Whatever happened to Romney Republicans?

by John Q on July 8, 2025

Have they changed, or just become their worst selves

While Trump is unpopular with a majority of Americans, his support among Republicans remains solid. That’s despite blatant corruption, fascist policies and a failure to deliver any of the economic benefits he promised. Faced with this depressing fact, the standard New York Times response has been to send an intrepid reporter to “Trump Country” (rural Kentucky or Midwestern diners) to find out what is going on.

But it would be far more instructive to send them to Long Island, where Trump won both counties in 2024. Long Island voters have given solid support to Republicans at all levels. Even as he was crushingly defeated in New York as a whole, Mitt Romney got close to half the vote in Suffolk and Nassau counties. Trump did a few percentage points better in 2024, winning both. But he would have gone nowhere if not for the solid support of Romney voters

This doesn’t fit at all with the usual stories about Trump voters. The residents of Long Island are not the “left-behinds” routinely described in explanations of Trump’s appeal. The average income is over $100 000 and unemployment rates have long been around 3 per cent. Like most New Yorkers, Long Islanders have been beneficiaries of the globalised economy of which Romney was a symbol. And, if you were to believe Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind they did so because they valued honor, loyalty and purity, qualities Trump routinely trashes.

Democrats from Hillary Clinton on assumed that these contradictions would lead suburban Republicans to abandon Trump in numbers large enough to offset any losses of Democrats attracted by Trump’s racism and misogyny. Evidently this is not the case. Not only have the Republicans who once voted for Romney maintained their support for Trump but they have preferred him to any Republican alternative. And, with few exceptions, they have embraced Trump’s racist and fascist policies, even as he approaches outright Nazism.

What has happened here? Has Trump, as Walter Olson suggests, radicalised his followers leading them to support positions they would once have rejected? Or has he simply allowed them to reveal themselves (or at least their worst selves) as the racists and fascists they always were?

The answers to these questions are academic, in the pejorative sense of the term, as regards the US. Romney-Trump voters have made their choice, and there is no going back to old-style Republicanism. Perhaps, if enough of them realise that their choices have been both evil and disastrous for the US as a whole, the regime might collapse relatively quickly. But there is no sign of that.

The big question for those of us living outside the US is whether it could happen here. As long as the far-right remains essentially a protest party for low-education voters who are mostly disengaged and disaffected, like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in Australia, its occasional flare-ups can be expected to fade, as appears to have happened with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. But if the middle class and business base of the mainstream conservative parties goes the same way, democracy is in trouble.

In Australia, at least, the opposite has happened. As the main conservative party (confusingly called the Liberal Party for historical reasons) has embraced Trumpism, it has been driven almost entirely from the major cities, falling back on a rural and peri-urban base which is, in an urbanised country Australia, not sufficient to provide a credible chance of winning an elections. Most notably, liberal-minded independents, mostly women, have won a string of seats that were formerly considered safely conservative.

I don’t claim to understand all this. As regards political strategy, the crucial need is to prevent the far-right from taking over mainstream conservative parties and their supporters. There is not too much we on the left can do about this, except to encourage centre-right supporters to punish conservative parties when they line up with fascists. Any other suggestions are welcome.

I don’t plan to write anything more about the end of US democracy. Further descent into fascism is already locked in, and nothing I can foresee is going to change it. The question for Australians, Europeans and others who want to defend what is left of democracy is how to achieve this in a world dominated by brutal autocracies and the evil dictators who rule them.

{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }

1

wp200 07.08.25 at 5:39 am

I’ve got some bad news for you on Geert Wilders.
After Mark Rutte stepped down as Prime Minister and leader of the mainstream conservatives in order to fulfill his dream of sucking up to Trump as secretary general of NATO, his successor decided to campaign on being mean to asylum seekers and other immigrants.

Wilders party got to be the largest in the election because voters who were into being mean etc. Preferred the real deal over Ersatz.

One year later, the new government (with Wilders party as the largest coalition partner) has crashed, delivering nothing.

Unfortunately, it seems that Rutte’s successor is once again trying to out-culture warrior Wilders, this time by dunking on pro-Palestine protesters and trying to outflank the (pro-greater Israel) Wilders.

Chances are Wilders will only lose a few seats. The mainstream conservatives are really, really bad at politics when they have to punch to the right in order to win.

To top it off with a Badenoch-like twist, Rutte’s successor is herself an asylum seeker. Her family are Kurds who came to the Netherlands from Turkey when she was 6 or 7.

It’s all very depressing.

2

Tm 07.08.25 at 7:34 am

Adding to 1:
The fascist parties in Europe are now stronger than at any point in the postwar period, they are close to actual power in most countries, and crucially, they are not taboo any more. The mainstream media are treating them as legitimate political actors even when they have radicalized to formally unimaginable levels. They are openly campaigning on ethnic cleansing, remigration, “millions of deportatations” (AFD) and on depriving immigrants of citizenship. In other words the full Trumpist program. And the media reaction has been to invite them to all the talkshows. Like the US media, the German media have proudly declared that it’s not their job to fact check fascist politicians.

