The Politics of Losing

by Rory McVeigh

  After the war, the Reconstruction-era Klan formed, in large part, as a balm for the economic troubles of white Southerners when slavery ended. Elite landowners could no longer use slave labor to reap large profits. At the same time, non-elite white Southerners now had to compete with former slaves for jobs and land. Later, in the 1960s, the successes of the civil rights movement meant that working-class whites in the South faced new competition as the legal restrictions on the freedoms of black Americans unraveled. While the economic story is important, so is the political story. White Southerners who competed with or exploited black labor had new economic challenges with the dawn of civil rights, but they also lost much of their political power as black Americans—and others—secured the franchise.

  The 1920s Klan attracted support from white Americans in communities that were depressed by the new mass-production capitalism. Here, also, Klan supporters reacted to declining political power that compounded their problems. The immigrants and women who fueled this new industrial capitalism would also soon enjoy the power of the vote. The Klan capitalized on cultural solidarity among those affected and began to restructure alliances in national politics.

  A century later, Trump drew support from whites in towns mired in the Great Recession, excluded from the recovery, and on the losing end of the transition to a global economy. “I think our president needs to not be afraid to say what he needs to say,” said a Trump supporter from Louisiana, “and, you know, take the fight to whoever’s done this to America.”3 His message was particularly appealing in predominantly white communities harmed by economic restructuring.

  * * *

  Political power loss may occur all at once or gradually. Sudden changes are easier to recognize, and they can provoke equally quick reactions. During Reconstruction, for example, black Southerners gained voting rights in a single moment, with the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which suddenly—and substantially—increased the number of eligible voters in Southern states. Women’s suffrage in 1920 immediately doubled the number of eligible voters in many states, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965—which banned literacy tests, spurred federal oversight of voter registration, and authorized the attorney general to investigate poll taxes—broke down the barriers keeping black Southerners out of the electorate. In Alabama, the total number of votes cast in the presidential election increased by 52 percent from 1964 to 1968.4 In every case, the Klan rose up to thwart these new voters.

  But gradual losses, once recognized, can also motivate political movements. Political power can erode slowly, through a steady flow of immigration or as regular supplies of new young voters come of age. In either case, political power loss is more likely to produce white nationalist politics when it is lost alongside economic power, since these political losses diminish the likelihood of redressing economic grievances through normal political processes.

  Many of the 1920s Klansmen had enjoyed a time of economic prosperity in the late 1910s before things went sour. Rural economies in particular thrived on agricultural exports to Europe during World War I. The boom years encouraged farmers to take on debt as they acquired more land and modernized their farm equipment, betting on continued prosperity. With the new land and machinery, American farmers were producing commodities faster than ever.

  But then the war ended, and the foreign demand for agricultural goods dried up. They were left with crops no one was buying and debt they could not repay. As economic historian Giovanni Federico describes it, “The fall in prices, from June 1920, dramatically worsened the financial conditions of farmers. Real interest rates jumped to almost 50 percent and interest payments on mortgage-backed loans rose to 16.6 percent of farmers’ income. Adding payments on other mortgages, the total burden might have exceeded a quarter of total income.”5

  At the same time, manufacturing practices that were already entrenched in industrialized northeastern states—large factories where unskilled labor produced goods cheaply and efficiently—began to spread across the country. According to the Department of Commerce, from 1914 to 1919 the average number of workers per factory jumped by 23 percent.6

  Americans were looking for answers. Bitter political struggle gripped the nation as those embedded in distinct economic systems jockeyed for federal policies that would advantage their system over others. Farmers in wheat-producing states, like Minnesota and North Dakota, turned to socialist and farmer-labor coalitions to pressure the federal government into stabilizing crop prices, whose wild fluctuations during economic downturns were ruining them.7 Klan supporters resented the Republican-backed passage of the Emergency Tariff Act in 1921 and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act in 1922.8 These acts taxed foreign imports to protect manufactured goods, and farmers feared a trade war in which other countries retaliated with taxes on American agricultural exports.

  Meanwhile, demographic shifts were destabilizing national politics, which were now more volatile and unpredictable than ever. Large-scale immigration from southern and central Europe, African American migration from Southern to Northern states, and the 1920 passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, swelled the electorate. The Klan worried that political representatives would cater to these new voters at the expense of their own interests.

  For the 1920s Klan, immigration was the paramount issue. They recognized it, rightly or wrongly, as the burglar of their stolen political power. “That America began restricting foreign immigration not a moment too soon,” wrote a Klansmen on the occasion of the Immigration Act of 1924, “is indicated by a study of the census reports, which show that from a negligible minority thirty years ago, southern and eastern Europeans have increased, until now they are dominant in twelve American cities of more than two hundred and fifty thousand population. In addition, the total foreign vote has grown until its combined strength is sufficient to control a national election, and this does not take into consideration the influence of the unnaturalized foreigners, who may in some localities wield a power practically equivalent to the strength they would have if they were allowed to vote.”9

  Klansmen drape an American flag on the steps of the Capitol building during a march on Washington, DC, on August 9, 1925. Photo © Bettman/Getty Images.

