How to Beat MAGA, Part 1

The first step is to understand what drives MAGA voters. It's not the economy.

The first installment in my How to Beat MAGA series answers the question of what drives MAGA voters. Parts Two, Three, and Four—a brief history of racial politics in America—show that MAGA is neither something new nor an aberration. Part Five will examine the current state of the Democratic Party. Part Six will give specific recommendations on how the Democrats can beat MAGA at the polls.

For ten long years now, many anti-Trumpers have relentlessly branded MAGA supporters as stupid and/or brainwashed. This is not only wrong, but politically suicidal.

The anti-fascist Resistance should take a long hard look in the mirror its own ignorance about what drives MAGA voters, because it is that persistent cluelessness that keeps getting MAGA candidates elected. Unless this ignorance gap is closed very soon, our grandchildren will grow up under fascism.

Anti-Trumpers have many theories to explain MAGA voters. Let’s take a look at the three most prevalent.

1. The Bermuda Triangle Theory

Based on my Facebook experience, this is the most popular theory among anti-Trumper about MAGA voters. It basically goes like this: No one knows what drives MAGA, and no one ever will ever know. Like what happens to you after you die, it’s a mystery that will never be solved. Here are some random comments taken from my Facebook feed just this morning that capture this resigned bewilderment:

“I'm constantly amazed that Trump’s followers think he's actually helping them.”

“I find a third of US voters completely incomprehensible.”

“I can't understand how Trump supporters still aren't getting it.”

“I really can't believe people don't understand who Trump really is.”

“How can Christians belief that this terrible man is one of them?”

“I don't understand why people voted Trump out the first time, then voted him in the second time.”

This widespread bewilderment doesn’t bode well for the viability of the anti-Trump Resistance. It is alarming, intellectually lazy, and absurd on its face. No human enterprise is inexplicable. We have the answers.

2. The Manchurian Candidate Theory

Another popular belief held by anti-Trumpers is that MAGA voters have been brainwashed by Fox News.

It is true that Fox, the top source of news for most Americans, is a 24x7 sewer of right-wing propaganda. It is also true that Fox News influences elections and has been a key factor in the fascist takeover of the United States.

But the obvious fatal flaw behind this theory is that it puts the result before the cause—the symptom before the disease. A sizeable percentage of Americans have always been warm to racism, authoritarianism, and misogyny, and there have always been media outlets that catered to that audience.

When Fox News launched in 1996, it started with zero market share. Only ten million households had access to it. It was not available in New York City and Los Angeles, the two largest media markets. Fox News had to invite media reviewers to its studios to watch its first broadcast because most reviewers couldn’t watch it where they lived.

Fox News didn’t become the #1 news network because it delivered something new. Fox News became popular because it gave the pre-existing right-wing audience in America what it already wanted. Saying that Fox News created MAGA is like saying that clowns invented laughter.

3. The Karl Marx Theory

Many progressive Democrats believe that the Democratic Party is losing to MAGA because it stopped caring about the economic concerns of the working class.

It is absolutely true that, outside of global warming, our biggest existential threat is the collapse of capitalism—the almost incomprehensible transference of wealth into the hands of the ultra-rich over the past sixty years. This theft certainly should be the top concern of every American voter.

But it’s not top of mind with MAGA voters. We know that because MAGA voters consistently vote against their own economic self-interest.

It wasn’t always this way. Between 1950 and 1979—when America was 90% White—Democratic and Republican voters alike supported programs that created a period of economic prosperity so profound that it seems incredible today. Thanks to socialistic strategies like government subsidies (think GI Bill), government-sponsored infrastructure projects that created millions of jobs (think highways), millions of manufacturing jobs, peak union membership, high corporate tax rates (think 90 percent), the median household income in the United States, adjusted for inflation, DOUBLED between 1947 and 1973. Wages grew along with productivity, and prosperity was broadly shared. This seems like an impossible economic hallucination today, but I grew up during this golden era, and it was real.

