8. Trump
CRITICAL SUPPORT FOR TRUMP (or ON BEING ANTI-ANTI-TRUMP)
In 2016, some 63 million Americans snubbed the political establishment and backed something radically different to the bipartisan policies which the Democrats and Republicans had pursued over many decades and which had systematically eroded American jobs and living standards, and law enforcement and social cohesion, through the globalisation trifecta of ‘free trade’, ‘open borders’ immigration of cheap labour and the off-shoring of American jobs (particularly manufacturing) to low-wage countries. Trump voters wanted a national government that would attend to the interests of US citizens first, not to the corporate interests, non-citizen immigrants and the ‘international community’ that was benefiting from globalisation at the expense of US citizens.,
They chose the Republican maverick, Donald Trump, because they wanted to see:
much tighter immigration controls, specifically less impoverishment of American workers by floods of cheap immigrant labour, less leeching off our schools, hospitals, and welfare systems by people who contribute nothing to the funding of them, less criminal violence and drug-pushing by illegal aliens. Trump’s barnstorming nomination rallies tapped into the popular desire, not just limited to his social base, to preserve the country they grew up in from endless Third World immigration. The 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 73% of Trump voters said immigration was of “very high importance” to them, compared with just 24% of Clinton voters. Trump vowed to fix this. Specifically, he would build a wall across the Mexican border to halt the flood of illegal migrants (there are 600,000 illegal border-crossers apprehended each year) - ‘Build the Wall’ was Trump’s signature policy, and his hit campaign slogan, highly symbolic of a basket of long-overdue immigration reforms.
fair trade instead of free trade - Trump said he would tear up, or renegotiate on better terms, the trade deals and unfair trade practices that had seen a $12 trillion US trade deficit as imports from Canada, Mexico, China, the EU and Japan replace goods made in the US and which had obliterated millions of American manufacturing jobs (55,000 factories gone, six million manufacturing jobs gone, in the last quarter century) and seen wages stagnate, ,
better infrastructure. Trump would commence a major, job-rich, rebuilding program of America’s crumbling bridges, roads, etc.
affordable health care. Trump said he would repeal and replace the expensive and inadequate Obamacare insurance scheme
an end to the endless wars in the Middle East.
Better relations with Russia. Trump would call off the new cold war with Russia and treat that country as it treats every other.
an end to the power of corporate interests to buy political power through donations. Trump the political campaigner was in no corporate’s pocket.
‘America First’ (aka ‘Make America Great Again’) – this is the Trumpian program. It was time for a government to put American working class citizens first.
All this has made Trump the enemy of elite institutions in politics, the media and culture who profit from the economic conditions of globalism or provide ideological cover for it through advocacy of multiculturalism, ‘Diversity’, social inclusion or whatever version of politically correct ‘wokism’ they espouse
Whilst the US elite, and its liberal foot soldiers, went into hyperbolic anti-Trump rage, however, it was the urban and rural working class which turned to Trump, a thrice-married, brash, Manhattan billionaire non-politician and found in him their most unlikely champion. Donald Trump became the symbol of a popular revolt against the political elites,
These were the people that both Democrats and establishment Republicans had forgotten about, the people who felt ignored or condescended to by politicians. A poll taken before the 2016 election showed that voters who agreed with the statement “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does” were 87% more likely to prefer Trump over any other candidate.
Republican voters saw in Trump a different kind of Republican from those (like the sixteen party hopefuls whom Trump despatched in the primary season) whose passion is cutting government spending, fighting more wars in the Middle East, letting infrastructure degrade, letting manufacturing go offshore, and easing taxation on the rich. Many traditional Democrat-voting workers saw this as well and switched their votes in 2016.
These were the politically-estranged voters who felt neglected by the political process. Their interests were not served by the well-heeled corporate lobbyists and big business donors of the major parties. They were not the recipients of welfare largesse, affirmative action policies or other special attention programs of the liberal welfarist elite. The Democrats’ Bernie Sanders may have been a quasi-populist on some economic issues and more in touch with ordinary workers but he was ideologically compliant on immigration (including its economic impact on working class Americans) and thus did not resonate with the average Trump voter looking for a suite of populist measures to address their class interests.
Only Trump resonated with the ‘deplorables’ (economically stressed and culturally dispossessed American workers). Trump isn’t your average, business-as-usual politician. So-called ‘real Republicans’ (ideologically and financially beholden to corporate interests) were incensed that a loudmouth from Queens, a TV reality star, a host of beauty pageants, someone never before elected to any public office, should challenge the Republican establishment orthodoxy, especially on cheap labour immigration.