So telling the truth about women is misogynistic?
Bill and Hillary (vote for one get two) killed the Midwest with NAFTA.
20
In his usual partisan zeal to criticize anything ‘red,’ Dr Krugman conveniently forgets the incessant pathologies that have infected blue urban areas for decades.
Detroit’s decay, Chicago’s murders, SF’s homeless, Baltimore’s riot? Brought to you by the Democrat Party. All of it.
31
I believe there will be light at the end of this Trump era tunnel...
The House of Representatives is getting ready to open their
doors to the public square....All we need is to be ready to
listen and learn....and then act.....
The wiser heads will...come out of the woodwork....
I do not believe in any one candidate or any one political party...I believe....we want what's good for each other...and
that means our country.....We fought to hard and long to keep it all together....not to stay together....so together we
Will win our country out of tyrants hands our of plutocrats
pocketbooks....we CAN get it right back on track...because
that is where this train needs to stay...on track...a shiny new
track....steady she goes.....right Admiral..."?
13
Want white, no-college voters to vote against their interests? Just get them worked up about the "browning of America". So easy, it's hard to believe.
124
I agree. Conservative elites--aka Republicans--depend on the Midwest white poor for votes but have utter disregard for them. It's beyond hypocrisy--it's boderline facism. But the Midwest poor are either too gullible or too ill-informed or too caught up in the macho posturing of "sticking it to Washington" to realize it. Sad. I've largely given up.
87
"never admitting error or learning from it — is utterly disqualifying."
That is just too funny coming from Krugman. The problem is, I guess, Krugman thinks he is right even when facts prove him wrong.
13
As one involved in Democratic party politics, I can tell you that Krugman is wrong (again). It's what Democrats DON'T do or say that is even worse than the garbage spewed by Trump cronies. They don't show up. They don't compete. They write off huge swaths of the country (where the deplorables live). Contempt is telegraphed simply by silently ignoring voters. In many places, you can't even get a Democratic yard sign. Oh. And what the party bosses say behind closed doors is just as bad as what Trump says pubicly.
31
Does rural America read ? the eloquent comments herein might
convince a sizeable portion of the armpits of America.
As heretic as it may seem, the NEW YORK TIMES should be made
available for free.
27
For the last 3 years, many of us have descended into amateur/pop psychology to explain Trump's political appeal & electoral success. Many Americans cannot resist applying that same dubious "soft science" to explain and often ridicule the lack of political sophistication that might cause the polarization in American society. What fun! Let's continue down that theoretical rabbit hole even further. Understand that the following is analogy and is not intended, by any means, to be taken literally. Thousands of words have been written attempting to explain how the other side can be pushed to act against their own self-interest. My pop psychology interpretation, Conservatives & Republicans have taken note of the ability of jihadists to recruit suicide bombers. They have applied those same techniques to manipulating the credulous masses of middle America. Appeal to the otherwise impossible yearning for meaning & righteousness, wrap it up in tribalism and Christian mythology. Abra-cadapra! The undereducated & malnourished transform into an army of the dead, willing to say and do anything that will validate their sense of moral superiority. They are committed for life, immune to new information & impervious hardship. They remain faithful, even if there are not enough suicide vests to go around.
26
If I want to find an economist who is "always wrong" I need look no further than you Paul Krugman. You are indeed the pot calling the kettle black.
17
Seems like there is always a lot of talk about whether or not certain groups of people despise middle-American conservatives. How about the flip side of the equation? How about talking about how middle-American conservatives despise the rest of us? They are the ones going on about coastal elites and their demented ways. They are the ones sharing racist memes and laughing about it. They are the ones cheering Trump putting children in cages.They are the ones using words like "libturd" to describe those who disagree with them. How come they get to seethe with contempt but if someone dares to hate them back they are just being "elitist?"
104
You don’t like the heartland either, Paul.
20
Totally agree with Mr Krugman .
34
Sen. Rob Portman represents those "armpits" mentioned by Moore. Is he going to vote to confirm? Pittsburgh, in Moore's view, would have a similar stench to it. Does Sen. Toomey concur? Indiana has two Republican senators and surely Indianapolis can't smell any better than its similarly sized neighbors to the east. Are Sens. Blunt and Hawley going to defend St. Louis and Kansas City or not? Middle America demands an answer!
17
Mr. Krugman, let me send these words back to you from your column today. This is not to say that you have not stood firmly against him, but this passage says it in as clear a manner as possible.
“His remarks about the Midwest, however, highlight more than his unsuitability for the Fed. They also provide an illustration of something I’ve been noticing for a while: The thinly veiled contempt conservative elites feel for the middle-American voters they depend on.”
Not a single nominee for any position of consequence in this administration has stepped up to the designated task. It is exactly what all Conservatives and all Republicans have been dong and saying for a very long time. They are hypocrites of the highest order. And it has been working to gel the base that keeps them in power no matter how much they disapprove of him personally. And they have allowed you and so many others of us to be branded as the elite.
18
Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
35
One correx only, Professor Krugman, in your insightful analysis of right-wing condescension toward Middle Americans. There's no such thing as a right-wing "intellectual." That's a contradiction in terms.
23
There is real discrimination , called rural discrimination.
When was the last time an "elite collage " sent recruiters to middle america . They are always in the urban areas !
https://hechingerreport.org/a-big-reason-rural-students-never-go-to-college-colleges-dont-recruit-them/
Economic development - Most of TIF money used for job creation is centered in big Urban area
Until we give the same opportunities to rural people , as we give urban people there will be this disparity. Giving groups always brow beating / stereotyping people who live in rural and middle america
6
And, yet, they consistently and gleefully send the Trumps and McConnells and Rick Scotts of the world to Washington and the statehouses to continue grinding their hopes into the dust, blinded by their hatred of "the other." Their behavior is like setting fire to your own house in hopes of your neighbor dying of smoke inhalation.
42
Voters get the government they deserve.
15
The mainly white rural areas vote for the white party, not much more thinking goes into it.
31
"Indeed, I’m sure that some people in the heartland will take any effort to convince them that they’re being misled as just another example of liberal disrespect." Kuhn may not have been right about paradigms in science, but about politics his mesage hits the bullseye. The red heartland won't really change until the self-styled "conservatives" there die.
7
When a voter casts a ballot, is that choice more akin to matters of taste, such as coffee or tea?, mint or green tea?; or, is the choice of rulers more akin to the correct treatment of a disease such as appendicitis, where the best experts guess the correct answer using ideas they learned?
It seems that Paul Krugman views voting as the latter case, with poor Republican voters duped. Offering his expertise, he recommends his correct answers for them.
Krugman's approach has implications for our uncontrolled democracy, where people are given a vote to cast any which way, even if based on Fox News. The Basket Of Deplorables could then vote wrongly because of their racism, bigotry or ignorance.
If, on the other hand, the choice is analogous to the health example, shouldn't innovative experts, like Krugman, select the rulers, rather than allow ignorant and uncontrolled voting by the Basket of Deplorables?
Replacing uncontrolled democracy with expert democracy would have prevented the Basket of Deplorables from putting Trump on his Oval Throne.
It would have prevented Nixon and the Vietnam War, Bush and his wars, Truman and his use of nukes, and prevented slavery?
For some who still believe that the choice of rulers is just a matter of taste, don't get mad if others' tastes may be different than yours.
3
The contempt for the heartland and working people, generally, held by the current occupier of the White House and his conservative enablers is clearly manifest in the unending stream of falsehoods and whack-o conspiracy theories emanating from their mouths and from their propaganda outlets like Fox. Their Barnum-esque and firmly held belief in the gullibility if not abject ignorance of these people, and most especially of their closest adherents, propels the core notion that anything they say, not matter how outrageous or truth averse, will be accepted as gospel, literally and figuratively, and not be subject to question or even a hint of skepticism. They in fact depend on it.
13
Paul:
My sincere suggestion is to cut back on this unremitting Trump-deranged mouth froth and take a refresher course in your original specialty -- Economics. You've yet to get one economic prediction correct since I started reading your column. Today's 3.2% GDP numbers only the latest in a long string of Trump-incensed rants that blew up in your face when you've insisted the improvement on Obama's record was a short-lived "sugar high" from his tax cuts. Some other bloopers being your prediction the economy and stocks would collapse upon Trump's election, and the continual description of something called the "Trump-Putin Administration." I'm not sure what that means. Maybe the Mueller Report conclusions can clarify on this point?
In any case, you've neglected your studies and are coasting off a Nobel Prize which is old news. Nobel Prizes are good as a "sugar high" one a one-time payment of a cool $1 million; but to be consistently wrong in the markets as you've been -- any investor or trader will tell you -- is a sure road to bankruptcy. More study, more reviewing, more out-of-the-box thinking, less Trump obsession. Please!
9
Ironically, a lot of the rather cruel, elitist comments on here about the rural poor in America prove your point. Members of neither party care about them. For all the talk about privilege in liberal circles, people are pretty darn disparaging of rural people who don't have the same opportunities or access to higher education that the average NYT reader has.
14
This is such a complex issue. I’ve read the responses all day and have come to believe - it’s not a political issue.
It’s a lack of awareness on both camps.
I was raised and worked in the “armpit.” You know what you know, no matter where u live. I moved for cultural reasons but that doesn’t make me smart, just lucky.
It’s really simple - we have to find a way, politics aside, to help failing cities because ultimately it’s our responsibility. It just is.
11
I agree with Dr. Krugman almost all the time. And I agree that conservative elites despise the American heartland. But he is wrong to downplay the liberal disdain. Many liberals, myself included, do feel disdain for the heartland. Why? Because we agree with Barack Obama that "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment." And we agree with Hillary Clinton that they're a basket of deplorables", "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic." And we despise the fact that the heartland votes based on their noxious beliefs, and thus puts into office politicians whose policies are bad for almost everyone, including people in the heartland.
25
The republican strategy is simple. Tell the folks that they are for kicking immigrants out of the country (since they take jobs, that you would't perform ), keeping muslims from entering the country (since they will kill you, but much more likely from a citizen carrying a gun), climate change is a hoax (since it will take away fossil fuel jobs, but your house may be underwater or smashed by a tornado or burned by a brush fire)), keep lowering taxes (since the deficit is no big deal and will put $20 more in your pocket, but let's not mention $100000 in the ,1% pocket ), get rid of regulations (to create jobs, but forget to mention it may be lethal to your health), emphasize your God given second amendment right (not really, since the founders were not gods and there most lethal weapon was a musket, not an AK47 that can kill 50 people in 5 minutes)...meanwhile pass laws that favor the .1% and multibillion corporations.
25
Republicans have prevailed in America's heartland (i.e., small town and rural America throughout the country) for reasons that have nothing to do with economics. The remedy will not come from "information and education" about economic self interest. It will only come from the awareness of voters that they have been sold a "bill of goods" from con artists and hucksters, staples of the American landscape going back to Mark Twain and beyond. Tragically, for too many who feel trapped by circumstance, the message of bigotry, racism, xenophobia and the razzle dazzle of empty unrealized promises is just fine, thank you. Positing one more "bogeyman," such as right-wing elites) to despise is not going to work, especially when the "bogymen" (no matter how real) are the similar color and appearance and religion and have similar names as Heartland denizens. Stephen Moore and Mitch McConnell and Rupert Murdoch know that as well as anyone. If there is an "answer", it will come from people who have proven themselves time and time again by their actions where their hearts and souls really are and can speak with a voice from that heart and soul. And the so-called "rubes" in the Heartland will listen.
12
Just wondering why this "Heartland" keeps voting for Conservatives and conservative policies if they have even an inkling of just how they are being had.
9
While I agree with Mr. Krugman's insightful appraisal, I can't help but cite one example that runs counter to his narrative.
In 1989, Michael Moore released what I think was his first feature film, the documentary "Roger & Me." It could accurately be called a mockumentary; and anyone who only knew the title but hadn't seen the film might assume that the target of Moore's mockery was GM's then-CEO, Roger Smith, noted for shutting down auto plants.
And certainly Moore did target Smith and the auto industry. But what left a bad taste in my mouth when I saw the film decades ago was Moore's gratuitous, supercilious mockery of the victims of Smith's policies, the "little people" trying to scrape by in the absence of lost manufacturing jobs.
Far from evincing respect for those people, Moore treated them like buffoons, making fun of them without their realizing what he was doing to them or how they'd appear in the film.
I suspect that Moore's presentation of struggling lower-middle-class Americans as unsophisticated clowns was not lost on the conservative elitists whom Mr. Krugman identifies in this essay. It wouldn't have taken exceptional perspicacity to reckon how this attitude could be weaponized against liberals.
Moore has done a decent job of exposing corruption and hypocrisy in his subsequent films. But his own condescending hypocrisy in his first effort may have done more damage than his later films have done good.
10
For proof need look no further than the depression of 2008-10. No bankers of any type went to jail. Victims in middle America lost homes, jobs, cars, health care and credit cards.
The GOP gutted the Consumer Protection Agency and Dodd-Frank. Followed with meager tax cuts for the middle class and HUGE permanent tax favors for the wealthy. Populism is fashionable every election cycle.
23
I was wondering when people would notice that republican presidents (and republican nominees for president) all tend to live in blue states. Except Bush, who moved to Dallas, a very blue county in an otherwise very red state.
Let's admit it. No one wants to live among red state voters if they can afford not to.
18
@Robin Johns I can afford to live anywhere that I want, and I certainly don't want to live in a Democrat area. Unfortunately, for family reasons, I live in Illinois, but in a solidly red area where our town doesn't need a police department due to the fact that we have so little crime.
6
Note to Republicans, you cannot love America when you hate Americans. That is blaming Republicans does not get at the problem because they got into power through democracy. That is many Republican voters are less concerned with helping themselves then they are concerned with hurting Black people and other Americans. Only I doubt in conversations the use the term "Black people".
That is most Republican voters are other than economic voters or at least good for themselves economic voters. Or to put another way, the overwhelming support for Donald Trump by Evangelicals especially in the old Jim Crow South proves that "values" in front of the word voter is and has always been code for race.
Or as Professor Krugman wrote in an article about 15 years ago in response to George W Bush's policies and how the affluent in the North especially in suburbs were becoming more supportive of Democrats whereas the poor and less educated especially in the South and rural area were becoming more and more Republican, either poor and less educated people in the South and rural areas understand Supply Side economics better than wealthy and better educated people in the North, or something else is happening.
4
I was wondering when anyone would notice that republican presidents and nominees for president all tend to buy or build their homes in blue states. Except Bush, who moved to Dallas, a very blue county in an otherwise very red state. Let's admit it. No one wants to live among red state voters if they can afford not to.
6
@Robin Johns
Jimmy Carter is from a very rural part of a very red state.
You know, Georgia.
5
If one celebrates scamming, one will likely move to where many people or institutions are wealthy enough to be worth scamming.
Chicago will be your favorite Midwestern city despite its many problems, likely followed by state capitals (where big budgets are allocated) and places with giant universities and/or tourist attractions. Last I saw, Ohio has exactly two growing counties - the county with the city of Columbus and its neighbor to the immediate north that is still in easy commuting distance. In contrast, many other Ohio counties, and plenty of other counties, can be insulted because there's less left that's easy to extract from them.
When some people call a region a "favorite", they might really mean "best target". Conversely, insults may just mean a place is either too poor or too resilient to be worth their "efforts".
You’re on a tear, Krugman! Thank you for bringing so much clarity. A side point: I’ve been thinking about country music and the musicologists, folk musicians, and ‘60s kids who listened and helped popularize some of the older forms of music from Appalachia, the South, and the West (my favorite was the singer and dulcimer player, Jean Ritchie). My point is parallel to yours, that music from more rural states was embraced by Northern and Mid-western city kids (a southern accent became standard for all kinds of bands), and a fondness for country culture. The left should not have become the object of their hostility.
8
America's "heartland" will get the idea soon enough when Republicans get their way and move to privatize or abolish Social Security and Medicare, and others lose their Medicaid.
19
@Morgan
Democrats have been accusing Republicans of wanting to get rid of Social Security since FDR.
We both know that’s untrue.
3
I visited my brother in the suburb of Chicago called St. Charles. Somehow my brother's GPS got us the wrong direction en route to Iowa via I-88. My daughter took the initiative to use her smartphone to get us to our destination. On our way, we saw vast tracts of farmland and wind turbines in the horizon. I have not seen this part of Illinois before. The view was serene but the country roads were not I expected. Bumpy and appears not well maintained. New Jersey gets the stereotype of horrendous infra structures but that notion vanishes right out of my mind. It has decent infra structure relative to the rest of the Union.Taxes maintain this important infra structure and for the greater good. Republican ideology against taxes is jurassic and moot based on my personal experience.
5
@Uly You do realize that Illinois is a state controlled lock, stock, and barrel by Democrats, don't you?
6
This is precisely what I've been saying for years, and it's a point that the Democrats should be driving home relentlessly.
13
Paul, this is one of the most eloquent pieces you have given us. Speaking truth to power never gets old.
19
**In reality, coal mine closures have continued and the manufacturing trade deficit has widened since Trump took office.
More important, think about what will happen to troubled parts of America if Republicans manage to do what they tried to do in 2017, and impose savage cuts on Medicaid and other safety net programs.
**
And these things happened because Republicans were voted into power by the very persons most harmed by their policies. You can offer a drowning man a life preserver but you can't make him take it.
18
Just about everyone thinks that middle America is an "armpit". We get little respect.
It's interesting that Moore described both Cincinnati and Cleveland as "armpits". Both are wonderful cities with great cultural institutions, especially Cleveland. Cincinnati has one of the best children's hospitals in the country. Cleveland boasts both Cleveland Clinic and Case Western. Both cities have beautiful residential areas with lovely homes at an affordable cost. I'd happily live in either. He could easily have included St Louis in his list of maligned cities and it's one of my favorite places I've ever lived.
Yes, there are job that are never coming back and one must face that reality. Yes, middle-aged workers will have to discover new skills/interests. Thus it has always been.
What would help a lot is a little respect.
25
So in both cities, you point out their medical institutions. What will happen if republicans impose those cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to those cities and hospitals?
13
@Meighan Corbett
Those medical institutions attract patients from all over the world. They are not just local hospitals.
7
Case Western is not a medical institution, it is a university - full name: Case Western Reserve Univerity.
1
Krugman: "When it comes to politicians, of course, what they say is much less important than what they do."
Right. People, including the press, focus too much on cheap talk.
9
I live in WV, and here, many of the more comfortable and established have an unapologetic dislike of the underclass, which is large and stuffed with problems. “Yes!”, in the widespread establishment view, it is the fault of the people in the underclass that they suffer as they do.
The better off strata largely would like nothing better than losing that underclass, which they see as undeserving free loaders. Cutting federal and state social benefits is a popular idea. “The Devil take the hindmost.” is a traditional outlook.
15
Having grown up in the heartland, an area of Illinois where folks were primarily dependent upon farming, coal mining, and small manufacturing operations for employment, this article struck a chord with me.
The mining and manufacturing jobs went away, os many moved to larger urban area, such as Chicago and St. Louis, for employment. Others knew they needed to move on after high school graduation, so they joined the military, or went to college, or moved to an urban area as soon as they completed high school, which was about the size of the school in the movie "Hoosiers"; and the folks in my hometown were as crazy about high school basketball as those in the small town in Indiana where Hoosiers was filmed.
But many of my friends were liberals, coming from families that revered FDR and Harry Truman, political leader that faithfully supported labor unions and the living wage won via collective bargaining. These folks grew up with the mentality of the powerful leader of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, who once noted at the bargaining table that the powerful captains of industry manifested "antisocial and niggardly propensities" that worked against advancing the public/common good.
Now, I am puzzled as to why many of those still living in rural areas believe that the Republicans will deliver them from impoverishment. Republicans have never supported programs that can deliver from poverty, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and collective bargaining.
41
@Robert Stewart: Trump irritates all the right people.
@JoeM: I agree with everything you stated except for your last sentence. I don't want to be them, I want us to be better.
1
"But all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth."
Told the truth?
Would that include the fact that while "social justice" liberals like Judge Roth all but destroyed the Detroit Public School system with his busing schemes, cities like New York were immune from such schemes.
When Elizabeth Warren continually foists her "whites are privileged" line, many white folks that I grew up with saw none of the imagined inter-generational wealth from real estate that Warren dreams up.
My family stayed in Detroit until our neighborhood became a virtual war zone. The war was waged by a fair number of its residents.
The resultant real estate wealth social justice advocates image my family gained? It's currently assessed at $102.
But we've done ok. My family has moved from the bottom 20% of the financial ladder to the top 10%. A tour of duty in Vietnam and I qualified for the GI Bill - not the WW2 GI BIll. African-Americans had the the same opportunity so save the Atlantic Monthly article.
Save the outrage over the "liberal elitist" label. It's more like liberal hypocrite. How goes the desegregation of NYC public schools? Just asking.
And there's no dog whistle to it.
15
@Jp: I've certainly heard this before, "well I'm white and I was never handed anything." That's certainly true for many and probably most whites. But there is a distinct difference when compared to a class of people who not only were never handed anything, but for their entire existence in this country have been marginalized. With a range of treatment spanning from enslaved to denied basic civil rights and opportunities. If you want to measure people equally, to ignore that added burden on people is to be fooling yourself. If it makes you feel better about your success, fine. But I think you are missing something.
I don't think liberals are hypocrites because they can't fix everything right away. They are generally reaching for humane ways to solve social problems. The segregation in NYC schools shows that even in what I imagine is the most liberal (and most dynamic and most visited) big city in this country, it's still incredibly difficult to fix some real world problems. It definitely doesn't mean that liberalism is for failures or hypocrites.
14
People who are scared are far less likely to think rationally. Democrats would be wise to actually go to middle America, volunteer when there is a natural disaster, and really pay attention to communities who are rebuilding.
Show people that you care, not just generally, but about them.
8
I love listening to people whose spouses are nurses, medical coders, drug counselors, teachers, and police officers--or who are themselves--talking about how much money government spends. Meanwhile, their wages--paid by government funds--keep trickling out into the communities they live in because their jobs are middle class and at least for now relatively stable.
12
@Wanda
Yep, as a retired teacher with an adequate income; I often tell more conservative (yes, there are some in so cal) peers how we are all living well off tax dollars. They never know quite how to respond!
7
There is no party that represents middle America. Not the Democrats, and certainly not the Republicans. Keep on thinking we are uneducated and ignorant but the swing states are here because we know neither party cares. 99% of politicians are in it for themselves not to serve us. They become millionaires on a public servants salary.
371
@Lillijag No party should represent only one segment of America. Between Democrat and Republican, the former actually includes such representation operationally more than the latter, while the latter fakes it more. Republican conservatives, at least nominally, favor undiluted capitalism, which essentially says if you can't make it in the economy, it's on you: too bad.
And keep railing about politicians, ignoring the fact that they're only in power because we vote for them. Most of them scamming swing states have been in office for multiple terms. Voter turnout in America is one of the lowest in the industrialized world. Thus, nothing will change until voters initiate it.
183
@Lillijag The air of resentment in your post is palpable. "Politicians" do not exist as a class of people, and such a small class (if it existed) couldn't have maliciously caused nor sagely avoided the economic cratering occurring in manufacturing areas of the country. Who has sympathy for someone so vocally disappointed a savior hasn't come along and designed and guaranteed a pathway for a better life? Not many.
82
@Lillijag
Sorry you feel that way. please take a few minutes to look over Elizabeth Warren's proposals and personal story on her web site. then you can decide which party represents the heartland's best interests.
204
1) I am not a Republican
2) I did not vote for Trump
3) I grew up in rural Missouri but no longer live there (lot's of family still).
It is going to be very, very hard for Democrat's to get past the Barrack Obama quote below. It was neither out of context nor unclear in anyway. Because it was in an unguarded moment many of the folks "back home" view this as what Democrats "really" think and not the typical stuff "they say" to get elected.
"They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Good luck on getting folks to forget that one.
11
@Bob mostly because it's true.
They are ignorant of everything but hatred. How dare he get it right
37
@Bob: The question would be, do people still remember one bit of politically incorrect commentary from all those years back? And is there anything to say about self awareness here? Presumably there are some with no special interest in guns or religion, and no antipathy to others not like them, but they might recognize the family down the road. And others might recognize themselves, but wonder why he says that as if those were bad things... there's a lot more to it than just getting folks to forget it.
9
not sure why anyone would have to get by "that one". it sounds like an honest explanation of the problem.
35
Please note it was reported today that 17 students at Cincinnati's Walnut Hills High School just received perfect scores on their ACT. This is a public school currently ranked 47 in US News & World Report ranking of all Secondary schools in the United States. These "armpits of America" produce well-educated, well-rounded people.
The school is a symbol of what is right in America —providing opportunity for students from a diverse population, ranging across a full spectrum of economic backgrounds. The students select from scores of AP courses and students from last year's class were admitted to every Ivy League school.
Stephen Moore does not know what he is talking about. This is another example of his ignorance. There is hope in the heartland. We need leaders with vision and respect for the successes of the Midwest. We must demand leaders that can adapt best practices and roll them out across the broader region.
Even though I have lived in NYC for 40 years, I am still proud of being from Cincinnati and Walnut Hills. Sursum ad Summum!
25
Don’t forget about the sickness and deaths caused by industrial pollution so prevalent in the northcentral and northeastern areas of our country. Air and water pollution kills, and much of it comes from fossil fuel energy production. Death by coal mining is legendary. Republican deregulation and economic policies contribute to this assault on people’s health and safety.
15
@Pollution Kills haven't you heard? Pollution is good for you!
In the air, in the ground water, in the soil itself,all that good old american american industrial waste.
With smart the people in leaving the midwest seeking opportunity who is left but the goobers?
Are they insulted when you tell the truth about them, they love lies that tell them otherwise
2
Just a comment on the picture accompanying the article:
I don't necessarily see sadness in the abandoned gas station, I see thriving native plants reclaiming the land. The people in these areas may have lost some industry, but they still live in a beautiful area of the country. As the country becomes more and more crowded and urban, rural areas such as this will become more cherished. There is richness there that can be exploited by a smaller population.
12
@Treetop: That is a great potential resource, both in terms of ecological preservation, and as a kind of local economy of hospitality and recreation can thrive, providing access to sports, hiking trails, scenic landscapes and other forms of enjoyment of nature. It takes some management, but it can work.
1
As a number of comments have noted, the elites of both parties disdain less educated white Americans. For 50 years the Republicans have told them, with some truth, that mandarin class Democrats see them as ignorant, racist, superstitious, overweight, gas guzzling proles stubbornly resistant to moral uplift. For that same 50 years, as Krugman notes, owner-manager class Republicans have hidden behind salt-of-the-earth publicists like Peggy Noonan while seeing the base of their party as no more than replaceable units of labor and gullible customers.
14
@JackCerf: I think the "elites" of both political parties disdain the US public.
7
Moreover, they only care about voters when they need your votes..
4
For 50 years? Really?
Going clear back to the deliberately segregated South which was firmly under control by the likes of George Wallace and the Democratic party?
What's next?
Repuplican Abraham Lincoln was a white supremist?
4
Someone could write a song: "C-O-N-T-E-MP-T, find out what it means to me." Any SNL folks out there? Sock it to me!"
5
If Cleveland is an "armpit" city then I have to admit some of our cherished institutions such as The Cleveland Clinic, Museum of Art and Orchestra smell pretty good to me
25
As a life long Democrat and native Nebraskan, Mr. Krugman couldn't be more spot on. For a deeper dive into the $8.00 an hour Republican phenomenon read Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas." That being said, the GOP trots out issues like gay marriage, abortion & gun ownership to get all the rubes worked up so they'll vote against their own economic self interest. And if you draw em a chart, try to explain their being hoodwinked, they'll hear none of it...
33
Economic problems in rural areas could be partially resolved with the establishment of a national high-speed train system allowing rural citizens (including reservations) to commute to urban areas for jobs.
Where is the action on infrastructure to bolster the national economy?
This concept is difficult to comprehend, but I now believe that approximately 50% of the U.S. population is comprised of malignant narcissists who literally thrive on cruelty and the suffering of their fellow citizens. The lack of universal healthcare in the USA alone in the 21st Century demonstrates serious, planned, malicious intent.
18
I am late to this conversation but Paul Krugman is spot on. Do conservative intellectuals care about the white working class? Of course not. Traditionally, blue collar whites have voted their economic interests in the Democratic Party. It took a smart guy like Newt Gingrich to discover that by using racism as a weapon to demonize liberals he could flip this population to the Republican Party. And White racism has fueled the rise of the modern Republican party giving it control of the House and Senate when in earlier times they could only dream of majority control.
Republican elites are very satisfied with their crew of hedge fund and investment banking people, billionaire entrepeneurs of one stripe or another that allows them to live in mansions and on big yachts they take all around the world along with those really nice luxury private airliners. They can do all of this with their control of tens of millions of working stiffs, indoctrinating them with the latest versions of Republican inspired racism, and homages to gun rights, pro natalism and general assaults on the public sector from education to the environment. It is all an illusion which they sell like an opiod to their followers. Stephen Moore is simply exhibit A for all of this. Like his boss, he is a disgrace in every sense of the word.
21
Thank you! I've thought this for so long. My conservative friends are constantly talking about how the arugula-loving snowflakes laugh and look down on "real Americans,' but I have rarely, if ever, seen derision or contempt among the Left. Contrast that with conservative elites who are all about tax cuts for the wealthy and then decimating entitlements which help the Red States more than the Left. Fox doesn't tell you that, though, so people in the middle of the country think the GOP is their friend.
21
In my opinion, capitalism without a robust social component providing the ever-increasing expense of social institutions is the problem.
The Boeing CEO receives $65 million a year for ruining a once great American company. Is anyone worth that kind of money? Jesus had no roof over his head let alone $65 million salaries with mansions and yachts on which to waste that money.
Give the struggling Eastern Heartland healthcare, affordable education, and a rebuilt and maintained infrastructure and that will go a long way to make American lives better.
I know Trump supporters here who only watch Fox news and thus remain ignorant of their own best interest. Is there any hope for an uneducated electorate?
11
@Truthseeker: Lavish corporate salaries can come with substantial commitments to make political contributions.
3
The Heartland institute aggressively promotes denial of climate change. Not an accident that Moore gave this speech at an event there. The Midwest is being hit hard right now by floods that were made worse by climate change. Droughts will probably follow sooner rather than later, also related to climate change. Climate change is another hard and inconvenient truth that right wing elitists work diligently to suppress, even as they are spending huge amounts of money to build gated survival retreats in New Zealand for themselves.
16
The contempt has more to do with education than ideology. Educated people, whether they lean Republican or Democrat, tend to look down on the uneducated. Educated people of both stripes view those with less education as in need of fixing, of improvement, of change. No surprise there is contempt coming from right-wing intellectuals, who will justify it on the grounds of their pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps-you-lazy-takers ideology. But there is definitely contempt for the uneducated on the left, too, especially the uneducated and religious. Neither political camp recognizes that in no society ever will all people be highly educated "symbolic analysts," and what is really needed is to figure out how many people can have a decent standard of living without extensive education. We will always need people to clean toilets, serve food, pick up the trash, take care of the elderly. Both left and right believe in a fallacy that everyone can earn their way into a high-paying job.
4
Count me as one of those people who believe that if the work dries up one should move to where one can support the family that you chose to have. There is no work in the hollers and rural forests where jobs are long gone. Like our ancestors, folks need to move where there is opportunity. And, there is almost no opportunity left in the Heartland. Folks just have to move. Sorry.
Instead, drug infested havens of alcohol abuse filled with angry white folks persist and continue to derive about half of their income from the largess of the highest earners in our economy who pay almost all of the taxes to support them. These communities still exist ONLY because places like NY, NJ, CA, CT and Metro DC supply the money for their jobs and their food stamps.
Enough.
5
@Bo
You're talking about Act II. In Act I liberals and conservatives/moderates conspired to hand Midwest jobs over to foreign producers (NAFTA, WTO) via Free Trade. Also known as Globalization. Uncompensated Free Trade, so that the gain to trade has come mainly to the new industries on the Blue Coasts.
That is, my NJ friend, the money you begrudge Midwesterners came to you from them via the Blue State welfare program called Globalization.
2
@BNS
But Chicago is awful for a significant chunk of its population and the rest of the metropolitan area is overrated as well.
The Democrats desperately need to catch up to Republicans when it comes to propaganda and brand management. Republicans have a good chunk of the country convinced that Democrats and Liberals are elitists who don't care about the working poor--and somehow convince these people that a billionaire from NYC cares more about them than any Democratic candidate could. It boggles the mind. Dems need a crash course in public relations, and soon!
10
I'm afraid it's worse than just needing a crash course in PR, I'm afraid it's something about the messages themselves. There's something appalling about how easily the whole Fox/Trump demagoguery catches on. And as liberals, we can't just create an opposing hate-machine railing against the Right wing elites. Actually we kind of have some of that going on, but is it really helping? I'm afraid that was what produced the Sanders/Trump voters. Most of us are stuck being honest and talking about real difficulties. Bummer.
2
Trump tries to install government by the greedy and the worst.
All of this is characteristic of the authoritarian, anti-democratic regime we have become. At least the Chinese are competently administered. Professor Krugman and others should devote themselves to preventing a future Trump dictatorship. It appears close now. Lets hope the military doesn't stand for a coup.
7
I used to have a friend who lived on fifth avenue. She was the wife of an art dealer.
She admired my talent and liked me in many ways, but every now and then if I said something particularly cogent or insightful she would ask again , "And you're from where?" When I would say the name of the town she would laugh out loud. She didn't find herself in the least insulting. I did.
She was the most ardent liberal democrat you'll ever meet.
I'm sorry but there are no good guys in this story.
Both the Republican and the Democratic elite are ignorant and arrogant when it comes to who lives in flyover country and what their lives and achievements are. They lie to them every election cycle and then they snicker at how easy it is to fool them.
Our bi-partisan east coast Ivy league educated elite really is every bit as despicable as they are made out to be — just ask them. they're not in the least ashamed of blaming victims or parting a fool from his money.
Our's is an Empire not a Republic, the Roman Imperial Family used to tour Gaul and Spain to collect expensive gifts from those seeking their favor. Then they would squander the loot on enormous decadent parties back home in what they considered the only real city in the world. Nothing much has changed.
10
Paul Krugman is not entirely fair to Charles Murray. Of course, few liberals are. After all, Murray had the temerity to write, "the Bell Curve," which suggested that blacks had lower IQ's than whites. Now he has trouble speaking on college campuses.
But I do believe that Murray has a right to be heard. And I did read his book on poverty in white America, which he does indeed blame on the breakup of family values, including marriage as a way of protecting the lives of chldren.
He doesn't talk down about the poor as Krugman suggests.
Krugman's essay is an example of the ad hominem arguments that liberals often use to slander conservative writers, which unfortunately leads to a substantial fraction of Americans doubting the NY Times even when it publishes articles which are factually correct.
Make no mistake. Stephen Moore is uniquely unqualified to be on the Board of Governors. His experience is in political activism, not economics. He received an MA from George Mason University, but that's not enough.
It may be as Paul Romer suggests in his essay, "the Trouble with Macroeconomics," that macroeconomics is fatally flawed, that the predictions of the models are not reliable. Nevertheless, we need to do the best we can in determining Fed policy. That requires people who are conversant with the flawed models to make the very best choices possible.
And no, President Trump should not try to politicize the Fed. On that point I fully agree with Krugman.
4
@Jake Wagner
I gather you are not a scientist, or not a very good one.
The problem with Murray is not what he said, though that is understandably unpopular.
The problem is they way he said it or, more particularly, the pretend science he used to support it.
He didn't just massage the data, he took it to a parlor and bought it the whole treatment.
