In 2016, a radical, right-wing, middle-class insurgency displaced the dominant capitalists in the Republican Party, at least temporarily. Donald Trump’s nomination and election is the most recent chapter in an ongoing struggle that began in the aftermath of the economic crisis and the 2008 Democratic electoral victory. Capital successfully beat back the first wave of middle-class radicalism in the Republican Party — the Tea Party — during the 2014 congressional elections, but these rebels were not vanquished. They were radicalized.

Since the 1960s, the voter base of the Republican Party has been made up primarily of older, suburban, white, middle-class, small businesspeople, professionals, and managers, and a minority of older white workers. Until recently, the particular passions of that base — especially its hostility to the democratic gains of people of color, women, and LGBT people — could be contained. Minor concessions to social conservatives on abortion, affirmative action, voter restrictions, and same-sex marriage/legal equality maintained their loyalty, while capitalists set the substantive neoliberal agenda for the Republicans. As with the Democrats, the non-capitalist elements of the Republican coalition were clearly junior partners to capital.