Former president Republican Donald Trump is heading for a convincing victory in the US presidential election. The Republicans have won control of the Senate and control of the House of Representatives – a clean sweep.
It also looks like Trump will also poll more overall votes than the Democrat candidate Harris (he polled fewer votes than Hillary Clinton when he won the presidency in 2016).
Why has Trump won? A first thought. Nearly every incumbent government in office during the pandemic slump and post-inflationary period has been ousted from power.
According to the AP Votecast survey, four in 10 voters named the economy and jobs as the most important problem facing the country.
One quote sums up why sufficient numbers of voters switched from Democrat to Republican. “I’ve been a Democrat my whole life and I haven’t see any benefits from that. Democrats have been sending funds to wars and resources to migrants rather than to Americans who are struggling. I trust Trump to put us first.”
The trouble is that Trump will put billionaires, corporations and fossil fuel companies first.
I’ll comment on the psephology of the election figures when all the details are available.
Michael Roberts Blog 
here is also a “cultural” element to be taken into account. Trump seeks to represent a “redneck” constituency, typically culturally reactionary, not only climate-change but science in general deniers, antivax, COVID denialists, homophobic, racist, sexist, anti-abortion, religious… the list goes on, all opposed to the liberal democratic party leaderships’ professed values, since Clinton at least.
This important part of Trump’s base, perceives – rightly! – that it is this liberal-democratic leadership and politicians who have pauperised them. That same liberal establishment are also – rightly! – perceived as “looking down on them” as uncivilised (white?) “trash” – Biden actually used the characterisation, minus the white of course!
Feeling -again rightly – that the same liberal establishment has pauperized them, makes it a classic example of “adding insult to injury”. Particularly the normalisation and justification of pauperisation by the “science” of economics can sour people on science in general.
Thats why Trump is very much the creation of the liberal establishment that is so mortified by his success.
Unfortunately, as anticapitalist socialists we apparently many of the bourgeois cultural values that a big part of the US population now rejects. Just an example, in a recent poll of the population of 35 countries on whether they accepted the theory of evolution, the US, the most advanced scientifically nation, is second from the bottom, just before Turkey with its vast territories of poor peasants.
I think this ultra-right cultural component of Trumpism is an important and difficult challenge for the Left. Of course, in all probability Trump will help us by showing that he might not be insulting them but he continues pauperising them.
But how we wean back to science and humanist values this part of the working class? I guess that fighting against impoverishment and capitalist exploitation in the workplace is an important arena in which unity between left wing and/or liberal workers and reactionary trumpists can be forged, and we can win them back to progressive ideas.
When a system collapses, everything that makes up its backbone, the state and politics, also collapses and becomes nothing more than a spectacle. Trump won’t change much, the rich will be even richer and the poor even more dominated. The only alternative is communism, but for that to happen the masses must perhaps first experience fascisation, since they are being hallucinated about the red terror (with no guarantee that the remedy will be effective). The masses have needs that the bourgeois politicians of the left and right are incapable of meeting. The state which manages class conflict (to put it plainly, the domination of one class over another), whether left or right, is what it has always been, a ‘bourgeois’ apparatus. If we are surprised that the masses are turning away from what are called socialists in the West, it is not really against socialism, but rather against a segment of the bourgeois political market, against an alternative which is not one.
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It is a part of reversal of globalization all over the world
Harris would do the same thing
Trust the markets to reveal the true nature of Trump’s policies. They jumped on the news of his election and the promise of lower taxes, fewer regulations and reshoring. Had a genuine pro-worker president been elected they would have crashed. Let me remind everyone; populists are like firework sparklers. They burn bright, furiously then go out. By the middle of next year Trump will be holding a stick. Trump can thank the sclerotic, corrupt, nepotistic and undemocratic Democratic Party gifting him Harris as his opponent.
FYI, control of the House of Representatives has not yet been decided. The vote is very close and it may be several days before the major news outlets announce a winner.
