The Great Revolt review: Trump-approved study of 2016 is key reading for Democrats

Between November 2007 and late 2016, white Americans lost more than 700,000 jobs. Seemingly oblivious to that reality, on the manicured lawns of Martha’s Vineyard, Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills Hillary Clinton repeatedly shared that a chunk of Donald Trump’s base was irredeemably deplorable. Only when Clinton was busted for repeating that same line at a Wall Street fundraiser did she bother to feign remorse.

The powder that exploded on election day 2016 was all around. But it took Donald Trump to light the match, and few were prepared for the ensuing conflagration. The industrial midwest, the Democrats’ famed blue wall, collapsed. A segment of the electorate that had cast its lot with Barack Obama, together with others who had never before voted, propelled Trump to the White House.

The Great Revolt, co-authored by Salena Zito and Brad Todd and subtitled Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics, strives to make sense of what happened 18 months ago. In large measure it succeeds. Through multiple interviews and targeted polling, the authors paint a portrait of Trump’s base that is not standard GOP-issue, and a Democratic party overly reliant upon its upstairs-downstairs bicoastal coalition.

Not surprisingly, Trump has already tweeted hosannas for the book. His endorsement should not deter anyone from reading it. The authors convincingly capture the anger and angst that helped upend conventional wisdom.

To be sure, Zito and Todd are conservatives. Zito is a commentator and opinion writer. Todd is in the business of campaigns. His client roster has included the National Rifle Association and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Indeed, the book highlights the role of guns and the NRA in motivating Trump’s supporters. Todd also admits that during the GOP primaries he repeatedly and mistakenly prophesied the demise of Trump’s campaign.

Like Clinton, Zito and Todd have their own taxonomy of Trump’s core. It is far kinder and more accurate. In their telling, Trump’s support ran the gamut from blue-collar voters and the once down-and-out to churchgoers and “silent suburban moms”. According to their numbers, in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin more than half of Trump voters had incomes under $75,000.

Significantly, Zito and Todd stress the personal connection between Trump and his supporters, something Clinton failed to achieve. “MAGA” was more than just a slogan; it was the credo for Trump’s backers whose commitment to their candidate is depicted as deeply personal and almost unbreakable.

A resident of Fort Madison, Iowa, is quoted as saying that the “only person that is able to turn me against Trump is Trump”. In north-east Ohio, a denizen of hard-hit Ashtabula county tells the authors: “So to ask me what would extricate me from Trump would be like asking me to remove me from myself, from my family, and from my community.”

The issues that resonated most with Trump’s swing state backers were restoring manufacturing jobs, protecting Medicare and social security and appointing conservatives to the supreme court. According to one interviewee, Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement, “is no longer an acronym – it’s a noun, and a profanity”.

In contrast to the hostility of the GOP’s donor base to entitlements, Trump’s voters were keen on government programs that were the earned reward for a lifetime of work. As for a wall with Mexico, it actually was a distant fourth.

But it wasn’t only about the issues. Trump’s mien and message were key. A voter from Macomb county, Michigan, the one-time home of Reagan Democrats, put it this way: Trump was “his own person, with his own style”. A blue-collar Trump backer from Wisconsin similarly observed, the “one thing you saw with Trump is that he didn’t pretend to be anything but himself”. However crude and volatile, authenticity mattered.

Yet one word trumped all others: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Trump voters nursed a sense of grievance that Clinton and the Democrats could neither salve nor satisfy. In the end, Democratic emphasis on credentialism and social issues came with a price.

To be sure, Zito and Todd pull some punches. Most glaringly, they discount the role of race in the race, with not a word about Pepe the Frog, Charlottesville and Trump’s reluctance to distance himself from David Duke. Similarly, they ignore the fact that Trump’s margin among white voters was actually 1% greater than Ronald Reagan’s in his 1984 landslide over Walter Mondale.

Focusing on Trump’s electoral coalition, The Great Revolt downplays the fact that Hillary Clinton’s margin in the popular vote, 2.86m, nearly matched the magnitude of George W Bush’s win in 2004. More glaringly, the authors fail to address another reality: that the GOP has now lost the popular vote in six of the past seven elections even as it has won electoral vote three times, raising questions about the legitimacy of the process if the trend persists.

What comes next is unclear. After Richard Nixon eked out a whisker-thin win in 1968, he went all out to woo voters across the aisle and was rewarded with a landslide in 1972. From the looks of things, Trump is either uninterested or incapable of such a reach.

As for the Democrats, they have shown a willingness to back moderates when faced with the task of capturing a House or Senate seat, as in the cases of Conor Lamb in western Pennsylvania and Doug Jones in Alabama. The larger issue is whether they are capable of wooing marginal Democrats and swing voters in 2020. The Great Revolt doesn’t answer these questions, but it definitely provides food for thought.