Seventeen months after the
2016 election, people still wonder why Donald Trump won. As in any presidential
election, there were many overlapping reasons why Trump won a majority of
electoral votes, although he lost the popular vote.
Clinton’s negatives are easy
to see. Conservatives had hammered at Hillary for two decades, creating a
fictional monster whom some voters hated so much that they wanted to lock her
up. James Comey’s decision to announce just before the election that her emails
as Secretary of State were again being investigated played into these beliefs
that she was unusually dishonest. Her campaign ignored
warning signs in key northern states, choosing to chase votes in
solidly Republican states.
The positives for Trump are
more puzzling and controversial, and will occupy social scientists for decades.
A new study
by Diana C. Mutz, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania,
offers valuable insight. Mutz argues against the idea
that has become a commonplace in discussions of 2016: that working-class
voters, who had been left behind by economic change, voted for someone who
seemed to promise them economic
redemption. According to this theory, key voters thought about their “pocketbooks”,
to use familiar political jargon.
Instead, Mutz supports a
different explanation for Trump’s victory, one that also has been much
discussed since the election: groups of Americans with traditionally high
status felt threatened and voted for the candidate who seemed to support their
continued dominance. White Christian men who were concerned about social
changes in recent decades gravitated to Trump, whose rhetoric and behavior
consistently prioritized whiteness, maleness, and Christian belief.
Enough voters were pushed
into the Trump camp by the efforts to reverse traditional discrimination
against blacks and women, by the increasing diversity of American society and a
future when whites will be a minority, by the fact that Democrats had produced
a black President and a female presidential candidate. Mutz summarizes her findings
by noting “a sense that white Americans are under siege”.
Trump said things during the
campaign about Mexicans and women and other people whom he did not respect that
could raise doubts about his character, but in the overheated atmosphere of a
presidential campaign, supporters tend to ignore any negatives about “their”
candidate. Since then, however, Trump’s character has been displayed much more
clearly: he lies about everything; his ego overwhelms all other considerations;
he is ignorant about most areas of public policy; his treatment of women,
including his wives, is despicable. Trump’s blundering performance as President
brings up the second big question about current American politics: why do his
voters keep supporting him?
Gallup weekly polls show little
change in approval of Trump for the past year: 38% to 40% approve of him as
President, and 56% to 59% disapprove. Among Republicans, his approval rating
has bounced around between 81% and 89% for more than a year.
The theory that status threat
motivated many of his voters offers a partial explanation. Every day the news
about Trump offers support for white men and evangelical Christians who long to
regain unchallenged dominance: his criticism of all organized efforts by black
and white Americans to identify and resist racism; revelations about his
pumped-up masculinity; his continued support for preventing Muslims from
entering the US and for the evangelical political agenda. No other politician
embodies so publicly the conviction that white Christian men should always be
in charge in America.
But doesn’t character count?
In particular, how could Trump continue to be so popular among evangelical
Christians, who constantly talk about morality?
I have no study, no
variables, no surveys to support the following idea, just intuition. I think
Trump’s low character is in fact a significant part of his appeal, especially
to the “moral minority”.
Nobody need feel morally
inferior to Trump. Although he constantly boasts about his genius, nobody need
feel intellectually inferior to Trump. As a person, Trump does not further
threaten those who already feel their status threatened.
The fact that voters could
give Barack Obama two terms as President and then elect Trump has caused no end
of hand-wringing and confusion among political commentators. I believe that
Obama’s obvious intellect, his high-mindedness, and his success contributed to
the sense of siege among some worried Americans. A black man was better than
they were at everything. Trump offers no such threat. It is easy to feel
superior to Trump, even while supporting his political direction.
For the Trump voters who don’t
believe that women, gays, blacks and immigrants deserve the same status as they
do, Trump’s personal behavior is irrelevant. All they care about is making
America great again, which they define as making white Christian males great
again. Three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants believe American culture
has changed for the worse since
the 1950s, when women and African Americans were rigidly subordinated.
They don’t want to be
lectured by a black or female Democrat about the virtues of diversity. They
want an old-fashioned white male chauvinist pig to put them back on a pedestal.
If that means more pollution, tax windfalls for the rich, and corruption in the
Cabinet, so what?
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published by the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, May 1, 2018
"Trump’s blundering performance as President brings up the second big question about current American politics: why do his voters keep supporting him?"
ReplyDeleteSouth Korea is going to the negotiating table and has stopped testing nuclear devices. Unemployment is down. Black unemployment is at record low levels. He's appointing judges who are sticking to adjudicating the law, not writing new law. He's stopped legislating immigration by Executive fiat and demanding that Congress do it's job and legislate - and until then, he's going to enforce the law as written, which is actually his job. He does not conflate "immigrant" with "illegal alien" - he recognizes the difference between someone who came here legally and someone who did not. They think that legal immigrants are O.K. but that illegal aliens shoujld be sent home. They see that while his tax law benefits wealthy people it also benefits them. Note, BTW, that the effect on wealthy people is often *negative* when you factor in the loss of deductability of property taxes and State income taxes; ask real estate agents in Manhattan and L.A. about wealthy clients moving out of town or out of State! They see that businesses are spending at least part of their repatriated cash on capital investment and increased wages.
In short - they don't think he's blundering. They think he's doing a fine job. They don't give a damn if he had sex with a porn star years before he was President and then paid her off to shut her up. They don't pay attention to his tweets, they look at what he's *doing*. And they approve.
"... his continued support for preventing Muslims from entering the US ..."
ReplyDeleteHis "Muslim ban" doesn't affect 86% of the Muslims in the world. Calling it a "Muslim ban" simply reminds his voters that the media will distort or outright lie to attempt to put Trump in a bad light. So they ignore the media. Trump didn't cause the public to see the media as enemies of America. They've believed that for years.
"In particular, how could Trump continue to be so popular among evangelical Christians, who constantly talk about morality?"
Because a) they saw Clinton as more immoral than he is, and b) they see Trump as someone who will leave them alone and not force them through Federal regulations to allow transsexuals to share bathrooms with their children and force their businesses to do work their owners find immoral.
"I believe that Obama’s obvious intellect, his high-mindedness, and his success contributed to the sense of siege among some worried Americans. A black man was better than they were at everything."
ReplyDeleteActually, they saw Pres. Obama as a failure. Libya dissolved into chaos after he took Kadaffy out. Syria was abandoned to the Russians. Iraq was finally getting stabilized after the mistakes made during the Bush administration when Obama blew up the Forces agreement and announced we were leaving. The gains in Afghanistan - that he promised to improve on - were lost. He was the one that described ISIS as a "minor-league team". All they did was to become the world's biggest terrorist threat and nearly take over Iraq. When a white cop shot a black man in Ferguson MO who had committed a strong-arm robbery, assaulted a cop (that he outweighed by 80 pounds), attempted to steal his gun to the point that it fired, and then charged after the cop again even when told to stop with a gun pointed at him he backed the "white cop shot an unarmed black man" narrative.
You think Obama was a success? Seriously? LOTS of people think he was a failure and that his mistakes are going to cost this country money and lives for years to come.
Diversity has pros and cons. Generally, less diverse societies have lower murder rates. That should count for a lot.
ReplyDelete