July 28, 2017

After "repeal and replace" fails, Trump cannot let GOP brand taint his ideas too

Today the American people, especially Republican voters, realize that the GOP exists only to peddle red meat ideas to their base in order to gain access to Washington, and then dump those promises immediately upon joining the Swamp.

"Repeal and replace Obamacare" is not some vague platitude like "defend the Constitution" or "fight for the rights of the unborn". It's a concrete policy target whose success or failure cannot be spun in the way the other red meat promises can be. And their effort failed, big-league, despite controlling all branches of government.

It was all just a lie to elect more of their party into the Congress for their own sake, and to raise boatloads of donor money on the theme.

Trump went to bat for the GOP Congress -- not zealously, but at least holding pow-wows, threatening unwilling Congressmen, and refraining from advocating his own longstanding single-payer goals. He used their slogan on the campaign trail, "repeal and replace". He did not appear to be at war with his own party in Congress, or even neutral.

The public will probably link Trump with the healthcare bill failure, just as they did when Trump's approval ratings took a nosedive right after the House's first failed attempt back in March. Trump had nothing to do with the creation of that bill or the dynamics of its failure, but unless he was vocally against it, Republican voters assume he was roughly on the same page as them idea-wise, and part of the same team effort to pass it mechanics-wise.

So they blamed him for being part of the losing team: maybe he didn't do enough to put good ideas in it, or didn't do enough to cajole the hold-outs by using his supreme office and bully pulpit.

Now that the GOP brand has been cemented as being cynical liars and spineless do-nothings, the Trump faction must distance itself from the GOP. The plan was for the bold, fresh Trump movement to stage a hostile takeover of the GOP and subject it to a major brand rehabilitation, to keep it viable and even thriving long-term.

But so far, the GOP is dead-set against adapting itself to the Trump movement, other than giving in somewhat on re-industrialization. They are determined to ride it till the wheels fall off. They'll all either have golden parachutes, to mix metaphors, or they'll have their brains rotted out by tumors anyway.

We'll see if the new RNC Chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, can right the ship or not. It means making a decisive break with the failed conservatism of the past several decades, orienting toward populism and nationalism, and fielding candidates who are sincere rather than feckless or outright deceitful.

The temptation will be the status quo because there's simply far too much donor money and influence with power groups (Pentagon, Big Pharma, Wall Street, media, etc.) from sticking with what has failed.

The elites and their power groups are degenerate, clueless, wasteful, and dangerous. They must be ignored, and the general public appealed to. In other times, when we had an elite that was stewardship-minded, you could just rely on them and not so much on public outreach. But now that the elite is so infested with parasites, they cannot be relied on to produce results, let alone guide something as large as one of the two national parties toward long-term sustainability.

Trump won with the people, not the elites or any of their power groups -- indeed, against their constant and hysterical objections. The GOP can either imitate the successful, or go extinct.

If Trump tries to advance his big plans through Congress rather than the executive branch, and especially if he plans on only working with the GOP, his winning ideas will inevitably become corrupted by the losing Republican Establishment. His momentum will tumble off a cliff, and after perhaps limping into re-election, the movement will get cut off from top power after that.

That leaves three paths:

1) Advance the agenda through executive branch parallels of legislative functions, like Obama did, by getting creative if necessary. Works best for things that the public is not too interested in, or won't mobilize over. E.g., ending support for jihadist militias in Syria.

2) Go through Congressional GOP, but against their failed orthodoxy, and daring them in public to defy him and the tens of millions of voters who finally delivered the White House to a Republican. He must back this up with a threat to sic his mob of rabid supporters on anyone who defies the majority of citizens. E.g., deporting at least half the illegal population by the end of his term, de facto end to labor-related visas, etc.

3) Go through Congress on a topic with bipartisan appeal, like infrastructure.

The common theme in those paths is that they don't require a lot of political capital, since Trump has effectively zero or negative capital among DC Swamp dwellers. Something that everyone loves, like rebuilding roads and airports, doesn't require Trump to give them anything beyond his signature at the end. Something that the GOP opposes, but that the Trump mob demands, can be gotten by appealing to those with whom he has immense capital (citizens). And executive actions are unilateral, although making sure they are enforced is another question.

After six months of failing at their own topics rather than pursuing and achieving the Trump agenda, it's pretty clear that the GOP will never consider Trump's political debt paid off, after he burned their party and brand to the ground during the primary and general. So even if he does build up a modicum of capital with them over four years, they will not consider it enough to put him in positive territory, and they will therefore never do him any big favors in good faith. They won't even call off the Deep State coup, and they control all branches of government.

