Trump Could Still Lead the U.S. to Civil War?Even if He Doesn't Run in 2024

In fact, the shift toward a whites-only Republican party began in force in the mid-1960s, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Voters in the eleven former Confederate states had been faithful Democrats for over a hundred years, still angry that Republican president Abra­ham Lincoln had refused to accept secession. (“I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,” Johnson said to his special assistant, Bill Moyers.) Running for president in 1968, Nixon decided to capitalize on that racial resentment, leveraging white fear with calls for “law and order” and a pledge to fight the “war on drugs.” This so-called Southern Strategy helped the GOP win the presidency and later reclaim the Senate after being out of power for almost thirty years. Moral imperatives and cultural identities are now, more than ever, driving voting patterns.By appealing to core policy concerns like gun rights and by stoking anxiety about immigration and America’s changing racial demographics (whites are pro­jected to be in the minority by 2045), Republicans have been able to win over larger and larger shares of the white rural vote. Trump retweeted a video of a retiree in Florida chanting “white power.” And he threatened to veto a defense spending bill in order to protect the legacy of Confederate generals on U.S. Army bases.In all of these ways, Trump was encouraging ethnic fac­tionalism—the splintering of political parties along ethnic lines. They, too, became ethnic entrepreneurs.Trump intuitively understood that the deep feeling of alienation among many white voters could carry him to power. And so he didn’t just focus on division, denigrating Muslims or Black Americans as the “other.” Like other ethnic entrepreneurs before him, he emphasized the downgrading of the former majority—in this case, how much whites had lost. His campaign slogan promised a return to glory: “Make America Great Again.” In him, people saw someone unlike any other candidate, someone who recognized the value of their lives and offered them protection.Trump was a naturally gifted ethnic entrepreneur. Milosevic remained Serbia’s party leader and president for 8 years—crafting an increasingly authoritarian government—until he was eventually thrown out as a result of mass protests.All signs indicate that Trump is likely to be the Republican candidate again in 2024, but even if he isn’t, other ambitious Republicans—Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley—have studied his playbook and will no doubt use it to try to catapult themselves into the White House.