Donald Trump has remade US politics despite - not because of - his policies

When Donald Trump began his first term as US president, back in February 2017, I speculated in these pages that we might be witnessing the beginning of a grand realignment in American politics. The recent election shows that this realignment has happened, but largely despite, rather than because of, Mr Trump’s policies. I wrote that Mr Trump could win over blue-collar working-class voters – traditionally aligned with Democrats – particularly if he was able to “secure a truly massive new infrastructure spending stimulus package” that creates “many good new jobs” for this constituency. If so, he could consolidate the support of “former Rust Belt Democrats, and bring into his new Republican Party organised labour and large sections of the left focused on working-class economic gains”. As president, Mr Trump frequently referred to infrastructure initiatives that never happened. Partly because of the coronavirus pandemic, but also many of his own economic policies, Mr Trump left office presiding over the biggest reduction in US jobs since the Great Depression. Yet in last week’s election, he was precisely able to muster that coalition, and more, to deliver a stunningly decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. The cruel truth is that it is President Joe Biden who secured a large infrastructure spending bill, and other national stimulus and government manufacturing policy initiatives that have created the fullest employment in more than half a century. Yet the Democrats were punished for that. The conventional wisdom is that inflation – which surged in 2022 at 9.2 per cent – was the biggest grievance against the Democrats. But against all the odds, the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve were able to quickly bring that surge to heel, with inflation largely between three to four per cent over the past year and a half, and now significantly below three per cent. This figure is not shocking by any standards, and virtually all economists agree that the US has experienced a remarkably, almost uniquely, “soft landing” from the global pandemic-driven economic crisis, all engineered by the Biden administration. None of it mattered. Mr Trump also secured unprecedented support from the Latino community, with 46 per cent voting for him, including 55 per cent of Latino men – a huge jump from the 36 per cent he secured in 2020. All this while he continued to deride Spanish-speaking migrants as disease-spreading, crime-committing invaders “poisoning the blood” of the country. He also picked up some additional support in the African-American community, particularly from young black men. But the lack of turnout from both groups for Ms Harris was, perhaps, even more decisive. For whatever reason, Democrats were not able to communicate their successes to the public, and Mr Trump was once again able to embody the American dream of wealth and upward mobility. Women had been expected to turn out heavily for Ms Harris, but the gender gap between the parties remained steady at a 17 per cent advantage for Democrats. Young men, however, swung towards the Republicans by almost 30 per cent. So, neither women nor young people were able to save the Democrats. Democrats once again found themselves clobbered on cultural issues, with Mr Trump successfully exaggerating Democratic support for transgender transition, even claiming children were receiving gender transition surgeries in schools – an utterly absurd claim. Even though Ms Harris led the party decisively towards the centre, and even the right, on issues such as immigration, policing, military strength and patriotism, none of it stuck. Instead, the caricature of Democrats as arrogant and effete coastal liberals obsessed with identity politics and the rights of small minorities such as transgender people in opposition to the interests of the working-class majority proved highly effective. It’s unlikely that any Democrat would’ve defeated Mr Trump in this year of global rage against incumbent parties. But nominating a woman of mixed black and Asian ethnicity perhaps only emphasised unfair stereotypes about the Democrats and identity politics. As I predicted in 2017, the drift of blue-collar workers and union members into Mr Trump’s coalition increasingly made it impossible for union leaders to oppose him. Key organisations such as the Teamsters Union, representing lorry and other drivers, broke from tradition and declined to support Ms Harris. Its president even appeared at the Republican National Convention, hinting towards support for Mr Trump. But the realignment cuts in both directions. In 2017, I suggested that “Republican neoconservatives and many traditional Cold War hawks” would perforce end up in the Democratic camp, and that too has happened. The vast majority of neoconservatives supported Ms Harris, and former vice president Dick Cheney, perhaps the archetypal living neoconservative hardliner, campaigned for Ms Harris along with his daughter Liz, a former leading Republican who was ousted for her opposition to Mr Trump. The Democrats emphasised the support they were getting from so many former conservative leaders, most of whom are noted international hawks. And not a single former Republican president, vice president or presidential nominee supported Mr Trump, not even his own previous vice president, Mike Pence. Few of them came out directly in favour of Ms Harris, but all kept a distinctly low profile and Mr Pence made his disdain for Mr Trump clear. What’s most fascinating about this realignment is that Mr Trump had done little in the policy sphere, when he was president, to win over the support of his blue-collar working-class converts. And Mr Biden, particularly in the first two years of his administration, delivered legislative packages and executive initiatives strongly aimed at benefiting these constituencies. Arguably Mr Biden’s greatest mistake was his failure not to level with the American people that, because of the pandemic-led economic crisis, he essentially had to choose between a policy that would save jobs and businesses but risk a surge in inflation. He tried to claim that he could avoid such a surge, and when it happened, it came as a terrible shock. And then he got no credit for bringing it under control. Mr Trump is inheriting an American economy, superbly marshalled by the Biden administration, that is unquestionably the envy of the world. American voters may be willing to give him, and not Mr Biden, all the credit if he can avoid badly damaging it. Whatever happens, the grand realignment in American politics I described in 2017 was fully realised on November 5.