Elite Resistance Won’t Do It

In liberal ideology there are no bad people.

Well, yes, there are straight, white men who haven’t committed crimes. They are very bad. But even they aren’t bad because of anything they’ve done as individuals. They were just born oppressors.

So, if you’re a liberal who accepts that dubious argument, you can’t see Trump followers as bad people. Maybe just misled. This is where liberals split. One camp forgets the thing about no bad people and just unleashes its hatred of the Trumpites. The other branch believes they aren’t bad, they’re just dumb. This is the branch of liberals who believe that God would do what they would do if only He were as well-informed. They seek to educate.

But, just for the sake of argument, what if we were to look at this differently? What if we saw Trump supporters as being in three camps? The first camp is true white nationalists full of hate. Screw them. The second camp is made up of country club Republicans who know better, but have convinced themselves that Trump is better than any Democrat because he’ll cut their taxes. Screw them as well.

But that leaves a third group, maybe the largest of the bunch. This would be a group of voters with legitimate gripes about what’s going on. They feel they work hard, but don’t get ahead while they see others, who don’t work as hard, get rewarded based on their family connections or their special status as a marginalized group. They didn’t go to college because they couldn’t afford to or, more likely, because they weren’t interested in that. They wanted to get on with life, get a job, start a family. They didn’t want to delay all that for four years, and the concept of a gap year is inconceivable to them.

They work. They pay their taxes. They raise their kids. They make their mortgage payments. They go to church.

Because they have actual lives to live, they don’t spend a lot of time consuming news. But they form impressions based on snippets here and there and from social media and conversations with friends. The impression they form is that, even if they’re doing okay, others are doing better. Now, if those others were working harder that’d be fine with them. But the impression they get is that if you go to college you’ll do a lot better simply because you went to college. And if you’re deemed a member of a marginalized group, you’ll also get a leg up simply for membership in it and despite any personal effort you’ve put forth on your own behalf. That rankles.

And when they raise those concerns beyond their safe circle, they’re told they’re racists or, more gently, that they just don’t get it and here’s a book by Ibram X. Kendi they should read.

So then Trump comes along. They can see that he’s a fool. He’s the last person they want their kids to emulate. And yet, among all the garbage this guy spews, he does say some things that they’ve been thinking for a long time. They don’t necessarily like the way he says it. They certainly don’t like the person he is. But the more he drives liberals apoplectic the more they like it.

And they’ve grown jaded. So, when Trump clearly lines his own pocket or abuses his power they tell themselves that they all do it. They’re wrong about that, but they’re mostly wrong in degrees. There’s no question that Joe Biden allowed his son to make a small fortune off of his name and official position, and then he pardoned him. In fact, that was corrupt. As corrupt as making a mint off bit coin, as just one example? Well, no, but you can see how Biden’s actions undercut any credibility Democrats had to complain.

So, if you’ve stayed with me this far, what’s to be done about it?

Well, for starters, not what David Brooks suggests. I’m a big fan of the New York Times and PBS commentator. Brooks consistently takes the reasonable, center-left approach to every problem and he often layers on a good sense of history and sometimes a really unique insight or idea.

But in a piece he wrote last Friday his unique insight was off by a mile. His solution to Trump is for the elites to unite. His argument was that we should all take our lead from Harvard. Universities and big law firms and a vague group of other powerful entities should RESIST! in some sort of hazy coordinated fashion.

It’s worth a try and if it works, I’ll be the first to say I was wrong. But I just think Brooks completely misses the point of Trump. It’s those very elites that are the root of the problem. Moreover, if you define them as anybody with a college degree — a very rough and broad definition that would include (God help me) even me — even that is only one-third of American adults. So, what he’s saying essentially is that the same over-powered minority should really flex its muscles now and reassert its privileges.

Not only do I not think that will work, I’m not sure I even want it to work. Because the root of the problem — the nugget in Trump that is legitimate — is that the elites’ culture, values and wealth have strayed too far afield from the majority and they’ve been too insistent on imposing that culture, those values and that economy on everybody else.

The solution will not come out of Harvard. Or PBS. Or the oped page of the New York Times. In fact, in other writing, Brooks has made the observation that virtually everybody who is in leadership on both sides of the Trump phenomenon is an Ivy Leaguer.

I really would like to see — not one strong man — but a group of leaders emerge who do not have Ivy League educations, who worked their way through school if they went to college at all, who have normal, middle class backgrounds and who live normal, middle class lives.

I’m thinking of people like Washington State Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. I might be thinking of somebody like Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. He has the right profile, but he’s moved way too far to the left and, frankly, he comes off as kind of a doofus. He’s apparently taking himself seriously as a presidential contender, but nobody else should.

You could look at this list of 50 House members, who form the Problem Solvers Caucus and pick out folks who could lead this movement.

I’ve written many times before that whatever we do has to start with a statement of values and work back — way back — to policy. Democrats’ big mistake is that they lead with policy because they’re afraid to talk values. In elite liberal society any mention of, for example, hard work will get you tagged as a dog whistle racist. Until they get over nonsense like that, Democrats deserve to be in the wilderness.

I don’t think weekend protests in Manhattan will matter. I don’t think rallies of like-minded liberals against “the oligarchs” will matter. I don’t think anything Harvard or Perkins Coie does will matter.

What’s needed is a centrist Democratic Party led by real middle class people with middle class values.

Elites got us here. They cannot get us out. For once, David Brooks is wrong.

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