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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?
Quick-reading and funny… Maybe they were too complicated for the UnHerd team to produce
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. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
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.
Well said.
Trump ‘normal’?! Yesterday at his rally he couldn’t think what to say so dad danced for 39 minutes to his playlist. He’s a mental wreck who spews lies.
Yes, recent events suggest that Trump is now at best senile, and at worst insane.
But that was a qualification for Biden
Or that you are gullible and stupid
Is there medicine available for severe TDS ?
Let the TDS lot stew in their own bile. It’s cheaper, and more entertaining.
Indeed, a massive dose of KDH on Guy Fawkes night ought to fix it!
Is there medicine available for TDS? Yes. It’s called reading, but not mainstream media sound-bites.
Granted.
But he’s still a better bet than Harris.
How could you “bet” on someone who thinks that’s dancing?
Pretty sure I am not voting for the dancer in chief
Honestly, rallies are boring. It’s the same lip service from everyone. I wouldn’t view this is as such a crazy thing. He has been doing lots of podcast interviews that are much more sober and focused (although he still goes off on his tangents, don’t get me wrong).
The reason he played music for that time was 2 people had medical emergencies & he decided, out of genuine concern, to stop the political speak & play music while the EMT’s tended to those people. LIB new orgs conveniently leave out that piece of info. when ‘reporting’ this. CERTAINLY NOT b/c he didn’t know what to say!
No but way to show your dishonesty, they played the music because a medical event was happening in the audience. He stopped speaking until the event was over. Nice try liar
Right now the inflation rate in the United States is 2.4%. The price of consumer goods have been going up because Proctor $ Gamble, General Mills, et al are price gauging. They raised price because of the pandemic and then inflation. But inflation rate is now the lowest in the world and there are no supply chain problems. So shouldn’t prices fall? Yes, but corporations are keeping them high for one reason: greed. Price gouging. There is nothing Biden, Trump or Harris can do to stop every corporation and small business for price gauging. (My hair salon charged me $145+ tip before the pandemic and inflation spike. They raised their price to $200+ tip. Did the price go down when things settled down? No. They raised their price to $225+ tip. My hair is barely worth $50, so I went elsewhere.) On a different note, can someone please tell me what Trump did for the working class when he was president?
Trump’s energy policies gave us reasonably priced gasoline.
His tax cuts, with the higher standard deduction, provided lower taxes to millions of working class people.
You used to pay $145+tip for hair, and you thought that was relatively cheap?
Dang, you colonials are a rum bunch. Greetings from the UK.
That’s about 2 years worth of haircuts for me. Maybe the weather in the US makes your hair grow quicker …
You forget that wages went up FAST during that same period and labor costs are not going to come down unless there is a major recession. Those labor costs and the costs of energy are baked into final prices for goods and services.
Your hair dresser got a 20% bump in pay well then the salon needs to add that to the final price to maintain margins.
Your salon’s electric bill and cost of supplies goes up, your haircut goes up too.
And the companies that are providing all those supplies have increased labor costs and energy costs, among others, that they too have to pass on to their customer, your salon.
There is no free ride. You cannot have rising wages without having rising prices unless there is so much competition that a business cannot raise prices and keep its customers. In that scenario, some businesses will go under, the supply will shrink and prices will rise again anyway. You can push up wages and maintain competition for only so long and only until some businesses go under and nobody sees opening another similarly situated one as a good investment of time, effort or money.
You assume that the owner is paying his/her staff their rightful share of the take. Based on one statistic about wages; which is likely to be an “adjusted” average of a very broad sample. You’re too full of certainty.
In any case, what you’re describing is the textbook progression of inflation. Costs (all costs, not just wages) go up so prices go up. Around and around. But your solution is to shaft the people who are actually doing the work.
As a city dweller I would guess that the price of commercial real estate is the most significant driver of inflation. Why shouldn’t the landlords take a hit, too?
Most retailers have a labor cost of around 15% of gross sales. Restaurants can be a bit higher, I’ve worked for some that get close to 30%. A Hair salon, from a quick google search, is even a bit higher than that.
Maybe the wage increases hurt certain businesses more, but even a 5% wage bump across the board for a retailer would add less than 1% to their total labor cost (5% * 15%).
These companies complain about how hamstrung they are, and how they have to keep prices up, but then the earnings calls tell an entirely different story.
I’m not saying it’s all greed, but the pandemic certainly gave a lot of companies an excuse to raise prices across the board, and unsurprisingly, many of these companies are going to make every excuse in the book why they can’t bring them back down.
Here’s a suggestion. Take your hair business elsewhere to a cheaper salon. Thats the essence of free enterprise
I was tempted to reply by telling you to check your grammar, spelling, evidence, and basic reasoning before you comment on UnHerd (though I wouldn’t bother if you were writing on a Grauniad chat-line, where you would be in good company); but I’ll pass on that in order to answer your specific question ‘can someone please tell me what Trump did for the working class when he was president?’. Answer: read Victor David Hanson’s ‘The case for Trump”. You’ll find all your answers there.
Do what I do and incorporate your hair cut into your shaving regime
In fact, I recall the D. John Trump years with nostalgia and longing. The world was at peace (although to compensate, the Dems through a 4-year long temper tantrum), the US economy was booming, inflation was nil, the border was secure. Here’s hoping for DJT 2.0 from this voter!
I don’t think anyone could watch Trump’s increasingly bizarre antics and his insane comments about sending the military after his political opponents and think that there is anything “normal” about any of it.
He was always dumb but now he is completely deranged.
All I can say is, I remember the Trump years with deep nostalgia. A world at peace, a country secure and prosperous, a golden future on the horizon, peace in the Middle East, feared by foes and loved by friends.