Deep Dive with Shawn C. Fettig

The MAGA Coup: Trump’s Takeover of the GOP (w/ Dr. Rachel Blum)

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Dr. Rachel Blum, an expert on political parties and factions, and author of the book How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics, joins the pod to explore a bold transformation within the Republican Party. Can the rise of the MAGA movement be understood as a mere political shift, or does it signify a deeper change in American democracy? We discuss the movement’s historical lineage, from Barry Goldwater’s conservatism to its contemporary manifestations, and consider its profound implications on the GOP’s future and the broader democratic landscape.

Donald Trump’s indelible impact on American politics is undeniable, and we discuss the fascinating trajectory that has seen traditional Republican elites ousted in favor of a new MAGA-aligned core. What are the social and political repercussions of Trump's enduring influence, and how has his rhetoric redefined what is politically acceptable? We examine the psychological loyalty Trump inspires in his base, the dynamics of conservative Christian support, and the Democrats’ ongoing struggle to resonate with some Americans amid a fragmented media landscape.

Finally, we discuss with threats to democratic norms, including erosion of trust in election integrity and heightened polarization, posed by the MAGA movement. From potential authoritarian tendencies in a second Trump term to the Democrats’ strategic response to evolving identity politics, we consider how these factors might reshape America’s political future. 

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Dr. Blum:

So when Trump is no longer guiding the Republican Party, I think that's where you could see some different things happen. The never Trumpers could come back in and try to take it back over. I'm not sure there are enough of them at this point to make that happen. Otherwise, though, the party has been gutted, especially the National Party. The party has been gutted, especially the national party, so it's going to be very difficult for the party to figure out how, as an organization, it can support other types of candidates who don't have this kind of cult of personality around them, and that is I'm thinking here of the book how Democracies Die by Levitsky and Ziblatt. That is bad as an outcome, right, because one of the things that makes democracies die is when a key political party stops functioning as an organ of the democracy and starts functioning as an organ of a particular leader.

Shawn:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. Maga, or Make America Great Again, is a political phenomenon that has not only reshaped the Republican Party, but has also radically transformed the political landscape of the United States. Born from the Tea Party movement's anti-establishment and anti-government fervor, maga has evolved into something far more potent, polarizing and dangerous for American democracy. This transformation didn't happen overnight. The Tea Party, which emerged in 2009 as a reaction to the election of President Barack Obama, the economic crisis and debates over health care laid the foundation for MAGA by channeling deep frustrations about government overreach and cultural change. Fueled by figures like Sarah Palin and the 2010 midterms, the Tea Party's rhetoric of grievance and nostalgia resonated with disaffected voters, setting the stage for Donald Trump's rise in 2016. And Trump didn't just adopt these grievances, he amplified them. His rallies became spectacles of defiance against the deep state immigrants. In a changing America, maga evolved into a full-blown cult of personality, with Trump's unfiltered rhetoric and disregard for democratic norms becoming central to its identity. The Republican Party, once home to a spectrum of conservative thought, has since been subsumed by MAGA, purging moderates and elevating loyalists who adhere to Trump's vision. As we stare down the barrel of a second Trump presidency, the implications are profound, from demolishing the rule of law to dismantling democratic institutions. Maga is no longer a fringe ideology it is the Republican Party.

Shawn:

My guest today is Dr Rachel Blum, assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma and an expert on political parties, with a focus on insurgent factions and their impact on American politics. She's the author of the book how the Tea Party Captured the GOP Insurgent Factions in American Politics and frequently examines the dynamics between party movements, institutions and democracy. We discuss how MAGA took over, what it means for the future of the GOP and, most importantly, what it means for American democracy. The future of the GOP and, most importantly, what it means for American democracy. All right, if you like this episode, or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, all right, dr Bloom, thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Blum:

I'm good Thanks for having me.

Shawn:

Yeah, absolutely. So. I've said this before. You may not know this, but I've said this before, and that is since the election this year. I've been feeling that I don't understand America or Americans anymore, and I mean, fair, maybe I never did, but this just feels different. I never really understood some of the racism and homophobia, misogyny, nativism, populism that has underpinned some politics on the far right in past, but it always felt fringe enough to not worry me all that much. But now I feel like the fringe has kind of become the mainstream and I'm really struggling with what this means for who we are as a country or as Americans and as people, and where we're headed and some of the things that I might have missed along the way. So I'm glad to have you here to help me maybe understand this a bit. So thanks for taking the time.

Dr. Blum:

Yeah, absolutely, I've been puzzling over many of the same things as you have.

Shawn:

Oh, great, well, we can puzzle through together. Perfect. Let's just start here, because I think to a lot of folks and I would include myself here the MAGA movement seems to have just come out of nowhere and it's attributed pretty much universally to something spun out of whole cloth by Trump. But some of the stuff that underpins this and I just mentioned this, but some of the things that underpin this movement, it really do have roots in certain corners of conservative politics that go back decades. Barry Goldwater and Pat Buchanan kind of immediately come to mind as some examples. But I think most recently we could probably point to the Tea Party movement as being maybe a tipping point into MAGA. But I don't know if that's a fair assessment. So I'm wondering if you could explain how the Tea Party movement might or might not have laid the groundwork for the MAGA movement, how it's evolved, and then, I guess in doing so, help me understand who the Tea Party is, who MAGA is, and if there's a distinction to be made here.

