Source: https://corat.mx/

Is America’s future (still) the world’s?

If anyone needed remembering that the US is still the world’s leading superpower, Election Night proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Not because it constituted a grand, majestic projection of power and international aplomb. On the contrary, the 3^rd of November and its aftermath does not appear to be a high-water mark for American democracy: the long, drawn-out counting resulted in a confusing battle of words and victory proclamations which saw the incumbent president – the man still embodying America on the international stage – claim total victory in a race that was still undecided, then proceed to launch baseless fraud claims and demand that the counting process is halted. Twitter and Facebook took steps to limit a series of false claims emanating from the Trump’s campaign[1], and, in an unprecedented gesture of defiance, broadcasters cut away from Donald Trump’s live speech to check-fact his declarations[2]. Much more worryingly, the FBI arrested two heavily armed men in Pennsylvania, having been tipped off they were planning a violent action against a ballot-counting site[3]. In the meanwhile, crowds gathered outside ballot-counting facilities in many of the most contested states, to protest alleged – and until now baseless – fraud accusations. The Trump campaign amplified the accusations and fueled conspiracy theories of forged ballots and faulty bleed-through pens given to Republican voters by malignant Deep State officials[4]. The situation on the ground was tense enough for the police to grant election workers an escort at the end of the night[5]. Election Night was thought to be the political Oscar of the nation, its Thanksgiving Parade, an exercise which, regardless of whether red or blue wins out in the end, served to renew (at least for a while) the democratic pact between American citizens. But this time, there was no spectacle of triumphant democracy, but rather one of a nation bitterly polarized and divided, searching for its ontological core beneath all the noise.

But this is not the most important. The greatest powers are not necessarily the healthiest powers. For almost one week, the world was holding his breath to find out who will be “the most powerful person on the planet”[6]. Few other political events have such an iconic resonance, transcending national boundaries. An international audience watched with the same mixture of apprehension, hope and frustration as American voters the election gridlock, split alongside partisan fault lines that mirror closely those in America itself. Liberal-leaning leaders and organizations expressed shock at Donald Trump’s premature victory cry[7], while populists rallied around the incumbent hoping for a “Trump miracle”[8]. The US’ heated internet battles echoed and were intensely experienced – thanks to the near instantaneous interactivity and virality provided by the new social media – everywhere in the world; from Eastern Europe to Iran and China[9], a flurry of gleeful memes have brought Nevada’s protracted ballot-counting, the intricacies of the US electoral system or Donald Trump’s “stop-the-count” temper tantrums into the new global pop vernacular: this is a powerful testimony not only to the political significance of the America election, but to its immense cultural reach as well. But behind the irreverent playfulness, there was a genuine anxiety, an inescapable sense that the future of America is – still – the future of the world. From a geopolitical standpoint, a Biden-Harris administration will undoubtedly mean more than a shift in the general symbolic decorum of the American foreign policy approach. While the “America First” narrative is set to be quite drastically repudiated, it is however unclear what will replace it. “The power of America’s example”, the motto featuring on the Foreign Policy section of the Biden campaign official webpage[10], seems to be a strong contender. Joe Biden has heavily invested into the idea of American moral leadership, writing in an op-ed piece in Foreign Affairs that “as a nation, we have to prove to the world that the United States is prepared to lead again – not just with the example of our power but also with the power of our example.[11]” But such an agenda – grounded mostly in a desire to break with Trump’s unapologetically transactional and disruptive approach – is deliberately vague. The fuzzy contours of the actual policies of a Biden-Harris administration (fuzziness which echoes the equally inchoated populism of the “America First” formula in 2016) leave room for ample questioning. Certain issues – such as the Euro-Atlantic relationship, the Paris Agreement commitments of the USA or the WHO membership – constitute clear campaign promises, embedded into Biden’s central pledge to “heal” the multilateral liberal paradigm roughed up by Trump’s heterodox views. But other aspects of the previous administration’s legacy are much thornier. Three of them, in particular, stand out. Iran, weakened by an economic downturn exacerbated by a particularly virulent coronavirus outbreak, was quick to express a desire to rebuild a relationship with the USA on condition that international sanctions are lifted[12]. Israel, still buoyant after the normalization of relations with the UAE and Bahrein, will accept with difficulty the loss of their best ally in decades and the abrupt demotion that is probably looming[13]. It’s not just Israel which was a winner of Trump’s approach to the Middle East: the Gulf states had built a strong relationship with the Trump administration, grounded in a common hostility to Iran. In the last years of the Obama administration, the US-Saudi relationships, for example, saw a dramatic cooling, so it should come as no surprise that some of the US’s most trusted allies in the region can hardly mask a bitter disappointment with Biden’s victory[14]. But if the Middle East quagmire is concerning, the most pressing issue, with the most global ramifications, remains the future of the relationship with China. Trump’s fraught record created a series of constraints that limit – both materially and symbolically, both externally and internally – Biden’s leeway. The president slash-and-burn rhetoric have done little to thwart China’s rising assertiveness, but succeeded beyond all expectations in one crucial way: being seen as “soft on China” is now a mortal sin in US politics, and no administration will risk paying the electoral price of a conciliatory stance that might appear timorous. Joe Biden – who was repeatedly attacked during the campaign as being unassertive, hesitant or downright servile towards China[15] – will probably don, too, the Nessus tunic that Trump created and maintain a hard line on issues like technology, trade and geopolitics. There is indeed a wide bipartisan consensus that China is a growing menace, for reasons that range from human rights violations and authoritarianism to unfair trade practices and economic espionage[16]. In his piece in Foreign Affairs, Biden expressed a desire to continue to combatively engage China on fronts like trade, democracy and intellectual property: “The United States does need to get tough with China.[17]” The difference is that the new administration seems more keen on building an “united front” against such foe, bringing in European and Asian allies (the later being threatened not only economically but also politically by the Chinese behemoth).

