Endogeneity

We were just talking about good old endogeneity in class the other day.  Basically, in the social sciences especially but in human nature generally, there is a desire to understand why things happened in the past so that we can predict things about the future.  Endogeneity is the difficulty in determining what caused what or whether there is any causal relationship at all.

Ta-Nehsi Coates wrote a provocative piece about Trump being the "first white president."  Coates looks at Trump and sees the ascendancy of a man based entirely on his whiteness.  Trump held no public office and has displayed a vulgarity and predatory nature throughout his public career.  In Coates' analysis, this is the product of racism.  He rightly notes that Trump's support did not come from "poor whites in Appalachia."  It came from ALL sectors of white society.

Coates, however, notes but glosses over the fact that Trump's share of the white vote is roughly the same as Mitt Romney's.  While Coates' analysis about the role race plays in American politics is almost entirely accurate, he falls into the trap of monocausality.  Coates is probably America's best writer on racism.  But that tends to force his explanation through that prism.

Thus, Coates can simultaneously be right about racism in the role of Trump and wrong.\

Josh Marshall responded, as usual, about as well as can be expected.  What's more, he collected the responses of his readers that note other factors.  Two noted the role that sexism played. Coates frames Trump's election as a rejection of the black president.  But Obama wasn't on the ballot.  Hillary Clinton was.  And sexism was just as big a part of Trump's appeal to the Deplorables as was his racism.  Another pointed to the narrow margin of victory and how candidates can be perceived.

My favorite response noted that there are simply too many factors to explain why Trump won.  Yes, Trump benefited from racism.  But he also benefited from excessive Republican partisanship.  Plenty of Republicans voted for Trump because he had an R next to his name, not because he was a racist.  Absent the Comey letter, Clinton likely wins and we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of the white South.  It is no longer the party of white supremacy.  That mantle has passed to Republicans.  Trump has - as Coates - makes clear, laid that out more plainly that ever before.  But the Republican party also has retrograde ideas on gender and sexual orientation.  They are climate deniers.  They are - in fact - out of step with a great many ideals that Americans profess to believe in.  And yet they win elections, because of the way our elections work to privilege these white, rural enclaves.

Yes, Coates is right.  But he's incompetely right.