Change we can believe in
“The liberal media keep telling the majority of Americans who voted for Trump that they are stupid. We’re not stupid, just mad and tired of the media’s lies. We want our country back.” — Ron Marol (Moxham, PA)
The 2016 presidential election was nothing short of a disaster: the “Trump effect” has emboldened the far right-wing, and given rise to a startling rise in hate crimes. Trump may have lost the popular vote, but how was he able to even come so close in the first place?
There’s been a lot of talk about how the white working class “stupidly” voted against its own “interests.” It seems like a plausible theory; for one, how is it in the “interest” of the economically downtrodden to elect an ostentatious billionaire? Most pundits structured their argument around a single (stated or unstated) premise: these people were too stupid to know what was good for them. Whenever pundits were not outright condescending, they allowed the white working class some sort of agency, usually by saying that it did go along with its “interests” by electing someone who appealed to their “white” or “male privilege.” This election, in other words, was won by racism and misogyny.
Both of these approaches are almost entirely incorrect.
To start, exit polls have shown that white voters shifted towards Trump (from Romney in 2012) by one percentage point. It seems that if racism has reared its ugly head, it is doing so in incremental amounts. In fact, the key (electoral) shift was when whites went from being +12% Republican in 2008 to +20% Republican in 2012. In 2016, however, the Republicans’ lead had only climbed by one percentage point to +21%. The supposed tidal wave of racism that catapulted Trump to office is hard to find.
On the other hand, one hears little talk about the startling shifts among non-white voters. Black voters, while solidly Democratic (88%), saw a 7% change towards Trump. This is perhaps to be expected, with the historical aberration of Barack Obama’s presidency. Less expected are the significant changes in Asian and Latino voters, who respectively shifted 11% and 8%. This relative lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton on the part of non-white voters was a big factor in her loss.
So why did ~60,000,000 Americans decide to vote for Trump? Was it because they didn’t care about his misogyny? This definitely applies to 55% of Trump voters who said that his “treatment of women” bothered them not much or at all. But the other 45% of Trump voters who said that it bothered them “some” or “a lot”, were not saying that his sexism didn’t exist. Nor were they saying that it didn’t trouble them. They were saying that other factors were more important.
So what, then, was more important to voters?
One clue is provided by an exit poll that asked voters, “‘Which one of these four candidate qualities mattered most in deciding how you voted for president?’ The options were ‘has the right experience,’ ‘has good judgment,’ ‘cares about people like me,’ and ‘can bring needed change.’ 56% of voters picked one of the first three categories, and Clinton won these voters handily. But 39% of voters picked the fourth quality — ’can bring needed change’ — and Trump got 83% of those votes. The ‘change’ factor overrode everything else.”
But what does ‘change’ mean? Some might intuitively think that people wanted, first and foremost, the economic situation to change. In a way, they are correct in thinking so: “The economy was the big issue — […] a majority (52 percent) of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country.”
It is puzzling that Clinton captured 10 percent more than Trump among these voters; if Hillary Clinton represented the established way of doing things, why would voters choose her to change our economic situation, when she is promising more of the same policies that got us here in the first place?
When one examines the exit polls a little more, things get even more surprising; there was a clear shift (16%) towards Trump (from 2012) among people making under $30,000 a year. Amongst those making $30,000 to $49,000 there was a 6% shift. Then, the numbers start to move towards Clinton. Those making $50,000 — $99,999 saw a 2% shift in Clinton’s direction, and by the time one gets to the $100,000 — $200,000 range, one sees a 9% shift in Clinton’s favor.
Another key figure is among whites with college degrees, Clinton saw a 10% swing; among whites without a college degree, Trump gained 14%. These figures seem to indicate that something important is happening: there was a shift of most of the working class, as a whole (including blacks, whites, latinos, women, men, etc), towards Trump. Trump represented change; not from our current (neoliberal) order as a whole, but from certain aspects of it. These “aspects” were the symptoms of a much larger revolt against the system. As one commentator put it, “the election was a referendum on globalization and demographics; it was not a referendum on neo-liberalism.” This means that Trump’s appeal to whites was “around their fear of the multiple implications of globalization. This included trade agreements AND migration. Trump focused on the symptoms inherent in neo-liberal globalization, such as job loss, but his was not a critique of neo-liberalism. He continues to advance deregulation, tax cuts, anti-unionism, etc. He was making no systemic critique at all, but the examples that he pointed to from wreckage resulting from economic and social dislocation, resonated for many [working class people] who felt, for various reasons, that their world was collapsing.” Trump’s solution was “protectionism plus firm borders.”
Clinton appeared in many ways the stronger candidate when it came to the economy, with strong ties to Wall Street. The Clinton campaign’s choice to not press the subject of the economy, instead resorting to the ‘no alternative’ narrative, seems questionable in hindsight. Beyond that, ignoring a large part of her constituency that demanded radical economic change towards social democracy proved to be a losing strategy. After the debates, voters were asked to rate two separate messages: one attacked Trump for his extreme attitudes and behavior. The other demanded “big economic changes and [attacked Trump] for supporting trickle-down and protecting corporate special interests.” They found “that the tough economic message performed dramatically better in consolidating millennials, white unmarried women and white working class women.” Instead, Hillary Clinton only gained one percentage point among women (from 2012), while losing five percentage points (among men) to Trump.
In the end, Clinton tried to win on the basis of identity politics; she calculated that if only white males favored Trump, she could coast to victory. She also assumed that she would get similar turnout numbers that looked, more or less, like Obama’s; pulling the “Trump monster” card was supposed to bring hordes of scared voters to the polls. This was a fatal miscalculation; unlike Barack, who represented “change,” Hillary had only fear to peddle. And even though she had a positive margin among voters primarily concerned about the economy, she could almost have certainly won more. The strategic choice of ignoring economic reform in favor of trying to win on the basis of identity cost her the election.
Overall shifts in voter attitudes show that the platform of identity politics (and neoliberal economics) failed miserably, their net result being to give fuel to the reactionary fire; it not only failed to do what it set out to accomplish, but helped to bring about its exact “opposite.” This ultimately means that fighting for the things that identity politics wants (an end to sexism, racism, etc) will have to entail some sort of radically different economic program. In other words, “those who [can only] play the identity game should be prepared to lose it.” With a far right on the rise, both around the world and in the US, this is not on a game that we can afford to play.
