Trump Populism and Diversity

A Painful 2016:  We are experiencing the birth pain of new political party, or the pain of transplant surgery on the old GOP.

The election of 2016 is a milestone and turning point in the alignment of the great political parties.  It is not a nightmare of vitriol.  Other elections have been this ugly.  The important thing happening is the remaking of the party coalitions.  We are not experiencing disfunction.   We are experiencing the pain of change.

There is a fight going on in America and within the GOP.   Is ethnic and religious diversity OK, or is it a threat to the "real" America?   Are people named Gomez or Wong part of America or are they imperfect and incomplete Americans not yet married into and absorbed by Smiths and Wilsons in the American melting pot?   Are immigrants doing important work or taking important work?  Are women regular people or auxiliary people?

23rd annual, but now controversial

Attitudes toward diversity explain a lot of the differences revealed in polls between between college-educated voters and non-college-educated, and between urban and rural, and between white and non-white, and between men and women.

A local radio talk show host read from material handed out at Oregon State University at Freshman Orientation.  Some OSU dean spoke to the incoming students about the likelihood of their encountering people with different backgrounds.  The talk show host read the dean's statement with a sneer, "You will meet people with diverse religious beliefs, and the university considers this part of your educational experience.  Some students may have foreign accents."   The host read with a contrived voice and disdain.  He told listeners, "This is all indoctrination, more pc liberal horse pucky.  Your tax dollars are paying to undermine America and teach multi-cultural liberal garbage."   He urged OSU alums to withhold donations to OSU until they stopped trying to push the liberal diversity-is-kumbiya agenda.

Diversity is now in the center of political debate.

Caught in the middle of the GOP re-alignment struggle

Donald Trump is redefining the GOP.   It had been a "conservative" party and Trump is remaking it into a populist, nativist party.  The GOP of Reagan-Bush-Bush-Romney-Ryan hinted at white resentment but, especially under George W. Bush 43, included outreach to Hispanics.   Trump reversed that, and he has the support of a majority of voters in doing so.  

Trump voiced white racial resentment and solidarity in an uncoded way--or at least in a less-coded way.   Reagan-Romney-Ryan Republicans spoke in subtle code, heard and appreciated in the American south especially, but heard everywhere it was welcomed, but dismissed or unheard completely by voters who didn't want it, voters with a gay son or Mexican daughter in law or a  landscaper with employees of unknown ethnicity, or people who liked the GOP for reasons of habit or on tax policy but who are fully urbane and comfortable with diversity.   

Headline from pro-Trump Washington Examiner

Obama was a racial unifier until  he spoke out about the confrontation between a white policeman in Cambridge, Massachusetts and black professor at Harvard Louis Gates six months into his term of office.   Obama said the police "acted stupidly" when he assumed a black man entering a house in a nice neighborhood was a break-in.  Say, what?!!!   The public realized something: Obama was black and was on "their" side.  The beer summit did not succeed in putting Obama back into the middle, a race healer.   Obama was black.   Obama's personal support fell, on racial lines.   Some 63% of whites thought Obama was wrong to criticize the white policeman; 28% of blacks thought this.  Click for more results

Many white Republicans see immigration as both a watering down of real traditional America and a Democratic Party election ploy to pack the electorate.  Immigration became a defining issue in the GOP primary.

The Republican party is re-making itself and there is an internal struggle for control. The voters are in partial disagreement with their party leadership.  Change is painful. Many Republican congressmen and senators live in districts with significant minority populations and have received a share of their votes.   A nativist GOP causes them problems while it simultaneously motivates their key voters, especially key primary voters.   

Liberals and Democrats are generally comfortable with diversity, and increasingly it is the glue that holds Democrats together.  People on the ideological right are less comfortable with it.   For them this election is not just about taxes and jobs.   It is also about who this country is and who represent the true patriotic American.  

In this election GOP voters are "coming home" to support for Trump.  This is a huge development for the future of the GOP.    This implies that this is not the birth of a new Trump-populist style party but rather that the GOP voters are accepting a values and policy transplant, so the GOP will endure, but as a populist and nativist party.    It will be a Trump party, not a Reagan-Romney-Ryan party.   The Bush family has already essentially left the party.  As Trump put it, Jeb--with a Mexican wife--is a loser, and in the struggle to define the GOP he is indeed.

People running as Republicans will either adjust to the new Trump-style policy and tone or face the risk of removal in primary elections as the GOP voters express their will.   If Trump wins, this will almost certainly play out as a transplant.   If Trump loses then it will be a longer struggle because the traditional GOP leadership will blame Trump.  But the voters might not.  They might blame the old leadership.

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Podcast:  Something scary for Halloween:

Peter Sage and Thad Guyer go back and forth on whether the polls are merely a worrisome trend for Hillary, or a real disaster. Peter says that Trump's Hotel ribbon cutting was a triumph: early and below budget. Thad talks about the models that predicted this was likely to be a good year for the party out of power. And preview of coming attractions: what the losing party needs to do to remake its party.

Click Here for the Podcast: Two Left Eyes, episode #9