[Depth] What supporters has Trump lost?
[Global Times reporter Liu Xuxia, Zhang Song, Liu Yupeng, Xin Bin] As of November 9, the U.S. 2020 general election, which has lasted for nearly a week, still has several states that have not completed the vote count, but the U.S. media has announced that the Democratic presidential candidate Biden " "Elected", Biden delivered a winning speech, and leaders of many countries also congratulated him.
In this year's election, the voter turnout rate in the United States was astonishingly high. The duel between the incumbent President Trump and Biden also experienced multiple days of stalemate.
"Why Trump lost the election" is being analyzed all over the world, because behind the number of votes are profound changes in American society, which will affect Washington's domestic and foreign affairs in the next four years.
"From the loss of the support of the Republican leaders to the abandonment of the "rust belt", from the "soft underbelly" exposed by the epidemic prevention to the concerns of ethnic minorities, are all regarded as part of the reason. However, for the winner, The United States, which has been torn apart, is no easy task to be the "President of all Americans."
Why did the "Rust Zone" turn around?
Trump's defeat, the "reversal" of the "Rust Zone" (the traditional industrial areas in the Northeast, Midwest, and Great Lakes region of the United States) can be said to have played a vital role.
In 2016, Trump was able to defeat the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton precisely because he won important swing states in the "rust belt" such as Wisconsin and Michigan.
Why did the "Rust Zone" abandon Trump after only 4 years?
For nearly a hundred years, the steel, coal, and automobile industry workers in the "Rust Zone" were symbols of middle-class American families and synonymous with the "American Dream."
However, "Global Times" reporters have traveled to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other important cities in the "Rust Zone" many times in recent years, but they have seen a scene of decline. In some cities, there are basically no streets on the streets from 6 or 7 in the evening. What is it?
After Trump took office and some Republican politicians did not reflect on the deep-seated problem of the decline of the "Rust Zone", they blamed it on China, Japan and other countries, saying that "Asian countries have stolen a large number of manufacturing jobs in the United States" and started Announcing additional tariffs on steel, aluminum and other products imported from the United States, in an attempt to restore the competitiveness of the US steel industry and automobile industry.
Trump also forced other governments or companies to invest and build factories in the "rust belt", but these measures have not brought much change to the local economy in the past few years.
According to US media reports, in 2019, Ohio and Michigan have laid off 8,600 jobs, and Pennsylvania has lost 9,100 manufacturing workers. Many energy companies and steel companies that have supported Trump’s 2016 election have also announced in the past two years. Bankrupt.
It is not surprising that voters in the "Rust Zone" have therefore abandoned Trump.
"Why did Trump lose some white support?" The Russian "Newspaper" published an article saying that the reason was that Trump's ineffective response to the epidemic caused them to lose their jobs.
Polls before the election show that Republican candidates appear to be losing support among white and older voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The head of the Roosevelt Foundation for American Studies at Moscow State University Yuri Rogulev and other scholars said that Trump’s core voters are white workers in the Midwest, but he did not fulfill one of his campaign’s main promises-protecting workers s right.
Valery Garbzov, director of the Institute for the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes: "Trump launched a trade war against China and verbally supported the return of manufacturing to the United States, but this policy completely failed. In general, Trump’s policy is to continue to serve the interests of the wealthiest in the American population. For the interests of Wall Street, he cuts taxes for the rich and pursues deregulation policies. In fact, his support for the working class is limited. Therefore, the working class is disappointed in Trump and it loses the support of this part of the electorate."
As we all know, many reputable people in the Republican Party have a bad relationship with Trump, such as the Bush family and Romney. These are obvious examples on the table.
People in the Republican Party who were dissatisfied with Trump also used the "Lincoln Project" to collect his mistakes or mistakes, and used them as propaganda materials to criticize him. These all affected the votes of centrist voters.
Republican U.S. Senator McCain, who died in August 2018, supported the anti-establishment Trump in 2016, but eventually broke with the "scandal-ridden" Trump.
