What initially appeared to be a topsy-turvy re-alignment election, where the Republican party would have become more populist and nationalist as it aimed to keep together the Trump coalition, has instead been hijacked by the standard policies of the interest groups that control the GOP.
Being a party in terminal decline, they have no results to showcase despite their control over the entire national government, and at best a widely hated tax cut bill.
Trump did not distinguish himself from the Republican retard show during the primaries by shouting about tax cuts, cutting social security and Medicare, and beefing up our military footprint around the world.
With nothing to satisfy the Trump coalition of populists and nationalists, and if anything only rejecting those voters' priorities while insulting them as a bunch of bigoted racists for wanting a decent standard of living for their fellow Americans, it comes as no surprise to see voters rejecting the GOP whenever they can.
In the early special elections, this total betrayal was not yet evident to everyone, and voters were willing to either give Republicans the benefit of the doubt, or were still in 2016 mode, full of Trumpian enthusiasm about making the GOP work for them for a change.
But especially since the last of the Trumpists were purged from the government by the Pentagon junta in August, which also saw a reversal of the America-first goal to GTFO of Afghanistan already, the administration and Congress have kicked it into high gear on governing as though this were the Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz presidency.
Voters have noticed, and they are not happy. Certainly the Trump voters are not satisfied with what has so far been delivered -- or not delivered -- but they can no longer count on independents and Democrat crossovers to save their ass. The GOP has burned all bridges with anyone who isn't a hardcore Republican partisan, and even that minuscule group is dissatisfied.
The rejection of Republicans can no longer be blamed on the race being held in a blue state like New Jersey or a purple swamp state like Virginia. Now one of the reddest states in the union has elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in a quarter of a century.
The common denominator is that these have been later races, after the public has given up hope on the GOP re-aligning itself to match the Trump campaign that won against all odds.
As the GOP goes even further into widely hated territory, like cutting away the social safety net programs, we can expect even greater rejection at the ballot box, including the 2018 midterms.
Do the Dems have what it takes to win those midterms? They won in Alabama not by putting up a cultural liberal of color who wants yuppie economics (Obama), but a conservative-to-moderate white dude running on reviving the New Deal populist programs that developed the Deep South out of its agricultural past.
Doug Jones was a staffer for the last Democrat to represent the state in the Senate, Howell Heflin, who was a conservative that fought for protectionist trade measures and consumer protection.
As long as the Democrats adhere to their recent string of wins by running moderate vanilla white guys (or gals) who don't want to cut the good stuff out of government, they can easily win against the Party of Stupid even in red states.
The Alabama election proved yet again that even red staters don't care that much about the culture war anymore. Remember, Trump dominated the Deep South in the GOP primaries -- not Lyin' Ted, with his Bible held high before he puts it down and then he lies.
Clueless observers keep referring to "the 10 Democrat Senators up for re-election in states that Trump won" -- it's too bad that Trump will not be running in any of those races. At least, not Trump the candidate of 2016. To the extent that he tethers his reputation to the GOP agenda, he will be on the ballot, but he will not perform as he did in 2016 when his reputation was burnished by disavowing the usual Republican crap.
No, it will be the results of GOP governance on the ballot. And at the current rate, we can eliminate Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania as toss-ups. Ohio is held by a trade hawk running against someone endorsed by the Club for Growth in the Rust Belt, so that's likely not going to change hands either. Florida is a swing state, even for Trump, so that's hardly in the lean-red category either. West Virginia has an old school Democrat who's been incumbent forever. Three of the others are in the Midwest (MO, IN, ND), where the Dems are not flaming liberals. Only one is in more solid red territory (MT).
These states in and around the Rust Belt were psychotic for the Trump campaign, not for the tax cuts and culture war distractions that are the standard fare from the GOP. If they are not given what Trump ran on, why would they reward the Republicans in Congress for sidelining the Trump agenda?
