A Discussion of Katherine J. Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Cramer Katherine J. . Chicago, IL : The University of Chicago Press , 2016. 285p. $90.00 cloth, $30.00 paper.

Review Symposium: The Politics of Resentment

Katherine J. Cramer's The Politics of Resentment (2016) suggests that we have missed something fundamental about public opinion: that working-class rural voters embody a coherent (if sometimes misplaced) set of non-ideological grievances. This "rural consciousness" manifests as generalized suspicion of urban elites, especially public-sector workers thought to receive undeserved government benefits.

Following Donald Trump's election, The Politics of Resentment garnered national media attention.¹Indeed, Cramer's thesis helps explain why Trump prevailed in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. Moreover, the rural-urban partisan gap may help explain electoral behavior in other industrialized Western democracies--such as Great Britain, where support for leaving the European Union was higher in rural areas than in London.²

However, it would be foolish to say The Politics of Resentment is only relevant because of recent events. Had Trump not been elected, the phenomenon Cramer reports would remain. Rather, the book matters because it is uncommonly well-executed; because it re-introduces intensive interviewing³as a scientific method of public opinion research; and because it demonstrates that an ethnographic approach can shed light on research questions that survey instruments sometimes neglect. Few political scientists have the chutzpah to attend 5:00am gas-station coffee hours with cranky small-town residents, often to talk about the perceived irrelevance (or worse) of higher education. Cramer brings that courage to the table. It is sorely needed right now.

The Resentment in the title refers primarily to rural Wisconsin voters' perception that public-sector workers are undeserving of government support. But it also represents a far-reaching perception that rural America has been left behind. Cramer's interviewees view urban elites as fatally out-of-touch and ill-equipped to represent rural demands. They see the demand for limited government not as an ideological rallying point, but instead a pragmatic acknowledgement that government will never be on their side. They worry about the corrupting influences of the University of Wisconsin system. They revile the "M&Ms" of Madison and Milwaukee, the two major Democratic strongholds in an otherwise very Republican state. And they...