So who were the people who put Donald Trump in the White House? Is it a revolt of the dispossessed? Or the left-behind — globalization’s losers? Is it the backlash against free trade? Some of the top voices on the US left seem to think so. But what if the economy isn’t the main driver? What if it’s racism and racial resentment that helped put Trump in the Oval Office? What if it’s the “whitelash”?
Just look at the evidence. First off, exit polls from the primary found the median household income of a Trump voter was well above the national average. And the exit polls of the presidential election confirmed Hillary Clinton won the majority of voters making under $50,000. In addition, a massive pre-election Gallup study found that living in areas more exposed to trade or immigration does not increase Trump support.
Second, people of color in the United States, especially black voters, are far worse off economically than their white counterparts. If it’s all about income and jobs and trade, why did people of color vote overwhelmingly for Clinton, not Trump? Or did their economic anxiety not count?
Third, just listen to what Trump voters actually say about why they support him. One study found that the easiest way to identify if someone supports Trump over Clinton is to ask if they think Barack Obama is a Muslim. It’s more accurate than asking them whether they’re Republicans. That study also found that factors like economic pessimism and income were statistically insignificant to Trump’s rise. Other studies found a strong relationship between anti-black attitudes and support for Trump — with Trump supporters more likely to describe African Americans as criminals, unintelligent, lazy, and violent — more likely to think people of color are taking white jobs, with a majority rating blacks as less evolved than whites. Do I really need to go on?
But what about all the low-income white voters who Obama won in 2008 but Trump won in 2016? A, there’s no evidence that the same people that voted for Obama voted for Trump; we just don’t have that data yet. B, Democrats lost more votes in counties where white income growth was highest than where it was lowest. And C, Obama wasn’t running against a candidate who engaged in the textbook definition of racism, and had a long history of anti-black bias.
There are multiple reasons why Trump won: a flawed Democratic candidate and low Democratic turnout; the email issue; and, of course, the economy played a role. But to focus all or most of our attention on income inequality and the “left behind” — real issues that need addressing — doesn’t tackle the racist elephant in the room. And yes, I accept, not all Trump voters are racist. But the racists did vote for Trump. Plus, as one very viral tweet actually put it, “Not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that racism isn’t a deal breaker.” And so we have a situation where in January, the first black President of the United States will hand over to a president endorsed by the KKK. But apparently, “It’s the economy, stupid!” I don’t think so.
–Mehdi Hasan
Noam Chomsky on the New Trump Era — UpFront Special
Breitbart states that the “origins” of the alt-right can be found in “thinkers as diverse as… Oswald Spengler, H L Mencken, Julius Evola, Sam Francis, and… Pat Buchanan.” It’s an odd collection of forerunners, with a few unknown figures. But note that every single one of the “diverse” thinkers from which alt-right ideas originate has one thing in common. The editor of Mencken’s works found him “clearly and unequivocally” antisemitic, calling Jews “the most unpleasant race ever heard of.” Julius Evola was also a notorious antisemite, and wrote an introduction to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Sam Francis thanked Billy Graham for daring to point out the Jewish “stranglehold” on American media and believed Jews were the technocratic operatives of a managerial class that dominated society. Pat Buchanan has long been notorious, and watched closely by the Anti-Defamation League, for his statements on Jewish political dominance. And while Spengler personally disowned antisemitism, he was the favored philosopher of the Third Reich and his theories have a prominent place in neo-Nazi thinking.
You’re describing the same thing that put Barack Obama in the White House in 2008. Only then, it was a hopeful movement. I mean, people were scared then, too, people were frightened. But what you see in the Trump phenomenon is desperation; it is hope after it has curdled in vinegar for eight years. People had such high expectations for Barack Obama and they were disappointed. And I think that they were right to be disappointed. He really did not deliver in all sorts of ways that people expected him to. And things that he easily could have — it’s not like they were expecting things that were outlandish or really radical or completely off the table. He just didn’t deliver them.
The failure of the American Dream, as we are told repeatedly, has produced a populist revolt of volcanic proportions. At the heart of the problem is the stagnation of real wages and the lack of upward social mobility as higher education costs escalate out of sight. The data is persuasive. Between 1948 and 1973, productivity rose by 96.7 percent and real wages by 91.3 percent, almost exactly in step. Those were the days of plentiful hard-hat jobs in steel and the auto industry when workers could afford to send their children to college and see them rise into the middle class. But from 1973 to 2015 — the era of globalization, when many of those jobs vanished abroad — productivity rose 73.4 percent while wages rose by only 11.1 percent. Trump argued that this was caused by unrestricted illegal immigration and the off-shoring of jobs, though these were only partial causes: the erosion of trade unions probably accounts for 25 to 30 percent of the net loss in earning power. The 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the US form only part of the vast mass of non-unionized labor competing for jobs.
Of all the healthcare reform nostrums in all the world, the most popular among Republicans in the US is allowing the sale of insurance policies across state lines.
Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
Here is what to expect, even with the sharp divisions between establishment and insurgents:
Yesterday the subscriber-only political almanac California Target Book reported that spending by all independent expenditure committees (IECs) on Sacramento legislative races in the general election had topped $41 million. That brought the year’s total of outside money for state Assembly and Senate seats, including primary races, to $70 million.
I wish it were possible, to dispense with writing this preface; for that which I put at the beginning of my Don Quixote did not turn out so well for me as to give me any inclination to write another.
It feels at times like we’re bombarded with poll coverage, but a little-noticed reality of the 2016 campaign is that we actually have many fewer polls out in the field than we are accustomed to…
I think much of the analysis of Trump has not quite grappled with… the reality that parties operate like herds. The focus on the individual is natural, and somewhat appropriate, given Trump’s extraordinarily disqualifying combination of personal traits. Still, all of Trump’s personal and ideological tics can be connected to decades-long trends within the Republican Party toward anti-intellectualism, white racial paranoia, and authoritarianism.