Copyright newrepublic
The backlash against the social revolutions of the twentieth century did not appear suddenly with Trump. It started as soon as the egalitarian movements did. So why revenge now? What additional fuel was added to the original fire? What happened in recent decades that enabled Trump to take over the Republican Party and turn it into a far-right movement of revenge? From Richard Nixon in 1968 to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Republicans courted the forces of backlash to win elections, but in office they didn’t fully reverse liberal reforms, nor did they even try. Temperamentally, Nixon prefigured Trump, and he also abused his executive powers. In substantive policy, though, Nixon’s presidency was mostly a continuation of midcentury liberalism. His administration introduced affirmative action in private employment and desegregated Southern schools. He signed laws vastly increasing environmental and economic regulation, came close to enacting a nationally guaranteed income, and proposed a broader national health insurance plan than any later Democratic president dared endorse. Although Reagan carried out a more consistently conservative agenda, even his presidency and George H.W. Bush’s didn’t halt the social movements for racial and gender equality. To be sure, Reagan’s policies on taxes, spending, business, and labor sharply increased economic inequalities. Reagan’s impact fell hardest on what by 1980 was already the weakest part of the liberal coalition, the unions.
