THREAD. Workers were suffering in 2016. But the politics of grievance will likely make no sense in 2024. Someone should tell GOP politicians.

My latest Bloomberg column: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-22/republican-attacks-on-business-won-t-work-in-2024 @bopinion

2/ To listen to Republican politicians, you’d think it was still 2016. Many of them, especially the presidential aspirants, are parroting the same grievance-based, stick-it-to-the-man rhetoric that Donald Trump reveled in.

3/ But that approach is not likely to work with the general electorate in the 2024 presidential election or in many state races. Why? The economic experience of voters looks likely to be much more positive over the next few years than it was in the run-up to Trump’s 2016 victory.

4/ Nevertheless, the strongman aesthetic prevails among Republicans. Take the reaction last week to MLB’s decision to move the All-Star Game out of Georgia. Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Mike Lee outlined legislation to end the league’s exemption from antitrust enforcement.

5/ And when a large number of corporate leaders joined a conference call to discuss how to respond to proposed changes in voting laws, J.D. Vance, an aspiring politician, suggested a response: https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1381692710046867461?s=20

6/ There you have it: Fighting “the corporate elites,” ostensibly in support of “the people.” Using government power to do something on behalf of a supposedly aggrieved silent majority.

7/ Before Trump’s rise, GOP politicians would have been appalled by this anti-business posture and recoiled at using the power of the state — taxation, antitrust — to punish perceived political adversaries in the private sector. No longer, apparently.

8/ This style of politics became popular after the 2008 global financial crisis and Great Recession, which seeded the ground for a populist strongman to be successful.

9/ In 2015 and 2016, the country was in the right mood to buy what Trump was selling. (And GOP politicians should note that he was a uniquely good salesman for this brand of politics.)

10/ But a decade after the 2008 crisis, U.S. politics was turning away from populism. Joe Biden defeated Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on his left for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, before he went on to defeat Trump.

11/ President Biden is popular, with a 54% approval rating in Gallup’s latest survey — much more so than Trump ever was.

12/ Hawley, Cruz and other GOP politicians will likely find that their Trumpian style appeals to their party’s base, which remains enamored of the former president. But this style likely won’t appeal far outside it.

Fin/ These politicians seem to think they have the numbers on their side, representing “the people” against a much smaller number of “elites.” They don’t. There is no silent majority.

My latest Bloomberg column: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-22/republican-attacks-on-business-won-t-work-in-2024 @bopinion