Listen now | The American Mind’s Tell Me What You Really Think is a daily interview series featuring the host, Spencer Klavan, and The American Mind’s publisher and editors aimed at dissecting the issues facing us in America today and finding out what the cast really
Trump seems to have lost 3-5% of the white college educated vote he won in 2015. Too bad Klavan and Williams, and doubtless McConnell, seem happy to give that vote away to anyone who wants it.
In my opinion, Trump lost that vote because of Trump's obvious incompetence and double dealing followed by his embrace of McConnell’s Senate GOP after August 2018.
It’s not clear that Biden picked-up their votes and I suspect most stayed home. After all picking between Trump and Biden or McConnell and Schumer or Pelosi and McCarthy is much like picking between hemlock and arsenic.
I heard "turn out more white working and lower middle class voters.” I don’t think that’s possible. Trump’s problem was he seems to have lost a number of white upper-middle class independent suburban voters that he carried in 2015. I don’t think they voted for Biden but they did stop supporting Trump after the 2018 mid-term elections and likely stayed home on November 3.
I can see that addressing this problem would mean having to seriously address Trump’s obvious incompetence, Trump's seeming inability to learn from experience, the vast chasm between what Trump said and what he actually did and the fundamental tension between the white suburban political independents and the utterly corrupt GOP. So all we got was hemming and hawing at the end of this segment.
But that is the core problem the Mideset has to address. Political Independents are the plurality party in the US. To date, the Mindset seems to assume the existing GOP can accommodate them and the GOP can be saved. I don’t think the GOP can be saved; not after it’s dreadful performance over the last four years that must have been orchestrated by the GOP Senate leadership.
I see what you're saying. There's ample evidence, chronicled e.g. by Pedro Gonzalez, that Trump's loss in the upper Midwest was due to precisely what Williams was describing: losing among the white working and lower middle class.
I think that McConnell and the Trump campaign, in all of their affirmative action policies (e.g. Platinum Plan, American Dream, crim. justice reform) were playing not only to ethnic minorities, but also (possibly moreso) to educated suburban whites, who deeply fear being called racist. The Trump campaign, and the GOP generally, spent a lot of time and political capital trying to make these people comfortable with the GOP. These affirmative action policies, and doing things like trumpeting the decreases in the black unemployment rate and inviting rappers on stage, were meant to give educated whites "cover" to vote for Trump without being considered a racist. And not only did they give them "anti-racist" cover, but they also catered to this educated, white suburban demographic by pursuing very typical pro-business policy, e.g. the corporate tax cut. These voters were coddled for four years.
If the primary political struggle of our time is, as Michael Lind argues, recovering democracy from the managerial elite, then we have to view politics as a class war between the workers of the heartland and the elites of the hubs. Trump had ample opportunity to refashion the GOP into the party of the workers of the heartland, but he didn't take it. Huge missed opportunity, and he paid for it this November.
The GOP can become the party of the workers of the heartland and retain some of the white educated suburban voters, but if they vote GOP, they will end up as class traitors. Nevertheless, many of these educated voters are patriotic and religious, and will be willing to become class traitors. But they are not the demographic that will sustain a nationalist and populist GOP.
Trump seems to have lost 3-5% of the white college educated vote he won in 2015. Too bad Klavan and Williams, and doubtless McConnell, seem happy to give that vote away to anyone who wants it.
In my opinion, Trump lost that vote because of Trump's obvious incompetence and double dealing followed by his embrace of McConnell’s Senate GOP after August 2018.
It’s not clear that Biden picked-up their votes and I suspect most stayed home. After all picking between Trump and Biden or McConnell and Schumer or Pelosi and McCarthy is much like picking between hemlock and arsenic.
WTF are you talking about? This is precisely what Williams laments at 3:55
And what did Williams say?
I heard "turn out more white working and lower middle class voters.” I don’t think that’s possible. Trump’s problem was he seems to have lost a number of white upper-middle class independent suburban voters that he carried in 2015. I don’t think they voted for Biden but they did stop supporting Trump after the 2018 mid-term elections and likely stayed home on November 3.
I can see that addressing this problem would mean having to seriously address Trump’s obvious incompetence, Trump's seeming inability to learn from experience, the vast chasm between what Trump said and what he actually did and the fundamental tension between the white suburban political independents and the utterly corrupt GOP. So all we got was hemming and hawing at the end of this segment.
But that is the core problem the Mideset has to address. Political Independents are the plurality party in the US. To date, the Mindset seems to assume the existing GOP can accommodate them and the GOP can be saved. I don’t think the GOP can be saved; not after it’s dreadful performance over the last four years that must have been orchestrated by the GOP Senate leadership.
I see what you're saying. There's ample evidence, chronicled e.g. by Pedro Gonzalez, that Trump's loss in the upper Midwest was due to precisely what Williams was describing: losing among the white working and lower middle class.
I think that McConnell and the Trump campaign, in all of their affirmative action policies (e.g. Platinum Plan, American Dream, crim. justice reform) were playing not only to ethnic minorities, but also (possibly moreso) to educated suburban whites, who deeply fear being called racist. The Trump campaign, and the GOP generally, spent a lot of time and political capital trying to make these people comfortable with the GOP. These affirmative action policies, and doing things like trumpeting the decreases in the black unemployment rate and inviting rappers on stage, were meant to give educated whites "cover" to vote for Trump without being considered a racist. And not only did they give them "anti-racist" cover, but they also catered to this educated, white suburban demographic by pursuing very typical pro-business policy, e.g. the corporate tax cut. These voters were coddled for four years.
If the primary political struggle of our time is, as Michael Lind argues, recovering democracy from the managerial elite, then we have to view politics as a class war between the workers of the heartland and the elites of the hubs. Trump had ample opportunity to refashion the GOP into the party of the workers of the heartland, but he didn't take it. Huge missed opportunity, and he paid for it this November.
The GOP can become the party of the workers of the heartland and retain some of the white educated suburban voters, but if they vote GOP, they will end up as class traitors. Nevertheless, many of these educated voters are patriotic and religious, and will be willing to become class traitors. But they are not the demographic that will sustain a nationalist and populist GOP.