing everything possible to take care of each other and they can see that and they can't see this bigger version of society and politics that is much less visible to people. and so i think we have to take seriously those things matter and it is not useful to kind of pointed the blame and say, how can we convince people to think

differently about that thing they are doing every single week, which is going to church and volunteering with their church sunday afternoons and wednesday evenings and that's a big heart of their lives. we are not going to convince people to think differently about this lived experience. the second thing you asked was about sort of propaganda on the right. and i guess what i will say here is that, i think we are all susceptible, regardless of our partisanship to listening to the news, listening to our friends who are already agreeing with us and i think that does have a polarizing effect in american politics because it makes us even move further to the right or the left and that is true of everyone on the right and on the left. i don't think that is particularly true of just folks in these communities or republicans in general, but i

also think that -- and this is what i was saying when i was talking about narratives -- those messages resonate the most when they are already picking up on something we already believe and have experienced in our own lives. the stories we are already telling ourselves. that's what i think senator vance is message now because it will resonate with people who are worried about -- and not just worried about but terrified by this massive loss they have seen all around them. >> let's hear from jeff from nebraska on our line from republicans. >> stephanie, i grew up in a small town not too far from middletown ohio and in the 60s and early 70s, middletown was booming. it didn't take but about two to three years and the politicians saw this deal and it turned into a ghost town overnight.

many people one from prosperous to nothing, and it left a large community, and that's where the trouble began. it wasn't that people got lazy and that's not what he said. it just turned into that way because, i know people do sometimes bad things, but as far as that goes, that is not what he was saying at all. that's just something you interpreted because you are probably on the other side, i have no idea. but whatever. >> sure, sure, no, and i think that in hillbilly elegy, senator vance does talk about that decline as central to what happened in middletown and

other communities like it and the broader decline of the steel industry, but he does also, in several occasions, talk about how he observed that other families were not kind of teaching their kids to be ambitious, that they were teaching their kids to be lazy, he talks about welfare cheats, he talked about people making bad decisions in their lives, and he credits his grandmother with giving him the kind of ambition and safety to behave differently on his own, and all i want to say is that, i think that -- of course everybody has agency and we can make our own decisions but when communities have experienced loss on the level of a lot of communities that experience those losses in the 60s, 70s and 80s like you described, it can be really hard to make good decisions, and so i think this is sort of

work senator vance has arrived at his politics. and i totally agree with you, he has arrived that we have to provide the kind of economy and the kind of community in which folks can make good decisions, and it's easier to make good decisions and they can teach their kids that working hard and going to school and building community is worthwhile. >> we received a question for you on x from -- who asks, i live in indiana, what city did you study? >> that's a great question. so, i have -- and i get this question all the time -- i anonymize the communities in my book and that was to prevent the identities of the folks that i to from being revealed so that they would feel comfortable talking to me. >> let's go to liz in mount laurel, new jersey on our line for democrats. that morning, liz? >> good morning. i read vance's

book and i also have family ties dating back to right after the american revolution in pennsylvania. at sort of a part of appellation and outsourcing of jobs and source -- such in the last 40 years. what i have seen is that, republican party captures most of these folks, by a combination of culture wars, claiming they are going to work for the middle class, but at the same time they are outsourcing the high paying jobs , union jobs in this area, and those that have a pension, it is a 401(k) and they don't earn

enough because they are desperate for jobs to be able to contribute to a 401(k). and the churches, they would call themselves the evangelicals, but they are not regular churches. so, this is more like a label than a reality . i think --. this got sort of put on steroids with reaganomics , and that's why we are seeing such broad disparity and it is leaking out from the areas that experience it in the 80s. liz, you are making a lot of interesting points. i want to let stephanie respond to some of those ideas you brought up. >> i think what you are talking about here is that, a lot of

the challenges that those communities are facing, you are suggesting that maybe some of those challenges were caused by the republican party and yet they seem to be voting for the republican party today. other folks might say, some of those challenges were caused by democrats, and yet some of those communities are still voting for the democrats today. i think you are putting her finger on a really key piece of the challenges that some of those communities are facing across-the-board, which is the decline of organized labor and i have already talked about unions as a political force, really relevant to creating working-class politics in the united states, but they are also an economic force, and i think we have good evidence that they are one of the best tools we have to kind of combat the worst ills of capitalism, to mitigate economic inequality and provide things like good pensions like you were talking about. and so, i think investing in

unions, it's good policy regardless of the politics. and so, i think that could help a lot of these kinds of communities. >> let's hear from gary in texas on our line for independence. good morning, gary >> i'm here in plano, texas and i haven't read your book but i have been listening to c-span a lot and we have this lady here speaking about how the republicans take over the rural areas. i would like a study on how big the government is, how vehement it is, how they have their fingers in every piece of the pie and this isn't what the country was founded on. it was founded on a small national government and the states would do their own thing. versus the guy who is talking about social security. the u.s. government formed social security. if they

mismanagement, add too many people into it to get extra benefits, and i'm not talking about -- i'm talking about wives they get benefits now, that degrades the amount. we need to put everything in a pot called welfare until we know exactly how much welfare we spend in every department of the government. let's talk about how big the government is and, of course joe biden is a big government guy, expander. let's look at states start doing stuff. thank you. >> thanks for sharing that point of view. i heard a lot of that point of view when i was my research and i still hear it a lot. i think you are kind of putting her finger on something that is really salient, you know? we were a country founded on minimizing the control of the

central government, but then we also made choices over time, particularly during the great depression and the great society that shifted some of that power to the federal government, and it sounds like that is not sort of a distribution of power that you prefer, that the federal government has certainly grown beginning with the great depression, much larger print but those are choices that, as a country we have slowly come to make him a building on those choices over time and it is certainly something that can be debated and we can talk about re-triggering those sources of power and spending. i think anytime you do that, there is going to be policy trade-offs. if we allow local governments and state governments to administer social security, for example, or other kinds of social programs, we might then worry that states with fewer resources will not be able to provide the same level of

