Since Donald Trump easily beat Kamala Harris to secure a second term in The White House this month, I penned quite a few articles about the US election.
Longtime readers will attest that the number of election-related articles published here in recent days was, if anything, fewer than what I might’ve published during tumultuous periods for US politics in years past. My editorial strategy has evolved such that I’m more deliberate and discerning in an effort to make every article “count,” while still ensuring a steady, predictable flow of content.
Newer readers were, from what I can tell, a bit surprised at the scope and tenor of my election coverage. On the first point (i.e., regarding the share of daily coverage devoted to US politics), those readers should understand: This platform is, was and always will be partially dedicated to political coverage, domestic and global. There’s nothing at all unusual about the number of political articles published here since November 6. If it strikes you otherwise, you simply haven’t been a reader for very long or else you read selectively until now and didn’t notice how much political content I actually publish in the normal course of business.
On the second point, I never made a secret of my political bias: I’m a progressive liberal. Full stop. I’m not a Wall Streeter. I can only say that so many times. Trading isn’t my natural habitat. I crash-landed in this realm by accident after my plane passed through a wormhole on the way to a farm in Colombia, and the portal back to my real life closed before I could get my Cessna repaired. Now I’m stuck here with you people. Forever. I adapted to your ways, co-opted your culture and learned to speak your language better than you do. Now I chant in jargon — “weaponized gamma” — like so many incantations and behold, the natives were mesmerized.
Jokes aside, a lot of you assume things about me. Politically and otherwise. Most of those assumptions are wrong. A handful of you — the ones who actually read between the lines of the Monthlies — get it by now. One of you — maybe two — out of thousands, has the whole thing figured out. The rest of you will never get it, or not entirely anyway. And that’s ok. You don’t need to get most of it, but you do need to get this: Whatever I did (or didn’t do) for a living prior to 2016, I was an (over)educated liberal by day, by training and on paper. I will always be that in spirit, just the same as I’ll always be… well, again, some of you get it, some of you don’t.
10 days on from the election, the (over)educated liberal in me wanted to pen a quick letter to the Trump supporters out there, a coalition which, we’ve just learned, is now considerably more diverse and probably larger than it was four years ago. Lend me your ear, just for a moment. Some of you may need a dictionary. In that respect at least, Google’s your friend.
I’ve said this I don’t know how many times, but it really can’t be emphasized enough: There’s a lot that’s unique about Trump, but through the lens of authoritarian populism, he’s typecast and his “movement” is commensurately hackneyed. It’s formulaic: Quick fixes to highly complex problems is populism 101, and you learn how to politically monetize untapped rage capital in your first semester as a demagoguery major.
It’s so, so terribly unfortunate that half of America (and I’m excluding the Wall Street vote here, because those Trump votes have to be analyzed separately) can’t see that in Trump and MAGA. The reason they can’t is simple: They lack context. Without the sense of history that comes from a formalized college education, they’re not immune to what, time and again, proves to be a deadly socio-political virus. A four-year degree would immunize those voters, both by providing for the discovery of historical populism and by affording them the analytical thinking skills necessary to rule out as viable certain lines of argumentation and identify manipulative, predatory rhetoric as disqualifying and dangerous.
The Ruy Teixeira and John Judis narrative (see my full exposition here) has a lot of explanatory power when it comes to the educational gentrification of the Democratic party, illustrated below.
I used that figure in “The Divide,” the March Monthly Letter linked above. It’s based on a Nate Cohn analysis of data from the Census Bureau, the American National Elections Studies and public polling.
Although this shift garnered quite a bit of attention over the past decade or so, the 2024 election was a veritable clarion call: The result underscored the extent to which educational gentrification threatens to destroy what, not so very long ago, was a Democratic coalition that Republicans worried might prevent the GOP from ever claiming the presidency again post-Bush.
This educational gentrification has “succeeded” in ostracizing key Democratic constituencies, driving more blue-collar workers into the arms of the Republican party and even allowing Trump, a notorious racist and a bloviating xenophobe, to peel off Black and Hispanic voters some of whom, it turns out, don’t want to defund the police, don’t want open borders and don’t care the first thing about the increasingly niche, single-issue politics (over)educated liberals like myself mistakenly believe are important.
If you’re wondering whether I understand what’s just happened to Democrats, that should answer your question. I do. And if you’ve read the other Monthlies, you know I can recite, from memory, the socioeconomic narrative which explains how neoliberalism’s failures and collateral damage sowed the seeds for Trump. Oblivious I am most assuredly not.
