The Point of No Return

January 16, 2023
In this data-driven essay collection, New York Times columnist Edsall (The Age of Austerity) sheds light on shifting voter demographics before, during, and after Donald Trump’s presidency. Contending that partisan realignment sparked by the civil rights movement (working-class whites without college degrees became increasingly Republican, leaving the Democratic agenda to be set by the “knowledge class”) paved the way to Donald Trump’s presidency, Edsall presents data showing an increasing correlation since the 1960s between voters’ attitudes toward race, gender, and sexuality and their party affiliation. Analyzing Trump’s march toward securing the Republican nomination in 2016, Edsall claims that rural and working-class voters were motivated by the same forces they had been in 2010 and 2014—anger at the “undeserving rich” and the “undeserving poor.” In a 2018 column, Edsall writes that Trump “appears to be gambling that letting those voters’ lives continue to languish will work to his advantage in 2020.” Skillfully parsing polls, Census Bureau statistics, and other data sources, Edsall provides essential context for understanding blue counties that went red in 2016, how an influx of wealthy voters has remade the Democratic Party, and why Trump made gains among Latino voters in 2020. Wonky yet accessible, this is a valuable guide to America’s political landscape.

April 1, 2023
A journalist with a penchant for political economics delivers a series of sharp judgments on the conditions that made Donald Trump possible. "The Trump era is not over yet--forewarned is forearmed." So writes Edsall in this collection of opinion pieces from the New York Times, beginning in 2015. While it seems clear that the author is no fan of Trump's, he takes an evenhanded approach in his analysis of events. For one thing, he notes, Trump took about the same share of White voters as did Mitt Romney four years earlier, but that White constituency was very different: "Trump won non-college-educated whites by 14 points more than Romney, a modern-day record." Moreover, Edsall notes, the Whites Trump won were largely blue collar and lived in the Rust Belt, states that Obama had carried against Romney. Not coincidentally, Trump won among lower-income Whites, as well, who had suffered economically for any number of reasons--not least of them, Edsall observes, free trade with China, which had offshored many jobs. Given current tensions with China, that may change. In any event, the author notes that the Democratic Party once positioned itself as the champion of working-class people but has attracted and served wealthier voters--even as, Edsall observes in a typically statistics-dense op-ed, the share of gross national product held by Democratic districts had increased to 63.6% by 2019. All of this speaks to a central truth about Trump. "Because the viewpoint he represents is now so widespread, he is in one sense personally irrelevant--a symptom rather than a cause," writes the author. One manifestation of that viewpoint is the polarization that Edsall bravely quantifies, and another is a campaign of Republican legislative efforts aimed at voter suppression, "a strategy more dangerous than the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists who sought by violent means to block the orderly transition from one president to another." Political trend watchers and history buffs alike will benefit from Edsall's insights.

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