Win or Lose, Trump Has Turned the Tide of the Culture Wars

When Donald Trump won his surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election, he brought with him what political scientists call a “thermostatic backlash” in the culture, a phenomenon in which public opinion shifts in the opposite direction following significant policy changes or other seismic political events.
Before the pandemic accelerated things, Trump’s first term in office was defined by cultural backlashes like the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, and a renewed focus within elite institutions on social justice, racial and gender issues.
In his last year in office, spurred by the arrival of Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd weeks later, the country convulsed under intersecting debates about personal freedoms, racism and public health. In cities across the country, there were demands to “defund the police,” yards signs proclaiming “no human is illegal” and “science is real.”
Fast forward four years, and Democrats are running a tough-on-crime former prosecutor pledging to crack down on illegal immigration in a campaign that has barely mentioned classic liberal social issues like the death penalty, climate change or gun control. In fact, both candidates on the Democratic ticket have found time to boast about their gun ownership.
The man most singularly responsible for the that pivot is none other than Donald Trump.
Four years ago, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that Joe Biden’s win represented a repudiation of Trump and his influence on the GOP. And yet, Trump and his MAGA movement are once again a coin flip away from a triumphant return to power.
“America is very polarized, and much of our political discourse has culture war undertones,” said Andrew Hartman, author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, in an interview with Newsweek.
“This isn’t just about specific issues; it’s about a zero-sum view of national identity, often framed as an existential battle.”
Hartman said Trump’s been able to intensify those cultural battles, “thriving on the anger these topics elicit.”
Although Biden won in 2020, polls still underestimated Trump’s support — some even more than in 2016. Following weaker-than-expected showings for Democrats in some downballot races four years ago, especially among minorities, analysts told Newsweek that the party should have seen the cultural backlash coming — that its progressive messaging was clashing with traditional voters and boosting Trump’s appeal especially among blue-collar Americans.
“The Democratic Party needs to address a major issue: how can a man seen as a reprobate and a convicted felon be tied going into this election?” said Quardricos Driskell, a professor at George Washington University’s (GWU) graduate school of political management.
“Why is the Democratic brand struggling to connect with voters when it should be a clear win?”
Driskell said that the institutional focus on topics like race, gender, and abortion—while important to many college-educated voters that increasingly make up the Democratic base—has alienated the party’s longstanding working-class base that, for decades, would vote blue across racial or gender lines. For these voters, economic concerns—wages, healthcare, job security, and inflation—are top priorities, especially among men of color, who polls show are less focused on social issues.
“When these voters see cultural issues overshadowing their economic needs, it shifts their voting behavior,” Driskell said.
A recent study by Georgetown’s Amanda Sahar d’Urso and Harvard’s Marcel F. Roman reflected that shift. Their research found Black and Latino voters, traditionally Democratic stalwarts, now showing less consistent support for the party. Some are even shifting toward Republicans due to ideological differences with what they see as the party’s leftward lurch on issues ranging from immigration to even the use of the word “LatinX.”
“There’s been a backlash against LGBTQ+ and other inclusive messaging by Democrats,” Roman, the paper’s co-author, told Newsweek. “After the rise of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo in 2020, Democrats likely saw an opportunity to expand their platform.”
“But recently, people are questioning whether this approach is right.”
The Trump campaign has used the backlash to its political benefit. “Kamala Harris is for they/them; Trump is for you,” says the voiceover of a viral Trump ad that has aired widely across TV, YouTube, social media and even during Sunday football.
According to data from AdImpact, the Trump campaign has spent $19 million on that and one other anti-trans ad. They have aired more than 55,000 times in the last month.
Those numbers suggest that the Republicans believe the transgender attack line is a motivating issue for their base, even on par with bread-and-butter economic concerns like reducing inflation or creating jobs.
“Trump’s campaign has shaped Democratic messaging this cycle because Democrats are forced to respond to his moves,” said Lesley Lopez, director of the public relations and communications program at George Washington University.
In a sense, Trump was early to the political salience of immigration. His opening message when he declared his longshot candidacy in 2015 was framed around keeping “rapists and murderers” from crossing the border at a time when Democrats had been publicly signaling an openness to migrants (even as Barack Obama was overseeing the deportation of some three million people, far more than were deported under Trump).
After Trump won, partially thanks to that hard-line border security message, Democrats fiercely opposed his promise to build a border wall and his even more controversial — and loathed by voters — policy separating families at the border.
Kamala Harris called the wall “stupid” and a “medieval vanity project” at the time. One of her more notable stumbles on the campaign trail was when she was pressed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a town hall whether she still considered Trump’s border wall “stupid.” She didn’t directly answer.
Her pivot to a harder-line stance on immigration this cycle reflects an implicit acknowledgment that Trump was closer to the median American voter on border security than any Democrat would likely admit in public.
“The Harris campaign has shifted its approach on several cultural issues, especially this past month, to win the Electoral College by appealing to suburban Republicans disenchanted with Trump,” said Hartman, the historian.
Public confidence in the Biden administration’s handling of immigration plummeted as illegal crossings surged over the first three years of his presidency. A Monmouth University poll in February found that only a quarter of Americans approved of Biden’s approach to the border, and Trump regularly eclipses Harris on who voters say they trust more on the issue.
In September, an Axios poll found something even more striking: a majority of Americans — including four in 10 Democrats — now support Trump’s promise to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
“Trump’s influence and conservative pressure have pushed Democrats to adjust their stance on these key issues,” said Driskell of GWU.
Hartman said Democrats’ move to the center on immigration is more about electoral strategy than a broader ideological change.
“It’s not that the general population has become more conservative,” he said. “Instead, the campaign is targeting moderate Republicans, especially in suburban areas like Philadelphia, where winning Pennsylvania is crucial.”
