Commenting on my post on the latest book by Francis Fukuyama, a reader emails,
The rise of Trump is the most overdetermined event in recent political history. For a short period following the election, the “this is how we got Trump” chatter was blessedly confined to periodicals and the web. Sadly, we’ve moved well beyond that, to the point where walking around in any bookstore, you can’t help but avoid the voluminous output of pundits, professors, and public intellectuals whose theories claim to be the *one missing explanation* for our societal moment. . .
Any abstract grand theorizing should not rest on the single day whims of 100,000 Midwestern voters. Simple heuristic: If it seems plausible that a book of social commentary would not exist if Trump had lost, or would have an entirely different thesis on the political moment we see either the republic or the world writ large, it does not merit reading.
Another way to put it is to imagine that Mrs. Clinton had won a narrow victory. Would your theory of contemporary sociology still be of interest? If not, then set that theory aside.
I don’t think that’s the right way of looking at it. Even had Trump lost, by 50K votes or whatever, it would still be important to learn why he even got close. The actual electoral college result is not the important thing, and is seriously over-weighted by the political class and the political book-buying public, because of the post facto political consequences.
What makes a topic interesting is that some event provides a compelling counterexample or “surprising, jarring evidence” that means one’s understanding (or “model”) of the current situation and the way the world works is off-base and needs correction. An opportunity for Bayesian updating of priors and all that.
Look at it this way. Let’s say some local high school track athlete were to compete in sprinting events with 20 other Olympic athletes, one of which was Usain Bolt. Of course everyone would predict that Usain would win gold, but they would also predict the high schooler would be far, far behind. If in the final result, the High Schooler was 0.003 seconds behind Usain Bolt, that confirms the prediction, but would still be shocking and interesting. It would be even more shocking and interesting if the way the High Schooler got so close despite repeatedly using unconventional training techniques that all the experts were certain to hurt, not help, his chances.
If the High Schooler was 0.003 seconds ahead of Bolt and actually won the gold, that would be contrary to the prediction, but wouldn’t suddenly become interesting. Again, what was interesting was getting anywhere close, when everybody – not just anybody but in fact the world’s best “experts” – would have predicted a certain blowout.
Even had the High Schooler only won the silver, it would be a worth a bunch of sports books taking a critical look at the field’s conventional wisdom regarding training and performance techniques, “Hey, maybe we were all wrong about the right and wrong diet, stretches, training intensity, etc.” Or even a book explaining why this particular kid was either (1) Cheating, or (2) Just some genetic freak outlier, and so the conventional wisdom still holds 99.99% of the time and no one need adjust their beliefs or behaviors.
All of this is not a bad metaphor for what actually happened with Trump’s candidacy and campaign. Which is why, even had he lost, it would still be “interesting” in some objective or Platonic sense of the word, and worth the analytical effort still going into the subject. Maybe it wouldn’t sell books, but that would just be more evidence in support of the general unhealthiness of our contemporary intellectual culture.
One additional point is that one should see if the international big picture tends to support the conclusion that Trump is some statistical aberration and outlier which can be ignored, or instead part of what seems to be a bigger, broader political and ideological trend in democratic societies, perhaps indicating some important and “interesting” common basis that one should integrate into one’s model of how the world works. Why all this mention of Poland and Hungary and Italy and Brexit (and now BoJo) and the rise of right wing parties in Sweden and Austria, etc. and the other alarmist panic and need for a new bass for a international liberal order if not?
On the other hand, it’s easy to tell a reasonable story about influential and political elites throughout the democratic Western world having settled on an ideological consensus that has deviated in the extreme from the preferences, desires, and interests of a significant portion of their voters, most especially in regards to immigration policy.
That raises several questions, for example, why did parties – including the GOP – get so out of touch with their own voters on something they really cared about, such that they were willing to leave the $20 Trillion Dollar bill on the sidewalk for Trump to pick up? Were they ignorant about it, or maybe they just didn’t care? Were they complacent about it because they thought that any GOP candidate was safely on board with the ‘comprehensive reform’ elite consensus, or that the organs of public influence would always be able to provide close air support for such positions to make the grumblers acquiesce?
An event like Trump’s election (or all those other instances abroad) is interesting because it should indeed provide a kind of wake-up call on this kind of deviation, that it exists, that it’s important, and that one needs to revisit one’s assumptions and adapt and adjust, or else lose out in a wave of political creative destruction.
Someone who happens to agree with the managed-immigration position might also hope that it would encourage at least some of those figures to wonder whether they made a mistake in going along with the in-crowd and whether that elite consensus is erroneous groupthink.
