Columbia Professor Todd Gitlin provides a broadly accurate history of the resurrection of Richard Nixon in the context of the populist uprising presented by then-Alabama Governor George Wallace. Much of this piece is contentious in its fine details, but not so much so as to ruin his point.
And his point is that Nixon served a useful purpose by taking on the anger and frustration represented by Wallace’s campaign and taming it. Of course, one of the ways he tamed it was by transferring anti-black attitudes to the New Left and the hippies. Having been born in Nixon’s first year in office and raised in the liberal bastion of Princeton, New Jersey, I don’t think we appreciated this transfer of anger, nor did it ever seem all that complete.
But I was isolated from “the Real America” in a variety of ways. In 1972, as I toddled after my older brother in his McGovern-Shriver t-shirt, it was truthfully said that you could walk up and down Nassau Street and not find anyone willing to express support for Nixon-Agnew. When I walked into my first kindergarten class, the Ford administration was less than a month old. By Thanksgiving, the Democrats had crushed the Republicans in the midterms and added significantly to their congressional majorities. In second grade, so many of my classmates supported Jimmy Carter in our mock election that I can still remember the two heretics who supported Ford.
In our classrooms, Martin Luther King Jr. was presented as an uncontroversial saint, and the segregationists were no longer present; they were as thoroughly defeated as Hitler’s armies. In the high school, racial tensions still ran high, but that was no longer true by the time the eighties rolled around and I began attending classes there.
What we all knew, however, was that the rest of the country hated New York City and hated liberal college towns like Princeton. There were no words for this phenomenon until later, when people began talking about the Reagan Democrats and the effectiveness of the Southern Strategy. But, by then, the focus was off the New Left and back on racial backlash.
I’m sure we all experienced those years quite differently, depending on whether we were black or white, or where we grew up or lived at the time. But there was at least a real sense that, while racism percolated on the surface of everything, it had been defeated as an overt political force. It had to be talked about in code, which offered constant testimony to its disreputable nature. The reemergence of open racism in our current climate has seemed like the reemergence of a beast we thought had been vanquished.
But here it is again in all its Wallace-esque glory, and Prof. Gitlin is concerned that there is no Nixon to harness and transform it into something less potentially violent.
Wallace roused his crowds against left-wingers in the same way Trump turns his followers’ rage against Muslims and immigrants. Like Wallace, the game Trump plays is, “Make my day.” Disruptors in his audiences are props for his performances, rallying his supporters more fervently and defensively around him. The result, as in 1968, is a growing climate of violence. It feels as if, somewhere, fuses are lit…
…The menace of the late 1960s eventually subsided as Richard M. Nixon harnessed his “silent majority” to calm the political climate early in his presidency as the ultra-radicals burned through whatever base of sympathy they had started with. But today’s chaos won’t be so easy to stop. The splenetic fury Trump taps may be immutable, and no Nixon is on the horizon to focus it…
…Today’s nativist animus — and the violence it has spurred — will not be so handily co-opted. First, there are stickier economic problems. In the past few decades, plutocracy, globalization and compliant governments have betrayed workers, most of whom are white…
…Most of all, though, there’s no respectable version of Trump — no Nixon — waiting in the wings to deliver on promises and contain the free-floating hatred. There’s no one to placate the enraged white working class, especially the men, and it’s hard to imagine policies that would make a re-greatened America “take the country away from you guys.”
I’m going to do a follow-up piece that will revisit some of the themes I’ve developed over the years. These mainly relate to the importance and power of leadership, and the fragility of American norms when that leadership is lacking.
Stay tuned.
Iow, he deflected racial animus onto a new target–long-haired hippies. A more attractive/permissible target since they were seen as racial traitors AND class traitors.
Don’t forget the SE Asians, please.
Never forget!!!
AG
“Racism” became a semantic game; it was made into a mechanism of presentation, of what was “seemly,” through that same Nixonian “Southern Strategy” alchemy.
The current right-wing manipulation of the 1980s “politically correct” terminology is the logical extension of this: it’s not about stopping yourself from employing or believing racial stereotypes or transcending predjudices; it’s about being forced to control how you speak, and what happens when you don’t want to do it any more.