Dr. Blum:

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you mentioned Barry Goldwater, because he was the first politician to run with Make America Great Again as his campaign slogan. So all of this has been in the water for quite some time, right. And if we wanted to trace it back even further, I mean the nativist movements were going on well before the turn of the 20th century, right. So this is all kind of old, but it's also new, and I do think you're right that MAGA has at least some roots in the Tea Party. So the way I like to think about it is that the Tea Party changed the conversation. They changed what was acceptable to say, especially on the right, but of course that trickles into the mainstream. They changed who represented the Republican Party in state office and in Congress, and they changed kind of what you needed to say and do to run successfully, especially in Republican primaries.

Dr. Blum:

To run successfully, especially in Republican primaries and some of the big things that they focused on that were antecedents of Trump or that really paved the way for him to be popular, were anti-establishment sentiments. They were extremely suspicious of any elite. They talked a lot about rhinos or Republicans the name only and they were just not shy about having a civil war within the Republican Party which really distinguished them from the conservatives of, say, the 1990s who were taking on the liberal Democrats and Bill Clinton and so forth as the real enemy. So the Tea Party shifts that focus to anyone who disagreed with them, even if they had an R by their name, and they shifted the focus to kind of right-wing populist type sentiments which obviously have a lot of overlap with ethnocentrism and xenophobia. So before the Tea Party it wasn't as common, even on the right, to hear some of the more overt anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments. But for Tea Partiers the fact that Republicans weren't talking about this and weren't talking about it in strident enough terms was a reason to primary Republicans. You could think of David Bratt primarying Eric Cantor, who had been a figure of the Tea Party but wasn't strident enough about immigration. That was kind of his big mortal sin at the time.

Dr. Blum:

So by the time Donald Trump is running, he wasn't necessarily the candidate that the Tea Party sponsored or liked. They didn't really sponsor or endorse candidates. They were pretty decentralized. Some of them really liked Ted Cruz. But as soon as it became clear that Trump was the nominee they started to find a lot of things to like about him. And I think the other thing that the Tea Party did that helped Trump was to secularize evangelicals. So evangelicals had been a big part of conservative politics since Reagan in the 1980s, but the Tea Party brought them into the fold. But they said we aren't going to talk a lot about Christianity and Christian issues. We're going to phrase this in kind of different terms and I think that made a lot of evangelicals more comfortable with this different kind of politics and was having someone who was very much not from the Christian fold be a standard bearer.

Shawn:

So there's something about these fringlements, both on the far right and the far left, have existed since the inception of the country, since the inception of our system of governing. But there's always been this kind of general understanding that this is a fringe and this is a while. They may be belligerent and they may be, you know, disruptive, that they're kept in check by the moderate voices and the moderate figures in both parties Right and that, if not, they would. They would ultimately be disastrous for the electoral hopes of the party Right. Yes, so you know, the worst excesses of the Tea Party would sink the Republican Party.

Shawn:

It has always been kind of the general sense about how this works, and so there's this norm that the parties will kind of police the worst excesses in there within their ranks. I feel like that did work until Trump came along and that there was something about Trump that broke the mold and essentially said not only here's a path to victory, but flipped it so much that it's the almost the only path to victory. That to be a Republican in 2008 today just doesn't fly, it doesn't work. That you have to be the fringe. Does that make sense? And that feels threatening to me.

Dr. Blum:

Yeah, I think you're right that that has definitely shifted and it was shifting, of course, before Trump. I remember sitting in a seminar on Congress in 2011 and the professor making the point that there are very few moderates left in Congress like there used to be. So you know this was happening for a while and made it more possible for Trump to run without being checked. But I think another thing that had been a moderating force for a long time was the shift that happened between the primary electorate and the general electorate. So the conventional wisdom was that when you're running in a primary, you run to the extreme, because that who votes in a primary whether or not that's true, that's the conventional wisdom. We do know primary turnout is low and then, when you run the general, you tack to the middle. But Trump didn't really tack to the middle. He showed that you didn't really have to tack to the middle. Now there are exceptions to this. I think 2022 showed us some important exceptions and we do live in a world where we the results of 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 are all real and valid, and I think the preponderance of those results, at least popular vote-wise, doesn't really show the extreme fringe of the right doing well. 2024, to me, is a big exception to that rule, but the rule we actually had up until that point especially 2018 to 2022, was that when the Republicans ran these kind of out there candidates, the people showed up and they would even split the ballot. They might vote Republicans in some places, but they would cast out the kind of crazier ones.

Dr. Blum:

Something in 2024, though, seemed different, and I think the thing none of us really know yet is if more people accepted that the fringy parts of the right were fine and that they should be the mainstream. It's unclear if it was just that people had forgotten everything that happened before COVID and attributed all the COVID problems to Joe Biden instead of Trump. It's unclear if this was just you know fundamentals wise. By that I mean we're in peace and the economy. An election for Democrats to lose, and it would have been almost impossible to do otherwise. Another option is that, to some voters, trump has changed the ideological alignment of the parties such that voters might now be seeing the Republican Party as one that is pro-IVF not necessarily one that would pass a national abortion ban, but one that would just make prices better for things. That, to me, is the most hopeful possible read of the 2024 outcome, that a lot of voters who weren't super aligned to politics just saw Trump as this kind of businessman and they just decided to forget everything that had happened before.

