They just got better at hiding it! But tax and spending issues will come roaring back if they win the election and set about dismantling the safety net.
I agree that Republicans never abandoned their hatred of the New Deal. The writer of this article imagines that if Trump were re-elected that there would be a legitimate election in 2028. The “dictator on day one” will not leave even if his cheating doesn’t work. He will have all the power at his disposal with his loyalists and friends like Putin, etc. He must not be allowed back in the White House.
Ever since Romney and Ryan’s run at it 12 years ago, I’ve thought about the seeming contradiction between culturally appealing to white rural voters on the one hand and decimating the social safety net for everyone on the other. Like Matt Yglesias, I assumed Trump had won by “moderating” on the latter even while getting more extreme on the former, and assumed that required squaring a circle at some point.
But lately, I’ve decided that way of thinking misses the big picture entirely. More to the point, it lacks imagination.
There is actually NO contradiction between seeming to “moderate” on the social welfare state for some, AND slashing it brutally for others. That is, in fact, exactly what authoritarian right wing parties are campaigning on in countries all over the world. Bigotry is, in fact, the glue that holds that position together.
What Trump is doing is a much more crudely direct, more openly ruthless version of what Romney and Paul implied in 2012–Preserve standards of living and the social safety net for loyal supporters of the Republican Party, and savagely curtail them for those not loyal and not supporting.
That nakedly corrupt, nakedly tribal position, basically a declaration of aggression against— treating as enemy, really—half of the country, allows Trump to play the role of “moderate” to those who benefit from it, laissez-faire capitalist to those who want others to suffer from it, and bigot to both of those categories, and benefit politically in all three ways.
It’s the kind of thing we lack the imagination to grasp in the American context, because we are not used to thinking of a president as leader of one tribe of Americans pillaging another tribe of Americans.
Vavreck clearly lacks the language to grasp what’s happening here, and assumes because Trump emphasizes culture war and denigrates slashing the New Deal, that battle must be “over”.
On the contrary. He’s found a way to potentially gain victory in that very material battle. Or thinks he has. (His billionaire, anti-New Deal donors, certainly think he has.)
That situation seems pretty darn clear to those who look at politics abroad and see the picture shaping up in America. It’s hard to comprehend, in part because it’s so seemingly unprecedented here, albeit depressingly generic and routine in a global sense.
Trump is trying to immiserate millions, and get away with that by placing other millions under his contingent, “loyalist” protection. Romney and Ryan tried to do the same thing; they were just far too polite to state it out loud, even to themselves. And it’s long been a brutal mainstay of politics in too many countries to count, democratic and not so democratic. We’re just not used to being confronted directly with it in the flesh.
" If there’s a free and fair election in 2028, after Trump winds down his second term...."
If Trump does win this fall, what odds do you place on the 2028 election being free & fair? I worry it's close to 85%-95% likely to be a rigged Hungarian/Putin-style "election" in that scenario.
The Republicans, at the time, hated the New Deal so much they attempted another coup. The Civil War being their first coup attempt. Jan. 6 was their third attempt. The fourth coup attempt is ongoing right now.
Perhaps Democrats need to make 2024 a referendum on Reaganomics, now not only completely debunked but proven to be toxic to democracy. Reagan managed to appear tough on the Soviet Union while gutting one of the most important defense expenditures of post WWII policy - direct subsidies of higher education - while pushing it off onto students. The result was a lifetime mortgage of their future without the high paying jobs they were promised by slight of hand “trickle down” economics. Meanwhile the tax tables were up ended to effectively cripple much of the middle class from building generational wealth. And did I mention the double tax on Social Security? Maybe the anger is justified, just not directed at the real villains in the piece.
We used to limit who could go to college — screening out low SES (including women at the time) except for exceptional and lucky talent, and otherwise mostly consisting of people already acculturated in the fewer (at the time) professional-class families.
When just anybody (including women, now the majority on campuses) could get a degree, the value of that degree dropped dramatically. Some well-meaning people thought education was a non-zero-sum investment, and it can be, which is a great argument for why government should be subsidizing it. But job openings ask for degrees, not education.
