Lots of people have written lots of theories about why Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, and why he was almost re-elected in 2020 (and might even be re-elected in 2024). The question is complex and subtle, and no doubt there are almost as many reasons as there are Trump voters, but three main theories have emerged:
1. The growing wealth inequality, income inequality, and lack of upward mobility in the nation, increasingly driven by the obvious corruption and insider-dealing in politics and the corporate world, has produced a backlash which populists like Trump can exploit.
2. The displacement of jobs overseas from globalization, which has enriched the wealthy elites but impoverished and put out of work millions of working-class people, has producing a backlash which populists like Trump can exploit.
3. Sandler’s thesis (see previous post), which is that our merit-based society produces hubris among the elites and humiliation among the rest, with the credentialed (ie - college-educated) elites looking down on the two-thirds of the country without college degrees, producing resentment which populists like Trump can exploit.
No doubt all three of these effects play their part, though how much each contributes can be debated. But let’s assume that together they account for a good proportion of the sentiment driving almost half of American voters toward populist candidates at both the federal and state levels.
I would argue that Trump got the loyal following that he got, and has largely maintained, by simply acknowledging the pain and resentment of the underclass. He didn’t do much of anything to actually help them, but just by not talking down to them, and by acknowledging their worth and their contributions to the economy and their resentments, he won their votes.
If liberals are going to gain and hold power at least occasionally in Washington and at the state level, which I would like to see them do, they are going to have to do at least that much, if not more. So how have they done so far? Poorly, it seems to me. Indeed, I can see no evidence that they even understand what they need to do. For example:
One main feature of the current liberal legislative plank is to provide free college to more people. This is simply an elitist view of the world from people who are themselves college-educated. The clear implication is that people without a college education are somehow inferior to those with a college education, and we ought to rectify that. It ignores the fact that the majority of people have no interest in sitting in college classrooms being fed an academic view of the world. Yet that majority feeds and clothes and shelters and warms and transports most of us, services of far more immediate and practical value than those provided by a stockbroker or economist or a professor.
Along the same lines, the liberal push to forgive college loans is also an elitist proposal, focused only on people who went to college. How about all the loans everyone else has, for their tools or trucks or uniforms or, or, or…? Why are they less important, less worthy of being forgiven?
Taxing the rich more is another ineffective liberal proposal. Oh, it sounds good as a campaign sound bite, even though we all know the really rich will evade the new taxes just as they evade the current taxes. But as a practical matter, taxing the rich does nothing to address any of the issues that breed underclass resentment. Soaking Elon Musk for another $50 million in taxes, fair as that might be, does nothing to help an unemployed steel worker in Pittsburgh, nor to deal with his resentments.
I could go on, but you can see the drift. Think about all the current liberal proposals, and the issues, especially the social issues, they are focused on, and ask what they mean to a single mother working three jobs, or an unemployed oil-field worker, or a small family farmer, or a small struggling store owner in some small mid-western town. How many of the current liberal proposals deal with the resentments that have fueled Trump’s campaigns? Almost none.
Until liberals can understand this, and face the changes they need to make in their own attitudes and outlooks, they are going to continue to be in a tenuous position politically. It isn’t that hard really. Trump has demonstrated that. He didn’t actually do anything to help people, he just showed some respect for those in the underclass (and it is a class issue). It just requires showing some respect and appreciation for those not among the elite, some recognition of their immense and critical contribution to the national economy and the well-being of all of us. Calling them “deplorables” (Clinton) “clinging to guns and religion” (Obama), depicting them as all knuckle-dragging racists who weren't smart enough to go to college simply won’t do it.
Posts
