America Tiring of Our Elite

Heart be still, but America is in the early stages of what could be a major political shift. On issue after issue, from soaring crime to inflation to critical race theory, Democrats and the far left are being forced to play defense because their radical policies are failing. The effort to reshape the nation is clashing with reality — and reality is winning.

— Michael Goodwin, New York Post 

We are undergoing a fundamental political and demographic realignment. According to University of Virginia politics professor James Ceaser, relations between elites and “non-elites,” those the Left once called the “common man” or the “people,” have changed dramatically. As the elites — those in entertainment, the media, higher education, national bureaucracy senior ranks, and in global business corporations — have moved left, non-elites have moved away from them.

Famed New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has noticed. Writing November 7 just after Democrats lost big in Virginia and Democrats dropped 14 points in New Jersey’s off-year election, Dowd wrote the election cratering showed that pursuit of massive spending  put off those voters “still struggling just to get by as they move beyond .   .   .Trump,”  while confronting “high gas prices and stymied from getting the appliances and Christmas toys they want.”

Conservative columnist Selena Zito pointed to a problem with journalists from “the new coalition of the ascendant.” They reflect “the cultural curators that run our academic institutions, corporations, sports organizations, and the entertainment industry.” They forget that having “the loudest voice does not mean they will carry the next majority.”

Daniel Roman, pseudonym for an AMAC (Association of Mature American Citizens) Journal author, writes:

the left [is making] everything political, from media and education to workplaces, sports, and even language. [Those left-behind react against] college-educated, liberal “woke” whites[, a] cultural clique of elite liberal arts college graduates that takes pride in showing how little they care about the practical challenges facing everyday Americans. And unfortunately for Democrats, Americans correctly associate this group with the Democratic Party.       

If you don’t like elitists, well they don’t like you more! According to one poll, while 5% of Republicans won’t befriend someone from the opposite party, 37% of Democrats won’t. And an astounding 71% of Democrats won’t date someone with opposing views, versus just 31% of Republicans.

Batya Ungar-Sargon tells us identity politics has allowed our new elite to believe they are still “speaking truth to power,” still fighting on behalf of “the little guy,” even after they have joined the powerful and speak down to those with less on every measurable scale.  

Instead of experiencing economic guilt about their status, the highly educated now believe the inequality that matters is racial; the guilt that matters is white guilt, the kind you can do absolutely nothing to fix, given that it’s based on skin color.  

Ungar-Sargon adds these highly educated feel they earned their status via intelligence and talent. Now political power, not just wealth, are theirs. They are happily on the right side of history, but without needing to disrupt what's right for them or their children.

So white progressives, instead of agitating for economic gain, agitate for more elite diversity, as in an incoming class of Harvard students. They make race — not class — America’s deep divide. That enables progressives to comfort the Woke elite, even as they call out “white supremacists.” They are as Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard birthday bash during Covid time, enjoying racial diversity at the top:

 

 

But affirmative action taking the place of economic progress isn’t good politics. People of all colors want a better life. Conservatives can meet that desire through economics.