In reading post-election analysis, I followed a link to a Facebook comment made by a British Guardian and Financial Times contributor named Vincent Bevins in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. His commentary struck be as being very insightful and extremely relevant to the the surprise Trump victory we’ve had the misfortune of witnessing this week.
Here’s Bevins on Brexit:
Both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very, wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for thirty years.
Questions such as - Who are the losers of globalization, and how can we spread the benefits to them and ease the transition? Is it fair that the rich can capture almost all the gains of open borders and trade, or should the process be more equitable? Can we really sustainably create a media structure that only hires kids from top universities (and, moreover, those prick graduates that can basically afford to work for free for the first 5-10 years) who are totally ignorant of regular people, if not outright disdainful of them? …….Immigration is good for the vast majority, but for the very small minority who see pressure on their wages, should we help them, or do they just get ignored?
He then goes on to make clear how wrongheaded he thinks the Brexit vote was, and how people like like Trump and Farage are dangerous opportunistic charlatans:
The leaders of these movements (Trumpstick, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage) have acted cynically for their own benefit. They've been willing to stir division and nationalism. And some of their supporters are real racists. The only solution for that small minority is to be crushed and thrown into the dustbin of history.
I’m not sure if I agree with the extent to which he downplays racism as a factor – he says that “some of their supporters are real racists”, but later goes on to suggest that most aren’t. He’s speaking about the UK and Brexit, of course, but even there it’s clear that there was a strong racial factor for some, if not many in the pro-Leave vote supporters.
In the case of the recent election here in the US, there's no denying that many of Trump’s supporters were driven by racism/xenophobia/sexism. And those Trump voters who weren't racists voted for him knowing and somehow overlooking the fact that he had said and done some very awful hateful things. Which is in its own way pretty awful.
But with all that being said, I think it is crucial for Democrats to acknowledge and recognize the economic factors in this surprise Trump vote. In particular, the phenomenon of people in forgotten, hard luck areas in flyover America, the so-called losers of globalization, wanting to express their anger with the status quo and using the only lever available to them, Trump, to express that anger in the general election. For some of them, their vote for Trump was a way to throw a bomb into the world of the elites, as a means of saying “Oh, do I have your attention now?”
The election of Trump is obviously incredibly disturbing, as there is no question that he is a hateful man, with a long, well-documented history of racist and sexist statements and behavior (and now, policy proposals). We should all be vigilant against fighting against the awful policies he has in store for us.
But I think it is a mistake for Democrats to completely ignore the role of economic factors and unresponsive elites in both parties as a factor in Trump’s surprise election. Some analyses I’ve read attribute Trump’s support entirely to racism and xenophobia, and I don’t think it’s as simple as that.
It would be a huge mistake for Democrats to not learn from this loss, and to fail to reckon with the ways in which their Party tuned out and failed people struggling economically. If the Democrats don't address this by making concerted and sustained efforts to look out for the economic welfare of people (and no they shouldn't look out for struggling whites only - they should seek to help economically struggling people of all races) , this sort of Trumpism is going to happen all over again, albeit in some other twisted form. We need to learn from this.