I enjoyed your op-ed Ross, but explaining Trump 2015 may be even simpler. Trump's base simply identifies with and cheers for this angry, loud, know-nothing, old, white man. Critical thinkers are imploring Trump to get the facts straight, shut up, and stop tweeting. Being told the facts, especially the obvious ones, just makes Trump and his base mean and angry.
11
The thing that may keep Ross and his fellow pundits for an extended stay in Pundit Purgatory is that facts there dissipate too quickly into the ether, lacking sufficient substance and duration to inform debate, consensus and solution. It is intolerable indeed to have to point out again that Trump rose to political relevance not on pitchfork-and-torch economic populism, but rather on racist Birtherism. He launched his presidential campaign with a defining racist rant against Mexicans, consolidating his core base of supporters and catapulting his campaign into relevance. Republicans had an interminable primary season to select a John Kasich who, unlike the billionaire Birther, actually had a long record and coherent campaign message based on the very issues that Ross suggests were the actual reasons for Trump winning the election. Pundit Purgatory will begin to empty and our country will begin to move forward again when facts, however inconvenient, are non-negotiable.
2
People who "prefer" white nationalism are racists. People who write about those people as though they are not racists are not only deplorable but deserve a special place in that zone below purgatory.
6
The only campaign themes that have carried over into *45's Presidency have been the ones focused on racial grievance. This has been exemplified THIS WEEK at least twice. ("Pochantas" and the videos purporting to show Muslim violence). It's just Wednesday. Douthat refuses to see what's right in front of his face.
9
I never thought I would write these words: this is an excellent commentary. With this single column, Douthat has justified his existence and, to a degree, his presence in the NY Times, though I am loathe to concede the second point (I'd still rather he go because of his insistence of sticking a long, sharp and at times untruthful knife in the backs of anyone who isn't a Republican).
The linked story on Vox is even more worthy. It states that Trump did not win America last year. This, conveniently, is a point that I have been making over the last 12 months. Aren't you people paying attention? (Just kidding.)
If, indeed, the dismissal by liberals of Trump's victory centered almost exclusively on Trump's appeal to racism, they did very much flee reason and careful analysis to embrace comforting myth. One can never quite trust Douthat when he's making points about those he despises, however, because he is always trying to diminish before he moves in for the kill.
As usual, Douthat much prefers to take the worst in progressive thought, like Clinton's unfortunate reference to "a basket of deplorables" and have that stand for the whole. This is a slippery technique he always uses, but the fundamental analysis of this column still stands as useful to open minds.
Trump's appeal was not singular. Many voted for him because he was a television celebrity. Many believed, despite the evidence, that he was a terrific businessman. Many more voted Trump just because he was not Hillary.
17
Racism
5
Mostly good points. Yes, Trump also deliberately targeted the economically depressed, and those folks have legitimate grievances. The fact is, though, that Trump lied about any solutions. He will not bring back the coal industry, He will not bring back the steel industry unless China's developing middle-class drives up wages enough such that American labor is again competitive, but then China also subsidizes industries when needed. He will not bring back all kinds of manufacturing jobs that have been leaving for four decades because of developing economies in other countries with much lower labor costs. He lied, pure and simple.
The Democratic party on the other hand supports clean energy and would like to help develop industries that will provide energy in cleaner ways and provide jobs. The Democrats support environmental protection, which will require clean energy technology and industries to implement effective polices. The Democrats support safety nets to help people in need.
Trump and the GOP do not support any of that, and in fact, fight it tooth and nail. They lie daily to the disenfranchised workers who supported Trump and now are making a mockery of that support by creating a tax bill that will hurt those people and further enrich the wealthy.
The GOP lies to their own voters who earn below some cutoff. They do not care about those people, and the sooner those voters wake up, the sooner we can all actually govern in the right way for common people.
13
I think we’re over-analyzing the Trump election. I agree with Ross that the election cannot simply be defined by one particular narrative, be it racism or economic populism. Trump simply represents the last 30 years of republican politics extrapolated to ifs logical conclusion. Unlike his rivals, he had no problem saying openly what many republicans have been saying behind closed doors for years. The racial dog-whistles became overt. The usual Republican con of promising economic policies that will bring prosperity to the masses has been rapidly translated into support for a tax reform bill that may both undermine the ACA and achieve massive upward redistribution in a single bill. As always, Trump just does things on a much grander scale. Trump has spent a lifetime in business promising what he can’t deliver and the dealing with or avoiding the consequences later. His genius (and I use this term in its loosest possible sense) was to recognize that 30 years of Republican politicking had primed the electorate for someone who was unafraid of the moral blow-back associated with pure, uncut, weapons-grade GOP electioneering.
14
Did not see ANY numbers in Douthat's opinion piece to justify any of the opinions. What was the medianincome of Trump voters? What was the percentage white voters? What was their education level?
As for Sanders voters being in "economic suffering", no. Mostly educated whites who have very low unemployment and highest pay. People wanted Sanders for fact based government and moral government. Government's job is to improve the lives of all Americans. Medicare for All (saves US economy $500B a year), financial regulations to prevent more Wall St Great Recessions, funding public education, funding science, funding housing and social services for the poor, reducing US military spending to be equal to Russia and China combined (saves US economy $400B a year).
So no economic suffering for Bernie supporters who were in fact those doing best in the Obama recovery economy. They wanted truth, justice and the American way.
5
"Government's job is to improve the lives of all Americans." Exactly where in the U.S. Constitution will I find this statement?
4
Trump supported wanted "wanted truth, justice and the American way?"
What a cruel joke.
1
The economic explanation is the right one. Race is a sidebar. Fact one, which every American knows in their bones, is that economic growth utterly failed under Obama, with no single year of his eight topping the mediocre 3% real GDP barrier. Overweening regulation and an ever present sense from his administration that only HE knew what was best led to the worst two terms since the depression. We should've known that someone whose idea of economic policy was "spread the wealth around" (as he told Joe the Plumber) was simply a bad choice.
5
"a sidebar. Fact one, which every American knows in their bones, is that economic growth utterly failed under Obama, with no single year of his eight topping the mediocre 3% real GDP barrier."
Obama had to handle paying for two wars started by and put on the national credit card by Bush & Cheney; and had to the Bush-Cheney great recession of 2008.
Do a little homework.
1
One of the many problems with claiming that economic issues were important to Trump's supporters is looking at what Trump promised.
He didn't have any real plans other than promising winning.
And his suggestions often contradicted themselves. For example, he was for more coal, more fracking, more oil. Coal has been dying because of fracking, so digging more coal won't make a difference. More oil? We have a worldwide glut. Pumping more will just further depress prices.
He won the votes of people whose jobs depend on NAFTA, though he promised to end NAFTA.
He promised to end Obamacare, and people whose lives depend on Obamacare voted for him.
His proposed economic plan was evaluated and was found to favor the wealthy and do nearly nothing for everyone else. Yet white everyone elses voted for him. Further, his plan was found likely to explode the debt, yet Republicans who professed to be fiscal hawks endorsed him.
4
And where do you place the winner of 2016? He said becoming president was his only route to heaven. But eighth circle of hell--for the fraudulent--seems more likely, and his fraudulence encompasses both race and class.
5
Ross. Rome is burning. Naval gazing ( left or right) is a read flag. To me it's a sign that a writer is unwilling to get his hands dirty. I've been a political activist for years ( a Dem). I live in a blue collar "Trump" town. I invite you to talk to me and talk to the people of Raymond NH. You'd learn a lot. I'm not joking about the invite. Send me an e mail.
4
"Make America Great Again" did us in, in large part. An eminently wishful statement that can't be faulted. And gerrymandering did the rest. Gerrymandering has now been followed by appointing the worst possible "protectors" to our politicized justice systems, to our E.P.A., to our consumer protections, to our taxation philosophy. We are very assuredly on the path of this evolving perdition. Philosophical "how it happened" comments like MisterD's are exercises in thinking. We're being shown exercises in doing, and they are the undoing of our United States as we've known them.
4
"racial reductionism"
Mr Douthat, no one is saying it all boils down to race.
I agree that numerous non-race-related factors brought this trump to power.
And I certainly don't believe all whites are racists.
What I am saying is that there were enough of them ....
And that the fuse has been lit because they exist in those numbers.
10
But, Trump is a racist. Used twice by the government in the sixties for not renting to black. Birtherism ...
3
Working class supporters? That must be why a wealthy white woman in this small Midwest city had two Trump signs in her yard in 2016.
3
Without question, if the Democratic party made itself more welcoming to pro-life voters it would immediately start to reclaim the ground it has steadily lost with Catholic and blue collar voters over the past generation. In addition,it would strengthen its place with the newly important Hispanic voters,many of whom are Catholic and culturally conservative. The Democrats are sadly mistaken if they believe a better "economic message"(whatever that means) will get them back in the game after all the political power they have lost over the last ten years.
3
That would mean trying to control women's constitutional rights and that's so Republican, not Democratic.
8
I see in the US what I experience in "Brexit England". When the brown or black man or women were just pressing my laundry, sweeping my floors or emptying my garbage bins, they were not a threat. Now you have people of all colors, sexes and orientations sitting in corner offices. being your solicitor or surgeon, and generally being the person that I "the white man" aspire to. We are talking about an existential threat. Rather than being happy that all boats are rising Trumpists and Brexiteers view this as a "I am sinking" and act out.
Look at pluralistic societies like Singapore. They promote the improvement of all. What does it get them? One in six is a millionaire (excluding the values of their homes). What would you chose? Singapore pluralism or Trumpist nativism?
12
Trump's appeal is tribal. But the appeal is only strong enough to swing a couple of key states when the tribe feels threatened economically. Otherwise they wouldn't bother to vote.
1
And yet here we are with economy restructuring legislation masquerading as a tax cut. There is nothing here for middle or lower class Trump supporters. Nothing economically beneficial nor white race empowering. Yet we’re going to waste time arguing about which motivated Trump supporters more while our collective future is auctioned off for the benefit of the already wealthy ? The donor class is going to own this country entirely. I don’t care anymore why people voted for Trump as much as what he’s going to do to them and the rest of us so he can brag about “winning” while making sure we one and all, lose.
8
“...large parts of the conservative coalition either tolerate white-identitarian forays for the sake of other ends (pro-life or pro-corporate tax cuts, depending) or else simply prefer identitarian nationalism to higher-minded forms of conservatism.”
Nothing mutually exclusive here. They “tolerate” it because they’re racists. Even so-called “higher-minded forms of conservatism” (oxymoron much?) can still be racist AF. Most are.
6
To think that race, religion, and white people thinking they are "losing their prestige" or position in society, and that these same people still hold their support for Trump without having these same horrible attributes is naïve and dishonest. I'm not sure what the disconnect is. Trump has said many racist, sexist, and bigoted things AS PRESIDENT. Still, the wall of 34-36% of American voters refuse to leave his side, even when the very policies that are being pursued are going to inflict pain on many in his own base. It's not about economics, it's not about jobs, it wasn't about anything other than vindictiveness, going after their perceived enemies, racism, and the stomach churning phrase, "telling it like it is". The fact that the majority are still sticking with him, when if any other public figure would get thrown to the wolves makes it impossible to believe that the primary reason for support is anything other than brazen bigotry.
By this point, I expect to hear nothing but unbridled lies, partial truths, deceptions, and dishonesty coming from the current administration. However, articles such as these seem to have an apologetic tone to them. These "They aren't really mean, they just want their jobs" explanations are just tiring. If someone still supports this, after all of these race baiting, unapologetically demeaning comments, tweets, speeches, etc., cannot simply see them for what they are, they will never do so. Stop explaining away their complicity.
18
When addressing the argument of present-day racism seeping into politics, we must first ask ourselves this question:
"Is America really far more racist than it was in the 1950's?"
Being both fiscally conservative and millennial, I find the answer to this question to be "no". When I look around my school and my classes, I see an entire ocean of people with different backgrounds, different ideas, different races, and different goals all striving towards the possibility of achieving some sort of higher education. The assumption that our society is regressing towards race-favoritism is preposterous when looking at the sole statistics regarding the transition of politics into this new era.
However, one thing in our nation's political sphere sticks out like a sore; that being the "(assumption) [...] that the "deplorable" don't deserve the fullness of free speech". On the left-side of the political spectrum, the suppression of free thought is becoming all too increasingly common. The class divide in our nation is not one of race, but one of thought. In today's society, liberality has come to be a blurry message of "ideas only matter if they coincide with my political standing". For instance, I've been ironically called anti-immigrant at times (being that I am an immigrant myself) just because I support a revision of our immigration system. (i.e. No "Green Card lottos")
In our nation, it is not the diversity of our skin being attacked, but rather, the diversity of our thought.
20
Excellent comment. I believe the racist meme is an attempt to shut down dissent.
8
On the economic side, anecdote coming-- Obama came to one of the most Democratic cities in the USA, closed all the highways while he visited Nike to promote TPP and generate corporate donations, then departed without speaking with older workers picketing against TPP, nor indeed visiting any workers in a union Dem town.
There are basically two choices in a presidential election, and one party lost too much cred in working world.
6
Ross doesn’t make allowance for the fact that this move to white ide ntity politics is largely a reaction to the left’s embrace (and ever increasing weaponization) of identity politics. Adjudication of disputes in the US has devolved to the point where belonging to a particular group identity — and that group’s claim to victimhood status — matters more in the public eye (i.e. social media and press coverage) than a disinterested consideration of the facts of the individual case. Needless to say, straight white men have the most to lose from this full on inversion of the status hierarchy. Is it any wonder that they’ve developed a new consciousness of themselves as a class with shared interests? For example, note how Stephen Miller and Richard Spencer were both partly formed by the Duke Lacrosse case.
Obviously these developments are highly unfortunate and worrisome, but to act — as Coates and others on the left have, with zealous glee — that Trump’s election reveals something that’s been there all along, without understanding that this is the result of a dynamic process, betrays yet again the contemporary left’s masochistic will to delegitimate the United States and destroy social cohesion in this country, all so that they can parade their sense of self-righteous moral superiority. It stinks to high heaven, and the downward spiral is still only in the first couple circles of Dante’s seven.
8
White identity politics didn’t arise recently, it is as old as slavery and the K.K.K. To say otherwise is disingenuous and as reductionist as those whom blame racism alone for Trumps election.
4
Douthat is wrong when he states that the Trump's presidency is not the result of racism or white nationalism.Mr. Douthat seems to assume that the only working class that matters IS white; thereby allowing him to dismiss all of the nonwhite working class that did not vote for Trump.It is amazing that Mr Douthat, while acknowledging the data cited by Mr Serwer, discounts the fact that the unifying factor among all of the voters for Trump overwhelming is one of RACE. Further, Douthat blithely skims over the fact that these white working class remain with Trump after he has done NOTHING to help them. He installed his budget director over the CPFB to dismantle programs that protect them from banks, merciless debt collectors and abusive student loan policies.The new tax bill - Cut Cut Cut is open season on the poor and middle class amongst them. And what has he done for those opiod addicted communities? Other than trot them out for pathetic photo ops. No real money has been allocated to alleviate the problem. If Trump gets his way, the opioid addicted will lose the care that they have received under Obamacare. No one is sayjng that the issues are not real. All of the working class, regardless of color, are effected by these issues, but the working class whites who voted for Trump, don't care about these issues as much as they do race. Working class whites prove this everyday that Trump does nothing for them while they remain steadfast in their support of him.If not, race, why?
6
Ross writes:
"[T]he entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward. It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech; the idea that the pejoratives don’t carry any element of political and legal threat is silly."
I'm sure it must be purely coincidental, but when I read this passage, suddenly every dog in the neighborhood began barking furiously . . .
4
Trump still loss big the popular vote and the corrupt system of electorate college is a much better and simpler explanation than this winded incoherent well written speculative reach.
1
This is an odd column. It begins with breast beating mea culpas, then quickly slides into the behavior for which Mr. Douthat had excoriated himself. Mr. Douthat, who wants liberals to be defeated, then advocates that liberals treat racist Trump supporters as not deplorable but instead persuadable. Let Mr. Douthat, who suggested this manner of belling the cat, show us how it's done. I doubt that he can make it work.
I also endorse CEA's nailing Douthat's long further claims: that liberals threaten racists, and that certain ideas are "silly".
3
Trump won simply because uneducated people in financial pain were given a scapegoat to blame for all their ills. It really is that simple. Of course the scapegoat is always "them". THEY are to blame. THEY who are different. Different colors. Different religions. Different sexual orientation, etc, etc. It's THEM! THEY are to blame!
It's the same old story. This isn't rocket science.
3
Trump won because the elitely educated were pretty dumb and grossly stupid regarding the needs of the uneducated, who the elite believe need to be informed only as the elite will inform them. The Democrats reek of royalty, which is very unAmerican.
3
@ Yes
I am a well educated, middle-class, white liberal guy, who always sides with poor and little people. Throwing around "elites" makes you seem to be the predujiced to me.
Are you for GOP "tax reform that benefits mainly the rich -- $40 billion saved from restated tax for CEO of Amazon; $1- $4 billion for Trump?
3
So what would Trump have to do for impeachment to succeed? I have seen lots of outrage - uncouth, lying, assault on women, possible collusion with Russia, on and on. But what line would he have to cross for serious articles impeachment and trial in the Senate to have a reasonable chance of success?
Remembering that you only get one chance at this and failure would be disastrous. Doesn't it make sense to have a set of criteria that says in essence "If he does these things we will submit articles of impeachment"? It seems to me that if there is not some criteria then we risk wasting time and credibility on frivolous submissions, or waiting too long until irreparable damage is done.
2
I direct Mr. Douthat's attention to the recently tweeted "Muslim" videos and to the article by Michael Kruse "Where Trump's Support Endures" at Politico.com. If these two don't seal the deal on what Trump is and what got him where he is, nothing will.
4
Mr. Douthat seems not to have heard of Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is the most likely one. Trump roused the rabble and now seeks to benefit himself.
4
ROSS I doubt you're going to make it off of Terrace 3 1/2 in Dante's Purgatorio. You might run into the Hogwarts Express ridden by Harry Potter on Platform 9 1/2. The difference, if course, is that your saga will not be the topic of innumerable copies of the Harry Potter books, including the latest sequel. Nor the subject of the movies accompanying the books. Alas, time to submit to the admiration of the liberals. You might get out of the mess by hitching your wagon to the star followed by Sisyphus. But don't eat your heart out quite yet. It's your liver the bird of prey is after. Oh yeah--happy holidays Ross!
2
I believe both were a factor. The freedom caucus which has a stanglehold on the house could care one wit about racism. They are a bumch of millionaires who think that were it not for the government they would be billionaires. They care not one wit about struggling middle class familues which is why Trump will ignore their plight and his campaign rhetoric. The gop is interest in one thing only, increasing the bottom lines of themselves and their donors. Anything that gets them there is fine including race bating.
4
I found myself first convinced by Serwer's essay in The Atlantic, and then by Douthat's critique of it in the Times.
3
"It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech"
Oh please. Yeah, I believe that people ranting that a cake is speech are a little insane. If your 60 year old uncle started saying that the cake on the table was sending him a message you'd take him to urgent care and screen him for a stroke, or dementia, wouldn't you?
And yeah, someone's "religious liberties" don't actually give them the right to control what I do with my own body. It is *irredeemable* for an employer to think he has any right to prevent his employees from using their compensation to acquire the medications they need. It is irredeemably cruel, shortsighted, intellectually dishonest, bigoted, and just plain old stupid. I'm not sure why exactly "my employer's" religious freedom includes meddling with my medications. Please explain to me how my having sex while on birth control that my insurance covers is causing my employer to violate his religious beliefs. To clear it up for you- I'm not having sex with my employer.
Does that clear it up for you, Ross? Your straw man arguments are getting really annoying.
12
(Racism economic stagnation greed fear) x gullibility = Trump. No lengthy academic analysis required.
4
Demonizing, slandering and trying to shame white people and then denying that they, the accusers, are not practicing racist identity politics is clearly among the more egregious sins that led to election of Trump. Keep it up and we'll be plagued with even worse politicians than Trump.
5
Also, how do all these Liberals know what Trump voters think and feel? I keep reading things like "Trump voter believe..." or "Trump voters support...." or "Trump voters are...."
Has any of the NYT liberals actually ever talked to a Trump voter? I have. My Dad voted for Trump. My liberal brother cut my Dad from his life after the election and hasn't talked to him in a year. I'm sure that makes my brother pure and keeps him in his ivory tower, but to me it's a shame.
My Dad is not a racist. My Dad is not a bigot. I am a transgender woman, my brother is gay, and my other brother is a schizophrenic. My Dad accepts and loves us all and I've never seen him do a racist or bigoted thing in my life.
My Dad voted for Trump because of economics. My Dad liked Trumps take on the TPP, and as a business owner he liked Trumps promise to lower taxes. Trump ditched the TPP and it looks like the tax bill will pass. To my Dad these are all good things, which is why my Dad supports Trump.
My Dad has been called a racist and a pig and a xenophobe and basically he's been ostracized by the rest of my family. The way my Dad was treated made me feel so ashamed that I've stopped calling myself a liberal.
We need to stop the radical racializing of everything. Liberals especially have taken it too far and started just blanket calling everyone racists. I can tell you one thing, I'd be surprised if my Dad ever voted for a Democrat again after the way he has been treated.
8
I want to believe you when you say that your Dad is not a racist. But how could he ignore the pure hate of the Trumo campaign: Trump talked about women in unsightly terms. Labeled Mexicans rapists, called blacks thugs, embraced white nationalists, lied on President Obama's birthplace...How could he ignore the small Business people who came out and said that Trump cheated them? How could he ignore the fact that Trump has filed bankruptcy four times? How could he ignore that Trump has never done anything for anyone but Trump? See the problem I'm having? And now does he realize that he was hoodwinked by Don the Con using America's oldest but surest trick- racism?
6
I have a white, female friend who hated Obama, his wife and kids; voted fo Trump.
Nothing like living in the past, is there?
If you realize the fact that we have had only one catholic as President, no woman as President so far, and only one Black as President and all the opposition and racial slurs he faced through out his two terms, you will know the importance of Race (White), Religion (Protestant - even if the candidate is flawed), and Gender (Male) in who will become POTUS. Only when the White race becomes majority minority will we see other races in the White House in future.
2
Ross is correct, it wasn’t racism. It was also anti-LGBTism, anti-womenism, and christian extremism.
Here's the key question for the person who voted for Trump versus the Trump voter: you make not think you're a racist, but you are certainly comfortable supporting one. More likely than not, you are white, Christian (by identity) and straight. Trump's "working class supporters" waited a political lifetime for the 21st century version of George Wallace to come along. Romney was just another rich man; W the same. Trump campaigned to the white racist id that is, Ross, at the core of this country's DNA. It's much easier for someone like yourself to suggest what the rest of us what we think or how we should think. As a straight, white Christian male, you will never, ever depend on the good-will of minorities for responsible government, fair taxation, equal treatment and so on. You will never be told to "be patient" when you ask for equal treatment and fairness. The history books of this country are not exactly overwhelmed with tales of white oppression at the hands of minorities.
The Trump voter is not coming back to the Democrats. In fact, they left a long time ago. There is a big difference between the Office Park Republican and the 87% of white Alabama who voted for Trump. That state is about to elect a child predator to the Senate. Save the righteousness and false equivalence for people who don't know better.
11
Wow. An extremely long column. The main, and I think correct, point is that the Democrats must cut the "deplorable" stuff and win those people back. Now, that took one sentence. Why did Douthat need over 100 sentences?
2
Trump is a chronic liar and con man. He is no more populist than the rest of the Republican Party. He lied over and over again during the campaign about what he would do as President. He got his political start by lying about President Obama's birth place, which played well in the right-wing propaganda machine. His appeal in making those claims was to the racism and anti-Democratic slander that his base gets daily from Fox News and the rest of them. Racism is a major factor in his success as a politician, and his words have unleashed a public display of the racism that was lurking within many White Americans. He made it okay, even fashionable, for them to utter their hate in public again. The right has lied about Hillary Clinton for years, and they are very good at it. They even convinced many voters that Hillary was running a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor. They lied about President Obama for years, and convinced a large number of Republicans that he was a Muslim, born in Kenya. Donnie apparently still says he believes it. Either he's delusional or he's just lying again. Delusional seems to be more likely since he also reportedly says it wasn't his voice on the vulgar video, after he previously admitted it was him speaking "locker talk." Republicans are only interested in their huge tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and their attacks on any program that helps working Americans. Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will be next.
8
Great article. I've been so disgusted with liberals racializing everything and treating anyone who doesn't follow liberal dogma to the T as a racist xenophobe that I've stopped calling myself a liberal.
I am an independent now, and it's because I see Americans problems through the lenses of multiple perspectives. The liberal will just say, "Trump voters are white racists who deserve to die of opiate addiction bc they didn't care about the crack epidemic 30 years ago" and ignore the fact that for a lot of America class struggle defines their lives.
I think this is most prescient when looking at immigration. Even NYT readers see that illegal immigrants with no skills are exactly what the elites want to keep down wages and prevent workers from organizing. They understand that illegal immigrants use more social services than they pay back because often they don't pay income taxes. They see that someone who doesn't have legal status can be used and abused by an employer, and they don't want a group of second class citizens in America that get substandard wages and no recourse if they are assaulted or hurt.
Yet, to the liberal, there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant and ALL immigrants MUST be POC. Therefore, to be against illegal immigration is actually a personal animus towards POC, and therefore the only way a person can not love illegal immigration is if they are a racist. This reductionist argument is so filled with holes that it could never hold water.
7
Douthat, Gerson and other so-called responsible, anti-Trump conservatives somehow cannot manage to criticize him without criticizing liberals, usually with scant justification. Douthat writes: It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech;
What is the evidence of this? So-called attacks on religious liberties like the Hobby Lobby matter were effort# to enforce rules that followed long established lines regarding what was protected religious liberty and where secular law controlled. Only recently did a conservative Supreme Court start changing these lines. In doing so they were redefining and expanding behaviors protected by religious liberty, deviating from long established precedent and changing long accepted lines between the “no establishment”and “free exercise” clauses.
Douthat’s claim that liberals are trying to restrain “deplorables” freedom of speech is made with even less justification . Where are examples of this; was Britebart News pursued by the Obama Administration; how about Neo-Nazi web sites?
Douthat’s reference to “deplorables” is itself propaganda. The term was unfortunate, but Clinton was referring not to all Trump supporters but to those embracing his racist and sexist dog whistles. Does Douthat not deplore this?
It’s easy to suggest liberal intolerance, but where are the examples?
4
"...Trump and Sanders did have a lot in common, with Trump deliberately positioning himself in territory close to Sanders on a range of economic issues. (And foreign policy issues, and attacks on Washington corruption, and more …)" and "Instead, his awful approval ratings in the midst of the best growth since the Clinton era strongly suggest that many of Trump’s supporters were hoping for something else from him besides just white identity politics and a repudiation of the first black president." The classic Art of the Con - no original ideas of your own - steal your opponent's ideas, wrap them up like a re-gifted present, and presto! Bag your quarry. That so many Americans bought the con is what's so sad about all of this, especially with all of the information out there about Don the Con BEFORE the election.
3
Hear, hear, Mr. Douthat. Your theory is the only one that explains my family. I am the only who did not vote for Trump and the only one who got a college education. I am also the only one who is economically secure. They are not all white. My mother is an immigrant. They are not religious. And I can assure you that they are not racist. Ignorant, maybe. Short-sighted, probably. But not racist. I tried my hardest to persuade them that Clinton could address their economic concerns in ways that Republicans never would. But alas, in 2016, my former union father voted against the Democrats for the first time because he just didn't believe they had his back anymore.
3
Why did he think a fake billionaire would have his back? You never did say. That any working class person is a Republican because of anything other than race is a mystery. The Republicans are out for the wealthy. I mean look at the tax bill, the healthcare proposals, they want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, social security...I don't understand how any poor person votes Republican. I just don't...
4
"He’s right that Trump’s campaign trafficked in casual bigotry, played footsie with legit white supremacists, and stoked white suspicion of minorities. He’s right that Trump’s supporters tolerated this noxiousness even if they did not endorse or embrace it."
Get a glove and catch a clue. Clues are everywhere. Trump's base is less than an inch from a total and enthusiastic embrace of overt MAGA racism. Trump has just herded a class of so called principled Congressional Reps and Senators into voting against the interests of the middle class. The last wall and veneer of GOP principles has just crumbled. More coming.
1
Conservatives conveniently forget the GOP's history of racism. Trump is only an extreme example of the seeds of racial animus and fear than have been sown for years.
Reagan didn't kick off his presidential campaign in Nashoba County, Mississippi because the state had lots of electoral votes.
He didn't speak at the county fair unaware that it was only a few miles from where three civil rights workers were murdered.
And when he chose"states rights" as the theme for his announcement he knew that these were a code words that the sons of Dixie knew well.
The message he sent was unmistakable. Under a Reagan administration the federal government would reduce enforcement of civil rights laws.
The promise was made, the whites heard his message and gave him their votes. And he delivered while black folk suffered. We suffered from housing discrimination, discrimination in schools and jobs and saw the Reagan administration respond by attempting to cut the thin thread of affirmative action.
This sacrifice of back rights for white interests is an old theme. Trump has simply updated it. The issue isn't whether this is being done by good people or bad. That's irrelevant.
But what is relevant is whether we are a nation of laws, will the promise of equality of the 14th Amendment will be fulfilled, will that sacred pledge extend as a principle to gays, women, Muslims and yes undocumented people?
Trump is simply the latest among many who have emphatically said no!
6
Why would Trump's victory "tell conservatives something depressing about the role white identity politics has played in their movement all along"? Since Goldwater carried the deep South; through Nixon's Southern strategy; through Reagan's Mississippi "states' rights" speech; and through Bush Sr.'s WIllie Horton ads -- the Republican strategy has consistently and consciously been to rile up white racial resentments in service of a plutocratic end. They were even happy to play along with Trump for a while: asked about the "birther" nonsense, John Boehner primly allowed that "it's not my job to tell the American people what to think."
Far from being depressed, Republicans should take some pride in how well the flames they fanned for decades have done their job. Sure, once the fire got out of control, some of their own possessions (like Jeb's political future) got incinerated first. But still: well played!
It is the rest of us, not conservatives, who should be depressed, as we try to figure out how to restore what was best in our country out of whatever remains once this fire has exhausted all available fuel and burned itself out.
4
Another false choice.
His opponent being publicly disparaged with an 18 month long criminal "investigation" is why he won. The rest is window dressing.
That the lead investigator dragged it out for that long despite finding nothing is being ignored. Why ?
2
Trump opened his campaign with a statement about Mexicans of such stunning crudity and essentialism that such ideas had not been heard in national politics in decades. From its inception his campaign was built on demonizing minority groups and encouraging the most bigoted ideas. There is hardly anything else to Trumpism than racism and minority bashing.
4
Trump’s campaign was driven by hostility. I watched his rallies as his supporters chanted “Lock her up.” They applauded when he proclaimed: “Build the wall.” He baited Muslim-American parents of a dead soldier. He called for a ban on immigrants from Muslim countries. He attacked the press, berating them for “fake news,” to the cheers of his supporters. He mocked a disabled reporter. It was seething animosity that drew his supporters. This animosity was the common denominator and it continues to be the hallmark of his presidency.
2
Trump voters want their cake and eat it too. But many of them don't actually have any cake. So then Trump came along shouting "let them eat cake". And they believed him. Then he gave all the cake to a few rich cake-eaters who already had more cake than they could possibly eat.
At this point I think the Bastille gets stormed?
3
And anyone who considers themselves centrists or liberals needs to pay close attention to this call for persuasion rather than denigration, compassion rather than condemnation, and moderation rather than extremism. The answer for the center left and left is not a populism based on a species of politically correct identitarianism, but an inclusion based on a recognition of shared economic pressures and needs. Moving ever further to the left, has some in the Democratic Party seem to be convinced they both need to do and are justified in doing, will simply perpetuate the current political ping-pong match in which we find ourselves and which, it should come as no great surprise, is both fruitless and unsustainable
2
Thanks for your editorial, which I read with interest, and thanks for the link to Serwer's article. Having read both, I find Serwer's argument much more convincing, and much more specific, than yours.
2
The simply stated reality is that the Democrats and Progressives dismissed the feelings of many white voters who for years have been saying they wanted some balance in the approach and expenditures as regards the groups identified as victims of hate and bias. When you overlook the feelings of large blocks of VOTING citizens, righteousness nor morality is enough to stem the tide of backlash. Such an approach placed an ill prepared man in the oval office.
1
Trump carried 206 counties, of which 18 are in New York, that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012. I'm very familiar with the 18 NY counties, and there is no reason to think that the voters in those counties became more racist or more economically insecure from 2012 to 2016. The difference in 2016 was gender. Misogyny on the part of men, and internalized misogyny on the part of some women, were more important than race or class in driving the result.
1
My observation of the Trump voters is not that they are racist but that they did not want a woman to be President.
1
"The path for liberalism is to treat Trump’s white working-class supporters as persuadable rather than deplorable"
They don't need to persuade them. They need to help them.
Trump promised. Hillary didn't. But Trump lied, and that was not a surprise. They preferred being lied to rather than being ignored.
How about actually addressing the problem, like Bernie Sanders tried to do? He may not have had all the ideas nor perfect ideas, but he was not a liar and he did try.
That is the future, and no racism in it.
9
Correction:
A.) "Working-class whites" were not labeled as "deplorables" by the left; those of Trump's supporters who evinced racially motivated hatred (of which there were no small few) in their actions and speech during his campaign (and presently) were condemned as such -- and rightfully so.
B.) There's also a large demographic of "working class" folk in this country that happen to not be white and they, statistically speaking, suffered (and are suffering) significantly more financial hardship as a result of the global, technological and financial forces of the past two decades -- without using it as a justification for turning to racial antagonism.
Observation:
The fact that Trump's working-class supporters honestly believed that a pampered-from-the-cradle, New York City, billionaire, playboy who'd never done an honest days' labor in his entire existence .. actually had a speck's worth of concern about them or their predicament.. well, that just proves that unworldliness has not gone completely from the world.
28
Hillary Clinton mentioned both groups, the deplorables and the economically squeezed, in back-to-back sentences. Unfortunately, she mentioned the deplorables fiirst, and that was 90% of what was covered by the press.
The same denigrating comments could have been made about FDR or JFK -- also billionaires (*in inflation-adjusted dollars) and raised in wealth with no need for a job. In modern time, candidates like John Kerry and Al Gore were also from billionaire dynasties. You thought that was just fine.
As per Hillary's comment -- reread it. Or listen to it (its on video). She clearly says HALF OF TRUMP'S SUPPORTERS ARE DEPLORABLES. Not a few. Not a specific number she can name. HALF. He got 63.5 million votes, so HIllary was damning 31.75 million American citizens.
