It isn't just about race, although it is a tiny bit about race. It is also about social class and access to the middle class.
Democrats have work to do. The model Democrat is a secular, urban, urbane, reader of the New Yorker magazine and the NY Times, listens to NPR, and is a white professional person with a job that uses technology in a sophisticated way. That model Democrat works in an office and is most typically female. There is the added suite of consumer behaviors: craft beer, fancy cheese, Trader Joes, imported cars. The key issues for these people are parental leave, access to contraception, and equal pay for equal work.
Or the person is black or Hispanic and is pulled toward Democrats by policy or pushed there by the policy or rhetoric of Republicans. Then, the key issues are equality and access to the mainstream economy and society.
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| Franklin County, PA |
A college classmate spent time helping Hillary Clinton in a red county in Pennsylvania. Political observers have said that Pennsylvania consists of Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburg in the west and Alabama in between. This was the kind of area that supported Trump rather than Hillary in enough numbers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin so that Trump was elected. This is ground zero.
She observed empty storefronts. She observed that Democrats in the primary voted for Sanders, not Hillary, and it was still a sore point. She observed that the campaign headquarters seemed less joyful than did the same HQ in 2008: less friendly, more desperate in the need to make calls, get results, turn out the reluctant vote. She noted the gun issue. She said voters seemed to think Trump understood them and that Hillary did not.
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| Santorum: Advocate of good blue collar jobs |
I have watched Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania Senator, speak on two occasions, both in nearly empty rooms, one in New Hampshire, once again in South Carolina. After the South Carolina speech he dropped out of the race. He was speaking about the great failure of both parties to address the real problem of poverty and working people. He said women have children without committed fathers, a moral and legal problem. And the economy works for the benefit of the whole GNP but does so at the expense of blue collar workers. He said the Democratic Party solution, go to college or grad school, is impossible and condescending. His famous comment on Obama speaking about college: "What a snob!"
The Democratic Party solution for the frustrated machinist whose job disappears is to remake that person into a computer programmer, and for him to move from Franklin County to Philadelphia. Or Silicon Valley.
White blue collar working people perceived the attention to minorities as the Democratic Party turning their back on them. Males found the attention to "women's issues" as a rebuke. People who found schooling irrelevant or difficult did not welcome the suggestion that college or grad school was their only exit plan.
Take a moment to review the photo below. It is from Hillary Clinton's website:
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| From Hillary's website: cheap college for black people |
The above photo, from Hillary Clinton's own website, shows something very good: smiling Hillary, smiling young people, smiling black family, and the notion of debt-free college affordability. The scene is unobjectionable. But there is a problem, when perceived by a 40 year old white working class person. It shows Hillary attentive to blacks, not whites, it implies higher taxes on working whites to support black students, and it shows an avenue into the middle class being given to someone other than themselves.
And guns. Guns are a symbolic issue, a marker for whether those people in urban centers "get it." Here is the reverse example: Suppose a national leader from a rural state said that subways are dangerous, too dangerous to exist. The leader cites ugly murders by people pushed or jostled off the platform. The leader cites horrendous train accidents. The leader says that subways should be restricted and reduced to 5 miles per hour. Not totally removed, just made safe. Urban dwellers would understand that the person is totally clueless about their urban situation. Rural citizens in counties like Franklin County, PA considered Hillary out of touch.
A Harvard Business Review article attempts to describe this rural mood, and associates it with resentment of the condescension they experience from the Democratic professional class exemplified by Hillary Clinton.
Harvard Business School report: What Working People Want
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A new podcast is up and running. Thad Guyer and I talk about what happened. Regular listeners remember that we have been warning that Hillary was much weaker than the regular mainstream polls showed. Thad had said the models and data he looked at showed Hillary losing all along. I thought it was a closer contest than that but in the end predicted a Hillary win. It is probably all the wisdom and insight a person can stand in one dose.
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