GREG SARGENT, WASHINGTON POST
As the Democratic convention opens in Philadelphia, it’s yet another poll-panic morning as a new CNN poll shows Donald Trump gaining a large bounce from his own convention and going into the lead among registered voters nationally. We shouldn’t take the head-to-head polling between conventions all that seriously, as a number of observers (including your humble blogger) have pointed out.
But I wanted to highlight this finding, because it tells us something important about the state of the country, irrespective of the ups and downs of the race:
Regardless of how you plan to vote, do you think Trump’s speech reflected the way you, personally, feel about things in the United States today or not:
Reflected your feelings: 45
Did not reflect your feelings: 48
So nearly half of respondents share Trump’s vision of an Americain which crime is skyrocketing, dark hordes are spilling over the border, terrorists lurk around every corner, the threat is mounting from a refugee crisis that menaces “the west,” and most important, we’re hamstrung from dealing forcefully with all of these internal and external threats by “political correctness,” i.e, too much racial sensitivity. Never mind that this vision of America is based on a series of egregious lies and distortions. Trump may have accurately captured how nearly half of Americans feel about the country.
But the demographic breakdowns are even more interesting. Whites say his speech reflected their feelings about the country by 52-41. Non-college whites say this by an overwhelming 60-34. White evangelicals say this by 73-22. But white college graduates say Trump did not reflect their feelings about the country by 53-39. This shows once again that Trumpism is causing a real cultural split among white voters along educational lines, suggesting that college educated whites are much more accepting of the cultural, social and demographic changes sweeping the country than blue collar whites are....Meanwhile, majorities of women, nonwhites, and moderates also disagree with Trump’s depiction of America.
But blue collar whites are embracing not just Trump, butTrumpism, in enormous numbers. Now obviously these voters have many legitimate grievances: Elites really have let them down; trade deals really may have killed a lot of blue collar jobs in the industrial Midwest. Wages really have flattened. But all of those legitimate grievances may be leading many of these voters to embrace Trump’s full, apocalyptic vision of America, one framed around xenophobic and ethno-nationalist sentiments of the most wretched kind.
[NY TIMES, NATE COHN : Mr. Trump has adopted a message all but perfectly devised to attract these voters. He has a populist message on trade and immigration. He has abandoned key elements of the Republican agenda that hurt the party among white working-class Democrats, like support for cutting the social safety net.
No liberal arts college class on “power, privilege and hierarchy” will tell you that white working-class men have become a disadvantaged group.
But many white working-class men do not feel privileged — not in a society where power and status are often vested in well-educated elites along the coasts. From their standpoint, the Democratic Party might look like an identity politics patronage system — affirmative action, immigration, “political correctness,” gender or whatever else.]
It’s always possible, of course, that many voters didn’t pay the closest attention to the details of Trump’s speech, and are reacting to the increased media coverage of Trump basically saying that things are a mess, he gets that, and he’ll fix things. Let’s hope so. Democrats will have to figure out how to strike a balance between acknowledging the many legitimate grievances voters have with a basic case that things are getting better and progress is being made, albeit slowly, and that Trump’s authoritarian, strongman allure — even if enticing — is equal parts a massive scam and a unique threat to America.