Also: what the heck "racial hatred"? Of whom? what anti-black or anti-asian comments did Trump EVER make? if you mean "hispanic" or "illegal" or "muslim" -- those things are not races.
2
"It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech"
Is that similar to the liberty to hold others in bondage, is that the free speech of "whites only admitted"?
The fear shown by those who feel threatened by liberalism is fear of the progress of our culture and our laws. That fear was magnified by the specter a black president and the many ways you concede Serwer is correct completely undermines your conclusion. To anyone who has not read the essay in The Atlantic, I highly recommend it.
9
But people can agree with the progress of our culture and our laws but also simultaneously believe that the pace of change needs to be slower. Or that there are other issues (economic issues) equally deserving of attention.
6
Please tell us who is being "held in bondage" in the US in 2017.
That would indicate some progress, too fast for some apparently. More modern “liberty” is the ability to make voting difficult, to call people who assert that black lives matter are Black Identity Extremists who should be targeted by the FBI. Modern “freedom of speech” is to announce that Mexican immigrants are rapists, that people who shout “Jews will not replace us” are fine people, and that refusing your cake baking services to a gay couple is freedom of speech.
2
That Trump's base does not object to his/GOP tax legislation which benefits most the rich, demonstrates that the base is more attracted by Trump's appeal to racism/racial anxiety, conscious or unconscious, than to economic populism.
16
Trump supporters may also realize that a thriving business sector is far more likely to employ people, as well as employ them in the US when US business tax rates are not so high, that after tax business returns are 1/3 higher if they locate outside the US. They also realize that a tight labor market increases wages and decrease inequality.
These Trump supporters reject Democrats because the left wants to protect college educated workers by limiting H1B visas so their wages are not driven lower and unemployment higher, but Democrats don't want to protect those without college educations from lower wages and higher unemployment by not limiting lower skilled labor entering the country forming an economic underclass.
2
Economic anxiety and racism are not mutually exclusive explanations of what happened in 2016. If history teaches us anything, it is that in times of economic distress, racism and other bigotries become both more prevalent and more virulent, as people cast about for easy scapegoats to blame for their predicament. There are many people who hold bigoted views towards certain groups, but who, so long as they themselves do not feel their life or way of life is threatened, will make an effort to rein in those views and avoid giving them public expression. But add to the mix stagnating wages and salaries among lower-middle- and working-class voters, while the very wealthy continue to make astronomical gains even as they lobby hard to eliminate the systems the lower-middle- and working classes must increasingly rely upon, along with a candidate who knows exactly how to play on their suppressed bigotries, and you have effectively set the stage for the kind of right-wing nationalism, in all of its toxicity, that is on the march today both in the U.S. and in Europe.
Unfortunately for the country, we have one party in total denial of the bigotries it has, in fact, countenanced, and another party equally committed to focusing solely on those bigotries to explain its own failures, and in nearly total denial of the economic anxiety to which the policies of their party have contributed over the last two decades.
7
Ross, get away from your computer screen. The angry racism is palpable if your heart is beating. The world has changed, is changing(ask Matt Lauer) in economics, education,cultural behavior, distribution of wealth and the ability to get and hold a decent job. We are all worried for ourselves, our children and grandchildren. Sadly, some of are irrational and open to a demagogue.[
We're becoming a nation of us against them. And if the them are immigrants, blacks, Muslims, Jews, Mexicans and those terrible people on the Coasts-you know-LIBERALS- the hatred and fear are radioactive. Whatever Trump says to condemn, blame, assign guilt, is accepted. For example, just heard his Missouri tax speech. He couldn't get through one sentence without a lie or misstatement of fact on his tax plan. They loved it.
Ross, fear TRUMPS all.
7
Republicans put Trump onto power. You included, Ross.
Republicans must, and will PAY.
November 2018.
November 2020.
11
Sorry, Ross. I think you have the dilemma somewhat uncentered on the slide, and do not see the whole picture. It is not true that Trump won either because he made a racist appeal or a populist appeal to white voters. So, further it is untrue that white voters chose him either because he was a racist or because he claimed to be a populist.
It was a TWO cylinder engine, racist AND populist. The confusing aspect is that the racism was real and deeply grounded in the candidate and his supporters. The populism... not so much. In fact the populism was entirely Trumpian, that is only existing in his mouth. But the imaginary, populist cylinder was crucial to the campaign; it provided the fig leaf for the masses to indulge their fears.
Significantly weakening your position about the course conservatives should take is the fact Trump was not the origin of GOP racism, but the continuation and logical outcome of deliberate racism going back to Richard Nixon.
The GOP sewed this biblical horror of fear, hatred, and unreason, and we may all reap Armageddon thereby.
7
Douthat keeps insisting that `liberals' somehow are to blame for making the thick and the dim feel so bad they went out and voted for Trump: ` ... the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward. It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech ... ' This is blithering nonsense. Can he please cite one example of a tax, mandate, or regulation that prevents the bigots who make up the legions of the Republican Party from practicing whatever crude religion they prefer or spouting whatever uneducated nonsense they like?
18
"for making the thick and the dim feel so bad they went out and voted for Trump"
They already felt bad, and for good reasons. Then they had a choice, and the choice that wasn't Trump offered even less, not even lies, just "can't be done" and more Bushwars.
I knew Trump was a racist when he questioned Barack Obama's birthplace. I believe that anyone that questioned or still questions his birthplace is a racist. I have spoken to Trump cultists who say Barack Obama hates white people. My response was and is that they should inform Obama's white mother of that. Their response? All I heard and still hear is the sound of crickets.
12
OK, I agree that Trump won because he lied about what he could and/or would do. Xenophobic AND populist lies.
What I do not agree with is your prescriiption for "lliberalism" in your penultimate paragraph. What you don't seem to understand is that the social issues that progressives are concerned about are largely economic issues for the people directly affected, contrary to your digs a little earlier about "the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West".
5
I am a European-American who has faced racism at several critical points. In the name of "diversity" & historical grievance… my career took a hit. Yet my ancestors were NOT responsible for slavery or racism in America. I grew up poor, not "privileged". I despise Donald Trump with every grain of my mind and spirit. But to paint all Trump supporters as racist is absurd. Many are just sick of identity politics; sick of the stereotypes and assumptions about so-called "white" people. Sick of the weaponization of race. If you pay attention, it isn't hard to see bias against white people in so many "liberal" publications, their blatant identity politics crusade, the insistence that if x% of computer scientists or engineers or physicists is not represented by x% people "of color" then the government should intervene. I've been prey to this type of racism - and I'm not alone. Isn't it possible that many folks voted for Trump NOT because of racism but because they are SICK OF RACISM? Sick of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s (and America's) fetishization of race? Sick of "progressive" people's confusion of race, skin color & ethnicity - many so-called minorities have white skin!. No, I didn't vote for Donald Trump… and never would. But I wouldn't vote for Hillary or any other candidate who panders to voters based on their race. I wouldn't vote for anyone who treats people differently because of skin color. When will "progressives" be honest about their own racism?
16
Wow, didn't know that slavery, Jim Crowe and mass incarceration were the fetishization of race. And good to know that Trump is the least racist republican president since Reagan, but the biggest pervert.
You say that you are a European-American. You can say white, you know. You did not participate in the original sin of this country. Neither did I. You say you grew up poor and do not experience privilege. I am sure that is your perception. You doubt racial privilege. I am also white and grew up on the lower end of the middle class.
Just 1 example of privilege that I and perhaps you benefited from:
As the wealth of the middle class grew in the post-war boom, whites and minorities invested in homes. Most middle-class wealth was and is held as equity in homes, and this equity was and is the fastest growing investment in the 20th and 21st centuries. By this process, the middle class was able to accumulate and transfer wealth to the next generation. But, for most of the last century, minorities were systematically, lawfully and blatantly denied the right to purchase a home in many areas, aka REDLINING (see Levittown, the most famous example.) Instead, they were pushed into racially segregated areas. Home values in segregated neighborhoods grew much more slowly. Due to historical racism in hiring, separate but unequal schools and prejudice in other areas of society, minorities, on average started with lower wages and a smaller investment. This can be a one-time discrimination with documented generational consequences. These days its no longer legal to discriminate this way, but it still occurs.
This is just one of the many ways racial privilege can be unwittingly experienced.
1
Mr. Douthat- fine, as far as that goes, and thoughtful. But you and the article you built this essay around don't touch on the most disturbing aspect of all of this. What explains all the lying, about everything, all the time? And what explains why it is so effective? To glibly dismiss Trump supporters as merely "persuadable" doesn't come close to capturing the dark turn society has taken.
I am not so addled by liberal dogma that swings in public sentiment throw me for a loop. I can understand annoyance with elites, with globalism, with multiculturalism, with immigrants, etc. I can even join in on particular avenues of criticism, and I'm perfectly prepared to admit to being misguided in some of my biases. But I can't seem to find anyone to have this debate with who isn't (cynically? strategically? idiotically?) married to silly falsehoods.
THAT's what happened in 2016, and I don't see any policy corrective to it because it has nothing to do with policy, and I don't see it changing now that bald lying has proven to be such an effective path to American power.
10
"Any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”
5
I have been struggling with how "progressives" define racism and have come to a solution. For a "progressive" the thought is "if one doesn't agree with me then that one is a racist". That exactly fits the comments here by "progressives".
8
You think to be proven a racist requires a pedantic evidenciary process, and therefor, when people accuse others of racism absent such a process, it must be illogical and unfair. But when humans don't care about people, other humans can smell it. We can just smell the lack of curiosity of people that just don't care enough to know better, even though they know better in the sense that they know about the horrible discrimination and racism in country's history. If you don't care to know, you can't say you're not racist just because you could care less about finding out.
2
Of course there were many factors that lead to trump winning, but I do think his overt racism, misogyny, etc was really the fuel that pushed him over the top to win. That dark racist side and the hate that exists in all of us is a very powerful motivator.
Trump was really the most out front open racist presidential candidate we have seen in modern times. The unfortunate thing is that this racist approach worked and he won. So we will surely see more of it in from other Republican candidates in the future. Conservatism and the republican party is the party of the rich and powerful. The one thing they have found during the 2016 election to appeal to the common man is the powerful motivator of overt racial hate, it works to get votes! So future republican candidates will surely use racism, misogyny, etc. to help themselves get votes. This overt racism technique unfortunately will not go away with trump, it will be with us for a long time, unfortunately, because it works for the republicans and they will need the votes, as gerrymandering and Hannity will only take a dead philosophy so far.
4
So what are Democrats going to do about it? More of the same that failed them? Abuse voters and drive them further away?
Democrats can't and don't want to use the Republican racism method, but they can use the other half, and use it better.
Speak to those voters, and offer them something more believable and better too. At least go there and try.
1
Just this morning the President re-tweeted some postings from an extreme right wing British site that was applauded by David Duke. The lack of Republican response conforms to what happened in Germany in the 20's and 30's, the only major difference being that the US economy is in far better shape than Germany was at that time. Looking forward, if the Republican tax plan were to lead to a major economic downturn and the Republican establishment continues to downplay the demagoguery of this President, there is no saying where we are going to end up in a couple of years from now.
8
How the effect of obvious sexism against Hillary is beyond me.
1
Hit send too early - how the effect of sexism against Hillary was left out of this analysis is beyond me...
4
That is just an excuse, not a reason. White women did not vote against her because she is a white woman. Yet more than half of white women did vote against her.
2
This morning Mr. Trump retweeted videos of old and non-muslim violence, claiming it was all the horrors of Islam, in an attempt to stir up racist fervor among his base. I believe this answers the question of what he thinks happened in 2016.
9
This country enjoyed a level of prosperity, total wealth, good government, and well regulated capitalism in the 1960's unparalleled anywhere else and at any other time in human history. It was a time when all were very optimistic for the future and willing to be a more tolerant and equitable place than at any previous time. A decade later this began to change into a time of greater challenges and more limitations, and the generosity and tolerance of people who were less like the majority was diminished. The fear of challenges from foreign countries and of the selfishness of those who still enjoyed power and influence began to develop. The anxieties were relaxed with Reagan's performance in office but nothing substantial was done to correct the problems and a lot of means to fix the economic stagnation that was taking hold were not tried because they went against some notions made popular by Reagan and were continually used by Republicans to deter simple solutions like public infrastructure projects and to continue to fund programs which helped all to improve themselves according to abilities regardless of their wealth. The loss of good jobs which contributed to Trump's victory really was a result of the private sector having no incentives to help the country as a whole, making decisions which hurt the real economy domestically, and of government being considered as an enemy of economic growth and so could do nothing to counter the behavior in the private sector.
5
Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign at the Neshoba Country fairground, where three civil-rights workers were lynched in 1964. Regan praised states rights, code for segregation.
Reagan played the race card, and thereby was a racist. No accident that he remains a Republican hero.
3
Great analysis: “But of course the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward.”
Conservatives also use taxes and mandates and regulations” as they have in Ferguson, MO, “against groups that they deem bigoted and backward.” And the segregated South was once the prime instance of that use of government.
And Clinton may not have threatened to use state power against Trump’s constituency, but she didn’t have to do so. Trump’s constituents had nothing to show for 8 years of Obama.
And if the truth be known, neither did African American youth, very much hurt in the job market by Obama’s disinterest in tax and military spending to stimulate government job growth and civilian job training opportunity (a G.I. Bill) both for minorities and the white working class Trump supporters.
Obama’s blindspot to the common unifying needs of the white and black working classes hurt Clinton among Trump’s white supporters. Among intellectuals, T-N Coates and Adam Server refuse to even consider the historical factors that repeatedly break down racial polarization. Historical models and research, well-documented, showing racial blending processes that created Mexico and South America’s mixed race nations, and all disprove the argument that racial divisions politically trump others or mirror them. The Atlantic authors are wrong.
3
Election of Trump is indeed a depressing event that no nuanced analysis can effectively explain away; Ross seems to be arguing that while racial preference/identification was a factor in Trump's election, there were other factors too at work, particularly economic. I find it easier to believe that a vast section of white voters have begun to feel insecure of their (and country's) future and have sought security in tribal affiliation. Whether this is temporary or more permanent for now remains to be seen. The concerns primarily seem to be with left's over identification and concern with social issues (LGBTQ, racism etc.). While these are worthwhile causes, they seem to come at the expense of bread and butter issues, which are crowded out by the former. The way forward for democrats is to credibly fight for economic interests of the working class without going too left.
5
"The way forward for democrats is to credibly fight for economic interests of the working class without going too left."
The way forward is to do that by going left. Centrism is the mantra that failed Democrats, attracting only donor dollars, not voters who feared for their futures. The fear of "left" is a right wing thing, and those voters voted for Obama, not McCain nor Romney.
I finished this piece believing Serwer made a better case than I originally did when I read it at the Atlantic.
4
"Simple explanations are rarely complete explanations...." R. Douthat
Exactly!
And GRIEVANCE is key. Both the economic and racial explanations are based on a deep sense of grievance.
5
As a born-again Christian, who votes Democratic
/Independent, my comment is to my Christian
brethren who support Republican initiatives.
It saddens me to see some Christians so will-
ing to forgo all other wrongs, for a seemingly
cultish-like obsession with banning abortion.
Or, to see Christians struting the stage swing-
ing pistols. Is this what our faith has boiled
down to for you?
Have you forgotten, "We are in the world,
but not of the world"? That we "wrestle not
with flesh and blood", but against?
(Ephesians 6:12).
Do you remember when Christ pointed out
to the Pharisees that they were straining at
knats, and swallowing camels?
Well likewise, you strain at a woman's
personal decision regarding an unplanned
pregnancy; whlist greed & corruption go
unchecked.
Paul, instructed Timothy to avoid "Men
who think that money equals godliness"
(I Tim 6:5-10).
Yet, you've made a league with them.
God has given each of us free-will, and he
knows we're not perfect. When we sin;
upon repentance he's faithful to forgive us.
The United States Republic is a secular gov't.
I get you want to uphold our father's values,
and that's commendable. But, you need to
start with the top of those values, by advo-
cating against greed, injustice and discrimin-
ation, which effect all of us.
What is our Christian mandate, to be judges,
or, to share the "Good News"?
8
According to some estimates, 7-9 million white, working-class, non-college Americans voted for Barack Obama (many twice), before turning in frustration or despair to Donald Trump. They can hardly be called racists. Many were concentrated in the swing states of the Rust Belt and Midwest, giving them outsized influence on the election result. http://tinyurl.com/yd78yz79
For these Obama-Trump swing voters, the motivation was almost certainly economic—the survival of their communities and/or their own families.
Many on the Left refuse to acknowledge the likely economic motivation of these swing voters. They continue to lump all Trump voters together as a monolithic bloc of racists. It gets liberals off the hook, I suppose, for their own complicity in the rise of Trump—their long indifference bordering on contempt for the plight of the white working-class.
In any population—the population of Trump voters, for example—there's always a range of beliefs or behaviors, a range that can be described by a bell curve. To win in 2018, the Dems need to find ways to lure back that 10-20% on the disaffected tail of the curve.
15
Ross, you make some good points - especially ones that refute the notion that every white guy who voted for Trump is a racist or fascist sympathizer. No, the truth is much simpler - the election was a choice between Donald and Hillary.
Trump was a risk, while Clinton left no room for doubt. It was easy to decide which was the lesser of the two evils.
9
I agree with Mr. Douthat -- the economic insecurity is the primary reason people radicalize and turn bigots and racists. Just like in Weimar Germany -- Hitler had no chance until the Great Depression struck and the political establishment failed to deal with it.
It is simply unrealistic to expect that everyone will keep a level head when they are living under constant stress, struggling to make the ends meet.
4
Yet, Blacks in America live under constant stress snd threat like no other group, but Black Americans didn't see Trump as the way forward. I just can't understand how people could think that someone who spews so much hatred could possibly care about them and their problems. "Lock her up, Mexicans are rapists, Hilary is a crook, but I won't show you my tax returns-" it is too much crazy to believe that race did not overcome all of the nonsense of his campaign, because let's admit it was nonsensical. Just like his presidency. I could just weep. That people think it is okay to vote for someone who is that hateful because of economics. It's Hitler all over again but this time everybody but the rich is going to suffer. When will we learn?
1
Respectfully, Mr. Douthat, the problem with your analysis becomes apparent in the first paragraph when you frame the issues as a dichotomy between racism and economic grievances. This is a false dichotomy because the deepening racism is a response to economic woes because it provides a scapegoat for the loss of privilege and power of the dominant social group. What we have in our nation today is aggrieved entitlement, with the loss of economic power merely a focal point for explaining the overall erosion of social dominance of white working-class males who no longer can dictate the shape of our culture in light of our ethnic, religious and ideological diversity. To move forward we must reject the divisiveness that poisons our body politic. The aggrieved entitlement class needs to understand that many of the forces of globalization and cultural change are not within the control of government. Nationalism and isolation will not bring back jobs and sustain the economy. Automation is much more responsible for job loss than international trade. The keys to our recovery and sustained growth are international diplomacy and education. Above all, no ethnic group or social class is entitled to dominate the "other." The end to ethnic politics will not come from returning social and cultural dominance to white males motivated only by their quest for their own power and wealth.
8
I read Douthat faithfully and carefully. It is fascinating to watch a highly cultivated mind of a Jesuit at work. And I do not mean that in a good way.
We have watched David Brooks struggling to make the difficult transition from a thoughtful conservative hack to a reality-based moral philosopher. Confused, muddled, and, more often than not, boring. But it is fascinating as a display of a mensch working towards enlightenment.
I struggled to follow this Douthat essay to the end. As the two most famous Jesuits in this country would have said, "gobbledygook" or "argery bargery."
After struggling to the end, I could make no sense of it other than moral chaos. I suggest that it is time for this Jesuit to take a sabbatical.
4
Every Trump voter owns his racism. His vulgarity. His misogyny. His hate of criticism. His hate of institutions. The Republican gerrymandering will destroy the American democracy . Be proud of Trump. You are guilty.
7
So of course Germany will be refunding ALL the Marshall Fund money the US spent rebuilding your country, correct? Did Germany ever do anything for the US? Ever?
1
How many votes will that attitude win back from Trump? None. But it might drive away even more, people who did not hear it the first time.
1
No matter how convoluted this columnist's thinking gets, it always comes back to "Democrats need to be more like Republicans." That's all. No "fatal" reductionist he--because they just let him keep on writing columns.
5
I comprehend RD today perhaps less than 50 percent, so why should a blunt confession have anything to do with this comment: caveat lecter (readers beware of my latin phrase's misspelling too).
My unhappy take is that DT turns "political science" onto its pointy head--my joke of an undergraduate major.
He may be relatively ignorant, amazingly vacuous if not merely profoundly shallow, and I perceive as cynical as h.
He's not as stupid as he seems, but perhaps is complicatedly-
perhaps simply- amoral as our very own absurd (to me, immoral) demagogue POTUS.
He plays it mostly by impulse, as his fan(atics) also now ought to acknowledge/realize.
He makes the POTUS a farce, and seemingly gets away with it so far, while 3 more years of this is so damaging that I can't laugh as the leaders of Russia, Iran & China probably are at the weakening, befuddled Americans.
Decades of "you're evil racists, xenophobes, anti Semites ..." slander & reverse racism quotas against whites by American elites doing race/ethnic/religious divide and conquer manipulation, because out 1%ers are afraid that what just happens to be the US majority (educated middle class white people) might come to enough of a consensus to force our supposed "representatives" to act in the best interests of all Americans had by 2016 built up enough insulted rage in the populace that people would vote for anyone who seemed to defy the political class status quo - whether it was Trump or Sanders or Stein. I spoke with black and Jewish voters who noted that the for 150+ years democrat run major cities were disaster areas of shootings, crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse and high school drop outs for minorities - that democrats seem to want keep people desperate. And that decades of open borders had killed wages, doubled poverty, filled the US with really racist immigrants and destroyed the environment with 30 million additional resource consumers and polluters that mass immigration adds to the USA every decade. The fact that Trump has gone back on his promises in many areas is no more surprising than that Obama betrayed his "dreams" by continuing the flood of desperate immigrants into the US to "compete" with, kill the wages and job opportunities of citizen blacks and browns, and allowed the continued the shipping of their manufacturing jobs to slave-labor China and Mexico.
4
Will Americans ever just own their vote? You seek to blame others because you know what you did is wrong.
1
I have never supported Trump, but as this article points out, we are now in the strongest economy since the Clinton days. It is this strong economy that is keeping Trump’s core of support. Many people are willing to overlook Trump’s crassness and cruelty when their wages and investments are rising faster than any time since the late-90s. That means that this article’s advance for Trump and Democrats is wrong. If Trump abruptly changes his economic positions and weakens the economy, his support will falter. Likewise, if Democrats focus their attacks on Trump on the economy, those attacks will fall on deaf ears. Democrats need to convince the public that they will steward the economy while also holding firm in their values.
Democrats need to care about working class whites again. That's really all they need to do, but I doubt it will happen.
1
Wages, no. Investments, yes.
The stock market is a continuation of the Obama post-2008 crises remediation. Nothing else. Only Trump would take credit for momentum.
And, do a little search on how much wages have increased. They are stagnant. But my portfolio definitely is not. And here's something to laugh about--Trump slammed Janet Yellen up and down. In fact, he was confused that he couldn't fire the fed chairman on day one, but he was quickly disabused of that notion. Yet, when it came time to choose a successor, there she is on the list. But, to save face after having slammed her, he just picks a Janet Yellen clone by the name of Jerome Powell.
This economy is not strong because of Trump, but it may stay that way because he selected a Yellen clone to run the fed.
2
Mr. Douthat:
I am far less interested in what happened in 2016 than I am in what is happening right now. When you are done kicking dead horses, perhaps, you can take a stand on how to oppose the obvious dismantling of all things democraticby your party and your president.
In the process you can stop writing in counterpoint to others work and maybe come up with an point of view that demonstrates that you can think for yourself.
9
Trump is a TV con man. Period. He makes whatever noises he believes will get the "best ratings". With nothing behind them except making sure his brand gets "better ratings". He couldn't care less about any of this other "political stuff". People are duped by the TV/radio/twitter feed "show", not the people or ideas behind any of it.
6
Wowie zowie, Batman! The trouble, as I see it, is that we all know the difference between right and wrong and legislating to prevent "wrongs" from overcoming what is right is not a case of insulting those termed the "deplorables". As far as I'm concerned, those listed by Clinton, under the grouping of "deplorables", were deplorable then, and are now. There is no appealing to or persuading thought and deed based on hate and refusal to face facts.
7
It is probably true that all racists voted for Trump. But as any student of logic knows, that does not mean all Trump voters are racist. But since identifying racists is not easy, many statistical analyses will confirm this erroneous circular logic.
As long as Hilary Clinton remains in the news cycle , we all remain in Purgatory.
3
I suppose, in the sense that some people don't even watch tv, you can say some are not racist.
And in the sense that a small fraction of people are just evil, and they are happy to see people hurt regardless of race, you can say some are not racist.
But the ones who know he's racist and voted for him anyway clearly don't care about the feelings or well being of non-white people, are racist or they are just evil or have some kind of lack of empathy.
I would say pretty much all Trump voters are racist, though most may not know it and there are some exceptions that are just broken people that don't care about anyone regardless of race.
But I see no evidence that all racists voted for Trump.
Bottom line, if you don't care when someone belittles or harms others based on their race, that's still racism.
HEAR HEAR. As a moderate liberal who works with many working-class Trump supporters, I have more than just "imaginative sympathy" for most of them. "Bubble liberals" unfortunately do not even try to understand the varying mixture of racism, white nationalism, religious beliefs, and economic grievance that motivate Trump supporters. They make the fundamental mistake of confusing correlation with causation. Some Trumpists I know are not racist at all, but some of them do say jaw-dropping things like "slaves didn't have it all that bad." The Trumpists that I interact with are, in my opinion, primarily motivated by economic issues and tribal loyalty. There is much more nuance in their individual characters than the sweeping generalizations that liberals are prone to believe.
I hate to agree with Trump's "good people on both sides" assertion about the Charlottesville tragedy, but I believe he is literally correct, although the gist of what he was saying was a terrible mistake. I used to think that there was no such thing as a "good" racist. But now I see them as whole people and find that I am much more tolerant.
Understanding Trump voters as real people, with varying mixtures of beliefs, ins a necessary condition to a more stable and productive political discourse in America. Trumpists are not going away. They have real and legitimate grievances that both Democrats and Republicans have failed to address. They must not be viewed as a homogenous "other."
7
And accepting that almost all human beings are a mixture of good and bad is part of growing up.
"I am obliged to argue once again that the most powerful liberal story about 2016, in which race overshadows everything and white nationalism explains the entire Trumpian universe."
The most powerful liberal story concerned the shortcomings of the liberal candidate for president, without which there would be no Trump story to discuss.
5
Complex as the electorate wants and wishes may be, the fact remains that crooked lying Trump, with a baseless ideology and zero commitment to anybody but himself, found a vacuum or niche of discontent he was able to exploit to advantage. Most unfortunately, Trump has mounted an oligo-pluto-kleptocracy densely deaf to the poor and even the middle class, due to it's wide social distance, to the promises made and remaining unfulfilled (let's give him credit, he has been and remains an excellent demagogue, with it's ugly reverberations with a life of it's own, surviving beyond his thankfully- limited reign of abuse). His racism, xenophobia and misogyny seem another feature he is well endowed with, a case study in megalomania if not narcissism.
1
No Mr. Douthat. You're all wrong. What won trump the presidency was laziness. Lazy people who didn't want to do the hard work to change the corporate take over of democracy by voting for those who would have actually challenged, with significant effort, the corporate class rather than embracing it. The one thing most of us who actually work for a living share with trump voters is the understanding that all mega-corporations in this country are working to harm us. They pollute our water and air. They hold down wages to enrich shareholders and increase inequality. They damage democracy with lobbyists.
If we want our country back, we need to work together to take it back from the corporations. But trump voters are too lazy to do that work, relying instead upon a liar and a corporate cheat. Taking their news only from a foreign corporation run by an anti-democratic plutocrat.
So, yes....laziness brought us trump. The only way to defeat him and those who follow him is to destroy the corporate hold on our democracy.
4
And I would add, most of us are too lazy to take the time to understand the economics and logistics of taking it back from the corporations. Anti-trust enforcement, rolling back piles of local and federal legislation regulating small biz and small biz jobs out of existence, better trade agreements would all be a start. These are thing that only that trollish man, trump, has ever addressed on a political stage.
Let me put it simply: why are drugs such a profitable and alluring business proposition for those economically sidelined by society?
Because it’s an entirely unregulated industry.
When every American can hang a shingle and start a biz as easy as that, we won’t have trumps or Clinton’s running for office anymore. And google, Facebook, Microsoft will all be very afraid.
But sadly, I think that will never happen. People are too used to letting others rule them, and squabbling over leftovers.
Douthat is always eager to justify whatever the GOP does, and this column is a perfect example.
What he refuses to acknowledge is that virtually all of Trump's voters in 2016 fell into one of two categories. All supported a candidate who, as only a complete idiot could fail to notice, made many racist remarks. Either they supported him because they agree with his racism, or they supported him because they don't mind electing a racist politician IF he backs other policies they agree with. In either case, what does that make them?
Douthat won't admit that those who supported Trump primarily because of his populist rhetoric were STILL supporting a man they KNEW to be racist. Like so many in the media, he simply will not confront the racist nature of our society and our people. Why not? Perhaps because he could not remain a Republican if he admitted that the vast majority of his fellow partisans are either racists or tolerant of racism?
9
I'm white. I'm going to vote for a white candidate. It's come to that.
5
i believe hillary is white ?
3
You did not say WHITE MAN, but why do I infer it? You have a buffoon for a WHITE president, and an international statesman for a previous president. Does that not open your eyes?
2
Please do tell, Ross, exactly what taxes, regulations, and mandates have been imposed on any hate group, white identity group, or ethnic nationalists....and as for free speech restrictions, I see nothing but a steady stream of right-wing parasites lining up to bilk our universities out of much-needed funds by forcing them to waste money on security for rubes who parrot Newsmax and Infowars trash for no purpose other than self-aggrandizement...
Poor, poor, beleaguered cultural conservatives....never has a privileged few whined so loud....
8
Sorry, the numbers don't add up! Ms. Clinton wins if African American support for her candidacy hadn't fallen as well as support among other disaffected registered Democrats and independents. It was those of us who stayed home that turned the election. The labelling of those of us who are deeply troubled by what we view as intolerant trends in the Democratic Party as racists will only deepen the rift and doesn't bode well for Democratic candidates in the years to come.
7
That the election and Trumpism analysis continues to be framed around nationalism, racism, and economic anxiety, with absolutely no consideration of sexism, speaks volumes to who still holds (or more significantly, who does not hold) the power in this country.
3
It's all about culture now. Maybe 25% of Trump supporters can claim with a straight face economic arguements mattered. Also, the Trump base is not in any shape way or form "persuadable", the Trump base will NEVER vote D in my lifetime.
4
That’s interesting because I know many Obama’s voters who swung for Trump. How do you explain that?
3
It's only difficult if one stops the analysis with the vote in November 2016.
After that, each of Trump's promises relative to the economic group disappeared or was replaced by the exact opposite: there's no infrastructure bill, no better health care bill, no trade deals, no help on opoids, only a tax cut for the rich and a higher stock market. But all of Trump's racial, gender, "not PC", anti media, anti muslim, anti immigrant, anti you name it is tweeted almost daily.
The very fact that his voters are sticking with him show that they never cared that much about getting economic relief. Turns out, the targets of the con with the economic talk was the news media and decent folk, who would rather believe the story of oppressed people dislocated economically lashing out irrationally than the story of oppressing people rationally choosing the president who would be their advocate.
7
"... identitarian nationalism" = racist. Be honest Russ. Half of a wit will only get you so far with that sort of "alt-right" speak. Trumps base loves his hateful demeanor with seemingly little concern for policy, which shifts depending on who he last spoke with. Meanwhile the corporate greed
heads love that they get to do whatever they want as long as he gets to play President. It's not complicated to understand, but if you care about our country, it is painful to behold.
6
The suggestion-
"The path for liberalism is to treat Trump’s white working-class supporters as persuadable rather than deplorable.."
is an obvious one , and one the Democrats are unlikely to heed because it entails treating white identity politics as equal to the black (championed by, for example, Coates) and actually listening to the concerns on immigration.
7
Except that immigration isn't harming whites. White voters who voted for trump are too lazy, uneducated, or entitled to want to compete with those who are willing to work. Immigrants generally work harder than everyone else because they have to work to learn the language, get ahead, and simply survive.
White identity politics is just a nice way of saying you wish to preserve institutionalized racism.
1
Whites are not lazy, they struggle because they don't have the economic opportunities (aka manufacturing jobs) their fathers and grandfathers had.
And no, Trump won't help them but calling them lazy (or deplorables) only strengthen their support for him. They are the victims of the rising inequality and they need help.
1
This opinion piece seems to promote Bernie Sanders r Elizabeth Warren as the best candidate for offices. Global capitalism eroding decent jobs caused too many enemies. Perhaps it is beyond scientific methods to determine the main influences on why so many voters choose economic policies that hurt their families and their efforts to improve their lives. Our best & brightest better dig into these complex influences and choose correctly before our country reaches a point of no return.
3
Slavery rooted in a white supremacist ideology is America's original sin. The extent to which we each are cursed with our personal white supremacy, is our personal assessment to make. We have to do a personal inventory to determine if we are a part of the problem or a part of the solution.
1
None of us was alive in the 1700s. We don't care about last year's Super Bowl winner never mind something that happened 200 years ago. You're on your own.
4
No, sorry, other people do not "have to do a personal inventory" or obsessively guilt trip themselves over things that happened before they were born just because you demand it.
1
Old thinking & misinformation delivered Trump.
For Democrats it was/is the old establishment that sided against Sanders - they held on to the old guard, campaigning & didn't do enough to stand for the avg citizen.
Republicans also stood with old values, protectionism & no concern for the avg citizen & eroding the basics of our Democracy.
The country has changed & will continue to evolve. Both parties need to have forward looking platforms that stand for basic values & they need to abandon placing corporate & wealthy influence above the people they serve.
Term limits & campaign reform.
4
Well, the good news is that it hardly matters what the pundit class says as most Trump supporters don't care at all what the vast majority of them say, except to use as examples of liberal bias. Ross discounts the effect of right wing distortions of the lefts' priorities and motives.
As the White Nationalist and Nazi sympathizer profiled in the much maligned NY Times article said, "the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: “You can just say, ‘Yeah, so?’ And move on.”
