The post covers how Fall River, MA (my home city) is a textbook case of post-industrial neglect and abandonment, and how Massachusetts elected a post-industrial populist (Ed King) as governor in 1979 and then had an election in 1990 (John Silber vs Bill Weld) with a post-industrial vs symbolic capitalist total polarization that's a mirror of what happened in this 2024 US election.
The background is that a large part of Massachusetts, called the Rust Belt, de-industrialized in the mid-20th century as its industries moved to the non-union South. Rust Belt residents eventually became half of the Massachusetts total voting population.
A longer general history of the rise and fall of the huge textile industry in Southeastern Mass is here: https://groundwork.space/boom-and-bust/ Brockton, another large city in Mass, was the world center of shoe manufacture, it experienced a similar fate. What to me is notable is the decades still continuing of neglect and abandonment since. The post-industrial Midwest will probably experience the same.
I will skip over the next sections where you set up straw men to destroy them (rightfully so in my opinion, the sections about elites who are only the top of capitalist pyramid, campaign fundings that nobody cares about when voting, third parties and their voters who are inconsequential as always in this electoral system).
What I agree with in your essay are your conclusions about both the backlash to the great awakening and the alienation of the "normies." Those are definite factors in this election cycle, I'd also lump in there your analysis of Harris's campaign decisions leading up to election day.
However, I still think there are two big points missing:
1) populism to reach the alienated "normies" must be done with intentions to actually help said "normies" because Trump and the Republicans are only selling smoke and mirrors. It works because nobody else is doing anything close to that. For example, Democrats go around rooting their own horn about Biden's economy being the best ever for America ... whose America is doing blgreat under Biden's economy? Not the normies' that's for sure.
2) Trump didn't get elected despite Americans like there is a majority of people in this country that are not behind Republicans ideas of division, capitalist exploitation, and false narratives about who is a danger to our democracy. Trump got elected because that is what America is: white supremacist, exploitative, falsely selling a rag to riches idea that has been dead for a long time now, a cheat, and a liar!
Time to open our eyes to who we truly are, time to rip the tape and take a long look at who is living with us and why they think what they think. Nobody is inherently evil or bad, people become those things like they can change if they decide to. However, a political party (not the Democrat or the Republican or any already there) must rise and show the way forward without dissent, hate, or prejudice. That will mean opposite the capital interests as well as the political hegemony in place ...
Point two, I think we're just in disagreement. Consider the danger to democracy bit: Democrats own polling showed that this is the least persuasive message. Voters weren't casting ballots based on who was a threat to democracy. Again, this isn't how or why most folks vote.
If Democrats really believed that democracy was on the ballot, and that fascism was one election away, they should have focused like a laser on speaking to ordinary people in terms of their own preferences, priorities and concerns. Instead, symbolic capitalists chose to focus on messaging that we found satisfying, to indulgently focus on what we thought of as most important, even when our own data showed that this was not likely to generate the outcome we wanted -- an outcome we described it as existential to achieve.
The conclusion to this comment I agree with wholeheartedly as well. There's a great study by Jacobin + YouGov, Commonsense Solidarity, it showed that most working class voters hate identitarian stuff, not because they dislike minorities, but because they want leaders to look out for everyone. They're looking for appeals to common values, shared goals, superordinate identities.
Likewise, there's tons of data showing that folks can criticize the prevailing order all day, every day and it doesn't matter. People will stick with a status quo, even one they hate, unless there's something better to replace it with. Not lesser of two evils better (in which case they'll stick with the devil they know), but actually better and actually plausible. Put another way, critique doesn't do anything to promote change in the absence of a positive vision. Constructing and building consensus around something else.
"Voters weren't casting ballots based on who was a threat to democracy."
Yep, on that we agree. I think we don't agree as to how they are actually casting their ballots. I think intersectionality of multiple factors (including class, race, gender, white supremacy, capitalism, etc.), you are thinking class first and foremost, then race (influenced by class) ... and that's it? Honestly, I am not doing a good job at representing your side here so my apologies.
As for the shortcomings of the Democratic party ... preach, brother! I am 100% in agreement with you there. That one is the most powerful statement I've heard on that yet:
"Put another way, critique doesn't do anything to promote change in the absence of a positive vision. Constructing and building consensus around something else."
As always, it's a pleasure to read you, Dr. al-Gharbi, thank you for taking the time to exchange with me today.
I think it's also an intersectional story, but one tied to these broader shifts in the knowledge economy. I think we can understand a lot of electoral trends -- the diploma divide, the urban rural divide, racial dealignment, the gender divide, etc. -- in terms of a more fundamental schism between symbolic capitalists and people who are sociologically distant from us, and who feel excluded from our social order. I view the rise of "populism," tensions over identity politics, the crisis of expertise, and so on as fronts in this broader struggle. So I think we're maybe closer than may have appeared at the outset, although we have some different emphases, etc.
I am definitely making a point to finish your book quickly :-). I was going to, mind you, but I'm working through quite a lot of books at once. Now, I want to read the whole "We've never been woke" to get your whole thesis, fully.
I have just come across your work and this is the first piece I have read. And I’m very glad I did! Your analysis here is quite compelling, although I need to look further into what you mean by “symbolic capitalists,” and other things.
The explanation for Trump’s success that I have been arguing for in my own Substack traces back to, essentially, what became a bi-partisan Neoliberal economic policy consensus that came together around Reaganomics (Trickle-Down Economics”) and in the repeal of Glass-Steagall, etc., — all dedicated to what Michael Alexander (see his Substack, America in Crisis!) calls “Shareholder Primacy.”
