According to the Reuters survey, 58 percent Americans say
they “don’t identify with what America has become.” While Republicans and
Independents are the most likely to agree with this statement, even 45 percent
of Democrats share this feeling.
More than half of Americans, 53
percent, say they “feel like a stranger” in their own country. A minority of
Americans feel “comfortable as myself” in the country.
There
are no doubt lots of reasons underlying this feelings. Demographically,
Americans holding these views tend to be white, older, live in the South and
have less than a college education. Politically, they are cordoned off as the
white working class. While they rarely attract much attention from the
political class, they still represent an enormous block of voters.
Their
numbers may be declining relative to the entire population, but they are still
the largest single block of voters. In many critical swing states like Ohio,
Florida, and North Carolina, they represent a significant base of voters that
can determine the outcome of elections.
The
reasons for their alienation are both cultural and economic. The economic
anxiety sparked by the financial crisis in 2007-8 has likely pushed them
further away from the mainstream political parties. This isn’t solely a
phenomenon on the right, as the resurgent popularity of explicitly socialist
policies on the left attest.