When I talk to my racist conservative relatives, or anyone I think of as a straight-up racist, I recognize the magnitude of this social failure. (Of course, to be fair, we’re up against master manipulators of public opinion who come up with genius constructions like “nanny state” and “tax and spend” to justify their barbaric policies, but still.) Nobody is a racist. None of them understand that they’re employing the worst kind of reductionist, jingoistic thinking when they look at cities and see a “culture of dependency” or when they look at immigrant Mexican laborers and see “lazy” or when they look at Trayvon Martin and see a “thug.” All they think is, here is this unfair situation where I, the white person, am being marginalized, and then, on top of it, here is this stupid societal convention where I’m not allowed to talk about it.
That’s all that’s been achieved in the decades since Wallace: the unwilling submersion of racial animus behind a veneer of civility that is resented and disrespected; that’s seen by white racists as merely “part of the problem”; as fellow white people “giving in” to externally-imposed pressure (from Universities, “the elite,” and other bastions of our new permissive, godless, liberal culture) to submit to semantic rules nobody likes.
All the Will Smiths and Barack Obamas and Oprah Winfreys and Idris Elbas and Clarence Thomases and Michael Jordans and Kanye Wests in the world don’t change this basic formulation: none of them ever abandoned their dislike for black people in the least, or even altered it in the slightest: they just played along with the “rules” that said you couldn’t say that stuff any more. People like Limbaugh and O’Reilly led them in snarling resentfully along the sidelines like Charlton Heston growling at the apes who had imprisoned him, reversing the natural order. But now that’s over: they’re being given permission to stop pretending to be egalitarian and progressive; they’re “throwing off the chains” of “political correctness” and revealing what’s beneath the mask: the same thing that was there fifty years ago.
A reposting of a pertinent link from priscianus in an old thread that might not have been seen….http://www.ianwelsh.net/why-poor-white-males-are-the-core-of-trumps-support/
“All they think is, here is this unfair situation where I, the white person, am being marginalized, and then, on top of it, here is this stupid societal convention where I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
As we look upon the probability of a Trump general election campaign, there are many negatives that will come with it. I would prefer that we avoid having to experience the overt calls to nationalism, racism, sexism, intimidation, violence, extreme partisanship and cult of personality that The Donald and his supporters would bring.
However, we all know that the conservative movement and Republican Party have made covert calls to low politics, retrograde social views and anti-democratic behavior in recent decades. If their candidate becomes the new leader of the GOP, these Trump supporters who want to let their hate flag fly will become the new face of the GOP. It’s frightening to contemplate even the remote possibility that we could elect our own Mussolini, but just as some Republicans are sick of talking in abstracts like “state’s rights” and “un-American cultures,” I’m sick of having the conservative movement hide behind these abstractions. I think it’s time to have it out, as unpleasant as it’s going to be.
That’s why I am sanguine about my misgivings about the Democratic POTUS nominees so publicly pursuing African-American, Hispanic-Americans and others. Those pursuits will make it easier for Trump and other GOP candidates to get the votes of many European-Americans. That worries me. However, appealing to as many voter groups as possible is what the Democratic Party and its candidates should be doing. That is also now the best and only path to winning national elections, so it’s both the more moral path and the most effective path to long-term power.
. . . to semantic rules nobody likes . . . “
I was struck by how analogous (in a mirror-image sort of way) this description is to a long-standing gripe of mine with many of my fellow liberal/lefties, whose response (my perception of it anyway) to the very successful, browbeating propaganda campaign by the likes of Gingrich and Rove to turn “liberal” into a slur was to abandon it (rather than robustly defend its actual meaning, history, and many very significant accomplishments) and start thinking of and labeling themselves as “progressives”* instead:
With the critical distinction that my gripe with fellow actual liberals “re-purposing” “progressive” for a self-descriptor (again, my perception — ymmv) is that what many of us “submersed” in submitting to “externally-imposed pressure . . . to submit to semantic rules nobody likes” was a descriptor of a positive political philosophy with a record of great achievement, not something inherently vile, like racism. The evil genius of Gingrich, Rove, et al. was to successfully tar that neutral/positive label with “a veneer of [IN]civility”. And it’s to our shame that so many of us acquiesced to that successful demonization with barely a whimper.