Yes thanks Phil too early to confirm
You give (an unsourced) quote: “Democrats have been sending funds to wars and resources to migrants rather than to Americans who are struggling.” Trump made immigration a big thing in his campaign.
Another democratic socialist commentator asserts that a poll showed (also no source): “when asked if they wished to legalize most undocumented immigrants or deport them, 56 percent preferred legalization while just 39 percent favored deportation.” So the door was open to address immigration.
If most voters care most about their economic situation (when a country is not sending masses of young men to war), what framework do they use to figure things out? Trump offered immigration. Harris had no vigorous alternative framework, and she tailed behind Trump on stopping border crossings.
The democratic socialist left in the U.S. has ignored this broad aspect of immigration. It has only spoken to immigrants. These leftists have also ignored globalization. If you don’t have a framework and solution for these two problems, you are toast.
“The democratic socialist left in the U.S. has ignored this broad aspect of immigration. It has only spoken to immigrants. These leftists have also ignored globalization”
A comment asserts that the commenter and his political crowd have “countered arguments that migrants drain public resources or take jobs from the resident workers.” You can say that, mostly speaking to the undocumented immigrants and confirmed liberals. You need to address the point that when undocumented immigrants enter the job market, wages fall.
Where’s your evidence? Where and when has a decline in real wages resulted from when immigrant workers enter the job market? EPI has studied this extensively and concludes the opposite. See;
https://www.epi.org/blog/immigrant-workers-help-grow-the-u-s-economy-new-state-fact-sheets-illustrate-the-economic-benefits-of-immigration/
https://immresearch.org/publications/states/
and with all the nativist nonsense about immigrants taking jobs and lowering wages–2023 and 2024 have again shown the opposite.
EPI too “liberal” a source? Welcome to provide some alternatives.
Thanks for the EPI link. A plain refutation of the widespread observations that undocumented immigrants (hence lacking various labor law protections) accept lower than prevailing wages would be welcome. Sadly, EPI does not provide it.
So you’d need to go look at those adjustments and whether the studies take them all into account.
In particular, do they accurately count those workers who leave the labor force when wages fall because of undocumented immigrant entry into the occupation? Look at the ouster of Black janitors, for example.
And who bears the costs of those “adjustments,” and for how long?
This thread is not the place to resolve the matter. We could really use a compelling rebuttal of the common-sense view that immigrant workers drive down wages. After all, this is why farm capitalists pioneered the bracero program. This is why the federal law that employers must verify the identity and employment authorization of each person they hire is a joke. And we can predict this is why president Trump will not get millions of undocumented immigrants out of the country.
The careful reader will note that Charlie1848 was invited to provide other reference sources to back up his “common sense” assertion that undocumented migrants damage the wage levels of the “native workers” if and when he found the reference cited to be unsuitable. And the careful reader will note that C1848 has provided no such alternative.
For reference sake, the US National Bureau of Economic Research (nber.org) has, I think, more than 4000 papers examining all aspects of immigrant labor’s impact on the economy. Now I have looked at less than 5% of that database and I have not found an analysis supporting C1848’s “common sense” assertions.
C1848 claims: ” Look at the ouster of Black janitors, for example.” Would love to.. Please provide a reference with the data.
C1848 claims: “This thread is not the place to resolve the matter.” Good a place as any, particularly since you presented the assertion here, but if you have a different venue in mind, I’m happy to resume the discussion there.
C1848: We could really use a compelling rebuttal of the common-sense view that immigrant workers drive down wages. After all, this is why farm capitalists pioneered the bracero program.
The great weakness of “common sense” is its ignorance of history. The Bracero program was not initiated to drive down wages. It was initiated by US Executive Order in July 1942 to fill the void created in farm worker availability as the “native” farm workers abandoned the sector and sought and found employment at higher wages in defense industries. The program was intended to assure the supply of temporary workers with minimal labor protections. The program was maintained and expanded during the post-war era as US urban employment grew; and mechanization ;and technology further concentrated the need for manual labor into a compressed period of time.
