Scared and White and Trump All Over
Trump supporters aren’t stupid—but they are afraid, and we’re not doing enough to quell their fears
At a panel I was on recently—in liberal-ish, reliably blue Seattle—more than one person expressed a kind of vexation about the support of Donald Trump. It’s one that I’ve heard echoed persistently and with a great deal of hand-wringing over the last six months.
How can people vote for him? Can’t they see the facts? Are they really that stupid?
To which I would say: First, it’s really not about who is smart and who is not smart. Instead, it’s about who is safe and who is not safe. Or at least, who feels safe and does not feel safe.
Say you realize you have something on your face. You don’t know if it’s a dangerous spider, a piece of lint, or maybe just an eyelash. Because it’s on your face, you can’t tell how big it is. But it feels big. And it feels dangerous. And it’s there.
“Yes, sometimes people have things on their faces” says one person in a calm, reasonable manner. “Sometimes they’re spiders but sometimes they’re nice things, like snowflakes. The thing on your face is not a poisonous spider so it’s actually ok there, but we need innovative solutions to curb the massive growth in things on faces. We may also just need to learn to be ok with things on faces—some people have things on their faces all the time! And we’ll try to find a way to get that particular thing off you through a comprehensive suite of policies.”
You’re distraught. These plans all sound good and rational if there weren’t an actual thing that you believe could be a spider on your person at this very minute.
Then, someone barges into the room with a large shoe.
“I’LL KILL IT FOR YOU!” he yells into your face. “IT’S DEFINITELY A DEADLY SPIDER AND I’LL JUST BASH IT RIGHT IN.” He’s swinging the shoe wildly, knocking over lamps and punching holes in the walls. You know it might not be the best solution—you accept you’re about to get hit in the face with a shoe—but it will get the thing that you believe could be a spider off of you and at that exact moment that is all you really want in the world.
Donald Trump has a very big shoe, and for many Americans, that’s the exact solution they’ve been looking for to quell their fears about money, race, and the future of the country*.
Pundits and pollsters and armchair politicos often will focus on particular voting demographics. In the case of Trump’s surprising (to some) support, no one subset of the population has been as thoroughly examined as those Americans who are white and without a college degree.
That section of the voting population—white and without a degree—has long been treated as the brass ring for politicians, and this year is no exception (in spite of the fact that the electorate will be, in 2016, the least white that it’s ever been).
But as Joshua Holland wrote in a particularly thought-provoking piece in Rolling Stone in September, different constituencies are motivated by different concerns, and writing off the white working-class demographic purely on assumptions about the income or their intelligence is a mistake:
Trump’s sparked a debate about whether his supporters are motivated by racial animus or economic insecurity. To some degree, this is a false dichotomy — people are more likely to scapegoat the “other” when their own lives suck.
But…we do see statistically significant differences in the degree to which working-class whites from different regions harbor “racial grievances.” It’s not a perfect correlation, but with the exception of the East north-central region, those in the most Republican-leaning parts of the country are more likely to hold negative views toward black people than those in the rest of the country.
Which is not to say there’s no link to low earnings and support of Trump—there is, and we’ll get to that—but it is to say that to understand the bulk of Trump supporters, it’s essential to see them as a complex group of people with complex concerns and, above all else, extremely acute fears that are being assuaged directly by his rhetoric.
First, let’s examine fears related to finances. A recent Gallup poll linked the perception of financial insecurity to a reported vote for Trump quite closely.
“Americans who view Trump favorably are significantly more likely than other Americans to report feeling financially insecure. The large gap in financial insecurity persists even after controlling for income, education, occupation, party affiliation and various other measures of objective economic circumstances.”
The Gallup poll found that “Americans with a favorable opinion of Trump report relatively high levels of financial anxiety.”
For example, those with a favorable opinion of Trump are 23 percentage points more likely to say they are not feeling better about their financial situation these days, 17 points more likely to say they do not feel good about the amount of money they have to spend and 13 points more likely to say they are cutting back on spending.
That might lead you to believe that many Trump supporters are actively poor—and indeed, plenty of them are—but it’s also the perception of financial instability that fuels his support.
Nate Silver estimated that the average Trump supporter earns around $72,000, a figure that’s well above the mean personal income for a white person with no college. However it’s important to note that, due to his top-heavy, trickle-down tax policies, he’s the favorite candidate for a lot of wealthy people who are hoping to keep claiming their lucrative tax breaks.
