Taking Trump voters seriously

“Trump supporters are bigots and racists and seem to have gone crazy”—so they say. That may be true of some of them, but it cannot be true of all of them, and not even of most of them. When one-third of a major political party throws its support to a flame-throwing boor like Donald Trump, it is wise to hear them out and take them seriously. “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to show anger” (James 1:19). Something’s going on, and political leaders need to listen sympathetically.

Election after election, these people have seen their jobs disappear, while those who pledged to defend their interests have taken care of the donor class ahead of them. Free trade was supposed to be good for America, but while the economy is working for someone, it’s not working for the people who now live from paycheck to paycheck and for whom a major car repair is a body blow.

People have been quietly irate at our porous borders that allow people of who-knows-what intention into the country. People also see lost jobs and lost loved ones to violent criminals. We can’t keep them out and we can’t get rid of them once they’re in.

Our current president seems more concerned about what international Islam thinks of us than what we think of our vulnerability to Islamic terrorism. Trump voters see a harmless 10-year-old girl traumatized by an extensive pat down at the airport while 95 percent of weapons pass unnoticed through screening. And when they complain, they’re called beastly names, told to be quiet, and treated as though they are the real public enemies.

This is madness to them. No one’s looking out for them, and someone’s getting rich or powerful—or both—from advancing their own interests in these matters over the interests of the ordinary people they’re supposed to serve. Peggy Noonan calls this political, economic, and social elite “the protected class.” They have no contact with the rest of us, “the unprotected class,” and thus no real sympathy. We have believed their promises for a long time but received only ballooning deficits, stagnating incomes, cultural bullying, and legally unregulated demographic displacement.

A lot of decent people are looking past what others abhor in Trump to his kick-butt readiness to defend them morally against charges of bigotry, economically against industrial globalists, and personally against whatever strolls into the country. You don’t hire a hit man for his moral pedigree. Their hopes are, however, entirely misplaced in this man, as he is every bit a part of the protected governing class—in his case, the crony capitalist wing—and gives us no evidence he will use his independence from donors to serve us rather than his own fortune.

Donald Trump may not get the Republican nomination. He needs a majority of delegates, but almost all his primary wins have come with only 30 to 40 percent support, earning delegates proportionately. If the nominee is someone other than Trump, that standard-bearer can avoid a tragic split in the party only if he can understand and convincingly address the deep concerns of Trump’s constituency. If one-third of the party is upset at something, we need to listen.