WSWS: Class, Not Race, Explains Trump’s Rust Belt Defeat

I agree with this analysis.

We defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

The Trump presidency and the 2020 campaign sucked.

WSWS:

“The defeat of Donald Trump in an election that produced the biggest turnout since 1900 was an expression of broad popular opposition to the fascistic politics of his administration. That it was far more an anti-Trump than a pro-Joe Biden vote was demonstrated by the poor showing of the Democratic Party in down-ballot contests (Congress, state legislatures and governors).

The election results overall were a clear refutation of the efforts of the Democratic Party and allied media outlets (e.g., New York TimesWashington Post, NBC, CNN) to promote a racialist narrative, which interprets virtually every aspect of American society as an expression of “white supremacy” and the supposed innate racism of white people, especially white workers.

The ideological and political function of this right-wing brand of politics is to obscure the central division in capitalist society, socioeconomic class, and sow divisions within the working class. …

An analysis of the vote results in the three Midwestern “battleground” states that were key to Biden’s victory—Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—confirms that the critical factor was a turn by substantial sections of white workers to oppose Trump. …”

The “Far Right” vote is concentrated in the Center.

In the 2016 election, Trump moved to the Center on race and populism, which is why he electrified the “Far Right” unlike all previous Republican presidential candidates. By 2020, he had become Blumpf … hopelessly cucked on race, a feckless blowhard who substituted tweets and a personality cult for policy concessions. He monitored the situation from the White House while Jared and the GOP ran the country.

It was the “Disaffected” or “Hard-Pressed Skeptics” or “Market Skeptic Republicans” who shifted against Trump in the Rust Belt. It was White men who are Moderates and Independents who make less than $100,000 a year in the middle suburbs. He activated them in 2016 and lost them in 2020. That’s why he collapsed with Independents. He tried to replace them with conservative Republicans. In 2020, Trump got 94% of the Republican vote. In 2020, Mitt Romney won 93% of the Republican vote. In 2016, Trump won with 88% of Republicans because he needed us more than the True Cons.

The media pigeonholes us as “white supremacists.”

It is true that we are ethnocentric Whites (15% of the White population and a larger share of the Right-leaning electorate that votes Republican), but our views and voting patterns are complex. Donald Trump was a disappointment. He ran as a populist and nationalist and governed as a mainstream conservative. He was more concerned about the stock market than the White working class.

Compare Core Conservatives to Market Skeptic Republicans.

55% of Market Skeptic Republicans believe immigrants are a burden on society compared to 43% of Core Conservatives. 5% of Market Skeptic Republicans believe the U.S. economic system is fair compared to 75% of Core Conservatives. These two groups are polar opposites on economics.

2014:

2017:

Moral of the story: his actual base was invisible to him for four years!

About Hunter Wallace 12378 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

26 Comments

  1. Trump was not fascistic though. If anything he was a Radical Liberal. Certainly on race regarding $500,000,000.

      • For sheer incompetence Trump wins the Nobel Prize, he set whole new levels of incompetence. He had both houses of Congress and widespread public support in 2016. He could have issued executive orders on the day he was sworn in to end immigration, start a real wall, pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, de-classify a mile high stack of CIA/FBI records of malfeasance and done a dozen other things he promised.

        This would have terrified the Republicans and the Deep State and turned things around in the country. He would have been reelected in a landslide had he done half of these things.

        More than anything else Trump was grossly incompetent as President. He did provide a certain level of entertainment, though.

      • And, what did anyone really expect, that he was some kind of White Knight? He bought you time, if you could see it. Apparently, White people are incapable of grasping opportunities these days. Now that the marxists have stolen the selection, time is up…

        • Trump’s Executive Authority allowed him to do the things I just listed, and a whole lot more. That’s what his supporters expected, that’s why he was elected, that’s what Ann Coulter and others begged him to do. It was all there within his authority yet, he did nothing. Through Executive Orders, no Congress necessary, the President had the authority to stop immigration, set it to zero, like that scumbag George Bush II did temporarily after 9/11. The Republicans wouldn’t have had the balls to challenge him and the Democrats didn’t have the numbers.