The upshot is that both parties came to “exuberantly” embrace this Neoliberal federal policy around prioritization of the enrichment of a relatively small elite, while both parties were effectively indifferent to the devastating consequences this had and continues to have for our working/middle class. The harms of these changes in economic and tax policy is the root cause of the now enormous rift in our society — a deep and painful wound so serious that even a depraved, demented demagogue like Trump has had little trouble exploiting it — with and for ‘blood and money’ — and cult-like adoration.
Trump somehow got this and came into the 2016 race and effectively built a platform around “a plague on both their houses.” He crushed the Republican Party and rebuilt it in his image. And he has dominated our politics ever since.
There are, of course, cultural issues now deeply intertwined with all of this, but Alexander argues that little will change for the Democrats unless or until they effectively renounce and pivot away from neoliberal policy prioritizing elite enrichment and towards national policy focused and incentivized around what he calls “stakeholder primacy” and that I refer to less precisely as economic policies that prioritize more the “common good.”
Anyhow, nice to virtually meet you and I will now spend some time getting to know you better. Thanks!
I'm still reading through it all, done with the second section now about women/men vote. I want to add that although I'm seeing a little bit more intersectional analysis there, it is very lacking everywhere I look for election results analysis: looking at race then gender in isolation isn't going to say anything useful. For example, saying that Harris being a women wasn't the problem this election cycle is ignoring the other side of this election: people were okay with electing a white supremacists, misogynist, rapist, liar, cheater etc. (all have been judicated upon and proven true by law by the way) to the white house over a black women (however bad she was on many issues, I do not contend with that, I agree she is far from the best we could have had, but she is none of the things I listed Trump is though, yet, that didn't matter ... let's analyze that please) --> that is the true intersectionality that needs analyzing here, not just one side at a time.
Furthermore, looking at shifts in numbers/points/percentages isn't likely to be helpful either. We need the effect sizes here! For example, yes women have been registering to vote and showing up at the polls more than man consistently, but saying that hence they control the vote is a stretch when the difference between the two group is only shown as one is above the other consistently. We need to be told by how much and if that is a significant portion of voter likely to make a difference in the election (aka effect sizes).
People don't usually vote for president because they're looking for someone who is a moral exemplar. The kinds of voters who care the most about things like decorum, civility, the president being presidential and virtuous -- those folks have been moving aggressively to Democrats the whole time Trump has been on the ballot: highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban whites. Most other voters aren't looking to hire an angel, they're looking to hire someone that's going to get stuff done for them. And they did not have confidence in Biden and Harris in this respect. And though they had significant concerns about Trump's character -- this is very clear in the polling -- they thought he would actually address their concerns better than Harris.
Symbolic capitalists tend to make voting decisions based on things like, "Is this a good person?" "Are they following the correct rules, norms and procedures?" "Do they check the right symbolic boxes?" Other voters care much less about these things. They tend to vote to solve problems or to accomplish things -- and if they don't think either party is good for addressing their core concerns, they tend to just sit the race out rather than casting votes for the lesser of two evils (while symbolic capitalists tend to vote no matter what, and to vote blue no matter who).
With respect to solving problems, I think there are a few things to bear in mind:
1. Democrats often make strong presumptions about what various groups' interests are. The constituents we're referring to often simply disagree. For instance, Hispanics often support border security. African Americans often have real concerns about public safety and public order, and "law and order" policies appeal to them. But rather than questioning whether we have an accurate understanding of others' interests, we assume that it must be the case that they're misunderstanding their own interests, or otherwise voting against their own interests, so their behaviors are baffling to us. These puzzles become much easier if we make ourselves alive to the possibility that others perceive their interests differently than we do -- and the problem might be with us instead of them.
2. Symbolic capitalists tend to think in intersectional terms -- so we assume if Trump says or does something "bad" with respect to one minority group, most other minorities will recoil alongside them. This is not how most other people think though! Take the Muslim ban -- the sectors of the Democratic coalition that are most supportive of policies like these is *not* whites, it's blacks and Hispanics, who are more likely than whites to be religious, typically Christian, and to view Islam as a false and dangerous religion. If Trump wants to restrict "those people" from coming in, they don't see a problem with it. Likewise, if you look at who in the Democratic coalition is most skeptical of, say, gender affirming care for minors, or teaching content about sexuality in K-12 schools -- that would also be non-whites, religious minorities, and less affluent people -- the very constituents Democrats view themselves as champions of. So this puzzle becomes easier if we understand that most other voters don't think the ways we do, in intersectional terms, etc.
In terms of women and men: this is something the data I shared lets us calculate easily. Let's assume you have 100 prospective voters, 51 women, 49 men (in the overall distribution of people in American society, and most societies, women outnumber men). 70 percent of these women register to vote, and 68 percent of registered women actually show up on election day. For men, 68 percent register to vote, and only 65 percent of them actually show up on election day. (these were the data at the end of the time series in the graphs I shared).
Well, then, what you would see on election day is that a total of 24 women would come out to vote on election day, compared to 22 men. Or, 52 percent of all the people who show up to the polls would be women, while 48 percent of the people who showed up to the polls would be men. If women voted consistently one way, and men another, the women would win election after election. The majority they hold among voters who actually go to the polls is actually bigger than the majority they hold in the population writ large. I calculated this using the last year in the time series. You can use any other year, you get a similar picture. The female vote is objectively more important than the male vote. Women have the capacity to unilaterally decide elections (if they voted as a solid bloc). Men do not. And this has been true in every election since 1976: women have been a decisive majority of voters.
