I'll put in a comment that I also made in response to one of Tim's other threads. This is that Trumpism also faces the obstacle, in Australia, that we are much more urbanised than the US. Can we imagine how different US politics would be if 40 per cent of voters lived in New York and Los Angeles?
Texas is over 80 percent urban by population. Many of the New York suburbs are dense in population and heavily Trumpified. There is some truth to the distinction between urban and rural voters, but "it's complicated."
It is complicated, but the basic story is right. Trump beat Biden by only 6 per cent in Texas, losing nearly all the cities and winning nearly all the rural counties. There are Trumpist suburbs in NY (and also in CA) but statewide support is only about 30 per cent.
Aren't there some salient forces/factors that make USA quite different from other Western democracies?
1. Many (most?) voters register themselves according to their partisan preferences.
2. Voting is voluntary.
3. Citizens identify themselves (in Censuses and just about anywhere else) according their ethnicity.
In their 2020 book 'Authoritarian Nightmare' John Dean & Bob Altemeyer draw out the characteristics of Trump's followers as necessary components of a successful autocratic movement. The question that ought to be put in these discussions is "Who comes after Trump?".
No one comes after Trump. If he takes office in 2025, by whatever means, he will be there for life, and his successor will be another Trump. If he loses, the Republicans will split between his loyalists and what's left of the establishment.
On your other points, it's only the first that is unique to the US, reflecting the primary system. Australia is the outlier on compulsory voting. France is (AFAIK) the only country that takes no official account of ethnicity.
I don't think that any discussion on this theme can be complete without reference to the malign influence of the Murdoch conduit between the US, the UK and Australia. Yes, there is a large network of corporate wealth and power supporting Republicans in the USA that doesn't owe its origin to Murdoch, but its influence would be far less if not for the megaphone that the Murdoch media gives and the culture war that it has stirred up to build opposition to left-leaning political entities.
Yes, right wing politicians have become ascendant in non-English-speaking countries where the Murdoch press has no particular foothold, but even here the influence of the rightward trends in the US has explanatory power.
Is "evangelicals" a good explanatory description of Trump's support base in the US? I have the impression that support for Trump(ism) has largely come to supersede religious affiliation as a primary identity. (But my impression here is based on anecdotal and journalistic accounts rather than serious studies, so it could be off base.)
There was a poll this week showing Trump leading Biden 85-11 among white evangelicals. He’s got huge leads among this group in the Republican primary polling as well. It’s really his base.
I don't doubt the demographic correlation, but I'm wondering how explanatory it is. My outsider's impression is that 20 years ago, it made sense to say certain groups of people were voting for Bush because their evangelical beliefs made him politically appealing. I'm not sure this is the case with Trump in 2024, even if many of his supporters still answer "evangelical" to the religious question in the surveys.
I think the explanation goes via a preference for hierarchical systems. (And racially segregated ones.)
But also there's a difference in rhetoric. Every Republican leader pre-Trump sounded like a pro-business candidate who would be sympathetic to religious conservatives. Trump sounds like a cultural conservative who'll have sympathies to business. I don't think this was reflected in policy at all. But in terms of how they sound on the campaign trail, Trump certainly sounds more friendly to cultural/religious conservatives than his predecessors did.
Trump also drops some of the pretense. Previous Republicans said neutral sounding things about judicial appointments, and then appointed hard-line conservatives. Trump says he'll appoint judges who'll overturn Roe v Wade, and then does so. It sounds a bit simplistic to me, but I think dropping the pretense really helped turn a big advantage into a 75-point advantage.
Another observation on the globalisation of politics is that, in my perception, and that of other leftists of my generation or a bit older, certain themes and priorities of the politics of the Corbynist Labour Left in the UK and the Sanders Left of the US Democrats have also been imbibed by young leftists in both the ALP Left and the Australian Greens.
I really enjoy this thing you are doing, responding to specific posts and including other responses. Reminiscent of what blogging used to be, back in the blog-twin days.
Indeed. Trump's personality/behaviour has many components which are in common with successful MAGA movement leaders such as narcissism, but I do think some of his unique qualities account for some of his success. And it's the proportion of his success due to his uniqueness that I am (perhaps irrationally) interested in.
This brand of politics is also much less likely to succeed in Australia because we have compulsory attendance at a polling station and preferential voting.
Compulsory means that politicians who offend more than they attract (which Trump does) cannot rely on a motivated minority base to defeat an apathetic majority.
The preferential element is particularly helpful now that legitimate alternative candidates to the major parties have emerged.
In the US, a depressing proportion of voters claim the “I don’t like Trump, but [insert excuse]” reason for voting for Trump, partly because a vote for any third party is wasted. But this is highly unlikely in Australia because voters can, and do, choose other options, safe in the knowledge that their vote will count in the final tally.
