Almost everything written about Trump and Trumpism uses the language of the extraordinary and egregious. The lying and cynicism, the serial violation of democratic norms, up to inciting a riot and/or coup at the Capitol, the crazy conspiracy theories: they all seem so unprecedented.
Obviously, that’s true! Trump did lie more than anyone, he did violate democratic norms, he really did speculate about injecting bleach to cure Covid. But another side deserves a hearing too: Trump and Trumpism are normal.
It’s good to consider this angle, not so as to ignore the real dangers posed by populism to democracy, but because it is good to start with the assumption that your opponents are at least partly reasonable. That is strategically wise — if you think your adversaries are crazy, they may surprise you — and democratically virtuous: you should try to see the other guy’s point of view, not dismiss him as a nutball. For political scientists, there is also a point of professional pride. If we throw our concepts out of the window whenever anything unusual happens, what price our “science”?
So, let’s see how far we can get in understanding Trumpism using some standard tools of the trade. The Median Voter Theorem says that on the left-right scale, politicians will head for the centre ground because that’s where the voters are. If half the electorate is on your left, and your opponent is on your right, then at least half the voters will vote for you, not him. The same if you have half the electorate on your right, and your opponent is on your left. Ergo, head to the centre.
The Median Voter Theorem is encouragingly bland. It says that even when voters are whackos, politicians will be moderate. Unfortunately, the theorem does not extend to a world where voters care about more than one thing. Maybe voters aren’t just left or right wing. They might also care about another dimension — say, being Open or Closed to global trade and migration.
Suppose we’re in that world, and it’s the 1980s. The Democrats, economically left wing and relatively anti-trade, confront the Republicans, economically right wing and pro free trade:
The grey blobs are groups of voters: liberal elites, flyover folks, and rich republicans. Politics seems one-dimensional. Being left wing and suspicious of trade just goes together. But then history happens, the Berlin Wall falls, Fukuyama writes a famous book, and it becomes consensus among elites that openness and liberalism and free trade are good things. The voters move, and parties move with them. Bill Clinton signs NAFTA.
Our political compass now looks like this, with centrist Democrats and free trade accepted by everyone:
Once again, politics seems one-dimensional — this time, because “everybody” has agreed on the open-closed dimension, which has disappeared from debate.
If you look at this picture, you’ll notice that the Democrats are pretty close to the median voter! They’re in the middle of the 3 groups with respect to the left-right divide, and they’re with the majority in being pro free trade. So, they should just keep winning, and the Republicans should join them, right?
Well, it’s debatable whether that happened — really, the Republicans were not very centrist, perhaps because they thought they were winning the argument on left-right policy too. But even consider the most centrist of the 2016 Republican primary, say Jeb Bush. Let’s put him in the middle. Can anyone beat him?
Yes! Here’s an interesting fact — interesting to nerds — about multidimensional political competition: any political position can be beaten. On this map, there’s always a way to get closer to two groups of voters, starting anywhere. Here, I’ve drawn the “winset of the status quo” in orange. The flyover folks prefer this area because it’s closer to them on the open-closed dimension. The rich Republicans prefer it because it’s closer on left-right.
Not coincidentally, I drew the winset in orange, because this is when Donald Trump appears:
Elections like these cause dramatic shifts in the US body politic. New coalitions emerge. Issues that had lain dormant erupt. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt won a landslide with the New Deal. In 1980, Reagan won with the support of Southern Democrats. Realigning elections are rare, but they’re not historically unprecedented.
From this perspective, Trump’s ongoing hold on the Republican party might be less about the appeal of dictatorship, and more about an internecine struggle for the party identity. After a realigning election, the new version of the party has to replace the old one. A lot of Trump’s candidate-selection work has this flavour. None of this excuses January 6, or the conspiracy theories about the stolen election, but it is worth entertaining a non-apocalyptic narrative about US politics. Maybe it’s the Fall of the Republic, but maybe it is just US political history doing its thing.
This cute, simplified story doesn’t capture everything about Trumpism, but it does suggest that ordinary political interests can explain why people voted for Trump. You don’t need to invoke conspiracy theories, hatred of the other, white supremacy or any similar version of the Madness of Crowds.
Looking at things in this way seems like a corrective to rather too much recent social science research whose underlying theme, even when it is well-executed, is “who are these loons?” I’m thinking of articles like this, where it turns out that Republicans think 30% of Democrats are transgender or whatever. (Perhaps, but it also turns out that average answers vastly overestimate small percentages in general, including the percentages of people who have a pet.) That Trumpism is politics as usual is not the whole truth. But it is part of it.
If this is true, what is the win-set of the left? BernieBros, "left populism" and "Nazbol"? Would the libertarian win-set be radical anarchy? (even though it is outside of the square)