Trump has made it OK to have uncharitable feelings. He has made it OK to be greedy. He has made it OK to rich and entitled and to boast about not paying taxes. It's OK to be tired of making amends for centuries of enslavement and discrimination. It's OK to not feel guilty about heating up the planet and polluting the oceans. People are tired of feeling guilty. And they're tired of experts.
Douhat's suggestions for conservatism bring to mind Jimmy Kimmel's ploy of calling the ACA "Trumpcare" and urging them to sign up. Perhaps Douhat's impression that conservatives are amenable to such suggestions comes from examples of Reagan and W.s progressive legislation. Today's Republicans are much more devoted to conservative ideology - which has ALWAYS been, first and foremost the gospel of no new taxes. They are party of Wall Street and it's shareholders. Bruce Bartlett understands this.
4
no new taxes for the 1% is closer to the truth.
3
The primary problem is the failure of people who know what is fact and what is false to inform everybody else. For hundreds of years people wise and ignorant and all in between held a belief that race indicated potentials and characteristics beyond those attributes which are used to identify race. Race is a concept that people made up in their imaginations. It's way past time to classify it as unreal like ghosts, unicorns, and perpetual motion engines. It's equivalent to a superstitious belief like believing that witches curses cause destructive natural phenomena. The damage that has been done to non-whites because of this false belief has been incalculable but it can be ended and the damage somewhat mitigated when all are enlightened. When any one observers racial characteristics and expects certain behaviors unlike what they expect when they see others, racial stereotyping is affecting that person. Learn not to do it.
The ATLANTIC piece discussed here is. brilliant. That does not mean that economic anxieties should be ignored by candidates. It does mean that the festering racist underpinnings of many of the Trump supporters have to be confronted honestly and with clear eyes. The majority of those who still support Trump either will not be swayed by any economic factors or have no sound reasons to be economically anxious. Clinton should not have used the deplorable label. That does not mean that the people she was describing are free of traits we should all deplore.
3
Overall I think this is probably the best - the most well-reasoned and unobjectionable (to me) - piece I've read by you Ross. Therefore you will not be surprised that I largely agree with your contentions and conclusion.
However I take issue with the paragraph beginning "And as ever in these condemnations...." because I think the most disagreeable example of tribalism and binary thinking in American political culture (besides the use of the terms "black" and "white") is the simplistic and base use of "conservative" and "liberal".
Doesn't your article support the contrary fact that so-called "conservatives" and "liberals" are not actually united and divided? Does it not indicate that there is (or should be) agreement between the centre-right and the centre-left just as there is dispute?
Does it not indicate that there are those to your right with attitudes and opinions you yourself regard as "bigoted" and "backward" - and also "irredeemable" and "deplorable"? Do you honestly object that Charles Manson was incarcerated until his natural death for only his ability to incite murder with his "free speech"?
So why appear to defend the indefensible and tar all "liberals" with the same extremist (and exclusively, the same quasi-authoritarian) brush? Why feign solidarity with respect to those you actually oppose and enmity with respect to those you really don't?
But generally - as I said - I agree with you and I think this is fine work and a credit to you and The New York Times.
1
Race lends itself to the lead role in explaining any division in any country. You don't need to know anything about an issue if you just say "race" when you open your mouth. Listeners, who don't know anything either, will generally nod their heads thus allowing everybody to advance to deciding what to drink. Populism is another easy out. Trump won because of his populist message...heads nod, I'll have another beer. If those around you can't connect Obamacare and the ACA, you're off the hook. The answer isn't always (A) and populism isn't what populism once was. Trump's populism, consisted of carefully coded, bumper sticker messages to people who saw themselves as victims of the system. When the $100M custom 757 pulled up to the freezing hanger (Lenin and Red Square like) people imagined they were looking and listening to somebody just like them. Disney couldn't have successfully pulled that stunt. Everybody had hats and everybody had MAGA. This was "us vs them" politics carried to the next level. Forget 5th Avenue, he could shoot somebody in that hanger. I belong to the "them tribe. I have several degrees, belong to PETA and the ACLU, hug trees, love animals, have three books going at all times, fly commercial, own 3 pairs of Bikenstocks and my Japanese wife and I have cookouts with my gay neighbors. Elite? Comparatively...proudly...definitely. My populism isn't Trump's...thank, God/whomever.
Hopefully the following is useful in purgatory.
My mom broke her hip and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the hospital. I thought context and gesture let me understand some of what she was trying to say. Once the doctors and my father were discussing her situation in front of her and it seemed I was the only one in the room who knew she was trying to say “I’m right here, don’t talk over me as if I weren’t.”
Working class whites have their problems but they’re in better shape mentally than Alzheimer’s patients. None of us have perfect self-knowledge, and I can think of a few times when it was as if I had a guardian angel who spoke through a sensitive person to finally get me to realize one of the ways in which I’m an idiot. But I’m pretty confident that in general we have much better access to our own inner dialogue and emotional reflexes than a distant pundit or academic.
Granted there’s an art, craft, and science to getting people to vote a certain way. (That’s a multi-causal phenomenon btw.) But when we go behind observable behavior to describe how others think and feel, the people we’re talking about are in a good position to know when we’re wrong. That was true of white people telling me what blacks or Mexicans were really all about in 1962 Houston and it’s true when pundits and academics describe the inner life of the working class or “white males” today.
3
My best to you and your mom. I'm sure she knows you care for her, although she may not express it as well.
Soon the Trump crowd will bring us, or maybe they already have, "The Protocols of the Elders of Islam". And perhaps a film about the evil machinations of a Muslim financier causing the crash of 2008.
If everyone kept moving to the right to create a new "center" based on these (White Power) extremists, even the Titanic would've sank.
Trump spewed white resentment and racial dog-whistles. And he delivered, over and over.
Trump also mentioned the economy and the middle-class a lot - in the transparently phony way only a "billionaire" grifter in a gold-plated high-rise that would appoint only Goldman Sachs millionaires to his cabinet to destroy the very agencies they lead could do. Keepin' it KKKlassy!
It's simply the difference between what they say and what they do. Fox News says it's "Fair and Balanced." Republicans say they are "the party of fiscal responsibility and small government."
So, if projectile-vomiting obvious propaganda and demonstrable nonsense on the issue of economics makes the election "about" something, then...
Yes, Trump made this election about the working class.
And, please, do get back to me with your tired "move to the center" prescription for all of America's ills just as soon as one of your Milquetoast candidates actually, you know, wins over a rabid right-wing radical.
Only Trump could turn the iceberg into the hero of this analogue.
1
Trump’s core supporters are Nazis, white supremacists, KKK members or their sympathizers. Without them he would have lost. The 1% encourages racism because if blacks and whites ever came together we could force real change that would benefit all of us.
2
Membership in white supremacist and neo--Nazi groups is estimated at less than 20,000 nationwide. Since they are widely dispersed across the nation, they have little political clout. No politician who counted them as his core constituency could ever win election to a national constituency. Klansman David Duke was elected to the Louisiana legislature but he received a grand total of 8,459 votes to defeat a candidate who got 8,232 votes.
1
Douthat once again parodies intellectual rigor to end up with visceral victimhood. He doesn't know anymore when he's lying.
5
sorry Ross but the purile attempt to legitimize a vicious self serving group of amoral men us too much.
legitimizing white supremacy; same for
racism
xenophobia
child molestation
vicious mysogyney
antiSemitism
and i could go on and on
no dice . in the pricess of taking office and trashing the office
you go down as just another talking head enabler no different than the spineless gutless GOP senators who buy the luies and like Goerbells hppe to say them often enough to the uneducated to help them believe this
this country is over
it has become nothing more thet a 3rd rate banana republics whose fearless leader begs for help he can’t and will never get
the Chinese are acsendant the Russian slimy psychopaths
and America as we know it has been sold to the highest bidder with the bounciest checks the rubbery spineless GOP
4
I am still convinced the principal element of Trump's victory was his opponent's political history.
Career politicians, like Hillary Clinton, accumulate layers and tons of scars, slime, and mold during their political careers.
Clinton's gender was her only appealing and believable characteristic, and it did not over come the slime factor. Her other goals were heard as they should be, political promises.
Trump did not win. The Democratic Party self-destructed.
5
Trump did not win. And the Democratic Party did not self-destruct -- the Electoral College prevailed.
4
So if one is willing to concede that racism is only one factor (albeit a major one) for Trump voters, then add in the sexist part of the equation. Maybe Trump and his supporters shouldn't think that a child molester is a great Senate candidate?
The complex truth isn't that complex no matter how much sophistry tries to spin this. Older, whiter voters elected Trump. Their average income was around $70,000 plus, so they didn't represent the poorest voters. They hated the black president and were not shy about expressing this. Hate groups have thrived. Trump is still almost daily hate mongering about blacks (such as athletes or President Obama's mythical birth in Kenya), Muslims, immigrants, women, and other designated targets such as the media.
Sexism came out into the open in obscene signs and t-shirts at Trump rallies. The women's march on Washington represented the largest protest in American history and the follow up willingness to acknowledge women have been victims for far too long is cascading right now.
This is not about liberals. It is about Republicans. This is the 21st century. There is a reason that young people left the Republican Party in droves and are being further alienated. Similarly the lack of minorities in the Republican Party is self explanatory. Republican pathways are the narrow ones these days. They are the ones in need of reform or extinction. It doesn't matter which to me.
3
Heart of Darkness. Call it that. It's deeper than race, populism, etc.. A strange mass of quivering goo impermeable to reason, light, goodness, love, etc.. It lurks in everyone, everywhere. I've seen in pale white marble halls on the National Mall and in the equatorial bush. The horror is that we so defenseless against it. All our beautiful and insightful art so easily crumbles before its sound and fury strutting and fretting its hour upon the stage ...
1
Since my comments on this subject - the termination of the US Census Bureau system of classifying people by "race" - often land in places where they cannot be seen I offer this simply statement (the URL - see below - given to me by the Times to take me to my comment does not work, a common occurrence).
End US Census Bureau system of classification by "race". There is no white race to which Richard Spencer and his followers can belong, a "race" that as defined by Spencer only includes a small part of the USCB "white race", the part that Spencer sees, in common with Donald Trump, as genetically superior to all other genetically defined groups.
That is, of course, utter nonsense so if the USCB would take these classifications away from all of us we would all be better off.
And you, your opinion. Gmail at my blog.
NON WORKING URL - supposed to lead to my comment at Douthat
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/opinion/donald-trump-2016-election.htm...
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen - US SE
"Race" - Human with 2% Neanderthal perhaps.
2
Trump started the campaign stating that most Mexicans who cross the boarder illegally are Rapists and Murders. I also seem to remember that "build the wall" was a big hit. They are motivated by race and you are a historical revisionist.
5
"But of course the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward."
Mr. Douthat, you are a liar. You present no evidence to support this slander, as is typical of all conservative arguments. Your straw man is just another attempt to absolve yourself of guilt for the rise of white nationalism by blaming liberals for forcing the deplorables to let their racist flag fly. And no, discriminating against the LGBQT communitiy is not "religious liberty".
3
The irony is, Trump isn't white: he's orange.
7
Some interesting points here - but I still believe the outcome of the last presidential election was in essence a vote against Clinton rather than a vote for Trump.
2
Mr. Douthat, thank you for the fine rebuttal to the economic fatalism of Adam Serwer and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I have to give a shoutout, though, to another Atlantic writer, Peter Beinart, who's been making the case that the Democratic Party has lost its way on another economic issue, immigration, through a decade-long blurring of the line between legal and illegal immigration. I would add that the Democrats have been too beholden to big tech to do anything to rein in the H-1B visa program, which has been used not so much for its intended purpose of filling hard-to-find skills as to undercut American workers.
The GOP has been far more to blame than the Democrats for the economic decline of the heartland, and technology and an inevitable shift in the global balance of power are even more "at fault," but that shouldn't let the Dems off the hook from taking the easy route of becoming the party of the cosmopolitan coastal bourgeoisie and people of color while occasionally throwing an unattainable bone like "Medicare for All."
3
Mr. Douthat make some good points, especially the idea that we should avoid reductionist analyses. But then he himself drifts into this when he states, "But of course the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward. " Where's your evidence, Mr. Douthat? That's a pretty big statement to make without any clear support.
2
Birtherism should have been a deal breaker, and it wasn't. Case closed.
Serwer's article is right, and you are wrong, Ross, and the reason is deeply psychological. Racism is not only cultural, it is biological; it is in our DNA to be less suspicious of people who look and act like people in our close family. And early experiences always reinforce these tendencies subconsciously.
The subconscious is not easily accessed for examination, which is why people like Alexander Stephens, George Wallace, Donald Trump, and their supporters can convince themselves that they are not racist in any way. It takes a lot of training to become self-aware of one's own subconscious biases whether they are genetic or cultural in origin, but when they are both -- look out! Our natural tendency to rationalize goes into high gear, as this article amply demonstrates.
4
Mr. Douthat, thank you for the fine rebuttal to the economic fatalism of Adam Serwer and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I have to give a shoutout, though, to another Atlantic writer, Peter Beinart, who's been making the case that the Democratic Party has lost its way on another economic issue, immigration, through a decade-long blurring of the line between legal and illegal immigration. I would add that the Democrats have been too beholden to big tech to do anything to rein in the H-1B visa problem, which has been used not so much for its intended purpose of filling hard-to-find skills as to undercut American workers.
The GOP has been far more to blame than the Democrats for the economic decline of the heartland, and technology and an inevitable shift in the global balance of power are even more "at fault," but that shouldn't let the Dems off the hook from taking the easy route of becoming the party of the cosmopolitan coastal bourgeoisie and people of color while occasionally throwing an unattainable bone like "Medicare for All."
1
Unfortunate for Ross that he makes this argument on the same day that Trump, absent any triggering event, indulges in another hateful anti-Muslim Twitter storm.
Ross might not know what moves the Trump faithful, but Trump does.
5
Well, so you have graduated. Last time I checked you were on the 8th level of the Inferno.
I’ve come to appreciate Ross Douthat’s writing more and more as hysteria sweeps the nation. I don’t identify with right or left, but am a fiscal conservative, socially conscious small biz owner. I despise trump, but I agree with him that large swathes of America are a rusted graveyard, sold down the river by politicians in DC. I believe he’s correct that we’ve signed up for unfair trade agreements, improperly handed off our economic status in unfair (to the US) agreements, allowed corporations to consolidate and rule us, and strangled our already dying small businesses with regulation.
And I believe all of this has been the worst for our nation’s most vulnerable, especially people of color and from disadvantaged economic positions.
So while I absolutely view the racial paranoia as legitimate and founded on real and unforgivable acts by our president, I think many white voters voted for him in spite of those things, in hopes his economic agenda would “float all boats” and lift us out of the despair the recession didn’t create but did much to intensify.
Thank you for solid thinking, Ross. If only the American people could see how much we hold in common, and stop attacking each other, there’s much we could do in spite of the clown show we have at the top.
5
The human mind seeks to link cause and effect. Thus, in explaining president Trump’s victory our cleverest analysts seek to know why and how he won. Did Trump defeat Clinton because of race, class, gender bias or some cause as yet unexamined ?
Perhaps, ultimately he won because of the inherent bias of the constitution that favors small states over large and rural over urban districts. Well , each analyst’s opinion seems to powerfully depend on the analyst’s own demography that signals her own race,gender, class, and party bias.
To argue that Americans accept that the proximate cause of Trump’s victory is White racism,sexism,or classism is to force Trump’s voters to personally acknowledge in their own heart what the America’s ethos of white male supremacy has made them. This is a fool’s errand.
Instead we all search for a socially acceptable motive that can render a vote for Trump and the Republican Party a rational act. For nearly a millennium, Okham has advised us to choose the simplest hypothesis that explains the observed facts when choosing among competing explanations.
Whatever other reason, as yet unanalyzed, for voters to have choosen Trump, his overt support for racism and his fear and loathing of women condems him by his own words and actions. One is entitled to assume that his constituents as a demographic group took him at his word.
1
As we navigate through our personal lives, we are often exposed to acquaintances who are vocal supporters of Mr. Trump and note how many of them - in comparison to our non-Trump supporting acquaintances - exhibit "deplorable" racist tendencies, language and actions. Sometimes just plain-old personal experience and intuition tells the story.
4
I don't believe most Trump supporters are "deplorable"--not at all.
But I DO believe most of them are unpersuadable.
But then I think the same thing about most Republican voters. Like not a few Democrats, their party is their "team", and wrong or right, they will never abandon it and go over to the "enemy".
2
You’re right. We don’t want to hear hate speech. We’ve heard enough.
Is your speech not hate speech as well? Of course it is.
1
Donald Trump was the most absurd Presidential candidate in memory. And yet he won. Reason: The Democrats ran a worse candidate. Not all of the blame can be put on HRC. I doubt Bernie would have won. Denying legitimacy of your opponents opinions is not the way to win friends and elections. The Left is intolerant of opinions other than their own. They call such people deplorables, and worse.
2
You naively imagine these white working-class voters are persuadable.
Go out and try it yourself! See how hard it is to change people’s beliefs. Beliefs are not based on reason. But on emotion.
Seriously - go out and see how many you can persuade! Then come back and report.
6
Tell you what Russ--you win. Racism has nothing to do with it--OK? Happy now?
"They're coming across the border and raping our women"--not racist.
"Pocahontas"--not racist
"show us the birth certificate"--not racist
Obviously, we could continue in this mode far beyond 1500 characters, but I also feel compelled to mention:
"Willie Horton"--not racist
"Welfare queens"--not racist
"Southern strategy....swooping in to pick up racist votes after the collapse of the Dixiecrats"--also not racist.
No--Trump was ushered in on a tide of populism--the economic (purely economic) concerns of the little people. And now all those little people will benefit hugely from the largest tax cut in the history of the universe! How was this accomplished? Russ wisely informs us:
"a campaign in which Trump explicitly and consistently tried to move the Republican Party’s economic agenda toward the center or even toward the left — abjuring entitlement cuts, channeling Bernie Sanders on trade, promising a splurge of infrastructure spending, pledging to replace Obamacare with an even better coverage guarantee and more."
What a terrific populist. So Russ--how's that protecting entitlements, grandiose infrastructure buildout, and better health coverage at lower prices working out for you and your fellow Trumpsters?
7
Here's a shorter version of the column: Hillary was square, Bernie rocked, and Trump steamed. The Millenials went into a pout and sat out the election - they're happy to live in the margins anyway. Those we affectionately think of as red necks with blue collars soaked up Trump's blood and earth, crypto-racist, zero-sum chopped logic, and they were lovin' his semi-literate bombast. Finally - one of their own. Hillary put up with all of this - like so much else. She stuck to her script, which had been written in some other world, and she was shown the door for her pains.
4
The emphasis on race and division will be the ultimate downfall of the democrat party.
5
Perhaps. And yet it worked for Trump because whites are a majority. So is this a morality tale or a warning about democracy?
Unfortunately, Ross shows his ignorance of American history. The White elite has always used race as a tool to persuade low-income and middle-income Whites to vote against their best interests. Unlike prior decades when race was a dog whistle, Trump put race, religion and sexuality front and center. Ross and his ilk can ignore this inconvenient fact but this pattern goes back to John Bacon's rebellion. The real question is will White Americans ever wake up and stop voting for the party whose policies (e.g., repealing ACA, tax plan) hurt them?
2
This is what real white supremacy has looked like in America for a long time. People are having their dignity and rights trampled on not because most Americans are virulently, explicitly racist, but rather because they're swimming in implicit bias, and more importantly, they just don't care about racial injustice. They. Just. Don't. Care.
So when people say they support Trump in spite of his racism, not in support of his racism, I say that is typical American racism: I don't know and I don't care!
Nothing is more powerful or destructive than "I don't care". And if you care about some groups more than others, you are definitely racist.
Race and class are two legs of a three legged stool. The third leg is
sexism. Making America great again was code for keeping women, Africa Americans, Hispanics , the disabled and the different in their places, while
white men stayed in power. All the hidden and not so hidden misogyny is coming out now...a new version of draining the swamp.
Although more than half the population is female (including women of all races), we have never in our over two hundred year history had a female president. Don't look for that to change at this time. America
is not grown up enough to elect a woman..
2
Thank you Ross for giving Dems (if they will simply listen) a clear path to victory in 2018 and beyond. Trump and the GOP congress are clearly abandoning many of the promises made to the Obama-to-Trump voters. Dems can win them back but showing them these results -- not by calling them racists and Nazis.
1
An awful lot of big words for such a small premise. t rump campaigned as a racist, a fascist, and an autocrat. "Only I can fix these great problems in America" are the words of a wanna be Hitler, not a populist. And he was elected mostly by people who share his contempt for people of color or exotic nationalities.
He ran his usual con except this time he was able to con many millions of fellow bigots, fascists and very, very, frightened people.
The thing that keeps getting left out of these discussion, no matter where they take place, is the propaganda machine republicans have working for them in the form of fox, limbaugh, hannity, jones, brietbart, bannon, et al.
If 30 -40% of US weren't listening to the lies of these media outlets, and believing them, t rump would still be trying to worm his way into Manhattan society, ryan would be a small time representative from nowhere, and republicans would be, once again, the perpetual minority party that God meant them to be.
We can have fox not news and its ilk or we can have a democracy. We can't have both.
3
Douthat repeats the familiar mantra that liberals must treat Trump supporters as persuadable rather than deplorable.
We must try to understand and treat them with kid gloves because they don't quite get it, or they live in the wrong places, or don't like off-white people, women, gays, trans, other people's sex very much, and feel oh so overwhelmed by change and blah and blah and blah.
Well, persuadable they are. Also gullible, falling for a painfully obvious phony like Trump, easily swayed by their own fears, myths and prejudices.
They're credulous, as long as it's Limbag, Fox or baloney Trump winding them up; also ill-educated, willfully ignorant or just plain dumb.
It's not up to liberals to turn the other cheek and pretend Trumpites don't hate them, won't mock and maybe stomp them. Trumpites are, after all, so brawny not brainy, and proud of it.
Trump is a bigot and Trumpites love him for his bigotry and zeal to spew invective against the 'other' in our society. Unfortunately for Trump and his basest of bases, the country is full of 'the other' and lots of them vote. Still.
We can only hope that Trump and Trumpism is an aberration, a variation on a Buchananistic theme that bubbles up every couple of decades, and not a viable movement that won't dissipate once Trump is gone.
And unbelievable as it may seem, Trump will be gone some day.
4
How is it that greed and bigotry have become so closely linked? I am not sure how anyone who feels that conservative economic principles have validity can not realize the fundamental error of their perspective because it can only be promoted by linking with bigots and fascists. They clearly suspend any moral standing whatsoever.
Because the trains run on time, was it really okay to murder all the jews.
Douthat is just bitter that his taxes are going up. And I for one feel so sorry for him! No - really! Some millionaire is going to pay more in taxes so billionaires pay less! Totally my problem!
The truth hurts...
It isn't necessary to separate economic from racial motivations for voting for Donnie. The path forward for the majority, who recall did not vote for Donnie is clear. There can be no negotiation or normalization with racism. Period. There is no possibility of persuasion. The believers aren't open to persuasion. They think they are leading a cause. They need to be marginalized. Not just by "economic liberals" but by "economic conservatives." The conservatives who have enabled and allied with the racists must also stand against the racists or accept that they will be assumed to be one of them. If you lay with dogs, you get fleas.
Economic policy needs to be continually explored and negotiated across all sides. This eliminates back room tax bills. To say that this is the only contested set of issues without acknowledging the reality, existence and threat of the racists is incomplete at best.
"It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech..."
Mr. Douhat:
It is not that liberals make assumptions about the 'irredeemable' and 'the deplorable.' It's that you make assumptions that the 'irredeemable' and 'deplorable' (your words) that aren't right.
In America, your religious beliefs come second to the interests of the secular liberal state that protects your religious liberty just as it protects those who have beliefs different than yours. It's fine if you live your life as God tells you to; if you think God is telling you to hate Muslims, refuse Gays service and deny others access to birth control, then you're not living your life as God wants you to; you're trying to live other people's lives as you thing God wants you to, and that's unallowable.
As for the idea that 'the deplorable don't deserve the fullness of free speech," well, any side has the freedom of speech; at the same time: Hate speech is not free speech; money is not free speech; carrying your semi-automatic weapon openly to intimidate others is not free speech; lies and slanders spread by the non-News Media of the far right are not protected free speech either.
Donald Trump was elected by voter suppression, gerrymandering, Russian help, an archaic primary/election system and anonymous Dark Money. The Hate, then and now, just helps. Mr. Douhat can't wave that away.
4
I’m afraid that the economic and racial motivations are not separate. Much of the economic anxiety of the white working class is because they feel they have lost relative status to “those” people. Any liberal economic proposal that helps the working class of all creeds and colors will do nothing to alleviate those concerns; in fact, it will be seen as helping “those” people get an unfair leg up on continuing to gain ground on the white working class. Alas, there is a racial component that is inextricable from the economic component in the eyes of Trump voters.
2
In some cases issues of economics and race are inseparable. A blue collar white kid or black kid can no longer work on a construction site because he doesn't speak Spanish. Deportations of undocumented Mexican construction workers is therefore clearing space for jobs the Native born used to do. Same for H1b Visas in the Tech Industry that keep Americans from being upwardly mobile. In many cases the issues of demographic change and economic stagnation go hand in hand.
4
So where are the numbers, Ross?
Fine words may be fun to write, but in the end they are just .... fine words.
Every quantitative analysis I've seem has racist attitudes as the strongest predictor of whether a person supported Trump. Yes, economics also has an effect, but in the studies I've seen, it's secondary.
You really ought to talk with Thomas Edsall before writing a column like this. He's not perfect, but at least he cites facts to support his opinions.
2
Trump promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as an infrastructure development plan. So what we really had was a campaign aimed at old southern Democrat before the Civil Rights Act: a racist progressive. That was all he needed in some states, the promise that he was NOT going to be an economic Republican while being a racist Republican. So in the end, it mostly boils down to race, whether you like it or not.
2
Relating liberal distaste for reactionary groups to the threatened use of state power against liberal groups is intellectually disingenuous. Pejoratives do not, in fact, count as political or legal threats. Political and legal threats are distinct entities with clear, bright lines around them. Or did you not hear "lock her up" chanted in Cleveland?
Why do you persist in this both-sides-ism, Mr. Douthat?
2
I am not unsympathetic to many of Mr. Doubtat's ideas here, particularly with regards to economic populism. There is more agreement between liberals and Trump voters on economic issues (particularly those of us who voted for Bernie Sanders) than the divisive nature of our politics allows either side to acknowledge.
But the Republican Party's marriage with racist, corporate, and authoritarian secular interests along with radical right Evangelicals obsessed with enshrining their anti-choice agenda and establishing their corrupted version of Christian values into national law makes agreement on economic issues unlikely to bridge the divide that decades of vitriolic, anti-liberal, anti-government, anti-tax propaganda has pushed on us.
Conservatism has mastered psychological projection, particularly as to accusations of class warfare and identity politics. Liberals are supposed to stop calling them on their racism, classism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia etc., in order to bridge the divisions that conservatives, themselves, ballooned out of all aproportion to decency.
My response to that? After you, conservatives. Repudiate your secular and radical Evangelical propaganda machine that promotes bigotry, ignorance, lies, and conspiracy theories in order to indoctrinate conservatives into the alternate reality bubble where despising liberalism and delegitimizing democracy and the rule of law came to look like patriotism.
You created this monster- its up to you to uncreate it.
3
As commenter Julia P notes, the suggested "path" for liberals at the end of this piece is a little hard to parse.
I think Ross said libs should try reaching out to Trump voters (how?), remind them that the GOP is picking their pockets (again/still?), and stop making elections about transgender bathrooms, gay-wedding cakes, and new, confusing "cultural appropriation" boundaries of what's not OK any more.
I agree with that last part. While there isn't a single Trump voter who said "I would have voted for Hillary except for the transgender bathroom thing," there probably ARE voters who stayed home (rather than vote D) because of that too-far-out social agenda. In the three crazy-close states from 2016, those (non-) votes really mattered.
1
I enjoyed this column, surprisingly. I do have two quibbles:
1. It keeps being said that a large part of the conservative coalition is tolerating “white-identitarian forays” to pursue their policy goals. When does this toleration become racism? I think this behavior is in itself racism.
2. It also keeps being said that the Democrats consider Trump White working class supporters “deplorable”. I’ve only heard Ms. Clinton say this. Is it fair to generalize that most Democrats feel this way?
1
Ross an excellent analysis until you made your own "identarian foray(s) for the sake of other ends (pro-life or pro-corporate tax cuts, depending) or else simply prefer identitarian nationalism to higher-minded forms of conservatism" by your comment on liberals of the West. Speaking as one of those liberals in the West religion, expressly Christian ones have been given the liberty to form their belief systems. They are also free from paying taxes. We western liberals do not feel that they are free to discriminate against their fellow Americans because of race, religion (Muslim) or sexual orientation. No we will not tolerate hate speech no matter how cleverly disguised in our midst.
1
Trump received "far more voters without a college degree (building on a primary campaign in which he likewise relied heavily on --working class votes-- relative to his Republican opponents)." Why is this always interpreted as "working class"? People who earn a college degree are working class. People who don't earn one are UNEDUCATED. You can just as well define uneducated people as easily manipulated, too easy to think divisively along ethnic and racial lines, and most likely to pander to idolatry, rather than the all-too-common need to define them as "working class."
3
Excuse me, snob, but I know many people who don't have college degrees, yet speak several foreign languages fluently, and know one or two programming languages, as well. How many foreign languages do you speak, btw?
You can't take a movement, break it down and drop its so-called parts into neat little buckets. The populism and the xenophobic hatred in Trump was and is a single ethos and a single message. To accept Trump you have to accept both. That's what Trump voters did. No amount of logical gyrations or finger pointing can change that.
1
Over the past generation that branch of progressives who were on the fringe circa 1992 now lead the movement- the ones who see the world in terms of variations of structuralism/post-structuralism, critical theory, leftover bits of sub-Marxism, etc. This worldview is now the mainstream, better or worse, and informs the thinking of millions who wouldn't put it in those terms. Given that, it is widely assumed that white people are structurally racist regardless of personal claims, no one else can be racist, all political claims in economics, crime, etc, are racially motivated, and so on. And all identity politics/tribalism is positive with that one exception. It is consequently impossible to escape the accusation of racism because it is baked in.
1
I can say in a few words what took you many: "Different people voted for Trump for different reasons." The racists (to oversimplify) still love him because he hasn't turned his back on them, and the ones who turned to him for reasons of economics are the ones who regret it now because they realize they made a deal with the devil. He's not following through on the economic agenda he proposed to help them. He's a Trojan Horse. He's destroying them. And their votes have allowed the racists to become a significant part of the public dialogue. So they should feel not only personal disappointment at not having helped themselves and their families, but guilt at conspiring to destroy the soul of a nation. However, your prescription is essential right--focus on economics, and downplay the social wedge issues that Trump wielded so effectively. Not that those issues aren't as important (and I violently disagree with your characterization of "cultural liberalism") but politics has been described as "the art of the possible" and it's impossible to win while the intolerant have such a loud voice. Politics is like sailing and equality is the wind. If the wind is strong the intolerants are able to push back hard and direct the ship of state where they want it to go.
Trump tapped into the fury that his core supporters--in different classes--feel in no longer automatically having the first and best places in line. Now they have to compete with the Blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, all the "others", they used to step on in order to get to their what they felt was their "rightful" place in line.
2
Trump won because the deplorables turned out to vote. He beat out his Republican rivals by insulting them. Unlike his rivals, he promised to bring back coal mining and other rust belt jobs; he promised to solve the opioid crisis; he promised to save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; he promised to build a wall along our entire southern border and have Mexico pay for it; he promised to renegotiate the trade agreements that allowed corporations to offshore their operations. The fact that so many Republican voters actually believed he would achieve these things is a testament to their naïveté and ignorance.
With his Birtherism, Trump brought the usual Republican dog whistles into the audible range. He demonized ethnic and religious minorities. He demonized the women who accused him of sexually harassment. He encouraged physical violence against protesters. He led chants of “Lock her up.” He demonized the press and the judicial system. He refused to recognize the validity of the electoral system in advance; it was valid only if he won.
Maybe—as Ross Douthat asserts—the typical Trump voter is not an overt racist. He and she are, nevertheless, overt deplorables.
3
When I look at those of my high school classmates who are avid Trump supporters, I see those who were mean and/or dumb in high school.
As far as "persecution" of "Christians" goes, I am a Christian, although of the mainline type, and I don't feel the least bit persecuted except by Evangelicals and fundamentalists who tell me that I'm not a true Christian because I don't hate the right people. A local public access preacher even condemned by parish by name because its bulletin proclaimed that "All are welcome," which according to this ranter was "the entire gay agenda."
When Muslim taxi drivers in Minneapolis refused to accept passengers who were carrying alcoholic beverages or accompanied by service dogs, the airport commission told them that no one would force them to drink alcohol or own dogs, but that they could not force their beliefs on non-Muslim passengers.
When a few Muslim supermarket cashiers refused to check out pork products, the store managers told them that nobody would force them to eat pork but that they could not force non-Muslims to abstain from pork.
Even Evangelical Christians can see the sense of those rulings, but they insist that everyone should follow THEIR beliefs about abortion, birth control, and homosexuality. When thwarted, their demagogues whine about "persecution."
3
Nothing new here. These same demographics have been shared by every Republican presidential candidate since RMN.
I'm glad you are here,Mr. Douthat, in the pages of the New York Times. I'm not brave enough to listen to Rush Limbaugh, as do some folks whose political persuasion I share, but I am happy to be able to think "along side of" what you write. Please keep writing.
So much hand wringing.
The core of it is anyone-but-them tribalism with a dash of thumb in your eye revenge against the 4th Estate and for whomever is imagined to be responsible for political correctness. The xenophobia and racism, naked stoked by the candidate, just added more gas and comfort to something already burning in those points of view. So no it's not a wholly racist movement but whatever doesn't hurt us makes us stronger right?
Right?
Trump, in the name of the Republican party, is defiling us. He has given full voice to every wanton or insane thought that crosses his putrid mind and has convinced this American that the ideals we once treasured are now merely 'talking points.'
And then you write this column which starts out with Dante but ends in the same sewer.
To you and other pundits who handicap everything within six, or four, or two year brackets inspecting Trump's putrescence (and Republican complicity) always winds up as an analysis of how to get re-elected.
I strongly suggest that what Trump has done is (and continues to do) may not matter as there will be little left of what we hold dear when he is finally gone.
Sometimes it isn't about the election, just about what is right.
2
I appreciate that Ross Douthat engages with liberals, and the skepticism he brings to leftist writing.
But columns like this are almost impossible to read.
"If I reduce everything to abstract pontifications and use lots of big words, I can poke holes in the purely abstract part of your construct."
Thanks Ross. That will make working class people feel better about their votes.
Religious liberty is NOT the liberty to act on your bigotry and deny serving somebody that you do not approve of their religion. If a gay couple shows up in your hotel, is none of your business what they do in the rented room. Discrimination against someone's religion is denying them their religious freedom. As always Ross is on the side of religious intolerance and against religious freedom, incredulously feigning standing up for religious freedom.
4
You perfectly illustrate Douthat's point, that many on the left are merely engaging in knee-jerk reductionism. What is your argument, other than "Nuh-uh"? Who is going to be persuaded by this? Of what use is it? (This goes for the people who "recommended" this comment, too.)
Fellow leftists, we've got to do a lot better if we're to have any hope of turning this thing around.
That's like saying not all slave holders were racist, some just liked the economic benefits of keeping black people in chains. Racist undermines everything Trump supporters feel. Economic uncertainty? Blame immigrants. Crime and drug abuse? Blame people of color? Loss of status? Blame women.
Also, perhaps not all republicans who voted for Trump are racist. But they were all willing to overlook his racism, which is effectively the same thing.
Finally, there is no denying that anyone who still supports Trump is racist. There's simply no other explanation, since his policies have consistently thrown populism under the bus.
2
Liberals are "against groups that they deem bigoted and backward." DEEM?
Would you say that some "deem" the hate speech the "president" retweeted today as racist and white nationalist? But whether it is or not is up for debate?
The sky is blue, the earth is round, and some Americans ARE bigoted and backward.
For the sake of argument, let's say Douthat is right: There are Trump voters who are "not racist" (even though they knowingly voted for sick, lying man-baby who ran on a platform of racial hate). There can be no debate that these racist-adjacent voters suffer from white fragility.
The task for liberals and Democrats now is to somehow have compassion for these people, and somehow get them to toughen up and accept the reality that INDEED, America is rife with White Supremacy. If we do the right thing, we will NOT pander to them; we will educate and elevate them to be better citizens.
69
Mr. Douthat, this morning, the banality that is our president sent out video tweets of Muslim violence in western countries. He did not take the time to confirm whether they were real or not, because reality is not a concern with this president. It is the images that matter and whom and what he is directing them to.
You are wrong Mr. Douthat. More wrong than you can imagine.
Since this inception of this country, we have always practiced exclusionary politics. While people in your party put the Founders on a god-like pedestal, they forget that full rights were only enjoyed by 6% of the US population and that 6% was white property owners.
This is our history and, over time, these rights were never freely given. Blood was drawn and blood is still drawn if we want to preserve those rights.
In point of fact, we still look for ways to practice this form of exclusionary politics. One need only look at what happened right after Supreme Court ruled on the Voting Rights Act to see this is so. There is no excuse to look for ways to suppress the vote and yet here we are, in 2017, still having the very same battles and arguments.
I, for one, have grown weary of these battles and ask myself if they are still worth having. Perhaps we are better off going our separate ways than to have these battles over and over again and tell ourselves that this time, we will get it right.
Let them have Trump and all that he represents and let us save ourselves before we become like them.
3
I cannot watch TV right now with the rush to raise taxes on the middle class and lower class (talk about economic anxiety!) across six days in the Senate. This is not sausage making but a feeding frenzy by the rich and corporations which is horrible to see. This is what Douthat's voters voted for. So they lose healthcare, have their taxes raised, explode the deficit, breath polluted air and drink polluted water, and protest that no, of course they are not racist (despite the mountain of evidence). None of the current policies have the support of the majority of Americans which doesn't matter to the GOP.
Voter suppression and Russian interference in the election helped give us the current unfit president. Diminished capacity is the phrase that Ross should have used instead of diminished absolutism. Or dimwit, as applied to Trump or to his voters.
It is clear segregation works in the interest of the power class, and why it has always been planned and subsidized by that group. To maintain alienation between groups, keep them separated physically, and economically. This fosters misunderstanding magnified by class-fueled prejudices, i.e. "we are obviously better than they are; just look how they live; they don't care about their homes and neighborhoods, etc."
This explains why the elites who directly control our government (it is no longer the people's) first cut taxes for themselves (they don't pay anywhere near the published rates, yet feel they pay too much), then cut education while increasing their investment in prison capacity. Is it not clear what their plan is by now? Their plan for poor whites and minorities alike, is not to help them to work their way up and out of poverty through education, but to leach and profit off of them by giving them welfare handouts and encouraging them to have children. All of that money goes right back into the corporate shareholders pockets.
The young women of poverty are useful to the elites, and will continue to be encouraged to have babies, but when the usefulness of the young men expires at age 18, they are discarded with no education to fall back on. Their choices are now minimum wage labor for life (not much better than prison), the military (not much better than prison), or prison. This is the ugly reality of America for tens of millions of its people today.
2
So welfare is magic money that flows from the meek sheeple to the mighty elite. But earned money has different "humors", not so easily flowing to those richies.
Brilliant insights! XD
Not enough space to elaborate, but yes, we all feed the machine; willingly, or unwillingly. Point is, we have the power but live our lives believing someone else does. Sad.
While it may be difficult to discern why Trump's supporters voted for him (racism or economics), it is pretty clear what Trump thinks their motivation was and is. All his economic populism (cheaper, better healthcare, tax cuts for the middle class paid for by taxes on the well to do, bringing jobs back to the US) has been thrown overboard. But all his proposals related to racism are going forward.
Trump obviously thinks that his supporters care more about race than economics.
4
This is excellent analysis except for a couple of things. One is the omission the prominent role of sexism and defamatory treatment of Hillary Clinton in Trump's campaign. The other consists of Douthat's cryptic reference to liberal denials of religious freedom to "deplorables."
Nice critiques of and complement to the estimated Atlantic articles referenced.
Good to see Douthat working with the broadly discernable acuity of which his is capable when he is not wrestling with his conservative Catholic co-religionists and their parochial enigma.
1
"What happened in 2016" you ask?
Well, that's easy.
Hillary Clinton.
She even wrote a book about it.
But Ross is right that "racial reductionism" is detrimental to understanding "our present predicament".
While racism is deeply systemic in the US, culminating with a form of neo-slavery today, cultivated and sustained by the prison industrial complex, it wasn't the driving force behind the election of Trump.
Tragic that so many in the US don't seem able to see that the problem is gross economic inequality in their country, regardless of race. But divide and rule still works well for the ruling class.
The Democrats' switch in focus from class to race and gender has segmented the working class from the common struggle. A people divided.
Identity politics at its core is mostly untenable and while it might treat the symptoms of disease in the short run it will always collapse under the weight of its internal inconsistencies.
It also seems that the white working class in America are the only group that the media feels it is acceptable to insult/denigrate, just like last year's anointed presidential candidate called them “irredeemable” and “deplorable.”
Only Hillary's cynical use of identity politics made Trump's pandering to angry white males possibly successful.
Only Hillary, giving a speech railing against inequality while wearing a $12,000 Armani jacket, made Trump's own gross privilege less offensive.
Racism didn't put Trump in the WH, Hillary and the corrupt Dem Party did
6
Ross Douthat's attempt to inject some balance and understanding of the complexities of voter (Republican) behavior is met in most of the comments here with liberal absolutism. It reminds me of Vietnam and of Harvard in the 1960s. Some wise wag at the time said that he would "rather be ruled by the first 30 names in the Cambridge telephone book than by the faculty of the college." My liberal friends have learned very little in the intervening years.
5
"That these paths are obvious does not make them easy to take."
It's not difficult to take that path. All that would be needed is to abolish plurality voting. Once voters are free to rate all candidates on the ballot, Republicans rejecting the Koch brothers agenda and Democrats rejecting the dictates of the PC-police will be free to run in a general election including all the Republicans and Democrats. Democratic voters would then be able to provide the margin for Koch-rejecting Republicans to soundly defeat the other Republicans just as Republican voters would provide the margin for PC-police rejecting Democrats to soundly defeat other Democrats.
I have my own take-aways from the last national election: (1) Democrats have NEVER gotten enthused about a candidate they already rejected in a previous Presidential election; (2) Pop culture celebrities always win against professionals. (This second point was learned here in California.)
We're almost through 2017. I don't want to read about 2016 any longer. I am thinking about 2018.
2
Californians came to their senses after too many failures by the incompetent pop-celebrity governor, and then elected a very capable administrator.
1
"... certain religious liberties"
The desire to impose one's religious belief on others, and to discriminate against others because of one's religious beliefs is not religious liberty.
Mr. Douthat should have ended the column at "God help me, I'm in that number."
2
There's no reason why it has to be either racism or economic discontent rather than a combination of the two. For the past 50 years, two things have been happening to the high school educated straight white working man in parallel. First, his cultural position as the standard of what is normal and right has been steadily eroded by the growing demand for racial, gender and sexual equality. At the same time, his real income has shrunk as he competes in the global labor market and as an increasing share of national income goes to return on capital rather than to wages and benefits. Trump promised, however speciously, to put an end to both trends and restore him to the position his father and grandfathers had.
1
Mr. Douthat, thank you for the fine rebuttal to the economic fatalism of Adam Serwer and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I have to give a shoutout, though, to another Atlantic writer, Peter Beinart, who's been making the case that the Democratic Party has lost its way on another economic issue, immigration, through a decade-long blurring of the line between legal and illegal immigration. I would add that the Democrats have been too beholden to big tech to do anything to rein in the H-1B visa program, which has been used not so much for its intended purpose of filling hard-to-find skills as to undercut American workers.
The GOP has been far more to blame than the Democrats for the economic decline of the heartland, and technology and an inevitable shift in the global balance of power are even more "at fault," but that shouldn't let the Dems off the hook and take the easy route of becoming the party of the cosmopolitan coastal bourgeoisie and people of color while occasionally throwing an unattainable bone like "Medicare for All."
3
After reading the last few paragraphs, where Mr. Douthat offers his suggestions on how to get out of this mess, I have to ask myself: Would the current news media even allow liberals and conservatives to reach common ground? Anger, bitterness, class envy, racial envy and so on are what sells newspapers. The media, as well as the politicians, have a big part to play in the divisiveness we're all experiencing. No matter what the Republicans did, I can't see the NY Times doing anything other than opposing it, and likewise, I can't see Fox news ever finding good in any Democratic initiative. The only way I see this media bias ever changing is if people stop patronizing divisive media outlets.
5
Seems to me the lesson is that the Democrats might want to rethink their strategy of blaming the country's majority for the ills of society.
Not only does the Democrat strategy irritate the majority, their rhetoric is exposed as empty to the minorities whom the Democrats continue to promise they will save, but don't.
5
Let me see if I understand what Ross is saying. Trump's supporters are not racialist because he lied about economic programs to help the working class. And in spite of the record of broken promises they still support him because he will allow them to discriminate against those "others".
Thus they are not bigots?
2
"[The pundits'] task, imposed by the refining power of divine love, is to wrestle together until they reach consensus on whether it was racism or economic grievances that drove so many American voters into the arms of Trump."
As Hobbes pointed out years ago, the act of reasoning itself leads to varying conclusions, because we all reason differently. Everyone thinks his or her own reason valid; anyone who disagrees plainly lacks both book smarts as well as nous. Permitting this reality, the objective the Almighty has set is an unachievable one. Pundits in purgatory are hopeless.
Tribalism is vital to any analysis, as is culture. Hard times and "racism" labored synergistically. If you ask the average person why he or she voted for Trump, or for Obama five years ago, they offer answers that are not correct -- by which I mean to say that they themselves don't know. People believe things for reasons they don't understand. It won't help much to ask Trump voters: Why?.
Coates is good at what he does, but what he does doesn't explain much. He's open about not feigning expertise in fields in which he lacks knowledge, but he then sets about doing exactly that. So many disagreements seem to stem from anthropological presuppositions about the nature of man. I find it odd that many leftists can recount a litany of crimes carried out by one group upon another, and yet end by implying or stating that the Oneness of humanity is both desirable and possible in a sort of multicultural dream.
2
Sadly, it’s true that many European Americans, whether they realize it or not, value their whiteness above sound policy. While the undertones of white nationalism in Trump’s policy were subtle, I believe they shaped his candidacy and won over a large number of votes. How else could you vote for someone who says undocumented immigrants are “rapists”, and “are bringing drugs and crime” (among dozens of other incidents)? It seems that this is what decided the split the white working class and working class people of color. Despite this, I still believe the main factor that won him the presidency was economic discontent. Of course, for many Trump supporters, it was the combination of these that drew them to vote for him. I can only hope we will eventually move beyond these ideas as a culture, but there is a long road ahead of us.
1
Trying to sort out what was in the minds of Trump supporters in the 2016 election is a futile task. But I think it’s a fair observation that voter frustration was widespread (unless you were a Hillary supporter) and that “change” was what Trump supporters – and Sanders supporters – were demanding. In some areas Trump and Sanders were on the same page in calling for change. But the DNC spent more time on sabotaging the Sanders campaign than on recognizing and addressing what people wanted. That left just one candidate calling for change – Donald Trump.
Now, did “change” mean cultural change, like re-confirmation of traditional racial and gender roles? While I don’t deny that some voters are sympathetic with these ideas, I think the sense of powerlessness, anxiety, and fear felt by many voters in the 2016 election was grounded in economic concerns – where’s my piece of the Dream? That economic frustration MANIFESTED for many in racial and misogynistic ways when Trump used those issues (aided by the DNC’s emphasis on identity politics) to explain economic distress. The bottom line is, that if you reasonably satisfy people’s economic needs – jobs, healthcare, education – it will temper much of the tendency for tribal (racial etc.) acting out.
But trying to untangle voter motivation in 2016 is beside the point. Clinton won by 3m votes. Why she isn’t in the White House (Electoral College, gerrymandering, voter restriction laws) would be a better topic for a column.
1
Step 1: cite classic literature
Step 2: acknowledge your opponent's argument (this is how we know you're an intellectual)
Step 3: in about paragraph 8 or 10 vaguely argue that Trump was a centrist who ran on Bernie's platform, therefore a broad caricature of his voters is incorrect.
Step 4: (this one is critical) grapple in no way with data, facts, argument of the other side. Instead reduce the opposing argument to a conclusion that seems extreme without saying what specific support for that conclusion you dispute.
Step 5: Lying whatboutism with zero evidentiary support as the final trump card. "But of course the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward."
It is sad that this is the best argument maker conservatives can muster.
1
"But of course the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward. It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech. . . "
This is a MASSIVE generalization. Could you provide at least a couple of specifics to support this sweeping statement?
Racism in the US is pervasive. In my life in the East, the Midwest and Texas, in visits to family in California and Oregon, there was no place racism didn't lurk, and lurk in quantity. There is racism against not just blacks but still against Jews, now against Muslims and sometimes still even Catholics. Against foreigners. But the racism against blacks is the most profound, woven firmly into the national character. It is exacerbated by other problems and it exacerbates them. Racism and a sense of economic injustice are twisted together today for many. Many folks wouldn't actually consciously act on their racism: thus blacks can ride in the front of buses, can eat in most restaurants (there was recently at least one in Mississippi where blacks still had to go to a window out back to pick up their orders). But when feelings are justified, encouraged, by a leader like Trump, the crowd will let them out and with relief vote with them.
1
Liberals and other less-than-friendly opponents can muse all they wish; they may assign any nefarious motives, conspiratorial cabals or billionaire co-opting their feverish, gobsmacked minds embrace to soothe their egos. We care not; they are noise, of the white and other hues type. We will continue to vote in monolithic fashion against any and all of their candidates in any precinct, locale or State. Count on it. Then count their numbers. What a nice day!
Reading the NYT Picks, it's amazing how conservatives and progressives spout such shortsighted or slanted versions of how we got here, just like Douthat does.
1. Dems are blamed for playing identity politics and having an ever growing list of litmus tests instead of inviting people (white working class) under the tent. Calling the promotion of a society that is open, free, and equal (i.e. making the U.S. what we claim it to be) identity politics is simply using what is now a far-right buzz word. Dems haven't said blue collar whites aren't welcome. Everyone is and everyone must accept that we're working towards a level playing field. Too many don't want or are afraid of that prospect.
2. More Americans voted for HRC. That important fact says a lot but too often is devalued for the sake of far less significant arguments.
3. Since when are issues like equal justice (or justice period), freedom of expression, and truly equal opportunity trivial issues, as one reader states? We should debate how we pursue these principles. Instead we tend to hear how it/we used to be. Well we've never had equal opportunity or a level playing field, regardless of how we imagine it used to be. Do we want more Americans to have a fair/equal chance at a better life or do we want to revive a past where a portion of the majority had opportunities but not many others (all the while ignoring how those opportunities were created)?
4. DJT has no policies. The win at all costs GOP is following his example.
1
All this punditry misses the forest for the trees. Everything about American politics has revolved around race since the founding -- slave vs. free, South vs. North, segregation and Jim Crow vs. integration, non-discrimination and affirmative action. Politically, the white South was Solid Democratic for 100 years with a phalanx of Dixiecrats protecting the Jim Crow system from any and all changes. With the national Democratic Party breaking over civil rights with its southern wing in 1964, Dixiecrats flooded into the Republican Party converting it, in the process, into the party devoted to protecting what was left of white supremacy. You didn't really believe all that racism just evaporated after hearing Dr. King speak? Whether this or that Trump position moved a few votes i Michigan mattered in the end because the race was so close, but where did MOST of Trump's support come from? 175 of his 306 electoral votes came from the South and the near South -- the Confederacy and a few Border States. And that's the core of the Republican Party's strength.
75
Overstatement x 1,000,000.
1
Of course there's a lot of racism in this country, but a lot of decent people suppress it because they know it's wrong. It's legitimate to ask whether Trump's "it's okay to be a racist" message had an effect.
Look, a lot of people just pull the lever they always pull. They were born Democrats or Republicans and they will die that way. It's only in the center that the message actually counts, and it's reasonable to ask which was the stronger factor--jobs or racism.
In the three critical states, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, Trump won by a mere 77,000 votes. Those are the people Ross is wondering about, not the deep South. Everybody pretty much knows how they feel about things.
Now, that said, it's not like one hundred percent of people in the deep South are racists. Plenty are not, they're just not in the majority. Yet. I see things slowly changing.
1
You didn't really believe all that racism just evaporated after hearing Dr. King speak?
People who grow up in a racist culture, from their family, through their community, through their region rarely change their worldview. Some do, but most are just people who accept what they are told. That is a terrific headwind with which to fight.
Let's put aside the reasons why people voted for Trump and acknowledge that Trump won as much because of the people who chose not to vote, as the people who voted for him. In the past year I have come across too many people proudly bragging about how they didn't vote because both Trump and Clinton were corrupt, because the DNC robbed Sanders of his fair chance, because they are protesting the system that offends their sense of moral superiority, ect...
This is also why the GOP has control of so many local and state governments. Democrats complain that Obama did not do enough to fulfill the vision of change he campaigned on in 2008. But conveniently ignore the severe losses suffered by the Dems in 2010. We lost control of the House, narrowed our majority in the senate further, and allowed the GOP to gain control of 26 state legislatures and 29 state governorships. Is it Obama's fault that only 82 million people turned out to vote, and apparently most of them voted republican.
Say you were starving and offered the choice of gruel or pea soup, neither of which you like, would you choose to continue starving, or would you find a way to stomach one or the other to survive?
3
The conclusion is spot on. Unfortunately the incentives in political process don't reward Ross' paths for both liberals and conservatives; namely because of the primary process in elections. My fantasy is that all primaries should be open primaries which would encourage candidates to have a message with a broader appeal instead of just appealing to their base. At that point Ross' policy remedies could become a reality.
The well-known was, I had been thinking, that the campaign strategists of Mr. Trump drastically subtracted, while earnestly copying the appeal of Mr. Sanders, the intellectual aspects of all which Mr. Sanders has. I did not know that there are still arguments regarding the consensus on this point. To positively make a communicative path between liberals and Trump supporters of normalcy (not extremists), a challenge lying is that both sides must admit a contradictory question about whether they oppose against one other is beneficial to each. As the writer indicates; liberals, for example if conceded, would lose their core-beliefs which have been diligently established over years. To a certain extent, that is true for the other side, too. Here, the meaning of concession is simple. The one must concede to persuade the other, even that may mean a partial loss of the reason of being.
What is that last recommendation for liberals? I have a PhD and can’t decipher that quagmire of a sentence.
3
Wow.
A lot of words.
Seems complicated.
It's really not.
Trump supporters represent two distinct groups.
One: Very wealthy people who stand to benefit from his scorced earth economic policies.
Two: people who find it difficult to exercise even a modicum of reasoned thought.
He could not have been more transparent about who he was, what he knew or didn't know and what he did in the course of running his businesses, minus the part about producing his tax returns which he obviously hid for what appear to be obvious reasons.
Yet 60 million people voted for him.
It's really enough to say that at least 60 million people in America are absolutely clueless. Let's face it, Trump's hand picked Secretary of State reduced it to its essence when he called Trump an (expletive deleted) moron.
8
No Ross, follow the real data. The racism, sexism, and xenophobia is what really put the racist in chief in office. No other explanation, given that wealthy white voters said yes to this evil buffoon. You are simply wrong, full of your white male privilege, and at this point who cares? Trying to reason with a hateful racist is not possible. Time to let those voters go and make real changes in 2018 and 2020 to sweep corrupt republicans out of office and real change makers including lots of women in. The more column inches devoted to this idiotic topic the more you waste time and air on a horrible racist moment in history. No lipstick will pretty up this pig.
4
It is easy to understand Trump as a knee-jerk racist. Coming from the Queens arriviste-Upper East Side echelons of the rich, racism is easy. WASPs almost unconsciously say “Good evening” to the doorman, blithely thinking that by doing so they are not racists, because they have just said, “Good evening” to the black doorman (knowing that the really rich have Irish servants, and thus they deny membership in the 1% - “Well, I don’t have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange”) and not being aware of or never having visited the same doorman’s apartment in East Harlem, a few subway stops up from 125th Street. These self-same WASPs go to bed at night, thinking, “Thank God, I’m not a Jew, living down there on Sutton Place. Industrious people, those Jews, some of my better managers.” Racism was not second nature to Trump? What listeners to Washington, DC’s program, The Tom Joyner Show would see as “hidden racism” would believe this?
3
You are describing a US that has not existed for about 80 years. And, btw, the left is much, much more antisemitic than the right these days. I would think you would know that, living in France.
If you think that the current tax reform moves the Trumpster closer to the economic center I have a flying pig who wants to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.
Hillary's use of the word "deplorable" legitimized the separation of the disinherited white working from the democratic party.
Trump's racism is self evident as is his infatuation with white nationalism and his inability to repudiate those who wave the Nazi flag which came from a country that incinerated Jewish people and killed American soldiers. That link is beyond the Trumpster's cognition.
It is less than a year till the next election. The Democrats have a change but must make a more compelling case for what they offer those left behind.
Vietnam Vet
2
You can't speak the truth in this country anymore. Clinton spoke the truth...Trump supporters are deplorable...and she lost the election because she spoke the truth. These Trump supporters fall into three groups: Powerhungry Machiavellians, fools that actually believeTrump's obvious lies and Cain's spawn (envious, muderous losers who want to drag everybody else down with them). They are despicable and beyond redemption...
4
Out of Dante's fantasies and into the dust bin of history for you, Douthat.
1
In essence, is the heart of darkness, more or less inherent in voters, more or less able to be corralled by peripheral economic inducements?
Or is the easier path to power manipulating enticements to our baser elements?
At risk is a further slide of the American experiment into deeper rings of hell.
It doesn’t take much thought to realize that in a country with over 300 million people that there are multiple motives for the people’s vote. Trump however is the first explicitly racist president in modern times and I am sure that this motivated many racists who would have normally stayed at home, to vote. This may have been the margin necessary to win in a few decisive states.
Now we are all stuck in hell until Republicans and Democrats can come to agreement which will take a lot longer than the life of our solar system.
2
58% of Whites voted for Trump. That is considered racist by many. In 2012, 93% of Blacks voted for Obama. That is not considered racist by most. What is the difference?
2
Great question! Now let's see if anyone answers it....
Douthat skims over the central flaw in the 2016 election; turn out.
Over confident in an HRC win, smug, snarky and unafraid of Trump (see Bernie bros, Jill Stein, Susan Sarandon, BLM)- the Obama turn out tuned out.
Of course there was an exploited Blacklash as well as the usual disgruntled vote against the past 8 years...despite a low unemployment and rising stock market.
The rust belt doldrums, opioid epidemic wage stagnation and gross redistribution of wealth upward (haunted by Tea Party astroturf local stoking) created a fervor for the bravado and dumb swagger of DJT. He used sleazy sales techniques to defeat senators in the primary and exploit Hillary's frump.
Turn out - not policy or economics- will be driven by emotion and as Trump's base is dwindling as his horrifying ineptitude, vulgarity, ignorance and - ultimately- 'bull in a china shop' strategy drives the snarks into the voting booth.
2018 will be a progressive Tee-ed Off Party.
2
Not bad but too white. You attack Coates for too broad a brush in painting whites as racists. I don’t have much use for Coates, but as a black man let me tell you that chickens don’t have a lot of time to distinguish the kind of Fox in the hen house.
1
No Ross, racists need not be KKK nightriders to vote for a man who calls Mexicans "rapists" and promotes banning Muslim immigration. Racists can rejoice reading ICE is targeting courts and schools to round up those "rapists" to achieve that "stepped-up immigration" you argue is "not the same thing": It is the same thing, Ross, with the force of the state behind it. And, arguing "liberals assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech" is just using the rhetorical tactics of bigots who don't want to bake a cake for gay weddings or, going back a bit, don't want blacks sitting at the lunch counter.
Like the blindered medieval clerics who revived Greek philosophy by working to refute it perhaps your flailing attempt to caricature Adam Serwer's excellent essay in The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-nationalists-de... will drive more to read it.
2
Perhaps you should read your own paper.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/us/politics/trump-anti-muslim-videos-...®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
1
White Identity Politics bad. But Black Identity Politics good, a sign of emerging pride in a once downtrodden race. But many White people were also historically downtrodden. Sorry, no sympathy for that heritage.
Once there was Traditional Jazz. Black and White musicians jamming together and defying the color laws that forced them to be separate. People of all races danced to the same kind of music, an amazing thing at the time.
This was the model for American social integration.
Then came Modern Jazz, a Black Art form that was arrogant and elitist. Where once there were Black and White people dancing, now there were only White hipsters sitting around smoking at coffee house tables. White intellectuals argued endlessly like religious scholars about which Modern Jazz musician was the greatest. Social drugs like alcohol and pot were superseded by heroin, cocaine and speed. Traditional Jazzers were called Uncle Toms.
The moral of the story: Liberals who opened the door to Black Power identity politics unwittingly set us up for the re-legitimization of White Power.
Bring back Traditional Jazz!
Sorry, Ross, Donald Trump is a racist and that is why he won. You can summon up Dante's Commedia all you like but any way you slice it, America gave Trump its most precious gift *because* he's white and *because* he's a racist. Any other economic reductionism on your part is a smoke screen. Shame on you.
2
Ross, you forget that the easiest expl
Just today Donald Trump retweet’s racist bigoted anti-Muslim video from an avowed white supremacist. Looks like pandering to the base to me.
1
Of course many trimp voters would be won over by a platform based on economic democracy. Even many of them who honestly admit to holding racists beliefs would do that.
White Supremacist racism, after all, has always been a means for short circuiting economic democracy by dividing the working class - which, by the way, includes everbody who couldn’t survive in dignity without a regular paycheck.
The rigged political system is, after all, nothing but a logical extension of a rigged economy which (more and more) is “legally owned” by an ever shrinking tiny (0.1%) bunch of irresponsible idiots.
1
A decent analysis by Douthat here.
1
Ross - what the heck are you doing? Whatever it is, stop it at once. Our nation is in peril and everything prior generations struggled and died for is being crushed or stolen. Your support of these men and their so called policies makes you a hater of monumental proportion because you know better. Shame on you and the Times for publishing you . . .
2
It appears that Douthat will have to remain in Purgatory awhile longer as he bends the facts to suit his argument. For instance he says "He’s right that Trump’s campaign trafficked in casual bigotry, played footsie with legit white supremacists, and stoked white suspicion of minorities. He’s right that Trump’s supporters tolerated this noxiousness even if they did not endorse or embrace it. " First, Douthat has no way of knowing whether Trump supporters embraced it or not but the fact that they "tolerated" makes them complicit and thereby embracing what Trump said. As for economic suffering and Trumps alignment with Sanders, the far left was more than willing to abandon the legitimate identity issues to preserve their own economic privilege which at heart is racism, misogyny and xenophobia all rolled into one. These 3 characteristics are all deeply embedded in the America psychic, it is part of America's DNA. Maybe Purgatory is to high level for anyone in America to expect Virgil had to get Dante out of hell first. Can't do that until we face our past, accept what we have done as a nation and make things right.
So why don't you leave the US and move to Africa? If I lived near you, believe me, I'd help you pack. I'd be happy to drive you to the airport...
Donald Trump's anti-Muslim tweets this morning reconfirm that he is a religious bigot. His tweets against black athletes prove he is a racist. Seeking to divide America along racial and religious lines SHOULD be an impeachable offense.
1
Thanks, Ross, for mentioning Alexander Stephens and not Judah P. Benjamin. Let's not call the Civil War a Zionist plot to perpetuate slavery. LoL - if one can.
OMG! Did I give another idea to Coates?
1
Your angry, racist uncle or the know-it-all llibrarian lady who steals your ball if it lands on her yard. That's all we had to choose from.
1
The NYT published the phrase "legit white supremacists"???!!!
Shameful.
3
The attempt to downplay the significance of racial grievance using the canard of economic anxiety is a time tested methodology to gain the support of the white electorate. Pitting white workers against newly emancipated slaves utilized the same tactics. Lydon Johnson's declarative that
"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." Says all you need to know about Trump and the GOP. This so called Tax reform is a glaring example.
The only reason you're indulging in the equivocation is because having a movement and a group you strongly identify with ("Conservatism") peppered with ideals so closely tied to white supremacy is just too much for you to stomach.
The Trump administration doesn't reflect nor give a care about the working class. Building a wall had nothing to do with economic. The Muslim ban wasn't about the economic woes of the "working man". Birtherism didn't play into the economic anxieties of the rust belt. Attacking NFL players for silent peaceful protest isn't identifying a problem to help coal miners in West Virginina. You all know what it is just admit it so we can all know where everyone stands.
The mainstream of the right wing expresses such vitriolic and hateful rhetoric towards people who look and think differently than they do that my feeling is to hell with those folks.
2
Poorly written and poorly edited. I couldn't even finish it.
No, Ross, the path for 'conservatism' is to renounce the Extra Virgin Snake Oil sales that comprise its intellectual, moral and economic core made possible by trickle-down stupidity and a carefully orchestrated collapse of the national IQ.
The Republican Party's depravity is only exceeded by the depravity of its willfully ignorant voters who thought a Birther Liar, TV celebrity and the President of a bankrupt, consumer fraud diploma mill would be a real problem solver.
The solution is to start embracing reality, not a 0.1%tax plan that the Kremlin would be proud of that also saws off the legs of healthcare and shreds Medicare, Medicaid and the safety net so millions can fatally fall over a Republican cliff.
And the path for liberalism is to remind all Americans that trickle-down is the Republican Party urinating on the 99% and that economies function better and smarter when their are more healthcare JOBS, more green energy JOBS, more infrastructure JOBS, more education JOBS, and more government JOBS to regulate the psychopathic Greed Over People that is giving the Walton family, the Kochs, the Trumps and the Mercer billionaires a multi-billion Russian Orthodox Christmas gift and everyone else a big, beautiful lump of wet coal to suck on.
And the other path for all Americans is to register AND vote against the decades of successful Republican voter suppression tactics and tyranny that have transmogrified America into a breakaway Russian-Republican satellite nation.
VOTE !
3
Much as Ross may look the otehr way, this isn't about trump, it's about the Republican Party.
Racism has always been a fact of American life, sometimes sneakily beneath the surface or, as it is now, very much on your face.
trump may have been the most overtly racist candidate in generations, but he was an effect, not a cause; he is the logical consequence of decades of Republican dog whistles and pandering to racism.
The GOP's highest point in my lifetime was when liberal Republicans (remember them?) joined Democrats in Congress to pass Johnson's Civil Rights act over the fierce opposition of southern Democrats. Since then it's been downhill all the way. The party purged its liberals and welcomed into its ranks segregationist Democrats. They say the confederacy lost the civil war, but here are its heirs trying to rule (not govern) our country, with their perfect figurehead in the White house.
3
"It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech; the idea that the pejoratives don’t carry any element of political and legal threat is silly."
It is interesting that Conservatives feel threatened by tough language from Liberals. Isn't that the whole point of free speech? And how is it that opposition to white young men, surrounded by heavily armed supporters and shouting "Jews will not replace us!" is threatening?
I'm trying to find an example of Conservative free speech that isn't an attempt to restrict the rights of another group that they don't like. Liberals have tried to persuade people, via the court system, that perhaps it would be okay to let people be who they are. Conservatives have reacted with cries that their speech (which, again, really seems to be aimed at keeping other people down) is being restricted. And, Conservatives readily admit they are willing to put any kind of person in power (see Trump and Moore) to ensure that the court system agrees with them against the groups they don't like.
But Liberals - I'm sorry, libtards, snowflakes, people whose "heads explode" because of Conservative antics - aren't nice enough and that's the problem. What?
122
Well said, thanks--
2
"I'm trying to find an example of Conservative free speech that isn't an attempt to restrict the rights of another group that they don't like."
The last administration went to court to force Catholic nuns to compensate their employees with contraceptives instead of cash. Not to restrict the rights of any of those employees to purchase all the contraceptives they wish. Just to force the nuns to do it for them. Pay attention.
1
This kinds of deceptions need to be knocked down, every time. I think that Gene is talking about Little Sisters of the Poor and the requirement that they fill out a form to opt-out of the contraception coverage mandate. No one ever denied the nuns their right to not use birth control. Completing the form simply made it possible for the Little Sister's health insurance company to cover the cost of birth control for employees who wanted it separately.
Which kind of proves my point. The right to contraception as a was established by the Supreme Court in 1965 (Griswold v Conn). Little Sisters of the Poor was attempting to restrict the rights of a group they don't like, in this case people who use birth control and work for the organization, by denying those people contraception as part of their insurance plan. This could make it too expensive for some of the employees to buy their own, effectively limiting their rights. The ACA sought to ensure that people have this right even as the Little Sisters of the Poor sought to diminish it.
3
Please NO! Not a discussion of American racism, ignorance, misogyny, and hucksterism parsed through the genius of Dante's Divina Commedia. Not even Purgatory, that dance of verse and theology. Please, no. Don't insert Donald, the leg, the liars, launderers, and Vlad into our last refuge of sublime despair or hope.