Fully agree with your portrayal of why people vote for president and your points about symbolic capitalists, very saillant and valid.
Now, I'd submit that "intersectionality term" is not "so we assume if Trump says or does something 'bad' with respect to one minority group, most other minorities will recoil alongside them." What you said there is vote by association, not intersectionality.
Intersectionality in the election's context is understanding that people do not vote along one part of their identity but along all of their identity's parts in interaction. It explains exactly what you are saying and what I quoted above.
For example, I'm not surprised by any of the examples of "similarly contradictory votes (poor whites or black or immigrants or whatever else for Trump) because their is always other parts of their identity that explain those decision and those parts are often manipulated and/or at least influenced by the system (capitalistic white supremacy).
Thus, most voters think in term of intersectionality.
Finally, your example along the gender line and the influence of women on election is based on an imaginary world (where all women would vote one way) and I don't deal in imaginary worlds, I remain in reality where you would never see an entire electoral block vote one way (because of intersectionality!). The women vote is not "objectively more important than the male vote" because of intersectionality. Do you see how you are setting this imaginary situation requiring all women to vote one way to say that they are in charge of who gets elected? Now what? This situation will never take place, will never happen. What's the point of basing any analysis on that?
The essay itself stresses this last point explicitly:
"Finally, it should be emphasized, there is a sense in which gender differences are completely overblown in most cycles, including this one. There was a non-trivial gap between men and women in 2024 — albeit not record-breaking. And even the record gap was less than one might assume. There has never been a presidential election in U.S. history where even 60 percent of men voted one way while a similar share of women voted the other. Let alone anything like a 70/30 gender split, or an 80/20 divide. It’s just not the case that men homogenously vote Republican. Nor is it the case that women overwhelmingly vote Democrat. In this race, nearly half of women voted for Trump, while slightly more than half cast ballots for Harris. On the male side, although most voted for Trump, nearly half pulled the lever for Harris. In fact, going back to 1980, there have only been a handful of races where Democrats did better with men than they did in 2024 (namely: Joe Biden last cycle, both contests with Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection bid). Kamala’s performance with men was solid. It was her performance with women that destroyed her prospects."
I don't think we're in disagreement here. I think we might be talking past each other a bit. My point in that section is that, if you have two populations, and one of those populations is larger in absolute terms, is registered to vote at higher levels, and also turns out to vote at higher levels -- such that their share of the electorate is typically even larger than the majority they hold in the population writ large -- this bloc is going to generally be more important for shaping electoral outcomes.
And it would be bizarre if, despite the fact that, on average, 52 out of 100 voters are from one group, almost all of the electoral analysis was focused on the smaller group. And few people really bothered to pay attention how the people in the larger group exercised their agency when they're explaining electoral outcomes.
This would be bizarre. It's also the world in which we actually live. Women are typically a clear majority of Americans who actually cast ballots, but almost all of the analysis on elections is focused on men. And their supposed motives (held to be somehow very different from those of women... more evil and so on... such that women vote for good reasons while men vote based on sexism). I'm saying this is not a good way of understanding society. I don't believe you disagree...
In terms of intersectionality, another place where we're talking past one-another a bit. The way you use intersectionality is the way I think about intersectionality myself (as I emphasize throughout the book). But in the comment here, I was referring to a tendency of progressive activism to view all of these struggles as interconnected and mutually reinforcing (black lives matter is a gay rights issue, environmentalism is a race issue, which is a gay issue, as formally noted) -- such that there is no distinction to be made between them, and the goal is to liberate everyone together all at once. My point is, this isn't how most other people think about politics. Most black people don't think of gay rights as a matter of black emancipation. If anything, they view these forms of morality and discourse as impositions by affluent whites upon people like them. And not entirely wrongly. So this was my point, and here too, I don't think you disagree. It's just, you were using "intersectional" in the way scholars and theorists do, while I was using "intersectional" to refer to this tendency in activism to assume uncritically that all good things go together, without a need to make hard choices or tradeoffs.
I just finished reading the part about racism and I have to say two things:
- one, racism is not skin color, it is a hierarchical system keeping black people at the bottom and white people on top; thus, any analysis that describe racism not a factor because of skin color is missing a big piece of the puzzle (i.e., white supremacy - the systemic impact of racism).
- second, no analysis of the election is legitimate if it only focuses on the points/percentage changes while ignoring the numbers ... I'm not sure how one can ignore the fact that white people have voted Republican en masse while being such a big demographic in this country to only focus on minority vote changes representing slivers of those votes. I agree that said slivers could be enough to sway the election, but that is ignoring the forest for the tree, isn't it?!
Thank you for reading me, back to reading the rest of your analysis.
The shifts are all that matter. You can only explain change by appeal to things that change. So if we want to understand why a race went one way in 2020 and a different way in 2024, it does no good to look at voters who cast ballots the same way each cycle. It's the people whose voting behaviors shifted who "cause" divergent outcomes from one cycle to the next.
And these weren't marginal shifts. Republicans haven't run up these numbers with many groups in more than half a century. Put another way: the shifts are objectively dramatic, not just relative to last cycle, but to broader social trends.