Later, the upper-middle class, who wanted to reserve jobs for people culturally/socially like them, started putting degree requirements on jobs which didn’t really need them; thus, a degree also came to function as an “ADMIT ONE: WHITE COLLAR JOBS” ticket.
But some people knew very well that college graduate wages would drop with the expansion of the labor force, and didn’t mention that to people who expected a law degree to almost mechanically lead to well-paid job as a lawyer — while prospects were trying to decide how much of their future to mortgage, they didn’t factor in the wage drop.
And the democratization of college opportunities wasn’t the end. All of the promises of “re-skilling” blue-collar/pink-collar jobs were always an attempt to drive down labor costs elsewhere, by adding the new and the desperate to that labor pool. Even today we are told that the US has a “STEM” shortage, when the real lack is “cheap new STEM graduate who can easily be intimidated or replaced” shortage. Average job search time for software engineers over 50 is six months (and stats say they’re more productive), yet we keep importing people for Microsoft etc on *temporary* work visas. If they’re so smart, we want them as *citizens*, able to bargain with their employer as…equals? “More equals”?
I think Brian, and David Dickson in the comments here, have it more accurately when compared to Prof. Vavreck. Politics do not change with the flip of a switch. There is still a contingent in favor of oligarchy and indifferent to broad based democracy.
Democrats can pick up 50-60 house seats and 10-15 senate if they hammer ion Dobbs all day every day. Prevaricate and lose. 100 million women are ready to vote and they ain’t voting gop.
I totally agree with yammering about Dobbs as much as possible, for both substantial and political reasons. However, your projection is a fantasy. Recall that the majority of white women have voted for Trump. Like all disempowered groups, many women vote with more powerful groups (in this case, white men), believing that will bring them power as well. Some women who have voted with the GOP previously will vote Dem over Dobbs, but most of them will stick with the GOP.
“If there’s a free and fair election in 2028”? There won’t be if #TraitorTrump wins. He will declare himself dictator for life and this country will never recover.
The anti-New Deal propaganda project was and continues to be one of the most successful in American history, aided by Milton Friedman in the 1970s and John Stossel in the 1990s. Bill Clinton famously disavowed the New Deal with his anti “big government” rhetoric, and Obama’s collection of dipshit, cowardly advisors and chiefs of staff also disavowed it.
Criticism of the New Deal often manifests as animosity towards the federal government. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has replaced Rush Limbaugh in leading federal government hatred. Both have been puppets of the would be upper class as Ronald Reagan was before them.
Are any of the Republican politicians who want to cut taxes and cut the safety net sincere? Do they really think that would help regular folks in some way? Or are they just pleasing their wealthy donors without giving any thought to average Americans? Paul Ryan seemed sincere. Was that an act?
You’re totally right about the GOP attitude towards the New Deal. IMHO you’re equally wrong to say that Trump will spend time in prison if he loses. The establishment will be desperate to usher him quietly off the stage, since he’ll have become an embarrassment (to media elites as well as political ones), and a prison sentence would undermine that goal. He might well be convicted of crimes, but the pressure on the judges to settle for house arrest at most will be overwhelming. The same thinking process that lead to the Nixon pardon.
I've been on this page for a couple of years now. Conviction or no conviction, I will be shocked if Trump ever see's the inside of a prison cell. The judges will be so reluctant to actually treat him like they'd treat anyone else, even after a conviction. He'll get house arrest *at worst*. Case in point: who else gets to threaten a judge's daughter and not immediately get taken into custody? Who else gets to have hundreds of stolen classified documents and, again, not get immediately taken into custody to wait for their trial? That simply doesn't happen that way to ANYONE, unless your name is Donald J. Trump, apparently. Pretty sure he could walk into court, literally punch the judge in the face, and the judge would just warn him not to do that again.
Unless somebody has convincing evidence that Cannon was the result of the first and only random judge draw in the classified document matter, I don’t have any particular belief it was random.
The spy agencies consider the classified documents matter to be dangerous not just in its details, but also that the lack of consequences erodes their employees’ fear of mishandling classified information. Until Snowden, *nobody* got away. (And do we call Snowden’s current circumstances “got away”?) Witness Hillary Clintons’s Ahab-esque quest for Assange’s head, over State Department traffic being leaked. So blatant disrespect at the top for even the spirit of the handling rules means the organization’s secret-keeping culture gets sloppier.