Shawn:

I'm actually glad that you bring this up because I've been thinking about this. There is, you know exactly, as you pointed out, a distinction to be made here in previous elections as to the success of Trump and how that would overlay or translate into success of down-ballot Republicans it really didn't which suggested there was something unique about Trump and his personality that even personality-wise couldn't translate to someone else. So somebody else that had the same personality and used the same language and vernacular and had the same policy decisions was too repugnant for the same voter that would vote for Trump. Yes, prior to 2024. But that seems to have shifted this year, and you've given a couple of reasons, but I guess I want to throw a flare up for the one that scares me the most, which is that somehow Trump I don't I don't know if we need to give him credit for this, but has reshaped the electorate and reformed at least the Republican electorate to not just acquiesce to the worst potential aspects of MAGA but to prefer it.

Dr. Blum:

Yeah, and it is very hard to know if they will continue to prefer these aspects when Trump is gone. He is in many ways, unique. Even Reagan was not as famous as an entertainer or an actor or TV personality as Trump was. He really is someone who has been in the national consciousness for decades, right Since at least the 1980s. He was a household name, maybe before that.

Dr. Blum:

So there are a lot of people out there who are thinking well, you know he says that, but that's just Trump, or they just know his name better, or he just seems like he's unique and different from everyone else and so they don't need to take any of it seriously.

Dr. Blum:

I definitely think there's some of that out there In 2028, if we have a candidate field that includes some people like Nikki Haley and also includes, then that would be interesting. But I also think that we kind of have this follow the leader phenomenon going on, where the media environment that a lot of voters turn to, which is not only Fox News but this whole far-right ecosystem that has recently gotten a lot more attention attention it should have had. All along they've very much embraced Trump and magnified Trump and what Trump wants, so that creates this nationalization of politics where voters live, they're all kind of getting the same message and they're thinking about the same things and downstream this could have an effect of people over time hearing these messages so many times that they just start to seem normal and accepted. I think that's one of the big fears that I'm sure you have. I have a lot of people have right now is that somehow the shock factor with Trump seems to have dissipated. He said crazy things so many times that people were inoculated.

Shawn:

Yeah, and I mean I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I think there's a step further that scares me, and that's not only that we're inoculated, but that some people have picked up the banner and embrace that now as an appropriate and an efficient way to win elections, but then fearfully maybe. Then also how they engage with people just on a social and civic level.

Dr. Blum:

Yes, yes, that's a very good point. I think it's almost become cancel culture on the right. Yes, that's a very good point. I think it's almost become cancel culture on the right, and this happened with all the censoring that the state and county Republican parties have been doing. But it's happening on a broader level as well, and the only thing that gives me a little bit of hope about that is what happened to cancel culture on the left. People over time really don't like being canceled. It's happening from a different direction now and if kind of the new PC becomes, whatever it is that Trump and Trump world are wanting to say, it's possible that people will lash out against that the same way that they've lashed out against traditional PC. I don't know if that's wishful thinking or not, but it's possible.

Shawn:

So I want to talk about a little bit about.

Shawn:

We've kind of established that Trump and MAGA have essentially captured the GOP and they have part laid that into I don't know they would say a landslide, but they part laid that into essential complete control of the government, at least for the next couple of years. And there's two sides of the coin when we talk about capturing the GOP. There's the populace, the electorate, and then there's the political elites and people that are elected right, the politicians, and they are perhaps captured for different reasons, and I think the easier one to talk about is political elites and politicians. To me it seems like this you know this isn't scientific, but it just seems to me pretty obvious that the GOP, who did find Trump to be pretty repugnant early on, are now some of his greatest supporters, the elites anyway, that this is probably about it being politically advantageous and about their political survival. But what do you think has happened within the Republican Party at the elite level that has allowed them to become so enamored by something like this with what seems like such little pushback?

Dr. Blum:

I think the political science way we would talk about this is the dual forces of conversion and replacement. But I'll talk about replacement first. So replacement is just is pretty straightforward it's the people who were the never Trump Republicans lost their primaries or they didn't run again. And that has happened now for almost a decade, such that there are so few of those people left in any of the halls of power. And the ones who are left, they can only do so much, right, mitt Romney can only do so much all by himself.

Dr. Blum:

And then the conversion, I think, is the stranger part, and that's kind of what you're getting at with, say, marco Rubio or JD Vance, right, people who said Trump was this big threat, and now are his running mate or part of his cabinet, like what happened with them.

Dr. Blum:

And that seems to me just like a very raw desire for power, which shouldn't be that surprising in politics After all, politics is about power but is nevertheless surprising because a lot of these people claimed to be principled ideologues who, you know, had had their own commitments, um, and now they're all in line to kiss the ring.