I think Trumpism is an unhelpful label as Trump is a unique individual whose peculiarities obscure how much the MAGA movement has in common with other right wing blocs around the world. If Trump is disqualified from future office by the Supreme Court, the relative popularity of the different candidates in the resurrected Republican primaries will show us the pure MAGA effect separate from the Trump effect. We could be living in interesting times.
Trump isn't unique, except insofar as every individual is unique. Leaders like him are typical of MAGA movements - Berlusconi, Boris Johnson, even Clive Palmer. It's true that not all MAGA movements have such leaders, but their appeal to a large class of voters is strengthened by having a Trump-figure in charge.
One obvious shared characteristic of these politicians is buffoonish masculinity. It occurs to me that part of the explanation for the wider gender gap is that these buffoonish right-wing men have found the secret of interpreting a certain constituency of male voters back to themselves.
The whole idea of right wing and left wing has changed since the days of the marxist revolutions. Now left wing means pandering to a support base that is more concerned with work and small scale businesses. Right wing means pandering to a support base that is more concerned with wealth creation and large scale businesses. There are many labels for political parties. But if you scratch the surface of conservative parties they have the same aim. As for the progressive parties, they look to reform and to redistribute to a large numerical support base. Now that large scale businesses are globally situated, the political alliances are also cross border arrangements.
I agree with Tim and Paul although you can see similarities between Trumpism and the right wing of the Liberal Party and its fellow travellers. Australians aren’t as patriotic as the Americans and we don’t display their religious fervour as regards to popular leaders. Only a small minority in Australia are members of a political party and only a small number ever turn up towards party rallies unlike the USA. Australians don’t behave like fanboys unlike the USA.
The label Trumpism obscures more than it illuminates. Trump is really sui generis, a black swan confluence of celebrity and narcissism surfing a wave of reaction to the complexity of the modern world. He's just an American fascist, politically no different than the rest around the world in his goals, to the extent he has goals. There is a global embrace of fascism as a solution to the complexity of an interconnected world for people who don't like or want an interconnected world. Calling it Trumpism is a marketing concept more than an explanation.
Trump isn't sui generis, except insofar as every individual is unique. Leaders like him are typical of MAGA movements - Berlusconi, Boris Johnson, even Clive Palmer. It's true that not all MAGA movements have such leaders, but their appeal to a large class of voters is strengthened by having a Trump-figure in charge.
I'll give you Berlusconi, but Palmer (had to look him up, being a typical American) and Boris had government experience before grabbing their brass rings. Trump has a unique lack of experience or interest in the concept of governance, and is uniquely corrupt on ways that would make even Belusconi say "lighten up". The mix of financial corruption, pandering to foreign fascists, theft of secrets, corruption of the Executive branch to engage in personal vendettas separate from political opposition, deliberate policy of reducing American influence in world affairs, I think is unique. None of them alone are unique, but all of them, combined with a stunning level of incompetence even in executing his own policies, is pretty special. All that combined with a significant percentage of followers ready and willing to riot, and possibly kill, on his command, pretty much seals the deal for me. I believe Trump is uniquely dangerous because he could start a war completely by accident. What he represents, and the wave he is surfing, is not unique at all.
Trump is obviously more dangerous, and the US system allows a direct ascent to the top in a way that isn't usual in parliamentary systems. But financial corruption, and pandering to fascists are par for the course for this class of demagogue
Does everyone really "know which side of the political fence they sit".
Are all Gaza-ians pro Hamas, all Israelis pro their govenment. Removing out-lying views, is there possibly a large section of the Israeli/ Gaza population who would happly get along with their neighbours.
Or is there a large percentage of US population who don't really care that much for Trump or Wokeism.
Do the majority of Austrailans feel that either the left or right sides of Oz politics does an OK job and they are more than happy to go along with which every govenmenet as long as they can live a free and happy life.
In short, is it clip baiting, searching for likes, and media cycles that makes me feel that opinions are so binary when the majority of people either don't have an opinion or hold simultaneously left/right/woke/conservative/religious and rebellious views.
Terrific - this looks like a discussion perchance a debate is forming. I'm intrigued as to how politics in the AUKUS alliance countries neatly cleaves into 2: lib/Lab, Torries/Labour, GOP/Dems. How did the 2party system evolve or was it forced divinely upon us? I wonder how civil wars ended up with eg., Spanish: Nationalists- Repub; or North - South in US and what must it have been like for many citizens forced to pick a side? Is that the way society tend towards - this bipartite cleaving? Is there other ways? Better ways? I need a little schooling here. Cheers
I'll put in a comment that I also made in response to one of Tim's other threads. This is that Trumpism also faces the obstacle, in Australia, that we are much more urbanised than the US. Can we imagine how different US politics would be if 40 per cent of voters lived in New York and Los Angeles?
