#katherine cramer

[rad-bi-blog]

yo required reading is Politics of Resentment by Katherine Cramer! She is a political science researcher who wrote a book based on field research she did about the rural identity in Wisconsin. Amazing woman, great research and a really relevant book to understanding the rise of income inequality in the US through the eyes of the Trump voter.

[new--tomorrows]

"This economic imbalance has apparently produced a widening gap in political access between the rich and everyone else. The policies our elected officials put into law reflect the preferences of the affluent. but not so much the opinions of other folks. For example, when you compare the votes of U.S. senators to the preferences their constituents express in public opinion polls, the preferences of the lowest third by income are hardly reflected at all in the senators' votes. The preferences of the middle third a reflected somewhat, but just by the Democratic Party. It is only the opinions of the wealthiest that correspond in any substantial way with senators' votes." --Katherine Cramer, The Politics of Resentment

[posthypnoticpress]

(Post Hypnotic Press Books)

[posthypnoticpress]

(Post Hypnotic Press Books)

[progressiveactiondaily-blog]

Perhaps most significantly, the people I talked with [in rural Wisconsin] thought that they were not getting their fair share of respect. They perceived that in the rare cases that people in the cities paid any attention to people in places like theirs, they ridiculed rural folks as uneducated racists... Donald Trump is not a rural person, but his message resonated strongly with the rural folks I have spent time with. They talked about him as an agent of change, a person who was not a politician who would come in and overhaul the way things are done, basically overnight.... Part of Trump’s appeal was that he gave people a story, however false or partial, about whom the good life is going to.

Article of the day: Katherine Cramer has written a compelling piece on the role that anti-elite sentiment played in galvanizing rural voters' support for Trump.  This is the first in a series of articles I’ll post exploring patterns of electoral support for him.