Wall Street Journal:
Trump and the Revolt of the 'Somewheres'


Since I've already read too many WSJ articles this month, it's behind a paywall for me. So I'll summarize with quotes from my written copy of the WSJ:

"The Anywheres are cosmopolitan, educated, mobile, and networked. Their lives center on communities of affinity rather than locality - friends and colleageus who may be anywhere on a given day. Their attachments to place are secondary; they tend to regard national differences as quaint, borders as nuisances, divergent regulations as irrational. Their politics are are liberal, whether progressive or classical. The Anywheres are generally wealthier than the Somewheres, but they include many people of moderate income, such as junior employees of government agencies, schools, and nonprofits.

The Somewheres are rooted in local communities. Their jobs and weekends, their commitments and friendships and antagonisms, are part and parcel of their families, neighborhoods, clubs, and congregations. Many work with their hands and on their feet. Whatever their partisan leanings, they tend to be socially conservative and patriotic and less disposed to vote with their feet."


The two are coming into increasing conflict.

"An important cause of this turmoil is the decline of representative government, in which law is enacted by elected legislatures, and the rise of declarative government, in which law is dispensed by bureaucracies and courts."

3 trends have led to the expansion of the administrative state since the 1970s 1) Anywheres have steadily gained numbers. 2) The decline of career politicians as their post-Congress job options have expanded. 3) Congress has "delegated policy-making to missionary agencies that can proliferate without limit, and to give quiet thanks when courts take prickly issues off the legislative docket."

"But they have also led to an imbalance of influence..... The most educated, articulate, mobile and networked are well positioned to influence the administrative state and the judiciary.... They think that policy should be determined by reason, science and expertise rather than legislative horse-trading and nose-counting. They themselves work in meritocracies - business, finance, the professions, universities, media, and think thanks. Meritocracy, not democracies, justifies their power and the means by which they exercise it."

"Mr. Trump's two galvanizing issues, trade and immigration, have been matters of extreme policy delegation."

This is obviously a trans-national issue. Brexiters and nationalist parties throughout the EU are driven by the same conflict. It's even worse in Europe as more power has been delegated to the un-democratic EU bureaucracy in Brussels.

He proposes several solutions: one is getting Congress to cease delegating power to agencies. A second is the rise of the importance of political parties, but that is unlikely in the USA (just see the failure of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America).