Instead we get almost nothing but the political version of Principle Skinner, “Why there are no children here at the 4-H club either! Am I so out of touch? No. It’s the children who are wrong.” Substitute ‘GOP voters’ for ‘children’ and ‘4-H club’ for ‘amnesty’ (or ‘comprehensive immigration reform’, or ‘open-borders’), and it’s about right.
Significant social change often comes from the unleashing of hidden preferences; … Under the pressure of social norms, people sometimes falsify their preferences. They do not feel free to say or do as they wish. Once norms are weakened or revised, through private efforts or law, it becomes possible to discover preexisting preferences. Because those preferences existed but were concealed, large-scale movements are both possible and exceedingly difficult to predict; they are often startling.
That’s from the abstract of Cass R. Sunstein’s Unleashed.
+1
Trump, or Cruz, or any Pro-Life Rep would at least get close because of the Pro-Life voters now voting Rep.
Leaving aside progressive agitprop, aren’t the main people pushing that line people either neocons or quillette types mostly. People that were part of the establishment that have been pushed out or made irrelevant by progressivisms rising tide. They would like things to go back to the way they were (with a bigger EITC credit or something).
My own view is that as minority population increases progressives don’t need those people anymore. More then 100,000 loyal vote banks will be added to relevant electoral districts within not that many election cycles. If they just hold the course they can loss a few elections but emerge victorious on the other side. Clinton losing is annoying, but it’s no an existential threat. Neocons and centrist leftist face total irrelevance as they are replaced as coalition members.
The idea behind the “this is how we got Trump” theories is that almost all of the polls, statistical models, and expert predictions told us that we were going to get Clinton. Why would any explanatory theory be judged based on whether the generally expected thing happened?
I am sympathetic to criticism of “this is how we got Trump” theories — they are generally unfalsifiable and ad hoc — but this particular criticism is pretty weak.
There’s actually a point to be made for Kling’s argument, even if it is limited. Indeed for the most part I still write as if Mrs. Clinton had won, because the protectionist stance and macroeconomic imbalance of today’s non tradable sector activity would still be the same in any instance.
If Clinton had won, she would still have been legislatively constrained by a Republican congress. This would frustrate the elites and they would still be waging war on the little people for not marching lock step with their schemes for the greater good. The biggest difference between a Clinton and a Trump administration is that there would not have been any regulatory reform. How much difference that is making is debatable, but Trump is probably doing better than she would have done on increasing energy supply. The Republicans completely caved to the Democrats on appropriations and they pretty much got everything Hillary would have wanted so no difference there. The tax cuts have had not actually made much of an impact on tax revenues so no real change in revenue collections. But they have primed the economy a bit so maybe a small advantage to Trump there. Trump’s increased defense spending so far looks to be money flushed down the toilet with China accelerating its gains on us militarily. She claimed that Trump stole her trade policy but even though I doubt she would have ever carried through on renegotiating NAFTA as claimed she would, you can’t see much difference there. It is hard to say what would have happened with immigration but I doubt much difference. Trump was eager to sign anything but Congress is split, as it would have been under her as well. On foreign policy, her recent speeches in Australia and New Zealand on the Chinese election meddling sound very similar to Vice President Pence. Russia policy would probably be much more accomodating since there would be no reason to maintain that campaign meddling narrative. On the other hand, she has always had the tendency to need to prove she is tough so there is a likelihood we would have more troops deployed in combat. Pallets of cash diplomacy in Iran produced no meaningful Irananian behavioral changes, so there is no change there either way. She would probably talk tough about North Korea but Trump has yet to accomplish anything meaningful there so no difference. On judicial nominees we would likely still be getting the same Ivy league, prep school masters of the universe except with maybe a few skin tone differences, than what we are getting under Trump, so no big difference there either. All in all my theory of sociology, namely that the united states are trapped under the weight of an unreformable federal government that dooms it to failure the next financial crisis, hold up well. Political rule by the elites for the elites was inevitable no matter who won.
Edger, if you think the Supreme Court appointments, tax reform and the regulatory reform (think EPA power plan or CAFE standards) are either the same as under Clinton or not a big deal, then nothing is a big deal. Look at stock market, it things this stuff is a big deal.
In the rant, I did try to give Trump credit for regulatory reform as well as for better energy policy. And yes, those are relatively big things. However, the number of federal employees is only down about 16,000 and I had had higher hopes for a broader swamp draining. Animal spirits and all kinds of other occult influences get reflected in stock market prices so I can’t too excited about those. Getting the pipelines approved is definitely long-term big if they ever do actually get completed.
I do hope that Kavanaugh will behave like the constitutionalist he is billed as but that remains to be seen. He is a Kennedy progeny and given the snake-bit history of Republican supreme court nominees is as likely to turn out to be the next Souter as he is the next Scalia. Once on the court the temptation to let your inner Solomon run wild is often overwhelming, especially among those whose elite credentials seem to create a sense of personal entitlement to rule the world as they see fit.
