Trump Tries To Appeal To ‘Housewives’ And White Suburbs, But His Views Seem Outdated

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A new homeowner tours his new place in Washingtonville, N.Y., this month.

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An aerial view of Rancho Palos Verdes, a suburb of Los Angeles.

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America Reckons With Racial Injustice
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But the suburbs have grown more diverse since the mid-20th century, when they were overwhelmingly white. The suburbs saw an explosion of growth then, as «white flight from cities took hold.

Leah Boustan, a Princeton University economics professor and author of the book Competition in the Promised Land: Black Migrants in Northern Cities and Labor Markets, wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2017:

I compared the patterns of black migration into cities and white departures for the suburbs in 70 Northern and Western metropolitan areas from 1940 to 1970. I found that for every black arrival, two whites left the central city. This figure puts a precise value on what contemporaries already suspected: When black people moved in, white people moved out.

Since then, though, particularly with Latino demographic growth, America’s suburban counties are two-thirds white. A Pew Research Center study from 2018 found the suburbs to be 68% white, 14% Hispanic and 11% Black.

The share of white people was down 8 percentage points from 2000. And in that time, Pew found immigrants made up a quarter of suburban growth.

That kind of appeal, pitting whites against Blacks and Latinos, is outdated, Republican pollster Christine Matthews told NPR’s Tamara Keith.

«He thinks it’s basically the planned development of Levittown in the 1960s as opposed to today’s suburbs, which are multiracial, diverse and highly educated, Matthews said.

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Trump’s view of women’s role in — or out of — the home is also antiquated. At his Tulsa, Okla., rally last month, he made up a story for effect that seems to have been a predecessor for the «Abolished ad now running. He warned of what would happen, in his view, if police were «defunded.

«Hey, it’s 1 o’clock in the morning, Trump said, «and a very tough, I’ve used the word on occasion, hombre, a very tough hombre, is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911, and they say, ‘I’m sorry — this number’s no longer working.’ By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many.

Trump also appealed to the «Suburban Housewives of America in a tweet Thursday, saying, «Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!

The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article. Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better! https://t.co/1NzbR57Oe6

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2020

But the percentage of mothers who stay at home has declined significantly from the 1960s, when they were about half of all mothers.

Today they’re about a quarter, according to Pew:

1967: 49%
2016 (latest data): 27%

Trump has a view of America that seems frozen in time. He has said that America has most lived up to his «Make America Great Again ideal at the start of the 20th century and in the «late ’40s and ’50s, the postwar boom time. Nonwhites, though, hardly shared in the prosperity — or equality.

There has been a sea change in America in recent decades on everything from views of race and protests to who Americans’ neighbors are. The New York Times, for example, found that all-white neighborhoods are practically entirely gone, compared with their prominence 40 years ago:

In 1980, about a quarter of the census tracts in America were almost exclusively white — 97 percent non-Hispanic white or more — and one-third of white residents lived in such a neighborhood. Those figures are probably undercounts, as the 1980 census lacked tract boundaries for much of rural America. But by the latest census data, just 5 percent of white residents live in such a place, mostly in rural areas.

Trump was able to squeeze out an Electoral College victory in 2016, despite losing the popular vote.

And this year, as growing numbers of Americans disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, he’s making a gamble with a shrinking part of the electorate.