To Avoid Repeating the Past Four Years, an Honest Assessment is Required
Note: The following is a collection of my thoughts on the current state of politics – the result of having too much time on my hands to watch the news. I don’t necessarily think my views are the ‘correct’ ones. I am just observing a pattern based on some research I’ve done since becoming unemployed. I also intend to add to this article as I learn more. So, if you have comments, please reach out!
I believe I am not alone in saying that the Trump presidency was a confusing time. For 4 years, everyone was obsessed with the tweets of a short-tempered megalomaniac in his 70s. Like most left-leaning people, I was shocked by Trump’s victory in 2016; however, I was even more stunned in 2020 when he gained votes despite botching the coronavirus pandemic. Shock turned to fear when, after losing the election, he was able to flex his cultural influence to inspire conspiracy theories and bring our democracy to its knees. And through it all, riot notwithstanding, Trump still holds tremendous support and political capital.
In the weeks following January 6th, I was stuck wondering how things could have gotten this bad. Unfortunately, none of the explanations floating around ‘liberal’ media circles seemed to adequately address the complexity or enormity of the current situation. Is the US simply an irredeemably racist nation begging for a white supremacist president? That is probably a significant part of the story, but it doesn’t explain why Trump gained votes among minorities in 2020. Are Trump voters truly just uncompromising bigoted meatheads? Maybe some, but that perspective does not help us get out of this mess. In my view, it is easy to paint Trump supporters as ‘the bad guys’ whose minds cannot be changed; it is more difficult to confront the underlying conditions that caused Trump’s message to resonate with millions of Americans.
What most news outlets seem to miss (or ignore) is the existence of systemic problems that have lingered in the background and weakened our society to the point of desperation: rapid offshoring, corruption, downward mobility, and a media-fueled partisan culture war to name a few. Such issues are far more varied and nuanced than what political pundits typically like to discuss. Trump, being the shrewd marketer that he is, identified and addressed these concerns in his original campaign where he was able to evoke an emotional response that carried him all the way to the White House. This combination of a vulnerable country and an opportunist con man is what has brought us to the present moment.
First, I want to talk about Trump the businessman. I had heard that Trump was a bad businessman but man I never realized how bad he was at business. Episode 6 of Netflix’s Dirty Money, “The Confidence Man”, details some of his many failures. Notably, after the Trump Taj Mahal floundered in Atlantic City, banks stopped loaning him money for cheap which effectively shut him out of the real estate development industry. The Trump Organization has since pivoted to rely more on licensing deals – slapping his name on random products or buildings to cash in on other people’s developments. The core competency of the organization, and the man himself, is branding. While the ‘Trump’ label is synonymous with luxury, there is not much to look at under the hood. Nothing illustrates this concept better than the Trump University scandal where customers bought into an expensive career mentorship program hoping that someday they too could make money like the Donald. Let’s just say that participants were underwhelmed. All his life, Trump has been able to skate by on empty promises and peddle fantasies of wealth. Why should it have been any different when he became president?
On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump represented something radically different from anything this country had seen in recent history. Political norms and traditional talking points were thrown out the window. It is crucial that we ask ourselves why so many people welcomed such a drastic change in direction. Part of the answer, I believe, lies in the rigged nature of our economy. After decades of job losses due to offshoring, the financial crisis, and rising inequality, the American dream has slipped further out of reach for many. In fact, upward mobility has become a coin flip as just 50 percent of adults born in the 80s are better off than their parents were. The United States’ founding principles of equality and opportunity – its brand if you will – have come under attack, and people have noticed.
It is my opinion that Trump was correct in diagnosing some of America’s problems in 2016, and that is exactly why he was so potent. The criticisms of China’s business practices, while reaching levels of xenophobic slander, opened a conversation on Trade that we needed to have; his promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and take on lobbyists was good in principle; and yes, even his self-serving attacks on the media had some kernel of truth. By taking hard stances on such unorthodox issues and posturing as an ‘outsider’, Trump inspired a large swath of the population who were willing to put their faith in a failed businessman simply because they felt paid attention to. Furthermore, the notorious marketer was offering irresistible visions of prosperity. Certain voters felt that under Trump, they might be able to finally reap the benefits of top-line national economic growth (I highly recommend you check out this article to see what I mean).
