A decade ago, the idea that, in the United States, the Republican Party would soon enjoy the enthusiastic support of many millions of working-class men and women, and that the Democrat Party would appeal mainly to well-off college-educated professionals, academics, feminists, trans-activists, eco-warriors and the like, would have struck most people as far-fetched, but this is what has happened. Thanks to Donald Trump, a party which, until he took up politics, had the reputation of being a stronghold of snobbish country-club WASPs and stolid businessmen, has morphed into something resembling the Peronist movement in its early days, while the Democrats have come to represent people who often heartily despise the unenlightened denizens of “fly-over country” who, as Barack Obama once said, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who are not like them”, and Hillary Clinton described as a “basket of deplorables.”
Trump’s hold on such “deplorables”, and on the Republican Party – popularly known as the GOP – was already tightening before a presumably troubled youth came to within an inch of killing him during an event being televised nationwide. Many now think that, by quickly getting back on his feet and, with blood streaming from his wounded ear, roaring defiance against the gunman, Trump put himself on course to win the November presidential election by a landslide, though there are some who hope that the violent spectacle in which he inadvertently starred will put off voters who fear the US is spiralling towards civil war. While that could happen, there can be little doubt that his fired-up supporters will be even more determined to vote than they already had been and that those who would be inclined to back President Joe Biden, depressed as they are by evidence that he is in his dotage and finds it difficult to finish a sentence without a teleprompter, let alone “lead the free world,” could decide to stay at home on election day.
The US is riven by class conflict, with those who like the way the economy, and with it, society, have developed of late, confronting the growing number who know they are getting left behind and, naturally enough, resent it. Trump was among the first who not merely took note of what was happening but also understood that it could provide a canny politician with all he would need to set about building a movement big enough to put him in the White House.
The real-estate magnate and television personality who swaggered onto the political stage just over nine years ago was greatly helped by the refusal of the Democrats to see what was staring them in the face. Instead of adopting policies designed to make things easier for those being displaced by the export of manufacturing jobs to countries like China or impoverished by the arrival of millions of low-skilled immigrants willing to work for next to nothing, spokespeople for the party which allegedly had their interests at heart simply told them to shape up.
They behaved in this manner because, like their counterparts elsewhere, US progressives believed themselves to be well-meaning souls who cared deeply for the welfare of mankind and were determined to rid the world of anything smacking of privilege even though, by most standards, they were among the most privileged beings who had ever existed. Some even came to take it for granted that their own country was a singularly evil enterprise built on slavery and that, whether they realised it or not, all “whites” were irremediably racist and should beg forgiveness for their inherent wickedness.
Something very similar has occurred in Europe, where those who want to be seen as progressives favour causes repudiated by most of their hard-up compatriots who, to the alarm of defenders of the status quo, are increasingly prone to back politicians of the “extreme right” who do not think working-class living standards should be reduced in order “to save the planet” from overheating and are worried by the massive influx of individuals whose cultural norms run sharply counter to those that have long underpinned most Western societies. As in the US, in Europe giving priority to working-class concerns is now assumed to be a right-wing thing, while subordinating them to whatever happens to be fashionable in metropolitan circles is deemed progressive and therefore desirable. In both parts of the world, daring to point out that men and women are different in many important ways can put an abrupt end to what until that moment had been a promising career.
Though what happened in the United Kingdom, where Labour recently won a huge parliamentary majority, appeared to buck this general trend by showing that “the neo-fascist” or “neo-Nazi” right was not about to have things its way, the truth is that what is now a middle-of-the-road party benefitted enormously from the first-past-the-post electoral system. With just 34 percent of the votes cast, Labour won 64 percent of the seats in the House of Commons, while the 14 percent going to the upstart Reform Party of Nigel Farage gave it not even a paltry one percent of the 650 available, over a tenth of those going to the Liberal Democrats who received 12 percent of the votes. Had Reform teamed up with the Conservatives, the resulting “right-wing” coalition would have outpolled Labour by a comfortable margin. Meanwhile, in France, Marine Le Pen’s party received a larger proportion of the votes than did Labour in the UK, but nonetheless fell far short of getting anywhere near a parliamentary majority.
Though the US electoral system does have its peculiarities, what with the “battleground states” on occasion providing the Republicans with enough electoral college votes to let them shrug off the huge majorities piled up by the Democrats in places like California, the distortions they bring about are far less important than those which have led to renewed calls for electoral reform in the UK. If, as even some gloomy Democrats now think is entirely possible, after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt and giving a memorable display of what Ernest Hemingway called “grace under pressure,” Trump wins the popular vote, it will be a sign that the drive by progressives to reshape the US in their own image has run out of steam. This would surely encourage the man’s admirers abroad, among them Javier Milei, to press ahead with their own “cultural battles” against forces akin to those that Trump and his running-mate, J. D. Vance say have brought their country to its knees.
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