Liberals and Democrats in my filter bubble – IRL, in the media, on social media – are spending a lot of time blaming people for Trump. Racist Republican leaders, strategists, funders, and voters get the most blame. There’s also a fairly loud contingent that want to (pre-emptively) blame Sanders supporters, independents, and third party folks for Trump and his continued existence. But the blame is always other people.
But did we liberals and Democrats have anything to do with Trump’s rise?
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Did you sit quietly by while Bill Clinton did his dog whistle race politicking? While Hillary talked about super-predators? Yes? Then you promoted racism in politics. Not as bluntly and crudely as Trump, but you helped legitimize the environment of racial anxiety he’s tapping into now.
- Did you protest the crime and welfare reform bills that Bill, Hillary, Schumer and others supported and brag about to this day? If not, you stood idly by while millions of black families were torn apart and millions of children were pushed into poverty – by laws that we knew at the time were biased.
- Do you laugh at and make jokes about the intelligence of Trump and Republican voters? If so, then, in addition to belittling people with your intellectual privilege, you antagonize and make sure they will never feel at home in your party. You give Republicans proof points that Democrats aren’t really for the people. You make us out to be such elite elitists that a billionaire can call us elitists and get cheers. Nobody joins causes or groups that insult them – so when you mock and belittle them, you shut the door to our movement, leaving them with only demagogues to turn to.
- Do you say sadly, “I just don’t understand how they can. . . ” without really trying to? Yeah? Well that’s not being thoughtful and sad or hurting in an enlightened way. That’s just another way of being elitist. See question #3. [Question 4 A do you wish people would read Toni Morrison and Coates and Malcolm X, but refuse to read Hillbilly Elegy or the like because “oh, I don’t want to hear it”? Update: Below are a couple more worthwhile links.]
- Do you know what the median income is in the United States? If not, then you’re probably unaware of the key economic reality of Americans outside of your filter bubble. It’s $51,000 which is very low just about anywhere – not enough to save, own a home, build equity, pay student loans, send kids to college. It’s been stagnant for years, too, so there are generations of working folks who haven’t had the American dream, no matter how they voted. Not until Obama or Sanders has the party really owned income inequality as an issue in the last 30+ years. So all that resentment we’re hearing now? Kind of on us, too.
- Talking to a Trump supporter, would you be able to name five specific things that Hillary or the Democrats have done to help the economic security of families below the median income? SCOTUS doesn’t count. Neither does “well, it’s obvious” – Name five specific things (specific like the way DOMA prevented same sex marriages and then overturning DOMA-style laws allowed it). Almost nobody can think of five, but once you do, present them to a Trump supporter and see if you or the person you’re talking to believes it.
- Have you spoken to a person with kids who is below the median income who isn’t your child’s caretaker, housekeeper, doorman, or gardener etc. about what their lives will look like ten years from now?
- Do you know the minimum wage in your state? Even if you don’t know the amount, you probably know that the amount * 52 weeks * 8 hours is well below the poverty level. What have Dems done on that front? How many times have you made phone calls or pinged your Congressional Representative to fix it? Do you personally pay your domestic help sufficiently above minimum wage to keep him or her above the poverty line? Are you contributing to their FICA (which also protects them from disability or their kids from loss of life)?
- Do you hate stereotypes of people, but feel comfortable labeling the 10 million people who voted for Trump as racists? If yes, is that because you’re so smart, you can tell what’s in the souls of ten million people without meeting them? That’s kind of messed up isn’t it – your stereotypes work but others don’t? Are you sure you’re the party of love, understanding and inclusion?
Liberals and Democrats need to take a look at whether they’ve truly been an alternative to the Republican Party and whether or not they’re culpable, too, in creating a body politic where a Trump thrives. As BHO famously reminded us:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
In Obama’s narrative, Democrats are no more entitled to the votes of these folks than Republicans are. Worse, when Democrats engage in memes mocking their intelligence and education, tut-tutting why they don’t get it, reducing them to their racial anxieties and prejudices, they make very clear: “not only do we not intend to help you, we find you distasteful.” (Obama famously mis-spoke the rest of this otherwise sympathetic analysis with “cling to their guns”, but he was calling out the same phenomenon.)
