Aug.26

electoral-vote.com

Dem 52

Ties 1

GOP 47

Donald Trump, Anti-Populist

Yesterday, Aaron Blake—late of The Washington Post, and currently at CNN—had a column in which he argues that Donald Trump, who ran for the presidency as a populist, has now become an anti-populist.

Blake's evidence for this is substantial, and built around examples of Trump doing things that are unpopular. A partial list:

• The trade war with Canada
• The damage done to the Kennedy Center
• The Iran War
• Vaccine policy
• The $1.776 billion slush fund

Blake makes his case based almost entirely on polling, and shows that all of these things are indeed very unpopular. For example, 60% of Americans oppose the changes to the Kennedy center and 60% also don't like the vaccine policy, while two-thirds oppose the Iran War and more than 80% oppose the slush fund.

Usually, Blake is the best analyst CNN has (and he was the best WaPo had while he was there). However, he's not a historian, and so his understanding of populism is a fair bit off the mark. A populist politician is not defined by doing things that "the people like." All politicians, or nearly all politicians, try to do things "the people like." But not all politicians are populists. Far from it.

As with Potter Stewart and pornography, when it comes to populism, it's something of an "I know it when I see it" phenomenon. That said, the defining feature of populism, more or less, is the idea that "the people" are being oppressed by entrenched economic and political interests, and that aggressive steps must be taken to smash that entrenched power and correct the imbalance. With right-wing populists, there is an underlying mindset that "this is what God wants." With left-wing populists, there is an underlying mindset that "this is a matter of justice/social justice."

Here are some of the ways in which Donald Trump is a textbook right-wing populist:

• Jobs: Trump has made "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" a major theme of his presidency. Populists like jobs.
  
  
• Jesus: Again, not generally true of left-wing populists, but the right-wing variety likes a heaping helping of religion intermixed with their politics. The original populists were overwhelmingly evangelical. Don't forget that William Jennings Bryan, the most famous member of the original Populist movement, was—among other things—the prosecuting attorney in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
  
  
• Culture Wars: If the core sentiment is "us vs. them," then "we" like it when "they" get poked in the eye once in a while. In Bryan's most famous speech, he compared the Republicans to the Romans who killed Jesus. And he would certainly understand, and appreciate, modern tactics meant to "own the libs."
  
  
• Trade Wars: Populists do not tend to be sophisticated economic thinkers. And so, they are usually pro-tariff, because they think protectionism means more jobs for working-class Americans, and less competition for American-made goods.

Here are some of the ways in which Trump is not a populist at all:

• The Iran War (and Other Conflicts): Historically, populists tend to be isolationist. They don't think that poor people should be giving their money or their lives to solve the problems of other nations.
  
  
• The Arc de Trump and Other Monuments: Monuments like these are enduring symbols of power. See above about populists' dislike for entrenched power.
  
  
• Crypto: One almost cannot think of something that is more anti-populist than not only accumulating vast wealth, but doing so in a commodity that has no concrete value or purpose. Populists, particularly the original ones from the 1890s, understood the value of an ear of corn or a gallon of milk; they were considerably less persuaded of the value of, say, a stock certificate. If you tried to explain crypto to William Jennings Bryan or James Weaver (1892 Populist candidate for president), it just would not compute, beyond making them very angry.
  
  
• Qatar Force One: Taking bribes/gifts from foreign nations runs afoul of the populist skepticism about foreign entanglements AND their dislike for extreme wealth.

Notice that the things that appear in the first list above are, by and large, smoke and mirrors. Trump hasn't actually created jobs in any meaningful way. Yes, there are more jobs today than there were 10 years ago, but that's driven by population growth. Every president back to Herbert Hoover could say, at some point in their presidency, "There are more jobs in America today than at any time in American history." Meanwhile, Trump's religiosity is just hot air, and so is his culture wars stuff. The trade wars are the most substantive thing on the list, but even with those, Trump usually chickens out.

The things that appear on the second list are, by and large, the things Trump actually does (or tries to do). He really did accumulate vast wealth in his various crypto schemes, and he really did scam a free airplane out of Qatar. He really did start a war with Iran, one he has no idea how to end. He really is spending an enormous amount of energy, not to mention government resources, on things like renaming the Kennedy Center, building the Arc de Trump, redoing the Lincoln Reflecting Pool, etc.

These things being the case, it's not exactly wrong to call Trump an anti-populist (even if Blake's reasoning is not on point). However, we think it's probably more instructive to call Trump a faux populist. He pretends to be a populist, a man of the people fighting against the swamp, but in his actions he is as swampy as it gets, and is the epitome of what he pretends to disdain.

The really famous populists of generations past—Bryan, Weaver, Huey Long, George Wallace, even Andrew Jackson (though Old Hickory predates the existence of the word "populist")—were, more often than not, ignorant, reckless, impolitic, bigoted and lacking in sophistication. But they were all, by all indications, true believers in the populist causes they embraced. Trump is also ignorant, reckless, impolitic, bigoted and lacking in sophistication, but we don't believe for a minute that he's a true believer in populist causes.

As long as Trump can sell MAGA voters on the idea he's a true champion of their cause, then it doesn't matter if the rest of us think he's a big phony. But if they start to wake up and smell the coffee, the President and his movement are in trouble. And his sagging approval ratings, including among Republicans, not to mention the somewhat anemic results his endorsees got yesterday (and in the last month or two of primaries) suggest that the coffee just might be starting to percolate right now. (Z)