Finally a recent study has answered the question of whether most Trump supporters were motivated by economic anxiety and concerns about their future prosperity or racial animus in the midst of an America that is growing increasingly ethic, brown and losing it’s global dominance.
Well, the true answer to both questions it seems — is yes.
A study conducted by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Diana C. Mutzhas found that white voters who participated in the 2016 presidential election were more concerned with the growing power of minorities in the U.S. and not “economic anxiety” as the media reported after the election.
According to a press release from university, the finding concluded that, “Traditionally high-status Americans, namely whites, feel their status in America and the world is threatened by America’s growing racial diversity and a perceived loss of U.S. global dominance. Under threat by these engines of change, America’s socially dominant groups increased their support in 2016 for the candidate who most emphasized reestablishing status hierarchies of the past.”
The New York Times summarizes the report, suggesting that Trump voters weren’t reacting to economic conditions or anger at the Obama administration so much as fears of losing influence in country that has been politically and culturally dominated by white Christians.
Based on survey data from a nationally representative group of about 1,200 voters polled in 2012 and 2016, Mutz set out to answer whether there was evidence to support the economic anxiety argument pushed by media analysts, or did the fear of becoming less powerful influence their votes.
Dominance. Influence. Power. Supremacy. Losing these elements is what motivated those voters to ignore the obvious incompetence and mendacity of Trump. They weren’t repulsed by his fact-mangling and delusional thinking, they were attracted by it because it’s a pattern they recognized in themselves. We were constantly told that Trump was the champion of “the forgotten man”, the people who weren’t on the receiving end of social justice, who were left behind by diversity efforts and affirmative actions. They were ignored. They were white or in some cases, white envious while brown.
From the NYTimes.
“It’s much more of a symbolic threat that people feel,’’ said Diana C. Mutz, the author of the study and a political science and communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. “It’s not a threat to their own economic well-being; it’s a threat to their group’s dominance in our country over all.”
The study is not the first to cast doubt on the prevailing economic anxiety theory. Last year, a Public Religion Research Institute survey of more than 3,000 people also found that Mr. Trump’s appeal could better be explained by a fear of cultural displacement.
…
Losing a job or income between 2012 and 2016 did not make a person any more likely to support Mr. Trump, Dr. Mutz found. Neither did the mere perception that one’s financial situation had worsened. A person’s opinion on how trade affected personal finances had little bearing on political preferences. Neither did unemployment or the density of manufacturing jobs in one’s area.
For further evidence, Dr. Mutz also analyzed a separate survey, conducted in 2016 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. It showed that anxieties about retirement, education and medical bills also had little impact on whether a person supported Mr. Trump.
…
Her survey also assessed “social dominance orientation,” a common psychological measure of a person’s belief in hierarchy as necessary and inherent to a society. People who exhibited a growing belief in such group dominance were also more likely to move toward Mr. Trump, Dr. Mutz found, reflecting their hope that the status quo be protected.
“It used to be a pretty good deal to be a white, Christian male in America, but things have changed and I think they do feel threatened,” Dr. Mutz said.
We’ve been having this argument ever since the great orange-o-tang came gliding down that escalator and proclaimed that “Mexicans are Rapists” and that America has been “horribly abused” in it’s foreign trade deals.
And yet when Hillary herself tried to warn us, she was attacked for merely stating the truth. Some of these people are truly Deplorable.
New York (CNN)Hillary Clinton told an audience of donors Friday night that half of Donald Trump's supporters fall into "the basket of deplorables," meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic. In an effort to explain the support behind Trump, Clinton went on to describe the rest of Trump supporters as people who are looking for change in any form because of economic anxiety and urged her supporters to empathize with them.
"To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton said. "Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it."
She added, "And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric."
Hillary was thoroughly bashed for this statement, but she had a point. Surveys taken at the same time supported what she was saying.
Supporters of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump are more likely to describe African Americans as "criminal," "unintelligent," "lazy" and "violent" than voters who backed some Republican rivals in the primaries or who support Democratic contender Hillary Clinton, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.
Ahead of the Nov. 8 election to replace Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, the poll also showed significant numbers of Americans in both the Republican and Democratic parties view blacks more negatively than whites, harbor anxiety about living in diverse neighborhoods and are concerned that affirmative action policies discriminate against whites.
Republicans in the survey expressed these concerns to a greater degree than Democrats, with Trump supporters presenting the most critical views of blacks.
And that wasn’t the only one.
Only 36 percent of Trump supporters agreed with the statement, “I prefer to live in a community with people who come from diverse cultures,” compared to 46 percent of Cruz supporters, 55 percent of Kasich supporters and 70 percent of Clinton supporters.
About 31 percent of Trump supporters said they “strongly agree” that “social policies, such as affirmative action, discriminate unfairly against white people,” compared with 16 percent of Clinton supporters.
Almost everyone ignores what Clinton said about the other basket.
That other basket of people are people that feel the government has let them down. The economy has let hem down. Nobody cares about them. Nobody worries about what happens to their lives their futures. They’re just desperate for change.
