For MAGA, it’s the culture, stupid

It’s not “the economy, stupid.” The economy was the issue that got Bill Clinton elected in 1992 in the wake of the 1990-92 recession, when the nation’s unemployment rate climbed to nearly 8 percent. Political strategist James Carville’s wise advice to Democrats was not to talk about anything else.

The current U.S. unemployment rate? 3.7 percent. Unemployment has been below 4 percent for nearly two years. Nevertheless, inflation has been declining since June 2022, when it peaked at over 9 percent. 

President Biden’s principal achievement has been to bring inflation down without a recession, or what economists call a “soft landing.” Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, a global financial advisory firm, told the New York Times, “There is something very reminiscent [of] the 1990s boom.” 

That was the “dot com boom” of 1997-2000, when the U.S. economy was roaring and tax revenues were pouring in so fast that the federal budget was (temporarily) in surplus. Politically, the booming economy got President Bill Clinton through the Monica Lewinsky scandal. To voters, the economy meant he was doing his job.

Not now. The economy is voters’ biggest complaint about President Biden — specifically inflation. The rate of inflation may be declining, but voters know that necessities like food, gas and rent are still more expensive than they were when Biden took office.

The sour view of the economy is probably rooted more in partisanship than in reality.  Partisan animosity has become so extreme that a large segment of the electorate refuses to give President Biden credit for anything. 

Partisan animosity is driving the Donald Trump campaign and keeping Trump competitive with, and often slightly ahead of, President Biden in the polls. The MAGA crowd holds Biden in contempt, not because he’s not doing his job, but because he’s a Democrat who defeated their hero in 2020.

Trump is a populist, and populism thrives on resentment. It comes in two varieties.  Left-wing populism is economic; it’s driven by resentment of the rich. Right-wing populism is cultural; it’s driven by resentment of the educated elite. Both forms of populism are class-based, that is, concentrated among voters with lower incomes and lower education.  

Beginning in the 1930s, Democrats thrived on economic populism. The basic division in American politics used to be business versus labor. Republicans identified with business, Democrats with labor. The division was defined mostly by income (lower income Democrats, higher income Republicans).  

The realignment began in the 1960s, when the civil rights and antiwar movements took over the Democratic Party. The “diploma divide” is now a defining feature of politics.  College degree-holders are mostly Democrats, non-college white voters are mostly Republicans (and often MAGA supporters).

The realignment happened in stages. Richard Nixon used his “southern strategy” to attract white racial backlash voters to the GOP in the 1970s. Later Ronald Reagan pulled in religious fundamentalists and “Archie Bunker” voters. 

Donald Trump horrifies educated Americans. MAGA voters resent the condescension of educated elites who call them “deplorable,” who criticize them for “clinging to guns or religion,” who promote “woke” values and who respect experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci who try to regulate their lives (pandemic shutdowns). To sophisticated voters, isolationism and protectionism are wrongheaded. But to MAGA voters — and to Trump — they are commonsense.

The MAGA movement is driven by contempt for authority and expertise. But isn’t Trump often criticized for favoring authoritarianism? Yes, but only when the authority is his own.

Trump has been careful not to offend economic populists. Unlike most hard-line conservatives, he does not say much about government spending or threaten to cut entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. As president, he embraced large-scale economic stimulus packages to counter the impact of the pandemic. As Roman emperors discovered long ago, a leader can enhance his power with bread and circuses.

Trump’s conservatism, like that of the MAGA crowd, is mostly cultural. His key issue for 2024 is the same one that first propelled him to prominence in 2016: immigration.

The surge of illegal immigrants is deeply threatening to his supporters. That reaction is nothing new. Throughout American history, every large-scale influx of immigrants has generated a political backlash: anti-Catholic, anti-Asian, anti-Semitic. 

It’s not so much an economic challenge. Immigrants are desperately needed to fill jobs and pay taxes. It’s a cultural challenge. Immigrants often bring different political values.

In fact, immigration is the key factor driving right-wing political backlash movements throughout the Western world (France, Germany, the Netherlands, even Brexit in the U.K.). Immigrants to Europe come mostly from Africa and the Middle East. Immigrants flooding the U.S. are mostly Latin American and Asian. Many are non-white and non-Christian.

Immigrants are important for the U.S. economy. Countries like Japan that severely restrict immigration have a rapidly aging population. In the U.S., working-age immigrants may save the economy. But they threaten the culture.  

What drives the MAGA movement isn’t the economy. It’s the culture, stupid.

Bill Schneider is an emeritus professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of “Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable” (Simon & Schuster).