Unless you persist in the belief black people are inherently less intelligent, socially less worthy, and biologically incapable of behaving responsibly, I fail to see how you missed all that.
Nowadays he is a professional martyr and fanboy of the Right.
Of course he has a right to be heard. We have, equally, the right to dismiss him as the faker he has shown himself to be.
29
@Jake Wagner I’ve seen Charles Murray speak at Brown University on Parents weekend 2013 as part of his speaking/press tour for Coming Apart. There were no protests of his speaking there. I’m the black high achieving mother of a black child who got a 35 on his ACTs, a 2290 on his SATs, a full IB diploma as well as 7 fives on his AP tests. Part of the reason I have to say all of those things about my exemplary and hard working child has to do with the Bell Curve. So before I could get to my point I had to explain why both I and my child deserve investment and opportunity in this country of my birth. Because that was part of the point of the Bell Curve. It was his “scientific” argument why we couldn’t EVER do enough to invest in black and brown people and so we shouldn’t even try.
When the audience was allowed to ask questions I heard Murray with my own ears say that these whites weren’t worth saving and produced no value in our country. It was stunning in its dismissiveness and the way he talked about the poor whites in his book. He said they produced nothing of value and nothing should be done to lift them up. I was in the audience. Krugman has it EXACTLY right.
He talks down about ANYBODY who might need investment. He started with blacks and would appear in front of congress to argue why education would never lift us up. And, now he’s using the same arguments about poor rural whites. And that is evident from Murray's writing and speaking.
15
I think the conservative evangelicals of the rural heartlands have a hard time with change. Today’s world is constantly changing. New knowledge, new technologies, changing values. The mind has to be nimble and ones skills constantly upgraded. Their biblical viewpoint can get in the way. Urban youth is surrounded with change and can better cope with it. The conservatism of the republicans is not much helpful it improving the economies of rural America. Trump talks of bringing back coal and industries that are now more automated. Unless they are more willing to adapt,not much change will happen.
6
I'll continue to pound the table that poor economic choices led to the decline of the heartland, most of which began under Bill Clinton. First was (predatory) "free trade" with China, which shuddered thousands of factories, followed by the death knell that was NAFTA. Making our workers, who were very good and very productive, compete with slave wages and non-existent OSHA requirements in the 3rd world. We let these go for nothing in return, choosing instead to open Walmart Supercenters in every town to sell us back the things we no longer make. The whole episode was foolish and shortsighted and, sadly, initiated by Democrats. I know economists like to blame "automation", as if factories now consist of 1000's of robots, and a half dozen people. Baloney. Go visit a real factory in the US and you'll see a full parking lot, nice cars, lots of well paid employees, and at most places, barely a robot anywhere in sight. As Elon Musk just found out the hard way, "people are underrated".
11
@Steve Yes, Bill Clinton was a DLC conservative Democrat who signed NAFTA. But it's not fair to say "initiated by Democrats." NAFTA was an idea started by Ronald Reagan, with George H.W. Bush also negotiating. Clinton added protections for labor and the environment. And which party most opposed NAFTA? Yes, it was the Democrats (Nay votes: 156(D) to 43(R) in the House and 28(D) to 10(R) in the Senate).
23
Professor, I think you are glossing over the big point. Republicans are the party of white people and at least in many people's (ill-informed) minds, Democrats are the party of the black and brown. Economic issues are simply a canard to justify this behavior.
7
Many of these states consistently elect Republican governors and state legislators, yet they continue to blame Democrats for their woes.
15
Can you please tell me why the people in the heartland consistently vote against themselves/best interests in extraordinary ways?
10
Because they are willing to suffer any indignity, even voting in on themselves , if doing so promises to make someone they perceive as “beneath them”, even more miserable.
12
@BBH Unfortunately. This.
2
I don't interpret things as the Professor Krugman does.
Before launching into my particular rant, let me fly my relevant flags. I am not conservative. I am more or less a Fabianist, and I am thrilled that my party has started showing some spine and stopped drifting ever rightward, which it has since 1970 or so. I would love to embrace Krugman's analysis, but I have to be honest.
I don't believe that conservatives hate the heartland.
If I take them at their word, I have to accept that at one level, they don't believe that government can help people in need. It is conservative doctrine that values matter, and if you have the correct values, all else will take care of itself.
I think that's bunk, but there ya have it.
Conservatives behave in a fairly consistent manner--they believe that government cannot work, and they consider it a good thing to hobble government, thus proving that government cannot work. The do not wish to do away with welfare for the heartland, they wish to do away with welfare for everyone.
At a more cynical level (a more realistic level) there are essentially two classes of Republicans--there are the Wall Street machers who steer the party, and there are the voter fodder, who largely respond to the GOP's loss-leader issues, for instance, God, guns, and gays.
The real agenda of the party machers is tax cuts for the fabulously wealthy, and business deregulation. And, indeed, those are the issues the GOP actually delivers on.
7
@Bill Morris
"Conservatives behave in a fairly consistent manner--they believe that government cannot work, and they consider it a good thing to hobble government, thus proving that government cannot work." Except when it comes to women's bodies and everyone's sexuality. Then conservatives think government can and will tell adults who they can have sex with and women that they have no control over their own body.
7
Once you understand that the GOP epitomizes a "kiss up/kick down" ideology, their entire partisan enterprise falls into place.
Pamper the privileged, enrich the rich, protect the powerful -- hinder the vulnerable, impoverish the poor, and attack the weak. That's squarely how the GOP operates these days.
And, above all else, lie about it, and hope voters don't catch on. Their attacks on our electoral politics is a reaction to that, as well -- if people do catch on, they're doomed at the polls, so, rather than deviating from Kiss Up/Kick Down, the GOP attacks voting, itself.
7
You have caught a big, multidimensional truth there. People who subscribe to some variant of "kiss up, kick down" in whatever context -- family, workplace, politics, international affairs -- contribute to a depressing atmosphere wherever they are. In public affairs it becomes especially pernicious. But it leads to hypocrisy everywhere.
1
What happened to the heartland? Republican gerrymandering. With complete focus on undermining the vote, the Republican party managed to take over state governments. What did they sell that made them so appealing? The drip, drip, drip mantra of Government is taking your freedom. They (dems) want to force you to accept people of color as equals. That is how it began and deteriorated from there.
Once in power, it was cut, cut, cut. The sales pitch was government is stealing your money by forcing you to pay taxes. These social programs help the people of color and it is your money doing it.
Then it was you don't need unions. they are forcing you to pay union dues and they are all in league with the man spending your money on fancy trips and big houses. You should have the freedom to choose who bosses you. And anyway, Dems want to put your employer out of business with their useless regulations and the Dems are in bed with the unions. The Republican party cares about you, not those elites who think they know what is goof for you.
Krugman is absolutely correct when he says that Republicans took their own malfeasance and stuck the label on the Dems. The Dems were left flat-footed because the 60s and 70s were turbulent and at times scary years particularly for people who were far from the positive examples of progressive ideas. Looking from outside, it seemed chaotic and alien.
Reps have not stopped using our fears against us. Do flat-footed Dems have a plan this time around?
13
I do not understand the notion that people
ought to just get up and move to wear the jobs are.
If you are barely making it, you probably have less
than $ 1,000 in saving.
That will not pay first month/last month/security deposit/
turn on gas and water and get you any new/used furniture
at your new studio apartment.
So how is a person supposed to move to the City ?
23
On a recent road trip to Mississippi we went through the Ozarks in Southeastern Missouri. It made Mississippi and Alabama look pretty prosperous. I don't shock easily but I've never seen such abject poverty and horrible conditions. Rotting houses, garbage piled everywhere. And the land itself was beautiful. I don't know what the background to this is but wow, it was unbelievable
11
While your observations are valid, that area isn't part of the Ozarks. While the term sometimes includes parts of central Missouri (mainly for marketing purposes) the Ozarks proper exists in Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas,on our near the Ozark Plateau.
3
All Americans deserve the truth? I don’t think so. If we reward liars, we deserve lies.
In 2016, voters in the swing states were presented with a choice: on the one hand, you had an experienced, policy-oriented candidate who offered specific plans to address job training, healthcare access and other problems facing rural America; on the other, a reality show entertainer who offered lies about bringing back coal and building a wall that Mexico would pay for. They chose the lies.
Over the past couple years, this administration has unleashed an unprecedented blizzard of lies—so many that the media has essentially given up trying to respond. Once, it was a big deal when the president got caught in a lie. Now, it happens just about every day. Trump has lied about everything from the size of the crowd at his inauguration to his business deals in Russia to his porn star pay-offs to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with “something great." And what price has he paid?
If there's anything we can learn from Trump, it is that people prefer a good lie to the hard truth. Democrats might as well campaign accordingly.
10
Paul Krugman nails it again. He is a national treasure. Thank God for a free press.
15
The trend toward urban areas and away from rural areas has been going on for generations.
Coal jobs have been declining due to the markets preference for Natural Gas, robots are making factory jobs obsolete in many more cases than factories going overseas but to offset those gains knowledge based jobs are on the increase.
Why can’t these people in the heartland pick themselves up by the bootstraps instead of complaining about it and using drugs and alcohol? Instead they rely on welfare and live in states that soak up more Federal money than they send to Washington.
Oh –wait. This article is about WHITES in the heartland not inner city African Americans?
I’m sorry – we must have open up a “dialogue” to hear about their victimization by people of color and undocumented immigrants.
Scratch that whole bootstrap talk. It doesn’t apply to them.
7
It's darn hard to shake off incorrect thinking like denial and delusion. To do so, you have to admit you were wrong....and that's a slippery slope: 'If I'm wrong about that, will my friends still like me? And worse, If I'm wrong about that, what else am I wrong about?'
It's just too much self-honesty for many.
5
Like a previous writer talking about Washington, Illinois is also split between a conservative rural vote and liberal urban vote. Chicago gets about $0.80 on the dollar for each tax dollar. Most of suburban Chicago, which has voted reliably democrat in the Trump era, gets back maybe $0.30 on the dollar. Yet the conservative rural voter of Illinois does not believe it. He has been fed with a racist line about Chicago, and white supremacists are nearly elected in some districts (as in Iowa). It's hard to believe anything can wake up these voters, raised on the Fox News propaganda network. Certainly the contempt of their donor class feeds their insecurity. They live in a cycle of failure and blame, depression and hate. No wonder they are vulnerable to propaganda, opioids, and suicide.
5
I have wondered how people could so entirely misunderstand that they are being condescended to, exploited, dismissed and betrayed by a bunch of power hungry, often angry, often rich, white men who boldly espouse both misogyny and racism, among other delightful characteristics is making every effort to ruin their lives, and instead swallow the lie that it's the people who are keeping them alive with food stamps and welfare and social security who are the enemy. It beggars belief.
8
I'm a New York Democrat and have to admit to contempt for some people in the Midwest, specifically Trump voters who based their votes on "sticking it to the libs." Hillary's "basket of deplorables" is real. But despite my contempt, what I wish for them is financial security, access to healthcare, a good education, continued social services, a safe environment and honest government.
What do they wish for me?
18
Conservative elites may have contempt for working-class whites, but liberal elites despise them. As proof, I offer two words: Archie Bunker. Liberal Norman Lear's creation was and remains (to those with long memories) the epitome of the "angry white male." Liberals' have never forgiven "Reagan Democrats"--a political trend that began in the 1980s. Liberals deny working-class whites have been badly hurt by cheap immigrant labor and also affirmative action quotas. Then there's the problem that working-class whites are not "woke" and won't confess their "white privilege."
7
@FrederickRLynch
Yes. My Dad wasn’t a Reagan Democrat more like a liberal but I simply cannot talk politics with him because he refuses to believe how nasty and destructive most liberals are towards whites who struggle.
2
As another commenter said, people can be disgusted by rural and small town voters and their attitudes, but still wish them things like healthcare, economic security, and happiness. I still suffer from my upbringing as a gay man in Arkansas, and I resent that such a culture robbed me of a close family and a stable mental health. I still want them to have what I wish for myself and other Americans. Yet I'm told by those people that I'm not a "real American", anti-American, a Communist, and that I should be imprisoned or dead, or rot in hell. Nevermind the endless lies and slander right-wing media feeds them. To many, if not most, of them I don't count at best and should be eradicated at worst.
7
That's why it so important for companies like Amazon to open new facilities in jack water towns.. If you build it they will come! And cities will spawn and thrive becuase of it!
The fact Amazon even considered New York was ridiculous. Trust me.. the L.A. New York and Chicago liberals are dying to get out of the city .. But there is no cosmopolitan capital investment in rural states. It really doesn't require more than a Starbucks, Home Depot, a dog park and a few "farm to table" restaurants .. Build it- announce on Snapchat- and the college educated liberals will migrate there in droves.
5
Dr. K. Will you agree to serve as Secretary of Labor or Secretary of the Treasury or as Chairman of the Fed in a Democratic administration? I’d love to see you and former Secretary of Labor Rubin together in the cabinet of President WarrenHarris...........
1
Mr. Krugman,
Very insightful opinion piece as always. I just want to mention an impression I have gotten from Steven Moore only from watching him on " The Bill Maher Show" on HBO. He has been a guest on that show numerous times and always comes across as a "know it all" pain in the behind. He is not generous with the panel of guests he appears with, and acts like his opinion is the only thing that matters. He laughs at his own statements excessively, and when he makes stupid remarks that are hurtful, he pawns it off like a joke. " I'm only kidding". I would not like to have him as a co-worker, because he appears to be, " A phony".
6
The liberals' reputation for overt condescension has been hard to shake.
3
So has the well earned reputation of rural conservatives for anti-intellectualism and willful ignorance, often reinforced by their religious affiliations.
4
Can't prove a negative ("liberals don't hate America") particularly with the Republican/Fox propaganda team poisoning people's minds 24/7 appealing to their fears and playing the abortion / immigration / socialism cards. How can reasonable people who don't lie for a living overcome this?
5
"The crowd laughed."
At least THEY got the joke.
3
“If you live in the Midwest, where else do you want to live besides Chicago? You don’t want to live in Cincinnati or Cleveland or, you know, these armpits of America.”
Moore just shows his parochial ignorance, figuratively still living in his UI frat house. Having lived in suburbs of both Cleveland and Chicago, Cleveland wins, hands down.
9
Paul Krugman: " . . .. something I’ve been noticing for a while: The thinly veiled contempt conservative elites feel for the middle-American voters they depend on."
I got it, finally, thank you, Mr. Krugman. The NYT wants Pres. Trump to win, they really do, instead of Bernie or Joe, because as any addict will tell you, "the devil you know is . .. "
2
We should cut the red states off. As a liberal, I am sick and tired of being villified and rhetorically spat upon by the very people I try to help.
You don't want my help, fine? Want to blame me for your failures? Fine. Then, live with the mess you won't help yourself get out of.
9
sadly institutional memory doesn't last forever. if it weren't for FDR and the Democratic party another "Grapes of Wrath" could have been written, but not with hope at the end. and if memory serves, those life saving, family saving actions were fought tooth and nail by the Rep party.
3
Isn't Paul Krugman being a bit unfair to Stephen Moore?
Moore has had a long and distinguished career as a a hypocrite, a liar, a bigot, a scofflaw, an oppressive (and deadbeat) husband), a scofflaw, and so stupid about economics that in a sane society he'd be taught how to use a broom so he could do useful work.
How is he not perfect for the Trump administration?
17
LBJ had it right decades ago" "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
20
In 2018 billionaires around the world saw their wealth grow by $2.5 billion a day while the poorest saw their wealth fall. It's not rural vs. urban...that issue is increasing wealth and opportunity disparity.
7
@Basic
Capitalism needs repair
1
"Truth is like poetry, most people hate poetry." J.D. Vance described a cognitive dissonance where the people that rely heavily on government programs resent the government for "failing them". The fact that so many West Virginians rely on Medicaid creates simultaneous resentment and reliance on the program and the entity that provides the aid. The people are too proud to accept the need for retraining and assistance and the lie that the destruction of a way of life is all do to elites, not economic forces, is very attractive. How do you convince people with poor critical thought skills to think critically?
The young flee to the cities for economic opportunity but do not vote in large numbers. The older generation sits, bitter and angry, reading their bibles and cleaning their guns, most importantly they vote. Conservatives understand this dynamic and exploit it. Liberals wring their hands and write comments in the Times and the Post and wonder why this is happening.
7
Those in the heartland may not get the government they deserve....but they're getton the one they wanted.
Okay, I should be ashamed I said that. I grew up in the heartland, went to a one-room country school in the heartland, went to college in the heartland. Yet I was one of, maybe, three or four people from the heartland to vote for George McGovern.
I still visit (briefly) the heartland. They're friendly, nice, wholesome, honest people. They're stubborn, too. And true believers who think things will be better when all the experts have been purged and the deep state conspiracy finally collapses. Only the harshest of realities can nudge them from the path to economic perdition. So I guess our president is working on it.
7
"But all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth."
That may well be true but the fact is most people would prefer to hear a fantasy narrative that appeals to them than one that is true but offers little hope and a lot of grim news. This is eminently true when it comes to religion and its many fables and is certainly true with the whole MAGA narrative about recalling the halcyon days of American industrial power.
Debating which party holds rural America in greater contempt is not really doing anyone any good. But if the Dems are going to recapture the disadvantaged of America then they need to come up with not only a plan to help the parts of middle America that have been left behind, but a narrative that makes it more appealing than the lie being peddled by Trump.
5
Think positively. Be thankful that all those rural folks are willing to give up federal benefits like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid so that the wealthy and folks in the cities can live a better life. It is not a lack of critical thinking skills, but a heartfelt belief that electing Trump Republicans will accelerate the wealth displacement and at least help a few people prosper beyond all belief.
7
I live in a very rural part of Colorado. In the 1970s we had continuous miles and miles of farms between us and the county seat. Now it is just empty fields. Coal mining held on until a few years ago when the fracking innovation dropped the price of natural gas through the floor and ended the demand for coal. Now instead of 5 to 10 coal trains per day, we have 4 or 5 per week. The economy in our county now consists of providing services to retired people in their 60s and 70s, local government services, and minimum wage CNAs providing home care or nursing home care to the older retired. As we say around here, "the young people with get up and go, got up and left." There is no economic productivity left. The success of our children and grandchildren in work and school increased by magnitudes as they left for Denver or out of state. They return for the holidays because we live in a very beautiful part of the state and it is home, but they can't support themselves here. We still consider this home, but my wife works 300 miles away because we couldn't afford the 50% pay cut if she took a job close to home. The country and the world is in transition to a new economy as different as the industrial revolution. We won't be around to see the results when things stabilize, but we are emphasizing education and flexibility to the grandchildren.
10
"White ghetto" states the conservative viewpoint exactly. Let's recall that they considered the social disfunction of the black ghetto in the 1960s as the result of black moral collapse rather than the disappearance of industrial work for black men. They are taking the identical postion about the white working class in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Let's recall that in respectable white Southern usage, "white trash" mean a lower class white person who was no better than a black.
7
The "mysterious collapse in morality and family values" that conservatives like to talk about serves them in two ways.
As policy, it lets them paint the heartland as a ghetto of mooching layabouts who deserve to be subjected to punitive austerity measures that will supposedly spur them towards self-reliance. We've seen this with the complicated and confusing system of work requirements the Trump administration attached to Medicaid, which caused 18,000 people to lose their benefits in Arkansas alone.
As propaganda however, it functions to paint coastal cities and their so-called "elites" as the Sodomites that have led America away from God and family and into a steep moral decline. The heartland isn't falling apart because of real economic issues, but because godless liberals have outlawed prayer in public schools, forced the "homosexual agenda" on the nation, made a mockery of marriage and inflicted a holocaust on countless unborn babies. Liberalism is a rot that has undermined and destroyed once-vibrant heartland families, communities and entire way of life.
So conservatives get to have it both ways -- they use the decline of the heartland to push through cruel policies that inflict real harm on these communities--and on the country as a whole--while also using it to convince these people to keep voting Republican. It's an amazing trick, and one that Republicans are, unfortunately, terribly good at.
9
It constantly shocks me that if you promote hatred, bigotry, white supremacy and a Christian outlook you can dupe people into anything. These people will think gays and immigrants were destroying their lives up until the point they die on the streets. Sad.
13
The urban/rural split in opportunities is the same all over the world. When everyone was sold on globalization, which may have been inevitable, no one talked about the fact that poverty would be globalized as well. Where does most poverty exist in the world? Rural areas and suburb/shanty-towns where rural dwellers live when they move to urban areas and can't afford to live there. China has seen the biggest urban influx over the past 30 or so years but its happening all over. Most carriers aren't even going to offer 5G outside of cities, for example. Small time farmers are gone along with industry jobs, so these towns really only offer pharmacies, liquor stores and misery.
2
Most people cannot deal with discovering that their belief system is wrong. They have an emotional vested interest in sticking in what they believe in, no matter what evidence you present to them. Climate change, Obama was born in Hawaii, President Trump is a liar, all these items will be dismissed because they do not fit into their belief system. Tell them a conspiracy theory that curtails to that system and they'll eat it up, i.e Pizzagate. school shootings are hoaxes, etc. Not even the catastrophic loss of jobs, and their way of life is enough to jolt them out of this belief system. Having so many people who believe the same thing in their communities only helps to fuel this fire. I wish I knew what to do, giving them facts hasn't seemed to work.
11
Mr. Moore and the crowd who laughed with him should spend a day in the shoes of the people they hold in such contempt. I doubt they would last ten minutes. A taste of humble pie for these elites might change their tune about laughing at fellow Americans having difficulties. These charlatans disgust me.
7
Perhaps the greatest fraud of our times: Republicans ability to get the people with the least to vote for those who want to take what little they have: wages, health care, hope ...
12
Cincinnati is a wonderful city with a spectacular natural setting.. (It does lack the lake front of Chicago) - but culture abounds and also in Cleveland (where the river no longer burns!!). Yes too many jobs have been moved out -- and the income gap is huge (but judging from the important mansions in the suburb of Glendale -- it's been that way for a long, long time -- a hundred plus years ago. It is hot and humid along the river in the summer and cold and windy along the lake in winter. (Oddly, NYC has better weather -- more sun it seems, slightly less extreme. No tornados.)
Certainly, the totally skewed economic system has more to do with an international elite than any other single factor and the politicians that kowtow to it. So far as public jobs, many pay too much for what is actually accomplished.. even in education -- principals, janitors, vice-principals -- administration rewarded much more than workers (why we need a form of Marxism). BTW transportation outside of NYC, DC, Boston -- pretty bad-- one forever needs a car... and this problem is never addressed. (Google car could potentially be a key to revitalization of lots of places... but in the meantime, BTW immigrants(refugees) should not be being relocated in the most expensive and densely populated coastal cities in the USA but in the heartland.)
Prof. Krugman seems to have overlooked the fact that Pres. Obama referred to rural Americans as clinging to their guns and religion, and to Secretary Clinton's reference to them as "deplorables." Who on the political spectrum is contemptuous of whom? Also, is he not aware that so many urbanites routinely refer to Trump supporters as stupid and racist? Separately, another reason for the deterioration of inner cities about 50 years ago is that barriers to housing integration began to fall. The deindustrialization of the inner cities was not the only factor. More educated, affluent inner city residents (i.e. "strivers") were able to move to wealthier areas. A version of this can be seen in how housing projects went from a more diverse group of residents to a less diverse community of residents.
6
The population has been fed (indeed brainwashed) on a 24/7 diet of magical thinking, hopey-dopey evangelical tales, Disney factory of happy, sentimental endings attached to hollow content.
It takes a well educated person with analytical thinking skills to see through all that garbage. It won't happen in a country that has a disdain for real intellect and logic; they celebrate ignorance and are rewarded with the breads & circuses of the propaganda machines (like Fox, religion, right wing think tanks, limbaughs, etc ad nauseam).
8
A good book on this subject is Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance which is soon to be a Ron Howard directed film. In this heartwarming book it was the strength of the author's grandmother and his Marine corps service that gave him the vision to escape destitution and create his own healthy future. It's an instructive story of the potential we all have within us.
2
Krugman is wrong when he says that we (Trump Supporters) think the Liberal Elites have contempt for the heartland. Drop the word Liberal - and he would be right. Elites see the heartland with contempt, and the heartland returns it to the elites in full measure. Nor do we distinguish much between Conservative and Liberal, it’s just that the former were so broken and dysfunctional, it was easier to steal their party. When it comes to immigration and gun rights, the Heartland agrees with Conservatives. When it comes to economic nationalism, the Heartland agrees with economic nationalists like Sherrod Brien more so than with free marketers like Congressional Republicans, but again, it was just easier to take over the Republican Party. When looking for Conservative Elites, yes you will find a few in the Trump administration, careerists who don’t have an ideological core worth defending, but more so you will find the Coastal Conservative Elite amongst the Never Trumpers. These “ fiscally conservative, socially liberal” elite are indistinguishable from the Liberal elite who pretty much spout the same mantra and have a man crush on Mayor Pete - their version of the acceptable Heartlander.
3
The question is why have voters in the heartland continued to buy into this charade for the past 40 years and elected charlatans? Mass delusion, perhaps?
3
Well, I don't think it's wrong to say coastal elites are snobby. They certainly are, and that includes a great many of the people who read this publication. (You can tell from how the comments talk about even places like Houston as if they were a backwater -- many people living in New York or San Francisco think they are the only worthwhile places in the entire country.)
But what conservative media gets wrong (intentionally) is to suggest to "liberal voters" or "liberal politicians" is synonymous with "coastal elites." This is wrong not only because they are a great many liberals with other backgrounds/perspectives, but also because the bulk of leadership in -both- parties is made up of coastal elites. A Republican congressman may pose with a gun out in the woods, but he probably likes fancy cocktails.
2
It's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled.
11
It is well documented that Stephen Moore, Donald Trump, and all their GOP elites view Middle America as nothing more than dupes, gulls, sheep and pigeons. Worse still is that they view their own base voters as truly stupid, and other than their votes want absolutely nothing to do with them.
5
here's one example of Republicans being right: they have treated most of their voters as at least ignorant if not outright stupid, and they have in the main succeded. Trump loves the uneducated with good reason: they can't think straight enough to see when they're being hoodwinked.
5
I wish Bret and Ross would read Paul.
4
Mr. Krugman is trying to use logical reasoning on heartland trump supporters but the problem is that logic doesn't work.
All they want to hear about are conspiracy theories, racist democrats, and the deep state.
Either that or they'll scream 'Obama is a criminal!' at you.
4
As long as are comparing things to body parts, there is no doubt that trump is our lower intestine. Their output is identical.
7
The Grey Lady, flagship of US journalism, is not helping when the top headline is "Economy grows at 3.2%!" when this excludes 95% of Americans who consider food and energy prices more important than stock options and public offerings. This is not Republican vs. Democratic, this is the urban ultra wealthy vs. everybody else.
1
I'm really glad to see this article. It is time for a honest discussion about the population that consistently voted against their own interest. I like Beto O'Rourke and some other politicians' strategy of visiting as many places as possible, talk to them and listen to them. French President Emmanuel Macron's The Grand Debate had the same intent. Personally, I think a reboot of the rail system will provide opportunities for these fly-over states real business.
2
Substitute “Upstate New York” for “Eastern Heartland” and “Cuomo Administration” for “conservatives” and the column still contains truths about contempt.
Fix your own pipes, Syracuse.
1
Krugman knows nothing about small time America.
6
The emperor has no clothes!
How long must I stare at his nakedness?
1
I think middle America talkes out of both sides of its mouth. One side says the costal liberals are giveing away the country to lazy minorities and illegal immigrants while the other side says we want bigger farm subsidies and more very cheap immigrant labor to work our fields. They voted for a party and man who has shown he/they don't care for them at all.
5
If one listens to the clip, shortly after the armpit comment he refers to teacher unions as “the evil empire”. I know this has been part of the Far Right Fox narrative for a while, but it never really sunk in until that clip to a gathering of true believers that all this time I was a member of an organization right up there with the former USSR. With his bonafides he could easily take over for DeVos when she decides to quit and take one of those high-paying, cushy teaching jobs in one of those failing public schools she is afraid to enter, no? Uffa!
2
Are we talking about the basket of deplorables? Checking.
5
If these white, rural, 'low information" voters are going to keep voting for Republicans against their economic interest, primarily motivated by, you know, racism, perhaps it's time for Democrats to give up on them and keep a laser focus on their own base. Guess who else is doing that, focusing exclusively on his ignorant base?
2
All the cons left middle America and moved to Miami, New York, and Los Angeles liberal cities they claim to despise.
1
Guns and God and Fetuses are all that seem to matter to a lot of people in America. Stock pile guns for the civil war being whipped up by conspiracy theorists, right wing radio, right wing politicians, Sinclair, and Fox. Use God in whatever way one wants to explain why some people -- Jews, Muslims, feminists, gays and lesbians, you name them -- are bad people. And keep women barefoot and pregnant by banning abortion. Trump's people.
5
Once again, you lump Republicans under one umbrella because one man made a stupid statement. What you fail to address is the simple fact that the rapid advancement of technology has overtaken the manual skilled work force that populates America. Moreover, when one is 50 or more years old, it is not so easy - in fact, it is very unsettling - to transition to a radically different skill set, something Hillary Clinton campaigned on.
Put yourself in such a position. Comfortably behind your desk, your editor tells you the NYT and all other newspapers are closing and you are no longer employed. Your only option after to coming to terms with the devastating consequences is to find a job to support your family. But the only available jobs are in the construction trades. You don't have any of those skills and must be re-educated. That will take a lot of time. You might have to move to get that first job. Quite disruptive, n'est-ce pas? That's what the Democrats offered and that's why West Virginians didn't care or vote for Hillary.
6
Disdain for the "white trash" of the nation has been well analyzed by Nancy Isenberg and others.
But, truth be told, it is difficult to not recoil from those, like J.D. Vance (author of "Hillbilly Elegy"), who describes his dysfunctional family (a generous description) and his co workers who do not show up for work or disappear on 2 hour "breaks" when they do.
Vance himself seems blissfully unaware, when he inveighs against the government which oppresses him, that it was the Army which provided him the only real family (and family values) he ever had and which propelled him with support after the Army for his education at universities funded by the federal government.
For him, and for most of the resentful underclass, anything they have accomplished was achieved by dint of their courageous self reliance, when in fact, they were feeding on the teat of the federal government in every important way.
In Kentucky and Tennessee they had to rename Obamacare, which saved so many and which provided the first health care many ever received to Ky-nect and TennCare so the pride of those receiving would not be bruised.
It's the old "keep your government hands off my Medicare" thing.
7
I guess I can accept and appreciate Dr. Krugman's own narrow views of America....which are mostly the same as Stephen Moore'.....both men having grown up in similar environments, educated in the same institutions, and now associated in the same professional environments.
Any percieved differences between these two men can be likened to school chums on the opposite side of the Harvard Debate Club.....that is to say "no difference at all".
Both men seem to believe the US Border is at the Mason-Dixon Line.....south and west of Ohio....there be redneck dragons!!......until you safely reach California......at least inside Los Angeles and SanFrancisco City Limits.
And now that the Tammany Hall Political Structure(DNC) is headquartered in Chicago.....both men can accept that urban outpost as US Territory too.
3
Americans deserve the truth but people are so brainwashed by Fox News they think everything about Democrats, including the truth, is bad.
1
"[S]ome people in the heartland will take any effort to convince them that they’re being misled as just another example of liberal disrespect." The yokels are too stupid to know what's in their best interests. (Shoot, they're probably too stupid to vote.)
But we're not elitists, of course.
3
"this will be a hard point to get across". Across the information control gauntlet that is a stunningly successful Republican strategy. 'Truth is what we say it is. Anyone who says otherwise intends to fool or disrespect you. They are evil. We must defeat them, etc.' Fox is the most trusted television news source. Sarah Sanders still has her job. The strategy works, (it was Hitler's) and it's not new, it's just happening. Many people are being conned, causing them to act against their own interests and in other horrible ways. Perhaps the "point" to get across starts with that?
2
The Republican far right took one of its most potent tools out of the 1930s Communist Party playbook. Projection is simply accusing others of what you are actually guilty of doing.
When it became clear that the Republicans rightly deserved the label Fascist as shorthand to describe their collective embrace of authoritarian, corporatist, theocratic, misogynist, racist and imperialistic ideology, they went into a massive campaign using projection in a frontal assault to smear the left with the label.
From the radical far right Billionaire funded propaganda engines to Fox News the far right made a full blown effort to pin the Fascist label onto the Democrats. Right wing “intellectuals” like Jonah Goldberg concocted elaborate revisionist histories that essentially made a hero of Mussolini as he crushed unions in Italy.
From their support of the NRA to Pro Life and the Tea Party the use of projection is widely used to enrage the “Left Behind” white middle class; cynically exploiting them to vote against their own best interests.
The powerful combination of projection and mass propaganda has taken 89% of the Republican Party though a looking glass that includes “Q-Anon”, pedophiles in pizza shops, and hordes of illegals swamping the nation.
Perhaps as reality of an environment deteriorating and the false Trumpian economy collapsing, the people in the Red States will become “woke.” Unfortunately, we could be well into Trump’s second term.
1
Obvious points Krugman makes, which roral midgets on the right, like David Brooks, will whine and protest loudly about, but the truth is that he and his ilk never go to the heartland, much less live there. These Conservative elites are just cons.
Martin Luther King, during the Pettis Bridge march, suggested that the security policemen march with them as that their salaries were comparable. In the 1960's JFK spoke to workers warning them of changes to come to come. People of color frequently encounter situations where they are the last hired, first fired, over and/or under qualified for positions, with some salvation found in organized labor. The truth is that greed causes economic issues, not immigrants, Muslims, people of color, feminists, or elitists. The 'Armpit of America' folks, much like the 1860's Reconstruction era created Jim Crow laws, although illegal lives on as 'breathing while Black'. We are all the same & suffer the same grief.
Fox and Friends, Info Wars, etc., gets away with the old, 'you don't have a job because that guy of color, etc., over stole your job'. To get away with such a lie, the Republicans, DJT enablers, Capitalists, etc., must convince the Caucasians that they are better than those of color who deserve nothing from this society, despite the fact that all working people are reaping the same harvest. I know Dr. Krugman knows what I'm talking about, cracking the Armpit may be impossible.
Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton created opportunity & explained why their fate was economic hell. Instead, they chose being coal miners & claimed the elitists, immigrants, Moslems, feminists, etc., caused their problems. The 'armpit' claimed that improved & standardized education deprived them of freedom.
Krugman has a disastrous track of his own that rivals Mr. Moore's some would say even exceeds that. What Democrats and people like Krugman don't understand is they share different values than people in the heartland. That's the truth. Just because the good professor says this "The point is that if you look at what conservatives say to each other, as opposed to what they pretend to believe, it becomes clear that contempt for middle America is much more prevalent on the right than on the left." doesn't make it true. We need a real discussion about how for all Americans to benefit in our growth. But pure partisans like the professor should be left out of the discussion.
2
Krugman is as usually very accurate in his analysis. However, the seemingly contradictory, self-hurting preference for the GOP in these states becomes more plausible when one acknowledges that the Republicans have been very successful in steering the political debate towards minor, private issues such as "values" and moral, eclipsing the major issues like economics or health care. It becomes evident when reading articles such as yesterday's portrait of Altoona, PA, where several Trump voters justify their choice solely with the stance on abortion. It's certainly one of the GOP's greatest schemes to have pushed something like abortion to the no1 priority of a large part of the voters in the "heartland", so that they forgo economic self interest and forgive even the most devious GOP power abuse only to get their will in terms of abortion (or guns). The Democrats really need to come up with a good approach to circumvent these petty issues and bring the real ones to the top, because in a culture war dictated by the GOP they will lose these states no matter what..
