Bob Ehrlich: The Deplorables, Clingers & Chumps Are About To Shout 'We. Count. Too.'
OK, George Washington defeated the Brits; Truman beat Dewey; Trump beat Clinton; Appalachian State beat Michigan; the Jets beat the (Baltimore) Colts; Douglas beat Tyson; Chaminade beat Virginia; and the U.S. (miracle) beat the Soviets.
Monumental upsets all. Heavy favorites lost; the smart money had it wrong.
I know, Trump vs. Biden is not quite the same. An incumbent president has serious resources at his disposal — just check out the recent miles logged on Air Force One. Still, the width, depth and reach of the interests in opposition to the 45th president is quite impressive.
How impressive?
Well, start with the power, influence and money of a united Democratic Party, big-city newspapers, the big four broadcast networks, two out of three of the major cable news networks (except Fox), public broadcasting, Hollywood, Broadway, professional sports leagues, the foreign policy establishment, Big Tech, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, teachers unions, the reliably progressive public college and university professorate, most other public employee unions, the billionaire class, and NeverTrumpers of all stripes.
These combined forces account for the vast majority of the publicly consumed media and politically influential groups in the U.S. Their total monetary contributions to Biden, Inc. to date is somewhere north of a billion dollars. And still the race is dangerously close. What gives?
The answer is both obvious and more nuanced than you might think.
And it’s not just the rage of the woke mob, or the greed of China-focused big business, or the near-religious convictions of the climate activists, or the uber-left tilt of teachers unions, or the anti-sovereignty cries of the open borders crowd, or the determination of secularists to remove religious liberty from the public domain, or the willingness of academics to suppress free speech on campus, or the desire of careerists to get “their” establishment back.
It’s actually much larger than all of this — and more dangerous. It’s about a subpopulation long ignored (or misconstrued) by the powers that be.
President Obama disparaged them as “clinging to guns or religion.”
Hillary Clinton labeled them a “basket of deplorables.”
Eminent historian Jon Meacham called them “anguished, nervous” white men with a “lizard brain.”
Joe Biden just called them “chumps.”
Seems just about every notable lefty has a favorite pejorative or dismissive phrase aimed at minimizing the 63 million voters who supported Donald J. Trump in 2016 — and still do today.
And at the very foundation of this rhetoric is a visceral condescension toward average Americans and their values. Seems there are just too many lizard brains preoccupied with making a living, raising their kids, paying their bills and hoping that the elites might someday make better decisions when it comes to the best interests of middle America.
It is true that a disproportionate number of these disfavored voters lack advanced degrees. Many do not possess undergraduate degrees either. But they are not dumb. They work hard. More than a few still work with their hands. And they do not appreciate condescending dismissals from the “let ‘em eat cake” crowd.
And they like it when an outsider shakes things up, questions the status quo, degrades the establishment and stands up for their slice of America.
Moreover, les misérables are sharp enough to see that people who have been in public office for fifty years have not one ounce of understanding as to how to run a business, make a profit or create a single job. They have seen too many manufacturing jobs dry up and disappear — often because not enough people in Washington, D.C., thought about them.
Today, they see economically ignorant political leaders who blithely say “close the economy down” in their city, state or country. They also stand by the blue and wonder how “defund the police” could ever gain cultural acceptance. But most of all, they hate being told whom to vote for by people who send their kids to elite schools, live in gated communities and enjoy armed security but wish to eliminate security for their “lessers.”
A quick glance at NBA, MLB and Oscar ratings may have begun to bring the point home to the woke owners and cultural elitists along the coasts. The “flyovers” (yes, the ones you see lining the streets whenever you-know-who is in town for a rally) may yet again remind the elite that They. Do. Count.
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