The real reason working-class whites continue to support Trump

By Jonathan Capehart June 6

“Donald Trump has become a white working-class symbol because he is the one who has returned them to prominence in American politics.”

Unlike anyone I’ve read or talked to since the November election, Justin Gest has helped me to really understand why President Trump won white working-class voters and hasn’t thus far lost their support. In the latest episode of “Cape Up,” we discuss the George Mason University professor’s new book, “The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality”
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“So much of Donald Trump’s politics is symbolic,” Gest explained. “They’re symbolic in the sense that this is what people want to hear and if it doesn’t get done, it’s almost beside the point because he’s elevating the prerogatives of his constituents to the national stage after having been relegated to the fringes of American politics for decades.”

{Working-class whites can’t handle their status as ‘the new minority’}

“When Donald Trump went up in Cleveland and said messianically,’I am your voice,’ that’s precisely what people heard,” Gest continued. “The sense of having a voice suddenly, after feeling voiceless for so long is powerful. It’s not in their cultural interests to vote against him, no matter how little he has delivered to actually help them in any kind of material way.”
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Jonathan Capehart is a member of the Post editorial board and writes for the PostPartisan blog. Subscribe to his podcast Cape UP, available on iTunes and Stitcher. Follow @capehartj