social programs as states with more resources. i live in massachusetts. it's one of the highest income highest gdp states in the country and so if we shifted the onus of income tax to the state level and away from the federal level and states were administering some of these programs, i would worry that people in my state would get great benefits and people in alabama would not get as good of benefits. that's the word i would have but i think these are -- you are raising important questions and they are questions that i think we can and do figure out when we hold elections pick we vote for candidates that do or don't want more federal government control. >> we have a question via text from sharon and minnesota. does the guest have plans to maybe do more studies in the same states but with different cities? i lived in rural minnesota for 40 years. ic towns dying but there politics a republican. >> sure. i don't have any further plans

to study more postindustrial politics. that's what i have been calling it. i'm actually working on a book right now about suburban politics, so i think about that as the same but the opposite. still really interested in place but focus on suburbs rather than these kinds of small midwestern cities. but, i think you are completely right and -- in the sense that a lot of these communities that have struggled so much but one of the other questions talked about was that massive kind of economic decline in those communities pick a lot of those communities probably most of them are voting republican and that is like i said the starting point in my book. most of those communities are voting republican but that by kind of trying to understand what -- which communities aren't voting republican, the places that have bucked that trend like the one town i studied in wisconsin, we can

kind of figure out why some places vote democratic and why most laces are voting republican. my answer is, a lot of it has to do with organized labor, helping to keep that one outlier community in the democratic fold and in the absence of organized labor sort of enabling roads for the republican and these other postindustrial communities. >> let's hear from catherine in ohio and our line for democrats. good morning, catherine. >> thank you for taking my call. i'm 75. my dad was born and raised in jackson city, kentucky, the same place that vance was born. his heritage was from. my stupid dad went to war in world war ii and after he got out of the war, that foolish man came to cincinnati and got a job because this is where the jobs were. and he raised five children. we are now successful, we are not

stupid, our children have college educations, and for you to say that vance is the only person who has ever done this, you are so wrong. a lot of us came from very poor backgrounds, but we have made it , not because of vance or not because of the government. government didn't buy me a college education, but it did by him when, and i would say when you -- before you hang up on me, a union pension every month, me, this stupid woman that had ancestors in jackson, kentucky. i get a pension. thank god, because now i can still stay in the middle class. i don't believe anything you are saying because you -- in jackson, kentucky. if you had, you would find out that he is not the exception.

what he has done --. >> catherine, i'm going to let stephanie respond because what you are saying doesn't really seem to line up with what i think stephanie was mentioning earlier. i will let you respond, stephanie. >> catherine, i'm so sorry if what you have taken from what i've said is that i think vance is the exception. i have only the most respect for you and your family, for people who get union pensions, i think more people should be getting union pensions. that's the argument i am making, actually. i'm making exactly as i think the argument you are making, which is that sometimes in his book vance makes it seem like he sort of, through the exception to the rule with his family, was able to succeed in these dire circumstances and what i'm trying to say is that, there is actually really a lot of challenges in some of these

communities. a lot of people are thriving and making ends meet and more than making ends meet like you are saying, but that we should consider having politics that tries to support people in all sorts of different communities, including places where they have experienced the kind of losses like middletown has. >> don is in california on our line for independence. go ahead, don. >> stephanie, i wanted to also touch bases that we don't hear about the military, which is interesting, and they show vance having been in the military. i grew up in detroit and grew up very poor, i would say, compared maybe not to him but i have seen a lot of drug addiction. i have seen people in the vietnam era who didn't want to go to the draft and ended up

wanting to go to -- and run to canada and things of that nature. i have a problem with people that toe to the american flag and our patriots and talk about those things when i totally respect the military, and i believe that this whole campaign between them has evolved to just the american people. as far as working class. it has gotten off of this whole military aspect of -- i know my family --. >> we are running short on time but i want to let stephanie respond to the idea of the rural military life and military salaries and maybe how those contribute to these communities. >> sure. yeah, i think the military is a big part of our government, a

big heart of our society and politics and i think that one thing you are getting at here is that, people kind of take up the mantle of patriotism for a bunch of different political causes, partisan causes, and i agree with you that can be really harmful and there is research showing that when you are forced to think of yourselves as americans, that we tend to be a little bit less vitriolic toward the other party. i think that it is really important that we remember that patriotism is about us sharing in this project, in this country and trying to make it better. that can involve criticism, should involve criticism. it can involve vigorous policy disputes like the ones that we have been hearing today, but should always be under the umbrella of, we are americans and we are all this together trying to make the country th best version of itself that it

can be. >> will have to end it there with stephanie ternullo who was the author of how the heartland went red. thank you so very much for your time this morning. >> thank you for having me. financial industry executives and consumer advocates testify on fraud protection within thcell network system and the banking industry as a whole. watch this senate homeland security subcommittee hearing live at 3:30 p.m. eastern on c-span three. c-span now come our free mobile app or online at c-span.org . c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television copies and more including charter communications. charter is proud to be recognized as the best internet providers and we are just getting started. building 100 thousand miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. span as a public service pports

along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democrac on wednesday, israeli prime er netanyahu will address congress, his first visit to the u.s. since the hamas attack israel on october 7th. many democratic members of congress haveuncethey plan to boycott his speech and protest of israel's military operations in gaza. the israeli primsteris expected to speak about the ongoing war against hamas. he be the first foreign leader ever to address congress in a joint meeting four times watch live coverage of his remarks from the house chamber wednesday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. online at c- span.org and on our free video app c-span now. we are back now and joined by energy reporter for news heather rids