{"id":13312,"date":"2023-08-08T14:47:06","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T14:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13312"},"modified":"2023-08-08T14:47:07","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T14:47:07","slug":"trump-is-changing-the-shape-of-the-democratic-party-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13312","title":{"rendered":"Trump Is Changing the Shape of the Democratic Party, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In reaction to his provocations, many white Democrats are seeing race relations in a new light. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by<\/em> Thomas B. Edsall<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Early on, after \nthe votes were counted, the dominant political narrative about the 2016 \nelection was straightforward. Donald Trump mobilized racially resentful \nwhites to build an army of angry supporters determined to constrain \nminorities and halt the flood tide of immigrants from south of the \nborder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe triumph of Trump\u2019s \ncampaign of bigotry presented the problematic spectacle of an American \npresident succeeding at best in spite of his racism and possibly because\n of it,\u201d Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote<\/a> in October 2017. \u201cTrump moved racism from the euphemistic and plausibly deniable to the overt and freely claimed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As time passed, however, a more complicated situation materialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Trump did turn out the universe of voters who score high on measures of racial resentment<\/a> and what political scientists call \u201canti-black affect<\/a>,\u201d he also generated a boomerang effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A groundswell of hostility on the political left to Trump\u2019s rhetoric and policy initiatives gained strength as Trump moved from the periphery of American politics to the Oval Office. And while the percentage of racially conservative Republicans has remained constant, the percentage of racially liberal Democrats has grown rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This shift did \nnot significantly raise the overall number of Democrats, but it did \nintensify liberal commitments, reflecting a process of internal sorting.\n The defection of conservative Democrats to the Republican Party \ncontinued a long-term trend \u2014 at the same time, many moderates have \nmoved leftward and many liberals further left still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a major 2017 study of the American electorate, Pew Research reported<\/a> that partisan divisions have<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

grown\n over the last several decades, as the public shift in these views is \nlargely driven by Democrats who are increasingly likely to take racially\n liberal and pro-immigrant positions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The\n Democratic electorate in 2018 was 61 percent white and 39 percent \nminority, including 19.2 percent African-American and 14.4 percent \nHispanic voters, according to exit polls<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n is not surprising that black and Hispanic Democrats moved to the left \nin response to Trump\u2019s racist goading and baiting. Pew found that the \npercentage of black Democrats who agree that \u201cthe country needs to \ncontinue making changes to give blacks equal rights to whites\u201d rose from\n 82 percent in 2014 to 90 percent in 2017. The percentage of Democratic \nHispanics who agreed with that statement grew from 59 to 76 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More surprising was the increase in support among white Democrats, many of whom are professionals with college degrees, for the view that the \u201ccountry needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights.\u201d According to Pew, their support grew from 57 percent in 2014 to 80 percent in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s take a deeper look at the numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a working paper, \u201cTrumped by Race: Explanations for Race\u2019s Influence on Whites\u2019 Votes in 2016<\/a>,\u201d Andrew Engelhardt<\/a>, a postdoctoral research associate in International and Public Affairs at Brown, makes the case that the percentage of racially liberal white Democrats grew from 19 percent in 2012 to 40 percent in 2016, as shown in the accompanying chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, the \npercentage of racially resentful white Republicans fell slightly, from \n51 percent in 2012 to 48 percent in 2016, a statistically insignificant \ndifference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an email, Engelhardt \npointed out that in recent decades, \u201cthe proportion of Republicans \nholding more racially resentful attitudes is increasing slightly over \ntime, but not by much.\u201d Looking at the 16-year period from 2000 to 2016,\n Engelhardt wrote, \u201cI don\u2019t find any evidence that the distribution of \nracial resentment for white Republicans reliably differs between 2000 \nand 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his paper, Engelhardt argues that in the Trump era<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

