The class question — whither the workers — has been mesmerizing during the Clinton-Obama battle in the United States, far more than the horse race itself.

Class issues never go away, yet rarely rise to view politically; in the 1990s, they virtually vanished under a blanket of identity politics. But candidates turn to workers when they need votes, often by dividing them rather than uniting them. In the 1930s, for example, populists such as Huey Long appealed to poor American whites. In Quebec, fascist Adrien Arcand used anti-Semitism to attract French-Canadian workers at a time when there were also many Jewish workers in the province. The rule: Divide workers even as you acknowledge them, then forget them once the election is over.

Hillary Clinton’s behaviour has been classic. Last week, she talked about “hard-working Americans, white Americans.” Note the code; it’s not casual phrasing. Whites work hard. The implication is that blacks don’t; they’re lazy and rely on welfare or affirmative action. So white workers in scorched industrial wastelands like Ohio and Pennsylvania have been damaged by the sloth of blacks. Clinton backer Geraldine Ferraro advanced the insinuation by saying Barack Obama was only in the running because he’s black; i.e., he benefits from white, middle-class liberal guilt. Ergo, affirmative action has also hampered the more meritorious, but unfortunately white, Hillary Clinton.

It gets knottier. During the Ohio primary, journalist JoAnn Wypijewski wrote that what drew white workers to Ms. Clinton was identification with her defiance. They had been betrayed by the North American free-trade agreement and lost their jobs. She had been betrayed by infidelity. Each survived, but deeply embittered. What intensified the connection was that both were traduced by the same man, Bill Clinton, who signed NAFTA into law! Mr. Obama’s supporters were perplexed that their candidate rarely raised the Clinton role in NAFTA. Maybe he didn’t want to reinforce the identification.

Then both try to compete by pretending they are workers.

Hillary drops her g’s. Barack starts to, but she’s already ahead by thousands of dropped g’s. He goes bowling, she drinks boilermakers at a bar. It’s hilarious. He’s a grad of Harvard Law School and she’s had Secret Service protection since 1992. I have some advice for them. I used to organize for a textile union. I was also writing plays at the time. The workers knew it, it didn’t bother them, they may have liked it. Everyone appreciates recognition from another quarter. Workers would even use my outsider presence to, for instance, start a conversation about a book one had read (on industrial archeology, I think) that they mightn’t have conducted without someone like me to channel the discussion through. The advice is: Go as yourselves among the workers.

Are there glimmers of hope in this cynicism-inducing mire? Sure, there always are. Younger U.S. workers seem less stuck in what Timothy Egan calls the cement shoes of race. They’re not innately smarter but they have a different experiential base from which to draw conclusions. And this week, as former candidate John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama before Michigan workers, he called them “brothers and sisters” — the signature of working class solidarity, rather than division, in the labour movement. It underlined how absent that notion has been in a campaign full of worker rhetoric.

As for unions, on May Day this month, 40,000 longshoremen on the U.S. West Coast struck for eight hours, defying a legal order, to protest U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (All candidates support the latter.) This wasn’t just American black-white solidarity; it involved Muslims in Muslim countries. The media sort of reported, sort of submerged the story: no context, no analysis, no evaluation. It was apparently incomprehensible. Yet — it happened.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.