We do a lot of silly things as (over)educated liberals. We’re meme fodder. I get that, and I’m cognizant of it every, single day. I go out of my way to avoid manifesting the (over)educated liberal stereotype. People see me, and they don’t know what I am. What I’m not is walking around in a tweed blazer with tight jeans, a curly mop head and some John Lennon glasses.
But here’s thing. We (over)educated liberals may not know much, particularly relative to how much time and money we spent getting stupid, but we know some history and we can hear it when it rhymes. We may be easy to dupe on some scores, but not on something like this.
That simple observation — that a college education is at least partial immunity to Trump’s brand of politics — may go a very long way towards explaining why a discernible, but relatively slow, long run trend (i.e., the educational gentrification of the Democratic party) suddenly went vertical in 2016. Occam’s razor.
I’ve read laborious explanations for the same vertical inflection, and they all feel needlessly tortured. Why do we go to college? The brochures will tell you it’s to discover your passion and prepare yourself for a related career. But a four-year degree does a lot more for you than that. Indeed in an era when many four-year degrees are proving to be useless, at best, for obtaining gainful employment, the critical thinking skills you learn on campus might be the only silver lining in those interminable monthly student loan payments.
In 2016, Americans were presented with a textbook populist demagogue for president. We (over)educated liberals didn’t just reject him, we rejected him out of hand. Not because we were somehow so aloof in our Ivory Towers — so brainwashed by the cult of neoliberalism and so obliviously ensconced in our urban digs — that we were incapable of understanding the grievances of those to whom Trump appealed, but rather because we’ve read this movie before (if you will), and we know damn well how it ends.
I ask myself often if Trump’s supporters outside of Wall Street (where people still remember how to vote for the own economic self-interest) ever wonder how and why it is that (over)educated liberals seem so sure about their reservations regarding a man who, let us not forget, used to be a Democrat. Why, Trump’s supporters often ask, do (over)educated liberals “hate Trump.” The answer to that latter question is that we don’t. We don’t “hate Trump.” We just know what happens when people like him discover the power of populist politics.
I’m going to leave you today with what I wrote as the riot on Capitol Hill was unfolding on January 6, 2021. You tell me if it sounds like someone who’s filled with “hate” towards the “other half,” or whether it sounds like precisely what it was: A sympathetic “I told you so” which, regrettably and almost inevitably, I’ll have to write again when Trump’s second term ends in the same violent melee as his first.
As protesters waving Trump flags marched on the Capitol, spurred on by the man himself and riled up by Alex Jones, who was on the scene, lawmakers were evacuated for their own safety. The Secret Service was deployed. The Capitol was locked down. At least one person was shot and killed.
The Trump faithful were branded “criminals” and “insurrectionists” by members of both parties, just as the African Americans who destroyed property over the summer during racial justice protests were deemed “thugs” and “looters.”
But watching the spectacle, one was reminded that, for the most part, the president’s supporters are victims.
Victims of their own gullibility, sure. But also victims of an economic system that failed them. And continues to fail them.
Victims of an education system that failed them. And continues to fail them.
Victims of a healthcare system that failed them. And continues to fail them.
And victims of a government that failed them. And continues to fail them.
Beyond that, Trump’s supporters are victims of a fraudulent narrative sold to them by a man who spent his entire adult life peddling empty packages wrapped in gilded promises he never intended to keep and whose business career was a case study in failure, resurrected, ironically, by a television show premised on a fabricated history of success.
Blame for the conditions that brought [Trump] to power lies elsewhere, but he leaves the country in worse shape than when he entered the White House.
Like the human and economic toll inflicted by the pandemic, some of that damage is structural. It will never be undone.
One thing I have heard is to hate on the educated. Blame them for everything. That is an interesting juxtaposition coming from a homeless man. Those who would try to get the government to help them are being blamed for failure to help them.
A typical playbook would be some chaos engineered in the streets to justify a crackdown, what better enemy to crack down on than the poor. The mechanism that has been proposed is to establish posse. Law by posse would be pure anarchy. Each participant robbing to fund themselves. The typical playbook is then a state crackdown on the original crackdown.
There is are antidotes to the above scenario, we can hope a plan is being prepared.
I just finished reading “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia E. Butler. It describes exactly this scenario. Populous President. (Christian Nationalist party) and a crack down on the poor (always an easy target). I think these books should be required reading.
