What started at the bottom of an elevator in June of 2015 ended on the trash-strewn steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Make America Great Again (MAGA) coalition, cobbled together by President Trump and touted as his ride-or-die, unwavering base for years, has, by the looks of things, reached its zenith.
It’s possible that the incoming Biden Administration will declare MAGA and associated groups hostis humani generis, enemies of the whole human race, using the awesome power of the post-9/11 security state to effectively criminalize pro-Trump sentiment. It’s also possible that Trump’s core of ardent supporters will dissipate in the face of withering social and institutional pressure. Regardless, the right-populist movement associated with Donald J. Trump has effectively ended.
If I had a nickel for every article that breathlessly decried Trump and his supporters as evil, ignorant, racist, stupid, sexist, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, psychopathic, sociopathic, white supremacist, white nationalist, etc, etc, I would be a very rich man. At times, his rhetoric steered into uncomfortable waters. Certainly some Trump supporters, maybe even Trump himself, harbored hateful views against this or that group. I don’t have such powers of mass mind-reading to confirm or deny the contents of the hearts of millions. As a sociological phenomenon, however, very few pundits have peeled back the layers of outrage, a lot of which was cultivated by Trump supporters themselves for sheer entertainment value (“triggering the libs”), to peer at the thing itself, underneath it all.
The central question is this: how does an outsider candidate move millions of people, who voted for Obama, the left-wing establishment darling of the 21st century, to vote for himself, Donald Trump, who has been described by so many “experts” as an arch-reactionary and the second coming of Adolf Hitler?
The election of Donald Trump, and the twin phenomena of the emergence of Bernie Sanders on the left, exposes so many sociopolitical trends that it is truly astounding. Political historians will write extremely dry, probably heavily-biased tomes for decades on the Trump era, so profound of a shakeup it proved to be in American politics.
There was a cascade of interlocking factors that, in hindsight, seemed to prime the American electorate for someone just like Trump. It’s now well-worn political wisdom that loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs following China’s entrance into the WTO and NAFTA contributed to Trump’s solid majorities in the Rust Belt. Something people might not think of, however, is how the national primary systems adopted by both parties in the 70’s and 80’s removed the influence of local political bosses from the processes of the national party, thus leading to a more and more nationalized political focus for both parties. Where previously there were conservative Georgia Democrats and liberal Massachusetts Republicans, the two parties have now generated their own national monocultures. In such an environment, a political candidate who has cross-party appeal, like Donald Trump, has a potentially vast well of untapped voters not represented by the major parties.
The sheer size of Trump’s 2020 coalition, over 74 million votes, is the single largest popular vote total besides Biden’s in the same election. He also put points on the board with Latino and Asian voters (32% and 34% respectively). While maintaining a comfortable third of the growing Latino electorate, Trump also has a lock on non-college educated whites. That may sound like a declining demographic, but the number of people going to college in recent years has actually been shrinking, and is expected to decline drastically due to the coronavirus pandemic.
So he managed to build a solid base, a big one with some promise, composed of social and religious conservatives, working-class whites and some working-class minorities.
It’s likely, however, that Trump will no longer be around to lead this coalition in 2021. If an impeachment is secured, he will be barred from ever running for office again, and the social consequences for being a Trump supporter might ultimately disperse the movement.
It had long been hoped for by some conservatives who were attracted to populism but not to Trump himself that with the “Orange Man” gone, they could slap a new, charismatic face on MAGA and ride it to electoral success. That was always a pipe dream. There is not a single statesman in this country that appears willing or able to harness the energy of the American populist-right for productive ends, and such “respectable” conservative pundits have learned that they can’t just slap a bowtie and a tweed suit on MAGA. MAGA is uncouth, loud, brash, and unapologetically plebeian, like Alaric’s Visigoths or the Greens and Blues fighting over who has the best charioteers. Whatever happens to this coalition, its very existence was a shot across the bow to this nation’s political and economic elite. Now retrenched, having narrowly averted a crisis of legitimacy, the establishment can return to status quo ante.
In the wake of the defeat of Trump, men of the American right can only hope that another leader will come along with a more benign personality: a Khrushchev to Trump’s Stalin. Perhaps a leader with more tenderness of feeling and eloquence of speech could translate the very real suffering of much of this nation’s rural and working poor into a message of hope and unity rather than incoherent, blind rage.
For his opponents, Trump was a scion of right-wing authoritarianism. For their sake, I hope they strive to understand his broad coalition of voters rather than demonize them and push them further to the fringes. After the summer and the Capitol Hill riot, this country needs a path to peace. Trump wasn’t interested in that, but neither were his opponents.
I hope that changes.
Photo Credit / Associated Press