*yeah, I know about the historic Progressive Movement. I just don’t buy that continuity with it has much to do with the rise in the proportion of lefties self-identifying as “progressives” in tight synchronicity with the decline in the proportion self-identifying as “liberal” AND with the “liberal”-demonization propaganda campaign. That synchronicity is just too suggestive for me to write these simultaneous phenomena off as unrelated or merely coincidental.
It just struck me in your formulation of the logic of attacking “political correctness” that etiquette has always been a matter of class politics. Insisting on a single set of standards of etiquette is a deeply political act. Performing to all of the externally imposed standards and expecting to have others reciprocate by calling you “Sir” is the step too far that white bigots have with blacks who gained some of the status jobs; no doubt even Republican Senators gag at calling Mr. Barack Obama “Mr. President.” The contempt is deeper than political tactics. It goes to some deep if unacknowledged reasons why they became Republican activists in the first place. It is likely that more members of Congress than one thinks does indeed “hate” the President.
The same goes for the architecture of etiquette between the sexes. It is a power relationship of pretend deference.
To act out of some other etiquette of power is not to be a “real” whatever the valued person of the moment is — real American, real man, real woman, real Christian, …and the mythology is that the “real” whatevers will “reclaim” the goodness and value by reestablishing the right etiquette of deference and respect.
ratings never “stick” here at the Trib for some unknown reason)
Did Nixon really “save us”? By channelling and feeding that anger and hatred over the course of the last several decades, is the country really better off? If Nixon had failed to win in 1968 (after all, it was a very close election) and Hubert Humphrey had become President in 1969, would violence have exploded? Or would Humphrey have been able to bring the war to a close much, much quicker without more atrocities and quieted the left down, leaving just the scary racists shrieking about getting their country back? What would have been the public’s reaction to that situation?
In 1968, the left was very agitated over the Vietnam War. The right was agitated as well over Civil Rights and the end of institutional segregation AND the left’s failure to patriotically support the war. Nixon’s election calmed the right and beat down on the left. This time around, it’s laughable to compare the right-wing rage freak-out happening in the Republican Party with the mostly well-mannered Bernie Sanders supporters or the non-violent (and still quite small) BLM. There is simply no analogue on the left for what we’re currently seeing with Trump. The closest is BLM because they criticize the police. But come on, BLM and Sanders aren’t giving the country a sense of roiling chaos which Vietnam did. The chaos is coming from one direction – Trump and his followers.
It seems to me that the right-wing risks a “law-and-order” backlash on itself if it continues to ratchet up the violence during the election and if Hillary becomes President. Non-white voters will rightly be afraid and white non-right-wing rageholics will be irritated and perhaps afraid of spillover violence as well (at the least; many off us are/will be outraged and afraid for our fellow humans). Right wingers in Oregon weren’t left impressed by months of the violent intimidation they experienced during the Malheur occupation. More and more of that will change some minds. We still pretend that white right-wing terrorism isn’t terrorism, but if it burns hotter in the wake of a Democratic victory, it may very well reach a tipping point.
This time, the “Silent Majority” may be the Democrats’…
Indeed. Hillary already has 1.1 million more votes than Trump and aren’t they largely drawing from the same age cohort?
Nixon “saved” us? I’d say it’s mostly the reactionary forces largely got their way in the 70’s. Hippies got squashed with the “war on drugs” (a Nixon invention) and white flight let racists mostly avoid having to deal with those icky minorities.
I think I have to strongly agree with this; look at the aftermath of the Malheur occupation. Those guys were a bit silly, a bit dangerous (mostly to themselves) and now there is the widespread feeling that they were a bunch of jerks. What if they had actually hurt anyone?
The bundy gang lie on the benign end of the wingnut direct action spectrum that ends at the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building; anything “violent” that we might see emerge from the newly engaged fascists is likely to fall on said spectrum, and none of it is going to sit well with the vast majority of americans, even the white ones.
You write (Emphasis mine.):
Oh, Booman!!! I do believe you to be a good-hearted, well-meaning man, but the second sentence of that paragraph is the most unconsciously whiteness-entitled statement that I have read in years!!!
Yes, we all “experienced those years quite differently,” black, brown or tan. But the idea that “there was at least a real sense that…racism…had been defeated” on any level whatsoever was…and remains…a media-produced meme aimed at the white majority.
