Why Do White Working-Class People Vote Against Their Interests? They Don’t.
Trump is a plutocrat who put Steve "Foreclosure King" Mnuchin in charge of the Treasury Department. Trump then signed a bill that lowered his own taxes and raised taxes on everybody with more than two kids. Nobody wants to pay more income taxes -- we're struggling as it is. So why did millions of white working class people vote for him?
Kirk Noden writes in The Nation that "Corporate Democrats have never advanced their interests—and at least Republicans offer a basic, if misleading, story about why they are getting screwed." Noden cites Youngstown, Ohio as an example.
"Youngstown has been left hobbled because progressives failed to secure economic power.
"The first step was the collapse of the industrial heartland. This hit white working class people incredibly hard—and it remains a phenomenon that is not understood on the East and West Coasts. It is [falsely] painted as a natural evolution of our economy and as if the onus is on people to adapt to it. This fails to capture how many families and communities were dependent on the industrial economy... Resources, jobs, decent housing, quality neighborhoods and schools are all in decline.
"Two narratives emerged about the collapse of the industrial heartland in America. The one from the far right has three parts: First, that industry left this country because unions destroyed productivity and made labor costs too high, thereby making us uncompetitive. Second, corporations were the victims of over-regulation and a bloated government that overtaxed them to pay for socialist welfare systems. Third, illegal immigration has resulted in the stealing of American jobs, increased competition for white workers, and depressed wages. Together these three factors led to the collapse of manufacturing in America. This, sadly, is a story that many Americans believe. The second narrative, promoted by corporate Democrats, is that the global economy shifted and the country is now in transition from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy. This story tacitly accepts the economic restructuring of the heartland as inevitable once China and other markets opened up."
Both narriatives are wrong. 'The most accurate narrative is one we never hear—and that I think is illustrated well in the collapse of Youngstown’s steel mills. When the corporations who operated the mills shut them down, the community organized en masse. Key religious and community leaders stood up against 'the severe consequences when corporations decide not to modernize older facilities, view relocation of industry as a logical result of corporate opportunities for profit, or shift capital altogether to other investment opportunities.'
"A coalition organized to reopen the mills as cooperatives owned by the workers, community members, and private investors. After a feasibility study showed that reopening the mills was economically viable, the coalition appealed to the federal government for loans to purchase and modernize the plant. Despite an initial commitment, the Carter administration backed off. Apparently, Jimmy Carter worried that supporting the project would jeopardize his reelection bid and bowed to lobbying by steel corporations who saw it as a threat, which was countered by only tepid support from the national Steelworkers Union leadership, who worried worker ownership might undermine the union.
"The collapse of the industrial heartland resulted from a choice about whether we would reshape our economic models to serve workers and communities over profits—or continue to serve corporate interests that painted the global movement of capital as inevitable. The [Republicans] blamed unions and regulation. The Democrats tried to explain the collapse as a weather phenomenon that we all needed to adjust to. Efforts to reshape the economy were marginalized and defeated by both parties; business and organized labor each supported the collapse of the city of Youngstown.
"Deindustrialization was a traumatic experience for white working-class people. Yet we act surprised when this constituency exhibits post-traumatic-stress disorder. And it is we who perpetrate the myth that they are voting 'against their interests,' despite all the facts on the ground indicating that for them it makes no difference which party is in power.
"...White working-class people have no experience of living in a place where the economy has been anything but miserable for decades, so they don’t understand how immigrants could be coming to the United States and not 'steal' someone’s job.
"If we want to save this country, we will have to organize and build an agenda that addresses the issues that have propelled so many people into enough despair that they voted for Trump. It is time progressives became serious about building economic power."
What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
Joan C. Williams writes in the Harvard Business Review that "the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap.
"One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich." The rich are presumed to have earned their wealth. Professionals are arrogant middle managers who believe they know more about your job than you do, even though they really have no idea what they're talking about.
"The [white working class] dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money... Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.
"Manly dignity is a big deal for working-class men, and they’re not feeling that they have it. Trump promises a world free of political correctness and a return to an earlier era, when men were men and women knew their place.
"[White working class] men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need."
