James Tulp reviews The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics by Salena Zito. Mr. Tulp is a radio talk show host at WYAB-FM, 103.9. His show appears Monday through Friday at 7:00 AM.
The Great Revolt’ Review: An Answer to Hillary’s ‘What Happened’
85%, 91%, 98%
These were the odds on November 7, 2016 that Hillary Clinton would win the election by the New York Times, CNN, and the Huffington Post, respectively.
How did so many political experts get it so wrong?
One of the few political journalists who correctly predicted the outcome of the 2016 election was Salena Zito, author of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.
Zito explores Trump’s creation of a brand new coalition consisting of surprising bedfellows such as lifelong Democrats, populists, secular conservatives, and evangelicals. Through her research, she finds that Trump’s campaign was less about right vs left as it was inside vs outside, and the fact that most pollsters and pundits were (and are) oblivious to his appeal proved the point further.
As far as 2016 election analyses go, The Great Revolt goes much deeper than the left’s intellectually lazy “whitelash” or conspiratorial “Russia” explanations, and deeper still than the anti-Trump conservative’s dismissal that the only reason Trump won was because Hillary was not a formidable candidate. Zito attempts to understand the Trump voter in a way that few journalists are willing to do.
Throughout the book, Zito consistently dismantles widespread explanations for why certain people voted for Trump. For example, the idea that working class whites who voted for Trump were acting out of anger is proven false. Of the “Red Blooded and Blue Collared” archetype, 84% were optimistic about their own future financial situation. This key fact was missed by most analysts who derided the “angry white men” and perfectly matches Trump’s optimistic and forward-looking slogan, “Make America Great Again”.
Zito used electoral data and shoe leather reporting in five key states- Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa- all states that voted for for Trump in 2016 after voting for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. How do you explain the millions of people who voted for Obama and Trump? Rather than just regurgitating the same polls that circulate the Beltway, Zito was willing to do something her colleagues in journalism weren't- listen to the people.
What’s fascinating about this book is that it becomes remarkably predictable about halfway through. It seems the same story gets told over and over again in different places, for different reasons: all the jobs are gone in a run-down town in a county that hasn’t voted Republican in decades, but feels abandoned by the Democrat party. Then Trump comes along and connects with the people in a way no politician ever has. The book seems almost redundant by the end, but perhaps that just means the real surprise was that so few people saw this coming. It was there for anyone willing to look.
The Great Revolt is useful for anyone interested in learning about the people so often overlooked or misrepresented in the media: Trump supporters. Understanding these people is the key to understanding the future of American politics. Is Trump’s new fusion of populism with conservatism here to stay? Will this book tell the story of just one election, or will it represent a movement that goes well beyond?
We’ll have a better idea after the midterms, but one thing is for sure- the people who were ignored in 2016 are still being overlooked today. These same people have a starring role in Salena Zito’s The Great Revolt.
The Great Revolt is available at Amazon.
320 pages
Kindle: $14.99
Hardcover: $16.45
3 comments:
The left leaning pollsters, media, and punsters suffer from CONFIRMATION BIAS. Look it up.
My instincts are telling me this election is similar to 2016 and the predictors are off again. We will know 2 weeks from tonight (I Hope) and the tale will be told. No doubt, Mississippi will go Republican in most cases and as far as Republicans it will be Hyde-Smith over McDaniels.
Hinds County is harder to predict but I believe Matt Allen and Judge Jeff Weill will win. Hoping for anyone other than Crystal Martin. She was terrible at the County and has turned into a racial shrew on the radio.
Surely we can do better than this.
This book, co-written by Zito and Brad Todd despite the nice write-up given by JJ that totally ignores one-half of the team that did the research, is one of the best and easy to read analysis of the 2016 election on the market. Focuses on the states that made the difference, those mid-western industrial areas that HRC felt she had in the bag and paid little attention to. Further, the authors talked to people that the NY media tend to ignore and assume don't exist; folks that don't live on the interstates transisting these states but instead live in the smaller, less urban areas.
A great read for anyone with the least bit of interest in politics, that explains a lot as to why Trump won, and why Clinton lost, and what the likely long term effect of this election may have on us in upcoming years.
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