Even if
Trump loses big, the anger will remain. Here’s how we can address it.
EJ
Dionne, in the Washington Post,
helps us make sense of this troubling election. Below is the full text of his
very thoughtful analysis and commentary. With images added.
The
urgent task of progressives in this election is to defeat Donald Trump. But
even if we succeed, we have a long-term responsibility: to understand why Trump
happened and to face up to how failures on the left and center-left have
contributed to the flourishing of a new far right, not only in the United
States but also across Europe.
The left, you might fairly protest, has enough
problems without being blamed for the rise of a dangerous figure who is, first
and foremost, a creation of the conservative movement’s radicalization and the
Republican leadership’s pandering to extreme views over many years. When I
watch GOP leaders bemoaning their party’s fate under Trump (or belatedly
jumping off his ship), I am reminded of John F. Kennedy’s warning that “those
who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”
But progressives should resist complacency bred by
the idea that the anger on display in this election will soon subside as older
voters uneasy with change decline in numbers. Throughout the West, social-democratic and left-liberal parties
are facing defections, divisions and decline. Their economic model — combining
a market orientation with welfare states, strong unions and regulations — is no longer delivering the broadly shared prosperity that was once
its hallmark. Yes, part of the problem, particularly in the United States,
comes from a weakening of social protections thanks to conservative policy
victories and the resistance of congressional Republicans to social reform.
Nonetheless, even if Trump loses big, the left and center-left have a lot of
work and rethinking to do.
The grievances of Trump supporters have been
well-covered this year (although it should not have taken both the Trump and
Bernie Sanders campaigns to bring them to the fore). Many voters fear that the social and economic
world that has defined their lives is irretrievably passing away.
The left is in trouble precisely because it has
not responded adequately to this fear or managed to tame the forces that
produced it. This is not just a political mistake but also a moral failing.
It is tempting to
discount the Trump movement as primarily a backward-looking reaction among
less-well-off white voters who can abide neither the cultural changes of the
past half-century nor the increasingly diverse country that has come into being
since we changed our
immigration laws in the mid-1960s. And it’s true that racism
and nativism have taken particularly vicious forms in this campaign — remember,
Trumpism was born in birtherism.
But
we can condemn prejudice and still understand the adversity afflicting Trump
supporters. And we should acknowledge that those who are angry about what’s
happened to their lives are not all delusional bigots.
Technological change has undercut incomes and
living standards for a significant share of our fellow citizens. An influx of
immigrants has shocked certain communities, leading them to experience a
genuine sense of displacement and powerlessness in the face of change they
cannot control. There are struggles for power as new groups gain political
ascendancy and older groups, once a majority, become minorities. There are also
battles over material resources as newcomers are perceived as taking jobs
(sometimes for lower wages) from groups that once dominated particular fields.
Supporters of immigrant rights need to be
sensitive to who pays the highest cost for a more open society. Some remedies
are obvious, including additional federal funds to communities whose local
budgets have taken a hit as they provide services to large numbers of new
residents. Broad egalitarian measures, including a higher minimum wage, can
lift the incomes of lower-skilled immigrants and the native born alike. Those
who — rightly, in my view — support a generous refugee policy can take care to
help those fleeing oppression and violence locate in areas with the capacity to
absorb them, and not expect a small number of communities to take an outsize
number of those in need. And advocates of immigration reform need to do a far
better job of making the case that the rights of the native born are
strengthened, not weakened, when millions of undocumented residents are allowed
to earn equal rights themselves.
Also feeding populist
rebellions on the left as well as on the right is the fact that supporters of an open global economy have simply not
been attentive enough to the costs of change. Every trade deal is defended in the same way: There will be a
majority of “winners” and a minority of “losers,” and the losers will be
assisted and compensated. But the assistance and compensation are never
adequate, and the trade deals have focused
far more on protections for investors than for workers.
We have added hundreds
of millions of new workers to the global labor market. This has created a
downward-trending bidding war for less-skilled labor, which is particularly tough on the least advantaged
workers in the most advanced economies. A much-cited study by three well-known economists, David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson,
found that import growth from China cost 2.4 million American jobs in the
2000s. It must also be stressed that deindustrialization has undercut the
opportunities for African Americans in inner cities, as the sociologist William J. Wilson has written. Progressives
have an obligation to underscore that angry white Trump voters have grievances
and interests in common with their fellow citizens of color.
Yes, trade creates jobs, but it can also
destroy them. Those who lose out dramatically will notice trade’s impact more
readily than those who gain ground gradually.
