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Notes -
On choosing your destructor.
An outgroup is any group in which status change is mirrored by another group.
The best endorsement any potential leader could have is the fear and enmity of the outgroup. This in turn means that every group has a significant (though not decisive) voice in the leadership and direction of their outgroup. The political lesson of the Trump era is that the hatred of one group is as good as an endorsement for their outgroup.
If you ask me, the reason both Trump and Mamdani won election is that they sought and exploited the condemnation of their side's outgroup. This leads to a lot of rhetorical brinksmanship which is completely divorced from actual policy, and acknowledged as Kayfabe publicly by both men.
Trump won by shifting from the elite economics focused high income high IQ conservativism to the growing mass of bottom feeder culture war obsessed populists. The stereotype had long been that poor = Democrat and rich = Republican and Trump flipped that around by making his appeal to the redneck socialists, health nuts (like RFK and Casey Means), and low information voters..
Mamdani is a bit different. He was mainly against Andrew Cuomo, held down by his long history of scandals, sexual harassment, and corruption, and still had a rather close election. I know so many people who just couldn't bring themselves to vote for Cuomo despite their distaste for Mamdani. And he comes out strong from a congested primary due to being the anti Cuomo schelling point (propelled by the fringe but meaningful socialist faction pushing his numbers up) and went on to victory from there. There's a very real world where if the other centrist contenders hadn't kept fighting each other spreading the attention around and just focused on providing a moderate non Cuomo alternative, we would have had that instead.
Although yeah Trump also has that "when my opponents suck I win" power somewhat too. He was against Clinton (widely hated) and lost the popular vote still. He then lost to Biden during COVID. And then when Biden went senile, refused to let anyone else run, presided over COVID era inflation and then was forced to put up the unpopular VP candidate who couldn't even get past the early part of the 2020 primary, finally getting the popular vote win, it was still so close that he didn't get a majority of the vote and was a major under performer when compared to the anti incumbent bias worldwide.
This is one of the worst explanations of Trump I've ever seen.
Immigration restriction has been the $100 bill lying on the ground for decades. Tariffs and trade war with China at least $20.
Trump was just not beholden to the existing power structure and willing to transgress their boundaries.
Immigration restriction, sure (although he still refuses to do the one thing that would actually work, which is go after employers who hire illegals).
But were the voters really hankering for tariffs and trade wars? Were the voters champing at the bit to start taxing imports from all of America's allies and making consumer goods more expensive?
This gets cited constantly, and it always strikes me as "Please don't throw me into that briar patch" situation. "Oh Mr. Trump, please don't score a massive own goal and shoot yourself in the foot by aggressively disrupting multiple industries that will have clearly seen and felt impacts on regular Americans, I say, I say, please don't do that for sure!"
As an immigration hawk, I'm actually pretty fine with the current strategy of "deport a ton of people (headlining bad optics criminals) while closing the border and squeezing even more out, in a way that gradually and inexorably shrinks the illegal labor base while giving the relevant industries plenty of advance warning that things are changing". That actually seems a lot more sensible and less disruptive, and less likely to allow Certain People to spend the mid-term campaigns screaming at the top of their lungs that some random fruit is experiencing shortages.
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A lot of voters wanted a trade war with China, particularly in 2016 (by 2024 China hawkery had basically become bipartisan, differing on tactics rather than strategy). They blamed China for American deindustrialization and the ensuing job loss; Trump doesn't win the Rust Belt without it. The actual consequences of tariffs and trade wars, well...
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Trump's success is probably more due to unshackling the GOP from their more unpopular policies, especially economic ones, than due to immigration restriction. People forget Trump's actual policies are surprisingly moderate.
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