“As long as the far-right remains essentially a protest party for low-education voters who are mostly disengaged and disaffected, like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in Australia, its occasional flare-ups can be expected to fade, as appears to have happened with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. But if the middle class and business base of the mainstream conservative parties goes the same way, democracy is in trouble.”

This is indeed the deciding question: does a relevant fraction of the capitalist class, the business elite, support fascism? The answer is yes. The AFD doesn’t get its money from small donations, they have millionaire donors keeping them afloat (sometimes illegally, similar Le Pen in France). The AFD gets enormous support from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the mouthpiece of the Swiss bourgeoisie, and the German Springer media.

Here’s a report from an appearance of Alice Weidel before the Zürich business elite:
https://www.woz.ch/2446/applaus-applaus/alles-so-normal-hier/!PJ01TM73VS7K

The commonalities with Trumpism are striking. Also the willingness of the mainstream rightwing parties to adopt the positions of their fascist rivals is breathtaking. Germany has, under protest of its neigbors, unilaterally closed the borders, in violation of EU laws. The courts have ruled it illegal: The government ignores the court rulings. I’m afraid European leaders are not resisting Trumpism, they are doing Trump’s work. You’d think at least their self preservation instinct should prevent this but I’m not optimistic about that. This political class is mostly incompetent and strategically inept.

3

tenacitus 07.08.25 at 8:15 am

I don’t understand why people keep assuming right-wingers are low information or uneducated voters. Romney and his voters have always been like Trump. They just thought it was gauche, or they had felt comfortable saying what they really believed and valued. These people are adults who are choosing who to be. There is the impression conservatives are uneducated and marginalized when their base has been local gentry, upper classes and just people of all races, education, income who are reactionary. In the US the conservative leadership who portray themselves as know nothings are all highly educated with post graduate degrees from the ivies. I think over the past 30 years, at least, there’s been so much discussion about understanding why people turn conservative or fascist. Republicans voted for a republican and a dog bites a man.

4

nastywoman 07.08.25 at 9:00 am

‘Whatever happened to Romney Republicans?’

My grandfather was a ‘Reagan Republican’ who told me that he rather die than to vote for somebody who got blackballed at ‘every decent golf club’ in America (and two years later he died) And my uncle who was a Long Island preservationist and builder always hated Trump to such a degree that he always invited Bloomberg to all of his parties – and all of the ‘Romney Republicans still exist but nowadays they much rather vote for a German Robber Barron called FF VON CLOWNSTICK because they have come to hate ‘the woke’ even more – and just don’t take that too seriously or as least not as seriously as Trump who actually FIRST – or always wanted to run as a Democrat – and only after the Democrats rejected him for being blackballed by every serious golf club – and a very funny and GREAT US President made a lot of fun of him (-‘and that’s what keeps me up at night’)
Trump decide to to use the much dumber US Republicans in order to get RICH AGAIN!

5

Phil 07.08.25 at 9:35 am

There is not too much we on the left can do about this, except to encourage centre-right supporters to punish conservative parties when they line up with fascists. Any other suggestions are welcome.

One thing that centre left parties can do is to continue to attack the far Right – and specifically to attack it from the left. This, admittedly, is a high-risk strategy: while it may drive votes away from the far Right, it is likely to drive them into the arms of the centre-right, who will also be making hay out of the centre-left’s revelation of its “radical”, “sectarian” nature. The alternative, however, is to turn a blind eye to the far Right, in the hope of profiting from the inroads it makes into the centre-right’s voter coalition, and we have seen how that ends.

We have seen how that ends, in fact, quite recently. During the July 2024 election campaign, the current British Labour Party leadership limited its attacks on Reform UK to a few joking or dismissive remarks,, concentrating its fire on the Conservatives. To make matters worse, Labour’s attacks on the Conservatives were generally coached either in terms of “competence” and “delivery” or in terms of the Conservatives’ own politics – which is to say, they were attacks from the right.

In the short term this strategy amply paid off: rather than draining back to the Conservative Party once the election had been called, Reform UK’s support grew from 11% to 14% during the campaign, ending by splitting the broad right vote so thoroughly that Labour won a landslide majority on little more than a third of votes cast. Sadly history – even psephological history – doesn’t stop the day after an election: over the next year support for Reform UK went right on growing, peaking at 30%. Support for the Conservatives was flatlining at 23% through the election campaign, and it’s been flatlining ever since.

The OP is about the centre-right, not the centre-left, but I think it’s important to remember that the left and right poles of mainstream politics support each other, and to an extent define, even constitute each other. If the centre-left, for whatever reason, legitimates the far Right – even for purely opportunistic reasons – that will have knock-on effects on the centre-right and the whole political spectrum. So, guys, don’t do that, OK?