3
I'm sure many of the people that make disparaging comments about the Heartland have never been in the Heartland. If they had they would know that we DO have large cities, we DO have Universities, we DO have theater, we DO attend symphonies, we DO have museums, we DO have libraries. We Don't all wear bib-overalls, we are not all ON government assistance, not ALL of us watch Fox.
That is exactly what I was accused of earlier this week when I made a comment about a different article. I'm always accused of voting for trump, of getting my information from Fox; neither of which I did or do. Nope, all of the demeaning comments I see do not come from Fox. They come straight from the comment section of the NYT's.
Just look at the insulting comments left pertaining to this article.
I realize there is the "dumb farmer" aspect to this as well. Let me tell you, I conduct research at a major university and I work with many farmers. Most (older generations) do not have a formal education but they are some of the smartest people I have ever met (with exceptions of course).
3
Proceeding from the given understanding that while both major political parties hold Middle America in contempt, the argument that the Democrats holds Middle America in less contempt than the Republicans is not exactly a ringing endorsement (and will make a really lousy bumper-sticker). The fact that so many in Middle America would rather knowingly vote against their economic interest than vote for a Democrat continues to be a limiting problem for the party, and a problem which the majority of their primary candidates are not effectively addressing.
2
There is another issue that is about the idea that the left pushes, that they everyone should go to college, when what we need is many workers for jobs that don't necessarily require a college degree, but either a technical degree for jobs like nursing, lab techs, on the job training, etc., as many companies can't find enough workers. In fact, there are millions of those with not only college degrees, but advanced degrees that don't have jobs in their fields, because that isn't where the jobs are. In Minnesota, both parties are pushing vocational education for the job market there, which is mostly healthcare, and machine related.
2
It is a pity that so many have committed themselves to lifestyles (family, place of residence, debt) that make it hard if not impossible to relocate or
spare the time and pay the costs of continuous retraining as their old jobs are phased out.
I have been going to school most of my long life training for a succession of careers.
Fortunately, I had the energy and grit to do so, but not everyone is so lucky.
Crushing educational debt is just one of the factors that must be modified in this new economy.
1
"You will know them by their fruits."
If Middle America is at all Christian, Democrats should repeat that quote from Jesus -- and urge voters to look at the policies of each party.
Tax cuts, investment in education, job retraining programs -- everything that matters to Middle America points to Democratic policies. It's going to be tough once again to overcome the misstatements of Republicans, but tell voters how Republicans voted in Congress on these issues.
If Middle America listens, they'll know they've been hoodwinked.
2
The Iowa Republican Party just tweeted out snark about one of the Presidential candidates calling him a "coastal socialist". Someone else justified the electoral college as preventing the country being run by "coastal elites".
I need to pass this on to my Bronx neighbors, the low-income immigrants I work with and my husband's transit worker buddies. Pretty sure none of us ever knew we were "elites". And if the Midwesterners' situation is so bad that we truly are elites compared to them, then I will keep them all in my prayers.
7
I've made this point before and interested in Mr. Krugman's thoughts: Several generations ago New England was hollowed out economically as industries of all sorts moved to the southern US. A situation very similar to what is now happening to the remainder of rural American. In the time since many, but not all, of the regions have recovered and seeing economic success unimaginable back in the 60's. Granted, this has created other issues, but one can't argue with the economic data. Can this success be attributed to social or cultural infrastructure or are other reasons?
1
As is normally the case the point is indisputably supported by fact in terms of policy position.
What it ignores is the influence of numerous democrat or democrat leaning commentators who peddle the narrative of "lets just forget the space between the coasts".
I can link to innumerate blogs and podcasts that include folks who hod this indefeasible position.
if you believe the above you are NOT LEFT WING but rather a lifestyle policy liberal who is a social and/or economic policy conservative.
2
So..."contempt for middle America is much more prevalent on the right than the left." An evaluation that fails to recognize the trajectory that the Democratic Party has traveled over the last 40 some years. Relinquishing focus on quality of life issues which are the central area of concern for this middle America. As the Republicans moved more to the right, the Democrats moved in to fill the ideological vacuum. The Democratic Party re-aligned focus allowing the accommodation of a conservative probity that once identified the traditional GOP, effectively re-branding into Republican Lite. Relegated to the past was the Democratic Party of tradition and their legacy of New Deal progressive domestic policy.
2
I'm a Northeast liberal who now lives in the South (granted, Atlanta, but still) and I've never had contempt in general for any part of the country. I have contempt for people who are racists, regardless of where they come from, and people in power who mislead their constituents just to keep themselves in power and the cash rolling in.
Part of what makes this country awesome and interesting is not just the addition of immigrants, but ALL the people and their stories. I enjoy reading "Humans of New York" but would be just as interested in reading "Humans of Parkersburg".
7
@Morgan
You haven't noticed all the "humans of flyover states" stories featured in the NYT since Trump took office? Enjoy. Of course, most of the articles feature Trump voters.
Hopefully Elizabeth Warren, her good ideas, and some easily understandable charts and explainers will visit the heartland to educate and connect.
6
Lack of education , cultural segregation and too much religious influence are probably at the basis of this demise.
These people live in a limbo , entangled in their own limited exchanges with the rest of the country.
They are heavily dependent on public aid and Medicaid without knowing who made this help possible and affordable.
Their voting for the GOP and trump are an indelible sign of their fossilized mental status .
I would have thought that in the era of technological communications this status quo wouldn’t have any reason to exist .
7
@inter nos Their own tax dollars made it possible, not the grace of the wealthy. Their tax dollars which once paid school librarians now pay for Presidential golf outings at private courses. This comment reflects the very complaint Mr. Krugman illustrates. The wealthy despise the poor.
"I know that this will be a hard point to get across." Nearly impossible! Republicans have been successful starting with Reagan to Trump with "bait and switch" strategies securing the GOP base in the Heartland. The pillars of Republicanism have been/are corrupt plutocracy, hypocrisy, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny and racism which outplays healthcare, education, or the environment. Republicanism is a coalition of grievances, united by hatred and fear, resulting in the creation of a criminal and corrupt corporate state masquerading as a democracy, an Inverted Totalitarianism.
12
I despise Trump's hypocrisy, but he makes no apologies for his stand on the issues. People like the appearance of confidence, they like a bit of scrappiness in their politicians. I am afraid that the Democrats are so mired in PC and Mea Culpas that they are turning off a substantial portion of the electorate.
Right now I am bracing for 5+ more years of Trump.
8
I know many "enlightened" Democrats who mock people who live anywhere but on the coasts. It's not just conservatives who have this kind of contempt. Ask a liberal in NYC what they think of the people in Arkansas or West Virginia. Good luck getting a compassionate response.
10
@Catgirl It really is only relatively recently that I have noticed just a wee bit of contempt in me for midwesterners....I believe it started in 2016.
3
Good effort by PK to reframe the debate over elitism.
It's been a head-smacker that liberals and Dems have allowed the right/GOP to frame EVERY major debate on policy and culture war issues to the extent the Ds are always playing catchup ball.
The Ds always seem to forget the adage; 'A lie will travel the world while the truth is still getting on its boots.'
Never has this old saying (Samuel Clemons?) been more cogent than in Trump world.
Suggestion to the press gaggle; When Trump starts telling rapid fire lies on the South Lawn on the way to the chopper, start laughing in disbelief instead of cowing down and letting it all go unchallenged. His lies are not worthy of polite consideration or earnest follow ups, which only trigger another tsunami of unchallenged lies.
He needs to be made a fool, live and on camera every time he drops a knee-slapper. Yes, some will be banned and lose status for a short while, but sooner than later their stock will surge as a thankful nation rewards them.
Start with short, simple questions about big lies about little things, like 'My father was born in Germany'. ??
Why would not SOMEBODY immediately follow up with; 'Sir, would that make you an anchor baby?', delivered in the most earnest and respectful manner.
10
Agreed. Press should break out in bellows of laughter before the questions are even answered. Perhaps his head will explode from the derision shown him
2
@Marty
Indeed again today the gaggle was screaming questions about Biden's and Bernie's ages, which Trump was already fully loaded with a magazine of lies which he delivered on fully automatic and then left in a cloud of dust. Win Trump.
They need to ask him SOMETHING that is a surprise. Heck, they have 400+ pages of the Mueller report. They can't find some tidbit to throw out at him?
Zero imagination. The MSM is as responsible for the Trump catastrophe as the GOP.
1
While I agree that Moore is not even marginally qualified to sit on the Federal Reserve Board, his statement about Chicago being the only worthwhile place in ”Middle America” is non-political East Coast snobbery and ignorance, which the Times itself shows by selecting a coal mining town in West Virginia as its example.
As someone who has lived in Iowa, Chicago, Ohio and Minnesota, I can affirm Middle America exists and it is not the convenient ideological monolith that East Coast talking heads vapidly write off. As someone who grew up in BROOKLYN (THE BROOKLYN, not the non-existent Brooklyns, like Brooklyn, Iowa-the flag capital of the world), my parents inculcated a worldview that there was a giant gap between NYC and LA-goodbye Chicago. After I went to college and grad school in Iowa, to my family’s shock, I learned that vast generalizations serve no useful purpose in solving microeconomic problems (or any other problems). Let’s drop middle America altogether and focus on the diverse individuals who reside in this fictitious land.
3
Are you kidding us, Mr. Krugman? The idea that liberals disrespect middle America, aka "flyover country," is all propaganda by Fox?
It is certainly true that Democratic policies would help heartlanders far more than the Republicans'. But it's the cultural sneering and contempt for middle American values which has been the hallmark of the left since about forever. It's the Democrats' Achilles heel, the reason that they continue to struggle to dominate national politics regardless of their policies. Some how "Vote for me, you bumpkin!" isn't a winning slogan.
9
P.T. Barnum said; "Never give a sucker an even break" D.J. Trump said...well a lot more of the same.
3
Speaking of truth, a companion article today on Florida’s sanctuary city ban specifically does not include mandatory use of E-Verify for employers. So much for the national Immigration emergency. I wonder if Fox News will highlight that bit of jobs legislation.
The disdain, insult, to the intelligence of the ‘base’, is indeed incredible. They will catch on, eventually. Keep up the fight, NYTimes.
3
"Conservatives" are no worse than "liberals" in their condescension to middle America, or their dislike of and judgment of anyone working class, poor, or the wrong end of middle class. Sure, this neglect and discrimination take different forms on the left and right. But a wealthy liberal is just as likely to choose Chicago, dismiss and mock Cleveland, and fail to do more than say the right things on issues of poverty, income inequality, prisons, etc. The elite left is generally not willing to put their money where their mouth is; is that better than the much more thinly veiled contempt of the elite right? Knowing how to analyze the problems and say the right words doesn't mean you will do the right thing. Actions speak loudest. Look at Warren, Sanders, and to some extent Harris and Booker. Time for actual policy change.
3
Only qualification for an appointment from Donald Trump is as promise to be his lap dog and loyal to him, even at the expense of the country. And there is no doubt whatsoever that that is Stephen Moore.
5
We're drowning in propaganda aren't we. The country ranked 26 out of 195 in suicides gets to be called the "Happiest Country in the World". I don't know must make sense to a Social Democrat. What happened they couldn't handle the joy of living in a welfare state.
I never had the opportunity to be on medicaid but I was on unemployment a bunch of times. Even was on extension a few times. Should I have retrained and start at the bottom again? And in what? Will that job have outsourcing and H1-b workers with a MBA in management that believes some one with 1 year experience is as qualified as some one with 30. And workers over fifty are worthless.
So I'm sorry to take Obama and Clinton out of context. I must have totally misunderstood when Obama said he was going after contract workers after a meeting with Bill Gates. I feel guilty when an ex president gets millions in speaking fee's from the tech industry. The shame I feel for wanting a job and not welfare and resenting that privileged white woman tells us we should be happy inches above the poverty line. Matriarchy forever.
In case you didn't get the message a liar like Trump is President. Congratulations. And thanks for the medicaid.
1
Moral collapse is a result of poverty and uncertainty. Two things conservative only give lip service to. People don't abandon hope, god and family when they are doing well they abandon them when the world of hope,god and family abandons them. Real Family values are bolstered by song social programs, not conservative wing nut fundamentalist platitudes. The later only produce tax exemptions for the preachers church.
When you see poverty as a person's fault it allows the good Christians to wipe their hand of the problems.
2
What really tickles me most about places like Detroit, and my hometown, places robbed of their resources in good times, the robbers head to places like the Sunshine State and vote against things like healthcare and childcare for subsequent generations. Can you here me Florida? I expect your state to be overwhelmingly Blue in 2020. (My personal preference, Elizabeth!
6
I grew up in rural Nebraska.
I never understood why farmers always voted against their own best interests. I only knew that no matter who was running, that is what they always did.
6
@Thomas C.
Because voting is not just about things, but about values.
My sister is a very conservative Catholic woman. Liberal/progressive moral values (abortion rights, contempt for religion, ambivalence about the nuclear family, LGBTQ extremism) are anathema to her.
She is middle class and would benefit far more from Democratic policies than Republican ones. But she is no more likely to vote Democratic than a black man in Alabama would have voted for Bull Conner just because he offered a better tax rate.
4
While I appreciate the insight of this article on "middle America" and the "white ghetto," the places Steven Moore criticized were not the rural heartland but urban centers whose prime has come and gone, including my own hometown of Cleveland. Just because it's in Ohio, doesn't mean it's farmland. I think you would have a much different thesis if you focused on the urban stalwarts in these flyover states.
1
So Dems are losing the propaganda war. The Rs are really good at winning the war of words (think “death taxes” and “death panels “) and now they’re killing us with the boogeyman “socialism”. We not only have to create programs and opportunities for the Heartland, we have to effectively sell those programs. So lets call our Oligarchy “socialism for rich people” (again and again and again because that’s how propaganda works right?) and stop saying “free college education” and talk about “affordable college education” or better yet “earned college education” where people can work to earn tuition credit in programs like Americorps. What the Democrats need is better marketing.
5
@Donna Mlinek
God yes. But will they ever figure that out?
I retired to WV to attend to aging family issues after living my entire life in NYC. And these “Trump Country” people here are absolutely belligerent about their support for Trump and GOP dogma—and, after much listening and questioning, I learned to read between the “lines” and it’s all about racism. The Whites’ hatred here for the “Other” is astonishing, bold and terrifying. People of color are rarely seen here, partly do to decades of nearly forced segregation into “housing projects,” and their exclusion from employment opportunities. Now, there are relatively NO employment opportunities with the death of coal mining and the collapse of heavy manufacturing. Hospitals, ironically, despite the GOP’s threats of Medicare slashes, are indeed the largest and now imperiled employers. I have tried to reason with these people but they are saturated and programmed with FOX propaganda. Any progressive views are dismissed as “communism/socialism” and one’s views fall on deaf ears. These people have brought on and fostered their own poverty with willful ignorance and prejudice. The local state press and broadcast media are shamelessly right wing and have colluded in this nearly fascist propaganda. West Virginia, in short, is a lost cause, the Mississippi of Appalachia.
12
If your comments are accurate, changing third-generation lifestyles will be impossible.
@Michael Gast (gastmichael) And they wonder why I have contempt for them.
2
Obama tried to offer federal money to West Virginia to train its unemployed and unemployable in tech jobs. The majority scoffed and decided it was somehow more American to collect assistance while they waited for the doomed coal industry to have a resurgence than it was to accept a lifeline from a black democrat. Some of the families interviewed for a Times article about their reluctance hadn't had work in the mines in generations, yet lamented the apparent laziness of people in cities. They have been successfully programmed by right wing identity politics to implode. They will keep voting against having money invested in themselves or handed to themselves while they wipe themselves out with opiates.
6
The power in the GOP only cares about one thing..their own personal gain. They are even envious of any of their fellow fat cats' gains.
2
Krugman avoids the elephant in the room -- Hillary Clinton's "deplorables" insult and her refusal to pay more attention to eastern heartland voters in 2016, despite warnings from her husband and Joe Biden that her approach could lead Democrats over the cliff in November.
5
Somehow the message just isn't getting through to a very large segment of our citizens. Many disgruntled voters can see no wrong in "blindly following the leaders" of 'American Fascism', and returning to an obsolete culture of the 1950's. We know from experience that change is nearly impossible during peaceful times. We only stand together when attacked by outside forces such as 9-11 or Pearl Harbor.
During those stressful times we as a nation put aside huge differences and became the greatest military known in history.
We accepted change all the way to the moon. After that, a large internal conflict has taken hold of the collective mind-set in nearly every arena of American life.
The resentments of the "Flyover States" to the "Coastal States" as being too elite, falsely believing that racially integrated educated people snobbishly look down their noses at the folks in the 'Heartland'.
This deception is the one great lie. Life will never be the same again in rural America, no matter how disaffected and angry they have become. We need to stop resisting the 'Globalization-Multi-Cultural' world that literally surrounds us. Instead we can cone together and solve these issues.
Republican politicians and 'the donald' in particular simply continue to pour gasoline on these huge fires of a raging, misdirected Civil War. Masked in the false notion that being white is rapidly being overwhelmed by "The Others" has sparked an embrace of senseless American racist fascism again.
5
Hillary Clinton's lamentable "deplorables" insult to the obviously racist unhinged fringe of Trump supporters had legs. Trump's "turn up the hate" campaign meshed well with that. The rust belt and ex urb America was where this battle was joined. Clinton fought it poorly. So the label stuck. The whole Democratic campaign is an effort the overcome the taint of Clinton's fly over America campaign.
1
I hope one of the Democrat senators mentions this during Moore's confirmation hearing. Ask for an explanation.
1
Have you been to Detroit lately? I have and I could not be more impressed. The city is in the middle of a true renaissance. They are using existing art deco buildings and remodeling the interiors while restoring the exteriors. They have young, intelligent people opening businesses. They have great food. They are developing public transportation. In short, Detroit is making a comeback. All of the midwest should take notice. In fact, a lot of smaller to mid-size cities in this country are becoming much more sophisticated and attracting people who want affordable homes and good jobs. We need to encourage this, not denigrate it. Even places like Des Moines are starting to get it. Let's continue this trend.
9
One of the moments that shone through for me was when the teachers of West Virginia took it upon themselves to take on the state government to demand better working conditions and better opportunities for their students. The importance of education in changing the trajectory of communities in decline has been so undervalued it is more than painful to watch; it is disgraceful.
5
The attitude that Moore exhibits makes sense in a way. If the working class of the Midwest states fought Donald Trump with all their might and were overcome after a fierce battle to the last breath of resistance, at least they would have the grudging respect of the folks selling them out for tax cuts for the 1%. However, these blue collar folks not only roll over and let the Republicans take advantage of them year after year, they scream with fury and indignation when anyone suggests that maybe the law should protect them. How can that draw anything but disdain?
On the other side of the aisle, it's not surprising that progressives look at these folks with eye-rolling frustration (which is gleefully misinterpreted as condescension by Right Wing Media) for their willingness to throw their communities, their families and themselves under the bus in the name of some inchoate rage at social attitudes.
One thing is for sure... Like an alcoholic, nothing will ever get better until they can admit that the problem is not with others, but within themselves.
5
An important article, exposing the policy hypocrisy of the GOP, but a more direct title would get it the attention it deserves. I almost skipped over it, though it is Krugman.
I certainly do not see clear signs that the 1% care about the "American Heartland", much less show any willingness to invest in it. Quite the contrary in fact.
Keep in mind.. it is the 1% that invented, deployed, and proliferated "Globalization" which was the main drain of manufacturing jobs (core to Heartland prosperity in many cases) in the US over the last several decades. It was deliberate, and it was without concern for anything other then gathering up more money.
I remember back in the day when Walmart was all about "made in America, buy American" as their marketing slogan. Guess what Walmart did... they globalized their entire supply chain over the last two decades and abandoned their roots as a Heartland based business. Greed... pure greed. And what has the Walton family done for the Heartland.. other then push mom and pop businesses under water by proliferating Walmart stores across the heartland and then closing them and consolidating after the small business are gone.
And let's not down play or forget the harm President "Tariff" is pressing on the Heartland farmers with his "pick a fight with anyone and everyone" approach to life. He leaves casualties everywhere he goes and on everything he touches.
11
If the heartland is important to Democrats, they could try showing up during campaign season. The first thing a politician needs to do is ask a voter for that person's vote. HRC did not visit Wisconsin once. Remember that.
12
Lets have a massive infrastructure project to build high speed internet highways that connect the small towns. One thing this would provide, aside from how useful it would be to the local schools, is a way for telecommuters who are tired of the big city to locate to small villages if the like. Google workers who want a country life. This could provide a way for small towns to grow in the 21st century.
5
The reason people in the Mid West don't realize that the Republican party wants to cut Medicaid is be/c they watch ONLY Fox news.
I am not prepared to ask these folks to watch a different channel or even to read a different newspaper. They simply don't trust the LEFT media news outlets for reasons of their own -- too complex a subject to get into here.
There has to be ANOTHER WAY to inform these people of the reality of the fact that the Republicans want to cut their health benefits.
There has to be a way to get corporations to invest in those states. They need more than just health benefits. They need jobs!
The question is not how to RE TRAIN these people -- the question is how to RE-INFORM these people.
9
"Some Democrats, notably Elizabeth Warren, have been offering real proposals to help rural areas". Her policy proposals are amazingly detailed and uplifting for the forgotten poor (black and white)
14
Thank you, Mr. Krugman, for always thinking of West Virginia. We have long been the underdog.
9
What I don't understand is apparent there are enough of these people to vote in a man like trump and keep him there. Is it the electoral college?
3
@jo ‘these people’?!? Seriously? They are called Americans.
2
@jo Yes! The electoral college is an anachronism that results in Americans not all being equal under the law.
2
Education is the key to creating an electorate able to analyze and think critically about all sorts of things, including candidates for political office. Republicans have been trying--often successfully--to gut education. How: by starting at the grassroots level with textbooks; eliminating classes that require students to think about history and politics; and putting colleges on the defensive about their "liberal" bent. Democrats are not entirely blameless in this endeavor.
Republicans understand that the local level is where political knowledge and understanding starts. Too many Democrats are willing to cede local politics to conservatives, while eying the bigger prizes.
5
My hometown area was very prosperous prior to the '80s. Some of the features that made it so included largely unionized industrial employment with numerous lucrative advancement and incentive piece-work opportunities, excellent post secondary education opportunities, along with competent and ethical state and local governments. I never even saw a homeless street person until I traveled to the West Coast in the 70's.
During the Reagan years things started to go downhill for our area. Several huge, lucrative unionized employers severely downsized, or moved away altogether. Most of the work was either globalized or automated. Most younger people started to believe that they didn't need unions. College at the public universities became much less affordable, and "college is not for everyone" morphed into "college is a frivolous waste of time for everyone". Placements for vo-tech graduates became harder to get and less lucrative. And our state and local governments declined in honesty and competence. Thus one of the most prosperous communities in the USA was transformed into one of the poorest.
Concurrently, the City of Milwaukee became more diverse. The white portion of city population decreased from 71% in 1980 to 37% in 2010. Black and Hispanic population increased from 27% combined in 1980 to 57% in 2010. The new arrivals presented convenient scapegoats for many.
The "good old days" will never return until we can get past the scapegoating.
12
Criticizing cities like Cleveland and Kansas City is actually in perfect alignment with Republican strategies.
Mid-size Midwestern cities are blue, urban and ethnically diverse, but their Democrat votes are often not enough to overwhelm the Republican votes from the red small towns and conservative rural areas of the rest of their states.
I’ve lived in mid-size Midwestern cities. Trust me, the conservative folks in the small towns generally don’t like St Louis or Kansas City.
Mr Moore is telling exactly what his audience wants to hear.
14
The late Joe Bageant wrote about returning to his rural hometown after retirement in the book "Deer Hunting with Jesus."
One point he made was that rural school systems are run by whatever local elites a town has: the store owners, the doctors, the bankers. What they want is not a population broadly educated to make decisions about the future but a population just literate enough to do the jobs available in town.
I saw that reading the weekly newspaper from my father's rural hometown. If someone proposed adding, say, calculus or a foreign language or world history to the local high school's bare bones curriculum, the response was usually, "Our kids don't need to know that stuff."
The kids who did want to "know that stuff," including my father, eventually left town, never looked back, and settled to raise their children in school districts where the curriculum includes "that stuff."
27
Krugman, you're right.
But the people who need to accept this aren't reading your column: they're watching Fox News, reading The Daily Caller, watched Alex Jones, and - wait for this - watching videos on FB of Korean War Veterans hailing Trump as the new "father of the country." (I am not making this up: this came up in the video stream on FB and I almost had a apoplectic attack at the assertion).
These people want to believe the mythology. And I doubt they want to wake up.
23
Homo economicus - economic man. If jobs move to big cities, rational workers should follow the jobs there. If they do not, then workers are behaving irrationally and deserve their fate.
When jobs disappeared in the rural South after WWII former field hands moved to Chicago and Detroit for jobs in manufacturing. Good, rational economic behavior. But no sooner had the job seekers settled in, jobs moved again and left them behind. Some of those jobs went to the South, from whence the workers recently came, because the South is virulently nonunion. Then jobs moved to China, Mexico and elsewhere, and workers were permanently stuck.
It's easy for city dwellers to look down their noses at these people. But the next big job moves are going to be from people to machines. And the move will begin in the cities. Where will those workers go?
6
As someone born and raised in the midwest and moved to NYC to find a better life I can certainly agree with everything Paul writes but I would also add that religion plays a very large part of the attitudes in the midwest and the nearly 24 / 7 rightwing radio and local papers who push rightwing economics and politics are every where and it's no wonder most vote Republican..
I am always amazed what big chips midwestern people have on their shoulders everytime I go out to the midwest everyone is always telling how their state is number 1 in something or another and how they would never come to big bad NYC or asking how many times I have been mugged or robbed.
Small farm town after small farm town has been hollowed out by big box stores and now we have entire downtowns of small midwestern farming towns with nothing but empty store fronts.. Truely sad how big business has distroyed once wonderful towns and how midwestern people have allowed themselves to become brain washed into thinking it is all big bad socialist or god forbid Democrats fault for their lot in life..
13
Ohio is a good representation of what is happening in this rural versus urban propaganda war with senators Portman (R) and Brown (D). The democrat in this case seems to be genuinely concerned with the plight of rural Ohioans through his voting record and Portman the republican seems to care less, shown by his voting on legislation that harms small town Ohioans, yet they still vote for him. Therefore, the rural voters are truly to blame for much of their own plight.
12
@Andrew
But somehow they have to understand this, and if Democrats intend to stay viable, they had better deliver.
2
This rural American travesty has been building for decades. And what was the answer that th local pols always told their constituents? DEREGULATION..! Bring back coal! "Don't let the scientists and physicians sway you into thinking any different." "Generate electricity th ol' fashioned way; it still works fine."
So these cons and right-wing zealots kept getting elected into office advocating a losing game plan for th long run, then doubling down on it at every successive election thereafter.
But, what really irks me about this familiar scenario is the fact that even in these "backwards" regions you still have some very fine schools, colleges where they should've been working on and doing studies and analysis', for these past decades on a more promising future for their respective regions. State schools in particular should have used government funding, which I'm sure th Obama administration would have gladly granted, (if he hadn't, in fact, already done so), in setting goals for a more practical future. But where were th deregulation kings when it came to doing something realistic and responsible like engaging in local university studies and investigations?
I have an idea: maybe they should start with a factory which manufacturs mirrors.
4
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell
There is one thing I have noticed and friends have commented on after driving through parts of the rural South, and mid West. Most everything needs a coat of paint and some fixin' up.
It is getting harder and harder as I get older and older to feel a great deal of empathy for people who keep voting for politicians whose only promise to them was they will outlaw abortion and keep the liberals and blacks in their place; and for all these years they haven't really done any of it. And for all these years the quality of life for these people has been going down, down, down.
And the problem is these people are not only voting against their own best interests, they are voting against mine and my children's.
Until those places stop taking the Nation down their rabbit holes I will spend only enough money there to get out, should I find myself there in the first place.
23
Mitt Romney had his "47%" moment, and Hillary Clinton her "basket of deplorables" moment. Both show how the elites of both parties feel about ordinary people in flyover country. They cannot begin to comprehend our lives, and misjudge us at every turn.
Trump is a con artist who can read the mood in the room, and he successfully tapped into the anger and frustration the "left behind" 99% are feeling. A lot of us saw through him, but, alas, a lot either did not or else thought, erroneously, he couldn't possibly make things worse.
I grow weary of hearing that people should just "move to where the jobs are" from the privileged. People stay because they can't afford to move, or they can't find better than a minimum wage job if they do. Or they have a caring social network that helps them out where they are. The problem is that there aren't enough "ordinary" jobs for "ordinary" people. Another is that older and disabled people, no matter how educated and skilled, are unable to find work outside of retail or fast food.
Until the establishment elites are willing to see us as human beings with hopes, needs, and feelings, not so unlike their own, and address the roots of the problems - largely of their creation, they will create a self-fulfilling prophecy about us.
13
Fox News will never enlighten the heartland; middle-American voters will get the "hard point" of Krugman's argument when they experience it. Unless Pelosi et al act very soon, Trump will use his second term to ensure that Medicaid and other safety net programs are cut to nothing.
12
Pelosi et al have not been sitting on their duffs. Nor have they been biting each other in the backside, which is most of what I see from the loudest members of the languid left.
Krugman is articulating a truth that few in the "Heartland" want to believe. The idea that liberals = evil socialist rural-haters is so ingrained into this area (southeastern Ohio) that it will be difficult to erase before the 2020 election. Meanwhile, our roads and bridges fall into disrepair, multiple drug overdoses occur weekly, the young leave and the old stay, and hope has stalled. Let's be honest, though--the HLand has always been the first region to suffer economic downturns, and the last region to recover.
837
@Cynthia Rucker Whenever I talk to heartlander (some of my relatives for instance) about where they get their assumption that coastal "liberals" despise them, I get the same answer that I get when I ask where they get their assumption that the "mainstream" media is a liberal hoax. They don't form these opinions based on their own observances, experiences with "liberals" or from actually reading or watching the news - they get these views from Right wing media telling them that these things are so.
186
@Lizmill
Agreed, and Trump is marketing it.
45
@Lizmill
Hate radio and fox no news!
28
God and guns, as well as disdain for the coastal Democrats are what drive rural and heartland voters. Logical proposals based on real economics go nowhere. The ACA and green energy added jobs to these areas, but they voted for a guy who promised to kill the ACA and bring ‘clean’ coal back. Trump has screwed up trade as well.
But hey - he will keep brown people and Muslims out and pack the courts to ensure I can still celebrate Christmas.
28
"It's easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled"
Mark Twain
24
Well, I live in Cincinnati and the odd thing about Moore's comments is that the 45243 area code just outside of Cincinnati is probably one of the biggest contributors to the coffers and ideology of the current GOP.
Without Cincinnati the GOP would lose a huge foothold in Ohio. Also Cincinnati is home to some large corporates such as Kroger, Proctor and Gamble, 5th 3rd Bank and Great American Insurance company along with many brand and design firms.
With all this, for me personally having grown up in Cleveland, I find that Cincinnati is very segregated both financially and ethnically.
I don't love the city and will never become part of the GOP, but Mr. Moore should know better than to look a huge armpit of cash in his distorted reality.
He is a misinformed person, with out of touch views based on no reality, but really doesn't that represent the current GOP and the President they so revere?
13
Anytime someone says “so-and-so said” on the internet, I’m inclined to believe the quote is taken out of context. But, the video doesn’t make this quote any better. The armpit quote is basically a throwaway line that Moore inserted for really no reason while cheering on Chicago. Perhaps he did mean it as a joke, but the overall context furthers the idea that he sees the world/economy as something to be divided up, not something to be grown. Chicago wins therefore Cincy must lose. So, I guess if he’s appointed, hopefully you are a part of his favored group and not a group that he seems ok to leave behind.
7
I believe we are going to have to find another name for the "American Heartland".
It no longer is the Heartland. The Heartland has moved to the East and West coasts and left the old Heartland behind in the hands of propagandists and evangelicals (same thing), who in order to stay relevant, pander to their fears and sense of abandonment which helped to spread the Opioid crises.
It's hard to feel sorry for people that are so closed minded.
22
You are several years behind in your thinking. When Hillary ran for President we learned that the old heartland is flyover country populated by deplorables.
1
@USMC1954
Hate to tell you, but you need these people now, more than ever before. And how you are going to get them back, I haven’t a clue, but your comment doesn’t help.
2
Funny too about Cleveland. It has made a comeback and so large companies are moving into the downtown from the suburbs. Cincinnati is also hardly and armpit. It was never the pits and still does ok relative to its peer cities. But none of this matters to conservatives who just make it up.
11
re: "The thinly veiled contempt conservative elites feel for the middle-American voters they depend on."
Bill Mauldin's Up Front collected his Stars and Stripes cartoons from WWII. My favorite was the two senior officers admiring a spectacular mount view. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/446911962994262009/
One asks the other ""Beautiful view! Is there one for the enlisted men?".
Historically, elitism is much more closely associated with the rich and powerful, the aristocracy or plutocracy, than with progressives seeking to change the established order. Those are the real "Let them eat cake" bunch, not the dreaded Liberals your RepubliTrump friends keep complaining about.
Hannity and Limbaugh, to name two, ain't exactly broke or powerless as they blame 'socialist Democrats' for the way things are.
11
A very perceptive column indeed, and it
ought to be free for rightists to please
circulate maximally.
I am afraid that our nation is ... "mortally wounded."
DJT's insistence of coal mining strikes me as insane.
The GOP in my humble perception is much about flat earth politics.
If fools regard evolution theory as ... devilry, then bye bye reasoning.
Trump is about demagoguery, absurdity, and
deceit
I hereby concede political reality is about
the immediate economy, and DJT's
credential of superb high employment
will make 2020 a horse race.
Sean and Rush are brilliant propagandists.
They win again in 2020, particularly if Biden's candidacy fails because of divisive politics among idealists.
Meanwhile seemingly with regressive SOCUS
the right is in control.
I am not against increasing the number of
Justices, because lifetime appointments
are political suicide for moderates.
3
The "Heartland Institute," Referenced here by Dr. Krugman, is a Cato-and-Koch-affiliated gaslighting "think tank" which has dedicated itself to questioning the science behind the negative health effects of tobacco, and misrepresenting scientific consensus to undermine efforts to combat global warming.
Lending this outfit credibility by appearing as an event speaker should immediately disqualify any candidate for the Federal Reserve.
14
Unfortunately the power of Fox News and Talk Radio is such that these folks just have no idea that the Republicans happily take their easily obtained votes, use them to pass tax cuts for millionaires, and heartily laugh at the poor folks at cocktail parties. When will they ever learn?
10
The consumption of the relentless propaganda from Fox News over the past ten years continues to achieve the goals of the GOP strategists and the Heritage Foundation.
Their success is stupendous.
Men and women now enthusiastically despise Clinton for being a woman with global views, science is enthusiastically denigrated, racism is enthusiastically justified and an immoral, malevolent president who is clearly beyond redemption is enthusiastically praised by Christian churchgoers throughout the Midwest and many other regions of the country.
What, me worry?
13
A little help from the rest of you.
Paul Krugman points out that the manufacturing deficit has grown, yet I have read from a lot of sources that manufacturing jobs have exploded under Trump.
This is not concern trolling, I really want to know so I come back at Trump sycophants with the real answer.
5
The US economy grew at 3,2 percent in the 1st quarter of 2019 and unemployment is at a more than 50 year low. Real wage growth is at 3.5 percent, well above the ten year trend. These are objectively verifiable numbers (Google is your friend.)
But by any means necessary, keep whining because America is not yet the leftist utopia promised if only the ignorant Trump voters would just become more woke.
