The Spectator podcast: Trump’s people

It’s been a difficult week for Hillary Clinton. Not only was she diagnosed with a bout of pneumonia but she also found herself under fire for labelling half of Donald Trump’s supporters as ‘a basket of deplorables’. Those so-called deplorables are the subject of Christopher Caldwell’s cover piece, in which he argues that Trump’s pandering to the ‘large group that is loyal to him’ is a more efficient strategy that making a play for a minority, amongst whom gains will only ever be marginal. So, was Clinton’s choice of phrasing a conscious attempt to stifle insecure middle-America? And how can Trump convince America’s forgotten majority to turn out for him? Speaking to Lara Prendergast, Christopher Caldwell said:

‘You can’t necessarily say they are being driven to Trump because the Republican party has always been, at least since the civil rights era, very reliant on the votes of white people. The Democrats are very quick to say that it is an overwhelmingly white party and, you know, in the last election the Republican party, at a Presidential level, got almost 60% of white people’s votes.