The Opinions - It’s Not Just Trump Voters. Both Parties Are in Denial.

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

In this episode, the editorial board director David Leonhardt talks to Arlie Russell Hochschild about why voters in Appalachia continue to support the president, despite the broken promises of Trump��s first term and looming cuts to social programs they depend on.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. The rest of the show's production team includes Derek Arthur, Vishakha Darbha and Kristina Samulewski. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm David Leonhard, the director of the New York Times editorial board. Every week, I'm having conversations to help shape the board's opinions. This week, I'm talking with Arlie Russell Hochschild. She's an eminent sociologist who a decade ago coined a term, The Great Paradox. It describes the fact that hatred of government,

often seems to be most intense among people who most rely on government. And it describes the fact that working-class voters are increasingly turning against policies and politicians that seem to benefit those voters. Donald Trump's second term has made the great paradox all the more relevant. He's shutting down government agencies, and his big, beautiful bill that he's trying to pass through Congress would cut taxes for the rich

while taking away health insurance from the middle class and poor. And yet millions of Donald Trump supporters continue to stand strongly by him. So I asked Arley to come on our show and talk about all this. She recently wrote an essay for Times' opinion about her reporting in Eastern Kentucky's 5th Congressional District. And it's a place where she spent years reporting for her book, Stolen Pride. Arly, thanks for joining us. Well, thank you very much, David.

Delighted to be here. Let's start by setting a scene. I know you're based in Berkeley, California, which is a very different. place from eastern Kentucky. So can you just talk to us about what eastern Kentucky and towns like Pikeville, Kentucky are like? It's beautiful. There are mountains around. What you can't see is that there's a lot of coal in them. This is the whitest and third poorest congressional district in the nation. and it's got a history that you see as you're driving around, closed mines and kind of coal machinery, kind of like these corpses. Coal was a source of great pride for people.

We kept the lights on. We won World War I, World War II, and now it's gone. So you see a loss, you see a goneness. You see places where stores used to be. You see schools that are now closed. And when you get to talk to people, the first thing that they'll talk about is the past, kind of how it was. So these days, the largest employer is not a coal mine. It's the Pikeville Medical Center.

And a lot of the top doctors are actually recruited from India, Pakistan, other places. And the nurses are trained, local women, usually women. So it gives you a feeling of something lost. And when you talk to people, that's what you hear. As I was reading your essay, I started thinking about this chart that I've come to think of as the most important chart in American life today. And it's a chart that shows life expectancy for both people who have a four-year college degree and people who don't have a four-year college degree. And life expectancy for people who don't have a four-year college degree

has essentially been stagnant for decades. And as I hear you talking about loss and the devastation in these communities, I thought of that chart because I do think it's really important to think about just how deep and profound and real the problems in places like Kentucky's fifth congressional district are. And it seems to me it's rational for people there to feel quite angry. Well, I think that is a fascinating statement to pause on how it is we respond to loss. And let's just go back to your saying lower life expectancy. A lot of the lives lost. are due to the drug crisis that came in when coal went out.

And it's taken the lives of young. These are part of the so-called deaths of despair. And you'll look at the obit page of the Appalachian News Express, and you'll see a sort of hearty picture of a young man, you know, 20s, 30s, dead, but it doesn't say the cause of death because there's shame attached to dying that way. People feel shame to have a son who killed himself. And you have to back up, why did he kill himself? Well, you know, he was given a choice, either take a low-paid service job, which is available in Pike County, but they call them kind of girly jobs.

You can't really support a family on that. Either they take that kind of job and feel ashamed of that, or they take Route 23 off to Cincinnati and they can't find a good factory job there, and they come back ashamed there. So there's loss, but what to do with loss? It involves kind of a mourning and shame. And that that created a setup for Donald Trump to direct feelings of loss and shame into anger. So when he came to Kentucky Five, he came with policies and he came with a story. And the policies in his first term brought them nothing. But he also brought a story.

And that was a story about how to shape feelings into rage. And then he, I think he did this through a four-moment anti-shaming ritual. And the Democratic half of America reads one half of the ritual. I think the Republican half of America reads the second part of the ritual. Moment one in that ritual, Donald Trump says something transgressive health. Haitian immigrants are eating your pet cats and dogs. Okay. Moment two, the punditry shames him.

Moment three is Donald Trump becomes the victim of the shamers. Oh, look how they're looking down at me. they're picking at me, they're criticizing me. Don't you, my followers, know how terrible that feels. You know, don't they look down on you too? Actually, they want to do to you what they're doing to me. But I'm taking your shame on my shoulders. So he's the victim.

He's the Christ-like figure of taking your shame away, carrying it himself. And moment four, very unchristlike, he is the retribution, the revenge at the shamers. So I feel like the Democratic half of America has been listening to, moment one, the transgressive statement, and two, the shaming, and thinks the story ends there. But the Republican half of America, here's the taking of the shame and the retribution. So I think the end point is anger, David, but it's a journey we need to trace that gets it there. I don't think they start with that. I want to play a tape of a conversation that you had with a man named Roger Ford, who's a resident of eastern Kentucky.

