All the right people, part 2

 Since writing my last post, I've seen two more pieces saying that the purported* Trump realignment (more support among minorities and the working class, less among the white middle and upper classes) represents the way forward for the Republican party.  The first is by Jonathon Van Maren in the American Conservative, and the second is by Kevin Williamson in the Washington Post.  An interesting point is that both of them treat the central claim as self-evident, even though Trump just accomplished the rare feat of losing as an incumbent and the unprecedented feat of never having had an approval rating of over 50%.  Why would someone want to preserve a coalition that produced unpopularity and defeat?  You could say that it offers promise for the future because the non-white population is bound to increase.  On the other hand, so is the population with a college degree, so focusing on appeal to less educated people works against your long-term prospects.  As I've observed, there just seems to be a general sense that getting votes from disadvantaged groups is more worthy that getting the same number of votes from advantaged groups.  That view has always been prevalent on the left, but now the right seems to have adopted it too.  

In my last post, I suggested that Trump's appeal to less educated people was partly a matter of style rather than polices.  Williamson makes a similar point:  "Trump’s followers may thrill to the promise of trade wars and border walls, but what excites them even more is his gleeful transgression. They do not embrace him in spite of the schoolyard insults, Twitter tantrums and conspiracy nonsense, but because of these things..."   He says that they are reacting against elite progressive culture:  Trump's "constituency consists . . . ordinary people who woke up one morning to find themselves re-christened 'Latinx' or were sent to a corporate reeducation seminar because they didn’t get the memo on nonbinary pronouns."  But the problem with this argument is that elite progressive culture is an elite concern--most people have probably never even heard of the term "Latinx" or nonbinary pronouns. 

So what were people reacting against?  I think it is political conflict and gridlock.  Obama appealed to some of the same sentiments as Trump--he suggested that he would get things done by transcending traditional ideological divisions and bring people together, and at one time a lot of people, including people who didn't vote for him, believed that he could.  Between 2000 and 2009, CBS News had a number of survey questions that went "do you think George W. Bush's/Barack Obama's presidency will bring different groups of Americans together, or do you think that it will divide them?"  With Bush, opinions were consistently split, about 45% saying bring together and 45% saying divide.  Immediately after Obama's election, 69% said that they thought he would bring groups together, and only 16% said that they thought he would divide them.  Even in April 2009, it was 63% to 25%.  However, as Republicans maintained a united front of opposition, conflict increased rather than declined, and people turned to someone who said he would get things done by being tough and not caring if he offended people. 

*I say "purported" because it's not clear that there's been any change among racial minorities.  See my post from Nov 9.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]