The Republican economic record

Beginning in the 1970s, American workers began voting to against themselves when it came to economic issues. Republican presidents (Reagan, the Bushes, and Trump) gave us massive tax cuts for the rich, the deregulation of the finance and telecommunications industries, the crushing of the unions, and disastrous responses to no less than three major economic earthquakes (the dot-com crash, the Great Recession in 2008, and the COVID-19 pandemic). Asset prices (stock and real estate holdings) rebounded faster than wages. Historically low interest rates created asset bubbles instead of wage growth. Stock ownership shifted dramatically to the wealthiest Americans. Business equity and real estate replaced workers and products as the primary creators of wealth.

It is not an overstatement to claim that the middle and working classes took all of the hit for these actions while the ultra-rich economically sucked up all of the benefit:

· In 1983, the richest 10 percent of Americans owned 24 percent of the wealth. Today, it owns nearly 70 percent.

· In 1983, the American middle class owned 32% of the wealth. Today it owns 17%.

· Pay for CEOs has increased nearly one thousand percent since 1978.

The Democratic economic record

Let’s get real.

It is true that the Democratic Party used to be the party of the working class—White and non-White—but over the past sixty years has lost the White working-class voter. (It is important to note that it is still the party of the non-White working class.)

It is true that Democratic policies and administrations didn’t do enough to halt the shipping of millions of jobs overseas (think Clinton’s NAFTA) or the loss of jobs due to automation. They also failed to hold Wall Street and the banks accountable for the 2008 economic collapse.

It is also true that the Democratic Party’s dependence on ultra-wealthy donors has led it to being too supportive of big business, Wall Street, and Big Pharma, and that donations from these segments have helped to keep the party from adopting a more progressive economic program.

And it is also true that, since the Reagan era, the Democratic Party has failed to communicate a political message that resonates with the White working class.

But the records of the two political parties show—indisputably—that the Democratic Party has done more for the American middle and working classes than the Republican Party.

It is not true that the Democratic Party has done nothing for the White working class over the past sixty years. During that time, Democratic administrations have given working people:

• Better job growth than Republican administrations

• Faster GDP growth than Republican administrations

• Lower unemployment than during Republican administrations

• Affordable health care for 16 million more Americans

• Substantial reduction of the federal deficit (under Clinton and Obama) versus large increases (under Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump)

• Paid family and medical leave

• More equitable pay for women

• Increased regulation of banks

• College-loan forgiveness

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

• $1.2 trillion in funding to update our nation’s infrastructure with the potential of creating 15 million new jobs

Given the dramatic differences between the two parties’ track records on helping the middle class, it is true that MAGA voters have consistently voted against their own economic self interest.

That leaves two possibilities as to why they have done this:

1. MAGA voters are too stupid to realize what they are doing.

2. There are other issues besides the economy that explain MAGA voting habits.

The first notion is absurd and smugly elitist. Yes, MAGA voters tend to be the voters who follow politics the least closely, but no rational person would claim that those 70 million Americans are fundamentally stupid. If you believe that, then you are a big part of the political crisis America is in.

The answer to what drives MAGA voters, then, must be #2.

What the 2016 election data tells us

MAGA was created in 2016 with Trump’s victory. That victory was a surprise to most Americans, especially the political pundits, so thankfully the 2016 electorate was analyzed ad infinitum. We have an ocean of data on what motivated Trump voters in 2016.

First, two key data points about the 2016 election:

• Fifty-eight percent of all White voters voted for Trump.

• Ninety-two percent of Republican voters were white. Nearly all of them voted for Trump.

As in any election, there were many factors that caused people to vote for Trump in 2016, including economic uncertainty, a dissatisfaction with the status quo, and foreign policy. But the data shows—clearly—that there was one factor that was most important to them.

The PRRI/The Atlantic study

One of the extensive studies of Trump voters in 2016 was the Public Religion and Research Institute (PRRI)/The Atlantic report published the following year. It found that:

• Fears about White cultural displacement were nearly 3.5 times more predictive of support for Trump than economic concerns among White working-class voters. White voters who said that they often felt like a stranger in their own land and who believe that the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence represented 68% of all White working class Americans.