But what can the Left – those leftists who aren’t running a major political party – do about it? The trouble is, there is a substantial current within the centre-Left which defines itself primarily against the Left (or, as they see it, the ‘extreme Left’, ‘the Trots’). Although its political programme is vague and undefined, their position is just as dogmatically ideological as any Leftist’s: their answer to any challenge or novel situation is for the party to move Right – and if it doesn’t work, that just shows that the party needs to try harder and move further Right. I don’t know about Australian or US politics (I’ve never been entirely sure what the Democratic Party is, outside an election year), but I do know that that current is in charge of the British Labour Party at the moment, meaning that there’s little hope of the leadership drawing any real lessons from its recent experience. What can the Left do? I’m not sure, but a first step is to see the situation clearly.

6

J-D 07.08.25 at 10:17 am

Unfortunately, it seems that Rutte’s successor is once again trying to out-culture warrior Wilders, this time by dunking on pro-Palestine protesters and trying to outflank the (pro-greater Israel) Wilders.

Do you expect Dilan Ye?ilgöz to lead the government formed after the election in October? Which parties do you expect to make up that government?

7

Pittsburgh Mike 07.08.25 at 11:27 am

Remember Romney’s comment about the 47% takers? The Romney Republicans never viewed anyone who’s not wealthy as worthy of any assistance and if you look at OBBBB. you see the natural successor of Romney’s position.

Even the rural voters who support Trump are often pretty well off.

A lot of Trump’s support is based on pure greed, without any regard for even the moderate proximate future.

8

engels 07.08.25 at 11:35 am

In the NYT Jamelle Bouie has now taken a somewhat similar position to CT’s Corey Robin’s during Trump 1.

Face It. Trump Is a Normie Republican
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/opinion/trump-republican-big-bill.html

9

NomadUK 07.08.25 at 11:57 am

It seems clear that in most, if not all, cases, the fascist Right have been using immigration and xenophobia as the thin edge of the wedge, and then expanding from there. Global warming (more palatably referred to as ‘climate change’) is going to make that far easier and more widespread as the equatorial zones become increasingly uninhabitable and masses of humanity try to move outward (mostly northward, given the distribution of landmass on the planet). When that happens, expect fascism to expand to just about everywhere, as northern populations resort to increasingly lethal means to deny entry to refugees.

It really is pretty much over, I think.

10

engels 07.08.25 at 12:18 pm

There is not too much we on the left can do about this, except to encourage centre-right supporters to punish conservative parties when they line up with fascists.

Ditch Clintonoid liberalism for a class-based, materialist programme that gives ordinary people something to vote for?
https://www.zohranfornyc.com/

11

Trader Joe 07.08.25 at 12:53 pm

@4
+1
In her own inimitable style, I think nastywoman has pretty well nailed it.

” they have come to hate ‘the woke’ even more – and just don’t take that too seriously or as least not as seriously as Trump who actually FIRST – or always wanted to run as a Democrat – and only after the Democrats rejected him for being blackballed by every serious golf club – and a very funny and GREAT US President made a lot of fun of him (-‘and that’s what keeps me up at night’)”

Its revisionist history at this point, but the republicans wasted the potential of a Romney candidacy by running him in 2008 (hey, lets run a private equity robber barron in the teeth of the global financial crisis, that will surely work). Because of that failure, the party was ripe for a big step-right which as it turned out resulted in Trump I.

The well documented failure of the Democrats to not force Biden to step down and hold a proper primary that would have produced a candidate named “anyone not Harris or Biden” was what produced Trump II….and so here we are.

12

nastywoman 07.08.25 at 1:39 pm

@So, guys, don’t do that, OK?

How about giving up the ‘Political Games’ altogether and focusing on all these voters who don’t want to vote for ‘Politicians’ anymore?

13

stostosto 07.08.25 at 1:58 pm

In Denmark it seems the operation by the Social Democrats to out-xenophobe the xenophobic right has succeeded, at least in political and power seizing/keeping terms.

PM Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democrats leads her second government since first appointed in 2019, and the right side (nominally) of the political spectrum is in severe disarray having been splintered into 6-7-8 parties none of which is claiming more than 10% of the vote.

The previously highly powerful right-populist DPP in particular has been shattered into a shadow of its former self. This is largely achieved by appropriating its policies wholesale though. But it looks to me Starmer is attempting something similar, only less successfully. Maybe less credibly?

14

some lurker 07.08.25 at 2:38 pm

First, are we talking about George or Willard? I assume the latter.

