Trump’s Obama Moment
The Continuing Saga of Neglected Populism
by Micah E. Weiss
Many will remember in 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency on a wave of support from a wide variety of demographics and ideologies. Obama had soaring rhetoric that filled many with a sense of awe and inspiration and he swept into office in a landslide–both in the electoral college and the popular vote–winning over 69 million votes, a number not matched by any candidate until 2020. In Congress, Democrats swept through as well, riding the ole’ coattails of the first black president. For two years, President Obama would have a majority in both houses (albeit a slight one in the Senate). He ran a brilliant and balanced campaign, speaking with populist fire, while proposing somewhat center-left positions. He also touched something in many Americans that represented a racial healing for a history that few could deny had continued to haunt us.
Elections are won and lost for many reasons, and Trump’s victory a few weeks ago is already the subject of speculations as varied as they are confused. Did Trump win because of inflation? Wokeness? Immigration? Was his campaign masterful, or was Harris’ campaign a failure? Was it Biden’s foreign policy, Afghanistan withdrawal, Israel and Ukraine war exhaustion on the part of the public? Was it a larger demographic shift, a party swap, an ideological turning point in our politics, or just a matter of the economy (stupid)? Are Americans just irredeemably racist and misogynistic and ignorant, or are they canny and wise and sick of politics as usual?
In digesting the many explanations, rationalizations, finger-pointing, and excuse making from across the political spectrum, what stood out were two quasi-populist related observations: one, the overall class shift evident from the exit polling data with the economically struggling working classes abandoning the Democrats as the affluent and college educated abandoned the Republicans, and two, the one really quantifiably effective tactic: the Trump campaign’s now well known ad attacking tax-payer-funded gender reassignment for undocumented prisoners. Both observations imply a populist anger and frustration on the part of a critical mass of the public, though it’s difficult to extrapolate an exact explanation. A struggling economy always hurts incumbency, especially with the working class and working poor. The education/economic divide is becoming more pronounced, and both sides are finding it harder to see and empathize with each other. Case in point, as the media establishment kept telling Americans how great the recovery was, out in Trump country you could almost feel the sizzle of resentment–though it’s clear the media had a point. The economy has been far worse, and the recovery is well under way. On the other hand, the bouquet of four issues crammed into that one somewhat masterfully conceived ad punctuated by the cleverest of taglines–“Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you”--also hits too many culture points to zero-in any one of them. Indeed the genius of the ad is that it has something for everyone, and the recording of Harris backing the issue vociferously, as some warned when she ascended, was the icing on the cake as she had no hope of escaping from four different issues at once. Unfortunately, both of these data points beg more questions than they answer–where does the anger and frustration come from exactly, with the economy not that bad and cultural issues too diluted? To oversimplify the question: Is it the economy or culture, or both?
By contrast, what caused the 2008 election results, or at least the landslide nature of those results, that favored Obama and the Dems was far easier to explain. Almost monochromatic in fact. The lopsided outcome had little to do with Obama’s lovely rhetoric or sound centrism. Nor did the results stem from John McCain’s massive blunder in choosing Sarah Palin as a running mate–though that was hilarious, and the last time Saturday Night Live was relevant. Looking at the polling, it's clear that Obama had the advantage through most of the election season, but as September rolled around, McCain started to look like he was pulling ahead in the polling. That changed on September 15th, when the investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and panic swept through the global financial markets. McCain compounded the issue by trying to put a good face on the state of the economy, and Obama immediately pounced on McCain’s mistake, successfully tying McCain to the Bush legacy and therefore, the economy. In short order the election was wrapped up while millions of Americans, to say nothing of citizens in countries around the world, were on the ruinous road to the Great Recession.
The mandate was real and clear, the American people were alternately furious or desperate, and the future of Obama’s presidency was determined in the opening months of that first term. What would he do to solve the worst financial crisis in generations and satisfy the populist wave that he rode into office? What would he do with both chambers of Congress and a massive approval rating? What could he do?
Trump hasn’t swept in with nearly that level of clarity, and his support amongst Americans Is clearly tenuous, though that support is stronger than it has been in some years. But the American people are, while not quite so furious, certainly disenchanted with something (everything?) the Biden administration represents. The cabinet pick wars are well underway. Relative to the norms of the past, Trump’s picks are certainly peculiar, some questionable, one or two possibly reprehensible, but they are all disruptive to the old order. But you don’t have to look at those picks to know Trump is planning on governing like a wrecking ball. His campaign made a lot of promises, many quite drastic, and an extreme overhauling presidency is one we should expect.
