WASHINGTON - Nov. 7, 2020 - Although Joe Biden won, the closeness of his victory should again remind politicians of what they should have learned in 2016 - that White Working Class [WWC] voters, the only cohort for whom life expectancy is rapidly declining, have more political clout than many others, and has important needs that must be addressed by Biden and others, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.
Although it's widely accepted that the intelligentsia - professors, pollsters, prognosticators, and politicians - grossly underestimated the strong discontent, resentment, and even despair of the WWC in the 2016 presidential election, today's vote tallies - including seats lost by the Democrats in the House, and failure to win a commanding lead in the Senate - show that President Trump did far better than most had predicted and suggest that the misunderstanding continues, argues Banzhaf.
In his widely reported controversial analysis of Trump's surprise win in 2016, Professor Banzhaf suggested that a new field - White Working Class Studies - should be established, just as many if not most universities have studies, classes, and even professors of African American Studies, Hispanic Studies, LGBTQ studies, etc.
As those frequently-asked questions suggest, in many cases the problem goes beyond merely a failure to understand, which has been called "class cluelessness," and becomes a "class callousness" of a kind likely to lead to the strong resentment which put Trump in office in 2016, and caused him to do much better in 2020 than most expected.
The apparently result of neglecting the needs and concerns of the WWC have been stark and dramatic. While life expectancy has continued to rise for virtually all other population groups - including African Americans, Hispanics, white Americans with 4-year degrees, and even the WWC in other countries - it has now fallen for several years in a row for WWC Americans.
The reasons were spelled out and well documented in the book "Deaths of Despair" which reported that deaths - all preventable - from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related disease among middle-aged white men and women skyrocketed from 30 per 100,000 in 1990 to 92 per 100,000 in 2017.
Perhaps, if politicians and government officials finally begin to understand and appreciate how important this group is to winning elections, a point driven home again by this election, they will begin paying more attention to the problems which drive them - unlike all other groups - to die from diseases of despair, and fashion programs which will be effective in addressing their unique problems, suggests Banzhaf.
http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf
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