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| Donald Trump supporters as an August 5 campaign rally in Green Bay, WI. Associated Press. |
About Those Loser “Trumpkins.” By William McGurn. Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2016.
McGurn:
What is it that the much-vilified Trump
voters are trying to tell us?
In the
land of NeverTrump, it turns out one American is more reviled than Donald
Trump. This would be the Donald Trump voter.
Lincoln
famously described government as of, by, and for the people. Even so, the
people are now getting a hard lesson about what happens when they reject the
advice of their betters and go with a nominee of their own choosing. What
happens is an outpouring of condescension and contempt.
This
contempt is most naked on the left. No surprise here, for two reasons. First,
since at least Woodrow Wilson progressives have always preferred rule by a
technocratic elite over democracy. Second, today’s Democratic Party routinely
portrays its Republican Party rivals as an assortment of nasty ists (racists, sexists, nativists, etc.)
making war on minorities, women, foreigners and innocent goatherds who somehow
end up in Guantanamo.
Thus
Mr. Trump confirms to many on the left what they have always told themselves
about the GOP. A New York Times writer put it this way: “Donald Trump’s supporters know
exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a
sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society.”
Still,
the contempt for the great Republican unwashed does not emanate exclusively
from liberals or Democrats. Thanks to Mr. Trump’s run for office, it is now
ascendant in conservative and Republican quarters as well.
Start
with the fondness for the word “Trumpkin,” meant at once to describe and demean
his supporters. Or consider an article from National Review, which describes a “vicious, selfish culture whose main products
are misery and used heroin needles” and whose members find that “Donald Trump’s
speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.” Scarcely a day goes by
without a fresh tweet or article taking the same tone, an echo of the old
Washington Post slur against evangelicals as “largely poor, uneducated and easy
to command.”
We get
it: Trump voters are stupid whites who are embittered because they are losing
out in the global economy.
But a new Gallup paper suggests this may be a caricature that misses the fuller picture. The
analysis is by Gallup senior economist Jonathan Rothwell, who looked not only
at Trump voters but where they lived:
“The
results show mixed evidence that economic distress has motivated Trump
support,” writes Mr. Rothwell. “His supporters are less educated and more
likely to work in blue collar occupations, but they earn relative high
household incomes, and living in areas more exposed to trade or immigration
does not increase Trump support.”
In
fact, in areas where people were more affected by immigration and competition
from Chinese imports, support for Mr. Trump declined. By contrast, his support
was stronger in areas low in intergenerational mobility. Could it be that what
motivates Trump voters is not a purely selfish concern for how they themselves
are faring but how well their children and their communities will do?
There
are those, this columnist included, who would argue that the under 2% average
growth rate of the past decade has done more to constrict income and
opportunity for ordinary Americans than bugaboos such as the North American
Free Trade Agreement or currency manipulation by China. In the same vein,
there’s a strong case to be made that Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” is the path to
the Trump voter’s goal of “Making America Great Again.”
The
people are not always right—even schoolboys know about the tyranny of the
majority—but a self-governing society ought to welcome the engagement of its
citizens. In this light, a more fruitful approach might start by taking note of
the surprise popularity in these year’s primaries of an outsider businessman in
the GOP and a socialist over in the Democratic Party.
The
result? A conversation that opened not with a taunt but a question: “What are
the American people trying to tell us?” Unfortunately, it’s hard to get there
when ordinary people with concerns about the future for themselves and their
families are hectored and lectured about how loathsome they are.
It all
calls to mind a witticism from Bertolt Brecht from 1953, after East German
workers who revolted over measures requiring more work for less pay were met
with Soviet tanks. In a poem that was not published until years later, Brecht,
a playwright who had publicly supported the crackdown, wryly defined the
problem as a regime losing confidence in its people rather than the other way
around.
“Would
it not be easier in that case,” he quipped, “for the government to dissolve the
people and elect another?”
On TV,
through Twitter and in person Mr. Trump has long made clear that his epithet of
choice for those who disagree with him is “loser.” How ironic that the same
people most loudly complaining about what a vulgarian Donald Trump is are now
using the same insult to dismiss the ordinary Republican voters who happen to
disagree with them.
