Defying the Odds

by James W. Ceaser

  Blue-collar workers saw danger from other quarters as well. One was economic globalization, along with the trade agreements that greased its way. Although NAFTA had a modestly beneficial impact on the economy overall, it did cost thousands of jobs in manufacturing and agriculture.60 To auto workers who saw their plants move south of the border, it was no comfort to learn that other Americans could now buy Mexican and Canadian goods more cheaply.

  People were also crossing borders. The 1990 census found 19.8 million foreign-born residents, accounting for 7.9 percent of the population. By the 2010 census, the raw number had doubled to 40 million, and the population share was up to 12.9 percent.61 When Pat Buchanan railed against undocumented immigrants in 1992, they numbered somewhere between 4 and 6 million. When Donald Trump did the same in 2016, there were more than 11 million.62 (That level had dropped from a 2007 peak of more than 12 million, thanks to the Great Recession and deportations.) Whether correctly or incorrectly, many native-born white working people were seeing an economic threat from immigrants, especially the undocumented. According to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institute, a plurality of white college-educated Americans thought that undocumented immigrants do more good than harm by providing low-cost labor, but 71 percent of white working-class Americans—those with neither a four-year college degree nor a salaried job—said that the undocumented hurt the U.S. economy by depressing wages.63 These were, in essence, two perspectives on one point.

  The gap between college America and non-college America went beyond economic issues. It literally extended from birth to death.

  In 2009, only 8 percent of college-educated white women were unwed when they gave birth, compared with 34 percent of white women with some college, and 51 percent of those with no more than a high school diploma.64 A 2015 survey found that 88 percent of children with least one college-graduate parent were living in a two-parent household, compared with 59 percent of those whose parents had only a high school diploma and 54 percent of those whose parents did not finish high school.65

  There was a rise in the mortality of middle-aged (forty-five to sixty-four) non-Hispanic whites between 1999 and 2013. (African Americans and Hispanics saw mortality rates fall.) This change stemmed mostly from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Mortality for those with a high school diploma or less increased by 134 per 100,000. Those with some college saw little change while with a bachelor’s degree or more saw death rates fall by 57 per 100,000.66 There was a similar pattern among younger people. The death rate for whites between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four rose between 1990 and 2014. For those with a college degree, the increase was a modest 4 percent. For those without a high school education, it was 23 percent.67

  In other words, non-college families were less stable than college families, and they disproportionately suffered from substance abuse and other pathologies that showed up in death statistics. Accordingly, working-class whites had a more negative view of American society than other groups. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 62 percent of African Americans and 57 percent of Hispanics said that American society had changed for the better since the 1950s. The figure was similar among college-educated whites: 56 percent. But among working-class whites, 65 percent said that things were now worse.68 Sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin writes that these differences reflected starkly different reference points:

  [African Americans] may look back to a time when discrimination deprived their parents of equal opportunities. Many Hispanics may look back to the lower standard of living their parents experienced in their countries of origin. Whites are likely to compare themselves to a reference group that leads them to feel worse off. Blacks and Hispanics compare themselves to reference groups that may make them feel better off.

  In the fourth quarter of 2015, the median weekly earnings of white men aged 25 to 54 were $950, well above the same figure for black men ($703) and Hispanic men ($701). But for some whites—perhaps the ones who account for the increasing death rate—that may be beside the point. Their main reference group is their parents’ generation, and by that standard they have little to look forward to and a lot to lament.69

  Between 2007 and 2016, whites between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four lost about 6.5 million more jobs more than they gained. Hispanics in the same age group gained some 3 million jobs net, Asians 1.5 million and African Americans 1 million.70 Although such figures do not prove employment bias against whites, the trend fueled a sense of resentment. The Public Religion Research Institute found that about two-thirds of working-class whites agreed that the discrimination faced by whites is as big a problem as the discrimination faced by non-whites. Only about 43 percent of white college-educated Americans took this view.71 On this issue, as on many others, members of the latter group were adopting socially liberal positions that often put them on the same side as African Americans and Hispanics.

