Think he doesn’t represent anything besides himself? Turns out a whopping 65 percent of white Americans say they’d consider supporting a nativist third party.
.. Is the Trump campaign about the man or the message? In other words, will Trumpism survive Trump?
.. I solicited white Americans’ support for Donald Trump, but also for a hypothetical third party dedicated to “stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America’s Christian heritage, and stopping the threat of Islam”—essentially the platform of the UK’s right-wing British National Party, adapted to the United States. How many white Americans do you think would consider voting for this type of protectionist, xenophobic party?
65 percent.
Clearly, Trump’s allure is bigger than Trump himself.
.. those who would consider voting for this third party are more likely to be male, of lower socioeconomic status, without a university education and ideologically conservative—in other words, the Republican Party’s longtime base. They are also more likely to be young (under 40 years old)—so this is not a phenomenon likely to pass quickly.
.. if Republicans, in an attempt to appeal to independent voters and the growing minority population, pivot away from Trump’s rhetoric, they could face internal upheaval, and perhaps even widescale defection to a third party from this 65 percent of whites. On the flip side, if Republicans do allow Trumpism to define the party, they risk ushering in an era of unprecedented Democratic dominance. Current polling predicts a Democratic landslide.
.. From six months of fieldwork in post-industrial cities in the British and American Rust Belts, I observed a remarkable sense of loss. Lost wealth in many cases. But more poignantly, I observed a sense of lost status.
.. For Democrats, their challenge is to draw white working class voters into their diverse coalition by convincing them that challenges in the household and workplace are general working class challenges that have very little to do with being white.
What, Congressman Steve King Asks, Have Nonwhites Done for Civilization?
“If you’re really optimistic, you can say this was the last time that old white people would command the Republican Party’s attention, its platform, its public face,” Charles P. Pierce, a writer at large at Esquire magazine, said during the panel discussion.
.. In response, Mr. King said: “This whole ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie. I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
“Than white people?” Mr. Hayes asked.
Mr. King responded: “Than Western civilization itself that’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America, and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.”
.. Rep. Steve King shouldn’t be allowed to use any inventions created by people who are not white. No elevators, no microphones, no pacemakers.
The Evangelicals and the Great Trump Hope
The former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister whose daughter, Sarah, is a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, checked the “family values” box by testifying to Mr. Trump’s closeness to his adult children.
.. Mr. Jeffress bluntly said that in the face of perceived threats facing evangelicals, “I want the meanest, toughest, son-of-a-you-know-what I can find in that role, and I think that’s where many evangelicals are.”
.. But the anger, anxiety and insecurity many contemporary white evangelicals feel are better understood as a response to an internal identity crisis precipitated by the recent demise of “white Christian America,” the cultural and institutional world built primarily by white Protestants that dominated American culture until the last decade.
.. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, white Christians (Catholics and Protestants) constituted a majority (54 percent) of the country; today, that number has slipped to 45 percent.
.. More than two-thirds believe that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against other groups. For discrimination against Christians, that number is nearly eight in 10.
.. Mr. Cruz assured evangelicals that he’d secure them exemptions from the new realities, while Mr. Trump promised to reinstate their central place in the country. Mr. Cruz offered to negotiate a respectable retreat strategy, while Mr. Trump vowed to turn back the clock.
For white evangelical Protestants, Mr. Trump’s general vow to “make America great again” means something specific. Mr. Trump stepped into the spotlight just as the curtain was coming down on the era of white Protestant dominance.
How Falling Behind the Joneses Fueled the Rise of Trump
The median new house in the U.S. is now 50 percent larger than it was in 1980, even though the median income has grown only slightly in real terms. Houses are growing faster than incomes because of a process I call “expenditure cascades.”
.. A family at the median income level would reasonably aspire to send its children to schools of at least average quality. But to do that, it would have to buy or rent a house near the median of its city’s housing price distribution. And that’s become significantly harder to do.
.. “the inflation-adjusted cost of the average wedding in the U.S. was $31,000 in 2015, up from about $10,000 in 1980.”
.. Growing income inequality in the U.S. has meant that as those at the top are able bid up the price of valued goods like housing and access to good schools, those in lower groups have struggled to maintain their positions.
.. A September 2014 Demos study found that median white family wealth is $134,000. Among whites in the working class, however — the bottom 32.1 percent — the average net worth is $0.
.. For some of these men, there is a less talked-about sense of status displacement that stems from the surge of women, including wives, girlfriends and daughters, into the work force. This has served to focus attention on the erosion of the traditional male self-image as provider and protector.
.. Trump’s supporters — more than any other candidate’s — believe that society would benefit if “women adhere to traditional gender roles.”
.. For working class whites, Vandello wrote, the loss of their privileged status and loss of manufacturing jobs go to the
core of what it means to be a man in our culture — being the protector and provider.
.. the practice among liberal interest groups of
highlighting group differences, cultures, etc. has contributed to Trump’s appeal, especially given that white men are often blamed for being oppressive or the source of many of the issues being protested.
.. Of course respect for women and racial minorities isnot political correctness — it is just decency. But well-known excesses in the policing of speech have handed Trump a gift: he can rationalize despicable attitudes as honest reactions to political correctness. In this way he multiplies the effectiveness of his taboo-shattering campaign. Supporters don’t perceive him as merely publicizing their ugly private beliefs; they perceive him as speaking truth to power.