The Trump Revolt

The Trump Revolt

Donald Trump’s election as US president left many aghast. Although there are now signs that his administration is already pivoting towards more conventional forms of policy, Trump’s ascendancy marked a dramatic shift towards right-wing outsider populism. It promised the reinvigoration of the nation-state, a repudiation of neoconservatism’s hopes of a new global order, and a reconfiguration of neoliberalism. Both freedom of movement and trade liberalization have been placed in jeopardy. There were some signs that a new industrial policy based upon the picking of winners and losers might be pursued. The “political class” was to be dislodged. Furthermore, populism’s inherent anti-pluralism and impatience with checks and balances appeared to threaten established democratic procedures.

How should these developments be understood? There are of course parallels with developments in many European countries and analyses that rest heavily on some form of American exceptionalism should be avoided. It can also be credibly argued that Trump secured the Republican nomination because of chance ordering processes in the primaries and then won the presidency because 2016 was a Republican year and the Clinton campaign proved lackluster. However, explanations need to go further. Trump’s victory depended in part upon turnout amongst stable Republican constituencies including evangelicals but defections within the white working-class proved pivotal. Exit polling suggests that fourteen per cent of whites without a college degree who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 backed Trump four years later. Their numbers bolstered the ranks of white manual or routine workers who had already shifted their allegiances to the Republicans. Class and race have long intersected together.

Why have the Democrats lost the support of those who once formed the core of the “New Deal coalition”? Why have Republicans, the party of corporate elites, secured their loyalty? One celebrated study published in 2004 pointed to the role of moral or cultural values. However, as in much of Europe, popular attitudes have been shaped to a much greater degree by lived experiences of both the labour market and the state. Donald Trump was the fortunate political beneficiary.

Eddie Ashbee (Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School) is author of The Trump Revolt, (Manchester University Press, 2017).