White Working Class Explains Clinton’s Loss?  Give Me a Break!

Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss to Donald Trump demands explanation, in the way nature abhors a vacuum.  The pundit class rushes to fill the void.

An explanation preferred by some—especially among older white male columnists: she lost “the white working class.”

Before that gambit freezes into conventional wisdom, let’s take it apart. I fear we have not a bona fide explanation, but ideological code switching—a tendentious argument masquerading as data-driven fact.

Let’s start at the beginning: Hillary Clinton won … the vote. She lost the election fair and square, under the Electoral College rules in force, but it is important to remember that she got more votes than Donald Trump.  Over a million more votes, it appears.  She beat him almost 2 to 1 in California, by better than 3 to 2 in New York and Massachusetts, and by better than 500,000 votes in New Jersey and Illinois.

I guess there aren’t many white working class voters in South Boston anymore?  No white working class left in New Jersey? Every member of the working class in California is now a person of color?

You see the problem. “White working class” sounds so much better than other factual descriptions of where Clinton did poorly:

1. Decaying Rust Belt towns
2. Rural whites
3. Uneducated white males
4. Old white guys

None of these equally factual descriptions of the vote have quite the same connotations as “white working class.” Roll it over your tongue:

1. The Heartland
2. Salt of the earth
3. Real Americans
4. Hard-working, unassuming folk, striking a blow against effete intellectual snobs

“Old white guys with no education and less couth” doesn’t have the same ring. “Revenge of the sundown towns” is not a rally cry. “Male patriarchy strikes back” won’t do.

But facts are facts: Hillary ran behind in particular counties in the upper Midwest and along the Ohio River valley—the kind of place that many a young person with ambition leaves, for California or New York.

By contrast, she racked up incredible margins in places that draw educated youth. She knocked it out of the park where women are professionals, and minorities make good money.

Class is not a regional or geographical idea. “White working class” cannot explain why Hillary won the vote but lost the election.

The correct explanation has to have a geographical component.