Trump's supporters revealed: two new books underscore the big lesson of 2016: GOP base voters hate big government spending only when the "wrong" people benefit.

• Author: Drutman, Lee

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin

by Katherine J. Cramer

University of Chicago Press, 256 pp.

Why Washington Won't Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis

by Marc J. Hetherington and Thomas J. Rudolf

University of Chicago Press, 256 pp.

How on earth did Donald Trump become the Republican presidential nominee in 2016? How did we wind up with such a nasty and bitter election between two of the most disliked candidates in modern history? Is there any hope for a better, more civil politics? These questions will surely launch scores of books in the years to come, but for now, we have two excellent ones to start with, both of which offer compelling, if pessimistic, explanations for how we got where we are (including anticipating Trump, albeit indirectly), and why things are unlikely to get better anytime soon.

Katherine J. Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker is the product of a six-year listening tour in which Cramer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, got in her car and drove around rural Wisconsin to learn how voters there actually discuss politics when they talk to each other over coffee and in discussion groups. Cramer isn't interested in putting down working-class whites because they may get their facts wrong or fail to vote their self-interest. She's interested in understanding how they reason through a complex world. As a result, these conversations--many of which she quotes verbatim--infuse The Politics of Resentment with a complex humanity that is rare in books about public opinion. The payoff is a narrative with both nuance and depth.

For many rural voters, resentment toward urban elites has become the organizing principle of their politics, writes Cramer. They look around and see their towns struggling. They believe that they are ignored by policymakers, and convinced that they do not get their fair share of resources. (This is more perception than reality: data shows that mostly rural Wisconsin counties actually get a little more state and federal money per capita than mostly urban counties. At the national level, a Mother Jones analysis found that 81 percent of predominantly rural states got more federal spending than they paid in taxes, while only 44 percent of predominantly urban states did.) These rural Wisconsinites do not feel that their values and lifestyles--which they see as fundamentally distinct--are understood and respected by those living in cities. "Our votes mean nothing," said one person; "I think we are just hung out there to dry," said another; "I think you've forgotten rural America," said a third.

Thus it follows that big-city politicians must be taking that money and spending it on their constituents. "Many people in small towns perceived that their tax dollars are being 'sucked in' by Madison or Milwaukee, never to be seen again," writes Cramer.

Rural voters often resent how much government employees make--that information is public, and it looks to them like pretty good money, especially with the benefits these employees get. And they don't understand what those people actually do, other than...