Continuing the discussion from Chris Hedges on the upcoming US Collapse:
I’m just starting to watch the Hedges video. At 2m45s to 3m15s, he says (emphasis mine):
You have millions of very angry disenfranchised white Americans - this is Trump’s base - living in economic and social misery, enraged at political stagnation, the corruption of the ruling class, a bankrupt liberal elite, which the Democratic Party embodies, and this mounting social inequality, which is about to get much worse.
This seems a really strange argument to me. For one thing, it isn’t particularly white Americans who suffer from these horrors, so why does he sneak in that description?
The racial presupposition is probably connected to another, which I’ve emphasised: “this is Trump’s base”.
That assertion has been disputed, if not altogether debunked:
Extract:
The claim that Trump is a supporter of blue-collar workers is accepted by much of the progressive-left as well. As the narrative goes, working class Americans rose up with a vengeance to reject the neoliberal policies of the Democratic Party, in favor of Trump’s promises to “make America Great Again” by returning manufacturing jobs to the U.S. This characterization of Trump voters is at times accompanied by a whitewashing or downplaying of Trump’s right-wing, bigoted, white nationalist policies. After all, if the public is primarily concerned with growing economic insecurity among the masses, then bigoted positions on social issues must play a relatively small role, if any, in motivating Trump voters.
The ‘Trump as a working-class hero’ narrative is to a significant extent a product of wishful thinking among those who are understandably disenchanted with the Democratic Party’s growing elitism, seen in the “New Democratic” politics of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi. It’s not surprising that progressives would conclude that voters responded to Trump’s populist rhetoric, which homed in on working-class Americans who have been harmed by corporate outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. We’ve been told so many times that Trump owes his victory to working-class voters; it’s no wonder that many don’t challenge this claim.
There is some truth to the position that Trump voters were motivated by anger and anxiety over the state of the economy. But a growing body of data now makes it clear that this ‘economic populism from below’ narrative is heavily exaggerated, and that scholars and commentators should be focusing on larger factors driving support for Trump, which include support for racism, xenophobia, white nationalism, right-wing militarism, anti-choice politics, and the elitist class war against the middle class and poor.
Numerous studies, including 2016 primary and general election data, leave little question that the traditional “economic populist” framework is increasingly difficult to defend. I summarized the studies covering the 2016 primary elections in detail in a previous Counterpunch piece, “Donald Trump and the Myth of Economic Populism,” which reviewed numerous polls finding that Trump voters were not more likely to be unemployed, to be lower income, or to hail from geographic regions harmed by outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. Rather, Trump supporters were mainly driven by reactionary positions on social and political issues. Significant statistical predictors of support for Trump included: disinterest in reducing health care costs nationally, disinterest in dealing with the problems of the poor and needy, disinterest in addressing climate change, concern with protection gun rights, interest in strengthening the U.S. military, concern with fighting terrorism, support for dealing with immigration, and embrace of Islamophobic attitudes framing Muslims as extremist and anti-American.
Since the 2016 Republican primaries, numerous studies of general election polling data reinforce the conclusion that Trump supporters are fixated on social issues, and that these voters do not represent economically disadvantaged demographic groups. Eric Draitser summarized some of this data in his important CounterPunch piece, “Donald Trump and the Triumph of White Identity Politics.” Drawing on national polling data analyzed by political scientists, Draitser argued that sexism and racism were much more significant predictors of Trump support going into the 2016 November election, as compared to personal economic dissatisfaction. More recently, other political scientists find comparable results. Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu published a piece in the Washington Post : “It’s Time to Bust the Myth: Most Trump Voters Were Not Working Class,” which finds that Trump voters in the November election did not generally hail from poor or modest economic backgrounds, and that Trump’s primary voters were not any different from the general public in terms of their level of education. While 70 percent of Republican primary voters did not possess a college degree, this was indistinguishable from the nation as a whole, in which 71 percent don’t have a college education.
In addition to the above studies, the Pew Research Center has just recently made available its late-October 2016 pre-election national poll, probing Americans on their voting preferences, economic backgrounds, and political attitudes. I took a closer look at the raw data, and undertook an in-depth statistical analysis of which demographic and political attitudes were significantly associated with support for Trump going into election day. The Pew survey largely reinforces previous academic findings on why individuals supported Trump, while adding some new wrinkles.
Support for Trump, as seen in previous polls, is largely concentrated among more affluent Americans. Trump voters were significantly more likely to be older, white, Republican conservatives – a group that has been quite privileged historically speaking. Trump voters were not more likely to be unemployed, compared to non-Trump voters. Income-wise, the single largest group of Trump supporters was comprised of individuals hailing from households earning incomes of more than $100,000 a year – which made up 35 percent of all his voters. Those earning between $75,000 to $100,000 a year accounted for 19 percent of Trump voters, meaning that 54 percent of the president’s supporters came from households earning over $75,000 a year. Another 20 percent of Trump supporters earned between $50,000 to $75,000 a year, putting them over the national median household income, which has long hovered around $50,000. In sum, approximately three-quarters of Trump voters were from households earning more than the national median income, while just one-quarter earned less than the median.
I don’t know much about these matters, so I’m not sure what to believe. (I think there are also similar questions to be asked about Brexit.)
