I don’t want to be a hater.
But I will now offer the mildest of critiques to everyone’s favorite demographic: the white working class.
Who doesn’t love these guys?
Yes, we know that Trump made gains with every racial demographic, but these “small deviations from long-term minority voting patterns could be a short-term blip that has not truly transformed the GOP’s voter base,” which is “hardly a multiracial coalition.”
In fact, the white working class remains the cornerstone of the Republican Party. Seriously, “if Democrats think they can win back the loyalty of the working class, they likely should think again.” After all, “under Biden, Democrats adopted one of the most pro-working class policy agendas in recent political memory, enacted much of it — and accrued no electoral benefit.” Meanwhile, the GOP’s “attention to the white working class is overwhelmingly symbolic” in that Trump presented “nothing substantive on policy” that would actually help these voters. Instead, what our president-elect “essentially offered the working class were attacks on undocumented immigrants, which his campaign blamed for much of the nation’s ills.”
And while a disturbing number of black and Latino voters were down with demonizing immigrants, who do you think really responded to this campaign strategy?
Yeah, take your time analyzing that one.
White working class voters made it clear that they were far more interested in outlawing trans people and keeping Muslims out than in preserving democracy, but every conservative, most of the media, and a lot of progressives still excused this hate-voting with the same tired excuses: economy anxiety, cruelly left behind, felt talked down to, and blah blah blah.
We were told — lectured really — that we needed to respect and listen to white working class voters. They had no choice (none at all!) but to vote for the guy who boasted that he would be a dictator.
But these voters “aren’t five-year-olds who have to be cajoled into behaving themselves.” For all the talk about respecting the white working class, there was little acknowledgement that when “you respect people, you also hold them responsible for the choices they make.” It’s maddening, hypocritical, and “infantilizing to assume” that white working class voters “aren’t or shouldn’t be interested in things like America’s democratic traditions.”
So which is it? Should we respect them and pay attention to their opinions? Or should we coddle them and excuse their ignorance?
And it is ignorance, because their hero is already backtracking on his absurd promise to bring down grocery prices. Every progressive in the country said that the incompetent buffoon wouldn’t follow through on this pledge, but we were told to shut up and stop being elitist.
And speaking of being elitist, we’ve learned that progressives are far too woke for the white working class, and we need to knock that nonsense off. However, this is yet another way in which the fawning of the white working class for authoritarianism has been excused.
You see, “anti-woke” voters basically said, “Those leftists claimed that white men have done some terrible shit throughout history. This has enraged me so much that I have no choice but to vote for a white man who will do some terrible shit today.”
Of course, people will say that I am being simplistic by blaming the white working class for its parochialism and lack of education. That’s possible.
But it’s also possible that media figures are overcomplicating things and becoming apologists for horrific choices. Perhaps it is too disturbing to admit that bigotry and misogyny are prevalent in every demographic and especially strong in the white working class. It is more comforting to say it’s the pompous college-educated progressives and hypersensitive minorities that are exaggerating and out of touch. This viewpoint, which its practitioners love to portray as insightful and contrarian, is in fact the prevailing opinion and a strong reinforcement of the status quo. It’s also a lazy excuse.
But hey, what do I know? I’m not a member of the white working class, so my opinion is null and void.
I hope you guys know something that I don’t know, because we are all in this together.