Did the growers abuse the workers, ignoring the minimal protections? Certainly. It got so bad that Mexico vetoed the program for agricultural work in Texas. Workers were systematically cheated and used to control labor costs in the sector. The problem was in the fact that the workers had only temporary status, were tied–serf-like–to a single employer, and prohibited from organizing collectively or being organized.
The solution, which has been tried and failed time after time, in the 1920s, 30s, 70s, etc, is NOT expulsion of the laborers who, after all, are simply a super-exploited sector of the working class–but IS full legal status for anyone employed in the US or by a US company, and the integration of these workers into the labor organizations,
US labor history is replete with examples of the bourgeoisie mobilizing new sources of labor power and the refusal of the nativist workers to integrate these new working populations. That has been the history of black labor in the US; that was the initial reaction to women entering the manufacturing and mining sectors; it’s the current condition of the migrant workers.
Common sense is neither.
Yes, I used “bracero” informally. Before the formal program, “From 1900 to 1930, the Mexican population in the United States more than doubled every 10 years. By 1930, an estimated 1.5 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans lived in the United States. Most Mexicans arrived as low-paid laborers who worked mainly in industries such as agriculture and railroad building.” pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3093266/
Anthony Edo, “The Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market”, Journal of Economic Surveys, Vol. 33 (2019), pp. 922-948. After considering over 50 studies of immigration in developed countries, the author concludes that immigration can create winners and losers among the native-born workers. An inflow of immigrants will tend to reduce the wages of competing native workers (with skills similar to those of the migrants), and increase those of complementary workers (with skills that complement those of immigrants). doi.org/10.1111/joes.12300 [And of course, low-wage workers outnumber high-wage workers.]
The remarks by Anti-Capital do not talk to the native-born majority of the working class. To him they are “nativIST.”
Your previous thoughts on the significant impact of inflation on those who are not able to participate in the economy as an investor seem to be spot on.
Your previous thoughts on the significant impact of inflation on those who are not able to participate in the economy as an investor seem to be spot on.
Ukraine will be sacrificed to Putin. Cuba and Iran will see sanctions ramped up. Netanyahu is celebrating, whatever, litte restrainst imposed by Biden gone, maybe a green light to attack Iran. Isolationism means not just a ramping up of military spending by what might become former US allies but maybe a pivot to nuclear arms by for a strat South Korea and Japan ( North Korea has themn and Kim will be tempted to attack the South, thinking like Sadaam that the US does not much care). Germany and eastern E urope will not rely on France’s nuclear weapons but maybe get their own, an dlike Israel do it secretely.
Tarif wars and the threat of them are already on the agenda.
your comments swing from Democrat liberalist to Western Marxist:
“Ukraine will be sacrificed to Putin.”
Michael, Something I posted on a class website — the advantages of a captured audience; or, why I’m still in the classroom and haven’t retired.
Thinking about the votes on both Monday and Tuesday
Marx once said, again, that “a drowning person will grab hold to a twig in the hope that it will save them.” Therein the reason, I argue, why so many working class people would think that someone like Trump, a billionaire, would have their best interests at heart. By “drowning,” again, I’m referring to the end of “the American Dream,” or, that the best that capitalism has to offer the working class is behind us. That was at the heart of the vote on Monday for Boeing workers, trying to restore pensions. Their vote soberly taught that it will take more than one union, however big it is to do so. The working class will need its own political party, one that militantly brings together millions of unionized workers, to be successful. Neither the Dems nor Trump’s GOP, capitalist parties, have any interest in restoring pensions, which your generation sorely needs.
There was, again, only one party in the Tuesday elections that put forward the perspective of building a working class political party in the US for the first time — the very small SWP. But, as Marx also said, even if a working class political campaign has no prospects of winning, the advantages of such a campaign — putting forward a positive perspective about what you’re for rather than what you’re against, the pitfalls of lesser-evil campaigning, and being able to see where your support is — outweigh the disadvantages of reactionaries being elected.
Again, the one thing I can promise. You’ll have another opportunity to vote should Trump et al try to implement what the liberals accused him of wanting to do if he won — the opportunity to vote with your feet, on the streets, where power is actually exercised.
