To Paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: It Is An Enduring Majority, If you Can Keep It

If Trump can deliver on key agenda items, he will make America great again and strengthen the coalition that elected him and his allies. Success on policy will lead to success politically.

To the utter surprise of the Left, its media sycophants, and NeverTrumpers, Donald Trump’s win last week occurred due to the increased backing he received from minorities and younger Americans, as well as stopping the slide of women towards Democrats. Specifically, despite being labeled endlessly since 2015 as a racist and misogynist, Trump earned 42% of the Hispanic vote, including a majority of Hispanic men; 16% of the black vote, including 24% of black men; 30% of the Asian vote; and 46% of voters 18-years-old to 29-years-old. Notwithstanding the steady drumbeat of “abortion-abortion-abortion” from the Left, Trump simultaneously stopped the movement of women towards the Democrats, having barely lost the group to a woman in Kamala Harris. Trump did what no other Republican since Ronald Reagan could do: he built a governing majority based on one key criteria that cut across all voter segments.

Namely, the key, as I laid out in my October 2017 in column, “The Bell Curve Electorate,” is that Trump secured the support of a clear majority of non-college educated voters. With those voters comprising 57% of all voters, winning them means winning national and, in most cases, state-wide elections. The great news for the Right is that there are even more of those voters to attract in the next decade. Imagine how much stronger Trump’s win and U.S. Senate elections would have gone had Trump upped his support from Hispanics to 50%, blacks to 35%, and Asians to 40% while holding steady with younger voters and women. As I noted last week, there were not ANY Red states that came close to supporting Harris, as there were several Blue states (New Hampshire (-2.8); New Jersey (-5.0); Minnesota (-4.2); New Mexico (-5.7); and Virginia (-5.2)) that could have shifted to Trump with just a little more support from minorities. Thus, going forward, the Right must strengthen its positions in the seven battleground states while it launches an aggressive and continuous registration and outreach program in the five getable Blue states. 

It isn’t just Trump’s expanded coalition of voters that creates a generational opportunity to establish an enduring majority. As I wrote about in my “Projected 2050 Population & Political Power Series” in June-July 2022, growing Red states will gain Electoral Votes from shrinking or stagnant Blue states after each U.S. Census, thereby making it increasingly easier for Republicans to win the presidency. As I showed, based on the 2020 U.S. Census, the Biden-Harris win in 2020 would shrink by twelve Electoral Votes just by shifting population allocations. If my projections prove accurate, Trump’s 2024 win would jump by fourteen Electoral Votes from 312 Electoral Votes to 326 Electoral Votes, which would allow for Republicans to lose several states without losing the White House. Given the massive influx of illegal immigrants since I did my projections, however, much could depend on whether Trump can deport those folks and/or institute the change he tried in the first term to bar the U.S. Census from counting illegal immigrants for Electoral Vote and congressional seat allocations.

Most important to strengthening an enduring majority, Trump must deliver what he promised to Americans this year. Here are the seven key policies that I believe must get done to deliver a powerful economy to Americans and expand the coalition that elected Trump and a Republican Congress:

(1) Energy: inexpensive energy drives the U.S. economy from agriculture (fertilizer) to transportation (gasoline) to manufacturing (plastics) to virtually everything Americans buy day-in, day-out. Trump needs to open the spigot on exploration, drilling, production, pipelines, refining, and exporting as quickly as possible. He also needs to ensure that upstream and midstream energy companies have the long-term assurance to invest in exploration, drilling, production, and pipelines so that they can obtain a return on the investments they make given how much it costs to operate. Without such an assurance, energy companies will be weary to make American energy independent again and find it difficult to get Wall Street to finance big projects.

(2) Tax cuts: not only must Republicans extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, but they must cut taxes as Trump promised during the campaign. This additional list includes no tax on tips, a reduced capital gains tax, and no tax on social security. 

(3) Deregulation: the underappreciated element of Trump’s first term that proved so powerful was his attack on regulations. No matter what industry, it simply takes far too long, requires far too many beancounters (lawyers, lobbyists, compliance officers, etc.), involves far too much paperwork, and swallows far too much money to just get good things done. If Trump wants to unleash American industries, he must curb the regulatory state and its power over producers. 

