[ad_1]
For over seven years the media have struggled to provide insight into the psychology and motivation of the Trump voter. We’ve learned that their views have been sorely neglected. We’ve been led to believe that their concerns and the attitudes that sustain them deserve our consideration. So, it’s been the mission of the media to explain these voters to us, just in case we might jump to hasty conclusions about them simply because they voted for Trump.
Meanwhile, the values of the majority of Americans who cast their vote for President Biden have been curiously omitted from the same degree of solicitude. As observed by Jonathan Last, writing in January for the Bulwark, many in the traditional media interpreted (and continue to interpret) their mandate to inform the public as an opportunity to rationalize the behavior only of Trump’s voter base:
Because we must understand why all of these people support a man who wrecked the American economy, attempted a violent insurrection, is under 91 felony indictments, and has been disavowed as a threat to the country by a large number of the high-level Republicans who worked directly for him.
Last notes that one of the biggest promoters of “understanding” Trump voters has been the New York Times. However, as he points out, this myopic focus has inevitably resulted in very little attention being paid to the voters who elected President Biden.
As Last notes:
There’s also another group of voters the NYT seems oblivious to: Biden voters. You may recall that in 2020 Joe Biden received more votes than anyone in American history.
No one is terribly interested in what makes those people—who comprise a flat majority of the population—tick.
The Times, of course, is not the only media outlet guilty to this selective focus. When Trump arrived on the scene many in the media instantly fanned out to try to explain the social reasons to explain Trump’s attraction. We were quickly informed that the small towns and worn-down suburbs across Middle America where many of Trump’s supporters live had sunk into a spiral of “economic anxiety,” caused by job losses occasioned by the decades-long evaporation of the “blue collar,” manufacturing sector. After someone imprudently pointed out that more Clinton voters had actually experienced economic distress than Trump voters, that diagnosis was eventually revisited: Well, it wasn’t exactly “economic anxiety” but “status resentment” that was the root of Trump’s support: the fear of “lost status” as people with darker skin hues were allegedly seen as competing for their jobs. In the end, most in the media eventually acknowledged that yes, plain old racism was the big motivator for most Trump voters.
Last cites to a prior Bulwark article written by Nicholas Grossman that suggests the relentless focus on Trump supporters was a predictable consequence of New York and Washington based editors and journalists who, surprised at Trump’s electoral showing in 2016, veritably “bent over backwards” to “study” the Trump phenomenon, simply to compensate for what they perceived as accusations of “liberal and/or pro-establishment bias.”
But in doing so they failed to do any similar diligence of President Biden’s supporters. Hence, as Grossman points out, the erroneous predictions that the party had moved so far to the left that the 2022 elections, for example, would yield a “Red wave.” Of course, that “red wave” did not materialize, much to the chagrin of the beltway press.
As Grossman notes, the media’s failure to acknowledge the values of Biden voters to the same degree they afforded Trump’s base of support goes a long way towards explaining how the media can — wittingly or not — reinforce a bogus narrative. For example, he points out that the Democratic party is hardly a party of “elites:”
.
Over 81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden, and the vast majority sure aren’t societal elites. They struggle with rising costs—of housing, healthcare, groceries, college, etc.—and economic disruptions from globalization and technological change. They might be hurt more by the decline of shopping malls than the decline of coal mining, but both impose economic difficulties on the larger community.
By every reasonable definition of working and middle class, the Biden coalition has tons of them.
This reflexive deference of the media to Trump voters’ “concerns” was also geographical, owing to the fact that many of them haled from the so-called “heartland” of America — apparently anywhere outside the “Acela corridor” and the nation’s major cities. Trump’s voters and the “values” they espouse were understood as somehow representing what this country actually “stands” for: hard work, love of family, and self sufficiency, for example, were the mythical traits grafted on to this population from the outset. Those salt-of-the-earth values, we were assured, were common to most Trump supporters, be they rural. suburban or urban. Conversely, the rest of the country — actually the majority of citizens, including (nearly) all people of color, all LGBTQ folks, and most college-educated people (especially those who’ve gone and gravitated to major population centers) — by default had to be somehow deficient in these same values. This “Trump voter as working-class-hero” framing embedded itself in the national media psyche, even though it was hogwash.
Grossman convincingly breaks down the numbers by income, educational attainment, type of work and even location. He points out that more working class voters live in Queens than in entire “red states,” observing that “Treating elite and lives in a major metropolitan area as interchangeable synonyms is absurd.”
The only definition of “elites” that includes most Biden voters is the postmodern one popular with today’s right-wing culture warriors: “disagrees with me on social issues.” But virtually no one outside the culture-war right thinks a millionaire who owns car dealerships but didn’t go to college, or a tech-industry venture capitalist who complains about the “woke mob,” are working class, while a middle-school teacher with a college degree or a coffee barista who puts they/them pronouns on a nametag are elites.
To Biden-voting workers, boorishness and bigotry are not inherently “working-class values.” They know there are people who are formal and informal, polite and rude, racist and non-racist in every societal class, and recognize that sexual harassment often comes from bosses. And since Biden beat Trump among people of color, women, and LGBT voters, it’s safe to say most do not think that changes in norms regarding race and gender have been, on balance, bad.
Just try to imagine a New York Times article, for instance, interviewing people (or conducting a “focus group”) who think trans kids are just fine, that abhor book bans and don’t want religion to dictate how their schools and lives are run. People who aren’t convinced that a person’s skin color is threatening them or their futures. People who actually believe in democracy and find the very idea of someone facing 91 felony counts to be even considered for the office of president to be preposterous. Or people who believe that the reproductive rights of everyone should be protected, and don’t pretend that the biggest threat to our country is immigration.
Now that we’re facing what promises to be the most divisive election in our nation’s history, it’s fair to ask why Biden’s voters shouldn’t be afforded the same deference so long afforded to Trump’s base. Few in the media have seemed to even consider that question. But if they did, they might reach a whole different conclusion about where the “heartland” of America really resides.
[ad_2]
Source link –