Country Folk Arent Perfect, but No, Coastal Liberals, Trump Is Not Their Fault – Daily Beast
Now we see some liberals sneering at poor whites and saying theyre getting what they deserve. But it wasnt poor whites who put Trump in office.
If you didnt bother to look at the data and relied entirely on the popular narrative, you could be forgiven for thinking that Donald Trump won the presidency by getting everyone who lives in a rural area on a low income to spontaneously decide to start voting. Trump won, the story goes, because of those rural white working class voters. Theyre the people who voteagainst their own best interests.
This has led to a resurgence in popular classism in the public square. Its in vogue in certain liberal circles to laugh at the very real struggles of the poor. When a story of horrific racism comes across their feed, the Twitter wags ironically cluck economic anxiety, to mock the narrative that economic anxiety made the racist punch that black person or call in that bomb threat.
A variation on that joke is liberal smirking at the prospect of some poor person who voted incorrectlylosing health careas a result of Trumps monstrous policies. These bon mots are explained away because after all, its those rural white low-income earners who got us Trump, a man who would happily terrorize a litter of puppies if it earned him a dollar.
Only 20 percent of the American population lives in a rural area. Even if every single denizen of the mountains, hills, and plains voted for Trump, it wouldnt make up enough people to have won him the presidencyand they didnt. Rural voters made up17 percent of the electorate. That number is up, to be sure. But its still not even representative of the population.
Beyond that, there were plenty of rural voters who went for Hillary Clinton. I should know; Im one of them. So are my closest friends and family. It seems more likely that I will be made president of Australia than that our little group of 10 or so in Meigs County, Ohio, were the only rural Hillary voters in the whole country. But the narrative took hold because rural turnout was up while city turnout was down, and its much simpler to talk about how the country folk came out and handed the White House to Trump than it is to parse out the reasons why the city dwellers stayed home. And who wants to let facts get in the way of a solid session of group condescension, anyway?
Then theres the problem of income. Poor people famously do not vote in anywhere near the numbers their wealthier peers do. Yet suddenly were all pretending that the people with the least political power in a country that is run on money and fantasies of meritocracy are the kingmakers, the real power behind Trumps throne. It must be nice, after years of rhetoric about the 99 percent and endless discussions about income inequality, for bigots who think the poor are beneath them to finally have an excuse to unleash all the venom and bias theyve been holding back politely.
Theres just one problem. Trumps voters skew wealthy. Two-thirds of voters making less than $50,000 yearly voted for Clinton. People makingmorethan that went for Trump, in margins that increased along with the tax bracket. Hisaveragevoter earns $72,000 a year. Its surpassingly unlikely that low-income white people voted en masse for Hillary. We dont have solid data, but we can infer from what we know that many or even most voted for Trump. Still, it doesnt follow that strong support from a low-turnout demographic can then be blamed alone for the election of Trump.
The single biggest predictor of voting behavior was educationevenmajority-minority countieswith low to medium educational attainment shifted toward Trump. (It is a personal belief of mine that black women will eventually save the world from itself, and the data show us that they voted against Trump in huge margins. That should be noted. But they dont make up enough of the population to swing a whole election any more than rural voters do.) As it turns out, poor people arent stupid, but the uneducated are susceptible to demagogues and propaganda. This shouldnt be surprising to anyone whos even thought about history or human behavior, much less studied it.
It may be cathartic to imagine all rural voters as toothless rednecks waving the Stars and Bars and singing racist chants, and then to blame that caricature for the countrys woes, but it doesnt get us anywhere. Bigotry surely does exist out in the country, and its ugly. It exists in the lower classes, and it should be stamped out. But it exists everywhere in America. Nobody from the holler is gentrifying Brooklyn. No poor person has set a rapist free with merely probation as punishment. It isnt out-of-work welders scratching busily away at legal justifications for the travel ban. Not a single rural opiate addict is conducting ICE raids, and that now-ubiquitous voter from Youngstown isnt in a position to close the wage gap.
If you want to mitigate bigotry and hate, try focusing on the system and the people who perpetuate it instead of merely pointing and laughing at the people who consume its outputs. It is never excusable and should be obliterated with vigor and forceespecially when the bigotry comes from people who actually have the political power to enforce and perpetuate it.
But it seems we still need to blame someone who isnt ourselves. We arent ready yet to grapple with what it says about this society that we elected a kleptocrat whos incapable of politely shaking hands with foreign leaders or going more than a month without a rally to shore up his fragile ego, but who has found time to install his family and crypto-Nazis in positions of power while he terrorizes small children because their parents overstayed their visa. So instead of doing that, were taking this opportunity to blame the poor for the behavior of the well-off, because otherwise wed have to admit that it was just normal Republicans who voted for Trump. Worse, we might have to admit that economic anxiety isnt just a punch line any more than its just for white people.
