Just this morning Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, while discussing the growing civil war in the GOP, compared two counties that he said defined "Trump Country" and "GOP Establishment Country." The typical GOP Establishment Country was Delaware County, Ohio, (in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio), and the "Heart of Trump Country" was - Wilkes County, NC. Todd cited statistics showing the difference - Wilkes has a poverty rate of nearly 20%, an average annual income of just $33,000, and only 13% of the county's adults have a college degree, while Delaware County residents have a 4% poverty rate, an annual income of $92,000, and some 52% of adults are college-educated. Also, half of Wilkes County residents are Evangelical Christians, only 7% of Delaware County's residents are. Wilkes County is losing population, while Delaware County is gaining. If Wilkes is typical of Trump Country (and statistically it is, which is why Meet the Press showcased it), it's rather hard to argue that Trump Country represents the future of America demographically or economically, or represents the current prosperity of the nation. I also thought the comment from a fundamentalist Baptist preacher in Wilkes perfectly stated the main force that's driving Trump voters - "The people who were born here (Wilkes) love America. They remember a different America, and he's (Trump) promising to bring that back." What's driving Trump's base, I think, are mostly older, white, rural, native-born people who fundamentally hate living in 21st Century America. They are desperate to go back - to when their little towns still had easy factory jobs that didn't require college degrees or technical knowledge, when the only two racial groups they knew were dominant whites who were born and raised in these little places, and a small minority of blacks who "knew their place." Nearly every "decent" person went to the local Baptist or Evangelical church, and the only tech you needed to know was tuning your TV set to the local TV stations. These people despise and feel very uncomfortable living in Modern America, feel left behind, and see Trump as the guy who will turn the clock back for them. It's not possible, of course, and is an illusion, but they're clinging to it. How the Democrats are supposed to appeal to that base, which is steadily shrinking in size, while protecting the rights of all those minorities who have benefited from the social progress of the last half-century, and maintaining their current voting base which is growing in size demographically every year, is a real challenge. Trump's election may eventually be seen by historians not as the harbinger of something new, but rather as the last hurrah of a dying (literally) voting bloc - white, rural, native-born, religious fundamentalist culture.
Here's the NBC News article:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/two-counties-defining-battle-lines-gop-s-civil-war-n812516