More Post-Election Analysis Provides Conflicting Information

Each side in the diagnosis of the Democrat’s electoral failure can marshal some new studies in defense of their point of view. For those who believe in the theory that the Democratic economic message was misguided and failed in reaching white working class voters, a new study shows that those counties whose industries were subjected to the most competition from Chinese imports voted far more heavily for Trump than they did in the 2000 election before China entered the WTO and became a dominant exporter. Countering this viewpoint are the results of exit polling that shows that a majority of voters across the nation and, more importantly, in the Rust Belt chose Hillary Clinton if they believed the economy was the most important issue.

There can be no denying that certain areas of the country are experiencing a profound decline in the standard of living and are seeing the same signs of societal breakdown such as rising crime and drug addiction that has been associated with the inner cities during and since their similar decline. As the history of those inner cities has shown, the solutions to these problems driven primarily by wage and job loss have proven to be politically intractable. Much of the problem is that the benefits that have been gained as these jobs have disappeared and moved offshore have flowed to consumers and the top 1% who control these companies directly or through shareholdings. Republicans have no interest in redistributing that income back to those disadvantaged communities and Democrats only attempt to do so at the margins. That has created a vacuum into which the easy answer of restricting trade and blaming immigration becomes an attractive alternative. And Trump filled that void accordingly.