Donald Trump and Populism in 2016

Not going to lie - I did not think, when I wrote the following essay in the spring of 2018, that it was ever going to be relevant two years later. But with less than two months remaining before Election Day 2020, it seems to me more important than ever to reflect on how America came to be ruled by a right-wing populist leader. Since this was written, of course, all manner of things have changed, and if I were to update this essay, I would spend a great deal of time examining Black Americans as an out-group in Trump’s (and the new GOP’s) populist fantasy world.

Donald Trump and American Populism in 2016

Nearly a year and a half after his election, analysts still struggle to explain the ascendancy of Donald J. Trump from political punch line to President of the United States.  One persistent explanation credits a wave of domestic and international populism for Trump’s remarkable rise, and a new body of scholarship on American populism has sprung up to lend credence to this view.  Few have argued that “Trumpism” and classical definitions of populism overlap completely, and Trump’s lack of consistent policy and shifting public statements, both during the campaign and while in office, further complicate any conclusive assessment.  Nonetheless, the tenor and dominant policies of the 2016 presidential campaigns strongly suggest that a grassroots populist movement can at least partially explain the election of Donald Trump.  This paper argues that American populism manifests in Trump’s partially conflicting messages of nativism and anti-elitism.  I also suggest that erosion of trust in bureaucratic and political institutions in the year since Trump’s inauguration reaffirms his populist categorization.

Populism in the 2016 Election

Despite the centrality of populism in political arguments over the last several years, formal definitions tend to lack universal applicability, and in many cases have been formulated to encompass specific examples.  No doubt this impulse has to do with the dominant use of the term “populist” as a mild pejorative; Jan-Werner Müller suggests, half-jokingly, that “a populist [might] simply be a politician one doesn’t like” (Müller 2).  Other authors, such as John B. Judis, resist offering a single definition of populism, contending that “the different people and parties called ‘populist’ enjoy family resemblances… but not a set of traits can be found exclusively in all of them” (Judis 13-14).  Cas Mudde, who wrote about European populism for years before turning his gaze towards Trump, has maintained one definition all the while.  Yet, with a few disagreements, all three of these authors identify the same parties and leaders as populists, suggesting that some definition, in fact, does exist that can identify a populist movement and a populist leader.  Such a definition could then be used to diagnose the Trumpian moment.

Despite other definitional disputes, most definitions of populism seem to be united in the separation of society into two and only two antagonistic groups.  Mudde terms these groups “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite;” Müller employs the terms “the people,” the “real people,” and the “silent majority,” and various versions of the term “elite” (Müller 101-102).  Michael Kazin writes of “ordinary people” and “elite opponents” (Judis 14).  Judis complicates this neat dichotomy by introducing a third group; he claims that, while leftwing populists “champion the people against an elite or an establishment… [rightwing] populists champion the people against an elite that they accuse of coddling a third group.”  This group, he claims, “can consist… of immigrants, Islamists, or African American militants” (Judis 15).

Judis’s choice of these particular minority groups is curious, and warrants some further consideration as regards the United States.  Immigration has long been a campaign issue for presidential candidates, although few have highlighted it as strongly as Trump in 2016.  Antagonizing immigrants, unlike Islamists or African American militants, runs the risk of pushing away a sizable voting bloc; as of 2010, approximately 40 million immigrants lived in the United States – about 13% of the country’s population.[1]  By contrast, the number of Islamists in the United States is negligible, and for decades the African American vote has been one of the least elastic Democratic constituencies.  One explanation for this particular grouping of populist boogeymen might be that Trump (or any other GOP candidate) was unlikely to win the votes of these groups anyway, and thus had nothing to lose by making them scapegoats.  Another explanation might attribute this selection to coded or overt nativist attitudes.  Nativism, of course, is not unique to the United States, and might help to extend Judis’s definition to other white-majority European countries.[2]

In the context of 2016, the role of in- and out-groups (the people and the elites/establishment, respectively) featured prominently not just in the Trump campaign, but to varying degrees for all prominent candidates.  On the Republican side, it is easy to point to Trump’s vilification of immigrants and promises to “drain the swamp” as examples of Judis’s right-wing populism.  However, all four prominent candidates (Trump, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders[3]) expressed dissatisfaction with the Washington, D.C., political world.  Clinton’s populist bona fides were by far the weakest.  As former First Lady of the United States (as well as the state of Arkansas), former Senator from New York, and Secretary of State under President Obama, her connection to the political elite was a given, although she occasionally distanced herself from the Obama administration in the primaries and general election.[4]  Though he had served in Congress since 1991, and in the Senate since 2007, Sanders remained a political Independent throughout his career.  Cruz, having served in the Senate since 2013 and having held no previous Washington office, could legitimately claim outsider status.  Trump, however, best embodied anti-establishment sentiment.

