Northeastern politics is about group conflict
There are two fundamental ways to look at politics.
To some people, politics is ideological — it’s about big ideas, big issues, and big principles.
To others, politics is about group conflict — it’s about who you stand with, and who you stand against.
Everyone feels the tug of both of these ideas, and every successful political movement incorporates a little of both. But the modern Republican Party as a whole has become a very ideological organization. Trump is, fundamentally, a backlash to that.
Huge swathes of white working-class America have moved into the GOP orbit because they see the modern Democratic Party as fundamentally not for “people like them.” Many of these voters aren’t particularly interested in the details of the conservative agenda, and have no principled opposition to programs (like Social Security) that they see as benefitting them personally. What they want is a politician who’ll stand up for their interests, not a politician who adheres to a particular ideology.
That’s Trump.
But it’s also the Northeast. On the Pacific Coast, state Republican Parties have generally clung to conservative ideology and simply contented themselves to be outvoted in statewide races. The Northeast is different. Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland all currently have Republican governors. George Pataki served three terms as governor of New York, and New City recently had a 20-year run of Republican mayors.
These politicians were (and are) pretty different from one another, but in that diversity there is a common theme: a fair amount of ideological flexibility that allowed them to build majority coalitions of white people prepared to stand against domination of state politics by “urban” machines.
This is Trump’s basic brand of politics. You may not know exactly what he stands for, but you do know exactly who he stands for — or at least who he stands against.
* Trump is merely exposing the fact that a lot of northeastern whites are fundamentally oriented toward populist-nationalist politics, not toward lamestream conservatism, or neoconservatism, or right-libertarianism, or centrist establishmentarianism. When there is not a populist-nationalist option available in Republican politics, these whites stay home, which is why the centrist establishmentarian wins. When there is, the otherwise apathetic whites show up and drown out the establishment. Trump is opening up a new lane in American rightist politics, and the supply is creating its own demand.
