Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Explaining Trump: Blue-collar GOP vs. White-collar GOP
Over at National Journal, Ron Brownstein simplifies the GOP’s state of play:
The blue-collar wing of the Republican primary electorate has consolidated around one candidate. The party’s white-collar wing remains fragmented.
That may be the most concise explanation of the dynamic that has propelled Donald Trump to a consistent and sometimes commanding lead in the early stages of the GOP presidential nomination contest.
Both national and state polls show Trump opening a substantial lead among Republican voters without a college education almost everywhere. And in almost all cases, Trump is winning more support from noncollege Republicans than any candidate is attracting from Republican voters with at least a four-year education. “It’s a challenge to Republicans that nobody has consolidated the college-graduate vote against Trump,” says Glen Bolger, a longtime GOP pollster skeptical of the front-runner.
Being a work-from-home writer living in the Sunbelt, I self-identify as a no-collar; however, Brownstein’s analysis sounds on the nose to me. Do you agree?
Published in General
Carson’s numbers are close to Trump’s, but Brownstein doesn’t tell us whether Carson supporters are blue or white-collar. Could white-collar voters be coalescing around Carson?
If that was the case, then why all the worries about Trump’s popularity? I bet participation in primary voting skews heavily toward college grads.
I think that is a reasonable analysis.
As the rest of the field drops out, especially Jeb!, we will see the split among non-Trump republicans:
Kasich, Christie, Rubio, Huckabee, Graham, Santorum
Carson, Cruz, Fiorina, Jindal, Paul
Jon, I agree. About half of my extended family work blue collar jobs, and Trump has grabbed their attention, cutting through the all-politicians-are-the-same ennui that generally shuts down any political discussion I try to start.
They know Trump from reality TV and like what they are hearing him say.
This is really simply: it’s the difference between the folks in Fishtown vs the folks in Belmont. I do not support Trump at all, but I do sympathize with the folks in Fishtown.
Chairman Mao was addressing a group of party cadres when he stated “I can get a cat to bite a hot pepper willingly”
A cadre asked “Chairman Mao, how could you get a cat to willingly bite a hot pepper?”
Chairman Mao replied “First I stuff the hot pepper up the cat’s ass, it will then quickly and willingly bite the hot pepper.”
At the beginning of 2015 Jeb! was poised to be stuffed right up the GOP primary voter’s fundament along with amnesty for illegals and sweet, sweet deals for big dollar contributors. Turns out they weren’t willing to bite.
I’ve been predicting a mutiny in the GOP ranks for some time, this seems to be one manifestation of it.
In the presidential race of 2016, I’m prepared to bite the hot pepper one more time if it turns out to be the price of avoiding a Clinton/Sanders/Warren/Biden presidency. Just hand it to me though.
My analysis on the Trump lead is too short for a column:
People will overlook every other thing he says, that many on the left or right would usually hang a candidate for (Mexican rapists, McCain no hero, Carly’s face, Bush blame for 9/11) so long as he closes the damn border.
Donald Trump could [could practically do or say anything] and still be popular so long as he builds that wall.
It’s the hot-around-the-collar crowd who loves Trump. But as the crowds grow and word-of-mouth spreads, he’s been able to flip rage into a campaign full of humor and joy.
The most vocal anti-Trump Republicans are print-oriented Gutenbergers, whereas The Donald appeals to post-literate voters more saturated in the electronic media environment. Gutenbergers issue position papers. Trump tweets.
Trump is an unpredictable one man show, but his instincts are interactive. The man watches ratings and polls more closely than a network executive. That means he’s listening to us, the audience, which is no small part of coming out a winner.
In the Age of Media, politics is entertainment. The Donald gets the inherent irony and humor of trying to govern ourselves in this environment. Those whose politics are subordinated to dogma or ideology aren’t laughing, because they don’t get the joke.
Emotion trumps logic in politics. A candidate who can sustain a joyful campaign has a better chance than one scoring debate points for eggheads.
Sometimes it seems that the Republican establishment has half their brain — the intuitive right side — tied behind their back, just to make things less interesting.
I think Trump is giving the GOP establishment a sriracha sauce enema. Maybe that’s the reason sriracha sauce bottles have those long, slender nozzles.
