AJRC_Analyses_2017A01_Madeline_Stein by Antall József Tudásközpont

A N TA L L J Ã&#x201C; Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E

HOW THE WHITE WORKING CLASS TRUMPED THE ELITES

MADELINE STEIN

COMMENTARY AJRC-Analyses 2017A01

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A N TA L L J Ó Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E

AJRC-Analyses Series of the Antall József Knowledge Centre

Publisher: Antall József Knowledge Centre Publisher-in-Chief: Péter Antall Managing editor: Tamás Baranyi Editorial office: Antall József Knowledge Centre H-1093 Budapest, Czuczor utca 2.

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A N TA L L J Ó Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E HOW THE WHITE WORKING CLASS TRUMPED THE ELITES MADELINE STEIN1

On November 9th, reactions of mourning, disbelief, and shock emerged in response to the Donald J. Trump victory among millions of Americans – many of them young, college-educated Clinton voters. Part of the shock stemmed from the pollsters’ erroneous prediction of a Clinton win, but another potential explanation is the bubble of elite culture and education in the United States. I can count the Trump supporters I know on one hand. Most of my friends from college would likely say the same, and some even argue that they do know any and do not understand how anyone could have voted for Trump. The idea that someone may personally know five or so Trump supporters is striking, given that close to 60 million Americans voted for him. Charles Murray, in his book Coming Apart, best explains the divide between white Americans that permeates the US on a deep cultural level, with contributing economic and social factors. While there are other important divisions involving other ethnic groups in the US, the white case is particularly important in understanding the 2016 election results given the pivotal role of the white working class vote. Murray recalls the cultural equality between white rich and poor that was an integral feature in American society, distinguishing American culture from others.2 America’s civic life represented this cultural equality, and Murray argues that its decline, along with a decline in marriage among the working class, creates a growing divide among the lives of the rich and poor. Some may dispute Murray’s analysis on why these disparate cultures formed, but for the purpose of this article, the important feature is that this divide does in fact exist. It pervades all aspect of life, including “the food Belmonters3 eat, their drinking habits, the ages at which they marry and have children, the books they read (and their number), the television shows and movies they watch (and the hours spent on them), the humor they enjoy, the way they take care of their 1

Madeline Stein is a Fulbright Fellow at the Antall József Knowledge Center.

Charles Murray: The New American Divide. Wall Street Journal. January 21, 2012.

Belmonters refer to residents of a fictional city based on one of America’s wealthiest zip codes.

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A N TA L L J Ó Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E bodies, the way they decorate their homes, their leisure activities, their work environments and their child-raising practices.”4 Simple examples of this cultural divide include the elite’s abhorrence of chain restaurants frequented by working class families, like Applebee’s. Beyond the divergent lifestyles, the element of elite condescension towards the working class helps explain the Trump victory. These attitudes prevail at elite universities in the United States. Growing up in New Jersey and studying in California, I am used to the sentiment that the middle of the United States is “flyover country.” My liberal arts college, Claremont McKenna, consisted mainly of students from the coasts, and the others were from wealthy suburbs of Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. This demographic makeup is found at comparable schools. For example, at Harvard, “51.5 percent of the non-international students who enrolled in Harvard’s Class of 2018 hail from just four states: New York, New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts.”5 These four states make up only 23.2 of the US population.6 Additionally, two thirds of students at the top 91 colleges come from the top 25% of families.7 Geographic segregation explains the overrepresentation of students from the coasts at universities, as “flyover country,” areas that have been defined partially as “suffering from injury and from people who are very well-educated and well-credentialed leaving and never coming back home.”8 The preference and tendency of the highly educated to flock to the same cities and metros like New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco perpetuate this cultural divide.

The disdain for non-coastal regions is not only because of the locations themselves, but the attitudes of the people there, namely their conservatism. At universities and within corresponding elite communities, a key factor of the contempt for working class culture is intolerance towards socially conservative ideas and a belief that these 4

Murray, 2012.

C. Ramsey Fahs and Forrest K. Lewis: Beyond Boston: Regional Diversity at Harvard. The Crimson. March 26, 2015. <http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/3/26/ regional-diversity-scrutiny/ > Accessed: December 12, 2016.

Population Estimates. US Census Bureau. <http://www.census.gov/popest/> Accessed: December 12, 2016.

Amy X. Wang: The Best American Colleges Are Still Overwhelmingly Filled With Students From Rich Families. Quartz. January 13, 2016. <http://qz.com/592646/the-best-american-colleges-are-still-overwhelmingly-filledwith-students-from-rich-families/ > Accessed: December 12, 2016.

