Must-Read: Very good from the extremely sharp Matthew Yglesias. The only hole in his argument I see is that he does not consider the possibility that "economic anxiety" leads people to focus much more on their caste identity as an important value to preserve. When people are getting richer and more comfortable at a rapid rate, then being primed by Fox News to resent the status-group insults of having to "press one for English... [hear] Black Lives Matter... slandering police officers, and worr[y] that Muslim and/or Mexican immigrants are going to murder their children..." is more likely to motivate action. When you know that you are getting richer, you are more likely to view everybody around you as a potential partner in win-win economic exchange, and thus as a potential friend. When you are not getting richer, not so much...
Matthew Yglesias: Why I Don’t Think It Makes Sense to Attribute Trump’s Support to Economic Anxiety:
Trump genuinely differs in this regard from recent Republican Party presidential nominees...
...as well as from figures such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and even, to an extent, Ted Cruz. The perception that the Republican Party “establishment” wanted to de-emphasize white grievance politics is accurate. Trump departs from earlier GOP practice in precisely the opposite direction.... The perception that electing Trump as president would decrease the cultural clout of “politically correct” norms... is at least highly plausible.... Not only is white racial resentment clearly a statistical correlate of support for Donald Trump, it’s a perfectly good reason to support Donald Trump.
By contrast, the idea that Donald Trump is going to usher in a new era of broadly shared prosperity based on a revival of coal mining and labor-intensive methods of steel production is patently ridiculous. Under guise of being respectful of Trump voters’ concerns, pundits attributing his appeal to his economic “policies” are in effect attributing a remarkable degree of foolishness to his supporters. The more parsimonious and simple explanation is that there is a basic divide over values and cultural identity.
Adding economics doesn’t explain anything: At this point the wise and statesmanlike thing is to suggest that there is no need to posit a false choice between identity-based grievances and economic ones.... But in this case, adding an economic anxiety factor to your account doesn’t actually help to explain anything. Trump’s supporters, for example, are considerably whiter and considerably older than the American population at large. If the economic problems of the past decade had been unusually hard on the white and the poor, then an economics-focused explanation could be valuable. In reality, things have been rougher on nonwhites and rougher on younger cohorts.
By way of comparison, the racial and ethnic divide in the 2016 Democratic primary was stark, but it’s genuinely impossible to fully understand what was going on without incorporating an economic component. Sanders drew his support disproportionately from white voters, but Clinton did well among the oldest and most affluent cohorts of white Democrats. Clinton dominated the nonwhite vote, but Sanders did well with the youngest group of nonwhites--precisely the group that suffered the most during the recession.
There are good reasons to support economic policies that will help the white working class--even if you don’t share white resentment: This is not to deny that many Trump voters are legitimately disappointed by the economic performance of the United States.... Income growth — particularly for people in the bottom 90 percent... has been genuinely disappointing... for black and Latino Americans and for young ones, as well as for older white people.... That economic grievance doesn’t particularly explain anything about the 2016 election should not be taken as a denial that the grievances are real.... That economic grievances don’t fully explain Trumpism is not an argument that Trump supporters don’t deserve better economic policy. All Americans--including the cranky racists and apolitical nonvoters and everything in between--deserve improving living standards....
But when Trump voters say they’re upset about needing to press one for English, mad that Black Lives Matter protesters are slandering police officers, and worried that Muslim and/or Mexican immigrants are going to murder their children, it’s perverse to interpret them as secretly hankering for a refundable child care tax credit. If it’s a good idea, then by all means propose it and implement it. But the argument about the nature of American identity that’s playing out around the country right now is real and important on its own terms, and it’s far and away the biggest driver of political behavior this cycle...