          That’s why Trump was elected, not one of the other Republican clowns who would have been thrashed by that vicious witch he defeated.

          Immigration is just one example. He could, as Commander in Chief have ordered an orderly removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Anyone, civilian or military who balked he could have removed, that was also within his authority. Trump could have struck a deadly blow against the Deep State by ordering the immediate declassification of documents, something also within his purview but again, he did nothing. The CIA/FBI/NSA/DHS cannot withstand an honest, thorough, complete public examination, that’s why they operate in secret.

          Before doing these things he would have to staff up with people committed to the things Trump campaigned on in 2016 such as immigration. Kris Kobach, former Kansas Secretary of State was an excellent choice in that regard but Trump ignored him. There were battalions of people willing to carry out the Trump agenda, come what may but Trump was interested in being flattered and creating a cult of personality.

          As George Bush II would say: “Mission Accomplished”. Trump will go down in history as one of the biggest political failures of all time, ironically just like his nemesis GWB II.

          You are correct about being prepared and I certainly hope everyone reading Hunter’s excellent blog is already prepared for the horrors to come under President Hindu-Dindu.

          • @12AX7,

            The jewsmedia literally attempted to rehabilitate the reputation of zio-kosherative war criminal and retard GWB just due to their Trump Derangement Syndrome. It was a most disgusting sight to behold.

          • What politico has ever spoken the truth, or done what they said they would do? Certainly no RINOs. Which is what Trump was from the beginning, a quick study of his life-long affiliations and actions should have told everyone that.

            True, he could have, by executive order, done many things. But after declining his first mandated order of business, which was to prosecute the Clintons, everyone should have figured out what the game was.

            There are likely variables which we will never know, also. His cabinet selection was probably chosen for him, or if he chose them out of stupidity, he was doomed to get nothing done. It is also entirely possible that he was just a Trojan horse, wittingly, or not. In any case, all that means nothing now.

            White people had better have their personal acts together better than their collective ones, because darkness is one the horizon for our people. Our people may not be interested in war and politics, but politics and war are interested in them.

      • Please tell me which American President or any other politician hasn’t been a disappointment. I hope Kam-Kali builds a “refugee” center close to where you live, which will be part of the Democratic plans to reduce white areas as much as possible.

        • Democrat presidents generally deliver for their disreputable people. They delivered the so-called “Civil Rights” legislation in 1964 – 1968, immigration of unlimited wogs in 1965, Left Wing Supreme Court judges like RBG, the list goes on and on. Yes, the Democrat stalwarts always bitch: “You shoulda done more” but they continue to get plenty and constantly move the country Left. The main complaint from Democrats is that the country isn’t moving Leftward fast enough, not a complaint about the direction the country is moving.

          The Republicans, even when they control the White House, Congress and have appointed most Supreme Court justices simply flounder. They deliver for the donor class tax breaks, H1-B visas (thanks Donald!), more immigracion (designed to drive down wages), gut the SEC on enforcement against scumbags on Wall St. and on and on. Republicans never change the direction of the country, they don’t even try.

          DJT tweeted about Law & Order but I thought he was tweeting about the TV show because he did nothing about rioting and wrecking statues. DJT allowed his own supporters to be attacked by Antifa/BLM while the DOJ did nothing. Ditto internet censorship.

          I’m starting to see a pattern here.

          Republican voters suffer because of Republican decisions. Democrat voters benefit from Democrat decisions. In both cases, of course, donors win bigly.

          The difference between the Republican and Democrat parties is that overwhelmingly Democrat voters and donors are on the same side while overwhelmingly Republican donors are antagonistic to Republican voters. The only reason the Republicans win at all is because the Democrat Party is so vile. The final Republican campaign slogan of every campaign: “The other guy is worse!” is actually true and President Hindu-Dindu will prove it in a big way, no doubt.

        • @Donald,

          I’m looking forward to upper middle class lily white suburban communities that have blm signsin their yards and windows to be culturally enriched by section-8 projects filled with blm criminal recidivists.