Texas is over 80 percent urban by population. Many of the New York suburbs are dense in population and heavily Trumpified. There is some truth to the distinction between urban and rural voters, but "it's complicated."
It is complicated, but the basic story is right. Trump beat Biden by only 6 per cent in Texas, losing nearly all the cities and winning nearly all the rural counties. There are Trumpist suburbs in NY (and also in CA) but statewide support is only about 30 per cent.
This is in the Nine papers this morning, and is also germane to this discussion.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/women-are-lurching-to-the-left-why-aren-t-men-following-them-20240202-p5f1zb.html
Aren't there some salient forces/factors that make USA quite different from other Western democracies?
1. Many (most?) voters register themselves according to their partisan preferences.
2. Voting is voluntary.
3. Citizens identify themselves (in Censuses and just about anywhere else) according their ethnicity.
In their 2020 book 'Authoritarian Nightmare' John Dean & Bob Altemeyer draw out the characteristics of Trump's followers as necessary components of a successful autocratic movement. The question that ought to be put in these discussions is "Who comes after Trump?".
No one comes after Trump. If he takes office in 2025, by whatever means, he will be there for life, and his successor will be another Trump. If he loses, the Republicans will split between his loyalists and what's left of the establishment.
On your other points, it's only the first that is unique to the US, reflecting the primary system. Australia is the outlier on compulsory voting. France is (AFAIK) the only country that takes no official account of ethnicity.
yes it is a doom scenario for decades
Chaps
I don't think that any discussion on this theme can be complete without reference to the malign influence of the Murdoch conduit between the US, the UK and Australia. Yes, there is a large network of corporate wealth and power supporting Republicans in the USA that doesn't owe its origin to Murdoch, but its influence would be far less if not for the megaphone that the Murdoch media gives and the culture war that it has stirred up to build opposition to left-leaning political entities.
Yes, right wing politicians have become ascendant in non-English-speaking countries where the Murdoch press has no particular foothold, but even here the influence of the rightward trends in the US has explanatory power.
Is "evangelicals" a good explanatory description of Trump's support base in the US? I have the impression that support for Trump(ism) has largely come to supersede religious affiliation as a primary identity. (But my impression here is based on anecdotal and journalistic accounts rather than serious studies, so it could be off base.)
There was a poll this week showing Trump leading Biden 85-11 among white evangelicals. He’s got huge leads among this group in the Republican primary polling as well. It’s really his base.
I don't doubt the demographic correlation, but I'm wondering how explanatory it is. My outsider's impression is that 20 years ago, it made sense to say certain groups of people were voting for Bush because their evangelical beliefs made him politically appealing. I'm not sure this is the case with Trump in 2024, even if many of his supporters still answer "evangelical" to the religious question in the surveys.
I think the explanation goes via a preference for hierarchical systems. (And racially segregated ones.)
But also there's a difference in rhetoric. Every Republican leader pre-Trump sounded like a pro-business candidate who would be sympathetic to religious conservatives. Trump sounds like a cultural conservative who'll have sympathies to business. I don't think this was reflected in policy at all. But in terms of how they sound on the campaign trail, Trump certainly sounds more friendly to cultural/religious conservatives than his predecessors did.
Trump also drops some of the pretense. Previous Republicans said neutral sounding things about judicial appointments, and then appointed hard-line conservatives. Trump says he'll appoint judges who'll overturn Roe v Wade, and then does so. It sounds a bit simplistic to me, but I think dropping the pretense really helped turn a big advantage into a 75-point advantage.
Another observation on the globalisation of politics is that, in my perception, and that of other leftists of my generation or a bit older, certain themes and priorities of the politics of the Corbynist Labour Left in the UK and the Sanders Left of the US Democrats have also been imbibed by young leftists in both the ALP Left and the Australian Greens.
I really enjoy this thing you are doing, responding to specific posts and including other responses. Reminiscent of what blogging used to be, back in the blog-twin days.
Yes, i am trying my best to turn Substack into Ozplogistan !
Indeed. Trump's personality/behaviour has many components which are in common with successful MAGA movement leaders such as narcissism, but I do think some of his unique qualities account for some of his success. And it's the proportion of his success due to his uniqueness that I am (perhaps irrationally) interested in.
This brand of politics is also much less likely to succeed in Australia because we have compulsory attendance at a polling station and preferential voting.
Compulsory means that politicians who offend more than they attract (which Trump does) cannot rely on a motivated minority base to defeat an apathetic majority.
The preferential element is particularly helpful now that legitimate alternative candidates to the major parties have emerged.