The natural first step would be for Trump to re-adopt his campaign trail tone about how he's not a conservative, how he wants to convert Democrats and Independents, while also detailing what a disaster the other major party is too. Everybody already sees how much the Democrats suck, though: they don't control anything because no one trusts them. The Democrats are a thoroughly defeated non-entity in contemporary politics.

What matters now is distancing himself from the GOP, which people actually do trust, but which consistently disappoints and outright betrays them. Whether that eventually leads to forming a new second party to supplant the GOP, or whether enough pressure causes the GOP to finally relent and let the Trump movement take over, remains to be seen. But we can't tolerate any more typical Republican bullshit, or the stench and disease will rub off on the Trump movement as well.

27 comments:

  1. The entrenchment of the conservatives shows history really is repeating itself: Teddy Roosevelt splitting from the Republican Party and founding the Progressive Party (a reminder)...

    "Roosevelt left office in 1909. He had selected Taft, his Secretary of War, to succeed him as presidential candidate, and Taft easily won the 1908 presidential election. Roosevelt became disappointed by Taft's increasingly conservative policies. Taft upset Roosevelt when he used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to sue U.S. Steel for an action that President Roosevelt had explicitly approved.[2] They became openly hostile, and Roosevelt decided to seek the presidency."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1912)

    A glimmer of hope: Paul Ryan is starting to make populist appeals explicity saying the House is working on the "Trump Agenda", the people's agenda. I personally am not aware of him doing this before. He's an idealogue, but he isn't stupid; most of them are utterly blind and blinkered. It does send a signal that the Trump agenda is a unique entity and I regard that as a very positive step.

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  2. They're just using "the Trump agenda" to refer to their own GOPe bullshit. Everyone knows what the real Trump agenda is -- not a sop to insurance monopolies, tax cuts for the rich, and the other stuff Congress is pursuing.

    They do not mean de-scaling our military presence around our failed globalist empire and slashing the defense spending as a result, or removing illegals / halting immigration / building the wall (prototype contest stage now delayed from summer until winter), 35% tariffs on foreign-made goods of American outsourcing companies, healthcare where no one will be dying in the streets, getting along with Russia, letting the President govern rather than holding Deep State sword of Damocles over his head, etc.

    Words are not magic, and anytime the GOPe say the words "Trump agenda," it means their own BS.

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  3. The 1912 election is an even worse indictment of the GOP than you're making it out to be.

    That was the first year that the parties held primary elections -- not everywhere, but across a broad range of places, including large and small states.

    The Republican primary results were unambiguous -- the people wanted Teddy Roosevelt, not Taft. Not even close.

    But Taft was the incumbent, more Establishment-friendly, and so the party delegates chose him over the fan favorite.

    They got a harsh reality check in the general election -- it's the people who cast the ultimate ballot, not party insider delegates. So their preferred choice flopped pathetically against the people's hero.

    TR got 88 electoral votes from 6 states, vs. just 8 votes from 2 states for Taft, and across a broad range including large states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and California, vs. just Utah and Vermont for Taft. At the county level, TR won the Chicago-Milwaukee region, if not the states of WI and IL. TR got more of the popular vote than Taft.

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  4. It may take something like that to shock the GOP out of its idiocy. They almost pulled the same stunt in 2016, with their planned contested convention that would provoke Trump to bolt with his voters, but Trump made some kind of deal with them.

    After Trump's first term, who can say if he'll even run as a Republican next time? The GOP is determined to wipe him and his faction out, whereas he could run Independent and keep most of his voters, who are about the movement his is just the messenger of, rather than kneejerk Republican voters.

    Some think we'll just primary the cucks and continue the hostile takeover and re-alignment of the GOP -- so far only Trump has managed to do that, and that was because he was larger-than-life and could not be ignored by the media, party, or voters.

    The special elections benefited the GOPe, not Trump candidates, who should've been the only ones allowed by the party to run. Who are the high-profile, take-no-prisoners Trumpians running in 2018?

    Josh Mandel for Senate in OH is about the only promising race. He is not having to get through a bruising primary, because after Trump's intervention in the early no-holds-barred stage of his presidency, the Ohio GOP is controlled by a Trump loyalist rather than the Kasich rats. Now even the GOPe like Portman have to endorse the Trumpian.

    Tea Party candidates like Kelli Ward will not count as Trumpians unseating the GOPe, since they are just another wing of the Establishment -- Cruz, Rubio, and the other Tea Party phonies.

