[Baltimore Sun] The ‘essential minority’ threatening democracy: white, rural Americans | GUEST COMMENTARY
Read Time:5 Minute, 6 Second
Remember that moment during the 2000 Democratic presidential primary when Al Gore conflated Sioux City, Iowa, with Sioux Falls, South Dakota? Or the time John Kerry confused the locations of Alabama and Georgia on a map? How clueless did Hillary Clinton look during that 2016 campaign event in Wisconsin when a visit to a Dairy Queen revealed she never so much as heard about the popular fast food chain’s famed “blizzard” treats? And nobody can forget when President Barack Obama congratulated the people of Kansas, not Missouri, after the Patrick Mahomes-led Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl a few years ago.
Examples like these are why regular folks from the so-called “heartland” of America increasingly view liberals and Democrats as out-of-touch, coastal elites with little connection to — and even less sympathy for — the real lives and struggles of the earnest, hard-working citizens from so-called “flyover” states.
Trouble is, Gore, Kerry, Obama and Clinton were not guilty of the above transgressions. Instead, each of those cultural gaffes was committed by Donald Trump, a guy born in Queens who has spent his adult life in Manhattan and Palm Beach.
Yet this guy is somehow the god-king of heartland, rural America?
Conservatives have howled for decades that nobody who has spent his entire life in diverse, blue, coastal cities can possibly understand the lives of “real Americans,” a term which by default applies only to small-town, white, conservative Republicans. And if only some Americans are real, the rest of us must be either less than real or less than fully American.
So potent is this fiction that even when a lifelong urbanite like Mr. Trump displays his ignorance of heartland geography, he gets a free pass. This is one of the paradoxes we explore in our new book, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.”
Mr. Trump, whose own experience could not be further removed from the lives of people who live in small towns and counties, is beloved in rural America, especially among rural white voters. He proved that, despite what we’ve been told, rural people will still support politicians who don’t speak their language and understand their lives — so long as those politicians channel their rage.
Indeed, rather than do what politicians normally do to court rural America — put on a Carhartt jacket and stage a photo-op where they nod knowingly as a farmer talks to them about commodity prices — Mr. Trump targeted rural folks’ darkest impulses.
With his naked bigotry and xenophobia, his sense of victimization and his resentment toward the elites whom he constantly complains look down on him, Mr. Trump turned out to be a perfect fit for rural whites, even if he can’t tell a combine from a corn dog. He is, as he promises, their “retribution.”
Rural support was a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, made possible by the fact that rural voters are given unique leverage over elections at both the national and state levels. When their outsize power enabled Mr. Trump to win an Electoral College victory while losing the popular vote, journalists descended on the heartland to give a respectful hearing to rural white voters and their concerns, to the point where reports from small-town diners on the depths of Mr. Trump’s support became a cliché.
Fawning attention from Mr. Trump and other culture warriors is just one more way in which rural Americans are treated as what we call “the essential minority.” Their disproportionate power is treated as inevitable, their values are lauded, and their shortcomings are justified and excused.
Of course, rural Americans have as much right as anyone else to fair treatment, economic opportunity, and a voice in politics. But the truth is that Mr. Trump, their supposed champion, cares not one whit about the so-called “heartland.” Well, that’s not entirely true: He cares very much that his flyover followers continue to deliver him votes, donate money to his campaigns and legal funds, and purchase flags, T-shirts, special gold coins and even swatches from the suit he wore for his infamous mug shot. (Yes, that’s something you can buy for $99; it comes with a trading card depicting a version of Mr. Trump far more muscular than his actual doughy self.)
Mr. Trump’s alleged concern for those real, heartland citizens is just one more grift; rural folk may think he loves them, but to him, they’re just marks. What else should we expect from a former reality TV star who told his staff to treat every day in the White House like a new episode of a show and, according to his former National Security Adviser John Bolton, spends nearly two hours a day doing his hair and makeup?
Elite conservatives tell rural Americans that liberals are condescending, coastal, out-of-touch, preening Hollywood phonies unworthy of their trust or political support. Yet rural folk have lined up gladly behind Mr. Trump, the most out-of-touch phony of them all. He assured them that he hates the people they hate, and for many, that was enough.
But he also promised them that he’d solve the problems they face and alleviate their struggles. As he did with so many vendors, creditors and victims of his cons, he reneged.
Politicians like Mr. Trump gin up cultural anxieties — fears of cities, especially — because doing so mostly exempts them from delivering much in the way of material gains to their constituents. Rural voters may relish mocking coastal urbanites as less “real,” but their slings and arrows will not reverse rural America’s decaying economies or declining life expectancy rates. Sadly, those problems are all too real.
Thomas F. Schaller (X: @schaller67) is a professor of political science at UMBC and a former Sun columnist. Paul Waldman (X: and @paulwaldman1) is a journalist and author who writes The Cross Section newsletter and co-hosts the Boundary Issues podcast. Their new book, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy,” will be available Feb. 27th from Random House.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0