Fareed Zakaria recently wrote an insightful analysis of the US election – which was all the more interesting because of he is a prominent commentator on the virulently anti-Trump CNN network. He identified three problems that had cost the Democrats dearly: firstly “the Biden administration’s blindness to the collapse of the immigration system and the chaos on the border;” secondly, “the over-zealous misuse of the law to punish Trump”.
According to Zakaria, some of the cases against Trump were legitimate - “but the host of them piled on in rapid succession gave the impression that the legal system was being weaponised to get Trump.”
The third factor was “the dominance of identity politics on the left, which made Democrats push all kinds of diversity, equity and inclusion policies that largely came out of the urban, academic bubble that alienated many mainstream voters.” He observed that one of Trump’s most effective ads made the point that “Kamala is for them/they: President Trump is for you”.
However, there were deeper, more structural, reasons for the Trump victory. They lie in the growing class cleavage between the privileged, predominantly white, elite on the one hand and the struggling multiracial underclass on the other.
The problem was identified by Charles Murray in his epic 2012 book “Coming Apart”. He described the growing rift in white America between the 20% elite and the bottom 30%. Membership of the elite had, since the 1970s, been defined increasingly by cognitive ability. They made it to the top – not primarily because of family connections, as in the past – but because they were smart; they could do math; and had impressive degrees from the best universities. He referred to this group as “Belmont” in which family life, religiosity and industriousness were stable – or had declined only marginally. More than 80% of this group were married – usually to other inhabitants of Belmont.
The bottom 30% lived in “Fishtown” - where the socio-economic wheels were falling off. Industriousness and religiosity were collapsing, and traditional family structures were falling apart with only 48% of its inhabitants marrying and living in traditional nuclear families – compared with 84% in 1963.
Although “Coming Apart” dealt with the class cleavage in white America it also reflected growing divisions between the predominantly white progressive elite on the one hand and black and Hispanic minorities on the other. 80% of progressives wanted legal immigration to be made easier compared with only 30% of black Americans and 28% of Hispanics. 70% of black Americans and 56% of Hispanics believed that reducing crime should be a top government priority – as opposed to only 34% of white Democrats.
Democrats had moved far to the left of median voters on key issues. 60% of Democrats supported affirmative action compared with only 20% of median voters. 40% wanted increased immigration as opposed to 20% of median voters who opposed it.
These stats go some way to explaining why, between 2020 and 2024, black support for Trump doubled from 8% to 16% and Hispanic support rose from 35% to 43%. Some of Trump’s biggest gains were in traditional, hard-core Democrat states like California (up 13%) New York (up 12%) and Massachusetts (up 9%).
The situation in Fishtown has deteriorated since 2012 while the privilege, power and affluence of the inhabitants of Belmont have become more entrenched. The people of Belmont – the inhabitants of Zakaria’s “urban, academic bubble” - are now more likely to be graduate and post-graduate Democrats than country club Republicans.
Another factor in the election was the question of lived reality vs campaign rhetoric. The Democrats proudly proclaimed before the election that the US economy was flourishing. Employment, productivity, and wages were looking good, and inflation was down. This, however, was not the experience of many of the people in the bottom half of the economy. Since 2020 the cost of groceries was up by 25% and petrol by 50%. House prices had increased by 47%. A whopping 78% of the population reported that they were living from paycheck to paycheck. 20% of Americans had maxed out on their credit cards – and another 17% had come close to doing so. Credit card holders were paying an average of 24% interest on their outstanding debt of $1,14 trillion.
It is not surprising that all this has contributed to an unprecedented – and unaffordable - increase in social transfers (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment and disability, food stamps, and veterans’ benefits) from 6,5% of GDP in 1970 to almost 15% ($4,3 trillion) now. If government transfer payments were spread evenly among all Americans, they would in 2022 have amounted to an annual payment of $11,500 per person. 56% of social transfers – mostly Medicare – is going to the rapidly growing section of the population who are 65 and older – and who split evenly in their support for Trump and Harris.
Underlying the growing cleavage in American society is wealth inequality. The top 0.1% of the population own 13,5% of the wealth; the top 1% own 30,2%; the top 10% own 66,7%; the next 40% own 30,8% - and the bottom 50% own just 2,5%. The country's 800 billionaires own 3,8% - considerably more than the bottom 50% (which includes 170 million people)! This gives the USA a wealth GINI coefficient of .850 - which is only a little better than South Africa’s .886 coefficient. The bottom line of the election is that wealth inequality had been increasing. In 1983 the upper-income group owned 60% of national wealth: by 2026 its share had risen to 79%. During the same period the middle-income group’s share declined from 32% to 17% and that of the lower-income group from 7% to 4%.
This, then, is the background against which we should read the factors for Trump’s victory identified by Fareed Zakaria. Overriding these is the perception that, under the Biden presidency, life had not been improving for the majority of Americans and that their interests were being ignored by an increasingly disdainful and detached elite.
This has been accompanied by a significant decline in trust in traditional institutions. According to a Gallup poll in June 2023 trust in the presidency stood at 26%; newspapers were down to 18%; TV news was down to 14% and congress was at only 8%. Much of this could, no doubt, be ascribed to the gross mismanagement of the COVID pandemic and to the perception that people had been lied to by their government over the origin, treatment and seriousness of the pandemic.
All the factors identified by Zakaria – uncontrolled immigration; weaponisation of the law to punish enemies; and the imposition of DEI ideology - as well as the growing gulf between the elite ruling class on the one hand the people on the other - are also present in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Before too long they may presage similar populist convulsions on the other side of the Atlantic.
The Trump election victory might just turn out to be the most significant development in the international arena since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