It's vital to understand "Working-Class Resentment of the Poor. Remember when President Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the [white working class], and in some cases that’s proved true: The poor got health insurance while some Americans just a notch richer saw their premiums rise.
"Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class. So my sister-in-law worked full-time for Head Start, providing free child care for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work." White working class people resent that they have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for child care -- and people who make $500 less get their child care paid for by the government.
"'The white working class is just so stupid. Don’t they realize Republicans just use them every four years, and then screw them?' I have heard some version of this over and over again, and it’s actually a sentiment the [white working class] agrees with, which is why they rejected the Republican establishment [in 2016]. But to them, the Democrats are no better."
Can Our Democracy Survive Tribalism?
Andrew Sullivan writes in the New York Intelligencer that "Healthy tribalism endures in civil society in benign and overlapping ways. We find a sense of belonging, of unconditional pride, in our neighborhood and community; in our ethnic and social identities and their rituals; among our fellow enthusiasts. There are hip-hop and country-music tribes; bros; nerds; Wasps; Dead Heads and Packers fans; Facebook groups. (Yes, technology upends some tribes and enables new ones.) And then, most critically, there is the Über-tribe that constitutes the nation-state, a megatribe that unites a country around shared national rituals, symbols, music, history, mythology, and events, that forms the core unit of belonging that makes a national democracy possible.
"None of this is a problem. Tribalism only destabilizes a democracy when it calcifies into something bigger and more intense than our smaller, multiple loyalties; when it rivals our attachment to the nation as a whole; and when it turns rival tribes into enemies. And the most significant fact about American tribalism today is that all three of these characteristics now apply to our political parties, corrupting and even threatening our system of government.
"Trump is as much an opportunist as a tribalist; he won the presidency by having an intuitive, instinctive grasp of how to inflame and exploit our tribal divide. His base is therefore more fanatically loyal and his policy views even more, shall we say, flexible than [Bill] Clinton’s.
"When a party leader in a liberal democracy proposes a shift in direction, there is usually an internal debate. It can go on for years. When a tribal leader does so, the tribe immediately jumps on command. And so the Republicans went from free trade to protectionism, and from internationalism to nationalism, almost overnight. For decades, a defining foreign-policy concern for Republicans was suspicion of and hostility to the Soviet Union and Russia. In the 2012 election, Mitt Romney called Moscow the No. 1 geopolitical enemy of the United States. And yet between 2014 and 2017, a period when Putin engaged in maximal provocation, [conquering] Crimea and moving troops into Ukraine, Republican approval of the authoritarian thug in the Kremlin leapt from 10 to 32 percent.
"And then there is the stance of white Evangelicals, a pillar of the red tribe. Among their persistent concerns has long been the decline of traditional marriage, the coarsening of public discourse, and the centrality of personal virtue to the conduct of public office. In the 1990s, they assailed Bill Clinton as the font of decadence; then they lionized George W. Bush, who promised to return what they often called “dignity” to the Oval Office. And yet when a black Democrat with exemplary personal morality, impeccable public civility, a man devoted to his wife and children and a model for African-American fathers, entered the White House, they treated him as a threat to civilization. Even as he gave speeches drenched in Christian allegory and offered a eulogy in Charleston that ended with a cathartic rendition of “Amazing Grace,” they retained a suspicion that he was secretly a Muslim. And when they encountered a foulmouthed [adulterer] who bragged of grabbing women by the pussy, used the tabloids to humiliate his wife, married three times, boasted about the hotness of his own daughter, touted the size of his own dick in a presidential debate, and spoke of avoiding STDs as his personal Vietnam, they gave him more monolithic support than any candidate since Reagan, including born-again Bush and squeaky-clean Romney. In 2011, a poll found that only 30 percent of white Evangelicals believed that private immorality was irrelevant for public life. [In 2017], the same poll found that the number had skyrocketed to 72 percent."
Trump is a serial adulterer who has had three wives, cheated on all of them, and pursued women -- including married women -- while married. So why did millions of Christians vote for him?
Teacher and blogger Neil Carter writes: "I recall an article a few months back wondering aloud why Trump supporters seem convinced of everything the man ever says even after showing them how he contradicts his own positions three times in a single week. They will defend anything he says or does, not because the actions or words themselves are rationally defensible, but because at some point the mantle for a particular group identity was placed on him and from that point forward it became about the tribal identity, not the man himself.
