The first time I saw the City/Country Mouse divide was Digby, the great blogger. One can overstate this closing monologue by Bill Maher, but it is a narrative that has enough validity to be useful. The Coates' argument about white people, particularly those over 40 also has sufficient validity to be a useful narrative.* Whatever it is, though, it remains a minority of actual voters and a bigger minority of potential but legal voters who support Trump and the Republicans in Congress. It is a structural failure that so many of us have a hard time thinking about in a sustained way because it seems so "wonky."
If you live in a state where the State Legislature and Governor will not support voter reforms that actually help more people to vote, that refuse to support the idea already passed as law in 11 states that if enough states support popular voting for President, that the State will assign electors that reflect the popular vote totals, but that will support the cynically designed and racist ID laws and caging of voters to remove legal voters from the voting rolls, and...if Democratic Party leadership would bother to nominate people who speak more like Bernie as opposed to those who just tell us we can't have any ponies so maybe we should be actually excited about a candidate, well, we won't have to deal with the cultural explanations so often.
The structural explanation is, again, sorta boring, and I am glad to see many of us now understand it. But we can enjoy the Maher monologue and still realize the structural is where the priority should be. For the cultural explanations leave us in despair and division as we continue to reflect upon it, and it overstates the support for the type of politicians who are in power due to quirks in our system that undermine popular sovereignty.
* Though see George Packer's response to Coates' attacks on him in the essay.
