The real story of 2024 may be the fraying of white Christian nationalist unity
And yes, I think Kamala Harris will win
John Heilemann, I think accurately, describes Donald Trump as “dotty, demented, mentally diminished,” but still insists that the debate between Trump and Kamala Harris is extremely unlikely to move the needle on the November election outcome.[1] Perhaps so, but it seems like I’m being asked to believe that independents are really going to vote for such a man as he very visibly and unrelentingly continues his melt down.
My answer has to be, no, I flatly don’t believe it. As repugnant as I find the neoconservative Harris embrace of genocide in Gaza,[2] I think she’ll win. But I think the real story of the 2024 election may be the fraying of white Christian nationalist unity that Trump had previously built into a powerful coalition and that had led me to discount the seven tendencies of conservatism I had identified in my dissertation.[3]
Trump will of course retain gun nuts’ support. There have now been not one but two assassination attempts on white Christian nationalists’ great white savior, both using weapons that have no legitimate civilian use,[4] but gun nuts are still gun nuts.[5] And, as before, I see more yard signs in support of Trump around Pittsburgh than I do for Harris, but notably, they seem less ubiquitous, and also notably, this has not meant that Trump has carried gun nut Pennsylvania in the past even when they were more ubiquitous. My guess—only a guess—is that Harris will carry Pennsylvania as the cities continue to outweigh rural areas.
But Trump has apparently flip-flopped on a question on the Florida ballot which would overturn the state’s abortion ban, alienating at least some social and traditionalist conservatives.[6] He failed, abysmally, to win the Libertarian Party nomination,[7] limiting his support among capitalist libertarians. He has spectacularly lost support among, again, at least some neoconservatives.[8] And it is hard to imagine functionalist conservatives, with a self-serving ideological agenda of preserving their own power and privilege over the rest of us, staying in line. Of those seven tendencies of conservatism,[9] this leaves just authoritarian populism (likely the most popular tendency) and paleoconservatism (including hard right neo-Nazis and white supremacists), which in the years since I wrote my dissertation, I’ve found increasingly difficult to distinguish from each other.
This hardly means that the story is over. The U.S. hard right was not by any means new when Trump won in 2016 and it will surely outlast his demise. Events may yet take a violent turn as Trump’s remaining supporters find they have been repudiated yet again. Tempering this is the more organized militias’ failure to turn out for the January 6 coup attempt; my guess is that if they didn’t turn out then, they won’t turn out now. But “lone wolf” attacks can be expected and absolutely should be anticipated.
And the lingering question of what to do about a system that, with what’s been styled “the ratchet effect” where Republicans push the country to the right and Democrats stop any counter-move to the left yields only regress, will continue to linger.
[1] John Heilemann, “Slaughterhouse 45,” Puck, September 15, 2024, https://puck.news/a-post-debate-meltdown-is-consuming-trumpworld/
[2] David Benfell, “Get ready to fight, kids,” Not Housebroken, September 9, 2024, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/get-ready-to-fight-kids
[3] David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).
[4] Emily Davies, Steve Hendrix, and Annabelle Timsit, “Suspected Trump rally shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks is from Bethel Park, Pa.,” Washington Post, July 14, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/07/14/thomas-matthew-crooks-trump-shooting-suspect/; Erin Doherty and Sareen Habeshian, “Trump targeted in apparent assassination attempt, FBI investigating,” Axios, September 15, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/09/15/trump-gunshots-2024-election-republicans
[5] Meredith Howard, “Why Hasn’t the Trump Shooting Sparked New Gun Restrictions?” Governing, August 14, 2024, https://www.governing.com/politics/why-hasnt-the-trump-shooting-sparked-new-gun-restrictions
[6] Kierra Frazier, “Trump scrambles to do damage control on Florida abortion measure,” Politico, August 30, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/30/trump-damage-control-florida-abortion-00176930; Michelle L. Price, “Trump says he’ll vote to uphold Florida abortion ban after seeming to signal he’d support repeal,” Associated Press, August 30, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/trump-abortion-florida-six-weeks-ae0ce47cb2af82a6586fa19235ea2226
[7] Stephen Fowler, “As voters suffer presidential election deja vu, Chase Oliver wants to be another option,” National Public Radio, June 21, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/06/21/nx-s1-4987678/chase-oliver-libertarian-president-trump-mises-caucus; Brittany Gibson and Peder Schaefer, “‘He’s more delusional than I thought’: Libertarians jeer Trump during convention speech,” Politico, May 25, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/panderer-libertarians-jeer-trump-at-their-convention-00160023
[8] Aída Chávez, “Do Kamala Harris’s Neocon Supporters Just Hate Trump, or Is There Something More to Her Appeal?” Intercept, September 14, 2024, https://theintercept.com/2024/09/14/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-neocons/
[9] David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).