In 2016, Trump’s presidential victory took the longstanding culture war phenomenon of “elitist anti-elitism” to a bizarre new level.
During the campaign, he positioned himself as the anti-establishment candidate, a human wrecking ball smashing the American elite into pieces. Yet he did so while boasting of his wealth and his fame and his luxury lifestyle, without any sense of disconnect whatsoever. [...]
The Trumpite slogan “Make America Great Again” offers the perfect real-world example. In his rallies and press conferences, Trump implied (or simply asserted) that Mexicans and Muslims were responsible for the nation’s decline. Clinton shot back by declaring that America was already great – and so the trap was sprung.
Rather than persuading the public that immigrants weren’t to blame for low wages, the Democrats sounded like they saw nothing wrong with declining living standards. Clinton thus became the candidate of status in an election in which voters desperately wanted change.
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