I’m not sure I agree with this Mother Jones article’s assessment (read it here) of why Trump won the 2024 election. But it has some interesting statistics. Summary: Wealth inequality has exploded under Republican governance. To wit:
“In January 1981, when Reagan took office, the households of the Middle 40—that’s the 50th to 90th wealth percentiles—held a collective 31.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. Fast-forward to January 2022: Their share of the pie had dwindled to 25.7 percent, even as the combined wealth of the richest 0.01 percent of households soared from less than 3 percent of the total to 11 percent.”
Yes, the economy has grown over the last 44 years. But the rich have hogged nearly all of the gains, aided by tax policies that drive deficits and the nation’s debt higher, and increasingly force social welfare programs that help the working and middle classes to rely on borrowing, which threatens their future existence. Which is what Republicans want. Income inequality has exploded, too:
“In September, the Congressional Budget Office reported that [the] average income of the highest-earning 1 percent of taxpayers in 2021 was more than $3.1 million, or 42 times the average income of households in the bottom 90 percent …. That’s the most skewed income distribution since CBO began reporting this data in 1979 …. Back then, the disparity was only 12 to 1.”
As for why Trump won, the article says the broad electorate is “fed up.” But “why in the name of Heaven would they vote for Trump, a billionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth who has lied and cheated his way through life?” And whose regressive policies favor the rich and hurt everyone else? The likely answer lies here:
“In courting Americans who feel, fairly or unfairly, feel like the system has never done them a bit of good, Team Trump has the rhetorical advantage, because he says he’ll destroy that system … [and] even if you rightly suspect that the Republicans won’t … improve your lot, you might just be tempted to … watch the system burn.”
That’s consistent with what political journalist David Corn (profiled here) says in another Mother Jones article (here):
“For years, Trump has forced American politics into a downward spiral of unprecedented indecencies and anti-democratic impulses. And this year, more than 71 million Americans continued to cheer this along.”
With more votes counted, the number is actually 74 million, about the same as in 2020. This time he won the popular vote because millions fewer voted for the Democratic ticket. But Corn is right this is a “watch it burn” electorate; Trump stoked “grievance, resentment, and bigotry,” and “essentially QAnonized American politics.” It took very fed up voters for him to succeed at that.