Of course she was right about that too. That point that this survey points out is that both baskets were a factor. It’s wasn’t an either/or situation, it was both Those who were concerned that they government and the economy had let them down, were offered a solution to that concern by Trump that was based in attack The Other. They were offered an answer that was based in blaming foreign nations for trade issues, blaming NAFTA, blaming TPP, blaming Mexicans, blaming Muslims, and blaming China.
Trump told them just what they wanted to hear, he told them just what they wanted to believe. He played on their confirmation bias just as “Art of the Deal” writer Tony Schwartz describes here.
Trump has used confirmation bias and also gas lighting to cover his tracks as he screams racialist dog whistles to the masses. The most recent example of this has clearly been recent tweet about immigration causes “Crime infestation and breeding”. While I am sympathetic to latino Trump supporters Steve Cortez’ argument here that Trump probably did mean “breeding Crime” — besides the fact that immigrants don't actually perpetrators more crime — more than the more White Supremacist connotation, but the bottom line is that his pretense of ignorance of that connotation means he gets to blow that whistle and then pretend that he didn’t in classic gas lighting style.
Just as Hillary’s primary point was actually highlighting the “forgotten man”, those who felt disaffected by government policies that seem intended to aid everyone else but themselves — even when in fact, that isn’t true — merely bringing up and admitting that some people, actually any people, have racial or ethnic motivations for their anxiety and fear is itself crossing a bridge too far.
We’re told It’s “playing the race” card. It’s making an excuse. It’s offense and unfair for white people. to ignore those minority citizens who also support Trump and fear crime.
This is a point that was made by Angela Rye while arguing with former Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter.
“I think the moment Donald Trump became the Republican nominee they agreed to normalize racism,” Rye said, arguing the party’s policies are “woefully horrible.”
“You have to at some point say Donald Trump is the Republican party’s Frankenstein,” Rye said and Carpenter protested. “They have to own this. Amanda, you can roll your eyes but I but I am—“
“Finish you’re point,” Carpenter demanded.
“I am, I don’t need your permission to do that, okay?” Rye asked. “Here is the bottom line—“
“Here we go,” Carpenter jumped in.
“Yes, we are just getting started, honey,” Rye replied before laying out Republican leaders’ complacency in the Trump administration.
Carpenter argued “what is so frustrating” is that people on the left “will do anything they can to lump any Republican, marry them to Trump.” Pointing to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI), Carpenter complained “good people are just leaving.”
“You want them to stay and fight you will berate people like Paul Ryan because they didn’t fight hard enough,” she said. “… You say every Republican is a racist. That’s what it always gets back to. I take responsibility for what my party did to create Trump but when are liberals going to do that?”
“What’s the question—liberals going to do what?” Rye asked.
“What Republican is acceptable to you?” Carpenter said before launching into a defense of her own posture towards Trump.
“What’s so interesting is there’s a very country saying in the south saying a hit dog will holler,” Rye said before explained, “I’m not coming after you.”
Republicans understandably get defensive when you point out the reason that Trump has taken over their party is because of their own racism. They whine and they cry and they feel put upon and blamed. I get that, I really do.
But being accused of possibly being a bigot is nothing compared to being accused of possibly being a criminal or a terrorist, particularly when the next thing that happens is that you lose your job, your freedom and possibly your ability to keep breathing. I’ll take the whines of being misjudged by GOPers seriously when they take the legitimate complaints from minorities of being misjudged by police, banks and corporations and losing their livelihood or their home and or their life.
It’s because of their racial anxiety over black people who might happen to might shockingly try to vote, who might shockingly try to sit, or might try to kneel, might try to hold a cell phone, try to go to school to get an education, start a business and find a job or possibly be the President. Their racial anxiety over Muslims and Sharia Law which seems shockingly similar to Betsy Devos’ Handmaiden’s Tail of abstinence only non-education, their anxiety over ISIS surging over the boarder and hiding within the ranks of the unwashed — when they usually get here by plane — how Iran who already gave up all of their enriched uranium is just going lay in wait for a decade and somehow regenerate that stockpile in secret when we have 24-hour surveillance of all their centrifuges, and their anxiety about how Mexicans and Central American kids and mothers trying to escape violent drug wars are really an invasion from “Shithole Countries” who are coming to take away our jobs picking fruit in the fields and landscaping.
I understand that some Republicans, and even others, would like to pretend that the core of Trump’s rise is really just about economic prosperity protectionism. The rust belt has been hollowed out with empty factories and shutdown coal mines. They argue that they support Trump’s economic message without regard to race or ethnicity and that these issues are separate and not linked.
But in fact, it’s not separate, it’s linked — and realizing that linkage is getting directly to the point. Economic anxiety and racial anxiety can be one and the same. Fear can come from many places, and if we can’t even discuss the sources of those fears, we’ll never be able to resolve the issue and solve those anxieties. If we can’t to route source of those anxieties and address them, they’ll simply continue on and on — and endless bottomless pit of fear and unease that will never be filled and never be eased.
And that, frankly, is exactly how people like Trump want it.