Dr. Blum:

So I I think both obviously have happened, but I actually think replacement has been the bigger force if you look at the house or the senate and you compare them to what they looked like in 2012 or even 2016,. There has just been drastic turnover, the same at the state legislative level, such that the reigning majority of the Republican Party in both of those institutions are post-Trump people, meaning the core of the party is now post-Trump and supportive of Trump, and the people who predated him and maybe oppose him are just so much fewer. So it's like a flip of what was happening in the Obama years, where the Tea Party-style Republicans were the fringe and the establishment people were the core. Now the Tea Party or MAGA-style people are the core and the others are the fringe. I think in that case it's not surprising that a few of those the Rubios right who want to stay around have decided to get on board, because there's not much of a political future if they don't.

Shawn:

What do you think this is doing to, or has done to, the Republican Party of old?

Dr. Blum:

Oh, I think it's been catastrophic. And I mean you can get pretty deep into this and look at it. At the state level even kind of single party states, red states like Oklahoma or Wyoming there are deep, deep battles between the old guard Republicans who only want to deal with issues that affect the state, who have traditional values, and the MAGA republicans who are coming in and bringing in national issues that aren't really a big deal in. These states right like Oklahoma and Wyoming, are not teaching critical race theory in their schools, yet the legislatures, or at least the new garden legislatures, are obsessed with legislation on this kind of topic. I think that's one example.

Dr. Blum:

At the state level, it has meant that Republicans are paying less attention to local concerns and things that actually matter in their states and more attention to these symbolic national battles, which in the end, is just bad for citizens. At the national level, it means that the Republican Party is no longer a robust organization that can stand up for democratic processes and institutions and values. It is now just an organization that's been gutted and remade to follow a particular leader. So when Trump is no longer guiding the Republican Party, I think that's where you could see some different things happen, right. The never Trumpers could come back in and try to take it back over.

Dr. Blum:

I'm not sure there are enough of them at this point to make that happen. Otherwise, though, the party has been gutted, especially the national party, so it's going to be very difficult for the party to figure out how, as an organization, it can support other types of candidates who don't have this kind of cult of personality around them, and that is I'm thinking here of the book how Democracies Die by Levitsky and Ziblatt. Yeah, that is bad as an outcome, right, because one of the things that makes democracies die is when a key political party stops functioning as an organ of the democracy and starts functioning as an organ of a particular leader there's this funny kind of I don't know, I don't want to say paradox.

Shawn:

I almost feel like it's being wielded as a comfort blanket for never Trumpers and also on the left, which is that if this is just about Trump and if the party has itself been gutted, that ultimately there's a light at the end of the tunnel, because post-Trump, that the party will be left in shambles and we'll have to figure out a way to rebuild itself or reshape itself or reconstitute itself in some way that is more moderate, and there's a part of me that feels like that's possible and that's hopeful. But at the same time, there's another possible outcome here, and that is that in that period of time, there is so much chaos and instability in our political system that a lot of damage can be done, not just to the basics of functioning but to democracy itself, and I feel like that's a very real possibility.

Dr. Blum:

I agree with you and I think that the idea of moderates doesn't really have a place here. Because if we were to look at, you know, left-right issue valences, the contemporary National Republican Party is more pro-choice at least under Trump, with what he's saying currently it's a good change than it has been in a while. Right, just more pro-spending. It's very strange, right, they are not the party of Reagan, but the real thing that they are about is dismantling government. Right, they do not believe that government can or should work, so they will make sure it doesn't. And that kind of dismantling is actually the part that I think is more deeply dangerous. And the question is how much they can dismantle before that party can rebuild itself. You know, moderates could come back in and have moderate policy views, but if we have gutted the state and just completely gotten rid of everything that might make the state able to function, I don't think moderates will be enough.

Shawn:

So let's talk about the other side of the equation here, the other side of the coin, which is the electorate. So one of the things that we've all probably watched happen but I've watched happen. I live in a blue city, in a blue state, so significant changes in just our neighborhoods is easy to see, right. So, by way of example, in 2020, you know, I have neighbors, typical Republican voters, but very adamantly, strongly against Trump and this year flying the flags to the point where now I'm like, okay, look, the guy won, you can take it down. Yes, flying the flags and numerous signs and very, very supportive of Trump. And I can't put my finger on maybe because I'm not in that bubble, but I cannot put my finger on what drives such a strong loyalty to Trump and MAGA in the electorate.

Dr. Blum:

Yeah, I mean it is puzzling, trump and MAGA in the electorate. Yeah, I mean it is puzzling, and there are, you know, the handful of Republicans who have gone the other way. You know, over the last couple of years have been more repulsed by him. And then you know, when it voted for a third party person, it doesn't seem like there were that many of those. So my explanation for the phenomenon of voters kind of getting more and more on board with him would be that winning feels good and Trump seems like a path to victory, more so than they were used to, and I think, especially if you looked at people in a blue state not so used to seeing Republicans win. Now they have this guy who seems to, at least if you believe him, never lose an election, or even if you don't believe him about that, definitely seems to be more successful than John McCain or Mitt Romney or anyone else they can really remember since Bush. And it's easy when your side is winning to forgive a lot of sins.

Dr. Blum:

But I think you also see this with the way a lot of conservative christians have gotten on board with trump.