Beyond the realm of geopolitics and trade, the United States also have an unrivalled symbolic clout; it continues to set the tone for the narrative around the globe. Trump’s victory propelled to a large extent the illiberal narrative, electrifying a form of political contestation that was long brewing around the world. Much more so than Brexit (a diffuse outburst which was only partly “populist” in nature and ironically ended up devouring its own populist champions, by effectively allowing Conservatives to absorb the thorn on their side that was the UKIP and then the Brexit Party), Donald Trump unleashed the pent-up energies of a certain type of liberal disillusionment. Trump moreover has a face, a face so internationally and instantly recognizable that all around the world mini-Trumps started popping up: Bolsonaro is a “Trump of the Tropics[18]”, Modi an “Indian Trump[19]”, Duterte a “Philippine Trump[20]”, Salvini an “Italian Trump[21]”. Trump became a shorthand for the populist backlash worldwide. His defeat might likewise signal that the engines of illiberalism are running out of gas. Can populism keep his momentum? And if not, what will replace it?

But it would be naïve to consider such questions settled by the victory of Joe Biden, belatedly announced on the 8^th of November. To paraphrase one illustrious Churchill quote, this is only the end of the beginning. The true answers are not going to be provided by who sits in the Oval Office, but by what he does and by who he is surrounded, in his administration but also in other decisional forums such as the Chamber of Representatives or the Senate. It is therefore important to look beyond the name of the victor of the melee, to the larger political and ideological dynamics that produced this result – and can shed light on future developments on the medium term.  

An unstoppable force meets an (almost) unmovable object

Source: http://moronmajority.com/

While it is undoubtedly of significance that Joe Biden won, how he won is even more important. The first key parameter is electoral turnout race. The 2020 election is set to achieve the highest turnout since at least 1908 (when the population was much smaller and women – and most African-Americans – didn’t benefited from the franchise)[22]. Compared to turnout rates hovering around 55-60% of voting-eligible population (VEP) between 2000 and 2016[23], the 2020 race witness particularly high turnout rates. While the final numbers won’t be official until each state has certified all ballots and sorted out disputes (probably by early December), the count now stands at over 66% of VEP[24]. In absolute volume, the projected number of voters is set to reach 160 million[25], up from 138 in 2016[26]. Biden will most likely reach the 80 million votes high-water mark, becoming the presidential candidate with the most votes in US history. Donald Trump, on the other hand, received roughly 74 million votes, the highest total for a losing candidate. Both the Democratic and the Republican candidates dramatically increased their vote volume since the previous elections. This is particularly remarkable for an incumbent president, and showcases the resilience of the Trump vote despite the mismanagement of the pandemic and the abrupt economic downturn. Barack Obama lost more than 3 million voters between 2008 and 2012, while Trump added an astonishing 10 million votes to his tally[27]. He is the Republican candidate with the most votes in history, and second only to Joe Biden as the candidate (irrespective of party affiliation) with most votes. He thus improved significantly on the scores of unsuccessful candidates such as Mitt Romney or John McCain, but also of successful Republicans such as George Bush (see figure below).

The political geography of the vote remained relatively stable, with a few surprises. The hinterland – the so-called “fly-over America” – confirmed its robust preference for Republicans, but Biden rebuilt the “blue wall” of West-coast and North-East states. In 2016, Trump had been able to shatter the blue wall of states that had voted democratic since at least 1992, taking Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania; Iowa, which was integrated into the blue wall by Obama in 2008, switched back to Republicans too[28]. Biden owes his victory to his capacity to reclaim these 3 states, and chip away at Republican bastions in Arizona and Georgia.

In terms of race breakdowns, there seems to be no dramatic shifts, but rather marginal adjustments. Latinos, who constitute the largest ethnic minority in the electorate (roughly 32 million eligible voters), received heightened media attention. Surveys consistently showcased that a robust majority (70%) of Latinos favor Biden over Trump, irrespective of age, gender or socio-economic characteristics – with one notable exception: Cuban-Americans are much more evenly split than any other Latino group, with 52% supporting Trump[29]. There is no systematic survey of voting preference of Venezuelan-born Americans, but anecdotal evidence points to the existence of a robust Trump preference[30]. The move away from Democrats of swaths of the Latino electorate, steeped in anti-communism and Catholic dogma, is an interesting story that is been unfolding since the late 1990s and loomed large in states like Florida, which Trump retained in 2020. Another key demographic, whose overwhelming support already played a pivotal role in Biden’s victory over Bernie Sanders in the primaries, is African-Americans. According to The American Election Eve Poll, Biden is credited with almost 90% of the “Black vote”. These numbers are, however, not a novelty: the democratic candidate over the last five presidential elections has averaged 91% of the Black vote, with 8% going to the Republicans[31]. The Trump-Biden contest has not upset this asymmetric distribution, but neither did Trump’s radicalism erode the (modest) base of Black Republican supporters. While Black turnout data is still unavailable, in key battleground states like Georgia signs point to a dramatic improvement from 2016, when 60% of the Black eligible population cast a ballot[32]. This might mean that the Black vote might rebound to the high watermarks of 2008 and 2012 (65% and 67% respectively[33]), an increase which undoubtedly gave a new impetus to the Biden vote. Unsurprisingly, the white vote leaned towards Trump (56%[34], down from 57% in 2016[35]); rural whites were the most likely to back the republican candidate (64%), while women (53%) and college educated (53%) are slightly less inclined to cast a ballot for Donald Trump. Biden over-performed Clinton among white men, both college-educated and non, but overall, the white vote remained also stable, much like all other ethnic votes.

