It Is A Mistake To Attribute Trump's Victory to Working Class Economic Hardship.
I have never accepted the notion that Trump won because his voters suffered economic hardships from loss of manufacturing jobs and undocumented Mexicans taking their jobs.
Manufacturing employment in the United States has actually increased somewhat since 2010. And as Adam Serwer has pointed out, “Clinton defeated Trump handily among Americans making less than $50,000 a year.” Additionally, the vast majority of Americans have housing, warmth, clothes, food, some health care and some Social Security retirement, and lead better lives than their parents did.
New studies about the election of Trump indicate it wasn't economics that carried the election for Trump - it was a subtle form of racism - an imagined fear among white Americans, including white evangelicals, that they are somehow under attack by cultural forces that threaten them.
University of Pennsylvania political scientist Diana C. Mutz analyzed in-depth data from 2012 and 2016 and came to the same conclusion I have. In a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, she added her conclusion to the growing body of evidence that the 2016 election was not about economic hardship.
She writes, “[I]t was about dominant groups that felt threatened by change and a candidate who took advantage of that trend.”
“For the first time since Europeans arrived in this country white Americans are being told that they will soon be a minority race.” When members of a historically dominant group feel threatened, she explains, they go through some interesting psychological twists and turns to make themselves feel okay again. First, they get nostalgic and try to protect the status quo however they can. They defend their own group, they start having nostalgia for older, more traditional ways, and they start to feel more negatively toward other groups.
Put simply, they increasingly view the world as "us vs. them." In psychology, it's called 'The Amity/Enmity Complex.' I believe it is a semi-malleable genetic behavior that is a fundamental aspect of human nature.
In one study, whites were presented with evidence of racial progress. Those whites experienced lower self-esteem afterward.
In another study, reminding whites who were high in “ethnic identification” that nonwhite groups will soon outnumber them increased their support for Trump, increased their desire for anti-immigrant policies, and increased their opposition to political correctness.
In other words, Trump voters desired their group to be dominant. Interestingly, they viewed international trade through this lens and disagreed with Clinton’s views on trade and China.
Trump supporters were also more likely than Clinton voters to feel that “the American way of life is threatened,” and that high-status groups, like men, Christians, and whites, are discriminated against. 79 percent of white working-class voters who had anxieties about the “American way of life” chose Trump over Clinton.
Trump voters imagined an unfounded, almost hysterical sense of persecution which was heightened because they believe our society is changing. To highlight how absurd they are, Emma Green has written that white evangelicals see more discrimination against Christians than Muslims in the United States.
Several surveys in 2016 showed many men supported Trump because they felt their status in society was threatened, and that Trump would restore it. Non-college-educated whites are simply more likely to affirm racist views than those with college degrees. (At the most extreme end, white supremacists also use victimhood to further their cause.)
This explains why it is simply not effective to reason with Trump voters. Their basic, fundamental view of themselves and American society is irrational, and no amount of rational argument can change their views.
This explains why Trumpistas simply don't care that Trump is morally bankrupt on every imaginable level. They don't care that he is a compulsive liar or that his policies harm our country and unnecessarily degrade the lives of millions of Americans. All they care about is they believe Trump is fighting for them, for their continued dominance, and every crime, no matter how reprehensible, is forgiven.
The fight against Trump will not be won when Trumpistas finally see Trump for the grifter he really is, because they will never see it. The fight against Trump will be won when those who realize what Trump is come out to vote in overwhelming numbers.