He's in his late 50s, and he leads an energy startup. And you asked him about a poll in which most Americans describe Trump's first three months in office this second time around as chaos. Here's what Roger had to say about that. It looks like chaos. He's coming at you from six directions all at once, but it is not chaos. It is very methodical, and it's all about making the deal. I draw correlations with what he's doing right now, early, with what was proposed at the end of World War II between Churchill and Roosevelt.

Here's what I want to ask you about Arlie. So I absolutely take the point that he is channeling the anger and the shame, as you say, of millions of Americans and that they have real reason to feel that anger and shame. Yes. What's less clear to me is why it has worked for so long. We're talking now about a decade. He has had a chance to make a difference, to improve their lives. and he has largely failed to do so, and yet Roger and many people like Roger stand by President Trump. Why is it that the last decade of experience has not loosened their loyalty and caused more of them to look at him as now part of the problem?

You know, that's the key question here. And to answer it, I think we need to learn to be bilingual in the same. sense of reading, one language is rationality and the other is emotion. We need to read what's happening emotionally because basically the part of America that have been the losers of globalization and automation, that part of America has looked to both the Democrats and the Republicans for answers to their local problems and have not found answers to their local problems. So they have, in desperation, turned to a charismatic leader. And we keep looking for real policies. That's not the thing. He offers veneer of policies

and a story. And we've got to tune in to the effect of that story on people who feel like the world's melting, like it's sinking. And the question is how people on the left can emotionally re-gear and re-energize themselves. I think you and I are both really trying to understand this anger in a searching empathetic way. I mean, it is the core of your work and your work has helped me think about these things. I assume you would also agree with me that there is a fundamental disconnect from reality in a bunch of the things that we're hearing from these Trump supporters. I mean, Roger Ford said that he's acting like church.

and Roosevelt did after World War II, I just don't think that's true. And yet, when I try to extend my empathy, I think about the huge number of Democrats over the last few years who also looked at something that was obviously not true, namely that Joe Biden could still be president of the United States and was not too old and was not aging in obvious ways. And they persuaded themselves of a story that I think clearly wasn't true, and we now know really. wasn't true. And I wonder if you've ever thought about some of the parallels between the false stories that Democrats tell themselves and the false stories that people in Eastern Kentucky tell themselves. Yes. I think you've articulated very well. And actually, I think the stories

are on the right are easier to ridicule, but that the stories on the left are more serious. and seriously wrong. There isn't a kind of a mobilization on the left center that I think we need. And part of the false stories that the left is telling itself is, oh, I don't need to think about this. This will go away. Four years later, we'll have our turn, and we'll go back, to normal. And increasingly, I think that's not the case. So there are lots of kinds of denial.

I've gotten really interested in denial. You know, this isn't happening yet or thinking it's not so bad. It will end. I think that the left is very inward turning. It's talking to itself. It's more bubbleized. And in that way, too, it's not facing the music. I think an example of that is how the left has talked about race in the context of Trump. I think initially there was a view that Trump's appeal was overwhelmingly about racism. And I want to be clear, Trump traffics in racism. But what we've seen over the last decade, and the decade that you've been thinking about these questions quite directly, is we've seen real increases in support for Trump and the Republican Party among Latino voters, among Asian voters, among black voters. What do you think

that is about and how have you thought about the rightward shift of Americans of color during the decade of Donald Trump? Yeah. I think they are identifying with a strength that there's kind of a pragmatic, let me go with the winning guy. I think that's that's, that's, you know, That's part of it. And I also think that at the heart of that are a lot of men who feel in crisis. And I think part of that is men of color feeling, gosh, we're downwardly mobile too. And it could be, this is a scary thought. Okay. So arm yourself for scary thought. Okay. That the rise of AI could do to the middle class, a lot of men in it, what the loss of coal did to the blue-collar class. So we have to think about resilience in the face of loss and the appeal of the strong,

man, what lies behind it. And we have to remember that America isn't the only place this is happening in. I think globalization really scrambled the status systems of the world's big countries. White men, especially feeling loss, you know, their whiteness doesn't cash in for much, and their maleness doesn't. Their heterosexuality doesn't. So they're, they're, they're So those are kind of hard to talk about losses that lead them to feel, hey, I'm a loser in a winner game. The last section of your Times essay really takes squarely this question of what should the Democratic Party do and what can it do to win more support. And honestly, it should be an important question even for many moderates and conservatives because at this point, the Republican Party is increasingly authoritarian. And so if you believe in democracy, at this point, we have only one party that is clearly pro-democracy.

And so I want to spend a few minutes talking with you about your thoughts on what Democrats are doing wrong and what they can do better. And to do so, I want to play another recording for you. This one comes from a Democratic House member named Marcy Kaptor who's in Ohio right over the border from Kentucky. And she just keeps winning re-election in a district that Donald Trump. has won. America has gotten off course, the far left, ignoring millions illegally crossing the border, and trying to defund the police, the far right taking away women's rights, and protecting greedy corporations at every turn.

