by On Wednesday, amid pro-Trump protests outside, Trump’s supporters in Congress will stage one final attempt at overturning the November election results. Over a dozen Senators are expected to be joined by at least 140 Republicans in the House to again contest the results. Even though the Congressional objections will be defeated and Biden will be successfully certified as the next President of the United States, Trump’s conspiratorial right-wing undermining of confidence in US capitalist democratic institutions has already had an impact. Trump’s aim is to undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency, sow distrust in the American democratic system among his supporters, and turn up the heat on the brewing civil war within the Republican party.
The certification of state electors by Congress is usually a formal process that attracts very little attention in the electoral cycle. This year, however, it looms larger in light of Trump’s constant cries of election fraud. Trump’s Congressional allies, who have signaled their intention to submit objections to their state electors’ counts, claim to be doing so to bring forward evidence of election fraud.
In reality, this is a cynical attempt by Trump to undermine Republican lawmakers who refuse to sanction his conspiracy, to weaken their political standing among their constituencies, and set the stage to levy challenges against them in the 2022 primaries. Meanwhile, most Republican officials have signaled an unwillingness to participate in Trump’s efforts, instead hoping for a chance to marginalize Trump and reclaim the GOP as the stable, conservative party of big business it once was.
This is the very real and growing schism in the Republican Party: between old-school corporate conservatism, and the populist right-wing of which Trump is the figurehead. The virulent nativest and socially conservative ideas now dominating the GOP were originally pushed by big business to whip up a voting base for themselves. But the anti-establishment anger they tried to unleash against “liberal elites” has increasingly been mobilized against the traditional Republican leadership by right-populist demagogues. Trump’s victory over them in the 2016 election was the logical conclusion of this long-standing contradiction. In a post-election comment to the Wall Street Journal, Senator Marco Rubio, a moderate in Trump’s GOP, gave lip service to this right-populist trend: “America needs a real, multi-ethnic working class party… The Republican Party can be that party.”
Trump may not be president again–for now–but he is not going away, nor is Trumpism. Republicans control nearly two-thirds of state legislative bodies and much of the judiciary system. Trump will remain a powerful force driving the GOP to the right, using his huge resources and base of support to threaten primary challenges to Republicans who don’t get in line; despite the vocal minority of Republican “never-Trumpers,” he had over 90% approval from Republican voters in exit polls. Trump is clearly aiming to leverage this popular support against the Congressional Republicans who have grown more defiant of him since the election–voting against his wishes on the defense budget as well as his push for $2000 payments to individuals in the latest COVID relief bill.
Since the drama of election night, Trump has made it abundantly clear that he does not intend to fade quietly into the night. He maintains a nearly 90 million-strong following on Twitter. He has a great talent for controlling the news cycle with his bombastic rhetoric and explosive Tweets. Many Republican leaders credit him with revitalizing the party, and many other news outlets such as the New York Times predict that Trump will remain a decisive Republican voice. Since the election he has raised over $207 million, ostensibly to support his bid to overturn the election, but actually as a war chest to fund his efforts to control the GOP, including 2022 primary challenges against those in the party who oppose him.
But while Trump may not have won a second term as President, his defeat by Joe Biden was not the decisive rejection of Trump by the American people that many had hoped. In addition to maintaining hold on nearly every state he has carried in 2016, he managed to win 7 million more votes nationwide than four years ago. The prevalence of Trump supporters at rallies and protesting on the street–including increasingly violent clashes instigated by his far-right supporters–is evidence that his base is as strong as ever. With the Democrats failing to challenge Trump with working class anti-establishment politics, Trump’s brand of right-populism has found resonance with increasingly disenfranchised white working and middle class voters.
Moreover, the Republican party is still likely to maintain control over the Senate, and Democrats only narrowly control the House. The judiciary system is also stacked with Trump appointees at both the federal and states levels. This combined with the Democrats’ timidity means we are likely to see a major failure by the Biden administration to live up to the “progressive” promises he made during the election.
Before Trump, the Republican party leadership’s hold over their voting base had been in decline for over a decade; what about Trump has revitalized the party so substantially? For much of the history of the GOP, but especially since the Reagan era, the party has primarily consisted of a somewhat uneasy coalition between big-business, no-entitlements conservatives, and a more right-wing populist contingent. But especially since the 2008 crisis, global capitalism has started to come up against the limits of neoliberalism that defined Reaganomics.
At the same time, over the last two decades there was a flood of mostly white, working-class people into the Republican party, enraged by the Democrats’ full embrace of neoliberal attacks on working people since Bill Clinton’s administration. However, the embrace of free trade and Wall Street corruption in Republican party leadership also stirred up popular distrust, weakening the GOP’s voting base. It is in this context that the contemporary populist streak began to develop on the right. Evolving out of the “Moral Majority” type of right-populist movements that developed in the ‘70s, figures such as Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin represented a growing trend toward populism on the right. The trend gained momentum with the development of the Tea Party in 2009, after Republican leaders worked with Obama to orchestrate the massive Wall Street bailout. But it found its strongest expression in the ascent of Donald Trump.
Despite a highly vocal minority of old guard conservatives who detested Trump in the 2016 primaries, and were critical of elements of his persona and policies, after his election a majority of party officials and 94% of the Republican electorate have been supportive of Trump. This movement away from big business conservatism and toward right-populism represents a sea change in the makeup of the GOP and has many implications for the future of the party and the right in general. This change creates a major problem for the capitalist class, undermining its control over one of the major pillars of stable capitalist rule over US society.
Trump has indelibly changed the Republican party, and while Trump’s defeat opens the potential for big business to try to “reclaim” their party, we can expect the populist trend to continue to expand in the next four years. The disastrous results of global neoliberalism continue to exert intense pressure on the American working class. More than ever, Americans are un- or under-employed, uninsured, in debt, and housing insecure. This leaves people very receptive to nativist and protectionist policies, such as withdrawing from trade agreements and sharply limiting immigration, and when combined with religious extremism, white supremacy, and social conservatism, right-populist ideology can be very alluring, absent a mass working class alternative.
The corporate liberalism of the Democrats, personified in Joe Biden, offers little respite from the economic woes of the working class. Clearly neither the Republican nor Democratic parties offer any solution to the problems facing the American working class. A new, mass party of working people is desperately needed to fight for strong social programs such as universal health care and a green jobs program. Without strong reforms that benefit the majority of Americans, right-populism has a wide margin for pushing xenophobic, racist, and nativist propaganda.