1
@Keith
The numbers you quote Keith are irrelevant to 90% of Americans. Wealth is accruing to the top 10%. Do really believe this economy is working for all Americans?
“No one is arguing that manufacturing is not expanding. But when looked at since 2007 it is not expanded,” Atkinson said. “Bottom line is we will know if the recovery in U.S. manufacturing is real, not from what a sample of purchasing managers say they intend to do but from measures of real value added output."
”https://www.factcheck.org/2018/01/manufacturing-jobs-roaring-back/
1
The Republicans are masters of projection and distraction. The real "echo chamber" is Fox News and right-wing radio, not NYT readers, who probably graze around in their reading across the political spectrum. Heck, I got to Fox maybe once a day just make sure they are still do what they do. The real "deep state" is not a few FBI agents, but rather the defense contractors, unlimited campaign cash, and a the herd of lobbyists and consultants that make insiders rich. Urbanization is a known fact of modernization. Every advanced country is urban. Capitalism does that to you. But the Republicans chase windmills and blame the wind.
9
As a young man, I ran away from the East and ended up in what was then a small Western Colorado community where I lived for 8 years. The people whom I met were polite and generous (I never went hungry), and asked about who I was, rather than what I did for a living - the exact opposite of an average New York conversation. I found the people in this community to be earnest, hardworking and respectful. Most had never met a Jew, and while I was the object of numerous attempts at conversion, I was never, not once, disrespected for my religious background.
On the other hand, I found a common resentment against Easterners, who, the thinking was, felt superior and did not understand their problems. I also found a certain anti-intellectualism: "He's so smart he's stupid" said a co-worker once describing then President Carter, who it was also pointed out to me couldn't possibly understand, coming from Georgia, the water scarcity of that region, which has only gotten worse since the late seventies. They believed no one should preach to them about what they should do with the lands they inhabit, irrespective of private or Federal lands.
They are not as politically cynical, which perhaps has perhaps has led to their victimization by the Republicans who know how to exacerbate their complaints. They know, and we Eastern urbanites know, that we look down upon them. Ironically, it was Obama who convinced enough of them otherwise. Let's see which Democrat can learn from his example.
8
I don't know much about Stephen Moore but he sounds like another Stephen Miller. What's the type? Someone who genuflects before perceived authority figures in the most disgracefully obsequious manner and compensates for the brown nosing by treating the rest of humanity with utter contempt and hostility.
Misfortune does not elicit empathy. Just the opposite. They follow the mantra of "never miss an opportunity to kick'em while they are down" and "survival of the strongest".
Not only is this a completely inappropriate attitude on the part of public servants - it undermines and is totally antithetical to the spirit of common effort and common purpose essential to democratic norms. George Orwell wrote volumes on the topic. Animal Farm and 1984 come to mind.
Granted - misanthropes exist, but they shouldn't be in government - let alone hold positions on the Federal Reserve Board or serve as senior advisor for policy for POTUS. This is the rule of the 1% run totally amuck.
Why don't people "move to where the jobs are"? The simple answer is - it's the F word. As in F for family.
I know first hand because my parents moved to Southern California in the 1930's. I was born and raised without relatives. No grandparents, no aunts, no uncles. It was me and my older brother. I was in my 30's before I ever attended a marriage, a christening, or a funeral. I lived in an unreal world where people were never born nor died.
Whatever happened to the GOP's vaunted belief in family values?
3
Life in small town America breeds tribalisms. Everyone knows who you are and what you believe and what you do for a living and what your strengths and weaknesses are. If you want to be part of the social structure of the town you must choose a tribe and conform to its worldview. The alternative is exile from friends and family as they shun you. Many small town tribes are deliberately organized around religion. Capitalists, like mill owners in North Carolina, built churches and paid pastors to create these places of belonging in order to shape and control their labor forces with value systems and world views that didn't challenge the working conditions imposed on them. The mill jobs may be long gone, but the churches remain. They are bastions of tribalism and the most segregated places in America on Sunday morning. Republicans are simply continuing their own history as capitalists to manipulate these tribes and bend them to their political ends. Truth in a small town always comports with the need for belonging and is thus interpreted through tribal values and worldview.
13
From this Canadian's perspective, Democrats appear to be the helpers, the fixers, the doers. They make realistic, responsible proposals, and where possible, they actually carry them out. The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to be the do-nothings and the know-nothings. The only thing they can consistently be relied upon to do is to deliver vast tax breaks to the rich, at the expense of the average person. Imagine what America could be if you had two sane, responsible parties vying for support? The only way this can happen is for the Republicans to suffer a huge loss at the polls. In 2020 I think the Democratic standard bearer must call out the GOP and lay bare all of their incompetence and avarice.
2
The difference is between "You are bad.", a misplaced accusation, and "Disembodied changes have made you poor", an attempt to evade responsibility through generous use of the passive voice. The second statement does sound a lot nicer but really doesn't tell the truth which is, "Some very well connected people made a lot of money destroying your lives and we all helped them, liberal and conservative alike."
1
I agree with you. The most damning travesty of "Trumptopia" is the conscious manipulation and cultivation of FEAR that Trump and his band of crooks have to this point successfully utilized to convince American Citizens to vote against their own best interests. People living in the Midwest and Rural America are not stupid. They are hard working citizens who battle increasing anxiety as they struggle to provide for their families and their communities during a period of history where the wealthy elite work to paralyze and thwart their efforts and ingenuity. It is disgusting. As Americans, we are all better than this. We do not have to give into the cancer of fear, hatred, racism, classism and misogyny that Trump and his team have cultivated. WE THE PEOPLE must review our nation's history and regain our commitment to rebuild our economic and social infrastructure to support ALL American Citizens. We have the wealth and means to do this. We need leaders who are committed to this path. If WE THE PEOPLE do not have to become the prey of GREED and Classism of the Upper 3% who care little for the American Public or humanity. Russia is not our biggest threat. The Narcissism of our current government leaders... and that includes not only Trump but many leaders in the Senate, Congress and Corporate Elite are our biggest threat. Americans of all ages and all areas of this country must rise up, speak out and refuse to participate in the CHAOS of Trumptopia.
5
@Leslie374
"...many leaders in the Senate, Congress and Corporate Elite are our biggest threat." Sounds right. But they don't typically support Trump - and Trump refers to them as "the swamp". Many of these establishment voices portray Trump as a lunatic or a Russian asset, which is clearly manipulative and wrong. So maybe he is also not a con-man, another favored story line of the establishment. If this were the case, then you wouldn't need to assume that so many Americans were conned out of their own best interest (which is a very patronizing viewpoint).
1
Cleveland is home to a top research institution and hospital system. Cincinnati has gorgeous architecture. Both have fantastic museums. Not to mention decently cheap cost of living and public transit. Oh how horrible?
5
There's a puzzle though: it may be easy to demonstrate that Republicans despise the "heartland", but looked at another way, those heartlanders are in fact the Republicans. To some extent it's probably that there are two Republican parties: the elitist leaders, and the despised followers they lie to. But there is probably another tendency, of self-hating heartlanders who would be the first to join in the laughter at "armpit of America" rhetoric, if not about themselves, then about their neighbors down the road. That internalization of derogatory stereotypes is something that can happen. But of course, it's not something to speculate about, you would have to actually know the specific people you were talking about.
1
[...always wrong, never admitting error or learning from it.... ]
Sounds like he'll fit right in.
5
“Eastern Heartland.” region suffers from persistently low employment among working-age men and has seen a surge in mortality from alcohol, suicide and opioids, wrote the author.
It's the blowback of a failed meritocracy system. A good social plan to get plain folks to obey and listen to lies while buying lottery tickets, booze and drugs dreaming getting out of it.
3
Of course what Paul says here is true. This is why Republicans (and some Democrats) since Nixon have used the “southern strategy” to bamboozle working class whites to support them.
3
This applies to every single area of life in the United States.
"But all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth."
But, republicans have the exact opposite view.
They have become the party of the big lie.
3
Mr. Krugman conveniently ignores the issue of leftist contempt for small towns and small town values. One need only read "What's the Matter with Kansas", whose theme is that conservative small town voters are too stupid to know what's good for them. The comment sections of this paper, which are filled with contempt for Evangelical Christianity and traditional moral values are another example of this. And, let us not forget the statements of the last two Democrat presidential candidates about people clinging to their guns and their religion and labelling people part of a basket of deplorables. Who views who with contempt?
Mr. Moore, a Chicagoan, has made some unfortunate statements. But, as someone from the good part of Illinois, we view Chicagoans as not much different from New Yorkers; often insufferable and filled with the false belief that they are better than others. Having gone to school with them as an undergrad, and going to grad school in the Chicago area, in large part they view people from the rest of Illinois as uneducated hicks or worse. I know what I've heard with my own ears.
None of this is to be taken as a comment in support of Donald Trump; I am a proud Reagan Republican. But, this is nothing but another partisan hit piece from Mr. Krugman. And I would suggest actually reading the National Review piece by Kevin Williamson, as it was quite good.
3
Krugman has let his often mentioned Nobel prize in economics gather dust while he has personally descended into the depths of faux leftist outrage againt any person or idea on which he is temporarily fixated.
Just last week he ran with a headline that read "Donald Trump is Trying to Kill You" (verbatim quote) then followed that bit of wisdom with another column asserting that "Republicans are the real extremists."
The columns are enjoyable despite their content, because the rants have become apparently unintended self-parody.
2
@Fred Rick
So it's not possible that we can think, debate, study facts and outcomes to improve this country?
If you don't have health insurance and can't afford a good education, then this country doesn't look so good.
If one watches one of Trumps rallies when he stirs up his crowd by his taunting of others, his calls for "lock her up" etc., it is horrifying to watch the crowd go wild - they respond eagerly at his display of bullying.
Have you ever witnessed a Trump crowd cheering when he says something inspirational? No? Me neither. He never says anything inspirational.
6
I'm sorry, this is a bit ridiculous. As someone who grew up poor in the rural South, let me tell you, NOBODY likes poor whites, nobody feels sorry for them. Elites of all stripes secretly, or openly, loathe them, just as they do poor minorities. One side thinks they're lazy, undeserving, immoral, and ignorant. The other side thinks they're racist, uneducated, moralistic, and ignorant. They are, along with poor blacks, the most maligned and hated group in America. Heck, how often do you see a positive media depiction of these folks? The best I can think of lately is Sharper Objects or True Detective and, um....
The author is absolutely right that conservative elites only care about these folks as much as is necessary to secure their votes and their grievances. But let's not pretend liberal elites are any better. I read plenty of liberal journalism that makes it clear that the left sees these people as the worst - being born with all the supposed advantages of white skin but failing to take advantage of said advantages - many of the white elites in the Northeast forget that these people even exist when talking about "white people" - they make it clear that "white" means country clubs, avocado toast, professional degrees, wealth. When I think about my roots and read the way they talk about whites, I sometimes feel I'm not white at all.
3
Republicans will continue to sell economic fantasies to Midwesterners. The unknown is will they be scammed again. It's comforting to think the Trump medicine show won't have the same success it did when it swung through Ohio in 2016. But it could happen again. The same meaningless early polls that helped the DNC push Hillary Clinton are now justifying bizarre candidacies like that of Joe Biden. A sort of semi-therapeutic amnesia has set in. Forget free toilet training--or whatever is being offered this week by candidates. Think Supreme Court. Repeat as necessary.
What Dems need to do is hammer home the math. Point out to the people in the heartland that what they'll gain in a small cut in their taxes, they'll more than lose in the necessary benefits cuts to such programs as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That alone is bad enough, but those programs will have to be cut further to bring down the ballooning debt.
As much as I believe Elizabeth Warren is right about offering proposals to help rural areas as an election strategy, it really galls me to think we have to favor the poor of one region over another. What about the poor in depressed urban areas? Once again the Electoral College rears its ugly head.
2
So the left is less dismissive of the Midwest and rural communities than Trump and Moore's right? This is unknown to people (outside the Trump zone)? What Krug and Warren do not get is the extraordinary paternalism and arrogance they and coastal liberals project as they advance their nebulous policy vision almost exclusively by attacking Trump and (in Mr. Krug's case) a nincompoop like Mr. Moore. Coastal liberals have always, in my lifetime, subordinated Midwest progressives on the basis that we are unsophisticated and stupid. The policy result has been disastrous, and created the circumstances under which a demagogue like Trump could become President. It is people such as Krug, Warren, Harris, Hillary Clinton and Gillibrand who caused the Democrats to lose the farm and rust belts, despite the obvious policy advantage. The only 2020 candidate to acknowledge this: wait for it... Mayor Pete from wait for it... South Bend, Indiana. Oddly enough, it is the same failing that Mr. Krug accuses Moore of- clinging to policy stances that are unsupported by evidence and unresponsive to issues- that caused Democrats to lose the heartland.
Warren grew up in Oklahoma.
When a scam artist scams someone the scammer always disrespects that victim. This is the relationship between the white voters of middle America and the GOP. Scammer and scammed.
These folks hate the ideas of Elizabeth Warren because in order for them to support her they must first admit to themselves that they have been scammed. They cannot admit their own gullibility.
The disrespect that the GOP has toward it's victims is not irrational. These folks hurt themselves and the GOP knows it. A person sits and hits themselves in the face with a hammer. The GOP has convinced them that the pain they feel is a product of liberal elites. How is it possible to have respect for or sympathy for self abusive people who also delude themselves about the source of their problems? I would suggest that GOP hatred and disgust with their base is actually the only rational thing the GOP does.
3
Why is it that Republicans are better at rhetoric than Democrats? What they are selling is snake oil, but at the end of the day they’re selling it.
The best literary description I know of for the evident contempt “conservative” leaders have for most Americans is Sinclair Lewis’s “Elmer Gantry”. This all goes back a long way, and progressive leadership has rarely found a way to turn it to advantage, much less counter it, probably because progressives actually respect ”regular” folks and shrink from manipulating them as “conservatives” do.
2
The Democrats abandoned the traditional working class long about the Carter Administration and that abandonment shows no sign of reversing. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” - Chuck Schumer
1
What you say about conservatives doesn't negate the moral condescending of many liberals who despise many of the values of those with whom they disagree .
1
Aaaaah, the echo chamber it's vastly entertaining. Today I see we're pretending that that the Democrats hold the working class in any less contempt then the Republicans. I got news they don't. Read the commentaries on this article and then Democrats don't hold the white working class in contempt. Try saying it with a straight face. personally and I am neither a midwestern nor coastal. I suspect (though I haven't seen any studies) was the equivalent of hand grenade launched at the winners of globalization. A scorched earth tactic if you will. A you destroyed my future and my children's futures let's see if we can take yours down with us. For all the talk here the Dems haven't done a single thing for the poor in what 40 years? The ACA hardly a good deal for the working poor A $275 a month payment payment and a 5k deductible on 30k gross. A heckuva deal for the insurance company. But not much of a deal for the insured. The fact is neither party has done much for the losers of globalization and they don't much care too. For all the pretending and pious statements the Democrats are no more interested in helping the losers the then the repubs. Too pretend otherwise is to insult people's intelligence. And losers well they are turning to scorched earth tactics and ...Nihilism perhaps? I'm afraid Trump is merely the herald of things come and what follows will be much worse. But our Political Parties should be proud they created this mess.
2
There is another problem at the high end of society. That is young successful men and women, putting off marriage, and either not having children or having only one child.
Does this have a negative effect on society? It was suggested to me, that this will cause America to reach peak IQ.
There is much discussion about peak IQ in individuals, but little research about this concerning societies in general.
1
@Texan
Please realize that IQ is fluid, like a lot of genetic properties. I have an employee who isn't terribly bright, but his daughter is doing very well in school. President Lincoln had very humble beginnings, but one reading of the Gettysburg Address will tell you he was no dummy.
@Susan
Very aware! Sleep, anxiety, learning disorders can greatly effect IQ test results. But, there is a solid correlation between performance and intelligence. Not everyone can be an MD or write for the NY Times.
The overall concern is very real, even accounting for discrepancies between potential and performance on IQ tests.
1
@Texan
"Not everyone can be an MD..."
My point was that not everyone who is poor is doomed to be unsuccessful and, given a chance, many will prove themselves. IQ tests have come under fire for having biases that can be difficult to factor out.
Kids from successful families will not necessarily be as smart as their parents, but they have advantages that the poor lack.
I love ya, Paul! We're cut from the same cloth. I chose my 1st yr university courses in '72 so I could qualify as a psychohistorian in the Foundation trilogy.
But when you sick your teeth into something (especially voodoo economics, trickle down, bad science, Stephen Moore etc) you are a dog on a bone. Keep chewin', my man!
2
I grew up in New Jersey so I'm used to being on the receiving end of contempt. If you've ever been asked the "What exit?" question, you'll know what I mean. In fact, I learned visiting a roommate's family in Cleveland that Ohio is disdainfully called "the Jersey of the Midwest." Chicago apparently found a way to dis two states in one go.
Of course, disrespect goes both ways. I can't share some of the more colorful examples but I'll share a few mild ones. Anyone from Massachusetts is a "Masshole." New Yorkers are "Wrong Islanders." I wish I could tell you what we call people from Rhode Island but they'd block my post. That's just a short list from the east coast too. We have derogatory insults for just about every state in the nation. If I told you how I really feel about Nebraska, I would be banned from the comments section for life.
Oppositional identity has its uses though. Everyone Jersey kid is going to defend New Jersey when insulted... even when they despise the place themselves. That's really what the propganda machine is tapping into. That defensive emotion so reflexive to our identity. In the same way you might use racists slurs to incite a fight, media is using geography to create divisiveness.
Not surprisingly, the division is politically useful to one specific Party. They've weaponized our geographical rivalries. And you wonder why our nation feels divided? It's very Bismarkian: divide and conquer.
3
Spot on from Krugman - and very frustrating.
Liberals "Elites" are elitist in the intellectual sense - they value education, "high brow" culture, etc. Some certainly do look down on "Middle Americans" for a perceived anti-intellectualism (e.g. not believing in climate change) and lack of cultural sophistication (e.g. liking NASCAR et. al), but they honestly CARE about the "Left Behind" people. Liberal "Elitist" socioeconomic policies are almost always trying to improve the lives of poorer people.
Republicans "Elites" are elitist in a more sinister sense. Sure, they will share a beer and watch the game with the "Common Folks", but at the end of the day, they genuinely do NOT CARE about their wellbeing and view them as inferior in a social Darwinian sense, as evidenced in their constant "Being Poor is Your Fault" type policies.
Unfortunately the cultural bond "Middle Americans" find with Republicans - whether religious, pro military/policy, not being "Latte Drinking Snowflakes" - keeps them voting for the folks who genuinely do not care for them
(Generalizing on all of this - of course - but the main point is true).
The clever part of the Republican propaganda machine is that they cover up their contempt for middle America with racism. This allows them to gain support for their policies by the very people they look down upon.
Just take Kentucky and West Virginia, they continually re-elect people like Mitch McConnell, complaining about how Mexicans in New York and California are stealing their jobs. Meanwhile their elected officials are the ones busy keeping them sick, in debt and ignorant.
LBJ said it the best, give the poorest White man something to hate and they will help you empty their pockets.
1
The circular irony just spins it's way through people who aren't rich. If your daddy didn't leave you a million or so, or you didn't get land some millions on your own, then it must be your fault. Either way, you're in the way of rich people who want it all.
2
Would that all Democratic leaders read this article! If they don't include the midwest in their message, will it be surprising that their "politics of inclusion" continues to fall on deaf ears?
Mr Krugman, perhaps you could return to a topic you supposedly know something about—economics—although you seem much more interested these days in rooting against capitalism and promoting progressive ideology.
Please explain how the economy just grew 3.2% in the first quarter—after your predictions this could NEVER HAPPEN. And what will you say as growth under Trump’s pro-capitalist policies continues to accelerate?
1
When I visit some outback places in Okla/Ark areas be afraid, very afraid. This is Alex Jones country. No one wants to go to the city for jobs. They expect the jobs to come to them. Everyone expects some assistance checks for forever cause they have no way to get to the city. I do believe FOX has pitted rural areas against cities and also states against the country. FOX IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!!
4
And so continues the right wing policy of blaming The Other — in this case, urban Americans — for all the things the right wing truly believes.
Never forget that even the “moderate” Republican Mitt Romney was caught showing his true colors on that video of his talk at a dinner for the rich.
The rest of them go downhill from there.
It’s a policy the GOP has been following since Reagan, at least, and, poor sods desperate to blame anything and anyone for the hollowing out of their world by capitalism, Heartland America falls for it every single time.
No matter. The right is literally eating its own, and will destroy itself in the process. That’s how it works in this economy.
Meanwhile the I Have No Life So Thank God It’s Monday IT crowd in the cities is in the process of wiping itself out with overwork, also not having learned any lessons from the generations of popular struggle for workers’ rights that came before it.
We are, as a nation, pedaling a stationary bicycle in place, on a beach where the imminent tsunami of climate change is about to overwhelm us.
It’s a sad spectacle, but the universe will not be affected by our absence, so oh well.
People think that Donald Trump is one of them because he sounds like their buddy at the tavern. But look at where the Donald hangs out. He wouldn’t be caught dead in your bar.
2
I don’t particularly like the guy either but you can’t fault his reasoning .
I don’t even like Chicago, much less anything else down the middle of the country, tell me pray tell, what state in that area is attractive to live in, none, people live there because they were born there primarily or because of a job, these are not beautiful stateS.
People want to live in New York, Florida, California, DC, Portland, these are beautiful states with beautiful weather, the mid west just isn’t, it just isn’t
@There
How wrong, how condescending. There are beautiful places and lovely little towns throughout the so-called flyover country. I wonder where you live. I'm sure I've been there. Yes, there is economic malaise in the Midwest, but don't gloat, it could be coming to a town near you. This world is very, very uncertain.
Um, Paul, it's the Democrats that want to keep allowing millions of low-wage workers to pour across our southern border.
2
Dr Krugman despises people like me because I disappoint him at the ballot box. He is so wrapped up in being better than the commoners that he can't see our humanity. This whole essay is just about using us to club "the Republicans". He doesn't actually care, he is just freaked out that we are voting against our self-proclaimed betters and his grip on power may be fading. This is his "let them eat cake" article where his flawed and corrupt government policies are the cake.
2
Republicans have successfully secured political power by selling anger and fear to their voters. However projected, Republican strategy is all about flaming a continuing resentment of "them," and its well-known sidekicks of racism, nativism, misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism. People in the Midwest are apparently so focused on salving their poor victimized psyches that they neither notice nor care when their pockets are being picked.
Is there anyplace further from rural America than a penthouse on 5th Avenue in Manhattan?
4
You're completely missing the point. The heartland can obviously handle a joke about being the arm pit of america. What they cannot tolerate, however, is the moral shaming from the left regarding their culture - the only culture they know and have. Do you really believe the closeted gay men who are openly anti-LGBT are happy? Probably not. So instead of stepping on them (i.e. calling them deplorable and mocking their belief system) recognize their humanity, however imperfect it may be, as whole and logical given their life trajectory.
Remember, if you are only compassionate towards the people you agree with, you are not actually being compassionate, you are just being manipulative.
3
Come on, "middle America" and the "heartland" is not West Virginia. Coal mining country is an obvious, painless target for economic reform proposals. Let's look at that Farm Bill (and who really are its beneficiaries), if we want to help the common people and family farms of middle America.
2
Neither political party has done enough for rural America (though individual Democrats have tried). It's disheartening to read the same litany of ills that I chronicled thirty years ago, in a book (Broken Heartland) about America's rural decline.
1
The educated elites of both parties have contempt for those in the bottom half of the country, both in terms of income and education and they will always come up with ways to blame those they exploit for their own exploitation. This is what has always been behind ideas based on supposed racial inferiority, but it applies also to ideas of class and cultural inferiority. Sometimes, the two are conflated and masked by expressing it in terms of geographical location, but it's always about blaming the victims. I think, however, that the victims are beginning to catch on, which is why the elites of both parties are currently so currently upset and united about the "dangerous" prospects of "populism" and "socialism."
3
I lived, for thirteen years, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Having grown up in New York and Central Jersey it came as a shock or maybe a series of shocks--culture shock being at the forefront. Then there were little ones. The first time I went to a movie theatre and waited in the lobby (much too cold to wait outside) I was shocked that everyone looked related--tall and blue-eyed--obvious descendants of Scandinavian immigrants. The next shock, after I'd been there, was how very attached people were to the place. Outsiders were not particularly welcomed, regarded as "different" or in some cases "real different." Politicians cited being a"Native North Dakotan" as a particular civic virtue.
Once I became part of the community (as much as "gown" can be accepted in "town) I came to love the people and the place--even the very dramatic, sometimes dangerous, weather.
But finally I had to leave. I had accomplished all I could accomplish. I began to chafe at the insularity much as I felt protected by it. And I missed my East Coast friends and family. I missed museums, theatre, and the pace of the city.
I was sad to leave. But I had a place to go, unlike my friends with deep roots. Leaving for them was simply not an option. This is not to say they could not thrive and succeed elsewhere, but their attachment to place is profound and enduring.
It must be terrifying to see jobs slip away and the economy shrink, to pack up like the Joad family and head off to parts unknown.
8
As always, the Republicans are worse; nevertheless, Democratic leaders have supported anti-labor, anti-heartland policies, including NAFTA and TPP. Our two major political parties are both beholden to wealthy donors and place their demands front and center. The Democrats used to be staunchly pro-worker, but the party of FDR no longer exists, though it may yet be revived. The abandonment of the working classes by political elites and the rise of Trump go hand in hand.
4
Neither NAFTA nor TPP was anti-worker.
Were there problems? Sure. Did they need addressing? Sure.
But anti-worker? Nonsense.
The source of this misinformation is in large part is Fox News.
This organization is the cauldron of fake news, political propaganda, in disguise of political opinions. The congress must restore Fairness Doctrine which was vetoed by Reagan. Unless we remove the source of this virus in the nation's political process, the country will never be safe.
9
Donald Trump along with other Republicans has/have managed to convince the people in the "heartland" that he and they are "one of them" and together he and the Republicans have nurtured an "us against them" culture against anyone perceived to be different. To that end the Republican's stock and trade has been to stoke fear, with the aid of Fox News. Fear of those of color, fear of uppity women, fear of those who are LGBTQ, and fear of immigrants. They have pushed their supporters to distain science and education. They have portrayed the government they depend on for subsistence as the enemy of the people. All the while conspiring to take away the very social safety nets which Democrats fought hard for and most of the Republican base needs. They have not offered hope nor any job retraining programs which would help lift people out of poverty as the Democrats have. They have offered hate and anger.
As has been the case with members of a destructive cult, there needs to be some kind of de-programming. How do we change the conversation when exposure of lies, exposure of immorality, exposure of corruption, exposure of obstruction of justice, and exposure of tampering by a foreign adversary in our election process has done nothing to sway the Republican base? How do we even reach them? Some inroads were made in 2018, which does give me some hope.
There are cracks in support for Trump at Fox News. That one advantage should be promoted to help turn the tide against Trump.
6
here has been several stories in the Times where reporters went to some of these heartland communities and just listened to the conversations in the local coffee shops and stores.
The general theme there was Democrats just want to take their money and give it to those illegals. That their kids go away to some university and are immersed in left wing socialist philosophy, that they learn useless liberal arts like history, psychology, sociology are taught by nothing but Socialist professors. They hear the young people from the farms laughing about those educated liberal elitists, their education consists of Fox News, and TV entertainment. The sneer at those sissy liberals who don't know what it is like to work dawn to dusk on the farm. Yes those heartland voters, will vote for a swindler, and conman, an authoritarian,they believe he is protecting the country and them from those others, those terrorists in the Islamic dominated countries.
Worse yet they applaud the attacks on them, if you are not a Christian, you must be and enemy. They will vote for Donald the Mad until their farms are in receivership, and claim it was the Democrats that caused it. I think we are hoping against hope that the majority of them will rethink their ideology, it is a long shot.
7
Living on the East Coast for nine years, I found Moore's attitude toward the Midwest to be fairly common, almost exactly like the famous New Yorker cover that pictures nothing between the Hudson River and California.
Someone at an Ivy League school once asked me in all seriousness if Minnesota had a seacoast. (My reply: "Not in this geological era.")
When my fellow graduate students discussed job possibilities, some of them shuddered at the thought of having to go to the Midwest. Their range of geographical acceptability ran north-south from New England to the University of Virginia and only as far west as the Alleghenies.
There are actually many pleasant places to live in the Midwest, including my hometown and current residence of Minneapolis, and its non-identical twin St. Paul. Between them, these two cities offer every urban amenity that one could desire.
Rural Minnesotans seem to believe that everyone in the Cities despises them, but in my experience, it's actually the other way around. The only disparaging remarks I hear from city dwellers are musings about why the rural people vote Republican, when it's the Democrats who advocate for things that would benefit them.
What I hear from rural people is that they could never live in the Cities, too many people, too much traffic, too many liberals, and in the worst cases "too many [racial slur]."
11
Sorry Mr. Moore, I'm glad I live in the very liberal upper-Midwest "Goldilocks" city of Minneapolis, where we've gotten the balance of technology companies, Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, craft beer, bicycles, light rail, and happiness just right.
7
This is a good essay, and an historical perspective reveals that collective bargaining and union representation were critical components in slowing deindustrialization and stabilizing communities with on-going pension and health care benefits from the 1970s through the 2000s.
Steel and auto workers in towns like Johnstown, PA, Weirton, WV, and Anderson, IN, negotiated to avert plant closures and when plants did close they relied upon enhanced pensions and health insurance coverage until they were eligible for Medicare. In the 1940s through the 1960s the UAW and USWA created a "parallel" or "private" welfare state that benefitted hundred of thousands of workers as globalization and technological changed came in the 1970s through the 2000s.
These pensions and health insurance benefits amounted to tens of billions of dollars for thousands of workers. They enabled workers to accept lower wage jobs, often without health coverage, and remain contributing community members.
This shadow welfare state has waned in recent years and it's disappearance is why we are now witnessing greater distress in the eastern heartland. The triage support from the unions is gone and Republicans have no interest in reviving it.
Hurtful hypocrisy in Republican politics is the pretend fealty to blue collar workers while simultaneously working furiously to undermine unions and collective bargaining at every turn.
12
@Glenn
All good and valid points, though the bigger point is: all politicians lie. Republicans are no more likely to bring low skilled manufacturing jobs back to dying small towns than Democrats are to revive them through more Government programs (or more pro-union laws).
But I also think small town "Heartland" voters are not as ignorant as politicians (from both sides) often treat them. And they tend to vote Republican because they are socially conservative and also because they prefer less economic interference from Government.
Perhaps we should respect that choice rather than try to force assistance on them that is not wanted.
If heartland folks don’t want assistance, why are they demanding it so loudly?
And could you name a “pro-union,” law, please? Is it the laws allowing unions to exist at all?
I agree with most of this but there is another side that is seldom mentioned. Democrats too often pander to rural America and the Midwest without delivering the goods once they are elected. Then people get sick of hearing the promises because they have heard them before. I loved President Obama but he dropped the ball early in his administration when he failed to deliver the card check law that would have made it much easier for workers to organize unions. This was a relatively easy thing he could have done that would have made a real difference in the lives of many people and may have helped fight the Tea Party movement. Of course Hillary Clinton's proposals would have been better for the Heartland than Donald Trump's, even if she had labeled them "The Deplorable Bills" -- but people saw how much money she made talking to Goldman Sachs so they doubted whether she would be a shill for Wall Street once she was elected. Of course Donald Trump is a bigger shill for Wall Street than she would ever have been. Still, Democrats need to do everything they can to deliver for working people once they are elected or else they become easy targets, given the vast Republican propaganda network. I am optimistic about the candidates in the current field. They appear to be less afraid than Obama and Clinton were of offending the donors by pushing for policies that might force those donors to share a bigger slice of the pie with their employees.
9
@Dave: Obama did more than drop the ball: he threw the game when he failed to ask the Supreme Court to rule on whether he had the right to nominate the next justice no matter how long it took.
1
Republicans got control of the House because we did not turn out to vote.
So if the card check bill upset you this much, look in the mirror.
I’m tired of seeing the languid left go after Obama.
Right-wing forces also use another trick to squeeze women and families already in the financial bind, "of their own making". A continuous stoking of not only anti abortion fervor, but access to family planning resources, keeps the pressure on women to have more children, while they are barely able to withstand managing at least one full-time and underpaid job, along with other young school-age children already in need of something more than part-time parents.
12
Thank you, Dr. Krugman. It is easy for people to turn on each other when the bad (economic) times come. The morning after Trump won I drove through Titusville, PA a once thriving town close to where the oil industry began. At one time it had a steel mill and several manufacturing plants. Now there is a huge food pantry right on Main St. This is the tragedy of small town America.
9
Creativity is known to come from places like NYC, San Francisco, Portland, Austin and of course Hollywood. What more right leaning and conservative people understand about flyover country (rural America and cities like Cleveland) is that the people who live there actually do have more to offer the world than being a potential victim group for the left to exploit. Krugman and Warren want to coddle them and approach them as another victim group that can offer votes and turn the country further left than it already is. Fly over country people need to find ways to assert their way of life and what they want our country to be into popular culture and to find and create avenues where their forms of expression can heard through art, business, morality and values. Part of the problem are the values of the Heartland are seen as antithetical to Hollywood and the the mainstream media who have a firm lock and vested interest in maintaining the status quo American culture. Flyover country and the Heartland may be suffering greatly now, but suffering often has a way of creating great art and influencing culture on a large scale and as the saying goes 'politics is downstream from culture.'
2
Abortion, guns, "social conservatism," and Fox News ensure that rural voters continue to vote against their own interests. Unfortunately, these voters aren't always, or even very often, receptive to logical, evidence-backed information offered by Democratic candidates, independent groups and reports, or anyone else - they just close their minds to the "liberals." Education would go a long way, one thinks, but what interest do Republicans have in improving public education when it means they'd most likely lose their voters?
It's honestly very difficult to see anything redeeming about the current Republican platform. The "platform" is about concentrating their own power, not serving the U.S. But they know that all they have to say to sweep the red middle of the country is that they'll protect gun rights and slash abortion rights. Boom. That's it, for so, so many voters - voters who have disproportionate power at the polls due to gerrymandering and the Senate structure.
Conservative voters: no government regulation - until a uterus is involved.
20
@Lucy Thinking you know what's in the "best interests" of millions of people you've never met is part of the problem with the left in general.
1
Krugman's "truth" is a little too binary for my taste but, as the past several years have demonstrated, many on the left can be as intolerant and unwilling to engage as those on the right.
When certainty, self-righteousness and vilification become more and more the norm for those who otherwise claim to be open-minded and open-hearted, I lose what little hope I have.
2
@J. Cornelio: If only liberals like Krugman could be more "open-minded and open-hearted" and pretend that coal mining and manufacturing jobs are coming back.
The biggest problem here I guess is that Krugman is just too binary in believing that facts matter. How deluded!
1
It is disingenuous for those who think that people can easily move to coastal cities to improve their lives. The cost of housing in these areas is so high that unless you have a guaranteed high paying job, well-off parents who can temporarily support you, or relatives or close friends who you can stay with until you find a job and put together a deposit and security, it is impossible to do so.
6
It is not the main point in Mr. Krugman's piece but there are plenty of very livable places in the Midwest. Take my own Lansing-East Lansing, Michigan region. Good air, clean water, almost no unemployment, college town, pleasant and tolerant people, increasingly diverse, Democratic voters, very little traffic, four-bedroom houses in good school districts for $250,000 dollars. But, if you are anything like Stephen Moore, please don't move here.