I suppose a shorter version of my complaint, is “If this is all we get with a Republic Congress and a Republican President, then something is wrong.”
Well, same thing happened back the Bush administration, so it’s been wrong for a long time. In fact, many things are wrong, most of which are not Trump’s fault in terms of lack of initiative or effort, and I’d say only half of which are the GOP establishment’s fault. Mostly it’s the judiciary running amok. A lot of things are currently stuck in the courts which will, almost certainly, eventually end up at SCOTUS. Until now, there’s been very little appetite to pursue those appeals all the way. But that’s probably going to change, starting now.
It’s fair to blame the GOP establishment – in the persons of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush I (and their respective legal advisers) – for the following Supreme Court justices who helped create the current legal status quo: Burger, Powell, Blackmun, Stevens, O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter.
Stock market is, what, 6th or 8th best since post war? More meh than an affirmative vote for any policy change. At least at this time.
I agree with many of the comments, but would also observe that “single day whims” is an idiotic way of describing the 2016 election. The Republican voters went against not just the media, not just the politicians, but the conservative media, who in the absence of party strength have traditionally been the kingmakers. Trump could call up 25,000 people all throughout the country on 24 hours notice to come to a rally.
The idea that Trump won because 100K midwesterners said “hmm, think I’ll vote Trump” is unquestionably stupider than any Why Trump Won theory.
So I went back and read Fukuyama, who repeats the standard consensus on the problem:
“two financial crises, the first originating in the U.S. subprime market in 2008 that led to the subsequent Great Recession, and the second emerging over the threat to the euro and the European Union posed by Greece’s insolvency. In both cases, elite policies produced huge recessions, high levels of unemployment, and falling incomes for millions of ordinary workers around the world.”
I’d suggest NOT reading his book, unless a friend makes a good case to read it (I haven’t; I find him too PC and not really original / different, plus a bit too “morally superior”).
The Clinton camel campaign was broken by a combination of bricks and straws. The biggest brick now voting Republican is seldom mentioned: the Pro-Life Christians. They are also a group that might be having fertility around 2.2 or more, where the Pro-Choice (pro-abortion) folk have been having a fertility around 1.1. Since the Roe v Wade not-quite Amendment, the Dems have been pushing out pro-life folk, even pro-life “leftists”, in their identity purity purges.
Demographics is destiny. It was certain that, over some amount of time. the pro-life folk who are having more children will be democratically challenging, and winning, over the pro-choice women who prefer being wage-slaves rather than mothers. This was a building wave of history.
The second brick was anti-immigration, split between those against all immigration, and the (larger?) group fiercely opposed to illegal immigration. This is the only anti-elite brick that Fukuyama seems willing to mention or discuss much.
Other reasons for Trump’s victory include those identity issues.
Dems support women – against all men (evil!). Men should vote Rep.
Dems support blacks – against all whites (evil!). Whites should vote Rep.
Dems support LGBTqx – against all normals (evil!). Sexually normal should vote Rep.
Dems support anti-Christians – against Christians (evil! tho many Dems don’t believe in God, nor Good & Evil). Christians should vote Rep.
So far, the Dem hysterical support for various minorities has not yet pushed each majority group to vote Rep, but that could be changing.
The Dems will change their identity politics when they “lose enough”. This is true — if they haven’t changed, they haven’t lost enough.
(Reps did change their nominating of “nice Rep guys” after “losing enough” in 2008 & 2012).
Trump’s secret is that he doesn’t do facts, he does adjectives. The media can’t pick his arguments apart because he doesn’t actually say anything.
[[The workhorses of his rhetoric are charged but empty adjectives and adverbs. Things are “great”, “wonderful”, “amazing”, “the best”, or they’re “crooked”, “fake”, “unfair”, “failing”. He sprinkles intensifiers liberally: “a very, very, very amazing man, a great, great developer”.]] —theguardian.com
I would add “terrific”. He says “terrific” a lot. Like that terrific health care plan he kept talking about.
I agree with Handle above, but another point is that the rise of Trump doesn’t just encompass the general election. It also encompasses the Republican primaries. Longer timeframe, multiple votes, something like 15 other candidates (including successful governors and senators), no establishment support.
When you take the primaries into account (maybe also consider Bernie Sanders), I think that there is a consistency here which is something more than a narrow victory in the Midwest.
Both candidates were nut cases.
Even if Clinton had won a narrow victory, just Trump winning the Republican nomination would have remained a novel, widely-unexpected outcome that begged an explanation.
Cliche time.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H. L. Mencken