Race as a major political motivator had grown over the 2010s before exploding in the wake of several high-profile police killings of Black men.
Fortune 500 companies expanded their diversity initiatives, professional sports teams like the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians changed their names, as did high schools bearing the names of Confederate generals. Media giants added “trigger warnings” to their catalogues of old movies deemed racially insensitive. The concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) gained traction in boardrooms and on campuses across the country.
“After George Floyd, the chief diversity officer role ‘was the hottest position in America,'” said Kevin Clayton, senior vice president for social impact and equity at the Cleveland Cavaliers.
But over the course of the Biden years, the movements around racial issues like affirmative action and DEI sputtered. Black Lives Matter is severely diminished as an institution. The Supreme Court ended affirmative action in university admissions, a conservative project decades in the making (but made possible by Trump).
A change was coming in the boardroom too. The financial research platform AlphaSense found a 31 percent decrease in mentions of environmental and DEI topics on corporate earnings calls between April 1 and June 5, 2023, compared to the same period in the year prior. A different report found explicit mentions of diversity-focused executive positions and programs plummeted 52 percent over the last year.
Simultaneously, major brands from Target to Bud Light faced widespread boycotts for their LGBTQ+ marketing, in some cases doing real damage to their profits. The public, it seemed, had soured on identity politics as a driving force — at least in corporate America.
Virtue signaling like “renaming a high school or sports team doesn’t have a concrete effect on people’s lives,” said Erec Smith, research fellow at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, pointing out the genesis of the backlash.
“People want real, pragmatic change.”
Trump has theorized that without Covid, his presidency would have been “the best ever.” The pandemic was a watershed event that many point to as responsible for his loss four years ago. Trump faced heavy criticism for downplaying the virus, promoting unproven remedies and clashing with his own health experts, most notably Dr. Anthony Fauci. He promoted conspiracy theories, questioned mask-wearing and social distancing, and frequently dismissed the concerns or advice of his own public health team.
But in between his erratic behavior in those months, he voiced concerns about the long-term impacts of lockdowns, the value of cloth masks and prolonged school closures — debates that, in hindsight, put him more or less in line with the conventional wisdom.
The former president also oversaw the development of an effective vaccine in record time, an accomplishment that, oddly, he almost never mentions.
Studies on the effect of the 2020 lockdowns have yielded mixed results, with some research suggesting that lockdowns may not have saved many lives at all. “By our count, there are at least 50 studies that come to the same conclusion,” wrote the authors of one article — in liberal New York magazine —questioning the efficacy of Covid stay-at-home orders.
Even though those policies occurred during his presidency, Trump has reframed himself as a champion of individual freedoms, gaining support from a broad range of society—from suburban parents whose children struggled with remote learning to small business owners who were forced to close their doors, and even high-profile figures like billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the implicit support for it among Democratic institutions was among the defining features of America’s culture wars in the Trump era.
The short-lived “Defund the Police” slogan continues to haunt the party, a relic of a time before a crime spike that put public concerns over safety back in the national spotlight.
Republicans haven’t forgotten this. After Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was selected as Harris’s VP pick, they labeled him a “dangerously liberal extremist” who supports defunding the police—despite his repeated opposition to such a policy. In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, voters rejected a 2021 ballot measure to replace the police department with a public safety department. Walz came out against the measure.
But there are cultural issues that have played out differently, with abortion being the prime example.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its landmark 2022 Dobbs decision—another ruling Trump made possible—public support for abortion access has skyrocketed, with polls showing a majority of Americans favoring abortion rights even in deep-red pockets of the country.
Reproductive rights have since risen to become a core issue for Harris and the Democratic party, even drawing in moderate Republicans who opposed the Dobbs decision. Ten states include questions about how abortion should be regulated on their ballots this year. Polling suggests a majority will pass. Trump, meanwhile, has stopped claiming credit for the reversal of Roe, effectively conceding on one battle in the culture wars.
While Democrats maintain, mostly, a unified stance on abortion, they’ve softened on other issues like transgender rights, a central focus of Trump’s campaign. Hartman suggested the shift on trans issues is also less ideological than strategic, aimed at attracting moderates who may be alarmed at stories about transgender women in youth or college sports.
“They’ve moved right on some gender issues, like trans rights, to appeal to suburban voters,” the historian said. “There’s also less emphasis on gun control, which was a major focus in 2016 and 2020, though public opinion likely hasn’t shifted.”
Driskell said that if Harris loses, it is bound to deepen divisions within the Democratic Party.
“Moderates might blame progressive priorities—such as climate policies, high social spending, and social justice stances—for turning off centrists and independents,” he said.
“Meanwhile, progressives might argue that a loss would stem from a lack of bold policies, failing to energize key Democratic groups, especially young and minority voters.”
Regardless of Tuesday’s outcome, Trump’s cultural influence has reshaped the country’s political landscape by brute force. Initially viewed as a political anomaly, his staying power echoes Reagan’s long-lasting impact on American politics.
When Trump committed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2016, the atmosphere at the GOP convention that year was tense. But by the time he accepted his party’s nomination for a third time this summer in Milwaukee — with a bandaged ear from a near-assassination attempt days earlier — there was no question the party had been remade in his image. One-time challengers like Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley were there, rallying behind him.
“Trump’s ascent suggests that the culture wars aren’t going away,” said Hartman.
The elevation of socially conservative figures like Ohio Senator JD Vance as Trump’s running mate and possible MAGA inheritor further suggests that Trumpism will persist for years. The party’s energy still centers around the former president’s whims and ideals, with more moderate, traditional conservatives largely roaming the political wilderness.
“A future GOP candidate who combines Trump’s populist rhetoric with cultural conservatism could broaden the party’s appeal,” Driskell said.
But first, they’d have to get past Trump.