Very enjoyable read, got me thinking. Regarding the Educated Decision chart, I’m curious about the college degree voters, specifically the percentage of those who did not vote Democratic, but graduated from a religious Christian college. Examples:
Lipscomb University TN
Point Loma Nazarene College CA
Samford University AL
Mississippi College MS
Calvin University MI
etc…..
Total guess, but I would venture to say graduates from colleges, like the above, did not vote intellectually but religiously, which is a different kind of arrogance or superiority.
There are over 900 Christian denomination affiliation colleges in the US. I wonder if we are drawing the right conclusions from the chart.
Are these accredited institutions? Many are not.
I too am not so sure all 4-year degrees are equally effective an inoculating someone. I’d like to see a academic paper that looks at inter and intra college degree comparisons. Obviously at the macro scale, the chart is the chart.
I grew up in a highly religious, blue collar area where 90%+ of the people vote Republican. My parents didn’t go to college as they were already on their first kid by the time they finished high school. All four of us kids did manage to go to college although I ventured a bit farther to a more well-regarded school. I just looked down the US News rankings for a top-tier business school that wasn’t too far away, but had no idea of what jobs you could actually get coming out of business school. I just figured I’d make a lot of money that way despite only being familiar with the typical blue collar jobs the locals had in agricultural, automotive work, or the military.
Thankfully, I always enjoyed school and history in particular. Even though I was a business major, I took every history course I could fit into my schedule: 20th Century American Wars, Debates of the Founding Fathers, Russia under the Tsars, History of Astronomy, and several others. It was so eye-opening for me and my favorite professor was a grumpy old bastard who wasn’t afraid to hand out Ds and Fs despite the many years of grade inflation that made it virtually impossible to get those grades in other humanities courses. I got my lowest grades in his courses (still only a B so not too bad), but his classes alone were worth the price of my degree.
Despite being a good student growing up, I had no clue when it came to politics. I couldn’t have told you anything about the two parties and didn’t vote in the Bush-Kerry election despite being eligible for the first time because I didn’t know anything about either one or why I should care. By the time Obama became the nominee, I was heavily in the overeducated progressive camp. Of course, my mom immediately assumed I had been brainwashed whereas my dad was an old school DFL guy who always assumed the rich were screwing over the little guy.
Even though I haven’t engaged in politics with my mom for a decade, she’ll still send random political rants about how democrats are socialists and about how much history she’s read. I don’t bother responding, but can’t help but appreciate the irony of someone who has been indoctrinated with religion from the day she was born and never lived outside the bubble that we grew up in accusing anyone else of being brainwashed. Thankfully, she never broaches these subjects when we are in person, so I’m not one of those people who has cut off their parents due to political differences. I don’t think that’d be helpful and it’s easy enough to ignore the occasional political rant text. On top of that, she knows better than to try to push her beliefs on my kids, and frankly, I’m not one of those people who’s scared that my kids might be exposed to things I disagree with anyway.
In a further irony (hypocrisy?), Bill Clinton was the speaker at my college commencement. My mom was not happy about that as she always hated him and was vocal about his womanizing. Clinton was obviously a gifted politician, but I don’t have a high opinion of him and was disappointed democrats still give him a speaking spot. However, it won’t surprise you when I say that my mom has no problem looking past the misdeeds of our president-elect since he’s not a democrat (anymore). The end justifies the means, right? Isn’t that what Jesus taught us?
Really, really good comment. Clinton as a spokesmen baffles me.
This helps explain how the misdeeds of one person are not equal to the misdeeds of another a generation later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSRnP1YvhV0
Thank you for the link to Dan McClellan. I just watch several of his critical thinking videos. I like this one…
You’re welcome. Dan’s great.
I agree with the long term analysis, being an over-educated liberal myself and that the Democrats are missing the point, but the crushing blow was different. Occam’s razor in 2024 is clear in the 70% who answered that their personal situation was worse than it was 4 years ago. Jimmy Carter lost in 1980 for the same reason – and college educated liberals were rare back then, but inflation and tough economic times were not.