    Their brand is intensifying the attempt to revive the corpse of conservatism, not accept that it's dead and did not conserve anything worth conserving anyway, and move on to nationalism and populism.

    Hopefully these repeal-and-replace disasters for both the corporate types and the Tea Party types will alienate enough voters into demanding Trumpian replacements during the next primaries. But in reality, Trump himself is going to have to campaign hard for populist and nationalist candidates, against "his own" party in Congress and Cabinet.

    "After all of the many well-intentioned failures by the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, it is time for fresh leadership on bold new topics like immigration, industry, and protecting and re-building America instead of Afghanistan."

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  5. The other wrinkle is generational turnover -- people live longer these days, and that's delaying the replacement of failed has-beens like McCain, Clinton, et al., by the late X-ers like Josh Mandel and Tulsi Gabbard.

    Sorry, but even the early X-ers are mostly Tea Party Reaganite LARP-ers or GOPe replacements -- Cruz, Rubio, Ward, Sasse, etc. Tom Cotton may turn out better -- he's born in '77.

    Maybe we could kill two birds with one stone -- transfer Medicare and Social Security from 65+ to under 45. It would drain the Boomer / Silent swamp, and give the shafted generations enough of a safety net to take on larger projects involved in running the society.

    McCain's behavior just says it all about imperial decline -- the spectacle of a literal walking brain tumor refusing to leave the Senate until he finally manages to provoke Russia into nuking the American future.

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  6. Something that doesn't bode well at all for the Trump agenda: Reince Priebus is out as chief of staff, that's good, but is being replaced by Kelly from DHS who has been slow on shutting down visa overstays and handing out H-2Bs like they're going out of candy.

    I've been trying not to blackpill but it's looking increasingly likely (along with the Russia/Iran sanctions bill that just passed) that the Deep State is asserting total control over the government to continue their globalist agenda and reducing Trump and the office of President to mere figurehead. Scaramucci seems to have it in for Bannon as well (and being a former Jeb! guy, talking up Hillary in the past and being anti-gun doesn't warm me up to him, no matter how Goodfella he tries to act) and if Bannon goes I think it will be obvious at that point which side of the globalist/nationalist power struggle won.

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  7. I don't think I mind Kelly as CoS, since he won't be in a policy role anymore. And it's a demotion for one member of the Pentagon boarding party -- no longer in line of presidential succession.

    Plus it frees up DHS, where Sessions can go after leaving DoJ during the recess, where Giuliani or some other brutal vicious killer gets in during w/o needing Senate confirmation.

    The only way it's bad is if it signals a shift from Trump needing a liaison to Congress because the focus would be on GOP legislative bullshit, and toward Trump needing a(nother) liaison to the Pentagon / Deep State because the focus is going to now be war with Syria / Iran / NK / Russia / Venezuela.

    Overall, a promising continuation of the shake-up that kicked out Spicer just a week ago.

    Mooch has no ideology of his own -- he just wants to bet on the winning horse, i.e. gain access to whoever it is that's going to take power. He'll be a good mercenary hitman, and he does not have a policy role anyway.

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  8. You're right, it's not nearly as bad as in 1912 (knock on wood).
    Just a quicky reminder for all of a period that Ag has repeatedly pointed to as having the most salience to our situation. It's frustrating how ignorant people are, in such consequential times, yet I know it's not their fault.

    Most people don't know the Progressives were a splinter of the Republican Party as there was a populist-conservative rift. I don't know when he started doing this (about 10 years ago? 8?), but Glenn Beck has preached for hundreds and hundreds of hours, plus writings, that the progressive movement is basically the devil and is why he was in such high dudgeon over Donald Trump. Donald Trump happening within the modern-day conservative Republican party -and being popular- must have been a shock to the average salt-of-the-earth conservative talk radio listener: "I like this guy, so how can he be an evil progressive?"

    There is a lot of misinformation and confusion among Americans about American and world history, especially on our side (liberal fascism) and I believe a lot of this is on purpose to preserve certain myths, most especially: the side of angels, you know, that party that was founded to free the slaves, has always been for unabashed free-market conservatism. It's what Jesus wants.
    When people have *no* idea that a populist-conservative rift in the Republican party is hardly a historical anomaly...

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  9. "Hopefully these repeal-and-replace disasters for both the corporate types and the Tea Party types will alienate enough voters into demanding Trumpian replacements during the next primaries."