White\n nationalist rallies may gain the most attention, in part because they \nmay play on pundits\u2019 priors about the Trump administration\u2019s bases of \nsupport. But this neglects the effects these events may have on the \nformation of more positive racial attitudes among those opposed to Trump\n and his administration.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In\n fact, Engelhardt continues, \u201cWhite Democrats are actually the unique \ngroup in this period. They increasingly hold a perspective that \nacknowledges racism and discrimination as obstacles to black success.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A number of scholars who study race and politics agree with Engelhardt\u2019s conclusions. Ashley Jardina<\/a>, a political scientist at Duke and the author of the book \u201cWhite Identity Politics<\/a>,\u201d\n wrote by email that Engelhardt\u2019s \u201cfindings are consistent with some of \nmy own analysis. I\u2019ve found, as have others, that there was a notable \nshift in racial resentment in 2016, but only among Democrats, who became\n more racially liberal on the racial resentment scale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\n the same time, one of the most striking facts to emerge from \nEngelhardt\u2019s analysis is how far white Democrats have moved in a liberal\n direction on issues of race over the last three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the period from 1988 to 1990, the level of racial resentment was almost the same among both white Democrats and white Republicans. In 1992, they began to diverge, as Republicans moved to the right and Democrats to the left on issues concerning race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, in \n1988 the mean level of racial resentment, on a scale of 0 to 1, was .65 \nfor white Republicans and .61 for white Democrats. By 2016, the mean for\n white Republicans rose to .70, but fell for white Democrats to .41. \nWhile the proportion of racially resentful white Republicans grew only \nslightly, the Trump campaign\u2019s rhetoric raised the salience of race. \nDemocrats, by contrast, grew increasingly liberal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel J. Hopkins<\/a>, author of the forthcoming article \u201cThe Activation of Prejudice and Presidential Voting: Panel Evidence from the 2016 U.S. Election<\/a>,\u201d argues that Trump \u201cactivated\u201d racially hostile whites, using divisive language to increase his margin of victory among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe\n marginal role of anti-black prejudice in 2016 was markedly stronger \nthan it was in 2012, when Barack Obama was on the ballot,\u201d Hopkins wrote\n in an email, adding that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Anti-black\n prejudice has the strongest predictive power for the 2016 elections \ninvolving Trump. I certainly don\u2019t think that anti-Black prejudice is \nthe entire explanation for Trump\u2019s 2016 victory. But my evidence \nindicates that it was clearly an element in Trump\u2019s electoral support, \nand that its role in 2016 was notably different than in prior elections.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The combustible mix of race and immigration was crucial for Trump. As Hopkins wrote, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It\u2019s\n clear that Trump\u2019s support in the 2016 primaries was concentrated among\n Republicans who were especially concerned about immigration and who \nexpressed higher levels of anti-Black racial prejudice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Among all whites, however,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It\u2019s\n a different story. For them, Trump\u2019s racially charged appeals have had \npolarizing impact: they pushed millions of Americans to express lower \nlevels of anti-black prejudice and to worry more about discrimination. \nBut those appeals also galvanized a smaller fraction of highly \nprejudiced Americans to express and act on that prejudice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What has been going on within the universe of whites who rank high in racial resentment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I posed this question to Michael Tesler<\/a>,\n a political scientist at the University of California-Irvine who has \nfocused much of his research on the role of race in politics, including \nas one of the authors of the book \u201cIdentity Crisis: The 2016 Election and the Battle for the Meaning of America<\/a>,\u201d which he wrote with Lynn Vavreck<\/a> and John Sides<\/a>, political scientists at U.C.L.A. and Vanderbilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tesler replied that the share of the electorate made up of resentful white voters<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

has\n declined somewhat \u2014 as the country diversifies, whites have become more\n racially liberal. Their partisanship has also changed \u2014 particularly \namong low-educated whites who score high in racial resentment. Highly \neducated whites who score high in racial resentment have long been \nstrongly Republican. This makes sense since they\u2019ve long been aware of \nthe fact that Republicans are the more racially conservative party.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Many less educated whites, in contrast,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

