American’s disinterest in the 2024 Presidential election is in part due to the political malpractices of the two-party system to answer to the anger fueling the ‘America First’ and ‘antifa’ movements against globalist policies that have contributed to income inequality, the decline of US manufacturing jobs and tax policies that have betrayed them in favor of the ultra-wealthy. For this paper, ‘America First’ and ‘antifa’ serve as polar opposites of the raging culture wars. Whereas America First stands for socially conservative and anti-globalist policies and Antifa (short for anti-fascist) stands for socially and fiscally progressive policies.
Politics in the United States since the 2016 election have been fractured in a way that is not how people traditionally view the left versus the right. Now they are divided on messages of populism that speak to the economic insecurity of the American working class. Before 2016, the political divide was ideologically split between pursuit of a socially conservative limited government and the socially liberal, pursuit of government intervention. But even within these divides, both segments held inconvenient contradictions. The conservatives believed in limited government except when it came to unnecessary displays of military intervention without fiscal limits. On the other hand, the liberals contradicted themselves by presenting their fiscally liberal policies as leadership when those same policies (the 1994 crime bill, welfare reform bill in 1996) became the policies holding back the very people they were claiming to help. There’s the obvious example of the new populism in President Donald Trump who proudly carries the mantle of ‘the forgotten American.” He advances messages that touch on racial insecurities as well as messages that celebrate ‘locking up’ the elites in Washington DC while ‘draining the swamp.’
Then there were the populist messages on the left in the 2016 cycle as well. Bernie Sanders, a fiscally progressive democratic senator from Vermont campaigned in first place until Super Tuesday on a message of taking the profit motive out of health care with ‘Medicare for all.’ He routinely ceded his microphone to Black Lives Matter protestors standing up against brutal police killings of unarmed black men. Elizabeth Warren, also a democratic senator who has roots in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration. She also tried to carry a populist message in her 2016 presidential campaign but fell short without a unifying principle around the message.
Ian Bremmer president and founder of the Eurasia global political think tank makes a point about the recent popularity of populist campaigns in presidential politics and the value they offer to voters. “These leaders aren’t arguing that government should be bigger or smaller, that it should tax less or spend more. They’re challenging the right of the ‘elites’ to make the rules that govern our lives. They tell citizens they’ve been cheated of their chance to succeed, and that the media is in on it. They promise to comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable, and burn down the houses of power (Bremmer).”
While the degree to which Donald Trump calculates the politics of the principles he carries is a frequent talking (laughing) point on cable TV, the policies he advances carry significant water on the front of how far American’s will take (or retract) globalism. Whereas globalism is, in short, interpreted to mean the capitalist incentive to employ a global strategy to the economic principle of specialization (focusing on a specific skill, activity, or production process) in the relentless pursuit of profits. The dilemma this strategy poses is to the future. How far will the pursuit of profits take humanity before humanity becomes obsolete? While President Trump’s border policies are wrapped in quotes that blame and shame Mexican Americans, the policies arguably are ‘America first (for lack of a better term).’ The policy of disincentivizing illegal border crossings by separating asylum seekers is cruel but enforces the desired effect of deterring those illegal crossings. ‘Remain in Mexico’ policies don’t carry the principles the statue of liberty carries (“give us your tired, hungry and poor”) but enforce the deterrence policies for South American migrants who are wrapped up in the dysfunction of America-Venezuelan relations. There is not space to truly evaluate the relationship the US has with Venezuela but in an effort to simplify a long story short, they are a resource rich country in an area of the world that the US feels entitled to. That means that the United States federal government loved them when they were a highly unequal state with a corrupt government that sold their resources back at a rate favorable to the colonizers while keeping their population poor and desperate and then when they had a revolution that promised land reform and improvements for the poor United States federal government began all manner of subversion and attack upon them in order to undo their revolution and return the control of the country back to the rich and powerful banks and capitalists of the global North. Including but not limited to: coups, attempted assassinations, successful assassinations, sanctions, and embargoes.