    When I wrote my initial comment this morning, I was hopeful, and then Reince Priebus was let go. I am cautiously optimistic, very hopeful, that this time around, the populists will be the strongest force in the Republican Party. As you point out, over the century we have taken a fundamental step in the populist direction, so, hopefully, we are in a better position to win this time.

    I know you see Trump as a McKinley, but seeing him more and more as president, I just see Teddy. Fighting, ambitious, larger-than-life, and fun-loving New Yorkers. Don Jr and Eric see their father as Teddy reborn, too.

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  10. Gainesville Police @GainesvillePD 4h
    "The @POTUS made remarks today that endorsed and condoned police brutality.

    GPD rejects these remarks and continues to serve with respect."

    GGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Oh, the cucks sperging out over being mean to bad people. He's the president! Moral hazard! Reeeee!!! Hasn't this been a feature of just about every action movie ever made? Bad dude either blown up or roughed up on his way to jail? Give me a break. I hear this and I honestly thought to myself: have these guys ever once made a woman a hot and bothered for them? It's not possible. No.

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    Replies
    1. https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/891004517017415685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2Farchives%2F2017%2F07%2F28%2Ftrump-cops-dont-nice-put-thugs-back-paddy-wagon%2F

      I voted for Hillary. But now I'm a populist. I'm in touch with the common man and understand his OH MY GOD, ARE YOU OKAY, TYRONE!?! THAT COP WAS SO MEAN TO YOU AFTER YOU ROBBED THAT BANK!!! HERE, TAKE SOME MONEY FROM MY WALLET AND GO HAVE SEX WITH MY WIFE.

      Delete
  11. "Ryan-Priebus ally to me: next phase of Trump presidency will be warfare against GOP Congress"

    "Ryan-Priebus ally tells me Trump is moving toward "an independent WH" untethered from the Republican Party"

    @JohnJHarwood 11h

    Please let this be true.

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  12. "Maybe we could kill two birds with one stone -- transfer Medicare and Social Security from 65+ to under 45."

    Inequality creates the conditions for overpopulation. That includes an aging population - the trend of veterans refusing to retire actually predated the cocooning. It has more to do with status-striving than the younger generations being cocooned.

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  13. Hello, I am just checking to see if you are still interested in an interview. I can either send you an updated version for if you are ok with an audio interview based on the questions that would work as well.

    Best Regards,

    Robert

    https://robertstarkradio.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/agnostic-quetions/

    ReplyDelete
  14. That said, the general trend is to increase Social Security benefits during periods of rising equality, and to decrease benefits during periods of rising inequality.

    The program was created in 1935; beginning in the late 70s, benefits were decreased/requirements made more stringent.

    "This financing shortfall was addressed by the 1977 Social Security Amendments. These amendments raised the payroll tax slightly (from 6.45% to the current 7.65%), increased the wage base; reduced benefits slightly; and "decoupled" the wage adjustment from the COLA adjustment"

    "The final bill, signed into law in 1983, made numerous changes in the Social Security and Medicare programs, including the taxation of Social Security benefits, the first coverage of Federal employees under Social Security and an increase in the retirement age in the next century. (Summary of the provisions of the '83 Amendments)"

    These changes, BTW, extended into the 90s - so cocooning doesn't appear to effect it.

    "This bill, signed by the President on March 29, 1996, made a change in the basic philosophy of the disability program. Beginning on that date, new applicants for Social Security or SSI disability benefits could no longer be eligible for benefits if drug addiction or alcoholism is a material factor to their disability."

    "This "welfare reform" legislation, signed by the President on 8/22/96, ended the categorical entitlement to AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) that was part of the original 1935 Social Security Act by implementing time-limited benefits along with a work requirement. The law also terminated SSI eligibility for most non-citizens"

    "On April 7, 2000 "The Senior Citizens' Freedom to Work Act of 2000" was signed into law, eliminating the Retirement Earnings Test (RET) for those beneficiaries at or above Normal Retirement Age (NRA). (The RET still applies to those beneficiaries below NRA.)"

    "With the new legislation, starting at the NRA, Social Security retirement benefits will be paid to beneficiaries who are still working."

    That last one shows that the worsening inequality is forcing the elderly to keep working.

    And of course, during the early 2000s, George. W. Bush was open about his plans to privatize social security.

    https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html




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  15. the conundrum is that the aging population usually decreases during periods of rising equality, yet we see that the elderly are actually treated much better during those periods. One possibility is that the system might buckle initially, but the survivors will get better benefits.

