Some evidence is emerging that the great political divide in the United States isn’t between Donald Trump and the citizenry but between elites and the citizenry. Politico reports that a lot more voters liked Donald Trump’s speech following his inauguration than disliked it:
A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows that the new president’s message is resonating with voters, refuting the idea that Trump bungled his first speech as commander in chief.
Trump got relatively high marks on his Friday address, with 49 percent of those who watched or heard about the speech saying it was excellent or good, and just 39 percent rating it as only fair or poor. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed reacted positively to the “America First†message, the cornerstone of the Trump campaign and governing posture.
Americans are looking for Trump to put his slogan into action: 61 percent said they agreed with Trump’s plan that the federal government should “buy American and hire American.”
“President Trump knows what his voters like to hear, and you see that resonating once again in our latest poll,” said Kyle Dropp, Morning Consult’s chief research officer and co-founder.
There are all sorts of possible explanation for the seeming contradiction between those results and what we’ve been hearing from the media for the last week. It may just be that Americans want to like their presidents.
It could be that pundits see things very differently than most voters. We have a larger percentage of non-citizens in the United States that at any time in living memory and the largest absolute number ever. Limiting the poll to voters would not include those non-citizens. It could be that things look very different in the place where our journalists and pundits live. The poll could be wrong.
It could be that 69% of Americans are deplorable.
Angelo Codevilla had a bit to say about this very thing…
https://spectator.org/39326_americas-ruling-class-and-perils-revolution/
I thought that Codevilla’s piece meanders a bit and he probably could have made his point better at about half the length.
I also think that he attributes coherence to some points of view where none exists.
He does make one point that I don’t think is emphasized often enough. Graduating from Harvard means nothing other than that the Harvard Admisssions Department thought you’d be making a good deal of money after graduation. It doesn’t mean that you’re smart or hardworking or discerning or creative. It just means that you probably have good earnings potential.
I also think he doesn’t understand the French educational system but that’s another subject.
Even more important is the fact that not having graduated from an Ivy school does not mean that you aren’t smart.
Yet somehow Harvard keeps ranking in the top 5 in the Putnam. (Median score is still a zero on that as I recall.) I think the way to look at it is that Harvard takes a lot of rich kids, knowing they and their parents will donate, IOW make a lot of money as you noted. But, they also have their choice of really smart and talented kids, so they take some of them also.
As to your broader point, I think the critics panned Dumb and Dumber, but the public liked it.
Steve
As H. L. Mencken noted nearly a century ago no one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
Trump is the first President since Reagan that didn’t attend either Harvard or Yale – he’s probably on their enemies list.
Codevilla is an an academic thus the length and the somewhat pedantic writing style. His main point is that we are now dividing by class (ruling class/country class) rather than by party or ideology. Democrat/Republican, Liberal/Conservative are gang colors.
This happens about every generation – think 1932, 1952, 1980, 2008. The pendulum is swinging back. I think we are in for a period of historical normalcy. That is, a 20 year Republican ascendancy until they take us too far in the other direction.
I think while Trump-speech is often rough and exaggerated, it nevertheless conveys blunt descriptions of what really concerns people. It’s similar to a parent bending down to a child, who listens intently to their woes, accurately repeats what was said, and then goes about addressing what bothers the child. That’s not only comforting, but grows affection, trust, and loyalty, because people not only like to be genuinely heard, but also understood.
The Dems don’t do this. Instead, they mock people’s values, minimize their priorities (i.e. climate change is pressed as a #1 urgency, versus jobs and the economy) if they don’t dovetail into the agenda being promoted by social progressives. Mocking is usually augmented by name-calling, accented with over-used accusations of bigoty, racism, misogyny, and so on to discredit rather than discuss issues. This has been a successful tactic to shut people up, sidelining them as heretics….until now.
The 2016 election, though, broke people out of their meekness, galvanizing large, diverse swaths of the middle class, blue collar workers, christians, parents wanting school choice, small business people, minorities tired of being endlessly tied to government dependency, rooted in bad neighborhoods with little chance of upward mobility, people sandwiched in health care plans/high premiums foisted on them by government know-it-alls – something they didn’t ask for, didn’t meet their needs, but were told was “wonderful” by government suits. When anyone brought up these grievances, they were usually guilted with lectures about having a lack of regard for others, followed by rants of racism etc. again.
And, still the dems don’t get it, blinded by their own definitions of social justice, self righteousness, and convictions that everyone else is wrong.