What Went Wrong for Progressives in the US?
And what will happen next?
"Donald Trump" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard” - HL Mencken
Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential election earlier this week is a little difficult to understand from a European perspective. The Republican is an open insurrectionist, not to mention a convicted felon and a racist, who ran on a platform that some of the world’s best economists said would be seriously bad news for the country’s economy.
Trump gleefully threatened his opponents; and talked about beating up criminals and expelling immigrants; at least when he wasn’t swaying to 1980s pop music or fellating malfunctioning microphones. A large percentage of the people who served in his previous administration urged Americans to vote for the other side. He still won, though, and with a landslide at that. Many of us in Europe (and elsewhere) were left wondering what, exactly, his voters saw in him.
One big part of the story, in my view more than 4,000 miles away from Washington DC, was the progressive left’s ineptitude when it comes to fighting a bare-knuckle culture war against the hard right. With 94% of the vote counted, Trump is on 73.4m votes, down 1% from 74.2m in 2020. This was enough to win the popular vote. However, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris won just 69.1m votes, down 15% from 81.3m for Joe Biden in 2020. What went wrong?
Harris largely ran as a moderate, and sidelined extremists, such as supporters of Palestinian nationalism, at the party’s congress. Even so, she had feet of clay. Her record of flirting with out-of-touch progressivism a few years ago haunted her. She pussyfooted around the (completely ridiculous) idea of defunding the police in 2020 and also raised her hand in support of healthcare for undocumented immigrants in 2019. Although she later pivoted, the damage was done with many swing voters in battleground states, who worry about personal safety in the street and foreigners getting freebies after sneaking across the border.
Trump, for all his faults, is at least consistent in his messaging and understands what frightens ordinary people. Hard-right culture-war narratives also pack a punch, particularly when it comes to young male voters without university degrees. These tales often make intuitive sense to the general public, even if qualified experts tend to disagree with the conclusions. Of course, deliberate misinformation and disinformation was a big part of the Republican strategy - many of Trump’s voters are in for a shock when they find out more about the policies that stand behind the narratives that they found engaging.
In general terms, Trump seemed better attuned to the anti-incumbency mood at large in the US and the wider world. His image - a suit and tie, a “Make America great again” baseball cap and a serious expression - must have appealed to many who were suffering to make ends meet due to inflation or to those who lost loved ones to the opioid epidemic. Harris’ emphasis on “joy” and broad smile appears to have missed the mark with many voters.
The most memorable moment in the campaign came when Trump raised his fist and shouted “fight, fight, fight” after a failed assassination attempt. His sense of defiance clearly resonated with many voters.
Harris’ side also had to withdraw its best attack line, highlighting the obvious weirdness of Trump and his running mate JD Vance, when her campaign appeared to realise that many of the fiercely independent floating voters it was trying to reach in battleground states must have been called “weirdos” their whole lives. There was clearly a high risk of the attacks backfiring.
Although the Democratic party remains the preference of the educated upper middle class and many wealthy people, it has lost its moorings with the middle and working classes. It was noteworthy that Trump beat Harris hands down with Latino men.
Many ordinary voters sent a message that the left’s double embrace of “neo-liberalism” (free markets, globalisation, relatively open borders) and “wokeness” (left-wing identity politics nurtured in elite universities in the Puritan heartlands, the northeast more generally and California) missed the point for ordinary working families. Well-paying factory jobs and the freedom to be disagreeable were important themes for many voters this time.
Of course, a certain segment of the electorate positively seethes when confronted by what it sees as paternalistic nagging from expensively educated and “woke” experts*. Stiff and tactless professionals with clean fingernails who tell others how to live appear to be claiming a higher status for themselves than the general population. Some bristle at the impertinence. just as we saw during the United Kingdom’s (UK) exit from the European Union (EU) - the hard right explicitly rebelled against expert opinion during the Brexit campaign.
Being told to change your ways can provoke cognitive dissonance (an uncomfortable feeling we all experience when faced with contradiction) in any of us. People who pledge allegiance to those American folkways that glorify independence and rugged self-sufficiency are likely to be particularly indignant by what they perceive as “woke” bossiness from technocrats. These concerns are particularly potent when combined with what ordinary voters perceive as the complete absence of common sense on much of the left, as seen with calls to abolish police departments or open support for Islamist terrorists in the Middle East.
Other mistakes by the incumbent party and its administration have been much discussed. Prosecutors were much too lenient on Trump’s coup attempt on 6 January 2021. Why go after the foot soldiers aggressively without prosecuting the generals? This awful strategy was set by Merrick Garland, who was picked to be attorney general by incoming President Biden on the same day as the assault on the Capitol. A more vigorous stance from prosecutors could well have led to a more conventional course for a Republican Party that has become unmoored from the centre right.