If the United States were gripped by a wave of anti-establishment populism, why did Trump succeed in the Republican primary, while Sanders fell short of the establishment candidate, Clinton, on the Democratic side?  One or more of the following explanations could provide the answer.  First, the average Republican voter may have been more susceptible to populism than the average Democratic voter.  Second, the Republican primary institution may have facilitated Trump’s candidacy to a greater extent than the Democratic process facilitated Sanders’s.  Third (and related), the leadership of the GOP may have proven unable to select its preferred candidate, while Democratic leadership succeeded in doing so.  Finally, Trump may simply have been the better candidate.

If the average Republican voter was susceptible to populism, what factors would best explain that sentiment?  One factor may simply have been the party in control of the White House.  President Barack Obama, a fairly liberal Democrat, epitomized the establishment for all four candidates[5], but for ideological reasons, Clinton and Sanders could stray only so far from Obama’s policy.  Cruz and Trump, by contrast, had quite a bit to gain in the primaries by demonizing Obama.  Trump’s policy proscriptions were less coherent than Cruz’s during the campaign, and less consistently conservative.  Thus, if Republican voters sought a thermostatic correction to Obama’s policies, Cruz’s campaign would make more sense.  However, nativism may have played a role as well.  If Republican voters sought a similar thermostatic correction to the politics of racial identity that came to the fore with the Black Lives Matter protests, rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the 2000s and 2010s, and the election of the country’s first African-American President, then Trump’s implicit and explicit nativist tone[6] more accurately captured that signal.[7]  A similar effect may well have occurred regarding Trump’s consistent offensive rhetoric; popular attraction to Trump’s use of previously taboo language and threats may have made him seem more candid and honest—in short, less “Washington”—than Cruz.  This factor may help explain Trump’s popularity despite his lack of consistent policy messaging.

The Republican primary system likely benefited Trump’s campaign far more than the Democratic system did Sanders.  Because Republican primaries, to a greater degree than their Democratic counterparts, tended to award delegates in an all-or-nothing manner, Trump’s primary victories widened his lead over his competitors to a far greater extent than did Sanders’s.  Furthermore, because the GOP field comprised twelve candidates as opposed to three on the Democratic side[8], Trump’s threshold for victory was significantly lower than Sanders’s.[9]  The third, related factor may well be the influence that each party had over the selection of its nominee.  Endorsements of each candidate provide a useful proxy for party establishment support.  By this measure, both Trump and Sanders fall far short of the lead in their respective parties (which is what we would expect of an anti-establishment candidate).[10]  Trump’s eventual nomination, and Sanders’s concession, indicates a stronger correlation (if not causation) effect from the elite endorsements.  Finally, the institution of “superdelegates” on the Democratic side provides not only another proxy for elite support of Clinton, but also helped to increase her delegate lead.[11]  The overwhelming party support for Clinton also likely dissuaded a large number of candidates from entering the Democratic race.

With all the above considerations in mind, was Donald Trump a better candidate than Bernie Sanders?  On one hand, the answer must be an unqualified yes.  In the context of the presidential primary contest, Trump prevailed while Sanders fell short.  I discuss some of the ramifications of this interpretation, which I term the “populist” explanation, below.  However, from a contrary perspective, the candidates’ rhetoric and actions regarding political institutions themselves complicates any easy conclusions.  From this viewpoint, it is very difficult to compare Trump and Sanders – they were simply playing different political games.  I call this contrary stance “institutionalism.”  Unfortunately, the fundamental problem of causal inference prevents direct comparison of Trump and Sanders presidencies.  Therefore, the next two sections analyze the election and early presidency of Donald Trump through the lenses of populism and institutionalism, and we must be left to wonder exactly how a Sanders administration might act.