This deconstruction of the Biden and Trump vote yields two main political lessons. First of all, that there was little variation from historical patterns: blue wall against red wall, two familiar voting blocs aggregated around a political geography strongly shaped by both ethnic factors and the rural/urban divide. The “referendum on Trump” didn’t have the expected disruptive effect on the US voter demographic, which remains split along traditional fault lines that precede and are likely to survive Trump’s rambunctious brand of populism because they are embedded into relatively stable political cultures. Secondly, the “blue wave” polls predicted never fully got to crest; it submerged Donald Trump, but failed to produce a clear Democratic victory in the Senate (a race set to be resolved in run-off elections in December) and barely retained a weakened majority in the House of Representative[36]. Biden, riding the wave of an exceptional turnout (especially among minorities and young voters), was indeed an unstoppable force; but Trump nonetheless sturdily hold onto his base, and added millions of voters to his tally despite a lackluster record and a catastrophic last year marred by scandals and the worst health crisis in recent American history. In the wake of this fraught, impassioned and puzzling election, both parties are set to engage in a soul-searching exercise for which there will be no easy answers. 

The feet of clay of the Biden big-tent coalition

The Republican resilience should not obscure the momentum of the Biden campaign; few now question his personal efficiency as an “anti-Trump”. Joe Biden is a staunch moderate: a calm, soothing figure, conveying, in these distressing times, a reassuring sense of stability and empathy. His own grief-stricken personal story, marked by the loss of a spouse and two children, molded his public persona. The president-elect appears almost tailor-made for a political moment dominated first and foremost by a desire to heal trauma. But the “mourner-in-chief” persona of Biden contributed in no small measure to the loss of his political edge. His unofficial campaign slogan – “Make America kind again” – was a stinging jab at Trump’s offensive political style, but was devoid of a precise political content. Kindness and civility are moral values, not political projects. Biden himself is an almost apolitical candidate, chosen as an antidote to an increasingly tribal brand of politics. Biden is a consensus-builder, chameleonic and slow-moving, which translated into exceptional coalition-building capacities. Benefiting from a lassitude with Trump’s polarizing, hyper-energetic style, his own deliberate “depolarization” counter-strategy has been effective but risky. The president-elect will now have to navigating the perils and pitfalls not only of a country still bitterly divided, but also of his own patchwork coalition.

The Democratic party has been, historically, a party at odds with itself. Its multiple ideological realignments – on the role of the State or on the Civil Rights agenda – only deepened the rifts and accentuated the soul-searching. Now it is split between a centrist wing and a progressive wing, both embodying two distinct political philosophies and two incompatible narratives on what is America about. The centrist wing aggregated around the heritage of the New Deal, updated by Bill Clinton’s market- and globalization-friendly corpus of doctrine. The socio-liberal synthesis (known in the Anglo-Saxon world under the label “Third Way”) formed the basis of the Clinton and Obama presidencies; sociologically, it veered the Democratic party away from its workers electoral base towards a resolutely middle-class, college-educated constituency[37]. Although arguably more liberal than Clinton, Barak Obama was happy to continue the legacy of Clintonism, despite using his identity as an African-American to propel his campaign on a promise of change. In a very similar way, Hilary Clinton tried to frame her candidacy less as a continuation of the Third Way social-liberal politics but rather as a new hope for American politics. Both Obama and Clinton stood for a certain centrist vision of the American Dream – an open, meritocratic society in which formerly disenfranchised groups like ethnic minorities or women could at last shatter the glass ceiling and ascend to the highest responsibilities. Obama in particularly was a congenial figure who could drape itself in one of the most powerful political myths of the American Left: the Civil Rights combat. Started outside the Democratic party (and against a fraction of it, the Southern Democrats known as Dixiecrats[38]), the fight for racial justice was progressively weaved into the Democratic ethos, and Obama was then seen as the crowning achievement of a truly dramatic political redemption arc: from the party of slavery and Jim Crow to the party of the first Black president. This powerful narrative often obscured the real contours of the Obama presidency: it was in fact Clintonism-with-a-twist (or Clintonism-with-a-human-face), pragmatically and prudently charting a path between neoliberal orthodoxy and social-democracy. On foreign policy, the Obama administration was moderately offensive, continuing about 80% of the policies of the second Bush term[39], but has grown less and less “hawkish” with time. The radical progressive wing was born of the left-wing critique of the American model. In the cusp of the growing counter-cultural malaise of the Sixities, academics such as Noam Chomsky articulated a radical rebuttal of the capitalist development model and of the American party system – arguing for example that the US is a de facto one-party state, with the Republican Party and Democratic Party as manifestations of a single all-powerful "Business Party"[40]. Chomsky’s line of thought was echoed by other hyper-critical voices. The director Michael Moore became quickly the mediatic face of a new brand of left-wing political activism which almost completely skirted the institutional partisan circuits of the Democratic Party. Occupy Wall Street was the uncontestable high-water mark of this nebulous and inchoate demand, and its failure probably played a role for the eventual “homecoming” of far-left activism within the Democratic big-tent. This transition was nevertheless far from smooth. Many radical progressives (Moore included[41]) had endorsed Obama with cautious enthusiasm, only to later express bitter disappointment[42]. But most threw their weight behind Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders is a formally independent who has close ties to the Democratic Party, having caucused with House and Senate Democrats for most of his congressional career. The Democratic Party was taken almost by storm by a crop of new progressive figures who drove the “blue wave” of the 2018 mid-term elections which allowed Democrats to regain a majority in the House of Representatives. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (14^th congressional district of New York), Ilhan Omar (Minneapolis), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) – all women of color under 50 – embody not only the demographic diversity of a younger generation of Democratic voters, but also its robustly left-leaning penchant. Once a buzz at the distant periphery of the Democratic Party, what has been dubbed “left-wing populism”[43] is now a fully constituted faction inside the party and a force to be reckoned with.

