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Why Trump, Again?

Why did most American voters choose a racist, women-assaulting conspiracy monger and authoritarian?

After Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he refused to concede his loss and then encouraged a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. That fact, alone, should have guaranteed that he never again would hold political power. Trump's actions constitute the most dangerous threat to American democratic-republicanism at least since the Second World War, far worse, morally, than what Nixon did. I am not persuaded that Trump's actions surrounding January 6, 2021, rose to the level of criminality—he is astonishingly good at always leaving room for plausible deniability—but certainly no Constitution-loving American ever should have voted for him again. That he again became the Republican candidate, and then again won the presidency, indicates a deep sickness in the American soul, a dangerous longing for authoritarianism. These are precarious times.

January 6 is not, of course, Trump's only sin. He has threatened his political enemies with state retribution, spoken in overtly racist terms about various immigrants as well as about Kamala Harris, praised dictators around the world, assaulted women (so says a jury in a civil trial; Trump has not been criminally convicted of any such crime), and lied and conspiracy mongered continuously. Any one of these deep moral failings should have permanently ended Trump's political career. But, somehow, when Trump confidently embodies all of these failings simultaneously, enough people love him for it to again make him president.

So, what happened? Here are my efforts to feel out parts of the elephant.

Appeal of the Strong Man

The weird thing is how many people worship Trump, a pathetic, overweight, spray-tanned, mentally incoherent clown, as some sort of Manly Man and American Savior. But Trump plays the part that many people want him to play. Trumpism is a cult. Trump's superpower is his ability to manipulate those willing to be manipulated.

Many of Trump's followers respond emotionally to his racism and violent rhetoric. They are titillated. They cheer and applaud. Trump confidently, defiantly demeans immigrants and women and fantasizes about violence against his enemies, and many of Trump's supporters (including some immigrants and women) love him for it. This is classic worship of a strong man.

Emotional fervor for authoritarianism hardly is new. Watch footage of the 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden. Read Robert Alan Goldberg's account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado in the 1920s, a movement that even captured the governor's office.

Immigration

Harris's counter to Trump on immigration is that he impeded efforts to deal with the problem. That was a legitimate point, but I think it struck many voters as a "me too" position.

Everyone agrees that, ideally, immigrants who come to the United States should do so legally.

The first problem is that we have let in a lot of peaceable people illegally who have made a life here and in many cases had children here. To treat those people morally and to serve our broader interests, we need to provide a pathway to allow those people to gain legal status here (not necessarily citizenship). Harris, to her credit, has made this point.

The second problem is that we have largely cut off legal pathways for people to come here, work hard, and chase their vision of the American Dream. Trump and his advisors are anti-immigration in the sense that they do not want much legal immigration. My position is that we should have quite a lot of legal immigration.

One issue that Democrats do not wish to touch with a ten-foot pole is that the U.S. demand for illegal drugs, in the context of the U.S. drug war, destabilizes much of Mexico, along with Central and South America, driving much of the refugee crisis, and gives dangerous and ultraviolent cartels a powerful incentive to transport drugs into the U.S. The only way to solve this problem is to end the drug war. Trump's wall will not keep out the drugs. A full-blown police state might dramatically reduce the flow, but at the destruction to our liberties. But no politician that I know of is willing to state the obvious fact that the drug war is a grotesque failure. We can bracket this issue, but we should understand that Republicans will continue to use the failed drug war as a pretext to demonize and exclude peaceable, productive people who want to move here.

Some of Trump's supporters are overt white nationalists. Why they support Trump is obvious.

But why do many Hispanic men also support Trump? It seems strange for them to support a racist who claims that immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the country. I chalk this up to three main things. First, Latin "machismo" culture draws a lot of men to Trump because, again, he plays the role of a Manly Man of authority and prestige who can grab women by the pussy at will, and do whatever the hell else he wants, and get away with it. Second, some of this support is straight-up protectionism; some Hispanics already in the country legally want to keep out others who might compete for their jobs and drive up housing costs. Third, Latin Catholic culture often is amenable to the sorts of abortion bans that Trump enables.

Evangelicals and Abortion

No one, for a second, believes that Trump is sincerely religious (although a few people pretend to believe that). His support among evangelicals rests not on evangelicals believing that Trump is sincerely Christian, but on them believing that God has used and is using Trump to achieve Christian aims. They fully recognize that Trump is using them as a means to his own political power, and they are thrilled to use him in return.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the reinstatement of severe abortion restrictions throughout much of the country, marks a huge victory for the religious right. Evangelicals pushed for that outcome for decades and finally achieved it. They realize that Trump may be in a position to replace two of the sitting conservative Supreme Court justices (Clarence Thomas, age 76, and Samuel Alito, age 74), with younger conservative justices, and perhaps even have an opportunity to flip another of the seats (Sonia Sotomayor is 70). The Supreme Court is now virtually guaranteed to be solidly conservative for the next few decades. (There's still some chance of a major court overhaul that would expand the number of justices, but that seems unlikely.)

Let's bear in mind what else many evangelicals wish to accomplish: enact severe abortion restrictions at the national level, ban "pornography" and "obscenity" broadly defined, introduce religion into the public schools, establish special legal privileges and exemptions specifically for religious people, deny transgender people gender-affirming medical care, and even roll back gay marriage (although this last ship seems to have sailed).