OHHHH, you were objecting to my characterization of Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State? Were you working in defense- or intelligence-adjacent parts of the government during Clinton’s reaction to Wikileaks?
Unfortunately, you pulled a Gen Z and ostentatiously blocked someone for one post, without asking for clarification. Good thing you never misunderstand anything! More seriously, I don’t know what parts of the story you are and are not familiar with. (I mean, at this point I am talking to the rest of the community, and/or possibly somebody who posts “blocked” just to see its rhetorical effect. But “conspiracy theory, blocked” is such a lazy way to dismiss a point that I thought it needed to be made an example of.)
Anyway, I could explain at various levels of detail how Clinton’s official actions in reaction to the cables leak were significantly different from existing procedures, affected operational capability just for political messaging, established internally contradictory guidance on document handling, and increasingly escalated and personalized US government pursuit of Assange. After a few years of this, Assange became evil when his life goals changed from “break improper secrecy” to “hit back at Clinton, who wants to treat me like Manning was treated.”
Because Clinton’s loss was so close, distaste for the way Assange was treated is yet another sufficient reason for the loss, as was Clinton’s inability to use desktop computers (which cascaded to needing a specific, private mail server, in order to have BlackBerry email support).
(The reason I judge Assange’s actions to have become evil is that he knew very well he was not as smart as the Russian intelligence services combined, but he thought he could use them, or at least work together towards a few goals. He knew that he did not know the entirety of their plans in 2016.)
I wish I knew what you were talking about, but apparently there will be no chance now.
The chief judge in the district does not need to engage in a conspiracy to choose Cannon, then state “it was a random draw.” There would only be a conspiracy if multiple people secretly agreed to do so.
But now I’m batting at ghosts, because I don’t understand why “a court in Florida could be corrupt, and I’m reserving judgment on an unlikely coincidence” set you off.
I agree that Republicans never abandoned their hatred of the New Deal. The writer of this article imagines that if Trump were re-elected that there would be a legitimate election in 2028. The “dictator on day one” will not leave even if his cheating doesn’t work. He will have all the power at his disposal with his loyalists and friends like Putin, etc. He must not be allowed back in the White House.
Ever since Romney and Ryan’s run at it 12 years ago, I’ve thought about the seeming contradiction between culturally appealing to white rural voters on the one hand and decimating the social safety net for everyone on the other. Like Matt Yglesias, I assumed Trump had won by “moderating” on the latter even while getting more extreme on the former, and assumed that required squaring a circle at some point.
But lately, I’ve decided that way of thinking misses the big picture entirely. More to the point, it lacks imagination.
There is actually NO contradiction between seeming to “moderate” on the social welfare state for some, AND slashing it brutally for others. That is, in fact, exactly what authoritarian right wing parties are campaigning on in countries all over the world. Bigotry is, in fact, the glue that holds that position together.
What Trump is doing is a much more crudely direct, more openly ruthless version of what Romney and Paul implied in 2012–Preserve standards of living and the social safety net for loyal supporters of the Republican Party, and savagely curtail them for those not loyal and not supporting.
That nakedly corrupt, nakedly tribal position, basically a declaration of aggression against— treating as enemy, really—half of the country, allows Trump to play the role of “moderate” to those who benefit from it, laissez-faire capitalist to those who want others to suffer from it, and bigot to both of those categories, and benefit politically in all three ways.
It’s the kind of thing we lack the imagination to grasp in the American context, because we are not used to thinking of a president as leader of one tribe of Americans pillaging another tribe of Americans.
Vavreck clearly lacks the language to grasp what’s happening here, and assumes because Trump emphasizes culture war and denigrates slashing the New Deal, that battle must be “over”.
On the contrary. He’s found a way to potentially gain victory in that very material battle. Or thinks he has. (His billionaire, anti-New Deal donors, certainly think he has.)
That situation seems pretty darn clear to those who look at politics abroad and see the picture shaping up in America. It’s hard to comprehend, in part because it’s so seemingly unprecedented here, albeit depressingly generic and routine in a global sense.