Borrow Tennessee Williams for your mendacious, lusty protagonists. Or go low. Something tawdry or tacky would do. Ask a friend with a taste for bad lit.
But if you doubt that racism, ignorance, or white nationalism were factors, you must have had a better Thanksgiving dinner with in-laws and their kin than we did.
3
Trump ran a cynical self serving campaign that was supported, in the end, by the GOP. He got them the White House, both houses in congress, and a majority of the governorships in the country. The GOP now has what it's wanted for decades: enough power and the money behind the power to repeal or drastically cut back on programs that benefit working Americans. The Democrats lost because their candidate and campaign didn't push the right buttons or convince enough voters in states that went for Trump that they had better answers to the problems working Americans are confronting.
Trump may have said he was for the working people. Now that he's in office he's shown, as has the GOP, precisely who he/they consider working Americans. Not immigrants, not 99% of us, and certainly not the people who supported them. Their working Americans are the DeVos's, the Walton family, the Koch Brothers; the uber rich who don't want to pay their fair share of the taxes, who want us to subsidize them.
Americans would do better to forgo identity politics and look at what we have in common. We all need jobs that pay enough so we can have decent lives, decent places to live, set aside money for the future, etc. We need leaders who work for us, not the upper crust. We need to upgrade and maintain our infrastructure. Those things are more important than skin color, religion, national origin, sexual preferences, etc. If we can't do that we don't deserve to name our country United States.
8
This is a compelling, flawed article. Mr. Douthat reaches a conclusion that liberals are restricting religious freedom. This is a direct reference to the recent Supreme Court Gay Rights decision versus people's religious rights to practice discrimination based on their beliefs.
When Lyndon Johnson passed Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, he told people around him that Democrats had just lost the South. During that same period the Courts had issued decisions that limited the rights of business' to refuse service.
Mr. Douthat points out, sort of, that civil rights decisions puts the law ahead of many Americans comfort zone. He's right. Then, as now, many Americans believed their rights (Often framed as religious rights), were being trampled on when their rights to segregate were limited. The Republican Southern Strategy was born.
Reagan later spread the Strategy into the Northeast, playing on resentments people held against both the wealthy, who controlled their lives and the minorities, who were crowding into their last bastions of superiority.
Donald Trump is sort of a mean Reagan without the smile and the pleasant asides.
Liberals have failed, as Mr. Douthat points out, by not pursuing great infrastructure projects that directly benefit the less educated Working Class. Clinton lost votes with her Deplorable comment the same way Romney did with his 47% remark. Liberals have failed by not creating a cost competitive healthcare system for all.
7
It was neither race nor class. We are a nation that has lost the ability to read with understanding and apply critical thought to the information we are given.
6
I totally agree with you. Many of the American People who voted for Trump voted against their own interests as well as the interests of their children. They relied on Twitter and Facebook for information. Twitter and Facebook were manipulatively used by Bannon and the Russians to incite fear, hatred and falsehoods selectively targeted at different communities throughout this country. Twitter and Facebook aided and abetted in this mess by mining data and selling it to the highest bidders. Still, people did not use their minds and they voted against their own interests. Privacy and Freedom of Speech are key components of any effective Democracy. But with Freedom comes Responsibility. It is going to get very ugly but the fact remains that Donald Trump did not win the Popular Vote, not by a long shot. Americans, especially older and younger Americans who have been thrown under the bus to serve the upper 1% with offshore bank accounts will remain strong and many who who were "gamed" or "Trumped" by Bannon and the Oligarchy will wake up. Will it be in time to save this country? Only Time will tell.
1
Yet another attempt to explain 2016. There are as many theories as there are pundits. My informal poll of friends, some educated, some not, suggests that there is no one explanation. Fear of the "other", hatred of Hilary, economic inequality, Trump's celebrity, attraction to an authoritarian leader and a desire to shake up the status quo, regardless of the consequences, all contributed to Trump's victory.
The first friend I heard endorse Trump said, "he's just saying what lots of people are thinking but are afraid to say..." and most people aren't afraid to talk about the economy....
5
Douthat writes that "many of Trump's supporters" may "simply prefer white identitarian nationalism to higher-minded forms of conservatism." Is he saying that "white identitarian nationalism" is just a lower-form() of conservatism" but, nevertheless, a "form() of conservatism"?
Douthat also writes that "(i)t's increasingly common for liberals to assume" that Trumpians "don't qualify" for certain First Amendment rights. I've never heard or seen a mainstream "liberal" organization decry First Amendment rights for anyone. He is conflating actions by some individuals on some college campuses to 25% of the electorate. Talk about generalizations!
9
What about all the liberal objections to the phrase "It's ok to be white"? Or to the phrase "All Lives Matter"? Those are just words, but liberals want them outlawed.
Mitch McConnell won the 2016 presidential election for the Republican nominee. It didn't matter who the final nominee was in the end and that's obvious given who won. McConnell's refusal to even vote on president Obama's pick for a Supreme Court justice won the election for the Republicans. Everyone knew that the next president would get to choose. Conservatives wanted that choice and they voted for it and won it.
The current president is an exact opposite of Mr. Obama and his sole accomplishments are his picks for the Supreme and federal courts. That seems to be fine with republicans.
1
I've had many a discussion with my millennial son about the right of everybody to free speech, particularly on campus.
But you can't compare that attitude with what evangelicals pretend of the country. They want their religion hardwired in our laws, and that is against the idea of what this country is all about.
The worst part is that truly believe that they do not want to achieve that goal due to spirituality, but rather to avoid temptation, to not have to worry too much about (or spend too much time) on how they raise their offspring and in not having to be respectful of other people's beliefs.
4
Not too bad. I can forgive mistakes and urge you to keep at it. The country needs all the ideas, constructively expressed, that it can get.
Mr. Douthat practices the same reductivism that he accuses the left of. Not surprising since redirection has been a primary tool of his cohort for decades. He deftly redirects the lies of the President from also being the practice of his cohort. They accepted the President's lies in order to excuse their vote. They say, "I did not vote because of white identity, I voted for economic change". After the President was elected and his bigotry and bias clearly supported and crowned, they then turned to the economic argument. Their turn has not been for equality of opportunity, or even for "listening to" Mr. Douthat recommends to the Democrats, but to the "take from them and give to us". Their disappointment is that the reality is "take from them and give to those above us". Mr. Douthat's cohort will be satisfied with just the "take from them" as he seems to be. Then again, he is a apparently a mainstream Republican/Conservative, just as the President is acting and so quite happy with the outcome. But, as even Saint Reagan found out, there will be a price to pay and even bigger this time. Not for them, but by everyone else including Mr. Douthat. What is the need for Republican pundits when only mouthpieces will be required?
1
First off, her comment very clearly referenced the isms as deplorable. Secondly, she was saying that by no means all supporters were driven by those deplorable emotions. But the press did not report it for a reason all three of you men still refuse to focus on-sexism.
The bias against Clinton, the refusal to cover her fairly or her comments in the context of what she actually said was endemic. The narratives of the campaign were written often by by men who we now discover were sexual abusers themselves, Halpern, Lauer, Thrush etc. The men in the race against her had questionable views of women. Trump is obvious but Sanders views women's issues as mere identity politics and has written (in his thirties) that some women fantasize about rape and that girls as young as 13 should have sex, freed of their prudish mother's control (not Dad's note, it's never a man's fault). Views that were never held up to scrutiny.
Plus of course she's the first woman candidate ever. EVER. But you three men are arguing over everything but sexism. I'm not convinced any of you are truly prepared to be honest about this election.
8
I cannot believe we're still discussing this. Clearly it was, and continues to be, racism that put Trump in the White House, and keeps his voters in line. There is no evidence supporting any other point of view. Can we just accept that at least 40 million Americans are racist?
10
I refer you to the videos of Muslim bad behavior retweeted by Trump and reported by the Times as I was reading this op ed piece by Douthat. What kind of president posts this kind of inflammatory stuff!?
As to class v race: I have a white relative who has a black daughter in law yet posts nonsense chiding blacks from sources with confederate banners. This cousin also posted a missive about immigrants being like birds who are not grateful for your bird feeder but foul the surroundings. She is by the way the granddaughter of immigrants.
You bet it’s about race and identity.
12
Yes, a relative--born and raised in a rural area and now living in the farthest exurban reaches of the Twin Cities-- unfriended me on Facebook after I wrote a post defending Black Lives Matter.
At least, that's what I assume, since her posts disappeared around then, and when I looked at her page, I saw that one of her "liked" pages was one on which a black conservative goes on and on about how there is no racism and black people just need to get their act together.
Let’s not focus on every White person that voted for Donald Trump. I do believe racism and misogyny were factors but let’s assume it was all about economic insecurity and anger at the establishment. Trump voters made one action, they voted for him on one day. Let’s take that one action off the table.
Let’s focus on every White Person that’s still supporting him in 2018 after:
*Lying that Obama wired-tapped him
*Saying some Nazi’s are very fine people
*Feuds With Black Athletes
*Threatening to jail journalist
*Tweeting about kicking out Transgendered folks out the military
*Asking April Ryan to set up a meeting with the Black Congressional Caucus
*The documented and record number of presidential and administration LIES
*Belittling his own cabinet and party members
*Not building a wall
*Trying to pass a healthcare bill that would do the opposite that he promised
*Lying about voter fraud & his commission on voter fraud is a ruse to disenfranchise more voters
*Getting out the Paris Accord deal that the rest of the world signed up for
*Emolument Clause violations
*Golfing more than every American Presidents ever
*Supporting Roy Moore
*ALL THE RUSSIA STUFF
Even if you don’t want to call Trump Supporters racists, sexist, Anti-Semitic, or Anti-LBTQ, how can you call them Patriots after all of this?
14
Here's a simple fact for you, Ross: without the enthusiastic support of racists because of his strong appeal to their racism, Trump would not have won a single primary. What else could possibly matter?
14
Coates and others who see the world sole through shaded glasses are doing the poor and wage-earners a real disservice. One wonders how a country that elected - and re-elected - a (self-identified) Black President suddenly became so "racist." Liberals who want to find fault will never look into a mirror: the Democratic Party had turned its back on working people of all races and found a role as advocate for the privileges of educated professionals and other "Dream Hoarders."
After the 2012 election, the Republicans supposedly were on the ropes due to policies and demographics that were against them. Suddenly in 2016, it's the Democrats who are in disarray. What happened? They "chose" a candidate who lost the nomination in 2008 to a largely unknown recently elected junior US Senator. She rigged the nomination process in 2016 and proceeded to make the same errors that were made in 2008: that she was entitled to be POTUS because she is a woman, it was the turn for a woman and no American woman was better known than her. She really offered nothing to the great majority of voters other than "it's time for me" and a smattering of position changes as she saw support grow for those of Sanders.
What did she offer Blacks, other than photo ops with Black "leaders?" Keep the Obama "legacy?" What legacy? Obamacare (not a Black issue), Libya, Syria, wage stagnation, coddling Wall Street?
Many Black voters stayed at home - because they have family among the jailed "super-predators?"
6
You mean coddling Wall Street by raising taxes on the 1%, passing Dodd-Frank and establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Republicans are determined to destroy?
1
Mr Douthat, please spare us the verbiage. The simple truth is that the White "petit-bougeois" of this country were sold a bill a of goods by a skilled huckster. A showman, who leases rooms in his homes, and sports a yellow comb-over.
Caveat Emptor, comes to mind as I try to figure out how to set up some S-Corps, LPs or maybe an LLc. Therein, I can lower my tax bill along with the President and his Goldman Bankers...
5
The rule:
Whenever someone says 'it's not about X," it's exclusively about X.
White working-class uninformed animus toward racial minorities, specifically African-Americans, couldn't be more obvious.
The thug that is president harnessed that dumb contempt -- first by baselessly questioning President Obama's nationality, and then by running a contemptible presidential campaign that smeared, variously, African-Americans, Mexicans, and Muslims -- and rode it to the White House he daily besmirches. That is all there is to that.
Douthat appears to be a disciple of one Charles L. Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, who has the Bellman say, in "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876), "What I tell you three times is true."
9
There is only one multicolored multiethnic biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit surviving modern human race species that began in Africa 300,000+ years ago. But 2-5% of European and Asian DNA has extinct Neanderthal and Denovisan traces. There is none in African DNA.
What we call "race" aka color is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at altitudes and latitudes. Primarily related to producing Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations.
What we call race is a malign white supremacist male American socioeconomic political educational historical myth meant to legally and morally justify enslaving Africans and making Africans separate and unequal.
My DNA is part white European, part black African, part brown Native and part yellow Asian. My ancestors were from England, Ireland, Spain, Nigeria, Mali, Mexico and China. And they roamed Asia for millennia before Europe. My maternal mitochondria line is linked to genetic "Eve" 180-200,000 years ago. In America this heritage makes me all and only black African American by one-drop historical convention.
When asked my race, I always say human. When asked my class, I always claim to have plenty.
See "The Emperors New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium"; "The Race Myth: Why We Pretend That Race Exists in America" Joseph L. Graves; "Dog-Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class" Ian Haney Lopez.
6
What a wonderful reply and your DNA is impressive and I am so glad you shared this information with us. (I have a DNA testing kit that needs to be sent in to the Ancestry.com lab. I have noticed that many people in this disconnected world are seeking to connect on the most basic levels. That signifies hope to me for true integration of people.)
Through basic science I learned a long time ago about skin pigmentation and the evolutionary response, long term, to those living in specific planetary environments, in this case equatorial Africa, or the origins of mankind. We are all the people of planet earth and that should unite us on a human scale as well as a global scale, but it doesn't more often than not.
Sadly though when it comes to racism you can't confuse the stubbornly ignorant with facts. They do not want to learn them.
2
@ Blackmamba Il - Your comment and mine just got accepted simultaneously 36 minutes ago in Times Speak. Mine was actually accepted earlier but with a bad URL - happens often. The correct URL is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/opinion/donald-trump-2016-election.htm...
If you see this before comments close would you take a look. I argue that the USCB system plays into the hands of the neo-Nazis and their Nordic counterparts NMR, Nazis to the core, all believing they are in a genetically distinct master race. I know you like to give readers the lesson they so clearly need but I think it is time to argue strongly against NYT belief in "races".
I refiled a comment since my real one had not appeared and there I add Race = Human with maybe 2% Neanderthal. I like your addition - class = plenty.
Larry L.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Thanks for the books and if you have not read Thomas Chatterton Williams on October 6 here in the Times, I recommend it - he takes on Ta Nehisi Coates.
2
@Larry Lundgren
Hey brother, I hope that you are healthy and happy.
My Dakota African American female cousin has a Danish Viking father for their Dakota Viking son. He has been enrolled in both ethnic groups.
I am 0.8 % Neanderthal.
1
No demographic group—including white Americans-- enjoys being told they are an impediment. During the 2016 election, Democratic candidates celebrated demographic studies they falsely said show white Americans will soon no longer be the nation’s racial majority. They gloated over how wonderful America will be once whites are no longer in charge. But according to the Census Bureau, America was 76.9 percent white in 2016, and many were suspicious of claims that racial and cultural transformation wrought by refugees from failed societies would be wondrously beneficial. What were Democrats thinking?
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045216
2
No candidate ever said that.
Democrats were supposed to have unshakable majorities. Instead of relying on a handful of “blue wall” states in the upper Midwest to preserve Democrats’ electoral college advantage, the party was supposed to expand into territory once held by Republicans. Among Democrats, it became common wisdom that a “rising American electorate” of nonwhite voters, millennials and single women would mean long-term Democratic majorities. But since the halcyon days of 2009, Democrats have lost one-fifth of their Senate seats, one-quarter of their House seats, nearly half of their governors and more than half of the state legislative bodies they once controlled. The Trump win was the final, not the first, indignity."--Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-demographics-werent--and-won...
What trash you write, for the last 50 years America has seen the dems and repubs tell us what they are going to do for us. What really happened is what they DID to us, they sent our jobs out of the country, they ran up $20 trillion in debt, they play the tax game dems hike repubs cut and in the end we get tax hikes, they sent our kids to war. In the mean time the dems and repubs went to their parties in DC, while our kids were killed in war, our taxes were hiked and jobs went overseas. These people will leave with pensions and get jobs making really big BUCKS and we get the bill in the form of paying off the debt and dead kids.
2
Ross, I am going once again to ask you or somebody who writes these columns that in Times language are "race-related" to go back to basics, just once.
You cite Ta-Nehisi Coates but you miss a new man on the block
THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS who on October 6, 2017 gave us, "How Ta-Nehisi Coates Gives Whiteness Power"
The total commitment of almost all Times writers and apparently a majority of Times comment writers to a belief in the existence of genetically distinct races plays right into the hands of neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
Their entire approach is built on that belief: "We, self-selected white Americans, come from a genetically superior race that was established in Europe. We and our Swedish counterparts want to purge our countries of people who do not belong to the genetically superior race, as we define that race."
Somebody must take that first step. Declare that the neo Nazis and white nationalists build their movement on a false foundation. End classification by "race".
That somebody might first consult with Svante Pääbo and recent Times contributor Sara Tishkoff, a geneticist seen by a Times Pick and most recommended commenter as not knowing what she was talking about.
Do you want to be the first Ross? Think about it. And which comment reader today will be the first to accept the challenge?
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com (Gmail there)
Dual citizen US SE
3
Right on!
Coates is no more a biological scientist than is William "Skip" Gates. Coates argues the socioeconomic political educational historical American definition of "race" aka color that folds and inextricably ties black caste and class together .
Both my black and white American brothers and sisters have problems with abandoning their color aka race. Such is life.
1
I have an uncle who turned 93 years old this past July. He had the misfortune to be black while wearing an American military uniform at the Battle of Iwo Jima fighting to defend separate and unequal American Jim Crow. He refuses to talk. My grandmother said that she knew the boy who went to war but did not understand nor recognize the man who returned.
1
Its propaganda, stupid.
The same marketing that targets 10 yr old girls for AK47 classes is at work in the electorate. A 30 yr disinformation campaign, where even today, the tax cut for the rich is soft pedaled by 97% of the media. Remember, Shear hannity reachers 300% more viewers than read the entire NYT. The Sinclair Broadcast Group, that owns 72% of all broadcast stations in the US, many of whom are NOT Fox affiliates, mandates right wing talking points to be distributed throughout the US. The National Enquirer at the grocery store supports Trump every time. The lobbyists are overwhelmingly bought by the very rich. There are bots and trolls on the internet in every forum, making sure the right Right wing message is massaged.
A plutocracy, a kakistocracy-- our country has been bought.
3
The sinners in Dante's Inferno were eternally damned because they had embodied their sins, emotionally and intellectually. Thoughtful conservatives like Ross Douthat and David Brooks maintain a belief in logical persuasion at a time when shared facts have become optional and beliefs are premised on feelings, but the merits of conservative thought and policy, so well articulated by Messieurs Brooks and Douthat over the years, have long been subsumed by the other-creating political calculations of the GOP. It is not merely ironic that Republicans now have a "reality" show star at the head of their party. A President Trump shows us that they, like Dante's eternally dammed sinners, now completely embody their sins.
4
White middle class voters are mostly not racist in the conventional sense. That is, few Americans believe that other races are inherently inferior to whites. However, many whites are resentful of what they see as favorable treatment by the government toward non-whites, at the expense of themselves. For these people, it matters little about the truth of the argument. It's the belief that matters.
Lower skilled whites sees immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, as unwanted competition. Trump's promise to get "them" out of the country resonates. The same thinking applies to any form of affirmative action. The untrue myth that it is mostly non-whites who take food stamps and welfare forms another part of the belief system.
You can decide whether the angst of whites who are losing economically is racist or not. Meanwhile Trump will continue to encourage racism with "People who march with Nazis are good people" and calling Warren Pocahontas while pretending to honor the Navajo Code Talkers.
4
@ Boston Barry from Boston Larry (actually Seekonk) - BB there are no races and you can read why in Blackmamba's and my comments all clustered here at 36 minutes ago.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
And just today the tweeter-in-chief re-broadcast a British right wing nationalist extremist convicted of hate crimes and physical assault against a British Muslim woman. So, is Trump really not a fundamental racist? I do not think you can support this man without that being OK with you.
7
The question I ask is 'Would Trump have won the electoral college if he was a woman?' I think not. The role of sexism, by women and men, is rarely mentioned in these pieces. That would be something worth reading about.
7
The white working class is kaput. It's not going to exist much longer. Self-driving trucks will deliver packages containing items pulled from shelves by robots and restocked by robots. Yet, due to the way our election system is structured, we're letting the very people replaced by this technology choose who leads us and, in the process, try to drag down those of us who are smart, productive, and know how to work in the new economy instead of just whining that our coal jobs are gone.
4
Maybe “the white working class” is doomed, as you say.
If so, the non-white working class is similarly doomed.
That adds up to nearly half of all humans who live in the USA.
What should be done with folks who are no longer relevant to what form of labor remains?
Should we educate or re-educate that national resource?
An approach that will in turn create a balanced American economy with enough taxpayers to fund a better nation?
Or should we leave 150 million women, men and children to die in the filthy streets of what will become the ramshackle, decrepit infrastructures of that near future USA?
If so, we can expect those unfortunate folks to react the same way that the lower classes of France did in the 18th Century.
And they will exact the same revenge against those who subjugated and neglected them.
1
Voters vote mostly on emotions, not logic. Candidate X makes them feel better than Candidate Y. Personality makes more of a difference than any set of policies. Hillary has lost twice to two men who made large parts of of the public feel better about the country and themselves... and they voted their feelings.
6
The writer is concerned about the reductionist viewpoint that Trump won because of racism.
Allow me to offer some additional reductionism: the left shuts down conservatives quickly and easily with the charge of racism. It continues to be effective. There’s not much else to analyze.
2
Generally, people are more generous and tolerant when all of their needs are being satisfied and they are confident that their circumstances are secure. The intensity and popularly shared attitudes towards race was much greater when the Civil Rights Laws were passed than now but everyone was better off and were optimistic about the future. When people become insecure, the worst in them will come out and so their prejudices and resentments which suddenly matter more to them.
2
It is wholly unproductive to continue micro analysis of whatever it was that caused 62 million American citizens to vote a reality TV host and proven serial liar into our highest political office.
The result may be painful at present, but it is water gone under the bridge.
It is much more relevant to analyze why 43 million Americans that were registered to vote chose not to participate in that contest.
The cornerstone of this Republic demands (not asks) that We, The People are charged with the responsibility to keep our form of democracy intact via our individual vote.
It is patently ridiculous for America to waste the lives and blood of our military - as well as trillions of our national treasury dollars - attempting to enforce democracy in far flung lands if we cannot do that ourselves.
5
It is sad to read and listen to so many learned men and women discuss terminology that no longer has any meaning.
"liberal" came to mean something during the Age after WW2....the ascension of "liberal democracy"....the Golden Age of Advanced Industrial Nations. The UN was created by the USA to be our "laboratory for Democracy(more acurately..."liberal democracy")...... in a related definition....republicans often proudly touted the "liberal" label...as the term implied participation in the advancement of Modern Democracy. Democrats were actually slow to pick up the mantra, as the main role of the Democrat Party has always been...and continues to be....defense of the old line Status Quo. But by the 1960s Civil Rights Era....the Democrats were catching on.
Sometime in the 1980s...the world began morphing into something completely different. The Industrial Base collapsed. Unions were no longer fighting for advancement, instead they were fighting for preservation......hardly liberal at all. Places once thought of as backward "third world" hovels, were begining to challenge US dominance in World Trade. Computer technology spread across the Globe.....and we forgot all about the future.
By the year 2000, it was obvious...though our "liberal" leaders continued to deny it......the Industrial Era was finished and we were struggling to figure out how the USA would prosper and forge ahead in the new Age of Global Electronic Commerce.
The "liberals" remain mired in a recent past.
As if to prove Ross Douthat right, the WSJ today reports that a lone senator jumped to Trump's defense last month when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacked the Administration's plan to rewrite NAFTA.
The senator is a Democrat.
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said, "Any trade proposal that makes international corporations nervous is a good sign that it's moving in the right direction for workers."
What do you call progressives who insist on endlessly deluding themselves about why Trump is in the White House?
Losers.
4
What Trump said during the campaign is UTTERLY irrelevant to his “mission” (I use the word loosely because he doesn’t have a mission). He didn’t believe much of it and certainly abandoned the sentiments when he got into office.
You miss the obvious point that lower class whites without a college degree believe they are a good rung or two higher up the ladder than they actually are. Just because they are White. Those promised doors will open to them some day. Because they are White. They’ll grab the brass ring some day. Because they are White.
This self-delusion is just one problem bred by the noxious notion of American Exceptionalism. Which is White Exceptionalism.
And these people will protect their perceived enhanced chance for a way up the ladder by giving fealty to whatever king will lead the charge. Kartoon King Donald.
They’ve already missed the boat. And Donald will leave them behind as he leaves behind all the people who trusted his good word in the past; just ask the bondholders and contractors he left in the dust.
What these voters wanted was NOT “something else from him BESIDES just white identity politics and a repudiation of the first black president”, but exactly THAT. It would mean American Exceptionalism = White Exceptionalism. They could sleep at night. They still had a chance.
The way to defeat this White Exceptionalism class is to outvote them. Let’s get on with it.
2
"Trump explicitly and consistently tried to move the Republican Party’s economic agenda toward the center or even toward the left..."
He did nothing of the kind. He spouted what he thought people wanted to hear - which oddly enough included some things that liberals espouse, then reversed course immediately after winning and became perfectly willing to sign whatever "classically Republican" trash Ryan and McConnell throw at him.
Trump is not a Republican, just ask any quintessential Republican who is not in office with their finger in the air. If he has an ideology it is capitalism, as unconstrained by considerations of the little people (his supporters) as possible.
4
At the end of paragraph 11, Ross posits that populist promises allowed Trump to win the white working class vote. Then he starts paragraph 12 by saying that "trends in public opinion since the election have tended to confirm this point." However, the second sentence says that "Since entering the White House, Trump has mostly dropped his campaign populism, [...] while relying on tribal and racial and culture-war appeals to hold his base." So how does the success of his race-based strategy while in office "confirm this point" that his campaign success was NOT based on a race-based strategy, but, in large part, on populist economics? The logic doesn't hold.
6
With you all the way in terms of let's avoid reductionism as we think about this matter. Unquestionably, there were strong economic reasons behind many votes cast for Trump. And many people were sick and tired of politics as usual, and turned to the one candidate who clearly wasn't a professional pol. But let me add this: Unlike you, I live among working class and petit-bourgeois whites. None of them are overtly racist in my presence, and I'm sure some of them are as colorblind as a person can be. But demographic unease and dislike for nonwhite, non-Christian folks is a real and strong undercurrent in their thinking and their lives. Race alone doesn't explain Trump, but the racial component to his appeal is there and should not be downplayed.
5
The fatal flaw in Douthat's reasoning is that voters listened at all to Trump after his racially tinged diatribes. If a candidate had led off their campaign with "The Eastern Europeans are liars, thieves, rapists, and some of which I'm sure are good people" the response shouldn't be to say "hmm, I wonder what their economic policy is". That Douthat here can easily compartmentalize racism reenforces Serwers point.
4
A class war stratified along racial divides, and nurtured by the 1% (and their political sucklings) for its ability to distract from their robberies. How's that?
4
I found Serwer's article compelling, although no one look at the world ever explains it all. I live about 45 miles from Alexander Stephens' home and know the depth and breadth of irrational hatred and the fear it breeds. With Stephens' and his ilk in the 19th Century, race wasn't so much a hatred as it was profit. Since my ancestors stepped off the Mayflower, race and profit have often entwined.
This is Trump's M.O. and always has been, from his days working with his father and discriminating in his apartment buildings to his claims that Amer-Indians who owned casinos in Connecticut "didn't look like Indians," to many of his current ramblings. The bonds between money and race in America can't be cut until we reckon with the depths of our history. Your 9th paragraph may explain those Obama voters who turned to Trump, but it doesn't explain those working class voters who voted for Trump but who would never have voted for Obama. Our history does explain them. Whether you can acknowledge this fact doesn't negate it.
On a related point, I found your 18th paragraph merely absurd. In my reading of and listening to the opinions of conservatives, I cannot think of one instance where a conservative showed any "imaginative sympathy for people who feel threatened by [conservatism] in power." Then again, I have never known a conservative willing to question the rectitude of basic conservative beliefs, even as they demand liberals question the rectitude of basic conservative beliefs.
1
That end of last sentence should have read, "even as they demand liberals question the rectitude of basic liberal beliefs."
i would agree w/ serwer. trump has done nothing along populist/economic lines to improve the plight of his voters and yet they continue to support him because of his racist, nationalistic ravings.
7
The self-righteous new left is the mirror image of Jerry Falwell's moral majority in the 80s. I have pretty much the same feelings about both groups and arguments, repulsion. Trump exploited this, along with all kinds of other fears including racist fears. Meanwhile Sanders was exploiting economic fears equally with the enemy being the 1%, while Clinton coddled the new Puritans of moral justice and rode the fence on the elite bashing. The only reason white supremacist is a topic of conversation now is because regular old racist doesn't do the trick anymore, like the Nazi the Times controversially profiled a couple days ago said, "yeah, so what?". This is where we are.
4
Too many words to come to a pointless conclusion. What percentage of racism, Ross, do you find insignificant? Economic uncertainty exists during every election, but the present one was epically historic in the degree that racism drove the outcome. This shades of grey thinking is insulting to those who suffer from this racist president every day.
5
Those of those of the electorate who are persuadable have already been persuaded—the 10% of the orininal 45% who voted for Trump. The remaining 35% will not be persuaded until America is again a lilly-white Anglo Saxon paradise. That is, never.
5
Arguing for complexity over simple-mindedness is legitimate, but Douthat's case on behalf of benign, non-racist motivations is compromised by two issues.
First, the claim that Trump supporters who voted on standard GOP policies are innocent of racism because they simply looked away from Trump's naked bigotry is specious. These "good people" have been abetted the GOP's drift into white nationalism for decades by ignoring the dog whistles, slanders, and trashy candidates to support their Party regardless.
Second, Douthat cannot loosen his grip on his social issues agenda or even recognize that it deprives other Americans of freedom. To wit, his demand that the phony Christians of the Right be allowed to discriminate against LGBT people, and his personal will to interfere in the healthcare and reproductive lives of all American women. This isn't an obvious path out of any predicament.
4
It is sadly telling that a conservative columnist has to tell liberals to be easier on the white working class. There was a time....
6
Brilliant..............I remember that time!
The usual polemic, starting an essay with a quote from a writer few Trump voters have read. It provides the illusion of legitimacy so RD can write this puerile rant:
“It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech; the idea that the pejoratives don’t carry any element of political and legal threat is silly.”
Really? If you and Dante say so.......
2
Need I point out that economic depression brings out the bigot? We need not look simply to pre-Nazi Germany: look at any nation state where genocide takes place, and you will find one group blaming the other for their (largely economic) troubles, and, given the power, violently doing something about it.
1
Persuadable? Attacks against their health care, their freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to vote, removal of tax cuts for the middle class in order to give this money to billion and trillion dollar industries, removal of consumer protections, and removal of necessary air and water pollution regulations have not made a dent in 30% of his supporting base according to the polls.
What would persuade them? Trump and the GOP showing up at their door with rapid fire military issue rifles demanding all their money?
6
I appreciate you having your eye on the prize. Regardless of what got us here, we need to look for and find a way forward!
Ross: There’s egg on your face.
One hour after this column went online, Trump tweeted out racist videos. His supporters, predictably, are defending this racism.
As a conservative, you don’t want to admit that a large portion of Republican voters are deplorable. But you have been proven wrong immediately.
9
Serwer and Coates are right. The data supports them. Trump's primary voters were well off. They were motivated more by racial resentment than by economic anxiety. The data does not support Ross. His imaginative ruminations cannot change the facts.
The similarities between Sanders and Trump are twofold. First, by focusing on economics alone, Sanders permitted his supporters to remain socially reactionary, i.e., racist and sexist. Second, Trump adopted verbatim the unrealistic Sanders economic plank.
Some of this editorial is just silly, and plays to the conventional Fox conspiracy theories and lies, e.g., "... the entire drift of cultural liberalism ... has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward ... common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech ..."
1
"...rather, Trump won white voters of all income levels, and did best among what in the European context we would call the white petite-bourgeoisie..."
I believe Senator Schumer declared the "white conservative" as good as dead, because the growing diversity in the voter rolls.
"... so long as he’s deporting Mexicans migrants, hassling Muslim travelers and picking fights with black pro athletes."
Deporting ILLEGAL aliens, profiling Muslims for TIES TO TERROR and expecting people that are protected by a symbol, that is born on the wind of SACRIFICE, to acknowledge that.
"He actually won a smaller share of the white vote than Mitt Romney overall, the same rough percentage of black and Hispanic voters — and far more voters without a college degree..." Really?
As for the voters without a college degree, is this group populated, like the general population? If so, that means the Democrats can only count on the precise slivers of their coalitions. If not, then, there are more people of color, leading to more voters of color that voted for Trump.
"But his governing style has not made Trump broadly popular, or enabled him to hold onto even the 45 percent support that he won last November. "
Let me be clear. Trump voters and establishment Republicans are not one in the same. This will become clear in 2018. RINOs will be primaried and many will be gone. Not to be replaced with Democrats, but Trump supporting legislators.
That's What Happened.
2
I am so sick of this white-splaining comparing Trump and Sanders. It's ridiculous.
That Trump spouted some economic populist ideas is irrelevant in context. Anyone who paid remote attention knew that Trump compulsively lies, is indifferent to governance, isn't changing at his age, and is incapable of running an administration that achieves anything for America's working family and the middle class -- in very stark contrast to Bernie Sanders, who spent his whole life fighting for those things and who understands government.
People voted for Trump out of mendacity, nihilism, and racism.
5
My question is: Is Douthat delusional, or willful in his failure to accurately assess the driving forces of the 2016 election.
It's either racism or economics, according to Douthat, which is nonsense.
It was a reaction to the war waged by the collectivist Progressives on the rest of us, and on the principles of the Constitution.
And, it was a rejection of the cocktail circuit elitists in both parties, whose condescending and self-righteous antics, combined with a willingness to drive this nation off a cliff in order to serve themselves and their cohorts, are no longer acceptable.
4
Adam Serwer’s essay should be ignored because it is based mostly on falsehoods.
Serwer writes that Trump ‘took out a full-page newspaper ad suggesting that the Central Park Five, black and Latino youths accused of the assault and rape of a white joggers, should be put to death.” This is just a lie. The ad called for restitution of the death penalty, but did not mention the Central Park Five or suggest they should be put to death. In a reference to “muggers and murderers,” the ad says: “When they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.” The Central Park Five were never accused of murder.