(4) Rebalance higher ed versus tech/trade: America today invests inefficiently in educating and developing its teenagers and young adults so that they can begin their pursuit of the American Dream. As I’ve written about as it relates to Ohio, 85% of state tax dollars go to funding higher education whereas only 15% of Ohio’s K-12 graduates complete a degree in six years or less at the same time it spends 15% of state funds for the 85% of K-12 high school graduates who don’t earn a college degree. Beyond pushing red meat about ending the U.S. Department of Education, Trump needs to incentivize states to rebalance their investments in higher education versus trade and tech opportunities. This single action could solidify his support from younger Americans and those without a college degree. More importantly, it would help the very people who need help versus the sons and daughters of upper class Americans. Trump should appoint Mike Rowe to oversee this vital project. Nothing else Trump will do would send a brighter signal to Americans without college degrees that he has their backs then this policy change.

(5) Decentralization: the announcement that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will oversee a temporary U.S. Department of Government Efficiency to reduce waste and abuse in the federal government generated a lot of ink. I think this project must be combined with an equally important push to decentralize functions currently being done by the federal government that are constitutionally the proper domains of the states under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Among the top items to decentralize (meaning, return all the money and power over these programs) are Medicaid, transportation, and education. As I detailed in my March 2013 report, “Competitive Federalism: Leveraging the Constitution to Rebuild America”, let the fifty laboratories of competition do what they do best and see which states come up with the best solutions and which states fail, thereby allowing Americans to vote with their feet. With the interstate highway system complete, any federal role in road transportation must be phased out and all gas taxes retained by the states for maintenance and expansion. Not only will this approach save Americans money and get better results, it will substantially reduce the power of the federal bureaucracy over the states and force those bureaucrats to find new lines of work. As I estimated, by cutting the costly federal government out of these programs and launching a fifty-state competition, the total tax burden on Americans will go down while outcomes improve.

(6) Immigration reform: along with securing the border again and deporting criminal illegal immigrants, Trump must push for a broader visa program. Back in October 2016 when I was a Visiting Fellow for the American Enterprise Institute, I published a comprehensive plan to reform America’s immigration system. My plan, “Reforming America’s Immigration System Once and For All,” included a “grand bargain” that I would no longer do given the Biden-Harris Administration’s mass invasion program that brought in over ten million illegal immigrants. The grand bargain involved giving amnesty to those illegal immigrants in America in 2016 in exchange for passing a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship. Critically, the amnesty was not triggered until the amendment was passed by the requisite number of states. Post-Biden-Harris invasion, that grand bargain should be scrapped even though birthright citizenship will continue to swell the ranks of Americans with illegal immigrant parents. Please don’t waste your time arguing the constitutional issue of birthright citizenship. No one truly knows how the U.S. Supreme Court would come down on the issue, but I fear 100+ years of operating that being born here grants citizenship would sway a majority of justices. Thus, an amendment is the safest, smartest path ahead. Nonetheless, with the Biden-Harris mass invasion, it is off the table.

(7) Global stability: Trump needs to restore the global peace he gave Biden when he left so that America can again experience a peace dividend in which global trade can operate efficiently and safely. Ending the Russian-Ukrainian War and assisting Israel to firmly put Iran in a box come first, followed by creating an alliance to keep China’s military aggression pinned down in the South China Sea. Global stability also means temporary trade tariffs that force countries keeping U.S. goods and services out to come to the table to negotiate true free trade agreements—they won’t respond to saying “pretty please." Europe and China should be high on Trump’s list to tackle, with the aim to team up with Europe to confront China’s mercantilism and theft.

No other policy should come ahead of these seven items. If Trump can deliver on these agenda items, he will make America great again and strengthen the coalition that restored him and his congressional allies to power. Success on policy will lead to success politically. 

P.S. I’ve loved Trump’s nominations for the various positions he needs to fill except Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. Gaetz is simply too much of a bombthrower and attention seeker with questionable conduct involving women for such a serious, sober role. I doubt he will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Perhaps Trump’s nomination involved a little 3-D chess in which he gets Gaetz to resign from Congress, which he did, to take pressure off of Speaker Mike Johnson knowing Gaetz won’t be confirmed. Time will tell, but this nomination was a mistake.