While President Trump caught wind of the politics of scaling back American interventions, he still did not end presence of US troops in Afghanistan but he did limit American drone strike in the region. These last two points are supported by James Curran in “Americanism, not Globalism.” While the coherence of America First gets lost in today’s media ecosphere, the policies to his supporters are not. Whereas America First policies promise to prioritize the interests of what the Republican voter base view as ‘real Americans’ in terms of the socially conservative religious right. The policies in a visceral way to President Trump’s base promise to stick it to the global liberal elites just by way of President Trump’s vulgarity that embarrasses the elites during their never-ending global security summits, global economic summits, etc. The media is entirely ignoring this aspect of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement because it’s a direct attack on their interests, personal and business. For a long time corporate media has been defining the issues for the masses. The issues the media has historically defined always inherently serve corporate interests and sometimes align with the public interest. The absolute refusal of the left leaning cable network MSNBC to engage on issues of the validity of the global world order serves their corporate interest and ultimate financial bottom line.
“He believes that in the post-Cold War era successive administrations in Washington have pursued reckless visions of regional or global hegemony — especially in the Middle East — leaving the home front to languish and the nation open to ridicule. For Trump, the government must first protect its citizens and promote their prosperity. Despite eschewing this stream of American altruism, Trump wants to “make America great again” by rebuilding its economy and projecting military strength (Curran).”
Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans remain satisfied with the policy agenda President Trump offers despite the danger of a second term. The danger of a second President Trump term is his propensity to seize power that the office of the United States President does not constitutionally hold along with his demonstrated desire to disrupt the pre-January 6, 2021 unblemished US record of peaceful transfer of power. Meanwhile, his tax policy record reveals who his first administration served first: the wealthy. While the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Bill was cloaked in ‘trickle down’ economics, the bill ultimately catered to the wealthiest interests.
“The $1.5 trillion GOP tax bill gives permanent cuts to corporations and millionaires. But the tax cuts for workers expire after just a few years. By 2027, 83 percent of tax benefits accrue to the top one percent, while Americans earning less than $75,000 — 86 million households in all — will face tax hikes (Dickinson).”
This betrayal of tax policy for the middle class will be felt in the upcoming new presidential term which raises the stakes for both major political parties.
Another betrayal within the Trump tax bill is the hidden incentive for corporations to replace skilled human laborers with robots. At the dawn of automation, when President Trump promised to fight for ‘the forgotten’ Americans who labor in factories and sent him to the White House, his tax bill directly betrayed their interests while promising more.
“Trump billed his tax plan as a boon to workers: “Our plan can be simplified in three simple words: jobs, jobs, jobs.” But the new law offers a deep tax cut for capital investments, creating a perverse incentive to replace workers with robots. If previously the cost of employing five people or investing in automation might have been equal, the tax break tips the economic scales to robots — and leaves workers holding pink slips (Dickinson).”
At a point when Trump’s first term policies do nothing but betray the promise of the MAGA spirit, it must be questioned, why do voters continue to put Donald Trump in positions of power? It is not that his base of supporters are as they’re often portrayed in traditional media, “duped and stupid.” It comes down to a confluence of factors: With no ranked choice voting in the nomination process (which would produce more moderate candidate instead of Republicans finding themselves hostage to their extreme base), gerrymandering of congressional districts that designate many districts as ‘safe’ and limit how much power is actually up for grabs within the democratic process, and the failing incentive politicians acquire when they are elected to national office to serve special interests exclusively.
The reason his base continues to stay loyal to him is because of the hope they see in the chaos that follows him. He is an agent of change and there is nothing Americans want more since the election of President Barak Obama (“hope & change”) in 2008 than change.
On the other hand, the Democrats have pursued an illiberal agenda of catering to minority identity politics that require membership and lack tolerance of dissent from the agenda. The Antifa (anti-fascist) movement today fosters individuals who are incentivized to make their livelihood out of stoking racial tensions, advocates for equity measures which is arguably in contradiction of the aspiration of the constitution’s preamble that “all men are created equal.” This is not to declare that institutional racism doesn’t exist in the United States, rather that the solution to that institutional racism cannot be more institutional discrimination. I would posit the hard evidence of this theory is the current state of palpable racial tensions paralyzing the great American experiment. Diversity, equity and inclusion programs incentivize unproductive attitudes all-around. Where there is hard data to support worse outcomes on the basis of race or ethnicity, the US ought to identify and root out the means by which those worse outcomes happen in those institutions. However, while we should always strive to be above hate we must recognize it as a biological human emotion that cannot be legislated away.
