TRUMPISM IS HERE TO STAY

 

Democratic strategists were wrong to assume that large numbers of voters would turn away from Trump in the 2020 election. Forty eight per cent of the electorate remains firmly behind the president. Trump’s brand of divisive politics, and his decision to ignore the greatest health threat to the country in 100 years did not prevent either his base or an additional four million new voters from producing an enthusiastic turnout. Trump’s message of white nationalism, pro-life evangelism, anti-socialism and anti-immigration lost no significant support over the course of four turbulent years in the White House.

Political scientists, sociologists, psychologists and historians have written dozens of books attempting to explain the Trump phenomena. In my view, few if any have gotten it right.  Of one thing I am certain, Trumpism will continue to play a role in American politics for years to come. My impressions of the man, the Republican Party and his supporters are the basis of this commentary.

If Trump holds true to form, he will turn his defeat into a platform of grievance and conspiracy in order to control the Republican Party, including an attempt to regain the presidency in four years.  He will claim through thousands of tweets that he never lost the election.  When he spoke on election night about the results being “a fraud on the American public”, he was addressing only his own voters. 

Remarkably, 70% of Republicans believe there was voting fraud despite the absence of any evidence.  This is but another example of the many topics where Trump has painted for his supporters a wide landscape of fear and paranoia based on outright lies.

Trump made no attempt to develop policy positions for his 2020 campaign.  To do so would be to admit that there were competing important issues for voters to consider. He wanted the election to be about him alone. He orchestrated the bluster and unmasked swagger of a leader who could defy death from the pandemic and return from the hospital stronger than ever.  This is not a man who will go quietly into the night.

The Republican Party is in an interesting dilemma.  Because of Trump’s wide ranging support, the Party will likely keep control of the Senate and has increased its number in the House. There is no reason for elected Republicans to abandon Trumpism.  There are many reasons for them to double down.

The last two presidential campaigns have unveiled astonishing factors concerning the electorate.  The increase in younger, brown and black demographics has not provided Democrats with the “over-the-moon” advantage that was anticipated.  Trump’s illiberal nativism has shown appeal across the political spectrum.

The last two elections have taught the Republican Party that it does not need to be the majority Party in order to stay in power.  Going forward the key to victory will be a combination of: 1) the Electoral College, 2) imbalances in the Senate because of the number of red states, 3) control of red statehouses with the ability to gerrymander congressional districts, 4) voter suppression and 5) control of the federal judiciary including the Supreme Court.

The most fascinating component of Trumpism is the voters who continue to support him. For four years, detractors dwelled on Trumps comments and on his personality which were considered well outside the limits of acceptable behavior. The takeaway of supporters was very different.  They saw a president who was tough, spoke his mind and stood up for them.

I have listened and read hundreds of comments by Trump supporters and reached several conclusions.  First, any single issue such as abortion, fracking, climate change, China and even mask wearing was enough to stay with or come to Trump. Second, many Americans remain distrustful of the federal bureaucracy often seen as an infringement on their liberty.  This is particularly true of small business owners who are struggling to remain viable during the pandemic and who fear increased regulations under the Democrats. 

Third, rural voters simply do not see the world through the same lens as urban voters. There is no diversity to consider where everyone is white in the mid-west farm country or where everyone is brown in southern Texas. Climate change and the Supreme Court are off their radar. They want food on the table with no health directives that impede their ability to work. Government experts of every persuasion from foreign policy to public health are viewed with the same distrust as the politicians who hired them.

Fourth, Fox News and conservative social media provide a powerful message of anti-Democratic Party propoganda that is impossible for rural America to avoid. Bogus claims of the Democratic Party’s turn toward socialism, leftist rioters and made-up attacks against religion are enough to keep Trump voters in line.

After the inauguration, Democrats will not be able to claim victory from a four-year nightmare or the return to the “American dream.”  At most the election was a wakeup call to the meaning of Trumpism and a clearer understanding of the threat it imposes to our polity.

The threat is an ironic one. Our president is a political opportunist, driven only by his own interests. He is not an ideologue.  Nevertheless, he has entrenched an illiberal, authoritarian culture into our democracy that is supported by almost half the electorate. Trumpism will not be easily uprooted when he leaves office.

 

AFTER THE ELECTION

 It is the Friday morning following the election. I now feel confident calling Joe Biden our next President, notwithstanding the frivolous legal challenges. America was on the ballot, and we won. Citizens have voted in greater numbers than at any time in our history despite the pandemic   It is time to consider our brighter prospects under a Joe Biden presidency.