Trump is trying to immiserate millions, and get away with that by placing other millions under his contingent, “loyalist” protection. Romney and Ryan tried to do the same thing; they were just far too polite to state it out loud, even to themselves. And it’s long been a brutal mainstay of politics in too many countries to count, democratic and not so democratic. We’re just not used to being confronted directly with it in the flesh.
Man, wish I’d said that. Do you have a Substack, or have you considered starting one? I would definitely subscribe.
Heh. Thanks!
No, alas, no Substack yet. I’m a new dad and engineer with maybe 30 minutes per day to dedicate to reading the news, let alone writing about it.
But thanks, I’ll keep your vote of confidence in mind!
" If there’s a free and fair election in 2028, after Trump winds down his second term...."
If Trump does win this fall, what odds do you place on the 2028 election being free & fair? I worry it's close to 85%-95% likely to be a rigged Hungarian/Putin-style "election" in that scenario.
The Republicans, at the time, hated the New Deal so much they attempted another coup. The Civil War being their first coup attempt. Jan. 6 was their third attempt. The fourth coup attempt is ongoing right now.
Perhaps Democrats need to make 2024 a referendum on Reaganomics, now not only completely debunked but proven to be toxic to democracy. Reagan managed to appear tough on the Soviet Union while gutting one of the most important defense expenditures of post WWII policy - direct subsidies of higher education - while pushing it off onto students. The result was a lifetime mortgage of their future without the high paying jobs they were promised by slight of hand “trickle down” economics. Meanwhile the tax tables were up ended to effectively cripple much of the middle class from building generational wealth. And did I mention the double tax on Social Security? Maybe the anger is justified, just not directed at the real villains in the piece.
We used to limit who could go to college — screening out low SES (including women at the time) except for exceptional and lucky talent, and otherwise mostly consisting of people already acculturated in the fewer (at the time) professional-class families.
When just anybody (including women, now the majority on campuses) could get a degree, the value of that degree dropped dramatically. Some well-meaning people thought education was a non-zero-sum investment, and it can be, which is a great argument for why government should be subsidizing it. But job openings ask for degrees, not education.
Later, the upper-middle class, who wanted to reserve jobs for people culturally/socially like them, started putting degree requirements on jobs which didn’t really need them; thus, a degree also came to function as an “ADMIT ONE: WHITE COLLAR JOBS” ticket.
But some people knew very well that college graduate wages would drop with the expansion of the labor force, and didn’t mention that to people who expected a law degree to almost mechanically lead to well-paid job as a lawyer — while prospects were trying to decide how much of their future to mortgage, they didn’t factor in the wage drop.
And the democratization of college opportunities wasn’t the end. All of the promises of “re-skilling” blue-collar/pink-collar jobs were always an attempt to drive down labor costs elsewhere, by adding the new and the desperate to that labor pool. Even today we are told that the US has a “STEM” shortage, when the real lack is “cheap new STEM graduate who can easily be intimidated or replaced” shortage. Average job search time for software engineers over 50 is six months (and stats say they’re more productive), yet we keep importing people for Microsoft etc on *temporary* work visas. If they’re so smart, we want them as *citizens*, able to bargain with their employer as…equals? “More equals”?
I think Brian, and David Dickson in the comments here, have it more accurately when compared to Prof. Vavreck. Politics do not change with the flip of a switch. There is still a contingent in favor of oligarchy and indifferent to broad based democracy.
Democrats can pick up 50-60 house seats and 10-15 senate if they hammer ion Dobbs all day every day. Prevaricate and lose. 100 million women are ready to vote and they ain’t voting gop.
I totally agree with yammering about Dobbs as much as possible, for both substantial and political reasons. However, your projection is a fantasy. Recall that the majority of white women have voted for Trump. Like all disempowered groups, many women vote with more powerful groups (in this case, white men), believing that will bring them power as well. Some women who have voted with the GOP previously will vote Dem over Dobbs, but most of them will stick with the GOP.
We'll see. So far all the evidence points to the opposite. Also I said "hammer" not "yammer"...
Right, yammer was my word
“If there’s a free and fair election in 2028”? There won’t be if #TraitorTrump wins. He will declare himself dictator for life and this country will never recover.
