I think there’s a kernel of truth in Salena Zito’s column at RealClearPolitics but I genuinely wish she’d use different words. Here’s the kernel:
Data provided to The New York Times by Civis Analytics, a Democrat firm, shows Trump’s support is strongest among self-identified Republicans, a coalition that uniquely follows the migration and settlement patterns of early Scots-Irish Jacksonian Democrats. That places their concentration across the industrial North, through the Rust Belt, down into Appalachia and the Deep South.
These are Democrats by birth, a legacy of their New Deal-Democrat parents and grandparents, who largely stopped supporting a party that began cutting them loose after winning their support in the 2006 midterm elections.
That explains the odd choices between Trump and Sanders, or Trump and Clinton: They’re straddling between one party that used to include them and another that now is trying to fit them in.
I think what she’s writing about goes back a lot farther than 2006 to the 1970s but otherwise that’s about right. However, this is what makes me uncomfortable:
Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Democrats have purposefully cut white, traditional-values, working-class, predominantly male voters from their coalition in favor of building an urban- and cosmopolitan-centered coalition of minorities, elites and women.
and word is “cosmopolitan”. “Rootless cosmopolitan” was a term used by the Soviets after World War II in a campaign directed against Soviet Jews, suggesting pro-Western sentiments and lack of patriotism. Find a better word. That one has a bad pedigree.
Very odd to have to change conventional language based upon foreign usage.
Most of the time that the word “cosmopolitan” is used, it’s used in the context of the hotel or the magazine. That’s its conventional usage. I question using it in a political context. Maybe it’s just me. Keep in mind that I was trained as a Sovietologist.
“Cosmopolitan” = SJW = SWPL = Whiter people* = Hipster douche bag
* Whiter people never really caught on, but it was a term used to describe Stuff White People Like (SWPL) folks. I preferred that construction as it cut to the heart of the matter, which is the intramural fight amongst white people.
As a white male, it’s been clear for a long time that I’m not welcome at the Democrats table. It even felt that way when Bill Clinton was president. And Barrack Obama? His mother was white and he was raised by white grandparents whom I get the impression he never liked. He calls himself black, and a Christian who clearly prefers muslims.
My point is, is it any wonder that someone like Trump doesn’t have to sell me on himself, only extend a welcoming hand.
In the English-speaking world, “cosmopolitan” is a positive word, not rooted in Stalinisque purges. People describe themselves as “cosmopolitan,” and researchers and urban planners write studies on how to create more “cosmopolitan.” This seems to be a suitable definition:
“The term “global cosmopolitans†is a self-ascribed status of those highly educated individuals who, seeking travel across national borders, are considered to practice a positive attitude towards the unfamiliar, have skills for intercultural communication, and a taste for different cuisines. However, global cosmopolitanism is a controversial set of political ideas. Analytically, global cosmopolitanism can take various forms and include different social groups. It differs from the concept of transnationalism and multiculturalism.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118663202.wberen514/abstract
I’m a white guy and I’m not welcome at the Republican’s table because I believe women should have control over their own bodies, gays should have the same rights as everyone else, and people who’ve been lucky in life owe the less lucky a helping hand. It’s nonsense to suggest Democrats have deliberately excluded working class white males, but it would be fair to suggest we aren’t doing anything to reach out to that group.
But setting that aside, yeah, “cosmopolitan” does have a dog whistle element to it. But then Dave and I are both men of a certain age, so I wonder if we’re hearing echoes no longer audible to younger folk. I suspect the writer wanted to use “urban” but recognized that as code for “black.” Probably considered metropolitan and city and various other possibilities before settling on cosmopolitan.
@michael, I once thought that cosmopolitan was intended to avoid the frequent euphemism of “urban” sometimes being used for black. But its commonly used by British historians in reference to political/social values attributed to London (“the City”), sometimes in juxtaposition of writers that idealize the English countryside, like Chesterton or Tolkien.
I may have been vaguely aware of the Soviet usage but it definitely has never come to mind when I hear the word cosmopolitan. To my ears it calls to mind the urbane element of urbanism.
It’s nonsense to suggest Democrats have deliberately excluded working class white males, but it would be fair to suggest we aren’t doing anything to reach out to that group.
I think that’s more correct than not. This isn’t a product of active exclusion but plain negligence and pejorative dismissal. “All those white hillbillies are welcome once they grow up and get an education”, etc.