Then there are the vulnerable Republicans, which is really all of them at this point. None of them has stood out to defend Trump against the GOP leadership, the Deep State witch hunt, or anything else. Especially Corker and Flake -- their betrayal will dampen enthusiasm so much, it may not matter who their intended replacements are. Voters will just be sick of their party. And Heller was already vulnerable in blue-state Nevada.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Dems net 1 or 2 seats, resulting in an effectively divided or slightly Democrat-leaning Senate.
And you know what, populists? That's a good thing, not a bad thing. The Republicans have given us neither populism nor nationalism, have adamantly promised never to do so in the future, and have insulted us for demanding them. At least the Democrats will pass out some breadcrumbs on populism, and will deliver even more if we play hardball with them leading up to the elections.
"Gee, it would be a pity if we merely stayed home due to lack of enthusiasm... that might not do enough to swing the election your way. We could do even better and turn out for your party, if you were to offer us single-payer healthcare, break up a media monopoly, slam 35% tariffs on off-shored production, etc., while shutting the hell up about cultural liberal crap."
"And BTW if you try to impeach Trump, we reserve the right to storm your offices and put your necks in the guillotines."
Americans are rapidly getting past this partisan obsession about which team "puts points on the board". Especially the generations after the hyper-competitive Silents and Boomers, who retardedly turn every political topic into a pointless Super Bowl match. And what if the point just put on the board is going to make America worse? We don't want points at any cost.
If widespread disaffection with the GOP can produce wins for conservative-to-moderate lite populists in the Deep South, it can do so anywhere else.
It looked like the Trump election was going to re-make the Republican party, but perhaps it is going to re-make the Democrats instead. Hey, whoever wants to cater to our needs can have our vote -- we don't care which team it is.
The only bumps along that road will be the clueless partisans on the Democrat side, who will read into these red-state victories that there's a secret underground army of soy-swilling liberal homosexuals and minorities who have finally decided to show up like a deus ex machina. Sorry liberals: you only win by adding moderates and conservatives to your side, or depressing their turnout for the other side (if their side doesn't already depress its own turnout).
Democrats can only retake the Senate by running more Howell Heflins, not Jon Ossoffs. Steelworkers, not Starbucks.
If Democrats manage to decouple their liberal cultural crap from progressive economics, the sky's the limit.
What exactly counts as moderate for a Democrat in your mind? Because from what I can tell, a moderate Dem is near guaranteed to be a neoliberal Dem. Meanwhile, while the left of the Party will of course stake out left positions on cultural issues, they're also the one's who are going to be advancing left and populist positions on economics. So in short, absent the left wing Democrats who voted for Bernie shifting the Democratic center to the Left, I'd be cautious in assuming that the white moderate Democrats you think will win will be advancing positions any different than the Third Way/Clinton/Obama tripe that lead the Party to go from dominating the House for 40 years to losing everywhere up and down the ballot.
ReplyDelete"Moderate" meaning on social-cultural issues, between libs and cons.
ReplyDeleteNot moderate on class or economics. Jones ran on lite populism, focusing on healthcare for children of poor parents, his issues webpage celebrates the infrastructure of the New Deal era, and he's for raising the minimum wage (by how much, who knows).
Bernie *activists* may be liberals, but they won't win elections if they insist on forcing those social-cultural values on the largely conservative and moderate voters who they need to win back the Midwest, or especially the South.
Bernie himself doesn't play up culture war topics, and defended being a moderate on gun control, vs. the flaming liberal position of Hillary Clinton.
As long as Our Revolution doesn't hire a bunch of Young Turks clones from urban liberal coastal cities to do their missionizing, they can totally convert Midwesterners.
It would be no different from the Trump campaign appealing not only to conservatives but moderates and some liberals as well. He did it not by droning on at length about how we need a moderate position on social issues -- he just didn't bring them up at all, and focused on the big issues.
All the Bernie people have to do is shut up about social issues. They will only fail if they insist on endlessly arguing about social issues with people who are desperate to vote for populism but don't want some flaming liberal from New York or San Francisco or Austin trying to impose their values on a community that they are not even from.
There's two ways to sideline social issues -- the winning way, to just shut up about them, and the losing way, to "not compromise" and waste most of your limited time money and effort trying to score conversions to liberalism rather than to populism.