Of course, Biden, who is coming up to his 82nd birthday, waited far too long to read the writing on the wall. Although Trump also showed signs of cognitive decline at 78, he counter-balanced it with a certain feral vigour. Unfortunately, Harris wasn’t battle-hardened in a primary fight due to the lateness of the switch. She looked uncomfortable whenever she had to discuss the economy, which should have been the most important talking point for her side.
At the same time, Trump channeled America’s id: he was unapologetic about enjoying the trappings of success while arguing against foreign wars, illegal immigration and offshoring manufacturing. His emphasis on personal success proved important in a society built on aspirations of social mobility. There was a sharp contrast with progressives, who he was able to paint as simultaneously domesticated, fussy and creepy. The Democrats proved vulnerable to narratives that they are effete and value weakness instead of strength and manliness.
It is no coincidence that Trump cynically spent $215m (a staggering sum) on anti-trans ads to get his campaign over the line. Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, had signed a law governor of Minnesota that allowed the state to remove custody of trans-identified kids if their parents opposed gender-reassignment surgery. It was clearly a bad law, which over-simplified messy and complex issues in illiberal ways. Although Trump’s pìtch on this front was largely based on bigotry against a tiny minority of people, the messaging appears to have hit the spot with many voters. By contrast, access to abortion - an issue that the Democrats thought would resonate with the female half of the electorate - fell short.
On a slightly deeper level, the Democrats often emphasised abstract issues that resonate with people with humanities degrees. For example, the left spent a lot of precious time wondering whether Trump is a fascist or not**. It’s a fascinating debate for the likes of you and me, who are interested in ideas, but maybe lacks a little urgency to someone in a small town in the middle of rural America who can’t afford to pay a looming credit card bill.
Trump, on the other hand, resolutely stayed away from abstraction and embraced physicality. He stood next to wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, encouraged Elon Musk to talk about rocket ships, and posed on a garbage truck. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the president-elect over-performed in rural areas throughout the US.
The big question on everyone’s lips now is what will happen next. As always with populists, Ernest Hemingway’s classic 1926 joke about one of his characters going bust remains box-fresh. “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Economically illiterate populist leaders tend to ruin their countries two ways as well. So, don’t expect any dramatic changes in the months ahead. Trump will take a number of decisions that economists hate, including tariffs (import taxes). Some of them will be scaled down quite considerably from the first iteration in return from concessions from trading partners. At the same time, he will slash other taxes and regulations, and also pump more oil, all of which should get the American economy roaring, at least in the short term.
In the longer term, though, there will be no escaping the fact that tariffs are inflationary, as is a debt-fuelled boom. Americans will no longer be able to buy dirt-cheap Chinese-made goods. This will be good for local manufacturers with straightforward supply chains and their employees, but prices will tend to go up for everyone; and people who are living from pay-cheque to pay-cheque will find it harder to get to the end of the month.
The idea that populists who win elections tend to erode the institutions that are meant to hold them back has been much discussed in this blog. There is no need for me to repeat the warnings. The risk remains very real, though.
One aspect that has been under-discussed, in my opinion, is corruption. As regular readers know, Spanish politicians across the spectrum have been caught up in kickback and sleaze scandals, which makes the issue a very obvious theme to watch over the next four years, at least to those of us in Spain. Lord Acton’s dictum teaches us that power tends to corrupt, while absolute power corrupts absolutely. The institutions of liberal democracy, particularly those designed to ensure the peaceful transition of power, such as free and fair elections, are designed to deal with this inconvenient fact of human nature.
As a man of questionable character, who refused to accept his loss in 2020, Trump is clearly a risk factor. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, infamously accepted $2bn (another staggering sum) in money from a fund run by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, for his private equity firm after leaving office as White House adviser. Obviously, the autocrats of the world will be interesting to see what exactly their cash will buy in Trump’s second administration. It would be unwise of me to speculate further.
One autocrat in particular, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, will be very interested indeed in the incoming administration’s views. Will the new US president want to cut a deal in Ukraine? It seems likely. What happens after that in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States is up in the air.
Trump has also compared the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to a protection racket. He wants its members to spend much more on American weaponry or risk being cut adrift.
Spain, where I live, is one of NATO’s laggards when it comes to hitting spending targets. Trump’s victory comes at a critical time for Spain. The country is struggling to recover from catastrophic floods centred on the autonomous community of Valencia. Prime Minister (PM) Pedro Sánchez, who runs a minority coalition that he claims is progressive despite its reliance on peripheral nationalists, has said that the massive aid needed should be part of his budget for 2025. If he gets a budget deal over the line, his administration would be able to survive for many more months, despite struggling on multiple fronts at once.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the opposition, finds himself in a wonderful position, but probably isn’t strategically adept enough to realise it. He should publicly offer to support massive aid for Valencia as part of a consensus budget, but place two non-negotiable conditions. First of all, the budget should bring Spanish spending on defence up to 2% of gross domestic product (GDP). Secondly, he should tell Sánchez that his support is conditional on a snap election before Easter 2025.
