'Deplorables' and the Myth of the Single-Issue Voter

There’s always a temptation, when thinking about politics, to reduce people's views to a simple binary that allows us to easily get a handle on them. The two most popular such binaries in American politics today are economics and race. Both of these lenses have been much used to explain the Trump phenomenon over the last year.

Trump voters, we are informed, are the victims of economic competition from abroad, and are therefore open to his populist pandering about immigration and trade. Alternately, they’re just a bunch of racist pigs who have finally found a voice for their racist piggery. Hillary Clinton's infamous and ill-advised remark split the difference by putting only half of Trump’s voters into a "basket of deplorables."