The post-election slogan after the inauguration in January will quickly morph from “Make America Great Again” to “With All Americans Pulling Together, We Can Accomplish Anything.”  Regarding the pandemic there will be a national mask mandate under the new Biden administration backed by a media campaign asking all of us to buy in. Notwithstanding the inevitable lawsuits and complaints from libertarian-minded citizens that will follow, new infection numbers will drastically drop and many lives will be saved.

Americans will discover that with most of us abiding by this simple mandate and wearing masks that we can work, attend school and otherwise attain a new level of normalcy until a vaccine is perfected and disseminated.  We will wonder what took so long.

The Biden presidency will not begin its term by pandering to the progressive left of the Democratic Party. The new president’s agenda will be practical and not ideological, organized to repair the damage to our institutions. The immediate focus will be on undoing the politicization and dismantling of the federal bureaucracy.  The State Department, intelligence network, Justice Department and other agencies will encourage irreplaceable career civil servants who were fired or who left in disgust under Trump, to return to their posts.

Several progressives will find a place in the Biden administration.  So will several Republicans as President Biden seeks to bring a sense of nonpartisanship to his cabinet. Unfortunately, the transition of government will be hampered by an uncooperative Trump administration who will “burn the files” and overturn the furniture on the way out the door.

There will be important policy initiatives in the first 100 days, unfortunately hampered by a razor thin Republican Senate.  First, assuming no stimulus relief during the lame duck Congress, Biden will negotiate a sizeable package with the Senate. Second, Biden will use an executive order to protect the millions of Mexican/Latin American “dreamers” from deportation. Third, the new president will roll back most of the offensive Trump executive orders.

Several major policy positions rolled out by Biden during the campaign will be placed on hold.  These include efforts to improve on Obama Care by giving Americans a new choice in the form of a public health insurance option, similar to Medicare.  In addition, revisions to the ill-advised Trump tax cuts for the wealthy will be postponed and the “green new deal” is off the table.  Hopefully these initiatives will be renewed after the mid-terms when the Senate can be turned Democratic.   

Several presidential commissions on the most pressing issues of the post Trump era will be empaneled to advise Biden on future policy.  These will include collaborative policing methods between urban communities and law enforcement; the composition and jurisdiction of the federal courts; as well as America’s response to climate change.

President Biden has learned that Trump supporters have legitimate concerns that must be addressed. He will minimize regulations that hamper small businesses struggling to return after the pandemic.  He will seek to lower unemployment in the rust belt by tying new jobs in these areas to new infrastructure projects.  He will remain tough on China trade policy until fair balances are achieved. 

President Biden’s most important cabinet choice will be Secretary of State. Our foreign policy is in shambles.  Both friend and foe have been left with misunderstandings and uncertainties concerning the international role of the most powerful nation in the world.

At the top of the list to repair relations will be the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Latin America. Back door channels will be open with North Korea and Iran to make clear the policy of the new administration.  Other illiberal and authoritarian regimes will receive the message that liberal democracy is alive and well in Washington and that human rights abuses will not be tolerated.

Globalization will make a comeback with respect to the United States participation in international forums, but much less so in connection with supply chains and trade. President Trump’s efforts to end participation in international institutions will be reversed. President Biden will renew ties with those international organizations governing climate, health and human rights. He will also revisit canceled multination agreements and arms control with Russia. 

On the other hand, the pandemic has taught Biden a valuable lesson regarding international supply chains.  He will implement policies that will never again leave America short of valuable supplies and medicines. He will insure that national stockpiles are kept full and that manufacturing essential to national security is either domestic or close to home.

The days of the ill-advised, out-of-date border wall are over. Security at the border will be enhanced through new technologies that provide the border patrol with real time information.  Moreover, Biden’s foreign policy team is aware that improving the economic and social conditions in Central America will reduce the flow of immigrants seeking asylum.

The greatest impediment to all of the above is the Republican Senate, and Donald Trump hangover as he profusely tweets angry rants from Southern Florida.  The Biden administration should be prepared to shut out the noise and get to work.

 

 

 

 

 

THE PAST IS PRELUDE WHEN REVEWING THE 1920 NATIONAL ELECTION

This year has forced my wife and I to find pastimes other than travel until COVID-19 is under control. One alternative has been to enter a virtual time machine and to look in on what America was up to at other times in our past.  On this vein the history concerning the national election of 1920, exactly 100 years ago, has captured my attention because of the many similarities with today.

