Editorial: Why Right-Wing Populism Won’t End with Donald Trump

After the historic victory of Biden and Harris in the 2020 election, many felt the influence of the Trump presidency would soon be over. In many ways, they’re right; the executive orders issued by Trump will likely be repealed, and a lot of other changes he made during his tenure are bound to be undone by the next administration. 

However, it’s important to recognize the 70 million people who voted for Trump still believe in his message, and have the chance to dramatically influence the American political space for years to come. 

First, it’s necessary to understand what beliefs characterize the most enthusiastic Trump supporters, especially those that differ from that of the traditional Republican party. One name often used to characterize these beliefs is right-wing populism— right-wing referring to the economic and cultural right, meaning support for free-market capitalism and conservative/traditional values— and populism, meaning policy aimed at everyday people who feel themselves ignored. In Trump’s case, this manifested itself into poor, working-class white voters feeling a need to apportion blame to someone for what they feel to be a worsening America. The scapegoats chosen by Trump and his supporters are plentiful, ranging from immigrants and minorities to Democrats and the establishment as a whole. 

These types of ideas, which can become radical and nationalistic when amplified by social media and news sources like Fox or One America News, have nevertheless begun to shift union and lower/middle class Americans toward the Republican party for the first time in years. In the past, Democrats have been the party of the working class; yet, with raised taxes and increasingly progressive policies and candidates, many of their former supporters have been turned off from their candidates. 

And, as per the two-party system, they’ve turned to the other side, where Donald Trump taught them who to blame (supporting the belief that Trump is, in the grand scheme of things, more of a symptom than a cause.) In short, the right has, through Trump, managed to secure an entirely new demographic while barely lifting a finger. 

Now, Trump’s loss in the 2020 election showed that this ideology, or at least the way Trump presented it, is not a foolproof way to win elections; Republicans know this, and yet it would be ignorant of them to ignore the success that right-wing populism brought them in 2016. In this way, there is a good chance the Republican party as a whole will shift to the right in order to accommodate and pander to these new, enthusiastic supporters. 

The Republicans have undoubtedly not had a candidate with such enthusiastic support since Reagan and are desperate to regain such fervent support for one of their own. (One another note, this shift by the Republicans also has the potential to cause a similar shift by Democrats, who could attempt to pick up a more moderately conservative vote, which will dramatically shift the Overton window of American politics even farther right.) For this reason, it’s very likely that Trump’s policies will have a lasting effect on the Republican party as a whole; it’s not to be taken lightly that the only success they’ve had in the past decade has been with a radical right-wing populist. 

For many, the success of a Biden-Harris ticket marks the end of the time in their lives that they felt the need to worry about politics. They confined the extent of their political beliefs to a hatred of the president, and nothing more. And now that he’s lost, liberals, centrists, and even some conservatives believe the war has been won; for some, I admit this is true. If you only care about politics when the person being opposed is as loud, belligerent, and openly hateful as Trump, you may be able to reside in a world free from the whirlwind of politics for quite some time before feeling the need to turn on the news. But, for the sake of the future of our country, I hope you don’t go down that road.

Now is not the time to step away from politics; Trump leaving office is not the end, but the beginning of a new chapter in American politics. I know that, for many, the last four years have been an exhausting barrage of infuriating news— it’s tempting to just step away from it all now that anyone else is in charge. But this idea that Biden will unite the country and solve all the problems Trump created isn’t real, not only because such a candidate doesn’t exist, but also because post-Trump America is different from pre-Trump America in ways that are never going to change. No matter what you believe, who you voted for, or what you think of either candidate, I urge you to continue to educate yourself and think with empathy, because if you stop caring, the other side has already won. 

Zoe Thomas is a junior at Portage Northern High School in Portage, Michigan, and is a Hoppin and Andrews Elementary alum. Zoe is passionate about political science and journalism.

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Any views or opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.