The Trump indictment of America’s ruling class

Orphan voters will find a leader

Watching the Donald Trump kerfuffle from across the Atlantic, British journalist Milo Yiannopoulos tweeted: “Republicans smugly predicting Trump will fail from self-inflicted wounds don’t see what a stunning admission of their own failure that is.”

He’s right. Trump’s rise and fall, if it is a fall, is an indictment of both the GOP establishment and the broader American political establishment. That bodes poorly for the future, regardless of what happens to Trump.

Trump’s rise, like that of his Democratic counterpart Bernie Sanders, is a sign that a large number of voters don’t feel represented by more mainstream politicians. On many issues, ranging from immigration reform to bailouts for bankers, the Republican and Democratic establishments agree, while a large number (quite possibly a majority) of Americans across the political spectrum feel otherwise. But when no “respectable” figure will push these views, then less-respectable figures such as Trump or Sanders will fill the need.

But Trump and Sanders are just symptoms. The real disease is in the ruling class that takes such important subjects out of political play. As Angelo Codevilla wrote in an influential 2010 essay, today’s ruling class is a monoculture that has little in common with the rest of the nation:

“Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. ... Until our own time, America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways ... and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. ... Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history (and) sins against minorities and the environment.”

To this ruling class, the rest of the country is sometimes an annoyance or obstacle and sometimes a source of funds or votes, but always the “other” — not our

kind, dear. Too ignorant, unpolished and unconnected to really count. With ruling-class Republicans having more in common with ruling-class Democrats than with the people they rule, it’s unsurprising that, as Codevilla predicted, millions of voters feel orphaned by policies that reflect ruling-class preferences.

In this election cycle, despite Trump and Sanders, it’s likely the ruling class will manage to return orphaned voters to the political orphanage by the time Election Day rolls around.

But the orphans will still be there, longing for someone to give them a voice. Unless our ruling class listens, the politician who unites them could be the one who will make Trump and Sanders look mainstream.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.