14
"But all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth." Yes, one would think that this is a fundamental truth. However, this same heartland, ruled by the GOP and its cronies does everything it can to ensure that they don't get anything if they can help it. Pre-existing conditions are a recent example.
Nonetheless, there is approximately 40% of the electorate that really believe, in the face of all this, that they are being told the truth.
4
"They attribute the heartland’s woes to a mysterious collapse in morality and family values that somehow hasn’t affected coastal cities."
If anyone knows about the collapse in morality and family values, it's Stephen Moore.
6
Yet another example of GOP projection. Trump is the most egregious, of course, but most of their prominent spokespersons and their party television network consistently blame on Democrats the very attitudes their administrations have institutionalized through legislation.
3
I grew up in Ohio and worked in Chicago and have spent the last 20 years in NYC and Pa. I am amazed at how Easterners/Liberals view the Midwest. They seem to think it's religion and guns that form the spine of conservative white voters. I think it's more about being forgotten.
Midwest cities are filled with the descendants of working class ethnics forgotten by liberals; in lots of cases they're the city dwellers who fled when blacks moved in, and they blame "liberal" busing and "liberal" civil rights. Reagan exploited that first and best.
Many Midwesterners see special programs for blacks and Hispanics but they don't see that for them, nor do they see any politicians, local, state or federal doing anything to improve future possibilities.
Many are apolitical, and the Republican party, in their minds, is the party that embraces doing nothing, because doing something could be worse. So no health care is better than government-aided health care.
No place is deep down more cynical about America than the "heartland."
10
As I read this column in our room at the Microtel in Keyser, West Virginia, amen comes to mind. We are here to move my mother-in-law into a Medicaid-funded nursing home from her Section 8 apartment. Coming here many times over the last 30 years has given me a fair picture of the culture and the economy. The bright spot here is the local coffee shop that some millennials opened up a year or so ago. It is emblematic of the attitudinal shift that is needed to foster a new sense of community based on openmindedness, not the old us-against-themism.
11
I’m sure the locals that have lived in that town for generations are so incredibly appreciative that some millennials have opened a coffee shop!
7
@William
“The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one.” --Henry Ward Beecher
@William
What makes you think those millennials aren't locals whose families have been there for generations?
The heartland discussed here puts god above country, wants their individual right to a gun but not a woman's individual right to control her body, and wants to close the borders to anyone who might want a job they think they're too good for.
Based on what I see and hear, and yes I've driven across the country several times, what happens in the "heartland" is of no interest to me. When they stop electing Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence and their like, maybe I will.
13
Thank you for driving through and all, but this sort of dismissive attitude about most of the country won’t do Democrats any favors in 2020 and beyond.
2
Krugman notes that "[mo]re than 16 percent of West Virginians are employed in health care and social assistance" and uses that statistic to argue that poor "Heartland" voters should therefore embrace Democrats who promise to further subsidize the healthcare industry.
What Krugman totally misses is that any area with 16% employed in healthcare is DYING. And more subsidies for a dying industry means making things worse.
On the other hand, a growing economy and a competitive job market mean OPPORTUNITY. Sometimes that means opportunity for once dying towns themselves, and sometimes it means opportunity for individuals to escape.
There is more opportunity today for more people in the Heartland and elsewhere than there was 4 and 8 years ago. I know nothing about Stephen Moore. But this article is case in point of why voters in the "Heartland" don't want more "help" from the liberal elites.
3
How does employment in healthcare mean a society is dying?
It would seem that the ways in which the heartland is dying is due more to the diseases of despair, right wing promises to bring back dead industries like coal. and lack of other opportunity because of a lack of,progressive thinking and spending. Mr Krugmans suggestion that the existing positives be preserved is wise and could only be viewed as a negative if taken with a heaping dose of bias.
7
@andrew asked: "How does employment in healthcare mean a society is dying?"
Overall employment in healthcare does not mean a society is dying.
But, if a region has a higher PERCENTAGE of employment in healthcare than other regions, it is a good sign of decline for that region for a couple reasons:
1. It probably means an aging population, thus it is literally "dying";
2. More importantly, healthcare jobs are not productive. Healthcare must be funded from income (or government funds) obtained through productive industries. An increase in the percentage of healthcare jobs means a decrease in the percentage of productive jobs, which means less opportunity to become economically prosperous.
3
In the second half of the 1980s, Reagan's newly-minted Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, began his campaign of deregulation in his belief that it would ignite the creativity of the free market. Well, it did but at an enormous cost to the Great American Workforce.
Coordinating with the MBA programs across the country, a "healthy" economy meant expanding corporate profits which, in turn, created expanded executive "compensation" packages. And that became a driver of corporate decision-making because, if they could increase profits, Wall Street would drive the value of those stocks higher which affected compensation packages loaded with stock options.
To accomplish those profit benchmarks, corporations took advantage of Greenspan's deregulation campaign and shut down manufacturing plants across the country but mostly from the midwest (heavy manufacturing) and the mid-Atlantic states (mostly textiles and furniture), to Asia and south of our border. Those decisions hurt millions of American workers.
With the help of conservative propaganda machines, Fox News, the Republicans have been able to blame Democrats whenever trickle-down policies fail miserably.
The heartland of America deserves better than conservative rhetoric. Democrats can retake middle America in 2020 but it will take a meaningful campaign message with real solutions to bring back those voters because, world history tells us desperation and fear can create the desire for an autocratic strongman to save them.
5
@David Ohman
Everything in this comment is wrong. Increased productivity drives continued economic growth. For a long time following WWII, US companies were able to achieve productivity gains through increased efficiency, lean manufacturing techniques, etc., all while supporting increased US labor costs.
Eventually, in order to remain competitive, they had to either cut labor costs (through outsourcing) or eliminate labor costs (through automation or more efficient manufacturing).
This has nothing to do with "deregulation." In fact, deregulation, if anything, slowed the outsourcing of manufacturing by lowering the regulatory costs for US manufacturers.
2
If the sane are able to regain control of our government, such issues as these will be easily fixed. Millions of people can be employed and decently paid in the Service field. One huge place wold be to educate and train enough school teachers to create a teacher student ratio of 1 to 10. this wold generate three to four times the number of teachers we now have, and go along way toward restoring our free educational system which the insane have been attacking for the past 40 years.
We tend to look at employment as being paid to do some kind of work that makes a profit for some owner of something.
Using ones strength and time to serve the Common Good in some way is a natural Human instinct. People want to be doing something that matters. Most of the "jobs" were doing something that enabled the owners to get rich.
The starting place is a guaranteed annual living income. I think that the vast majority of individuals will use their time and labor to do something that will improve life for all. The vast majority of humans are amazing, caring. loving. We can not abide doing nothing, and if we do not have to do something that will make money for some owner of something we will do things that make the planet a better planet. It's Human Nature
4
Abortion was the ideological red meat that American conservatism tossed to its voter base even as it organized the decades-long economic heist of transferring jobs overseas and tax cuts for "job creators" (who never showed up for work!).
You'd think people would have woken up by now. But those cuts to destroy science and education clearly have worked.
7
@GeorgeX: Three generations of Americans have been brainwashed with the utterly specious proposition that this playpen for con artists is "under God". Thus we have demand for public policy that makes death a better place.
As a resident of one of the “armpits” listed, I’d like to note: Cleveland and Cincinnati are not rural areas. Cleveland is solidly Democratic and we did not vote for Trump. Cincinnati is more the establishment Republican city in Ohio so it surely did but not out of economic despair.
I agree with Krugman’s overall point, but as someone who lives in the Midwest it’s a bit infuriating to always hear Midwest = rural. Or Midwest = post-industrial hole. That’s one place where the sense of coastal liberal disdain comes from (and I’m liberal). Anyone should check out what’s actually here before writing it off as all one thing or another.
15
I don't know anything about Stephen Moore. But the reason most voters in the "Heartland" lean Republican is because they value work and don't want to have to rely on the Government for their livelihood, even if (and perhaps because) they disproportionately do rely on the Government today.
And nobody wants the primary industry in their town to be medical. That's the truest sign of a dying town. And so what real promise does more Government healthcare funding really provide them?
In my experience (and I have a lot of family from and in small towns), many voters in those towns believe they would be better off if they were not so dependent on Government programs.
That is why so many in the Heartland believe elite liberals disdain them ... because paternalism is a form of disdain.
8
@Econ101
Well, when politicians stop hearing about how that part of the country is overlooked and how the coasts get everything, they will probably stop proposing government solutions for them. I mean, why aren’t they complaining the Musk or Gates or Bezoes about how their economic programs haven’t reached the Midwest yet? Write a letter to your friendly Oligarch!
4
@Econ101
"But the reason most voters in the "Heartland" lean Republican is because they value work and don't want to have to rely on the Government for their livelihood"
What does that mean? That those not in the "heartland" don't value work and want to rely on the government?
Yet the greatest number of jobs, and high paying jobs, are on the coasts and in other high economic centers. Those earning the most and paying the highest taxes are doing so primarily with good, well paying private sector jobs in the so-called "elite" areas of the country. Where work is valued.
This idea the Democrats don't value work is fully disproved by the high number of people employed in the "blue states" where Republicans alone could not fill all the jobs.
RE: "many voters in those towns believe they would be better off if they were not so dependent on Government programs."
Aren't these the same people that call those that depend on government programs lazy and say that they should get a job?
1
@Econ101: If they want to be so independent, why haven't they done so? No one forces them to take government help.
A situation that is mostly beyond their control has forced them to become dependent, like the so-called welfare queens that they so despised. A few find a way or go to where the jobs are, but most do not. They are stuck with a belief system that no longer matches reality and are being dragged kicking and screaming into a situation that they have been taught is dishonorable.
For those people, Trump is like a rainmaker to desperate farmers.
Sister Joan Chittister called out the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement as really a pro-birth movement. There was no corresponding insistence for the protection, housing or feeding of the children so loudly promoted by what are in fact, human breeding programs.
Mr. Krugman asks the question: why has there not been a collapse of economies in the eastern coastal systems.
Could it be, that the same conservative politicians are loath to admit that white people are human, too, that white people might need help, that white people might lose the "other" to whom they could feel superior ?
6
I would be curious to hear how much a "brain drain" has to do with the decline. I actually grew up in a fairly enlightened place and time in central Illinois. we had the influence of a large university in our daily life and public schools. however, just about everybody that was a close friend from my high school days left as soon as they could and few returned except to visit their parents or other relatives. the town I grew up in continues to thrive but the areas around are much like what is described in the column.
8
@coale johnson You are correct, Coale, Chicago Democrat politics and policies have helped to destroy what Chicagoans disdainfully refer to as downstate. An ethanol plant with 95 jobs has been cancelled for Jacksonville this week because Chicago Democrats are hostile to our state's business climate. https://www.pjstar.com/news/20190425/nick-in-am-firm-blames-illinois-business-climate-for-decision-to-shelve-500m-ethanol-plant
Didn't Krugman permit the economy would collapse under Trump and that we'd never again see 3% GDP? Check today's front page announcing 3.2% GDP.
3
@Mike Now ask yourself why. Hint: excess inventory. Consumer spending was a very weak 1.3%.
5
@Mike
GDP can be measured over many different areas and timeframes. Find me the quote where Krugman says that no part of the US will ever grow at 3% again over any timeframe and I’ll consider you right.
8
@Mike The problem is that the growth misses the rural areas and is concentrated on the coasts and metro areas which is the point of the article.
Not too long ago a conservative pundit writing about Appalachia in the National Review said: “Simply put, Americans are killing themselves and destroying their families at an alarming rate. No one is making them do it. The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand. Immigrants aren’t making them cheat on their wives or snort OxyContin. Obama isn’t walking them into the lawyer’s office to force them to file a bogus disability claim.”
The right wing despises the very people whom they con into voting for their retrograde candidates.
In a democracy, you get what you vote for — good and hard.
30
In my experience with people that live in the Heartland they still think that the cities on the coasts are ravaged with drugs and crime like many were in the early 1990s crack epidemic. They want to cut Medicaid and "Welfare" because they think these dollars go only to urban Hispanics and African-Americans. Gentrification where minorities are being priced out of cities is mostly unknown to them. Instead they believe there are "welfare queens" like their hero Ronald Reagan described but now with the latest smartphones and driving exotic foreign cars.
13
@Louis James
The joke's on them: Here in Ohio and other parts of the Midwest, the opioid epidemic is primarily rural and white; meth addiction and production is a big problem in rural areas as well. A lot of rural areas and small towns in the Midwest have been decimated by both the opioid epidemic and depopulation due to younger people leaving because there is no opportunity for them for education or employment. People who cling to the racism-oriented belief that urban areas are racked with drug and crime problems should visit some of the rural areas in the Midwest and get educated. I've seen this with my own eyes, because I live here.
4
@eheck
Also with gangs. Heartlanders seem to think street gangs run cities like NYC and SF, that MS-13 controls entire neighborhoods much like Trump thinks Muslims control entire neighborhoods in London and police won't enter them.
@me
And if you're going to bring that up, then be sure to look into how the racial redistricting of the areas in these cities have also led to the lack of resources, and ultimately an increase in poverty and crime.
At least tell the whole story.
I am an educated, East coast, white woman. Dare I add pro-choice, pro-gun control? Whatever the intersection, to use the current term that renders the body politic into ever smaller groupings, I am beyond satiated with hearing about the people in rural America who feel that they are looked down up by likes of me. I am bursting with gall at the manner in which they look down on me! Try pointy-headed intellectual for starters, then move on to feminazi. I don't notice them running out to the coasts wringing their hands and writing books about their discoveries as has been done in the opposite direction. Please. Stop throwing epithets. Find the commonalities and build on them.
28
Stephen Moore's ugly comment about "armpit" cities in the Midwest s the talk of a truly ignorant man - and a man who flaunts his ignorance so blithely is the last man who belongs on the Federal Reserve's board of governors. Just to take Cleveland: Is "armpit" an appropriate adjective for a city that boasts a world-class symphony orchestra and art museum? That supports three major-league sports teams? That possesses a superior, affordable residential housing stock amidst an extraordinary assortment of trees planted nearly 200 years ago? Enjoys access to one of the world's largest bodies of fresh water? Benefits from one of the country's oldest and deepest reservoirs of philanthropy? And, most important, is witnessing a growing number of young residents, many of them newcomers, who are exhilarated to be party of an old city's re-invention?
19
Young people are flocking to live in downtown Cleveland, revitalized near downtown neighborhoods, and suburbs. Good jobs, great quality of life, lake access, culture in top 10, and many other reasons. Old tropes die hard. Frankly, Steve is simply an ignorant and mean Trumpster. He has no business being on the Fed since he is totally unqualified. But, of course, so is our President.
25
Manufacturing employment has increased in the U.S., particularly in the areas that Paul says is forgotten.... see: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true
So, what's his real point?
1
The GOP has contempt for the coastal elites, and people in the Heartland. The Democratic party needs to hammer this theme and hammer it hard. The GOP only wants to hear from a select group of very rich people that live in some sort of John Galt world.
This guy says this in Chicago at the Heartland institute. Hey Chicago! This guy is Don Rickling you. Except he means it.
TIme to pay attention.
7
"They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion" Barack Obama, April 2008
"I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America," Hilary Clinton, April 2008
"You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it." Hilary Clinton, September 2016
Readers, if you want to remove President Trump in 2020, treat everyone with dignity and not disrespect. Insist the Democratic nominee does as well. Starting now!
3
@Luddite
Sure sweetie we will get right on it. I think that both of the quotes are actually pretty spot on. God, guns, and religion and basket of deplorables are fitting. But let’s just go ahead and ignore the disrespect heard daily from republicans and this president, they insult us daily with their lies but sure we can all get along amarite?
1
@Luddite exactly right. It is amusing to see Krugman, rather than listening to the "heartland" about why they vote the way they do -- and perhaps learning something -- instead tells them what they should be thinking and tells them how they should be voting (while implying that they are too stupid to do so).
Then he scratches his head over why "the heartland" has antipathy for the coastal elites.
@Luddite
Yawn - Once again, the use of cherry-picked "quotes" taken out of context from larger speeches and sold as propaganda by conservative media and pundits. The perpetual recycling of particular tropes has grown pretty stale, but I guess that's to be expected from a movement that can't seem to come to grips with the modern world and wants to take us all back to the 1950s.
3
Let’s not deny that liberals feels the same way.
2
Consider today's economic news, of another great quarter with 3.2% growth.
Now, imagine we'd listened to you.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election-night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout
You, BHO, and the rest of the extreme left told us that vibrant growth was impossible, that a plodding economy was "the new normal", that tax cuts wouldn't work, etc. You were wrong. Consistently, spectacularly wrong.
So, one should be careful about casting aspersions against others when one's record of prognostications -- inter alia, that markets would "never" recover after DT's election --has been uniformly wrong.
(And, incidentally, must you go to such great lengths to prove -- yet again -- that leftists have absolutely no sense of humor?)
4
@Michael
Excellent comment. I almost spit out my coffee when I read this line in Krugman's coffee: "his track record on economics — always wrong, never admitting error or learning from it — is utterly disqualifying".
Bias is often borne out of ignorance, and attendant stereotypes reinforce it.
So it is with divisive manipulation by politicians who thrive on fueling the flames of resentment, hoping to harness it for their own selfish political purposes. That they do so disingenuously, without regard for facts, policies and programs that do not serve their own interests, makes it all the more troubling.
Our politics have become not an exercise in binding us together as a nation, but a zero-sum game in which we are primed to resent others by believing that their gain is our own loss.
Arrogance and attendant antipathy toward those who would benefit from a helping hand is the stock in trade of Republicans who mask their true sentiments with a plethora of disingenuous platitudes designed to lull the Middle American objects of their true scorn into a sense of complacency.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" goes the old, if misogynistic adage. The same may well hold true for Main Street Americans when they realize that they've been played by Republicans who, in spite of their assertions to the contrary, really don't care about them at all.
1
Just to be fair, Hillary Clinton, by referring to Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables", didn't exactly ingrate herself with the heartland.
5
@G. Sheldon
She actually said that "half"of Trump supporters were in that basket; then she listed what she meant by "deplorable" (racist, homophobic, etc.). Judging by the evidence since the election, that percentage seems about right.
@G. Sheldon
I guess the truth hurts.
Democrats rely on the black vote. They would never visit the black slums of Baltimore, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland, and so on and so forth. They favor emptying prisons as long as the prisoners go to these neighborhoods. They won’t say bad things about blacks. But their actions make it clear that they view these neighborhoods as armpits of America. The elites of both parties show scorn and disgust for voters they depend on. Blaming one and not the other is hypocrisy.
1
There may be a grain of truth to that Republicans look more down upon poor white people than Liberals, but it was Hillary Clinton who referred to them as “the basket of deplorable.”
If that is not an expression of contempt I don’t know what contempt is.
1
@Inga Dora Björnsdottir She was referring to a specific segment of Trump voters, not to "poor white people."
1
Funny how Fox News that claims support for the people living in the rural parts of the country is based in New York City.
6
This "armpit" quote is quite a gaffe for a pundit with career ambitions.
Imagine what would happen if a major party's presidential nominee scorned an even wider swath of the electorate as "deplorable."
2
@R.A. Williams
“Imagine what would happen...”
She’d win the popular vote by millions?
4
People in the eastern heartland, reliable Republican voters all, will go to their graves starving, jobless, penniless and homeless...all the while blaming Obama, Crooked Hillary and libs, just as they have been trained to do by Fox, Rush, Trump and the fake 'christian" preachers that populate their pulpits.
They will never learn, it's pointless to even try.
9
I think that Stephen Moore is the pet of some billionaire. His job is to parrot whatever his boss is saying at the minute
Anybody know who his owner is?
Submitted at 1.38am EST April 26th
5
But what’s the source of that narrative?
----------------
Hollywood/TV shows, the media, and your Dem leaders.
Hillary called us deplorables, and Obama said we cling to our Gods, guns and children.
In the free labor states, where settlers pushed west and we had no slaves, there are a lot of white people. Chrisitan white people, specifically, of diverse northern European stock.
Don't look now, Paul, but white European Christians have fallen out of favor in much of the world. You're just noticing the hatreds against us now? The campaign has been ongoing, but perhaps you're been too busy watching the Southern Poverty Law Center track white supremacists?
Teach your children well, indeed.
2
Mr Krugman, About 15 years ago, you wrote an article about a tire manufacturing plant in South Georgia which closed due to low skills in reading other matters among the employees. You used this example to disparage the South its inhabitants. Your comments?
1
I think the armpit comment is about the large African-American communiites in the midwestern cities. It's another not-so-veiled comment about race.
3
I know this is not the point of the article, but I really don’t like the term “white ghetto” just like I don’t like the term “white trash”.
To my ear it sounds like the term “white” is intended to distinguish that particular “ghetto” and “trash” from “regular” ghettos and trash.
Are average white people somehow supposed to be exempt from these social ills in a way that people of color aren’t?
2
Someone should ask the rurals what decades of Republican rule has done for them. Vote for a Dem in 2020. “You have nothing to lose!”
4
@K. H. We have money to lose to confiscatory Democrat tax proposals.
It is difficult to change people's mind until a "personal" catastrophic event struck him or her. I had such an event that changed my whole life perspective. Economy, education, environment, and other outside factors will not change a person's fundamental opinion and decision. I suspect that those rural folks feel the same way about Republicans as well as Democrats long time ago. "You are what you were born when" was the title when I first had the non-technical training in a company about 35 years ago.
This article is concise and accurately exposes the issue.
Democrats need to read this article and use this as their central message at every opportunity, to educate the poorly informed 'heartland' voters, and all other middle and lower class voters as well. God and guns will never substitute for healthcare, education, or jobs that have dignity and pay a living wage.
3
As conservative pundits inundate the airwaves with negative branding of any and all opposition, the Democrats are always talking about solving the world's problems. It's nearly impossible to run on a platform to fix everything at the federal level. Stay focused Democrats (listen to Nancy Pelosi). The ideal progressive candidate would set an agenda to make actual progress in Washington DC. Focus on the environment, healthcare, major social programs, trade, a more defensive military, and technological advancements.
Don't make any promises to change backward looking states. Speak about the right for local governments to make their own mistakes, like the Governor Brownback tax cuts in Kansas. Speak about the rights for states to create incentives for a cleaner environment, just society, and local education. We cannot drag some communities into the 21st Century. They aren't willing.
Other commentators have mentioned it here. The Republicans have a simple message: God, Guns, Deregulation, and Tax Cuts. Republicans don't have plans to do anything for the greater good. Republicans mostly ignore everything except for the dictates of the conservative corporate and religious organizations. Republicans will use every level of government to force legislation upon a more and more serf-like underclass. This has to stop.
5
I’m a retired Marine reservist. I also retired as a civilian from The Dept of Defense and many years working at the Pentagon as a foreign affairs specialist for the Sec of Defense. I’m from NE Ohio, I guess armpit central. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. My family was Republican. Where I am now - I moved back here after many years in Washington, even working at the House of Representatives - was ground zero for the “malaise” described by President Carter. I remember it all very well. I got out, thanks to the Marines and a college scholarship. While working in both the Legislative and Executive branches of government, I was extremely privileged to be present as a fly on the wall at many historic moments. What used to strike me is that I always felt out of place working around many “elites” with Ivy League degrees and connections that landed them jobs on Presidential campaigns and thereafter plum political appointments. Although I was a Republican (then) it always struck me that I was treated better by Democratic appointees than the Republicans, who were suspicious of anyone who worked for the previous Administration, apparently misunderstanding the role of nonpartisan civil servants. I understand under this President it’s been raised to an art form. My point? What is described here - the disdain for people from here and places like it - is palpable among a certain “class” of DC inhabitants. It does exist.
7
Thank you Paul. A classic example of projection. What the RePubs have done for decades and now perfected by their fearless leader tRump. Take your own weaknesses and prejudices and "project" them onto your political enemies in order to hide and diminish them from the voters. Collude with Russia? Hillary did it! Lock Her up! Progressives look down their nose at the Heartland, while tRump tells his wealthy patrons at his club: "I just gave you a huge tax cut." After his trillion dollar gift to Billionaires. And of course tRump's best line: "I love the uneducated."
4
It still bewilders me that the GOP is so cavalierly cruel to their "own". W's "ownership society", Ryan's budgets. Are most of these GOP lawmakers only children? Have they no cousins,aunts,uncles who suffer under their policies? Are they all sociopaths?
8
Con men typically feel contempt for those they have conned.
20
The Republican party have been masters of propaganda. It's pure evil, but effective. They have an entire media empire designed solely to gaslight and propagandize at least 35% of our populace. They de-fund education to discourage and curtail critical thinking among their base and the electorate, while reinforcing the "virtues" of ignorance and "gut feelings" and their disdain for intellectuals and knowledge through their media and politicians. Any "experts" they support are solely out of the authoritarian model which further push their lies and divisive message.
They played the long game. It took decades to degrade the American people. Removing the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan to allow propaganda media. De-fund education, privatize schools, push the cost of college into the stratosphere. Spread conspiracy theories, false narratives about the past. Pack the courts with extremists. Corporatize everything. Destroy unions. Outsource jobs. Create a "gig" economy. Shift the bulk of the tax burden from the wealthy onto working people. And worse of all, do everything in their power to sabotage the functions of our government from within.
It's time for us to stop trying to find middle-ground with insanity and to call it out for being insane. We need to expose the Republican party for the twisted, greedy wreck that it is. We need to fund aggressive progressive public policy to stabilize our nation after 40 years of atrocious extreme-right policy and propaganda.
15
Completely agree.
So if Stephen Moore's track record on economics is indefensible -- totally wrong -- how can president Trump anoint him to the Fed Reserve Board of Governors? Moore is the epitome of unsuitability for the Fed, given his Conservative contempt for working people, the "armpits of America" remarks, and his misogyny and ignorance.
The heartland of america is not its armpit or any other physical region. It is a geographical area of low employment among working-age Americans suffering from despair, alcohol, suicide. No work, no love, the 2 sine qua nons of human life. The rust belt is another example of crisis in America today.
Scary to reflect on "the white ghetto" where victims of the ultra-Conservative/G.O.P.'s lack of respect for rural areas and small towns and lost jobs wallow in the dim backwater of the American dream. The question is, why are American voters in the heartland attracted to Donald Trump's contempt for all but the richest Americans?
3
All that midwest cannon fodder needs to go into the military. I could care less about people who continually vote for Republicans.
@Mogwai
Another person who knows noting about the midwest.
Thank you for this column.
As a lifelong Midwesterner, the contempt that elected Republicans have for those of us in the Midwest who are solidly middle-class and working-class has never escaped my notice, since circa 1982.
It's about time we started talking about it.
13
@Nino Gretsky: In reading the opinions on the website of the Minneapolis paper, I find astonishing ignorance from the right-wing commentators. For example, Minneapolis typically votes 80% Democratic, and the right-wingers make astonishing claims as to why this is so, such as claiming that this happens only because the Democrats "bus illegal immigrants and welfare mothers (talk about racial dog whistles!) from precinct to precinct."
I think this opinion demonstrates more of East Coast contempt, the NYT contempt, than Republican contempt for the Midwest. The Vice President and the dominant figure in Congress, Mitch Mcconnell are from the Midwest.
Midwesterners are conservative by nature, are suspicious of big government, believe strongly in self reliance, and tend to be religious. They are also pretty racist in their views, but with some justification based on negative minority behavior in schools and perceived and clearly obvious cheating on welfare. There is just no place for those beliefs in the current Democratic Party. Trump’s win will be much greater next time
There are more jobs in the Midwest, there is at least some wage progress, there is Hope foreign agricultural markets will be pried open, there is greater respect for Christianity, Midwest needs are at least being discussed. Krugman sees this as stupid
Yes Trump is talking about cutbacks in Medicaid, Medicare, and other welfare. But this is needed to manage national debt. And handouts are the NYT focus, not midwesterners. They see it as cheating.
Trump will dominate the Midwest by continuing to respect what counts to people there. Democrats like Hillary laughed them off
1
Thanks for your well-written response. While brief, it is an extremely clear and comprehensive explanation of why support in “middle America” has and continues to be strong for Republican politics.
In all earnestness, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how income inequality is perceived in these constituencies - and how Democratic proposals to moderate income inequality by bolstering the middle class are perceived.
@John Mortonp
Midwestern is not just rural or smaller towns it is also the mid-sized cities and college towns. They are just as Midwestern as the rest.
@John Mortonp: Yet the cities and college towns in the Midwest vote Democratic.
Could it have something to do with more educated people (many of whom are Christians, by the way) moving to the cities, encountering people different from themselves, and realizing that they're not so scary?
Of course conservatives have contempt for "middle America" or whatever, for the past 50 years they gained the trust of people there by demeaning liberals, Wall Street, have told them that the problem with the US is that we tax the rich too much, that we are bankrupting ourselves paying for 'welfare mothers', that we have 'forgotten our values',and yes, that whites are being discriminated against...all the while, right under these same people's noses, the GOP has promoted the very things that have caused problems, slashing government spending on the state level for education, including community colleges, state universities and technical training (Kansas, anyone?), and of course not to mention the tax policies that favor the kind of get rich quick stockholder management (Hedge funds, private equity funds) that led to the massive outsourcing of jobs to China and elsewhere, and has also led to the largest gulf in income and wealth in US history, far surpassing the 1920's...yet the GOP base still believes the 1950's are coming back, that the GOP is going after "them" and is going to return a golden age..and time and again when it doesn't happen, people get angrier but not wiser, they keep falling for the Fox News propoganda, that 'elite liberals' look down on them, when most in the GOP look at the heartland voters as a bunch of suckers dumb enough to vote for them. Trump is the pinnacle of this, he pretends to fight the elites, but in the end has engorged them,not the base.
4
Cincinnati is a nice city. Just sayin'.
3
As much as I agree Moore is totally unqualified and a bad choice for any position, I listened to the clip. He was talking to midwestern folks from Chicago and just making a bad joke about competing cities to endear himself to the audience. Maybe a tasteless joke, but humor often has a mean streak.
So even though I agree with your general thesis about liberals and midwesterners, I feel we’ve all made bad jokes occasionally and let’s not let that interfere with the really wrong things he has said.
1
Can we stop using the term "Heartland" to describe these areas?
Yes, they're in the geographic middle, but the spitefulness, anger, and lack of empathy that have come to dominate aren't what I would call heart.
You want heart? Look at the people willing to make themselves worse off to help out someone they don't know. And now tell me which political leaning you'd see out of them.
7
The peasants supported the czars in Russia until it became unbearable. They thought that lords were the problem.
Rural folk must believe that liberals run Wall St, bust unions, are against safety net programs among other things in order to be oppressed by progressives. Those job moving executives are not liberals. Romney is prime example of a Republican who moved jobs overseas yet got a vast majority of the rural vote. Romney got richer and Democrats got punished.
Rural folk ascribe to the concept of herrenvolk as developed in Germany in the 19th century. The ties that bind them says keep the other out. It is unruly task to break through those bonds. Even though progressives want to help the blighted rural areas, they are better off increasing turnout in urban areas.
5
“Look at where the belief that liberals don’t respect the heartland comes from, and it turns out that it has little to do with things Democrats actually say...”
How soon you forget the infamous ‘bitter clingers’ and ‘basket of deplorables’ remarks from the last two Democratic presidential nominees.
4
@JB, yeah, totally the same. You folks instantly forgive anything trump churns out, listen respectfully as they lie to your face over and over.
""They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Hmmm, just awful, you poor things. It's just as bad as 'All Dems are traitors', huh? Obama might have hurt your feelings, but, um, guns, religion, immigrants and NAFTA are the topics you rally around, so how is it wrong to say that's how you handle frustration?
But hey, you'll forgive the 'armpit of America' comment right now, and lecture us on how respectful we should be toward the boastful liar you so adoringly follow.
It seems to me that the far right is motivated by fear of almost everything new or different. The left's messaging looks to the improve the present and future, the right's looks to bring back the past. When we are comfortable with the way things are, the fear of change colors our entire outlook. When we look back at our past, we tend to remember the good times and discount our troubles. Dealing with reality requires us to face facts about what is happening and how it will affect the future. When the Big Corporations made it clear that they wouldn't pay American tool and die makers the prices they had become accustomed to, those businesses sold their equipment to China, Japan and other countries where labor is cheap. The auto manufacturers got lower cost parts, but also lower quality. Those Americans who had lived comfortably as skilled workers had to scramble for less lucrative employment, lowering their standard of living. The conservatives were fine with that, as long as corporate profits increased. Their claims that they were concerned for those lost jobs didn't equate with their policies that encouraged more manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. I find it frustrating that so many average Americans have seemed to have lost the capacity to think for themselves, evaluate what is actually happening V/S political propaganda and vote in their own best interests. Reliance on "talking heads" for their opinions is a losing proposition. No disrespect to Mr. Krugman intended.
3
@KOOLTOZE
Some legislative genius figured that it would be cheaper to repair the Bay Bridge with cheap Chinese products and workers. The rivets used were inferior and had to be replaced at great cost. The Chinese workers knew nothing about building or repairing a major bridge structure; they had to be trained and supervised at great cost. So much for corporate genius. We are a long way from the men who actually knew how to build things, and to produce things of quality. They might have been eccentric in some ways; however they knew what they were doing. Trump and his kind know nothing; they have inherited wealth, not produced it. They don't even have the patriotic decency to fund museums and beautiful public spaces. The Rockefellers, Mellons, Carnegies at least had those qualities.
This is a great and valid question considering the fact that for years, especially since the age of Trump, the reason for anything that's wrong with America's heartland always lies with the "liberal coastal elite" -- or more specifically, New York City and California.
That's why it's been an uphill battle trying to persuade the denizens of these southern and mid-west states that the real culprit behind these myths is the president they resoundly voted for, and who hasn't really done anything for them besides make more promises about more jobs, hold more rallies, rile them up with his usual vindictive, and then load more taxes on them while threatening to take away any remaining affordable health care they might already have.
And now comes his nominee for the Federal Reserve, Stephen Moore; whose history of brazen comments makes him not only unfit, but a threat to the post and this country were he ever to gain the post, which thankfully is looking ever more uncertain these days.
Of course this seems to be following Trump's trend to nominate only the worst possible candidates as long as they reflect his beliefs and swear personal allegiance to him, with a guaranteed shoo-in from a lockstep Republican Senate.
And as long as they can deflect the real contempt they have for poor and working-class Americans by blaming Democrats, socialists, liberals and coastal elites, the heartland will continue to suffer economic distress without ever really knowing where it's all coming from.
5
The real challenge is to awaken the "victims" to the current and future snake oil being sold. How do you deal with desolation?
5
Red America votes along party lines, and did well before Trump. Blue America does too.
I believe you are turning conservative observations about the sad state of life in middle America into perceived contempt. Those are two very different ideas. You can do better.
1
Paul, when 8 year old Suzie tells her little brother “Mommy doesn’t love you,” little brother does not go next door and interview another mother.
More likely, he buys a motorcycle when he is 16, gets a tattoo, and goes it alone. And from that point on he will trust no one enough for it to matter.
They know Trump is just another suit, but he is just uneducated enough, uncouth enough, stupid enough, bigoted enough, and randy enough for everyone to know for certain that he is uneducated, uncouth, bigoted, and randy, and that transparency is what they trust.
They know that fixing what ails rural America is not possible because they know human nature, and they know no government can fix that. They also know that government will spare no expense trying to fix human nature. They like Trump because he steadfastly refuses to even try.
So yes, you are right, but it’s irrelevant.
2
Allow me to add to Krugman's list of conservatives that disparage the American heartland: J.D. Vance in "Hillbilly Elegy".
Mr. Vance points out some of the real problems that affect the heartland where I live. But what are his solutions? Nothing. He simply blames the people who have problems.
