It’s education, stupid
Studying The Times’ stats on the midterms, one lesson stands out clearly: It was uneducated, white, older, often Southern men who did not ride the blue wave, who continued to back the Trumpists.
It is time to end government and politics built around this stubborn minority, which amounts to less than a quarter of the adult population across the country. about 10 percent if one adds the South as a factor. It is time to build government around the pluralistic majority.
It is also time for the left in power in states across the country to support and rebuild education. One might argue that the uneducated voted this way because they have harder employment and economic prospects and feel left behind. Maybe. I prefer to think that education itself has salutary effects on citizens, making them less vulnerable to attempts to sway them toward fear, bigotry, and hate because of their ignorance. And so the education I support is not just vocational, it emphasizes the humanities and social sciences: education for education’s sake, widening the mind.
These are the numbers just for voters with no more than a high school education. You will note that every category shifted left. But many categories of voters still stayed behind, in the red:
- men by 9 points,
- white voters by 26 points,
- white men by 34 points,
- white women by 17 points,
- men over age 45 by 7 to 10 points,
- white men over age 45 by 40 points.
- white Southerners by 46 points.
Yes, make gas and groceries cheaper. Get rid of Trump’s tariffs and war if possible. Root out corruption. Release the damned Epstein files. All that.
But first and foremost: Educate, educate, educate.
And so whom does the #BrokenTimes run to talk to today after the great pluralistic election? Old white men in the South.
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