Biden is not a mere continuator of the Obama legacy. Biden is the Obama legacy: as a vice-president for eight years, he helped shape the political line of the Obama administration to a large extent. This veteran of American politics embodies perfectly the post-Clinton Democratic establishment, and his past record sometimes brings back memories of the worst features of Clintonism (such as the draconic anti-crime legislation which disproportionately impacted Black Americans[44]). After a quasi-collapse during the primaries, Joe Biden’s nomination was received coldly by the progressive wing of the party. Their champion Bernie Sanders gracefully accepted the democratic game, but some supporters nurtured, in their bitterness, accusations of unfair bias or even conspiracy theories that Donald Trump was only too happy to circulate[45]. By leaning into unproven ideas of a corporate conspiracy to stymie the progressive élan, many Sanders supporters deepened already profound rifts and delegitimized the Democratic candidate. In 2016, some of Sanders’ supporters went on to back Trump in the general elections, creating the proletarian coalition which was instrumental to the Republican victory[46].

In this light, Biden’s success in maintaining the unity of the party during the campaign was a tour de force. He made a series of concessions to progressives. His agenda is surprisingly left-leaning, and he used the Covid-19 crisis and America’s newfound tolerance for governmental intervention to push for a more active role of the State, especially though the expansion of the Welfare State. The overhaul of the healthcare system, in particular, has been ambitiously drafted by a joint Biden-Sanders task force[47]. A former “tough on crime” hawk, Biden also favorably views police immunity reform (but stops short of any “defund the police” initiative) and the decriminalization of certain drug offenses. Another success of the joint Biden-Sanders task force was its climate action package, who draws on many of the measures of the progressives’ flagship Green New Deal pitch[48]. Biden is a realistic and a consensus-builder at heart, who willingly compromised on issues where he observed a clear popular dynamic in favor of progressives (healthcare, police reform, climate change) while de-emphasizing issues on which radicals are at odds with the public opinion (such as defunding the police). The president-elect is stepping into the sweet spot of the Overton window, keeping both factions relatively satisfied. His choice of a younger, combative running mate from a minority group is also a strategic move. Kamala Harris is everything Biden is not: her biracial (Black and Indian) roots mean she can symbolically engage with America’s melting pot of overlapping identities; her upbringing steeped in activism reenergizes an Obama-style uplifting narrative which Biden needs in order to win the battle over hearts and minds. Harris is far from a radical progressive, but has all the assets to make progressive forget (or at least forgive) it.

However, keeping this temporary unity will be a battle that the Biden-Harris duo will have to fight anew every day. Distrust with the Democratic establishment runs deep. Jacobin Magazine had an anti-Biden outburst in a piece transparently titled “The Third Way Is the Past. Socialism Is the Future”: “Meanwhile, Joe Biden, the heir apparent of the US Third Way, is running a campaign based solely on restoring Obama’s ancien régime, a pitch not one whit less backward-looking and nostalgic than Trump’s atavistic appeal to “Make America Great Again.[49]” Once the honeymoon is over, the only thing that might save this convenience, loveless marriage is the promise it will be a short one: ironically, Biden’s age is his secret weapon for keeping his coalition alive. Left-wing progressives need a respite to gather strength after the probable departure from the political scene of their champion Bernie Sanders; they are willing to sit out 4 years of a Biden presidency because they know there won’t be 8. Biden openly views himself as a transitional candidate acting as a “bridge” towards a new generation of Democratic candidates[50]. Whether this new generation will be Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris’ or Alexandria Osario-Cortez or Ilham Omar’s remains to be seen. A progressive DemExit[51] (exit from the Democratic Party) seems implausible…for now.

The ghost of Trumpism and the future of the Grand Old Party

Source: https://magazine99.com/

Just like the Democrats have been durably shaped by the “Clinton consensus”, the Republicans’ body of doctrine was bearing until 2016 the imprint of the “Reagan consensus”. Reaganism was a complex blend of neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism and interventionism; it was economically liberal, socially conservative but politically rather enamored with the Western liberal-democratic model of development. The old-school Cold War conservatism was sincere in its adherence to the minimal axiological core of political liberalism[52]. Indeed, few contested human rights, checks-and-balances or the independence of the judiciary. Even fewer would have disagreed with Adam Przeworski’s famous aphorism that “democracy is a system in which parties lose elections”: when the Conservative Revolution ebbed, it did so silently and resignedly. This is not what can be said of today’s nationalist populism.

