Court versus Country: The United States

Court Conservative disunity has not prevented Trump from going from one surprise win to the next. This is not because Trump has magical powers. It’s because anti-establishment right-leaning populists have rallied to him over time with unmatched enthusiasm. In the United States, Country Conservatives have greater numerical, institutional, and historical advantages than in any other Western nation. They’re not a majority of American voters, but they do form a plurality, and within today’s GOP, they far outnumber any other faction.

In November 2016, Trump demonstrated that contrary to conventional wisdom, he could squeeze out an Electoral College majority with strong support from Country Conservatives and not much else. Democrats made a mistake by completely writing off these voters. It appears they’re making the same mistake again.Democrats have answered the immediate challenge of physical fitness for the nation’s highest office. Consequently, they’re experiencing a kind of sugar high, with a lot of help from the press. But Biden was never unpopular simply because of his age. He was unpopular because of his overly left-wing, demonstrably incompetent approach to one pressing U.S. policy challenge after another.

Harris now inherits that unpopularity, and rightly so. She also has one major disadvantage, which Biden did not possess. Unlike Biden, Harris is one hundred percent politically correct. She is entirely a product of the twenty-first-century Court Progressive movement. Unlike Biden, she has no feel whatsoever for Rust Belt working-class voters that Democrats need to win back from Trump. Indeed, she may very well scramble the Electoral College map to the benefit of Republicans.