One can reasonably wonder why and how djt got elected in 2024. By then, his mendacity, corruption, explicit authoritarian intentions, e.g., his 1/6 coup attempt, and poor track record of governance were clear. There was no empirical basis to trust him. Nonetheless, tens of millions of people trusted, believed and voted for him. Tens of millions of others did not vote for Harris.
Election analyses constantly point to three factors as the main reasons. Near or at the top was economic discontent, resentment and pain associated with (i) wage stagnation, (ii) inflation, which was effectively blamed on Biden, and (iii) globalization, which was blamed on Biden and Democrats generally. Also among the top factors were (1) fear, anger and resentments grounded in perceptions that immigration was very bad, with the borders being uncontrolled, (2) cultural fear, anger and resentments related to relentless cultural and anti-woke narratives of oppression and discrimination, e.g., DEI and woke extremism, and (3) demographic political shifts of expanded support for djt and Republicans generally among Black men, Hispanics, and young white men not college-educated.
Truth made tribal
Although not usually included as an important factor in 2024 election analyses, was decades of radical right authoritarian demagoguery and divisive propaganda. djt’s ascendancy was not an aberration. Instead, it was the culmination of a intentional decades-long propaganda effort designed to displace empirical (evidence- and reason-based) governance with emotion- and loyalty-driven authoritarianism. Along the way, major changes in the media landscape played a role. For example, Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) owned 800+ AM radio stations by 2011. That constituted a homogenized authoritarian messaging Leviathan. We are all aware of the authoritarianism and demagoguery that dominated major radical right sources like Faux News for decades. The Moral Majority’s opposition to civil rights and LGBTQ+ protections established a template in the 1980s for conflating natural social change with moral decay.
Although authoritarianism was inherent all along among elites, popular right-wing rhetoric aimed at the rank and file evolved over time from more or less principled, institutional democratic conservatism to populism to mostly unprincipled authoritarianism and demagoguery. The Overton window was gradually pushed from the right, to the hard right to the extreme authoritarian right. Rush Limbaugh was an example. His rhetoric started out as a Reagan-style small government conservatism with belief in constitutional separation of powers (not belief in a unitary executive), federalism, and respect for democratic institutions like the courts, free press, and academia. Over time his rhetoric evolved (2009-2016) (Obama won via “illegal immigrant voters”). Later his rhetoric became harsher (2107-2021) and degenerated into a more reality- and reason-detached authoritarian demagoguery (the 1/6 Capitol rioters were “hundreds of thousands of people — Americans who have gotten fed up with having elections stolen from them by the Democrats, including the White House.”).
Also, there was the rise of toxic media, which became a much bigger factor starting about 2008-2010. The collective legacy of Limbaugh, Faux News and other sources of radical right authoritarian demagoguery was that they made truth tribal for a significant minority of Americans. Politics went from more or less evidence- and reason-based to more or less emotion and tribe loyalty-based. Collectively, that paved the way for the rise of djt as an openly authoritarian demagogue despite what his public track record showed him to be.