Will Grievance Culture Win Back Suburban Voters?

The president gambles by trying to scare people about low-income housing 'invading' neighborhoods.

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Last month, Donald Trump decided his campaign needed a shot in the arm. Badly trailing in the polls against Joe Biden, Trump was looking for a way to recapture the support he’d been hemorrhaging among white suburban women—a cohort that is credited with helping send him to the White House in 2016, drove the blue wave election of 2018, and doesn’t seem inclined to return to the GOP fold this year either.

How to reach these people? It was a little late in the game to change the things that had driven them away in the first place: The unpresidential behavior, the smashmouth vulgarity and controversy, the demagoguery and insults and racial grievance. But what if there was another way? A way, perhaps, to get the suburban women themselves in on a little grievance-based action?

This seems to have been the thought process that led Trump to announce he was revoking an Obama-era housing rule which, in his telling, was part of Obama’s—and now Biden’s—plan to “destroy the suburbs” with a dreaded influx of the urban poor.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1288509568578777088

On the heels of Biden’s announcement that Kamala Harris would be his running mate, Trump returned to the talking point this week, adding a (misspelled) dig at Sen. Cory Booker for good measure:

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  1. linda

    There are many problems with moving poorer people out to the burbs. One of the biggest issues I've seen is that in my burb there are really no buss service. There is only a commuter busses during certain hours of the day and you have to drive to a park and ride to catch them. Everyone drives. There are no corner stores. The feds dropped off some asylum seekers in my burb and rented a house for them. They can't get to a grocery store, they can't speak the language, they are trying to catch a nonexistent bus, and the men are trying to find work. There is no work here. The whole thing is madness. Good thing the churches are helping them out.
    Trump is saving no one from anything. Dumping people who need city services in the burbs is no big treat for them, either.

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    Octávio Lima

    This is one more step in the transformation of the GOP into the second grievance party of the United States. Up until 2015 that was not exactly the case, but suddenly it became the party of victimhood as much as the Democratic party. That is not healthy.

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    Paul B

    Jonah makes an interesting point about Trump...he's not necessarily racist, he just believes that Republicans are racist, so he plays to that stereotype. I can no longer reflexively dismiss the "Acela Corridor" caricature of racist GOP hicks out-of-hand like I would do prior to 2016.

    However, this is yet another chapter in Trump's playbook of affirmatively using that elitist stereotype to garner support from those same "hicks."

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    1. linda

      I think Jonah is right. Trump spends all his energies trying to play to the base and he doesn't really know who they are. I doubt if he ever hung out much with the middle class.

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        Ray Salemi

        I’ve also seen it point out that he is the exact kind of effete trust-fund baby that his base would despise if he weren’t Trump.

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      Aylene Wright

      So he's basically running the George Wallace play. Which certainly didn't work for Wallace himself, at least when it came to his POTUS race.

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    Marshall Power Locke

    Charlie Sykes and other pundits have floated the idea of Trump, deprived of the polling/feedback mechanism of his rallies he depended on to kick the tires on messages/slogans/memes/etc., is flailing about, resulting in ham-handed, cartoonish attempts by Trump to deliver what, in his lizard brain, *he* thinks conservatives want. In the case of 'protecting the suburbs', blue-eyed, blonde-haired women of European lineage will look to Trump as their champion to save them from the hoards of bad brown people. Vintage Trump.

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    1. JohnO

      I agree about the COVID-damaged feedback loop. However even when functioning, it tends to be Trump homing in pretty accurately on what his rally audiences wants to hear, or the rally faithful think other groups want to hear. It's not really about 'conservatives'. In my self-described conservative perception, Victor David Hanson, Molly Hemingway, Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes are all still 'real conservatives'. In the big picture, what they disagree about is mainly Trump, first pair v second pair. In general elections though the bulk of GOP votes are from people who flunk any purity test of 'conservative', though perhaps lean more that way than the other. It's more about affiliations beyond ideology. And while on the plus side (for him) Trump's points about low income housing or the recent upturn in crime in many cities have potential to expand his appeal IMO (whether 'racist' or not), even with the feedback machine functioning normally it tends to come out as MAGA-hatter version of what the targeted groups supposedly want to hear. As with Trump's occasional attempts at direct outreach to black and brown voters.

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      Aylene Wright

      One of the many reasons I cannot give Trump the benefit of the doubt here, is that he tried a very similar strategy in the 2018 elections. I remember the caravans, and the fear mongering about the bad brown people invading the country back then. I remember an ad screaming about a Hispanic immigrant who murdered someone, described as "he killed our people!" An ad that even got rejected by the Fox News Channel, for being too inflammatory. I remember his rant in 2016 about "Mexico not sending their best", too.