It’s easy to want Trump voters to just go away and take all their distasteful, unevolved behavior with them. But that won’t happen no matter how soundly HRC beats him. If liberals and Dems aren’t going to connect with them, are unwilling to hear their pains or heed their concerns, they’ll come back even more angry. Remember how we were all terrified when Trump might lose because Rubio and Cruz would be worse – more electable, more effective, less unhinged? That’s what our next demagogue will be – smoother and more effective than Trump, and we’ll have done nothing to get right with the disaffected.
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More reading:
“The Politics of Resentment” an article summarizing the research of a professor who repeatedly visits every county in Wisconsin to understand the voting divide and contradictory behavior. There’s also a book. Short version: some people start their political identity building with a simple question: “are you with us or are you with them?”
Deer Hunting With Jesus: Notes from America’s Class War I haven’t read it, only downloaded it, but many find it akin, even superior to Hillbilly Elegy.
“Winner Take All Politics” Bill Moyers interviews the authors of the book by the same name. Covers a lot of ground, but for this post, it’s also about the destruction, cooptation, or dilution of intermediating groups like unions and political parties.
White Trash – the link is to an interview with the author.
In at The End of The World 
A lot in this post and a lot to think about. And I agree with all of it. A few initial thoughts. The point about median income is particular important.
It does feel like in this case “liberal’ means liberal couples who make combined incomes in the low six figures and/or have post graduate degrees. And the same could be applied to conservatives, or at least the GOP establishment, who suddenly find themselves–between the Trumps and evangelicals–without any political party. Is this election the beginning of the final sorting of political parties by income and education? I sure hope not, because, like you, I don’t want to be a member of any party sorted out that way.
I started Hillbilly Elegy this evening. At the immense risk of commenting on a book that I’ve barely begun, I object to any book using the word Hillbilly to make generalizations about the white working class. I’m writing this from SW PA where I grew up, and I find it offensive if the author or the media, in the wake of the book, think that a usually derogatory term for rural people in southern Appalachia–people the author identifies as mostly Scotch-Irish-, can represent the working class experience in SW PA or Ohio or Michigan or Wisconsin of a much more varied set of immigrants, including the Scotch and Irish.
Look, the author’s roots are in Kentucky so he can wear the term “hillbilly” in the same way I can wear the term “dago” as an American of Italian descent. Just please don’t use that term to generalize about the people I grew up. Or the people I spent time with yesterday at the local VFW (many of who are probably voting for Trump) and had skilled blue collar jobs, or municipal jobs, or service-related jobs, and could talk about the Pirates and Steelers for hours.
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My take-away from the book was that Vance uses Hillbilly no more broadly than the perjorative: Appalachian folks close to hollows/hollers; and more specficially to his particular flavors of it. Flavors plural because it’s partly Kentucky, partly transplanted/migrated Ohio. I have to say, though, that one thing that resonated with me was how much the raw patriotism and casual presence of violence existed in both our extended families. Curious to hear more on Vance, especially since some conservatives are alarmed at how much liberals seem to be taking to him:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/why-liberals-love-hillbilly-elegy/
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Couple of typos in that previous comment. Sorry about that
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This is pure liberal guilt, self-defeating and self-important. It’s a silly idea that if only we had been less racist and less intellectually elitist, there would no Trump phenomenon. And where is the connection between the 90s crime bill and Trumpism? Is it all the angry black people at Trump’s rallies? Your argument is absurd. Anyone want to dispute me? Be careful, because if you make me mad I might vote for Trump and that would be your fault for having been intellectually elitist toward me.
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Hi, Barry. Thanks for posting a comment. Please feel free to continue joining the discussion anytime.
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Hey Barry! Welcome to the distribution list on WordPress without a private setting!
Thanks for reading and weighing in. Couple thoughts/responses:
My point certainly didn’t land well. Or maybe I’ve got it wrong. My intention was to call out liberal/Democratic hypocrisy in order to have a more honest and productive approach to the resentment and anger that seems to be frightening liberals in Capitol City (an analogy I picked up from a Sanders staffer). It was directed at a very specific set of Democrats – urban, affluent, concerned about SCOTUS, but less urgent about other issues. People who were/are New Dem/neoliberals and who are shocked to find out that part of America doesn’t understand how well-intentioned they are.
