Democracy is closer to its ideal when it is more open, accessible, and representative. However, everyone does not participate equally in politics. Upper-income and more highly educated people are more likely to participate. This is a problem, because in many advanced democracies, it is only the preferences of the wealthiest that are reflected in public policy.1→Larry Bartels, “Political Inequality in Affluent Democracies: The Social Welfare Deficit” (Paper presented at “Democratic Participation—A Broken Promise?” workshop, Villa Vigoni, Italy, March 13–17, 2017).
→Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, 2nd ed. (New York and Princeton, NJ: Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press, 2016).
→Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
→Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12 (2014): 564–581.
How, then, do the voices of others matter in governance?

One solution might be democratic innovations that encourage coalitions among lower-income people. However, many things hinder such coalitions, from people choosing to attend to other aspects of their lives, given the small likelihood that their individual actions will matter,2→Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1958).
→Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965).
to long-standing racism that prevents workers from seeing common cause.3→W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (Harcourt Brace, 1935).
→Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (Oxford University Press, 2004).
→George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).
→David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, new edition (Verso, 2007).

There is yet another barrier: people’s lack of faith in each other. That lack of faith is undoubtedly fed by racism, but knowing that is not enough. We need to know about the contours of this lack of faith in order to address it. In contemporary politics, there is much criticism of lower-income or working-class whites voting for Republican candidates—in other words, supposedly voting against their interests.

But contemporary commentary seldom stops to consider how these voters regard their counterparts on the left.

In this essay, I present the results of an ethnographic study of such views, conducted as part of a larger study of Wisconsin residents.4Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016More Info → In 2007, I began inviting myself into the conversations of people meeting regularly in gathering places such as diners, gas stations, and cafés in 39 groups in 27 communities sampled across the state to represent a wide variety of places.5Extensive details on the methods used for this work are available in Cramer, The Politics of Resentment. I visited these groups repeatedly through 2012, and have returned to groups in rural places in 2016 and 2017.

“People in rural areas perceived that the important decisions affecting their lives were made in the main urban centers, and communicated out to them, with little listening going on in reverse.”

About one year into this fieldwork, it was undeniable that there was a pervasive and intense resentment toward cities. In general, it took the form of people feeling as though they were not getting their fair share of three main things: attention, resources, and respect. People in rural areas perceived that the important decisions affecting their lives were made in the main urban centers, and communicated out to them, with little listening going on in reverse. They also perceived that the state capital (Madison) pulled in their taxpayer dollars, spent them on itself or on the other urban center (Milwaukee), and spent less than it should on their own communities. Finally, they perceived that decision makers had little experience or understanding of rural areas, and did not respect the people living there.

The contours of criticism of left-leaning voters

One of the more common criticisms I have heard of people who voted for Democratic candidates is that they are being fooled.

One group I have spent time with calls themselves the “Downtown Athletic Club.” They are a group of white working and retired men who meet for coffee in a warehouse attached to one member’s business, every weekday morning, in a low-income agricultural hamlet in central Wisconsin. In late January 2017, they complained that Democratic voters are foolishly just voting the party line, a common criticism. One man said it bothered him that a Democratic acquaintance “doesn’t care how the country is going, he’d still vote for another Democrat.”

This criticism is often lobbed at urban voters in particular. I regularly encountered people who told me urbanites may be “well-educated” but have little common sense. One man in a group of men meeting every morning in the town hall of a northern tourist town told me in June 2008, “People go to college, they come out dumber than they went in. They got the books there, those books, it’s not like the experience.”

The criticism of the competence of judgments on the left had other aspects to it too. Some claimed Democrats vote for candidates just because they are African American (as in the case of Barack Obama), or because they are women (i.e., Hillary Clinton). Sometimes the allegation was that Democrats paid too much attention to left-leaning news media.

And, just as Republican supporters are sometimes criticized for voting against their interests, the low-income Trump supporters I have spent time with likewise doubt the validity of the reasons to vote Democratic. In particular, many of them have claimed that people are voting for Democrats just because they want to continue receiving “handouts” from government programs.

For example, three days after the election, I asked the Downtown Athletic Club about their faith in their fellow citizens. Joe said, “[t]he voter base is so screwed up with the giveaway programs because there’s so many of them, and that’s why it’s hard for conservatives like most of us here to break through because they’re, all the devils are voting Democratic because they don’t want to bite the hand that’s feeding them.” His friend Lou added later on, “I think in the cities they have a lot of social programs that they help… A lot of minorities, and that’s to cost them a lot of money. You can’t say they do a lot in roads because when you go to Madison their streets are all terrible. They don’t take care of them because they don’t have any money, I imagine, to do that. They’ve got a lot of other people they’ve got to take care of.” A bit later, John equated working for the government with receiving a handout. “I just think in general, now I don’t know the magnitude of the country, the size of the country, but the government is just growing at such a rapid pace…is it necessary to have that huge body of people working, and I mean with their hand in the pot, in government grabbing a big salary, or a good salary. Do we need all those people on the dole, on the payroll?”