were\n unaware of the parties\u2019 differences on race before Obama\u2019s presidency. \nObama and Trump have helped simplify the politics of race by making it \nclear to even non-college voters who don\u2019t pay much attention to \npolitics where the two parties stand on race.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The result, according to Tesler:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Low-educated white voters in general, and low-educated voters who score high in racial resentment in particular, fled the Democratic Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Tesler\n wrote that while they were doing the research for \u201cIdentity Crisis,\u201d he\n and his co-authors, using panel studies that tracked the same voters \nover time, found that measures of racial resentment, anti-Muslim \nattitudes and anti-immigrant sentiments \u201cwere all stronger predictors of\n vote choice in 2016 than in 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Schaffner<\/a>, a political scientist at Tufts and co-principal investigator at the Cooperative Congressional Election Study<\/a>, elaborated on this point in an email:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I\n do not think Trump has made people more racist, but I do think that he \nhas helped make explicit what was once implicit; namely his willingness \nto attack racial minority groups has led to a sharpening of the party \ndivisions on attitudes related to race.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In a 2018 paper, \u201cUnderstanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism<\/a>,\u201d\n Schaffner, Matthew C. MacWilliams and Tatishe Nteta, political \nscientists at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, demonstrated that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

while\n economic dissatisfaction was an important part of the story, racism and\n sexism were much more impactful in predicting support for Trump among \nwhite voters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Schaffner and his colleagues continued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Trump\u2019s\n willingness to make explicitly racist and sexist appeals during the \ncampaign, coupled with the presence of an African-American president and\n the first major party female nominee made racism and sexism a dividing \nline in the vote.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Lee Drutman<\/a>, a senior fellow at the New America<\/a> foundation and contributor to the Democracy Fund\u2019s Voter Study Group<\/a>,\n noted in an email that analysis of the voting of key subgroups is \ncritical to understanding \u201cthe role of racial attitudes in the 2016 \nelection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this vantage point, \nDrutman argued, the critically important ballots were cast by \nvote-switchers from one party in 2012 to the opposite party in 2016:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

By\n almost every account, Obama-to-Trump voters were pivotal in rust belt \nstates that swung the Electoral College, and by almost every account, \nthese voters had high racial resentment and anti-immigration attitudes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In other words, Trump\u2019s ability to convert and turn out these voters was the engine driving his election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going into 2020, \nTrump has clearly decided to continue and expand upon his 2016 strategy \nof mobilizing white voters high in anti-black affect, strongly opposed \nto immigration and resistant to liberalizing social mores \u2014 just as \nDemocrats are aiming to turn out Obama voters who sat out<\/a> 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats\n find themselves in what Cristian G. Rodriguez, a doctoral candidate in \nthe department of psychological science at the University of \nCalifornia-Irvine, calls \u201ca social comparison process in intergroup \nconflict.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that Democratic \u201cgroup self-definition is a function of how the opposition party is behaving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More specifically, Rodriguez continued,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

When\n Democrats perceive G.O.P. politicians as \u201cgoing all in\u201d with \nanti-immigration policies, for example, it is not psychologically enough\n for Democrats to keep the same positions on the matter. The social and \npolitical environment is pushing toward a redefinition of the group to \nkeep up with the G.O.P. Moderate leadership is unlikely to be seen as \nwhat could face down the rise of Trumpism.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is just the kind of push me-pull-you politics of provocation at which Trump excels. If they want to turn Trump into that rare bird, a one-term president, Democrats must be wary of getting stuck in his web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas B. Edsall is a <\/em> Professor, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and contributor to The NY Times Opinion section on strategic and demographic trends in American politics and he is<\/em> a . <\/em>@edsall<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In reaction to his provocations, many white Democrats are seeing race relations in a new light. by Thomas B. Edsall Early on, after the votes were counted, the dominant political narrative about the 2016 election […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[86,85],"class_list":["post-13312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-culture","tag-culture","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13314,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13312\/revisions\/13314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}