1) Positions and messaging strategy. Trump tends to take up the positions you hear Republican voters talk about over a coffee at the diner or over a beer on an aluminum-hull outboard motor fishing boat. As with Democrats, typical Republican planks aren’t terribly close to what their voters want, so (Trump proved) you can win elections by targeting this unmet demand directly.
“Why don’t they just build a wall?”; “Fucking NAFTA, sold us all out”; “gotta do something about that trade deficit with China” and/or other comments on restricting trade with China; “Obamacare sucks” but also kinda vaguely supporting something to fix healthcare (this muddled set of positions came out rather directly in Trump’s speeches—sometimes it’d sound like he was about to advocate single payer); “we should stop being the world police for free” and/or “Europe’s freeloading on NATO”; lots of complaints about illegal immigration’s and crime generally; Washington corruption (“drain the swamp!”); et c.
If you know many Republican voters, not politicians, you may recognize that as stuff that’d inform their wishlist. Trump heard that, and just… did exactly that, turned around and said exactly those things instead of taking up the typical Republican platform. Got him elected. He even sort-of followed through on some of it. This is true for at least the first election, his positions this time seem to have gone a bit more tail-wagging-the-dog (creating issues and demand for a particular solution to the created issue, through messaging, rather than going to where voters already are on existing issues)
2) Relatedly, and especially because he did follow through on some of it, he’s the only big two party Presidential candidate since perhaps 1980 to not be fully on-board with neoliberalism. That’s definitely remarkable. Vance alluded to this at one point in the recent debate.
(Disclaimer because it’s a polarizing topic: observation without condemnation should not be taken as support)
1) Positions and messaging strategy. Trump tends to take up the positions you hear Republican voters talk about over a coffee at the diner or over a beer on an aluminum-hull outboard motor fishing boat. As with Democrats, typical Republican planks aren’t terribly close to what their voters want, so (Trump proved) you can win elections by targeting this unmet demand directly.
“Why don’t they just build a wall?”; “Fucking NAFTA, sold us all out”; “gotta do something about that trade deficit with China” and/or other comments on restricting trade with China; “Obamacare sucks” but also kinda vaguely supporting something to fix healthcare (this muddled set of positions came out rather directly in Trump’s speeches—sometimes it’d sound like he was about to advocate single payer); “we should stop being the world police for free” and/or “Europe’s freeloading on NATO”; lots of complaints about illegal immigration’s and crime generally; Washington corruption (“drain the swamp!”); et c.
If you know many Republican voters, not politicians, you may recognize that as stuff that’d inform their wishlist. Trump heard that, and just… did exactly that, turned around and said exactly those things instead of taking up the typical Republican platform. Got him elected. He even sort-of followed through on some of it. This is true for at least the first election, his positions this time seem to have gone a bit more tail-wagging-the-dog (creating issues and demand for a particular solution to the created issue, through messaging, rather than going to where voters already are on existing issues)
2) Relatedly, and especially because he did follow through on some of it, he’s the only big two party Presidential candidate since perhaps 1980 to not be fully on-board with neoliberalism. That’s definitely remarkable. Vance alluded to this at one point in the recent debate.
(Disclaimer because it’s a polarizing topic: observation without condemnation should not be taken as support)