More than three times as many people voted for Trump on Staten Island, and nearly ten times as many in Macomb County, Michigan, than live in my whole county. If youre looking for a reason Trump is in office, you might start by looking where the majority of his voters are.
View post:
Country Folk Arent Perfect, but No, Coastal Liberals, Trump Is Not Their Fault - Daily Beast
- Wealthy White Liberals Reportedly Urge Democrats To Be Willing To Get Shot Opposing Trump - dailycaller.com - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Albertas PCs Might Rise from the Dead. Not the BC Liberals - The Tyee - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Cryo-liberals are still dishing up deranged delusions - The Times - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Wealthy White Liberals Reportedly Urge Democrats To Be Willing To Get Shot Opposing Trump - AOL.com - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Liberals, Conservatives, And Independents Form Initiative To Fight For Democracy And Freedom - thedailypoliticususa.com - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- How the Liberals are eroding workers Charter-protected rights - Canadian Dimension - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- Liberals dont want Muslim women to demand rights in the Hindutva era. Theres no right time - ThePrint - July 8th, 2025 [July 8th, 2025]
- New polls show the Liberals opening large lead over the Conservatives - iPolitics - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Another Saturday Night - Liberals Are Patriotic! updated with how to help the central Texas flooding - Daily Kos - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Vancouver has a new civic party the Vancouver Liberals - Business in Vancouver - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Liberals Lose Trust on Health After 11 Years - Mirage News - July 6th, 2025 [July 6th, 2025]
- Newsom warms to building, but will California liberals allow it? - Washington Examiner - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Liberals Are Declaring That The Fourth Of July Is Canceled This Year And Even Threatening To Sue People Who Celebrate For Emotional Damage - Whiskey... - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Peter Menzies: Justin Trudeaus legislative legacy is still haunting the Liberals - The Hub | More Signal. Less Noise. - July 4th, 2025 [July 4th, 2025]
- Opinion | Memo to liberals: Diversity can be conservative - The Washington Post - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Liberals Are Going to Keep Losing at the Supreme Court - The Atlantic - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Hollywood Liberals Slammed as 'Disgusting' for Bleating They Weren't Invited to Jeff Bezos 'Vulgar' Wedding - RadarOnline - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Forget female quotas, its mediocrity thats killing the Liberals - The Australian - July 2nd, 2025 [July 2nd, 2025]
- Fatal flaw of liberals is belief that being right is enough | Opinion - The News-Press - June 29th, 2025 [June 29th, 2025]
- Liberals want Americans to depend on government - Washington Times - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- If old school white-anting Sussan Ley on gender quotas works, the Liberals may pay a heavy political price - The Guardian - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- HUNTER: Have Liberals had their come-to-Jesus moment on crime? - Toronto Sun - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Random Musing: Why some Indian liberals are celebrating Zohran Mamdani and think he is the new Obama - Times of India - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Liberals In California Are Banning Books Again - The Daily Wire - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- 'Liberals need to reconnect with people's deep feelings of being disrespected,' sociologist says - Perspective - France 24 - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Threat of Trump should drive liberals from the middle ground | Opinion - The Portland Press Herald - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- If the Liberals want to appeal again to aspirational Australians, they could start by taxing wealth | Judith Brett - The Guardian - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- The Weekly Wrap: The Liberals must abandon their internet regulation agenda - The Hub | More Signal. Less Noise. - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Data breach may have exposed 200,000 home-care patients' information, say Ontario Liberals - Yahoo - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- M. imeka criticized the Slovak government after the summit of liberals in Brussels for not diversifying gas supplies - European Newsroom - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- ANALYSIS: David Petersons Liberals are remembering the good times. Ontarians should, too - TVO Today - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Carney Liberals urged to ditch DST as Trump terminates trade talks with Canada - Toronto Sun - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Martin Regg Cohn: History reminds Ontarios languishing Liberals that they need to make their own luck - Toronto Star - June 28th, 2025 [June 28th, 2025]
- Arab Journalists and Liberals Praise U.S. Strike On Iran: The Iranian Threat Is Over; Trump Saved Humanity; God Bless America - MEMRI | Middle East... - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Conservatives report better mental health than liberals. I think I know why. | Opinion - USA Today - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Federal Liberals reintroduce cybersecurity bill meant to protect critical infrastructure - The Globe and Mail - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Threat of Trump should drive liberals from the middle ground | Opinion - Lewiston Sun Journal - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Opinion: The Tory future may lie with the Liberals - Winnipeg Free Press - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- FIRST READING: All the hidden extras buried in the Liberals fast-tracked omnibus bills - National Post - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Battin wants to reset and to rally Liberals behind taxes, housing and crime - Neos Kosmos - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Chaos over withdrawal of EU law against greenwashing. Last trialogue skips, anger of socialists and liberals - Eunews - June 24th, 2025 [June 24th, 2025]