Pittsburgh Mike @7 reminds us that the GOP are taking a victory lap over closing hospitals and gutting services, from cancer research to epidemiology, as well as weather (the weekend’s headlines made clear how good that ideas is). They talk about cutting the “bloated federal bureaucracy” or whatever but that money saves people’s lives. Romney funded his college expenses by selling stock in his father’s car company. These are people who will defund a school to keep kids they don’t like from getting an education (see: Mississippi and Alabama). They see everyone as a taker because they are not givers.

15

Tm 07.08.25 at 3:07 pm

engels 8:

“Most everyone other than apologists and professional contrarians would agree at this point that President Trump aims to make the United States a personalist autocracy, where his whims are policy and his will is law.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/opinion/trump-miller-immigration-ice.html

“Trump Wants to Be a Strongman, but He’s Actually a Weak Man”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/opinion/trump-los-angeles-ice-strongman.html

“More than a constitutional crisis, this is a fundamentally tyrannical assertion of illegitimate power.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/opinion/trump-court-order-constitution.html

Why is it so hard to understand that several things can be true at the same time: Trump can be a fascist (Bouie talks of autocracy and tyranny; whether he would endorse the label fascism I don’t know but the NYT certainly wouldn’t allow it printed) and also share some of the economic goals of the traditional Right; Trump can be an unprecedented constitutional crisis and also draw on ur-American ideological and political traditions. These are not mutually exclusive. And similar things can be said about Hitler and Mussolini. Only the historically illiterate can deny this.

16

Tm 07.08.25 at 3:27 pm

stostosto 13: The Danish DPP has indeed imploded, from 21% in 2015 to below 3% in 2022. But new right wing parties have appeared. Curiously, the mainstream right wing party Venstre also collapsed to its worst result in 30 years. What this means for the future is unclear but the left doesn’t seem to have benefited. The Social Democrats have only slightly improved, from 26.3 to 27.5%.

For comparison, the German SPD got 25.7% both in 2013 and 2021 (the closest comparable election dates). 2021/2022 were relatively good times for the European left. The SPD has now collapsed to 16% in 2025. The next Danish election will be the real test for Frederiksen’s strategy.

17

PatinIowa 07.08.25 at 3:41 pm

My family moved from Saskatchewan to Houston in 1959, where we encountered, among other things, segregated bathrooms, and the infinite variety of racial slurs that were common back then.

Since then, I’ve watched voters in the US elect Nixon a second time, Reagan a second time, Bush II a second time, and Trump a second time, not to mention last Democratic president wax nostalgic about his segregationist pals in the Senate, and the Democratic presidential candidate from the election before talk about “superpredators,” in support of a frankly racist and stupid crime bill.

I’m going to go with this one: “Or has he simply allowed them to reveal themselves (or at least their worst selves) as the racists and fascists they always were?”

I think expecting center right folk in the US to exert themselves to punish fascism and racism is delusional. They haven’t done it yet.

I’m with Engels at 10, assuming we can do anything more than hunker down and try to protect people more vulnerable than we are at the moment.

18

ETB 07.08.25 at 4:08 pm

Bad news, I’m afraid, from the platform section of the website:

“The Mamdani administration will protect LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers by expanding and protecting gender-affirming care citywide, making NYC an LGBTQIA+ sanctuary city, and creating the Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs.”

I’m given to understand this is extremist identity politics, making him alligned with the Brahmin left/PMC (who are, of course, ontologically evil and functionally no different to MAGA).
Even worse:

“Zohran will make it faster, easier, and cheaper to start and run a business in New York City, so that bodegas and corner stores stay open and dollar slices come back.”

Supporting the petite bourgeoisie rather than vowing to guillotine them in a public square? Surely no-one of god conscience could countenance such actions!

19

ETB 07.08.25 at 4:19 pm

Face It. Trump Is a Normie Republican

Of course, there are two possible interpretations here: a) Trump is a normie Republican, and therefore is not an extremist, or b) Trump is a normie Republican, and therefore is an extremist – faites ce que vous voulez..

20

engels 07.08.25 at 4:49 pm

“The Mamdani administration will protect LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers by expanding and protecting gender-affirming care citywide…” I’m given to understand this is extremist identity politics

May I remind you that the last time you went off on one these rants it was because I said I supported funding gender-affirming care but not mandatory pronouning in business meetings (as an example of why I consider myself pro-trans but not pro-idpol)??? I’m going to respond to any more of this because I’ll get blocked again. Mamdani’s great though and is exactly what the American left should be doing imho.

there are two possible interpretations here: a) Trump is a normie Republican, and therefore is not an extremist, or b) Trump is a normie Republican, and therefore is an extremist

As someone who protested GW Bush back in the day the second seems more favourable to me.

