What after Trump?

Oct. 26, 2016

After 2016 election: Trumpism fading or apocalypse?

Riad Tabbarah

Summary

As a result, some of the debate has shifted to what will happen after the election: Will the Trump phenomenon melt away and become a footnote in the history of U.S. elections, or will we witness a deepening of the ethnic and racial divide in American society, accompanied by enduring violence?

Trump has not missed an opportunity lately to assure his supporters that these elections are rigged.

This time the reasons for the rise of Trump are of a long-term nature, so even if Trump fades away, which is not guaranteed, the issues behind his rise will remain. Trump's appeal is mainly, if not solely, directed at the white population of the United States.

In 2012, Mitt Romney received 59 percent of the white vote and failed to make it, partly because the minorities voted more intensively than in the past, and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. In the last four years, that is, since that last election, the minorities' eligible voters grew by an average of 10 percent, while the white eligible voters grew by only 2 percent, making it still more difficult for the white voters to elect a president.

All polls and probability estimates point already to a victory for Hillary Clinton. An analysis of the latest electoral map of “Daily Wire” seems to indicate that Clinton could well end up with a landslide victory in the number of electoral votes. The two leading probability models, “Five Thirty Eight,” and the “Upshot” confirm this prediction. At the time of writing (two weeks before Election Day), the first gave Clinton an 86 percent chance of winning and the latter 93 percent. As a result, some of the debate has shifted to what will happen after the election: Will the Trump phenomenon melt away and become a footnote in the history of U.S. elections, or will we witness a deepening of the ethnic and racial divide in American society, accompanied by enduring violence?

Ross Douthat of the New York Times is an advocate of the first position. In a recent article, he stated that “Trump could fade into the celebrity-industrial background of our culture,” because, for one thing, his “base is senior citizens, not the testosterone-addled young” that create a danger of violent upheaval. Furthermore, the idea that Trump could establish a populist conservative TV network with lasting effect, cannot be easily implemented. Fox News, Douthat said, filled a vacuum, and there are no more vacuums to fill.

Damon Linker, writing recently in the British “The Week” magazine, imagines a scenario in which “groups of armed white men who, at Trump’s urging had patrolled minority neighborhoods ... on Election Day” will “stick around and [expand],” after “Trump’s Election Night speech, and the launch of his network in mid-December.” This will be followed by a paralysis of government, led by the Republican majority in the House, and by sporadic but widespread riots sparked by the shooting of black men by policemen.

The aftermath of these strange elections is, of course, difficult to predict, but there are certain dangerous signs already apparent.

Trump has not missed an opportunity lately to assure his supporters that these elections are rigged. If Trump loses, as expected, and continues to claim that the elections were rigged, this will certainly agitate his supporters and may result in some disturbances. Furthermore, the prospect of gun-toting white vigilantes patrolling black neighborhoods during the voting process and, as feared by Linker, not disbanding afterward should be a major source of concern.

But all this does not constitute a long-term threat to the stability of the American society. Violence during elections, and even immediately after, is no stranger to American presidential elections. The most recent major violent interruptions are to be found, for example, in the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 and in the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004. These disturbances resulted in mass arrests but petered out rapidly, without leaving much of a long-term effect. They did so because they were expressions of revolt against momentary phenomena. In 1968, it was largely a protest against the Vietnam War, exacerbated by the assassination of Martin Luther King in April, and of Robert Kennedy in June. In 2004, the protests were driven by George W. Bush’s re-election bid, his wars in the Middle East and other social issues that the protesters wanted to include in the platform of the Republican Party. The Vietnam War ended in 1973, and Obama was elected in 2008 promising disengagement from the Middle East, and both protests ended.

This time the reasons for the rise of Trump are of a long-term nature, so even if Trump fades away, which is not guaranteed, the issues behind his rise will remain. Trump’s appeal is mainly, if not solely, directed at the white population of the United States. Some 90 percent of Trump’s supporters are white, according to a detailed survey published last September. Although the majority of this group does not have a college degree, almost one-third has. Trump’s appeal, therefore, is not only to less educated whites who feel their jobs threatened by minorities (particularly, blacks, Latinos and Asians), it is also to professionals who are likely to be more secure in their positions. The explanation for Trump’s appeal is a widespread feeling among the white people in the United States that they are rapidly losing their historical firm grip on the politics of the country to the minorities. And they are, of course, right. In 2012, Mitt Romney received 59 percent of the white vote and failed to make it, partly because the minorities voted more intensively than in the past, and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. In the last four years, that is, since that last election, the minorities’ eligible voters grew by an average of 10 percent, while the white eligible voters grew by only 2 percent, making it still more difficult for the white voters to elect a president.

These are long-term trends. They are not like the war in Vietnam that ended in 1973, together with the protests sparked by it. Even if Trump fades away, there will be others who will rise to defend the historical white hegemony, and there will be enough whites to back him up, at least until a new normal is established. America is not short of white supremacist extremist organizations ready to do war for a cause like this: The white Christian nationalists, the Neo-Nazis, the Second Amendment militias, anti-government paramilitaries and the heavily armed “patriot” groups are major examples. Official data indicate that these right-wing extremist groups represent “the most direct terror threat in the U.S.”

So if Trump loses and rejects the election results, he will be initiating a relatively long legal process, that may be accompanied by violent protests, particularly since a large percentage of Republican voters (73 percent) already believe that the election could be unfairly taken from him. But this protest will hopefully be short lived, like those mentioned earlier, and end when the final results are in.

But what about the long run? The loss of political power by the white population will continue and intensify. This will, undoubtedly, be exploited, if not by Trump himself, then by other populist politicians. The white supremacist groups, indeed many non-extremist whites, seeing the meltdown of white political power, will be in great turmoil. These facts seem to be all the elements needed for a perfect storm.

Riad Tabbarah is a former ambassador of Lebanon to the United States.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2016/Oct-26/378196-after-2016-election-trumpism-fading-or-apocalypse.ashx