Successfully aimed, apparently. It’s still working today.
I experienced those years on the hard streets of New York City, a white man in a primarily black and brown working world, and brother…there was no such “sense” of the defeat of racism among the people with whom I worked and lived.
Not a bit of it.
Not in Boston, not in NYC, not in Indianapolis, not in Atlanta and not in Atlantic City there wasn’t, for sure. (The cities in which I most worked at the time.)
I well remember going into a movie theater on the old, funky 42nd St….people called it “The Deuce” then…at 2AM on a scorching summer night with a black friend and musical colleague to goof on a movie we had both missed…”Jaws… and to cool off because neither of us could afford air-coditoning at the time. Must’ve been 1976. Somewhere in there.
The theater was packed!!! And rowdy as a motherfucker. Pot smoke everywhere, almost entirely young, bad-ass ghetto kids and lower east side hippies.. And to a man, they were rooting for the shark!!!
“Bite that motherfucker!!!” was the chant!!!
Oh.
Like dat.
They understood upon which side they had been cast. Post-racial my royal Irish ass!!!
Further, you write:
Ye gods, man!!!
Something potentially less violent!!!???
Nixon and Kissinger were carpet bombing all of SE Asia at the time!!! Burning brownish people and their children at an enormous rate!!!” Less violent” for the citizens of the U.S., maybe. Those that lived in all-white ghettos, anyway. Bin Laden pinned that attitude way back in 2004, and now here you are repeating it under different circumstances.
WTFU.
AG
LOL Priceless.
The challenge in writing this piece is the one you identify.
I thought I was being as open and transparent as possible about the unusual circumstances of my childhood. I would never deny the white privilege involved and the resulting unique “sense” of things we had.
For one example, in much of the country, people like me were constantly reviled, but we didn’t revile ourselves. For another, many classrooms didn’t treat MLK has an uncontroversial hero. For another, race relations remained tense in places like the Bronx long after they settled down in places like Princeton.
On the other hand, the sense that open political racism, as opposed to coded dog-whistle racism, had become disreputable was pretty widespread. You’d see it crop with folks like Pat Buchanan, but the way he was received and the limits of his appeal testified to it being a thing of the past, not the wave of the future.
I quote:
I repeat:
Sounds like it’s some sort of nasty surprise to you, Booman.
To you.
Now!!!
You bought onto Obama’s hype.
I will admit…it was a tempting line. When Obama defeated HRC…about whom I had no such illusions; I simply thought that she had a head start as far as wielding the levers of power and would at the very least be better at the job than would Obama (A prediction that came to pass, by the way.)…but when Obama defeated HRC, I surrendered to the “Hope and Change” meme. For a while. Not for long, because he soon revealed himself to be just another smart, self-seeking, ladder-climbing, shallow politician with a gift of gab but no real class at all.
As the bitter old ghetto joke goes…” Gotta go now. I’ll be white black.”
Like dat.
When I write “Wake the fuck up!!!” or variations on that same theme to people like you…as I said, good-hearted, well-meaning liberal/progressive/call it what you will thinkers who don’t really seem to understand that they have bought into some terrible lies from the Pollyanna-selling/left DemRat hustlers…when I say things like that, I am trying to talk to my brothers and sisters who remained fairly safely inside that soothing cocoon of white entitlement that has enveloped probably 95+% of the white population of the U.S. over the last 50+ years. That cocoon is coming unraveled before our eyes. The successes of the Trump and Sanders campaigns are symptoms of this unraveling, and no matter who is elected in November…unless the absolute dominion of the corporate 1% is somehow smashed…things are going to get worse here before they get better.
Bet on it.
They will get worse (a move towards white supremacist fascism) if Trump is elected and they will get worse (a continuation of the neolib/neocon PermaGov hell in which we are living now) if HRC or some RatPub stand-in for Trump is elected.
Waking the fuck up is really the only option left to us.
One eye at a time if necessary.
One fucking eye at a time.
Later…
AG
P.S. Ya gotta admit…I do keep trying.
I have been surprised by the strength of the racist backlash against Obama, that’s true, and even you admit the same about yourself.
I also think Obama is unquestionably our finest president since FDR, and his only competition is the guy who gave us Vietnam and couldn’t even stand for reelection.