21

somebody who remembers the guy who preceded romney 07.08.25 at 5:17 pm

The ironclad determination of political analysts of america to pretend the iraq war didn’t exist continues. romney was a brutal white supremacist fascist just as much as trump – he had to be in order to be in the republican party in 2008 and take the position that the iraq war was right, was just about to succeed wildly, the wmds were about to be discovered, and after a quick second invasion, this time of iran, the american flag was about to be flown over the whole middle east (skipping of course our pro-democracy saudi royal family pals and their bonesaws of course.) enough of america had turned away from the roaring, screaming, open hatred of arabs that “barack HUSSEIN obama” could win. I guess the downside of his winning is it allowed analysts to pretend the roaring, shrieking constituency for open, vicious racism didn’t exist for a few years. but i was there. i remember.

22

Suzanne 07.08.25 at 5:33 pm

15: “whether he would endorse the label fascism I don’t know but the NYT certainly wouldn’t allow it printed)”

We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-canada-fascism.html

Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/magazine/robert-paxton-facism.html

As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator
John Kelly, the Trump White House’s longest-serving chief of staff, said that he believed that Donald Trump met the definition of a fascist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-trump-fitness-character.html

23

Suzanne 07.08.25 at 5:47 pm

Over the last decade most congressional Republicans inclined to oppose Trump in any way have effectively been driven out of the party and some of them have had impeccable wingnut credentials, like Thom Tillis of North Carolina who has just announced he will not run for re-election.

@11: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is said to have had something of an epiphany on her deathbed as to the damage she had done by failing to resign strategically when it was still possible, but Biden’s lack of self-awareness will allow him to go to his grave thinking the party done him wrong, instead of acting too late.

24

mw 07.08.25 at 6:10 pm

Trump has attracted more working class and minority voters than Romney and, in return, some (generally white, educated, better off) Romney voters stopped voting Republican, so the coalitions are not identical. Also, since Romney last ran 13 years ago, some number of Romney voters have died and been replaced by those who were too young to vote in 2012. But many Romney voters did become Trump voters. Most people are ‘agreeable’ creatures (in the big 5 personality trait sense of the word) who adopt political positions based on group membership and they like to be part of winning coalitions. Most of their explanations for their views are post-hoc rationalizations at best and more likely are just talking points supplied by their ‘tribe’.

Also, the positions of not only the Republican Party, but also the Democrats have changed since 2012. People vote against as much as they vote for, and some of those former Romney voters are in the Trump camp because of opposition to positions Democrats have adopted post 2012.

Lastly, the information landscape has changed dramatically, with the traditional media losing much of the influence and prestige they once held. At one time, Republican candidates worried about earning a much respect as they could eke out from journalists at powerful (mostly left-leaning) publications — even though they knew they were generally going to end up with the short end of the stick. But now, they no longer need to care what these journalists write or say. Joe Rogan, memes, and Tik Tok matter much more to Republicans than do the NY Times and Washington Post.

25

M 07.08.25 at 7:18 pm

ETB @19: “Of course there are two possible interpretations here”

Indeed. At the same time, the op-ed itself seems clear about which side Bouie himself lands on:

Yes, you can attribute some of the worst of this administration to the specific authoritarian vision of Trump and his allies. But a good deal of what we have seen — and what we will see — is simply what happens when you elect a Republican to the White House.

26

Raven Onthill 07.08.25 at 7:29 pm

As very sharp media critic Driftglass says, “The Republican party is full of Republicans.” (He lives in Springfield Illinois, surrounded by these people and knows where of.)

It’s been clear that Trump base is petite bourgeoisie since his first term. The January 6 insurrection left no doubt; the poor can’t travel across the country—they don’t have the time or money.

We seem to be having a global xenophobic panic. I wish the reasons were better understood; if they were we might be able to counter it. I suspect it has to do with the increasing connectedness of the world. The last two times this happened, well, we had world wars.

27

Tm 07.08.25 at 8:22 pm

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and point out that Romney did not campaign on “dark-skinned immigrants are eating white Americans’ dogs and cats” when he ran against Obama in 2012. If people around here think there’s no difference between the dog whistle racism of pre-Trump Republicans and a campaign consisting of nothing other than wall to wall fascist propaganda right up to the promise of systematic ethnic cleansing, then I’m gonna have to disagree. Because, you know, history. Fascist rhetoric always leads to fascist violence. The project of ethnic cleansing is being realized right now by a lawless fascist paramilitary that has just been given a budget exceeding that of most armies. I do think that matters.

And if you think pointing out the above lets the pre-Trump Republicans who made Trump possible off the hook, then again I’m gonna have to disagree.

28

Jim Hrrison 07.08.25 at 8:39 pm

Guys like Romney follow an extreme version of the Protestant ethic, but it’s harder for them to believe in their elect status than it was for their forbears. Romney’s dad made his money by making and selling cars. His son got rich through dubious if legal financial maneuvers, which, understandably, makes him an even more zealous advocate of the virtues of hard work. That’s why the rich fuck Republicans are absolutely maddened by the threat of moral hazard. It isn’t a matter of reason with them as anybody knows who has ever pointed out, for example, that universal health care is a vastly better system economically than the current disaster even after you factor in cheating. They are morally offended as if you were pointing out the practical advantages of child molestation.