          Go get ’em President Harris. Integrate those white leftists real good.

  2. It probably is best that Trump loses. Reading the comments over at Vox Day’s blog, you can see that Trump functions as a psychological crutch to many. Trump provides these people will a real sense of false hope and security. (Similar to how some here believe the south will rise again even though it is hopelessly demographically swamped.) That is an impediment to a sense of desperation which is needed to facilitate a revolutionary mindset.

  3. As awful a president as Trump was he can still redeem himself by refusing to leave office on January 20th.

  4. “The Trump presidency and the 2020 campaign sucked.”

    After what’s coming under Harris, you’ll want him back.

    It’s gonna be all out retaliation against the White South and the Interior West. Somebody has to pay for Trump being President. As usual, it ain’t gonna be Yankeedom and the Left Coast.

    We need a Southern Natioalist Party, and we need Southern Independence.

    • If you really think you will ever see “Southern Independence”, you are as delusional as MAGA-pedes. This crap is why White people will not unify.

  5. WSWS is an excellent source of information that I cite frequently and recommend, although as an ethno-nationalist I vehemently oppose its purpose, which is to promote atheistic, Trotskyist, Internationalism (one world government). The SEP / WSWS is anti-racist and anti-nationalist, opposing Stalinism, Chinese socialism (“with Chinese characteristics”), Korean socialism, Cuban socialism, and all other independent and semi-independent, national and ethno-national forms of socialism. Most WSWS articles conclude with a Trotskyist one-world-government “solution to the problem.”

    Nevertheless, because of the quality and accuracy of the reporting, and useful information that is hard to find elsewhere – especially on war, labor and other economic issues and the pandemic – I recommend reading it daily.

    Other excellent sources I recommend (and none of these is Trotskyist) include The Grayzone, Mintpress News, Moon of Alabama, and NiqNaq: https://niqnaq.wordpress.com/ – I can hardly find a fault with any of these.

    • You’re the anonymous (you guys really need to differentiate yourselves; add numbers or something to your handles, please) that is a Christian socialist, I believe. (If I’m wrong about your beliefs, please correct me.) You’ve often linked to Niqnaq, which I appreciate. They offer info on Syria and other issues I don’t see anywhere else. Have you looked into Bookchin’s “libertarian municipalism”? It’s a philosophy that has been adopted in the real world, by Iraqi Kurds and the Zapatistas. If changes are going to occur, it will have to be at the levels closest to the people (local and county), imho. If you want a different system, it will have to be built from the ground up. Examples that work will have to be provided to people, if you want them to try another system of political organization.

      • You are correct, Christian socialism, or more specifically,, Christian agrarian ethnonational socialism that I recommend.

      • Bookchin’s libertarian “socialism” https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-libertarian-municipalism-an-overview may be a false hope for people in Iraq and other countries being crushed under the boot of the global imperial Beast, if it makes them think they can get away with “building democracy from the bottom up.” Libertarian socialism is oxymoronic, I think. Socialist freedom is a better expression, because “Socialism is the system that provides the maximum of freedom for the vast majority.” (An unlikely quote that I like to repeat, from the late British Labour leader Michael Foot.) I mean socialism in the proper, full sense of common, public ownership of nearly everything, public instead of private for-profit money and banking, fully socialized healthcare and education, and of course, workers’ ownership (and control) of means of production.

        • Thanks for your reply and perspective. Keeping public ownership localized allows for more citizen participation and control, imo.

          • That is true.

            In China there is direct democracy on the local level, grading to a Party-led meritocracy at the top. However taking “capitalist roads to a socialist destination” involves moral corruption (the “profit motive” is, essentially, greed) that undermines, and may finally destroy that democracy.

    • Disaster is coming at us at 100 MPH because of Trump and his manifest failures, not in spite of him. All he had to do was stop immigration and build the fence and he would have returned to the WH in a landslide, all else would have been forgiven. The browning of the U.S. (and the West) is the issue. Trump ran on it, won on it then gave up on it. The blame is on him, not those who outrageously expected him to deliver on his signature issue.

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