America Divided!
As I write this column two weeks before Election Day, pollsters have declared that the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is too close to call.
But even before votes are counted and the winner declared, it is important to understand why it is that millions of Americans are voting for an individual whose character, misogyny and authoritarianism manifestly make him unfit to serve as President. Or as the New York Times columnist David Brooks rhetorically asks, “Why the Heck Isn’t She [Harris] Running Away with it?”
In the political science literature, Trump’s strength is seen as having its source in the shift from the Democratic to the Republican Party by less-educated Americans. As explained by David Hopkins, the co-author with Matt Grossmann of Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, this movement occurred in reaction to Democrats’ acceptance of “the values and priorities and governing styles favored by the well-educated.” Hopkins points to examples such as “changing racial and gender norms …acceptance of alternative identities, [and] the secularization of the American public.” By rejecting these and other changes, Trump was able to transform the Republican Party, and in so doing he made it more attractive to Americans with less than a college education. Hopkins maintains that, with Trump as its leader, the Republican Party came to define itself “…as an anti-elite party, including an anti-intellectual and anti-expert party.”
This description of the country’s recent political realignment is accurate. But it neglects the reality that at least some of the animus directed to Democrats as the embodiment of cultural liberalization was rooted in the increasingly difficult economic conditions experienced by the non-college segment of the American population. The anti-elite rhetoric of the Republican Party resonated with a population that was experiencing hard times in the midst of affluence.
Recent studies of mortality in the United States by Anne Case and Angus Deaton vividly capture the scale of those hard times. As they explain, “an examination of the mortality gaps between more- and less-educated Americans can tell us how the US economy is performing, not just on average but for the majority of its population, those without a college degree.”
Case and Deaton compare differences in life expectancy between Americans who have secured a four-year college degree (about one-third of the population) and those who have not (roughly two thirds of the population). As would be anticipated in a developed country, both educational groups experienced increases in their life expectancy between 1992 and 2010, though it was the case that the increase was greater for more highly educated Americans. Between 2010 and 2019, life expectancy continued to increase for the highly educated. Tragically however, this progress did not extend to non-college graduates. By 2021, their life expectancy was actually lower than it had been almost in 1992 – three decades earlier.
During the Covid years, death rates for both groups increased. Again however, non-college graduates suffered more. According to Case and Deaton, death rates “rose markedly more rapidly for the less educated.” By 2021, the mortality gap between the two groups had expanded to an astounding 8.5 years. Furthermore, as compared to other developed countries, Case and Deaton’s research shows that “the United States appears to be the only wealthy country where life expectancies are trending in different directions, one up and one down.”
Who then bears responsibility for this shameful decline in life expectancy among the country’s less well-educated population? The answer is that both major political parties are complicit. In the years covered by Case and Deaton’s study, the White House was home to four presidencies – two Democratic (Clinton and Obama) and two Republican (Bush and Trump). But neither successfully intervened to close the growing gap in life expectancy.
With that the case, it is not hard to understand why the victims of this neglect became alienated from conventional mainstream parties. They came to believe that Donald Trump’s hostility to cultural liberalism signaled his identification with them. They believed that he would address their needs. But they were sadly mistaken.
If Trump is victorious in 2024, it goes without saying that he will fail (as before) to provide any effective response to the devastation revealed by Case and Deaton. But the fact is that based on past evidence, it is hard to be convincing that a Democratic victory would be sufficient to reverse the damage done to less well-educated Americans. That would require the Party to change; to stretch to address the needs of those who do not share its cultural consensus. Difficult though it may be, that is precisely what is needed in order to reverse the disgraceful decline in life expectancy of less-educated Americans.
About The Author: Jay Mandle is the Emerita W. Bradford Wiley Professor of Economics, Emeritus,at Colgate University. His many books include Change Elections to Change America: Democracy Matters Students In Action, and Creating Political Equality: Elections As a Public Good,. Mandle’s regular monthly editorials, Money On My Mind, appear on the Democracy Matters website, and explore the role of private money in politics and other critical social issues.
The views expressed in Money On My Mind are those of the author, (not necessarily those of Democracy Matters, and are meant to stimulate discussion.