The other thing Bernie people must do is play up the great promises Trump made against the GOP orthodoxy during the campaign, and point out how the Republicans in Congress have not changed their ways in response.
ReplyDeleteIf they make it all about rejecting Trump, they will lose the places where voters desperately wanted Trump and do not feel like suffering cognitive dissonance and buyer's remorse.
Make it instead about the failures of the GOP Congress -- which is who will actually be on the ballot anyway, not a presidential candidate.
"We feel your pain on how hard it is to make ends meet, and we too want to see those good-paying jobs come back to America. That's why you understandably voted for Trump, but the Republicans in Congress have sidelined those issues in favor of their own usual garbage about rewarding companies who move out of the country, rewarding hedge fund managers with tax cuts, and on and on."
They need to say, "Vote for us, and a Democratic Congress can work with Trump on the issues he was good on as a candidate -- trade and manufacturing, infrastructure, healthcare (single-payer, at least negotiating drug prices from Medicare D), and shrinking our expensive military footprint around the world."
Again Bernie has been leading the way there, with his rally speeches starting off by listing the reasons why Trump voters chose Trump in the Rust Belt, why he sympathizes with them, but then points to the lack of delivery from the GOP government.
The only change he should make is back off from calling Trump a liar or con-man -- everyone can tell Trump was being sincere, sacrificing his wealth, and risking his neck for those issues. Attributing lack of results to his personal lying will just come off as partisan bullshitting.
Just blame it on the GOP Congress -- not only is it true, it's more believable, and it doesn't make Trump voters bristle with cognitive dissonance. They hate the GOP just as much as Democrats do.
But if Dems win the historical nation is over for sure.
ReplyDeleteGSS political affiliation by birth cohort, white males only:
ReplyDelete1940-1949
Lean Republican
31.6%
Indepedent
14.9%
Lean Democrat
41.3%
1950-1959
Lean Republican
40.9%
Independent
17.1%
Lean Democrat
39.3%
1960-1969
Lean Republican
50.4%
Independent
15.6%
Lean Democrat
31.9%
1970-1979
Lean Republican
44.1%
Independent
20.3%
Lean Democrat
33.1%
1980-1989
Lean Republican
36.1%
Independent
23.7%
Lean Democrat
37.1%
Later generations are way less partisan. This gives me a little hope, though the quickly changing demographics of America may simply be too much to overcome, not to mention being the bitch of China, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico with scarcely any elites willing to have a productive talk about how to restore America's dignity. I also fail to see why any 1st world country needs to import inbred MENA garbage; we already had enough diversity in the West by the early 1980's.
Is there any elite right now, in any position of influence or power, willing to punish the Saudis, not accept Mexican ne'er-do-wells, and take back our factories from China? Ya know, what most Americans intuitively supported WRT Trump, even if some of them didn't know it because they were distracted by Trump's fellow elites dogpiling onto Trump.
The partisanship by generation is constant over time, BTW, not just an artifact of age-related differences here and now. It's a true generational shift.
ReplyDeleteSplit up the data by decade of survey, and the partisan affiliation by cohort is remarkably similar from the 1970s through today.
Early Boomers are about 15% independent, late Boomers just over 15%, early X-ers 20%, late X-ers 25%, Millennials 25%.
All of the difference is due to later generations balking at joining the Republican side, as Democrats are similar across generations and decades.
Medium-to-long term, that means the death of the GOP as a party, not just its current version, and its replacement by a new 2nd party that is more populist and nationalist.
Short-term, though, that means more staying-at-home or holding their nose for Democrats -- after playing hardball with them before the election, and keeping the heat on them afterward if they think of betraying.
The historical nation has been under sustained attack by both Republican and Democrat governments, whether executive or legislative. It's a long-term trend, whereby George W. Bush was worse than Bill Clinton on nationalism.
ReplyDeleteSaving America means a great big reversal for both parties, not handing one vs. the other a short-term victory. Republican voters have been suckered by that scam for over 20 years now, and at least the post-Boomers among them have grown tired of it.
