I was trained professionally, in graduate school and at work, as a Sovietologist and expert on communist systems. This was in the 1970s and 1980s. The USSR seemed to be on the march, building a huge ICBM force and sponsoring revolutions in Africa and the Americas. Many European countries still had large and influential communist parties.
More than once during this time I would have discussions with my father, a staunchly anti-communist philosophy professor, who could never understand why anyone would be attracted to communism. It was theoretically indefensible, and awful in practice. He would get this puzzled look on his face and ask me, with a kind of anguish, what was going on in the world. Were people just crazy?
My answer then was that he was right about communism as an ideology, and right about the awfulness of existing Marxist-Leninist states, but he was missing the point. The point was that millions and millions of people had been and were ardent supporters of the ideology and the regimes that embodied it. What did they see in it, and what did they dislike so much about capitalism that they could overlook the obvious flaws of communism? This was the reality we had to respond to.
We should be asking the same question now about Trump and the MAGA movement. Liberals have by and large not figured this out. They were knocked badly off balance in 2016, but with Biden’s win in 2020 they thought they had swept Trump and his followers into the dustbin of history. This turned out to be very wrong. Trump is still with us, and the MAGA movement is much more organized and institutionalized than four years ago. It’s not just Trump anymore.
Now in 2024 Democrats have pulled the plane out of its nosedive at the last second and stand a chance in November. But the wave of enthusiasm for Kamala and Walz has so far only managed to make the race a statistical tie. I just watched the Democratic Convention and heard many stirring words and lots of jabs at Trump (who is the easiest political joke butt of all time) but I didn’t hear clearly that liberals see and understand the MAGA appeal. Millions and millions of Americans remain all-in for Trump. I can hear my father’s anguished puzzlement: are people just crazy?
I suspect all of us have run into people who say something like, “Well, I wish Trump would tone it down…” or “I know he says some crazy things…” and then go on to say “But…” and explain why they plan to vote for him anyway. Sometimes it’s because the Democrats are going to impose communism, or they think Trump was a great businessman, or they think he’ll lower interest rates. The point is that they are willing to overlook all manner of flaws because there is something they think MAGA will do, something it stands for, that overcomes his defects. In fact, many see these defects—the bullying, the threats, the name-calling, the lies and deceptions—as virtues because they show strength and toughness and a willingness to do ‘whatever it takes’ to make things right.
We liberals can bemoan this till the cows come home, but unless we understand and confront the underlying reasons for MAGA enthusiasm I don’t think we’ll get much traction. The antidote to enthusiasm for communism in Europe and America was ultimately creating robust welfare states that protected individual rights and looked out for the interests of working people and the poor, while curbing the power of big business—not destroying capitalism but showing that liberal democracies were capable of real reforms. Similarly, the antidote to MAGA will start by understanding and addressing things that have gone wrong with modern society and its economic underpinnings, and offering serious solutions, while vigorously rejecting the flawed and dangerous solutions offered by MAGA. You can’t beat something with nothing. Democrats will flounder if all they do is criticize Trump and talk up joy and hope. Americans—and by no means just MAGA enthusiasts—are looking for fundamental, radical change.
What is it then that MAGA enthusiasts want? What was so great in the American past that they want to restore? Essentially they want two things that MAGA sees as going together, and that liberals must work to pull apart. The exact time of peak American ‘greatness’ is deliberately kept vague with different things for different people, but is I think centered on the postwar America of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. During this time the economy boomed and offered growth for all, workers and CEOs alike. Every generation was assured of living better. Growth and government support made public schools strong and higher education available and affordable; millions moved for the first time into their own homes, helped by federal loan guarantees; social security and other new government programs bolstered economic security; strong unions helped keep wages high and give American workers a sense of dignity; and America was on top of a new international order that was largely made in the USA. This made people confident and supported strong families, neighborhoods and communities.
Importantly, the heartland flourished as much as the coasts. Blue collar workers flourished as much as professionals. Small towns flourished as much as big cities. The country felt unified.