So, we don’t look at the present the same way at all. I’d repeal the 22nd Amendment in a heartbeat to give Obama one or two or even three more terms. The country can’t handle these shitty would-be replacements. It’s going nuts even contemplating replacements.
And for good reason.
The way you portray Obama is so disrespectful that it’s ironic for you to complain about Trump, IMHO.
Say Hillary had won the election and had executed exactly the same domestically as Obama. Would you have nothing to say about the failure to haul a single solitary banker/financier before a court for what was done in our mortgage markets? Over SEC’s practice of allowing fines to replace enforcement. Still happening, even in the most egregious cases, btw.
Would you have nothing to say over the failure to raise minimum wage over an 8 yr period? The last step of the 2007(Bush) compromise was in 2009: $7.25 I won’t even go into the failure of Labor department to go after 1099 abuses for years. McJobs and “at will work” are the ones that have been created in this economy. In the 7th yr of presidency, over-time has been restored that was removed by Bush’s executive order.
Would you have nothing to say if she had dangled SS benefits before a Republican House?
Would you have said nothing over the EPAs bewildering behavior re: fracking fluid contamination of ground water?
Would you have nothing to say if she had negotiated secret trade agreements that gave away our rights all the way down to municipal levels to enact consumer, worker and environmental protections that might impact the profits of foreign corporations?
I would take Obama ten times over Hillary on foreign policy, but if there is a domestic difference, I am not seeing it.
Must add that as a human being, Obama is heads above the snake pit that was LBJ. Read Caro, anyone who is curious.
Well, if the summary here were a full reporting of the record, then I might be convinced that both the President and Hillary are horrible horrible horrible.
But this is a remarkably incomplete and deceptive reporting of the President’s record, so what happens to me in the wake of “analysis” like this is that it causes me to become an evangelist for Obama on this blog and in my daily conversations. Congratulations!
I’ll fight over the broadest and most accurate history of these and other political years seven days out of seven.
Just a little balance to Booman’s evalutation of LBJ as ” his only competition is the guy who gave us Vietnam and couldn’t even stand for reelection”
Well, then you might wish to engage BooMan’s consideration. Name a recent President whose record in total is better, particularly in the context of the crisis the nation was in at the moment he entered the Oval Office and a level of Congressional partisanship which had not been seen since the Civil War.
So you are dismissive of LBJ’s 4yrs, too?
5+ actually.
Best Presidents in the last 100 years:
FDR
LBJ
Obama
There were other good ones, but these are the best, all things considered. Pretty great company.
Don’t mistake noise for backlash. Obama comfortably won reelection.
Had there been a real racist backlash, Herman Cain and Dr. Ben would never have flown as high in GOP POTUS polling as they did. Scott wouldn’t have been appointed and then elected to the US Senate from SC.
Compare that to the speed of the backlash against Roe and the ERA. First strike on the former came a mere three years later with the Hyde Amendment that remains in force today. State ratifications proceeded swiftly in 1972 and early 1973 and then the backlash began with a few states rescinding their ratification and the hold-outs beginning to dig in their heals.
Is it disrespectful to say that Obama’s support of the Security State is a danger to us all? Read about the nascent Chinese version and feel real fear. It’s just around the corner both there and here if current policies remain in place. When it happens, remember the barefaced lies told to the Senate by the NSA/CIA/FBI about the extent of illegal U.S. surveillance of innocent citizens. All supported by Obama. How do I know that? Because he didn’t fire the motherfuckers who laid them out, that’s how. Remember how he went after Snowden, Assange and poor little Chelsea Manning as well?
Like dat.
Ron Paul:
Like dat, too.
Bet on it.
Disrespectful to say that his foreign policy actually helped to create ISIS?
Disrespectful to say that racial relations in this country have seriously regressed during his term of office?
Disrespectful to say that the societal madness which is evidenced by the (almost daily) criminal killings committed by both police and civilians is in large part a reaction to his failures in domestic policy making?
Disrespectful to say that the rise of Trump is in large part due to the economic problems that he has done absolutely nothing whatsoever to truly solve besides bailing out a number of large and badly run companies…due to the the outsourcing of American industry coupled with the barbarically vicious depredations of Big Credit/ Big Money and the total ownership of the U.S. government by massive international corporate interests?