As it relates to the white voters casting ballots for Republicans en masse -- again, the only group Harris gained with this cycle was whites! She did better with whites across gender lines, even as non-whites across gender lines moved the other direction. She got objectively solid levels of white support, meeting or exceeding most other Democrats over the last half-century, including her immediate predecessor. To understand why 2024 went so different from 2020, you really do have to look at the non-white vote. The white trends would have presaged a Harris victory.
To be clear, I don't disagree that the sifts have to be looked at, I'm saying the effect sizes of those shifts matter more than just the raw numbers. Otherwise, that's just you saying that they matter, not the numbers (that's statistics for you).
Moreover, comparing elections is supposed to achieve what? Biden and Harris, albeit both Democrats, are widely different people. I'm not sure why we expect Biden's (or Hilary's or any other Democrat including Obama's) election results to indicate anything for a new election cycle. We can certainly interpret Trump's numbers because their is a link between the elections ... Trump himself!
Finally, you say the "white" and "non-white" votes like it means anything. Once again, race isn't a skin color (dig into that please). This country is hell bent on ignoring that fact because if not, it would mean looking at our history in the face and that won't be an easy moment for anybody. It would also mean the capitalist class would most likely lose its power (economic and social) so they won't take it lying down ... and they aren't.
There are factors at play going beyond skin color and those factors are numerous (racism, sexism, normism, etc.) while intersectional and applying to both the electorate as well as the candidate, and they interact! One can think about a generalize linear mixed model (glmm) approach if that helps (with fixed, their interaction, and random variables - even if we're more likely to also need other types of analyses here).
But here's the thing: the trend lines precede Trump. This has been a big point of my research. The media focuses on Trump because they're literally obsessed with him (https://musaalgharbi.com/2019/11/13/media-obsessed-trump/), but this isn't really "about" Trump or any unique appeal on his part. In fact, a candidate with less baggage would probably be racking up even bigger numbers, especially among whites.
I say "whites" and "non-whites" as a shorthand, but the essay breaks it down by Hispanic, Asian and Black votes. Incidentally, each of these blocs independently trended the same way, towards the GOP -- even as whites -- unique among ethnic blocs -- went the other way. So the white/ non-white distinction in this case does map on cleanly to what we see when we look at the groups individually. As I showed in this essay. And as I've previously illustrated, you can get even more fine-grained, looking at different Asian subgroups, different Hispanic subgroups -- the trend lines are the same (https://musaalgharbi.com/2020/11/02/understanding-trump-success-minority-voters/2/). Consistent redshift. As I emphasized in this piece, you can look at shifts geographically, and you see areas with heavy concentrations of non-white residents moved far more towards the GOP than any other counties. And this holds regardless of which ethnic bloc you select for.
People say things like "categories don't mean anything" (especially when the folks in those categories behave in inconvenient ways. Other times, we're happy to talk about "POC" : https://musaalgharbi.com/2021/01/05/democrats-learn-2020-race/) -- but the truth is, you can get as far into the weeds as you want, and the picture doesn't change. The Democrats have been seeing losses with all groups but whites. This is true when you look at "whites v. non-whites." This is true when you look at each ethnic bloc individually. This is true when you disaggregate each ethnic bloc into subgroups. There's no way to "complexify" this reality away. It isn't just an artifact of clunky language, it's a persistent shift that has predated Trump and will likely continue after him.
Is that these shifts are tied to broader socioeconomic trends. The patterns of exclusion within the symbolic professions, the levels of mistrust many populations feel towards symbolic capitalists as a result of sociological distance (e.g. https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/who-is-vaccine-hesitant-and-why) -- these patterns are now manifesting in who feels supportive of the Democratic Party and who feels alienated therefrom. The story I'm telling is not just, or primarily, a race story. It's a class story. It tracks along racial lines
1. Because of the ways wealth and opportunity have been allocated in the U.S. writ large to date, and
2. Due to the extraordinary and systematic patterns of exclusion within the symbolic professions (despite their emphasis on DEI) that are a product of contemporary behaviors and trends and cannot be well explained as mere products of history (as the book explains at length).
"In fact, a candidate with less baggage would probably be racking up even bigger numbers, especially among whites."
On what do you base this assertion of yours beyond your opinion?
Considering your second paragraph, I would advance that confounding variables are likely to explain the white/non-white distinction (which is indirect and not causal, you saying it is does not amount to anything but your opinion). By the way, confounding variables explaining that are likely to be intersectional (applying to more than one part of a person's identity). The fact that fine-grained analyses show the same trend hint even more to the presence of confounding (and ignored) variables.
I fully agree with you and your third paragraph and all those after that :-). You are exactly right when you say "The story I'm telling is not just, or primarily, a race story. It's a class story. It tracks along racial lines." That is bullseye! Here, you are advancing intersectionality of race and class. That is only the start of the analysis. Gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. are likely to factor in there.
To reiterate, I completely agree with your conclusions, not with (some of) your assessments leading to those conclusion.
An excellent sum-up. I referenced it in an FB post today https://www.facebook.com/awuersch/posts/pfbid02XCCqha4hvzFYPx87WEHpWq2RWJmBFhPSH4hxYy9SCC96FEZZtE3CE9xdphHHaAXEl .
The post covers how Fall River, MA (my home city) is a textbook case of post-industrial neglect and abandonment, and how Massachusetts elected a post-industrial populist (Ed King) as governor in 1979 and then had an election in 1990 (John Silber vs Bill Weld) with a post-industrial vs symbolic capitalist total polarization that's a mirror of what happened in this 2024 US election.
