By Max Boot
Columnist |
August 31, 2022 at 12:55 p.m. EDT
PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — I’ve been feeling very blue this summer. Oh, I don’t mean I’m depressed — I’ve been having a ball. But I’ve been spending time in some of the most liberal enclaves in America: first Martha’s Vineyard (where former President Barack Obama has a house), then Provincetown, Mass., an LGBTQ mecca where pride flags are ubiquitous. I even took my step-kids to a drag show. (Don’t tell Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis!)
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I have to admit that even this reformed ex-Republican did a slight eyeroll at the car next door to our rented beach house in P-town. It sports bumper stickers proclaiming “Biden-Harris,” “Coexist” (with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and peace symbols), “Resist” and “Bye Don” under a shock of yellow hair. Naturally, it’s a Subaru station wagon with a bike rack. How cliche can you get?
It is easy in such environs to imagine that you’re not in the “real America.” In fact, a friend who lives, as I do, in New York City — yet another Democratic bastion — made precisely that observation in a half-joking manner. “I’m happy not to be in America,” he told me, meaning, presumably, he was happy to be in a place where drag queens are considered normal and Trumpkins are not.
But you know what? Provincetown is the real America. So is Martha’s Vineyard. These communities are undoubtedly on the left and prone to excesses of political correctness that make for easy punch lines. But, in many ways, they might be more representative of 2022 America than the Rust Belt diners where reporters love to take the pulse of Trumplandia.
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There is an implicit assumption, shared by many Republicans and Democrats, that “real” Americans are White, rural, conservative, Christian and poorly educated. (“I love the poorly educated,” Donald Trump said in 2016.) Ultra-MAGA Republicans assume that their policy preferences — anti-immigration, anti-gun control, anti-abortion, anti-“woke” — are the only legitimate views that can be held by “real” Americans, and that anyone who disagrees is a pointy-headed elitist or “globalist” who is out of touch with reality.
Yet it is White, Christian, rural, conservative voters who are now in the minority. Indeed, much of the reason that MAGA Republicans sound so hysterical so much of the time is that they know that the tides of economic and demographic change are leaving them behind. The White share of the population has declined from 80 percent in 1980 to just 60.1 percent in 2019. By the 2040s, America is projected to become “majority minority.”
Accompanying this demographic shift is an economic shift that puts a premium on brains over brawn: In 1970, 31.2 percent of non-farm workers were employed in blue-collar jobs. By 2016, the blue-collar share of the workforce had fallen to just 13.6 percent. There is even a religious shift: Atheists and agnostics are the fastest-growing religious group in the country, while the percentage of Christians declined by 15 points between 2007 and 2021.
Demography is not necessarily destiny, and Latinos, in particular, are not as Democratic as they used to be. But these trends are hardly favorable for a Trumpified Republican Party whose base increasingly consists of White, evangelical Christians who haven’t graduated from college.
A more diverse, better-educated country is more liberal, particularly on cultural issues. In other words, more like P-town and the Vineyard. Just look at the massive shift on same-sex marriage. Even Obama came out against marriage equality in 2008 when it had the support of only 40 percent of Americans. Now same-sex marriage is supported by 71 percent of the public — and even by 55 percent of Republicans. It has become a nonissue.
The hardcore MAGA base might thrill to the kind of cultural warfare practiced by Trump and DeSantis, but it repels most of the electorate — which is why so many Republicans who touted their opposition to abortion during the primaries are now soft-pedaling an unpopular stance.
Our political system has a sharp minoritarian bias, but there is little doubt that Democratic positions are way more popular than Republican ones. Sixty-seven million more Americans live in counties won by Joe Biden than by Trump in 2020 — and the Biden counties produce 71 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
The Biden strongholds are in major cities and suburban areas — and that is increasingly where most Americans live. Even in red states, major metropolitan areas tend to be pretty blue. The largest city Trump won in 2020 was Oklahoma City, whose entire population (681,054) is less than half that of Manhattan, the New York borough where the former president was once feted and now is a pariah.
The whole country might not be nearly as progressive as Provincetown or Martha’s Vineyard, but those blue havens are closer to an increasingly liberal mainstream than the MAGA redoubts where pickup trucks sport “Let’s Go, Brandon!” bumper stickers. There is a good reason so many MAGA Republicans are embracing “semi-fascism”: Their views are too unpopular to command majority support anymore. They certainly don’t speak for the “real” America — to the extent that such a thing even exists.