Serwer writes that “a majority of white voters backed a candidate who assured them they will never have to share this country with people of color as equals.” Trump never assured Americans they would never have to share America with people of color as equals. This would have been an odd thing to say, since a person of color was president during the 2016 campaign.
Serwer writes that “a majority of white voters backed a candidate who explicitly pledged to use the power of the state against people of color and religious minorities.” Trump never explicitly pledged to use the power of the state against people of color. Trump pledged to enforce existing immigration laws. Trump never pledged to persecute religious majorities. By Election Day, Trump’s pledge to ban Muslims immigrants had morphed into a pledge to screen out Islamic terrorists.
2
Douthat simply does not want to admit that identity politics, which he has in the past blamed for Democrat failures, is even more present in Republican and conservative politics, and in a more extreme and troubling way…Republicans taste for victory goes past their support from the highly visible but relatively few neo-Nazis/white supremacists/birthers to the comfy confines of middle American, men and women who maybe only to themselves believe that their race is special and all others are not…it is the quiet middle American racists that find Republicans appealing as they are intimately the same sort of people…
2
The Dixiecrats have taken over the Republican Party and are the biggest leg of the "3 legged stool." In the past the business leg of the stool tolerated the Christian Coalition, only to reward Wall Street (and never the religious rights' anti-abortion zealotry). But now, they have thrown a bone to the nativist/racist/birther wing of the party (they got Gorsuch) while trying to pass the biggest tax plunder for the rich in US history. Of course, the military-industrial complex will continue to get their funding increase and possibly even their nuclear war.
It's not that complicated really. Wall Street, and the Defense wing will tolerate any amount of racism to get their tax cut and unending wars, although this time is willing to support the unfairly appointed activist Judges (to dismantle abortion law for the religious right - and perhaps dismantle regulatory laws as well - quite a twofer).
The rest is just rationalization. The racists/know-nothings are the biggest part of the Republican pie, or as a convicted pedophile once said, "the majority of the majority". The other two legs are complicit, yet still unwilling to admit it.
1
I think that there is an awful lot of wisdom in this article.
1
To sum up this article . Blacks votes as a bloc for their best interests . Hispanics vote as a bloc for their best interests. Now whites are voting as a huge bloc for their best interests. Now race voting is a problem?
4
Dear Mickey,
The majority voting to keep down the minority based on invidious discrimination is not in anyone's best interests.
"... Trump and Sanders did have a lot in common ..."
True, but Trump was lying, Sanders is sincere.
Of course it was not simply racism versus economics, as if these were non-overlapping magisteria. It is some mix of both.
Trump is a racist, this should not be soft pedaled as is done in this article. Racism is a major component of his support.
Trump does not understand economics as evidenced by his long track record as a failed businessman (bankruptcies) and thief (trump U) , and his promise to pull out of TPP and the Paris Accords. thus ceding southeast Pacific trade dominance and the green revolution to China.
But the vast majority of his supporters don't know any of this, thus economics can not be the basis of his support.
For the life of me, I simply can not understand why anybody voted for an obvious crotch-grabbing imbecile.
2
Two words destroy your argument, Mr. Douthat. Voter repression. Those dirty liberals that you love to bash encourage voter registration and participation. The godly conservatives encourage gerrymandering and suppressing the vote.
3
I have no problem accepting your assertion that not all Republicans are racists. One of your problems is that you can't accept the fact that all racists are now Republicans and are the core of their support in the South. You seem willfully blind to the tectonic shift that occurred as a result of the Civil Rights legislation in the 1960's when the Democratic Party made it clear that racists were no longer welcome. That the Party would rather forego racists' support than continue the denial of basic rights to minorities.
4
What basic rights are being currently being denied to US citizens based on race or ethnicity? Please answer the question bearing in mind that the year is 2017.
I'm still waiting for an answer to my question.
No, Ross, the path for 'conservatism' is to renounce the Extra Virgin Snake Oil sales that comprise its intellectual, moral and economic core made possible by trickle-down stupidity and a carefully orchestrated collapse of the national IQ.
The Republican Party's depravity is only exceeded by the depravity of its willfully ignorant voters who thought a Birther Liar, TV celebrity and the President of a bankrupt, consumer fraud diploma mill would be a real problem solver.
The solution is to start embracing reality, not a 0.1%tax plan that the Kremlin would be proud of that also saws off the legs of healthcare and shreds Medicare, Medicaid and the safety net so millions can fatally fall over a Republican cliff.
And the path for liberalism is to remind all Americans that trickle-down is the 0.1% right wing raining effluent on the 99% and that economies function better when their are more healthcare JOBS, more green energy JOBS, more infrastructure JOBS, more education JOBS, and more government JOBS to regulate the psychopathic Greed Over People that is giving the Walton family, the Kochs, the Trumps and the Mercer billionaires a multi-billion Russian Orthodox Christmas gift and everyone else a big, beautiful lump of wet coal to suck on.
And the other path for all Americans is to register AND vote against the decades of successful Republican voter suppression tactics and tyranny that have transmogrified America into a breakaway Russian-Republican satellite nation.
VOTE !
70
OK, Ross, how about you and Mr. Serwer and Mr. Coates spearhead a national conversation that attacks the complexities you raise, all valid, but that also attacks directly the latent racism that lies underneath those complexities. You have the beginnings of a solution here, and you do not want to linger much longer in purgatory. You three be our Beatrice and lead us out of here.
1
I generally agreed with your argument until the following sentence: "But of course the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward." Specific proof of this statement, please? Laws that prohibit discrimination based on religion or sexual preference are consistent with the ideals on which this country were founded and not, as you seem to imply, cudgels to beat those with whom "liberals" disagree.
3
Brilliant article, Ross. It offers the most plausible insight into what occurred in the 2016 election that I’ve read so far; and it provides a path for this Country’s redemption. Well done!
2
Voting for an openly racist candidate who makes racist statements a central theme of their candidacy is a racist act in itself.
Trump voters knowingly and, in many cases, enthusiastically performed a racist act when they made their choice. They placed a racist in a position of power to hurt people. Claiming to be taken in by a laughably obvious populism con is not an excuse any more than economic anxiety is an excuse for armed robbery.
7
I'm sorry, but if you need this much tortured logic to explain away the obvious racism displayed by both Trump and his supporters (the great "working class" who voted against their own interests to choose this man as their leader), then you are being intellectually dishonest and naive. And by the way, grouping all Hispanic and other minority voters together, while ignoring the fact that a large portion of them identify as white and are racist themselves is oblivious at best, and ignorant and racist at worst. Why are we so reluctant to acknowledge the simple truth? It is the only way we can address it.
7
And in other news, criminals are both vicious AND morally corrupt.
1
thank you ross for guiding me to the real purgatorio, i.e. having to wade thru your scholasticism and casuistry.
it was prescient of you to have released this article the same day as trump's antimuslim tweets. The tweets sure sound a little racist to me and seem to prove the point you are working so hard to deny. i am still waiting for a tweet that addresses the financial issues of his base...ah! yes the real purgatorio.
but certainly wrestling with you will not save me.
3
Beginning a Douthat column is a pleasure. Reading through to the end, however, is disturbing. He makes all the right observations, accepts all of the evidence as presented, but then makes all the wrong conclusions based on illogical and nonfactual reasoning. For all his sophistication, his argument is sophomoric and juvenile. Decrying racism within a political party is not akin to calling everyone in that party a racist. And, the use of appropriate and accurate verbiage to describe the worst elements of that party, is not a threat against anyone’s rights. There is nothing to justify the paranoid delusions of conservatives that liberal threaten free speech or religious liberty. Finally, considering that Mr. Douthat’s brethren have advocated for the use of violence to attack their political enemies, and have used the power of the state to discriminate against Muslims, his argument is utterly unpersuasive.
7
Weird: Trump's appeal to working-class whites was to promise them jobs he couldn't deliver. This was his "economic" argument: brown people have taken your jobs. Liberals--not automation--have decimated the coal industry, etc. In other words, he didn't so much "reach out" to white workers as lie to them. Clinton did deal in the actual and the possible--and got hammered for it. This is a windy article that ends up agreeing with the position that it seems to attack and ignores what did indeed happen--a con artist worked his hussle. Democrats should do the same? I don't think so.
8
Sure Ross, the Trump 2016 campaign had some overlap with Bernie Sanders' reaching out to an angry wage earner class while outsmarting Hillary Clinton's wonky empty centrism. And, Trump was able to attract angry whites who had voted for Obama, even twice. It didn't help that Hillary was to arrogant or stupid not to repeat the Romney game losing error of insulting voters with her deplorables comment.
All that said, throughout Trumps campaign the dog whistle racism and other-ism was incessant. Non-bigoted Trump supporters of all stripes would comfort themselves with the delusion that this was just campaigning and that Trump would emerge from his chrysalis a different insect. Alas, there was no metamorphosis. Trump's drop in the polls suggests a lot of those angry wage earners are slowly coming to terms with their gulling.
Trump's many white supremacist supporters and the African American apartment seekers who sued the Trumps in the '70s got it right, having seen Trump for what he is.
5
Maybe Ross should have waited a day before posting this column when he could have savored the lack of bigotry exhibited by Trump aimed at his white base regarding the retweeting of fake anti-Muslim videos first produced by far right extremists in Britain showing attacks on whites and Christian symbols.
You know, like his claim, not aimed at anyone in particular, that he saw hundreds of Muslims cheering wildly as the Twin Towers fell on 9/11.
But, really, all of this white identity trumpeting by Trump is just so much window dressing, right, Ross? It's the economy, right?
5
What happened was Hillary Clinton was the other candidate put forth by an archaic two party system.
That's all.
3
After years ofhis partisan Republican advocacy, and defense of the indefensible, it's difficult to believe Ross Douthat would actually support a candidate promoting redistribution of wealth on the order of other prosperous industrial democracies, if only he or she was willing to countenance abortion restrictions, police America's bathrooms, play down the racial divide and stop insisting on gay wedding cakes.
That such a candidate is unlikely to ever present herself in the U.S. of A. must be a great comfort.
The business class has gotten much better at convincing us what a happy life is and what we need by way of devices to achieve that life. They sell us I-watches, larger and larger TV's and SUV's and more old movies on Netflix and more and more health care gimmicks and "life is good" caps. Of course none of these make life happier. Now that our minds have gotten softened up, we can now acquire political views that mold us into some sort of lemming-like society. Isn't it obvious that we have all been sold? and for a long time? Is the liberal or the conservative ideas really academic or just the SUV du jour. Black attractive president? National debt debate during recession. Improved health care policy? death panels. Transgender in the bathroom? Government regulation. There is no central hypothesis in either camp just winning strategies to get votes and voters conditioned to vote against their own humanity. Trump is a charlatan con man, but for Republicans he is their charlatan con man. But his core interest is not at all what he says. He wants a tax break and reduced regulations. Why? well, he is a businessman and perhaps because lower taxes and less regulation makes his own profits better. Does he believe all the other conservative stuff like hating gays, Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics? Oh! you say, that's not what conservatism is based on! or so you thought. Better rethink about that humanity. Better rethink what conditions our thinking.
1
Obama DID start death panels. Google "IPAB".
The President's actions this week don't help him with "liberals". Ruining the Navajo Code Talkers ceremony with his 13 year old girl behavior. His alarming tweets this morning showing Muslims allegedly engaging in bad behavior. When is this going to end? The most shocking part is Congress' paralysis to act against this abhorrent behavior. Outside of a handful of members, the rest stand silent. To use the word of the year.....complicit.
5
Trump and the Republicans are running willy nilly as lemmings right off the cliff. Whether there is anything remaining of American Democracy is unknown but this group certainly will not save us from ourselves. The big question is has true Conservative Republicanism no moral compass?
2
Mr. Douthat’s thesis would be more appealing to me if his suggestion that ex Dem Trumpsters are persuadable was true in practice. Anecdotally, I’m not finding that to be the case and I don’t think I’m a below average slouch in what’s required to persuade i.e., friendliness and a grasp of the data and facts. But, what I get from Trumpsters friends is an iteration of a yada yada mix of viscerally tinged Trumpism propaganda. No, the answer to this is to double down on rainbow coalition/ethnic identity politics and let white nationalists come to their senses in their own good time like the Afrikaners had to do.
4
"whether it was racism or economic grievances that drove so many American voters into the arms of Donald Trump."
It's not either-or. Religious conservatives who would ordinarily despise Trump voted for him because of his promise to fight Roe vs Wade. Mr. Douthat's article does not even mention abortion as an issue.
5
Dear Charlesbalpha,
Because abortion isn't the real issue. It is an excuse for depriving women of control over their own bodies. I say that because the same people who claim abortion is murder entirely irreconcilably oppose policies that have been proven to decrease abortion: real sex ed in schools and birth control availability.
For me, this is the "Yes, but" statement that Mr. Douthat whole column turns on, the statement that threatens to relegate him to a deeper level of the pundit purgatory than the one he describes: "He’s right that the obvious mind-meld Trump has achieved with a part of the Republican coalition should tell conservatives something depressing about the role that white identity politics has played in their movement all along."
"Something depressing?" How about something corrupt, immoral, and unconscionable? How about a strain of calculated, variously overt and covert racism (to which we now apply the polite term "white identity politics") that goes back to the roots of modern Republican conservatism in the Great Society era of the 1960s, and that reached it first full flowering in the smiley-faced presidency of Ronald Reagan. Philadelphia, Mississippi, anyone? Willie Horton, anyone? John McCain's mixed-race child anyone?
Like the country itself, well-heeled Ivy League conservatives like Mr. Douhat have been demurely looking the other way at this aspect of their political and ideological "coalition" all along. And now that that they have helped to deliver the country into the hands of a depraved demagogue, they are suddenly willing to acknowledge that, yes, race HAS played role in their appeal to the white electorate––but it's not the WHOLE story. Perish the thought.
2
Identity politics, as practiced by both sides, is killing us in this country. Attributing general characteristics to millions of vastly different people united only, in some instances by skin color or religion, is something we associate with fascism. But if we are honest and not entrapped by partisanship, we know it is wrong and terribly so. We also know that it has damaged both parties, though much more so the Republicans and our country as a result.
That said, the Democrats now have so many obligatory litmus tests, and an ingrained disdain for those who not long ago were their voters (See the alleged firewall states HRC lost), that the party's electoral recovery remains in question. Hatred and shock and revulsion toward the incumbent will only go so far. You still need a message and a leader. A message that concentrates on the people HRC mentioned when she said half of Trump voters were not deplorable but rather disillusioned. Wise words.
4
Ross,
You are on to something but the truth presents us with the realization that there are two irreconcilable Americas and there will never again be a United States of America. What is called liberal and conservative is no such thing.
Red America and Blue America worship different gods, believe in two different flags , serve two radically different constitutions and occupy two different realities. Both Red America and Blue America have liberals , centrists and conservatives and define the others not in terms of their temperament which may be liberal, centrist or conservative but in terms of their definition of country.
I was brought up with the term petite bourgeoise and the European literature I read was invariably dealing with the peccadilloes of the class of people that made things run but never had the time to ask why.
America is failing because it has decided that science and rigorous analysis and scientific theory is not enough and only certitude will do. America has decided that affirmation and truth are synonyms. Cultural liberalism has been the norm since Plato and in both political parties it is the norm. Both Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi are above all else cultural liberals but their cultures are different they serve different gods, different constitutions and two very different countries.
Even now nobody is willing to ask the most important questions of the day such as, Why is Trump President ? and why we need to change the tax code when the economy is great?.
3
Living in an area of the Mid West that shifted from Obama to Trump the issues that moved voters were as noted by many that did include ethnicity, religious beliefs, urban vs rural, education and the Democratic candidate.
One issue that is rarely mentioned is trade. The best paying occupations for people with a high school education in this area are manufacturing from foundries to paper making including shoe making.
All of these are threatened with cheaper products from abroad from countries whose wages, environmental standards and government subsidies favor their own industries and make it very difficult for domestic factories to compete.
The great majority of us benefit from the cheaper goods particularly urban educated classes but people are also hurt. And those people felt abandoned by the Democrats and HRC. And they were.
Trump played on those real fears.
3
Mr. Blau: NYT and its readers do not care one bit about blue collar workers.
1
Serwer calls non-discrimination discrimination and discrimination non-discrimination, and fantasizes that Trump endorses state violence. Orwell mocked such nonsense; Serwer takes it as truth.
1
Yes white nationalism definitely not a major factor!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/29/trump-account-retweets-a...
1
I agree with much of this. I would like to point out that Coates and Sewer's articles are responses to the fact that much of the media including this paper supported the economic anxiety narrative. I agree with Ross's solution what I see happening is a Republican party pulled rightward by Trump Peterson and the Kochs and a Democratic party pulled leftward or split by Bernie Sanders.
1
Trump is to the left of Peterson, and the Koch's. Peterson and the Koch's are to the right of the US electorate, and if Trump had (openly) run on a Peterson/Koch inspired platform, he would not have won the nomination.
This is the relationship between race and class in our country. The ruling class uses and encourages racism in order to divide the working class.
That is why authors who proclaim that racism is primary and cannot be changed--especially among working people--are welcomed, praised and even describes as "progressive" by Establishment media. They are in truth deeply reactionary. Their ideas serve the ruling capitalist elite.
Only a class analysis can solve racism. But such a class analysis cannot be expressed in our "free" media. In fact, Marxist commentators and ideas have been banned in the US media since the late 1940s.
In order to abolish racism, one must logically get rid of the ruling class that benefits from it. But that would require a social revolution--an idea the rich owners of media would not pay any commentator or pundit to advocate.
2
I am constantly amazed by the lack of self reflection amongst the majority of NYT comments-makers.... I also suggest read an excellent historic contextual critique of the Tax plan from Martin Wolf in the Financial Times... At the end of the day, there is an angry, ignored and sometimes vilified working class out there that should be voting for the party that (used to be) standing up for the ordinary Joe against the power of big corporations and creating a level playing field for their kids.... but is not. self reflection please.
4
The president's administration has been an abject failure to date but his base is happy at his pugnacious and bellicose attitude towards minorities. The president is quarrelsome and disruptive, and his base admires his saloon brawler approach in attacking black athletes as being uppity, militant and ungrateful, giving voice to their feelings and protective of white grievance and their intolerance of political correctness.
His base has overlooked the president's ineptitude at governance because that's not why they voted for him at all. On the campaign trail last year, he said what his supporters felt and wanted to hear from the highest levels of government. The president has delivered on attitude and being disagreeable alone, and that's what makes his base happy.
3
What dithering...
This isn't just some debate about which of two competing but complementary motivations brought Trump victory, this is about which of two competing but complementary motivations has the potential to do more damage to our nation and the ideals we hope support it.
Ross, you are welcome to spend your days gazing at the deeper meanings of Trump's support, I, on the other hand, intend to man the bulwarks against the worst of these; the clear, unequivocal danger presented by his support amongst the worst and most retrograde impulses of some of my fellow Americans.
4
What I know is simple and first hand. Since the election I've been told to "go home" by strangers on the street four times. I've also been called different racial slurs six times. This didn't happen openly before.
You tell me, race or economics.
7
What happened to Race and Class? I'm sure this is very important to the Democratic Party, since they use Races and Classes by pitting them against each other. The 'ol "Divide and Conquer" scheme.
2
Ok. Let’s just stipulate that both ignorance and racism were harnessed to Trump’s electoral victory. And let’s try to combat both.
In his Autobiography, Ben Franklin wrote that when he was young "some books against Deism fell into my hands. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist." Mr. Douthat's criticism of Adam Serwer's essay had a similar effect on me.
1
There are so many points on which to comment in Mr. Douthat's article; unfortunately there is a character limit. Suffice it to say several members of my rural WI family are "core" trump supporters. Based on extended conversations with them I will summarize: regardless of what was promised versus what is being delivered by trump, his core still thinks he is delivering because of Fox news and their ilk. When their opinion pundits like Hannity (see NY Times article) consistenty outright lie or fail to issue correctives to their lies then his core thinks life is going along swimmingly well. Only when they ultimately pay more taxes because of the failed republican tax plan will they realize they've been bamboozled. Wait, probably not because some Fox talking head will blame it on the Democrats.
2
Julie--you get it.
I write a lot of comments for the NYT, especially as a result of the election. I'm going to taper off and probably stop. I'm tired of going over the same old nonsense twenty different ways.
Pundits have to make a living so they read everybody else's stuff, and even throw in a little Divine Comedy, to come up with alternate explanations. But, yours is the correct read of the core Trump supporters. You and I know that Fox Fake News owns them. There's no escape.
But, there just aren't enough core supporters, and because of that I have hope. My own relatives will not vote for Trump again, but they don't live in a state that matters. Wisconsin does matter, and I hope there are enough rational folks there to turn that state back to blue.
Economic grievance was part of Trump's appeal, no doubt. But much of that was simply marketing, with Fox News to trumpet the lies. In 2016 before Trump, we had record real median household income and net worth. Unemployment was very low. Our tax burden was well below the OECD average. Banks were again under control due to Dodd-Frank, and 20 million more had health insurance due to Obamacare. The deficit was back to historical average after raising taxes on the rich and the solid economy.
Yet to hear Trump and Fox, we were a high-tax economic disaster area, with millions losing their factory jobs, a trend since 2000. In reality, white male CEO's were sending their jobs overseas to maximize the wealth of the top 1%, the actual group that benefits from Republican policy.
Those voting Republican continue to override their economic interests (which are clearly better served by Democratic policies of higher taxes on the rich and a stronger safety net) to pursue racial, religious, and gun-toting priorities.
Trump continues to sabotage Obamacare, thus trying to take away health insurance from millions who voted for him. He is trying to raise their taxes and cut their benefits. His trade posture is a net loss for the country. But I'll bet their support for him won't waver much, as economics isn't really why they support him. He's their guy, trying to "Make America White Again."
2
So how do you account for the fact that the " 5th Ave. Principle" is alive and well in Trump world?. ( " I could stand in the middle of 5th Ave and shoot someone and lose voters"). Prejudices are powerful determiners of behavior and Trump understands this and has used it. Don't try to sugar coat it.
3
I agree we should avoid racial reductionism in analyzing and responding to the Trump victory. But I think Douthat overstates the degree that Coates and Serwer do that.
Economics played heavily in Trump's win. But Dothan confuses Trump the con artist, with real economic policy. Trump has no serious beliefs beyond his own self aggrandizement. His economic populism was no more that an actor reading his lines.
But a conservative move "back to the center" becomes a kind of race reductionism in reverse. Until we get beyond the false dichotomy of race or class and see these as deeply intertwined phenomena there will be no way forward.
Race is deeply entwined into American culture. One moment it influences politics, another art, and in another sphere it even steers science and medical policy.
Race affects systems and structures, not just views and beliefs. This is where the real work needs to be done and this is precisely where the Democrats failed.
It doesn't take a lot of weight on the scale to push a system off course. Trump became that weight during the campaign as he skillfully shifted racial fears to Mexicans and Muslims while carefully avoiding negative comments about Blacks, America's traditional scapegoat, of course until recently.
Trump supporters are understandably angry about being Clinton's 'deplorables' but only because they can't accept that conservative elites are the ones really treating them that way.
Race is an illusion and it also fosters illusions.
1
And as ever in these condemnations of the sins of white America, there is little imaginative sympathy for people who feel threatened by liberalism in power. “Nowhere did Clinton vow to use the power of the state to punish the constituencies voting for Trump,” Serwer writes at one point, while discussing the Democratic nominee’s famous references to the “irredeemable” and “deplorable.” But of course the entire drift of cultural liberalism in the West of late has been to use taxes and mandates and regulations and speech restrictions against groups that they deem bigoted and backward. It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech; the idea that the pejoratives don’t carry any element of political and legal threat is silly.
This has got the absolute dumbest paragraph I've read in the TIMES.
Douthat thinks that making it illegal to discriminate against gay people is the same thing as ICE arresting a child in surgery or Trump attemping to ban Muslims.
The rest of the op-ed is dumb, but this really does take the cake.
1
The President is preparing for war, and that seems to be his only true focus. He really donen’t care about the needs of our citizens.
1
That may be so, but the thing is, he's preparing for war ON the citizens.
1
Ross, I make it a point to read every one of your columns, more out of a sense of duty than anything. Therefor, imagine my pleasant surprise this morning at reading the Hogwartianly amusing opening to today's article. However, despite reading it three times, the rest of your article lost this English major at several points. I THINK you were trying to say that "liberals" should not accept arguments that Trump's election win was based solely on racism? Maybe it's just my progressive mind-set, but your article seemed more to support this very concept more than the point I think you were trying to make.
4
To me, the story of the 2016 election is pretty simple. Trump won the Republican nomination by running against the political establishment, which he easily showed was thoroughly corrupt and had long ago stopped working for the majority of Americans.
The Democrats should have learned something from watching Trump steamroll all of the "establishment", insider candidates, and adjusted accordingly. Instead, in a massive combination of hubris and incompetence, they ran the most hated candidate in the country, Hillary Clinton, who embodied the establishment that Trump was leading a rebellion against. Running Mrs. Clinton under those circumstances was an act of breathtaking stupidity, especially when there was a candidate, Bernie Sanders, who, according to all available data, would have trounced Trump.
Candidate Clinton behaved as she has always done. Her campaign was arrogant, tone-deaf, insulting to many Americans, and pretty much clueless. Trump didn't so much win, as Hillary lost. That will be her legacy - she's the candidate who lost the presidency to Donald Trump.
1
It is just disappointing to read one analysis after another without touching the fundamental truths: (1) Triblism/racism is in our DNA. It is not unique or specific to white people. In fact, most Asians are xenophobic. Go talk to non-white foreigners in Japan. (2) Do people really know how to define a species? Hybrid from the mating of two different species cannot reproduce. It is the definition of species. In other words, mother nature prefer to separate creatures based on their unique adaptations to their surroundings. Even though we are all Homo sapiens, different races evolved at different locations separately. This was not a peaceful process. Ethnic cleansing is our ancestors' survival necessity. Crimes against humanity is an essential part of human history. (3) Because we all possess the "original sin", we are prone to develop the "symptom". People should finally treat racism similar to conditions such as type II diabetes (a multifactorial condition). There is a genetic component but it is not all. (4) White liberals merely practice "segregated but equal" because they can.
Solutions? (1) Less Immigration and strictly enforcing immigration law; (2) Ban race as a factor when making decisions; (3) Compensate the decendents of slaves and native Americans once for all so we can all move on; (4) The only way to prevent police brutality and racial profiling is to use AI. (I will elaborate more on this exciting topic and why it is inevitable).
This is a longwinded account of what everybody with a brain knows. Trump used class, race and mockery of the "system" to get elected and then abandoned the people who elected him and put the plutocracy in charge. It was a massive con job that "fired" the hopes and dreams of his supporters.
1
"The path for liberalism is to treat Trump’s white working-class supporters as persuadable rather than deplorable..."
That's a nice thought, but completely without factual or historical evidence. I have yet to see even one Trump supporter who is persuadable. Most of Trump's white working-class supporters are unwilling and incapable of being persuaded to think anything other than whites should rule, and minorities should acquiesce to being ruled; better yet, minorities should "go back where they came from."
That concretized belief, Ross, makes your Trump supporters seemingly, hopelessly deplorable.
3
I agree that causation is complex and that lot — a perfect storm, in fact—accounted for trump’s victory. But curious about how douthat thought the dems might move from “absolutism”on social issues, i, clicked the link to find that he argued for remaining staunch on same sex marriage, abortion, and criminal justice reform (as it pertains to black americans, police violence and differential sentencing), while backing off on issues as transgender bathroom choice or requiring the catholic church’s insurance companies, not the church itself, to fund women’s health services for its employees.
douthat is mistaken if he thinks that dems can peel off much of any rightist support by softening its stance on the more peripheral(?) issues of the “culture wars” while still defending same-sex marriage rights, reproductive rights and race-focussed criminal justice reform.
A majority of Americans support same-sex marriage. A majority do not support free bathroom choice. Douthat's proposal makes sense.
The "culture wars" are not all-or-nothing, at least not on the ground to actual voters. Real people have real, nuanced views on discrete issues. The far-left had too much success for too long and began making every coastal cause-of-the-day PC-issue a litmus test for candidates. This trickled down into alienating party members who weren't 100% on the left flank, and led to decreased turnout and ultimately to loss in the election.
A significant majority of Americans believe in reasonable restrictions on abortion (e.g., not being 100% elective in the 9th month). A significant majority of Americans believe in reasonable limits on immigration. A significant majority of Americans believe in reasonable limitations on government handouts.
It is possible still to stake out moderate views that appeal to a significant majority of Americans. It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will do so in 2018 and in 2020.
2
A fundamental truth buried in fancy words.
Many dynamics, particularly economic concerns, play out in every election.
But the election in 2016 swung on a hinge of racism and sexism. All other complicated things being equal (a bit of an assumption, I admit), the margin of Trump's electoral victory was provided by a significant number of people who either resented the Obama presidency and other aspects of racial progress, or despised Hillary at least in part because of her gender. Or both.
And, Mr. Douthat, these "white working-class supporters" of Trump and Trumpism are deplorable. Look at the evidence. All of his populist campaign rhetoric has been contradicted. The swamp is teeming. The corporate elite are his close confidants. The tax bill is for the wealthy. Coal is not coming back. He is out to decimate health care for ordinary folks. The only campaign promises he's kept are to be defiantly racist, irresponsibly anti-Islam, anti-gay and deeply, arguably criminally sexist. That's enough to retain most of his base, regardless of his total abandonment of support for working class white folks.
What more evidence do you need?
8
How are voters who voted twice for Obama but then for Trump evidence of racism?
Or why is a middle-class voter from the de-industrializing rust belt necessarily sexist for voting against a pro-trade, pro-wall street candidate from a party that has seemed happy to oversee the eroding of middle-American manufacturing over the last 25 years?
Trump acts like--and very well may be--sexist and racist. And he got his 15% toe-hold in the primaries by campaigning as the white-supremacists' candidate. But in the general election he advocated policies and goals that were laser-targeted to vulnerable western-PA, MI, OH and WI voters who believed (with some basis) that the Democrats had ignored them and taken them for granted and pursued policies that hurt them since 1992.
(In terms of governing, Trump has largely abandoned these people too, so it will be interesting to see what 2018 and 2020 bring...)
4
Your view and mine are not mutually exclusive. My point was that the margin of victory seems attributable to the core who were significantly responsive to racist and sexist impulses. That doesn't necessary include the twice Obama voters or the anti-Clinton for pro-trade, pro-Wall Street reasons. Although, if they were attracted to Trump for those reasons, they certainly should have abandoned him by now.
I taught English and Reading to at-risk high school kids for the last 5 years of my professional life.
The most important lesson was critical thinking - asking questions, using your knowledge of the world to analyze, to be skeptical, to measure what you are told - by whom, with what agenda? Who has a dog in the fight? Follow the money. Understand the reason that people are telling you something. What do they have to gain?
These kids with street smarts understood my lesson immediately. They knew about people that wanted them to think or believe a thing because it profited them, made their lives easier, gave them more power or money. They had been thinking critically for a long time - just didn't translate it from the street to politics - then they got it.
11
Before the election, when everyone presumed Hillary would win, I had a long discussion with a friend of mine. I was lamenting how the Democrats had stopped caring about the white working class. The Dems used to be the party of unions. The party of the working man.
But they'd really turned their back on white working class. The Republicans are the party of religious and the party of the rich. The Dems became the party of minorities -- often urban -- and of "rich" liberal causes -- the things you worry about when you don't have to worry about paying the bills. It played well to the well-to-do liberals in NY and California. But it left middle America out in the cold.
I told my friend that I hoped once Hillary won the election that she'd help the rural, working class since they had been left behind. Maybe the result of the election will remind the Dems that these people still exist.
12
Good column. There's a huge opportunity in American politics for whoever takes the following positions:
--disengagement from our foreign wars and adventures, with concomitant cuts in military spending;
--economic centrism, i.e., a smart technocratic fix for Obamacare, no tax cuts for the rich, Wall Street regulation, America-First trade policy;
--immigration restrictionism;
--sanity on race, free speech, and law-and-order issues, i.e., rejection of SJWism and a feeling that 'It's okay to be white.'
No one is taking these positions except Trump--and he's been inconsistent and ineffective. That our elites are unwilling to take such a great opportunity speaks to how beholden they are to interests other than those of most Americans.
1
Thank you for an intelligent and nuanced look at how we got where we are today. Travelling around the country as I am I've met many people who voted for Trump. Most are not out and out racists.
Democrats will be making make a terrible mistake if they lump everyone who voted for Trump into the basket of deplorables and fail to treat them as persuadable voters. To me this means promoting populist economic policies which Trump seems to have dropped the moment he stepped foot in the Oval Office and dialing back the volume on some of the more divisive social issues--not changing their heartfelt positions on the issues but changing the way the speak about them to one in which respectful disagreement is tolerated.
Both parties need to stop believing their own propeganda. Clearly an electoral loss doesn't mean that the other party is finished, done, caput. The Democrats learned in 2016 that the Obama coalition will not hold together without a heartfelt dose of economic populism which made their social positions more palatable to socially conservative voters. Republicans too should realize that relying only on hardcore social conservatives, gun rights absolutists and courting white supremacists while crafting policies that harm the middle class are not the key to long term power--not to mention long term stability for the American people.
I truly hope that this country can get its act together.
4
Innumerable MORAL failings to get morality? The completion backwards principle.
2
Pundit purgatory? I think not. They delight in their 'tangle of arms and legs and laptops' far too much. There is no enduring here, no yearning for purification. They love exactly where they are, in the middle of the Garden of Earthly Delights. God help me too. I read every word. Enjoyed all of them, only occasionally wondered where, in all of the exquisite verbiage, the point was.
Ah yes, there it is. At the end. The right needs to move to the center and the left needs to woo the white working class.
So many highfalutin words in service to such a small point. Punditry at its best. The journey, not the destination. Travels with Douthat are highly entertaining even if they do drop you off at a Greyhound lunch counter in the middle of nowhere.
4
No, it is undeniably racial animosity that binds Trump's core. He can tout a tax plan that will hurt them. He will allow unchecked abuse by the financial world, again to their detriment. He will thwart minimum wage increases while many of them earn a minimum wage. He will not only tolerate, but even support sexual abuse again harming many women members of the core. Why is he able to repeatedly act in a manner that is contrary to the interests of the core while its members steadfastly support him? The answer is obvious. Racism has seethed below the surface for decades. He has encouraged hatred and rendered it not only acceptable but appropriate.
I have no doubt that his actions have alienated virtually all of those who are not his blind adherents. He will not win re-election if he chooses to run. The damage he has caused and will continue to cause for the remainder of his term, however, will take decades to repair.