The background is that a large part of Massachusetts, called the Rust Belt, de-industrialized in the mid-20th century as its industries moved to the non-union South. Rust Belt residents eventually became half of the Massachusetts total voting population.
A longer general history of the rise and fall of the huge textile industry in Southeastern Mass is here: https://groundwork.space/boom-and-bust/ Brockton, another large city in Mass, was the world center of shoe manufacture, it experienced a similar fate. What to me is notable is the decades still continuing of neglect and abandonment since. The post-industrial Midwest will probably experience the same.
Finished reading now!
I will skip over the next sections where you set up straw men to destroy them (rightfully so in my opinion, the sections about elites who are only the top of capitalist pyramid, campaign fundings that nobody cares about when voting, third parties and their voters who are inconsequential as always in this electoral system).
What I agree with in your essay are your conclusions about both the backlash to the great awakening and the alienation of the "normies." Those are definite factors in this election cycle, I'd also lump in there your analysis of Harris's campaign decisions leading up to election day.
However, I still think there are two big points missing:
1) populism to reach the alienated "normies" must be done with intentions to actually help said "normies" because Trump and the Republicans are only selling smoke and mirrors. It works because nobody else is doing anything close to that. For example, Democrats go around rooting their own horn about Biden's economy being the best ever for America ... whose America is doing blgreat under Biden's economy? Not the normies' that's for sure.
2) Trump didn't get elected despite Americans like there is a majority of people in this country that are not behind Republicans ideas of division, capitalist exploitation, and false narratives about who is a danger to our democracy. Trump got elected because that is what America is: white supremacist, exploitative, falsely selling a rag to riches idea that has been dead for a long time now, a cheat, and a liar!
Time to open our eyes to who we truly are, time to rip the tape and take a long look at who is living with us and why they think what they think. Nobody is inherently evil or bad, people become those things like they can change if they decide to. However, a political party (not the Democrat or the Republican or any already there) must rise and show the way forward without dissent, hate, or prejudice. That will mean opposite the capital interests as well as the political hegemony in place ...
I agree with point 1. No notes.
Point two, I think we're just in disagreement. Consider the danger to democracy bit: Democrats own polling showed that this is the least persuasive message. Voters weren't casting ballots based on who was a threat to democracy. Again, this isn't how or why most folks vote.
If Democrats really believed that democracy was on the ballot, and that fascism was one election away, they should have focused like a laser on speaking to ordinary people in terms of their own preferences, priorities and concerns. Instead, symbolic capitalists chose to focus on messaging that we found satisfying, to indulgently focus on what we thought of as most important, even when our own data showed that this was not likely to generate the outcome we wanted -- an outcome we described it as existential to achieve.
The conclusion to this comment I agree with wholeheartedly as well. There's a great study by Jacobin + YouGov, Commonsense Solidarity, it showed that most working class voters hate identitarian stuff, not because they dislike minorities, but because they want leaders to look out for everyone. They're looking for appeals to common values, shared goals, superordinate identities.
Likewise, there's tons of data showing that folks can criticize the prevailing order all day, every day and it doesn't matter. People will stick with a status quo, even one they hate, unless there's something better to replace it with. Not lesser of two evils better (in which case they'll stick with the devil they know), but actually better and actually plausible. Put another way, critique doesn't do anything to promote change in the absence of a positive vision. Constructing and building consensus around something else.
Doing this kind of work requires flexing different muscles than symbolic capitalists usually develop, as I explain here (https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/universities-civic-crisis-solutions). But it's super important.
"Voters weren't casting ballots based on who was a threat to democracy."
Yep, on that we agree. I think we don't agree as to how they are actually casting their ballots. I think intersectionality of multiple factors (including class, race, gender, white supremacy, capitalism, etc.), you are thinking class first and foremost, then race (influenced by class) ... and that's it? Honestly, I am not doing a good job at representing your side here so my apologies.
As for the shortcomings of the Democratic party ... preach, brother! I am 100% in agreement with you there. That one is the most powerful statement I've heard on that yet:
"Put another way, critique doesn't do anything to promote change in the absence of a positive vision. Constructing and building consensus around something else."
As always, it's a pleasure to read you, Dr. al-Gharbi, thank you for taking the time to exchange with me today.
Thanks for your great questions and provocations!
I think it's also an intersectional story, but one tied to these broader shifts in the knowledge economy. I think we can understand a lot of electoral trends -- the diploma divide, the urban rural divide, racial dealignment, the gender divide, etc. -- in terms of a more fundamental schism between symbolic capitalists and people who are sociologically distant from us, and who feel excluded from our social order. I view the rise of "populism," tensions over identity politics, the crisis of expertise, and so on as fronts in this broader struggle. So I think we're maybe closer than may have appeared at the outset, although we have some different emphases, etc.
I am definitely making a point to finish your book quickly :-). I was going to, mind you, but I'm working through quite a lot of books at once. Now, I want to read the whole "We've never been woke" to get your whole thesis, fully.
I have just come across your work and this is the first piece I have read. And I’m very glad I did! Your analysis here is quite compelling, although I need to look further into what you mean by “symbolic capitalists,” and other things.
The explanation for Trump’s success that I have been arguing for in my own Substack traces back to, essentially, what became a bi-partisan Neoliberal economic policy consensus that came together around Reaganomics (Trickle-Down Economics”) and in the repeal of Glass-Steagall, etc., — all dedicated to what Michael Alexander (see his Substack, America in Crisis!) calls “Shareholder Primacy.”
