The Politics of Losing

by Rory McVeigh

  It worked. Using this strategy, the Republican Party found a position of relative strength: Resisting civil rights advances attracted white voters across class boundaries, inside the South as well as outside it. In the thirty-two years between the founding of the New Deal coalition and the election of 1968, the Democratic Party had won seven out of nine presidential elections. Over the ten that followed, Republicans won all but three.

  For many wealthier white voters, this realignment posed no dilemma. Their interests in protecting their class privilege aligned with their interest in protecting their racial privilege, with no tension between the two.55 Working-class white voters who moved to the Republican Party had to balance their preferences for preserving racial privilege against their class-based interests. The national party opposed policies that would hang a safety net underneath the poor and working classes. Republican politicians resolved this dissonance by arguing that policies favoring corporations would spur the economy as a whole, and the benefits would fall upon the working class as well as the wealthy.56

  In the 1980s, conservative Protestants and conservative Catholics joined the new Republican coalition.57 Some were economically comfortable, and aligning with the Republican Party did not strain their loyalties. But religious conservatives run the gamut of wealth,58 and siding with the Republican Party, for some, meant weighing the importance of protecting religious privilege against advancing their class interests. Just as with race policy, Republican leaders downplayed this tension between economic conservatism and religious conservatism. Liberal positions on social issues, to them, promoted immoral and irresponsible behavior, and progressive economic positions were antithetical to individual responsibility.59

  The entry of religious conservatives into the Republican Party reified its positions on gender and sexual orientation. Conservative Christian political lobbying is overwhelmingly concerned with policies that favor traditional families and gender roles. Determination to overturn Roe v. Wade is central to these efforts, but they have also opposed same-sex marriage and resisted laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. Vice President Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is supposed to protect individuals from substantial burdens on their exercise of religion, while he was sitting governor of Indiana. Critics, however, argue that the law is a barely veiled means of legal discrimination against LGBTQ people.60 In a few states, like North Carolina, Republican legislators drummed up fears about transgender use of public restrooms and gender-segregated facilities. In March 2016, North Carolina passed a bill that prohibited anyone from using public restrooms that do not correspond to their biological sex at birth. Republican House Speaker Tim Moore argued the bill was necessary because a city ordinance passed in Charlotte “would have allowed a man to go into a bathroom, locker or any changing facility, where women are—even if he was a man. We were concerned. Obviously there is the security risk of a sexual predator, but there is [also] the issue of privacy.”61 The bill was repealed a year later after threats from businesses and the National Collegiate Athletic Association to boycott the state.

  Over the last several decades, these political alliances—between economic conservatives, white racial conservatives, and religious conservatives on the Right, and between economic and social progressives on the Left—have calcified and lodged in place. Today America suffers almost unprecedented political polarization.62 This played out in political stalemate, as Republican legislators dug their heels in against Obama and the Democratic agenda.63 It took the fiscal crisis of the late 2000s, combined with Republican and Democratic responses to the crisis, to destabilize the alliances within the Republican Party and set the stage for Trump.

  The fiscal crisis was the most severe recession since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate sat at a relatively low 5 percent in December 2007, but catapulted with the recession, peaking at 10 percent in October 2009. But these figures underestimate how dire economic conditions were, since they only track those who actively seek work and cannot find it. The labor force participation rate—the percentage of the population age sixteen or older who are either working or seeking work—declined during the recession. But it also continued to fall during the recovery, even as the unemployment rate improved. By the time Trump was elected, it had dropped from 66 percent in October 2008 to less than 63 percent.64 Even more telling, during the recession, long-term unemployment (those unemployed for twenty-seven weeks or longer) jumped. “At 6.8 million in April 2010, long-term unemployment represented an unprecedented 45.5 percent of total unemployment.”65

  The stock market suffered along with it. In October 2007, the Dow Jones Index stood at 16,000—by May 2009 it had dropped below 10,000.66 After years of rising home equity, American homeowners lost more than seven trillion dollars in the housing crisis.67 The economy teetered on the brink of collapse, large banks seemed poised to follow Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy, and corporations, most notably those in the auto industry, were on life support. As the recession deepened, President Bush’s approval ratings dropped. They bottomed out at 25 percent in the fall of 2008. His disapproval rating stood at 70 percent.68

  In the midst of this, voters responded to Barack Obama’s call for “hope and change,” and he handily defeated his Republican opponent, Arizona senator John McCain, in 2008. In the early days of the Obama presidency, the Democratic-led Congress approved bailouts to stabilize the banks and auto industry and pushed a stimulus package through Congress authorizing public spending to circulate more money in the crippled economy. The bailouts were controversial at the time, and remain so, though they have mostly been repaid.69

  When Obama and Democrats in Congress approved bailouts—steps they believed necessary to salvage the economy—their efforts were met by strong resistance from a growing faction of Republican fiscal absolutists who came to be known as the Tea Party.70

  In 2009, CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli was tasked with delivering a live response to the passage of the Homeowners Affordability Plan, which allocated money to homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure. Santelli asked, pointedly, whether voters really wanted to subsidize mortgages for “losers.” “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July,” he said, referring to the revolutionary protests against taxes levied by the British Crown against imported tea. “All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.”71 Soon, symbolic Tea Party protests cropped up in nearly every state in the country.