And as I detailed in an earlier post, the GOP is more globalist than the Dems because they're the military party, and imperialism is more open-borders and anti-core-nation than the finance party's globalism -- which only wants to open up foreign economies to Wall Street or Silicon Valley monopolies.
The Pentagon's version of globalism puts more Americans physically all over the world, and invites people from all over the world in order to curry favor with the foreign governments who are our allies in the imperialist project (especially Muslim immigrants when our focus is conquering the Muslim world, but earlier it was Latin immigrants when we were focused on conquering Latin America).
And it's the GOP power factions that rely on cheap labor, being more labor-intensive. That's the main driver of immigration and off-shoring that destroys historical America.
Democrat power factions don't rely on cheap labor to grow their fiefdoms -- they do mergers & acquisitions within their informational sectors. So they are not so structurally opposed to closing the doors on immigration, in the way that the GOP factions are.
You've gone off the deep-end, Agnostic.
ReplyDeleteWTF??? His analysis is spot-on.
ReplyDeleteAnd you say that bullshit after he took the time to explain his views, like you asked.
ReplyDeleteYeah, when have we seen immigration accelerations and reductions in immigrant quality?
ReplyDeleteThe early 70's (Nixon)
The late 80's/early 90's (Reagan/Bush)
The 2000's (Bush II)
Each time we're assured that the New Americans are wonderful people who, wait for it, uphold "family values" and can be "natural conservatives" (just how that didn't translate into a utopia in their homeland remains a mystery, though in the cold war we were told that we were getting the good ones and the bad commies were kept out).
Dwelling on the sponsors or cheerleaders of a particular law really doesn't matter, since it's whoever is in power and that person (or party's) whims that counts. They can choose to enforce or not enforce the various provisions of a bill, to achieve whatever their goal is. We saw that in the late 80's, when employment sanctions against illegal employers were barely enforced (these sanctions were marketed by amnesty sponsors to "prove" that the bill wasn't a chaos inducing cheap labor grab). Some Democrats may have supported the '65 immigration act, but it's impact wasn't felt until the early 70's under Nixon. Eisenhower is the last Republican to kick some ass on the immigration front (we'll see if Trump gets the wall, which GOP traitors could turn into a turnstyle at any moment anyway), and he was a hardass Lost gen dude at a time when Americans demanded order and security (the 1950's).
The 2000's really are the graveyard of Pax American, given the still extant military misadventures of the decade and the combination of importing countless Mexicans and MENA rejects. 9/11 (itself a consequence of Pentagon negligence) became a catalyst to accelerate every dumb idea that the GOP dabbled with to varying degrees in the post-WW2 era. Obama wanted to pare down some of this non-sense, which did happen by default (the Pentagon having less influence), but was over-ruled on some issues by Hilary (a loathsome, horrible excuse for a human being who managed to get whored out to the interest parties of both sides) and her flunkies.
Remember the "Muslims for Trump" knee-slapper at some '16 GOP event (whose name escapes me)?
ReplyDeleteEven in the most less than lucid low-points of the 1980's GOP, can ya imagine a GOP event with a speaker representing "Russians for Reagan"? At least back then we weren't being asked to accept the presence of obvious subversives and terrorists on our soil. Over on another blog I pointed out that the lapses in national security seen in the 1990's-present day (which all coincide with GOP regimes and/or "Centrist" Dems looking the other way wrt immigration quality and quantity), had they occured in the pre-90's, would've provoked calls for accountability, commissions, and reforms; and political elites back then would've been more cooperative and sensible.
One galling thing that I read about recently is various GOP consigliers owning stock/board membership in companies that make various kinds of security equipment. Hey, let's pretend to "do something" about security (besides, ya know, not letting numbskulls in the US to begin with) while we make $. It's akin to being "tough on crime" so that prison companies give you legal kickbacks (like post political career stocks, board membership, and speaking fees).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_New_York_City
ReplyDeleteGoing by this list, there are three periods of unrest.
