Studying The Times’ stats on the midterms, one conclusion stands out clearly: It was uneducated, white, older, often Southern men who did not ride the blue wave, who continued to back the Trumpists. Out of that, I see two lessons: the need to support a pluralistic society and education.
It is time to end government and politics built around this stubborn minority of old white men, a demographic that 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 instead around the pluralistic majority that won this election.
Here, from my book The Gutenberg Parenthesis is sociologist William Kornhauser’s definition of a pluralistic society — apt guidance for us today:
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 towIt 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, ennobling the individual.
Here are the numbers from The Times’ analysis focusing just on voters with no more than a high school education. You will note that every category shifted left. But majorities in 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. Get ready to expand the Supreme Court. Impeach half the executive branch. All that.
But first and foremost: Educate, educate, educate.
Even as I celebrate the emergence — the victory — of our pluralistic society in this election, The Times has twice in a week dismissed “identity politics,” arguing that if candidates don’t say “vote for me because I’m a ____”, it’s dead. This is willful blindness on the part of The Times, a profoundly conservative (not Republican) institution that defends status quo power and institutions such as itself. Still, The Times itself cannot stop covering its vision of identity politics, showing its priorities and worldview. Whom does the #BrokenTimes rush talk to after this great pluralistic election? The great variety of voters who won? No, old white men in the South:
Let’s be clear about one thing: Black voters saved Democracy’s ass. If the Democrats don’t use their power to assure voting rights and erase the Republicans’ racist policies, they will have every right to say, “Next time’s on you all.”
