They WANT to Go Back

As the election nears, a 78-year-old blowhard, con man, and convicted felon with declining cognitive ability, a man whose former cabinet members have warned will put the country in grave danger, is considered even money to regain the presidency in a contest that should have been laughably one-sided the other way.

After Donald Trump won in 2016, although Democrats chalked up his victory to a combination of misogyny and Jim Comey, as time passed, many were forced to admit that Hillary Clinton, despite a lifetime of achievements, was not an especially effective candidate.  She came across to many voters as aloof, entitled, and even sort of phony, where Trump, for all his idiotic statements and antisocial behavior, somehow seemed “real.”  In addition, Clinton was roundly criticized, although only in retrospect, for running a poor campaign, replete with unsound judgments, such as visiting Texas instead of Michigan.

Whatever the real reasons for Clinton’s defeat, they do not apply to this election.  Kamala Harris, to the relief of many, has run an effective, professional campaign, and Harris herself has been effervescent and eminently relatable.  She is viewed more favorably than Trump, and, in something of a coup for a sitting vice-president, considered more of an agent of change than her challenger.  She has embraced that mantle with a rallying cry.

“We won’t go back.”

That may be the crux of her problem.

Trump is relying on three key demographics to gain victory and each of them wants very much to go back. 

For all his populist rhetoric and disastrous economic policies—his planned tariffs are fiercely denounced by just about every economist—Trump remains extraordinarily popular with much of the monied class.  Billionaires, such as Elon Musk, Paul Singer, Peter Thiel, and Richard Uihlein, drool at the prospect of the further elimination of both taxes and regulations. The last thing they want is the sort of change Harris represents, with the promise of higher (and fairer) taxes and a lessening of their ability to do anything they damn well please.  All of them have donated massively to Trump’s campaign and while their numbers are not great, the number of voters they want to buy is.  With appropriate gratitude, a second Trump term promises to be extremely pleasant for the plutocrats, allowing them to go back to the Gilded Age.

The second demographic is the working class, and Trump’s appeal to this group, especially white, rural men with no college, is more visceral than practical, but no less effective.  From the earliest days of his first campaign, Trump, ever the salesman, perceived the deep anger and resentment among blue collar Americans who saw Democrats as abandoning them, ignoring both their contributions and their needs, and instead foisting their attention on gays, transgenders, and the Black and Brown, forcing on the country policies that are now called “woke.”  It didn’t really matter that the Democrats gave them Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, the minimum wage, pro-union legislation, and a slew of other programs that favored their class.  They were tired of being treated like a bunch of narrow-minded, uneducated boors and they wanted to get even.

Trump promised to let them.  He vowed to get rid of government agencies that they view as oppressors—the “swamp”—and Make America Great Again.  Whether it will be great for them remains an open question, but their vision is to go back to the 1950s.

Then there are the Evangelicals.  How, many ask, can anyone who is genuinely religious back someone who would be an apostate in virtually every religion on the face of the Earth?

For all the talk about Evangelicals seeing Trump as an imperfect vehicle doing the Lord’s work by smiting atheists, homosexuals, and others whose deviance is an affront, the real reason is far more prosaic.

As a “lifelong Southern Baptist” and former pastor from northern Mississippi wrote, “Evangelical culture has developed over the years into this angry, cynical group.  There is a feeling of victimhood.  Evangelicals used to rule everything and be the group every politician and entertainer pandered to. A fast shift happened in the 70’s when we became the minority (though not oppressed by any means). That generation is Trump’s base, the ones who watched the shift happen and were so disgusted by it.”  He added, “Issues like climate change, CRT, progressive economics, psychology, vaccines, and others are all looked at as a power grab by dirty Democrat politicians. Trump rallied against them all and gained the love of the ignorant.”

These latter two groups, then, see themselves as the backbone of American prosperity, while the evil, lazy, godless city dwellers, conniving Democrats all, suck both money and morality out of the system.  Hearing those sentiments, Trump supporters in the monied class must have difficulty suppressing guffaws.  It is they who intend to suck money out of the system and Trump promises to leave them free to do so.

Still, while sufficiently hefty to guarantee him a solid slice of the vote, these three groups are not enough to put Trump over the top, especially in the seven swing states.

But there is a fourth constituency that might do the job.

News media are filled with reports of Harris’s eroding support among Black and Latino men.  When interviewed, these men will invariably discuss policy or claim they don’t know enough about Harris.  But the last thing any member of these traditionally macho cultures will admit to a reporter, or anyone else, is that they’re voting for Trump because they are attracted to his maleness, caricaturish as it may be, and further, they might whisper if they’re honest, electing a woman, especially a Black woman would be…emasculating.  They want to go back to when male domination was unquestioned and women were not allowed to pose a threat.

While there is no hard evidence to support this conclusion, why else would middle class men who voted for both Obama and Biden desert the Democrats now?  Employment is up, inflation is down, the widely predicted recession never happened, and Harris’s policies will benefit them a lot more than Trump’s will.  Barack Obama obviously believes it because he felt the need to lecture Black men on the need to vote for a Black woman.

If they do not, the nation surely will go back. Any Black and Latino men who decide to help elect Trump have forgotten what, particularly for them, going back actually means.