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October 15, 2024 - 7:15pm
Many in the Beltway view Donald Trump as the personification of dire political disruption. A recent Atlantic cover even painted the former president in the foreboding hues of a Stephen King novel. However, a series of recent polls suggest that many swing voters may see something else entirely in Trump: the potential for normalcy.
While Joe Biden ran on a “return to normal” message in 2020, chaos has been the leitmotif of his administration. The border crisis has pushed the asylum system and many working-class communities to breaking point. While the shortages of the past have abated, inflation has ravaged family cheque books. The frenzied withdrawal from Afghanistan was a prelude to war returning to Europe and the Middle East, and foreign policy tensions have continued to escalate.
This record has cast a shadow over the presidential race between Trump and Kamala Harris. New polling of battleground-state voters from the Wall Street Journal gives Trump an edge over Harris on immigration and the economy, as might be expected. But it also found that voters favoured him on foreign affairs, too. They thought he would be better able to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by 11 points (50%-39%). They gave him an even greater advantage on the Israel-Hamas war, by 48% to 33%. These voters may believe that Trump’s “don’t poke the eagle” brand of Jacksonian foreign policy kept many international rivals on their toes. As president, he didn’t invoke high ideals about “liberal democracy” but instead struck hard and fast at geopolitical foes, such as the Islamic State.
Luckily for Harris, foreign policy is almost never the central issue for the electorate. What is happening at home is much more important to voters. In the crucial battleground state of Michigan, the Financial Times has documented how much the surge in prices under Biden has battered workers’ finances. A national NBC poll offers a stark quantification of voters’ perceptions. Only 25% of those polled thought that Biden’s policies were helping their families; 45% thought that his policies hurt their families. Conversely, 44% believed that Trump’s policies as president helped their families, while only 31% thought that Trump’s record had hurt them. Matching WSJ numbers, this poll also shows that voters think Trump would be better than Harris at handling the Israel-Hamas war.
NBC’s polling has found a tightening national race, from a five-point Harris lead right after her debate with Trump to a tie today. Harris’s “vibes” media strategy has hampered her ability to distance herself from these frustrations, and some of her recent comments — such as saying she would change “not a thing” about Biden’s record — have not helped, either. Even some of her attempts at a veneer of bipartisanship might be backfiring. While the VP has trumpeted her support from many elites of the Bush-era GOP, George W. Bush left office with approval ratings that had been dragged to the basement by debacles abroad and a financial crisis at home. This is not a political tune likely to win over restive voters in the Rust Belt.
If these polls show the limits of Harris’s campaign strategy, they might also offer a warning to Trump should he win. Some Very Online influencers may be inclined to use a Trump presidency as a chance to muscle through radical disruption, a kind of populist-accelerationist “shock therapy”, as it were. But leaning into disruption could boomerang on the former president. Supply-chain crunches, a spike in consumer costs, and cascading crises abroad soured voters on Biden. If such woes reappeared in a second Trump administration, Republicans could pay a high political price. Voters, if they opt for it, will hope that a populist correction can deliver stability rather than another storm.
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Subscribe*just a side note, what happened to ‘undercurrents’ at this time of night, used to look forward to that.
Yes, especially the sneaky comments accompanying the news item, likely from the same member of the team. They may have left?
It is just possible that future historians might see the Trump phenomenon as an inchoate (and of course in many ways flawed) attempt to break out of conservatism’s imprisonment in a political etiquette that has proved to be a philosophical stacked deck.
Not really. He’s not a Conservative and he’s not running as one. Its impossible to be a Conservative in an environment where everybody has their hands out trying to extract government benefits and contracts. What would cutting a wasteful entitlement accomplish now? No significant numbers would vote for it.
All he’s doing is promoting a more orderly, meritocratic environment in an impossibly chaotic financial system. That’s enough for me at the moment.
Historians will view this as a revolt against an illiberal, incompetent, technocratic, political elite that has lost the confidence of the people it serves. It’s important to remember that there are a dozen Trumps across the west right now. There’s a reason for that.