Following their keynote panel on the economy post-Trump at our Spark Disruptors conference late last year, the Washington Post columnist George Will and macroeconomist Elle Hawkins took questions with Spark CEO Jim Wiandt from conference attendees.
Here, Will reflected on the gaping economic divide between Trump voters and Biden voters, who make for a 70% aggregate share of U.S. GDP. The Brookings Institute, which published the data in November, warned that the difference between Democrat-leaning major cities and conservative rural and blue-collar communities would only fan the flames of divisiveness between parties.
Brookings says that “this economic rift that persists in dividing the nation is a problem because it underscores the near-certainty of both continued clashes between the political parties and continued alienation and misunderstandings.”
Responding to this, Will calls the number “ominous” for the Republican party in winning back moderate voters who voted for Biden and for Democrats to retain them. Given the Capitol Insurrection and the subsequent second impeachment of Trump currently in progress in the Senate, it seems Will was absolutely right.
