HE USES ALL THE GREAT QUOTATIONS
I’ve spent a lot of time since November 8 trying to figure out what makes Trump voters tick. Is it even possible for progressives to have a productive political dialogue with diehard Trump supporters? I haven’t been able to figure out a way. But I’ve learned three important things in 70 years of failing to solve problems.
First, if I keep hitting the same dead end over and over again, it’s possible that I’m asking the wrong question.
Second, if I keep getting results I don’t like, it’s possible that I’ve arrived at the right answer, even though it’s not the one I was hoping for.
And third, it’s likely that sooner or later, someone smarter than I am will tackle the problem and solve it for me.
In this post, I’m going to share some ideas I’ve gleaned from several smart people, and then try to tie them all together.
I’ll start with the question of who makes up Trump’s base in the first place. I remember the conventional wisdom right after the election. Working class white voters gave Trump the win, pundits claimed. They voted for Donald Trump because Hillary Clinton and her coastal elites looked down on them. They were somehow more authentically American than Clinton supporters, Clinton’s 3 million popular vote victory notwithstanding.
I never believed that, and said so at the time. It was almost exactly a year ago that Hillary Clinton said that half of Trump’s supporters were “Deplorables.” I thought the term was awkward but accurate. Ten months after election night, the actual percentage of Deplorables in Trump’s base may be open to debate, but the label still strikes me as awkward but accurate.
That was the first of many quotes, so batten down the hatches. I’ll continue with some conservative writers. Here are three quotes from articles published on conservative websites in 2016, in the months before the election.
Quote 1: “The problem with their neighborhoods and towns is not primarily economic stagnation, but cultural collapse.” (John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist)
Quote 2: “The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand. Immigrants aren’t making them cheat on their wives or snort OxyContin. It was consistently astounding how little effort most parents and their teen children made to improve their lives. If they couldn’t find a job in a few days — or perhaps even as little as a few hours — they’d stop looking. If they got angry at teachers or coaches, they’d drop out of school. If they fought with their wife, they had sex with a neighbor.” (Kevin Williamson, National Review)
Quote 3: “If you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence. The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.” (David French, National Review)
If you’re like me, when you read conservative writers raging against cultural collapse, a sense of entitlement, and welfare dependency, you assume they’re talking about African-Americans. But in fact, all three quotes came from articles about poor white communities in Appalachia and the Rust Belt.
Those comments resonate with two things I’ve read recently by progressive writers – David Roberts (via Twitter) and Ta-Nehisi Coates (via a long article in The Atlantic, link below, and do take time to read it).
Roberts cites studies that show that, because humans are social creatures, their political opinions are more often driven by cultural leaders than by a rational assessment of specific ideas. The cultural leaders of the Republican Party aren’t politicians. If Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were to have a come-to-Jesus moment and suddenly began to speak rationally about climate science or immigration, conservatives would first mock them, and then vote them out of office at the earliest opportunity.
The cultural leaders of the Republican Party are media personalities on Fox News, Breitbart, and talk radio. They’ve been lying successfully to their audience for two decades now, and in the process they’ve created an alternative reality for members of their tribe, the Deplorables plus the older “low information” voters who make up another significant portion of Trump’s base.
And then along came Donald Trump, a congenital liar who popularized the concept of “fake news.” “Fake news” gives Republicans a nearly impenetrable defense when they turn out to be wrong. If their leaders fail to deliver on their promises, or when one of their can’t-miss solutions blows up in their face, they’ll simply double down whenever reality threatens their fantasy world. Bad news will be spun as fake news, or blamed on deep state sabotage.
In my naïve moments, I wonder if being affected by a major disaster might open the eyes of some conservatives. Will Hurricanes Harvey and Irma plant seeds of doubt in the minds of climate change deniers? Will Texans and Floridians who complain about paying taxes to Uncle Sam change their tune about big government now that it has saved many lives and will soon help millions make a new start? Maybe a few, but probably not many.
If I had to bet, I’d bet that most of them will find a way to hang on to their prejudices. Their preachers are already telling them that hurricanes happen because God is angry about gay marriage. The right wing echo chamber will find a way to blame Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Operating in tandem, they’ll lay down a smokescreen that will keep ignorant people ignorant.
But wait. It gets more discouraging.
In his Atlantic article, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about an even more fundamental barrier between progressives and Trump’s base. For a great many of his supporters, Trump’s appeal is based on white identity. Build that wall, ban those Muslims, deport those Mexicans, and make it clear that Black lives don’t matter. Those are non-negotiable positions – on both sides.
Coates demolishes the theory that the economic anxiety of the white working class gave Trump the presidency by citing data, such as:
· Trump won the votes of whites making less than $50,000 by 20 points; whites making between $50,000-99,000 by 28 points, and whites making over $100,000 by 14 points. He won the majority of white votes at every income level.
· Trump won the votes of white women by 9 points and white men by 31 points. He won white people with college degrees by 3 points and white people without college degrees by 31 points.
· Trump won white voters ages 18-29 by 4 points, ages 30-44 by 17 points, ages 45-64 by 28 points, and ages 65+ by 19 points.
White anxiety helped elect Trump, but it wasn’t economic anxiety. Instead, Trump won because he carried white voters in every single major demographic – age, gender, income, and education. Those statistics, by themselves, don’t prove that all Trump voters are racists, but they do help explain the persistence of Trump’s support in the wake of Charlottesville. I’ve read that 98% of Republicans who voted for Trump in the primaries approve of the job he’s doing. Among Republicans who supported other candidates in the primaries, that drops to 67%, but still. I can’t be too optimistic about the fact that “only” 67% of Republicans approve of a raging dumpster fire.
Circling back to my original question – whether it’s possible for progressives to have a productive political dialogue with Trump supporters – I regretfully conclude that the answer is no.
No doubt there are better and worse ways to have a dialogue with those you disagree with, and we’d all benefit if we could adopt the better ways. Better is better. But the truth is, even the best arguments, supported by the best data and delivered by someone with the eloquence of Winston Churchill and the disposition of Mr. Rogers, would be ignored by people who’d believe that two plus two equals five if Limbaugh and Hannity said so.
I’m sad about that, because I know that a non-trivial portion of Trump’s base is trapped in what amounts to a bad dream. But for the moment, at least, I don’t know how to wake them up.