1/ This morning, a friend directed me to the Instagram Stories of a popular southern lifestyle blogger who goes by the name "Charleston Blonde" (she was also a SURVIVOR contestant, of course)

2/ This blogger is never, according to this friend, political. The closest she's come is a single post in response to BLM about being actively anti-racist. But in a poll in her Stories, she asked her followers who they were voting for. At first, the tally was split.

3/ But Trump began to climb into the lead. She asked her readers to anonymously submit their reasons for voting for Trump or for Biden. The answers are a mix of what you might expect: a bit of abortion, a bit of God, a bit of QAnon "Save the Children"

4/ But the thing that came up again and again: The economy. My 401k.

This blog is *deeply* bourgeois aspirational. When these women talk about maintaining "the economy," they are talking an economy that has largely rebounded for them as (white) bourgeois women

Stats here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/coronavirus-recession-equality/

Oops I missed 5/ but here's 6/

All of this, combined w/the now-deleted tweet from this morning about how "Trump voters like his debating style because it reminds them of their working class homes," highlighted just how dominant the image of the Cartoonish Trump Voter remains

7/ For these women, all the other bullshit about Trump just doesn't *figure.* They ignore it the same way this blog ignores the "political." What they care about is preserving the status quo and their positioning within it — in terms of class, racial hierarchy, religion, etc

8/ This isn't hard to understand! In fact, it is very transparent! But this sort of woman is often elided from the profile of the Trump Coalition. Not by POC, who keep reminding readers how white women actually voted. The people ignoring her: white, educated, middle class pundits

9/ The only way I can explain this = white liberals are intent on disavowal: I'm *nothing* like them. I'm not close with a single Trump voter.

But if you're middle class & your extended peer group is middle class, you almost certainly know someone who voted for him

10/ But it also has to do with something deeper and darker, I think. I wrote about that — with more specifics about the Lifestyle Blog Trump Voter — here: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-lifestyle-blog-voter