It seems that blue collar voters might have legitimate beefs with their white collar brothers. Our government with all its idiotic schemes and fraud is dominated by the white collar. Almost all stupid ideas have been thought up by someone with the finest educations from the finest universities. It is possible that college educated emperor is just being seen for what he is. Another explanation is that the almost all the group running for President is lined up perfectly with Chamber of Commerce vision for immigration. Their campaigns are sustained by that money. Have you ever wondered why Jeb! has all that money and no votes. Trump is noisy about it even if you doubt his bonafides. Carson also seems better on the issue. Immigration is a far greater issue than neocon concerns in the Middle East or just about any libertarian concern. Maybe the white collar are just concerned about where they will get their maids, gardeners and nannies. By the way I confess to being part of the idiot class but so far haven’t needed a maid, gardener or nanny. MSME Purdue
Mr. Trump, build up that wall!
It’s a good partial viewpoint to explain Trump, but perhaps not sufficient. I would suggest that some of us college educated professionals who came from a blue collar background could entertain Trump as an option.
I can also understand that a white collar person from several generations of white collar forebears would act a bit crazy when confronted with Trump.
I also posit that any GOP candidate who cannot mobilize and fire up the blue collar voters will lose. Reagan did it, so did W, both refused to talk down to them and seemed to be trustworthy to do what they said.
Running for the Chamber of Commerce is a losing hand.
The same Reagan who granted citizenship to millions of immigrants – supposedly the worst policy move possible in the eyes of blue collar workers?
Call me a cynic, but I don’t see a good correlation between those candidates listed above who could talk well to blue collar voters, and actual conservative policy successes for blue collar voters.
Instead, the trade-off seems to be that the Chamber of Commerce still gets most of what it wants (including free trade deals and loose immigration policy) and the blue collar vote gets mollified with enhanced entitlements. Both Bush and Reagan fit that model, and I’m not sure it’s one we should be praising.
But it’s one the GOP establishment can’t quit playing.
I really like Scott Addam’s take on what Trump is and is doing. He calls it the Master Wizard theory. Which in summation is that the election (maybe all elections) occur on a very superficial level of salesmanship. Trump in Scott’s opinion is a master at selling people on buying things. What he is selling is his candidacy which he is doing through the use of classic salesmanship techniques. The people who support Trump therefore are the people who are most susceptible to those techniques. Basically if you have bought something for 19.99$ from a TV salesman you are very likely to buy what Trump is selling. It really is a novel view of the situation, and I think it may have far more validity than what most pundits and political scientists are thinking.
Have a look at his blog.
I would say that Trump is doing better among the blue collar crowd. The Republican’s have to learn that a large part of their base are blue collar white males and their wives. These are the Reagan Democrats. What the Republican’s have failed to learn is that they lost the college educated vote to the Democrats a long time ago. The only way the Republican’s can win the presidency is to strongly turn out their base and hope the Democrats can’t turn out theirs.
There should be another color collar for those who work in the government and in politics, say beige. The Beige collar worker is pulling for Jeb!
Laura Ingram says this blue collar and white collar divide (she calls it business or Chamber of Commerce conservatives versus working conservatives) is taking place around the world. She goes further and says the issue is not left or right, but rather those who want free trade and those who ask, “Is globalization really helping me?” She says it explains Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the left and Trump on the right. She then goes on to lay out the Scotish Nationalist Party, the National Front in France, the UKIP, uprisings in Catalonia and Greece, opposition to the EU, and the Liberal Party victory in Canada. Per her telling, the working people are tired of the same old “trust us,” we will take care of things approach and it is not just conservatives or progressives who feel it’s time to toss out the status quo.
Nice to think Trump’s just a clever huckster and that people will eventually see through him and come back to the establishment’s Certified Pre-Owned Moderates™. Well, don’t hold your breath. The GOP establishment has sown the wind and this year they’re reaping the whirlwind. There’s a reason Jeb’s stuck in sixth place. It’s got nothing to do with Trump. The fact is that 60% of the Republican party is currently supporting candidates who have never held office or have a solid record of opposition to the establishment
Casey J: I think what Scott Addams is saying isn’t that people will see through Trump. It is the exact opposite. Trump is a master at selling himself. He has figured out what the people want and is giving it to them with skill and purpose. Addams is predicting that based on his Master Wizard theory, Trump will go on an win a land slide victory. Everyone else thinks the race is about ideas and positions, Trump knows it is all about presentation and salesmanship.