"The reason Trump remains popular with his base no matter how dangerous or irresponsible (or demonstrably false) are his tweets and off-script public statements is that he’s become a symbol for a group identity, like a team mascot strutting the sidelines during a football game. People will root for their team no matter how consistently poor their performance because it’s not about the performance. It’s about the group identity.
"For the life of me, I cannot explain theologically how disagreeing on [a] single [social] issue [i.e. abortion, gay marriage, or supporting Trump] could equal a betrayal of the entire Christian faith. It doesn’t really add up in my mind. Except that it does once you realize that at some point in the recent past it was decided that this [issue] would be an identity marker for the tribe itself, and that was the end of the discussion. Once that association was made, the battle lines were drawn and now they’re willing to go down fighting over this."
Since supporting Trump became part of a tribal identity, people who don't support Trump cannot be members of the tribe. By the tribe's logic, those who stop supporting Trump (such as Congressman Justin Amash) have betrayed the tribe.
Trump has spent his life making chauvanist, sexist, and misogynist remarks. Why would millions of women vote for him?
Adam Serwer writes in The Atlantic that "Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear." They see those not in their tribe as the enemy, and they delight in seeing these supposed villains get what they deserve. They like seeing the "enemy" tribe -- i.e. those who disagree with their politics -- defeated and humiliated.
"We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border-patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting to Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president had sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by the police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.
"The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty.
"Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."
That's what a demagogue does.
Chris Hedges writes in Common Dreams that Donald Trump follows the playbook of a cult leader.
"Cult leaders arise from decayed communities and societies in which people have been shorn of political, social and economic power. The disempowered, infantilized by a world they cannot control, gravitate to cult leaders who appear omnipotent and promise a return to a mythical golden age. The cult leaders vow to crush the forces, embodied in demonized groups and individuals, that are blamed for their misery. The more outrageous the cult leaders become, the more they flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal... Those who follow them grant them this power in the hope that the cult leaders will save them.
"Trump did not create the yearning for a cult leader. Huge segments of the population, betrayed by the established elites, were... desperately looking for someone to rescue them and solve their problems. They found their cult leader in the New York real estate developer and reality television show star.
"Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious fawning and total obedience. They prize loyalty above competence. They wield absolute control. They do not tolerate criticism. They are deeply insecure, a trait they attempt to cover up with bombastic grandiosity. They are amoral and emotionally and physically abusive. They see those around them as objects to be manipulated for their own empowerment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment. All those outside the cult are branded as forces of evil, prompting an epic battle whose natural expression is violence.
"...Cult leaders manipulate followers primarily through language, not force. This linguistic manipulation is a gradual process. It is rooted in continual mental chaos and verbal confusion. Lies, conspiracy theories, outlandish ideas and contradictory statements that defy reality and fact soon paralyze the opposition. The opposition, with every attempt to counter this absurdism with the rational—such as the decision by Barack Obama to make his birth certificate public or by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to release the results of her DNA test to prove she has Native American ancestry—plays to the cult leader. The cult leader does not take his or her statements seriously and often denies ever making them, even when they are documented. Lies and truth do not matter. The language of the cult leader is designed exclusively to appeal to the emotional needs of those in the cult.
"The cult leader grooms followers to speak in the language of hate and violence. The cult leader constantly paints a picture of an existential threat, often invented, that puts the cult followers in danger.
"Cults externalize evil. Evil is embodied in the demonized other, whether desperate immigrants, black political candidates and voters, or the Democratic Party. The only way to purge this “evil” and restore America to “greatness” is to eradicate these human contaminants.
"The cult leader, unlike a traditional politician, makes no effort to reach out to his opponents. The cult leader seeks to widen the divisions... Democratic norms, an impediment to the leader’s omnipotence, are attacked and abolished.
"The cult leader responds to only one emotion—fear. The cult leader, usually a coward, will react when he thinks he is in danger. The cult leader will bargain and compromise when afraid. The cult leader will give the appearance of being flexible and reasonable. But as soon as the cult leader is no longer afraid, the old patterns of behavior return, with a special venom directed at those who were able to momentarily impinge upon his power."