Thinking about you from the other side of the pond where, as you can imagine, there is a lot of interest here in London, from a taxi driver to a waiter, about what happened on Tuesday. One reason, especially in ruling class circles, the US continues to be the best that capitalism has to offer to capitalist rulers elsewhere — which speaks volumes about the historical situation of the capitalist mode of production.
First, it’s not clear how many working class voters opted for Trump.
What is remarkable in this election and seems to be ignored is that a) voter turnout in 2024 declined by 15 million votes, or 10 percent from 2020; b) Trump’s vote total 2024 is 2 million less than it was in 2020; c) Harris’ vote total is 13 million–that’s right, 13 million–below Biden’s 2020 total.
For all the talk about early voting etc turnout declined dramatically.
Now I think that 1) the last 4 years of voter suppression actions paid off for the Republicans 2) some of this, not all, is the result of good old US sexism and racism 3) Trump’s election in 2016 was motivated by “white revenge” for the “indignity” of a black man elected and twice 4) Trump was able to “benefit” from a candidate who was Hillary and Obama wrapped in one-a woman of color.
Might be interesting to investigate in NC, Pa, Ga, Mi, Wi, “swing states”–the vote total of African-Americans 2024 vs 2020.
The threat that Trump presents to “US democracy” is not that of a torch. It’s the mirror.
Professor M.R
I am a Marxist Ecologist from Colombia interested in Degrowth Theory. I recently read your reply to the Colombian Marxist Collapsists (Text “Marx Theory of Value: Collapse, AI, and Petro”: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/10/03/marxs-theory-of-value-collapse-ai-and-petro/) and their new publication regarding a possible nearby World Climate catastrophe and Energy Crises (Text “Future and Communism”: https://www.scribd.com/document/782281935/Future-and-Communism-Between-Total-Annihilation-and-the-Conquest-of-the-Stars-Digital-Book). I also read your debate with David Harvey on Marx Theory of Value (Text “Marx’s Law of Value”: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/marxs-law-of-value-a-debate-between-david-harvey-and-michael-roberts/).
Do you think that Trump election means that the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference are impossible to achieve now and that a 1.5 and even 2 degrees of Global Warming is impossible to stop now? (As discussed here: https://www.marxismoycolapso.com/post/future-and-communism-collapsist-marxist-theory-digital-book) Can Global Capitalist Economy survive a Global warming exceeding 1.5 c. degree or that kind of climate change could indeed imply a total civilization collapse (as shown in this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qs_f4ZOA6E)?
probe
I announce that a few months I hope to publish in Pluto editions the book entitled “2040/2050 Russia and China in the Collapse off Capitalism and in the new impulse of Socialismo.Discovering the C.E.R. (revolutionary economic cycle).K Marx and R.Luxemburg were right”.It is the book that in this great forum of socialism economic I promised to publish on the revolutionary cycles for 4 years until 2023.With permisión of M Roberts I Will speak about It again in depth when I publish It.Yes,its true, revolutions are the engine off history (Marx) and produce economic cycles that can It be scientifically demostrated A very cordial greeting to the great M Roberts,Brian Green and AntiCapital.With them I have learned the best socialist economic of today and I have shared the one I knew.
you don’t know who he’ll put first you’re just guessing and going up the mainstre
Excellen, clear, short observation. Thank you. But, really…”psephology”? I had to look it up.
In any case, tariffs will not save us from this sham.
After the brief opening up of Keynesian Fordism and relative prosperity, the return of stagflation in the 1970s left capitalism with no other recourse than to mortgage the future by speculating on property titles, turning central banks into dumping grounds, and a global debt of epic proportions,
In addition to the financial industry, we must also mention the 3rd industrial revolution, the introduction of micro-electronics, which will lead to the massive elimination of immediate work, and ultimately a boulevard towards socialism, if we can weather the storm of the ultimate capitalist jocker and its destruction of variable capital – wars.
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