• More than two-thirds (68%) of white working-class Americans—along with a majority (55%) of all voters—believed that the U.S. was in danger of losing its culture and identity.

• More than half (52%) of white working-class Americans believed that discrimination against whites was as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.

• More than six in ten (63%) white working-class Americans who reported living in areas where poor people were predominantly black believed that people on welfare were abusing the system.

Conversely, the PRRI/The Atlantic study found no correlation among White voters between a loss of social and economic standing and a tendency to vote for Trump.

• White voters who described themselves as being in fair or poor financial shape were 1.7 times more likely to support Hillary Clinton, compared to those who were in better financial shape.

• Only a slim majority (51%) of white working-class Americans identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.

• Two-thirds (64%) of White working-class Americans favored strong, authoritarian leaders.

The PNAS study

“Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote”, a study published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) came to the same conclusions.

Some findings of the PNAS study:

• “Support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election was widely attributed to citizens who were ‘eft behind’ economically. These claims were based on the strong cross-sectional relationship between Trump support and lacking a college education. Using a representative panel from 2012 to 2016, I find that change in financial wellbeing had little impact on candidate preference. Instead, changing preferences were related to changes in the party’s positions on issues related to American global dominance and the rise of a majority–minority America: issues that threaten white Americans’ sense of dominant group status.”

• “Many Trump voters are feeling left behind, but not for reasons related to personal financial problems or economic anxiety about the future.”

• “Traditionally high-status Americans, namely whites, feel their status in America and the world is threatened by America's growing racial diversity and a perceived loss of U.S. global dominance. Under threat by these engines of change, America's socially dominant groups increased their support in 2016 for the candidate who most emphasized reestablishing status hierarchies of the past.”

• “Trump's rhetoric during the 2016 election capitalized on the fears of Americans who currently enjoy dominant status in society, most notably those who were white, Christian, male, or some combination of the three. Many of those Americans, Mutz found, switched from voting for the Democrat in 2012 to the Republican in 2016. Particularly those who found societal changes threatening voted for Trump in an effort to maintain their perceived social dominance in the country and the world.”

• “Trump's victory also occurred during a time of economic recovery, during which unemployment was falling and economic indicators were trending positively. Those who had lost a job between 2012 and 2016 were no more likely to support Trump than Clinton. But those who felt besieged by globalization and the rise of a majority-minority America were quite likely to vote for Trump. For example, those who thought whites were discriminated against more than blacks, Christians more than Muslims, and men more than women were most likely to support Trump.”

• “Despite exhaustive data analysis, the study did not show any relationship between financial hardship and voting for Trump. In addition, those whose financial situations declined between 2012 and 2016 relative to others' economic well-being were no more likely to switch to Trump.”

Fear of White displacement—the notion that the White race and its culture is in danger of being replaced—is, obviously, a racist belief. It views culture through a purely racial lens: White culture is, or should be, supreme and other cultures are threats to it.

How on earth it possible that, in 21^st-century America, racism is still driving our politics. Didn’t we abolish slavery and fight a Civil War a thousand years ago?

Next, in Part 2: A quick refresher course on the history of American racial politics, from Jamestown to MAGA

Sources:

Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump | PRRI/The Atlantic Report - PRRI

Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote | PNAS

Another Study Shows Trump Won Because of Racist Anxieties

Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Hardship, Drove Voters in 2016 Presidential Election | Annenberg

The Macroeconomics of Aautomation: Data, Theory, and Policy Analysis

Cultural Stress in the Age of Mass Xenophobia: Perspectives from Latin/o Adolescents - PMC

Border battle: new survey reveals Americans’ views on immigration, cultural change | Brookings

Trump Voters Driven by Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Anxiety, Study Finds - The New York Times

The Rising Wealth Gap: How U.S. Wealth Disparity Evolved from 1950 to Today - ballplanning.com

15 Million Infrastructure Jobs: An Economic Shot in the Arm to the COVID-19 Recession - CEW Georgetown

America’s Wealth Shift: How Policy and Economy Eroded the Middle Class

PolitiFact | Here's how the deficit performed under Republican and Democratic presidents, from Reagan to Trump