  All the while, black Americans were migrating north. The Klan was anxious that this would impede their constituents’ goals in national politics. In a passage dripping with paternalism, one Klansman writes, “There are more than 10,000,000 of him—about one tenth of our population. He cannot attain the Anglo-Saxon level. Rushing into the cities, he is retrograding rather than advancing, and his rate of mortality is shockingly high. It is not in his interest any more than in the interests of our white population that he should seek to assume the burdens of modern government. These are almost too heavy for the strongest shoulders, and their weight is increasing.”10

  To counter the tide of immigrant and black voters, the Klan looked to women’s suffrage. In 1923 an auxiliary faction of the Klan, the Women’s Ku Klux Klan, formed and headquartered itself in Little Rock, Arkansas.11 If new women voters opposed the Klan’s agenda, it would only exacerbate their troubles, so they worked to raise voting among women sympathetic to their cause. Writers for the Imperial Night-Hawk consistently welcomed the role of women in the public and political spheres: “The time has come when women can no more be limited to home activities. They must, and will, take their places in the broad activities of national life.”12

  According to sociologist Kathleen Blee, “Klansmen argued that white Protestant women functioned best as political helpmates of men.”13 By its peak, the Women’s KKK had half a million members.

  The Klan appealed to its members and supporters by disparaging their cultural enemies, whom they accused of undermining their political and economic standing. They riled up white supporters by suggesting that black participation in politics posed an existential threat to their interests, and conjured up the specter of their political radicalization. They alleged that a black d
elegation traveled to Russia asking for “more funds with which to Communize negroes.”14 This outreach, according to the Klansman, “proves that there are black Bolsheviks as well as white, and that the call of the Klan for the maintenance of White Supremacy is not an idle one.”15

  But without question, Catholics were their primary political foe. Catholics, they argued, were unfit for democratic participation because they placed allegiance to the Pope above allegiance to America: “The time has full come when this country, and every other country ought to serve notice on the Catholic church that its day in politics has passed, that so long as it meddles in the affairs of state its activity will be an insurmountable barrier to official preferment for any man who owes allegiance to its authority.”16

  POLITICAL POWER AND THE TRUMP CONSTITUENCY

  Although the battle lines are different, the nature of the underlying conflicts that gave rise to the Klan in the 1920s and the election of Trump are the same. In the latter case, as was true in the 1920s, there existed two distinct and competing economic systems housed under a single political roof. Members of one economy—those to whom a Trump candidacy appealed—suffered a sense of political impotence that exacerbated their economic losses. For decades, presidential candidates from both major political parties had engaged globalization pragmatically. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans advocated isolationism. The primary differences between the two parties instead played out in debates about the government’s role in hanging a generous safety net, legislating higher minimum wages and better working conditions, and training citizens for the skills necessary to thrive in a global economy.

  As we saw in chapter 4, the recovery from the Great Recession almost exclusively benefited those with a college degree, particularly if they lived in cities where available jobs matched their education. Many towns lost jobs that did not come back, and they did not have the critical mass of highly educated workers they needed to attract new businesses that could compete in a global market. Presidential candidates offered little hope for remedy—and sometimes ignored them outright. Republicans almost uniformly promoted the idea that reducing taxes and regulations and government spending would create wealth that would trickle down to every stratum of American society. After decades of such promises, which seemed more and more empty, their impatience grew. And few Democrats cared to reverse the tide of globalization and return high-paying jobs to communities where most residents had no college degrees. Donald Trump stood out. He promised to restore the old economy, mostly by forwarding a white nationalist agenda that would “put America first.” He offered an economic platform that was seemingly irreconcilable with politics as usual, and his candidacy took on the characteristics of a revolt—not just against the Democrats who had controlled the White House for eight years, but also against his fellow Republicans.

  Trump appealed to voters who, like the Klansmen of the 1920s, felt their political power waning. A constituency can lose power when there are more voters overall, regardless of who those voters are. More voters add uncertainty to electoral outcomes. It’s difficult to anticipate how they’ll come down on issues—and they could be potentially mobilized by opposing forces. The total votes cast in elections increased substantially in the decades leading up to Trump’s election. As shown in figure 6.1, in 2012, there were nearly thirty-three million more votes cast than in 1996 (a 34 percent increase).

  This growth can be broken down into two parts: demographic shifts—immigration and younger voters coming of age—and new participation among already-eligible voters. Some recent elections, like Barack Obama’s, activated new constituencies. Obama’s candidacies in 2008 and 2012, for example, awoke swaths of voters who usually ignored elections.

