Words, Leigh Ann Caldwell
Videos, Matt Rivera
Photographs, Mark Peterson
The emergence of Donald J. Trump as the presumptive Republican
presidential nominee is an intricately woven tale: Fifty years of
political, economic and cultural changes, exacerbated by the growth of
conservative media, the polarization of Congress and, most recently, a
crowded political landscape with no clear GOP leader. In chapter two of
the United States of Trump, we look at voters fed up with the status quo
and looking for a champion – and they found one in a bombastic
master-marketer who, based on newly unearthed footage, has spent his
career promoting himself and his brand, ultimately promising to “Make
America Great Again.”
The movement that produced Trump should have surprised no one: It began
amid the turbulence of the 1960s, when white southern Democrats began
changing their party affiliation to Republican. Over the next five
decades, as the GOP built a three-legged stool of support from security
hawks, social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, white
working-class voters, especially men, gravitated toward the party but
did not fit neatly into any of those groups. Over time, those voters
felt little loyalty to a party that increasingly counted on their
support in election years but otherwise paid them little attention.
The Republican Party’s historic focus on supply-side economics — cutting
taxes for the highest earners as a way to unleash economic growth and
create jobs — has helped fuel the perception of the GOP as the party of
the wealthy. The Democratic Party, once the political home for laborers
and unions, has evolved into a more urban, coastal and college-educated
coalition, has embraced its new core of women and the nation’s growing
minority population. Working-class voters, particularly men, have felt
increasingly marginalized, with no natural home in either party.
Click here for the special report.
Source: NBC News
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