      Honestly, while I am a suburban professional woman, not a "suburban housewife" (the implications of that term would be fodder for more rants, too, but will refrain as I have already monopolized the comments on this article), I found this appeal to, at best, classist tribalism, and the idea that women want some tough guy to protect them from "riff raff", to be deeply insulting.

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      1. Mary Stine

        So. Well. Said! Thank you. When I was in my 20's with a young toddler, my 20 yr old neighbor and I were on a walk down our tree-lined suburban street when one of our older longtime residents stopped us. Did we live on the block? Yes, pointing out our houses. We introduced ourselves and watched her lips purse. Did we attend church? My neighbor mentioned that her family were longtime attendees of the local Catholic parish, St. Anns. "Well," the older neighbor noted, while blowing cigarette smoke in our faces, "your family can join the Knights of Columbus". Then she turned to me, lip curling and said "there isn't a place for YOUR kind". We thanked her and walked back home. For several minutes we were confused and then realized she was telling a devout Catholic and someone she mistook for Jewish, that we did NOT belong in" her " community.
        I would like to believe her type are dying out, but I do not have enough proof.

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    Kevin Johnson

    I find Trump a dangerous idiot and voted for Hillary, with a heavy heart. Some of the issues he raised and raises, however, deserve debate and ring true to good people across the country. Failure to appreciate that concerns about immigration and trade were turning good people against both major parties helped get us Trump. I am a free-trader married to and father of immigrants, and I speak Spanish at home. But I could see Trump appealing to folks who felt left out on immigration and whose views were reflexively called racist. Trump’s language aside (he is indefensible) it will be a grave mistake for folks to now ignore legitimate fears about violence and other mismanagement of cities and federal intrusion to fine-tune neighborhoods across the nation. Tied to iconoclasm and elite campaigns to demonize the founding and totally transform the language (“persons with a cervix” vice “women”, “the scientific method” is “white”) these issues may cause a similar reaction to what helped Trump win. So, by all means let’s call out Trump again and again...but let’s also recognize that some issues he raises, however offensively, are legitimate concerns among good people; we ignore them or dismiss them as racist, bigoted, etc, (or as ONLY that) at our peril.

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    Victor Clairmont

    I don’t think the scaring thing as Trump has tweeted it will work. When Biden is forced to talk about his tax increases of up to 2 trillion on the debate stage, and also all the other plans, expect a shift to happen then of it happens at all. If people are just not turned off of Trump of course.

    It was after all (if you ignore the deficit which one should never ignore), a very excellent economy until March of this year. Covid of course, has changed the game.

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      Pat Riot

      "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV."

      Those debates will have zero substance on policy. Trump has absolutely no clue what these policies mean to normal people and there's no way he could articulate them. He will talk about Hunter; he will say the word, "radical" ever 30 seconds; he will just state that we'll all be speaking Chinese if Biden gets elected and how black people will move into your neighborhood if he loses, bla bla bla.

      Right now the narrative pushed by Republicans--and one which they themselves seem to be convinced of--is that Trump is going to mop the floor with Biden in the debates because Biden is senile.

      The actual evidence we have at this point says the opposite. Trump was pretty dumb to begin with ("effing moron" according to his former SoS, "daycare" Sen. Flake called it, all kinds of other terrible things, many anonymous WH staffers called it), and it would appear that he has declined considerably from there.

      Biden, meanwhile, trips over his words sometimes, but his mind is clearly fine, and all he has to do is say, "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." or bring up the Ramp From Hell or something to send Trump off on a 10 minute rant about how he's totally fine and super-smart while Americans have their Captain Queeg moment with Trump.

      And as for taxes, even if it does come up, the Democrats are now just matching what the Republicans have done in the last 40 years and promise tax cuts while keeping spending right where it is or even increasing it.

      The debates are *extremely* dangerous for Trump since he depends so greatly on the narrative being controlled by Fox News and the Republican-controlled media. Once people see the "raw Trump" they will be pretty shocked.

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        Victor Clairmont

        Er....didn’t we see the raw Trump during the debates with Hillary? I mean, he called her The Devil and said he would put her in jail....in fact the raw Trumps been on display for the past numbers of years. It’s not a big it’s a feature. The assery I mean.

        I think a lot more people are ambivalent on the Trump side with it. The question is, are the swing state voters ambivalent and still open to voting Trump again?

