SALENA ZITO: The voters revolt against our cultural curators, again.
Their detachment is not just geographical but cultural, and it is not limited to politics. For decades, the nation’s cultural curators have operated through corporations, national sports organizations, Hollywood, academia, the national news media. More and more, they have become detached from the people who buy, watch, or are educated by them. . . .
I have argued for years that the conservative-populist coalition was born in 2008 when John McCain became the Republican nominee. These voters either stayed home or voted against their interests for Barack Obama because of his candidacy’s historic and aspirational nature.
By 2009, their breakaway began, and the anti-establishment Tea Party movement was born. The 2010 midterm elections demonstrated the coalition’s strength, but it felt the same way toward Mitt Romney as it had for McCain — nice guy but didn’t inspire them. Obama became the first president ever reelected with fewer popular votes and a smaller percentage than his first election.
Instead of listening to the voters, Obama spent his second term going all-in with executive action. Democrats shed their blue-collar and rural voters that had been part of their coalition and went full elite progressive. The 2014 election was the result, an even worse bloodbath for Democrats than 2010.
Two things were missed in the coverage of 2016. First, Trump was never the cause of that election — he was the result of a coalition that had been building for a decade, made up of suburban-educated voters, blue-collar and rural voters, and a growing number of middle-class Hispanic voters. . . .
Now, Biden and the Democrats have been caught once again failing to appreciate why they were sent to Washington, D.C. They underestimated just how toxic their intersection with the cultural curators would be for them — with those constantly telling voters they are insurrectionists and racists and lying about voting laws in Georgia and Texas and Pennsylvania or smearing them because they don’t want idiotic ideas driven into their children’s skulls. On Tuesday, those voters gave Democrats a piece of their mind, not just here in Pennsylvania but also in Virginia, New Jersey, and nationwide.
Will the curators continue to underestimate and insult the electorate? Look to 2022, an inside-out midterm election. It will not be about Trump — oh, how the Democrats misunderstood that on Tuesday. It will not be about spending more money and passing bills people never requested. It will be about their lives, their children, their communities, and their future.
The thing is, insulting the electorate is a vital part of the curators’ self-image. Like many with few positive achievements, they boost their self-esteem by finding others to look down on.
A friend messages: “Kinda hilarious. Voters objected to being demonized. The Dem/media reaction is a thoughtful handwringing demonization, a deep concern about doing a better job of demonizing.”