29

Kenny Easwaran 07.08.25 at 9:15 pm

Long Island is a slightly non-representative suburb to be focusing on. Look at the shifts in vote over the past three presidential cycles: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/presidential-election-2024-red-shift.html

Most places shifted right in 2024, but the New York City area more so than anywhere else.(Notably, the Atlanta and Charlotte suburbs actually shifted left in 2024, as did a few places in the Dallas suburbs.) In 2020, most places shifted left, but New York and its suburbs were one of the few right-shifting areas (along with most of Ohio, Arkansas, Iowa, Mormon country, and the Rio Grande valley). In 2016, most places also shifted right, but suburban Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia all shifted left, as did most of California – and interestingly, the Connecticut suburbs of New York.

Comparig why Long Island has been shifting right in all three elections, while the Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, and Charlotte suburbs (as well as the Connecticut suburbs of New York!) have been shifting left during the same period, is going to be much more interesting than just treating Long Island as though it is representative of all of the shifts nationwide.

30

Robert Weston 07.08.25 at 9:16 pm

I don’t plan to write anything more about the end of US democracy. Further descent into fascism is already locked in, and nothing I can foresee is going to change it. The question for Australians, Europeans and others who want to defend what is left of democracy is how to achieve this in a world dominated by brutal autocracies and the evil dictators who rule them.

A couple of points:

1) The current European/EU discussion about NATO’s future and relations with the United States in coming years revolves entirely around Washington’s willingness to defend the Europeans and keep troops on the continent. The democratic regression on the other side of the pond doesn’t come up at all in what I’ve seen of these conversations, even though NATO bills itself as an alliance built to defend political freedoms.

I’m making no prediction on whether, or when, Europe will emancipate itself from American suzerainty: based on what I’m reading and seeing, however, I must conclude Transatlantic relations would have gone on just as before under Trump II – had the regime limited itself to shredding democratic liberties at home, instead of calling the very alliance into question at every opportunity.

2) JQ distinguishes between: plurality support for fascism in the United States; and and lower election/polling scores for far-right parties in Europe. It might be worth considering the extent to which far-right media groups and their billionaire owners drive elite conversations in Europe – certainly in Germany and France, the countries with which I’m most familiar. I get the sense that to varying degrees, media and political elites in these countries either welcome Trump II as an inspiration for future political action; or see recent developments as a salutary warning to their ethnic minorities, universities, supporters of Palestinian rights, and leftist groups in general.

That’s why I see the preservation of democracy receding as a concern among media and political elites in the countries I’m familiar with. Perhaps the MAGA-type reliance on state violence and mass hate is less likely in Europe, but I find it plausible that at least some version of their agenda would find implementation in several countries.

31

supergreen 07.08.25 at 9:45 pm

“There is not too much we on the left can do about this, except to encourage centre-right supporters to punish conservative parties when they line up with fascists. Any other suggestions are welcome.”

If I understand correctly, in may countries now there is a bit of a generation gap in politics where the older voters are more attached to the established parties and kind of the ‘normal’ way of doing things. The younger voters, who are very distrustful of politics are moving towards newer parties like the greens or liberals or also the far right. As a result, party systems are changing in a number of places.

I think the left can try to attract the more distrustful voters. I don’t think the group of distrustful voters is monolithic, some actually do lean far right and would be hard to convince, but some lean in other directions. I think there is a potential future in trying to engage these people and get them more involved in democracy. The far right dominates attention right now because it is flashy and because no one else seems to have a particular vision of the future. But maybe a left wing that focuses more on democracy and what citizen participation in governance could mean would be a fresh take. There are so many problems/issues that the far right doesn’t have a clue about and making any of those salient could take some wind from their sails.

But I’m also a bit clueless too.

32

ETB 07.08.25 at 10:03 pm

May I remind you that the last time you went off on one these rants

And may I remind you that someone gently mocking you (in very much the same way you have mocked others) is hardly ranting. You are, of course, free to conduct yourself how you wish – but perhaps if you are this thin skinned you might consider recalibrating the degree of mickey taking you engage in?

[I could comment on the differences between supporting funding gender affirming care – a laudable position IMO – and supporting people living in accordance with their gender identity, but out of respect for your blood pressure – and to keep on topic – I shall refrain. Instead, I shall offer an olive branch!]

Mamdani’s great though and is exactly what the American left should be doing imho.

Well, yes, I would agree – generally coupling strong social and economically left wing policies is a good combination (hopefully he keeps it up).

As someone who protested GW Bush back in the day the second seems more favourable to me.

Also agreed.
(almost as if I’m not quite such an unreasonable monster as you seem to believe!)