The upshot is that both parties came to “exuberantly” embrace this Neoliberal federal policy around prioritization of the enrichment of a relatively small elite, while both parties were effectively indifferent to the devastating consequences this had and continues to have for our working/middle class. The harms of these changes in economic and tax policy is the root cause of the now enormous rift in our society — a deep and painful wound so serious that even a depraved, demented demagogue like Trump has had little trouble exploiting it — with and for ‘blood and money’ — and cult-like adoration.
Trump somehow got this and came into the 2016 race and effectively built a platform around “a plague on both their houses.” He crushed the Republican Party and rebuilt it in his image. And he has dominated our politics ever since.
There are, of course, cultural issues now deeply intertwined with all of this, but Alexander argues that little will change for the Democrats unless or until they effectively renounce and pivot away from neoliberal policy prioritizing elite enrichment and towards national policy focused and incentivized around what he calls “stakeholder primacy” and that I refer to less precisely as economic policies that prioritize more the “common good.”
Anyhow, nice to virtually meet you and I will now spend some time getting to know you better. Thanks!
I'm still reading through it all, done with the second section now about women/men vote. I want to add that although I'm seeing a little bit more intersectional analysis there, it is very lacking everywhere I look for election results analysis: looking at race then gender in isolation isn't going to say anything useful. For example, saying that Harris being a women wasn't the problem this election cycle is ignoring the other side of this election: people were okay with electing a white supremacists, misogynist, rapist, liar, cheater etc. (all have been judicated upon and proven true by law by the way) to the white house over a black women (however bad she was on many issues, I do not contend with that, I agree she is far from the best we could have had, but she is none of the things I listed Trump is though, yet, that didn't matter ... let's analyze that please) --> that is the true intersectionality that needs analyzing here, not just one side at a time.
Furthermore, looking at shifts in numbers/points/percentages isn't likely to be helpful either. We need the effect sizes here! For example, yes women have been registering to vote and showing up at the polls more than man consistently, but saying that hence they control the vote is a stretch when the difference between the two group is only shown as one is above the other consistently. We need to be told by how much and if that is a significant portion of voter likely to make a difference in the election (aka effect sizes).
People don't usually vote for president because they're looking for someone who is a moral exemplar. The kinds of voters who care the most about things like decorum, civility, the president being presidential and virtuous -- those folks have been moving aggressively to Democrats the whole time Trump has been on the ballot: highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban whites. Most other voters aren't looking to hire an angel, they're looking to hire someone that's going to get stuff done for them. And they did not have confidence in Biden and Harris in this respect. And though they had significant concerns about Trump's character -- this is very clear in the polling -- they thought he would actually address their concerns better than Harris.
Symbolic capitalists tend to make voting decisions based on things like, "Is this a good person?" "Are they following the correct rules, norms and procedures?" "Do they check the right symbolic boxes?" Other voters care much less about these things. They tend to vote to solve problems or to accomplish things -- and if they don't think either party is good for addressing their core concerns, they tend to just sit the race out rather than casting votes for the lesser of two evils (while symbolic capitalists tend to vote no matter what, and to vote blue no matter who).
With respect to solving problems, I think there are a few things to bear in mind:
1. Democrats often make strong presumptions about what various groups' interests are. The constituents we're referring to often simply disagree. For instance, Hispanics often support border security. African Americans often have real concerns about public safety and public order, and "law and order" policies appeal to them. But rather than questioning whether we have an accurate understanding of others' interests, we assume that it must be the case that they're misunderstanding their own interests, or otherwise voting against their own interests, so their behaviors are baffling to us. These puzzles become much easier if we make ourselves alive to the possibility that others perceive their interests differently than we do -- and the problem might be with us instead of them.
2. Symbolic capitalists tend to think in intersectional terms -- so we assume if Trump says or does something "bad" with respect to one minority group, most other minorities will recoil alongside them. This is not how most other people think though! Take the Muslim ban -- the sectors of the Democratic coalition that are most supportive of policies like these is *not* whites, it's blacks and Hispanics, who are more likely than whites to be religious, typically Christian, and to view Islam as a false and dangerous religion. If Trump wants to restrict "those people" from coming in, they don't see a problem with it. Likewise, if you look at who in the Democratic coalition is most skeptical of, say, gender affirming care for minors, or teaching content about sexuality in K-12 schools -- that would also be non-whites, religious minorities, and less affluent people -- the very constituents Democrats view themselves as champions of. So this puzzle becomes easier if we understand that most other voters don't think the ways we do, in intersectional terms, etc.
In terms of women and men: this is something the data I shared lets us calculate easily. Let's assume you have 100 prospective voters, 51 women, 49 men (in the overall distribution of people in American society, and most societies, women outnumber men). 70 percent of these women register to vote, and 68 percent of registered women actually show up on election day. For men, 68 percent register to vote, and only 65 percent of them actually show up on election day. (these were the data at the end of the time series in the graphs I shared).
Well, then, what you would see on election day is that a total of 24 women would come out to vote on election day, compared to 22 men. Or, 52 percent of all the people who show up to the polls would be women, while 48 percent of the people who showed up to the polls would be men. If women voted consistently one way, and men another, the women would win election after election. The majority they hold among voters who actually go to the polls is actually bigger than the majority they hold in the population writ large. I calculated this using the last year in the time series. You can use any other year, you get a similar picture. The female vote is objectively more important than the male vote. Women have the capacity to unilaterally decide elections (if they voted as a solid bloc). Men do not. And this has been true in every election since 1976: women have been a decisive majority of voters.