  Pundits, media outlets, and social scientists have characterized the Tea Party as an “astroturf” movement—meaning that while it had the appearance of grassroots activism, it was funded and orchestrated by conservative elites.72 This is partly true. The Tea Party was heavily backed by donors like the Koch brothers and think tanks like Freedom Works. And conservative media outlets—especially Fox News—led, rather than covered, the movement. But there was a real grassroots component that drew regular citizens into protests and rallies. Together, the elite conservatives and grassroots activists organized resistance to government spending programs like the Affordable Care Act and pressured legislators.73 With the help of the Tea Party, Republicans gained solid majorities in both the House and the Senate in the 2010 midterm elections, and they would come to block Obama’s agenda throughout the rest of his presidency. While the Tea Party appealed to Americans who preferred lower taxes and who perceived that government spending disproportionately benefitted nonwhite Americans,74 it offered no remedy for the hardships of those who would in the not-too-distant future fall behind Trump.

  When Trump began his campaign in 2016, he entered a crowded field of seventeen contenders for the Republican nomination. Few believed he had any chance of winning.75 In hindsight, however, we can see how clearly he stood out from the rest. For the most part, the other candidates stayed true to Republican campaign wisdom. Voters in primaries and caucuses tend to be more conservative than those who vote in general elections, and so candidates must appeal t
o the Religious Right, advocate for a strong military, and promote pro-business fiscal policy. Republican primary candidates generally jockey to position themselves to the right of each other.76 When new polling revealed that conservative opposition to path-to-citizenship immigration reform was skyrocketing by as much as 20 percent year to year, the candidates suffered convenient changes of heart. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who in 2013 favored amnesty reform, was suddenly against it by the middle of 2015. “But then came reports that he was privately for it, so he declared that he really was against it” during a Fox News interview. He would drop out of the race that September.77

  But polling did not capture how empty Republican promises of trickle-down economics had begun to seem in the towns bypassed by globalization. Trump’s willingness to break with Republican orthodoxy didn’t just separate him from the other contenders, it let him claim that he alone could recover the lost economic power of so many white working-class Americans. He made bold promises that he would halt the forces of globalization and return manufacturing and extractive industry. And his cure did not require supporters to change their behavior or update their skills.

  In February 2016, speaking after winning the Nevada caucus, Trump said, “I love the poorly educated.”78 The press ridiculed his awkwardness. The Washington Post’s Peter W. Stevenson suggested he “might be the most unfiltered candidate in the history of American presidential politics.”79 But his critics missed how Republicans (Trump included) had for years dismissed the college-educated as elitists who could never understand why blue-collar work was a point of pride for many Americans.80 Rather than embracing the free-college promises of the Democrats, voters instead preferred to wait for Trump to make “better trade deals” with foreign nations and bring well-paying manufacturing jobs back home.

  ECONOMIC POWER AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

  In the 1920s, the Klan reeled in communities that were struggling as mass production and a deep agricultural recession ripped money from their economies. Klan recruiting was most potent when it linked these dire straits to culture, especially through racial and religious solidarity against Catholics and immigrants. Trump drew from the same playbook, fortifying his unconventional economic message with cultural solidarity and resentments. The economic message, alone, did not set him apart. Independent Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, for example, was an articulate spokesperson for many of the core economic positions that Trump advanced. Debating Hillary Clinton ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Sanders highlighted their differences. “I do not believe in unfettered free trade,” he said, “I believe in fair trade that works for the middle class and working families, not just large multinational corporations. I was on the picket line in opposition to NAFTA. We heard people tell us how many jobs would be created. I didn’t believe that for a second because I understood what the function of NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, and the TPP is. It’s to say to American workers, hey, you are now competing against people in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour minimum wage.”81

  Unlike Trump, however, Sanders blamed large corporations and a political system that had allowed the wealthy to dominate public policy. “Our vision for American democracy should be a nation in which all people, regardless of their income, can participate in the political process, can run for office without begging for contributions from the wealthy and the powerful.”82 And he took opposite positions from Trump on racial equality, LGBTQ rights, and the environment. He developed his own strong following, but many voters preferred to have the economic message delivered Trump-style—a style that linked cultural resentments to economic grievances, scapegoating cultural outsiders rather than blaming the business class.