6
Interesting essay, however much less persuasive than Serwer’s lengthy piece. History confirms the inextricable connections between race and economics in our country, and specifically the persistence of white racial animus and the readiness of capital to exploit such divisions in the working classes.
To deny that race and ethnicity are major preoccupations of Trump supporters is naive and wrong and not supported by the evidence. Furthermore, Trump’s supporters are almost entirely white, it doesn’t get any more tribal than that. What we have in the current administration is the unfortunate but logical result of our country’s failure to acknowledge, understand and ultimately transcend our racist history.
4
And African Americans applauding cop killers is not "tribal"? What about the African American nurse who said white newborn males should be murdered - https://newsone.com/3761580/indiana-university-hospital-nurse-tweet-whit... This nurse is not racist or "tribal"???
Are you SERIOUSLY judging an entire race on the comments and actions of a few individuals???
Sorry. Get real.
Au contraire, Adam Serwer is spot on. The statistical evidence is exit polling showing Trump support among those with above-median incomes to be equal to or greater than his support among the economically anguished. The historical evidence is the irrational hatred heaped upon Barack Obama, whose entire presidency was so bland and middle-of-the-road you'd have to suppose he was taking advice from the ghost of Eisenhower. But no one hated the actual Obama; they hated crazy stories that matched what they'd expect from the horrible disaster of having one of Them in the White House. I have personal experience with wing-tipped racism, and the benighted indignation they express when confronted with the obvious. Give me a nickel for every swell, well-spoken conservative with barely disguised disdain for people of color, and I'd be quite wealthy. I hope they will all pay up in some other way, some day.
4
Punditry is really not all that necessary -- RD excels at complicating things (though his references are entertaining and pertinent, usually), engaged as he always is in the rarefied "angels on the head of a pin" issue. Earnest but largely unhelpful.
Trump was an immoral, larger-than-life master showman and a pathological liar with incalculable meanness in his soul who knew what the masses of racist and economic victims of 30 years of Republicanism wanted to hear and shouted it like the carnival barker he is. His rallies were epic and riveting theater and he fanned flames of hatred he knew would burn the country down.
No secrets about it -- he proved the maxim that "the best argument against democracy is a 5-minute conversation with the average voter" (Churchill).
Ross: given your particular interests and intellectual capacities, please explore and explain in your next column the idea of "antichrist". Might as well get to the bottom line.
2
I'm willing to grant Ross' thesis that Trump's election came from both a large wellspring of racism--fear of a black and brown planet as symbolized by the first non-white President--AND from economic anxiety among those who perceive themselves in close economic competition with those black and brown forces, particularly immigrant ones. So Trump garnering working class votes from those who might have voted for Democrats, by presenting an economic program that sounded more Democratic than Republican--promises of continued entitlement programs, infrastructure spending, suspicion of free trade and Wall Street manipulation--makes a certain amount of sense.
But we've left one major thing out, though. There was absolutely no evidence--NONE--from Trump's own past or behavior that he believed in any of these things, and quite a lot of evidence that he was lying merely to appeal to a certain swath of voters. The people who believed he actually held these positions should not have--a cursory examination of Trump's personal and economic history would have cast massive doubt on all of this. But too many voters are too easy to fool too much of the time, dumbed down by Fox and Limbaugh and Hannity, and did not notice that Trump acts just like any other oligarch, and one even more selfish than most--Trump will do what is good for Trump, and that means what is good for rich real estate holders. Everyone else can go to Hades. And his administration is now bearing this out.
5
Douthat is again conflating different groups, excuses for Trump supporters, and glossing over what really happened. Yes, Trump made promises that have not been kept, not even attempted and yet why does his so-called base still support him. Because they feel his white nationalism will get them what they want in the end. That is the hope of these people. That is what they care about. "Basket of Deplorable" was uttered once by Hillary Clinton, not a common term by Democrats. Now Douthat is insisting that it is part of the Democratic mindset.
Trump, again and again, boasts and showcases his disparaging attitude to minorities, women. Yesterday he "honored" Navajo Codetalkers in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, making a crack about "Pocahontas" as if that name is an insult. His tweets or comments show his opinions clearly. His comments are generally racist. His continued questioning of Obama birth certificate was also racism. What else could it be? Why focus on Obama's legacy the way he has? The growth of the "alt-right" is tied to Trump's underlying support.
2
Sometimes when I read Mr. Douthat op-ed, I understand why Trump is in the White House, He quotes Dante, The Atlantic times two. He talks about encomiums He seems to apply Dr. Spock’s mind meld power over the nation by Trump. But after all the paragraphs of quotes and the authors of those quotes names he uses, the main idea of his op-ed is he really doesn't like Trump. as president. That could have been said in the first sentence. He didn't need Dante to make the point. We can look at the first primary in New Hampshire for understanding. Democrats who voted there were asked afterwards, what was the main reason they voted for a certain candidate. They answered ' "Trust". Sanders won by 80 % of the votes. Hilary has just about blamed everyone such as the Russians and of course Comey. Mr. Douthat wants to blame racism. Maybe someone who was in the fray would help Mr. Douthat, like Donna Brazile’s book, "Hacks"'. Or another book, "Shattered". Mr. Douthat may remember Donna. She’s the one who fed Hilary the questions for the next debate. Do we think that a vote from a Hillary supporter was switched to Trump because of that revelation? Comey said that he could not find any evidence the Russians or anyone else caused even one vote to be changed. If we want to know why Trump is president, we can listen to the two candidates. When Hilary talked to the people, she said, "Now it's my turn." When Trump talked to the people he said, "Now it's your turn.”
1
Letter to the Writers of Letters to Ross Douthat: through his cloud of casuistry nuggets of truth correctly describe actions, motives and cultural movements that describe today's predicament. I'm a liberal and Hillary fan who reads Ross to understand better what happened. Just as he protests reductionism, his essays are not easy reductions into dualistic thought. Yes Ross can be wrong and irritating, but he points out the stones in liberals eyes that blind us and often he is right.
2
"Trump and Sanders did have a lot in common, with Trump deliberately positioning himself in territory close to Sanders on a range of economic issues. (And foreign policy issues, and attacks on Washington corruption, and more …)"
Try as you might to conflate, Ross, the key verb here is "positioning." This is what a man without a center, a liar, does: he seeks out positions in which to posture for some transient advantage. No, Trump is a phony in every way, and he and Mr. Sanders do not have "a lot in common." IN fact, other than age, they have nothing in common.
4
His voters will accept innumerable personal failings and a stumbling policy agenda that’s more royalist than populist, so long as he’s deporting Mexicans migrants, hassling Muslim travelers and picking fights with black pro athletes.
I wonder does Mr. Douthat realize how blasé he sounds about all this. For the groups mentioned above the bigotry displayed by Trump is very serious, life altering. He rattles these things off as if they are minor character flaws like being tardy for everything.
Coates article was excellent. He nailed exactly why Trump is sullying the office right now.
It is just something very difficult for many like Douthat to swallow.
4
"It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech; the idea that the pejoratives don’t carry any element of political and legal threat is silly." Come on, Ross. Pejoratives are certainly a form of dismissing someone you disagree with, and they actually don't accomplish much when considered as communication, since they alienate the targets and only speak to the limbic system of supporters. But calling someone's gullibility "deplorable" is hardly a political or legal threat. And I'm not aware of any liberal who thinks that people don't have the right to express their own opinions.
As far as qualifying for "certain religious liberties," I have no objection at all to anyone believing whatever they believe — how could I stop them, anyway? When it comes to imposing their religious views on the rest of us, that's another matter. It's fine if you believe that abortion is a sin and a moral wrong, or that homosexuality is evil, but don't try to control the behavior of us who have different views. If you're going to sell something don't say that your religion gives you the right to refuse to sell to gays or lesbians — what if someone claimed that their religion forbade them from selling to blacks or Native Americans? Don't tell a woman what she can do with her body.
5
You're complicating it, Ross.
The real trump and the real trump voters are playing out their own kabuki dance down in Alabama, even as we speak.
The parade of supporters for Moore - and trump - who say, "I have no reason to disbelieve the women, but I'm voting for Moore,"is a simple re-run of everything that trump and his supporters have said for the last two years.
Simply switch out the "Moore" word for "trump" and switch out the "women" word and interject "Mexicans", "Muslims", "liberals", "handicapped", and, yes, then put the "women" back in, and there you are: the ethicless vapids.
It's very simple: trump is ignorant, possibly mentally ill, a racist and a sexist.
And, so are his voters.
His voters are Moore's voters.
It's not that the Left marched too fast - it is that the Right turned around and headed back home. Did they leave the stove on? Forget their wallet? Or were they looking for their tiki-torch they left in the garage?
Either way, you are mistaken to think that they are still around to be "persuaded".
Like Elvis, they left the building long ago.
6
No question, it was racism and a lack of moral values that got our country to where it is. Active ignorance. Hypocrisy, hate and intolerance seem to be the order of the day.
Our ideals have long been forgotten and ignored by the power-hungry. Dictatorship is not far away.
2
Oh you were doing so well until you fell into the “of course” everyone knows, and the cartoons of liberals killing kittens.
To the complements that helped Trump’s victory we need to add two more:
1) the concerted, decade-old attacks on the Clintons by the Republican Party
2) the reduced effectiveness of President Obama deliberately engineered by Republican obstruction
Both were key in persuading voters of easy manipulation that Democrats are bad - and to try something different.
5
Enjoy this Christmas, it may be the last one celebrated in a Democracy.
2
Trump convinced many that the economic pie was small and that minorities were being given bigger slices, thus reducing the size of the pie for the rest. The system was rigged, according to Trump, in favor of minorities and illegal immigrants.
Sanders, and Clinton to a lesser extent, argued that the pie is big enough for everyone but that the wealthiest had carved out big slices for themselves, leaving the rest of us to fight over the small leftovers. The system was rigged, according to Sanders, in favor of the large corporations and super wealthy.
Both Sanders and Trump were preaching economic warfare. Trump, however, was pushing the racial narrative, along with the typical Republican memes of the negative impact of regulations and taxation.
A winning vision for a happily diverse country would be understanding that the pie is big enough for everyone to get a decent slice, with enough for leftovers.
2
Ross, Put this in language liberals can understand.
Stop calling Trump voters racists, misogynists, ageist, anti Semitic, homophobic, and Midwesterners.
Instead call them suckers.
36
Trump voters are not ageist. It's the Democrats who are ageist.
We can analyze the roles of economics and racism until the cows come home. What we need to understand is the basis for and nature of the fear that we carry with us. We are afraid that, as populations grow, demographics shift, needs become more clearly defined, and responses to conditions more extreme, we will suffer a loss of place and a loss of our sense of self. We will not know how to define or identify ourselves within new structures or be confident that we can fit ourselves in.
What we should be aware of is that we leave ourselves open to be used by individuals and small groups who use our fear to manipulate us. We should be afraid of what we might let them cause us to do to each other.
1
Exactly.
I agree with Ross Douthat's arguments although my conclusions are different. Yes Trump won the election not because of the incremental give or take 80,000 votes in Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania but because he successfully rallied the white vote across class and geographies. His "base" is extremely similar to Marine Le Pen's in France or Geert Wilders's in Netherlands. But as in those countries, that base hardly exceeds 30-35% of the voting population. The reason why Marine Le Pen or Geert Wilders didn't win in Europe is that their "establishment" center right (equivalent to what used to be our GOP) is decent and courageous enough to reject an alliance with their bigoted populist leaders. If Trumpism (and our democratic institutions) survive, we might end up with a deeper re-composition of the political landscape where liberal democrats join forces across party lines to defeat bigotry, similar to what happened in France with the election of Macron.
8
Ross, nice try...as a conservative, who is or maybe was a Republican, it is painful to be associated with a party that for years has been waiting to let it all hang out---no more coded language--welfare queens---or coded political commercials--Willie Horton--no, finally, Trump has branded your party of what it always was---racists. In the words of Ken Burns, "race informs everything we do in this country."
12
You assume that Trump supporters are "persuadable." You are wrong.
16
I live in a place where Trump won. My observation that race played a part in the Trump election is not based on analysis of data; it's purely anecdotal. The people I know who admit to being Trump supporters hold a common racist view of the world.
Black people are criminal. They are immoral. They are irresponsible. People will tell you that they are not racist, but they believe that black people are at fault for whatever troubles them.
The irony is that this region is caught in an economic decline. We have a horrifying drug crisis. Petty crime is on the rise. Young people are leaving for better opportunity.
Rather than blame themselves for the very real problems, the white people who remain here blame blacks, immigrants, big city dwellers, and government. There's a confluence of economic problems and other difficulties with perceptions about race.
What has led us to this? I agree with Douthat that it's not Donald Trump. He was able to take advantage of what has been constructed since the fall of LBJ.
Richard Nixon rode to power on the shoulders of the Silent Majority. His appeals to patriotism and denigration of "liberals" were effective.
Republicans used reaction to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to flip the South, but their dog whistles were heard by the people here in my town loud and clear. A public relations machine, fed by Fox News and other media outlets, completed the process while Democrats marched right, not left, especially on economic issues.
420
I completely disagree with your analysis. I too, live in a place where Trump won and I have spoke to many of his voters. Overwhelmingly they voted for Trump because: 1) they were lifelong conservative and towed the party line, 2) they wanted an outsider, someone different, 3) they viewed hillary clinton as corrupt.
Your statement is hyperbolic and is putting an overwhelming emphasis on race which i see little evidence as being a major factor in this election. Comments like yours only exacerbate the race issues that face america by painting all conservatives as racists. Knowing many from family and friends, I assure you that this is not true.
1
So as a resident of Columbia SC you're in the unique position to critique the accuracy of Betsy S's appraisal of the situation in upstate NY?
1
New York City specializes in ignorant immature inarticulate mugging bloviating buffoons with fake hair like Al Sharpton and Donald Trump. Trump is a natural born Aryan German Scottish white supremacist bigot by nature and nurture.
New York was the home of the People of the Long House aka the Iroquois Confederacy. Donald Trump's Native American name should be "Big Buffalo Chip". And Third Lady Melania Trump's Native American name should be "Big Clothes Hanger".
1
Very nice essay, Ross. But please stop nibbling around the edges. Birtherism, the start of the Trump Regime. Do you actually believe that's coincidental? I don't. The 2016 campaign was the most racist display since George Wallace. That was the POINT. The Confederacy rose again, hopefully for the LAST time. Just admit it, or I'll never take you seriously again.
20
Much ado about nothing. DJT beat a female because the country (admittedly, mostly white and a lot female) would not vote for a woman. It didn't help that that woman was a terrible candidate. But the election was not just about race/class. Almost any male Dem candidate (including a Jewish socialist) would have defeated Trump. Let's hear something from Ross about the white females that preferred this reprehensible man over a considerably less flawed, and infinitely more qualified, woman.
11
The idea that the pundit class belongs in purgatory rather than further down is mighty optimistic.
7
Almost everyone has been wrong about Trump. The Republican middle class expected deliverance from the liberals. Democrats foresaw dictatorship and Nazism. Instead, we got a lot of tweats and no substance. And we got a President who argues about nothing, accomplishes nothing and is shameless about that fact. Trump lacks principals and ideas and he is the laziest President in a long, long time. What we got is a thoroughly non-Presidential President.
Looking back at 2016, I think we all were mistaken about Trump. Anybody who tells you they knew that he would be a contentious figurehead -- and that's what he is -- is almost surely lying. Trump fails on leadership, demeanor, intelligence, and so much more. And more than half of us now know that. Whether you kneel for the anthem or stand, the guy is a loser who, above all else, is embarrassing.
I think Mr. Douthat is overly analytical. People are allowed to make mistakes, and that's what Trump is. And the biggest dilemma for Republicans has nothing to do with the economy or racism. For some reason, neither Mr. Douthat nor anybody else is talking about whether Trump will face a serious Republican challenge in 2020. It is incumbent upon Republican pundits to call for just that. And it is getting to be time that they address the matter.
106
Sorry. I hate to upend your arguement, but most of us here in New York City already knew what a "contentious figurehead" Trump would be, because we lived up close and personal with him for so long...And that's also the reason why we overwhelmingly didn't vote for him, and why he hates to come back here.
11
You are wrong to think that Trump is accomplishing nothing. He is dismantling the EPA; he is destroying our diplomatic corps; he is presiding over one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the middle and working class to the super rich. The enormous harm he is doing to this country will be evident for a generation or more, and it will costs the lives of many good and decent Americans. That's not "nothing".
11
Michjas,
I am not lying when I say I knew Trump would be a contentious figurehead. It only required a half an hour on reading and five minutes of listening to Trump to understand that he lacked every requisite quality to be president.
I will confess that even I did not think he would be as bad as he is. It requires a certain complete lack of empathy to pick fights with a newly bereaved war widow and to "honor" Native American veterans by using a racial epithet in a room dominated by a portrait of Andre Jackson who used the skins of Native Americans as lampshades.
As Trump destroys our institutions of government; our standing in the world; and our economy, aided and abetted by McConnell and Ryan, the U.S. will become a second rate power in which the majority of Americans live in poveriy.
TLGK
84
For the past 6 years Democrats have been getting their clocks cleaned in state elections. We can't govern if we can't win races. The Democratic party has reached a tipping point. It's time we take a hard look at what's holding us back. This issue isn't that complicated. We lost the working class vote. They feel like we have abandoned them. And lets be honest...we have. Trump wouldn't have capitalized on the salience of race & ethnicity if the Democrats hadn't exploited it. The left wing of the party is dragging us into culture wars we can't win. The left has become self-righteous, denunciatory, & obsessed with trivial issues that have made Democrats a national laughing stock. This is politically disastrous & just plays into the hands of Fox News. Remember when we stood for the dignity of hard work, family, faith & coming together around basic "kitchen table issues? Sadly, over the past 10 years the DP has abandoned those core values in a desperate attempt to please the strident & disrespectful advocates of identity politics, who find it easier to burn bridges, to insult mainstream Americans rather than build coalitions. The far left never stops mocking these people. You're bad for eating factory-farmed meat, owning a rifle, & driving an SUV. You're bad for speaking the language of micro-aggressions, patriarchy, & cultural appropriation. Are you kidding me? Stop. Democrats can't & won't win over working class swing voters if they persist in ridiculing their cultural values.
182
The Democrats need to return to the political philosophy of FDR. "Without Economic Justice there can be No Justice."
4
Racism (micro-agressions), patriarchy (sexism and gender violence), cultural appropriation (seeking to demean others), driving an SUV (environmental irresponsibility), owning a rifle (complicity in an epidemic of gun violence) are not "cultural values." They are things that merit criticism, although not necessarily ridicule.
7
To see how Democrats lose states, look at North Carolina. A few years ago it was considered a "purple" state that the Democrats could win. Then the Obama Administration threatened to cut off millions of dollars in subsidies over the silly bathroom bill. The Republicans decided that they could play hardball, too, and now are completely in charge of the state.
3
“Their task, ... is to wrestle together until they reach consensus on whether it was racism or economic grievances that drove so many American voters into the arms of Donald Trump. “
“But we will never escape from purgatory until these points are treated as complements to the role that other forces played in Trump’s success “
Did Investor Sentiment Affect Credit Risk around the 2016 Election?
http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2017/11/did-investor-sentim...
"Immediately following the presidential election of 2016, both consumer and investor sentiments were buoyant and financial markets boomed. Perhaps more surprising, the risk of corporate default—which is driven mainly by firms’ financial health but also by bond liquidity—fell following the election, as indicated by lower yield spreads. Although expectations of better corporate and macroeconomic conditions were the primary drivers of lower credit risk, improved investor sentiment also contributed."
The point is, The Donald’s ascension is also firmly rooted in practicality.
1
While I understand where you're coming from, you are missing one critical piece: All of Trump's economic populism has dog whistle racism underlying its messages, messages delivered by a man whose political career was launched by accusing the first black president of not being American. Race was critical in this election.
2
are there ten people out there who can follow, let alone understand this essay?
3
@mark Goldman
I gave it the "old college try" to follow this. Here is a summary of each paragraph, where it breaks off after I started dozing:
Dantes finds journalists with piteous cries, smug certainties attempting to reach consensus - economics vs racism.
Douthat claims to be one, argues racist claim is exaggerated albeit partialy true.
Cites Serwer, Coates who argue against reductionist conventional wisdom dismissing race, rather argue hard truth matters more than politics, but the telling is incomplete.
Serwer argues it was racism, not economics as cause - white (not paycheck) panic over demographics.
Serwer claims trump supporters accept trump's failings as long as he deports mexicans, hassles muslims, hassles black pro athletes.
... I dozed off here ...
1
I think the truth lies in between. A key component of Trump's economic populism is "demonizing the other". The message is that working class white folks are suffering because elites have forgotten them AND have given handouts to people who look and pray differently.
But you know, being forgotten by the elites does not give you a free pass on bigotry.
Are the "deplorables" educable? Having been born and raised among them before escaping to climes more hospitable to my worldview, I say sure. All it will take is another generation and a couple more black men in the presidency.
4
And you aren't a bigot?
"He’s right that Trump’s campaign trafficked in casual bigotry, played footsie with legit white supremacists, and stoked white suspicion of minorities."
Note the fake news here: "Casual," "footsie," "stoked."
No, Ross, that is not what Trump did. His naked appeal to white identity cannot be denied by introducing the economic argument because SINCE 1968 the economic argument for white people IS the identity politics argument.
Trump said Mexican illegals were taking their jobs. This was a major theme in the so called blue wall states where immigrant populations boomed during the Obama years. The deportation police were the answer.
Trump said Muslims were here to attack us. On election day eve in 2016 he was in Minnesota speaking to white crowds about the influx of Somali immigrants in those neighborhoods.
He constantly railed about how the lives of black people were not worth living so "what do you have to lose?"
I'm sure Douthat is familiar with the so called 2012 GOP autopsy report that said the GOP must adapt or die.
Race trumps all for white America. It has since the ink dried on the Civil Rights Act. But to make it acceptable to race bait, the tactic must be cleaned up. And THAT is where the GOP's economic message comes in, as disinfectant for its naked appeals to white identity.
7
It looks like around 30% of the U.S. population is effectively “unreachable” in the Trump camp. They don’t care what Trump and the GOP say or do – persuasive tactics rule them. Issues with our educational system that have led to a lack of robust critical-thinking skills have taken their toll. It is a serious problem.
So Democrats have about a 20% “margin” to play with in upcoming elections. Factor in another Hillary/Bernie-type rivalry leading to more protest voting, and people not voting at all, along with gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement and external “meddling” from the likes of Russia and any other players and – poof – there goes the margin, and then some.
Meanwhile, the DNC has some sort of bizarre intramural contest going to see who is the oldest person we can nominate for president.
Trump has turned our system on its head: taxes and tax returns, emoluments, blatant nepotism, Russia, white supremacy, and on and on. When will Democrats get down – in the mud – and slay this monster?
The good news is that not much has changed since Obama was re-elected in 2012. The “deplorables” were there then. Obama won. And today *both parties* are getting most of their financial contributions from small grassroots donors.
Democrats need to reach out to the non-voters and protest voters from last year. Just doing that will solve the problem, and without all the tripe and philosophical drivel we’re being forced to suffer now.
We need to stop overthinking it.
122
" Issues with our educational system that have led to a lack of robust critical-thinking skills have taken their toll. It is a serious problem."
Not at all. The "unreachables" know that their best chance of overriding Roe vs Wade is to vote for a President pledged to appoint anti-abortion judges. Meanwhile liberals engage in doublethink, treating the judges as wise Platonic guardians while wringing their hands over Citizens United.
1
I hear you on the bizarre intramural, but where are the younger voices? Sometimes I think the only people who remember true Democratic values are the ancient ones like Sanders. In the olden times, it was about creating opportunity for all through good jobs, good affordable educations, good financial security in old age, and don't even think about messing with SS and Medicare. Many of our young progressives serve at the altars of tech and globalization, which is just another version of trickle down. Now, I have no gripe with globalization, but people have to get it in their heads that being able to buy a really cheap TV does not equate to personal dignity in the form of a good paying, long lasting job that lets you raise a family without worry.
I think we'll easily get back the 77,000 voters in those three critical states, but Democrats better have some think tanks figuring out how to fix income inequality in this country. I don't think they do. They rely on 'down the middle' groups like "Thirdway." I read their stuff and weep.
1
@Blue Moon, I agree with most of what you have written -- all except your contention that the Clinton/Sanders primary rivalry had anything to do with Clinton's loss in the general election. That kind of rivalry is what primaries are all about, and it is a perfectly healthy thing and should be encouraged. What many people fail to understand about Bernie's supporters is that a certain percentage of them -- maybe 15-20% -- only registered as Democrats in order to support Bernie in the general election. These are folks who had long ago become disenchanted with the Democratic Party and the kind of corporate cronyism that has overtaken the party since the mid-90s. These are folks whom Obama won over (before heThe De
Unfortunately, to many Democrats currently leading the party, these folks have been casually dismissed (as has even Bernie himself) as being "not real Democrats." But whatever their party or non-party self-identification mmay be, they certainly are not Republicans, and they certainly are progressives whom the party should be welcoming to. And they are voters the Democratic Party must appeal to in order to win national elections. Sadly, though, too many Democrats are focusing on who is or isn't a "real Democrat." To them I say I hope they enjoy their insularity, but they shouldn't expect it to lead to much by way of electoral victories.
.
2
The deeper issue I believe is psychological, and reflects the ease with which people can feel powerless and resentful. You can also throw in the Fox propaganda machine. Half the nation does not believe in evolution, the defining accomplishment of Western science. Most of the citizens do not have a clue about the implications of modern physics. People believe guns provide safety.
All of these issues, and many more, can be used to stoke people's fears and feelings of powerlessness. Our leader is an adult version of a kindergarten schoolyard bully, and millions of us seem just fine with that.
We are at a cross roads. Hindsight will cast its usual if this if that perspective. The passage of the 'tax cut' is the second of many upcoming opportunities to observe the tug of war in progress, and contemplate whether or not we picked up the rope or were bystanders.
92
Adam Serwer's essay in The Atlantic was long but it was compelling as an argument because he wasn't doing what Ross Douthat does here which is to minimize the noxiousness of white tribalism as too complex to judge. Now, it may well be true that there has been some slippage from Trump's 2016 high point. But that isn't crucial to Serwer's argument. Over and over, pundits including more a few on the left, stated Democrats are elitists because they "didn't speak to the white working class". Instead, Democrats' class bias (see: "deplorables") drove whites into the arms of the most ostentatiously unqualified man ever to run for president, someone whose rich history of patholoogical lying and crude hucksterism was on naked display.
Because I live with and among the white working class, I'm not surprised. They don't read The New York Times, or JD Vance, or Das Kapital. They really don't read much at all. But they do like a "straight shooter", someone who oversimplifies to the point of distortion, who finds a scapegoat for their problems and makes politics seem visceral rather than cerebral. HL Mencken analyzed this phenomenon nearly a century ago.
Douthat is struggling here in his counter-argument because conservatism in this nation is so intertwined with white identity politics that it's easy not to hear the dog whistles. Fortunately, that's why he can descend from his Dantean perch and talk to those of us living in the lower rings. We hear them loud and clear.
12
No historian worth his or her salt will use the term "populist" when describing Trump. Fraud, yes. Demagogue, yes. Profiteer, yes. But populist, absolutely not. Bernie Sanders is a populist, which, by definition, is a politician who fights for the rights and welfare of the masses.
15
What proves Douthat mostly wrong and Serwer and Ta-Nehisi mostly correct is in the way Douthat uses the term "working class." In using that term he essentially means white people. Is the black community not working? is the black community not part of the working class? The Black working class votes 85% to 90% democratic election after election.
The trend is stronger in the former slave states; in Alabama the black community voted at a higher percentage for Hillary than for Obama and the majority whites at a higher percentage for Trump than for Romney. Isn't it obvious? why would the black community vote for a white supremacist?
The Asian working class voted 70% democratic; the hispanic working class 70% democratic.
10
You need to define "working class" then. Most Asians are college educated professionals, ergo not "working class" by the usual definitions.
1
The Democratic party would rather lose elections than invite people under its tent who don't meet their every-lengthening list of litmus tests. That is how we got where we are. So be it. Eventually the old buzzards in charge will die off and a new generation will wish to actually govern, which will lead to a softening in the standards for ideological purity.
.
The Democrats are insufferable in their smug self-righteousness. That remains a political problem.
110
@Tom:
If "supporting equal Constitutional rights for all Americans" is an untenable litmus test for the white working class, then we are lost as a country.
1
Yes we smuggly consider racists bad folks. We plead guilty.
3
Leave no man behind, the credo of the Marines in operation, which really means leave no one behind. Yes, I am willing to lose elections to stand on this principle.
Trump ended up winning the Primary by insulting his opponents and threw them all of their game. They were in shock at how low Trump could sink to. Then Trump channels Bernie Sanders stands on Trade, the economy and infrastructure. The difference being Bernie actually was sincere and knowledgeable. Trump was merely mouthing it. Trump has no idea how most people live, but he could see how well Sanders was doing with attracting huge audiences and financing his campaign in a true Populist way.
Unfortunately the DNC did Bernie Sanders in, as did the press. The DNC by their disgraceful behavior and the press by ignoring the Sanders Campaign for the most part. The press gave so much coverage to Trump, including the mainstream press, that Trump won the primary. After that the DNC and Hilary Clinton did the rest, by proving they ran a extremely bad campaign, ignoring the problems of most Americans. Hilary did not help herself from the start. In one of the first Primary debates with Sanders she refused to reveal what she had to say in her speech to Goldman-Sacks, thus creating more suspicion among voters.
The reality is that Hilary still one the popular vote.
The real reason Trump is President is because of the Electoral College. It appears that you, Serwer and Coates forgot to mention that. Maybe it is time to stop the nonsense that is the Electoral College. We are now in the 21st Century and we have been given two illegitimate Presidents because of this fact. Disastorous
208
It's not clear what you mean by "two illegitimate presidents". It's likely you are referring to the Electoral College. Perhaps you should research how many candidates have their staff research their votes using the Electoral College rather than the popular vote as a path to the White House. It's likely your candidate had her staff run those numbers. Had Clinton won, would you consider her an illegitimate president?
But what you fail to consider is the genius of the Electoral College: it protects the minority. The minority it protects is smaller-in-population states. Their voices are heard, as they should be.
I'm sure you would agree that the rights of the minority should be protected.
I wonder if Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Electoral College section. Makes me think of what John Kennedy said when he and Mrs. Kennedy entertained Nobel Prize winners at the White House in 1962: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
1
Direct election is not an answer. Direct democracy has a much uglier history than what we are living now.
So we now suffer the tyranny of the minority under the system that gave us the two worst presidents of the modern era? What a tradeoff...
Analysis of the election is using the lies that Trump offered about economics and security to win the votes of middle and lower class voters. Only Trump is determined to create bills, kill regulations that would help that same class of voters.
So even more so than in the past lying during the campaign is more important than real policy positions and the one who can lie the most efficiently will win elections.
I always enjoy the human shrewdness of Mr. Douthat's articles, but he seems to turn a blind eye to racism and economic exploitation going hand in hand in America, and that it has since Slavery's beginning; and the racism most certainly fed the economic. White and black Americans so clearly divided by Trump are, and always have been fundamentally divided through race for economic leverage--former then the later, later then the former, etc.
7
We should spend less time debating the tools politicians use to manipulate the voter and more time talking about the system in which they operate. Consumerism operating within Capitalism is doing nothing more than what it is designed to do...more goods - less cost. Labor is a cost when reduced too much reduces demand. Our culture, our system survives or fails around demand and resources. Rhetoric on both the right and left is falling on deaf ears. If you want to borrow from Dante, try this:
"My course is set for an uncharted sea."
Capitalism has lost its way and we have an Ahab at the helm madly chasing a White Whale. Let us hope he doesn't catch it. We are not as well prepared for the uncharted sea as Dante. We are just starting that journey.
Capitalism, Dante, Melville...who'd of thought it!
7
Unlike Mr. Douthat, it didn't take a visit to Purgatorio for most Black voters to see which way the wind was blowing when it came to Donald Trump -- as his message was unmistakably clear, and it had nothing to do with deliverance.
In fact, for Black people in America there is no great difference between racism and economics, they're basically different sides of the same coin.
And now that Donald Trump has been elected to the highest office in the land by the same people who come out and march with torchlights, and neo-Nazi slogans, and hate, this country now has a chance to see close-up, the path it has chosen and what it is doomed to become.
The problem here far exceeds that of liberalism or conservatism, it's more than whether one is Democrat or Republican, it's all about humanity, and whether one can retain some vestige of it.
And it's all written in Black and White.
7
Trump, alas, has proved himself to be a tool of the very Establishment he promised to be against. In this he is no better, nor worse, than any other politician. Truly the Republicans are heirs to Lincoln's famous observation, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Though you have to give credit to the Republicans for trying to make that last one stick.
Sure they may frame their candidate's appeal in race, or class, or some combination thereof. But at the end of the day, what really changes? The rich keep getting richer, more are pushed into being poor to become poorer (see pending tax cut legislation). One can only wonder if Bernie Sanders' populism would remain so pure and for the people, or would he have had to comport to the Establishment? We'll never know. But we can say with certainty that we, the people got played again, and as much as Ross hopes for a rise from this purgatorial station, I cannot quite shake a sinking feeling.
85
@Patrick: The "American Century" ended with the 2000 election. The general trend has been downward since then. Don't be surprised: when at the top, there is nowhere to go but down.
1
Trump is no one's tool. He planned to use the Presidency to aggrandize his portfolio and feed his petty narcissism, and he has done so with great success. All that is left for him to accomplish is to lead us into war and become Mars.
It is not certain that anyone has a handle on "the truth." Socioeconomic inequality in this country has widened along racial and ethnic lines over the last 8-10 years: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great... .
One recent book does not hold out much hope for a fix: "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century," by Walter Scheidel -- https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10921.html . His premise is that only major catastrophes--things that lead to state collapse--level the field.
Several reviews hint at other ways out, but none have the cohesive intellectual force of Scheidel's work. He thinks that there is not much likelihood of such a widespread and violent event in the near term, leaving us stuck with what is likely to be rising inequality.
What happened in 2016 may be part of of this pattern, and our current stability--for as long as it lasts--may be working against us. From the book blurb:
"Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich..."