That’s the good side. But what MAGA associates with this is a whole set of cultural and historic restrictions, some legal but many deeply ingrained in commonly accepted practices, that it believes were inextricable from this socio-economic success. These include restrictions on women, via limits on abortion and divorce; on equal rights for African-Americans and minorities; on immigration; on any and every type of sexual or gender nonconformity; and on non-Christians and people outside the religious mainstream.
Essentially, MAGA mistakes correlation for causation. It argues, sometimes explicitly but usually implicitly, that the expansion of rights to previously repressed or ignored groups destroyed this golden age. This expansion has come at the expense of the jobs and power and dignity of ‘real Americans’. It has been deliberately engineered by hostile forces, liberal socialists and coastal elites and Jews and globalized financial interests. MAGA is convinced that in the name of rectifying past injustices, these interests have raised up new groups and institutionalized new types of discrimination, embodied in affirmative action and DEI, to the disadvantage of Christian white men. A whole industry of right-wing commentators, media, advocacy groups, and politicians has grown up to relentlessly push this message. Vice-presidential candidate JD Vance is one of its loudest exponents.
We can certainly debate and disagree about the ramifications of the great expansion of rights of the past 60 years. As with all changes, there have been winners and losers. Adjustments and course corrections may be needed, and liberals have not always been understanding of those who fail to quickly fall in line for the latest shifts in language or behavior. But the reactionary dreams of the MAGA faithful for some wholesale return to the past are delusional; worse, they have become for many the prelude to a rejection of democracy itself. If the people don’t back our side, then we have to find a way to win anyway.
Liberals must find a way to be on the side of restoring the better aspects of the postwar economy, while rejecting any ‘restoration’ of the barriers and discrimination and indignities that were de rigeur for millions of American citizens. The Biden presidency has put in place the building blocks for this argument. Biden said he was breaking with the neoliberal policies of his own party (and of Biden himself). He was creating industrial policy rather than relying on markets. He was lifting up unions and bringing back manufacturing. He was aggressively breaking up monopolies. He was raising taxes on the wealthy. These are major pieces of an economic model that owes more to the America of the 1950s than the globalized and hyper-financialized economy touted by both parties since Ronald Reagan. This is what it takes to tackle the inequalities in the economy and give opportunity and hope to everyone, not just Ivy League STEM majors.
This must be accompanied by maintaining and expanding opportunity and rights for everyone who has been left out. The assignment for Kamala and Tim and their followers is to convince the American people that bringing everyone to the table makes the economic and social foundations for families, neighborhoods and communities stronger, not weaker. It is not a zero-sum game. We are not looking to create a society of winners and losers. We want everyone to be a winner.
This is something many Americans find hard to accept. The relentlessly fearful messaging of the right has convinced them there isn’t enough to go around—not enough jobs, not enough safety, not enough dignity, not enough patriotism. Liberals can help by adopting a new framing that stops dwelling incessantly on past injustices, which—rightly or wrongly—feels like an exercise in blaming and shaming. Americans who want to be proud of their heritage feel condemned and mocked. They are reacting with a lot of anger.
The Democratic Party at its 2024 Convention took important steps to put itself on the side of ordinary, middle-class Americans by championing ideas of community, neighborliness, patriotism, and mutual assistance. That Kamala has the chance to be the first woman President, that she is black and Asian and exemplifies diversity, were frequently acknowledged but not the focus of her message. Instead, Democrats put Tim Walz forward to demonstrate that liberalism can be at home in small rural towns, not just big rich cities.
For many MAGA adherents, cultural nostalgia is the feature, not the bug. They support Trump because of his racism and misogyny and faux religiosity, not despite it. But many others are troubled by these positions, yet choose Trump because they believe he will restore a prosperous, safe, growing heartland. During his four years in office he did little to bring this about. During his four years in office, Biden did a lot. If Kamala runs on this record and its goals, she can win.