Following Michelle Obama’s exhortation at the Democratic National Convention to “just do something,” I decided to devote my September and October weekends to canvassing voters in Maine’s 2nd (“swing-state”) District.

We’ve owned a cabin outside of Rangeley for 50 years, and I traveled throughout the state as part of my economic development career. So, I wasn’t unfamiliar with the economic issues in Franklin County and the rest of the 2nd District. However, as I canvassed in Jay, Livermore, Livermore Falls, Wilton, Farmington, Kingfield and Rangeley, the poverty, distress and discord I encountered in discussions with scores of working-class voters made a powerful impact on me.

Yes, there was anger: “Biden destroyed this country … F**k Biden, and f**k you!”

Plenty of opinions: “We should have a woman. Plenty of other countries have had women leaders. It’s time now.”

Or: “I’m a small gun-business owner — the Second Amendment is key. But Trump makes absolutely no sense.”

There were strongly held beliefs: “I’ll never vote for an abortionist!”

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And disassociation from the system: “I don’t like any of it — don’t want to talk about it.”

A real eye-opener was the conversation with a woman in tears in a basement apartment next to the laundry room: “I’ll vote — I always do. It’s just so hard now since my divorce. I have a 14-year-old straight A’s daughter, I work 40 hours a week, but it’s not enough and there’s just nothing — no support for me.”

Most memorable was the 20-minute discussion on election eve with an 84-year-old woman who opened the door of her small mobile home, smiled gently after looking at the buttons on my chest identifying me as both a Franklin County Democratic Party volunteer and a Harris/Walz supporter, and said: “I’m sorry, but I’m going to vote for that a**h**e, Trump.”

Swing-state voters across the country (like those our 2nd District who voted for Trump while narrowly reelecting conservative Democratic Congressman Jared Golden) exhibited similar sentiments. It was a working-class lament by folks — some with great anger, some close to a breaking point, experiencing real financial hardship — whose lives and hopes have narrowed. Why? Because up until about 40 years ago, the post-World War II industrial boom that swept across American cities and surrounding towns in the Midwest, West and Northeast created millions of industrial jobs — in textiles, shoes, pulp and paper-making, automobiles, air conditioners, etc.

It was a rising tide that lifted Americans pretty much everywhere. But by the 1980s, world and national economic and political changes were translating into the closing of most of those textile, shoe, automobile, air conditioner, pulp and paper industries all across the Northeast and Midwest. And the lives of the people and families who depended on those generational factory jobs became steadily less hopeful.

Buttressing a broader point that America is not the superpower it used to be, author George Packer, in this month’s Atlantic magazine, described “the economic and cultural transformations of the past half century: the globalization of trade and migration … (and) the growing inequality between metropolis and hinterland.”

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“Unlike Europeans, Americans have not accepted managed decline,” said Konstantin Kisin, U.K.-based author/podcaster, in a YouTube video titled “10 Reasons Why You Didn’t See This Coming,” the day after the election.

Those two words, “managed” and “decline,” are key. As a nation, we’ve not taken either one seriously. And the pull-each-other-down polarity we’re trapped in today is a direct result of that national shortsightedness. Though we remain a prosperous, powerful and envied nation, our decline as the world’s economic and military superpower is undeniable and we’re all feeling it. Yet our political leaders too often trot out “America First,” “America’s best days are ahead of us” and “There’s nothing we can’t do when we do it together” rather than honestly lead us through this changing reality.

Both parties (and frankly, most of us) continue to dwell in an American exceptionalism mindset, failing to develop a comprehensive national strategy to address the vast and growing gap in economic resources between the top 1% and the rest of us; failing to put in place economic incentives that directly address the needs of America’s working class in the Rust Belt and in swing-state districts like Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

We Americans are a proud and optimistic people. We focus on opportunity, not decline. But decline it is and it must be managed. So, let’s watch to see if this Trump administration actually implements policies, programs and incentives to reward the long-frustrated, angry, stressed-out working-class Americans who delivered their victory across the country, including in Maine communities like Rumford, Jay, Farmington, Livermore Falls, Skowhegan, Greenville, Dexter, Lincoln, Dover-Foxcroft, Millinocket and the many smaller towns and villages around them.

And my fellow Democrats, instead of endlessly agonizing over past campaign strategies and messages, let’s get real.

We’re the party of the American working class, and we’re losing them. Remember when American cities were falling apart and we responded with programs called Model Cities, Urban Renewal, Section 8 Housing and Urban Development Action Grants? Well, let’s finally put our heads together and come up with the platform, policies and programs that reach out directly to working class Americans in our hinterland.

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