Class in the US fascinates me. I think a lot political popularity (eg. Trump) comes not from lack of education but from bing in a different position in society. To me the appeal of Trump is no mystery, and I don’t feel like it has to do with a deficiency in intillect.
I am not a Trump supporter or hater, it’s just an observation.
Let me yell this from my soapbox before we start the thread: class has less to do with money than it does with attitudes, hobbies, taste, and expectations. You take two families making the same amount of money, and one can be very lower-class, and the other very upper-middle. Happens a lot.
As far as the current election and Trump in particular: the “limited-success class” certainly seems to like Trump. I suppose they think he’s self-made, and if they work hard enough, they can be like him. I don’t know anyone from the “educated” classes who particuarly likes Trump or who would even contemplate voting for him. “Buffoon” is the nicest term I hear used about the guy.
I don’t see any connection with classism and the reason for Trumps strong polling numbers.
Trump’s sound bites resonate with a good number of people, educated and uneducated alike. I wouldn’t even consider voting for him, because I don’t think he has the qualities to be President, but that doesn’t mean that many of things he says don’t resonate with the frustration I feel towards Washington and how the Federal government is run. I’ve got buddies that I think have decent opinions, but I wouldn’t vote for them either, because they can be just as big a boobs as Trump.
If one of the other GOP candidates can piggy back on that “everyman” frustration vibe that Trump has going, but bring sound logical policy issues to address them, they should have a shot getting the nomination.
I think trump is popular among lower educated, socially conservative white people. They tend to believe in their own moral superiority and have to compete against Latino immigrants for work. So that is a big motivation for them, and Trump’s strong anti immigration stance plays well into their economic and social values. The fact that trump makes a point of saying he will not cut social security, Medicaid or Medicare and is the only gop candidate to do so works for him too. His base is not economically secure enough to survive without those programs.
He has more black support than any republican in a long time, and from what I have read, this is readily acknowledged. Do you agree that he has much greater support from black voters than republicans typically do?
Also, he is significantly ahead of Carson, who is black.
I wouldn’t disagree, but I think that you’ll find much stronger class correlations to family wealth. If there’s money in the family, it will tend to put even the black-sheep son (who became a teacher… ) in a higher class (by non-wealth indicators) than his peers who scratched up out of a lower-middle-class family.
And I can tell many stories about the parents at a private school our kids attended for about two years. Because of the location and the era, the “wealth” tended to be related to the building trades… and it showed. The best thumbnail I came up for these graceless, Martha-Stewarty, snooty, clannish McMansionites was “their dad drove a pickup and was a carpenter… but their husband drives an Escalade because he’s a developer.” Many of them had family incomes well into the 1%, but hadn’t left Bluecollarville behind except to chrome it - rude, stupid, uneducated, vapidly right-wing and obsessed with “keeping up with the Joneses.” Low class in every respect but their brand of automobile and address. Their sudden generational success did not truly change their class.
And it works in the opposite direction, as well. I have some relatives on my mother’s side who haven’t had two nickels to rub together for ages. Yet they are the epitome of class - educated, well-spoken, genteel, impeccably put together. The few things they still own are beautifully take care of, and despite having so little themselves, they are always ready and willing to assist with charity ventures, fund-raising, etc.
It’s called “nouveau riche”. It’s the same borish behavior you see on any of the Real Housewives shows (or any show on Bravo for that matter). Groteque oastentation displays of conspicuous consumption and attitude by people who finally get the chance to show how they are “a lit bit better” than everyone else.
Strictly speaking, it’s probably more “nouveau upper middle class”. True “nouveau riche” (i.e. dot-com or hedge fund kids) tweet pictures of their yacht with captions like “BALLIN!” or quotes by Jay-Z and whatnot.
Most “Old Money” people I’ve met, you wouldn’t know they have money except for the fact that you can Zillow how much a house costs in their neighborhood and they have the same last name as a 80+ year old company.
Of course if you were referring to the negroid and Oriental elements of the nouveau riche class (or in earlier generations the Hebraic element), to which much of this undoubtedly applicable this would strike most people as perhaps a bit…excessive…
I see it more as “nouveau trying to appear rich,” some of these people are leveraged to their eyeballs.