  College America was becoming a class apart. Its members had their own tastes, preferences, and neighborhoods. And its children were marrying one another.72 (For instance, the Clintons’ daughter wed a fellow Stanford graduate whose parents had both served in the House of Representatives.) College-educated parents passed along good genes, provided their children with cultural opportunities, paid for test-prep classes, and used their connections to open the doors for internships and jobs. Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, writes of friends who ask for his help in getting internships for their children. “I understand what they’re doing; this is part of being a parent. Still, it’s a reminder that America’s current internship system, in which contacts and money matter more than talent, contributes to an economy in which access and opportunity go to the people who already have the most of both.”73

  Lauren A. Rivera explains that college America reproduces its own advantages in subtler ways. “Upper- and upper-middle-class parents are more likely to know that enrolling their children in structured leisure activities pays off in selective college admissions and beyond than are working- and lower-middle-class families.”74 Admissions officers and corporate recruiters prefer applicants who have taken part in elite sports such as squash, which poor kids do not play—or even know about. When bright students from blue-collar families do get into good schools, they are still not on a level playing field. They often assume that grades are the only key to success, so they tend to spend less time on extracurricular activities than their peers from affluent, educated backgrounds. Rivera writes, “Ironically, working class students’ focus on academics (rather than social or extracurricular activities) while in school constrains, not expands, the types of jobs and incomes available to them when they graduate.”75 Even if guidance counselors clue them in about getting the “right” extracurricular credentials, they stay a step behind. “This is because simply knowing this rule of the hiring game in insufficient for passing résumé screens. Students need to have evidence of participation, and real material constraints (e.g., joining fees, equipment costs, time away from paid work, and forgone wages) limit their involvement.”76

  So to the extent that blue-collar Americans thought that the system was rigged in favor of college America, they were not entirely wrong. They also had reason to think that college America looked down on them. Charles Murray writes:

  Try using “redneck” in a conversation with your highly educated friends and see if it triggers any of the nervousness that accompanies other ethnic slurs. Refer to “flyover country” and consider the implications when no one asks, “What does that mean?” Or I can send you to chat with a friend in Washington, D.C., who bought a weekend place in West Virginia. He will tell you about the contempt for his new neighbors that he has encountered in the elite precincts of the nation’s capital.77

  Joan C. Williams, a law professor from a working-class background, observes that blue-collar Americans resent professionals but not the wealthy. “Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-
collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day.”78

  Such attitudes help explain a puzzle. The Democratic Party has long been the natural home for organized labor, so why did so many blue-collar workers turn toward the GOP? One answer is that unions are increasingly the domain of the professional class that they dislike. At the start of 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that barely over one in ten wage and salary workers belonged to a union, but just under half of union members worked for the government.79 On the union rolls, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar workers. For instance, 6.1 union members worked in management, professional, and related occupations while just 2.4 million worked in production, transportation, and material moving occupations. In other words, a union member was much more likely to be a teacher than a teamster.

  Non-college whites felt isolated, and in a direct geographical sense. In recent years, the people most likely to move for better opportunities were the highly educated, who clustered in places such as Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and Seattle.80 The counties encompassing such areas accounted for much of the growth in new businesses after the Great Recession. Government spending enabled lobbyists and contractors to flourish: five of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties were suburbs of Washington, D.C.81 Meanwhile, small rural counties shrank and faltered. In the recovery of the early 1990s, they had accounted for a third of the net increase in new businesses. From 2010 through 2014, they lost more businesses than they generated.82

  The physical and psychological separation of college America and non-college America left a mark on politics. As college America got more liberal and geographically concentrated, certain areas became overwhelmingly Democratic. The resulting inefficient distribution of the Democratic vote had major implications for the electoral vote and House elections, as we shall discuss in later chapters. More broadly, the separation meant that members of the elite could be blind to problems afflicting people who were out of sight and out of mind. Take crime, for instance. In 2016, people without college degrees were telling pollsters that crime was on the rise, whereas college graduates said that it was not.83 Pundits dismissed worries about crime concerns as inaccurate and possibly racist, but FBI data later confirmed that the number of murders increased nearly 11 percent between 2014 and 2015, and overall violent crime rose by nearly 4 percent.84 Perhaps the people who lived in more vulnerable places could see things that were invisible to those who dwelled in gated communities and high-security apartment buildings.

  The social and economic forces driving the two Americas apart had been brewing for a long time. But why did they have such impact in 2016, and not ten years earlier? One reason was the Great Recession, which slammed working-class communities, and whose effects lingered long after its official conclusion. In 2016, Pat Buchanan looked back at his 1992 race and told journalist Jeff Greenfield, “Those issues started maturing. Now we’ve lost 55,000 factories. . . . When those consequences came rolling in, all of a sudden you’ve got an angry country. We were out there warning what was coming.”85

  Another reason was President Obama. Some of his supporters said that opposition was really a reaction to his heritage, or, as he put it diplomatically, “my unique demographic.”86 Racial prejudice surely played some part, but something else was also at work. President Obama, whose parents met at the University of Hawaii, was a product of college America—and its elite wing at that. His father went on to graduate study in economics at Harvard, and his mother earned a PhD in anthropology. Obama himself attended an exclusive prep school in Honolulu and got his bachelor’s degree at Columbia and his law degree at Harvard, where he headed the law review. As of 2014, two-thirds of his cabinet appointees had attended an Ivy League institution.87

