The story of the decade, part 2

 As I said in my last post, another popular explanation of the rise of political polarization is:

"For many years, elites ignored the wishes of ordinary people, or showed contempt for them.  Finally the people rose up in anger, with the Tea Party movement and then with the Trump insurgency.  "

The idea of a revolt against an elite consensus is another case of the right explanation at the wrong time.  In the 1990s, most of the public favored a harder line against immigration, especially illegal immigration, while political elites of both parties were willing to accept high levels of illegal immigration and consider a chance for citizenship.  If you didn't like that, you needed to turn to an outsider--someone like Pat Buchanan or maybe Ross Perot.  But over the next couple of decades, public acceptance of immigration grew, while Republican elites moved in the opposite direction.  By the time Trump came around, there was no elite consensus on the issue--if you wanted a hard line against immigration, there were plenty of Republicans to choose from.  That's just one issue, although it was Trump's signature issue, but the partisan divergence among political elites, and consequent decline of elite consensus, was a general process.  

 Then there's the idea of elite condescension or contempt.  In my view, this is not just wrong, but the opposite of the truth--in fact, there's growing disapproval of anything that can be interpreted as "elitist."   I've looked for survey evidence bearing on this point and haven't found much.   However, I think that my position can be supported by historical evidence, which I'll discuss in my next post.  I'll offer one anecdote here.  The NY Times had a story about the first Kansas City Chiefs game in which it mentioned calls to do away with the "tomahawk chop" practiced by Chiefs fans.  They quoted some fans who wanted to keep it, including a 19-year-old woman who said "how is it OK for the past how many years, but now that it's 2020 it's apparently offensive."  The most-liked reader comment said:  "Note to Hannah and her all-white sorority sisters and fraternity brothers: It wasn't 'OK' for the past 50 years, but fortunately society is capable of evolving and recognizing some of its offenses and is trying to correct them."  The interesting thing is that the story didn't say that she was a sorority member, or even a college student.  In fact, it also quoted her mother and gave her age as 38, meaning that she had her daughter at 18 or 19.  So it's a pretty good bet that the young woman's mother didn't graduate from college, meaning it's less likely that she's in college herself.  I think that illustrates the current tendency to assume that "elites" or people with "privilege" are the source of any problem. 

 Finally, while looking for evidence about "elitism" I ran across this question:  "In your opinion, do all students have the ability to reach a high level of learning, or do only some have the ability to reach a high level of learning?"  This doesn't directly bear on the question--either "all" or "only some" could be interpreted as the elitist answer, depending on how you look at it--but it's interesting in its own right.  Opinions differed by age--older people were more likely to say "only some"--but education, sex, and race made little or no difference.  There was a difference by partisanship--60% of Republicans and only 48% of Democrats chose "all," with Independents right in the middle.  Maybe this is because the survey was done in 2001, when the No Child Left Behind plan was in the news.  That was based on the idea that we could bring all students up to proficiency by educational reform, so it's possible that the pattern was just because of Republicans supporting the plan.  It would be interesting to repeat the question to see whether the pattern still exists.

 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]