Trump achieved the first egalitarian boom in decades

The American left-wing monthly The New Republic has published a long and stripped down self-criticism that may also be valuable to the Italian left. The author, Christopher Caldwell, writes that there is little to celebrate for the American Democrats, given their anemic result in the vote for Congress, stemming from structural problems.

For starters, the results of the Trump presidency: invisible from globalized cities, all democratic, where 90% of American journalists live. Trump has achieved something extraordinary: the first egalitarian boom in decades. In 2019 it managed to lower unemployment to 3.7% (practically full employment, except for the frictional share of those who are changing jobs), and above all an increase of 4.7% in the wages of the lowest quarter of the population. During the last three years of Obama, labor income had also increased, but especially those of the top decile (by 20%), while the other strata had only registered slight improvements.

So if the virus hadn’t existed, Trump probably would have won. But even here: the 31% drop in GDP in the second quarter was offset by the 33% rebound in the third quarter. Except that the data in favor of the incumbent president was released just five days before the vote: too late for the perception of economic decline to change. Also, the majority of voters had already voted: this was the true distortion caused by voting by mail, not the nonexistent fraud.

It’s embarrassing for Democrats to admit: Trump was unlucky. More than his victory four years ago, it was chance that caused his defeat a month ago. Because now the Democratic Party is seen as the defender of economic privilege: nine of the ten richest states voted for Biden, 14 of the 15 poorest for Trump. If the District of Columbia (the capital Washington) were to become a state, as many Democrats want, it would be the richest in the United States, with a per capita income 17% higher than the second, Connecticut. And in Washington Biden beat Trump 92 to 5. The Democrats are the party of the global economy, therefore of its two consequences abhorred by the working class: inequality and ethnic diversity.

“This is why Biden’s popular front is destined to crumble,” Caldwell ruled. How do Socialists Sanders and Elizabeth Warren keep up with the ‘big money’ rich who gave the Democratic Party its first billion dollar campaign (60% more than Trump spent)? Where have Obama’s small ten dollar donors gone? This time they covered just 39% of Biden’s funding, compared to 45% for Trump. Therefore, here too it was more democratic than the Democrats.

In Caldwell’s analysis there is also room for Italy. “In the 1860s,” he writes, “three great Western countries, Germany, Italy, and the United States, fought similar wars of unification, in which the more dynamic part of each nation subjugated the more bucolic part.” Today in the United States, the Democrats are the party of technological and demographic progress (California of Silicon Valley, New York, Boston), the Republicans of backwardness. Until half a century ago, Republicans were instead the party of capital and Democrats that of workers. But capital and labor need each other, dynamism and tradition do not. Therefore, the current gap runs the risk of being irremediable.

Caldwell concludes: We have never seen anything like this before. There will be more instability in the future: “The conflict is no longer between two visions of America, but between two different peoples.” Each of the factions is convinced that they represent the incarnation of America, against the anti-Americanism of the others. Vice President Kamala Harris told her 79 million voters: “You have chosen hope and honesty, science and truth.” And Michelle Obama: “We voted against lies, hatred, chaos and division.” Bad things, but they got 73 million votes, more than ever for her husband. Xenophobic, macho, selfish things: “deplorable”, according to the famous definition of suicide by Hillary Clinton. Which, however, while highly politically incorrect, has attracted ten million more Americans than Trump’s loot in 2016.

So while Joe Biden’s ecumenical appeal has prevailed for now, the new president’s America has become indecipherable to many of his court’s rowdy leaders. A bit like Lombardy just two years ago, when Democrat Giorgio Gori lost 29-49 to North League player Attilio Fontana in the regional. An astronomical detachment. Are some Italian Democrats ringing in your ears?