A snap election would be dangerous for Socialist PM Sánchez, who came second in July 2023, is engulfed in a number of corruption scandals and has slipped in the polls. The anti-incumbency mood we saw in the US is clearly alive and well in Spain too.
Just loudly and publicly making an offer like this would be positive for Feijóo, even if Sánchez rejects it, as seems likely. The opposition Popular Party (PP), which sits on the centre right, would find itself in charge of the news cycle for once. If Sánchez cobbles together a pork-barrel deal with his various allies, or comes under pressure from Trump for not spending enough on arms, sections of the electorate might struggle to understand why the PM had felt the need to reject an easy cross-aisle deal when he had the chance.
To bring this essay to an end, what should progressives do if they want to start winning again? The Democrats have a chance to make Trump’s life harder in the mid-terms in 2026; and will have the opportunity to replace him in the White House in 2028. By that time, many of the inflationary side effects of Trump’s tariffs will be well known to the general public; and the reality of the new administration’s social conservatism risks a backlash with many voters who voted on their gut instincts without doing much research.
It is worth noting, though, that in the UK it took Labour seven years to win a landslide general election victory after being on the losing side in the Brexit vote. Like Trump’s tariffs plan, leaving the EU hurt the UK economy in insidious ways. Both should be seen as examples of the hard right backtracking from the “neo-liberal” consensus about the benefits of friction-less trade.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but there is a difference between common-sense progressivism and a theoretical and abstract progressivism nurtured in elite universities. Left-leaning and socially liberal politicians should lean into the former while being critical of the latter. The next time the left’s theoreticians come up with an idea quite as bad as defunding the police, moderates on the centre left who want to gain or maintain power should roll up their sleeves and fight back loudly and publicly.
Progressives should also nurture talent that doesn’t look quite so stiff, smug or cowardly. Stop preaching! Be reluctant to use language in new and unusual ways! Find people with dirty hands and maybe visible tattoos, who can make the case in a way that swing voters in places like Pennsylvania will understand.
It is interesting to note that three of the most interesting characters in the US election, Trump himself, his anti-vaccines guru Robert F Kennedy Jr, and entrepreneur Musk, all began their adult lives as supporters of the Democrats before going down various rabbit holes. In a way, Trump’s version of the Republican Party is more a mutant Democratic Party than an heir to Ronald Reagan’s GOP, which emphasised free markets and resistance to dictators.
Trump’s Republicans represent what the Democrats might have become if Bill Clinton had resisted the siren call of third-way “neo-liberalism” in the 1990s; and the party had kept its distance from “woke” activists this century. Indeed, before Trump announced his political ambitions in 2015, tariffs were often associated with the populist left rather than the right.
The realignment should teach progressives an important lesson: the Democrats need to get much better at keeping big characters in the tent even after they come to heterodox or uncomfortable conclusions. It is probably a bad idea to align the political map so that one party defends technocratic solutions in a slightly smug and conformist way while the other side backs wildly contrarian bets with a mischievous wink. Both sides need a bit of both.
Finally, let me dedicate the very end of this essay to the elephant in the room. Trump’s views on climate change being a hoax could be the opening scene in a tragedy. Our species has a chance to get the climate crisis under control if we continue to act bravely and decisively now. Putting such a flawed character in charge of the world’s biggest economy in 2025 is likely to be a missed opportunity at best.
On a more positive note, I strongly believe that progressives should put optimism about tech at the heart of their environmental mission. Why does someone like Musk, who has spent much of his life developing electric vehicles (EVs) and next-generation batteries, feel more at home with climate-change denialists than with with the people who buy his expensive EVs? Reflecting on this difficult question will help progressives raise their game in the future.
The comments are closed, as always when I criticise populists. If you subscribe, though, you can hit reply to the email. I might not get to it immediately, but I will reply when I get a chance. See you next week!
*”Maternalistic” would probably be a better word than “paternalistic” in the context discussed in this essay. It should be more widely used.
**My view is that Trump’s rhetoric is often fascistic. However, he often sets out his more extreme views as a negotiating position and then seeks concessions in order to return to a more mainstream stance. This might well be fascism (or adjacent to fascism), but it is also feels different from 20th century fascism, which never compromised at all. I think the parallels with Latin American populism led by colourful strongmen are probably going to be more fruitful.
Previously on Sharpen Your Axe
Trump’s insurrectionism and racism
Vance and the Silicon Valley right
The enemies of our institutions
Corruption in Spain (part one and part two)
Nationalism is not progressive (part one and part two)
Rabbit holes out of liberalism
Further Reading
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer
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