Dr. Blum:

Right, they'll talk about him as this imperfect vessel, as the tip of god's spear right, and all of this is just kind of a psychological mechanism whereby people decide that they want to like or believe in something and then they shut their minds to anything that doesn't confirm that and they will bend reality to try to make what they want to be true seem true.

Dr. Blum:

So this kind of like confirmation bias and all these other types of cognitive things that we know people are able to do to change reality in their minds to make it what they want it to be, and so I think a lot of that kind of confirmation bias but also these kind of cognitive slippage devices are happening, because what people really hate is the feeling of cognitive dissonance, and that would require someone to say I want Republicans to win, but I don't like this guy, and you know that's hard and uncomfortable to hold those kind of conflicting views in your head at the same time, and what we know from kind of decades of research in political psychology is that voters will do almost anything to avoid having that feeling.

Shawn:

Let's spend a little bit of time talking about Democrats, because this isn't just a Republican driven phenomenon.

Shawn:

The Democrats response to this and also their own plans for the future of America, the future of American democracy, all play into this as well. And I remember thinking after the Dobbs decision that the immediate election following that was very beneficial to Democrats. But I had a uncomfortable feeling that this was more of a backlash to the Dobbs decision or the Republicans position on abortion than it was anything proactive on the part of the Democrats and wondering how long those coattails would extend or how much they could capitalize on that and for how long. And I feel like we have a bit of an answer, and that is to 2024. We don't know the exact story yet about 2024. But there is quite a bit of rumbling that the Democratic Party hasn't quite understood the economic landscape, especially downstream in like rural America, and or maybe it's upstream. But it does make me wonder if you think that Democrats have dropped the ball here or if there's significant things that somehow the Democratic Party has overlooked in addressing that MAGA, and the Republican Party by extension, have been able to capitalize on.

Dr. Blum:

So this is definitely part of the post-election narrative right that Democrats just they missed something. You know the Bernie Sanders argument that they've let the working class go. Obviously, there are arguments that the Democrats have cared too much about identity politics or trans issues, and there might be a kernel of truth in each of these things. I mean, you can pick them apart. Trans issues have really been something that Republicans have brought to the fore. Democrats are not passing reverse bathroom bills or bills to allow trans women and girls sports. It is Republican states that are doing this, and then it's easy for them to say that this is a big issue. So some of this is a little bit of a straw man and obviously identity politics are very strong on the right. This is kind of part of Trump's appeal.

Dr. Blum:

I tend to think that the Democratic Party has a really hard job right now, which is to be the big tent that the Republican Party is not. Typically, both of our parties have been kind of big tents. They can pull a lot of different types of people into the coalition. The Republican Party is not so much doing that right now. I mean, they've made small inroads with non-white voters, but their primary base is white voters from specific states with specific education levels and working backgrounds. In other words, most Republican voters look very similar to one another, whereas most Democratic voters have less in common with one another than they do with Republicans. So the Democrats are responsible for holding together everyone from never-Trump Republicans to people who would really consider themselves socialists, and there is no winning with that kind of coalition. It is almost too broad for Democrats to satisfy everybody, and the dysfunction at the level of the federal government has meant that when Democrats get in power they really can't deliver or do very much to change anything the voters want. So then voters say you know they didn't really keep promises or whatnot. Another part of the problem is the information environment. Republicans have done such a good job at having a unified message and having that unified message put out across all kinds of different outlets, whereas Democrats do not have a unified message, and even though there's this sense that the media has a liberal bias, the media's attempt to correct for that has actually been by being equally critical of Democrats as Republicans, even if Democrats aren't doing things that deserve as much criticism. So it's created a difficult environment for Democrats to operate and legislate in. So I think these are all part of the problem, but at the end of the day, like my explanation for what happened this last election is very much the political science explanation.

Dr. Blum:

There are a couple of things we look at to predict who's going to win. One of them is incumbent party in office. Another one of them is economic growth in the quarter before the election. Another one is whether wars are going on, and the fundamentals did not do the Democrats any favors. In fact, if COVID hadn't happened in 2020, we would have. We would have predicted a Trump victory. But because COVID happened, it kind of changed the fundamentals in that environment and in this case, none of the fundamentals were really on Harris's side. So if she could have talked more about a certain issue or less about another issue, or try to visit one group or another group, it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

Dr. Blum:

I think there's kind of a danger in pinning all this too much on identity politics, because the only way to make the argument that this is because the Democrats have spent too much time about identity politics is to then talk about the identity groups that were left out in the Democrats' pursuit of identity politics. In other words, it's really circular. So I think a Democratic Party that can win a national election is only four years in the past. It's possible if a few things have been different, it could have been the party this year. But I don't see the Democratic Party as being so deeply off base as some people are saying it is. I mean, its positions are very broad and minimal, and they kind of have to be, unless the Republican Party were to somehow broaden the coalition that it has.

Shawn:

Yeah, and I think we also overlook the importance of some of the structural design aspects of our system that just so benefit the Republican Party at least right now. Right, so, like the gerrymandering and the redistricting in the Senate, the apportionment in the Senate.

Dr. Blum:

Even the Electoral College.

Shawn:

Right. So much is being made right now of the fact that Trump won the popular vote, but I think, because he narrowly won the popular vote, that that story overshadows the institutional design benefit that the Republican Party had Exactly.