The 1910's/1920's (in which Italian/Jewish associated Leftist radicals caused trouble, many of these people were either immigrants or 1st gen Americans)
The late 60's/70's ( several incidents were related to Croatia )
The 1990's-Present (most terrorist incidents were perped by Muslims, most of whom hailed from the MENA hellhole). Given how few Muslims there are in America, to this day. they are incredibly over-represented. As I understand, Muslim immigration didn't really come to pass here until the 80's (which, BTW, was when the US started to really meddle in the MENA). It takes but a relative few Muslims to experience massive issues.
"Yeah, when have we seen immigration accelerations and reductions in immigrant quality?"
ReplyDeleteNot sure, but it seems populist movements happen with the angsty cycle(peak every 15 years). The populist revolt in the early 90s you mentioned, the WTO protests in the early 2000s, the Trump/Sanders campaigns in 2015.
Going off the deep-end would be trusting the party of cheap labor and empire building to protect the welfare of ordinary people back in the core nation.
ReplyDeleteWe took a high-risk / high-reward chance on re-aligning the GOP toward populism and nationalism, but it ain't happening.
No point in wallowing, just move onto Plan B -- re-aligning the other major party, whose customer service message is not "Fuck off," who is already compromising somewhat with insurgents, who is in a desperate state where they'll make concessions to get our necessary help, and whose power factions are not materially based on cheap labor and imperial expansion.
We don't live in utopia -- time to make the best with the landscape as it currently exists, and as the near-term forecasts show it will be for the next few years at least.
I'd rather be economically suckered than elect the "Fuck Whitey" party, even if they're putting up southern white moderates to make us forget 2013-2017. Not a fucking chance.
ReplyDeleteIt may be the least worst option since the Repubs have proven they're going to keep destroying the historic nation with lies.
ReplyDeleteThe Dems will flood you out too though. They openly hate the historic nation.
The weakness is people are not very tactical in their party associations. How would you get natural conservatives - normal nationalists of the recent past who are now seen by Dems as racist white supremacist sexist imperialist colonialist oppressors - to associate with Dems and influence Dem policy. They've become too different life forms.
No one said the Dems were going to deliver nationalism. That waits for the New Second Party, which will exemplify the populist zeitgeist, but offer a nationalist rather than globalist version.
ReplyDeleteWe're just talking what things look like in the short term -- 2018 midterms, 2020 primaries and general, etc.
The Bernie revolution is clearly where the Dems are headed -- not toward doubling down on FUCK BIGOTED DRUMPF VOTERS. Just watch any of Bernie's rallies targeting the GOP tax cut bill, and trying to win back the white working class in the Rust Belt.
Remember, the FUCK WHITEY people targeted Bernie, hijacked his mic at a rally, and shut it down before he could speak. Black Lives Matter, an identity politics group.
Bernie and his ilk don't hate white people, they hate big corporations and imperialist military fuck-ups.
They differ from us in wanting "globalization from below" -- a phrase I would've endorsed back in my college days, but which I now see is impossible. We can't make the entire 10 billion people in the near future rich enough that there will be minor wage differentials all over the world.
The Third World is going to stay poor and full of cheap labor for at least the next several centuries, maybe millennia -- we'll wait and see.
Before and unless that happens, there are only going to be a small number of manufacturing jobs compared to the world's total population -- and we need those here, not over there.
Not that we wish harm on Third World workers, but we're the ones who invented the Industrial Revolution, and the ones best able to carry it forward. Look at what happens to production when it goes to Mexico, China, and India. They're just not ready yet.
The other reason the Dems will become less obsessed with identity politics is that the Bernie wing is the ascendant one, and they do not specialize in "fuck whitey".
ReplyDeleteThat would be the specialty of the neoliberals, like when Crooked Hillary said something to the effect of, "I don't see how breaking up the big Wall Street banks is going to end racism, sexism, or homophobia."
Or when that black woman propagandist from the NYT asked Bernie if he was a misogynist for not getting out of the way of the First Female Nominee of a major party -- back in April, IIRC, well before the primary race was over.
The Bernie activists have gotten so personally burned by the ID politics crowd, they aren't going to tolerate that as the main message going forward.