  Even though immigration from Mexico and Central America (legal or otherwise) had minimal effect on the economic situation of most of Trump’s core supporters, his vows to build a wall across the southern border resonated with those who understood, on some level, that their fates were tied up in the overall supply of unskilled workers in a global economy. He also claimed, again and again, that American workers suffered from trade deals like NAFTA that benefited foreign countries at the expense of American workers. He promised to negotiate better deals for American workers and bring manufacturing jobs—and even jobs in coal production—back.

  President Trump speaks to autoworkers at the American Center for Mobility on March 15, 2017, in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Photo © Bill Pugliano / Getty Images.

  So why did so many white working-class voters support Trump? Why did so many join the Klan in the 1920s? As far back as George Wallace’s third-party presidential challenge in 1968, presidential candidates have largely refrained from blatant racism. Since then, the two major parties have staked out clear and opposing positions on race, but Republican candidates signal their positions more subtly. Through dog-whistle messages, they found they could appeal to voters opposed to civil rights, but in a way that offered cover from accusations of out-and-out racism. Some of these messages, of course, have been less subtle than others. Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” exploited black stereotypes to discredit social safety nets.83 And after watching one of his own campaign ads that showed footage of an urban riot, Richard Nixon privately expressed his approval: “Yep, this hits it right on the nose … it’s all about law and order and the damn Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there.”84 But even this covert signaling showed that candidates for national office believed they would pay a political price if they ever crossed the line to open bigotry. Trump has proven that theory wrong: with every crossing, his popularity only seemed to grow.

  * * *

  Globalization has affected men and women differently. Because of men’s overrepresentation in manufacturing, the loss of manufacturing jobs disproportionately affected male earnings and men’s positions as head of the household in traditional families.85 More women also go to college now. In 1980, 26.8 percent of white men ages twenty-five to twenty-nine had at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to only 23.3 percent of white women. By 2016, 39.5 percent of white men held a college degree, but the number of white women with a degree had doubled and outpaced them: it now stood at 46.3 percent.86 Just as the Klansmen in the 1920s tried to prevent women from entering the paid labor force, Trump’s treatment of women was an analgesic to men who were losing not only their jobs but also their capacity to rule the household as breadwinners.

  But to say Trump’s open views on race, religion, foreigners, and women were effective simply because his supporters were bigots is to miss the point. As was true of the Klan, coupling economic protectionism with cultural resentments can be a powerful tonic. It signaled to white voters that Trump was a different kind of candidate, one who would prioritize their interests and who was prepared to disrupt the status quo if it meant bringing them the kind of change they had been waiting for.

  In the 1920s, Klansmen organized to defend the livelihood and lifestyle of middle-class white Americans by pressuring the government to restrict immigration and cut off the supply of unskilled foreign labor. They organized boycott campaigns, encouraging consumers to give preference to “100 percent American” merchants.87

  A hundred years later, economists criticized the immaturity of Trump’s own brand of nativism. But his solutions were never as real as the grievances of his base. Instead, his rhetoric appealed intuitively to those whose economic standing had fallen victim to globalization. The uneven recovery from the Great Recession brought home the consequences of the new economy for the white working class. They heard news of job growth and low unemployment rates, but that news always came from far away.

  5

  WHERE TRUMP FOUND HIS BASE

  When a particular group loses power, it can disrupt political alliances and challenge party orthodoxy. If no candidate for office will lead that challenge, it may take place outside of party politics, as was the case with the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. In the 1924 elections, the Klan tried to influence Republican incumbent president Calvin Coolidge
and his two competitors—Democrat John W. Davis and Progressive Robert La Follette—promising to deliver millions of votes to the one who embraced their agenda.1

  But some movements also play out within party politics, as when a candidate like Donald Trump takes on the establishment on behalf of those who feel their fundamental interests have been neglected. In this chapter we examine what the counties that went for Trump had in common, and how this might disrupt the Republican alliance for years to come.

  One of the surprises about the Klan of the 1920s is how far it expanded beyond the boundaries of the American South. As historian Felix Harcourt wrote, “By the end of 1921, the Invisible Empire had transcended its sectional origins to become a truly national phenomenon, from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine.”2 Unlike earlier characterizations of the movement as a rural phenomenon motivated by prejudice, we now know that the Klan was far more complex.3 It thrived in cities like Denver, Colorado, and Oakland, California, as well as in smaller towns like Kokomo, Indiana, or Athens, Georgia.

  In sociologist Chris Rhomberg’s in-depth study of the Klan in Oakland, he found that the Klan was particularly attractive to the upwardly mobile middle class. The city’s elite controlled a network of patronage in which politicians exchanged political favors for votes. The working class, mostly Catholics and immigrants, organized along ethnic lines. The middle class was determined not to be crowded out of local politics.4 “Large monopoly franchise corporations furnished the resources for private and political patronage brokers to channel economic opportunities to members of favored ethnic groups,” writes Rhomberg. “These resources were distributed through the private institutions within the ethnic community, including the family and the Catholic Church, as well as through public spaces like the saloon.”5