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          Pat Riot

          Do a before and after between Trump then and his recent speeches / interviews. No way he'd ever be elected in the first place after Person Woman Man Camera TV.

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            Victor Clairmont

            Well we kind of have....and he is becoming competitive again in the polls so...most people his base is basically like, "We don't care".

            But I mean, anything's up for grabs this crazy election.

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    2. Raincheck

      “ Covid of course, has changed the game.”. This. COVID has placed the spotlight on competence, and, secondarily, on compassion. Trump does not fare well on those counts.

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      1. Raincheck

        He never saw the pandemic as an opportunity to show leadership and compassion, he saw it as a threat to “his” economy and his re-election. He didn’t understand that just standing up and saying and doing the right, normal things would have swept him back into office.

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          Pat Riot

          That has always been amazing to me: any other president would absolutely *relish* the idea of a national crisis like this (secretly of course).

          Trump on the other hand saw it as an immediate threat and--this is the amazing part--his supporters seemed to *instantly* understand that this was a terrible development because they immediately went into denial mode.

          You could liken the Republicans to some college students putting a Labrador (Trump) behind the wheel of a car as a prank and then they see him get into real traffic and suddenly realize it isn't funny anymore.

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    Aylene Wright

    Ok, I realize that "the Left constantly falsely accuses the Right of racism" is a long running trope in conservative media, and I even think it is accurate in many instances.

    But after reading this I came away thinking "The Dispatch team punted here, even though the field goal would have been only a 40 foot try and your kicker routinely makes successful 50 foot kicks!"

    You strongly hint that the grievance Trump is hoping will carry him over the top with white suburban women, has racial implications, or - let's be blunt here - is based on latent, or not so latent, RACISM. That Trump thinks, or at least hopes, that White suburban women are scared not just of "riff-raff", but specifically the Black sort.

    But you don't actually commit to the possibility, even as one raised by a "leftist", even though I am sure you could have found more than one to furnish an appropriate quote.

    Now, I will assume the, um, hue of Cory Booker wasn't mentioned here because the Dispatch assumes the readers are well informed enough to know that he is African-American / Black. But Trump including him in the Tweet, to me, makes it not even a dog whistle but a bullhorn. "They are coming for you, and this Booker guy will be leading them!" A guy who just *happens* to be Black?

    Booker himself has, BTW, called the Tweet "blatantly racist" on Twitter, and recently appeared on MSNBC to discuss it. Mentioning that would have been easy. I understand that actually acknowledging Trump's racism in the Dispatch's editorial voice in a news based article, might be going too far. But I honestly was disappointed by this article.

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      Wes

      I'm not sure if it's racism or tribalism. I'm also not sure there's a meaningful difference between the two isms. Either way, Trump is betting his re-election on dividing the American people rather than uniting them.

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        Aylene Wright

        As I wrote initially, I understand why TD might not be comfortable using its corporate voice to call Trump a racist. But it is still certainly newsworthy that he HAS been accused of being a racist by many people, as have the Tweets mentioned here. Whether it is possible for a Tweet to be racist, but not it's author, is an interesting discussion. But I just felt TD danced around that hot button issue in this article without really naming it, which did disappoint me.

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      Aylene Wright

      PS: To be fair you DO mention that Trump has stoked racial grievances before, and is looking to advance his support among "white suburban women" not suburban women in general.

      But when I read phrases like "naked factional interest " that doesn't specify exactly *what* faction that might be, I felt like I do when I see a baseball player swing wildly on a 3-2 count at a pitch that's obviously 2 feet off the plate. Since you wrote this as "what leftists think", it would have been easy to attribute the perception of "naked RACIAL factional interest" to the "leftist" without actually committing to it as fact.

      Sorry to be so harsh. I usually prefer the measured style that the news and news-analysis articles here have, to shrill hot take clickbait. But when it comes to *this* topic, I think the subtle style was TOO subtle.

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      JDW

      You may be right but it's hard to prove and it's not obvious and let me assure you there is noone on this planet as NeverTrump as I am. So The Dispatch will not go there and I think that is fair. You drew your own conclusions very easily so there was no need for them to draw them for you. They report and you decide is a great way to view this information.

      Now having said the above, I think the appeal is as classist as it is racial. It is a fact that in many cases the poor do not keep up their property as well as the rich. And I don't mean just the stuff that costs money. The grass is not as reliably cut. Repairs are not made as quickly. People with money have more time to worry about these things. Perhaps it is a modern trend and wasn't as true in prior decades.

      Personally, I despise gated communities and their rules but they exist for a reason and it's not all racism. In some quarters there may be some racism but well to do black people also want property in a gated community. So the reasons aren't just race.