A Populist Victory: Explaining the Taboos of Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s victories in the Republican primary and the general election probably constitute his only unqualified political successes.  In both cases, “success” is defined by the singular end of political victory, and so we may assess the means by which Trump achieved the nomination and the presidency simply: in what way did his words and actions contribute to his success?  I contend that the majority of Donald Trump’s actions during the 2016 campaign represent a classic populist agenda in two significant ways.  First, he constructed enthusiastic, if not terribly well defined, in- and out-groups.  Second, he capitalized on existing anti-establishment sentiment.

Trump’s candidacy was marked by an abnormally high number of ad hominem attacks on his opponents, and by vilification of particular groups (such as immigrants and Muslims).  These attacks often illustrated existing social cleavages, and allowed the mainstreaming of privately-held opinions by a significant number of voters.  Among these:

·      President Obama is Muslim (held by 43% of Republicans in September 2015)[12]

·      General dislike of atheists and Muslims (rated 34 and 33 by Republicans, respectively, on a mean thermometer rating [1-100] in July 2014)[13]

·      The US should change the Constitution to bar citizenship for children of illegal immigrants (held by 47% of Republicans in August 2015)[14]

·      Too many people are easily offended by language (held by 78% of Republicans in July 2016)[15]

Holding constant any other variables (and ignoring the effect that Trump himself may have had in creating these sentiments), by the middle of 2016 it should have been no surprise that a candidate strongly espousing anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and anti-political correctness views might poll well among Republicans.  The brazenness of Trump’s taboo messaging, rather than harming his candidacy, may in fact have helped it by lending credence to his anti-political correctness position.[16]

Trump also benefited from existing intra-party divisions within the Republican establishment, which divided support from party elites and allowed him to win primary contests with a plurality of support.  The Tea Party branch of the GOP, loosely developed in 2009 as a far-right response to the Obama presidency, swept to a host of Congressional wins in 2010 and 2014; the House Freedom Caucus, another far-right branch, rose to the fore in 2014 and 2015.  The Tea Party movement included members such as Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom Trump would defeat in the 2016 primaries.  While the Tea Party movement undoubtedly galvanized Republican voters, it also created divisions between the “mainstream” GOP and the Tea Party, which was less willing to seek compromise with the Obama administration (a division that came to a head in the government shutdown of October 2013, an event prominently featuring Cruz).[17]  Congressional job approval ratings suggest a consistent and widespread anti-Congress sentiment, which has intensified since 2010; the lowest support for Congress occurred in October and November of 2013, just after the shutdown.[18]  In other words, Donald Trump ran a populist, anti-establishment campaign at a time when support for the Washington establishment was particularly low.  In this sense, that the Democratic nominee was Hillary Clinton allowed Trump’s messaging to remain consistent through the general election, where it proved sufficient to win the Electoral College.

Taken as a whole, Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency constitutes a classic example of a far-right populist campaign, at a time when the Republican Party was almost historically vulnerable to such a campaign.  Latent, heretofore under-acknowledged xenophobic and nativist sentiments, and an extreme frustration with the Washington elite, were given powerful voice in a candidate who happened to command near-ubiquitous media attention specifically due to the politically taboo nature of his statements.  Trump voters could see themselves as an in-group with genuine representation; Cruz (and then Clinton) provided oppositional avatars for the Washington establishment; and groups with low political influence (immigrants, Muslims, and foreigners) served as a scapegoat (Judis 15).

Institutional Erosion: Trump and the Hollowing of the Bureaucracy

What happens when an anti-establishment candidate suddenly and unexpectedly becomes the establishment?  Müller is one of the few writers who positively assert that populists can govern, although he makes clear that such governance is likely to incorporate “mass clientelism and corruption, and the suppression of anything like a critical civil society.”  Furthermore, he claims that the populist leader will undertake these practices openly, with “an explicit moral justification in the populist political imagination” (Müller 102).  I propose that three aspects of the Trump presidency align with Müller’s description: first, Trump’s unification of ideology, including the hiring of family members and friends; second, the politicizing and undermining of oversight institutions, including the courts, the intelligence community, and the media; and third, the real or perceived weakening of mid-level bureaucratic institutions.

