November 16, 2018

Trump’s Not Populist Enough

The midterms suggest that President Donald Trump needs to double down on populism, just not the sort that’s been his signature to this point.

The midterms suggest that President Donald Trump needs to double down on populism, just not the sort that’s been his signature to this point.

Trump is both too populist and not populist enough. His populism is largely, although not entirely, a matter of style — combative, lacerating, emotive, unpredictable and grandiose.

This sensibility is a central part of Trump’s appeal. It also puts the accent on his personality, which is a double-edged sword, at best.

For every Trump voter that it lights up, it reminds a suburban woman why she hates his guts. If Trump’s populism is always based foremost on Rally Trump and Twitter Trump, i.e., on the behavior pushing the suburbs away from him, there is no way for him to try to tamp down the yawning geographic and demographic vulnerability underlined by the midterms.

Other than on trade and immigration, Trump has governed as a fairly typical Republican. His biggest legislative accomplishment during the first two years was a tax cut out of Republican Central Casting.

Trump knew that it didn’t resonate as a campaign issue. “Hey, did you hear that I created a 20 percent deduction for pass-through income?” wasn’t the messaging he was looking for.

He showed an instinctual sense that he needed a genuine middle-class agenda. He talked of a fantastical, imminent middle-class tax cut. And he insisted that Republicans would do a better job dealing with the problem of pre-existing conditions than Democrats, without offering any supporting policy.

In the absence of any populist substance, Trump was thrown back on the caravan, and more caravan, and his usual mediagenic provocations. This pushed both his supporters and opponents to the polls, and — with the exception of some key red-state Senate races — more of the latter than the former.

Going into 2020, he needs a populism that is less stylistic and more substantive, and one that has crossover appeal to Trump’s working-class voters and suburbanites.

It’s easy to see a rough outline. One focus should be work. Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute has written a new book, “The Once and Future Worker,” that is a guide to new conservative thinking on how to support a healthy labor market. The Trump team should crib from it freely.

Another broad category should be the cost of living, especially health care and college. Although you wouldn’t know it from the midterm campaign, conservatives do have proposals to deal with pre-existing conditions. The thrust of the GOP health care agenda is to reduce costs to consumers, a theme Trump should emphasize.

It should be natural to take on the costs of higher education, driven in part by the unintended consequences of federal programs, and explore alternative means of training and accreditation besides four-year college. Trump, of all politicians, should want to promote the interests of young people entering the workforce without a four-year degree.

As for Trump’s signature issue of immigration, it would go down easier in the suburbs if he began talking about E-Verify, which puts the focus on the employers who hire undocumented immigrants rather than the immigrants themselves.

The problem is that these are relatively small-bore ideas that don’t lend themselves to Trump’s rhetoric of large claims and easy-to-understand villains. Taken together, it can be an agenda larger than its parts, but it will need to be thought through and can’t just be grabbed off the shelf.

Even if last week’s results weren’t as encouraging to Trump as they first appeared, he is still very much in the game. But unless some exogenous event boosts Trump’s standing to another level, he is dependent on Democrats once again nominating a candidate unacceptable to the white working class (and not particularly popular in the suburbs, either).

Even then, it could be a near-run thing. Best to deepen and widen his populism in advance of another effort to thread the electoral needle.

© 2018 by King Features Syndicate

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.