Yeah, but John, this article is basically just the nice version of “Dumbasses” that I published the other day. Half the country’s just dumb as hell. It is what it is. And it’s inescapable in the south. You walk out the door and there they are: Dumbasses. Everywhere. A Walmart in the south is one version of hell. I don’t think there’s any utility in trying to dance around it or find a silver lining. There isn’t one. 51% or so of the country’s in thrall to a would-be authoritarian and although there are legitimate grievances which help explain that, ignorance and gullibility have a lot of explanatory power too. Democrats are so soft and so determined to play by the rules that they won’t just say it. Maybe Hillary should’ve leaned into it right from the beginning: “Clinton: Because F-ck Deplorables.” I’m kidding, but then again, I was out today and saw a giant, lifted truck with a banner tied to the tailgate that read: “Trump: F-ck Your Feelings.” That’d be easy enough to laugh at, except that it’s a winning message now. Nobody wants this measured, “save our soul” bulls-t Democrats are pushing. Maybe AOC should pull a Trump and say: “I’ve decided the party’s mine now, and there isn’t anything anybody can do about it. I’m going to start holding crazy stadium rallies all over the country and saying crazy things really loudly, and lying my ass off, and making all kinds of promises I have no plan to, or even any intention of, deliver(ing) on, and if any of you disagree with me, I’m going to call you a DINO and remind everyone that you’re an evil warmonger even if you aren’t. I’m sorry, really I am, but this is what we gotta do. To beat a demagogue you need a demagogue. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go come up with an acronym and order 157 million blue baseball hats from China.”
I heard that Trump has promised a 1000% tariff on blue baseball hats. Might want to get those rush delivered.
As I was knocking on doors in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia, there were more Harris/Walz signs thanTrump/Vance signs, the most prominent flags were those same giant “Trump F-ck Your Feelings” flags. Children walked by them to and from school.
Taking my Occam’s razor thought, I have to paint myself as an optimist. Obama pointed out – in October (way too late) that Trump’s good economy came from the good one that Obama left him in 2016.
Looking at the future, the 2028 Republican candidate is going to look back at an economy that went straight down the drain from January 20, 2025 when doing that better / worse comparison. Odds are the Democratic crisis ends before 4 years are out.
A good high school education would inoculate you from trump no less than college.. Secondary education in the US overall is awful compared to most developed countries. The fairness doctrine being tossed led to the advent of a right wing media bubble populated by fox oan etc. The internet spread lies via groups and uncharted opinions. The Supreme Court allowed unlimited contribution to ‘pacs’ further skewed the ability for money to buy elections. Musk alone was able to float trump 130mm. Trump had no $ until the boys got together and floated him the money. These things all have contributed to this state of affairs. But look overseas. There is plenty of backlash and far right wing bases. Look at the Netherlands, Italy with neofascists in power. Germany has the ‘afd’ and France has a strong neofascist movement with le pen.So it isn’t just the usa. It’s a worldwide problem.
Wonder how many votes Obama cost the D this year.
Comments about Clintons apply 5x to The Obamas. The epitome of the elite mannerism.
Yeah, they should really dumb things down and speak from the perspective of a silver-spoon billionaire who traffics in conspiracy theories and casts blame on immigrants and those know-it-all liberals.
By the way, if you look at polling for the Obamas, they are viewed favorably by a majority of the electorate which is something very few other high profile politicians can claim. If Michelle Obama had been the candidate, I don’t think we’d be discussing why democrats lost.
I don’t know. Obama was elected twice, and would’ve have been elected a third time (running against Trump) if he’d been able to. FWIW, if Trump doesn’t keel over before his term is over, I’m pretty sure he’ll ignore the Constitution and declare himself eligible to run for a third term — and the Roberts Supreme Court will find a (yet another) bogus pretext to sanction the move.
I didn’t take many courses in the humanities when I went to college, neither did my children. I stuck to mathematics and my children followed my advice and stuck to STEM. That said, we did learn logic and that allowed all of us to see through the populist rhetoric. It wasn’t so much a knowledge of history but a knowledge of logic with a dose of cynicism that allowed us to see through Trump and his colleagues.
Dumbass R > D
Tone Deaf D > R
Sam Harris (yet another overeducated liberal) wrote a nice substack on this (The Reckoning) which I don’t think is paywalled.
A good high school education would inoculate you from trump no less than college.. Secondary education in the US overall is awful compared to most developed countries. The fairness doctrine being tossed led to the advent of a right wing media bubble populated by fox oan etc. The internet spread lies via groups and uncharted opinions. The Supreme Court allowed unlimited contribution to ‘pacs’ further skewed the ability for money to buy elections. Musk alone was able to float trump 130mm. Trump had no $ until the boys got together and floated him the money. These things all have contributed to this state of affairs. But look overseas. There is plenty of backlash and far right wing bases. Look at the Netherlands, Italy with neofascists in power. Germany has the ‘afd’ and France has a strong neofascist movement with le pen.So it isn’t just the usa. It’s a worldwide problem.