President Trump’s desire to be liked has been well-documented, and he has long employed his oldest children in his business ventures (Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump currently manage the Trump Organization).  However, the quantity of close family and friends that Trump has appointed to official White House positions is remarkable: daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner, longtime personal aide Hope Hicks, and former “The Apprentice” star Omarosa Manigault have all served significant roles in the administration.  Furthermore, Trump is widely reported to value personal loyalty, perhaps above any other trait.  It is illustrative how many members of the administration have been promoted or dismissed by virtue of their loyalty (or disloyalty) to Trump: among others, acting Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon were all fired or resigned under circumstances that suggested personal conflict with the President.[19]  Conversely, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who shares Trump’s hawkish position on North Korea, was recently tapped to replace Tillerson at the State Department.  Although the personnel rotation in the White House and the Trump administration perhaps lacks sufficient unity to constitute a cohesive vision, the net effect seems to have been a consolidation of ideology around Trump’s personal views (or at least a willingness to go along with them).

Throughout his presidency as well as during the campaign, Trump has criticized and sought to weaken institutions that have formal or informal oversight capabilities over the executive branch, and over the powers of his office in particular.  His criticism of the FBI stands out for its longevity, but those who have drawn Trump’s ire include federal judges in California[20] [21] and Hawaii[22], Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch (whom he nominated to the Court)[23], and numerous others.[24]  In all of these cases (except that of Gorsuch, with whom his disagreement was personal), the President reacted to limitations placed by the courts on his policy or businesses.  And Trump’s most pervasive systematic criticism of an institution may well be that of the media, which he memorably termed an “enemy of the American people” less than a month into his tenure.[25]  Within and without the halls of the West Wing, the vicissitudes of Trump’s rhetoric and policy continue to separate the insiders from the outsiders.

But where Candidate Trump was a political outsider, he now occupies the Oval Office, the head of the world’s most sprawling political bureaucracy.  Yet he runs what may be generously termed a skeleton crew; as of October 2017, a number of departments lacked nominations for more than half of the positions requiring Senate confirmation, which the administration claims is by design; Press Secretary Sarah Sanders asserted, “the president came to Washington to drain the swamp and get rid of a lot of duplication, make government more efficient.”[26]  The “drain the swamp” comment refers to a campaign promise Trump appears to have first made in October 2016 and has repeated many times since.  In its way, the metaphor encapsulates Trump’s populist attitude towards the Washington establishment.  Why should he need to appoint advisors, ambassadors, and other bureaucrats when, in his own words, “I’m the only one that matters”?[27]

Cas Mudde defines populism as a thin-centered ideology “which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde 2007).  As a candidate, Trump could claim to be the sole embodiment of the general will, but governing requires a coalition, and the President has faced difficulty reconciling these ideas.  In response, he has adapted three logical tenets of populism to the realities of governance: he has sought to eliminate dissent, surrounding himself with yes-men and his own family; he has discredited and weakened institutions, such as the press, the FBI, and the courts, that can limit or diminish his power; and he has refused to appoint nominees to hundreds of bureaucratic positions, insisting that his own voice is the only one that matters.  None of these actions appears surprising, given Müller’s forecast of government by a populist leader.  Indeed, for all his inconsistencies, President Trump has shown a remarkable loyalty to populism.  It remains to be seen how well, or whether, America’s bureaucratic institutions will weather this systematic weakening.

Conclusion: It Can Happen Here

…what does that say about your constituency if what you're saying to them is, ‘Look, the only way that I can win this part of the race is by being an unrepentant, narcissistic asshole, because that's what my voters like. But once I have to appeal everybody, I'll be cool.’  -Jon Stewart, on the Trump campaign[28]

“President Donald Trump” was once a phrase relegated to the purview of late-night talk show hosts.  But through the lens of populism, Trump’s rise to the highest office in America is not so far-fetched.  In the summer and fall of 2015, Trump gained notoriety (and media exposure) for a multitude of statements that, while taboo for a career politician, only emphasized his status as a Washington outsider.  Many of these statements, including some that were xenophobic, nativist, and misogynist, gave an air of respectability to sentiments that were held by a sizeable portion of the Republican electorate.  With this loyal following, Trump was able to win the Republican nomination, despite earning less than a majority of the popular votes.  In the general election, against über-establishment candidate Hillary Clinton, Trump earned enough support to win the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote.  Subsequently, Trump’s administration has demonstrated numerous traits in line with predictions for a populist leader, including ideological siloing, the consolidation of the governing coalition, and the undermining of institutions that might limit his authority.  With President Donald Trump, populism has finally made itself at home in the United States.

Bibliography

Ellis, Christopher, and James A. Stimson.  Ideology in America.  Cambridge UP: 2012.

Judis, John B.  The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics.  Columbia Global Reports, New York: 2016.

