Eight million more people voted for Trump this year than in '16. He increased his support in exurban and and rural areas, with Latino voters, and slightly with black voters compared to '16. The only area it would appear that he lost support was in heretofore Republican leaning suburbs.
That is really, really disturbing.
It's obviously too early to understand completely what's going on here, but it's safe to say that what matters to most educated, affluent urban voters is very different than what matters to most everyone else. This is a divide that is not about policy, which hardly anyone, educated or uneducated, really understands or cares about except as it fits into pre-existing values narratives that voters have. Republicans have understood this better than Democrats at least since the Reagan years, and while Democrats have gotten better at story telling, they have fewer powerful commonplaces to work with. 'Facts matter' is rather weak when it goes up against 'Live free or die'.
I mean 'commonplace' in the rhetorical sense of an idea that is accepted as true without thinking about it. It's what everybody believes. Commonplaces are often codified in adages like "the early bird gets the worm" which may or may not be supported by ornithological evidence (I have no idea), but everybody recognizes the truism it expresses. Commonplaces come to us from our acculturation, it's what everybody you know growing up thinks and believes. It's common sense.
Even if some ornithologist were to prove that birds who hunt for worms at 10am rather than 6am are more successful, it would not change the underlying truth of the commonplace. The problem for Democrats lies in that they are rather like the ornithologist that wants to prove that the commonplace is wrong by making data-based arguments. Highly educated voters are more receptive to be persuaded than those less educated because the commonplace 'facts matter' resonates with them in a way it doesn't for the less educated. But even if the more educated are persuaded, they will continue to live their lives as if the data didn't matter. Old habits of thought die hard.
This goes a long way toward explaining why Al Gore and his An Inconvenient Truth were so easily mockable by conservative media. He's the ornithologist telling conservatives that early birds don't get the worm. Anthony Fauci is playing a similar role on conservative media now. Polls say that 64% of Americans approve of him, but does anybody, even Liberals, believe polling data anymore? Fauci, like Gore, is up against a powerful commonplace in the areas that voted for Trump, including areas in the country that have been hardest hit by the Coronavirus: "We don't need pointy-headed, Nanny-State Liberals telling us what to think or do." The power of that commonplace far exceeds the threat of serious illness and death. It's amplified by 'Live free or die'.
Affluent suburbanites are a rational, utilitarian lot by and large, and the the choice between living free and dying is for them no brainer. They will choose safety and security every time. They watch these men and women gathering with their guns and their MAGA hats, and they ask quite understandably, "What are they playing at? Can they be serious?" But these gun-toters are dead serious because of the power of their commonplaces. And they take pride in how shocking this behavior is to urban and suburban utilitarians whom they see as lacking their good sense and virtue.
They see these urban, Liberal types as mewling cowards afraid of their own shadows. This in part explains why the Coronavirus increased Trump's support despite how anybody who respects data and science was appalled by Trump's handling of it. Liberals saw Trump's posturing at the White House after coming back from the hospital as absurdist grandiosity; Red America saw it as exactly as Trump framed it--"Don't be a mewling coward. Don't let the Coronavirus dominate your lives. Live free or die."
And this in turn explains, at least in part, why Trump increased his support in rural and exurban areas--especially those hardest hit by the virus--while losing it in the suburbs. He made suburbanites, especially educated suburban women who would otherwise vote Republican, feel unsafe. Trump understood this and tried to win them back by painting a picture of Black rioters invading their enclaves in suburbia, but it didn't work because it was too crude and because, at least for these suburban voters, the Coronavirus was the greater threat to them and their families.
This is really what American politics boils down to. The candidate wins who makes more Americans feel more comfortable or to feel less comfortable with his or her opponent. Nobody really cares about policy except as it feels right, which is almost always determined by how politicians frame it in well-worn commonplaces. And in this the commonplaces abound for Republicans in ways that they just don't for Democrats. Republicans have welfare queens, angry black men, nanny state, live free or die, Hispanics are indolent rapists and thieves, they're coming for your guns.
"Biden is a socialist" was all Trump had to tell the Cubans and Venezuelans in Florida. Democrats are urban elites who indulge in all kinds of sexual depravity is a commonplace that has gained traction through Qanon. This stuff works because it fits with what god-fearing people in Red America are already inclined to believe about educated, affluent urban elites whom they have no acquaintance with except as they are depicted on TV and in conservative media.
That Trump is a living exemplar of much of that depravity does not matter because his supporters feel comfortable with him because he knows how to work their commonplaces. He just talks common sense. He played a tough, shrewd businessman on TV. He's a straight shooter. The facts about Trump don't matter; it only matter that he triggers commonplaces so many Americans feel familiar with and so comfortable with.
What commonplaces do Democrats have besides "facts matter"? I'm hard pressed to think of any that have broad appeal. 'Black Lives Matter' has real power, but it's coinage is too recent--it's not something people have grown up with--and so I'm not sure how broadly it resonates. It used to be a commonplace that the Democrats were the party of the blue-collar worker, but Bill Clinton and his Neoliberal fellow travelers pretty much destroyed any evocative power that had. Biden is trying to revive it, but he's actually got to do something to prove it, and McConnell will make sure that won't happen.
But while the truth does matter, and facts do matter, stories built on commonplace foundations matter more because that's where the meaning lies. Facts have value to the degree that they are woven into a meaningful narrative. A fact-free story that evokes commonplaces is going to beat a factual story that doesn't every time.
That's just the way it works, and so while the Democrats have the truth and the facts on their side in a way that Republicans just don't, it doesn't matter because the Democrats don't have a story that broadly resonates--even among most people who vote Democratic. I vote Democratic, but I don't identify with Democrats the way most Republicans identify with their party. What gives my life meaning has hardly anything to do with Democratic or Liberal ideology. I support Democrats because I see them--as most educated, urban voters do--as being in a better position to understand and solve urgent problems like, for instance, the Coronavirus pandemic.
So this is why, despite Biden's win, I'm not feeling the jubilation. The most pressing problem is to break the gridlock, and the Democrats as they are currently constituted don't have the resources to do that. They have the facts and the science, but they don't have the commonplaces.
Biden won this time not because more Americans favor Democratic policies but because Trump scared the hell out of white women in the suburbs. That's the difference, and they'll vote for Cotton or Cruz or any pro-oligarchy, proto-fascist candidate the Republicans put up next time. The idea that our democracy is at stake is an abstraction that maybe 10% of us really believe with any sense of urgency. Such a possibility doesn't resonate with most Americans because it doesn't fit with their commonplaces, "That could never happen to us." "You're exaggerating."
You have to know something about history to understand the real threat that Trump poses, and history's a bore. Trump is a typical American in this sense. He knows as much, or probably less, about history as the average guy you could meet in a bar in Tuscaloosa. He, as most Americans, has no sense of how destructive of a truly comfortable commonplace America his short-sighted, absurd presidency has been.
As I suggested in my post yesterday, I think that Biden and the Democrats biggest job is to disentangle culture war issues from urgent practical concerns that demand solutions in short order. In order to tack left on economic issues, you have to push cultural issues to the back burner. This is a an extraordinarily heavy lift, but a big part of it is a communications or rhetorical challenge that lies in activating commonplaces that will support their cause.
More on this as we go along.