Have they changed, or just become their worst selves
While Trump is unpopular with a majority of Americans, his support among Republicans remains solid. That’s despite blatant corruption, fascist policies and a failure to deliver any of the economic benefits he promised. Faced with this depressing fact, the standard New York Times response has been to send an intrepid reporter to “Trump Country” (rural Kentucky or Midwestern diners) to find out what is going on.
But it would be far more instructive to send them to Long Island, where Trump won both counties in 2024. Long Island voters have given solid support to Republicans at all levels. Even as he was crushingly defeated in New York as a whole, Mitt Romney got close to half the vote in Suffolk and Nassau counties. Trump did a few percentage points better in 2024, winning both. But he would have gone nowhere if not for the solid support of Romney voters
This doesn’t fit at all with the usual stories about Trump voters. The residents of Long Island are not the “left-behinds” routinely described in explanations of Trump’s appeal. The average income is over $100 000 and unemployment rates have long been around 3 per cent. Like most New Yorkers, Long Islanders have been beneficiaries of the globalised economy of which Romney was a symbol. And, if you were to believe Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind they did so because they valued honor, loyalty and purity, qualities Trump routinely trashes.
Democrats from Hillary Clinton on assumed that these contradictions would lead suburban Republicans to abandon Trump in numbers large enough to offset any losses of Democrats attracted by Trump’s racism and misogyny. Evidently this is not the case. Not only have the Republicans who once voted for Romney maintained their support for Trump but they have preferred him to any Republican alternative. And, with few exceptions, they have embraced Trump’s racist and fascist policies, even as he approaches outright Nazism.
What has happened here? Has Trump, as Walter Olson suggests, radicalised his followers leading them to support positions they would once have rejected? Or has he simply allowed them to reveal themselves (or at least their worst selves) as the racists and fascists they always were?
The answers to these questions are academic, in the pejorative sense of the term, as regards the US. Romney-Trump voters have made their choice, and there is no going back to old-style Republicanism. Perhaps, if enough of them realise that their choices have been both evil and disastrous for the US as a whole, the regime might collapse relatively quickly. But there is no sign of that.
The big question for those of us living outside the US is whether it could happen here. As long as the far-right remains essentially a protest party for low-education voters who are mostly disengaged and disaffected, like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in Australia, its occasional flare-ups can be expected to fade, as appears to have happened with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. But if the middle class and business base of the mainstream conservative parties goes the same way, democracy is in trouble.
In Australia, at least, the opposite has happened. As the main conservative party (confusingly called the Liberal Party for historical reasons) has embraced Trumpism, it has been driven almost entirely from the major cities, falling back on a rural and peri-urban base which is, in an urbanised country Australia, not sufficient to provide a credible chance of winning an elections. Most notably, liberal-minded independents, mostly women, have won a string of seats that were formerly considered safely conservative.
I don’t claim to understand all this. As regards political strategy, the crucial need is to prevent the far-right from taking over mainstream conservative parties and their supporters. There is not too much we on the left can do about this, except to encourage centre-right supporters to punish conservative parties when they line up with fascists. Any other suggestions are welcome.
I don’t plan to write anything more about the end of US democracy. Further descent into fascism is already locked in, and nothing I can foresee is going to change it. The question for Australians, Europeans and others who want to defend what is left of democracy is how to achieve this in a world dominated by brutal autocracies and the evil dictators who rule them.
John Quiggin 
From the bleachers, where I haven’t done a ton of math on it, I feel a need to point out that in 2024, an inexplicable number of midwest Democrats decided not to vote. (I don’t think it was just Arab-Americans, either.) So there may have been less crossover than it seems – a chunk of the left threw in the towel. I can’t say I understand those people at all. It was millions of people. In fact to me it seems almost a little fishy. If you want to avoid our fate, make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
Voldemort is a skilled pol, whatever else he is. His rhetorical style gives people a lot of wiggle room for their conscience – they can tell themselves they didn’t know what he was going to do. Aided and abetted by many religious leaders, in fact.
And again, our media is sick – I do blame people for falling for lies, but I also blame our elite political class for allowing lies to go unchallenged. If you want to avoid our fate, make sure that you go out and proactively pop all of the information bubbles. We haven’t done that here yet.
At the risk of repeating myself: I personally believe Bernie provides the clearest explanation of why so many Democrats and Republicans (to a lesser extent) have abandoned their parties. Voters have become too disillusioned with how corrupted the whole political process is now. You simply can’t expect democracy to work when a handful of very rich and powerful have so much control over policy direction, over executive decisions and over legislation.
If they can’t reform the electoral process, then Democracy will be on life support (at best) and you’ll get more and more narcissistic wannabe demagogues exploiting frustrations by offering “radical change” as their primary platform and it seems those who exploit prejudices best are just the ticket for electoral success.
Not going to bother with this, Svante. Anyone who uses the term “woke liberal elites” is, for practical purposes, a Trumpist, and therefore well on the way to being a Nazi
I listened to Musa al-Gharbi on LNL, and checked him out. He’s
part of the Jonathan Haidt small “c” conservative clan, which ineptly enabled
the attack on so called “woke” paving the way for the MAGA hysteria about it.
Together with the likes of Sam Harris they class themselves as liberals but
seem to lack personal insight (strange for a psychologist/neurologist/sociologist
you might think). I thought his thesis lacked rigour treating so called “woke liberal
elites” as a single monolithic entity straw man, ripe for the knocking down.
And I always find it curious how they refer to woke liberals as elites, but never
the mega billionaires who run the world. Anyway David Marr gave him a deserved
hard time, unusually for such a light on interview show.
NME
The Darlings of these masters of the universe?
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/the-meeting-wherewall-street-billionaires-tripped-over-themselves-to-back-trump-20240617-p5jm8p.html
Anonymous – no offense but I must take issue with your description of our politics as “corrupt.”
Yes, the rich have too big a megaphone. Yes, our media culture is very unhealthy. (We shouldn’t have let in the Murdochs. Big oops there.)
This does *not* excuse people sitting on the sidelines. Bernie or no Bernie. Only the left side stayed home – so, this is a really dumb belief for us to have, or give sympathy to, or anything like that. Just no. If that is what Bernie is saying, he’s now part of the problem. (And btw, having seen DSA pols up close – they do not have any special skill in solving problems. I have seen no evidence of it. That whole scene is a deadend.)
N
There are numerous examples of corrupt behaviour in US politics, Trump’s $1M a plate dinners just being one of them.
In a recent article in the Atlantic David Brooks asks why is it that Trump still popular. He thinks that the abandonment of moral education could be the reason, without guiding principles critical thinking is diminished and amorality is acceptable.
Again, this is just my two cents, but – our process isn’t corrupt (yet). This is what Anon said that bugged me: “Voters have become too disillusioned with how corrupted the whole political process is now.”
Our election process is fine. The vote counting is fine.
Media culture? Very not fine! Campaign finance? Yes it is tilted to the right, but if our media were healthier that might not matter. (Lots of times, the richer side still loses here.)
It is the idea that “things are so corrupt” that it’s okay if people stop bothering that I am protesting.
There is no excuse for those people in the Midwest. There is none. I hope they realize by now.
Sure, the current president is a total disgrace! No argument there.