Trumping

I haven't blogged for a bit. It's been a difficult time and I have been preoccupied. Ideas have been swirling round my head though not making it to the screen, but Trump - something as horrendously bizarre as Trump - how could I not add to the noise?

I don't really like instant judgement, which is why I am attempting some, and I have read a lot of commentary since the American election. Most of it is saying that 'Trump's election shows I have been right about everything all along.' You have the standard tropes about the white working class. Either they are uneducated, stupid hicks, or they are racists, or they are the left behind victims of the system, protesting about their poverty. Either the media is to blame for indoctrinating them or the liberal intelligentsia is at fault for ignoring them. Not many bothered to look at Trump's middle class support. Then there is the internet and Facebook taking a kicking. And, of course, there are tales of a right wing populist surge. Others pick on the weakness of Clinton as a candidate and sigh, 'if only …' There are elements of truth in all of them, but few are looking at the complete picture. Let's look at some facts that tend to be overlooked.

The first thing, though this is now getting a lot of attention, is that Clinton won. She won very narrowly, but none the less got more votes than Trump. She lost in the Electoral College because her votes were in the wrong place. It's crazy. Any presidential electoral system based on a simple plurality would have given her victory. She had just about held off the challenge. She may also have been hit by the loss of votes to the Greens and Libertarian Party in very close run states, though we have no idea how those votes would have been cast if there had been no other candidates. Trump lost, but still won. It's another example about how we cling to institutions created for a different era because they appear to work approximately or conveniently. As I have argued before about the design of the Brexit referendum and proportional representation, we need to reconsider the appropriateness of our democratic systems for a modern mass society.

Second, Trump had an automatic advantage. Not because he was a crazed racist bully, but because he was a celebrity. He was familiar to millions. His TV image was that of a ruthless, successful businessman. The apolitical already admired him. They had watched him hosting The Apprentice on TV for years. They knew him. Many of his supporters did not vote for the demagogue, they voted for the businessman from the telly. Those in the know about his methods thought he was a crook, but not the average punter. Clinton was a mystery to them. Bill Clinton's presidency ended sixteen years ago.

Third, despite that advantage, he only performed moderately. He polled fewer votes than either McCain or Romney when Obama roundly beat them. There was no vast populist surge. He lost votes rather than won them. But the support he did pick up was in the right places for the Electoral College. He had the good fortune that the Democrats' vote dropped further than the Republicans. Democrat voters didn't turn out. If Democrat numbers had held up, he was toast. For whatever reason, Clinton did not inspire.

Fourth, this was not wholly a working class insurgency. Though there was strong white working class support, it could not have won on its own. His support was an electoral coalition between the poor and the affluent. Neither could have won without the other. What appears to have held that alliance together was cultural conservatism rather than economics, and, just like Brexit, it was the older generation that formed the bedrock of Trump's vote. The black and Hispanic working class were firm in their support for Clinton. The ethnic divide was critical.

Finally, it didn't come out of the blue. There were authoritarian and culturally conservative movements that had prepared the ground. Conservative Christian fundamentalists and The Tea Party had led the way. Fox news and shock jocks on the radio had built an audience by preaching anti-elitism from their own elite pulpit. More importantly, the Republican Party had deliberately targeted blue-collar workers since the Reagan era. This had been years in the making - it had been a conscious effort. It was never intended to pave the way for a Trump presidency, but he was a perfect fit for the paranoid and reactionary political style that had been mainstreamed by this movement. Once the campaign was underway, his team devised a highly professional operation that completely understood the uses and abuses of communications technology. Liberals had hardly challenged this movement. They didn't take it seriously, and preferred to mock it and talk amongst themselves.

I am reading lots of angry stuff about the Democrats. 'Why didn't they choose a better candidate?' 'They should have done this rather than that?' 'Why didn't they do what I have been saying all along, even if I didn't say it then?' They rarely say just who is this mythical beast that would have inspired the masses. Some of this is relevant, but as a whole it misses the mark. The real anger should be directed at the Republican Party that adopted and adapted to a candidate absolutely unsuitable for any public office, let alone the presidency. Individual Republicans did distinguish themselves by refusing to support Trump, but the rest either persuaded themselves that he would be OK or were crazy enough to join in the hatefest. The Republicans not only let down their country, but those of us in the rest of the world who depended on the result. They allowed a candidate to go forward who was the reflection of the wildest fantasies of their most extreme membership. They were grossly irresponsible.

At this point, it is easy to cue the Hitler analogies. There are plenty around. There always are. But Trump is not Hitler. I think we should consider historical parallels, but this is one of the rare times I agree with Niall Ferguson. In a very good article he looks back to the populism of the 1880s in the wake of a previous economic crisis. 1873, not 1929, is his model.

This is not the sanest moment in American history, but not all of the USA has gone mad. What it is though is extremely dangerous. The racism, the demagoguery, the authoritarianism, and the Putin-friendly isolationism don't bode well. And if this particular evil does turn out to be banal, the huge conflicts of interests over his businesses promise a presidency devoted to self-enrichment at the expense of the people who foolishly hoped for something different. And before we get too hung up about Americans, our European crazies are on the march too. I am very anxious about the French presidential elections.

The presidency is passing into the hands of an inexpert, sociopathic narcissist. He has issued wild promises and don't kid yourself that he won't try and deliver on them. The big problem is that they will not work. Niall Ferguson again:

Indeed, populists are under a special compulsion to enact what they pledge in the campaign trail, for their followers are fickle to begin with. In the case of Trump, most have already defected from the Republican Party establishment. If he fails to deliver, they can defect from him, too. 

Of course, populists are bound eventually to disappoint their supporters. For populism is a toxic brew as well as an intoxicating one. Populists nearly always make life miserable for whichever minorities they chose to scapegoat, but they seldom make life much better for the people whose ire they whip up. 

Whatever the demagogues may promise—and they always promise “jam today”—populism tends to have significantly more economic costs than benefits. 

And what will happen in the wake of that failure? Who knows? But it certainly makes Britain's own act of isolation look even more foolhardy.