The Price That Was Paid
Donald Trump’s victory came from leaning into working-class America’s anxieties over economic decline — and unless the Left’s economic offer becomes as strong, they leave the pitch open to the Right.
Donald Trump speaking during a campaign event on August 29, 2024, in Potterville, Michigan. (Bill Pugliano / Getty Images)
In the wake of Trump’s second victory, we could have expected the usual triumphalism from America’s growing contingent of right-wing extremists, and the usual handwringing from liberal commentators.
These two groups have set about attacking one another online, with American liberals lamenting the fact that half of their country is either evil or stupid, and the extreme right celebrating its fantasies of total domination over the people they perceive as weak — from women, to trans people, to migrants.
But these two groups each make up, at most, 20 percent of the American population. They are vocal, and they are loud, and they are much more likely to be amplified on both social and traditional forms of media. But they are far from being the majority.
Understanding what actually happened at this election requires understanding how everyone else voted, and why. And it’s more complicated than the simplistic explanation of ‘America just lurched to the right’.
Making the Trains Run on Time
It is, of course, concerning that so many people voted for Trump, given his increasingly virulent proto-fascist rhetoric. But that doesn’t mean that they voted for fascism.
Fascism doesn’t gain sway among the majority because their hatred of minorities overrides all other concerns. It gains sway among the majority because the fascists promise order, prosperity, and, as was said about Mussolini’s Italy, to make the trains run on time.
Fascists, in other words, promise to be effective managers, which is why they tend to do well during periods of political or economic crisis. The modern far-right, whether you see it as fascist or not, pledges to deliver on this promise by protecting and boosting ‘the economy’.
There is one statistic that captures these dynamics more effectively than any other. 73 percent of those who voted for Trump reported that inflation had caused their families ‘severe hardship’, next to 25 percent of Harris voters. 78 percent Harris voters reported that inflation had caused their families ‘no hardship’, compared to 20 percent of Trump voters.
It is hard to overemphasise the sense of decline experienced by working-class Americans over the last several decades.
One 2018 study from the Pew Research Centre found that in real terms, the median wage in the US had barely changed since 1979. Wages have, however, increased substantially for those at the top.
When the pandemic hit, these issues became even more acute. Nearly 10 million US workers lost their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic. Inflation outpaced wage growth between 2021 and 2024, meaning that those who did keep their jobs were worse off in real terms.
But the effects of these crises were not felt evenly, with working class households experiencing this economic decline much more acutely than those at the top, as the inflation statistic above indicates. There is a deep and pervasive sense among the American working class, reflected across the rich world, that things are getting worse.
Official poverty rates haven’t moved much in recent years, remaining at a fairly high rate of 11.5 percent, or about 38 million people — and Black, Latinos, and women are all more likely to live in poverty. But the majority of the support for right-wing populists does not generally come from the poor. It comes from working-class voters anxious about becoming poor.
The high rates of poverty and inequality in the US actually strengthen the right-wing populist message. Seeing the extent of poverty and homelessness reinforces the anxiety felt by working-class households with falling living standards. Without a social safety net, they know that if they lose their jobs, or see a substantial fall in their earnings, there may be no coming back.
Anxiety and Competition
Competitive individualism, evident in all rich societies but particularly pervasive in the US, works to reinforce these feelings of isolation and fear. We are encouraged to believe that we have to compete with one another for resources — for jobs, for commodities, even romantic partners. And those who fail in those competitions are considered ‘losers’.
Seeing the success of those at the top — and all the glory and status that comes alongside this success — encourages working-class men to fantasise about how much better life could be if they could just beat the competition and win for once. These fantasies are just as much about being treated with dignity and respect as they are about controlling resources.
The economic anxiety being experienced throughout the American working class isn’t just about economics — it’s about identity.
These economic/identity anxieties explain the increase in support for Trump among the American working class. It’s not just that he’s promised to fix the economy — a promise that people are more likely to believe, given that many of them would have felt better off when he was President. It’s that he speaks to the anxieties of working-class Americans, particularly men, who feel like they’re fighting tooth and nail to keep their place in the social hierarchy.
Trump explains these feelings by telling the working class that the threat they face comes from migrants and welfare scroungers rather than greedy bosses. But more than that, he identifies himself as a ‘winner’. And they believe that, in Trump’s economy, they could be winners too.
Liberals love to castigate Trump voters for their stupidity and their racism. But this stance is intellectually lazy. Trump doubled his vote share among Black men and secured nearly half of the Latino vote. Something else is clearly going on here.
Status-anxious working-class men flocked to Trump because they felt that voting for him was the only way for them to stave off economic decline. For these men, economic decline doesn’t just mean poverty, it means becoming a ‘loser’. Trump played into these feelings of anxiety by stoking up hatred against ‘out’ groups and encouraging young men to identify with his own power and success.
But this is not the only way to respond to people’s anxieties about economic decline. The other way would be to actually deal with the causes of this economic decline.
No Answers
Trump’s presidency will not fix the challenges the average working-class American is facing. His tax cuts may provide a boost to stock markets and growth over the short term, but they will not increase the living standards of the majority.
The only way to improve people’s living standards is to invest in the everyday economy. This means investments in physical and social infrastructure — in the transport and energy networks and the health and education systems that people rely on to live decent lives. Conducting this investment in a way that supports decarbonisation would actually create more jobs and improve health outcomes.
It also means supporting the labour movement, which not only improves living standards but gives people a sense of belonging and community at work. Supporting workers and communities to organise themselves is the best way to counter the fear that spreads so easily in competitive, individualistic societies.
Combatting the far right requires us to invest in the everyday economy. But it also requires us to replace societies in which people aren’t constantly living in fear of falling down the hierarchy with those in which they feel part of a community that will always have their back.