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        Scarlette Tarte

        Hahahhahhahh "it's not obvious"! Haha...that's the funniest thing I have read in a long time.

        I would hate to be the obtuse person it was "not obvious" to. They must have a hard time getting thru life.

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        Mudskipper

        But why Cory Booker? There isn't any plausible reason to mention him in particular other than his race.

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        Aylene Wright

        I usually appreciate the Dispatch's style, and I don't think the *overall* reasons behind suburban NIMBYism are just race-based. But Trump's approach to it, certainly smacks of it. Not asking anyone at TD to state as definite fact that "Trump is a racist", but to omit the newsworthy fact that many people have accused him of being a racist over this, but to just hint at that, just seemed TOO subtle an approach.

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      Logical

      AW, by not mentioning Booker's melanin, I believe he missed the whole point.

      I don't believe it's intentional. More problematic. Mr. Egger, possibly the nicest guy on earth, is not equipped to detect certain patterns even while flashing red. Hence the problem with racism; people of goodwill don't know how it works. You have to be on the receiving end to see it.

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        Aylene Wright

        But writers have editors, hence why I specifically referred to the Dispatch as a corporate entity here and not just the author. It would have been easy to at least include a mention that "Senator Booker has, in reaction to his mention in the Trump tweet, called the Tweet racist, and went on MSNBC to discuss his own parents' experiences with racism when they moved from the city to the suburbs", as he did.

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    Earl King

    Public Housing is scary...Have you ever been to Newark or Camden? To deny it is ludicrous. Yes Public Housing or Low Income housing. As it imports gangs, poverty, and the crime that comes with it...But let's say you can contain to the area or surrounding area. Here is the rub...Let's say you have purchased a nice home in the Suburbs. Maybe you came up with $45,000 in hard earned savings to buy a $450,000 home. What happens to the property value of your property is it happens to be in a sphere of influence next to your house. Let me point out the poo posing Mr. Egger poses. In NJ there is a decision called Mt. Laurel. In a nutshell it requires towns to set aside areas for dense housing of the kind I alluded to above.Towns and cities all over NJ have been trying to stymie the implementation for decades...using property swaps and the like. It has nothing to do with melanin. I agree Suburbs have more people of color....but they belong to same class or tribe. The Black Doctor doesn't move back to the hood..He moves to Suburbs where people take care of their property as it's a retirement hedge. They have nice schools without gang members trying to appropriate lunch money. Fewer drugs and fewer incidents of violence. Nobody gives two shits what color you are if you take care of house and keep property values up. It's about green. Women may not be as in turn with property values...as their husbands...but they can see what public housing looks like and nobody will want to live near one....Anybody who has every owned low income housing and become a landlord...knows what I am talking about. Some do take care of the apartment. Some don't. It's a crap shoot. Why the pejorative of the word "grievance"? This is about money.. Pure and simple and the Govt. forcing me to lose money....God I hate biased writers.

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      Adam

      "Women may not be as in turn with property values...as their husbands...but they can see what public housing looks like and nobody will want to live near one"

      Are we *sure* the womenfolk are able to engage in such dreadful number-crunching without their husbands' guidance?

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      Evan Donovan

      As Mr. Egger pointed out this rule is about zoning, not subsidized public housing. So Trump's appeals are inaccurate.

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      Scarlette Tarte

      Lol, you hate "biased writers" but you are a big one yourself.

      You have obviously not seen "low income housing" lately. It is not the "projects" of memory. And the tenants maybe are better screened or maybe because the units are not huge complexes by small areas their is less anonymity and the tenants behave themselves. We have them in the small town in the rural county I live in. They are neat and clean and right next to a very upscale little neighborhood, and NO ONE, not even here in ignoramus east Texas is bothered by them.

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      Andrew Egger

      This rule isn't actually about the construction of subsidized housing so much as zoning regulation and housing density. It's whether suburbs continue to strictly limit private construction to single-family units or begin to permit private construction for denser apartment-style units. To be fair they're obviously related issues.

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      Mudskipper

      I live about three blocks from low income housing and a friend of mine lives right next to it. And it's fine. You'd never know it is low income housing: it looks like an immaculately kept up apartment or condo complex.

      People go through a vetting process before they can move in. From what I hear, many are teachers or social workers or of similar professions where you don't make the kind of money that makes it easy to buy or rent a home in my expensive coastal California city.

