In terms of the American experience, the Harris campaign seemed to aspire to something like Nixon’s 1972 project for a ‘new majority’. To be sure, today’s Democrats lack Tricky Dick’s swagger and agility. But, like him, they imagined building a coalition that spanned the AFL-CIO, the Business Roundtable and the neoconservative movement (nascent in 1972, senescent in 2024).

The things about him which are supposed to be deal breakers – racism, xenophobia, misogyny – can only be seen as outside the American mainstream by someone with the mental equipment of an earnest child. The slogan Make America Great Again is borrowed from Ronald Reagan, an American hero who mocked the poor for being hungry, compared African diplomats to monkeys and (on the advice of Pat Buchanan) proclaimed the Waffen SS to be ‘victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps’. The idea that Trump could be banished to the margins by getting Reagan appointees to endorse Harris never made sense to anyone not already opposed to Trump.

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But it is simply not serious to claim that workers who rejected Harris were ignoring objective economic reality. As Biden’s own outgoing Council of Economic Advisers observed last month, ‘workers’ share of national income took a hit during the pandemic inflation’, with the result that the labor share – ‘an important indicator of how the economic pie is divided’ – was lower in 2024 than it had been under Trump. Perhaps the safest thing to say is that the working class, as a class, didn’t do anything. The vote is evidence of dealignment, not realignment: voters below $100,000 split basically down the middle.

This same top decile, according to a study by Thomas Ferguson and Servaas Storm, captured 59% of the overall increase in household wealth created since 2019. In turn, this wealth explosion set the pattern for a highly inegalitarian consumption boom, with the top 10% of US households accounting for 36.6% of the overall increase in consumption between 2020 and 2023. If you add in the next richest decile, the top 20% of households accounted for over half of the increase.

I'm more of quintile type guy but

Wall Street’s euphoric response to the election suggests that ‘the market’ doesn’t think Trump is serious about mass deportations and punitive tariffs. But even if he doesn’t go as far as he promises, any serious steps in the direction of economic nationalism will have differential effects on business which could turn into political fractures. The same may develop with regards to the budget deficit, particularly if inflation returns for whatever reason.