If it is, than I cop to it. I disrespect the man as a short-sighted, me-first pol. He will retire into the lap of luxury for his family and most likely for several generations of his family to come, taken care of because he was a loyal and effective servant of the 1%.
Deal wid it.
AG
You are a clown.
P.S. Where is the president right now?
Physically in Cuba and from a policy standpoint all over the lot. Deployment of new bases in Vietnam, Cambodia, and once again in the Philippines. Having cut some sort of deal in Syria with Putin and following up with negotiations in which the Syrian Kurds have opened a position of Syria as a federation. While the clock on the take-down of DAESH/ISIS/ISIL keeps ticking. Allowing the Saudi war in Yemen to continue. Reasserting something akin to “sole superpower” posture in the new strategic assessment. Allowing NATO to ramp up the potential of Arctic conflict.
No final judgement of Obama’s foreign policy will be available until after the new President is inaugurated in 2017.
I’m still thinking that DAESH might be taken down by then if the Republicans don’t find some way of delaying it through their operatives in the military. Dealing with the reality that restabilizing the Assad government with Russia’s help has had a positive effect even if Erdogan is pissed.
Per the Jeffrey Goldberg interview, Obama is trying not to be the weight on the scale in military conflicts between Middle Eastern nations (other than Israel by the way).
Because of the Republican blowback, Obama has stated that he is forgoing normalization of relations with Iran. This however does not dismiss the possibility of lame duck normalization.
At the moment, Obama is in the position of having transformed the foreign policy environment geographically to the extent that George H. W. Bush and Harry Truman did. The ball and chain of the Republicans and neo-conservative Democrats in Congress plus Obama’s own intuitive foreign policy position has limited the creativity and boldness of transformation. Furthermore, the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in retrospect will likely seen to have been a mistake. The appointment of the dogged John Kerry likely will be seen in a much favorable light.
Tarheel, I am seriously have trouble connecting up your comment with any version of reality I am familiar with.
I say that respectfully.
You’re speaking a special language.
Do you know what we just did to India over solar? http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2985164/crushed_the_us_and_the_wto_demolish_indias_so
lar_energy_ambitions.html
Making Cuba safe for Big Corp. Why?
AG
Well-educated and egalitarian population “might” save them from dollar colonialism. Hope so.
I am afraid not. Read my post after i spent a a couple of weeks in Cuba a few years ago to understand why i say that.
Cuba and CommuCaribbeanism-A Sad, Strange, Brave Old New World
Long story short?
Sure.
The seemingly endless trade embargo did ’em in. Been broke so long they broken.
Read the article.
AG
No, Booman. I am not clown.
Not by a long shot.
AG
AG, when I first came to this blog and read your comments, I just thought they were bizarre and self-righteous. I’ve started to realize that you have something useful to say, just presented in a way that challenges the reader. Unfortunately it also tends to insult the reader. But I’m past the bluster, mostly.
Here is my question to you, however:
What exactly do you mean with your exhortations to Wake The Fuck Up?
If by waking up you mean that readers should adopt all of your anger and outrage, then what exactly will be accomplished? Growth of an army of people writing angry comments on blogs?
I sincerely do not know what your idea of waking up is supposed to entail.
For starters…and finishers as well,I suppose…my own “WTFU” message has to do with asking people to realize that the bipartisan, centrist Permanent Government is not working for anybody but the 1%, and that the farce that we laughingly call “elections” is in fact an ongoing fix. Once one truly sees this fact, no more “awakening” is needed in a political sense.
Further, that the entity known as “the mass media”…Ron Paul called it the Governmental Media Complex…has as Job One the responsibility of making sure that every political candidate of any possible national promise who does not have the confidence of that Permanent Government (confidence that he or she will not seriously rock the massive profit boat of the major corporations that own said Permanent Government lock, stock and gunbarrel) will be laughed out of being any danger to the scam. I call this media process “non-personing,” and it can be best seen in the media treatment given Ross Perot and the Pauls.