Trump is, at first sight, less the receptacle of the intellectual tradition of the Reaganian Grand Old Party and more the enfant terrible of an altogether more chaotic political mythology. From Andrew Jackson to Father Coughlin and George Wallace, America’s social conditions and sense of exceptionalism offered fertile soil for populism. The actual political content of this populism is less important than its style. Populism is essentially a discursively strident strategy of construction of the political frontier between the people below and the people above, which can be grafted to a large variety of ideologies or regimes[53]. Trump excels in the critique of the American establishment, and his rhetoric against the post-Cold War neoliberal consensus was a potent, effective mixture of right-wing and left-wing ideas. This allowed the maverick businessman to tap into a large well of disillusionment, alienation and anger. His electorate was largely white (88%), rural (35%) or suburban (53%); roughly 71% were non-college graduates[54]. A study of the Brookings Institute called attention to the fact that the 2497 counties who voted for Trump make up only 29% of the economy: he thrived in the struggling pockets of poverty and deindustrialization of America’s heartland[55]. However, if Trump was the ideal champion of the people, running on a radical anti-establishment demand, how comes the Republican Party became the sole vehicle of Trumpism? First and foremost, there was an almost perfect overlap between Trump support and Republican affiliation: in 2016, 98% of voters who identified as “consistently conservatives” (and 87% of those “mostly conservative”) voted for Trump[56]. In 2018, support for the impeachment of Donald Trump also split predicably along party fault lines, with over 90% of Republicans opposed and 90% of Democrats in favor[57]. The last pre-election Gallup poll showed that over 90% of Republicans approve of Donald Trump, as opposed to 3% of Democrats[58]. To put these numbers into perspective, George W. Bush – the quintessential “establishment” Republican hailing from a Republican dynasty– only had 75% approval rating among Republicans (6% among Democrats) by the end of his second term[59]. To some extent, this is also true about minority voters: over 65% of Trump’s Black voters[60] and 85% of Latino voters[61] identify as Republicans. Policy-wise, Trump has pursued consistently some of the main objectives of his party: he waged war on “Big Government socialism” trough tax cuts and deregulations. On foreign policy, he treaded a somewhat unpredictable middle lane between neoconservatism and non-interventionism, but his tough stance on Iran, Israel, Venezuela, Cuba or China granted robust satisfactions to the Republican establishment. Above all, he was a prominent fighter on the barricades of the Culture Wars in which Republicans have invested so much in the last three decades. His appearances at pro-life events, his anti-political correctness rhetoric, his offensive against Antifa and his staunch pro-Second Amendment oaths of fealty have made him an icon. The conservative pop culture (and the extreme right counter-culture) has seized his colorful persona and made him a war machine against “libtards” (“liberal retards”), “feminazi”, “snowflakes” and everything that is wrong about today’s “leftist” America. Trump embodies the rugged, alpha Americanness of the “good side” of the Culture War: no wonder the gaudy unofficial slogan of the Trump campaign was “Make liberals cry again” (a reference to the popular “liberal tears” meme)[62].

This is why Trumpism is so perfectly soluble into republicanism, and vice-versa. However, now that Donald Trump leaves the Oval Office, the Republicans are a ship without a captain. The resilience of the Trump electoral base means a brutal execution of Trumpism is unthinkable on the short term. Trump remains a wildly popular figure who energizes the electorate in ways other hard-right figures such as Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Linsday Graham or Mitch McConnel can only dream of. Yet the support he garnered from establishment figures has always been tinged with pragmatism. To understand the dynamics of the post-Trump Republican party, we must cast our eyes on the reasons it so readily embraced Trump. We can identify three “pathways” to Trumpism. The first path is that of “ideological Trumpism”. Some, like Patrick Buchanon, Julius Krein, Alex Jones or Steve Bannon, articulated a much more cohesive and coherent form of Trumpism than Trump himself, projecting upon him their own aspirations. If many among the initial cohorts were disappointed (see the case of Julius Krein[63]), a new crop of conservatives – many of them young – adhered unconditionally to Trump’s palingenetic narrative of American decay and ultimate redemption under his presidency. The second pathway is the one of “anti-anti-Trumpism”: many supported other candidates to the Republican primary in 2016, but were radicalized by the backlash against Trump in liberal circles. A prime example of this is conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, an initial Trump skeptic who declared that he will be voting this time around because “Democrats have lost their fucking minds[64]”. The Republicans stoked this sensibility by peddling the idea that Biden is a mere trojan horse for socialism and is a hostage of the radical wing of his party[65]. The third pathway is, unsurprisingly, cold pragmatism and a realization that Donald Trump is effective. The future of the Republican party is in the hands of the latter. They could either side with ideological Trumpists or with a fourth faction of the Republicans, the so-called “Never-Trumpers”. They “anti-Left” faction will follow, as they have a vested interest in not dividing the conservative bloc and creating a bulwark against progressives .

