Why Trump Will Retain Power

One piece of news that might have gone unnoticed in the middle of all this Covid19 news is that Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign to be the Democratic nominee for this November’s American Presidential elections. So it looks highly likely that Joe Biden will take on fellow-septuagenarian Donald Trump.

Thinking about it, it doesn’t matter which Democrat takes on Trump. He is going to win. I suspect that Sanders realised this as the covid crisis was panning out, and so decided to fold.

Essentially what the Covid-19 crisis has been largely positive to things that American conservatives traditionally value, and showed the perils of some of the things that American “liberals” have traditionally valued. As a consequence of this, we will find that people who are on the margin (I’m told there are very few fence-sitting voters in the US, compared to India for example) are likely to shift more conservative.

In fact, everyone will become a little more conservative (in the American sense) after this crisis is over (though most Americans have such extreme political opinions that this won’t matter). And that means that in this year’s elections at least, the Republicans are going to win. So assuming he remains healthy, Trump has four more years in the Oval Office.

So what are these “conservative and liberal values” that influenced by this crisis? Let’s make a laundry list.

  • Borders: Open borders, at state and national level are a favourite of liberals (except, in the American context for some strange reason, for skilled labour immigration). They are great for economic growth, but also for pandemic growth. We are surely likely to see tougher border controls (maybe Brexit will be followed by Nordexit? Can’t be ruled out) continuing post this crisis.
  • Cities: Conservatives are all about urban sprawl, owning McMansions and commuting by car. Liberals bat for high density cities and public transport. The tail risk of high density cities as being higher risk for pandemic spread (which had largely been hidden following the rapid advances in medicine in the first half of the 20th century) has been exposed.
  • Families: When you are isolated you would rather be living with your family (“near and dear ones” as some like to put it). The lockdown has been hardest on people living alone or living “with roommates”. American conservatives are all about marrying early and staying married and “two parent families”, which means fairly low chances of living alone. On the margin, people are likely to rediscover “family”.
  • Individualism: Sort of related to the previous one. This is something that is likely to affect me as well. Liberals have been about “breaking free of the community” and living by and for yourself. Crises like this one make you realise the value of having a community, and cultivating relationships in good times that might come of use in bad. So we are likely to see less individualism.Related to this, liberals are far more likely than conservatives to cut ties with families on account of their political leanings. The pandemic might force a rethink on this.
  • Privacy: Countries that have managed to suppress the disease to great extent (such as Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea) have done so by increasing surveillance on their citizens. As Raghu SJ wrote in this excellent blogpost, countries are facing an “impossible trilemma” in terms of protecting citizens’ privacy, containing the disease and protecting the economy.
    And he wholeheartedly agrees that privacy is the one thing that should be sacrificed now. I’m thinking he’s not alone. Moreover, instruments like Aadhaar and Aadhaar-linked bank accounts, which was vociferously opposed by privacy fundamentalists, can be of excellent use for fast direct transfer of benefits now (that India, which has this infrastructure, is only doing a tiny stimulus is another matter).
    Going forward, people will be more willing to trade off privacy (which a lot of us are already doing with Facebook, etc.) for superior service, and privacy fundamentalists will get less attention.

There are some mitigating factors as well.

  • Church attendances will go down, since religious gatherings have been shown to be a reliable source of infection spread.
  • The health crisis can mean that some sort of Obamacare might make a comeback.

On the balance, though, at least in the social sense, you can expect Americans to become more conservative. Move to smaller towns and suburubs (greater remote working will aid this), keep factories in the US (a favourite Trump theme) and become more family oriented. While all this may not last for too long, it should be enough to win Trump this year’s election.

It doesn’t matter how well or badly his government handles Covid-19.

I deliberately decided to not talk about India, since I’m not sure there’s that much of an ideological difference between political parties here. But similar trends, at the personal level, are likely to happen here as well.