This election is shaping up to be a face-off between Establishment globalism and populist nationalism, with little interest in stale, distracting culture war topics. That change has been clear to Trump fans for awhile, but I mean to the general public, the political apparatus, and the media.
With the way that our economy and government are going, and have been going for 30-40 years, Establishment globalism is going to go over like a lead balloon, especially once Trump and allies have been hammering these points for months and months.
Thus, the question is no longer which states can Trump win? -- but rather, in which states will Crooked Hillary be able to survive the brutal siege? His campaign doesn't fall into the standard Democrat traps of identity politics and the culture war, and will be attacking her "from the left" on the economy, government corruption, and foreign policy. The "it's my turn" candidate from that other latter-day dynasty didn't exactly weather Hurricane Trump for very long.
We've heard for awhile about "swing states" and "threading the needle" for a Republican to win the electoral college. But that landscape was under the old paradigm of liberals vs. conservatives. Now that it is rapidly shifting toward populism vs. elitism, and America first vs. globalism, the blue-red landscape will look different. Some will be heavily Trump, some heavily Hillary, and others will be close races -- swing states still, though not necessarily the same ones that were close races during the liberal vs. conservative era.
And given how much Trump has been emphasizing the theme of unity and getting along instead of polarization and demonization, you can bet that he will start to unveil several policies intended to include the populist / anti-globalist liberals. They're populist and anti-globalist, too, so who cares about liberal or conservative? (Trump keeps saying, "I'm a conservative, but who cares? We've got a country to straighten out, folks!")
He recently said he thinks he'll get a lot of the young people voting for Bernie (Trump does best among older voters, so this would make a nice complement). Therefore one of these positions will be some very big change to how student loan debt is handled. Why not cut to the chase and issue a one-time-only forgiveness of all student loan debt? With the understanding that the higher ed bubble will be popped and not allowed to re-inflate.
The higher ed bubble is mostly a scam, and Trump has said so several times on the trail -- that the students, who don't know any better, are being used as a conduit for federal loan dollars to get sucked into the coffers of the universities. They give the students nothing of value in return -- witness their pathetic incomes despite having a four-year degree.
To pay for the federal loans that will go bust, tell the universities who scammed the immature students to either pay it back, or we'll nationalize your assets and take the cash, sell off those fancy stadiums that they've been building with all that ill-gotten wealth, and whatever else the ruthless negotiator-in-chief can think up.
This would be a purely populist program, and not much to do with the theme of America first. But not everything is going to do with nationalism -- "I don't want people dying in the streets because they're too poor to afford health care".
Crooked Hillary is owned by Wall Street and would never dare try such a populist stunt. She would rather have these impressionable kids who were allowed to rack up tens of thousands in debt by age 20, continue to eke out a subsistence as indentured servants.
Armed with this secret weapon, the welfare-enhancing effects of sending the illegal immigrants back, along with declaring a truce on culture war matters, Trump can steal California and its 55 electoral votes right out from under the complacent and sclerotic Democrat Establishment.
If they thought the Trump army was going to stay away from so-called hostile territory, and only try to chip away at five swing states, they will be caught with their pants down. "How did you let those Trump supporters sway you Californians? Don't you know they're conservatives?!" "They didn't look like either liberal or conservative, so how should we have known? And anyway, who cares? They promised us one-time full debt relief on student loans!"
California, and many other states, are not going to be such hostile territory for the populist America first party.
The key in winning them over will be turning out the large pool of non-voters. That has been the secret of Trump's success so far, and it will continue into the general election phase as well. Things get more quantitative when we talk about boosting turnout, and how big this pool of untapped voters is in different states, so I'll save that for another post.
You overestimate the Millenials. They're the least white generation ever, which means they're collectively even dumber than their predecessors. The vast majority have had their head stuffed full of leftist drivel and consider virtue signaling far more important than actual people.
ReplyDeleteAll Hillary need do is chant "racist, sexist, anti-gay, right wing bigot go away!" and the vast majority of youth will lick her boots.
Trump should add student debt forgiveness to his platform then.
ReplyDeleteI'd favor instead making student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy, like every other debt. A one time forgiveness of all student loans is too broad (a lot of high fliers took on debt they can absolutely afford to pay), and probably ineffective at preventing a re-occurrence of the debt crisis.
ReplyDeleteMaking every past and future loan like normal debt would force, one way or another, the publication of correct employment figures for individual schools and degree majors, and mandate some good judgment from loan providers that the gullible (where they're not hoodwinked) students can't exercise themselves. It'd intrinsically place some cost controls, without a government directive.
The Democratic Party can't go in this direction because some of their most important clients are university instructors and administrators, and if student loans were subject to bankruptcy a lot of academic departments would go poof. It's an unexposed conflict of interest between naive Millenials and academic SJWs.
