A lot of analysis has gone into The poor fortunes of Democrats in 2016.
Most people settled on an explanation: The democrats lost working class whites because they were too focused on identity politics and not offering economic relief to those in rural communities. The election, they said was about the economic angst of a group left behind by a generation of wage stagnation.

There is certainly truth in that large groups of working class whites were suffering. But, to be honest, Hillary Clinton was talking about jobs, wages, healthcare, re-training and such in between headlines dominated by Trump's antics.

As time goes by I see less truth in the theory that people voted for Trump in spite of his character flaws. With each day, and each Tweet this President becomes more unhinged while accomplishing nothing. And his base cheers him on. The more bizarre, the better.
 I see a base that voted for Trump, not in spite of his character flaws, but because of them.
My theory is that the election was NOT about the economy. It was about culture war.

The problem is, and continues to be, that there’s no evidence for the economy argument. I don't believe that the problem with the Democrats is that they aren’t doing enough to raise wages, or that they want people to go without healthcare. No.That just won't fly. Instead, there’s an inchoate anger over cultural changes that largely fall outside either party’s control.

The roller-coaster politics around health care really drive home how much Republican base voters view politics through a culture-war lens. Progressive policy is, however appealing in the abstract, is a secondary concern to the desire of angry white conservatives to exert or reassert their cultural dominance. Which goes a long way towards explaining the loathing of Obamacare: It was the “Obama” part, not the “care” part, that riled up the GOP base. Now that Barack Obama is gone, anger over the health care bill is rapidly receding.

The issue isn’t with Democratic policy, but with Democrats, who are perceived as snooty, educated, racially diverse city-dwellers, and therefore hated. Even if Democratic politicians tried to abandon “identity politics” entirely, it wouldn’t matter. Conservative voters can see, with their own two eyes, that the nation is changing culturally. They will continue to use the Republican Party as a cudgel to beat up the people that threaten them.

So, we all scratch our heads that Trump remains so popular with his base in spite of the fact that he has been so unsuccessful in keeping his promises. The thing we don't realize is that Healthcare, infrastructure, or jobs are NOT the Trump agenda. The Trump agenda, the thing his followers elected him to do, is it to be a walking middle finger to the cultural changes the country is experiencing. It's a primal scream of F-you to liberals, educated elites, environmentalists, immigrants, the press, all reminders of a nation that is changing.

It’s telling that the media was the “enemy” Trump was best able to whip up rage against among crowds in rural areas.  Journalists are the Fox News-assigned symbol of the cosmopolitanism that the Trump-voting masses see as a threat to their cultural dominance. These voters aren’t really moved by policy. They are being moved by fear of, and resentment towards a nation's changing identity.

So, one wonders if simply talking about wages in the hopes of winning over rural white voters is a fool’s errand. Those voters mostly aren’t voting their economic self-interest, and won’t start doing so anytime soon. Instead, they are clinging to a mythological past of Christian white dominance, and the Republicans, especially Donald Trump, are promising to restore it.

Last edited by Goose (7/22/2017 3:32 pm)