“Recipients of ‘welfare’ were viewed as lazy and therefore undeserving, while government support in the form of workers’ compensation benefits was not a ‘handout.’”

These criticisms of voting merely on the basis of handouts are where we can most clearly see racism working as a wedge between voters. Often the handouts they criticized were associated with people of color. Recipients of “welfare” were viewed as lazy and therefore undeserving, while government support in the form of workers’ compensation benefits was not a “handout.” Whether the driver of their resentment toward these handouts was that the recipients were undeserving, or because they perceived the recipients to be mainly people of color, it is not clear. But, to the extent that racism was a part of these views, it works as an effective deterrent to believing that support for government programs is legitimate.

During the 2016 presidential campaign and in its aftermath, the most intense criticism of “handouts” I heard concerned immigrants. Ben, in the Downtown Athletic Club, was notable in such views:

It’s not the land of the free, it’s the land of the freebie. That’s this country. The people who elected the president [Trump], they are tired of it… You know, we’re tired of the freebie. I’ve got nothing against immigrants, I’ve got nothing against that, but by God you better pay your taxes and be legal here. There’s 13 million people in this nation that just shouldn’t be here. To me, that’s just…I can’t even imagine that, that aren’t paying their fair share.

Many of the Trump voters I have spent time with are aware that many believe a vote for Trump was an endorsement of sexist and morally abhorrent behavior. But some of them view a vote for Hillary Clinton as no different in this respect, and call Clinton voters hypocritical for failing to recognize this. When I asked the Downtown Athletic Club about Trump’s misogynistic comments in the Access Hollywood videotape revealed during the presidential campaign, Fred retorted:

I get a kick out of Ken, our staunch Democrat. When Trump get in there he says, “Oh! I can’t wait until the inauguration when that stripper walks down the aisle at the inauguration!” I’m like, really? That’s any different than the president having sex in the White House with somebody? [pause] That’s better? That’s okay? That’s okay for that to happen? What the hell are you thinking?

I heard nearly identical comments from a group of mainly retired women who meet once a week in a west-central Wisconsin town. In mid-January, they asked me whom I had voted for and I said I had voted for Hillary.

Carrie: Why?

KJC: Because Hillary, I have to say [pause] I did watch the videotape that was released with Trump bragging about grabbing this woman. And I really [pause] I couldn’t get past that. I have a nine-year-old daughter, and…

Gladys: But look at Slick Willie6This is a nickname for former Democratic president Bill Clinton.[…]

Carrie: His choice of words were inappropriate. But we’re all human. Even girls go out and get drunk and have a good time and say things maybe we shouldn’t say in public.

Gertie: Bill Clinton, look at him.

Carrie: They didn’t know that they were being taped. Again, something that happened in 2003 is going to come out now? Yet look at all the stuff Hillary’s done. That just goes underneath the carpet, which is a lot more harmful than what Trump ever said, not that it wasn’t appropriate.

These folks resist the hypocrisy they see among their political opponents. They also resist what they see as intolerance.7Surveys of voting-age US residents show this perception among left-leaning voters toward conservatives (http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-polarized-voters-20160622-snap-story.html); Heather Digby Parton, “Donald Trump and the GOP Base: A Closed Universe of Small-Minded Self-Deception.” Several men in the Downtown Athletic Club put it this way, at the end of January:

Fred: Yeah that’s the thing we’ve noticed, if you get a Republican and a Democrat talking, just talking about it, the Democrat seems like they just go ballistic over the top. Doesn’t matter what you say, you’re just totally wrong. Won’t even allow you to listen. Won’t even allow himself to listen to what you have to say.

Lou agreed, explaining that Democrats “say I should be tolerant but they’re not tolerant of anything. If I don’t agree with them, they’re not tolerant.”

Similarly, the women in the lunch group said they avoided talking about politics with people in their extended families who supported Obama or Clinton. “This is why I don’t discuss politics, because I’m not going to get scolded for how I think,” Gladys said, “‘Who do you think you are telling me that I’m wrong and you’re right?’” These Trump voters were critical of the quality of Democrats’ political judgments, but they were also critical of the Democrats’ tactics.