I didn’t mean to imply that Dems are solely responsible for Trump. Neither did I intend to argue that, had they acted with more principle over the last 20 years, Trump wouldn’t have happened (though It’s worth some thought). What I meant to say is that by sitting by while the Clintons and other Democrats played the race card, enacted brutal laws that hurt POC, and largely ignored the working poor, they allowed an environment of resentment and legitimate grievance to fester and legitimized racial biases as well. I find it 1) intellectually dishonest to ignore our use of the race card; 2) hypocritical to act like we’re pure and blameless; and 3) politically dumb to think this happened in a vacuum of Trump, the Kochs, and the Tea Party while we liberals and Democrats had our act together over here if only people were _____ enough to listen.
My point was the last line: if we win this election without getting right with the disaffected – which requires that we acknowledge and improve the mistakes we’ve made – and we hide behind an illusion of moral purity and superiority, we’re going to lose the next time around. We’re lucky we’re fighting Trump and not someone more skilled.
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Are the people supporting Trump in any way affected by policy positions? Sanders supporters had policy positions., in fact, their policies make up a great deal of the Democrat’s platform that Hillary is running on. Will be fascinating to see what happens next, after Trump loses, starts a television network, and Bernie is building out his organization. How many Trump supporters will move over to Bernie, who offers bold policies that will make a difference for the white working class? If 13 million Trump supporters were speaking out for a minimum wage hike, Medicaid expansion, collective bargaining rights, higher taxes on high speed financial trades, etc, etc, then I’d be much more sympathetic. Or, even if Trump had specific trade policies. Having just returned from Western, PA, small manufacturers–and I mean companies with less than $10 million in annual revenue and a few dozen employees–face many challenges. I don’t hear Trump saying anything that addresses their concerns. Certainly, pre-Sanders, the Democrats were tepid in their policies. But, the past is just that. After the election, those 13 million Trump voters will have to be more specific about what they want, other than a wall between Mexico, a friendship with Putin, and more coal mines in West Virginia.
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I appreciate your intent, and maybe I’m not your intended audience. But I am a life long progressive and I don’t think the solution to what threatens us is to be more understanding of (or paternal toward) Trump supporters. Bernie Sanders staked out real ground for a populist, progressive message for economic justice that completely defied neoliberalism, and yet 14 million people – almost all white – chose Trump. That wasn’t a reaction to neoliberalism, or Bill Clinton’s crime bill, or us liberals being too smug and intellectual. Instead of ascribing their motives, I think we should listen to what they actually say, and hold them accountable.
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CVFD: Did I get this right: 1) they would be voting for Democrats if they cared about those issues, but since they’re not, they don’t care about those issues? 2) if they cared about Medicaid Trump would be talking about Medicaid?
Additional question: what’s your take on the current surge for support of HRC?
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Medicaid is just one issue. And no one is going to make their voting decision based on Medicaid. Though, if you are below the median family income you should think about basing your vote on it. And, yes, if Trump’s supporters cared about Medicaid or any of the other policies I mentioned, then Trump would support them. Except that he doesn’t support anything other than himself. Which is why I can’t, at the end of the day, empathize with the people voting for him.
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Laska, I think the quote is one of Obama’s best, and it’s about empathy. Being a middle aged white guy myself, I liked hearing my demographic mentioned sympathetically, because the general narrative now is that “our group” is implicitly liable for white privilege and male privilege. That’s had it’s effect and stoked the Trump movement, and Obama surely realizes this. Working class white men are consistently hearing that they’ve unfairly benefited from both white privilege and male privilege, implying they’ve blown these great advantages and still can’t make a good living. They must be losers. I just wish we’d get away from so much demographic identity. Demographics are meant to describe groups of people, not define them.
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I don’t believe these 14 million people are irrevocably racist, but if they are, we need to understand why and figure out a way to fix it. Can we afford not to engage them? Shouldn’t we heed POTUS’s call to students at Howard: “But we must expand our moral imaginations to understand and empathize with all people who are struggling, not just black folks who are struggling — the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender person, and yes, the middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the advantages, but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change, and feels powerless to stop it. You got to get in his head, too.”
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