Dueling Planes of Concern

A big problem right now in our politics is that pro-Trump and anti-Trump sentiments stem from different "planes of concern."

In today's Washington Post, two op-ed pieces speak to one of those planes of concern. One is Michael Gerson's "Trump doesn’t just fail a moral standard. He enables cruelty and abuse." Mr. Gerson vilifies Trump on moral grounds for his racist and misogynistic statements and behavior. The columnist says:

It is one thing for public officials to fail a moral standard. That makes them human. It is something else to shift a standard in favor of cruelty and abuse. That makes them poor stewards of public trust.

In "Roseanne Barr should blame Trump most of all," Eugene Robinson says:

President Trump wants to create a safe public space for ugly, unvarnished, unambiguous racism, which he knows he can exploit for political advantage. This cynical and destructive ploy must not be allowed to succeed.

Mr. Robinson is, like Mr. Gerson, putting the immorality of Trump's doings above the huge list of things that many of the most crucial of Trump's voters placed atop their own concerns in 2016.

You can read about those voters' primary concerns in The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics by reporter Salena Zito and Republican strategist Brad Todd. The people Zito and Todd interview all come from small communities in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Their communities are just barely hanging on by their economic fingernails.

In 2016, those communities and their respective states flipped from "blue" ones voting Democratic — most of Zito and Todd's interviewees had voted for Barack Obama twice — to "red" ones voting Republican.

Brad Todd, center, and Salena Zito, right

The Zito/Todd interviewees were not represented by the authors as racists, misogynists, homophobes, or other kinds of bigots. Many admitted to having had a hard time deciding to vote for Trump, due to his quite apparent hostilities toward blacks, Hispanics, women, and, more generally, groups these voters had nothing against.

Yet these voters put their concerns about their local communities first. Their communities had, over the course of several decades, lost industries, jobs, population — and the recognition and respect of most Democratic office-seekers. Democrats such as Hillary Clinton were, in 2016, more interested in supporting the interests of sections of American society that have been historically maligned and oppressed than they were in addressing the needs of other groups — for instance, blue-collar groups who had historically voted Democratic.

The Zito/Todd interviewees were saying, in effect, "Yes, but what about us."

"We ourselves are," these voters were saying, "now the ones being maligned and scorned. We want our jobs back, and we also want to be seen once more as vital communities on the American scene. We want to be recognized and respected as such once again."

Those voters' primary issues, in my view, arise from different planes of concern than the ones Mr. Gerson and Mr. Robinson talk about in their columns. Those voters are mostly concerned with how they think they are being seen and treated by the rest of America. But the "choir" to whom Messrs. Gerson and Robinson are "preaching" today put the president's moral failings above the reasons why so many of Zito and Todd's Rust Belt voters gave Trump their votes.

There is a mismatch of planes of concern here, and until the mismatch is somehow resolved, America's politics will remain on the critical list.