Two worlds
Published November 29, 2018
by Carter Wrenn, Talking About Politics, November 27, 2018.
Two Worlds
Before the election, two polls landed on my desk the same day. One was taken in a rural county. The other was taken in suburban Wake County (Raleigh). And reading them was like looking at two different worlds.
One world was religious, traditional (not politically correct), and most voters had lived there all their lives. The other world was also religious but the religion was different (with less of the faith of Blessed Assurance); it was also full of people who’ve moved into it from other places and are more politically correct.
One world was full of working people; the other had more people with college degrees and post-graduate degrees than working people. One world was older; the other was younger.
Trump was a plumb line in both worlds – but in a different way in each.
Almost everyone in the rural world, with the exception of African-American voters, approved of President Trump. Even a lot of Moderate Democrats approved of Trump.
In the suburban world Democrats, almost to a man, loathed Trump. And Republicans almost all approved of Trump’s policies, although more than a few were uneasy with Trump’s personality.
The final group – Independents – disliked both Trump and Washington Democrats. Their dislike of Trump was more intense but their ambivalence opened a door that allowed a Republican candidate to give them a reason to vote for him instead of a Democrat.
Here in suburban Wake County, every Republican running for State House or Senate lost except one – and the same thing happened in suburban Charlotte; while in the rural county the opposite happened – Republican candidates defeated Democratic candidates in each contested race.
These two worlds are light years apart but politics is only a reflection of their differences – the real cleavages that separate them are what they revere and the culture that springs from that reverence. It seems odd, given their differences, that people in neither world harbor hostility to the other. But will that be true a year, or two years, from now? After all, there is devilment in both worlds.