It’s just the latest version of the “Trump voters are stupid” line. Yawn. The establishment just doesn’t get it. The base despises them.
We haven’t gotten to the point Rick is in this clip, but we’re getting there.
Jon,
I think we are still overestimating what Trump represents. If one just looked at Jeb and Trump then the white collar / blue collar thesis holds. However, Carson completely disrupts this logic. Rubio & Fiorina aren’t so far back as to be out of the running either.
What’s really going on now is everyone is waiting for the Democrats. If Hillary is forced out and Biden or others come in then the complexion is again very different.
The other factor that is hard to compute is the Speaker. At one moment the voters are completely rejecting Jeb & the establishment and in the same moment we are falling backward into a Squish Speaker.
We’ll just have to stay tuned. Don’t touch that dial.
Regards,
Jim
Forget praise. They won the election and their re-election. Blue collar voters vote on character, not policy.
Circumstances were rather different in the 1980s. For one thing we didn’t have NAFTA and other “free trade” agreements that moved the US industrial base to other countries, nor did we have endless uncountable millions of illegal aliens here.
In other words, more jobs, fewer illegals workers, and Reagan at least passed a law intended to stop illegal immigration. Bush, on the other hand, simply decided that family values didn’t stop at the Rio Grande, so he would simply ignore US law, then failed to get his open borders and amnesty scheme passed. Fail.
And if you think the blue collar vote is “mollified” I suggest you ponder just why Trump is popular, who likes him, and why.
Trump may be able to do what no Republican has been able to do – attract a substantial portion of the minority vote. There was one small, early poll which showed him winning 20% of the black vote. If that were scalable, then it’s bye bye Democrats. Maybe for a long time.
So why have there been no polls measuring his appeal with blacks and Hispanics? Maybe those who commission the polling are afraid to know the answer.
I suspect Ingram is correct- and the GOP establishment, unlike the base of the party, is on the side of globalization, regardless of what happens to the United States.
One way or another, this is a political loser for the party. Either the democrats will import enough foreigners to fundamentally transform the US into Venezuela del Norte, rendering the party irrelevant, or the GOP base will desert the party forever and all time.
The Club for
GlobalismGrowth seems poised and ready to unleash a vast amount of negative advertising against Trump. They may well succeed in destroying his candidacy, but I bet they’ll also drive vast numbers of his present supporters away from the GOP.Then the GOP will lose again, and we’ll get to listen to the idiot GOP establishment lecture everyone about how awful the voters are, because they wouldn’t vote for the me-too globalist who mildly differed from the democrat globalist.
To paraphrase Harry Truman, if you give the voters a choice between one globalist post-American and another, they’ll pick the globalist post-American every time.
The GOP wants to offer no different choice from the left, supporting the TPP, open borders, and failing to offer resistance to the left on a host of other issues.
That party has no future, nor does it deserve one.
I’m old enough to remember when a politician who governed by polls came under heavy criticism and accused of lacking in principles.
Everything has been turned 180 degrees in this election season.
“Came under criticism” and “accused of” … ah, the passive voice. That would be criticism by the chattering classes, yes? The thing about properly constructed polling and ratings samples is that they’re far more inclusive of we, the people.
Personally, I admired President Clinton’s daily polling operation during his terms. They probably weighed in favor of Dick Morris’ advice to moderate his policies, and against his more ideologically driven left wing
harridanadvisers.I initially took it as that too, but upon further reflection I don’t think Scott’s idea is about Trump supporters being stupid. Here is how I see it now. There is a segment of the Republican base that has a clear idea of what it wants. It has looked at the nation, identified its problems and come up with a solution. Now they are looking for the candidate that they think has their solution. I think some percentage of Trumps support comes from these guys, but most of his vocal opposition comes from them as well, because Trump isn’t selling the solution they want. Now there is another and probably larger segment of the Republican base that doesn’t really know what they want, they just have a sense of need. What Trump does better than any candidate is that he defines their need and sells them his solution. Once they are sold on him they are set.
It was almost exactly 50-50 in 2012.
New Hampshire: 55% college graduates
South Carolina: 47% college graduates
Florida: 50-50
Louisiana: 50-50