Nate Hopper: J. D. Vance: Why Elites Didn’t See the White Working Class Coming. Time. November 9, 2016. <http://time.com/4565491/jd-vance-white-working-classvoters/> Accessed: December 12, 2016.

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A N TA L L J Ó Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E votes are out of ignorance. Charles Kesler notes that working class votes for Republicans are often reduced by the left to the question “how could the working class vote against its own obvious (to a liberal) economic interest?”, epitomizing “the smug ‘knowingness’ of the contemporary Left.” 9 While Kesler’s characterization is accurate, I believe there is also a divide between right-wing elites and their working class counterparts. On elite college campuses, however, this distinction is not as relevant given the strong leftist bias at these institutions. According to a study on the political leanings of professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, at liberal arts colleges, 61% of professors identify as liberal, 35.1% as moderate, and 3.9% as conservative.10 At elite PhD granting universities, the composition is 56.6.% liberal, 33.1% moderate, and 10.2% conservative. Charles Camosy’s analysis of the election frames it as largely a result of the divide between working class and educated voters. On issues such as religion, abortion, and gun rights, students and other college-educated young people have dogmatic views, and often “ if anyone disagrees with these dogmatic positions they risk being marginalized as ignorant, bigoted, fanatical or some other dismissive label.” 11 Camosy references the political correctness so common on college campuses. Political correctness expands beyond prohibition of racist jokes. It has its own language complete with words like positionality, intersectionality, and triggers that often sound almost foreign to outsiders. These trends are illustrated by the threats to free speech at universities. Conor Friedersdorf details dozens of examples, noting that free speech is “threatened by police spies, overzealous administrators, and students who are intolerant of dissent, “activists agitating for speech codes and sanctions for professors or classmates who disagree with them” and “people who push to disinvite speakers because of their viewpoints and those who shut down events to prevent people from speaking.” 12

Charles Kesler: Donald Trump & the Conservative Cause. American Greatness. August 13, 2016. <http://amgreatness.com/2016/08/13/donald-trump-the-conservativecause/ > Accessed: November 14, 2016.

Neil Gross and Solon Simmons: The Social and Political Views of American Professors. ResearchGate. September 24, 2007. <http://www.researchgate.net/ publication/228380360_The_Social_and_Political_Views_of_American_Professors > Accessed: December 12, 2016.

Charles Camosy: Trump Won Because College-Educated Americans Are Out of Touch. Washington Post. November 9, 2016. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-college-educated-americansare-out-of-touch/?utm_term=.d72825b2013f > Accessed: December 12, 2016.

Conor Friedersdorf: The Glaring Evidence That Free Speech Is Threatened on Campus. The Atlantic. March 4, 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ archive/2016/03/the-glaring-evidence-that-free-speech-is-threatened-oncampus/471825/ > Accessed: December 12, 2016.

2 Czuczor Street, 1093 Budapest | +3620 310 8776 | ajtk@ajtk.hu | www.ajtk.hu

A N TA L L J Ó Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E While inclusivity of people from different backgrounds is important for academic enrichment, the exclusion of ideas based on the race of the author is extreme. Campus protests over Halloween costumes represent a good instance of frivolous PC culture, resulting in mockery and confusion by those watching from the outside. The combination of the inability to understand social conservatism, disdain for Republicans, and foreign version of political correctness makes universities out of touch with working class. Since universities produce the political and business elites, these ideas will likely continue into the professional world. During the 2016 election season, the condescension manifested itself in the reduction of Trump support to racism and xenophobia. An example of this tendency is the article comparing the forces behind Trump’s wins to those that motivated Dylann Roof to kill nine people in black church.13 While racism and xenophobia played a significant role in the campaign, but there are more complex forces behind the rise of Trump. It would be a disservice to the future of American politics to reduce Trumpism to racism. Such a tendency mirrors the dogmatism on college campuses on issues like abortion. The other rejection of Trump was based on his character and brash remarks. Since Trumps ideas on trade, jobs, and immigration often resonated with the working class, the refusal to take him seriously by the elites bolstered his support. Trump is essentially a metaphor for the ignored working class. He successfully presented himself as their champion, despite his tremendous wealth.

There are several factors why Trump was able to win over the working class and thereby win the presidency. He was uniquely conscious of the “flyover country” giving him “a cultural jump on his rivals in the 2016 primaries.”14 He recognized the “downward mobility, broken families, disability and other forms of welfare support” which were increasingly the new reality” for the working and middle classes. Besides Bernie Sanders, other politicians tend to have a more optimistic approach, but Trump, when he announced his candidacy, remarked, “the American Dream is dead,” more accurately capturing the feeling and experience of many of his

Jamelle Bouie: What Gave Us Donald Trump Is What Gave Us Dylann Roof. Slate. December 15, 2016. <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/ politics/2016/12/what_gave_us_donald_trump_is_what_gave_us_dylann_roof.html> Accessed: December 19, 2016.

