Trumpism: Race, Class, Populism, and Public Policy

(Hardback)

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Trumpism: Race, Class, Populism and Public Policy is divided into two parts. Part One examines the foundation of Trumpism: Trump's form of populism, Trump's political ideas, and Trump's base of support. The text defines Trump as a right-wing populist. His political base emerged out of four political movements: the conservative evangelical Christian, the Tea Party, the economic elite, and the white nationalist movements. Part Two examines Trump's public policy agenda. It covers labor, health care, social welfare, voting rights and police policies. A review of these policy areas reveals a consistent pattern: a public policy agenda committed to weakening labor power, hacking away at the Affordable Care Act, shredding the social safety net, eviscerating voting rights and constructing a racially repressive police state. The central theme is that despite his popular appeal to white workers and conservative evangelical Christians, Trump's public policy agenda favored the upper class, exacerbated inequality, and had its most devastating impact on low-income white workers and minorities.

Reviews

Wilsons Trumpism: Race, Class, Populism and Public Policy is an important and distinctive contribution to the literature on the Trump presidency. What distinguishes it is the wide-ranging focus on public policy. In fact-based empirical analyses of labor, health, education, welfare, tax and regulatory policies, Wilson methodically demonstrates the deleterious effects of Trumps public policies on American workers of all classes and colors.

-- Robert C. Smith, author of Questions of Character: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump

Carter Wilson examines the connections between Trumpism, populism, and public policy, arguing convincingly that this network is centered on reinforcing an oligarchy of wealth and entitlement. He explains that the oligarchy is not a traditional one, but one based on corporate insurgency, an extreme anti-government ideology with policy prescriptions most damaging to the white working class. This is an impressively integrative contribution to our understanding of how ideas, personalities, and elections affect public policy.

-- Bryan D. Jones, University of Texas

Author Bio

Carter A. Wilson is professor and department head of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Northern Michigan University