As of today former Vice President Joe Bidden and Senator Kamala Harris are President and Vice President elect, after a longer than usual vote counting process and in a more evenly matched electoral race than it was expected from the earlier polls. Although as of this time it is still expected that the electoral results in some States will be contested by the Trump campaign organization. But given the number of States that proceedings need to be filed the chances are dim for a successful legal reversal of the vote count results.
At the present date, President Trump’s days in office are numbered and we can say that his presidency was pretty much a roller coaster, as it would have been expected for people that have closely followed his story. Trump entered the presidency without previously having held any other elected position, and without much in terms of public policy experience. On the other hand, his discourse was of contempt for establishment politics, with a penchant for constant self-promotion. It was for the whole four years a TV celebrity presidency, lots of inside drama with hirings and firings of key personnel, and a message that repeated the success tropes that Donald Trump used to build his particular type of branding. It was a very contested presidency, something that it’s becoming all too normal in American politics since the 1990’s…
As a president Donald Trump wasn’t a consistent policy maker, which also would have been expected since he’s not the type of person that would have the attention span and the necessary training to formulate policies together with his advisors. And for that reason much of the key officials on his cabinet were in most cases free to implement their own policies as long as they didn’t get into conflict with the President and appeared for the most part to be loyal.
This was a presidency that regularly nominated corporate insiders with serious conflicts of interest for key Federal agencies (which happened in other administrations as well). Agencies like the E.P.A., the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, etc., where regulations were reversed, diluted or defanged to align with corporate special interests. Not only that, but this was probably one of the periods of the most unashamed skewing of federal institutions in the name of partisanship, for example over 200 federal judges were appointed that are known to be aligned with the Republican Party. And this is probably much more concerning in the long term, because it has the potential of gridlocking and destabilizing the US over partisan lines for a long time.
One thing that has to be said, the nature of American politics wasn’t squeaky clean before Trump or in the last twenty or thirty years, there were always shenanigans. And each party did at times abused power and tried to skew institutions in their favour. But the policies that led to sustained economic growth after the WWII did a lot to reduce polarization and partisanship in American society. These definitely were not perfect times, but until the 1990’s both the Democratic and the Republican parties had moderate elements in Congress that could make bridges on important issues. That has gone away since the Tea Party revolution, and since then many of the previously moderate Republicans are now Democrats. And in many ways the Republican Party became a revolutionary party, while the Democrats became conservatives???…
And… There are some long term trends in the two parties that have led us to this situation, the first is that the traditional demographic groups that the Republican Party depends since the 1970’s to achieve electoral victories are slowly reducing in percentage of the population. And, the party hasn’t really tried to broaden its electoral coalition to other potential groups. Since it captured the traditional Southern Democrats in the 60’s, in some sense it actually became less capable of adding new groups to its core voters. And probably, that could explain why Trump was effective in capturing the party in 2016. He actually brought working class voters to vote Republican but also make them a vocal pressure group that would cow the Republican National Party into submission. It’s also very probable as well that at the time the funders of the party also saw Trump as useful for their own interests.
On the other side the Democratic Party after losing the South became over time progressively less working class oriented. Although it was capable of making broad coalitions of interests, it also suffers a lot of internal strife. Since it actually arbours people that are in fact conservatives and pro-business, labour union members, progressives and left leaning intellectuals, etc.. And this does make political messaging to be quite confusing at times and not very self consistent. But the reality is that the DNC has mostly aligned with the interests of Urban elites, and has focused more in urban centres and service sector businesses and finance at the expense of their traditional working class voters. And the way it structures its voting coalition since the 1990’s is by focusing more in aspects that can decouple from class, and here we have the suburban mothers, or Black/Latino/Other urban voters, or some other demographic grouping. That in fact doesn’t recognize their common socio-economic condition.
On the political funding side, there is also Citizens United case, but that’s another rabbit hole for another time…
More recently, social media is an element that hasn’t helped either, in fact it made easier for people to attack each other and exacerbated the polarization resulting from economic issues, high personal debt, lack of job stability, wage stagnation and a lack of good jobs. It didn’t help either that it enabled all kinds of sociopaths to persecute other people with no personal liability attached. It hasn’t been a pretty sight, this is not a type of discourse that leads to productive dialogues.
And this leads me to say that it’s not very productive to disparage Trump voters, because many do have strong reasons for their vote. And these are in their root economic, many of them are hurting, and feel forgotten and neglected. Many have lost their jobs since the factories relocated or mines closed, and when they have jobs they have to work for longer hours or have more than one job to make ends meet. If they are farmers, they are in constant pressure from banks, their business is becoming less profitable because their customers and suppliers are bigger and more concentrated and have more market power, and their fixed costs keep increasing.
It’s true that many of the jobs that disappeared aren’t coming back, but it’s not only the jobs that are the problem. Rural America is under a lot of pressure from large Agribusiness that can capture a large portion of federal and state subsidies for production and outcompete independent farmers, and also farmers have to sell their produce and cattle to big buyers at lower prices. At the same time suppliers of seeds and farm equipment are trying to create monopolies, either by patenting genetically modified seeds or by making it impossible that farmers can fix their own farming equipment.
These people are under economic pressure, that’s why rural communities started having serious drug problems. And in some cases it’s a familiar story around the world, people needed to work more hours so that they could make ends meet. People that needed to work even when they were in severe pain. Lack of prospects, despair…
If Democrats are really serious about turning around most of those that are rural working class that voted for Trump, then you need to look for those things that matter for them:
- Start anti-trust proceedings on large semi monopolistic farm businesses, break down large meat processors and farm purchasers, enable right to repair for farm equipment.
- Increase public investment in rural communities so that they can attract new businesses (roads, telecom infrastructure, etc.).
- Have a public option in terms of healthcare for farmers, and the rest of the population, so that they can keep their fixed costs down.
- Have a decently funded unemployment insurance and jobs training program that actually works.
Will this ever happen?…
I have serious doubts, it’s easier for political operators to distract and pretend until better times come and nothing that will conflict with established interests will ever be done. The problem here is that these communities are having problems since the late 1990’s, and these have been accelerating for some time. If there is no effort to improve their prospects then I feel that the US will become even more polarized between urban and rural lines.
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