McCain had asked Trump not to attend his funeral before his death, but Trump, who was not invited to attend, went to play golf on the same day.
The McCain family is very influential in Arizona. Trump won the state in 2016, but lost it in 2020.
Russian infox reported on the 7th that US Vice President Mike Pence received support from many influential white evangelical organizations, but these organizations did not like Trump, and some people regarded Trump as a "liar."
Such differences have also led to a reduction in Trump's votes.
More importantly, the discord within the Republican Party has caused Trump to lose the support of some basic voters.
In addition, he often publishes provocative tweets, attacks some media, and incites racist topics, all of which have caused dissatisfaction among American public opinion and society.
Trump's sharp cut in federal scientific research funding after he took office has also caused dissatisfaction in the education sector.
"Unlikely Alliance"
The Russian vtimes website stated in an article entitled "Why Trump Failed" that the epidemic has completely exposed the professional capabilities of the Trump administration and focused Americans’ attention on health-related issues. It is Trump's "weak underbelly."
The Washington Post published an article titled "Despite the severity of the epidemic, President Trump still vowed to completely end Obama's healthcare reform bill" in May of this year, worrying about Trump's stubbornness.
Alexei Makarkin, a professor at the Russian Advanced School of Economics, said that many American citizens cannot forgive him for his response to the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
According to polls, the proportion of African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans choosing Biden far exceeds Trump.
The New York Times believes that an "impossible coalition" of women, people of color, elderly and young voters, and a small group of Republicans who are dissatisfied with Trump, will allow Biden to win.
American political commentator Van Jones heard the news of Biden’s victory on the CNN news program on the 8th. He was so excited that he said: “If you are a Muslim, you don’t have to worry about the president not allowing you to stay in this country; If you are an immigrant, you don’t have to worry that the president will be willing to take away your children; those who come to the United States to pursue their dreams don’t have to worry about being deported without reason."
Mr. Yue, a Chinese-American who works and lives in Washington, DC, predicted that Biden will win the election before the election. He told the Global Times reporter: “Most voters in my community are supporters of the Democratic Party. They cannot vote for Trump. I also know that a white friend who originally supported the Republican Party is a highly educated middle class. The main reason why he did not vote for Trump this year is his dissatisfaction with his failure to prevent the epidemic, as well as the scientific literacy and personality problems exposed in the process. . Trump has politicized the simple thing of wearing a mask and repeatedly confronted this scientific understanding. In the eyes of many Americans who respect scientists and medical experts, it is stupid and dangerous. But Trump actually warned the United States. Voters,'Don't choose Biden, because Biden will listen to scientists when elected.' This is very illogical. In the face of the epidemic, who does not listen to scientists?"
Mr. Yue told the Global Times reporter that as far as he knows, in 2016, many Chinese voters who supported Trump used WeChat to “ventilate” each other, but the irony is that Trump threatened to block WeChat and close TikTok this year. The practice makes them very upset and also brings a lot of inconvenience to everyone.
Mr. Yue said that Trump did these things under the guise of "maintaining national security," but in fact it is neither in line with common sense nor in accordance with the Constitution, because every executive order must minimize its interference with the people, and Need to prove that this interference is necessary.
Many Chinese and other Asians are dissatisfied with Trump’s repeated attempts to "shovel" China's ineffective fight against the epidemic. This has caused many Asians to be attacked by racists and therefore no longer support him.
The poll results of the "Asian Group Voting Tendency" published in September this year showed that the enthusiasm of Asian voters for political participation in 2020 reached an unprecedented high. Among them, 54% of Asian voters said they would vote for Biden, and 30% said that Prefer Trump to continue to lead the country.
According to CNN, 32 million Latino Americans registered to vote this year, making it the largest minority group in the United States to vote.
The New York Times analyzed that the reason Trump has received more Latino supporters than in 2016 is that these voters are more concerned about their own employment and economic conditions. They are eager to get close to white people and support Trump in building the wall to prevent more Chinese. The invasion of brown immigrants from America.
