James Risen writes:

To understand the rise of Donald Trump, you don’t need to go to a diner in the Midwest or read “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance’s memoir.

You just need to know these basic facts:

In 1980, white people accounted for about 80 percent of the U.S. population.

In 2024, white people account for about 58 percent of the U.S. population.

Trump appeals to white people gripped by demographic hysteria. Especially older white people who grew up when white people represented a much larger share of the population. They fear becoming a minority.

While the Census Bureau says there are still 195 million white people in America and that they are still the majority, the white population actually declined slightly in 2023, and experts believe that they will become a minority sometime between 2040 and 2050.

Every component of the Trump-Republican agenda flows from these demographic fears.

The Trump phenomenon and the surge of right-wing extremism in America was never about economic anxiety, as too many political reporters claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign.

It was, and still is, about race and racism.

The mainstream press has been afraid to say this directly and succinctly. Political pundits keep looking for other causes; after Trump’s upset win in 2016, they thought that “Hillbilly Elegy” was the answer. I read the book in its entirety — something I doubt most campaign reporters can claim — and it offers nothing about Trump or the economic anxieties in the American heartland that supposedly led to Trump’s election. It’s a personal memoir about his dysfunctional family, and the closest thing Vance gets to a political message comes when he writes that his relatives screwed up their lives on their own and have no one else to blame.

But the political press somehow concluded that the book’s narrative unlocked the key to understanding Trump voters, and the ambitious Vance, now Trump’s running mate, didn’t bother to correct them.

The press hasn’t done any better in the years since. It has now failed to adequately cover Trump for three straight presidential campaigns.

The simple truth is that Trump is a racist, and it is his shamelessness about his racism that appeals to white people. He says what they wish they could get away with saying. [Continue reading…]