Mudde, Cas.  The Far Right in America.  Routledge Focus, New York: 2017.

Mudde, Cas.  Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe.  Cambridge UP: 2007.

Müller, Jan-Werner.  What Is Populism?  UPenn Press, Philadelphia: 2016.

Sykes, Charles J.  How The Right Lost Its Mind.  St. Martin’s Press, New York: 2017.

Wlezien, Christopher.  “The Public as Thermostat: Dynamics of Preferences for Spending.”  American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Nov. 1995), pp. 981-1000.

Citations for online articles provided in footnotes.

[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pdf/cspan_fb_slides.pdf

[2] Mudde (2007) designates nativism as the foundational ideological feature of European radical right movements, along with authoritarianism and populism.  Among the four significant 2016 US presidential candidates, Mudde’s tripartite definition most closely applies to Trump.

[3] Senator Marco Rubio and Governor John Kasich also received delegates in the GOP primary.

[4] See, for example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/?utm_term=.65242094f5f7

[5] The GOP controlled both houses of Congress, but Congressional leadership tends not to provide as potent a symbol as the White House during campaigns.  One notable exception is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has been used in GOP attack ads for years, leading to speculation that sexism is, at best, a thinly-veiled device in the ads.  Perhaps not coincidentally, some of Trump’s criticisms have targeted women in sexual or reproductive diction, including attacks on Clinton, Megyn Kelly, Mika Brzezinski, Heidi Cruz, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

[6] Notably, Trump came to the political forefront in 2010 with claims that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore was not legally President.  He made no claims (at least not of the same intensity) about Cruz’s eligibility during the 2016 campaign, despite the fact that Cruz was born in Canada.

[7] Wlezien (1995) and similar arguments suggest that such a thermostatic correction need not indicate the voter’s precise preference; rather, in this argument, Trump’s nativism would represent a semi-conscious over-correction from the political climate of the late Obama years.

[8] As of February 1st, 2016.

[9] To take “Super Tuesday” (March 1st, 2016) as an example: Trump won seven states and 255 delegates with 34.4% of the popular vote; Cruz finished second with 218 delegates and 29.2%.  That same day, Sanders won four states and exceeded 35% in two more large states (Massachusetts and Virginia), yet Clinton expanded her delegate lead by 171.  An exact comparison across parties is probably impossible given the complexities of both systems, but at a first approximation, it seems fair to say that Sanders was no less, and probably more, popular than Trump, yet lost ground while Trump gained.

[10] FiveThirtyEight.com kept an ongoing tally of party endorsements, which suggested that Clinton received the most party support of any non-incumbent Democratic candidate since 1984, while Trump received the least support of any Republican nominee since 1980: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-endorsement-primary/

[11] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/democratic_delegate_count.html

[12] According to a CNN/ORC poll conducted September 4-8, 2015 (http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2015/images/09/12/iranpoll.pdf)

[13] http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-religious-groups/

[14] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/24/what-americans-want-to-do-about-illegal-immigration/

[15] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/20/in-political-correctness-debate-most-americans-think-too-many-people-are-easily-offended/

[16] Once again, it may actually have constituted a thermostatic correction.

[17] Personal squabbles also attend Cruz, which made him a problematic candidate for the GOP.  Although few official, verified reports exist, Cruz appears to be the most hated politician in Washington: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/12121499/Why-do-so-many-people-hate-Ted-Cruz.html

[18] Based on RealClearPolitics’s poll average 2009-2018: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html

[19] The ongoing tension between Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and between Trump and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, suggests that loyalty-based dismissals may not be a thing of the past.

[20] https://www.npr.org/2016/06/07/481140881/

[21] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-immigration-dreamers-20180110-story.html

[22] https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/17/judge-blocks-trumps-latest-travel-ban-order-243875

[23] http://www.newsweek.com/trump-offended-wanted-reverse-gorsuchs-supreme-court-nomination-752170

[24] The Brennan Center at New York University School of Law keeps a running list: https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/his-own-words-presidents-attacks-courts

[25] The news media as an institution appears to have become a partisan issue: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/363098-poll-majority-of-trump-backers-say-media-is-enemy-of-american-people

[26] https://www.npr.org/2017/10/12/557122200/

[27] http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/358573-trump-on-lack-of-nominees-i-am-the-only-one-that-matters

[28] https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/jon-stewart-2016-transcript-axe-files-axelrod/index.html