Pur Autre Vie

I'm not wrong, I'm just an asshole

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Racist Ryanism

2016 came down to a math problem. Trump's rhetoric was, to a certain segment of the population, refreshingly free of conservative free-market nonsense. It was time to reorient policy to serve common people, not the moneyed interests so keen on paying speaking fees to Hillary Clinton. The economy had been very good for people like Trump, now it was time for prosperity to make its way down the rungs. Entitlements should be protected and expanded. Health insurance should be cheaper and everyone should be covered, conservative principles be damned. The opioid epidemic should be taken seriously. This resonated with white working-class people who might ordinarily vote Democratic or not vote at all.

On the other hand, Trump freely engaged in race-baiting and misogyny, and his policy proposals were generally devoid of content or actively stupid. I don't want to imply that this was some kind of novel thing for the Republican Party, but we hadn't seen a presidential candidate this crudely and openly bigoted in a long time. This tended to alienate certain affluent, well-educated people who would ordinarily vote Republican because of their desire for low taxes and, in some cases, their desire to slash spending on things like Social Security and Medicare. (I don't mean to imply that there aren't any affluent white people who thrill to the sound of racist demagoguery. But broadly speaking, the way to pick up affluent white votes is to sound like a generic tax-cutting Republican, not a welfare-expanding bigot.)

So which effect would dominate? Well, obviously Clinton won the popular vote, but in general affluent white people pulled the lever for Trump and so did poor white people. You might say there was an implicit social compact formed: The rich would look the other way while Trump attacked blacks, Hispanics, women, the disabled, Jews, and Muslims, in exchange for tax cuts. The poor would look away while Trump attacked social services for the poor, in exchange for attacks on blacks, Hispanics, women, the disabled, Jews, and Muslims. This bargain has been respected to a degree that is somewhat remarkable in American politics.

But of course that's a very jaundiced view of poor white voters. It seems likely that many of them thought Trump was a genuinely new kind of Republican, one whose obvious concern for the less-well-off would lead to sensible, worker-friendly public policy. Instead Trump has governed as a hard-right plutocrat, elevating the most extreme right-wing elements throughout government. To anyone who wasn't in on the bargain described above, Trump's decision to unleash full Paul Ryanism on the population must feel like a betrayal.

So 2018 and 2020 will be tests of whether Trump's 2016 coalition was a fluke that relied on misleading substantial numbers of non-bigoted white voters or a durable arrangement that will prove mutually satisfactory to his two bases. All indications are that "racist Ryanism" is not actually popular in the United States, so my bet is on the former. But there is one troubling aspect of all of this—it took a special kind of naivete, an almost culpable degree of gullibility, to think that Trump would govern in the way he promised. It is not easy to understand why anyone who turned a blind eye to Trump's manifest dishonesty then would wake up now. Even if the Republicans lose badly in 2018, this may simply be because they will rarely put an openly racist asshole like Trump on the ballot. The real test of racist Ryanism will be in 2020, when Trump will presumably enjoy the full-throated support of the far left that pushed him over the top in 2016. So unfortunately we won't be able to rest easy for quite some time.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have been consistently amazed and remain consistently amazed by how badly people misunderstand the last election. I am amazed by how many highly intelligent people who often display deeply perceptive insight (btw not necessarily saying the writer of this blog is among them) fail to see the obvious factors. Factors that are so obvious that describing them as an elephant in the room understates their prominence. They are neon glowing phosphorescent orange elephants in the room.

American culture is deeply sexist. You think, “duh, I know, society is sexist.” No. It’s more sexist than that. Way more. It’s really very sexist. It has been sexist for a very long time, and that sexism is baked in deep.
People are really really sexist. And Hilary Clinton was a woman.

While some extremely wealthy whites may have voted for low taxes, that’s a tiny minority, 1% or half a percent. Most affluent whites voted against a woman. While some poor whites were undoubtedly voting for racial reasons, most were voting against a woman. Those Bernie supporters (>10%) were not voting for populism, they were voting against a woman, just like they did in the primary. And the significant share of black and Hispanic voters Trump picked up compared to Obama? They were not voting for more racial discrimination. They were voting against a woman.

10:32 AM  
Blogger Zed said...

To the extent the special elections tell us anything about this, Trump's base seems to be eroding from #bothsides (as opposed to predominately among the white working class). There are multiple theories as to why. That Ryanism implies tax hikes on the upper middle class might be relevant. There are also marginal voters on various margins -- for example, people who would like low taxes and are willing to tolerate bigotry but are unnerved by the incompetence and chaos. Then (as noted above) there are the sexists, who were voting against Clinton rather than for Trump, and might show up again in 2020 if the Democrats nominate Gillibrand or Warren.

(Doug Jones did well with black voters in AL, and Northam did relatively poorly with them in VA, so I don't think it was just -- or even chiefly -- misogyny there.)

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