Kesler, 2016.

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A N TA L L J Ó Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E voters.15 One of Trump’s unique foci was on middle class jobs. Joan Williams argues that the middle 50% of voters with a median income of $64,000 are not particularly interested in the minimum wage and sick leave policies proposed by Democrats. Those will not help them earn an adequate income to support their families. Instead, they seek “steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree.16” Beyond Trump’s ideas, hatred directed at him by prominent elites such as the Bush family, Mitt Romney, Lena Dunham, and other celebrities, increased his likeability among the working class, as “the people have figured out that in a democracy they still hold — literally and figuratively — the Trump card.” 17 The Trump victory effectively allowed some Americans to send a strong message of rejection to the elites. Trump’s wealth helped him, but it was because “he is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to have earned his wealth— not stolen it through financial trickery.”18 In contrast, working class voters view those in the financial sector, law, lobbying, and politics as corrupt and incompetent at solving major problems facing the nation. A Pew survey indicated, “just 19% say they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest levels in the past half-century. Only 20% would describe government programs as being well-run.” 19 Finally, Trump’s directness resonated with the middle class as straight talk is considered a middle class norm, another reason why political correctness is so alien.20 His anger set him apart from other candidates who failed to express the same indignation towards the present political system, as Stephanie Coontz explains, “a little class anger on behalf of the bottom 90 percent – the ENTIRE 90 percent, mind you –

Donald Trump Presidential Announcement Full Speech. YouTube. <http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=q_q61B-DyPk > Accessed: November 14, 2016.

Joan C. Williams: What so Many People Don’t Get about the U.S. Working Class. Harvard Business Review. November 10, 2016. <http://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-manypeople-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class > Accessed: November 30, 2016.

Salena Zito: The Death of Elitism. Washington Examiner. November 6, 2016. <http:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-death-of-elitism/article/2606518 > Accessed: December 12, 2016.

George Friedman: The Roots of Trump’s Strength. Mauldin Economics. March 7, 2016. <http://www.mauldineconomics.com/this-week-in-geopolitics/the-roots-of-trumpsstrength > Accessed: November 30, 2016.

“Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government” Pew Research Center. 2015. <http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/beyond-distrust-how-americans-viewtheir-government/ > Accessed: December 12, 2016.

Williams, 2016.

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A N TA L L J Ó Z S E F R E S E A R C H C E N T R E is overdue.”21 Only Bernie Sanders’ impassioned criticism of Wall Street and political elites rivals Trump’s attitude. The anger and boldness helped emphasize Trump’s dissatisfaction with the status quo. It is also important to understand why Hillary Clinton was particularly unappealing to the typical Trump voter. Though it is unfair to group Hillary and Bill, the fact that she was part of a political family did not help her due to distrust of Washington elite. Her government experience and scandals like Benghazi and her private email server inherently linked Clinton to the political establishment considered corrupt and incompetent by millions of voters. Williams argues that she “epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables.” 22 To many, Clinton represented a culture they found foreign, condescending, and corrupt. Her strategy against Trump often criticized his character rather than ideas. The issues I have raised explaining Trump’s win have been explored much more following the election, which I believe is a positive trend. The increasing cultural, economic, and social divides between elites and those living in “flyover country” represent the main explanation for Trump’s win. His unique focus on the interests of the white working class distinguished him from mainstream politicians. Even if he does not in fact represent their interests, he successfully portrayed himself in that manner. Of course, his brash style is also a significant factor, which sets him apart from others. The refusal to take Trump seriously ultimately bolstered his appeal. Now, after the election, the repulsion over his victory may prevent cooperation and discussion about Trump beyond pointing out his offensiveness. Even for people who hate Trump, it is useful to understand why people voted for him and how other politicians can appeal to this base, perhaps in a different way. The notion of trying to understand the opposing side sounds like a cliché, but the failure to do so has resulted in American communities with disparate and seemingly foreign cultures. While the cultural, religious, and regional diversity of the US is one of its defining features, such an extreme disconnect is worrying beyond this election. Leaving one’s bubble, of thought or location, is one of the best ways to move forward.

21 Stephanie Coontz: Taking the Nostalgia of Trump Supporters Seriously. Berggruen Insights. No. 4. July 26, 2016. <http://insights.berggruen.org/issues/issue-4/institute_ posts/120 > Accessed: December 1, 2016. 22

Williams, 2016.

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