2
Amen. Terrible book, poorly written. Wrong message entirely. Of course maybe there’s something revelatory that a law degree from a top-tier school imparts that a technical degree from a top-tier school doesn’t.
1
Hiring an less than intelligent, aggressive, buffoon as our president is a focusing event. It really holds our feet to the fire about who we are. Interesting times, I hope we will be ok?
3
Paul, I hope you are advising some of the Democratic candidates running for president. They need to take some of your rhetoric too in order to reorient the conversation. It’s not enough merely to offer policy pronouncements, it’s necessary to ask folks if they are better off today than they were in 2016, if their health insurance today is better than it was before a Trump came into office, if their paychecks have increased since 2016. Keep the heat on the Republican Party and keep exposing its lies and corrupt if not criminal contempt of the working classes.
2
Let's take this one from the top. Stephen Moore made his "armpit" speech at a pseudo-tank called the "Heartland Institute." Without revealing my position, let me state that not only have I been on Heartland's distro list for years, but also, I "swam upstream" and found through detailed research that Heartland is a "false flag" operation run by the fossil fuel industry to deny climate science. They're in the business of pushing pro-fossil "agitprop." Moving on in the Krugman piece to its central theme - contempt for the blue-collar eastern part of the "flyover," I know this attitude only so well from living in uber-wealthy Fairfield County, CT for nearly a decade. The "trust fund kids" (inherited old money) saw the rest of us as their shoeshine boys. But when they needed us for some purpose, they'd put on this "polite' demeanor. Very shallow and transparent, a la Leona Helmsley. The GOP's hold on this voting bloc isn't assured - maybe 2020 will be a reversal of 16.
8
As a son of the small town, rural South, I have for many years been a witness to the contempt shown by so-called conservative elites toward those they hold in thrall. They maintain political control through various forms of social coercion exercised in a subtle manner, usually, through implicit threats of social, religious, and racial ostracism toward those who dare to differ. White identity politics, as you aptly described it in one of your columns earlier this week. Meanwhile, in the privacy of their meeting places, in the company of like-minded people, they ridicule and mock the poor fellows whose support they require while plotting new ways to distract and deceive them. It has proven to be an effective political strategy. Democrats need to find more forceful ways to confront the issues, not only in political campaigns, but also every day in their communities.
7
@Ouzts
Yes, agree. And I also grew up in rural, small town. Now I am in urban area w only a couple of neighbors who are dems.
Yes, on more forceful ways to confront. Told neighbor what he said was a lie and, oh heck, had to move quickly, he exploded in anger. Same thing w next door neighbor, was glad I had a fence.
A couple of friends and I have decided we have to go to protests.
Truth, hahaha now that’s a funny concept. We are lied to every day, multiple times a day by this administration and their cohorts. They lie standing up, sitting down, behind your back and to your face. It’s the lying! It’s the constant lie and the need to lie. Truth has become whatever you want it to be, we live in an alternate universe where the values you were taught as a child have no meaning. It is insulting to our intelligence to think that we are so easily manipulated with their lying. It is bare for all to see and there is no end in sight, it keeps you awake at night, it makes one despair for who and what we have become. We are lying to ourselves as much as being lied to. What happened to integrity, your word being meaningful, compassion and decency? I’m ashamed to be an American, embarrassed as a country.
3
Because the USA is actually ruled by the multinational corporations through their all-powerful lobbyists, the 1% who sit on most of the money would feel contempt, wouldn't they? Living in a Midwestern house built by a Midwestern gangster of great notoriety whose name is synonymous with organized crime in Chicago, I can understand the contempt. The Midwest was crude, filled with hicks and upstarts who made their fortunes during and after the Civil War. They had no venerable family lineage like the New York, Philadelphia and Boston elites. But they had the patents and and made the money. The rest of the people who were immigrants from northern and eastern Europe didn't know or care about kowtowing to elites. And we still don't. Flyover country. Until someone needs to get hands on the vast revenues we pay into the Treasury.
1
I couldn’t agree more, but convincing the any “heartland” of this is like a dandelion blowing against a hurricane.
2
Like Trump, Stephen Moore is one of a vast array of bottom-feeding grifters and hucksters who have profited off the dumbing down of Republican voters by continuing to peddle the thoroughly discredited theory of trickle-down snake oil. By now it should be obvious to all that deficit-exploding tax cuts for the rich can only be paid for with budget cuts for the the the poor, the disabled, the sick, the unemployed and the opiated. Why those in red country cannot see through this GOP hoax and continue to vote against their own interests is as mystifying as why once honorable Republican senators have allowed Trump to hijack their party.
4
Conservative Republicans are simply narcissists who project their malevolence onto liberals in an effort to be superior and overcome their low self esteem and guilt. The only way to overcome this malevolent force is Truth. Democrats must demonstrate again and again through actions, words and now social media that they are the party that truly cares about Americans - not just the wealthy ones.
4
What can you do about people who are more worried about a woman they don't know in another state having an abortion than about their children's schools? I read an article yesterday about the problem of dirty water in Kentucky because their infrastructure has been so neglected, yet they keep voting for Mitch McConnell. I have compassion for people living in poverty, down on their luck, but it is getting hard to keep caring about people who are so willingly ignorant.
9
The Truth... Why can't so many middle-class and poor Americans see it? Without going into too much detail, it's because they believe in stories about themselves as self-reliant, virtuous, hard-working, loyal people who have lost out in a corrupt system that favors lazy dishonest insiders, cheaters, manipulators, and especially, liberal elites. These stories are promoted and reinforced every day by myriad sources that are familiar to most of us. To admit that your entire self-view and world-view are based on lies is simply too difficult for most humans. The Right's edifice of lies needs to be dismantled, one fact at a time.
3
Not every issue fits into the familiar left-right political dichotomy. Contempt for the poor, the stupid, the mediocre, and "middle America" pops up everywhere. It has little to do with left vs. right. Regardless of who is being more contemptuous, Republicans or Democrats, your message to the left is just wrong. They quite plainly and obviously need to do more - a lot more - to understand and feel the pain of the average American. This is why Bernie Sanders is popular. He goes out and talks to people, asks them what they are worried about, listens to their responses, and takes what they say seriously at face value. It is that simple. Elizabeth Warren in my mind has better ideas than anyone else on the left. But listen to the tone of what she is saying - "I know better than you how to solve your own problems." That may be true, but it is smartness cutting against another value, the value of autonomy.
1
Paul, honestly, you've developed this bad habit of presenting false alternatives. The fact that X, a conservative, despises A may show that X is a rotten person, but of course it doesn't show that X is the "real" despiser, or that Y, a liberal, doesn't despise A. It's an elementary blunder, and you keep making it.
1
@Bob Acker
You’re right. The obvious solution is either that everyone hates A or no one hates A. Evidence that X hates A is of little use to anyone.
Charles Murray is an excellent choice for Mr. Krugman to use as an example of conservative attitudes. His shameful psuedo-research, THE BELL CURVE, has been used by racists since its publication to justify inferior educational opportunities available to children of color. These days, in addition to despising the American heartland and its workers, conservatives are ever bolder in their promulgation of racist philosophical arguments. To the extent that the corruption, greed, religious zealotry, and traitorousness of the conservative movement is ascendant, we're doomed as a country.
1
Dear rural Republican voters,
You have helped give tax break after tax break to the wealthiest Americans. The top 1% has now accumulated 40% of our nation's wealth. Where are these people? How many good jobs have they brought back to our small towns for that prize?
Sincerely,
A liberal lifelong rural resident
9
We shall see in about 20 years what folks think of the Heartland. Global warming will reek havoc and devastation on the coasts. Wont matter if you are Dem or Rep. Cleveland and Buffalo will be prime real estate.
2
Yes!!
What, you are just now noticing the conservative elites are contemptuous of Middle America? That they consider their supporters to be losers and failures? That they wouldn't spent 5 minutes with them unless they really, really needed to?
3
Reminds me of Romney's off mic remarks at a $50K per plate Florida fundraiser regarding his opinion that 47% of Obama supporters "are dependent upon government" or Obama's quote that working class voters "get bitter, cling to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them ..."
While both parties are often complicit and complacent in expressing their contempt for their fellow Americans, one party is always far ahead in its race to the bottom.
Vote.
1
Why don't you actually address the problem with big pharma that has hit rural America the hardest? People disagree how the handle the opioid / heroin problem, regardless of political party.
My understanding is a family qualifies for healthcare based on proof of income if a person's employer doesn't provide medical coverage. We have an aging population and how to manage chronic pain is best discussed with a person's physician.
https://www.usda.gov/topics/opioids
As for Trump and his cohorts, the empty drums sound the loudest.
3
Moore's contemptuousness toward the segment(s) mentioned, is well deserved.
Any segment that has replaced their values with the desire to: (a) self destruct in every way possible, and (b) produce an ethnic nationalist state that shoots immigrants at the border - is not worthy of anything other than contempt by republicans - particularly when they show up at Trump rallies wanting to punch and kick black people, deport Hispanics, and what not - and do their bidding.
What should he feel? Love? Brotherhood? Empathy?
Now, about his contemptuousness of the economic academia. That too is deserved. Here is a discipline that is inexplicably engaged in generalities (price goes up . . . no kidding), that it is inseparable from superstition. Hands out Nobel prizes for the discovery that rocks are heavier than air (that politics cause famines). Takes pride in producing undecipherable journal articles with gobbledygook, nonsense variables, lousy measurement, and with the conclusion: what do we really know? Well deserved contempt. Most academics do this, but no one claims intellectual superiority in ways economists do (okay maybe English professors).
Now to his convenient labeling of liberals as those contemptuous of Middle America - is similarly well deserved because it sticks. Democrats tried to produce a dependent class, and lost people's respect.
Liberals (like me) should know that we are weak and our game is up. Until we recover, Moore wins.
Hillary’s deplorables comment is too recent for this argument to be persuasive. That one comment has probably been the biggest driver of the liberal contempt narrative in the last couple years, and it’s hard to take Paul seriously here if he doesn’t at least mention it.
2
The Green New Deal is a real answer for the poor, poorly served communities. Really addressing climate change means jobs, manufacturing, housing, transportation, healthcare.
2
Let's face the facts. Republicans vote for Republicans because they appeal to ugly ideals. The "others" the Republicans rail against are non white immigrants and brown and black folks. we don't want to admit that this is the case, but it is. It's not complicated or difficult to understand. Republicans will never admit to any of this. The sooner Democrats call them out for this the better off all of us will be. This is the ugly truth of America. Face it and deal with it.
1
Stop it with this “heartland” nonsense. I can’t give any credence to anything that starts out with this false narrative. The geographic location of some of our historically backwards states does not make them the cultural and spiritual center of our country. That would be the coastal areas of the country... since its founding.
1
Americans in the heartland need to wake up, smell the coffee ☕️, and stop voting for someone just because of social issues. These voters need to do their homework and get beyond the talking points.
1
They are good people love the outdoors and all the attributes that come from it. The one thing the Democratic Party misses though is their love for guns. And of course their hatred for abortion. I always wonder if those two wedge issues were off the table if they’d still be the distrust and hatred. Social media is over the top these days. Seems almost like this is the new normal we’ve evolved to.
1
In Sleeping With the Enemy, Julia Roberts flees an abusive husband on the West Coast and finds herself in a lovely small college town in Iowa--a leafy place where she could afford to rent or buy a big house with a traditional wraparound porch. That looked pretty good to me.
1
I was surprised a few weeks before the 2016 election, when the tow truck driver that was hauling my car to the mechanic, asked me who was I voting for. I demurred and asked him for his preference. He said that he was voting for trump because he was going to bring back jobs so he could get a better opportunity in life.
Upon further questioning I asked him what jobs did he expect that Trump was going to bring back? Of course, he had no answer. He had swallowed the sound byte that he wanted (needed?) to hear.
My conclusion is that we are losing the sound byte battle. Our democracy, and maybe our world, was not ready for the internet that provided a deafening mouthpiece to all the snake oil salesman of the world. That includes the narcissistic demagogue in the white house and the fanatical religious nuts out there.
I hope that we learn how to deal with this "new" technology before it destroys us.
PS. A few weeks ago I saw the tow truck driver. He was still driving it.
2
The more I see about division in America, the more it goes back to Fox News and talk radio. We (well some of us ) are concerned about Russian use of social media to spread disinformation and divide the country, and we rightly regard it as a hostile act - yet Fox has been doing it openly for years and we shrug it off.
There’s a difference between free speech and speech deliberately weaponized for bad ends. If the fairness doctrine was still around, this would be a different country today. Like so much else, the rot began under Reagan.
Media consolidation and social media has further aggravated the situation. Where there was once a general consensus of public discourse, we now have a Balkanized conglomeration of information bubbles at war with each other.
1
When the victims deliberately put in power those who denigrate and abuse them, then yes, you can blame the victims.
3
I angee with what you day Dr.K but since the Republican reaction to the Mueller report and the Trumpists obvious contempt for the law and our Constitution the terms "right wing" and "ultra-conservative" are obsolete and no longer descriptive of these people and their donors.
The word we should all be using is "fascist" as in the ongoing fascist coup d'etat of the United States which uses propaganda organs controlled by fascists to spread lies and disinformation.
For now the Senate is controlled by fascists, government departments are lead by fascists the president is a fascist and until a Democrat is elected president with a Democratic Congress the Supreme Court is controlled by fascists and is about to self-destruct and lose the confidence of the people and compel the addition of 2 and maybe 4 additional seats. The Trump court will not survive him if he loses in 2020.
2
The white working poor should ask themselves, would Trump ever invite you to one of his clubs or hotels? The answer is no. Deranged Donald cares only for the rich and powerful.
4
Sure the residents of the armpits have been sold a bill of goods by right-wing con men. But don’t for one minute forget the devastation caused by the loss of jobs to the forces of globalization, which are not the inevitable outcome of laws of nature, but the result of utterly misguided policies fed by corporate lobbyists and deluded academics. Just because you’re not going around giving speeches deriding parts of the country doesn’t mean you respect these people. Let us all know when you move to Cleveland, or even visit there.
3
Rural Americans are the victims of a con job like the people who expended thousands of dollars to attend courses in Trump University were the victims of a con job . The greatest con artists in the World are Bernie Madoff and Trump . One sits in jail and the other is President . Figure that out .
4
Conservative contempt for the heartland is real, while liberal disdain is a fiction of Fox News. I can’t imagine how Paul Krugman can write this and not be embarassed. He has consistently painted the white working class in his columns as "racists." I am appalled but not surprised by this hypocrisy.
His readers have followed suit with their own denunciations of the WWC as "stupid" or "racist." "Stupid" because they vote against their own self-interests."Racists" because they’ve been at the top of the social order fo so long.
What Krugman and his liberal readers refuse to acknowledge is that all humans are tribal. White urban liberals are every bit as tribal as white rural conservatives, and feel just as strongly and righteously about the superiority of their tribe over those "others."
So, Professor, don’t piously paint the other guys as bigoted, while you and your own are saintly. It won’t wash. We are all guilty.
3
This is the New Gilded Age, Paul. Let them eat a factory cheeseburger and cold fries.
1
The right's beloved "Hillbilly Elegy" supports your thesis.
But two explanations exist for Moore singling out the "armpits" of Cincinnati and Cleveland in opposition to Chicago: Percentage of blacks in Cincinnati: 45%; Cleveland, 53%; but Chicago, only 33%. He was singling out blacks for contempt. Alternatively, he may have been singling out poor people for contempt (with race hitching along for the ride thanks to racism).
I used to think that Trump's blathering at his rallies was his genuine level of mental functioning. Thanks to Mueller, I know that Trump is far more sharply manipulative than that. What level of respect do the R's show *their own base* by arranging for it to be conned? I'll take their frank hostility to libs any day.
1
The way to change peoples minds/hearts is to listen to them and educate them. Expose them to different ideas and why those might/will work better for them.
Thus candidate Sanders goes to Liberty University to speak. Goes on Fox to do a Townhall meeting. He gets his ideas heard straight from his own lips. Not some propagandized version from Rightwing media.
He listens to them. They respect his forthrightness in showing up in supposedly hostile, flyover territory.
That earns respect. And gets them to listen and consider him.
Thus Sen. Sanders won states such as: Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, North Dakota and Montana etc.
21 states from an unknown Independent Democratic Socialist.
Because he listened and treated them like the Americans they are. May that fire alight more so this time around.
Give the man a listen 'merica. He is working and speaking FOR YOU~!
NotMeUs
2
@Dobbys sock
Perhaps you know how Bernie is going to pay for his promises? Surely not by raising taxes on the middle class? The poor don't have any money, and the rich have sharp accountants and tax lawyers. So, it will be the ever shrinking middle class, the property owners who see rising property taxes on the piece of ground they managed to get a mortgage for. Or the small business owner struggling to grow his business. Bernie lived on welfare when young; he has no real policies, just talking points. He is the flip side of Trump, another shouter. Biden has actually worked in government; he is not stupid, unless you count this recent need to be President at age 78. If he is the nominee, I will vote for him. He raised his sons after losing his wife; he took the train home between R.I. and D.C. every day. He grew in his years in the Senate; he didn't get rich. He isn't mean. He has traveled. He doesn't want to destroy Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security. He doesn't go to the South and make speeches about what a great man Lee was; the man who wanted to destroy the Union the Founding Fathers fought and died for, after they risked all to be free of the British Mad King George. He has borne family tragedies with dignity. We could do worse with a young man whose only governing experience is that of a mayor, or the Texan who is also inexperienced. We got lucky with an educated, patient man whose government experience wasn't deep either.
A couple of years ago Jared Kushner let slip Trump’s real opinion of Republicans: that they are dumb and will believe anything. Trump in fact would not touch his base with a forty foot pole.
2
I've lived in rural and urban America.
Based on the vitriol towards cities, who are perceived by some rural Americans to be comprised of "lazy" "uppity" and "book-smart-world-dumb" people, it hurts me to admit that I've sometimes wondered if we'd have free education and affordable healthcare if we marketed job training, ACA, etc. as a way to "own the libs."
I wonder if much of the GOP’s appeal to the white heartland isn’t grounded in the erosion of white privilege.
The loss of top-paying jobs throughout the middle of the country has deprived huge numbers of white Americans of their self respect, reducing many to opioid despair. The GOP gives them someone to blame for the loss of prestige that was once thieir province, someone to hate. To reverse Barack Obama’s famous line, “You didn’t lose your job to a microchip, you lost it to a Mexican.” To go back further, to the refrain that has been the GOP mantra ever since its “southern strategy” in the 50s and 60s, “You are losing your white status to the grant of black opportunity, to the ‘political correctness’ that gives ‘your’ rights to ‘them.’”
Hate of the “other,” of someone to blame for your woes is a powerful political motivator. And the GOP—now with Trump as its biggest mouthpiece—has been fanning it to a frenzy for decades.
2
@Steel Magnolia
Yes, you are right, but it's hard to get this message across in the face of the self-righteous group think that adorns these pages.
What you are talking about are the conditions that leave people susceptible to Trump’s demagoguery.
These include feelings of loss and dependency as their jobs disappear, their status erodes, their families and communities disintegrate, and their values are mocked. For them, the final straw is seeing the government and the liberal elites advocate for immigrants while ignoring them.
Liberals like Krugman, and many of his readers, don’t really care about these people. They paint them as racists to cover their guilt. They "argue powerfully" for policies that help themselves, and then pat themselves on the back for helping everyone. It is bigotry compounded by hypocrisy.
2
I recently read Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance and I get it. I read about a decade ago, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America and the section about Borderlands to the Backcountry also explain it. What I gather, is certain types of middle-Americans distrust outsiders and loyalty to family is the law of the land there. The majority of GOP leaders and business folks have similar sounding names and ethnic backgrounds so the GOP gets the vote. What I also gathered from my reading is when a family member or someone from the clan turns watch out for retribution.
1
If I I vilify conservatives as arrogant, vicious, violent, hypocritical, despicable, stupid liars -- all accusations I've seen in these comments -- I am part of the problem. How does it feel to have these words flung at myself for being a liberal?
All this rhetoric widens the radical divisions between good people. I'm disappointed in myself, in the New York Times, for abetting the destruction of civic discourse. I'm not playing any more.
2
“the Environmental Protection Agency significantly weakened a proposed standard for cleaning up groundwater pollution caused by toxic chemicals that contaminate drinking water consumed by millions of Americans and that have been commonly used at military bases.”
Ah, a two-fer for the forgotten man. Vets and working class whites poisoned by Trump. Be sure to get out there and vote for the Blowhard again next year. So much winning.
4
GDP up 3.2! Much higher than expected.
Thanks Trump!
Must be sad news for Paul Krugman.
1
@Jackie Really? I distinctly remember Trump promising 4% growth.
1
White nationalism depends on fear, anger, and racisim. I’d say its working great in the Eastern rural ghettos, including eastern Rensselaer County here in upstate NY. Essentially all white, 75% of households receive a government check of some sort, expects Medicare and Social Security to go forever, loves Fox “news,” content with mediocre schools, always votes Republican. Such hearts and minds cannot be changed. Only heavy millennial turnout in 2020 can redeem our Republic, and our honor.
3
There have been only two instances where Trump would even bother to talk to someone who isn't a member of Mara Lago.
(1) When he struts into one of his campaign rallies, wearing a suit he had manufactured in his overseas sweatshop, so that he can scream out racial epithets and get the crowd going with his "America First" rhetoric; and
(2) When he's telling a caddy to go get the ball that's landed in a water hazard replete with alligators.
3
"They attribute the heartland’s woes to a mysterious collapse in morality and family values that somehow hasn’t affected coastal cities." As someone who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and escaped to New Mexico, there is little in the way of family values and a sense of community in San Francisco where the median salary is way above cities in the heartland and certainly the rural areas. The city is now populated by 20-something rich by any standard Silicon Valley nerds that care nothing about their own community. I lived there for 23 years and it's sad to see the degradation of a once great city, mainly because they don't care and are rich enough to isolate themselves. That is a true "collapse of morality".
2
The Eastern Heartlands are merely following urban African-Americans into those men-deserts of poverty and social pathology where single-mothers are wedded to the government and men have no purpose.
As Krugman points out the "region suffers from persistently low employment among working-age men." Yes, "16 percent of West Virginians are employed in health care and social assistance" as against 3% in coal mining, but 78% or more of that 16% are women. How is that a solution to male un- and underemployment?
Frankly, other than a substantially more generous EIC, I can't see any program that Democratic contenders support that will improve the current situation. And the Eastern Heartland agrees.
2
So much of the Republican lack of empathy for the needy stems from right wing radio as well as Fox "news." Without these sources of cynical propaganda, the country would be much more supportive of all of its citizens, not just the "haves."
7
A lot of the comments here seem to be of the opinion that Republican voters will sell their economic souls over (most notably) abortion. The vast majority of comments here appears to believe that it is utterly ridiculous that a large group of people would sacrifice their material well-being over such a "small" issue (most people are acting as if abortion is done minor tertiary issue to these voters and are not acting as if these voters sincerely believe abortion ends a human life). That said, if that is truly the case and abortion isn't worth risking the economy over then Democrats are being nearly as irrational. The Democrats are also willing to risk losing over abortion, which means Democrats run exactly the same risks to their material wealth for exactly the same reason. Of course, when the Democrats decide that it's a hill worth dying on then suddenly it actually is an important issue worth sacrificing the entire well-being if the country for. I don't expect anyone here to change their minds on anything but at least consider that, if you wouldn't compromise on an issue for your personal well-being, there are other people who disagree with you who would do the same.
1
I started out working poor in my late teens and ended up middle class to upper middle class in my senior years. Worked my way out of poverty. So I have straddled both worlds. But I was mainly healthy, had a strong work ethic, live close to a growing city and was gifted with a high IQ. Not every one is so lucky. Which is why we need compassion and help the less fortunate. We always will have as Jesus said the poor with us. One idea going around is a universal income high enough to live on. We are a wealthy nation and can afford this. Most people will want to work anyway. But this would level the barter power between employee and employer. Resulting in a better deal for workers which grows the economy and fund the universal income. A turn on trickle down, trickle up which would actually work.
4
As automation takes over more and more jobs a universal base pay will have to be put into effect since unemployment will rise to unacceptable levels. I believe it’s imperative to start programs in infrastructure and renewable energy in an attempt to forestall this as long as possible.
2
Just a word about living in the Midwest. I spent most of my career at top notch organizations in Cleveland, Minneapolis and Milwaukee. My career thrived and these are great cities with great people. We raised our kids in the Midwest and I can say they have a sense of civility that our family prizes. Although we now live back east where family has settled, these cities are thriving and reinventing themselves. This is not an abstraction.
Finally I disagree about manufacturing. This country will need to make things that are high value and well made like Germany does. Service jobs simply do not provide the income or mobility to sustain a middle class. As an example, Elon Musk has shown that we can make innovative, game changing products the whole world can want--Tesla is the most popular car in Norway, for example. We are going to need to get back in this game to compete economically and provide better jobs.
5
@JRS
"Service jobs simply do not provide the income or mobility to sustain a middle class."
Absolutely. Nothing value added in doing each other's laundry or babysitting each other's kids.
I'll make a plug for universal broadband and boutique manufacturing and production though. And the infrastructure to move product, labor, and materials. Then you have a much wider choice in where to live and set up shop.
Automation is wiping out manufacturing jobs at an alarming rate.
1
This is one reason why I like Elizabeth Warren. I think she understands and can speak to voters in the Midwest. Granted, some of those voters are single issue "values" voters. But I think most are just angry at the disrespect and disregard, and see meanness and decay overtaking their communities.
A lot more thought needs to go into policies that allow people in these areas to remain in the region. As well as policies that help people move to jobs and opportunity. Small midwestern cities need a big shot in the arm to attract and support people from the region. And completely rethink our agricultural policy, which has facilitated ownership in fewer hand fewer hands, degraded the soil, and polluted waters.
5
Unfortunately correct. Conservative Republicans have morphed into Republicans with Contempt. If you don't fit into their incredibly narrow vision of politics and economics, then they have nothing but contempt for you.What they clearly don't get or care about is that their contempt is for most Americans - including moderate Republicans. They are the party of exclusion, not inclusion. DJT and his reign of error won't go on forever, nor will Republicans control the Senate forever - the American public that they have so much contempt for will vote them all out of office.
4
The situations was further compounded by state governments that gave corporate tax incentives to international and national corporations, instead of supporting small businesses. Meanwhile, both liberal & conservative leadership undermined union and employee bargaining, so jobs brought in by large corporations were at a low hourly wage.
9
WV is the heart of "lock her up" Clinton hatred. It's the heart of the USA where people didn't know Obamacare helped them bigly. They *believe* she committed crimes and should be locked up. They *believe* democrats will impose socialism on the state. That's what's important in WV.
They don't care that the EPA cleaned up their air and water. 30 years ago the paper mills and coal mines made it difficult to live and breath in that state.
They elected a Democrat Governor, Jim Justice, who ran a Republican platform to beat the Republican candidate. And after the election Justice changed parties to Republican.
He is a billionaire coal baron and a clone of Donald Trump in many ways. He doesn't pay his taxes. His doesn't pay contractors and suppliers of his business. He refuses to put his companies in blind trusts. The list goes on and on - including his time spent coaching basketball teams, instead of working as Governor. All well documented. Google is your friend.
What does all of this mean? It's even worse than Krugman makes it out to be. Just like Trump, the people of WV knew exactly who they were voting for.
It's what they wanted.
10
We have a long history of rural vs. city divide and I don't think it can be just laid at the feet of conservatives without any admonishment of liberal behavior towards these populations. I like Krugman, but this is a overtly biased piece. The democrats of the 90's believed in globalism and free trade selling the idea that the destruction caused would be minor compared to the benefits gained in the form of higher wage jobs and lower cost goods. The argument being that; "why are we doing low skill work when we can get someone to do it at a fraction of the cost and we can do the higher skilled work that they can't do?" Fast forward to today and we see a load of horse manure which is the economy in the rural eastern Midwest states. None of those high minded ideas came true partly because the same liberals that sold that idea were the one's who did not fully invest in areas that needed immense economic assistance to weather the transition between the old economy and the new economy. Obama had opportunity to address these issues when he had a democratic majority as did his predecessor W with the republicans. None of that happened and now we have a whole butch of angry disenfranchised white people who actually vote. Couple that with the destruction of unions that have devastated worker compensation and our middle class is not under attack. it is on fire, running down the street and hoping to find some water.
5
Effective healthcare has been a target for the Republican party because it demonstrates the Democratic promise—of government intervening in the market for public good. The real political flaw in the ACA has always been how its economic incentives play into the culture war talking points on Fox News.
The Republicans haven't created a replacement because it has been politically effective just to exploit some of the class resentments that were baked into that law: A lot of poor and uninsured people qualified for healthcare while a lot of working and middle class people saw their costs rise significantly. In other words, the have nothing's benefitted at the cost of the have little's.
Our president is the perfect messenger for this type of politics. His singular skill is as a marketer and negative campaigner. Dog whistle politics had grown untenable when attached to actual policies. Trump makes something of a virtuous circle out of Republican culture war tropes. Every policy position starts from a war footing. Invading hordes want to take your job and drain the budget. Just look at all the free health care they get.
Congressional Republicans are happy to endorse unqualified people to carry out these policies because it drives public debate and attention still further from any rational discussion of the policies themselves. The Iraq war was a proof of concept for a PR strategy divorced from rational debate. Our political debates have drifted further from reality since.
3
I have a tree stump in my front yard that I've been trying to burn out for the past year or better. Given time it will rot on its own, but I've gone through all the trimmed wood from the tree and it refuses to burn out. Most likely saturated with water from underneath.
Then it occurs to me that for the sake of a few dollars I could buy a 40 lb bag of coal and maybe that would burn hot enough and long enough to make some progress on the stump. A web search tells me there are no local sources for bag coal nor could I special order it through one of the big box home improvement stores. No inventory.
If I absolutely wanted bag coal I could order a pallet of 50 bags and motor freight it out of Pennsylvania, otherwise I'd be be looking at a 25 ton bulk load from an out of state vendor.
I'm told that Trump digs coal.
From a retail perspective coal is an obsolete product with no market demand but still works in a political stump speech.
Go Figure.
4
I know where I live, the conservative politicians like Tom Cotton talk about guns, religion and abortion, take huge amounts of campaign money from the investment world and never do anything for rural populations that get poorer and poorer.
Most the people that make a decent living in rural Arkansas commute into the metropolitan areas like Little Rock or Memphis, etc, for their jobs. Nothing much props up the small towns and many are simply dissappearing as people do leave over time.
So, educating people to stop voting against their own self interest would seem to be the way to go but wedge issue politics and self feeding social media bubbles continue to contain that sort of change, to the detriment of all in the long run.
8
@David Unfortunately, local politicians and even national politicians have little control over companies, their locations and the people they hire. It has been a fact in America for years that large industries will locate in populations centers, both for a reliable source of employees and for supplies and components.
The idea of small companies and mom and pop stores being hugely successful will be limited in rural areas. Look at the history of America. It has been as a largely mobile economy, particularly in comparison with Europe. People continue to go where the jobs are and that is in larger population centers. Local incentives will have small effect.
Referring to some cities as "armpits" in a joking manner might be objectionable but not necessarily a sign that someone is unfit for public office.
Referring to some cities as "armpits" is not quite as objectionable as referring to large swaths of the population as "deplorables".
A presidential candidate who would attack the intelligence and integrity of the population because they have different ideologies is unfit for public office. In a presidential campaign the idea is that the candidate should be distinguishing him/herself as more qualified than the opposing candidate, not excoriating the electorate.
A person, not holding public office, referring to Cleveland as an "armpit" is using an old, tired reference to a city that, perhaps, deserved that in the early to mid sixties. This, in the context of intercity rivalry, made it a little more apt but not a great joke. That is a bad speechwriter or just a failed attempt at developing some sense of connection with the audience.
It would be good to establish a baseline on what constitutes fitness for a job, failed humor shouldn't necessarily stop an appointment.
4
The "basket of deplorables" comment was specific to the irredeemable white supremacist groups that supported trump, and was not directed at any region, creed or color.
At the time, in fact, if you were to look up media endorsements for Trump, the list was limited to the National Enquirer and a dozen hate sites like Stormfront.
So Hillary insulted neonazis, and Trump insulted everyone else, but AGAIN -- as in the primaries -- only Trump's opponents were the bad guys.
Are you starting to see yet the role of social media in helping shape public opinion and how it was manipulated to make Hillary seem more evil and Trump somehow "honest"?
2
@Margo And yet *most voters* preferred the candidate who is not presiding over the current shambolic White House. They preferred someone who told the truth.
2
@Margo You failed to mention another derogatory term that Trump and his advisors on Fox "News" uses to incite the supporters-"liberal coastal elites" that fight Trump on every issue (perhaps if Trump was not a grifting coastal elite he would be more believable).
2
As a native Cincinnatian who’s also lived in places so fundamentally different as NYC and Dallas, I have an objective sense of laughing and crying at the “flyover state” mentality of so many people on both ends of the political spectrum. I’m amused at their tendency to write off such a beautiful part of the country that’s experiencing a phenomenal arts renaissance, and saddened by their habit of dismissing an entire populace that runs the gamut of education, income bracket and human experience. As well, as half of a creative professional couple, I’ve found that this region is one of the last bastions of affordability this country, offering a balance of housing and cultural openness to all comers. Frankly, I’m at the point of raising a local beer and toasting their ignorance and arrogance- after all, it keeps them at a healthy distance.
13
Well said!!
Stephen Moore is beyond the pale but if we were to eliminate all the economists who don't admit their mistakes we would be hard pressed to find many. I mean did Robert Rubin, or Larry Summers, or Alan Greenspan ever admit their error - or apologize - for their bushwacking of Brooksley Born when she was head of the CFTC and wanted to regulate derivatives back in 1999?
Where were you on that issue BTW?
9
@L F File: What economist will admit that Volcker's interest rate spike to throttle inflation in 1980 revolutionized banking into loan origination business for Wall Street securities manufacturers?
5
Well said. I've long been amazed at the sheer audacity and propaganda machine of the Republicans that would convince a whole segment of the population to consistently vote against their economic interests whilst convincing the voters that doing so is the only "moral" choice.
26
It is true that all of us deserve to be told the truth, and yet the problem is that so many on the right have lost the ability to discern the truth thanks to Fox and one out of control Twitter account.
21
I took Krugman's article a great advice.
But
Then , Democrats must figure out their message should cross that invisible barrier between them and Armpit places.
That is clearly the case here. While thinking about the people problem and offering solution but totally misunderstand by them.
2
That's an apt observation, Mr Krugman. I believe if Democrats could come up with a sufficiently brilliant election phrase for what Trump and Republicans do ALL THE TIME -- which is projection. Look at what they do, not at what they promise. I wish the brains behind The West Wing could jump on this and come up with something. The Liberal elites actually want to do something for the people left behind -- the conservatives just use them as props.
10
When many people talk about the political scene, there seems to a assumption that many people are being misled by FOX, Rush, Coulter, and Co. But many people watch FOX because FOX disparages the people that they hate the same way that The Con Don hates the people that they hate. They have always hated the dark-skinned, immigrants, people of "strange" religions, the "uppity liberals", etc. FOX and The Donald tell them that they are right and that is music to their ears. Many of the FOX/trump faithful know or care nothing about government programs, the rule of law, free speech, fair treatment for everyone -- --- all of the things that most of us hold dear. They just want to be told that they are right.
Much of racial/cultural/religious antagonism and "Trumpism" is rooted in insecurity and fear. The Donald is, I feel, a very insecure person who has to be agreed with and told constantly how great he is. Many of his followers are afraid to venture out to get education and new lives. They just want to do what they have always done but they think that they are facing competition from, and being supplanted by, those that they hate -- the immigrants, dark-skinned, etc.