But this year the situation is different.
Most of the Latino groups who opposed Trump came from Mexico, and only 23% of them chose to support the Republican Party.
They were attracted by the Democratic Party’s inclusive immigration policy and voted for Biden in order to get easier access to medical protection and improve housing conditions.
Beth Walling, executive director of the U.S. Immigration Commission, said that after (enduring) Trump's 4 years of "absolute anti-immigration and racist atrocities", Mexicans ushered in "just and fair" opportunities.
Robert Hernandez, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said in an interview with Mexico’s “Financier” that Biden’s victory will bring more policy certainty to Mexico, and Mexico-US bilateral relations will also return to an institutional nature.
If Biden's previously stated policy to prohibit the sale of offensive weapons is implemented, it will reduce the trafficking of illegal weapons from the United States to Mexico.
In addition, Biden will help the United States return to multilateralism, which will also directly benefit Mexico.
However, he also reminded that the Democratic Party’s historical policy of repatriating immigrants is not small. During the Obama administration, many illegal Mexican immigrants were expelled.
In the past 4 years, "people are tired"
On the 8th, the BBC reported that Trump won the general election in 2016, partly because he was a “political outsider” who broke the rules and said something that could not be said before, and in 2020 he lost the presidency, partly because of the same reason. Some people who supported him at the time have begun to resent him.
The article said that as in the scene in the 2018 midterm elections-more highly educated Republicans think that Trump is too much like a president and are disgusted by his aggressive performance.
Specifically, Trump incited racial tensions, used racist language on Twitter, slandered people of color, and did not fully condemn white supremacy on special occasions, and even promoted some conspiracy theories.
Trump's actions on international issues have also disappointed some American voters, who do not want to see the United States coldly treat traditional allies and various "retirement" measures.
Hausenstein, a Pittsburgh citizen who was a Trump supporter four years ago, voted for Biden this year. He said: “People are tired and hope that this country will stop hating and unite. Everyone wants to see one.' A decent'America.' According to BBC analysis, Trump's failure lies in his failure to expand his "turf" beyond Trump's core camp. "As the president who deliberately created divisions in the past 100 years, He hardly tried to fight for the 20 states that support the Democratic Party-that part of the'blue America'."
The New York Times published an article on the 8th that the Trump administration’s unconventional measures in response to the epidemic have exhausted many voters and made Trump’s defeat a foregone conclusion.
The article said that 2020 is chaotic, such as the House of Representatives vote to impeach the president, anti-racism protest demonstrations triggered by the "Death of Freud", and the dispute over the nomination of the justices. Trump has catered to his conservative camp all the way and intensified. In particular, “for months, he tried to sow the seeds of doubting the legitimacy of the democratic political process”.
It is worth mentioning that although Biden won the election, Trump also won more than 71 million votes, setting a record for the incumbent president of the United States in the election.
This reflects from one aspect the increasingly fierce dispute between the "two Americas".
"The New York Times" believes that even if Trump loses the election, he will show his appeal to many white voters, especially his popularity in rural areas.
The British "Financial Times" commented that "the real message of the record number of voters is that the United States is very divided and the two sides look almost evenly matched".
Nearly half of U.S. voters still support Trump, behind these people's support for conservatism, as well as concerns about "progressive" tendencies.
In the past half-century, the new technological revolution has given the United States sustained growth momentum, but a large number of rural white Americans and the middle class who benefited from manufacturing have been left behind, and income has not changed substantially.
These people worry that after the Democratic Party comes to power, its policies will be more inclined to Silicon Valley's high-tech companies and ethnic minorities, leading to further damage to their interests.
"I don't think Trump's influence will disappear with his failure." According to Zlobin, director of the Russia and Asia Program of the World Security Institute, some Americans will also ask Trump to express their opinions. In the future, as a "political commentator," his views will also have a significant impact on the mood of the American public.
For Biden, who wants to "heal and rebuild America," challenges will follow.