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      1. Victoria Ferauge

        I also live very close to low-income housing. There is a complex just up the street from me and another, larger one a bit farther away that sits on the edge of a national forest. I live in Versailles, France but I live in the "cheap seats" which are on the other side of the city from the castle. You can definitely identify public housing (called HLMs) and yet they are not hideous, crime-infested places. On the contrary, all of the complexes have lovely gardens with places for older people to stroll and children to play. The public areas are neat and clean. Now that is not true of all public housing in France and I've seen come that is just godawful. But here the city has done a good job and I stroll through them on my way to the trails in the forest and I have zero fear.

        What really keeps most low-income people out of this city is the draconian rules around house exteriors. Even the meanest, smallest house must conform to a rigorous set of rules. There is an official color palette for wood, stone and metalwork. There is a specific style for roofs, etc. We are not allowed to so much as paint the shutters without authorization. If you want to replace the windows, for example, they must be replaced with ones that are identical to the old ones and in wood. Any work to be done must be authorized by the city architect - an application in 5 copies and it takes a few months for approval. Once work begins they come out and check up on you and will halt the work if they don't like what they see.

        As a result of this there are folks in my neighborhood who bought their houses years ago for very cheap who can not afford the maintenance. As for folks who want to buy a fixer-upper (and there are quite a few in my end of town) they must factor in the cost of bringing it up to standard with things like custom-made wood windows, for example, and the work of expert stone and brick masons.

        I understand that this is a tourist area. I also understand the folks here who want to maintain the value of their houses and seek to prevent people from remodeling lovely old houses into tasteless monstrosities. And yet the result is to make the city unaffordable for most people and I think that is just, well, wrong.

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        Mudskipper

        Oh, and by the way, both my home and my friend's home have appreciated nicely since we moved in.

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          SusanC

          This is true of my former hometown of Alameda, CA, "the island city by the bay", as well. The more newly built low income housing is indistinguishable from the market rate housing in terms of aesthetics and upkeep, and property values continue to go through the roof.

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            Mudskipper

            A friend and I co-owned a small sailboat that we kept in the Alameda marina years ago. I really liked Alameda. A real community feel to it, nice shopping/restaurant districts, and some lovely older homes. (Access sucks, though.) But I can see why property values keep going up.

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      Rebecca w

      Poorly done and poorly managed public housing of course will be doomed to failure. But, newer organizations are starting to be more creative. I’m in Chicago, and while certainly you can find people vocally against mixed income residency, it’s proving to be sound business model. I’ve lived in multiple buildings that are mixed income and it’s been fine. Other methods are partnering with key businesses to ensure relevant jobs are available for people who live in the units. I have been fortunate my whole life to have an income or support of my family. There are people who fall on hard times, get bad credit, and then wind up in really challenging situations to ever qualify for a traditional rental. Empathy and not painting groups of people with broad brushes can go a long way.

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        Earl King

        I think its much easier done in cities than in the burbs...Especially in cities where renting is more prevalent. In mixed income building if a tenet doesn't take care of the place it doesn't impact the surrounding apartment. A housing project with multiple buildings obviously has more impact on schools and the surrounding neighborhoods.

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        1. C Winter

          I am a white woman living in the suburbs in a mixed housing area, meaning we have single family homes, townhouses similar in architecture to lovely Brooklyn brownstones, small one to two story apartment complexes, four-plexes, mixed commercial/residential apartments, and small low income apartment buildings that you would not recognize as low income, all interspersed with parks and trails.

          The low income apartments have black and white residents and they are clean, quiet and perfectly safe. I didn't even know they were low income until I read about it.

          The new model for low income housing is no longer multiple high rise buildings that can overwhelm communities. It's my community, a growing community because it's not a homogenous suburb with only single family homes. People want to buy here and raise their families here and send their children to our excellent public schools.


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            Jonathan McAnulty

            As I read your comment, I am struck by the amusing thought that the black and white residents in the apartments next to you must be some sort of throw-back to the world before color was invented, an age still able to be seen in the movies from that era.

            http://calvin-and-hobbes-comic-strips.blogspot.com/2011/11/calvin-asks-dad-about-old-black-and.html

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    Logical

    "laissez-faire arguments are just the useful ones to reach for when you’re the party whose interests are served by government inaction rather than action"

    This says it all!

    In a homogeneous demographic society (may be Scandinavian countries as a close approximation), the choice berween passive vs active govt role can be based on simple economic principles.

    In non-homogeneous demographic democracies where there is a tremendous good will between groups, passive vs active still can be still based on simple economic principles.

    What about when the leader is a racist with vile intentions to put down certain minorities? That's the struggle. Laissez-faire and Adam Smith become ploys.

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