Dr. Blum:

Exactly yes, because if the Electoral College were proportional, this would have been a much different map. He might have still won, but it wouldn't be by nearly as much as he did, and he definitely went to one in 2016. So, yeah, a lot of the hand-wringing that's happening in kind of like the pundit sphere, I think is a little bit unfair, right, it's attributing all kinds of things to the Democratic Party that they didn't cause and can't control, and they are in national elections kind of fighting an uphill battle all the time. So it's when, in years like 2020, when they can really get turnout high, that's when they can win. But it takes really an extraordinary amount of Democratic turnout to overcome the Republican structural victory and the fact that they couldn't really an extraordinary amount of Democratic turnout to overcome the Republican structural victory and the fact that they couldn't get an extraordinary amount of turnout two elections in a row is not that surprising, right. People get tired. That is a lot of work to keep doing every four years.

Shawn:

So let's talk about one of the other narratives and that is it's in the same vein as the conversation that we're having right now.

Shawn:

And that is it's in the same vein as the conversation that we're having right now, and that is that Democrats, over the past couple of decades especially, have focused so much on identity related politics that that has created or generated a backlash within the electorate that the Republican Party probably spawned by the MAGA movement or at least most evident in the MAGA movement has capitalized on. But they've capitalized it in such a way that the response is we see that coalition on the far right being responsible for things like January 6th, so some type of political violence, and also being responsible for heightened violent rhetoric. And what that makes it seem like is that in the United States we can't have both parity or equality or equity and peace and stability as long as we have these really fringe elements on the right that are willing to raise the heat past tolerable standards. And I'm wondering if you've given thought to how we would thread that needle or if that is just a component of our politics.

Dr. Blum:

That's such a hard one, I mean. I do think that it is a bit of a false dichotomy, right, the option is not peace or inequality, and I think, again, we could look to 2020 as a counter example of that, because what is happening in the world as you lead up to elections really does matter. In 2020, we had the George Floyd and corresponding protests happening the summer before the election and then, anywhere where Trump could have a say or Republicans were in charge, there were kind of brutal crackdowns, and that fueled a different kind of engagement from the electorate. We have a different world. That led into this election. People didn't feel good about economics. The progressives, who were really energized by the George Floyd protests, were instead de-energized by the situation in Gaza. That mattered a lot too. That mattered a lot too, and it's not like the Democratic Party in 2024 was more pro-identity politics than it was in 2020. If anything, it had really dialed back right. This is post-MeToo. We are not really talking a lot about police violence against Black people anymore. Kamala Harris did not play up any of the unique parts of her identity. Her campaign was completely devoid of appeals to identity groups. So if people want to make the argument that identity politics are why Democrats lost.

Dr. Blum:

I think 2024 is kind of a weird example to use to show that identity politics can't win. I think it is much more variable than that. And then of course, you have the part on the right about political violence, and I think that is scary in its own unique way that is completely independent from identity politics. There has been a history of political violence in our country on and off for a long time, but the kind of sense of partisan animosity is kind of new. We call this, um, effective polarization, or in other words, like emotional polarization, and it is stronger on the right because of identity politics on the right actually.

Dr. Blum:

So what has seemed to happen is that Republicans have multiple overlapping identities that are all important to them, and then being Republican becomes one of those identities as well, and this galvanizes them even more, such that they start thinking of anyone not like them as not only the other but dangerous, and our surveys pick up on this in all kinds of ways. You know you want to date someone of the other other but dangerous, and our surveys pick up on this in all kinds of ways. You know you want to date someone of the other party, et cetera. But at its far extreme, this kind of dehumanization of anyone who doesn't fit in your identity groups is a really easy justification for violence. I guess my answer would be to kind of turn that on its head and say that identity politics on the right is one of the main causes of political violence on the right.

Shawn:

So another narrative, at least since Trump came on the scene, one of the narratives louder or quieter depending on the election, but is that Trump and MAGA pose threats to American democracy. So you know, the election is between democracy or authoritarianism. Biden really leaned into that, as when he was running as a strategy. I think Kamala pulled back a little bit on that, but nonetheless, here we are Right. So Trump is one, maga movement has won, and we're two months away from the second inauguration of Trump. So I guess I want to ask do you consider MAGA to be a threat to democracy and if so, in what ways? And if not, why not?

Dr. Blum:

They definitely do, although I fear that people have grown tired of hearing about that. I also think it's a reality that when we start talking about systems of government, that gets kind of academic pretty quickly. So, whatever tolerance most people have for it, we've passed that threshold a long time ago. And that's assuming that people really have much of a sense of what we mean when we say democracy and authoritarianism, which I really don't think most people do, and you know, no fault on anyone who doesn't have a deep understanding of these concepts. Right, everyone has to specialize in and learn different things. So I understand why that argument didn't get as much traction this time and why maybe people didn't find it that persuasive.

Dr. Blum:

I have heard people who voted for Trump using justifications like well, you know, he said he was going to do all this stuff the first time. He didn't, so he's not going to do it this time. Maybe. I think the main reason he didn't do it the first time was because he didn't understand how to effectively use the government. People have said that he will use the government more effectively this time. That's possible, but then you can look at the people he's choosing for his cabinet and think that maybe it's not as possible. He is certainly not picking people who, for the most part, are, you know, deeply, uh, experienced in politics. There are, I think, scarier people. He could pick people who would be more skilled at using and dismantling these various structures than the ones he has chosen.

