Few moments have captured as clearly 2016’s evolution into a cultural civil war. Trump is rallying passionate support from the voters most estranged from the social and demographic trends reshaping America, particularly blue-collar, older, non-urban, and evangelical whites. But the brusque, racially barbed nationalism he has used to court those voters has provoked unprecedented resistance from all the forces that welcome (or even accept) this new America. That includes not only most minorities, young people, and cultural figures like Streisand who ordinarily tilt Democratic, but also much of white-collar white America and the business establishment, which ordinarily lean Republican. [...]
Against all this, it’s striking that Trump is keeping the race as close as it is (even if he’s yet to prove he can push much past 40 percent support). It also underscores why so many Trump voters view 2016 as their Alamo. It’s unlikely any future candidate will articulate their grievances as unreservedly as Trump. And it will only grow harder to construct a winning electoral coalition around his blue-collar base: although Census surveys show non-college educated whites as a larger share of all voters than media exit polls do, both sources show them declining on average by about three percentage points in each election since 1992. The minority and college-educated white voters most repelled by Trump’s insular message are inexorably filling the gap.
Clinton’s dismissal of the “deplorables” may help Trump energize his voters by deriding her as an elitist who “mocks and demeans” them (as he said Monday). But the exchange also portrayed Clinton to her coalition as the defender of a diverse, inclusive America against an opponent they consider uniquely hostile to it. And in fact, while polls show most Clinton voters welcome immigration and rising diversity, much of Trump’s support views each with alarm. Whoever wins in November will struggle to find common ground between these culturally antithetical coalitions. But it is Clinton, for all her other missteps, who has planted her party on the side of this divide that is growing larger every four years.
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