Fully agree with your portrayal of why people vote for president and your points about symbolic capitalists, very saillant and valid.
Now, I'd submit that "intersectionality term" is not "so we assume if Trump says or does something 'bad' with respect to one minority group, most other minorities will recoil alongside them." What you said there is vote by association, not intersectionality.
Intersectionality in the election's context is understanding that people do not vote along one part of their identity but along all of their identity's parts in interaction. It explains exactly what you are saying and what I quoted above.
For example, I'm not surprised by any of the examples of "similarly contradictory votes (poor whites or black or immigrants or whatever else for Trump) because their is always other parts of their identity that explain those decision and those parts are often manipulated and/or at least influenced by the system (capitalistic white supremacy).
Thus, most voters think in term of intersectionality.
Finally, your example along the gender line and the influence of women on election is based on an imaginary world (where all women would vote one way) and I don't deal in imaginary worlds, I remain in reality where you would never see an entire electoral block vote one way (because of intersectionality!). The women vote is not "objectively more important than the male vote" because of intersectionality. Do you see how you are setting this imaginary situation requiring all women to vote one way to say that they are in charge of who gets elected? Now what? This situation will never take place, will never happen. What's the point of basing any analysis on that?
The essay itself stresses this last point explicitly:
"Finally, it should be emphasized, there is a sense in which gender differences are completely overblown in most cycles, including this one. There was a non-trivial gap between men and women in 2024 — albeit not record-breaking. And even the record gap was less than one might assume. There has never been a presidential election in U.S. history where even 60 percent of men voted one way while a similar share of women voted the other. Let alone anything like a 70/30 gender split, or an 80/20 divide. It’s just not the case that men homogenously vote Republican. Nor is it the case that women overwhelmingly vote Democrat. In this race, nearly half of women voted for Trump, while slightly more than half cast ballots for Harris. On the male side, although most voted for Trump, nearly half pulled the lever for Harris. In fact, going back to 1980, there have only been a handful of races where Democrats did better with men than they did in 2024 (namely: Joe Biden last cycle, both contests with Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection bid). Kamala’s performance with men was solid. It was her performance with women that destroyed her prospects."
I don't think we're in disagreement here. I think we might be talking past each other a bit. My point in that section is that, if you have two populations, and one of those populations is larger in absolute terms, is registered to vote at higher levels, and also turns out to vote at higher levels -- such that their share of the electorate is typically even larger than the majority they hold in the population writ large -- this bloc is going to generally be more important for shaping electoral outcomes.
And it would be bizarre if, despite the fact that, on average, 52 out of 100 voters are from one group, almost all of the electoral analysis was focused on the smaller group. And few people really bothered to pay attention how the people in the larger group exercised their agency when they're explaining electoral outcomes.
This would be bizarre. It's also the world in which we actually live. Women are typically a clear majority of Americans who actually cast ballots, but almost all of the analysis on elections is focused on men. And their supposed motives (held to be somehow very different from those of women... more evil and so on... such that women vote for good reasons while men vote based on sexism). I'm saying this is not a good way of understanding society. I don't believe you disagree...
In terms of intersectionality, another place where we're talking past one-another a bit. The way you use intersectionality is the way I think about intersectionality myself (as I emphasize throughout the book). But in the comment here, I was referring to a tendency of progressive activism to view all of these struggles as interconnected and mutually reinforcing (black lives matter is a gay rights issue, environmentalism is a race issue, which is a gay issue, as formally noted) -- such that there is no distinction to be made between them, and the goal is to liberate everyone together all at once. My point is, this isn't how most other people think about politics. Most black people don't think of gay rights as a matter of black emancipation. If anything, they view these forms of morality and discourse as impositions by affluent whites upon people like them. And not entirely wrongly. So this was my point, and here too, I don't think you disagree. It's just, you were using "intersectional" in the way scholars and theorists do, while I was using "intersectional" to refer to this tendency in activism to assume uncritically that all good things go together, without a need to make hard choices or tradeoffs.
Yep, you clarifying those two points did it for me. I agree with you.
I just finished reading the part about racism and I have to say two things:
- one, racism is not skin color, it is a hierarchical system keeping black people at the bottom and white people on top; thus, any analysis that describe racism not a factor because of skin color is missing a big piece of the puzzle (i.e., white supremacy - the systemic impact of racism).
- second, no analysis of the election is legitimate if it only focuses on the points/percentage changes while ignoring the numbers ... I'm not sure how one can ignore the fact that white people have voted Republican en masse while being such a big demographic in this country to only focus on minority vote changes representing slivers of those votes. I agree that said slivers could be enough to sway the election, but that is ignoring the forest for the tree, isn't it?!
Thank you for reading me, back to reading the rest of your analysis.
Cheers,
Luc
The shifts are all that matter. You can only explain change by appeal to things that change. So if we want to understand why a race went one way in 2020 and a different way in 2024, it does no good to look at voters who cast ballots the same way each cycle. It's the people whose voting behaviors shifted who "cause" divergent outcomes from one cycle to the next.
And these weren't marginal shifts. Republicans haven't run up these numbers with many groups in more than half a century. Put another way: the shifts are objectively dramatic, not just relative to last cycle, but to broader social trends.
