Trump’s America: down but not out
“Just over half of the US is beside itself with joy,” said Patti Waldmeir in the FT. But just under half the country is not. About 71 million Americans tried to prevent Joe Biden from becoming the 46th president of the United States – and they “will not simply disappear because around 77 million others now have the upper hand”. These Donald Trump supporters are not just in the traditional red states. For all the predictions of a Democrat landslide, many of the so-called pivot counties failed to pivot to Biden: Macomb County, Michigan, for instance, was expected to be washed by the “blue wave”, having waltzed with Barack Obama before turning to Trump in 2016.
But Trump added 40,000 new voters to his 2016 total there.
They didn’t choose him because they were hoodwinked, said Jonathan Tepperman in Foreign Policy: after four years in office, we know what our president is: “an authoritarian, white nationalist serial liar”. In voting for him, they either embraced, or chose to overlook, his racism and sexism; his ignorance about the government and the world; his “disdain for traditional US values”, such as the rule of law, and the freedom of the press; and his willingness to tear down democratic norms. Of course, Trump did not invent the polarisation of US politics, said Patrick Cockburn in The Independent, rooted as it is in “division between North and South, free and slave states” – but he plugged into one side of it, “envenomed it further and became its messianic leader who could do no wrong”. His supporters seem not even to have been deterred by his botched response to the pandemic. Polls had suggested it would be the “Trump-destroying issue”. Democrats duly played up the illness in their campaigning – “underestimating the degree to which poorly paid workers and small business might fear joblessness more than Covid-19”.
Trump’s gift is his uncanny ability to connect with voters, said Freddy Gray in The Spectator. Undoubtedly, his blithe response to the pandemic cost him votes, but it also worked for him: at rally after rally, he cheered his supporters with optimism, jokes and even comedic dancing – which lent itself to social media sharing. “Biden promised Americans a ‘long winter’ of death. Trump told them not to be afraid”, and that was exactly the message they wanted to hear. He always had a “performer’s charisma”, said Michael Goldfarb in The Guardian. Right at the start, Republicans identified him as a “self-confident guy who took no shit and had moved beyond the rhetorical niceties of politics”. In office, he used social media to communicate directly with the electorate – and in this, he was much aided by his liberal opponents: Pew Research indicates that every time he “tweeted something insane”, millions of anti-Trumpers retweeted it, spreading and amplifying his message, without pausing to consider whom it was aimed at and why it might resonate with them.
Meanwhile, a hysterical liberal media disparaged him at every turn, said Clare Foges in The Times. It was so pervasive, it got a name: “Trump derangement syndrome”. Everything he did was “tinged with evil”. His failings (and there were many) were pored over, while his successes – the pre-Covid economic boom; the cut in unemployment; peace deals between Israel and Arab nations; criminal justice reforms that had bipartisan support – were ignored. Worse, the haters poured scorn on anyone who backed him: they were still Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables”. It was no way to change minds (if changing minds was even the point: you start to wonder if the outrage is “performative”, designed more to reap “likes” on Twitter than reach across political divides). If liberals want not only to eject Trump, but to banish Trumpism, they need to “reject the lazy assumptions, and try to come to a better understanding of their fellow Americans’ hopes and concerns”. Contrary to the stereotype, Trump’s message didn’t only resonate with bigoted white people: in this election, he actually increased his share of the black and Hispanic vote ( see page 16). Ethnic minorities can also have conservative values; and they also want jobs.
“Every time he ‘tweeted something insane’, millions of anti-Trumpers retweeted it, amplifying his message”
The fact is, the anger that Trump “weaponised”, the dread that he “meticulously cultivated”, was not irrational, said Yanis Varoufakis in The Guardian. The social contract in America collapsed in the sub-prime crisis of 2008. Working-class communities were ruined, while the bankers who cost them their homes were bailed out by a Democrat administration. To many less welloff voters, Biden was just a “polite emissary” of that government. Still, he did win an emphatic victory, said Philip Collins in the London Evening Standard: the “man of quiet decency” prevailed over the “noisy populist”. What happens next is down to the Republican Party: will it stick with divisive Trumpism, or find “a dignified way to forge a working-class Republican coalition”?