Like this year, 1920 was billed as a “return to normalcy” national election. However, Republicans, not Democrats, were the party touting this slogan after eight years of the aloof President Woodrow Wilson with an internationalist prospective. Many thought that Wilson would run for a third term. Instead, he suffered from a debilitating stroke while campaigning for the League of Nations.  On the forty-fourth ballot, the Democrats chose to nominate a compromise candidate, Ohio native, James M. Cox. (Franklin D. Roosevelt was his running mate.)

The Republican candidate, Warren G. Harding was considered a moderate. It was thought that Harding would represent a kind of anti-Wilson, non-cerebral back-slapper who would return the country to peaceful isolation.  He was nominated on the tenth convention ballot as someone who could reunite Republican “regulars” who followed William Howard Taft, along with the Theodore Roosevelt “progressives”, to win the national election.

Both candidates came to the 1920 campaign with baggage.  Harding had a mistress who had given birth to a child the year before.  Cox was divorced and remarried to a much younger woman.  During the final weeks of the campaign, a “fake-news” pamphlet claiming that Harding had black ancestry failed to gain any traction.

Campaigning was a much different affair in 1920. Harding did most of his outreach to voters from his front porch in Ohio. One of his slogans was the humble phrase: “No man is big enough to run this great republic.”  Cox was the first national candidate to use an amplifier while addressing the crowd.

Ironically, many of the issues facing voters in 1920 were similar to those in 2020. The “Spanish Flu” pandemic had killed six hundred and seventy-five thousand Americans through the spring of 1920.  Everyone was fearful of a fourth wave as voters went to the polls. Both candidates ignored the pandemic on the campaign trail because public health did not carry the political implications it does in today’s society.  Harding, as the outsider, did propose a modest appropriation to study the flu and how it could be prevented.

Immigration was an issue, and nativist voters were suspicious of the new arrivals and the still assimilating Southern and Eastern Europeans.  Nevertheless, the overall effect was muted by the fact that many voters had recently arrived from the same distant lands and were now welcoming their families. The Democratic vote was hampered by German citizens annoyed with President Wilson for going to war against their homeland and by Irish voters upset with the lack of enthusiasm for Irish independence.

Socialism was a major topic of the campaign.  The International Workers of the World were rumored to be planning a “reign of terror” in the Pacific Northwest.  In mid-September, an act of domestic terrorism killed thirty-eight when a bomb exploded on Wall Street.  Evidence pointed to Italian anarchists as the cause.  The socialist, Eugene V. Debs, imprisoned for sedition after working to assist draft evaders during the Great War, ran a third party candidacy from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. As a prisoner, he garnered a million votes.

Racial equality was not an issue in 1920. Racial violence against blacks was discussed with minimal enthusiasim.  The Republicans could only offer a weak declaration in its party platform: “We urge Congress to consider the most effective means to end lynching in this country.” The Democratic Party, the bastion of Jim Crow segregation, offered even less. There was no outrage against the Ku Klux Klan, which was mustering its forces to terrorize the nation’s immigrants and black population after the election.

On the economy, the roaring twenties had not yet begun, and the country entered a sharp eighteen month recession at the beginning of 1920.  This no doubt was responsible for some of the socialist agitation.  In January 1920, three thousand immigrants accused of being alien radicals were arrested or deported during raids conducted by President Wilson’s Attorney, General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Congress passed both the Eighteenth (Prohibition) and Nineteenth (Women’s Suffrage) Amendments. They came into law in 1920 and would exemplify the contradictory nature of the American electorate for the next 100 years. On the one hand, Prohibition was an anti-immigration, authoritarian measure.  It was designed to get the new heavy drinking, rabble-rousing immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Germany under control and in line with conservative Protestantism.  On the other, women’s suffrage was a move toward liberal pluralism through universal voting.

Culturally, 1920 was the beginning of the reign of Scott Fitzgerald and the “jazzing” of America.  The age of manifest destiny was over. The country was not yet ready to assume a broad international role. Jazz provided just enough wildness and permissiveness to keep the young happy without “going to the dogs.”

Warren G. Harding was elected President on his fifty-fifth birthday.  While turnout was low, Harding won by a landslide and provided Republicans with majorities in both houses of Congress.

The election results were uncontested and received with civility.