Republicans as Economic Radicals

If Donald Trump’s Republican Party is now the party of “radical” economic change, as the Financial Times recently warned, it is not radical in anything resembling the left-wing sense.

The rules of the game it intends to shred are, in the main, those that offer some dignity and hope to immigrants, trans people, women, and other oppressed groups. The change Republicans are after is reactionary in direction: sabotaging the country’s excruciatingly slow transition out of a fossil fuel economy, tearing up workplace safety protections and union rights, and handing out a new round of generous tax cuts for the rich.

And yet, with Trump slightly but consistently behind in the polls and desperate to win — and in characteristically chaotic fashion — his campaign has also started to articulate a right-wing program for workers. Combined with the air of radicalism hanging over his campaign, of big changes and uncertainty, many will falsely but somewhat understandably see in it a promise for better days ahead.

Trump’s right-wing pitch to workers includes: Ending taxes on tips as a way to boost the income of tipped workers, especially in Las Vegas, a key battleground; capping interest rates on credit cards at 10 percent, a means to alleviate the suffering of the millions of Americans for whom easy credit can often be a lifesaver (and a policy lifted, knowingly or not, from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez); eliminating taxes on overtime work, which would increase take-home pay for those working extra hours; restoring high tariffs on foreign imports, raising the hopes of many in Rust Belt America who dream of bringing industrial jobs back to the United States; an attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve, which Trump blames in part for the country’s current economic woes; and an anti-immigrant and pro-fossil-fuel-industry agenda, touted as being part of a jobs plan for working American citizens.

Of course, each item of Trump’s program for workers ought to come with the kind of warning one hears on ads for prescription drugs. For instance:

• Ending taxes on tips. Warning: will have little effect unless it also ends Social Security taxes on tips, in which case it would hit tipped workers’ retirement income.
• Capping interest rates on credit cards. Warning: may decrease credit availability for low-income households, potentially pushing them to turn to even more unscrupulous payday lenders for emergency funds.
• Eliminating taxes on overtime work. Warning: may cause employers to reclassify salaried workers as hourly workers to reduce tax obligations, and would hit federal revenue hard, teeing up more cuts to pro-worker social spending in the future.
• Bringing back tariffs. Warning: may cause serious side effects including major price increases on essential goods for lower-income families, and may fail to bring back industrial jobs.

For years, Democrats have promised to make health care more affordable and to bring back good-paying jobs. Fewer and fewer working-class people believe them. For these voters, a novel program like Trump’s — perhaps precisely because experts and elites denounce it so vigorously — could be appealing.

Democrats as Economic Conservatives

Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has tried to be both the candidate of stability — the anti-Trump who will govern with reason and patience — and the candidate of change. It’s a hard line to walk. The solution to this challenge that her campaign seems to have settled on is captured in its key slogan: “We’re not going back.”

The reference to not returning to Trump’s first term is clear, but it is also at least ambivalent about what going forward might look like. “We’re not going back” is no “change we can believe in.” In fact, it has an eerie resonance with the semi-secret slogan of Joe Biden’s 2020 bid: “nothing will fundamentally change.” Little wonder, then, that as she does her best to reassure Wall Street of her intention to govern to the right of the incumbent president, she’s won the support of conservative Republicans like Dick Cheney.

What’s especially maddening is that when Harris has made concessions to the need to campaign on a bigger “change” platform for workers, it’s come in the form of getting on the Trump bandwagon rather than aggressively championing the genuinely progressive program laid out by Bernie Sanders at this summer’s Democratic National Convention. Trump’s plan for abolishing taxes on tips became Harris’s plan, too. The Republican commitment to defend fracking to save jobs in Pennsylvania became the Harris commitment as well (despite the fact that no more than twenty-thousand people in Pennsylvania are employed, directly or indirectly, in the industry, and Pennsylvanians are increasingly turning against the practice). Most disturbing, Trump’s agenda for cracking down on immigration to reduce job competition has become the Harris agenda also.

Despite all this, Harris’s gambit seems to be working to some extent. Deep dissatisfaction with the economy, combined with Trump’s position as the candidate of radical change on economic questions may be keeping the election exceedingly close. But it’s Harris who just barely leads in most recent estimates of the Electoral College results and in the betting markets, and it’s Harris who — setting economic questions to one side and looking at people’s general feelings about the race — is seen more in recent polls as the candidate of “change.”

Reversal of Roles, Reversal of Fortunes

For the forty years from 1968 to 2008, there were at least three clear facts about American politics: First, Republicans were the heavy favorites in presidential elections (the GOP won seven out of ten races in these years, twice in landslides). Second, Republicans were the party of conservatives, standing athwart history yelling stop. And third, Democrats were the underdogs in fundraising, getting outspent by Republicans, sometimes by quite significant margins.

Both roles and fortunes have changed. Since 2008, Democrats have won three out of four presidential races, and the popular vote in all four. Democratic presidential candidates, not Republicans, had a significant cash advantage (in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, and yet again this year), while at least in 2016, Trump depended more on small donors than Biden. And the Democrats are now the party fighting to conserve and mend what exists — against a Republican Party that promises root and branch change.

If what Trump is selling this year is enough to secure him the White House, it will be in part due to the fact that enough angry voters in the middle see him as the candidate who might rewrite the rules of the economy in their favor. And all the warnings from elites about how dangerous he is and about how radical the changes he promises are may only serve to boost many people’s confidence that he’ll follow through.

On the other hand, what Trump might soon come to realize — and what the Harris campaign must be counting on — is the truth that has often bedeviled radical parties: the lurch into the unknown is scary. The party of order all too often has the advantage. For some — especially the ideologically committed — drastic change might be a risk worth taking. But for many, “safety first” is the natural response to talk of transitions into uncharted territory. And in 2024, that may be good news for Democrats, the new party of conservatives.