Opposing assessments of the GOP post-2020

For the first time in my life, the field of presidential candidates for a major political party looks like America — a racially diverse country.

The debate will include a Jewish democratic socialist (Bernie Sanders), a LGBTQ person (Pete Buttigieg), two African Americans (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris), a Latino (Julian Castro), an Asian American (Andrew Yang), and six women (Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Marianne Williamson and Tulsi Gabbard).

The GOP debate stage for their 2016 primaries featured one woman, one African American, one Indian American and two Hispanics. They were basically bookends for 12 white men who dominated that stage.

That shocking contrast on the debate stage is only a hint of the divide between the nation’s two big political parties going into the 2020 presidential race.

There’s a Grand Canyon between each party’s voters.

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According to a report released this month by Public Opinion Strategies, based on NBC News/Wall Street Journal data, whites without college degrees now comprise an outright majority of all people who identify as Republicans.

In 2012, 48 percent of Republicans were non-college-educated whites. By 2018, with Trump as president, that figure had risen to 59 percent.

In 2012, 40 percent of Republicans were college-educated whites. In 2018, under Trump’s leadership, that number had fallen to just 29 percent.

[...]

When Democrats won 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms, “women voted Democrat for Congress by a record margin and by a record gap compared to men.”

Republicans had a four-point edge with men, but a 19-point deficit with women — a “net 23-point difference by gender,” as the report pointed out.

Once again, the gap comes down to white men without a college degree: 66 percent of them voted for the GOP in the 2018 midterms.

And then there is the age gap.

Last year, the Brookings Institution reported “the oldest Americans, those 50 and over, have consistently given Trump his highest approval ratings while young people aged 18-29 have consistently given him his lowest approval ratings.”

In fact, Quinnipiac University polling in May reported 70 percent disapproval for Trump among adults under the age of 35.

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n overwhelming share of America’s racial minority voters are Democrats.

  Juan Williams @ The Hill

Indeed that's why the GOP has gerrymandered so many districts.

The only middle ground left between the divided political parties is occupied by white men in swing states who voted for President Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016.

“While diverse in many ways, Obama-to-Trump voters are more likely to be white, working-class and to live in the Midwest. Because they voted for Barack Obama in 2012 before supporting Trump in 2016, we can assume that their votes were not informed solely (or even strongly) by racial preference,” Johns Hopkins University Professor Stephen L. Morgan wrote for Bloomberg last week, based on research he recently conducted.

I think I can explain that one: McCain had a woman on the ticket as vice president. The white men in that category preferred even a black man to a woman in the White House.

“On economic matters, Obama-to-Trump voters are centrists, except when it comes to free trade, which they view as a greater threat to jobs and wages than both Democratic and Republican party loyalists,” Morgan added.

Team Trump knows its only shot is to hold as many of those six million Obama-Trump voters as it can. That means speaking to their number one issue — opposition to free trade.

Sure. But the tariffs are backfiring. They may just be losing those voters if that's the reason they're voting Trump.

In the Democratic field, the most outspoken opponent of free trade is Sanders.

“When people take a look at my record versus Vice President Biden's record, I helped lead the fight against NAFTA; he voted for NAFTA,” Sanders said on CNN in April. “I helped lead the fight against [trade agreements] with China; he voted for it. I strongly opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership; he supported it.”

Warren, too, has called for a renegotiation of NAFTA, although she blasted Trump’s combative use of tariffs to start a trade war.

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If Trump can’t win the few middle-of-the road white men watching next week’s debate from the middle, he might be the last Republican president.

If only. But then where would we be? One party, when two is too few.

It has become commonplace to claim the Republican Party now is the “Trump party.” Republican leaders certainly have devoted themselves to doing his bidding and have performed remarkable feats of mental gymnastics to reconcile their previously articulated values with those of his administration.

But viewing the GOP as the “Trump party” is far too simplistic. This implies that once he is gone from the White House, things will return to “normal.” In fact, the GOP is far more likely to continue its radicalization, post-Trump, than it is to moderate.

  The Hill

I think that's absolutely correct.

Trump is just the beginning. The social trends that propelled him into office will only accelerate. Researchers have identified a strong correlation between those with authoritarian tendencies and support for Trump. In fact, authoritarianism appears to predict support for Trump better than any other factor.

Even than economics? I think that's true, too. What remains to be determined if - and it's a giant if - voting determines the next president, is how many people are scared shitless of immigrants and Muslims.

Scholars on authoritarianism also believe that latent authoritarian tendencies are triggered by external threats (such as from China, Russia, ISIS or Iran) and by rapid societal change.

The U.S. population continues to moves toward majority-minority status. As it does, a large bloc of voters — once the majority — will continue to search out a strongman leader, to reclaim their power.

Not only is organic demographic change fueling pro-strongman sentiment but famine, drought and conflict, exacerbated by climate change, will continue bringing scores of migrants to our borders and to Europe. Those willing to scare-monger about “migrant caravans” and “invasions” of “criminals and rapists” will have more fodder for their demagoguing, not less. Abjectly racist language could become normalized. Pseudoscience about racial superiority might proliferate. White supremacy and border militias will continue to increase.

[...]

The divide will grow between the service workers who are paid starvation wages and the elite whose whims and desires are catered to every day. [...] Young men will continue to feel worthless and unlovable because our society tells them that “real men” are successful breadwinners and then denies them the ability to earn that bread.

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To imagine such a future in America, behold the right-wing creators on YouTube. Don’t expect that GOP politicians will work diligently to appeal to Americans’ better angels and stem this reactionary energy. GOP politicians saw how Donald Trump came to power and they’ve watched what happened at the polls to those who tried to buck the trend.

While this may be the likely future of the GOP, it is not inevitable that these forces win. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) reminded us in a speech this week, we have faced down a rising tide of authoritarianism brought on by economic despair and cultural change before. When much of the world turned to fascism, Franklin D. Roosevelt had the foresight to recognize that dramatic action had to be taken to avoid a similar fate in America. Then, as now, authoritarian tendencies were triggered by economic collapse and cultural change. FDR’s response was, in his words, to be “fairly radical for a generation.”

The result was the New Deal, an aggressive, direct government intervention to shave the rough edges off a capitalist system that had left many destitute. Unionism flourished. Workers had more power, less despair. That period of history should give us hope, and it should give us a roadmap. But we should not fool ourselves that we are in for a short, or easy, fight.

Just as Trump has made some people nostalgic for the George W. Bush presidency, whatever comes next from the right could have us longing for the bumbling incompetence of Donald Trump.

Perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but while Williams' citation of the report showing the dramatic increase in the percentage of Republican voters who are non-college-educated whites is something to be hopeful about, I don't feel comfortable assuming that voters are in control of our future. The GOP is a criminal enterprise with authoritarian aims. McConnell has successfully packed the Supreme Court. The presidency has been provably outright stolen by the GOP in two presidential elections in recent history. Fair elections - indeed, perhaps, simply elections - have never been more threatened in the federation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.