John Harris is befuddled by our current political situation – “a conflict so profound that, as in the 1860s, democracy, constitutional order and union itself are in peril.” Harris marvels: “A big deal, indeed. But also a puzzle: If this is a 21st century version of 19th century disunion, shouldn’t it be more obvious what the war, at bottom, is all about?”
Kevin Drum, using Harris’s question as a jumping off point, examines “the two most obvious candidates: race and money, with a focus on white men since they're the ones who seem most discontented.” After brief consideration of each candidate, Drum sums up:
The conclusion here is hard to avoid: neither racial animus nor worries about jobs and the economy seem to have recently skyrocketed among large numbers of white Americans. It's hard to believe that either of these things, on their own, are what's torn the country apart. There must be something else at work.
But what?
Multiethnic democracy
While it’s surprising that anyone who has listened to Donald Trump’s grievances during the past decade – from his role as the chief advocate of birtherism, to Mexican “rapists,” to “shithole countries,” to the “invasion” at the Southern border that led to the separation of children from their families, to tirades directed at women of color in the House – could have doubts about what at bottom divides our country, as it happens political scientists, drawing on ample research dating back a decade, have an answer.
There is a division between a party that embraces multiethnic democracy and a party dominated by white Christians with ‘traditional’ views of a racial and gender hierarchy. No matter what zigs and zags Trump takes, Trumpism is animated by hostility toward the other, a rejection of political opponents as not real Americans. Inclusive Democrats are committed to the equality of all, encompassing groups of Americans that Trump and his base regard as illegitimate.
Here is how Lilliana Mason, Julie Wronski and John V. Kane described the division on January 3 for readers of the Washington Post (“Republicans and Democrats have split over whether to support multiethnic democracy, our research shows”):
A democratic system of government ideally affords all citizens equal representation and protection, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, income, gender, or other areas of difference. That has not always been the case in U.S. history, which has included official and unofficial prejudice, hatred and violence toward non-White, non-Christian citizens, manifested in such ways as Jim Crow laws and the Chinese Exclusion Act, racial profiling, and anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ hate crimes. While civil rights legislation and court decisions reduced some discrimination in recent decades, U.S. society continues fiercely debating whether to strive toward guaranteeing equal protection under the law and voting rights for all Americans.
That debate now divides the United States’ two major parties. The Democratic Party tends to push for further advances in the pursuit of racial and gender equality. The Republican Party tends to resist such change, sometimes even leaning toward a past when White, Christian men stood unquestioningly at the top of the American social hierarchy. The phrase “Make America Great Again” invokes that time in a tacit endorsement of democratic backsliding.
John Harris referenced a long list of possible answers to his question: “globalism and selfish elites,” “resentment of trade and the decline in real wages,” and dislike of “the cultural ascension of women and African-Americans and the diminution of working class white males. And so on.” He granted that all were “semi-plausible.” He rejected them all, however unconvincingly, because of “Trump’s zigs on one day and zags the next.”
Kevin Drum’s rejection of race and money as an answer hinged on the absence of any significant changes, as recorded on five charts, at the time of Trump’s ascent. Racial resentment among whites has not mushroomed since 2015, nor has the economic distress of working Americans.
Activating animus
Again, political science has an answer. Research suggests that neither Trump’s candidacy, nor presidential term, or nor continued domination of the Republican Party has increased the prevalence of white racial resentment. There was a reservoir of racial resentment within the American electorate before Donald Trump, including animosity toward the African American, Hispanic, Muslim, and LBGTQ communities. His candidacy and campaign mobilized voters harboring this animus. From the aforementioned analysis:
In our research, we found that Donald Trump’s politics activated and attracted the MAGA faction – a group that had not been securely attached to any particular party.
We used data from the Democracy Fund’s Voter Study Group survey, which interviewed the same Americans repeatedly between 2011 and 2018, and continues to do so. This publicly available data acts somewhat like a time machine, allowing us to identify the common characteristics of Trump supporters before Trump announced his candidacy. We found about 30 percent of Americans surveyed in 2011 reported feelings of animosity towards African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community. These individuals make up our MAGA faction. Members of the MAGA faction were approximately 25 percent more supportive of Trump in 2018 than everyone else in the survey, even after taking into account many other factors, including partisanship.
This relationship between hatred and political support does not exist for other Republican leaders. We found that 2011 animosity toward these groups did not predict later approval of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, or the Republican Party. Only Trump was linked to bias.
No Trump-like figure emerged among Democrats. Rather, pre-existing animus towards these four groups consistently predicted less support for prominent figures in the Democratic Party. Nor did we find that disliking Whites or Christians – groups associated particularly with the Republican Party — in 2011 predicted higher support for Democratic leaders. Trump was unique.
Our findings reveal that Trump did not himself create this animosity; he merely harnessed it and benefited from it politically.
They offer this chart:
We should give credit to John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, who drew on many of the same sources (including the Voter Study Group) for their 2018 book Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, which offers a book length account of how Trump’s message of white America under siege, sharply at odds with Hillary Clinton’s appeals to diversity, resonated with his voters (many of whom had voted for Obama just four years earlier).
They write (in Chapter 8, “What Happened”), “The campaign’s focus on identity-inflected issues—and Clinton’s and Trump’s sharply divergent positions—led voters to perceive Clinton and Trump as farther apart on these issues than any major-party presidential candidates in over forty years.” Moreover, “In turn, voters’ attitudes on these issues became more strongly related to how they voted in 2016 than in recent presidential elections.”
Trump still dominates the Republican Party. The issues he brought to the fore continue to divide Americans.