Quick aside on the role that racism and xenophobia played in Trump’s original campaign: I am no expert on critical race theory, so I don’t feel that I should write too much on the subject. What I will say is that there is a long historical precedent in the US for making lower class voters feel like prosperity is a zero-sum game. During reconstruction and the civil rights movement, elites propagated the myth that increased status for minorities represented a threat for white people. This trend manifested itself in 2016 mostly with Trump’s promise to build the wall. Maybe his racist arguments would have still won support regardless of how the economy was doing, but I don’t believe that the deep structural problems helped the situation.
Now let’s talk about what truly makes Trump a failed president: how he conned many of the same people who put him into office. First, it is true that the economy performed better from January 2017 – March 2020 in several key metrics (we all know what happened next), but the structural weaknesses have remained. Trump era domestic economic policy didn’t represent nearly the same divergence from Republican orthodoxy as his populist rhetoric did. In fact, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act came straight out of the establishment GOP playbook. With that move, Trump took a band-aide approach to the economy despite promising a sledgehammer, and big surprise, nobody benefited more from those tax cuts than the rich.
Additionally, the Trump presidency never lived up to the fantasy he touted of some grand return to American manufacturing. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s atrocious business instincts followed him into the oval office. The trade war simply didn’t work. New tariffs and trade deals provided for some flashy headlines but have largely failed – remarkably, trade deficits worsened from 2017 to 2019. In a more specific example, Trump became an ardent proponent of a deal between Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics company, and Wisconsin in 2017. This tragic incident serves as a metaphor for his entire presidency. Hoping to avoid the incipient trade war, Foxconn’s CEO shrewdly found a way to win favor with the new administration. The company promised to build a production facility in Wisconsin that was slated to create 13,000 new jobs. Trump of course took credit for this deal and the Wisconsin GOP staked their political careers on it. However, a quick peak at the details of the project would have revealed that Foxconn never had any real plans to bring jobs to Wisconsin. They happily took in subsidies from the state and fit local taxpayers with the bill. If you want hard evidence of Trump’s failure as president, this is it.
Finally, a lot has been said about Trump reshaping the Republican party in his own image, but this appears true only up to a certain point – the conspiracy theory/ culture war point (hello Marjorie Taylor Greene). On his promise to ‘drain the swamp’, Trump did pretty much the exact opposite. His cabinet from day one was full of corporate cronies and establishment GOP figures who pushed him down the path of supply-side economics. Also, when you pardon Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, it’s hard to argue that any swamps have been drained. What we’re seeing now is a Republican party that is willing to say the most outlandish things while passing much of the same grand old anti-working-class policy. Congressional house elf Ted Cruz claiming that the GOP is the blue-collar party while fleeing Texas to vacation in Cancun is the future.
Many others have written about how awful Trump was as president. My intention in writing this post was to bring to light a different set of criticisms. I don’t mean to absolve Trump of any responsibility for the state of our country, but I do hope to view Trump voters through a different lens. Perhaps blame for the Trump presidency should also rest with the powerful people (Democrats included) who let the problems in our society fester until the breaking point. Under these circumstances, the playing field was perfectly set up for the orange man to swoop in, say some of the right words in the right order, and become the most powerful man in the world for 4 years. It cannot happen again.
Final note: I know it might seem like I am downplaying the role of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in Trump’s success which is something I never want to do. I fully embrace the argument that many of his supporters feared losing status to minorities and felt that the white hegemony was threatened. It is undeniable that Trump’s demeanor made a lot of bigots feel a lot more comfortable expressing their bigotry, and that is absolutely reprehensible. I just wanted to compile a more comprehensive audit of why Trump was able to gain such broad popularity. Hopefully, if we can tackle some of the legitimate issues that plague our country, Trump supporters will have no excuse to back someone who spews so much hate.