“None of the authors here (nor few others anywhere else) notice that tribalism, identity politics (including white identity politics) were nourished and expanded by the blending of mass immigration with “race conscious” affirmative action policies originally intended to remedy past discrimination against blacks. The limited “righting past wrongs” mission of affirmative action was transformed into demographically-driven, “look like America” diversity policies that legally mandated Americans self-identify with an expanding list of racial and ethnic categories which could be crucial in determining university admissions or employment opportunities (Lynch).”
These identity membership requirements of the new era of US politics are antithetical to the aspiration of the preamble of the United States Constitution that has served this American experiment in the pursuit of a peaceful multi-cultural democracy where we are presumed equals before the law.
The failure of the right’s Trump MAGA movement is to recognize how vital diverse voices are in sustaining the quality-of-life liberal democracy has brought to the masses at home and abroad. “Nor does he admit that global capitalism necessitates multicultural marketing and “diversity management” to understand and communicate with Third World workers and customers (Lynch).” The left’s influx of diversity virtue signaling is a recognition that the policies need to serve a wide variety of demographics, which is a smart thing to realize. However, the elitist policies of the democrats don’t actually serve those people. People do not immigrate to America to become caught up in a welfare trap. Time and time again immigrants say they seek a better life. Democrat’s welfare policies trap vulnerable people from freedom. Welfare doesn’t provide ‘the American dream.’ It incentivizes the worst parts of humanity.
“As to the future of populism and American politics, both major political parties are nervously navigating economic and cultural populist tides. Economic populism with a re-emphasis on “all working Americans” was the theme of Chuck Schumer’s 2017 Democratic Party blueprint “A Better Deal.” But cultural populism is a problem. Democrats are struggling to appeal to white working-class voters without succumbing to “white nationalism,” while still yoked to ethnic identity politics, political correctness, and preference policies. The Democrats are also caught in a little-noted contradiction of supporting extensive welfare-state programs while simultaneously endorsing relatively open borders for “huddled masses” who might bankrupt such systems (Lynch).”
The failure of the left is to recognize the moral bankruptcy of their virtues and policies. While lifting the masses out of poverty is a noble cause, is it the best strategy for American values? While the overall fight over American values is constantly up for argument, one value that is time and again exemplified in American history is the idea of freedom. From the original revolution which sought freedom from taxation without representation, to the emancipation proclamation, to the problematic settlement of the wild west, freedom is a through-line.
The failures of the left and the right have together combined the economic interests that are going unanswered by the 2024 presidential campaigns. “According to the US Census Bureau, the 2020 turnout for American voters under 30 was 54.1 per cent – 10 percentage points more than in 2016 when Trump beat Hillary Clinton, and three points higher than the previous record set in 2008 for Barack Obama’s history-making win. Now, however, data shows much of that cohort is skeptical or apathetic towards this year’s race, and some are questioning whether they want to vote at all, which can be the difference in a close election. The latest Harvard Public Opinion Project, which provides the most comprehensive look at young Americans’ political opinions and voting trends, recently found that fewer people aged 18 to 29 intended to vote at this year’s November 5 election than they did at the same point during the 2020 election cycle (Tomazin).”
Taking in the failures of both the left and right, the 2024 election is set up to be the most uninspiring, disappointing election in modern history. The corporate interests have taken priority over voters and values. The populism in this political era demonstrates hope for American democracy but only if they align across economic class struggle. The identity politics-culture war policies that divide the masses today will only serve corporate interests and not the American experiment.
Bibliography
Bremmer, Ian. Us Vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism. 2018, openlibrary.org/books/OL26957749M/Us_vs._them.
Curran, James. “Americanism, Not Globalism”: President Trump and the American Mission. Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2018. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep19793. Accessed 11 June 2024.
Dickinson, Tim. “Trump Versus the Working Class.” Rolling Stone, no. 1308, Mar. 2018, pp. 30–31. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f6h&AN=128080198&site=ehost-live.
Lynch, Frederick R. “‘How Did This Man Get Elected?’ Perspectives on American Politics, Populism and Donald Trump.” Society, vol. 56, no. 3, June 2019, pp. 290–94. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.deanza.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s12115-019-00366-5.
Farrah Tomazin. “American Youth Apathy Bad for Biden.” Age, The (Melbourne), 4 Mar. 2024, p. 18. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=DOC7UE4SGG7OP11FK39HKE9&site=ehost-live.
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