We've Heard More Than Enough About Trump Voters, So When Will The Media Acknowledge Biden Voters?

- Daily Kos, March 6, 2024. Ed. 🇺🇲 Photo: President Joe Biden speaks at a political rally, Phila. Convention Center, Sat. June 17, 2023.
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For over 7 years the media have struggled to provide insight into the psychology and motivation of the Trump voter. We've learned that their views have been sorely neglected. We’ve been led to believe that their concerns and the attitudes that sustain them deserve our consideration. So, it’s been the mission of the media to explain these voters to us, just in case we might jump to hasty conclusions about them simply because they voted for Trump.

Meanwhile, the values of the majority of Americans who cast their vote for President Biden have been curiously omitted from the same degree of solicitude.

As observed by Jonathan Last, writing in January for the Bulwark, many in the traditional media interpreted (and continue to interpret) their mandate to inform the public as an opportunity to rationalize the behavior only of Trump’s voter base: - Because we must understand why all of these people support a man who wrecked the American economy, attempted a violent insurrection, is under 91 felony indictments, and has been disavowed as a threat to the country by a large number of the high-level Republicans who worked directly for him. -

Last notes that one of the biggest promoters of “understanding” Trump voters has been the New York Times. However, as he points out, this myopic focus has inevitably resulted in very little attention being paid to the voters who elected President Biden. As Last notes: There’s also another group of voters the NYT seems oblivious to: Biden voters. You may recall that in 2020 Joe Biden received more votes than anyone in American history. No one is terribly interested in what makes those people—who comprise a flat majority of the population—tick.

The Times, of course, is not the only media outlet guilty to this selective focus.

When Trump arrived on the scene many in the media instantly fanned out to try to explain the social reasons to explain his attraction. We were quickly informed that the small towns and worn-down suburbs across Middle America where many of Trump’s supporters live had sunk into a spiral of "economic anxiety," caused by job losses from the decades-long evaporation of the "blue collar," manufacturing sector. After someone imprudently pointed out that more Clinton voters had actually experienced economic distress than Trump voters, that diagnosis was eventually revisited: Well, it wasn’t exactly “economic anxiety” but “status resentment...

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