MAGA, from Middle America to the new right
One of the great ironies regarding the figure of Donald Trump is his positioning on the conventional notion of the political spectrum. While the current president appears to be extreme in many ways, the reality is that in both of his electoral victories, he actually received crucial support because a portion of the voting population saw him as less so than his opponent. It would certainly be audacious to consider Trump a moderate: his language and political behavior are anything but restrained, and his political base has proven willing to challenge both societal norms and the law to pursue its aims. Yet the backlash against movements such as “wokeness” and DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) opened the door for the Republican Party to claim the center in American cultural discourse. Less visible, however, is the emerging shift in national identity proposed by the MAGA wing of the party today.
Surveys of voters in 2016 showed that while Donald Trump was considered to be quite conservative, Hillary Clinton was seen as just as far from the political center in the other direction. Not only was there a view of Democrats as being too left-wing, as exemplified by the “socialist” rhetoric around Bernie Sanders, but respected pollsters such as Gallup and Pew Research found that while Trump was seen as unconventional, he was not considered ideologically extreme. To the contrary, Clinton came across as a rigid representative of the “system”, and thus less likely to change the status quo. Ultimately, Trump’s mix of positions – against immigration and in favor of Social Security, pro-business but against globalization – created the hope among a sufficient number of voters that he would actually make changes in the interest of “Middle America”.
The four years of the first Trump administration produced a shift left in society, driven by a reaction to what became a very unpopular presidency. The social movements culminated in the widespread demonstrations held after the murder by police officers of George Floyd in 2020, which saw the involvement of Americans of all ethnic and social groups. As often happens, there was subsequently a law and order-type reaction to the protests. Trump and the Republican Party attempted to exploit this trend in the 2020 elections, although the effect was somewhat blunted due to the president’s other failings.
By the middle of the Biden years, the phenomenon accelerated in reaction to the progressive push for policies such as defunding the police and promoting an “anti-racist” agenda in educational, corporate and cultural contexts. Once again, the Democrats were seen as being driven by an extremist ideology, allowing the conservatives to claim the middle ground.
This strategy turned out to be quite effective in the 2024 presidential election, as the Trump campaign hammered Kamala Harris on this point. There was irony here, as well: Harris generally avoided “culture war” issues during the campaign, correctly recognizing the need to focus on bread-and-butter issues in order to contrast Trump’s appeal with the working class. However, Republicans used Harris’ past statements against her, in particular her support for sex change operations for transgender immigrants and prisoners, expressed in a television interview during the 2020 Democratic primaries.
The question to be asked is whether the political success of the conservative anti-woke campaign indicates a true cultural shift in the United States population. Americans are undoubtedly more conservative than what one could expect from following mainstream media and liberal academic institutions. There is a sense that the focus on helping minorities has led to reverse discrimination, a practice which regardless of cases in which specific programs may be useful and popular (such as affirmative action), is easily presented as conflicting with the basic value of equal treatment based on merit.
The second Trump administration has taken the battle against wokeness and DEI to another level, which in turn risks becoming extreme in its own right. It is indisputable that the decision to shut down vast government programs in the name of combatting woke ideology represents a dramatic case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater: when essential health care and research is cut in the name of combatting DEI, it is clear that political ideology is prevailing over human welfare. Indeed, polling shows little support for the Trump/Musk slash-and-burn approach to federal programs. The pain caused is real, and the cultural justification is not resonating with the population.
Various surveys show that support for initiatives promoting diversity and inclusion remains relatively high. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, for example, found that when breaking down DEI into specific initiatives, rather than viewed as a political issue, even among Republicans there is majority support for courses on racism and scholarships for students of color.
This underlines a key truth about American politics that pundits tend to forget: what seem like wide swings in public opinion are actually often fairly small, although sufficient to sway elections in a heavily polarized society. High partisan loyalty amplifies movement among limited numbers of voters to make them seem momentous. Think of Trump’s 2024 “landslide”: in reality he won by only 1.5%, one of the smallest margins in modern presidential election history, and the Republican majority in the House of Representative is razor-thin.
The evidence for a wholesale cultural shift to the right is not strong, although various institutions – from corporations to universities – are acting as if a new paradigm is imperative. Nevertheless, the Trump administration is blazing forward, assuming society wants massive change on this front; which means using DEI and immigration as bogeymen that can justify just about any sort of reaction. The immediate result is a clash with the courts, as the White House and Justice Department tend to ignore the law and the Constitution when pursuing their goals. In addition, the president’s popularity has already fallen noticeably in his first 100 days, and seems likely to continue its downward trend.
Beneath the surface of the exploitation of the anti-woke reaction, lies a more serious cultural shift driven by the hard-core populists; a shift that could portend a change in the very identity of the country. Vice President JD Vance has said that while “ideas and principles are great… People will not fight for abstractions,” but rather for a homeland.
History shows otherwise, but this shift toward a “blood and soil” view dovetails nicely with the campaign to expel foreigners, serving as justification for action against whomever isn’t “one of us”. A worrying example comes from a recent article by John Daniel Davidson, senior editor at the conservative publication The Federalist. He writes that “Our government exists to secure natural, unalienable rights for American citizens,”… not for others, claiming that noncitizens do not have the same rights.
This is a far cry from the aspiration of “All men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. The Trump administration and its ideological allies have exploited the backlash against the extreme elements of wokism – a predictable, but limited reaction entirely consistent with political and cultural cycles in the country – to push for positions that would entail a fundamental change in the principles underlying the United States of America.
