NOTHING seems to vex Biden supporters more these days than the spectacle of 74 million Americans voting for a billionaire buffoon. After four years of tantrum-laden misrule, news pundits too cannot grasp why Trump’s vote increased, even if the Democrats’ vote thankfully rose even more. Is almost half the US electorate dim-witted, ignorant or psychotic?

It’s not because they are all rich, which might have explained it since Trump served the wealthy superbly. It must be something else. Author Fintan O’Toole writes: “It vindicates the self-pity that he has encouraged among his supporters … that the world is a plot to steal from them their natural due as Americans.” This statement is posed as if there could not be an iota of credibility to it. So why might so many Americans not be besotted with Biden, the candidate for whom the corporate party establishment pulled out all stops to push past left-populist Sanders last year?

In any country, 25 per cent to 33pc of the populace verges on fascism or is actually fascist, attracted to authoritarians even if they do nothing for them except symbolically. Even after four vile years of collaboration with Nazi Germany, Marshal Petain was stubbornly beheld by some 20pc of the post-war French as a misunderstood hero. Richard Nixon slunk out of office in disgrace in 1974, but even then retained a 24pc approval rating as one of the best presidents ever. So what does it take to dislodge a large fraction of the populace, the sort who bay for ‘law and order’ over social justice, from their often unrequited affection for authoritarian lawbreakers?

Why do Americans think the game is rigged?

In the US, Christian evangelicals, nearly a third of the Republican vote, are disciples of anyone, no matter how hypocritical, willing to mouth their reverent platitudes. Most military, police and security service people cling to Trump for what he says, despite being a draft evader who can’t figure out why these gullible ones would be willing to sacrifice their lives without getting a cut of the profits. That adds up to a lot.

Then there are those who switch sides out of angry disappointment, such as many Obama voters who voted for Trump twice. One must also not underestimate those eager to blame and punish anyone more vulnerable and different than they are. And, even at the best of times, only two-thirds of US citizens vote, so it’s not so difficult to get a Republican majority, especially when corporate Democrats decline to offer policies that improve ordinary voters’ lives, and concentrate on luring disaffected red over disaffected blue voters, of whom there are many more.

Why are voters liable to think the game is rigged? Perhaps because, as a recent RAND Corporation report confirms, the shift upwards of income since the mid-1970s has on average cost the average worker over $40,000 a year. RAND zeroed in on core of all the woes, beside which, if unfixed, all else pales. The post-war years (1945-74) allocated equal shares from economic productivity and growth between the super-rich and the other 99pc, hiking living standards to highest in the world.

But since then, all the benefits of productivity went to the top, so that $50 trillion that the lower 90pc of income earners would otherwise have to spend today instead went into the portfolios of the super-rich. At the same time, the wealthy used this influx to buy politicians via campaign donations to secure tax cuts, anti-union measures and deregulation.

Families work twice as many hours today as in the 1970s to maintain a decent lifestyle amid growing housing, health, education and childcare costs. The top 1pc’s income share rose from 9pc in 1975 to 22pc in 2018; the bottom 90pc’s share fell from 67 to 50pc. Americans are not alone in suffering these deliberately engineered trends. The Indian top 1pc income share soared from 6pc in 1980 to a shiny 21pc today. Gender and minority income differences diminished, but within a shrinking pie. Elite white guys in suits siphoned the extra money from disgruntled lower ranked white men, not women, minorities or immigrants.

Median income for university graduates grew from $55,000 in 1975 to $72,000 in 2018, but was way short of the $120,000 they’d make under an equal division of productivity gains. Even the lowest earners would be better off by $10,000 annually. No wonder nearly half of all renters are overburdened, four in 10 Americans can’t handle a $400 emergency, and one in eight report not having enough food. Who is going to ease their burdens?

Cheer for minority figures who are joining the new Biden (really the old Clinton and Obama) administration, but they are there to put you off guard. The last thing the Democratic establishment wants is to reverse this upward redistribution. For the rulers of both parties today, nothing could be better than the status quo, and that is why so many lower-income people voted, spitefully, for the trickster Trump.

The writers are the authors of No Clean Hands and Parables of Permanent War.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2020