A booming economy, a fear-based campaign, and "economic anxiety"

Do you remember all of the bullshit explanations for why Trump voters supported him in 2016?  Commentators who didn't want to state the obvious truth bent over backwards to avoid pointing out that it was basically about race and Trump's blatant appeals to racism and xenophobia.  However, that's the kind of thing you can't say if you are trying to avoid accusations of the dreaded "liberal bias!!!"  The rhetorical solution?  The term that may have drawn your ire as much as it did political scientists' was "economic anxiety."  Trump voters were either the left-behind, so to speak, from international trade (and now we're supposed to believe that "globalism" has nothing to do with anti-semitism…), or just generally felt that they weren't somehow being represented and blah, blah, blah.  Really, it was about economics, not race.

The problem, of course, is that empirically, the best predictor of support for Trump was not anything having to do with personal financial circumstances or anything like that.  It was how individuals scored on what we sometimes call, in political science, a "racial resentment" indicator, which takes survey respondents' answers across a battery of questions on race-related issues and combines them into a single score.  In 2016, scores across this type of index were much better predictors of support for Trump than anything that could be called, "economic anxiety," or economic circumstances, or anything like that.  In other words, predictably, the standard defense of Trump's base was bullshit.

And here we are, in 2018.  What's happening with the economy?  It has kept growing.  The economy cratered in late 2008/early 2009, and then started getting better.  It has kept improving since.  If anything, the growth has accelerated somewhat.  Wages are even growing.  This is the best economy in decades.  Yes, really.  Does anyone have any justification for being "anxious" about the economy?  Stock brokers have been going a bit bonkers for the last few weeks, for those paying attention to the S&P, but like I always say, invest in a passively managed index fund and let stock pickers drive themselves nuts.  They're already mostly there anyway.  Just make sure you park your car a good distance from where they might jump if we start approaching 1929, or Black Monday, or 2008, or something like that.  If you invest for the long-term, you can ride out stuff like this and laugh at the people who stress out over a bad month in the market.

The rest of the country?  Is there any real cause for economic anxiety?  Nope.  The economy is chugging along just fine, except for the people Trump is fucking over with his trade war.  So, how are Trump-supporters feeling?  What is the state of their attachment to the guy whose appeal is based on "economic anxiety?"  If that were the case, then get rid of any real justification for feeling economically anxious, and his support should fade, along with any tolerance for his racist, xenophobic demagoguery.

Has any of that happened?  Nope.  Trump's behavior is at least as xenophobic and demagogic as ever.  His support among Republicans, at the electoral level is as solid as ever, and the elected officials are more solidly behind him than ever.  What have we learned?  What political scientists demonstrated long ago.  It was never economic anxiety.  Take away any possible justification for economic anxiety, and all of the xenophobic demagoguery remains, with full support from the GOP base and increased support from the Republican Party officials.  (That latter part, I admit I didn't see coming when Trump won.  I'll get to that after the election, I think.)

You may ask yourself, if the economy is so great, why not "run on" how great the economy is?  A few brief points on that.  First, campaigns are less about strategic decisions than responses to circumstances.  Second, and more importantly, campaigns reveal.  Not everything is a strategic choice.  Some actions are just coalitions demonstrating their beliefs and preferences.  The Republican Party is, centrally, and anti-immigrant party.  That is now as central to the party as tax cuts.  Whether or not it remains so for the long term remains to be seen, but for now, opposition to immigration, legal immigration included, is a central plank of the party platform, by collective choice.  Anti-immigrant parties have existed in American history before.  We have one again, and with a booming economy, there really shouldn't be any more pretending that this is about "economic anxiety."  I haven't seen the term much lately, though, so I thought it might be useful to point out its absence and what that absence tells us.

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