In his account of the political rise of Benjamin Netanyahu, Guy Laron lays out a framework we could apply to the politics of many countries.

Laron describes how Netanyahu gradually fused together a coalition between business interests, religious fundamentalists, and disaffected working class people. He did so by using state power to tie these groups together under his leadership. For instance, he used the promise of housing and resources under a settler colonialist regime to tie ultra-Orthodox religious people to his political project.

Israel thereby stands out as but one example of a politics that has degenerated into a rivalry between technocratic liberalism (e.g., the Labor Party in Israel, Labour in the UK, the Socialists in France, and so on) on one hand and a xenophobic far right that occasionally represents the interests of a segment of the working class, on the other. We find many such examples.

But that’s not how things work in at least one country – the United States.

Trump, 2024, and U.S. Exceptionalism

The Democrats certainly hold up their end of the bargain. Technocratic liberalism runs the Democratic Party practically from one end to the other. It stretches from the ‘nudges’ and stingy, means-tested programs of the moderates to the structural reforms of the progressives.

No, the problem comes from the other side of things – the far right.

Trump certainly pretends to represent the interests of a segment of the working class. We’ve all heard his nativist sales pitch on immigration and taxes to working class whites. But he rarely fools actual workers with this sales pitch. More often, he fools liberals and pundits. Even some leftists repeat the false claim that Trump has a working class base, despite repeated refutations of the idea for years.

The fact of the matter is that Trump rarely carries out his promises to working class people. He doesn’t even truly aim his remarks at them. And they largely don’t vote for him. Many don’t vote at all. And the ones who do vote still lean a bit Democratic. Trump rode to power on a petty bourgeois coalition, not a working class one.

Unlike in most other countries, the U.S. has managed to so thoroughly marginalize its working class people that politicians can largely ignore them. At least, they can do so in the current environment.

2024 Election

When we look at the U.S. election in the coming weeks, it’ll be worth interpreting events in light of this striking example of U.S. exceptionalism. It provides insight into U.S. politics that might not be evident.

It’s always worth asking whether and how we can change the situation. But, at least for this year’s election, we’re stuck with a system that puts working class people entirely at the margins.

And we’re left wondering whether we get four more years of technocratic liberalism or four of the Trumpist routine.

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