He's referring to the pundit class and is he ever right. The column takes about 8-10 minutes to read. Excerpt below the link.
On-air ‘experts’ are more disconnected from their demographics than ever – and their lack of expertise has become glaring in the age of Trump
Overall, the conversation, with its references to “a certain demographic” and “these people,” had a strangely disembodied and abstract air, as if describing the exotic inhabitants of a remote land. And in a way that was the case. Most of the discussants live and work in the Acela corridor, removed both geographically and materially from the lives of those on whom they were so confidently pronouncing. Tellingly, no one from the demographic in question was present to comment.
The Morning Joe crew, in turn, is part of another demographic that has become prominent in the world of the media, the academy, think tanks, and consultants: experts without expertise. Its members expound on gun culture without knowing anyone who actually owns one; opine on evangelical America without knowing any evangelicals; assess the impact of free trade without having met anyone whose job has moved to Mexico. And their lack of expertise has become all the more glaring in the age of Trump.
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Urbanists have faced a similar reckoning. In 2002, Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto, came out with The Rise of the Creative Class. The creative class consisted of writers, designers, financiers, academics, artists, musicians, technology workers, and entrepreneurs, who, congregating in cities, turned them into “hothouses of innovation.” The resulting surge in growth, Florida maintained, benefited not only the third of the population that qualifies as creative (ie making a living with their brains) but also the remaining blue-collar and service workers (who rely on their bodies).
A bestseller, Florida’s book had a huge influence on urban planners not only in America but throughout the world, prompting them to devise policies to attract the skilled and hip. Florida devised a bohemian index, a gay index, and a diversity index to rank cities according to the percentage of creative people living in them. While noting the possible downsides of the influx of talent, such as rising housing prices and gentrification, he treated them as incidental to the new industries and jobs boom that would result.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way. While some big cities have thrived, the accompanying problems – soaring real estate prices, widening income gaps, the disappearance of middle-class neighborhoods – have made them playpens of the rich. And the idea that creative types want to live only in dense cities has proved inaccurate.
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Florida himself, citing Kolko’s findings, wrote a piece for the Times stating that “the urban revival is over” (as the headline put it). “The much ballyhooed new age of the city might be giving way to a great urban stall-out,” he wrote (without acknowledging that he himself had helped lead the ballyhooing). ...
On top of it all, Florida, living amid other incubating types, seemed oblivious to how inherently elitist the idea of a “creative class” is and how policies based on it were bound to cause resentment among the less gifted.
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The problem, however, is not limited to geographic separation. Last October, Harper’s ran dispatches from 13 writers on “local politics in the age of Trump.” Among them was Marilynne Robinson, reporting from Iowa City, Iowa, where she has long been based. Robinson spent much of her piece lambasting the Republicans who run the state. As in the country as a whole, she wrote, the Republican governor and the Republican-controlled legislature create “problems where they need not exist.” ...
Such policies were “consistent with the agenda of a national movement” heavily influenced by “outside money” and “strikingly at odds with the situation in Iowa.” Those policies “reflect an ideology” rather than “any engagement with the state itself” or “the particulars of its life or culture.”
Yet that ideology seems very much in line with the state’s life and culture. In 2016, Trump took 51.8% of Iowa’s vote to Hillary Clinton’s 42.2%. Eight years earlier, Barack Obama had defeated John McCain by 53.9% to 44.4%. That’s a swing to the right of nearly 20% points in just eight years. Both houses of the state legislature, which not long ago were evenly divided between the two main parties, now have lopsided Republican majorities. How has this happened? What are the underlying forces at work? Unfortunately, Robinson did not address these questions. Nor did she quote any actual Iowans.
I was especially disappointed that she did not consider the role of religion in the state. Robinson is a committed Congregationalist and Calvinist who has written extensively about Christianity in America. Iowa has a large evangelical population. What is the connection between their beliefs and the state’s rightward turn? Given that evangelicals constitute one of Trump’s main bases, what is it that attracts them to him?
Yes, it's a good article. Close minded "experts" unwilling to look at both sides. And can be found on all sides ofthe political spectrum.
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