The strong showing of Republican candidates in congressional elections proved Trumpism is not an automatically losing ticket. The party still holds, thanks to Trump, institutional bridgeheads around which it can gather: the Supreme Court who now has a conservative-leaning majority[66], and possibly the Senate. In the vacuum left by the presidential defeat, however, a national figure on par with Trump has yet to emerge. As an alternative to Donald Trump, the Lincoln Project (a resolutely anti-Trump conservative organization) suggested the name of Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson[67]. Carlson, known for his diatribes against political correctness, sits squarely in “anti-anti-Trumpism” territory. He is the beneficiary of a growing consensus both among Trump supporters (such as Sam Nunberg) and Trump-skeptics. The 51-year-old Carlson brings to the table a massive medias audience (his show is currently the most watched cable news program in history, no less) and an image of intellectual gravity that Trump lacked. Other names from the conservative media sphere, such as Ben Shapiro, might be considered. Ron de Santis, governor of Florida, has also been boosted by Trump’s success in his state and his popularity with Latino voters (62%[68]), who can be a crucial demographic for Republicans in the future. Among high profile Republicans, Texas senator Ted Cruz might also be benefiting from the Trump-induced swerve to the right of the party. On the other hand, Nikki Haley, a woman of color, would anchor the party back to the political center, an arguably better strategic move. But it is impossible to ignore the elephant in the room: a return of Donald Trump or of his family in 2024. His two very political children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, represent two very different faces of Trumpism. Donald Trump Jr embodies the abrasive, macho edge of the MAGA ideology: he has invested everything in his father’s bellicose narrative of “owning the libs” and is a natural heir to Trumpland. Ivanka and her husband Jared, on the other hand, are a vague promise that Trumpism can swerve towards a more orthodox brand of conservatism. Her gentler, more “maternal” presence may be soothing enough to allow conservatives of different sensibilities to coalesce around her: some attracted to her suave idealization of family values, some to her identity as a successful businesswoman, some others to her name.

But beyond questions of who will be the torchbearer of the Republicans into the near future, one thing is certain: Trump won’t be the last American populist. The conditions that produced him are still here. The variegated Trump coalition has still at its core downward mobile white voters. Economic inequality was heightened by a sense of cultural malaise, and Trump weaved both economic and cultural insecurities into a new nativist synthesis. He was particularly apt at exploiting the deepening suspicion of technocratic politics and stoking resentment of experts of all kinds – something his feud with dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading epidemiologist in charge with the country’s COVID-19 respose, showcased only too clearly. As a direct result, some of the more radical sprouts of Trumpism are taking roots and growing: in Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene has become the first supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory to win a US House seat[69]. It is not an aberration: 27 Q-Anon supporters were on the ballot for the 2020 Congressional elections, according to a study by MediaMatters[70]. The so-called QAnon conspiracy believes that a Satan-worshipping cabal of Democrats, Holywood celebrities and billionaires run the world through a corrupt administrative apparatus (the “Deep State”), engaging in pedophilia, human organ trafficking and cannibalism. That this gory imagery, reminiscent of the turn-of-the-century anti-Semitic blood libels, has managed to break out of the ghettos of the Internet far-right and somehow spill over in the political mainstream is a testament to the political volatility of our times.

A fraught period of soul-searching lies ahead for the United States. Joe Biden clearly expressed a desire for it to be a period of healing and rebuilding, but for that the country will need a new social pact that has been upended by the resentment on both sides following the 2016 shock. Draining the toxicity of populism while heeding to what Trump got right during his presidency will be a difficult balancing act. But the fate of the country and of liberal democracy hangs in balance.  

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[1] “Facebook and Twitter take emergency steps against Trump false victory claims”, The Guardian, 5 November 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/04/facebook-and-twitter-emergency-trump-false-victory-claims

[2] “Major Networks Cut Away From Trump’s Baseless Fraud Claims”, The New York Times, 5 November 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/trump-tv.html

[3] “Two charged with carrying weapons near Philadelphia vote-counting site amid election tensions”, The Washington Post, 7 November 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/06/philadelphia-attack-plot-vote-count-election/

[4] “Small protests flare and tension grows as ballot count continues”, The Washington Post, 6 November, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-protests-flare-and-tension-grows-as-ballot-count-continues/2020/11/05/bf3a377a-1fa7-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html 

[5] Ibid. 

[6] A title gracefully bestowed upon Donald Trump in 2020 by the CEOWORLD magazine ; see “Ranked: Most Powerful People In The World, 2020”, CEOWORLD, 5 May 2020, https://ceoworld.biz/2020/05/05/ranked-most-powerful-people-in-the-world-2020 

[7] “International observers rebuke Trump over fraud claims”, Politico, 4 November 2020, https://www.politico.eu/article/international-observers-rebuke-trump-over-fraud-claims/

[8] Caroline de Gruyter, “Europe’s Far-Right Is Still Hoping for a Trump Miracle”, Foreign Policy, 5 November 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/05/europes-far-right-is-still-hoping-for-a-trump-miracle/

[9] “The U.S. election gripped the world, making way for plenty of memes”, The Washington Post, 6 November 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/11/06/us-election-memes-world/; “Arabic and Farsi videos mock US election ballot count”, The Jerusalem Post, 8 November 2020, https://www.jpost.com/us-elections/arabic-and-farsi-videos-mock-us-election-ballot-count-648323

[10] “The power of America’s example: the Biden Plan for leading the democratic world to meet the challenges of the 21st century”, Joe Biden.com, https://joebiden.com/americanleadership/

[11] Joseph R. Biden, “Why America Must Lead Again”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 99, no. 2, March/April 2020

