That particular reason for her losing has to do with the Trump voters themselves, half of whom she insensitively called a "basket of deplorables." Such disdain tells me that, deep, deep down, she simply cannot grasp the mindset of that group of Trumpists.
That's not uncommon among us (upper) middle-class whites with a college education, whether we are male or female.
White working-class voters voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Exit polls showed that white voters without a college degree are nowadays down to just 1/3 of the electorate. Yet they turned conventional wisdom on its head by voting Trump into the Oval Office.
"In the end, the bastions of industrial-era Democratic strength among white working-class voters fell to Mr. Trump," wrote Nate Cohn of the New York Times. "White working-class voters may not have commanded enough of Clinton’s attention," wrote Matthew Cooper of Newsweek, "but Trump put a spotlight on them. J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir and study of these voters, became a best-seller and a must-read for political types."
I think those post-election analyses miss a point that may or may not be relevant. (I think it is relevant.) I'd say the "bastions of industrial-era Democratic strength among white working-class voters" are not "hillbillies" by J.D. Vance's characterization in Hillbilly Elegy. "Hillbillies" are mostly white people of Scots-Irish descent who live in southern Appalachia or whose families have moved north to find work. The term "hillbilly" applies also to other (often poor) white people from other mountainous areas of the country, such as northern Appalachia or the Ozarks.
We need to keep in mind that the term "hillbilly" is frequently used by non-hillbillies in a derogatory way — suggesting that a fair number of America's non-hillbillies consider hillbillies to constitute a "basket of deplorables."
I'm saying that the erstwhile "bastions of industrial-era Democratic strength" and the "hillbillies" are two different sets of working-class whites, even if both sets voted heavily for Trump.
The following is admittedly a guess on my part: Hillary Clinton has more trouble grasping the mindset of the "hillbillies" than she does the mindset of working-class descendants of the erstwhile "bastions of industrial-era Democratic strength" — people whose family background can be that of those who once were thought of as "ethnic" whites: Italians, Irish, Russians, Poles, Greeks, Hungarians, Slovaks, French-Canadians, Portuguese, Croats, etc. Many of these are people who typically became blue-collar workers after their families arrived in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As people who furnished labor to grow America's economy, they were generally ill-treated until they unionized during the early 20th century. Such white union members once voted reliably Democratic.
*****
But "hillbillies" were not part of the original union movement of the early 20th century. They were nonetheless typically Democratic. But as southerners, they voted Democratic (if they voted at all) for different reasons — often deeply entrenched racial ones — than did the "ethnic" whites of the North.
The "hillbillies" of J.D. Vance's narrative are often the people of whom President Obama has said:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
This was a somewhat ham-fisted attempt by the president to show he understood their plight. Yet his "cling to guns or religion" remark was called out as false stereotyping, just as has Hillary's "basket of deplorables" comment deservedly was. Both comments gave off more than a whiff of disdain. Disdain for any group of Americans implies a lack of understanding, a lack of listening, a lack of honoring.
*****
Over the past fifty years many Americans have ceased stereotyping and showing disdain for groups that are not just like themselves. These groups have included (for men) women; (for whites) African Americans; (for straight people) gays and lesbians; etc. etc. etc.
But just as importantly, "hillbillies" have not been included in that list.
One reason has been that the general stereotype of America's "hillbillies" includes the adjective "racist" — and there is a fair amount of accuracy to that attribution. Many whites from the South are not disposed to see black people as their equals. And many of those whites are "hillbillies."
Since at least the 1960s, the Democratic Party has invested itself heavily in furthering the civil rights of black Americans. That is a marvelous and much-needed thing. But at the same time, it has made it harder than ever for the upwardly mobile white folks who form the "elites" of the Democratic Party — Hillary Clinton is included in that group — to "grok" the mindset of white "hillbillies." To "grok" means "'to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with' and 'to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment.'"
