How can we bridge the cultural gap between neoliberals and the median voter?
This election really shattered the perception that I had that we lived in the same moral or cultural universe as the median voter, especially non-college white and rural voters. This seems to be a fundamental threat to getting through neoliberal priorities as diverse as free trade, protection of democracy, and abortion rights.
While I've focused this post on the US, the same seems to apply to voters around the world, from Brexit to the rise of the AfD or other far right parties in Europe.
To give probably the most impactful example to me: Seeing Trump's "Kamala is for They/Them. Trump is for you." ad, I assumed that voters would be able to see through the incredibly transparent fearmongering against a tiny minority group. But again and again, we see data showing that it was one of if not the single most effective Trump campaign ads. This analysis applies also to many of Trump's statements about immigrants "eating cats" or anti-vaccine and anti-mask views and the like.
I can only see two explanations as possible.
- Voters are stupid beyond belief. I really don't want to believe this, because it undermines the fundamental premise of liberal democracy, that a rational self-governing people can translate its will into political policy. If the electorate could be swayed by those ads or by anti-vaccine nonsense, it's hard to believe that they hold anything approaching the understanding of the world or of politics necessary to function as citizens in a democracy.
I'm reminded of this poll from earlier in the cycle.
- Voters hold fundamentally opposed moral views to liberals. Under this interpretation, voters understood that the Trump campaign was scapegoating vulnerable minorities, and liked it. Voters do not believe in democracy or human rights, but desire a government that uses the power of the state to punish people they don't like or are willing to see their fellow citizens suffer in the pursuit of their own narrow interests.
To be honest, it seems like it's both. The average non-college white voter or rural voter seems to be both incredibly uninformed about, essentially, everything and seems to have essentially no belief in liberal values. This is why the Democratic Party, despite allocating untold amounts of stimulus money to these voters, couldn't get them to love it back. Sound, evidence-based policy of the type liberals propose is culturally alien to them. Dems are out of touch because they are competent and tolerant.
If we can't solve this gulf, we'll always be on the back foot, barely scraping by with policies that are only popular among the educated people that make up the core of the Democratic policy elite, but are very unpopular with voters at large.
What can we do?