Not to mention the blame game after the ID politics voters (non-whites) gave Crooked Hillary the nomination, and she went down in flames against Trump. Bernie also would have lost, but by a much smaller margin, and not embarrassingly losing Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota (Trump + third party spoiler beat Clinton).
Trump would've kept Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, based on primary results for him vs. Bernie. Probably Iowa too, and maybe that one district in Maine. Somewhere between 273 to 280 EC votes, vs. 306 against Crooked Hillary.
The Bernie people must already be trying to diplomatically tell the non-white side to just STFU about white privilege etc., or else a Republican is going to win again and there goes your social safety net.
"We can address your racial issues, but we can't shout about them front and center during the campaign. That belongs to economic issues."
Plus that first major Bernie ad was the whitest thing we'd ever seen:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRiuh1Cug
It was not self-consciously white, like if the Alt-Right had done it. The Bernie people are blissfully unaware of their uber-whiteness, because they're from New England or the Great Lakes and aren't surrounded by minorities. Identity politics as opposed to class would never strike them as an important political matter.
And apropos of the Simon & Garfunkel lyrics, Saginaw voted for Trump -- first R vote since the Reagan landslide back in '84, when the whole country voted that way. This time they stuck their neck out from a big chunk of the country in voting R. And we see how the GOP Congress is repaying their risk.
Did you miss the outpouring of "BLACK WOMEN SAVED AMERICA" after the Alabama election?
ReplyDeleteTrump would be better off pushing some Bernie-lite issues than us voting for Democrats. I remember 2006, they gave all that up to yell at whitey, and they won't ever stop.
We need to be sowing dissent in their ranks, we need to be poking the identity politics bear.
I am so passionately against the tax plan for a whole host of reasons that I would consider voting Democrat for the first time in my life. Yet for me to do so the populist Bernie side would have to completely take over the party with no identity politics. It is also important to me that Democrats steer clear of any pro-Muslim rhetoric. In the end it wouldn't surprise me I throw away my vote on some fringe third party candidate that alligns with my views closer than either Rs or Ds.
ReplyDeleteThere are still plenty of Hill shills, especially in the media, who are trying to crow about how black women saved Alabama. Like I said, that would be an obstacle to winning more elections -- drawing the wrong conclusions about why you won.
ReplyDeleteIt remains to be seen how the Bernie people will interpret the win, though. They're the ones steering the party in a different direction, so it's not important what the clueless media pundits are saying.
Even if they wrongly attribute the win to black women, rather than depressed turnout among whites who are alienated from the GOP, that doesn't mean the Bernie people would attribute the win to identity politics issues.
Doug Jones' main policy focus was healthcare for children of poor parents, which naturally affects black women more than other groups. But that's just a case of an apparent racial issue reducing to a class issue -- not a racial issue per se, like check your white privilege, diversity is our strength, blacks are morally superior, etc.
It would only be an identity politics issue if they said that poor white single mothers are getting over-fed by government programs, while the racist system is depriving poor black single mothers of the same assistance.
As it was actually argued, it was that the sociopathic Republicans want to take away a piece of the social safety net, and black women resonate with that message more because they're more likely to be relying on the social safety net for their kids' well-being.
"the populist Bernie side would have to completely take over the party with no identity politics"
ReplyDeleteSo why don't the Trump supporters crash the Democrat party, and serve as the rowdy cavalry for the Bernie revolution? We already blew up the Republican status quo -- time to blow it up on the Democrats' side, too.
Except they will actually respond to demands, rather than us just razing their headquarters to the ground because they refuse to surrender it to our hostile takeover.
It's not as though the Trump voters don't already include a decent chunk of Bernie supporters. Over 5% of all Trump voters in the general were Bernie voters in the primary -- that's 3 MILLION people who voted Bernie then Trump. And probably concentrated in the states that Trump flipped for the win.
Even if you're still planning to vote R, you should at least vote in the D primary to give the Bernie people the edge to shove out the identity politics / Wall Street alliance in their elite wing. "What the hell do you have to lose?" Lord knows there won't be much worth voting for on the Republican side, with no Trumpians warming up in the bullpen.