As it relates to the white voters casting ballots for Republicans en masse -- again, the only group Harris gained with this cycle was whites! She did better with whites across gender lines, even as non-whites across gender lines moved the other direction. She got objectively solid levels of white support, meeting or exceeding most other Democrats over the last half-century, including her immediate predecessor. To understand why 2024 went so different from 2020, you really do have to look at the non-white vote. The white trends would have presaged a Harris victory.
To be clear, I don't disagree that the sifts have to be looked at, I'm saying the effect sizes of those shifts matter more than just the raw numbers. Otherwise, that's just you saying that they matter, not the numbers (that's statistics for you).
Moreover, comparing elections is supposed to achieve what? Biden and Harris, albeit both Democrats, are widely different people. I'm not sure why we expect Biden's (or Hilary's or any other Democrat including Obama's) election results to indicate anything for a new election cycle. We can certainly interpret Trump's numbers because their is a link between the elections ... Trump himself!
Finally, you say the "white" and "non-white" votes like it means anything. Once again, race isn't a skin color (dig into that please). This country is hell bent on ignoring that fact because if not, it would mean looking at our history in the face and that won't be an easy moment for anybody. It would also mean the capitalist class would most likely lose its power (economic and social) so they won't take it lying down ... and they aren't.
There are factors at play going beyond skin color and those factors are numerous (racism, sexism, normism, etc.) while intersectional and applying to both the electorate as well as the candidate, and they interact! One can think about a generalize linear mixed model (glmm) approach if that helps (with fixed, their interaction, and random variables - even if we're more likely to also need other types of analyses here).
But here's the thing: the trend lines precede Trump. This has been a big point of my research. The media focuses on Trump because they're literally obsessed with him (https://musaalgharbi.com/2019/11/13/media-obsessed-trump/), but this isn't really "about" Trump or any unique appeal on his part. In fact, a candidate with less baggage would probably be racking up even bigger numbers, especially among whites.
I say "whites" and "non-whites" as a shorthand, but the essay breaks it down by Hispanic, Asian and Black votes. Incidentally, each of these blocs independently trended the same way, towards the GOP -- even as whites -- unique among ethnic blocs -- went the other way. So the white/ non-white distinction in this case does map on cleanly to what we see when we look at the groups individually. As I showed in this essay. And as I've previously illustrated, you can get even more fine-grained, looking at different Asian subgroups, different Hispanic subgroups -- the trend lines are the same (https://musaalgharbi.com/2020/11/02/understanding-trump-success-minority-voters/2/). Consistent redshift. As I emphasized in this piece, you can look at shifts geographically, and you see areas with heavy concentrations of non-white residents moved far more towards the GOP than any other counties. And this holds regardless of which ethnic bloc you select for.
People say things like "categories don't mean anything" (especially when the folks in those categories behave in inconvenient ways. Other times, we're happy to talk about "POC" : https://musaalgharbi.com/2021/01/05/democrats-learn-2020-race/) -- but the truth is, you can get as far into the weeds as you want, and the picture doesn't change. The Democrats have been seeing losses with all groups but whites. This is true when you look at "whites v. non-whites." This is true when you look at each ethnic bloc individually. This is true when you disaggregate each ethnic bloc into subgroups. There's no way to "complexify" this reality away. It isn't just an artifact of clunky language, it's a persistent shift that has predated Trump and will likely continue after him.
Now, the point in my book, and in essays I've written like this one: https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/contextualizing-the-2024-election
Is that these shifts are tied to broader socioeconomic trends. The patterns of exclusion within the symbolic professions, the levels of mistrust many populations feel towards symbolic capitalists as a result of sociological distance (e.g. https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/who-is-vaccine-hesitant-and-why) -- these patterns are now manifesting in who feels supportive of the Democratic Party and who feels alienated therefrom. The story I'm telling is not just, or primarily, a race story. It's a class story. It tracks along racial lines
1. Because of the ways wealth and opportunity have been allocated in the U.S. writ large to date, and
2. Due to the extraordinary and systematic patterns of exclusion within the symbolic professions (despite their emphasis on DEI) that are a product of contemporary behaviors and trends and cannot be well explained as mere products of history (as the book explains at length).
"In fact, a candidate with less baggage would probably be racking up even bigger numbers, especially among whites."
On what do you base this assertion of yours beyond your opinion?
Considering your second paragraph, I would advance that confounding variables are likely to explain the white/non-white distinction (which is indirect and not causal, you saying it is does not amount to anything but your opinion). By the way, confounding variables explaining that are likely to be intersectional (applying to more than one part of a person's identity). The fact that fine-grained analyses show the same trend hint even more to the presence of confounding (and ignored) variables.
I fully agree with you and your third paragraph and all those after that :-). You are exactly right when you say "The story I'm telling is not just, or primarily, a race story. It's a class story. It tracks along racial lines." That is bullseye! Here, you are advancing intersectionality of race and class. That is only the start of the analysis. Gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. are likely to factor in there.
To reiterate, I completely agree with your conclusions, not with (some of) your assessments leading to those conclusion.
For essays surveying evidence of how Trump's more vile elements are likely a drag on his candidacy, see this essay on the last election: https://musaalgharbi.com/2020/08/06/trump-voters-misunderstood/
And this essay: on the 2022 midterms: https://musaalgharbi.com/2022/11/30/2022-midterms-false-narratives/
There's one on the 2018 midterms too that does a similar dive, but the pattern is consistent and clear across cycles.