Ethnonationalism and the Rise of Donald Trump by Jeff Manza and Ned Crowley
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ethnonationalism and the rise of donald trump by jeff manza and ned crowley At first, it almost seemed to be a joke. He had flirted with running for president multiple times in the past, so most political analysts and commentators refused to believe that Donald Trump intended to mount a serious campaign. Even after the campaign’s formal announcement, many commentators continued to dismiss his chances, with The Huffington Post declaring “we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump’sin ecampaign is a . irv jill a and sideshow [and]ine we won’t take the bait [but] . irv ce m ani if youby j are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.” 34 contexts.org As the Trump presidency unfolds into a miasma of contro- Trump’s support among non-college educated voters was their versies, scandals, and domestic and international provocations, perception of being left behind and lacking opportunities to live it is easy to forget how puzzling his rise to the GOP nomination as well as their parents had. was. Indeed, even his shocking triumph in the general elec- There are various reasons to suspect that economic dis- tion over Hillary Clinton might be viewed as less surprising, tress and/or declining mobility chances could have motivated in retrospect, than his successful primary campaign. Given a struggling GOP primary voters to support Trump. Evidence is macroeconomic environment and other factors which prompted mounting that younger cohorts are not, in fact, experiencing all election forecasting models to predict a close election, com- the same degree of mobility opportunity as cohorts born before bined with the strength of the partisan divide (and the simple 1950. Further, with populist rhetoric and policy positions some- unwillingness of almost all Republican partisans to cast a vote for times sharply at odds from the GOP, Trump’s campaign stood Clinton), Clinton’s popular vote margin—a little over 2%—was out from the pack. In recent decades, the Republican Party had right in line with most forecasting models. Only the unexpected largely coalesced around on a number of issues: retrenchment Electoral College verdict, resting on Trump’s small margins in of the welfare state (under the umbrella “entitlement reform,” some key Midwestern states, would hand him the presidency. So how did Trump muscle aside an Trump’s political breakthrough fits a much experienced field of well funded and far better organized opponents? The ques- larger set of patterns in American political life, tion is a genuine puzzle. He had virtually from Andrew Jackson through to the present. no endorsements from elected Republican office-holders or other party notables until It recalls past anti-immigrant movements, the very end of the primary campaign, when he had locked up the nomination. red scares, racial wars, and fears of foreign He enjoyed a substantial advantage in the subversion and terrorism. amount of media coverage he received, but the content of much of that coverage was negative (at least, as it would have been understood prior which Trump opposed during the primary season before mov- to the 2016 election). His performances in the GOP debates ing to more conventional GOP stance in the general election); were uneven at best; most veteran observers consistently graded deregulation and the promotion of free markets (including, criti- them as poor. cally, international free trade, which Trump strongly opposed); Two theories about Trump’s rise have been widely advanced. an interventionist foreign policy (which Trump opposed); and tax Both raise classical themes from political sociology. The first is cutting (the one economic policy topic of the primary season on that Trump’s populist, economic nationalist rhetoric drew strong which Trump’s views were in line with the GOP mainstream, but support from downwardly mobile and struggling middle- and always expressed as being in the interest of “working people”). working-class voters. In one example, New York Times columnist The central alternative view is that Trump’s rise reflected David Brooks declared in March 2016 that “Trump voters are his ability to capture racial resentments and anti-immigrant and a coalition of the dispossessed [who] have suffered lost jobs, anti-globalization sentiment, a package of beliefs known as lost wages, lost dreams.” Veteran political commentator Bill ethnonationalism. A key point of departure for this possibility is Schneider suggested, “What we’re seeing right now in American evidence that citizens harboring such sentiments were increas- politics is class warfare…[but] it’s not the working class versus ingly moving toward Republican identification prior to 2016. the 1 percent. It’s the working class versus the educated elite. Two recent influential studies highlight this critical partisan shift In fact, one of the richest men in the world is leading the revolt: among voters with anti-immigrant sentiment (by political