"Not sure, but it seems populist movements happen with the angsty cycle(peak every 15 years). The populist revolt in the early 90s you mentioned, the WTO protests in the early 2000s, the Trump/Sanders campaigns in 2015."
ReplyDeleteAnother cyclical aspect here is:
Who is demanding something?
Why are they demanding it?
How do elites respond to it?
In the late 60's/early 70's, mid-upper class people demanded action on foreign policy (get out of Vietnam) and the environment (No more lakes on fire), for good reason. Meanwhile, white proles were furious about the Civil Rights movement's over-reach, with blacks rioting and committing much more crime. How did elites respond? LBJ tacitly admitted his loss of popular goodwill by opting not to run, and there wasn't some kind of corrupt strong interest group around to mourn his departure or vainly try to prop up a political zombie. Nixon then won in '68, and Nixon wound down Vietnam, created the EPA, and promised "Law and Order" to reassure the broad masses of non-hippie white Americans that he wasn't going to take the kind of shit that well meaning but cluelessly sentimental liberals put up with. The populace was wholesome (all things considered), and elites were listening to us.
Early 90's? Working class and middle-middle class people were fed up with Reaganomics and Wall Street excess. Elites and near elites were too busy admiring their fortunes to give a damn. Bush tried to rouse the country's spirit with a short and sweet (or so it seemed....) foreigner ass-kicking, which basically worked for a while, but it ultimately wasn't enough to distract people from their hostility toward's the GOP's economic ideas. Interestingly, Bill Clinton never really convinced anyone that he had much better ideas, thus why Perot (who ran on an early version of Trumpism) did so well while Clinton failed to win the popular vote. The GOP was toxic by the early 90's, and Bush got shown the door early. Elites commanded Clinton to accellerate neo-liberal economics, though the Dems at this time also deflated the Pentagon bubble to a degree and didn't push supply side crap as much as the GOP would've done. Meanwhile, Clinton greatly reformed welfare which was met with approval from many people. By the mid-90's, Clinton had a decent public image and was widely credited with fiscal responsibility (though in reality his cuts to financial regulations and lack of protectionism would wreak a lot of damage that wouldn't be clear until after he left office. The idiot GOP relentlessly attacked Clinton's smarmy quality and his moral failings, rather than for being America's first president to fully commit to globalism.
The 2000's? People under 35 first attacked neo-liberal corporate crap in the early 2000's, but this only ever was a niche Lefty activist thing, which indicates the civic apathy of much of the American population by this point. In the late 60's, broad swathes of people had well-reasoned opposition to major issues (war excess, pollution, and civil disorder). Later 2000's opposition to military excess was more promising, with some nice sized marches, some elite celebrities lending support, and some iconic figures to emerge (like Cindy Sheehan). But by the 2000's, elites and a good chunk of near-elites believed it was America's responsibility to "build democracies" in foreign lands while neglecting American's own infrastructure. So this anti-war movement never gained any real traction, to the point that even Obama's regime didn't acknowledge elite incompetence by withdrawing from various theaters. With military excess and financial malfeasance brewing, Bush became the most hated president since LBJ. But due to America's withered civic culture, and elite arrogance, the culture of his presidency lived on in subsequent administrations.
It looks so far like the lion's share of elites cannot be persuaded to give more of the public what they want. You'd think that after 40+ years of being asleep on the job that they might wake up, but nope. I know it's true for conservative elites, and I'm waiting until 2020 to render a verdict on the Left (another properly complected DLC flunky like Booker or Harris, or a flinty populist?) If the Dems keep running older white guys, regardless of their success, at what point do the cultural Marxists storm the DNC castle and demand greater representation, not unlike the insistence that black actors have to be nominated at the Oscars?
ReplyDelete"All of the difference is due to later generations balking at joining the Republican side, as Democrats are similar across generations and decades.
ReplyDeleteMedium-to-long term, that means the death of the GOP as a party, not just its current version, and its replacement by a new 2nd party that is more populist and nationalist."