The global economy is
not going away, and the United States draws some real advantages in the
worldwide competition it fosters. But unless there are what Jared Bernstein and
Lori Wallach have called “new rules of the road”
on trade deals, advocates of an open economy will face ever more ferocious
opposition. Just as it has often fallen to capitalism’s critics to save the
system, so might critics of free trade push its advocates to more sustainable
approaches.
Progressives and
moderates alike also need to recognize that arguments can be sensible as far as they go but still send signals
of indifference to those who are
losing out. Take a group we might call the “schoolers.” They say again and
again that there’s nothing wrong with our economy that can’t be solved by
giving more education and more training to
more people. The core insight here is certainly right: We must do far better in
preparing workers for the economy as it exists.
But especially for older white workers, a lot of
this talk sounds like a put-down. They can be forgiven for thinking they’re
being blamed for following the rules that applied when they first entered the
workforce: A high school degree and hard work would be enough to allow them to
live well and their kids to live even better.
Trump is blowing smoke
when he claims he can reopen the old factories and mines. But his promise, however
empty, sounds more sympathetic than technocratic talk about “the skills gap.”
And the education argument should not be used to draw attention away from
another problem, the declining bargaining power
of workers in a world where
unions are weaker. Progressives need new approaches to empowering workers, as
David Madland argued recently in a paper for the Center for American Progress.
Then there is the paradox of
“cosmopolitanism,” a word that captures another aspect of the reaction. Attacks
on “rootless cosmopolitans” are the stuff of old forms of anti-Semitism. Trump,
whether consciously or not, veered toward a classic anti-Semitic trope on
Thursday, when he declared that Hillary Clinton “meets in secret with
international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to
enrich these global financial powers.”
But there is another, positive understanding
of the idea of cosmopolitanism, offered by Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony
Appiah. He writes that “two strands . . . intertwine in the notion of
cosmopolitanism. One is the idea that we have obligations to others,
obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of
kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship. The other
is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular
human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that
lend them significance.”
This should be an aspiration for all of us.
And it means that those who live
cosmopolitan lives must go about “taking an interest in the practices and
beliefs” of those whom the late Rev. Andrew Greeley called “neighborhood people.”
Being “citizens of the
world” is not high on their priority list. They love the particular patch where
they were raised or that they have adopted as their own.
I suspect that many of Trump’s backers are
neighborhood people. Economic change,
including globalization, is very hard on them. It can disrupt and empty out the
places they revere, driving young people away and undermining the economic base
a community needs to survive.
Liberals and conservatives alike insufficiently
appreciate what makes neighborhood people tick and why they deserve our
respect. Liberals are
instinctive cosmopolitans in the citizens-of-the-world sense. They often long
for the freedom of big metropolitan areas. Free-market conservatives typically
say that if a place can’t survive the rigors of market competition, if the
factories close, the people left behind are best off if they find somewhere
else to live.
Let it be said that there are no simple
answers for the plight of neighborhood people who find themselves under siege.
Ghost towns are another old story. There are limits to how much a local economy
can be propped up when it is pummeled by globalization’s gales.
But if there are limits to what can be done to
help such places help themselves, this does not mean that nothing can be done. Neighborhood people are the forgotten men and
women of an integrating planet. Their affections and loyalties are civic gifts.
We should nurture them, not cast them aside.
The far right is still
a long way from winning majorities. The center-left’s constituency is younger
and more diverse and thus much more like the United States of the future. My
reading of the polls is that unless we repeal both women’s suffrage and the
remaining parts of the Voting Rights Act, Trump will lose. The video portraying
his disgusting misogyny and the latest round of harassment charges against
him have further tilted the electoral playing field Clinton’s way.
But
to roll back the far right, progressives need fresh thinking about how an
innovative economy can make those innovations work on behalf of the many and
not just the few. We also need to tend to non-economic matters
such as patriotism and a sense of belonging. Citizens worry not only about
their pocketbooks but also about how to build community and how to rear
children in a challenging time.
Progressives regularly preach empathy and insist
that the best way to solve a problem is to deal with its underlying causes. These
principles apply as much to the struggles of our political opponents as they do
to the problems faced by our allies. Defeating Trump is the first step. Giving
an ear and a heart to the legitimate concerns of his supporters is the next.
Liberal elitism will never pave the way for
liberal egalitarianism.
[Thank you, EJ Dionne, for your insights here.]