Dr. Blum:

That said, I think if Trump had his way, if he could just do things by fiat, he would 100% lean into authoritarian tendencies. Right, his main concern is making sure that he is on top and he would use the organs of the government, which he would view as parts of a business. That is now something Trump runs to do, what Trump wants. Now he might not be thinking that's authoritarian, but the effect would be authoritarian. I am not sure if that is something he can actually pull off with his intellect and expertise and that of the people that he has underneath him. He also has this kind of bad tendency to fire people as soon as they say something he doesn't like, and that makes it really hard for anyone to pursue a kind of consistent agenda.

Dr. Blum:

So I think the kind of stupidity excuse could save us a bit, but there are still some deep ways, even if Trump can't pursue some of his most outlandish aims, that he has already undermined democracy. Obviously, the election integrity situation is a huge threat to democracy because for the longest time we have said that free and fair elections are the bedrock of democracy. The United States, along with other countries, has spent a long time helping monitor elections in other countries, and that's how we decide how their democracies are doing. So the fact that there are so many Americans let's say at least a sizable majority of one of the two parties that no longer believe that our elections are free and fair unless there's a certain outcome and even then they might question it is deeply problematic, because that distrust is not going to go away, and that happened at a moment when Americans already had historically low trust of institutions. I think another way that our democracy could be deeply hurt by Trump is if he does manage to make some of these federal agencies work less well than they currently do. So he might not be able to fully abolish them, but part of the reason Americans don't trust government that much is that since the 1980s, starting with Reagan, there has been a big push to make government work less well in order to prove that government can't work. So if government does work less well, then this kind of just gives people who are against these institutions more grist for the mill.

Dr. Blum:

And then you know, the separation of powers is this whole other problematic situation that is bigger than Trump right? The super majority on the Supreme Court right now is beyond Trump and it's really unclear how institutionally minded they are, in other words, how much they care about preserving a view of the court as an independent institution for politics versus how much they care about pursuing conservative political aims. It's also not clear to me if Congress is going to check the presidency the way it was meant to. So the whole idea was that these branches would check one another because ambition would check ambition. So members of Congress would be jealous of their authority and wouldn't want the president to take it.

Dr. Blum:

But right now, the way that the party system is structured, it's not so much a three-way tug of war between the branches as a two-way tug of war between the branches as a two-way tug of war between the parties. So this is also deeply problematic. I think the one potential saving grace is actually the federal system. So in a world where there were insane power grabs at the federal level, there are multiple states that have economies larger than many countries that could stand up to the federal government. This isn't something they've had to do for a long time, but it's possible.

Shawn:

I think that that is one of the few fail-safes built into the American system that is still standing the fact that you have you've researched this, you have you have expertise in this, I think you have a longer view and a depth of knowledge that might give you some context that allows you to see patterns in the noise in ways that the rest of us don't. And so, in that context, then, I guess I'm wondering where you think the GOP, the zombified GOP directed by MAGA, at least where they might be headed in the next decade, and what that might mean, or maybe, just moving forward, the implications that this could have for not just the GOP but for our politics and the country as a whole.

Dr. Blum:

Yeah, I do spend a lot of time thinking about this and trying to figure out if there are historical parallels, because you know we've we've had times before where parties wax and wane in our system. We haven't had as much of a time when a party was truly beholden to one figure although I think you could say that the Republicans with Teddy Roosevelt were. It was similar but not the same right. That party ended up fracturing when Teddy Roosevelt decided he actually did want to run again. This is how Woodrow Wilson got in the White House. And you could think about the Democrats with FDR. You know they spent decades kind of living on that legacy. But our parties today are fundamentally different than the parties were then. Without getting too much into the weeds, state-level parties and party organizations have so much less power than they did before the 1970s and there's been a worldwide push for more intra-party democracy. Right, people are more suspicious than they've ever been of the role of political parties. So the kind of popular push would actually be for less elite control of a Republican party, which who knows what direction that would go in. Another thing that's changed about our parties is kind of the issue space they occupy. Across the Western world parties have become cartelized, meaning there are very few issues that are actually on the table for debate and so many other issues where there's been some kind of consensus and there's been an agreement not to talk much about it. Now that is kind of changing right now, because many of those areas of consensus are things that Trump is attacking, like the idea that free trade is good or the idea that international alliances are important to our national security, so things like that. But the parties today are are fundamentally different than they than they ever have been before. There's just much less direction from the top and much less public trust in them. So what I really could see happening is more of a crisis for the parties, and especially for the Republican Party, and out of that we would get possibly a different party system. I don't think we would get more parties that has never actually happened anytime we've had this crisis in the US but we would get parties that have different members of their coalition and operate along different axes. That doesn't necessarily mean they'd be better right. It just means they'd be different. So whatever the Republican Party is going to look like after this, we can't think it's going to look like the party of John McCain or Mitt Romney, because the Democratic Party also doesn't look like the party of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. They are going to fundamentally change.