  Soon, white Americans will be a numerical minority. Their proportion has declined from 84 percent in 1965 to 62 percent in 2015, while Latinos have increased from 4 percent to 18 percent.17 By 2013 more children were born into minority households than into white households, and the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that the white population will dip below 50 percent by 2044.18 The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, declining fertility rates among native-born whites, and an aging white population have worked in near concert to shrink the white majority.19 This has been the bugbear of white anxiety for at least a century. In 1923 the Imperial Night-Hawk published a warning from economist William Guthrie: “Unless immigration of other than whites is halted entirely, two generations will see the whites of the United States wiped out. Colored races rear families much faster than white families and we must protect the white race in this country.”20

  FIGURE 6.1 Votes cast (in millions) in U.S. presidential elections, 1980–2016.

  Source: “Historical Election Results,” Federal Election Commission, National Archives and Records Administration.

  These demographic trends mean that the white share of the electorate has dwindled.21 As figure 6.2 shows, the percent of voters who are white dropped sharply from about 85 percent in the mid-1980s to only 74 percent by 2012, when Obama won his second term. Historically, African American turnout rates have lagged behind white rates, but since 1996 they have risen steadily, peaking with Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012. The black turnout actually exceeded whites for the first time in 2012, when 66.6 percent of blacks indicated that they voted, compared to 65.3 percent of whites. Turnout rates for Asian American and Latino voters have lagged behind both white and black voters, yet the raw number of votes cast by Latinos and Asian Americans has risen materially in the last few decades, as those populations have grown. In 2012 more than twelve million American Latinos voted, compared to fewer than four million in 1988.22

  FIGURE 6.2 Non-Hispanic white share of the electorate, 1986–2016.

  Source: “Voter Turnout Demographics,” United States Election Project (USEP); USEP data are derived from the Current Population Survey, November Voting and Registration Supplement.

  These demographic transitions work to the advantage of the Democratic Party, since minorities tend to favor Democrats by substantial margins.23 The political consequences of these trends, of course, depend not only on the growing relative size of the minority population and their turnout rates but also on whether the Republicans can draw them in. Even Republican strategists, after assessing recent losses, saw the danger of the Republican Party becoming a permanent minority if it didn’t make inroads with Latino and African American voters.24 In 2015, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was staffing an ambitious Latino voter outreach plan, hoping to address the problem. “It’s important that you have a candidate who’s willing to make the Hispanic community a priority,” cautioned Jennifer Sevilla Korn, the RNC’s deputy political director.25

  To the extent that success in presidential elections depends on winning more of the ever-expanding minority vote, the campaign strategies of both parties have signaled to some white voters that their votes are less important—or at least taken for granted.

  Since 1980, women have turned out for presidential elections more than men, and the total number of female voters has exceeded the total of male voters since 1964. This gender turnout gap has increased substantially in the last couple of decades: in 1980, 61.9 percent of eligible female voters cast a ballot, compared to 61.5 percent of eligible male voters. But in 2008, 65.6 percent of eligible women voted, compared to 61.5 percent of eligible men.26 In 1964, approximately 1.7 million more women voted in the presidential election than men. But, by the 2012 election, that number was almost 10 million. “Some men have this feeling that women are coming—in education, on polls, on social media, they have a voice,” says sociologist Marianne Cooper. “This upends a long history of women knowing their place.”27

  The rise of the Moral Majority and the Religious Right in the 1980s bound Republican candidates to social conservatism. The influence of the Christian Right may have peaked with the election and reelection of George W. Bush, who rode to victory on the backs of his evangelical supporters and who, once in office, adopted their priori
ties into his policy agenda. Like other Republicans of the modern era, he supported conservative positions on virtually every social issue. His first executive order as president established his faith-based initiative, directing government funds to religious organizations providing social services. His anti-abortion stance blocked funds for international family planning organizations offering abortion or abortion counseling. In 2004 he said that he would support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. “Conservative evangelical Christians identified with Governor Bush,” said Reverend Allen Phillips, an evangelical pastor in South Carolina. “He has the experience of knowing Jesus Christ as his savior.”28

  But conservative Christians have lost their political potency. Obama’s defeats of John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 signaled to the Religious Right that consolidating their votes behind the socially conservative candidate was no longer sufficient. Even the proportion of Americans who identify as Christian has been in decline. Between 2007 and 2014, the proportion of Christians fell from 78 to 71 percent, while the proportion of religiously unaffiliated rose from 16 percent to nearly 23 percent. In 1987, just 7 percent of American adults claimed no religious affiliation—that number had nearly tripled by 2012.29 To many Christians, these changes portend a new era, when Christianity no longer sits at the head of the political table.

  Trump captured this Christian anxiety. “Some [of his supporters] sincerely believe that Donald Trump was ordained by God,” says Stephen Mansfield, “and is actually going to put the right people on the Supreme Court and fight for religious liberty.”30 As we showed in chapter 5, Trump excelled in evangelical communities in the primaries as well as in the general election. In the nation as a whole, close to 80 percent of evangelicals voted for him in the general election.31