The strange thing is that I have met trump followers who were intelligent enough to learn new skills and capable enough to meet and deal with all kinds of people. But there seems to be a reluctant to leave the past and go into the future where they could be successful.
25
Nice try, but no nickel. It's all about unearned relative status and not being held responsible for their bad behavior. This translates into voting their bigotry and the promise of a weak or powerless group they can abuse with impunity.
Conservatism is a conscious, deliberate choice. They know they are trading money for protection of their bigotries. If you realize that conservatism is just another name for nihilism, much becomes easier to explain. It is literally true that conservatives would rather die than give up their most deeply held needs. Sadly, the 1945-1965 interregnum when the American political class actually tried to make some "American values" a reality died on the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act's passing. The conservative half of the population absolutely rejected all the ideas associated with them. Reverting to their historical mean.
We should be grateful the death toll has been as low as it has. Had we had the the shooting civil war they craved, the toll would have been in the 10s of millions. But their owner-masters calculated, quite correctly, that their inherent constitutional advantages would return them to the 1850s if they were just a little patient.
And so ends the American experiment in a return to oligarchy and feudalism.
10
I agree with Krugman's assessment of Conservatives' contempt for the very people they attempt to represent and defend. After all, tell me how coal miners and factory workers benefit from the GOP tax cuts? How do these workers benefit from all the noise about building that stupid wall? How does pushing Right to Work laws and preventing a much-needed increase in the minimum wage help struggling communities? I was not aware that banning abortion would resolve all the problems with the opioid crisis.
BTW, 400 years of using race to divide working people has led to stagnant wages, busted unions, student debt, etc. The conservatives' strategy to keep working people divided is the only avenue to allows them to continue to push their policies.
24
I agree with Dr Krugman’s analysis. But I do believe he overlooks a source of coastal disdain for flyover country. Krugman makes clear that conservatives look down on rural and rust belt folk for what they see to be their moral failings. Yet there is also a very real liberal disgust for those in the ‘heartland’, but for a very different reason. Liberals understand that society has failed Trump’s base; that those at his rallies are not solely responsible for the frustration of their lives. But what liberals cannot reconcile is the fact that these overlooked voters look to a lifelong liar and cheater as their savior. In other words, they cut them slack for the problems in their lives; they are however way less forgiving for what the ‘neglected’ perceive to be the solution to their woes.
8
Well, they (many of them — there are plenty of decent and moral people in these areas who do not support Trump) gleefully embrace a proudly racist, crotch-grabbing liar who behaves like a spoiled teenager and knows nothing about leadership, governance, American history, laws, norms and values. And they are willfully ignorant — furiously pushing back against facts and fact-based solutions, no matter how forgivingly they may be offered.
1
I am an immigrant and I support Trump.
I like lower taxes, less illegal immigrants, less wars, less International involvement where America pays the bills. I was one of the coastal elites until my job was outsourced and even with a bachelors and masters in STEM found it difficult to get employment. I am sick and tired of paying ridiculous taxes in NJ when money is handed out to poor people who only need more money. The final straw, my exceptionally bright child cannot get admission to an elite college, but much poorer and darker people can get admission with full ride. Trump wants to bring more fairness in the system, not more special treatment, a concept not shared by democrats.
The Trump support is spreading, not waning.
6
Much of what you’re complaining about has to do with New Jersey, not the United States. With all your education, you ought to do your homework before you complain. Just exactly how much money do you think is being handed out? What would these people, many of whom are children, sick, recipients of poor education, marginalized because of structural racism do to survive (or are you one of the people who would prefer to let babies die on American streets?)? Sorry about your kid not getting into an elite university. The fact is that statistically, almost nobody who applies to an elite university gets in unless they are legacies, athletes, wealthy, or beyond exceptional. It’s often said that you could replace everyone who gets into the freshman class at Harvard with the first runners up, and nobody would be able to tell the difference.
Once you’ve had a chance to do your homework, come back and we can talk about your sense of entitlement and privilege.
4
@Realist
"Realist" is a funny name for someone who pays attention to what's going on yet can pair "Trump" and "fairness" together in a sentence. The man's personal and professional life is a history of contempt for fairness. See for example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/us/politics/donald-trump-mar-a-lago.html
And by the way, lots of those "poorer" and "darker" students are just as smart as your precious child.
3
It is an abiding fact that poor people need money. After you give them some, they need more, because life goes on. The bills keep coming due. You may notice some similarity to your own experience.
That’s not a huge feature of your NJ taxes, though. Put your education to work and look into it. Guaranteed half your property taxes go to schools.
By your own description you were never part of the elite. Merely having an education and $100,000 a year job doesn’t pass muster. Welcome to the “precariate”, the slightly good life forever on the edge of crashing down. No job security, no healthcare security, no security for your children’s education or future. Sound familiar?
Eliminating affirmative action and forcing Medicaid recipients to work won’t change your situation one bit. What fairness is there in eliminating protections by the EPA and CFPB? How will more pollution and bank fraud improve your life? How will suing colleges for racial admission preferences affect your children’s admission? What fairness?
Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, does have your back. She would guarantee healthcare to everyone, make public universities tuition-free, and provide universal daycare to young families. Your children would begin their lives with no college debt, secure in the knowledge their health needs will always be met, and able to take on a mortgage with two incomes without devoting one to daycare.
1
In the US, people who don't have any money think rich people are smarter than they are.
They think this because it allows them to fantasize that one day they, too, will figure out the tricks to be wealthy, and become a big success.
The reality of the situation, that there is no upward mobility in America for people who were born in challenging circumstances, and that the economic system is rigged against them, is depressing. So people choose the fable which the right (and Fox) is only too happy to spoon feed them.
20
@Turgid
It is untrue that those of us who were born in poor families can't make a go of it. My siblings and I all attended college on scholarship, have gone on to successful careers (law, ecommerce and IT) and never again lived in the rural, small minded town where we were raised.
1
Correct. The voters in the heartland are being played for fools by Trump and the GOP. Look who the tax reduction benefits.
6
As someone who liberally berates the "eastern heartland" (and western and central heartland for that matter) I find this material liberating. My beef with the Ohio's and West Virginias has to do with their willingness to elect those who have a large hand in destroying them for dumb reasons like god and abortion. Let's face it, globalization and economic liberalization has no political face. It is smart business. It is a way for business to make more money. And that is what business does unless constrained or politically managed. The Daytons of the world set up their own demise when they became a manufacturing hub with highly paid labor. The next transformation by business had to be move south and south and further south, since that is where docile, cheap labor could be found. In closing, "eastern heartland" citizens unite. You have nothing to lose but the distain. The distain the right has for you that is.
3
@Paul This is exactly why the cities and country disagree. The cities think that murdering children is a constitutional right. They think God doesn't matter. There can be no peace, no agreement between the faithful and the faithless.
@Paul
Not sure what your point is. VW, a corporation with good salaries and benefits looked to establish a manufacturing center in the South. When they began to interview people, and to look at the potential employee base, they left. They could not depend on a poorly educated employee pool. Germany educates all citizens; they track young people into either academic or technical schools. It might not be perfect; however it at least recognizes human differences and limits, and works to give as many as possible a decent basic education and a decent life.
What do our current governments, local, State and Federal have to offer people. Corruption and feckless governing; just listen to the man who took the Electoral College in PA, MI and WI. Really listen to his self pity as if he has been shorted somehow. Listen to his insults, in particular towards an educated Marine combat hero. He isn't fit to serve Mueller lunch.
1
I agree people do not always like the truth, but being told the truth wins out in the end. I think a consistent campaign highlighting the continued decline of small town americas Economic base juxtaposed against a few clear ideas that speaks to the heart will turn people against the policies of Republican neglect.
Trumps trade war is having an effect on farmers attitudes. People already know they are getting the shaft, they just don’t believe there is a credible alternative.
2
"The thinly veiled contempt conservative elites feel for the middle-American voters they depend on."
This is nothing new, as Prof. Krugman seems to suggest. The most easily manipulable by moneyed elites are the uneducated, the disconnected, the poor, the hopeless, the disenfranchised masses heavily dependent on religion for solace.
Orwellian fodder is GOP country.
10
Krugman unintentionally explains why Trump became President and why his support is solid. The heartland voter Krugman describes hates the elites of both parties. That voter is fed up with being disrespected and tired of having politically correct thinking, be it on sugary drinks, guns, the environment, immigration, the association of Islam with terrorism or transgender bathrooms, rammed down his or her throat. Trump is indeed that voter's voice and is beloved when he hurts the elites and the causes they cherish - even if the the Trump voter suffers too. The bargain is that the elites will suffer even more and a bit of pain for the Trump voter is fine if it causes more pain for the elites.
The bottom line is that Stephen Moore can tell Trump's base they are living in armpits and that base will be fine with it because a) many of them live in places that aren't nice agree with the observation themselves and b) if the elite Krugman hates Moore, on that basis alone he's a good guy, regardless of anything he's said or has done in the past. Insults from Moore are worth it if they cause Krugman to tut tut and wring his hands.
3
Republicans' claims to love the heartland, like their claims of religion and patriotism and personal freedom and financial stringency, are glaringly fake if anyone really examines them. The current contretemps between Mayor Pete with-the-odd-spelled-name and Vice President Pence, now joined by Rev Franklin Graham, is a good example. What kind of Christian approves of cuts in Medicaid for the poor after lowering taxes for the wealthy? For that matter, how can "patriotic" right-wing voters ignore the way Trump flaunts his admiration for Putin while resisting warnings about Russian cyber-spying? As for Republicans' passion for fetuses followed by lack of interest in the welfare of newborns and new mothers, there's no way to add that up. "GOP" should add an "H" for hypocritical.
8
Dr. Paul is completely correct, but how do Democrats get past the heartland hatred of abortions, immigrants and gays?
It is important to repeatedly point out that Government-Trump, like Business-Trump, has failed on his signature issues. Illegal immigration is up, coal mines are closing, factories are closing, the budget deficit is up. Trump has offered nothing but bluster for 70 years. Bluster is noise, not success.
1
@Barry64 easy, criminalize abortion like it should be. Controlled immigration is fine. Homosexuality is not equal to heterosexuality when it comes to marriage.
Thanks, Paul, for writing this column. I hoped somebody would notice that hoards of conservatives that regularly vent their spleen about Midwestern baskets of deplorables clinging to guns and their Easter worshipping religion. And their deplorable, unscientific, misogynistic views opposing abortion through birth and infanticide. Yep, nailed it, Paul, right on the head. I was wondering when the GOP might recognize what a problem it has with those voters. Glad you also noted how wrong the nominee is on economics, since your "never saw money we can't spend" economics has served our country so well.
@JOHN Actually, Dr. Krugman's economics have served our country well. Your economics? Your politics? Not so much.
Let’s take our webbed folding chairs and sit by the shuttered factories and mine entrances and wait for the reemergence of coal and manufacturing jobs.
3
If I were Putin, I would look for the easiest way to destroy America. What he has accomplished so far by rigging our election, fostering racism and putting his puppet in charge pales in comparison by his next move: Dismantling the Fed. The fed is all that stands between the excesses of a totally free market and disaster. Looking back to 1929, it is easy to see the potential our system has for economic disaster. The difference between then and now? Many of our citizens are heavily armed.
6
'...all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth."
I agree, Dr. Krugman, because the truth is a tool you can use to set yourself free. What I wonder about is whether some Americans vote Republican because they don't want to take up the responsibility of freedom. Somehow, when confronted with a problem many people never imagine past blame. Think of people in your experience who feel that once something or someone (else) has been found to be blameworthy, somehow this means the problem has been resolved! They aren't interested in solutions that involve changing anything or doing anything; thus, the truth becomes their enemy, and so do its messengers.
4
"But all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth."
Yes, everyone deserves the truth, but those Americans who voted for Trump and continue to support him are effectively deaf to the truth. Unfortunately, any honest description of these people is inevitably going to sound like contempt. However, what I feel for them is more despair than contempt.
4
The MAGA syndrome is about fear, bigotry and old fashioned hatred, not economics. Since at least Nixon, the GOP's marketing strategy is to portray just social policies of the center-left (integration, affirmative action, feminism, LGBT rights, humane immigration policy, reproductive rights, sane gun control) as an effort by so-called coastal elites, typically emanating from ivy tower universities, to destroy the soul of (white) America. Economics is a secondary consideration in these culture wars. It's why West Virginians, etc consistently vote against their economic self-interest: their bigotry is their main interest, and the GOP obliges.
6
I will acknowledge that Paul Krugman has been my favorite public intellectual since his columns first appeared on the op/ed pages of the N.Y. Times, I guess almost 20 years ago. It pains me to suggest that today's column misdirects discussion of liberal bias down a really deep rabbit hole. And it seems that his conservative critics are eager to dive head-long down that same subterranean labyrinth. Clearly, this is behavioral psychology one might expect from a Nobel laureate in economics. I would hypothesize that most Americans, liberals and conservatives alike, do not take political positions in response to an opponent's insult. Conservative citizens do not become conservative because their liberal adversaries show disrespect. Conversely, liberals do not choose to be liberal because Rush Limbaugh accuses them of stupidity. While liberals & conservatives both tend to tell themselves that their opponents' political philosophies grow out of stupidity, almost all citizens remain certain that they are personally immune to such weakness. But we generally feel validated when we can attribute political disagreement to the stereotypical moral or intellectual inferiority of our ideological adversaries. The assertion that millions of people & entire regions would allow their politics to be manipulated by an opposing affinity group that hurt their feelings, has no basis outside of misguided pop psychology.
3
Conservative citizens start out as conservatives, almost by birth (same for liberals), but become tribal when they feel threatened (same for liberals). “Conservative” and “liberal” labels have almost nothing to do with American politics because most Americans, regardless of labels are horribly uninformed about politics, history, economics, and science. Most Americans cannot describe coherent liberal or conservative ideologies, and this fact is probably the most thoroughly researched, documented and agreed proposition in all of American political science.
Americans do start out with certain baseline predispositions about the world. People who think of themselves as liberals tend to be more open to experience and novelty while people who think of themselves as conservatives tend to be warier about the world, more attuned to hierarchy, structure and rules, and the possibility of being attacked. For any society to survive and prosper, you need both kinds of people.
Over the last 40 years our parties have become more uniformly sorted along these lines. Crank up social tensions with demographic change and hard times economics, and people naturally flee to spaces where they are in the company of people who agree with them. When strategic politicians stir in the claims that the troubles people in their corners are experiencing are the fault of others outside the group, you get the contempt and hatred of the other that has become all too common in America today.
1
Republicans are playing a game in which Democrats can't compete, much less win. They are the loudest voices in the room in every corner of this country. They're always talking stuff they've been fed via conservative talk, regardless of how silly or without reason the motivation of their rant. They even polute their kids with that fact-less based garbage in which they stew for hours a day, everyday. It's hard to fight lies when the last and loudest word in any argument...is a lie.
5
This Contempt isn't just a Conservative issue. The growing contempt for the American heartland reached an apex after the 2016 elections. Conservatives have contempt, sure, but so do Liberals, Globalists, and Progressives who shame the Midwest as being too stupid to know better than to vote for Donald Trump. The Heartland faces real economic and social issues just as any other place in america. Instead of trying to jam a narrative into a sound bite it would be better to take a real look at what's going there before 2020.
4
"The thinly veiled contempt conservative elites feel for the middle-American voters they depend on."
Yes, but...
Conservatives have the wrong policies for the struggling heartland. Think of Governor Brownback. And jerks will be jerks.
But can we make a general claim that well-off midwestern conservatives show contempt for their areas? When an African American criticizes black communities it has a different quality than when a white person does. Similarly, when a conservative midwesterner criticizes midwestern conservatives, it doesn't have quite the same ring of distance as, for example, when a Harvard Law School grad and a child of an academic family (i.e., Obama) talks about rural conservatives' weird attachment to guns and religion. The latter feels like anthropological detachment, which is a form of contempt.
And I know the sea in which Krugman swims--it merges with the sea in which I swim--bristles with liberal contempt for the 'fly-over' states. Go to New Haven, take a seat in one of the city's Blue State Coffee bars, (what a smug name), and try to pretend that the contempt isn't a problem.
It's good, though, that accusations of liberal contempt have Krugman thinking hard and starting to write about the problems of the heartland. Case and Deaton with their work on deaths of despair are making the problems hard to ignore.
Interesting allusion to the potential effect on hospitals should Medicaid be "hollowed out." Recent analysis, published in the NYT, predicts even more devastation for hospitals should "medicare for all" be enacted.
@JP
Put simply NO.
I think the people who point at abortion as a crucial factor are on the right track. It's not my mindset, but I think there's a certain nobility to knowingly (as I'm sure it is in the vast majority of cases) voting against your "interests" - but strictly your economic interests - to stick one to the baby killers.
Arrogance, and contempt for those in the Midwest, plains, etc., what they label flyover country, was a true belief by someone I met while living in California, in both Los Angeles, and Beverly Hills. He was originally from Chicago, and despised his own upbringing, It was incredulous to him, that many of those where I grew up, Montana, had been to China when President Nixon helped open it up, had college degrees, money, etc., even voted for Democrats, especially their favorite son, Joseph Mansfield, and this was over 50 years ago. It really is the truth, that being overeducated, over religious, etc., often puts into one's brain a belief of superiority. If you don't have the number of degrees they have, the religious background, or either the east coast or west coast background, they really believe you are nothing. I was born in Minneapolis, grew up in Montana, and Wyoming, worked and lived in both New York, and California at a young age, and settled back in Minnesota. To tell the truth, I prefer Montana, Minnesota, and Wyoming, to either New York, or California. The crowded conditions on both the east, and west coast, the pollution because of it, and the idea, that those places are where the those who should lead this country should come from, are wearing thin.
4
@MaryKayKlassen I meant to type Mike Mansfield, had been reading Joe Biden pieces.
1
Decades of GOP "government" have clearly shown what they think about their own supporters. They have crushed these people's lives with tax breaks for the 1% rich donors and polices that take away health care and decent jobs for the 99% that is left behind.
And yet their biggest supporters prefer to believe the demonisation of Democrats. Supporters rally around religion, abortion, the fear for "socialism" and gun ownership. Fox State Television spits out propaganda on a daily basis. People voting against their own interests, time after time, till not realising they are being played by the GOP.
In light of the findings of the Mueller report it makes sense that this President and the people around him attempted to work with the Russians as it was Russia that showed them the blueprint to control their supporters with false information for decades.
2
Just send me my checks. I did my Army time., college time, married time and now my life time. What Krugman posts is “nonsense”. It is communism, socialism 1. He is going in the wrong direction. Crime, corruption and the “New York City” hustle rules. Enjoy the ride America, you wanted cheaper, you got it. Enjoy your superior imported car and you 50 year mortgages.
To actually care about these people the Repubs would have to PAY for policy and that's their North Star. Tax cuts forever despite reality.
2
Even Kansans started getting wise to "What's the Matter with Kansas?" They partly restored a properly balanced and prudent tax structure after Sam Brownback's bogus supply siding devastated Kansas schools, and (barely) turned back Kris Kobach's descent into a white-supremacist, theocratic Middle Ages feudalism. But they still have the Koch brothers dominating them, and have to answer for Mike Pompeo (a Koch errand boy).
But then, every state has things to answer for - these are the (barely) United States, after all - so not to demonize. Demonization from all sectors and sides is a major part of our national cultural problem - and it's fed with gasoline from the news studio desks and bully pulpits and political diases across the country.
1
Moore’s remark was not only boorish - it was unfair, in my opinion. I haven’t been to Cincinnati, but - as Ian Hunter explained - Cleveland Rocks!
3
"I know that this will be a hard point to get across. Indeed, I’m sure that some people in the heartland will take any effort to convince them that they’re being misled as just another example of liberal disrespect. But all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth."
The point is almost impossible to get across. America deserves to be told the truth, but the heartland listens to Republican propaganda, spread 24/7 by Fox and right-wing radio.
You've probably caught some of the alternate facts woven on Fox, but if you have never listened to right-wing radio you should do so to get a taste of the vitriol it spews. Just commit to 30 minutes (more than that will raise your blood pressure to a dangerous level). You will have a better idea why truth and reality are what Republicans say they are and why it is so hard to get through to the heartland.
2
Why does the American heartland vote Republican? Why have they bought into Trump? Maybe the American heartland despises the American heartland. Maybe that's the real problem. If so, there's no easy solution.
2
Simple thought. What about the total contempt shown by liberal elites for (1) working class labor impacted by illegal immigration and h-2b visas and (2) highly skilled labor impacted by h-1b visas? In both cases with the visas, American citizens compete against severely underpaid and otherwise exploited guest workers. Of the Democratic candidates for president, only Sanders has made a strong point about the seriousness of the situation. The rest either pretend it does not exist (e.g. Biden) or actually state their intent to lower skilled citizen wages (e.g. Klobuchar). With “winners” and “winning atttitudes” like this, the Democrats deserve to lose to the monstrosity that is Trump.
2
Trump and his republican enablers believe that their lies carry more weight in the heart of America than do their policies.
I grew up rural -- two-grade-per-room schoolhouse -- and got bused into Spokane for high school. I wandered off to Seattle for graduate school in Seattle, and battled political correctness before it had that name without becoming a radical right-winger. I was admitted to Berkeley and after two weeks of being surrounded by so much crime I wanted to form a vigilance committee and returned to Seattle for law school, and got a top law job after being on the U.W. law review etc. And I bailed out of that to teach college and public school in the boondocks, and now I am back in the law in the lesser boondocks of Spokane. I love visiting our major coastal cities....except every waiter and store clerk I see I wonder, "Where can you even afford to sleep at night?" The inequality in these "liberal" cities is overwhelming, and thus I prefer the boondocks, were I get my NYTIMES, my NYROB, my London Review of Books, The Economist, etc.
That said, I have watched a large percentage (not all) of rural, pragmatic culture, being lost to Fox "news" which has colonized the lifeworld of so many people in rural areas. Many people are so ideological they have lost touch with themselves. An urban-originated, right-wing ideology now dominates a majority of rural minds.
The urban mind has become rigid, as well. For example, my urban friends cry out "ew, eek a gun!" at the sight of one, and make no effort to understand rural, or even less urban, people.
Thus did "Hillary Smug" give us Trump.
There are ways to defuse Mutually Assured Disdain.
If the Heartlanders can stop pretending they do not know where all the Federal money comes from, the Coastal Elites can stop pretending they care about the Opioid problem.
Who dislikes the middle America? - Both parties do. The Republicrat Party of the US pays lip service to it, but works against it at every turn. Thta's a millennia-honed game of the elites pondering to the masses in words and exploiting them in deeds.
1
Professor Krugman is talking about a geographical configuration which has along history of alchoholism, poverty and ruralness. So the people who ae vulnerable to alchoholism are also vulnerable to opiod addiction. The South and the Apalachias return terrible politiciians like McConnell every election. Sometimes when the Democrats get a good politician the GOP created a vendetta to nail the Democrat like Gov. Sugarman.
Republican messaging always serves the same strategic goal; divide and conquer. Set working people against each other either through identity politics, religious intolerance or cultural wedges. As long as working people are suspicious of “the other”, they will not work tougher for their common good, which in today’s politics means voting for Democrats.
1
Some folks love living in the heartland.
Big city noise, pollution, crime, traffic is not for everyone.
Some folks don't need to see all types of people to feel good about themselves.
They don't lock their doors at night...they leave keys in cars.
Big city folk walk in fear.
They rush to get in and out of places behind security and alarms.
They have bars on their doors.
If its so good , why not share your home with the people you say to care so much for?
Now getting close to another election and big city slickers will start boasting how they care for the disadvantaged.
In reality all they care for is their votes.....then they lock their doors.
The hate for the heartland is at fever temps now because it = Trump.
Big city hate is disguised by fake Liberal compassion.
Heartland people may not have fancy college degrees but they are smart.
I live right on the edges of the city and heartland.
I spend time in both places every day.
Paul, I know this subject better than you.
1
@Joe Paper
Di you now. Based on your comments I would have to disagree.
@Byter I do not come here looking for agreement. I expect prejudiced views, and usually I am not disappointed
I am afraid that this kind of article outlining the reality of Trump supporters will actually support Trump's cause. He thrives on conflict and victimization and of course, any criticism fuels his followers hate and denial. The level of anger on both sides is beginning to make me feel anxious and afraid. It is now clear that Trump has no limits to what he will do to encourage division so that he can stay in power. I don't usually deal in conspiracy theories, but his actions this week on the subpoena issue which are a direct blow to the Constitution spell out real trouble for the next 24 months.
3
You know all those multi-million corporate severance payouts provided to incompetent executives after bankrupting the company and being shown the door?
How about a national severance payout for workers who involuntarily loose employment —automation, factory closing, merger with larger company, whatever...?
Let’s say $2000 payout for every year of service, up to 20 year max ($40,000).
Funds could be used to payoff student loan or home mortgage, start a small business, or pay for retraining. No strings tax free funds would soften the blow to a bewildered middle class buffeted by globalization.
Too often business decisions are based on immediate profit enhancement without factoring in human costs. Now the cost of automation or factory relocation would incorporate the true impact to the affected workers, and decisions may be different.
1
Society is like hard ground. Give it some water (a living wage), and crops will grow and people will live. Add some compost (education, job training), and crops will thrive.
Yet if you divert the water to someplace else (corporate subsidies), the ground will turn fallow.
It’s that simple.
5
I won't defend Republicans, but I think their appeal to rural voters stems from where they sit on the "more government/less government" spectrum. Many rural people have an enormous regard for self-reliance - they respect folks who can fix their own cars and do their own home repairs. Even if they receive help from the government, their first impulse is to endorse smaller government and fewer government rules. It's up to Democrats to show rural voters that their way of governing is congruent with the values of rural people, especially self-reliance.
2
Recently biked across W VA. absolutely beautiful. Really, an amazing place. Wonderful people. The state is in the hole it’s in because of coal. Put way too many of its ‘eggs’ in that one, harmful and destructive ‘basket.’ Great opportunities for green energy, tourism/recreation, service industries like health care and education. Go WVA.
14
@jamiebaldwin
I drove through W. VA years ago; it was beautiful. We took a rafting trip down a rough river; we crawled on our hands and knees after the trip was over. They served P&B sandwiches and sodas, and we ate everything. We met a man with a pet live squirrel. We stayed in an inn and ate family style with locals. After dinner they gathered to watch Starsky and Hutch in the common room; I will never forget one man saying "I sure wouldn't want to live in that California place". There are places so removed from anything most of us know, there are no words. I hope the world has reached them with jobs, better schools, clinics and hospitals. Better roads and communication. They go back a long way, to the Scotch Irish immigrants. They have to be tough to have eked out a living in those hollows. They know things about rivers, rock formations, fixing things that break, making quilts to last. They gave us directions when we got lost, very kind and patient.
1
At least from Chicago, the smaller cities - the Omahas, DesMoines, Indianapolises, Knoxvilles and Nashvilles - look pretty good. They're sprouting tall buildings, and sprouting the kinds of food and culture that appeal to most Americans. You can afford a house there, and the schools will be OK. On the map, you'll recognize them as the blue dots on the red sea.
In the horse and buggy days, there was a town every 20 miles. Now you drive past these tumbledown old towns to someplace with a supermarket, and comment on the decline of the American heartland. But the town with the supermarket will be doing OK. It's really not that bad.
4
@Murray Omaha has almost half a million people. I wouldn't call it small.
I've driven through lots of towns with supermarkets and they did not appear to be going well. Here in California and other western states, in the Mid-West, the North-West. Towns with lots of boarded-up storefronts. Then there's other towns that do seem to be doing okay like, say, Mile City Montana.
You must be wearing blinders not to see the many small cities and towns that have fallen on hard times.
@Murray
Chicago is bankrupt and may more will follow. I tell everyone i know not to ever move to the states of IL, NJ, CT, CA, NY.
I'm a liberal who has made a number of extremely enjoyable road trips in parts of the "Heartland".
Part of what I enjoyed was natural beauty from the deserts of Arizona to the mountains of Montana to the lakes of Minnesota to rivers like the Columbia and the Missouri and the Mississippi.
The other big parts were the folks I met and conversed with and their towns. The truck driver in North Platte Nebraska, the fellow in Bemidji Minnesota who was so tickled by my cruising around the country that he bought me a drink. The Pirogue Grille in Bismarck where I've had two delightful meals and conversations some four years apart, Bozeman Montana which I've visited three times and loved every minute.
I could go on but you get the point. I didn't experience any hostility despite my California plates and aging hippy look. On the ground the extreme polarization we hear about is hard to find.
I have encountered many towns and small cities that were obviously going through hard times. Places where the charming architecture spoke of better times now obviously gone given the boarded-up storefronts and degree of dilapidation. Which saddened me.
I grew up on Long Island and moved to the SF Bay Area a looong time ago. As coastal a person as you can find. I don't have even a speck of disdain for the "Heartland" or its people. If coastal snobs think there are, say, no good restaurants there I'm here to tell you that's bunk. I mentioned one above but it ain't the only one.
15
@Jack Toner
My maternal family arrived in S.F. in 1852; they fled the Irish famine, settled in Boston, then boarded a Clipper ship to S.F. I am so glad they did; I went on board a Clipper docked at the Marina; it was so small. It is a miracle so many of them made it around the Horn. My paternal family left Ireland when the British aristocrats came in to buy up the land; they sold out and made enough to reach Quebec, sail down the coast, managed to get to Missouri where they hired their own wagon train, took the Oregon trail and settled on the Willamette River. As you probably know, there are many generations of settlers on the West Coast. My former husband's maternal family left Philadelphia, made it to Oakland, bought land and sent their sons to law school and medical school. One son settled in Berkeley. His paternal family left Finland to avoid conscription into the Kaiser's army. We're fine with new people looking to start over; we never ask anyone why they are here; what has been left behind stays there. That is how port cities are.
2
Thanks to mass propaganda like Fox News, talk radio, and some fool preaching nonsense every Sunday, millions of Americans rank the abortion issue above all others.
60
@Chad That was my thought as I read the article. What Krugman says is true but he doesn’t mention abortion & guns, which is the glue that ties the people here in the rust belt to the GOP. Yes, they vote against their interests but they do so because while their cities hollow out and the opioids flow, they can hold their heads up knowing they are saving babies’ lives and will have their guns to be able to overthrow the evil liberal government when the time comes. If Medicare is cut & hospitals & medical clinics fail, Fox & pals have conditioned them to understand that the liberals will be at fault.
Of course so-called conservatives hold them in contempt! They are easy to manipulate but they are hard workers and without their votes, the GOP would be in the dustbin. So they court their votes will gun rights & abortion, get them to do the heavy lifting, and laugh at them all the way to the bank.
8
Mr. Krugman, like many is missing the crux of the matter. Rural voters may be poor and they may be ignorant, but they are not voting against their interests when they vote Republican and for The President. They are voting for their main interest: their identity. That identity is their whiteness. They may lack most privileges but they have one: they are wealthier and have greater status than their Latino and black and female neighbors.
Until we and Democrats can address this perceived loss of status, they will never vote for their other interests. Those are secondary. I don’t know what the solution is. Perhaps there is none. I haven’t heard a good one, have you?
With this aforementioned in mind, elections don’t involve changing hearts and minds, they are about turnout and dragging the rural, poor White voter into the future with legislative policy after victories. They will benefit despite themselves. Perhaps that changes hearts and minds. I doubt it.
Luckily, time and demographics and the mortality around white poverty will change the demographics. I fear that we’re going to have to wait this one out sadly.
241
When the much of the Midwest voted for Obama in 2008, was that because of its whiteness or because Obama offered hope?
110
@Shawn
So for their identity of "whiteness" read as white supremacy by other minorities, the whole nation has to suffer for their greater "status".
From my perspective, I say take away Medicaid and all the Federal aid given exclusively to the Appalachian rural areas. Then see who they vote for.
4
@ShawnThis is perfectly said.
5
Why can't Democrats find a candidate who can talk sensibly about abortion and gun control? How about saying, "We aren't going to repeal the Second Amendment (because it wouldn't magically remove 300 million guns from American soil), nor should we. Most gun owners are law-abiding citizens whose right to own guns should not be abridged or infringed. Instead, we need laws that will protect the rights of responsible gun owners but at the same time, keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them. We need a reasonable compromise." I'm guessing that many gun owners would respond positively to that simple message. They might see the candidate as a decent moderate who understands them. But Democrats lead with their chins every time, emphasizing identity politics to satisfy single-issue constituencies, and then scratch their heads wondering why rural voters think they are all a clueless joke. It's because they are. They still haven't figured out how to talk TO voters instead of talking AT them (think Bill de Blasio). Full disclosure: I have voted Democratic since '08 and will do so again in '20.
4
I’m not sure why you think democrats want to repeal the 2nd amendment. I haven’t heard one candidate suggest that. Instead what I hear are the reasonable compromises you suggest. Close gun show loopholes, background checks, etc. the problem is Fox News, etc., all portray these as sneaky backdoors to repeal, and the “reasonable gun owners” buy it.
20
@Arthur Larkin Your quote, which you're suggesting be what Democrats say, is pretty much exactly what almost all Democratic politicians do say about gun control. Are you getting your "news" from Fox? The lying propagandists there totally distort what Democrats actually say.
After Obama was elected there was a lot of talk that he was going to try to take peoples' guns away. The people who were saying this seem not to have noticed that that never happened.
Try listening to actual Democrats. You might be pleasantly surprised. Yes, some may emphasize "identity politics" a bit but many do no such thing. How do you think Democratic House candidates received ten million more votes than Republican ones? It wasn't by running up their totals in big cities. The Democratic candidates talked about health care more than anything else.
Listen.
Paul, worth mentioning is Stephen Moore’s book on how the Bush (43) economy was going to work out so well due to the tax cuts and deregulation (we all know how that prediction worked out) yet he continues to argue for the same policies.
10
No matter where you live in America, having to reinvent your life in middle age when you've spent the first half of your life acquiring and honing the skills of your occupation and building social networks and an "I am" identity around it is dispiriting, to say the least. There is a limit to human flexibility and adaptability, confidence and hope. Also, Americans tend to blame themselves, their buddies or their loved ones for job losses even when the decision came down from some glass tower in New York. There is always suspicion that the laid-off worker didn't work hard enough, didn't show the right attitude, or somehow "messed up" or "made trouble." All of that works well for capitalists chasing the extra dollar of profit offshore or capital gains on stock trades, and the "elite" conservatives who have no intention of helping "lazy" and "immoral" people not of their privileged class. They become the "takers" and the "losers" overnight when they lose a paycheck they've earned for 20 years or more. Maybe no politician, Republican or Democrat, can bring back some sectors of the ever-changing economy but when Hillary Clinton told the truth about coal and offered government help to re-train miners for new occupations, they turned against her and voted for her con-man opponent. That's all I hold against the "heartland" people. Republicans have never cared about ordinary working people and they keep voting them anyway.
2669
@abigail49
This is the single greatest comment I have read in terms of its resonance with my personal situation having experienced brief success followed by crushing failure as a sales rep during the housing boom in the early mid 2000s. My career was destroyed and my life upended and I am still struggling.
279
An uneducated mind trained to blindly follow the leader is fallow ground for Trumpism.
238
@abigail49 The reason "heartland" people vote for the GOP and people like Trump is because they identify with them. Someone said they like Trump because, if they had the money he has, they would behave like him. This rises above everything when it comes time to vote. We're not talking "rational" here, we're talking emotion. That's why it's a waste of time to try to talk to a Trump voter. They're not going to listen.