Right, the party of Patrick Bateman and Ned Flanders went out of it's way to alienate more and more people as the 80's and 90's (and subsequent decades) went on. As the party has refused to change it's tune, it's become archaic and aggravating to people born over the last 40-45 years who feel as though they were totally gypped by Silents and Boomers.
While outright sociopathy seems to have motivated a lot of the die hard Republicans born in the 30's-50's, I get the hunch that 60's births are more likely to be well-meaning Ayn Rand idolators who really think that the most beneficial outcome to everything is achieved by keepin the gubmint out of everything. Age of first marriage has been rising since the 90's; AFF/middle class aspirations have been out of reach for many people born since the early 70's. 60's births got to have a go at the last remnants of mid-century opportunity that persisted into the 80's, and they're self-servingly passing judgement on "Millennials" (who actually share a lot of traits with mid-late X-ers). Lefty Boomers/early X-ers are more sympathetic to younger generations, while so many late Boomer/early X-er righties tell young(ish) people to keep calm and pretend that it's still 1985.
Neil Howe says that 1972-'73 is the dividing line between political values in X-ers, with many 1960's-'72 births being allied to the GOP and those born after '72 being much more Democrat or Independent. That squares with the idea that around 1990, elites started to really pour oil down the ladder of opportunity. Those born after 1972 just don't have anything to feel grateful for, and they certainly aren't going to pine after an era (the 80's and 90's) that did nothing for them economically; nor are they going to have any love lost for the past GOP leadership, or the now ascendant class of late Boomer/early X-er Republicans..
Off-topic:
ReplyDeleteWTF, LOL, BFD.........
LUKE IS KILLED IN THE LATEST DISNEY CORPORATE PRODUCT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ahem. Good, now there's one less (big) reason for anyone to care about the new SW products. What X-er is going to care about the future movies? Nobody has affection for any of the new characters, has felt invested in them or quotes them.
I think if you want an indicator of how utterly clueless and out of touch the GOP is, it's been reported that Paul Ryan's retiring after the 2018 midterms (hurray!) but is going to make his final year all about... entitlement reforms (boo!). One last little middle finger before riding off into the sunset with his eye on a nice, cushy lobbyist and/or think tank gig.
ReplyDeleteWhat an utterly useless cretin.
If you hated Ryan, wait till you see his replacement. (If you hated Boehner, wait till you see his replacement).
ReplyDeleteTo make major changes to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid they would need 60 votes in the Senate, which is not happening.
So either McConnell decides to lower the threshold to 51 votes, in order to gut the social safety net, or they just run out the clock to sideline the populist / nationalist agenda completely, while at least trying to shift the Overton Window on gutting the social safety net and hoping to get it done later.
I suspect the latter.
I can't help but notice the entitlements Republicans are most thirsty to cut are always Social Security and Medicare. They want to cut programs many older people are dependent on and often paid into for decades. They won't dare cut programs for unwed mothers and their offspring. They only want to hurt older people who ironically are some of their most loyal voters. These cuts are especially insidious considering there is much discrimination in the workforce against hiring older workers. Many seniors will have difficulty surviving if establishment Republicans find a way to get these cuts through.
Deletehttps://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/16/dan-lipinski-conservative-democrat-election-299572
ReplyDeleteIf you think the Dems are out of the woods yet.....
Lipinski is from the Eastern Midwest, is a white male Boomer, and he's pro-life. He also voted against Obamacare and the TPP, while he supported Bernie in '16. I suspect the feminazis and the last factor are what's driving the Left establishment's jihad against Lipiniski (a lot of "Left" PACs are pooling resources to get him replaced).
Note that one of his critics claims that Lipinski doesn't have the correct "values" (grrr) that his nominally "progressive" district/region supposedly demands. If these zealots won't heed the populist call and stop the elitist moralizing, were just gonna be pushed closer and closer to the edge.....Then we might fall off and whatever is left of a decent functioning society will crash and burn.
Populist Dems under assault by libtards ought to reach out to Trump voters for help during their primaries -- "I'm under attack by the feminazis, come out and take a stand against the pussy hat brigade!"
ReplyDeleteLet's see if the Bernie people want our help...