In this environment, for the first time since President Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive run in 1892, voters face the choice of two functional incumbents, two candidates running on their recent performance in the White House. One was president during a time when wages rose faster than inflation, when the stock market was strong, when home loan rates were accessible, and one wasn’t. But it is more than dollars and common sense that will see Trump win in a fair election—it is his understanding of the America that he rode to victory in 2016 and near-victory in 2020.
Think of Hillbilly Elegy if you want to take the shortcut. Or, as another pundit put it, “Trump rode a wave of pessimism to the White House—pessimism his detractors did not share because he was speaking about, and to, an America they either didn’t see or understood only as a caricature. But just as with this year, when liberal elites insist that things are going well while overwhelming majorities of Americans say they are not, Trump’s unflattering view captured the mood of the country.”
Trump’s thesis may be truer today than it was the first time he ran on it—polls show most young people never expect to earn what their parents do now, and deaths of despair continue to rise. People tend to notice when they are doing better in an economy, and when they are not.
Immigration under Trump was simple, and matched a large number of Americans’ thoughts: We may have enough. As Trump said, “A nation without borders is not a nation at all. We must have a wall. The rule of law matters!” Yet under Biden a pattern of curtailment of immigration, thought once labeled racism, is now edging toward policy in sanctuary cities. We may have enough.
Biden, in a way, should be thanked for drawing such a stark contrast between his immigration policy and Trump’s, and what the coastal elite minority hold true and what the majority of inner Americans believe and will express by voting for Trump.