Coastal elites

A couple of years ago, I proposed that "American society has become a lot more socially egalitarian over the last 60 years or so. Educated people don't want to be thought of as snobs or elitists, and less educated people are less likely to think they should 'improve themselves' by emulating the middle class.  At one time, you could say that Democrats thought of themselves as the party of the common people, and Republicans thought of themselves as the party of successful people.  Now both parties think of themselves as the party of the common people, plus the fraction of the elites who care about or understand the common people."  I have looked for evidence bearing on this point, and report two examples in this post:  white people have become less likely to say that racial inequality is due to things that could be regarded as the fault of black people, and people have become more likely to say if someone is poor it's the result of "circumstances beyond their control" rather than "lack of effort."

My idea suggested that the change would be larger in the advantaged group--that is, that people would be less likely to be critical of people "below" them.  That is the case for race--blacks became a little more likely to say that racial inequality was the result of lack of effort or ability.  I didn't look at opinions about the causes of poverty then, but here are results for 1964 and 2018 broken down by education:

People at all educational levels have moved towards "circumstances," but the move is larger among more educated people.  As a result, the relation between education and opinions has changed.  In 1964, more education went with more chance of saying that poverty was due to lack of effort; in 2018, the correlation between education and opinions was essentially zero.  There was a relationship in 2018, but it wasn't linear:  people at middle levels of education were most likely to say that poverty was due to lack of effort.  The 2018 survey also distinguished people with graduate education, and they were even more likely to say that poverty was due to circumstances.

Of course, these are just two groups, so you could say that maybe elites have more contempt for certain kinds of people, like those who didn't graduate from college or those who live in the "heartland."  I have looked for more general survey questions, but haven't been able to find anything very relevant (although this one is interesting).

On the other hand, how much evidence is there for a rise in elite condescension?  The go-to example is Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables"--in which she said that not all Trump supporters were racists, xenophobes, etc.  She didn't say anything explicit about the social position of the two "baskets," but since her point was that many Trump supporters has legitimate economic grievances, that implies that working-class supporters were less likely to be "deplorables."  So it was a foolish remark, but not an example of contempt for the working class.   Then last week I saw the NY Times review of a new book by Nicholas Kristof.  The reviewer (Sarah Smarsh) wrote "even well-intentioned, coastal, college-educated scribes commit obliviously condescending word choices ('flyover country')...."  That reminded me that I recently read Paul Collier's The Future of Capitalism and noticed that he also cited the expression as an example of elite condescension.  Although I am coastal (grew up in NJ and lived most of my adult life in Connecticut) and college-educated (at an elite coastal institution), I'm not sure I've ever heard or seen "flyover country" used in a straightforward way--just in an indignant or ironic way.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I followed a link from Ross Douthat to an article written right after the 2016 election by Walter Russell Mead.  He said "the Republican Party’s extraordinary dominance in this election demonstrates just how costly the Democrats’ scornful rejection of 'hillbilly populism' has been." Finally, a good example of elite contempt!  I didn't remember anyone using this term, so I did a search, and the first thing that came up on Google was Mead's own article, then something from a book discussing Orville Faubus, then another book talking about an "older South," ..... nothing from a Democrat during the 2016 election.   OK, it would have been a good example if anyone had actually said it. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]