One of the writers I respect the most is Thomas Frank, author of "What's The Matter With Kansas" and many other riffs on our politics. He has a wonderful piece in the Guardian this week on Donald Trump, and why he has such strong support from white lower and middle class voters. It's not that all of his supporters are bigots - many of them are, but that doesn't explain the Trump phenomenon fully.....
Trump is saying the unthinkable - the real reasons middle America is being screwed.
Read this - you may change your opinion, not about Trump who is all the media says about him, but why he has the support he does.
Every so often we find an "epiphany" article, and this is one of them. It will also explain why Bernie Sanders has such passionate support and won Michigan, a rust belt state last night..
Excellent, excellent article.....
I call it a “mystery” because the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers. On their opinion pages, these publications take care to represent demographic categories of nearly every kind, but “blue-collar” is one they persistently overlook. The views of working-class people are so foreign to that universe that when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wanted to “engage” a Trump supporter last week, he made one up, along with this imaginary person’s responses to his questions.
When members of the professional class wish to understand the working-class Other, they traditionally consult experts on the subject. And when these authorities are asked to explain the Trump movement, they always seem to zero in on one main accusation: bigotry.
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