33

ETB 07.08.25 at 11:01 pm

Whatever happened to Romney Republicans? Have they changed, or just become their worst selves?

Being in the arguably fortunate position of observing the ongoing tire-fire from a distance, I wouldn’t like to say.

However, if I may be so bold as to venture an opinion on the UK: our ruling class has always being filled with a good number of people who comfortable with systems of great oppression and exploitation, providing it keeps them in comfort and Nice Things. What has largely changed, I think, are the boundaries of acceptable cruelty without plausible deniability have expanded – and while not exactly a shock (once one has accepted that certain people are undeserving of a place to live, medicine to survive, or even food to eat, then what else might one accept as being privileges to be denied to the unworthy?) I doubt it has been spontaneous. Were I to hazard a guess, it would be that this has been largely a result of a mixture of (a) the centre to right wing ecosphere continually pushing a reactionary agenda, or at least opposing non-reactionary agendas; (b) the ruling class circling the wagons (one of the few unforgivable sins an Important Person can commit is inconveniencing their class, which is punished both quickly and mercilessly); (c) the Important People cooking their brains on social media – for all the trees which have died to further questions of Are The Kids Addicted To Their Medias, I think whatever problems – if any – cause by teenagers spending time on Twitter pale into insignificance to those cause by what happens when the ruling class have to interact with the hoi polio in a forum where they can’t control the narrative (the speed of descent into radicalisation which occurs when one of the pig people talks back to their betters has to be seen to be believed); (d) the media engaging in no-hold-barred non-stop scream fest the second anyone proposes a policy which isn’t either stomping on underclass or shovelling wealth into the trousers of the elite; and (e) that as we now enter the stage of capitalism which involves the snake eating its tail, crackdowns and tightening the screws are the only real ways forward which can still maintain (at least for a little while longer) the status quo – and so it is a case of masks and gloves off, time to turn the heat up on the class war. And even the people who don’t actively support this general direction will tend to go along with it – after all, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’.

While the US is not the UK, it may be that there are some parallels to draw?

34

Jake Gibson 07.08.25 at 11:22 pm

Conservative media has done their job well. They have been able to convert the many who are uncomfortable with change and with 21st Century into raving reactionaries. They many conservatives who are not horrified by the authoritarianism of Trump have completely embraced Fascism. Corporate media is only a step behind them. It is hard to have much optimism.
I fear for the future of my Korean-Guatemalan-American granddaughter. The number of people who would reject the American part are terrifying.

35

JWP ESQ 07.08.25 at 11:51 pm

Long Island (that is, the heart of the place, the “Lawn Guyland” part of Long Island) is a special case. As any Manhattanite can tell you, Long Islanders are not “like most New Yorkers”. Both Trumps, Fred and Donald were “from” out there on the Island, in the deepest sense of the term. Long Island will forever remain his spiritual home, even in Palm Beach, and that was reason enough for the vote.

36

LFC 07.09.25 at 1:15 am

As Tm has noted upthread, aspects of Trump 2.0 are “normie Republican” while other aspects are definitely not.

Take for example the recent domestic policy legislation that Trump and his congressional allies pushed through. The tax and welfare-cutting (Medicaid, SNAP) aspects of it are roughly “normie Republican.” However, the billions upon billions of dollars being thrown at ICE and the resulting huge expansion of what its proponents euphemistically call “immigration enforcement” is a departure. I don’t think Romney would have done that on this scale had he been elected in 2012.

Then there is the extremely expansive and illegally wide view of executive power that the Trump henchmen have. The admin has already unlawfully closed an entire agency (USAID) that was in effect chartered by act of Congress (after initially being set up by Kennedy). The Trump exec order on the federal govt that was the subject of Sup Ct action just today is a wholesale restructuring of the fed govt pretending to be merely a matter of “staffing decisions” (see Justice Jackson’s dissent from the SCOTUS order staying the district court’s preliminary injunction, Trump v. AFGE).

The admin’s direct assault on the universities and their research funding is also not really “normie Republican.” Neither is the enthusiasm for tariffs. Neither is the detention and attempted deportation of students for exercising free-speech rights. Neither is the sending of approx. 300 Venezuelans to CECOT in El Salvador with no hearings. Neither is the deportation of people in the U.S. criminal-justice system to South Sudan (!). Neither is the revocation of temporary protected status for Venezuelans and Haitians. Neither is the attempted deportation of Afghans who fought alongside or otherwise helped U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. SCOTUS has put the brakes on a couple of Trump initiatives, but as Jackson points out in her dissent today, it has in effect greenlighted a lot of them in brief and unreasoned orders on the so-called shadow docket.

However bad its immediate predecessors were, and some of them were bad indeed, the Trump 2.0 admin seems uniquely determined to implement a radical slash-and-burn of the civil service and federal agencies, an enormous expansion of the intrusive and carceral aspects of immigration “enforcement,” and a wholesale imposition of MAGA orthodoxy on what is taught in institutions esp. those directly under its control such as the military service academies.