The most stunning thing about Trump victory is that he defeated the "conservative" prestige media that went against him, the Neocons had no answer toward the Trump phenom, the Neocons are able to purge all the dissent voices in the media and think tanks because they have a lot of money behind them, Neocons defend the elite policies and Hillary is a Neocon for all intents and purposes, she is the elite defender.
ReplyDeleteIf Trump wins and redefines the GOP at a image closer to the Alt-right, the Neocons will go back to the Democratic Party.
Neo-Cons should be called "Jewish Trotskyites" and they need to move their dysfunctional politics back to the Democrat party, where there is a home for all crazy.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of weight will they use on the H2H polls. The media men don't want Trump so will give him bad polls.
ReplyDelete"All Hillary need do is chant "racist, sexist, anti-gay, right wing bigot go away!" and the vast majority of youth will lick her boots."
ReplyDeleteAnd yet when the Don promises to relieve their student loan debts, no questions asked, they will not only line up in droves to vote for him, they will defend him ("without actually endorsing him") on social media.
"Yeah, I mean, he says some like totally ridiculous stuff, but I mean, are you really gonna turn down a free BMW on your 16th birthday just because your Republican uncle bought it for you?"
Remember, Millennials are not hardened ideologues like their dopey teachers. They parrot bullshit in public, and even believe it in private. But there is no way in hell they're going to put defense of these grudgingly-agreed-to culture war bromides above being DEBT FREE.
As far as Millennials not being very white, show us a race-by-age distribution across the 50 states. Or just the racial demographics for the 18-29 year-olds, by state. Then look at how concentrated the non-whites are in only a few states.
BTW, wanting to be relieved of your student loan debts is race-blind. You really think some 25 year-old black or Mexican or Asian in California is going to look that gift horse in the mouth, just cuz some ol' white grandma told them that "Trump = Hitler" on Twitter?
"A one time forgiveness of all student loans is too broad (a lot of high fliers took on debt they can absolutely afford to pay), and probably ineffective at preventing a re-occurrence of the debt crisis."
ReplyDeleteTrying to figure out who can and cannot pay what principal with what interest rate over what time frame while making how much income in each of those years, and having scored what percentile on the SAT... too hard, and too technocratic.
Remember Trump's remark about making poor people pay some income tax vs. zero income tax? It would cost more to collect it than it would bring in. He's pragmatic and wants to keep the rules simple.
Similar story with perfectly tailoring the response to the higher ed loan bubble. Just pop the sucker, and forgive the debt. Mostly on principle, and the remainder for pragmatic reasons.
The higher ed bubble is due to bad loans, that never should have been made because the student was in no position to get that much out of college, and therefore wouldn't be making that much more than if they had gone straight into the labor force.
So, those who "can pay back the loans" are minor, and would be looking for a needle in a haystack. Just throw them in as well, rather than waste even more resources "to be fair" than would be brought in as a result of pursuing maximum fairness.
Perfectly fitting a curve to data points requires an increasing complexity of the model. We have to strike a balance. And in this case, forgiving the whole thing is pretty simple.
"Neo-Cons should be called "Jewish Trotskyites""
ReplyDeleteYup, they even like to call themselves 'Liberal Interventionists', one of the reasons the Neocons have been successful was because they had the support of the Liberal media, they all belong in the same Tribe anyway.
Hildebeast's frigidness is going to turn off a lot of young (especially male) voters, it will look much worse in the general election, even with all the media adulation. There was already considerable speculation about (often younger, but Hillary is failing to woo the unions) Bernie supporters switching to Trump if necessary (and vice-versa).
ReplyDeleteForgiving the debt would be based on the reason that most of those loans were bad, made in bad faith by the FedGov, only accepted in bad faith by the schools, and were exploiting a group of people whose brains are still maturing.
ReplyDeleteOn that basis, there will be no more loans like there were -- else it would be another round of bad loans. If you frame the volume and size of loans as a fundamentally bad thing, no one will expect or accept that it return to that state.
"Hillary is failing to woo the unions"
ReplyDeleteCNN's exit polls show that voters from union households are evenly split between her and Bernie, within margin of error.
Voters from union households who are already voting Bernie in the primary are ripe to hear the Gospel of Trump. They've already repudiated the culture war crap from their own party. They don't want TPP, NAFTA on steroids, and they don't care about gender politics. Bye-bye Hillary voters.
Do students or their parents usually pay down the student loans? I don't mean on paper, but in practice. Though in that case, at least you'll have the parents supporting it.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not sure how much millenials care about debt -- I don't think they do the future income estimates and net present value calculations.