Cultural chasm: Why the election hinges on financial victims of the virus

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Trump dismisses Biden as factor in 2020 race, says he's running against the media instead

Democratic strategist Robert Patillo and Trump 2020 advisory board member Jason Meister debate.

There are so many ways to slice and dice the debate over reopening the country: Democrat and Republican, pro-Trump and anti-Trump, urban and rural, elderly and younger people.

But it may come down to a different kind of cultural chasm: Those in more danger or less danger of getting the coronavirus, based on the kind of work they do.

This is the dynamic that has divided the country for decades, in the battles over NAFTA, global trade and immigration.

Simply put, there is a group of Americans on one side -- call them the elites -- that push policies that they view as better for the country, but are largely insulated from the consequences. They include mainstream people in media, entertainment, politics and government who are not going to lose their livelihoods if factory jobs are shifted to low-wage countries or service jobs are taken by those in this country illegally.

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The vulnerable people in that regard might be called the working class -- though it includes much of the middle class -- for whom trade and immigration policies are not some theoretical debate but a clear and present danger. It may well be true that free trade policies boost the overall economy, but that matters little to the autoworker or steelworker who loses his job when the local plant shuts down.

Now, in the pandemic era, we have a version of that debate on steroids.

What made me reflect on this history is a piece by Bret Stephens, a conservative, never-Trump columnist for the New York Times. I think he’s nailed something here.

Citing a University of Chicago study that 37 percent of U.S. jobs can be done from home, he calls this group the Remote, who are, “disproportionately, knowledge workers, mostly well educated, generally well paid.”

Stephens dubs the other group the Exposed: “They include everyone — shop owner, waiter, cabdriver, sales associate, factory worker, nanny, flight attendant, and so on — for whom physical presence is a job requirement. They are, typically, less well educated, less well paid.”

And that sounds on target (as I write from my home office). These folks can’t phone it in. They are the ones most likely to lose jobs -- 35 million have vanished in the last two months -- or to have their pay slashed, or their businesses falter, or be worried about economic calamity.

To them, reassuring words about flattening the curve, if only we can stay locked down for a few more weeks or months, sound empty. We all want to work; they need to work. As Stephens says:

“For the Remote, the lockdowns of the past two months have been stressful. For the Exposed, they have been catastrophic. For the Remote, another few weeks of lockdown is an irritant. For the Exposed, whose jobs are disappearing by the millions every week, it is a terror.”

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But here comes the twist: While the Exposed are under the most financial pressure, perhaps worried about paying the rent or the mortgage, they are also the ones most vulnerable to Covid-19. They are on the front lines in more ways than one. And if death tolls continue to rise, some may lose confidence in President Trump.

In an eye-popping analysis of New York City, the virus epicenter, the Times found that between March 1 and May 1 about 5 percent of residents fled the five boroughs. But “in the city’s very wealthiest blocks, in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, the West Village, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, residential population decreased by 40 percent or more, while the rest of the city saw comparably modest changes.”

In other words, leaving students aside, the affluent went to their vacation homes or country homes to hide out from the pandemic, while most of those with lesser means had no such option.

Trump is catering to the Exposed, in my view, when he cheers on those who are protesting state restrictions (beginning with the LIBERATE tweets), and when he lauded those who shouted insults at a Long Island reporter covering a protest.

That’s why, despite more than 90,000 deaths, Trump’s rhetoric in recent weeks generally favors those who want businesses and schools to reopen quickly. In fact, he told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo that critics who want to extend the lockdown indefinitely are doing so to tank the economy so he’ll lose reelection.

I don’t agree with that -- who really wants to prolong this economic agony? -- any more than I agree with critics who say Trump is concerned only with saving his reelection rather than saving lives. It’s the same balancing act faced by every governor.

As for the media, the most frequent target of Trump’s anger, this is not the same as free trade or immigration. Many journalists have lost their jobs as newspapers have cut back, and even such elite outfits as Conde Nast, Buzzfeed and Vice have laid off staff or curtailed operations. Financially, at least, the media are not immune to the virus.

One final quote from Stephens: “The Democratic case is that nothing matters more right now than saving the public from Covid-19...The Republican case is that nothing matters more than saving the public from the effects of the response to Covid-19.”

That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but 2020 politics are being defined by this debate. It’s time we recognized that not everyone has the luxury of watching this play out on Zoom, and those more fearful of a collapsing economy are acting in their own self-interest.