298
It needs to be understood that NOTHING lasts forever. We were once an agrarian nation, now farms are corporate and mechanized, negating the need for manual labor and emphasizing educated labor to create the processes and technology of the future. One doesn’t have to go to a traditional university to obtain this; tech/vocational is better for a lot of people who learn with their hands. Obama tried this and was vilified. Conservatives in this country require a low educated, angry base in which to obtain votes, as the educated turn more and more to the Democratic party.
This country needs to display adaptability at the lowest levels to counteract the ossification and “i’ve got mine” robber baron conservatism at the top.
1516
@Jts Remember Trump said he likes uneducated people and so do republicans, they make no effort to help these people obtain the skills needed in the new economy. They blame other people rather than a system that doesn’t work for them.
95
@Tom W
The GOP, the corporate leaders, and tRump wants un and under educated people so that they have masses of low paid workers.
20
"But all Americans, wherever they live, deserve to be told the truth."
Without knowing the truth, making informed decisions is impossible. The problem we have is what you mention earlier in that same paragraph: There seem to be a growing number of people who aren't willing to hear any truth that upsets strong beliefs.
Ignorance is not a crime, (it can be overcome by learning) but a stubborn insistence on ignoring uncomfortable facts should be.
1246
@Gregory E Howard I think perhaps we should stop blaming Republican voters for voting against their interests, or voting without regard to facts. Because of Rushbo and Fox, these voters actually are voting according to the facts they have before them. The real problem...
84
@Gregory E Howard Being told the truth is only part of the dilemma. Understanding the truth is quite another matter. When the truth runs counter to the preconceived or preferred narrative, it gets rejected. Those having difficulty with the truth will seek out alternative sources that will tell them what they want to hear. The Appalachian Coal Fields have witnessed boom and bust cycles before. Not until the belt lines are pulled from the mine shafts, the coal fired power plants are torn down and the railroad spurs are torn up does it sink in that this time it is different. Even then, some die hards will be taken in by the empty words of trump and McConnell, that they will bring coal back.
49
Telling them the truth isn’t as important as inducing them to vote for good candidates.
These people’s votes are much more influential than the votes of urban/suburban coastal people, due to the Electoral College and the two-senators-per-state system. Their fundamentalist religions beliefs and their support for trumpist demagogues indicate incapacity to process information. This isn’t fixable.
It may sound cynical, but what we need to do is to protect them from reality. Be better at fooling them than the Republicans are. Promise them anything, and elect leaders who will actually be good for them as well as us.
18
There are a few things I can't help noticing about the hard line right in America. One is that they themselves are elitists. They pretend to be interested in the average American but enact and support policies that actively hurt average Americans. Their reaction to the ACA is one example. Some of them are remarkably biased against any person who is different: LGBTQ, African American, handicapped, non-Christian, immigrant, etc.
They are very quick to call people names, to threaten people who disagree with them, and to jump to the worst conclusions they can. They attribute malicious motives to every person that disagrees with them. Trump fits this nicely. And they provoke which is even worse. They condone violence to further their agenda as long as they don't have to do it themselves.
Contempt is a polite word. The truth is that they despise most Americans no matter where they live. They are not Libertarians either. They are elitists without any sense of compassion or understanding of what life is like for most people in America. In truth, they are the lazy ones.
4/25/2019 8:08pm
1960
@hen3ry
"They are very quick to call people names, to threaten people who disagree with them, and to jump to the worst conclusions they can. They attribute malicious motives to every person that disagrees with them."
This is almost word-for-word something I could imagine Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh saying about liberals. This is precisely why liberal and conservative elites have so much in common. Each party of elites is guilty of this. They both start from a position of presupposing the rightness of their cause and argument, assuming that those who disagree with them are fools and imagining that those disagreements are rooted in evil intent.
As something of a centrist, I find pols from both parties nauseating. The Republicans are worse at the moment, but the Dems are doing their level best to form their own confederacy of dunces at the moment.
The thing is--in summation, Krugman's article basically tries to argue that perceptions of liberal elites deploring the heartland are slightly overblown yet largely true, but Republican elites are just as guilty and also hypocrites. What a sad state of affairs.
24
@hen3ry “Elitist” in this context is usually an anti-intellectual attack. A teacher who makes $30,000 a year can be “elitist” because they have a graduate degree (and hold liberal views.)
42
@Souvient This argument always comes up from so called moderates that would like to vote republican but the party is so crazy they find it impossible. This country is so far right that even moderate liberals, who genuinely wants whats best for all people, get labeled the same as Trumpsters. Where I live, one of the most conservative counties in the country, I hear this all the time. The problem is bothsiderism which the media/people love to harp on so real change can't happen. Change that might provide health care at a reasonable cost. Students graduate without a mountain of debt. Billionaires being held to the same standard as middle class Americans. For the life of me I can't understand why a majority of Americans are not for this.
69
I cannot fathom why rural Americans vote Republican. Can it all be about abortion and the 2nd Amendment? In my state of Washington the eastern half of the state is mostly rural and also very Republican and yet more state money is spent there than what the rural eastern Washingtonians pay in taxes. Whats more, the local farm economy relies on water supplied by dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers and built by the government that they so often rail against.
This is true across the country. Cities vote for Democrats and more rural areas are reliably Republican even though the rural areas rely on government assistance more than the cities do.
I have sympathy for rural America, I really do. I just wish that they would stop voting for Republicans who want to cut taxes for the rich and pay for it by cutting services for the poor.
2843
@Dave There is a tacit realization that Rural America dependent on the state for many things, and this dependence rankles deeply, so they take it out on the hand that feeds them, resenting the fact that they cannot feed themselves.
418
@Todd
Well put. This is something I have noticed as well. Evangelicals think of themselves as "out of this world" literally. They believe that they belong in heaven (a better place) and that their time on earth is akin to a cross to carry. They are doing the will of God when they fight abortion for example and think that they will be rewarded for it.
This way of thinking is totally exclusive, first you become born again and then you go on forsaking your past or who you are. Then you'd better not associate with non believers unless you preach to them. You become obsessed with sharing the gospel because you feel guilty when you're having a good time with the unsaved.
Not all of these Christians think that way, but in my experience, evangelicals do. They are "special" and others are not worth much unless they're saved.
467
@Dave
Please do not forget the racism issue, that accompanies the GOP everywhere now with Trump in the lead.
418
Remember when Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia and told the coal miners that their jobs weren't coming back? That she had a plan to provide training to help them transition into the new economy?
She was attacked — for telling the truth. West Virginians preferred Donald Trump's message that he'd bring back king coal.
Truth hurts. We just have to hope that the folks who are hurting in the Eastern Heartland can finally see the snake-oil salesman for the conman he is.
Don't hold your breath.
3213
@Elizabeth A People want hope not reality especially when the generic answer is job retraining which by and large doesn't work in a depressed area like West Virginia. You have very limited "modern" white collar jobs and almost no decent paying blue collar jobs. Most blue collar workers only real option for a future is to somehow get training in a skilled trade and then move to another state. Which is possible if your in your early twenties and single but is almost impossible if you are in your forties with a wife and kids.
152
@C.G.
Then, do you have an answer for this problem? Do you think it is better to pretend that Trump will bring back coal or is it better to face reality?
231
@C.G.
Apparently you missed the recent excellent article in the New York Times about coal miners being retrained and now having excellent green energy jobs in West Virginia.
189
Stephen Moore and Donald Trump, any surprise that Trump would see another of a birds of a feather as a good guy?
Trump's own life style has been nothing but contempt for middle and poor American. Penthouses separated by stories and security from the masses huddled below. Private, gated resorts where entre are membership are restricted. Private planes and helicopters so as not to have to mix with the riffraff in commercial first class. Bullying and suing the small property owners next to his country clubs so that he can have his own way. Stiffing and not paying for the work that contractors did for him. Those episodes of The Apprentice that helped gain him election - watch how people were cleared so that his magnificence could enter. Watch how the contests who may have been focused on a customer or a problem with the project were chided for not paying attention to him above all.
11
When we were a agricultural country,there was often a “barn raising party “. A farmer needed a barn but the cost and labor were too much for the individual. The whole community pitched in and up went the barn. Many of the issues we face today need that attitude to be dealt with. We do it as a country or it’s not getting done. Helping depressed areas of the country is one such task. Unfortunately Trump and the republicans still talk only of individuality.
11
Reading this, especially your comment on propaganda organizations relying on out-of-context quotes and sheer fabrication, I am reminded of the speech in March of 2016 that Hillary Clinton gave on renewable energy and unemployed coal miners.
“I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right? And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people.”
We know what happened to this quote in the hands of the Republican propaganda machinery that has relentlessly pummeled Clinton. It is the willingness of the Fox News audience and others, primarily working class whites (some are family members who are dear to me), to accept this blatant disregard for the truth and to be completely taken in by these appalling lies that is integral to the problem. This group of people is to conservative elites nothing more than a prop in a battle for power. We must be vigilant in the upcoming campaign. The stakes are unbearably high.
13
I recently saw an interview with a Trump voter who worked in a rural hospital in West Virginia. The woman noted that the hospital was in real trouble financially and might have to close. She also noted that many patients were on Medicaid and could lost their coverage if the legislature got its way. The interviewer asked if she would vote for Trump again. Without missing a beat, she said "yes" although she wished Trumps would do more to support poor people. Unless and until people begin to connect the dots between cause and effect, I fear that their situation will grow substantially worse.
25
It seems that rural America still has potential. With the internet, many jobs can be accomplished just about anywhere. There is a market for work that requires creative skills. Green energy - solar and wind, can locate in rural areas. The internet offers educational opportunities just about anywhere. Real estate and rents are more affordable away from cities. Universal healthcare would level the playing field. There is much room for innovation and improvement. We need leaders that work toward creating a bright future for everyone.
10
@Phyllis Mazik
I lived and worked in CT for 22 yrs. We had branch operations from Mass. to PA; there was no comparison in the level of education throughout each State. There were hard working good people in PA; however the further you went beyond urban centers, the more insular it became. We stayed in local inns and motels; we ate in local restaurants and diners. We provided good jobs and salaries; we paid for job training and retraining. We walked a fine line when visiting branches; we left as much as possible to the managers. The new world of more job losses and transitioning to more skills needed is very hard on people in small rural communities. I hate to think of what robotics will do to them. We need leaders who recognize how the future is going to affect thousands of people; we need to put more money into technical schools and good basic public school education. New skills require an ability to read and to comprehend. Coops would be good things to support; they would maintain a sense of community. The days of new frontiers are behind us; we need to develop what we have, and that includes people. We need compassion for the left behind. We are still a rich country; we can afford to do things right. I would like to start with getting rid of people like McConnell and his ilk. I would vote for younger candidates and give them time to learn. Obamas and Kennedys are thin on the ground now. I am sick to death of Trump's cynical, ignorant public appearances.
The greatest disaster for America's rural and non-coastal cities is one the Republicans wanted but couldn't get: a major depression. If Republicans had won the White House in 2008, they would have imposed Euro style austerity across the board. No stimulus to the economy to ease the Great Recession. Like Europe, we would have spent ten years trying to claw our way out. All of this would have been blamed on "Democrat overspending". Social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security could have been cut savagely so mega-wealthy Republican backers would never have to worry about tax increases to pay for those services. Perhaps even Americans in old age could have been returned to the desperate state of going hungry and without medical care of generations ago: the dream.
The Republican ideology that no one can be truly helped by government allows them to believe that no one is helped, therefore slashing away at the small supports some people have doesn't actually harm them, it encourages them to get up out of that wheelchair and go to work at Walmart of McDonald's for minimal wages. Stand on your own!, even if you can't walk.
Republicanism, as always, is a system of protecting the wealthy while trying to teach those at lower economic levels that they must learn to accept their fate as near vassals of corporate power and low wages. Take your medicine! That millions believe otherwise is a tribute to the power of cultural politics over facts and reason.
31
Paul
I agree with your diagnosis of Conservatives views on the middle states, but then “Only little people pay taxes” has been the moto of the Republican party since Reagan. I do thou disagree view your summation of the Democrats view. Warren’s plan to save family farms is condescending at best. It summarizes why the Democrats have lost those states.
I grew up on a farm in Iowa, left for college during the 1982 recession, which made 2008 look like a cake walk. My brother and sister still farm, their kids are trying to start farming on their own, I talk to them regularly. Warren’s “plan” is based on her having watched reruns of Green Acres one too many times. She talks about the Gilded Age; she forgets that the rural areas were in recession for 20 of those 50 years. She flies over the issue of health care in the flyover states.
Her education plan will simply help speed up the brain drain from the small towns, at my 40th high school reunion we figured out that 90% of us that got college degrees left for good. How about speeding that money to create the infrastructure that would allow those that get college degrees to be able to stay and find jobs that would payback our investment.
The Republican distain for the Midwest is part and parcel of its distain for those without a lot of money, doesn’t matter where you are. The Democrats’ is worse, it comes from their infatuation with identity politics, thus Warren’s plan to help save those people.
6
I looked up the definition of identity politics, and to say that a political party is infatuated with identity politics is the epitome of the word “oxymoron”.
“Identity politics” has become a meaningless insult to progressives. Fighting to assure that every individual gets an equal chance, regardless of their personal characteristics or background is not identity politics.
2
@JJ upside down thinking. Did you really read Warren’s policies?
@Geoff
Identity politics is when you talk about gay rights, black rights, not civil rights. Go read Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches he never talks about right for blacks, he talked about civil rights for everyone.
A factor hardly anyone notices is the woeful state of public education outside the urban and suburban areas of the Midwest. In Ohio, to take one example, public schools are funded via property taxes (household and business), even though the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that this arrangement is blatantly unconstitutional because of the inequities it fosters.
The result is that education is more aspirational throughout Ohio, but especially in the poor rural counties of eastern and southern parts of the state, which just happens to correlate perfectly with a rampant opioid crisis. Blame for this situation is easy to pinpoint: the Republican dominated state legislature and GOP governors (Kasich, anyone), who have refused to create a new, fairer public education funding system.
Yet the folks in these areas consistently vote for Republicans at the local, state and federal levels. "Hillbilly Elegy" provides a reason: these people wallow in victimhood, a self-blame fostered by Republican elites by their actions to prevent any kind of policies that would improve their lives.
14
@PaulB67
You’re forgetting they have lived under both parties and they have seen one “talk” as hollow as the next. They’ll vote for the one one most seen to have command of the issues. And the media will help in their choice. For the poor voter, it’s a game they can’t win. How long has taken Congress to address the opioid crisis?
1
Moore and the GOP can make those types of jokes because it is not inconsistent with the positive vision and ethos that many in rural white America hold for themselves. Sarah Smarsh said this perfectly when discussing her book Heartland in a NYT article last year : "People on welfare were presumed ‘lazy,’ and for us there was no more hurtful word,” she writes. “Within that framework, financially comfortable liberals may rest assured that their fortunes result from personal merit while generously insisting they be taxed to help the ‘needy.’ Impoverished people, then, must do one of two things: Concede personal failure and vote for the party more inclined to assist them, or vote for the other party, whose rhetoric conveys hope that the labor of their lives is what will compensate them.”". Democrat candidates who fail to embrace the desire and belief that these voters want the chance to pull themselves out of poverty without federal assistance, even while taking it, will most always fail to get their votes. These folks need candidates who, in this instance, embrace the type of hope for their lives that embodies what they believe is morally correct. We all should respect that, Democrat and Republican alike.
13
@Tom Hebert I read that article and I read the book. ( I actually own it.) What she is writing is her explanation of the problem. Her point is that the 'hard work' cliché often is a blind alley. It is certainly not valued by the people who benefit from the 'hard work,' which generally is not the people actually doing it.
@Tom Hebert
But nobody needs to feel like conceding defeat for picking up a freedom dividend, your fair buy-in into the rewards of your co-stewardship and co-ownership of all the yuge available natural riches you're a part of and to which dividends you are eminently eligible. No need for welfare presuming you lazy, malfunctioning, or inadequate anymore, that's a bingo and an abracadabra with one stone.
Thank you for introducing me to Sarah Smarsh, whose comet-like arrival into the mediasphere I had somehow missed. This piece of hers left me in tears:
theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/06/teachers-red-states-kansas-memoir-sarah-smarsh
It actually points at monied media echo chambers and at the quality of our education as responsible for prejudices against perfectly sensible Democratic policies rather than at these policies or their proponents for being inherently disdainful and scornful to their designated beneficiaries.
Sorry to pierce your bubble.
@Tom Hebert maybe why so many voted for Obama.
1
Increasingly I see the divide between left and right in the US not as ideological but as a difference in capacity for moral reasoning. The people of the left are the ones who’ve retained that capacity, and the people on the right, with their contempt, rage, greed, and taste for violence and draconian punishment, have lost it. I can think of many factors leading to the creation of this psychologically damaged population. Breakdown of community bonds, substitution of virtual for real human relationships. Poor quality public education. Cultural glorification of self-interest and wealth and “winning.” Gross fictional narratives of violence and slaughter as the path to the triumph of “good.” Even poor diet and psychopharmacological toxins and pesticides in drinking water.
This contempt for Americans suffering the brutalities of our dysfunctional economy is just a small example. The incapacity for moral reasoning is everywhere. Trump is an exemplar, of course. So is McConnell. Down to the shooters targeting crowds of strangers. It’s a psychopathology, and it appears intractable.
18
The real problem is this - American society has a 'winner take all' mentality. Everything is based on generating more and more profits. Investors rule. Corporations rule. The idea of equality for all is actually something of a farce, and keeping wealth in the hands of old white men is the name of the game. There are few attempts anymore at creating true economic equality in the US. At some point, a random straw will break the camel's back, but just temporarily! The wealthy will always bounce back, because the system is on their side and in the US, always will be.
10
Capitalism gets is to where we are now unless the rules and taxes are changed so that more citizens can enjoy the success of our country.
2
"Some Democrats, notably Elizabeth Warren, have been offering real proposals to help rural areas. They’re probably not enough to reverse rural and small-town economic decline, which would be hard to do even with plenty of money and the best will in the world. But they would help."
What does this mean in the context of this column? Is it just the truth or is it the nice way, the democrat way to say what Moore and republicans who aren't poor say?
I have a hard time with the wholesale dismissal of, well, most of the country by elites no matter their political affiliation. It's not a stretch to think coal mining will continue to disappear. But the majority of the "heartland" is agricultural. We all need to eat regardless of where we live. Perhaps decline is the same extractive ,exploitive practices Big Business/Finance has exacted on urban manufacturing: moving overseas and corporatization of farming so that all the proceeds go to shareholders not farmers.
But that's not the major reason why mortality is declining. It's that there is less and less for adults to live for. Adults raising families have their entire time taken up with working and keeping their families living--and for what?
Maybe there was never as much flavor to life as people on the coasts think they have, but one thing is for sure, the economic realities have taken away what little flavor to be found in life for more and more Americans. Moving to the coast won't get it back.
11
@no one special
Warren's college plan will only hurt rural areas, making it cheaper to leave than to stay, her "Family Farm" plan is based on women in bonnets and men in bib overalls I can see the “Make Farming Great Again” hats already.
Your point about healthcare, healthcare support, and community and social service employment sectors is well taken.
Here in Maine according to the BLS, in May 2018 those 3 sectors employed 72,640 or 12.0% of the working population. The healthcare sector alone employs 4,280.
Cutting funding to these sectors, a much beloved idea by Republicans, would not only throw a lot of people out of work but would have the knock-on effect (not the Moore and his ilk care) of depriving many thousands of much-needed services.
Off topic: the Heartland Institute is one of the principal funders of the climate change denialists.
15
@Fred
Correction: healthcare employs 41,280!
"Some Democrats, notably Elizabeth Warren, have been offering real proposals to help rural areas. They’re probably not enough to reverse rural and small-town economic decline, which would be hard to do even with plenty of money and the best will in the world. But they would help."
You can't actually reverse the decline. Maybe you can slow it But the "help" either way is something akin to permanent government subsidy unless and until the population reaches some kind of sustainable balance with the region's economic prospects . I am ok with that. But let's call if what it is -- gasp -- a form of Socialism!
5
I have lived my entire life in either rust-belt, Midwestern, or Southern areas of the country. Showing contempt for the people living in these areas is not a function of someone's political background. It's a product of the stereotypes that northeastern and west-coast people have about these regions. One's political persuasion only determines *how* these stereotypes are expressed. Are people of these regions poor, uneducated people who need "help" from more "successful" outsiders (Liberal solution) or lazy, undisciplined people who need to "pull themselves up be their bootstraps" (Conservative solution). Neither of these so-called "solutions" actually attempts to break from stereotyped thinking and find real answers to problems. How about just assuming that people who live in these areas are diverse, and perhaps might be resilient enough to find their own solutions (as a community) if they're given respect and allowed to have hope?
24
@Lisa
The poor people actually do need help. they are not going to work their way out of their problems.There is nothing keeping them from having hope and finding their own solutions, apart from a lack of training, skills, and of course, money.
The false equivalency is clear. Democrats offer aid, the GOP offers cuts. Which is apt to be more enabling?
4
@Lisa: Reactionary "desperation motivation" denies the need for some resources to work with.
I have come to believe that politicians reflect society. They don’t influence it. Until we stop blaming politicians nothing will change, really.
6
As long as "conservatives" fall back on the idea that individual responsibility is the solution for all problems, they will fail to address any of those problems. If people can't or won't step up and fix things for themselves, we are stuck.
We can rail at people for bad choices, lack of initiative, and other personal failings, but the problems will go unsolved. That's a huge thing for communities caught in a downward spiral.
Change happens, but the response should not be a kind of Darwinian reliance on the survival of the "fittest." We need to balance efficiency with compassion.
It looks to me as if people who might solve the problems in that "heartland" have already migrated out for better opportunity and nicer lives. There's no reason for them to return to the small cities and villages they abandoned.
Whenever the economy of a community is severely damaged, there are social problems. Those problems are often ugly to look at and it has been easy for politicians to tell voters that it's the fault of those who are suffering.
10
Great points, not often mentioned, and very important.
More of the same old drive to vote against your own interest.
Blaming liberals or Dems for a situation which really is beyond the control of any political party, and only exacerbated by Republican hypocrisy and inaction.
How many states refused the generous ACA drive to expand Medicaid? And now?
And with all of us boomers hitting the official old age demographic, it will only get worse.
We need to be a extremely well equipped with good hospitals everywhere, staffed with good people.
And we don't need Stephen Moore in any public office.
21
@Bruce The states refused Medicaid expansion because they are ultimately responsible for the cost and can’t afford it.
1
@Jackson If the states can't afford paying pennies on the dollar for medicaid how will they manage to pay for the sick and dying abandoned by private insurance and government?
The GOP healthcare plan is "die quickly".
1
I don't know who is more shameful - Moore, the people who laughed at the event, or the people who ignore his comments completely in supporting him for the Fed.
Poverty, income inequality, and the decline of the middle class are endemic in the midwest but everywhere in this country, and the party that has done the least to help in the past thirty years is the GOP. At least the DNC put forth the ACA and expanded Medicare, among other initiatives like the expansion of internet into rural and underserved areas.
More needs to be done, and we need to recognize that these challenges are in big cities and in small, in suburban areas and rural. People believe that New England is a wealthy area, and I suppose that it is, but try telling that to residents of Bridgeport and New Britain, CT, or Springfield, MA, Berlin, NH... I went to school in upstate NY and on my way to my bucolic campus I passed by towns and villages with broken down trailers and children wearing worn-out clothing, where there were more signs about businesses closing or closed than hiring.
We need to open our eyes also to those within our midst who are hurting in our "booming" economy. I used to be a free-trade, purist economist in my 20's. Now my beliefs more nuanced because I meet and hear from people outside of the bubble of economic comfort. I know what my parents went through in the late 20's/early 30's, and what my neighbors are facing now. More of our politicians, and future leaders, need to do the same.
30
The working class is a big problem for many people who are not working class. By "working class" I mean people who have to exchange their time, energy, and lives for "compensation" in the form of wages and salaries. They basically have to maintain themselves (food, logging, clothes, transportation) as working machines even before they get their first pay check.
Some people want to leave them to their fate and exploit them. Some want to pay them more and reform them. Some want to scold them for their poor lot and their less-than-stellar choices. The writer, Nelson Algren, wanted to elevate them because they were human beings and because they were real.
I'm reading Colin Asher's wonderful book, "Never A Lovely So Real," and it reminds me of how much I have forgotten about my own upbringing and my own youth. Algren's writing –– he wrote "Walk On The Wild Side –– was aimed at showing what it was like to be on the bottom end of the economic scale, and to show it from the inside –– to understand it. Algren was a rising great writer until the FBI and the "Red Scare" got on his case. He had joined a Communist writer's organization in the 1930's as a young, unemployed man. Unforgivable, and so proletariat!
America's prevalent "money snobbery" is destroying one of the best things we have going in America –– the dignity and potential of the individual as a person and not a cog in a rigged economy.
22
Speaking at a conference on the pathologies of the rich and the contempt it breeds in the class some 2,000 years ago, noted sociologist and behavioral psychologist Jesus reported:
"I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
The history of the last 2,000 years--and certainly American history more recently--has done nothing to dissuade me of the fundamental accuracy of Jesus’ assessment of the moral failings of the rich, many of whom like Stephen Moore self-identify as Republicans.
It's not that I or Jesus dislike the rich, it’s that given their attitude toward their fellow men, their generalized contempt for those less fortunate than themselves, we just feel better when they're not around.
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@Greg Gerner: No kingdom of anyone is a democracy.
I'm constantly having trouble with the term "Heartland" or "Rural America" and what it has become a euphemism for, that is, White-Bread America.
The Eastern Heartland according to the work of Harvard economist, Ed Glaeser comprises twelve states: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Surely it must recognized that this twelve-state region has millions of black Americans; Mississippi has over one million and the largest concentration (by percentage) of blacks in the U.S.. But-of-course, Republicans don't notice and don't care.
It is time to let go of the extremely narrow definition of Heartland and see it for what it is; a place where minorities are suffering too; typically more so.
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@Candlewick This Harvard economist is a terrible geographer. Illinois in the East? Where is Pennsylvania?
As for black folk, in many parts of the country they're mostly in cities. The old South is an obvious exception. So talking about the "Heartland" in the South while ignoring the black people there looks quite racist indeed.
Outside the South rural areas do tend to be pretty Caucasian in their population. A lot of this is because of the racism of a lot of rural whites.
Here in California (where the rural picture often features lots of Hispanics) I've heard stories of racism both overt and covert. A black family being followed in their car in a menacing sort of way. In western Marin County! A black C&W band that played in a small town up in the mountains. By all accounts they were quite good. When I asked if they'd be invited back the answer was no, they're black.
A young friend from rural Oregon whose vocabulary included the n-word as well as the use of jew as a verb. On the one hand he didn't know any better on the other hand he definitely had stereotypes in his mind.
So I get the use of "Heartland" to refer to rural areas which often contain very few black people. But let's not forget the role that racism plays in that. I doubt that there are no blacks outside the South who wouldn't prefer the slower pace of a rural town. But they don't see moving to such a place as a viable option because of white racism. Don't accuse me of being PC. I'm telling it like it is.
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@Candlewick
Trump and the compliant, complicit GOP, of course, does not care about Black America (or Poor White America), but, boy, have they "noticed." That's why they have begun a legislative pogrom to prevent our minority citizens from voting, thus eliminating their impact on how Rich, White America must be run.
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@Jack Toner
I reside in California also- albeit in "Rural" California. (If you've not visited many states- most states are comprised of rural communities).My point is, those areas considered rural, or Heartland for purposes of *Continual* discussion (about the left-behind) here and other media outlets- exclusively embrace the terminology to mean White America(ns) to the exclusion of blacks. And yes; millions of blacks reside in Rural America.
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Perhaps he doesn't like college and university towns with good school systems, low housing prices, natural beauty, cultural
and social opportunities, good solid neighbors, intelligent people, etc. If he likes snobs, high coastal prices, housing costs out of control, college towns who really don't want to be apart of towns outside of tax exemption status, by all means elevate the coasts to an imaginary status (although the East is still a beautiful region in many many ways). Perhaps it's more imperative than it has ever been for American's to live outside of their echo chambers in the East and West, but especially the East. I wish I could find the Madisons, Ann Arbors, Minneapolis, Chicagos, etc (the list is very long) of the East Coast. But I would never put down an American city because it has fallen on hard times. That includes many former textile mill towns of the East Coast. The real problem here is the incredible snobbery that exists in this country based on the location of birth or present residence. I have never encountered the level of snobbery I've encountered in the Northeast. It's sad and ruinous to the fabric of the nation. I don't expect much from the Trump Administration, but I expect better from "We the People." E Pluribus Unum, or have we forgotten?
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@East Roast: We're in awe that the heartland elected the very worst of our city slickers to liberate it from being ripped-off by city slickers.
Rural America blames its decline on the coastal elite states. These are economically successful, liberal, diverse, cosmopolitan and blue. Hence they vote for the Republican Party despite its program is detrimental to the needs of the majority of red state citizens. Republicans feed the resentment and then exploit it, People vote against their core interests because politics are so complex that they resort to emotional motives. Hate wins against hope on most days.
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The best insight in this piece is the economic impact of health care on rural areas. In Maine, as in many rural states, healthcare is the principal economic activity and more people are dependent on income from healthcare jobs than any other sector. It is baffling that rural residents fail to see that both their individual health and their local economy are dependent on programs supported by Democrats and pilloried by Republicans. Democrats should be able to make more of this economic connection. Healthcare is the only growth industry in which small-town youth can get relatively inexpensive training in a medical-support job and earn a decent living without having to move to a city.
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That quote from Moore should be good enough to cost the Republicans the state of Ohio. I teach at a mid-western big ten university but I keep an apartment in NY and go back there for culture and amusement so I am not a great fan of the region but I consistently find comments like these appalling. In Ohio, Cincinnati and Columbus are very dynamic thriving places. Both are full of techies and neighborhoods full of great restaurants and cafe's. Cincinnati is the location of the very statue of Lola Montez commissioned by King Ludwig for Neuschwanstein Castle. There are fantastic hotels and a lively music scene in the city as well. Columbus is the site of a thriving tech sector and an enormous research university (approximately 60,000 students and a distinguished faculty which would never have tenured Moore). The core of Cleveland may be down but it was the has an amazing symphony orchestra and the second biggest and most important art museum after the Met in the US. It has much larger and more important collections than the next largest museums. It also has a great University (Case Western Reserve) and medical school and some of the best medical facilities in the country. Pittsburgh has a great symphony and three fine universities (Pittsburgh, Duquesne and Carnegie Mellon). As for the state where I work (Illinois) , it is often taken for a Trump stronghold but it is full to the brim with great cultural institutions and it is as solidly Democrat as NY or California.
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@Bill H And don't forget the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
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Another real problem is how the conservative right convince the working-class white to blame people of color for their problems. This is something Trump et al have taken advantage of and has continued to do. It is not a new phenomenon, but harks back to the days of Andrew Jackson, suggesting the evil is deep and will take generations to change.
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@Gordon Alderink
If you look at the history of the Industrial Revolution, you will see that the wealthy and successful advocated draconian social policies to force the victims of the changes to adapt or die. That was the reason for the migrations of people that settled the US.
We see now that migrations cause other problems and barriers keep people from helping themselves. In this new Gilded Age, maybe we need a different national philosophy.
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Yes and the solution is UBI or the Freedom Dividend of a $1,000 a month for adults and paid for by Amazon and other tech giants. Automation has cost us most of country's jobs and we need a solution that has been discussed since the days of the founding fathers. also conservatives like Milton Friedman and even voted through by the house during the Nixon years.
Andrew Yang, Presidential hopeful, is pushing it and defends it and I see it addressing many of our current issues.
@Gordon Alderink Rungs on the ladder are easily fearmongered.
ANY person that contemplates on where to live in the country is going to take in a whole host of economic AND social factors in making their decision.
First of course, they are going to make a choice based on whether they are alone or not. (with children or not) If alone, then people tend to go/live somewhere based almost exclusively on economic potential.
If with a family, then the dynamic changes dramatically, They consider schools, and doctors, and taxes (and so on). They look at the governance of the state, and whether they are going to have their full rights respected. (especially for women)
Essentially, who wants to live somewhere if they are not welcome, and excluded in almost every possible way ?
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@FunkyIrishman: and all that ignores the huge number of people for whom moving away is nearly unthinkable. You live in the house you grew up in, your family all lives within 20 miles, you (like your parents) struggle to pay the mortgage and are barely able to save anything for retirement. You once were able to afford a trip to Disneyland for the kids, but otherwise you've almost never been out of state. Now you're supposed to pick up stakes and relocate (assuming you could pay the moving costs) in hopes of a better job? Most people will not be thinking in those terms.
Another "let them eat cake" trope by the 0.1% — "What's wrong with you? Just move."
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@pmbrig
If the place you are living has been going downhill for years, and the industries that were the staples of employment are gone, it is (IMHO) illogical to assume things will improve. Companies will not normally locate in an area where the educated/skilled, young and healthy have departed. Best to bite the bullet and say goodbye.
Good message that needs to get out to the Midwestern Democrats and Republicans. Let’s give it to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a speaking tour of the Midwest. Her invitation from a Republican Congressman was withdrawn because some of his advisers realized her message about funding miners pensions and Medicare for All was just what his constituents’ doctors ordered.
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@Robert Pryor Interesting what happens when a demagogue's rhetoric is put under the microscope of reality.
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I like Eastern Heartland. It is inclusive so upstate New York and rural New England can be included but excludes the far west which has issues with extreme low density and competing land interests.
A lot is a matter of tone. When you are one notch above extreme poverty, it is easy to resent people who get aid. So advocating for more aid rubs these people the wrong way.
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@gammagirl Absolutely. A lot of what I hear too reminds me of my own parents' resentment of a hand-out when what they wanted was a hand-up. More focus on support services for the working poor, rather than a reinstitution of welfare, would make a big difference. More certainty about healthcare would help.
The best thing though, in terms of tax, would be a slight but significant reversal. Instead of capping Social Security contributions at $132,900, let's instead exempt the first $35,000 of earned income from SSI and Medicare/Medicaid. I know how much having that extra 7+% in my paycheck would help my family - I imagine it would boost others' paychecks as well, and if done right (a few tweaks), it would eliminate or reduce the absurdly-complex Earned Income Tax Credit, which was designed to refund in part payroll taxes.
Instead of wealth tax, why not increase the top capital gain/dividends rate to 25 or 30% for those in the top tax brackets, and lower the estate tax exemption from over $11m back down to $2m? In 2015, roughly 6,500 estates were subject to estate tax. In 2018, that number was estimated to be 1,600. People who derail about taxing wealth and estates usually don't understand who pays. And if your estate is that high, I can recommend some other tax accountants and attorneys who can easily put together a plan to avoid most of it anyway!
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@gammagirl
I think it's more than tone. The PR machine of the extremely wealthy is grinding out "messages" that manipulate public opinion. Those messages target everyone with the goal of enhancing the power and influence of the people enjoying the apex of our economic pyramid.
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Excellent column Paul. On point and extremely timely.
How republicans have been able to pull the wool over the eyes of middle America on everything that matters, or should matter, to the low or middle income Americans living in our nation's breadbasket is mind boggling.
Who do elected republicans think they are? They are not gods. They do not control the hearts and minds of Americans. Hard working Americans deserve much, much better than what elected republicans are giving them.
Amy Klobuchar has been putting in the backbreaking work to meet with and inform the heart of America with her message. That for well over ten years she has voted consistently to support, inspire and protect low to middle income Americans in providing job support, workplace protections, health care mandates, educational benefits, and children's support. She leads the Senate in putting forth and passing legislation on all of these topics, and more.
Like back in the day with Harry Truman, real Americans are taking notice of how hard working leaders like Senator Klobuchar are getting things done to protect their interests.
And November 3, 2020 will be a day of reckoning for elected republicans in the Senate, House, and White House.
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