Trump Is a Secessionist From the Top
David Frum writes in The Atlantic that Trump gives racists an excuse to stop pretending they're not racists.
"To his admirers, one of the most attractive qualities of Donald Trump is his utter shamelessness. When he does something wrong, he boasts about it. He tells Lester Holt on television that he fired James Comey to shut down the Russia investigation. He tells George Stephanopoulos that he would again welcome foreign help for his reelection campaign. When he diverts taxpayer money to his businesses, he does so in full view of the watching world. When he takes payments from foreign governments, he does so in a garish hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. There is nothing apologetic about him. And this was once again on full display.
"Trump finds ways to convey his powerful message: All those decencies that irritate and chafe you, that you don’t dare disregard? I dare. I dare for you.
"Trump knows that millions of his fellow Americans are sick and tired of having to pretend to care about Black and Indigenous people. He wants them to know that he doesn’t care either. That’s what they love about him."
The Authoritarians
In his 2006 book The Authoritarians, Professor Bob Altemeyer asks: "...aren't most people likely to trust someone who seems to agree with them? Probably, but people differ enormously in gullibility. [People who tend to distrust authority] are downright suspicious of someone who agrees with them when they can see ulterior motives might be at work. They pay attention to the circumstances in which the other fellow is operating. But authoritarians do not, when they like the message.
"So... suppose you are a completely unethical, dishonest, power-hungry, dirt-bag, scum-bucket politician who will say whatever he has to say to get elected. ... Whom are you going to try to lead?" Right-Wing Authoritarians (RWA's) or people likely to distrust authority? "Isn't it obvious? The easy-sell High RWA's will open up their arms and wallets to you if you just sing their song, however poor your credibility. Those crabby [people who tend to distrust authority], on the other hand, will eye you warily when your credibility is suspect [just] because you sing their song. So the scum-bucket politicians will usually head for the Right-Wing Authoritarians, because the RWAs hunger for social endorsement of their beliefs so much they're apt to trust anyone who tells them they're right. Heck, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany running on a law-and-order platform just a few years after he tried to overthrow the government through an armed insurrection.
"Once someone becomes a leader of the high RWAs' in-group, he can lie with impunity about the out-groups, himself, whatever, because he knows the followers will seldom check on what he says, nor will they expose themselves to people who set the record straight. Furthermore they will not believe the truth if they somehow get exposed to it, and if the distortions become absolutely undeniable, they will rationalize it away and put it in a box. If the scoundrel's duplicity and hypocrisy lands him on the front page of every daily in the country, the followers will still forgive him if he just says the right things."
Right-Wing Media Dominance
In the New Republic, Michael Tomasky explains how Trump won a plurality of votes -- and the Presidency -- in 2024.
"People ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren't they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn't his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him?
"The answer is obviously no -- not enough people were able to see any of those things.
"This line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it's the crucial one: Why didn't a majority of voters see these things?
"The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media -- Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk's X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan's, and much more -- sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.
"Billionaires on the right have invested far more heavily in media in the last two decades than their counterparts on the left… And the result is what we see today. The readily visual analogy I use is: Once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beachball, and the right-wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media… is the size of a volleyball, and the right-wing media is the size of a basketball,
"This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It's not just that it's bigger. It's that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.
"The existence of Fox changed everything. Fox hosted the early debates, which Trump won not with intelligence, but outrageousness. He tapped into the grievance culture Fox had nursed among conservatives for years. He had (most of the time) Rupert Murdoch's personal blessing. In 2015-16, Fox made Trump possible. [Without Fox, Trump] would not have been taken seriously at all.
"The Biden economy has been great in many ways... But in the right-wing media, the horror stories were relentless. And mainstream economic reporting too often followed that lead.
"The Democratic brand is garbage in wide swaths of the country, and this is the reason. Consider this point. In Missouri on Tuesday, voters passed a pro-abortion rights initiative, and another that raised the minimum wage and mandated paid leave. These are all Democratic positions. But… Trump beat Harris there by 18 points."
Legacy Links: [But Today,
I Confess: Political Satire in Verse] | [Obamawatch] | [The Legacy of George W. Bush]