'It Can't Happen Here'

As I mentioned previously, I think many Americans simply cannot imagine that "it can happen here." They see January 6 not as a harbinger but as an anomaly. They just don't believe that Trump actually will (or will be able to) round up peaceable people and force them into detention camps or weaponize the U.S. government against his political enemies, even though he has explicitly told us he intends to do those things. Either they think Trump is just bullshitting, or they think American institutions will moderate his excesses.

But this idea that America is eternal and cannot be destroyed is a dangerous delusion. I hope and believe that American institutions will largely withstand another Trump presidency, but ultimately, in the long run, Constitutional America cannot hold up against a population pining for authoritarianism. We are in dangerous times, and millions of people blind themselves to the danger.

Economics and War

Harris blamed inflation, not on government blowing out the budget during the pandemic, but on "corporate price-gouging." Her solution to the budget deficit was to soak the rich. These are bad positions, and I think many voters recognized them as such.

Trump, amidst his interminable rambling ("weaving") and conspiracy mongering ran on three dominant issues: immigration, inflation, and global security. He's terrible on each of these issues, but Harris never was able to convince most voters that she is better.

I've already discussed immigration. The pandemic inflation was a bipartisan effort. As Noah Smith points out, Trump brings a serious risk of setting off a new round of inflation by pushing the Fed into revving up the economy. If Trump actually was able to implement the high tariffs he has threatened, he would substantially bog down the economy. He's overall terrible on economic policy, but he will have a lighter regulatory touch when it comes to energy production and antitrust enforcement. (The Biden administration has, stupidly, accelerated antitrust actions with a vengeance.)

Meanwhile, Trump and J. D. Vance tell voters that immigrants are responsible for high housing costs and overused public schools and health facilities. The real cause of high housing costs is NIMBY policies. The real cause of problems with schools and health is that government has totally mucked up those markets. So we witness Team Trump scapegoating immigrants for the problems created by bad government policies. And Democrats have little to say in reply.

Regarding foreign policy, Trump has said, ridiculously, that Putin never would have invaded Ukraine if he'd been president. Out of the other side of his mouth, Trump tells Putin he's welcome to seize large portions of Ukraine without U.S. resistance. Trump's position regarding Putin is "anti-war" in the sense that Neville Chamberlain's position regarding Hitler was "anti-war." You don't stop war by appeasing bloodthirsty aggressors. We'll see if other Republicans are able to change Trump's tune here.

The situation in Gaza is a disaster. Trump will not improve it. He may, however, be in a position to claim to have helped improve it, if it improves due to nothing that he does. Obviously Trump supports Israel, not because he cares about Israel, but because key supporters of his support Israel, and anyway Trump hates Muslims. Biden and Harris also support Israel, although they also sometimes pander to the anti-Israel wing of their party.

The Pandemic

A lot of people are still enraged at "the elites" over the pandemic. A key example here is California governor Gavin Newsom partying it up at the French Laundry restaurant even as his administration discouraged others to gather. Many state governments imposed harsh and arbitrary restrictions. The public schools largely failed to cope with the problem. The federal government responded largely by handing out taxpayers' money to cronies.

A Black Woman

A lot of people are saying that Harris lost mainly because she is a woman or a Black woman. I'm skeptical. She didn't make much of an issue of her race or gender. I'm sure that some people voted for Trump mainly because they are racists or misogynists (or both). And I'm sure that, on the margins, some people fell off the fence toward Trump because they weren't thrilled about voting for a Black woman as president. But I doubt these factors were enough to swing the race. It's hard to know for sure.

I think more impactful is that Harris was a last-minute emergency substitution for Biden, rather than someone who had been vying for the job for a long period. I think Harris ran about as good a campaign, and rose to the moment, as well as anyone could have hoped or expected. Initially I feared she would be a pretty bad candidate, but she turned out to be an excellent one. Consider how she mopped the floor with Trump during their debate. I haven't heard any plausible argument that Biden, had he stayed in the race, might have outperformed Harris.

Our Stupid Two-Party System

True, many American voters are positively enthusiastic about Trump. But many American voters, if given an opportunity to pick anyone they wanted as president, would not have picked Trump or Harris. Our two-party system is practically designed to give small groups of elites, party insiders, the power to select candidates that most Americans do not especially like. What I think we should do is get parties totally out of formal elections, treat all candidates the same with respect to ballot access, and implement approval voting. But the two main political parties have a tight grip on political power, and they will not willingly give it up.

Context

Two things can be and are true: The United States is the greatest nation ever conceived; and the United States frequently has been home to atrocities and tyrannies. Our country has tolerated slavery, leading to a bloody Civil War; tolerated Jim Crow white supremacist terrorism against Black people; treated Native peoples horrifically; and endured two major world wars, the second of which served as a pretext to herd Japanese Americans into concentration camps.

So let's not pretend that Trump presents some sort of novel threat to the nation. The U.S. government frequently has trampled people's liberties; American institutions often have been under threat.

Trump poses a real threat to liberty and democracy. It is up to those of us who still care about liberty and the ideals of the Constitution to defend them.

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