That’s evident in the Gallup poll as well, which found that “the largest gaps in worries about personal finances tend to be found in households earning $200,000 or more in annual income.”
Make no mistake, though, that many, many Trump supporters are struggling financially; an Edison exit poll found that Trump netted the largest percentage of low-income (earning under $30,000 per year) voters in the primaries. Many of them are also reliant on industries that are rapidly drying up. Another Gallup poll found that a full 22 percent of male Trump supporters work in automotive, steel, or other manufacturing jobs.
But regardless of whether they’re actually in peril of losing everything, people who are nervous about their finances are more likely to vote for a man whose entire campaign is predicated on the idea that he is financially stable and he can make you financially stable.
“It’s worth a chance because nothing’s happening now. Like [Trump] says, what do you got to lose?” said 57-year-old Ohioan Tony Martin in a recent interview with STAT News. “We know what the hell we’ve been having, and it’s been continuing on. It hasn’t gotten any better.”
That sentiment — that the current situation is untenable, that what has been happening isn’t working, and that they, personally, are being left out of political conversations—is a powerful one, and one that seems to be steering people who either are actually in the lowest income brackets or feel economically vulnerable, to vote for a man who has done what they want to do.
For individuals of all income brackets who are worried about their money (whether it’s their retirement fund or their next yacht that they’ll write off as a business expense), a campaign build on business acumen and financial fortitude is the hammer they need, when for so long, they’ve been offered a butter knife.
In a lot of ways, financially unstable (whether perceived or in reality) Trump voters aren’t wrong; Democrats haven’t exactly done the lowest-earners a solid, either. At least, not in a lot of very visible ways.
Bill Clinton’s welfare “reform” changed the way that assistance dollars were divvied up, effectively ceasing the flow of necessary cash to millions. President Barack Obama, for all of his strengths, raised the minimum wage just once during his first year in office; it has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. Americans still have no universal paid sick leave or family leave. Income inequality, though largely ushered in by conservative policies (hello, deregulation of the banking sector!), has been allowed to swell under the watch of a Democratic leader. Industries that were one lionized as the salvation of the white-collar workers (and white workers, generally) have dissipated and been replaced with service work that’s every bit as valuable and skilled but receives a fraction of the respect (and a pittance for pay).
The financial fears of Trump voters aren’t as simple as the death of manufacturing or a low minimum wage, though—they are also linked to the fear that when others in society advance, those who have typically been in positions of power must necessarily lose something.
“He may not have experience but we need somebody from the outside.” —Joe Thomas, Trump supporter, speaking to USA Today
Many Americans view the economy—and prosperity, in general—as a zero-sum game. Someone else’s success necessitates my stagnation or loss. We see this in conversations about the minimum wage, about universal health care, and especially, most apparently, about affirmative action programs or other systems set up directly to combat inequality.
It’s impossible to ignore the fact that a full 90% of Trump’s support comes from white people, and that for many whites at every rung of the income ladder, racial equity looks a lot like losing ground.
An ABC poll found these patterns most starkly among Trump voters. From the Washington Post’s analysis:
…When respondents were asked whether they felt economically “comfortable,” or whether they felt that they were “struggling” or “moving up,” there was a clear pattern in the responses.
Those who said that they were comfortable or moving up were much less likely to support Trump. Just 29 percent did, while 40 percent of those who said they were struggling were in Trump’s camp.
Respondents were also asked whether they felt that it was a “bigger problem” that African Americans and Latinos were “losing out because of preference for whites” or that whites were losing out because of preferences for these groups. Among those who said that it was a bigger problem that whites were losing out, 43 percent supported Trump.
Among those GOP-leaning voters who said that it was a bigger problem that the other groups were losing out because of preferences for whites or who said that it was a problem for both groups or for neither group, just 25 percent supported Trump.
This isn’t exceptionally different from previous years, and it doesn’t represent a massive shift in Republican voters; Republicans have, for years, rejected racial equity programs, pushed back against efforts to end police brutality or improve struggling schools or generally help dismantle white supremacy.
But it is notable when we parse these questions of why conservative voters can check so much of Trump’s toxic, dangerous, abusive rhetoric at the door and decide to vote for him anyway. Why God-fearing people who could barely utter the word “Hell” would condone a man who brags about sexual assault. Why his comments about Mexicans and Muslims don’t turn people off.