scien- Trump.” Sociologist Andrew Cherlin advanced an intriguing vari- tists Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan Hajnal) and racially resentful ant of this argument, suggesting that the key to understanding Whites (by Michael Tesler); in particular, they reveal how party WINTER 2018 contexts 35 Median income and mean years education among all state residents, Republican primary voters, and Trump primary voters. Differences in median annual income Differences in education 100 (in thousands) 16 mean years completed 14 80 12 10 60 8 40 6 4 20 2 statewide primary voter trump voter statewide primary voter mean** trump voter median* median** median** mean* average of 23 states mean** *from CPS **interpolated from exit poll results *from ACS 2015 **interpolated from exit poll results NOTE: State averages from Current Population Survey. GOP primary voter averages estimated by authors from state exit polls. Data from Republican primary exit polls, collected by Edison Research for the National Election Pool consortium of news media outlets. Average income and years education are estimates interpolated from cross-tabulations. identifiers had been realigning on the basis of racial and ethnic Democratic Party was seen as a vehicle for helping minorities attitudes, transforming the GOP from below. and immigrants “jump the line” over White Americans, as Arlie The upshot is that while there was a time when racially Hochschild put it in her recent book Strangers in Their Own resentful White partisans could be found in both parties – Land (See Q&A, this issue, for more). Obama, Hochschild finds thereby diluting their impact – by 2016, ethnonationalism had in her study of Tea Party supporters in Louisiana, was himself moved into partisan alignment. This outcome was the result viewed by many as a “line-jumper,” someone who got ahead of a slow-moving process. Its roots trace to the 1960s, when because of affirmative action. Today, the increasing visibility of Northern and Western Democrats pushed through the major both the Black Lives Matter movement and the mobilization of civil rights legislation over the strong resistance of their South- immigrant communities (and the embrace of these efforts by ern bloc. The disillusionment of Southern Democrats led to the many Democratic politicians) have sharpened the partisan divide South slowly became more Republican, as Democrats in most over race and immigration. Congressional seats without a minority-majority voter base either Between the Clinton and Obama presidencies, the views of White Democrats and White Republi- Trump did not benefit from a large bloc of poor cans had diverged substantially. Here’s one stunning example (identified by political or low-income voters or draw such voters into scientist Michael Tesler): in 1994, there were no differences between White Demo- the GOP primaries. That’s a powerful myth. cratic and White Republican voters in their views of the O.J. Simpson verdict, but by switched parties or were displaced by Republicans. 2013, an almost unthinkable 40% gap had opened between Bill Clinton’s presidency and the centrist Democratic Party White Democrats and White Republicans in their views of the the Arkansas native sought to present to voters in the 1990s decision in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida (in which Martin’s slowed the partisan divide over race. The Clinton Administra- murderer, George Zimmerman, was exonerated). tion undertook various initiatives to address concerns of racially Trump’s appearance as a candidate for the 2016 GOP nomi- resentful Whites—most notably the 1996 welfare reform leg- nation suddenly provided a voice for these voters. His candidacy islation, the 1994 crime bill, and in Clinton’s famously critical provided ample, blunt, and sometimes even uncoded racial remarks about the hip-hop artist Sister Souljah. But these efforts appeals. For example, in the run-up to his 2016 bid, Trump seized were insufficient to reverse the long-term process of outflow. on a bizarre conspiracy theory about Obama’s birth certificate to The combination of rising population diversity and the 2008 challenge the legitimacy of America’s first Black president. His election of Barack Obama fueled another wave of ethnonational- opening campaign speech referred to Mexican immigrants as ist realignment. In spite of Obama’s determined efforts to avoid “rapists” who are “bringing crime and drugs” to the U.S. And politicizing race controversies, America’s first Black president a federal judge with Mexican ancestors could not rule fairly on was symbolically meaningful. By 2016, for many Whites the a case against Trump University, the candidate thought, because 36 contexts.org Donald Trump’s feeling thermometer score and standardized attitude items from the American National Election Study, January 2016. NOTE: Americna National Election Study pilot survey from January 2016, available at http://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/ anes_pilot_2016/anes_pilot_2016.htm. The survey was fielded from January 22nd to 28th, 2016.