The white working class

George Packer writes in the New Yorker about Trump’s appeal to the white working class (as if The New Yorker had any idea whatsoever of how to appeal to the white working class).

Palin showboated her way from politics to reality TV, while Trump swaggered in the opposite direction.

…The base of the Party, the middle-aged white working class, has suffered at least as much as any demographic group because of globalization, low-wage immigrant labor, and free trade. Trump sensed the rage that flared from this pain and made it the fuel of his campaign. Conservative orthodoxy, already weakened by its own extremism — the latest, least appealing standard-bearer was Ted Cruz — has suffered a stunning defeat from within. And Trump has replaced it with something more dangerous: white identity politics.

…The Democratic Party has a strange relationship with the white working class. Bernie Sanders speaks to and for it—not as being white but as being economically victimized. He kept his campaign alive last week, in Indiana, in large part by beating Clinton nearly two to one among whites without a college degree. Coverage of Sanders has focussed on his support among the young and the progressive, but he has also outperformed Clinton with the white working class. Even in losing, Sanders has shown that a candidacy based on economic populism can win back some voters who long ago deserted the Democratic Party. It’s hard to know whether these voters, faced with a choice between Clinton and Trump, will revert to the Republican side, stay home, or vote for a Democrat who until now hasn’t known how to reach them.

…Last fall, two Princeton economists released a study showing that, since the turn of the century, middle-aged white Americans—primarily less educated ones—have been dying at ever-increasing rates. This is true of no other age or ethnic group in the United States. The main factors are alcohol, opioids, and suicide—an epidemic of despair. A subsequent Washington Post story showed that the crisis is particularly severe among middle-aged white women in rural areas. In twenty-one counties across the South and the Midwest, mortality rates among these women have actually doubled since the turn of the century. Anne Case, one of the Princeton study’s co-authors, said, “They may be privileged by the color of their skin, but that is the only way in their lives they’ve ever been privileged.”

Read more here.