Hillary did not understand (or enjoy) the "hillbillies" of the white working class "intuitively or by empathy." I have to compare her unfavorably with Bobby Kennedy. During the 1960s, Kennedy became a hero of ordinary African Americans and black civil rights leaders. But at first, he (as his brother John F. Kennedy's attorney general) tended to talk at, rather than listen to, leaders of the civil rights movement. In a crucial meeting with them in New York, according to Larry Tye's biography Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon, they pretty much handed him his head.
The fundamental problem was that Kennedy didn't yet understand black Americans "intuitively or by empathy." He didn't grok their mindset. This was a problem that Bobby would soon rectify, during a period of deepening of his personal understanding as he mourned the assassination of his brother. In that period, he took the trouble to look first-hand into the poverty many African Americans were forced to live in.
Then, when Kennedy was running for president in 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated on an evening when Kennedy happened to be campaigning in a black community in Indianapolis. His sensitive extemporaneous remarks to African Americans on that night, which became one of his most famous speeches after he himself was struck down by an assassin's bullet, were proof that he had learned to grasp their mindset intuitively and precisely. That speech kept Indianapolis from erupting in riot and flame the way many other cities did in the wake of the Reverend King's slaying.
*****
Back to "hillbillies." They (and other working-class whites) were not truly understood by Hillary Clinton the way Donald Trump seemed to be able to grok those supporters' wants and needs. She tried to talk at them, offering policy proposals that might help them economically, but she did not really listen to them.
We aspire upward in the social-class hierarchy. We want to climb the ladder, so we identify with those above us on the ladder. That means we tend to disdain downward.
It takes a special person to grok downward instead. Bobby Kennedy was just such a special person. In his early life, that third son of a wealthy Boston Irish businessman named Joseph P. Kennedy took his designated part in Joe's aspiration that a Kennedy son would become president. The first son, Joe Jr., died in WWII, making Jack the presidential aspirant. The Kennedy children were groomed by their father and mother to possess the characteristics typical of the powerful Protestant leaders in this country, such as attending Harvard University. They had little reason not to somewhat disdain those below them on the social ladder, including African Americans.
Jack became president, with Bobby his attorney general and closest advisor, at a time in our history when African Americans were demanding their rights. Reluctantly, Jack and Bobby had to deal with their push for equality. It was in that context that Bobby met with civil rights leaders in New York in 1963 and failed to impress them. He did not yet listen to them. So he could not yet grok them.
After Jack Kennedy was assassinated, Bobby's "better self" began to emerge out of his intense mourning. He started to study the great philosophers of ancient Greece and to read Shakespeare. He took ever more seriously the Catholic adjurations to help the poor. He traveled to places where poor "Negroes" lived and painfully witnessed the conditions of their impoverishment. He became involved in their struggle to better their lives. The revised and matured version of Bobby began at last to grok them.
To grok someone is to lose the tendency to disdain them. To lead, you first must grok. Bobby Kennedy, in grokking the "Negroes" of this land, had become able to be one the few white civil rights leaders in America.
Hillary Clinton does not seem to be a special person to the perhaps unique extent Bobby Kennedy was. Coming from a family lower in social and economic class than the Kennedys, Hillary has so successfully aspired upward as to become a first lady, a U.S. senator, a U.S. secretary of state, and the first female U.S. presidential candidate to win the national popular vote. In climbing the ladder, she has formed a vast network of movers and shakers who support her assiduously. What she has not done is the kind of homework Bobby Kennedy did that allowed him to set aside his earlier disdain and to grok the lives and minds of needy people lower down in the social hierarchy. Bobby, once he was open to honoring their plight and their unfulfilled needs, earned their trust, loyalty, and political support.
The Hillary Clinton of the "basket of deplorables" utterance is clearly not yrt open to honoring the plight and socioeconomic needs of lesser-educated working-class whites. she wants to help them via programmatic but she hasn't really listened to them — especially not the "hillbillies." She hasn't learned to grok them. Hence, they don't see her as an eligible leader in Washington.
It's a big reason why she got too few electoral votes and lost the election.
No comments:
Post a Comment