So while there are “normie Republican” elements in the program, much of it is more extreme and driven by extremists like Miller and Vought. One main reason Trump was so emphatic during the campaign in his patently false statements that he’d never heard of Project 2025 was that he knew that if he won it would indeed become the blueprint for his administration.

37

J-D 07.09.25 at 1:19 am

And, if you were to believe Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind …

… then there might be something wrong with you.

38

J-D 07.09.25 at 1:23 am

Its revisionist history at this point, but the republicans wasted the potential of a Romney candidacy by running him in 2008 (hey, lets run a private equity robber barron in the teeth of the global financial crisis, that will surely work).

Mitt Romney was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, not 2008. The Republican presidential nominee in 2008 was John McCain.

39

wp200 07.09.25 at 8:05 am

“Do you expect Dilan Ye?ilgöz to lead the government formed after the election in October? Which parties do you expect to make up that government?”

Ye?ilgöz is bashing the center-left as “too left” (which it is not). She’s not bashing Wilders but has refused to enter into another coalition with Wilders.

I expect it to be near impossible to form a new government after the next elections. The easy way (center-left + center + center-right) is now being undermined by Ye?ilgöz. The center parties (left-liberals and christian-democrats) won’t do business with the looney right (either Wilders or one of the others).

It’s going to be a mess.

40

Tim Perry 07.09.25 at 9:43 am

somebody who remembers the guy who preceded romney:

The ironclad determination of political analysts of america to pretend the iraq war didn’t exist continues. romney was a brutal white supremacist fascist just as much as trump

I’m glad somebody pointed this out. Romney was Hitler in 2012, so all this pining-for-Hitler is a little confusing.

41

Tm 07.09.25 at 10:48 am

Ropber 30: “It might be worth considering the extent to which far-right media groups and their billionaire owners drive elite conversations in Europe – certainly in Germany and France, the countries with which I’m most familiar. I get the sense that to varying degrees, media and political elites in these countries either welcome Trump II as an inspiration for future political action”

Exactly. A large fraction of the elites are on board with and even admire Trump. The media discourse often focuses on low income people voting for Trump, which is backward. A much larger fraction of the upper than of the lower class are supporting fascism, both in US and Europe, and they matter more because they control the media and other levers of power.

Another observation: Especially the left wing discourse seems to oscillate between “Trumpism is a break with neoliberalism” and “Trumpism is just ordinary Republican/rightwing politics”. We have seen enough of this here on CT. Which is it, friends? It seems to me both of these wrong takes are just a way to avoid having to acknowledge that yes, it is fascism.

Shoutout to LFC 36.

42

mw 07.09.25 at 11:34 am

Trump 2.0 admin seems uniquely determined to implement a radical slash-and-burn of the civil service and federal agencies

LFC @ 36. Yes. This seems to be his revenge for the ‘resistance’ within the agencies during his first term. In doing this, he’s pushing the idea of the ‘unitary executive’ — meaning that, constitutionally speaking, the chief executive is in control of the executive branch and that there is no de-facto 4th branch of government consisting of independent agencies that are only nominally part of the executive branch but not answerable to it. We’ll see how far he ultimately gets with this.

BTW, the most recent decision by the Supreme Court allowing the Trump administration to proceed with agency restructuring is a preliminary one. The Trump admin has explicitly said it is going to make plans ‘consistent with applicable law’. The court determined that it can’t guess that the administration is likely lying about this. The point is that a lot of Trump initiatives have not yet been finally litigated (very much including whether or not the presidency actually has the tariff powers that Trump has been exercising). There’s a decent chance Trump is going to spend a fair amount of time raging against Supreme Court decisions in the months/years to come.

43

Alex SL 07.09.25 at 12:34 pm

Looking a few more decades ahead, instead of only to the next election: what NomadUK wrote at 9. I really don’t see any other outcome now given billionaire ownership of the media and the absence of a left with any degree of mass basis and vision for the future.

44

MisterMr 07.09.25 at 2:59 pm

“The question for Australians, Europeans and others who want to defend what is left of democracy is how to achieve this in a world dominated by brutal autocracies and the evil dictators who rule them.”

IMHO, in a medium to long term: avoid at all cost austerity moves, in particular stuff like increasing retirement age or similar.
The right for some reason can resist this stuff but the left can’t, and a lot of this stuff is currently pinned on the left.
In particular, in the EU Bruxelles enforces austerity or similar policies, leftish and center leftish parties stand by the EU, and they are blamed for the bad effects of austerity.
This is largely due to the center left, but for some reason voters will still vote center left dudes who do this stuff and then punish the left in general for doing this.
This is IMHO the main problem that is putting the far right in power.

(This is largely the same that Engels said at 10)

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