The leadership of the Republican party was weak and Trump stepped in and said I am king. Republican senators and congressmen crumbled. Hail Trump !
Even (over) educated liberals have a couple of blindspots in their educations that is shared by nearly everyone. My daughter was given one of six spots in our school system’s brand new talented and gifted program. The first thing her new teacher told her was that she would be better off if no one knew she was “smart.” The teacher said everyone in this class was headed for a miserable life because they are going to be hated by everyone who will be jealous of their intelligence. When we heard what went on in her class we pulled her from the program. By the end of the week all the rest had left as well. Rather than trying to fix the situation, the principal just canceled the program. There are educated folks among those that have degrees but the truth is people in the US don’t care for education. They have guessed correctly that power flows to those who know what it actually means to become educated. In some ways, a really good con artist has likely also learned this talent, through their ability to read the room. It takes effective self-education to see the best way to succeed in their con games.
Even some of the best educated in our society fail in their education as they just don’t understand logic and the difference between deduction and induction. They make too many assumptions without sufficient evidence. One of the hallmarks of my school’s business program was that every student in management had to take a required course in decision making, one of the few such courses in the country. The prof in this course was known for his practice of giving unannounced mid-term exams, sometimes back to back. Suffice it to say students who took this class left better off than when they entered it. They understood all types of logic, how to be effective decision-makers and other critical keys to continuing their educations.
Many years ago a cult of economists got together, looked at some data that appeared to show that the more educated a person was the more money they would make. The main flaw in the logic of this study was that the cult assumed that education could be measured by a degree. There is undoubtedly some relationship, but is unlikely to be significant, at least based on the grades and success of most of the 12,500 students I taught. There was a full professor of anthropology at Ohio State who had no degrees or diplomas of any kind. He was widely published and deeply (self)-educated, but never formally educated. I heard about this guy so I crashed his class to see what the fuss was about. The class was standing room only and I was nearly moved to tears. In my career I gave fewer than 5-7% of my students a grade of A because most be the best they could be. The three best I ever had were my wife who educated herself to be one our best teachers, a woman who took three classes from me and is now the Business Dean at my school, and an Engineer from Deere who went on to be a Hoover Fellow at Stanford Operations Doctoral Program. Another one of my smartest was one of the top salespeople at the Electrolux company. He had no formal degree but he was a self-taught investor and a self-made millionaire. I let him take my investments class and we both learned a lot. His brother was my eye doctor and a very smart guy. Education is an important target, but just degrees, not so much.
I have found that the real strength in people is to recognize that each and every one excels in their own zone. They do that better than anyone else. The thought that everyone deserves their 15 minutes of fame, is reality. We are truly much stronger as a group than any one person.
Imbedded in this is the fallacy of the current fad of hating on intelligent people. For if you recognize that everyone has their unique perspective that excels for a moment above all others then you must hate all people. It is only a abject failure that does not recognize this obvious mistake.
May we celebrate our differences, our different perspectives and yes listen to everyone. For through this diversity we will find a stronger, more survivable, and more robust organizational structure.
“a lot of you assume things about me”….I never assumed that you named your report “The Heisenberg Report” solely because you are a fan of quantum mechanics. 🙂
You’re the “maybe two” in “One of you — maybe two — out of thousands…” By my estimates, you have about half the puzzle done. There’s someone else (the “One” in the quoted passage) who has the key that unlocks the whole thing.
Hookandgo.
What’s changed during my lifetime is that now the dumbasses are proud of their stupidity…and I didn’t see that coming. My non-accredited high school in northern Michigan was not an ideal launching pad for success but a bunch of us managed to become successful. Somehow we figured out that freedom to live on our terms had to be earned…that even in America, we’d have to become educated to be truly free.
The dumbasses are more obese, more addicted, more incarcerated, and more likely to live under autocratic control. Someone should tell them that the price of stupidity is steep.
I wonder if anyone has put together the following logic train.
Mitch stopped from impeaching the president for January 6th because well he was not president anymore therefore could not impeach him. However once sworn in he could be impeached for January 6th and swept out of office one hour after he was sworn in. The articles of impeachment have already been prepared all that is required is to print out multiple copies.
America was born of a revolution, but not the one we are taught about in our schools.
Plutocracy: Political Repression in the USA (2015 documentary)
America was born of a Rebellion