    The Victorian Era also had an aging population, and someone even wrote a book about it:

    "The Victorian era, Chase argues, marks the emergence of old age as an "established 'category' of scientific and political discourse" from which Victorians sought to "take age into full account""

    "For example, Chase reads Dickens's portrayals of aging against what would have resonated with contemporary readers' consciousness: the growing awareness that the increasing number of elderly threatened to become an overwhelming financial burden on the younger generations"

    "In their "supernatural tales," Oliphant and Gaskell make heavy use of elderly women ("playing a part well exceeding the statistical norm") to show how the aged can "disturb tranquility and . . . frustrate satisfaction" of the young"

    http://www.nbol-19.org/view_doc.php?index=54




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  16. "For example, Chase reads Dickens's portrayals of aging against what would have resonated with contemporary readers' consciousness: the growing awareness that the increasing number of elderly threatened to become an overwhelming financial burden on the younger generations"

    GSS-wise, whites born before 1952 are somewhat more likely to identify as middle class rather than working class. Vice versa for those born from 1952-1972, then those born after 1972 are far more likely to identify as working class.

    In other words, the 1930-1970 egalitarian culture of low immigration, minimal striving, affordable and modest housing, strong unions/entry level wages/pensions, etc. allowed those who entered the workforce before 1970 to cultivate a more refined and prosperous identity. Age alone doesn't explain the generational disparity, since many Silents were practically middle class the moment they left high school and worked a full-time job. By now, had conditions been better, a lot more white X-ers born in the later 70's should've shifted up in their cultural and economic identity. Hasn't happened yet, and probably never will for many of them absent fast and effective reforms.

    Note also that affirmative action took off in the 70's; the upper castes of lower functioning ethnic groups have made tremendous gains at the expense of whites.

    Entering the workforce before 1970: Great
    Entering it in the 70's and 80's: Middling
    Entering it after 1990: Horrible

    1989-'91 seems like a key period; the Soviets broke up, America had demographically lost several major cities to non whites (as I'm sure we had politically by that point, if not later). Under Clinton we'd intensify the already negative trends of the 70's and 80's, in spite of the early 90's populist anger at immigration, yuppies, and affirmative action.

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  17. The 90s were the darkest hour of midnight for status striving. Remember that NAFTA successfully passed in 94.

    Prior to that, populism peaked in late 50s early 60s. It just letting getting worse and worse after that, peaking during the pep rally like atmosphere surrounding the 2003 invasion of iraq.

    At earliest, populist revival can be dated to the failure of bush juniors immigration reform. But early 90s in my opinion when least populist , remember that NAFTA passed in 94 with little restitance.

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  18. What are you talking about?

    NAFTA saw yuge resistance by Ross Perot voters -- nearly 20% in '92, and the topic was front and center of that election. Largest third-party vote that was not a regional break-away candidate, like the Southerners becoming disaffected with the Dems during the '40s, '50s, and '60s.

    It was passed 234-200 in the House, and 61-38 in the Senate -- hardly "little resistance" like we just saw with the Russia sanctions.

    If you don't know these things, it's OK not to comment on them.

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  19. My apologies to Ferylthen. I thought that the fact that it was even passed in the first place was a big deal.

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  20. I'm remiss in not even mentioning Perot above. Bush and either Clinton did not inspire confidence (they were already knee-deep in sleaze, back then!).

    A fair number of Mexican Americans voted to deny illegals benefits in early 90's California.

    Had we not been just 20 years into the striving zeitgeist, elites would've listened to what people wanted back then. Proleish Boomers (the last truly American and heavily native born generation), by then mature enough to vote in large numbers and therefore seemingly influential, were fed up with affirmative action, slick strivers, dumb welfare policies, and invaders turning their neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, etc. into something that didn't resemble the America they remembered from the 50's-70's.

    Elites didn't listen (except, perhaps, on some aspects of welfare and crime), the economy took off in the later 90's, and Boomers and especially post-Boomers are (pre-Trump, anyway) more resigned to corruption and dysfunction. You can only be let down so many times. And unless they try and implement more popular policies like immigration control and isolationism (which the public mostly wants even if they don't like current messenger of these ideas, Trump), then it's yet more proof that the elites are too busy counting money to notice the West slipping into an abyss from which rescue is very difficult.

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  21. "It was passed 234-200 in the House, and 61-38 in the Senate -- hardly "little resistance" like we just saw with the Russia sanctions."