Columnist |
August 31, 2022 at 12:55 p.m. EDT
PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — I’ve been feeling very blue this summer. Oh, I don’t mean I’m depressed — I’ve been having a ball. But I’ve been spending time in some of the most liberal enclaves in America: first Martha’s Vineyard (where former President Barack Obama has a house), then Provincetown, Mass., an LGBTQ mecca where pride flags are ubiquitous. I even took my step-kids to a drag show. (Don’t tell Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis!)
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
I have to admit that even this reformed ex-Republican did a slight eyeroll at the car next door to our rented beach house in P-town. It sports bumper stickers proclaiming “Biden-Harris,” “Coexist” (with Christian, Jewish, Muslim and peace symbols), “Resist” and “Bye Don” under a shock of yellow hair. Naturally, it’s a Subaru station wagon with a bike rack. How cliche can you get?
It is easy in such environs to imagine that you’re not in the “real America.” In fact, a friend who lives, as I do, in New York City — yet another Democratic bastion — made precisely that observation in a half-joking manner. “I’m happy not to be in America,” he told me, meaning, presumably, he was happy to be in a place where drag queens are considered normal and Trumpkins are not.
But you know what? Provincetown is the real America. So is Martha’s Vineyard. These communities are undoubtedly on the left and prone to excesses of political correctness that make for easy punch lines. But, in many ways, they might be more representative of 2022 America than the Rust Belt diners where reporters love to take the pulse of Trumplandia.
Follow Max Boot's opinionsFollow
There is an implicit assumption, shared by many Republicans and Democrats, that “real” Americans are White, rural, conservative, Christian and poorly educated. (“I love the poorly educated,” Donald Trump said in 2016.) Ultra-MAGA Republicans assume that their policy preferences — anti-immigration, anti-gun control, anti-abortion, anti-“woke” — are the only legitimate views that can be held by “real” Americans, and that anyone who disagrees is a pointy-headed elitist or “globalist” who is out of touch with reality.
Yet it is White, Christian, rural, conservative voters who are now in the minority. Indeed, much of the reason that MAGA Republicans sound so hysterical so much of the time is that they know that the tides of economic and demographic change are leaving them behind. The White share of the population has declined from 80 percent in 1980 to just 60.1 percent in 2019. By the 2040s, America is projected to become “majority minority.”
Accompanying this demographic shift is an economic shift that puts a premium on brains over brawn: In 1970, 31.2 percent of non-farm workers were employed in blue-collar jobs. By 2016, the blue-collar share of the workforce had fallen to just 13.6 percent. There is even a religious shift: Atheists and agnostics are the fastest-growing religious group in the country, while the percentage of Christians declined by 15 points between 2007 and 2021.
Demography is not necessarily destiny, and Latinos, in particular, are not as Democratic as they used to be. But these trends are hardly favorable for a Trumpified Republican Party whose base increasingly consists of White, evangelical Christians who haven’t graduated from college.
A more diverse, better-educated country is more liberal, particularly on cultural issues. In other words, more like P-town and the Vineyard. Just look at the massive shift on same-sex marriage. Even Obama came out against marriage equality in 2008 when it had the support of only 40 percent of Americans. Now same-sex marriage is supported by 71 percent of the public — and even by 55 percent of Republicans. It has become a nonissue.
The hardcore MAGA base might thrill to the kind of cultural warfare practiced by Trump and DeSantis, but it repels most of the electorate — which is why so many Republicans who touted their opposition to abortion during the primaries are now soft-pedaling an unpopular stance.
Our political system has a sharp minoritarian bias, but there is little doubt that Democratic positions are way more popular than Republican ones. Sixty-seven million more Americans live in counties won by Joe Biden than by Trump in 2020 — and the Biden counties produce 71 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
The Biden strongholds are in major cities and suburban areas — and that is increasingly where most Americans live. Even in red states, major metropolitan areas tend to be pretty blue. The largest city Trump won in 2020 was Oklahoma City, whose entire population (681,054) is less than half that of Manhattan, the New York borough where the former president was once feted and now is a pariah.
The whole country might not be nearly as progressive as Provincetown or Martha’s Vineyard, but those blue havens are closer to an increasingly liberal mainstream than the MAGA redoubts where pickup trucks sport “Let’s Go, Brandon!” bumper stickers. There is a good reason so many MAGA Republicans are embracing “semi-fascism”: Their views are too unpopular to command majority support anymore. They certainly don’t speak for the “real” America — to the extent that such a thing even exists.