[12] “Iran urges US's Biden to lift sanctions, rejoin nuclear deal”, Al-Jazeera, 18 November 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/18/iran-urges-joe-biden-to-lift-sanctions-rejoin-nuclear-deal

[13] David M. Halbfinger, “Biden’s Win Means a Demotion for Netanyahu and Less Focus on Israel”, The New York Times, 9 November 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/world/middleeast/biden-israel.html

[14]  Jonathan H. Ferziger, “UAE, Bahrain Brace for a Chillier Biden Approach”, Foreign Policy, 8 November 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/08/uae-bahrain-biden-saudi-israel/

[15] “Joe Biden has made a career on being soft on China”, Republican National Committee, https://gop.com/joe-biden-has-made-a-career-of-being-soft-on-china-rsr

[16] For example, a recent Axios poll shows that almost 90% of Republicans and Democrats agree on placing santions on China for human rights violations ; the gap widens when it comes to economy and trade, but a majority of both Republicans (79%) and Democrats (61%) agree that tech companies should be prohibited from building communication networks in the US. See “Poll finds bipartisan consensus on sanctioning China over human rights abuses”, Axios, 22 September 2020, https://www.axios.com/poll-finds-bipartisan-consensus-on-sanctioning-china-over-human-rights-abuses-6f0ef774-228d-44e2-93e2-65c706c22c05.html

[17] Joseph R. Biden, op. cit.

[18] “Trump buddies up with Bolsonaro, the ‘Trump of the Tropics’”, Associated Press, 20 March 2020, https://apnews.com/article/bdc70648e5814d25b549d1c252910006

[19] “Lalu calls PM Modi 'Indian Trump', slams Centre for presenting Budget despite E Ahamed's death”, India Today, 1 February 2017, https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/union-budget-2017-lalu-prasad-modi-e-ahamed-death-958320-2017-02-01

[20] Andreea Ricardi, “The ‘Philippine Trump’ scares the world”, Andreea Ricardi, 20 May 2016, https://www.riccardiandrea.it/2016/05/the-philippine-trump-scares-world.html

[21] “Italy’s Trump, Matteo Salvini, Excels at Scapegoating Refugees”, Muftah, 14 February 2018, https://muftah.org/italian-trump-matteo-salvini-refugees/#.X7bqss0zauU

[22] “Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections”, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections

[23] Ibid.

[24] “Voter turnout rate in the presidential election in the United States as of November 16, 2020, by state”, Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184621/presidential-election-voter-turnout-rate-state/ 

[25] “2020 November General Election Turnout Rates”, United States Elections Project, 16 November 2020, http://www.electproject.org/2020g

[26] “2016 November General Election Turnout Rates”, United States Elections Project, 9 May 2018, http://www.electproject.org/2016g

[27] For projections and numbers on the 2020 race, see “Election 2020 Results and Live Updates”, ABC News, 21 November 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Elections/2020-us-presidential-election-results-live-map; for the 2016 elections, see “2016 Presidential Election Results”, The New York Times,  https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president; for 2012 election results, see “President Map”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2012/results/president.html; for 2008, see “Election Results 2008”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2008/results/president/votes.html  

[28] “2016 Presidential Election Results”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president

[29] “LATINO VOTERS IN THE 2020 ELECTION NATIONAL SURVEY RESULTS”, The American Election Eve Poll, 5 November 2020, https://latinodecisions.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Latino-EE2020-Deck.pdf

[30] “US election 2020: How the ghost of 'socialism' is dividing Venezuelan vote”, BBC News, 16 October 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54576198 

[31] See “How Groups Voted 1976-2016”, Roper Center for Research on Public Opinion, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how_groups_voted?utm_campaign=item_320903&utm_medium=copy&utm_source=link_newsv9

[32] See “'It's too important now': Record turnout, Black voters fuel Democratic hopes in Georgia”, NBC News,  1 November 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/it-s-too-important-now-record-turnout-black-voters-fuel-n1245416; “Black voter turnout in Knoxville surged in 2020 presidential election”, Knox News, 3 November 2020, https://eu.knoxnews.com/story/news/2020/11/16/knoxville-black-voters-increased-turnout-2020-election-joe-biden/6254982002/ 

[33] “Black voter turnout rate declined sharply in 2016, dropping below that of whites”, Pew Research Center, 11 May 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/12/black-voter-turnout-fell-in-2016-even-as-a-record-number-of-americans-cast-ballots/ft_17-05-10_voter-turnout/

[34] “American Election Eve Poll 2020 – White Vote”, The American Election Eve Poll, 5 November, https://electioneve2020.com/poll/#/en/demographics/white/

[35] “How Groups Voted in 2016”, Roper Center for Research on Public Opinion, https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2016

[36] “Senate and House elections 2020: full results for Congress”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2020/nov/09/senate-and-house-elections-2020-full-results-for-congress

[37] See Thomas Piketty, Capital et Idéologie, Seuil, Paris, 2019

[38] See on this topic Kari A. Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2001

[39] David Brooks, “Getting Obama Right”, The New York Times, 11 March 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/opinion/12brooks.html

[40] see James McGilvray, Chomsky: Language, Mind, Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2014

[41] Michael Moore, “My Vote's for Obama (if I could vote) ...”, 21 April 2008, Web Archives, https://web.archive.org/web/20131220180732/http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/my-votes-for-obama-if-i-could-vote-by-michael-moore

[42] Moore for exemple suggested that Obama’s Peace Nobel Prize be withdrawn, and harshly criticized the Medicare bill as too timid. 