At the end of January, visiting with the Downtown Athletic Club, I found the group to be highly critical of the Women’s March that took place the day after the presidential inauguration, questioning the marchers’ expectations or goals. “I think they’re dumb,” Lou said. “Wasting their time and money, they’re not going to change anything. They won’t change anything.

Several months earlier, on the Friday after the election, they also criticized people protesting Trump’s win. They have been highly critical of protests in general, including Black Lives Matter, wondering aloud why people would think it would make a difference and wondering how anyone who was a hard worker could carve out time to participate. They perceived protests were manufactured through bussing people in to “create chaos.”

A bleak picture of the potential for democratic innovation among ordinary citizens

The picture rural Trump voters paint of their liberal urban counterparts, revealed in these conversations, is not a positive one. Their comments contain extensive doubts about the quality of reasoning among their political opponents, and the effectiveness of their tactics.

These views alone pose a significant challenge to the task of encouraging people in a democracy to work together in ways that enhance democracy for all. They convey a significant lack of trust and respect in people on the other side of the political divide.

The conversations also remind us an even more troubling set of barriers: racism, nationalism, and xenophobia. Part of the distrust and disrespect that shows up in these comments is an intense resistance to recognizing the equality of all people. While not representative, these conversations are, at a minimum, a caution against crafting democratic innovations that require joint buy-in from people with opposing political views.

Stridently different points of view toward the role of government are themselves one barrier to democratic innovation. But the skepticism about the basic judgment of people who support innovation via the government is perhaps an even more daunting hurdle.

“The people I have encountered in my fieldwork have been telling me for nearly a decade that their opinions do not matter, that they are overlooked and ignored by the political process.”

Perhaps these conversations are reason to rethink the notion that the most effective or feasible democratic innovation can occur at the level of the ordinary citizen. The people I have encountered in my fieldwork have been telling me for nearly a decade that their opinions do not matter, that they are overlooked and ignored by the political process. In many ways they are right.8Bartels, Unequal Democracy; Gilens, Affluence and Influence; Gilens and Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics.” Perhaps our desire for democratic innovation should not focus on perspectives and preferences among ordinary members of publics, but should instead focus on the powerful elite who actually influence the shape of our institutions.

In other words, this analysis further supports the arguments Chris Achen and Larry Bartels make in Democracy for Realists.9Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016More Info → They show us the very difficult truth that the folk theorem of democracy, in which “good citizens would engage in thoughtful monitoring of their government…[d]emocratic norms would be enforced by the shared values of an enlightened populace…and [a] government derives its just powers not merely from the consent of the governed, but from their political judgments,”10Ibid., 297. does not capture actual human behavior in democracies, and is not possible for even the most sophisticated and politically aware to achieve.

That heavily empirically supported conclusion is itself daunting. But perhaps most troubling is this claim:

Especially at the state level, proponents of mind-numbing clichés about giving power to ordinary people bear considerable responsibility for the domination of government by narrowly self-interested groups. In reforming government, good intentions and high-sounding rhetoric are not enough. In the end, it is the folk theory that props up elite rule, and it is unrepresentative elites that most profit from convenient justifications it provides for their activities.11Ibid., 327.

We have seen in this essay that people in the public have the folk theorem in mind when they judge their fellow citizens. Their disdain for others is not assisted by using this folk theorem as a standard. It gives them justification for turning away from those they disagree with, and tuning out from paying close attention, which enables those with the reins to continue to make policy that does little to improve their lives.

References:

1
→Larry Bartels, “Political Inequality in Affluent Democracies: The Social Welfare Deficit” (Paper presented at “Democratic Participation—A Broken Promise?” workshop, Villa Vigoni, Italy, March 13–17, 2017).
→Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, 2nd ed. (New York and Princeton, NJ: Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press, 2016).
→Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
→Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12 (2014): 564–581.
2
→Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1958).
→Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965).
3
→W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (Harcourt Brace, 1935).
→Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference (Oxford University Press, 2004).
→George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).
→David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, new edition (Verso, 2007).
4
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016More Info →
5
Extensive details on the methods used for this work are available in Cramer, The Politics of Resentment.
6
This is a nickname for former Democratic president Bill Clinton.
7
Surveys of voting-age US residents show this perception among left-leaning voters toward conservatives (http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-polarized-voters-20160622-snap-story.html); Heather Digby Parton, “Donald Trump and the GOP Base: A Closed Universe of Small-Minded Self-Deception.”
8
Bartels, Unequal Democracy; Gilens, Affluence and Influence; Gilens and Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics.”
9
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016More Info →
10
Ibid., 297.
11
Ibid., 327.