Rural Republican voters know what they re doing – UnHerd

Still, the hurting themselves genre continues, because it comforts liberal audiences by assigning blame downward. It allows political writers to bypass any reflection on how Democratic governance might also be failing. And it satisfies a deeper urge to feel vindicated, to watch the people who voted the wrong way suffer the consequences. Urban, college-educated voters are granted agency their mistakes are tragic choices seen as complex, morally legitimate, and grounded in values. Rural, working-class Trump voters, by contrast, are seen as emotional, ignorant, even pathological.

But Trump s voters know exactly what they re doing. They ve calculated often correctly that the programmes designed to help them are more likely to help someone else. So go on sneering, comfortable in the knowledge that the real problem is out there, somewhere in flyover country. But if you actually care about democracy and about preventing another Trump presidency you might ask what stories like these really accomplish. Because they certainly don t persuade rural voters. They don t build coalitions. They don t correct the underlying failures of economic governance. All they do is harden the divides they claim to lament.

via unherd.com

Nicholas F. Jacobs.