  Many in non-college America had a hard time believing that he was on their side. During the 2008 campaign, he told a group of rich contributors, “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”88 His supporters said that his policies benefited working people, but non-college America had a different view. Immigration, trade, and crime were all sore points—and so was health care. The Affordable Care Act did have some positive effects through the creation of the exchanges and the expansion of Medicaid. But those on employer-provided coverage saw their deductibles rise and their choices shrink. The president’s often-repeated promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep it” became a bitter joke. Six years after a 2008 campaign pledge to fix health care for veterans, journalists uncovered that waiting lists were so long that some veterans died before they could get medical treatment. The president again vowed action and again fell short. A year after the Veterans Administration scandal broke, progress was halting at best.89

  As for the president’s determination to curb lobbyist power, interest group representatives continued to ply their trade.90 Liberal author Thomas Frank observed unhappily that the nation got a lesson in how that trade works: “Like simple class solidarity between the Ivy Leaguers who advise the president and the Ivy Leaguers who sell derivative securities to unsuspecting foreigners. As that inspiring young president filled his administration with Wall Street personnel, we learned that the revolving door still works, even if the people passing through it aren’t registered lobbyists.”91

  Those things were still in the future in 2008, when a combination of a bad economy and an unpopular war all but guaranteed Obama’s victory, and even many of the “bitter clingers” voted for him. Two years later, the outsider reaction was already forming, and Republicans took control of the House. Obama narrowly won reelection in 2012. He had the advantage of incumbency, and the economy had improved just enough to make him electable. Moreover, the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney, a governor’s son who had grown up in wealth, earned two professional degrees at Harvard, and made a fortune in private equity. For all his virtues, it is hard to think of anyone less suited for leading a revolt against insiders. Two years later, Republicans won control of the Senate, bulked up their majority in the House, and scored historic gains in governorships and state legislatures. White working-class voters were a major source of GOP support.92

  Then came the 2016 election, with its surprising showings by Sanders and Trump. Although both had elite educations (Sanders at the University of Chicago, Trump at the Wharton School), neither sounded like it. They grew up only fifteen miles apart, and both retained their distinctly non-elite outer-borough accents. In different ways, and with different emphases, both men spoke to the anxieties and resentments that recent decades had produced. And the previous twenty-four years had given them new means of reaching their audience and bypassing existing political structures.

  OVER RED AND BLUE

  In its account of the 1992 campaign, Upside Down and Inside Out described two broad categories of mass media. One was the older collection of big units: the broadcast networks, wire services, major newspapers and magazines. The defining characteristic of this category was gatekeeping, the process by which editors, producers, and other media figures decided what parts of the candidates’ messages could reach the public. The other category consisted of alternative means by which political figures could communicate with voters more or less directly, including talk radio and cable television. Ross Perot took full advantage of the second category, reaching millions via speeches on C-SPAN and softball interviews on Larry King’s CNN program. Clinton spoke to younger voters via appearances on Arsenio Hall and MTV.93

  Upside Down and Inside Out caught a snapshot of the second category in its embryonic form, and correctly noted that it had not yet become dominant. “[The] ‘mediated’ channel of news and interpretation . . . still commands most of the attention, and the media tribunes remain at the center of media power.”94 By 2016, that center had shifted. As more and more Americans got their
news online, print newspaper circulation plunged and newsrooms emptied out. Between 1992 and 2016, employment in the newspaper industry fell by more than half.95 Newsmagazines shrank and either went digital or barely lingered in little-seen print editions. The evening news broadcasts of the big three networks continued to attract millions of viewers, but since 1980, they had lost more than half of their audience.96

  Television viewers simply enjoyed many more choices. In the early 1990s, the average household received about thirty-six channels.97 By 2016, that number had passed two hundred.98 As the old media tribunes lost their dominance, political figures now had more opportunities to reach national audiences, with a special focus on their partisans. Republicans and conservatives now had Fox News, just as liberals and Democrats had MSNBC, neither of which existed in 1992.

  This media environment was especially hospitable to celebrities with roots in the entertainment world. It would not be accurate to say that 1992 started the merger of entertainment and politics. During the 1968 campaign, for instance, Richard Nixon had a cameo on Laugh-In, and a dozen years later, former movie star Ronald Reagan became president. But the 1992 race did take the process a big step forward. In 1992, Tabitha Soren covered the campaign for the still-hip MTV network. In 2016, she reflected, “And I feel just a tiny bit sorry—not for what we did, but for what we enabled. In trying to interest young people in politics, MTV News inadvertently helped create a model for turning politics into entertainment.”99 Also in 1992, MTV premiered The Real World, which did much to establish the terms of reality television shows. At the time, no one saw that genre as a route to political prominence.