The anti-New Deal propaganda project was and continues to be one of the most successful in American history, aided by Milton Friedman in the 1970s and John Stossel in the 1990s. Bill Clinton famously disavowed the New Deal with his anti “big government” rhetoric, and Obama’s collection of dipshit, cowardly advisors and chiefs of staff also disavowed it.
Now Biden is tepidly warming back up to it.
Criticism of the New Deal often manifests as animosity towards the federal government. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has replaced Rush Limbaugh in leading federal government hatred. Both have been puppets of the would be upper class as Ronald Reagan was before them.
Are any of the Republican politicians who want to cut taxes and cut the safety net sincere? Do they really think that would help regular folks in some way? Or are they just pleasing their wealthy donors without giving any thought to average Americans? Paul Ryan seemed sincere. Was that an act?
You’re totally right about the GOP attitude towards the New Deal. IMHO you’re equally wrong to say that Trump will spend time in prison if he loses. The establishment will be desperate to usher him quietly off the stage, since he’ll have become an embarrassment (to media elites as well as political ones), and a prison sentence would undermine that goal. He might well be convicted of crimes, but the pressure on the judges to settle for house arrest at most will be overwhelming. The same thinking process that lead to the Nixon pardon.
I've been on this page for a couple of years now. Conviction or no conviction, I will be shocked if Trump ever see's the inside of a prison cell. The judges will be so reluctant to actually treat him like they'd treat anyone else, even after a conviction. He'll get house arrest *at worst*. Case in point: who else gets to threaten a judge's daughter and not immediately get taken into custody? Who else gets to have hundreds of stolen classified documents and, again, not get immediately taken into custody to wait for their trial? That simply doesn't happen that way to ANYONE, unless your name is Donald J. Trump, apparently. Pretty sure he could walk into court, literally punch the judge in the face, and the judge would just warn him not to do that again.
Unless somebody has convincing evidence that Cannon was the result of the first and only random judge draw in the classified document matter, I don’t have any particular belief it was random.
The spy agencies consider the classified documents matter to be dangerous not just in its details, but also that the lack of consequences erodes their employees’ fear of mishandling classified information. Until Snowden, *nobody* got away. (And do we call Snowden’s current circumstances “got away”?) Witness Hillary Clintons’s Ahab-esque quest for Assange’s head, over State Department traffic being leaked. So blatant disrespect at the top for even the spirit of the handling rules means the organization’s secret-keeping culture gets sloppier.
Blocking you for spreading conspiracy theories
OHHHH, you were objecting to my characterization of Clinton’s actions as Secretary of State? Were you working in defense- or intelligence-adjacent parts of the government during Clinton’s reaction to Wikileaks?
Unfortunately, you pulled a Gen Z and ostentatiously blocked someone for one post, without asking for clarification. Good thing you never misunderstand anything! More seriously, I don’t know what parts of the story you are and are not familiar with. (I mean, at this point I am talking to the rest of the community, and/or possibly somebody who posts “blocked” just to see its rhetorical effect. But “conspiracy theory, blocked” is such a lazy way to dismiss a point that I thought it needed to be made an example of.)
Anyway, I could explain at various levels of detail how Clinton’s official actions in reaction to the cables leak were significantly different from existing procedures, affected operational capability just for political messaging, established internally contradictory guidance on document handling, and increasingly escalated and personalized US government pursuit of Assange. After a few years of this, Assange became evil when his life goals changed from “break improper secrecy” to “hit back at Clinton, who wants to treat me like Manning was treated.”
Because Clinton’s loss was so close, distaste for the way Assange was treated is yet another sufficient reason for the loss, as was Clinton’s inability to use desktop computers (which cascaded to needing a specific, private mail server, in order to have BlackBerry email support).
(The reason I judge Assange’s actions to have become evil is that he knew very well he was not as smart as the Russian intelligence services combined, but he thought he could use them, or at least work together towards a few goals. He knew that he did not know the entirety of their plans in 2016.)
I wish I knew what you were talking about, but apparently there will be no chance now.
The chief judge in the district does not need to engage in a conspiracy to choose Cannon, then state “it was a random draw.” There would only be a conspiracy if multiple people secretly agreed to do so.
But now I’m batting at ghosts, because I don’t understand why “a court in Florida could be corrupt, and I’m reserving judgment on an unlikely coincidence” set you off.