The geography of Trump-ism

Opinion: Many commentators are trying to make sense of the re-election of Donald Trump and as a geography teacher, I always think geography is a valuable discipline to make sense of momentous and world-changing events.

Let’s start with some simple stories, ones that I have heard in the last few days. The right-wing media, which wants a business-led agenda in the White House, created a powerful media campaign which misled and duped many Americans into thinking Trump, a racist and misogynist bigot, is on their side. The more ‘intellectual’ variant of this explanation holds that ideology isn’t just about ideas, but is something that gets into our feelings and emotions, taps into our insecurities and doubts. Trump serves as the powerful figure who promises to quell these anxieties.

The problem with these explanations is they don’t get us very far in explaining why Trump, and given that he was defeated in 2020, why now?

There is a collection of essays under the title The Political Landscapes of Donald Trump which explores the geographies of Trump from multiple conceptual standpoints, and contextualises his rise to power within the geography of his victory in 2016. (I guess a revised and updated edition is being prepared this very moment.)

Three arguments that appear in the book are worth drawing attention to.

The first focuses on the question of whether Trump’s election in 2016 was indicative of a major shift in the political landscape. Electoral geographers point out that, in most elections, the political map ends up pretty much the same, with changes at the edges. The authors argue that the 2016 map was largely a continuation of the 2012 version, when Mitt Romney was the Republican presidential candidate.

The distribution of support for the Republican presidential candidates varied only slightly between 2012 and 2016, though Trump did better than Romney in the six crucial swing states that delivered his electoral college victory, and he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Trump became president in 2016 because he won over more voters – mainly disadvantaged Whites – in the Rust Belt swing states. Clinton lost support there among Blacks and voters in those states who, after supporting Barack Obama strongly in 2012, abstained from voting in 2016. Geography mattered in the 2016 election.

Second, what about the ethno-national appeal of Trump? Electoral geographers make much of the ‘locality effect’. People decide who to vote for but tend to vote in line with people near where they live. The jury is out as to whether Trump’s ethno-nationalist appeal reflects an emerging American attitude or the dying embers of white male hegemony. But the geography of his support is focused on places that languish in the rearguard, rather than the vanguard, of American society. To put it crudely, Trump appealed to left-behind people in left-behind places.

Third, and as an overall comment, the editor of The Political Landscapes of Donald Trump (Barney Warf, Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas) read out the charge sheet against what he calls ‘The Donald’. It’s a long chapter. He concludes that working-class Americans who had experienced decades of neoliberalism, globalisation, automation, and the offshoring of production, deserted the Democratic Party, which took them for granted. As the US economy changed shape, many blamed their declining fortunes on immigration, and were receptive to Trump’s xenophobia.

What this doesn’t explain is why the political map reverted to ‘normal’ in 2020, and why there was a pattern of clear ‘blue’ and ‘red’ states to begin with? Trump seems to have shifted the balance again, but is this temporary or indicative of a genuine shift in the underlying politics and culture?

The end of neoliberalism?

To get at this we need a sense of the ‘long space’ of America’s political economy. Gary Gerstle’s (2022) The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order is the type of history that requires us to think beyond events to see how they are part of wider patterns. He sees the last century as marked by two orders – the new deal order and the neoliberal order. Gerstle argues that the 2016 election was significant in that it signalled that the neoliberal order that had prevailed was breaking down. The global financial crash of 2008 was the trigger.

In the years following, three very different groups of Americans began to transmute their economic distress into political anger and protest. These were Whites who saw themselves outside the corridors of the neoliberal order (the Tea Party), young people who discovered that the economic future was uncertain (Occupy Wall Street) and black Americans who were angered at the burst housing bubble and police violence in their communities (Black Lives Matter).

The three groups profoundly convulsed American politics, fuelling the rise of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They were two very different politicians but shared the same analysis of America’s problems. They both argued that decades of neoliberal free trade and open borders had undermined working-class American’s jobs. They both opposed and challenged the elites on Wall Street. They spoke a similar language on immigration. Their imagined America was dominated by the former Pennsylvania steelworkers whose bridges, railways and skyscrapers make up the great American landscape. In their different ways they sought to ‘make America great again’.

But both Clinton and Obama were losing their grip on the national imagination. Clinton won the Democrat nomination, but it was clear she was out of touch with the perceived reality.

Gerstle reminds us that political orders don’t disappear overnight. There are still those who want to deregulate, and the cultural elements of neoliberalism (excessive individualism, celebrity culture and rampant consumerism) continue to shape contemporary America.

Trump is an indication of that mix. Much will depend on whether the US economy can regain its economic momentum. Of course, these are dangerous times.