I'm Marcy Capter, and I'm fighting for what matters to us, like stopping illegal immigration, bringing our jobs home and growing new jobs right here. I think that's a fascinating clip for two big reasons. So first of all, she talks about growing jobs, not benefits, which connects to the dignity point you and I have already been talking about. But she also talks about some issues that are traditional weaknesses for the Democratic Party and particularly immigration. And you talked about denial. I think one form of denial among the Democratic Party is that if only they can change the subject to economics and keep all of their socially liberal positions, they can somehow persuade people to vote for them. And I don't think that's what you see when you look at Democrats who actually win places that Donald Trump does, like Alyssa Slotkin, the Michigan Senator, whom we had on this show a couple weeks ago. And I'm curious from what you've heard in Kentucky. Do you agree with my view that the sort of thorough social liberalism, elite liberalism of the Democratic Party is a major problem in places like Kentucky and Louisiana and even in places like Ohio and Michigan?

Yes, I agree with you. And what I would add is that there is surprising room for crossover. And let me tell you what I mean. The very man that you gave a clip of, Roger Ford, told me, you know what, we really need a new party, a kind of a more moderate party. And what he is. especially interested in is the renewable energy. Here we are in the center of coal country, and he's a guy who's for renewable energy. Now, he gives no credit to Joe Biden for giving 75% of billions of dollars of government funds to red states to build battery factories and solar panels. But that's an issue he cares about. And a lot of other people there, too, think, hey, that's a chance for us. So it's crossover territory. The most popular guy in Pikeville, Kentucky, he predicts the weather.

And he's organizing something that organizes rescue for people who've been flooded out of their homes. That's an opportunity for the left to say, hey, that is a real issue. good for you, you're doing a good, proud thing right there, and the Democratic Party can help you, it can support you. And it's an example of a communal solution, which traditionally is the real centerpiece of political left thought, which is that if we come together, we can do things that we can't do individually. That's right. The Marcy Captor ad that we just played was very heavily focused on immigration, and you and I

are recording this on Thursday, June 12th, during a week with these protests. in Los Angeles and the Trump administration's extreme response to them. You just mentioned that Roger Ford, one of the people you interviewed, has talked about this idea of a party that represents the broad middle. I'm curious if you imagine a kind of sensible middle policy that is less open than Joe Biden's border policy and less nasty than Donald Trump's policy, what might that look like? it would use the word control. We control immigration. Now, we may, in our control, decide that it's a good deal to have certain immigrants allowed in,

and to make a deal that people who were born here would be treated differently than those who weren't. It would be our own kind of art of the deal to work out compromises. You would get most Americans agreeing with that, I think. But the word would be control. And as you point out, it's not just both sides, that there are a broad group of Americans who on many issues, I think including immigration, actually have a set of views that often make sense, right? which is the idea of we should control our immigration system,

we should admit some people, and not everyone. Yes, yes. Let's close by my doing something a little unfair, which is ask you to predict the future. It seems to me that while it is obviously true that Donald Trump has retained extremely high levels of support from the people who voted for him, it's also true that American politics changes

and often changes more rapidly than we expect in the moment. We didn't see Donald Trump coming. And I don't think we are in a permanent era of Donald Trump. We may well have entered a profoundly new political era, but there's going to be a new politics. I think at some point more people really will see that Donald Trump has failed to deliver on his promises. When you think about the time that you've spent in Kentucky

and in other places that are similar. Do you have any sense of the ways in which American politics might be most likely to shift over the next decade, given just how profoundly it's changed over the last decade? So you're asking not about what we could do. You're asking about what will happen. and my answer is sort of putting those two things together. I think a lot of what will happen depends on what we do. In other words, I don't think there is some iron law of history that is unfolding and this is the era of autocracy and nothing to be done.

No. I think what we learn is that there are a lot of actually failed efforts to establish fascism, and it all depended on what people did. So how effectively people of conscience mobilize themselves. And so I think I agree with what you're saying. We're not going back to the status quo ante, but now is a period, and I think all hands on deck, to actually help shape our future by actively joining the conversation, running for office, reaching out to other groups.

And so to answer your question, what would this mixed beast kind of look like? If the last continues just to shun and cast a gate and separate itself from the white blue-collar class, then I think we could slide further in the direction of autocracy, because whatever the policies they're following the story and the emotional payoff of that anti-shaming ritual. So we have to stop the story, reverse the story. story. Nobody stole your pride. We're restoring it together. Well, I'm struck as you described that, that much of your political advice, don't shun, treat people with respect and empathy, listen to them, talk with them, also doubles as pretty good advice for leading a rewarding life. And if we stop

thinking about politics as something totally separate and instead think about it as part of our national life in all kinds of ways. Maybe that's part of how we start to get out of this very grim and worrisome period. Arlie, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you very much, David. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Veshaka, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzik. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro.

Additional music by Amon Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuoski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.