As we did in 2008. In the event, however, President Obama choked. The day after the election, unemployment was already rising and the Dow was down. People were losing jobs, homes, retirement funds straight through inauguration. Obama sprang into action and cautiously did. . . very little. While his close political advisers were encouraging him to take an aggressive approach towards the banks who had already been bailed out on the tax-payer’s dime, Timothy Geithner and the economic team disagreed. Many, including David Axelrod, wished to see Obama “take scalps,” according to Frontline. Go after the big banks, or at least the big bankers, get someone to take responsibility and blame, and then reform the banking system. Despite a public outcry over highly public, somewhat obscene, and certainly unearned multimillion-dollar bonuses to the very CEOs who helped cause the Great Recession, despite marches and demonstrations by a disaffected public, despite the possible political advantage of tying Wall Street greed to a Republican party that was already stonewalling Obama’s centrist agenda, President Obama sided with Geithner, and let the banks and bankers off the hook. Many people would not forget, nor forgive, which handed the Republicans a massive political advantage. When Obama had a very public meeting with some of those very same CEOs, a meeting in which he made neither demands nor threats, the tempo shifted in Washington, and whatever was left of Obama’s popularity was squandered in the fight to pass the deeply flawed horse-designed-by-a-committee healthcare reform bill.
Enter Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, the left and right discontent in two absurd populist movements that in part, or in full, have morphed and shifted over the years, influencing today’s political divide. As in 2008, today we find working class people who once waved Tea Party signs supporting Trump with enthusiasm. The left-wing economic populists found a voice in Bernie Sanders, but were roundly defeated in primary after primary by an increasingly bourgeois Democratic party that also embraced identity politics going back to the waning days of Obama’s zombie-like second term. The populists have not been satisfied. Nothing else can adequately explain the strange shift of voters from Sanders to Trump these last three elections, insurgent extreme House Reps like The Squad and Margery Taylor Green and her ilk, or the ticket splitters from my old neighborhood in the Bronx this election who voted for Trump and Alexandra Occasio Cortes in this election.
The Obama-Trump circumstantial parallels aren’t really exact, but Trump faces a similar moment inasmuch as his supporters, and skeptics–oftentimes, detractors–like me, wait to see what he will do with this mandate. Depending on one’s interpretation of where the anger and frustration in the electorate is focused (economy, culture, or both) what he does next could settle American politics for some time, or it could swing populism back to the left. Obama watched the pitch go by, and the populism that has colored everything since 2008 has added levels of volatility in our Republic not seen since the Civil War. Trump enters government this second time as an insurgent, with a rebellious, anti-elite posture, and a declared willingness to “move fast and break things.” His past performance would indicate fickle views and protean obsessions, his managerial style was dysfunctional and chaotic, and his tendencies towards dipping his toe into the temptations of tyranny have always been deeply disturbing. To say it’s hard to be optimistic might be an understatement.
However, one silver lining on an otherwise very dark and threatening thunderhead is that a single agenda can be implemented for the first time in ages, and everyone will see what Trump’s governing really looks like. Last time, he recently told Joe Rogan, he was surprised to have won at all, and his liabilities as a manager, plus Democrats harrying his administration (justified or not), hampered Trump’s ability to even learn the job. In theory, he is better prepared this time, and the Democrats are weaker than they have been since the 1980s. As with Obama in 2008, one party rule for a brief moment will allow an agenda to be passed, and the voters will at the least be able to tell what the consequences of that look like. In our no-compromise era in Congress, that is a rarity. Come what may, Trump will own it.
Our constitution was designed to counter populism as much as monarchy. The window to address the concerns of populists could well last only two years, and as someone suspicious of populist excesses, I consider that a good thing. Whether or not the populists can be sated without a drastic restructuring of society remains to be seen. Indeed, “they” remain resistant to clear definition and identification, eliding party loyalties, as the surprising results of this election imply. If Trump can address the economy as he brags he will, if the economic lower-half of the population feels their lives improve, it will be extremely difficult for the Democrats to poach populists back to their side. Conservative cultural policies will be an easy sell, and the entire society will lurch to the right (no matter what Hollywood says). However, if Trump’s policies crash the economy, or even just trigger a lateral shift or maintain a kind of status quo, the populists’ frustration will only increase, and four years from now, we’ll be right back where we started, which will give the Democrats an opportunity, again, and we’ll get on the merry-go-round one more time.