Dr. Blum:

We also can't rule out something that has kind of changed parties throughout history, which is these exogenous historical shocks. Which is these exogenous historical shocks? The trajectory of both parties was fundamentally changed in 2008 and 2020 by things no one thought were going to happen. We don't know what else will happen and how else that will change things Again. That could be good and that could be bad. We don't know how people will respond to crisis, but there's to me, looking forward, just so much uncertainty, like that's the one thing I'm sure of. This is not going to be repeating anything that we have necessarily seen in American history before. We are definitely entering, I think, a new party period, more of a realignment.

Shawn:

All right, final question you ready for it? What's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately? And it doesn't have to be related to this topic, but it can be.

Dr. Blum:

I recently finished the book and find the name of it. It's about the great migration. It's called the worms of other sons by Isabel Wilkerson and it's a fictional book. But she did kind of academic level fieldwork for this book and talked to so many people who had migrated out of the Jim Crow South between World War I and the 1970s. I'd always known that a great migration had happened, but I was not aware of its depths or its patterns or how it reshaped the north. So I would highly recommend that book for anyone who's interested in in how america became what it is today, um, and especially in what shaped, um, the contemporary politics of black americans. And, uh, in terms of of what I been watching, I don't know. I just finished the short Netflix docuseries on Simone Biles, which is very fun if you're into gymnastics, like I am.

Shawn:

Would you recommend it?

Dr. Blum:

Yes, yes, I would.

Shawn:

I want to go back to the Great Migration, but I want to talk about migration just really quickly generally in the United States, because one of the things that's kind of struck me is we have these two stories about one that we're going through a party realignment in the United States or something right, some type of evolution, and at the same time that we're experiencing another migration of people, like moving to the Sun Belt and out of the Rust Belt and etc. And that's changing up the makeup of a country. And I just wonder, if you overlay those two if there's anything that would maybe there's if we overlay past migrations in the United States over the politics of our time if we would see some type of a trend that shows a certain amount of upheaval and heightened political anxiety at those periods of time.

Dr. Blum:

That's interesting. I mean also because one of the big hallmarks of the Great Migration is that when it was happening, no one could really see that it was happening right, so we can never fully tell that these things are happening until they're over. So right, we could very well be in one right now and we aren't quite sure yet. So the two hallmarks of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and the West were terrible conditions at home, like truly terrible life-threatening conditions, and the possibility of greater economic opportunity elsewhere.

Dr. Blum:

That doesn't mean that those are the conditions of every Great Migration, but typically, for people to pick up and leave, they need to have a combination of not much hope where they are and the promise of something better elsewhere. So it's possible that something like that could be happening or continue to happen. Maybe we could see some people leaving red states for bluer states states, um. Maybe we could see people leaving areas in the rust belt that are economically depressed for, um, say, the atlanta suburbs or or places or you know, california's leaving for texas, places where it's cheaper or there's more economic opportunity, but I don't think we'll see anything on that same scale right, yeah, the right, right, yeah, the solid Jim Crow South was just a historical anomaly Like there really has never been anything else like it, and the places that Black Americans went to were just so diverse it was really everywhere else in the country.

Dr. Blum:

So I'm not sure we'd quite see anything like that. But there has definitely been a little bit of a shifting, at least I think, of millennials. A lot of us, myself included, lived in really big, expensive cities when we were younger, say in our 20s, and we scraped to get by. And then at some point you get really tired of that and you realize that there are a lot of less expensive places to live in the country. And at least some of this shift, I think, has been reflected in how certain states have turned a little bit more purple. I'm thinking Colorado, arizona, georgia, maybe North Carolina. So you know, we could be seeing a little bit of like a millennial migration. I don't know if it's any bigger than that.

Shawn:

Yeah, agreed. Food for thought, though.

Dr. Blum:

Yeah.

Shawn:

Dr Blum, thanks for being here and thanks for the conversation.

Dr. Blum:

Thanks so much, I really enjoyed it.

Shawn:

It's clear that the MAGA movement has fundamentally altered the landscape of the Republican Party and the nation as a whole. While populist movements can highlight legitimate grievances, the MAGA approach often prioritizes divisive rhetoric over constructive solutions, with a single-minded focus on reshaping American cultural, social, economic and political life in ways that could dismantle American democracy. Democracy thrives on diverse voices, respectful debate and a commitment to facts and constitutional principles. It's crucial that we, as citizens, engage critically with political movements and prioritize policies that unite rather than divide us. The strength of American democracy lies in its ability to evolve and improve through inclusive dialogue and participation.

Shawn:

A second Trump presidency poses a real threat to democracy and human rights in the United States and around the world, creating an urgent need for action. Trump's campaign promises and the policies outlined in Project 2025 signal a potential dismantling of democratic institutions and a severe erosion of civil liberties. The urgency is compounded by the fact that Trump and his allies have learned from his first term and are better prepared to implement their agenda swiftly. So this creates a critical need for immediate action from civil society organizations, legal institutions and us, concerned citizens, to safeguard democratic values and human rights, as demoralized as we may be in this moment and over the next four years. We need to continue to advocate for a political discourse and a political behavior that values truth, respects democratic institutions and works to address the concerns of all Americans. That's our homework over the next few years. All right, check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat soon, folks. Thank you, thank you, you.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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