Chapter 3. Can the Realist Remain a Democrat?

In chapter 3, I take up influential works by self-proclaimed realist social scientists and journalist-ethnographers of white grievance that paint a dark picture of the political competence of mass electorates. Aiming to change the terms of this competence debate, I draw on work by Katherine Cramer and Suzanne Mettler to reframe incompetence as not a failure of citizens but a constituency effect, both of elite political communications and of public policy expressly structured by legislators to hide the role that government plays in funding significant benefit programs. Those who give up on mass electorates in the name of realism pit democracy and realism against one another in a zero-sum choice.

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