Wednesday PM
Trump's commanding, fact-free economic narrative keeps him in the hunt
Kia ora and G'day
It borders on trite to note for the millionth time that liberals like me were oblivious to the extent of Donald Trump's appeal among a large swath of American voters, and that these blindspots cleared the way for a victory in 2016 that left our gobs smacked. In pursuit of greater understanding of his ascent in the years since, a lot of attention has focussed on his scary, Nativist appeals, immigrant-bashing and out-and-out racism as if they must have made up the secret sauce.
And while the core MAGA base – the insurrectionist faction – is obviously aroused by that kind of far-right ugliness, Trump's winning coalition was FAR broader than that – including a large number of voters who supported him DESPITE the racism and xenophobia, not because of it. They hated all that bollocks but voted for him anyway. Let's call this cohort ‘Not Overtly Racist Trump Supporters', or NORTS.
The standard liberal explanation is twofold:
Dislike of Trump's MAGAness could not overcome countervailing affection among NORTS for tax cuts and conservative judges, along with the perception his policies delivered economic boom times. Pundits like to stress this one.
Hatred of the other side, known as negative partisanship, has hardened and intensified (over decades; since well before Trump) to such an extent that NORTS are simply unwilling to switch parties, however obnoxious their nominee. However bad Trump was, the fear of woke liberals and their celebrity mates taking charge again was too much to withstand. Political scientists tend to emphasize this.
Starting with the second point first, I find the already robust but still emerging body of research on negative partisanship to be utterly compelling. Americans are unquestionably hardening their partisan allegiances. One striking proof point is the decline, indeed near-disappearance, of red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans in the US Senate. Consider this: in 2010, both Senators from South Dakota – which has voted for the Republican in every Presidential race in since 1968 – were Democrats; the same was true, amazingly enough, of ARKANSAS, which would no more elect a Democrat in today's climate than make a gay 🐧 the state bird. Likewise, Republicans used to regularly win Senate races in deep blue states, from Oregon to Massachusetts, Illinois to Maine, where Susan Collins – whose remarkable victory against the grain last year demands thorough study – is a notable outlier.
This trend doesn't hold so rigidly at state governor level, where party splitting remains commonplace. Republicans have the Governor's Mansion in Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland; Democrats, in North Carolina and Louisiana.
State and local politics bring idiosyncratic dynamics, and individual candidates are still able to transcend party labels. Take New York City, where Democrats enjoy an eye watering partisan advantage: they were shut out of the Mayor's Office for twenty consecutive years between 1994 and 2014.
No doubt, though, when it comes to national races – President, House of Reps, Senate – American voters are less and less inclined to chop and change between major parties, regardless of candidate. The changing media landscape – the algorithmic unreality fields in which we all live – is undoubtedly behind a lot of this. Likewise the convergence of politics writ large with cultural and social identity: over time, the once-familiar notions of a ‘liberal Republican’ or ‘conservative Democrat’, has come to make as much sense as a ‘Catholic Mormon'.
Back to the first point
But I digress.
The idea that NORTS held their nose to the MAGA stench to support tax cuts, judges and the Trump economy deserves more scrutiny.
First, a word on judges before I get to the economy. I'm just not convinced the composition of the federal judiciary is a determinative issue for enough voters to explain the overwhelming loyalty of Republicans to Trump, especially when you consider that up to nine million of them had previously voted for Barack Obama,
The federal bench is a preoccupation of liberal elites and conservative social activists, and the vast majority of voters are neither. To me, it doesn't explain much at all.
To understand how Trump won and maintained considerable support among NORTS, therefore, we need to look squarely at the economy, or more particularly how he mastered perceptions of the economy.
Before Covid scrambled everything, Trump's economy was performing roughly on par with Obama's – in fact, job growth was slower. There was no resurgence in manufacturing. Coal towns were not roaring back to life. The trade war was backfiring. Sure, tax cuts juiced the economy somewhat, but they disproportionately benefited a fraction of taxpayers, and certainly wouldn't have had a material effect on the household circumstances of most NORTS.
Where Trump triumphed above all else, including after Covid came through like a wrecking ball, was to persuade Republicans that he had engineered an economic resurgence when no such thing took place. His approval ratings on economic management, even during the pandemic, were such that even Democrats mostly gave up protesting that Trump's economic narrative was a mirage, which is exactly what it was.
How did he do it?
There's a lot going on here, much of it beyond my pay grade. Economists and political scientists will have a lot to say about how, in the absence of an economic crisis or recession, objective measures of relative performance between one president and another are less persuasive to voters than perceptions: how they feel the economy is doing, and how well equipped they believe the guy in the White House is at managing it.
My theory, for what it's worth, is this: voters, especially Republicans, were primed to credit Trump for a strong economy when they gave Obama far less for a slightly stronger one.
Part of this is just party biases – if the economy is booming under a Democrat, it must be despite the White House's efforts, not because of them.
But in Trump's case, there was a unique and, in my view, underappreciated factor at play: his success over decades at casting himself, despite all available evidence, as a brilliantly successful businessman.
This is a direct legacy of The Apprentice TV show, which so entrenched Trump's persona as a billionaire titan that it proved impossible for Democrats to seriously challenge.
For late night TV watchers, aka liberals, insomniacs and gays, they looked at Trump's myriad business failures – Trump Water, Steaks, University, Casinos, etc. – and couldn't believe he was getting away with it, or that anyone could take it seriously. The reaction was head-shaking mockery. His Art of the Deal schtick was such obvious bullshit, we couldn't contend with the reality that a lifetime of relentless, fact-free brand building had in fact been wildly successful. NORTS swallowed it hook, line, sinker.
As a result, to this day, and even in light of an economy crushing pandemic, Democrats have failed to make a dent in Trump's economic credentials. If you ask me, it is that fact – and not all the MAGA theatrics – that keep him alive as a political prospect.