In the US, a depressing proportion of voters claim the “I don’t like Trump, but [insert excuse]” reason for voting for Trump, partly because a vote for any third party is wasted. But this is highly unlikely in Australia because voters can, and do, choose other options, safe in the knowledge that their vote will count in the final tally.
I think Trumpism is an unhelpful label as Trump is a unique individual whose peculiarities obscure how much the MAGA movement has in common with other right wing blocs around the world. If Trump is disqualified from future office by the Supreme Court, the relative popularity of the different candidates in the resurrected Republican primaries will show us the pure MAGA effect separate from the Trump effect. We could be living in interesting times.
Trump isn't unique, except insofar as every individual is unique. Leaders like him are typical of MAGA movements - Berlusconi, Boris Johnson, even Clive Palmer. It's true that not all MAGA movements have such leaders, but their appeal to a large class of voters is strengthened by having a Trump-figure in charge.
One obvious shared characteristic of these politicians is buffoonish masculinity. It occurs to me that part of the explanation for the wider gender gap is that these buffoonish right-wing men have found the secret of interpreting a certain constituency of male voters back to themselves.
The whole idea of right wing and left wing has changed since the days of the marxist revolutions. Now left wing means pandering to a support base that is more concerned with work and small scale businesses. Right wing means pandering to a support base that is more concerned with wealth creation and large scale businesses. There are many labels for political parties. But if you scratch the surface of conservative parties they have the same aim. As for the progressive parties, they look to reform and to redistribute to a large numerical support base. Now that large scale businesses are globally situated, the political alliances are also cross border arrangements.
I agree with Tim and Paul although you can see similarities between Trumpism and the right wing of the Liberal Party and its fellow travellers. Australians aren’t as patriotic as the Americans and we don’t display their religious fervour as regards to popular leaders. Only a small minority in Australia are members of a political party and only a small number ever turn up towards party rallies unlike the USA. Australians don’t behave like fanboys unlike the USA.
The label Trumpism obscures more than it illuminates. Trump is really sui generis, a black swan confluence of celebrity and narcissism surfing a wave of reaction to the complexity of the modern world. He's just an American fascist, politically no different than the rest around the world in his goals, to the extent he has goals. There is a global embrace of fascism as a solution to the complexity of an interconnected world for people who don't like or want an interconnected world. Calling it Trumpism is a marketing concept more than an explanation.
Trump isn't sui generis, except insofar as every individual is unique. Leaders like him are typical of MAGA movements - Berlusconi, Boris Johnson, even Clive Palmer. It's true that not all MAGA movements have such leaders, but their appeal to a large class of voters is strengthened by having a Trump-figure in charge.
I'll give you Berlusconi, but Palmer (had to look him up, being a typical American) and Boris had government experience before grabbing their brass rings. Trump has a unique lack of experience or interest in the concept of governance, and is uniquely corrupt on ways that would make even Belusconi say "lighten up". The mix of financial corruption, pandering to foreign fascists, theft of secrets, corruption of the Executive branch to engage in personal vendettas separate from political opposition, deliberate policy of reducing American influence in world affairs, I think is unique. None of them alone are unique, but all of them, combined with a stunning level of incompetence even in executing his own policies, is pretty special. All that combined with a significant percentage of followers ready and willing to riot, and possibly kill, on his command, pretty much seals the deal for me. I believe Trump is uniquely dangerous because he could start a war completely by accident. What he represents, and the wave he is surfing, is not unique at all.
Trump is obviously more dangerous, and the US system allows a direct ascent to the top in a way that isn't usual in parliamentary systems. But financial corruption, and pandering to fascists are par for the course for this class of demagogue
Does everyone really "know which side of the political fence they sit".
Are all Gaza-ians pro Hamas, all Israelis pro their govenment. Removing out-lying views, is there possibly a large section of the Israeli/ Gaza population who would happly get along with their neighbours.
Or is there a large percentage of US population who don't really care that much for Trump or Wokeism.
Do the majority of Austrailans feel that either the left or right sides of Oz politics does an OK job and they are more than happy to go along with which every govenmenet as long as they can live a free and happy life.
In short, is it clip baiting, searching for likes, and media cycles that makes me feel that opinions are so binary when the majority of people either don't have an opinion or hold simultaneously left/right/woke/conservative/religious and rebellious views.
Terrific - this looks like a discussion perchance a debate is forming. I'm intrigued as to how politics in the AUKUS alliance countries neatly cleaves into 2: lib/Lab, Torries/Labour, GOP/Dems. How did the 2party system evolve or was it forced divinely upon us? I wonder how civil wars ended up with eg., Spanish: Nationalists- Repub; or North - South in US and what must it have been like for many citizens forced to pick a side? Is that the way society tend towards - this bipartite cleaving? Is there other ways? Better ways? I need a little schooling here. Cheers