The Guardian nails it: White working class votes for white supremacists. Period.

[AverageOldGuy]

Excellent Guardian essay. Here's the crux of the essay.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/ng-interactive/2026/jun/21/american-racial-anxiety-white-working-class-rights

The assumption that economic angst drives political loyalties for the white lower classes inaccurately assumes that they are chiefly interested in economics as the reward for their vote. In reality, access to power over other racial groups is their preferred political currency. When presented with proposals of a multiracial democracy, and in instances when governments were seen as responsive to Black social movements, working and poor whites have repeatedly supported politicians that champion successive tax cuts for the rich, slashed spending marked for low- and modest-income Americans, and authorized anti-Black and anti-immigrant policies that exclusively benefit the wealthiest white Americans.

Of course, LBJ said it in fewer words.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

I was born (1944) and reared in a rural, crossroads, cotton-picking village in SW MS. I escaped at age 18 and never looked back. I have 14 cousins, all living in MS and LA, 4 of them are Democrats the rest are Republicans -- college-educated, financially successful but to hear them talk, it sounds like the words I heard in MS in the 1950's . . . their children and grandchildren attend lily-white " segregation academies." they do not refer to Black people as "Black," instead, it's "n####r" just as it was 60-70 or more years ago . . . and they are for Trump all the way.