    Yeesh. People thought things were bad back then. 25 years later, and the majority of politicians are openly contemptuous of things that real Americans consider to be common sense.

    We've retconned the 80's and 90's into an abyss of sleaze; maybe that's because Gen X and Millennial strivers/taste makers just think that, well, gosh darnit, what we've worked for is so cool and "progressive" that we're a higher life form than those dinosaurs from 20-30 years ago.

    Hey, we're lest racist and sexist these days. Who cares if we did nothing to rein in elite decadence.

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  22. "Sorry, but even the early X-ers are mostly Tea Party Reaganite LARP-ers or GOPe replacements -- Cruz, Rubio, Ward, Sasse, etc. Tom Cotton may turn out better -- he's born in '77."

    Yeah, they're stuck in the 70's and 80's, a time of "malaise" and Willie Horton, when the Dems couldn't get out of their own way, on a national level, at least. Besides, they probably got where they did by sucking up to the party's older elites, who feel flattered by da kidz telling them how awesome their parent's and grandparent's generation was.

    But late X-ers are not preachy or headstrong (raised mostly by chill later Boomer parents, and coming of age in the later 90's when detachment was in, and the early Bush era not spurring much either). I expect that later Millennials, who came of age in the Obama era and had activist early X-er parents, probably will try and knockout older generations (including their whiny early X-er parents). Their large numbers will help (those born from 1987-2001 are a far larger cohort than those born from 1970-1986). The impact of (white) 70's and earlier 80's births has been blunted by their tiny numbers; I expect that we'll transition from Silents and Boomers running the show (as they have for 40 years) to later Millennials starting to dominate in the 2030's.

    I mean have you noticed how difficult it's become to find white people in early middle age? There just aren't that many of "us" (those born from 1970-1986).

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  23. If later Silents and early Boomers wanted to cut off the cancer of their dull parent's generation's culture, and did so by 1980, then perhaps later Millennials(early Gen Z, too) will wish to show taciturn X-ers the door by oh, 2050? G.I.s didn't complain, and I suspect that X-ers, at least the later born ones, won't feel slighted either.

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  24. The roll call on NAFTA looks like another planet from this one:

    https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/103-1993/h575

    https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/103-1993/s395

    It was always a GOP project dating back to Bush Sr (Trump came out at the time to bad-mouth it). Support was bipartisan, with somewhat more R's than D's. The opposition in Congress was made up mainly by Democrats -- 3 to 1.

    Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, plus the White House, yet they were on opposite sides of the issue, with D's in the House being mostly opposed, and basically split in the Senate (against were +1), while the President was pursuing some good ol' triangulation -- i.e., sell out the working-class' solid livelihoods, throw some breadcrumbs on social services, and pander to multiculturalism.

    At the state level, the main backers were deep red Republican states near the Mexican border, especially ones that rely on government-subsidized agriculture. The trade in NAFTA was that manufacturing would leave the US, while agriculture would stay and wipe out Mexican farms.

    And states near the border would get higher amounts spent on convenience stores from truckers coming in from Mexico -- zippity doo dah.

    Opposition was fierce in the Rust Belt, including New York and New Jersey. Jesus, even phony Chuck Schumer voted against NAFTA! Why doesn't the White House comms shop dredge up some old press quotes or C-SPAN footage of Fake Tears, and constantly beat the Senate Minority Leader over the head with it?

    Because the GOP Establishment is still too afraid to win, especially when it would implicate their own party for the initial catastrophe.

    It's time for re-alignment, though, and people will be forgiving. That's why hardcore Republican primary voters chose Trump over everyone else, and the nation as a whole followed suit.

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  25. All that checks out....The GOP was never locally very popular in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and Appalachia back then, even after the Reagan Revolution which has been ret-conned as some kind of giant red wave (in the general election yes, but not locally) by GOP nostalgics.

    Also, the GOP really was counting on the Sun-Belt back then. Jesus freaks, the war industry/the military and geezer snow birds were supposed to become the back bone of the GOP.

    NAFTA really was the last straw for the GOP in the pre-Obama era snow belt. "Fuck their unions up north, they don't deserve anything from us".

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  26. A lot of legacy Dems (and I mean a lot, the average Dem age seems to be like 65 and had some of them not died it would be even higher!) could be picked on with 1980's and 1990's anti-free trade policies and rhetoric they employed. Two decades of anti-trade culture....poof....gone. There's no acknowledgment of the flip-flop, which would indicate the level of cynicism and moral bankruptcy of the Dems who traded white prole Boomers for swpl yuppies and invaders.

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