Donald Trump Won on White Male Resentment—But Don’t Confuse That with the Working Class
Article/Op-Ed in The Nation
Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Nov. 10, 2016
Monica Potts wrote for the Nation about the significance of poor, white voters in the 2016 election:
It’s a little hard not to be overtaken with despair.
The scandal-free, class-act President Barack Obama, who gave us the Affordable Care Act in all of its flawed glory, will leave the White House to the least qualified president in history, a petty, childish narcissist who is just as likely to use his high office to exact revenge on his perceived enemies as he is to fulfill his worst promises—building a wall along the Mexican border, imposing a religious test on immigrants, bringing stop-and-frisk back, and getting rid of most of the federal government.
The people who will be hurt most are obviously people of color, all women, and the poor. This includes poor white people, and their significance in this election has to be examined.