"A more plausible theory is to apply Occam's razor: A substantial minority of white Americans are rallying behind Trump's white ethnocentric agenda because they are — reasonably — concerned that ongoing demographic changes are threatening white people's political power in the United States...
More broadly, whatever economic troubles middle-class white Americans have suffered over the past generation pale in comparison to the struggles of black and Latino Americans, who have lower incomes and far less wealth. A political movement that primarily resonated with people seized by economic anxiety would have a very different look than Trump's...
2015 marks the first time in American history that white Christians are no longer a majority of the population.
America has a black president, and he has presided over the most diverse set of executive branch appointments in history and the most diverse federal judiciary in American history. The share of the population that was born in a foreign country has reached a level not seen in generations, and even many liberals (including Barack Obama!) are expressing profound anxiety that the youngest cohort of Americans are using their clout to impose a freedom-ravishing regime of "political correctness" on the country...
In his classic study of the politics of the Jim Crow South, Southern Politics in State and Nation, V.O. Key observed that the politics of white supremacy was strongest and most salient precisely in the states and counties that had the fewest white people. In a state like Arkansas or Texas or Tennessee that has relatively few African Americans, there was little need for an explicit white supremacy politics to ensure that white people would, in fact, be supreme. These states, not coincidentally, generated some white politicians who were racially moderate by the standards of the time and place."
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/22/10636538/obama-trump-theory
The only person who I personally know who has talked about supporting Donald Trump is an upper-middle class, white, male techie who explained that he was concerned about how many Asian people (who he assumes are immigrants) he sees in his company's cafeteria. His said he was worried about job opportunities for his children.
So, this all really, really, from the beginning, has looked to me like a majority fearing some kind of minority-takeover. There are actually so, so many things going on right now that just feel like an aggressive, fearful over-reaction to seeing other people have some power and privilege. It's like, wealthy white men are used to everyone being 10 steps behind and now some people are only 9 steps behind and a lot of these WWM are behaving as though this means that next week everyone else will be 10 steps ahead of them and treating them as poorly as they have been treating us for the last 500 years.
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