Wrong. Good for an article needing to be published, but just plain wrong. I live in a near suburb of Cleveland, one of the most segregated cities in America. it started here and other northern cities when school "busing" was used to enforce court orders to desegregate. Sentiment moves much more slowly than economic cycles. I grew up in NYC, in a "blue collar" mentality. These mostly immigrant or first generation families both loathed and feared black people. Think Howard Beach. It is racism. Even when people live "side by side" or work together, it is a manifestation of the kind of tribalism our society must overcome. Trump is the culmination of those visceral responses. Hidden and ugly, people acting in herd mentality that continues to assure that African Americans just do not get a fair shot. People talk about "progress" because we only can measure "success" in numbers. Americans have behaved only slightly better than people involved in wholesale slaughter and ethnic cleansing, but they are guilty of this crime nonetheless. Racism brought us here and it may very well be our undoing. The folks that got Trump elected should attention to" Be careful what you wish for."
9
Please find ANY laws still on the books in the US in 2017 that encourage, or even permit ANY discrimination in housing, employment, education, health care or access to services based on race. Racial discrimination is illegal in the US. And, as far as "slaughtering" is concerned, black on white violent crime outnumbers white on black violent crime. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/race-and-homicide-in-ame...
1
But you miss the larger picture, from the same report you link:
"The vast majority of homicide victims are killed by people of their own race. People tend to kill who they know."
So, your premise that "black on white" is greater than "white on black" has very little meaning. You're dealing with data on the margins, which makes your observation only marginally interesting.
Also, the data presented in your link is for "homicides." Not all violent crime results in a homicide, so we should both look further afield for a fuller picture.
2
I'm one who believes that economics was more important than race in the 2016 election. Since I don't have as much space as Mr. Douthat I'll just provide two points.
First, a non-trivial number of Trump voters had previously voted for Obama. Did they become racist between 2012 and 2016?
Second, when the economy is growing rapidly, everyone can benefit. With a slow growth economy such as we have had for the past decade, it becomes a zero sum game, where your gains come at my expense. So whether justified or not, much of the anti-immigrant sentiment can be attributed to a feeling that immigrants are taking jobs and holding down wages.
6
Right on! Pundits, and most people commenting on them, seem to miss these points. I am an over-educated working-class person, now retired. Both points are among the first thoughts I had as all the post- election comments appeared.
2
I just don't find your argument very convincing. Based on everything I've seen, even the economic issues were (and are) cast in White Nationalist, xenophobic and in some cases flat-out racist terms. The Trump administration's policies follow from this. For example, the proposed tax policy changes in truth are designed to hurt successful Blue State voters and in particular successful Blue State black and Hispanic voters. Their pain then would be the Red States' gain.
1
I think Hillary Clinton had it right in mid 2016 when she said half of Trump supporters were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ect (basket of deplorables) while half were people with economic anxiety. You can debate about the proportions in each group, but I hope everyone can acknowledge that is still true. Another thing that she was trying to get across in that speech is that the first group will never support Democrats while the second can be persuaded with an economic argument. The fact that she understood this makes it even more frustrating that she never tried to reach these voters and lost the election.
Having an either/or debate is counter productive. As Douthat implies, Republicans now have even less justification to deny that a large portion of their support comes from "deplorables". (Incidentally, Republicans that embrace this term are embracing the racism, sexism, etc that Clinton referred to in her speech.) Democrats need to acknowledge that their message is not resonating with non college educated voters that are struggling economically and find a way to reach them. Both Republican and Democrats need to find a solutions to these issues. Having the either/or arguments obscures this fact and is counterproductive.
2
HALF is a pretty clear message.
HALF would be 31.5 million American citizens -- citizens who bothered to register and VOTE -- and that's fully 10% of the total population or about 20% of all voters.
And Hilary mocked them. I guess she didn't think she needed our stupid deplorable votes. SHE WAS WRONG.
1
Typical Western thinking, that there is one cause for any effect. The world is multi-variate and interactive. The things we observe, like a Trump victory, are the result of a multitude of factors interacting in just the right way to produce the outcomes we observe.
Of course racism played a role, as did the Comey letter, Russian propaganda and angry white people in the Red states. Hillary's campaigning style and strategy undoubtedly played a role. You can point to each of these factors as a contributor to Trump's victory, but the search for a single explanation is a pointless exercise.
2
Ross, you forget Occam’s razor, where the easiest explanation is most likely the correct one. You can muddle it up to make it more palatable to yourself but the truth lies in white identity politics. I’ve talked to enough Trump voters to realize the main thrust is that old segregated country club cult. They prefer being part of a “Whites Only” Republican Party. Being a member of that cult means accepting anything another member does in your fight against the outside. It’s the main reason the South flipped in the eighties. They may tell pollsters otherwise but in intimate conversations they unveil themselves.
4
Once again Ms Clinton's words are twisted to read that her basket of deplorable was in reference to working white voters, people who feared losing their jobs and not the types we saw in Charlottesville who still rabidly support Trump. The deplorables are there and they are persuaded by racist language.
Douthat actually had a good piece until he got to the end. There is in fact an economic factor in the Trump election, it could be seen in the narrow victory margins he had in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. He promised them a lot and now is only delivering for his family and the wealthy. Oh, and the racist deplorable who love the belittling language and stunts like honoring the Navajo Code Talkers in front of Andrew Jackson's portrait.
BTW Ross I'm a Catholic too and no one has arrested me for being one so far so this whole religious liberty thing is nonsense. Tax payers don't have to fund our schools and religious people do not have the right to choose whom they will serve in their public businesses. If I owned a business I should not have the right to tell my employees what reproductive health care they can have. I can choose how to live my life but not make that choice for others. The Earth is round and climate change is real, the Pope who hate says so.
6
She said "half of Trump's supporters". That is 31.5 million American citizens, exercising their right to vote -- people who BOTHERED to register and show up to vote. And she mocked them.
Ask yourself if FDR, JFK, LBJ -- even Carter or Bill Clinton -- would have mocked working class voters as "deplorables".
BTW: nobody has any power to tell any person what contraceptives to use -- if they pay for it themselves. Ask ME to pay, and then it becomes MY BUSINESS.
1
Single causes rarely explain complicated events. It was clearly a toxic combination of economics, racism and kulturkampf that led to Trump’s election. The progressives need to address all three and edit their message in all three areas to have a chance of rolling back the tide.
These causes are also interlinked in complicated cynical ways, the Republicans will never do anything about abortion because doing so would then lose the future support of Evangelicals. Wealthy white elites have fostered racism amongst the white poor to cover up income inequality. These things have deep roots and Democratic moralising is not going to change them overnight. The Dems need an outreach strategy that starts with where the white working class are, not where the Dems think they should be.
3
In the next election less than a year away, Democrats must go after the Trump voters who cast their ballots twice for President Obama and also the 43% of eligible voters sitting out the 2016 debacle.
3
Except....read the comments. You've got liberals claiming "Hillary actually won".
You've got liberals insisting that "half of Trump supporters really ARE deplorables in a basket!"
You've got liberals claiming half of the nation are racists, xenophobes, bigots, KKK, White Aryan Nation, etc.
The left has learned nothing in a YEAR since their humiliating total defeat -- not just the White House (with all the lame explanations) -- but the Senate, the House, 37 Governorships, 1000 other public offices -- and oh yeah -- SCOTUS for the next generation.
1
On good days I like to think of Trump as just another episode in the American struggle with pluralism. On bad days I worry about Nuclear War.
1
It makes sense to dismiss simplistic explanations for Trump's victory, but no one should ignore the economic anxiety throughout large swaths of the nation. And we should also keep in mind that those of us who appreciate complexity and nuance are atypical. Trump realized many people experienced economic woes under a black president and was more than happy to use race to stoke their anger. Mr. Douthat is exactly right to acknowledge similarities in Trump's and Mr. Sanders' platforms, both of which featured strong appeals to Americans anxious about the future. The key and distressing element to Trumpism is his default position in the heretofore shadowy regions of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and isolationism. Trump remains comfortable and even obligated to provide oxygen for the worst elements of the American character. It is this aspect of his campaign and presidency that has alienated establishment Republicans, not his actual policies.
120
Trump is a business man first and foremost, and businessmen think first in terms of money. Countries that practice "isolationism" and devote their resources to their own citizens create higher quality of life societies for their own citizens than countries addicted to playing world cop - think Norway, Australia, Canada, Switzerland vs the US. Norway puts Norwegians first, Australia puts Australians first, Canada puts Canadians first and no one criticizes them for it. So why shouldn't the US do the same?
2
@me:
He brands himself as a "businessman", but all of his business "successes" are acquired through fraud, inheritance, or collusion with the Putin regime.
1
I would only add to this excellent comment that Trump is abetted by his Vice President, cabinet, donors, advisors and Congress, who participate in his manipulation of our government to their own and mutual advantage.
He is not acting alone.
"The path for liberalism is to treat Trump's working-class supporters as persuadable rather than deplorable..."
If the passage and signing of this tax bill doesn't erode his support, then your thesis is clearly wrong. But support hasn't been waning despite the way his administration has run and made appointments to government agencies, which on well on their way to becoming nothing more than extensions of the corporations and industries they are meant to regulate.
1
"..Trump deliberately positioning himself in territory close to Sanders on a range of economic issues."
Trump "...railed against Clinton’s Goldman Sachs connections..."
The thing is that Trump was conning the voters. While Sanders actually believed in, and would have instituted policies, that economically benefited the masses, Trump was lying to the voters. Trump has filled his cabinet and inner circle with oligarchs including, yes, Goldman Sachs people. His actions as president have had one goal: enrichment of corporations and the very wealthy. The Republican Party has used racism to attract voters while enacting policies and laws that favor and enrich oligarchs.
3
You seem to forget, Ross, that Hillary Clinton won the election--by 2.9 million votes. The definition of democracy is that each voter has equal power and the majority rules. That she "lost" the election was because of unequal voting power and racism, which kept many black and Latino voters off the rolls, especially in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but others as well.
As long as we remember these facts, Donald Trump will not be considered a legitimate president.
She did NOT because she is (obviously) not the President.
What part of "we don't elect POTUS by a popular vote" don't you get?
To her credit, even Hillary knew this and that's why she ceded the election to Trump and made a prompt concession speech.
BTW: those 2.9 million votes came from ONLY ONE STATE -- a sanctuary state that lets illegals vote. Therefore, it is obvious her votes from from illegals voting illegally.
1
If any Trump voters really believed Trump's claims about jobs and the economy, then those voters really are gullible small-town rubes, in full stereotype.
But Trump voters knew what they were really voting for and why.
It's about race. We all wish it were about something else, but it's about race.
2
Economic and cultural anxieties undoubtedly underlie all political swings. Racism? Sexism? The role model for White men (and White families once dependent on the male breadwinner) has been subject to compression for half a century. Uncertainty of future prospects incurs desperation and if there are no apparent panaceas the outcome is rage (a good ingredient for Trump to work with). Given accelerated models of automation, truck drivers will soon join draftsmen, assembly workers and coal miners in obsolescence. The remedy? -- A tax bill which will surely hasten consolidation and automation as it adds cash to already cash-heavy balance-sheets with no incentive to increase employment as there is no increase in demand for real consumer assets. The great question I have is whether the Democrats will be able to nimbly counter the coming socio-economic mess or will they give in to addressing their own cultural anxieties and stoking the anxieties on the other side.
2
I think that both Douthat and Serwer miss a significant motivation that led many people to vote for Trump - spite. It is not hard to find people in Trump's basket of deplorables echoing this sentiment in interviews and online forums, "Thus, OUT OF SPITE, I plan to vote for Trump, to show the Political Elite and Media they do not make decisions for us!" Basically, their reason for voting for Trump was to show elites that "you're not the boss of me". Adolescent? Certainly, but this makes much more sense than arguing that middle class voters opted for a gilded, faux-billionaire phony like Trump in hopes of economic justice.
29
John Ranta: that is certainly my own vote, and that of many I know. We'd suffered through 8 years of political correctness under Obama, and the idea of ANOTHER eight years of that kind of destruction of our nation was unbearable.
We would have voted for literally anyone to upend the system.
You genuinely are NOT the boss of us. GET USED TO IT. If you don't....the NEXT populist we elect will make Trump look like Mr. Rogers.
1
What a peculiar article. Douthat essentially agrees with all the important points that Serwer makes about racism/nativism rather than economic distress being the key to the Trump victory. He then suggests that to say this explicitly gives little "imaginative sympathy" to people who "feel threatened" by liberals, e.g. by laws regarding equal protection for minorities, gays, and abortion providers, and by people who call them out for condoning racist behavior. In other words, it's not really OK for Trumpists and "conservatives" to say and do all kinds of untrue and awful things regarding large sections of the population--but if you criticize them for it they have a right to be offended.
1
Excellent analysis. Regardless of the pole one clings too there is much food for thought. As an aside, I regret having to stop and look up vocabulary that I found distracting.
Trump won because of a number of factors, and if any had been missing he would have lost.
First, the social issues of race and religion. It is clear that he got the anti-minority bloc and the anti-abortion bloc. And the Democrats will never, ever, make any dent in this group, unless they repudiate their positions on these issues.
Second, the anti-Clinton vote, which went either to Trump or to the third party candidates. The Democrats can get this group by running a candidate not named Clinton.
Third, the anti-status quo economics vote, which went to Trump because Sanders wasn't on the ballot. The Democrats can get this group by running a candidate who does not pay more attention to Goldman Sachs than to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
In short, the 2016 election was a "one off" black swan event. And if the Democrats do not commit political suicide by following their failed path of 2016, they will be able to beat Trump 2.0 in 2020.
(And Richard, you are correct ... the pundit class is in the Inferno, not Purgatory.)
3
When I taught high school civics, I'd use opinion pieces to teach the difference between fact and opinion, asking students to underline evidence--which we would discuss to evaluate its reliability--to support the author's argument. I don't think this piece would have much underlining. It's just him, the pundit, in conversation with other pundits.
1
I voted for Hillary and would never vote for Trump, but she and the Dems dropped the ball on two issues for me. I worked outdoors near the Mexican border for years and saw the effects of the tidal wave of illegal immigration earlier in this century. I even bought and carried a pistol to defend myself if I ran into trouble while on foot, which I was, typically, all day. Furthermore, this border situation is an affront to national sovereignty. Dems seem to think that the racist history of the USA looms so large that an open border is necessary for redemption. It seems like one of their fears is that a border wall might actually work.
Then there is the issue of Muslim immigration and entry to the USA. Dems seem to think that, also to atone for past racism, we must not restrict Muslim immigration or entry, and treat terrorism as criminal but not reflective of a clash of civilizations. I disagree, based partly on the unhappy situation in dozens and dozens of countries where minorities are persecuted under the regime of the dominant Muslim sect. Why would I want my country to go that way? Muslims make up less that one percent of the US population but most of the domestic terrorism.
I don’t think Democrats will successfully navigate these issues until they stop looking for redemption from past sins and start looking to the future and how we can build a more cohesive society that will care for the citizens we have now.
8
" Trump and Sanders did have a lot in common" with Trump deliberately positioning himself in territory close to Sanders on a range of economic issues."
Please. Any prospective voter looking at the facts underlying Trump's lies, from his use of imported product to workers in his enterprises could determine that he was a phony. Keep up the false equivalency, Douthat.
1
It's understandable that Douthat can't accept that his party, the Republican Party, appeals to white nationalism rather than a more acceptable right-wing populism. It's understandable that Douthat can't accept that his evangelical Christian brothers, with their prosperity gospel and hard-edged Christian nationalism, are more pagan than Christian. Of course, acceptance is the first step to revelation, while denial is the enemy of revelation. What Douthat does in this essay is sprinkle in a few truths with a large dose of denials and prevarications, pronounce the current condition of his party as "complex", and call it a day. See you next Sunday, Ross.
2
I found this column of Ross' almost unreadable. The basic point is that an election puts A or B into office. You do not know why they voted, other than for A or B. Such conclusions have no real validity, even though many engage in such sophistry. Trump is a mystery and puzzle to me. He is crude and attacks anyone in his way, with any language he can find. Making a conclusion from that or about his "supporters" that he is racist, bigoted, etc. etc. is nonsense. Those slurs are used so much that they are meaningless.
"The path for liberalism is to treat Trump's white working class supporters as persuadable rather than deplorable." Really? Has that even worked for conservatives at this point? Let us know how that works out Mr. Douthat (and Mr. Erickson and Mr. Sykes).
It is likely that economic anxieties played a role. But without racism, the trump voters could have easily concluded that Trump was a con man. And it is because of racism that they will still cheer even when his economic agenda put them in a deeper hole.
5
How anybody can argue that any policy content of things that Mr. T. said was or is pertinent is beyond belief. I'm not sure what is worse here, voting from xenophobic tribalism or having at any point believed that "trillion dollar infrastructure", or "border wall" were real.
1
It's extremely hard for the liberals to treat Trump supporters as anything but deplorable, and equally difficult for conservatives to treat the liberals as anything but the future inhabitants of the top ring of Purgatorio. Pride goeth before the fall.
1
As a liberal I will admit liking a lot of what Trump campaigned on, similar to Bernie Sanders yes, but I could not get past the deceit. The man was shown to be a liar and he thought nothing of ripping off the working class building his projects so why would I trust him to do what he said. Turns out I was right!
5
You really need to get out more, Ross. It's not clear why you don't recognize #theGreatMisleader's feigned populism is one of his go-to tools. Of course he mimiced Sanders, it was an obvious and easy way to draw voters from Clinton. It would have been shocking for him not to attempt to coopt the theme for convenience in the moment. How many Goldman-Sachs Captains did he stock the Cabinet with immediately? What is the play with CFPB? His words, and drama of the rallies were always a ruse. It is his way, and how he came to be what we see before us. His supporters welcome the cover, and you fell for it, and continue swallowing the tripe to this day. There are definitive, weighty factors of disenfranchisement and disillusionment, as you say, but you're clearly disconnected from the symptoms and misconstrue the root causes. As an adept analyst and "root cause machine", with specifically relevant personal history, I welcome a dialogue to help you improve your grasp of the factors and better discern the dynamics at work.
3
From CNN, 12/16: "More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history. The Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia."
This was Hillary's total, which she achieved in the midst of Comey, Russia, her own flaws, etc.
If she had received approx 70,000-75,000 more votes, spread across three key states, she would be president. In fact, all she needed was slightly better turnout (e.g., by millennials, by African-Americans) in three cities (Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee) and she would have won the election.
In other words: I am not convinced that these Big Discussions about race & class are all that relevant. Hillary swamped Trump's in the popular vote. Give her 75,000 more votes: she is president, and the Republicans as a party are in total disarray, dumbfounded how they ever could have nominated a sure-fire loser like Trump in the general election.
3
Then there is the intriguing idea that those particular three states were barely "won" by tRump. In each of those states, it would not have been difficult at all for relatively few local Republican election officials to tamper with vote totals. With the help of voting machines provided by companies which have openly stated that their machines can be manipulated for Republicans, this seems not only possible, but likely.
1
You have missed a few fairly obvious initial steps on the paths out of our present predicament:
the Republican Party in control of the legislature needs to put patriotism over party and impeach the lying treasonous profiteering con-man who is currently our President, and then the American public needs to ensure brand failure for Trump and all who are associated with him. Brand failure would be the most just of all possible outcomes for Trump as he entered the presidential contest solely for money, and every day that he remains in office is a day that he enriches himself further.
3
Trump was able to appeal to the core American values of independence and patriotism. Both cross over into racism, xenophobia, and sexism because white men (and many women) see minorities and liberals as cultural and economic threats.
2
I'm reading this column and breaking news comes across about Trump sharing videos on twitter supposedly showing violence by Muslims. Once again I have to ask every Republican who writes a column for whomever - how can you possibly think Trump is not intentionally fanning the flames of racism, to make implicit promises to white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males that he will lead them back to supremacy ("Make America Great Again!") and how can you think there is any way to consider such people (women too) persuadable? Years of upbringing and background have created a large class of people who are proud to be utterly racist, and they now feel liberated to spew their hate because the President of the United States is doing it too. We can't persuade these people at all, BUT perhaps, we can persuade their children that there is nothing evil about a mixed society, and in fact, it makes for a strong society.
6
Mr. Douthat's mistake is one that most Purgatorial Pundits make. It is the assumption that voters are rational and make decisions based on policy proposals. Trump even pointed this out with his "shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Ave." boast. Trump says whatever gets the most applause so long as it fits the comic book character he has been perfecting on TV and the tabloids. It's not about content, it's all about the delivery.
Mr. Douthat has no doubt seen the tourists crowded around a 3-Card Monte dealer. Rational people with a modicum of street-smarts see this game for what it is–a scam. Naive (and delusional) people think that they will outsmart the 3-Card dealer. And once you put down 20 bucks, you're committed to that belief. It wasn't such a big deal when the losers walked away minus $100, which would have probably been spent on a "Rolex" or a "Louis Vuitton" bag anyway. But it is a much bigger deal when the dealer is made president.
Pundits, as defined in the dictionary, are supposed to be experts with opinions. Clearly this definition is no longer accurate. Few pundits are experts on any topic except punditry.
Racism and classism are just "accidental" properties. [See Aristotle.]
Rational explanations for trump are never going go very far. He is the culmination of an irrational set of TV addicts, combined with opportunistic rich dudes, and a media industry that knows how to make loads of money off "The Situation" or a Snooki.
3
I would agree that regression analysis of political motivations for voting preference is both inevitable and pointless. As much as I want to agree, I cannot give in to the thinking white working class voters believed the dotard’s second-grade level promises for the economy. Anyone with a an IQ higher than body temperature knew he was a fraud, and always would be.
I cannot agree their hatred for Clinton, the daughter of a working stiff and actually knows how to score in bowling, was based on anything but her failure to be a reliable path to preserving white privilege.
Everyone in the US knew she was no friend to white male privilege, and that drove them to vote for the one person capable of threatening democracy.
2
Excellent, accurate, and beautifully written column.
1
Most of the perceived failings of Trump supporters are also failings of Democrats, not just Republicans, as it was the 'Democratic firewall' that largely handed the election to Trump. These are people who were regarded as upstanding, rightful thinking citizens for a few decades and then per the current Democratic story somehow changed overnight to become uneducated, bigoted deplorables. If one accepts that story one also needs to acknowledge that there is a continuum of people in this country who evidently make such fundamental changes overnight, and that many are Democrats.
The more rational explanation is that there is a continuum of people, and when presented with a bad choice many feel compelled to explain why they chose one bad choice over another. Remember, Hillary couldn’t even beat Trump, the election was hers to lose and she managed to lose it. And it was Democrats who handed her a defeat as their votes were down by over 900,000 compared to 2012 in the six states that trump flipped. Again, when looking for explanations start by looking in a mirror.
167
Clinton won the popular by approx. 3 million more votes.
11
No one said that the swing voters that handed Trump victory were deplorables. The deplorables, half of all Trump voters (just to be grossly generalistic) are the white nationalists, and the citizens that wave an American flag while yelling "don't tread on me" but hate everyone that is not like them, and really anyone who approved of Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims entering the US. Go look at polling surveys to see just how many people thought banning Muslims from entering the US was a good idea.
7
Peering into my mirror I do not see reflected the one-[hu]man-one-vote promise of American democracy, but rather an overhanging cloud of an electoral college that skewered the popular outcome so we got what we’ve got: an incompetent, vain oligarch who has abandoned all so-called populist pledges and promises to let Ayn Rand devotees, puppets of wealthy and foreign powers and yes, bigots ruin the United States for evermore. The tax hike, the dismantling of the State Dept., turning the Justice Dept over to the Confederacy, making blue staters pay even more than they do, eliminating deductions for student loans among many other benefits for education, leaving millions without health insurance, erasing the line between church and state, letting the generals run things without civilian oversight -Trump didn’t run on that platform. He ran on bullying and, yes, bigotry, which is what he continues to deliver that is evidently applauded by his base.
7
Mr. Douthat had me interested in his argument until he dropped the following tidbit “It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech; the idea that the pejoratives don’t carry any element of political and legal threat is silly.” Really? The “certain religious liberties” and “the fullness of free speech” that current-day conservatives seem to be clamoring for is the ability to discriminate against LGBT persons and non Christians. Sorry Mr. Douhat, what Trump’s victory proved to the world is that our country was not the beacon of liberty we’ve been advertising all these years but still the land of the bigoted of yore.
676
I'm not a fan of everything Douthat writes, but the speech codes on many campuses have been explored in articles, both here and in other publications. Thoughtful non-conservatives, mindful of the role progressives played in free speech movements, are troubled by much of the obligatory group-think on university campuses.
That conservative students do themselves no favor by inviting far-right provocateurs instead of choosing Douthat for example, as speakers is an issue. But to claim Douthat is way off base on this issue is ideology on your part.
2
I'm a non-Christian. So are many prominent members of the Trump administration. None of us feel that "current-day conservatives" want to discriminate against us.
In fact, "current-day conservatives" are often the strongest opponents of discrimination. For example, who else is standing up for fair treatment of South and East Asians (generally Hindu or Confucian, not Christian) in college admissions and hiring?
1
Bigot is in the mind of the beholder, CEA. It's a lot like Racist these days. If you utter it, not matter what your beliefs. As we said as kids, "It takes one to know one." Or "If that's what you are, what am I?" Don't forget the "kettle-caller" either.
Ultimately, those quickest to yell "Bigot!" are bigots. For those who believe, according to Dante', there's Purgatorio time ahead.
1
"It’s increasingly common for liberals to assume that the irredeemable don’t qualify for certain religious liberties and the deplorable don’t deserve the fullness of free speech; the idea that the pejoratives don’t carry any element of political and legal threat is silly."
Huh? Ross, I can't agree with anything in your intricate but incomprehensible analysis of the Trump victory and its aftermath. But the above statement is even more over the top than usual, and I'd like specific examples of where "certain religious liberties" can't be extended to Trump voters--if they violate the first amendment, they're unconstitutional, Ross, not retaliatory.
For once I'd like to read one of your columns and come away with a takeaway as simple as the obvious: A con man made pie in the sky promises to the down and out who bought into his fantasy of returning them to an era that never existed.
Trump is a Brigadoon president who can't keep his promise for so many reasons it's hard to cite them all: first he doesn't care, second he doesn't have to as long as he throws them racial and cultural bones; third he hasn't a clue what he's doing; and fourth, his own wealth is more important than anyone else's.
Pick your poison, Ross, but remember, it's not that complicated. What I want to know is, what are you going to do now that your beloved conservatism has been trampled by self-serving Trumpism?
369
First, this was a well written and lucid column, and it was about Trump voters, and their perceptions, not about Trump himself. Secondly, how can you claim an era "never existed"?? Are you claiming that the years between 1945 and 1970 didn't exist? That the US didn't exist between those years? In fact, there are millions of people alive today who remember those years, and remember them fondly, with pleasure. Many people remember when US workers without multiple degrees could find a job that paid a living wage. Many people remember living in peaceful, crime free neighborhoods, feeling safe walking to school or playing outside. If millions of people hadn't ENJOYED the 50's and 60's, then 50's nostalgia wouldn't be "a thing".
5
Christine - Your best commentary among many fine submissions.
1
Since Trump can keep about half of his supporters with his race-baiting tweets and comments, Clinton's comment that about half of his supporters were "deplorable" appears to be closer to the mark though even Clinton herself later said that "half" was a poor choice. (Would anyone disagree with "many" instead of "half"?)
Douhat is guilty of the same poor reporting that allowed Trump to slip into office. If Douhat really cared, he would have noted that Clinton saw this before the election and before the commentators, but was ignored. At the time, I looked for and found the context of her remarks:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updat...
"to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. ...racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic ... ..
"But the other basket …. are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
183
Lynn:
Nice appologia for Hillary, but, as a trial lawyer, I was taught long ago not to attack the jury. It leads to defeat every time.
5
Thank you for reminding us of the context of Clinton’s , (what turned out to be disastrous), comment. It was both astute and sensitive in full. She may have been generous in saying”half,” nevertheless one wonders when “the other half” will realize that Trump doesn’t care about them and never did.
6
"you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables...racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic."
And they proudly identify themselves as deplorables, on tee-shirts and coffee mugs - people for whom it is a badge of honor to be labeled "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic" in some combination.
6
I agree with this column and appreciate Mr. Douthat's refraining from his usual potshots at liberals. (Minor quibble, I don't think it's a given that Democrats "marched left faster than the country" on social issues.)
The basic thrust that we are oversimplifying the explanations for our disastrous current president and each other in ways that are counterproductive is well reasoned and compelling. (I am in the midst of Van Jones' "Beyond the Messy Trush" which holds a similar message. I find these positions reassuring.)
I understand that there are some things that are non-negotiable and I share the fury at those responsible for electing Trump, but I do think we need to find common ground. What is the alternative?
5
I agree that Serwer/Coates and Richard Rorty see clearly different parts of the underlying U.S. dynamic. And it is curious how long it has taken us, though we have eyes, to see that the elephant is both very like a snake and very like a tree trunk. There is more, to be more fully understood with time, I expect.
4
Oh spare me, Ross. More twisting into a pretzel to try to explain the ugly and increasingly in-your-face tribalism, bigotry and xenophobia of your Party's base. Trump is no "populist," he's just willing to say out loud the nasty stuff these folks have been thinking for a long time. And there is NO equivalent on the Left to any of this, no matter how often you repeat the nonsense about "PC culture." Face it, Ross, your "president" would never have been elected if he hadn't been able to tap into the vast well of racial anxiety and anger in your Party. And the longer you deny and try to explain it away, the more complicit you all are in he destruction of our Republic.
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He’ll be claiming it even as documents are drawn up to re-establish the republic as the “Confederate States of America”. He’ll be claiming it when the first purges of “undesirables” take place - i mean the ones where folks are not merely rounded up for deportation.
Oh really? Just read the comments section of the NYT, and you will see plenty of bigotry directed at Republicans (as monolithic a group as, say, blacks). You will see a ton of closed-mindedness chained by shibboleths of the Left. PC culture is 1984 Newspeak, let's be honest. Although George Orwell did not have the insight to explore the need for 37 genders.
As far as why Trump won, wasn't it Bill Clinton who ran a campaign guided by the insight "It's the economy, stupid". There are very few people who will go to the voting booth to vote for a candidate based on race (well, maybe some Obama voters), but many who will vote on their perception of the economy.
An enormous number of words and some of the usual Douhat casuistry to disprove a thesis but that ends up largely endorsing it. Economic alienation undoubtedly played a role but Serwer's much more substantive essay (which I wasn't aware of until I read this piece) is largely true.
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Ross has a lot correct in this column. Trump did say a lot of centrist economic pablum during the campaign and immediately reverted to type after the election (just look at the tax reform). His supporters here in the heartland haven't yet figured out they were sold a pig in a poke on jobs and trade. Neither have they changed their white identity politics. Democrats, on the other hand, still aren't reaching the white working class. All the information and pronouncements coming from coastal democrats (the most oft cited in the media) still doesn't resonate or persuade any out here.
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tom: I'm in a Trump-supporting area as well, and the support appears to be unshakeable and completely disconnected from reality. My question: what do we do? How do we reach people who see politics as a sporting event? Their team "won," and now they get to gloat and rub our noses in it, and that's apparently all that matters to them. In fact, the more earnestly we try to explain the issues to them, the more gleefully they call us whiners and losers and snowflakes. It's a quandary.
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Patience is one way. When I pointed out at a meeting that some 90% of them were receiving some sort of federal government assistance of one sort or another (farm programs, social security, medicare), there was silence for a time. The farm bill, social security and medicare were not created by and are not supported by Republicans. When I point out that every Democrat running for office in our area is a strong 2nd amendment supporter (and many are NRA members), that strikes a chord. Trump's position on NAFTA has scared the bejeezus out of the farmers. At least they are starting to think for themselves and what would be their own best interest. It will take time for them to understand the problem but there already are a lot less loser and snowflake comments.
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Nancy:
The way democrats can win future elections is by not nominating frauds like the Clintons.
If the party had chosen Joe Biden, for instance, he would have won his birthplace, Lackawanna County, and thus the state of Pennsylvania, and, thus, the White House.
The 2016 vote was far more a rejection of Hillary than an endorsement of Trump.
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This is one of the most thoughtful analyses I've read about our current state of politics. And more important, how we can move forward to a better place.
Importantly, it looks at both parties and the country as a whole. And it avoids the myopic tendencies all too common these days.
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If liberals expect to become relevant again, then they should read Douthat and think about it. This means their favorite pastime of calling names won't win over the lost voters. Instead they need to tame the rigged system and come up with an economic plan to share the wealth.
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Calling names and obstructing everything Obama tried to do seemed to work for the Republicans at least in the short run. I agree the democrats need to change leadership and become more progressive in their policies especially push for single payer health care system and be pro union. The Reagan Revolution has just about ran it's course and the new generation I believe will be ready for a new progressive movement in this country all the democrats have to do his find the right leaders to lead the way.
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@Not Drinking the Kool-Aid:
Trump voters have absolutely drunk the kool-aid. They are fully committed cult members, and they are lost. Nothing will reach them.
A much more productive use of the Democrats' time is to rally, recruit, and inspire the much larger number of people who didn't vote.
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The most important thing Democrats need to do when back in power is pass legislation that takes money out of politics and negates Citizens United. The second thing is to get rid of the Electoral College and eliminate (outlaw) gerrymandering. These are at the root of the having a minority in control.
The only reason the tax bill is the stinker it is, is because it has been bought and paid for by the filthy rich. Get the money out and changes that benefit us as a nation and as citizens will happen.
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Leave it to Ross when doing a book review on Dante to choose Purgatorio, the most boring third of his Divine Comedy. Give me the subtly-distinguished sinners of Inferno any day. And I’m not so sure that pundits can be found in Purgatory anyway because that assumes that they’re not all in Hell for eternity plus one day.
Ross’s was a crepuscular analysis with no bright lines. However, in the end he arrives at advice that I can support: conservatives need to move closer to the center on economics and pay far less attention to race, while liberals need to broaden their messages to working and middle class voters and be willing to compromise to some extent on social issues. If we do that, whether Trump compelled such movements or not, then we’ll open up enough middle-ground that we can talk civilly, compromise, and move forward again. Everyone’s a winner.
The whole focus on Trump as avatar of the white identity is overplayed. It had its part in the election but the disillusion and grass roots rejection of establishmentarianism was far broader than that: it was a rejection of business as usual.
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@Richard Luettgen:
Democrats have been offering centrist policies to help the working class for decades. _White_ working class voters dismissed these policies with contempt to actively vote for overt racism.
On whose rights would you like to "compromise"?
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@ Richard L. - Richard since you are an "outlier" I wonder if you might be the only other comment writer than me to support USCB system of classification by "race". Some commenters might say "Larry those are just socially constructed" but Richard Spencer firmly believes as do his Swedish collaboraters that he belongs to a genetically distinct superior race. Commenters like Josh Hill also belIeve there are genetically distinct "races" but not in genetic superiority. Filed a comment on this but it may appear when "Comments are closed."
Larry
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
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Then why Trump and not Rand Paul?
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