I think there is another type of upper middle class person that really raises the ire of some folks, more along the lines of what stillownedbysetters wrote:
In my experience most people in lower, middle, upper middle classes will respect someone who is, say, any type of engineer(chemical, electrical, software etc). Engineering is science based, real world tested, and productive. The rigor of the discipline is highly resected by academics as well as the average joe schmo working person. I think what really raises the ire of many working people of any color, but especially white people, is the type of person described above. A person like this, who is educated and has all the appropriate affectations is respected even though they can not manage to rub two cents together. Furthermore, the idea that majoring in some sort of undergraduate liberal arts degree gives one legitimate claim to superiority or demonstrates superior intelect is almost laughable.
Yet, the person described by still owned by setters will look down upon a blue collar person just because of what they do for a living, especially if they are white and a male. If you are Mexican, or an immigrant from a poor country, you will get all sorts of sympathy - you are the oppressed etc.
I think really what Trump speaks to, and fights against, is this.
According to the author, kids from low or middle income families often have a hard time landing job in prestigious law firms, banks and management consultancies (think companies like Goldman Sachs or McKinsey that routinely pay six figures) because, counter-intuitively, they study TOO much. The argument goes, top tier universities and even these firms tend to look for people with “passion”. That typically means some sort of extracurricular activity that someone trying to work full time and go to school might not have time for (or even access to, depending on where they come from). As top firms tend to recruit from specific colleges, not going to those schools precludes you from getting a job with those firms (other than maybe a back-office support job).
Of course, being the sort of person who is trying to position themselves for a job at Mckinsey or Goldman Sachs indicates you are from a certain class. A class of people who feel the need to join a company that makes you work 100 hours a week in hopes of quickly earning a ridiculous income. Real rich people are probably more like my cousins. One is almost 50 and as far as I know he never had a real job. He just sort of bums around Manhattan playing hipster and talking about all these vague artsy things he’s involved with. His sister at least tries to appear productive by working 3 days a week at their dad’s insurance company.
Anyhow, the point being that “class” is often not only defined by income and profession, but what you don’t have to do or work at in order to maintain your standard of living.
Then there are the people who were born into wealth and at a certain age, inherit a buttload of money and can basically just live off the interest.
Heck even a person who lives a middle class life but has a rich relative who takes them on an expensive vacation every year and who puts money into their college fund goes along way to help a family along.
That’s not really classism. That’s just some people having more money than others. Maybe the college fund part is, as IMHO college is one of the biggest class barriers in this country. Not just whether you went or not (or if you even needed to go) but which schools you went to and what you studied.
Classism is getting a high paying job ahead of stronger, harder working candidates because you spent your summers in lacrosse camp with the hiring manager.
For the past couple of decades I have been amazed at the support Repubs have derived from working class folk who seem to not benefit from party positions which seem (to me) pretty clearly primarily aimed at improving the position of the most advantaged. Conservative working class stiffs gladly vote for politicians whose primary efforts seem directed at making the rich richer, at the expense of encouraging employers to eliminate jobs, and reducing tax funded public services.
The only possible explanation I can come up with is that the GOP has brilliantly been able to tap into such peoples’ prejudices to encourage them to vote against their personal interests. No matter how bad the middle class might have it, there is always the possibility of demonizing/blaming the poor, or some other “other.”
Trump is peddling anger. A lot of people are angry, and their analysis doesn’t go much further.
Nixon’s southern strategy was a lot like that with race rather than the poor/non-Christians/gays.
Going back further than that, the Senate career of Storm Thurmond is instructive.
Perhaps in the 70s and 80s, racism wasn’t enough of a pull on poor white voters, so the GOP had to find something else. Like Jesus, especially if Jesus meant lording it over non-Christians/gays.
Ross Perot’s third party was an attempt to capture the same demographic. In a nutshell, his platform amounted to:
In the event, he mostly took votes from the Rs. But many pundits on both sides thought it was going to be a very seductive approach. His actual failure could be put down more to poor organization and the state-level legal barriers to 3rd party candidates than to any fundamental failure on his part to create a desirable new product aimed at a market desperately seeking a new product.
Here’s an interesting article on what’s going on now with the Rs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-08-18/crashing-party (No paywall, but must register to read it for free). Without being a polemic it connects some dots on shifting class memberships in the US now versus the R’s historical base groups and base ideologies.