[43] See Mikko Salmela and Christian von Scheve, “Emotional Dynamics of Right- and Left-wing Political Populism”, Humanity and Society, vol. 42, issue 4, 2018

[44] See “’Things have changed': can Biden overcome the racist legacy of the crime bill he backed?”, The Guardian, 17 October 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/17/joe-biden-race-crime-bill-1994-policing 

[45] See Anis Shivani, “#DemExit Now: How the Democratic Party Cheated Bernie Sanders Out of the Nomination”, Naked Capitalism, 18 April 2020, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/04/demexit-now-how-the-democratic-party-cheated-bernie-sanders-out-of-the-nomination.html; “Trump Wants to Convince Bernie Voters the Election Was Rigged Again”, Intelligencer, 14 Janurary 2020,  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/trump-bernie-sanders-impeachment-biden-primary-rigged.html; “‘Rigged’ rhetoric makes a comeback after Trump’s comments and Sanders’s losses — and gives Russia just what it wants”, The Washington Post, 4 March 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/04/rigged-rhetoric-makes-comeback-after-trumps-comments-sanderss-losses-gives-russia-just-what-it-wants/

[46] The exact size of this “Sanders-Trump” vote is still a contentious issue. It has been exaggerated probably under the auspices of the horseshoe theory (right- and left-wing populism eventually rejoining into a common illiberal stream); a large survey of 50 000 people conducted by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study indicated that around 12% of Sanders voters backed Trump. “Here's How Many Bernie Sanders Supporters Ultimately Voted For Trump”, NPR, 24 August 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds?t=1606345270376

[47] “Key health care recommendations included in Biden-Sanders task force proposals”, State of Reform, 13 July 2020, https://stateofreform.com/federal/2020/07/key-health-care-recommendations-included-in-biden-sanders-task-force-proposals/

[48] “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces Unveil Improved Climate Policy”, EcoWatch, 9 July 2020, https://www.ecowatch.com/democrats-climate-policy-2646373430.html

[49] Paul Heidman, “The Third Way Is the Past. Socialism Is the Future”, Jacobin Magazine, 19 January 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/third-way-democratic-socialism-tony-blair-bill-clinton-uk

[50] “Biden says he's a 'bridge' to new 'generation of leaders' while campaigning with Harris, Booker, Whitmer”, CNN Politics, 10 March 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/09/politics/joe-biden-bridge-new-generation-of-leaders/index.html

[51] See “'DemExit': virtual convention aims to create US leftwing alternative”, The Guardian, 29 August 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/29/demexit-peoples-convention-leftwing-alternative-democrats-republicans

[52] Ann Applebaum, “This Is How Reaganism and Thatcherism End”, The Atlantic, 10 February 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/the-sad-path-from-reaganism-to-national-conservatism/606304/

[53] See Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism, Verso, London, 2018

[54] “An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters”, Pew Research Center, 9 August 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/

[55] “Biden-voting counties equal 70% of America’s economy. What does this mean for the nation’s political-economic divide?”, Brookings Institute, 10 November 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-nations-political-economic-divide/

[56] Ibid.

[57] “Did Americans Support Removing Trump From Office?”, FiveThirtyEight, 12 February 2020, https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/impeachment-polls/

[58] “Presidential Approval Ratings – Donald Trump”, Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx

[59] “Presidential Approval Ratings -- George W. Bush”, Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx

[60] “American Election Eve Poll 2020”, https://electioneve2020.com/poll/#/en/demographics/black/

[61] “American Election Eve Poll 2020”, https://electioneve2020.com/poll/#/en/demographics/latino/

[62] See Monica Hesse, “‘Make liberals cry again’ became the battle hymn of the Republicans under Trump”, The Washington Post, 5 November 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-republican-liberal-tears-make-america-cry-again/2020/11/04/2342f0de-1eb0-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html

[63] Julius Krein, “I Voted for Trump. And I Sorely Regret It”, The New York Times, 17 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/sunday/i-voted-for-trump-and-i-sorely-regret-it.html

[64] “Ben Shapiro explains why he'll vote for Trump this time around: 'Democrats have lost their f---ing minds'”, Fox News, 20 October 2020, https://www.foxnews.com/media/ben-shapiro-why-voting-trump-in-2020

[65] “Trump Portrays Biden as ‘Trojan Horse’ in Emerging GOP Theme”, The Wall Street Journal, 28 August 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-portrays-biden-as-trojan-horse-in-emerging-gop-theme-11598627832

[66] “How A Conservative 6-3 Majority Would Reshape The Supreme Court”, FiveThirtyEight, 28 September 2020, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-a-conservative-6-3-majority-would-reshape-the-supreme-court/

[67] “Lincoln Project's Schmidt: Carlson could be 2024 GOP front-runner”, The Hill, 6 October 2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/presidential-campaign/524907-lincoln-projects-schmidt-carlson-could-be-2024-gop-frontrunner

[68] “Gov. Ron DeSantis is one of the most popular governors in America”, Miami Chambers of Commerce, https://www.miamichamber.com/news/poll-gov-ron-desantis-one-most-popular-governors-america 

[69] “QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene wins seat in US House”, The Guardian, 4 November 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/03/qanon-marjorie-taylor-greene-wins-congress

[70] “Here are the QAnon supporters running for Congress in 2020”, MediaMatters, 1 July 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/here-are-qanon-supporters-running-congress-2020