Brooks: 2016 A ‘Campaign of Hate,’ ‘Everyone’s Dividing Based on Demographic Categories’

On Friday’s broadcast of “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks characterized the 2016 presidential election as a “campaign of hate.” And one where “everyone’s dividing based on demographic categories. And, sometimes, you get the sense that the campaign barely matters. People are just going with their gene pool and whatever it is.”

Brooks said, “I think she’s the favorite. I — what’s — I have a sense that it would have happened anyway, and that, at the end of the day, people were going to come home to who they were. And what’s depressed me, frankly, most about this race, is, we went into this country a divided nation, and now the chasms are just solidified. So, divided along race, divided along gender, urban/rural, college-educated/non-college-educated. We can go down the list. And, basically, less educated or high school-educated whites are going to Trump. It doesn’t matter what the guy does. And college-educated, going to Clinton. I mean, everyone’s dividing based on demographic categories. And, sometimes, you get the sense that the campaign barely matters. People are just going with their gene pool and whatever it is. And that is one of the more depressing aspects of this race for me.”

He added, “This is just a campaign of hate. And, you know, people who don’t like Trump really don’t like Trump. And I guess I’m among them. And we just saw in our report about the Trump voters in Pennsylvania. Did you see — when they were shouting on the road, did you see anything nice about Trump? No. Send Clinton to jail. And so it’s just — what was it? There was a Burt Lancaster movie where he had love and hate tattooed on his hands. And there’s just a — we’re in a psychosis of what they call negative polarization, where nobody likes their side, but they really hate the other side. And it feels like it’s just building and building, and so we’ve got this cycle. And I don’t know if it pops on Election Day. I hope so. But the idea that Clinton is…finishing this campaign bringing Miss America — or the Miss Universe to the rallies just seems wrong to me. I do think she should have pivoted to say, I am change, I am change, because people do want some change. And to end on this negative note, I think especially for her — he has no choice, that’s his whole repertoire. I think, for her, I think it’s a very questionable way to end the campaign.”

Brooks further stated, “I think globalization has been really good for America. I think the influx of immigrants has been really good for America. Feminism has been really good for America. But there are a lot of people who used to be up in society, because of those three good things, are now down, a lot of high school-educated white guys. And they’re — they’ve been displaced. And shame on us for not paying attention to that and helping them out. And, therefore, as a result, what happened was, they were alienated, they got super cynical, because they really were being shafted. And so, they react in an angry way. Well, that’s not a shock, given the last 30 or 50 years of American history. And so, for us going forward, it’s to not reverse the dynamism of American society and the diversity. But it’s to pay attention to the people who are being ruined by it, and so this doesn’t happen again.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett