Studies after the 2016 election found that the commonality in districts that voted for him wasn’t “economic anxiety” or education level or rural character any of the other comforting stories centrists tell themselves, but rather a perception that cis-het white privilege was being supplanted by demographic shifts in the country. As is usually the case, right-wing populism is grounded less in hatred of elites (real or imagined) than in boneheaded bigotry.
That won’t stop Bobo Brooks and his ilk from victim-blaming people who had the temerity to get a post-secondary education and in the process become more open to people who are different from them.