The current climate for white working class people—whether they’re poor or not—feels dire, due largely to these fears. There is fear about losing their industries and losing their jobs. There is fear that they’re going to lose those jobs, specifically, to people of color. There is fear that when white people are no longer the majority of the country (or hold the majority of power, or the majority of wealth) that must mean that things will be very bad.
And then along comes Trump, who has no problem offering a seemingly-simple solution that speaks to all of those fears at once. Bring back jobs. Give them to white people. Keep scary Brown people out. Stop and frisk the Black people who are coming to get you.
He has brought the proverbial shoe, and he will swing it where it needs to be swung, consequences be damned.
It’s not that Trump supporters are stupid—that they’re hornswoggled by his truly abysmal tax plan or that they’ve been duped into thinking his borderline incenstuous adoration for his daughter somehow makes him a champion for women.
It’s that many of them are afraid. And the truth is that you can’t win a feelings-driven fight with facts.
It doesn’t matter that crime is at an all-time low, that employment is generally strong, and that racial equity is objectively a good thing. It doesn’t matter that progressive tax policies—which close loopholes like the ones that allowed Donald Trump to potentially pay no income tax for 20 years, or which tax earnings at a much higher rate than interest—will directly benefit a broader number of people. And it doesn’t matter that tax cuts for the wealthy basically never trickle down.
What matters is that Donald Trump has promised to lower the taxes of people who already feel they’re paying too much. He has promised to keep the people who look different away. He has promised to get the old jobs back.
And those promises land much more easily and comfortably than assurances that the world is going to look different in the future but it’ll still be ok.
This fear is also why Trump’s slogan, Make America Great Again, is so powerful. Nostaglia for a time that was perceived to be simpler or less frightening or less “PC” is a powerful drug, and one that sounds more appealing than progress in a direction that feels scary.
“Everybody’s getting too sue-happy and crazy like that,” Myra Harkness told NPR at a rally this week, adding that “we didn’t have this 10, 15, 20 years ago.”
Though it may make those of us who consider ourselves smart and good and righteous and would never vote for a man like Donald Trump to chuckle about what might be wrong with those who are on the Trump Train, the truth is that it achieves nothing to decide that Trump voters are simply dumber, or too poor to understand their own best interests.
Often when we talk about low-information voters, we mean low-income (or at least, lower than our own), low-brow, or worse, low-class.
What we forget is that people—like Trump voters—can see us.
They can see us (I count myself shamefully among this group) gleefully writing them off as ignorant hicks—as deplorables. They can see us laughing at their racism and, as a result, denying our own (NPR Politics host Sam Sanders has a great takedown of this line of thought in the September 12th episode of the podcast). This is what drives the rejection of elitism and why we have reached a point where a man who is so grossly underqualified for the office of the Presidency is a sneeze away from holding it.
“We’re very, very, very quick to label other people ‘racist.’ And we start the conversation that way knowing that it shuts down a conversation.”—NPR reporter Sam Sanders.
As a progressive and a wonkish female, I’ve been impressed with Hillary Clinton’s ability to go deep on policy; during the town hall-style debate on Sunday, she was able to walk the audience through the complexities of the Affordable Care Act and of the tax code.
For me and people like me, that’s the perfect messaging. And to be fair, white college graduates have not typically been a demographic that has bent toward the Democratic party, so perhaps this is a smart approach.
But that same careful assessment also works for myself and people like me because, while we may be nervous about some things—student debt, the housing market, social security—we don’t feel the same acute fear of losing our status, of our chosen industries going under, of people of color moving onto our block, or of the misty specter of terrorism.
And this is, I think, where we begin to lose our empathy and our ability to communicate. This divide is why I think think year feels worse somehow.
I believe that it is anecdotally true that Donald Trump’s “say it like you mean it” attitude has emboldened many Americans to dust off their latent racism and fly it proudly. I believe that if Donald Trump wins in November that the country will be in deep peril. I believe that Donald Trump is a man who holds racism and fear in his heart and wields them like a sword.
But I also believe that his supporters are not stupid, and that treating them as one big dumb monolithic group of white rednecks serves exactly no one.
*It bears noting, as well, fear of inverting gender roles and/or upsetting the gender binary also seems to motivate many Trump supporters; Hillary Clinton is leading handily among women and a recent survey of male voters found that supporters overwhelmingly hold beliefs that reflect traditional (and toxic) masculinity. And then there’s this whole ordeal. But the misogyny of Trump voters is like, a whole different essay than this one.
