"The majority of Trump voters, for instance, were middle-class and wealthy suburbanites. More significantly, Trump crushed Clinton in counties where unemployment had fallen in recent years. ... True believers weren't wage slaves pining for better jobs. They were self-employed, or small business owners -- the petty bourgeoisie, basically -- who wanted white privilege preserved and laws enforced and immigrants deported. Demographically, this far-right coalition was 'concentrated among the older generation, men, the religious minority populations, and the less educated -- sectors generally left behind by progressive ideas of culture value change.' ... But research complied by the political scientist Philip Klinkner shows that racial resentment was second only to party identification as a driver of Trump support. As you move from the least to the most resentful view of African-Americans, support for Trump climbs 44 percent.
"He's the front man for a movement that took root and grew in direct correlation to the rise of talk radio. The GOP establishment embraced the medium because it helped shape hyper partisan, misinformed voters who could be counted upon to embrace a politics of resentment over economic uplift. What they got in the bargain was a president who talks like Rush Limbaugh on the stump and thinks like a dittohead off it ... .
"Take Pennsylvania, where the majority of voters approved of Obama and thought Trump was dishonest, erratic, and unqualified. Why didn't Clinton win there? According to Dan Hopkins, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, the key was the email story, which pushed marginal voters into the Trump camp. ... A team of Buzzfeed reporters studied which election stories garnered the most attention on Facebook. Early in the campaign stories from venues such as the New York Times and the Washington Post dominated. But in the last three months of the campaign, the top twenty items produced by propagandists received more attention than the top twenty stories produced by journalists. Seventeen of these were pro-Trump or anti-Clinton, all easily debunked."
Congratulations to our presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden!
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