- Libman: Quebec Liberals gamble on Rodriguez. Will voters? - Montreal Gazette - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- Hunger strikes! Tears! Arrest! Its been a week of ridiculous performances as NYC liberals chase folk-hero status - New York Post - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- The Trump Peace Prize? Matt Gaetz suggests renaming honor they only give to liberals - AL.com - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- Victorias Liberals saved John Pesutto from bankruptcy. But can they save themselves from all-out war? - The Guardian - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- Q+A | Outgoing Yukon premier highlights renewed energy in Yukon Liberals with new leader - Yahoo - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- Trump Complains He Should Have Won FIVE Nobel Prizes By Now But They Only Give Them To Liberals - Mediaite - June 22nd, 2025 [June 22nd, 2025]
- Putins biggest threat is not from liberals but the nationalist Right - The Telegraph - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Obama swipes at affluent liberals during rare public remarks, says 'all of us are going to be tested' - Fox News - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Swedens Liberals bet to revive a sinking party - Euractiv - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- They Hate Our Country The Right-Wings Accusation Towards Liberals - Daily Kos - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- BREAKING: Yukon Liberals select Mike Pemberton as their new leader and the territory's next premier - Yukon News - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Andr Pratte: Pablo Rodriguez has won over the Quebec Liberals. That was the easy part - National Post - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Why liberals ignored the grooming gang scandal - The Spectator - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Liberals to pass major projects bill this week with Conservative support - National Post - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Liberals Pushing Through Law That Expands Governments Power - The Tyee - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Liberals major projects bill on track to pass before House rises for summer - iPolitics - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- Yukon Liberals to choose new leader tonight - 96.1 The Rush - June 20th, 2025 [June 20th, 2025]
- MAGA World and liberals have turned on Musk as Trump divorce turns friends to foe - The Independent - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- The Occupation Is Destroying Israel From Within, and Liberals Can't Ignore It Anymore - Haaretz - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- 15 Liberals And Conservatives Are Sharing The Political Opinions They Hold That Align With The Opposite Party - Yahoo - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- How are the Liberals of Bradfield coping with their loss? | Fiona Katauskas - The Guardian - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- 15 Liberals And Conservatives Are Sharing The Political Opinions They Hold That Align With The Opposite Party - BuzzFeed - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Liberals and Conservatives in Canada split on Mark Carney and the country's direction after the election - YouGov - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Moderate Liberals say the party has a choice be a far-right rump run by octogenarians or move to the centre - The Guardian - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Chris Selley: Liberals wrap much-needed refugee reform in a terrible privacy-invading package - National Post - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- 7 Things: Trump and Musk are going at it; Tuberville taunts liberals; angry mob demands MTG stay out of HSV; and more... - Yellowhammer News - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- How a little-known procedure helped the Liberals dodge their first confidence vote - National Post - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Supporters of John Pesutto question Victorian Liberals priorities over reluctance to bail out former leader - The Guardian - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Globe editorial: The Liberals get around to fixing the thing they broke - The Globe and Mail - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- As John Pesutto faces bankruptcy, the Victorian Liberals struggle to unite - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Liberals survive confidence vote, as throne speech motion passes through House - iPolitics - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Liberals introduce bill to cut trade barriers, speed up 'nation-building' infrastructure - Yahoo - June 7th, 2025 [June 7th, 2025]
- Wave of anger could sweep liberals to victory in South Korea election - Reuters - June 4th, 2025 [June 4th, 2025]
- Liberals lead debate on the future of European security in Helsinki - ALDE Party - June 4th, 2025 [June 4th, 2025]
- Milk Act to Bike Month: How Liberals are trying to slow Bill 5 with 4,000 amendments - Global News - June 4th, 2025 [June 4th, 2025]
- What are Canadas governing Liberals going to do about AI? - The Conversation - June 4th, 2025 [June 4th, 2025]
- Opinion | The one thing liberals need to address before the June parade - The Washington Post - June 4th, 2025 [June 4th, 2025]
- Gina Rinehart helped Liberals raise nearly $400,000 at exclusive dinner that led to wrongful dismissal claim - The Guardian - June 4th, 2025 [June 4th, 2025]
- Just before the election, Liberals handed out 411 cheques worth $3.86B - Global News - June 4th, 2025 [June 4th, 2025]