Jonathan P. Baird

As people sort through election results, one thread that has commonly emerged is the idea that Trump won because he was the “change” candidate. He was the disrupter, who was anti-establishment. This supposedly enabled him to corner the market on voters who wanted to blow up the status quo.

There are a number of variants on that theme. Trump was allegedly authentic because he told it like it was. He was unlike other politicians, more plainspoken. He intended to drain the swamp and purge the Deep State. Trump’s minion, Steve Bannon, said he would deconstruct the administrative state. He appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and is friendly with Dana White and UFC fighters.

Trump’s misogyny and his archaic notion of masculinity are held up as a form of rebellion. The ridiculous memes of blubbery Trump as a highly muscled Rambo figure appeared all over social media. Trump’s history of repeated sexual assault is passed over and is not seen as disqualifying. Instead, his machismo is held up as a virtue. He nominates others accused of sexual impropriety to high office. This is about change as anti-feminism and about silencing women.

Being a soulless entrepreneur who makes millions and is surrounded by beautiful women is what now passes for rebellion. It is a sad perversion of the honorable role of anti-establishment rebel and there is nothing that is in the slightest rebellious about it. It is more like an archetype of the capitalist robber baron. To be more specific, Trump fits the archetype of the huckster and con man who preys on the weak.

Whatever the efforts to repackage Trump and his MAGA movement as “rebellious”, they are, in fact, a movement of, by, and for the billionaire class which spared no expense to see him elected. These billionaires were buying the politician who would feather their nests and not interfere with their private pursuit of endless billions, mansions, mega-yachts, island hideaways and even space odysseys. Trump was the “greed is good” candidate.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, gave Trump’s campaign over $130 million. Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon family, donated as least $115 million to the campaign. A laundry list of other billionaires including Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon, Vivek Ramaswamy, Bill Ackman, Diane Hendricks, John Paulson, Scott Bessent, Woody Johnson and Marc Andreessen went all in. The circle of billionaires supporting Trump is similar to the oligarchs around Putin.

The fact that Trump won many working class voters means nothing about the trajectory of his administration. His advisors told Axios that on day one he is going to push “a business-friendly agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and expanded energy production” and “will fill his top ranks with billionaires, former CEOs’, tech leaders and loyalists”. The veneer that the GOP was for workers will be quickly stripped away.

As someone who lived through the 1960’s, I know something about what it means to be anti-establishment. It is not about posturing a fake image of cool. The American ruling class has created a society of vast economic inequality where grossly disproportionate wealth goes to the top 1%. Today the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 92%. We don’t guarantee health care. We fail to recognize the urgency of the climate crisis. The economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote:

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of motives, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.”

Being anti-establishment is about fighting the distorted priorities of unfettered capitalism. 60% of us live paycheck to paycheck. One survey found 63% of workers were unable to pay a $500 emergency expense. On the other hand, things have never been better for billionaires. They have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes.

I would suggest my own definition of being anti-establishment and it is not about having tattoos. It is caring about the pain and suffering of the millions of working class Americans who have been screwed by the system. The labor leader Eugene V. Debs put it best:

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

Being anti-establishment is not about getting rich, unjustified hatred against immigrants, indifference to others, being sexist, racist or homophobic or being opposed to science. Change comes in different varieties and the shaking up the status quo Trump offers is an illusion.

As distraught Democrats consider the reasons for Trump’s gains and their electoral losses, I would counsel against despair. Democrats can certainly come back. It is important that there is wide debate about the reasons for the Democrats’ poor performance but some things are clear and they have been best articulated by Sen. Bernie Sanders. To quote him:

“There was no appreciation – no appreciation – of the struggling and suffering of millions and millions of working-class people. And unless you recognize that reality, and have a vision of how you get out of that, I think you’re not going to be going very far as a political party.”

In the last election, the Democrats failed to recognize peoples’ anger or their suffering. Saying the economy was good when it was hurting so many was inexcusable.

We can do so much better. Democrats have the great example of FDR. While certainly not a flawless figure, his example of uniting a broad majority still provides a model for how Democrats can rebound. It is only a matter of time before Trump and his administration are more widely despised. Many people seem to like authoritarians but they will soon be dissatisfied with outcomes. That is entirely predictable.