Only…it’s not working with Trump. He has so far seriously outhustled the hustlers. I wrote a post here 8 months ago titled “The Trump Problem. You Cannot Laugh A Clown Offstage”. Trump has proven to be a virtuoso clown. Now, the controllers don’t know what the fuck to do. That’s why they are so panicked. For the first time in recent memory,…since RFK, actually, and he predated the “kinder, gentler” sort of character assassination that has become so prevalent over the last 37+ years or so (since they got rid of Nixon, whose increasingly unbalanced actions also scared them to death)…a politician who is not a satrap of the powers-that-be is threatening to fix the fix. His way. It is certainly not an endorsement to say that…I think Trump is a dangerous megalomaniac, myself…but the day that he publicly stated that HRC felt beholden to come to his daughter’s wedding because he gave her mucho dineros for her campaigns (and for Bill’s too, I believe) was the day that the entire DC Revolving Door/Permanent Government establishment caught its breath and thought “Fuck!!! This guy is dangerous!!! He’s telling the peons how their peonage really works!!!”
If most so-called “liberals” are to be believed, most of the denizens of Leftinessville do not understand this process and thus swallow hook line and
stinker…err, ahhh, I mean sinker…the bullshit peon lures that stream out of the mouths of the DemRat chosen few.So I try to inform them. Any way I can.
Clear enough now?
It’s all I can do.
And I do keep trying.
Later…
AG
Umm.. Sanders?
Popular among white males, he transfers the white hot racism to the culprits/benefactors of middle class stagnation.
Or am I missing something?
AlGiordano @AlGiordano
The people in society who have the most reason to be angry are not. Those with least reason to be angry are terrified by that.
https://twitter.com/AlGiordano/status/711199451956707328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
I don’t think Sanders transfers a whole lot of racism, frankly.
The results of the Southern primaries and the rust belt primaries seem to show little failed working class crossover and less failed middle class crossover. Sanders white voters appear to be those who played by the rules and are stranded, those who are their parents, and those who see the future of cuts to public and private spending–thus the focus in towns that are home to publicly-funded colleges and universities.
Astute observation.
Not the racism, the animus – from the other (but fellow slave) to the owners.
That doesn’t seem to be happening either.
In 1972 I was in Okinawa with the Army Security Agency. That year was the first election in which I could vote. I voted for Nixon. And I would have in 1968, when HH was too identified with the war and with the rioters of Chicago.
I would never have voted for Nixon. He was a horrible man. Only looks half-way decent today because the barrel is now more filled with rotten apples than it was in his day.
I think the appropriate description for Richard Nixon is “venal son of a bitch”. He started his political career in California that way, red-baiting his opponents, and never quit. There was nothing surprising about the way he spoke on the White House recxordings.
Today’s “rioters in Chicago” are “Black Lives Matters”. The calls for law-n-order are going to be heard soon. You are already hearing them from Trump.
If anti-Trump folks want to make him stronger, continue the protests. Continue the disruption. He will call for law-n-order, and his authoritarian followers will increase their strength.
When he becomes the nominee, polls will follow him. People will be able to rationalize supporting him. If you are sitting there saying “No one would vote for this clown”, you are way wrong.
The protesters, a huge crowd, in Chicago were a coalition of groups that have been working to raise issues in Chicago for over four years. They included public employee unions, Chicago Teachers Union, Fight for 15 activists, Black Lives Matter, and UIC students who were not happy that their university extended the invitation to a racist candidate to speak on the Near West Side. Who actually disrupted Trump’s rally is unknown. A lot of groups argue that it was a Trump set-up, but the fact remains that Trump did not show because he does not want to face contradiction for other people. Whether part of a campaign strategy, it further shows the cowardice of Trump when it comes to putting himself on the line before an audience less that 100% filled with sycophants.
Since you has sussed out Trump’s thinking, maybe you have insights into ways of defeating him without capitulating to his ideology. If he is defeated in the primaries and defeated soundly, he is as dead politically as Mitt Romney.
The obvious defeat of Trumpism is more black, white, and Hispanic fusion politics against our historic divisions. Unless one has a self-interest in maintaining those divisions, the appropriate effort is to talk white people back from the cliff. Any hints of how to do that or we will witness just more centrist capitulation to racism?
My thought is to revisit the Barbara Jordan Commission on Immigration recommendations, done under Bill Clinton. I am certain you remember Jordan, a capable woman of great personal integrity, who was one of the first black women elected to the House. She chaired the Jordan Commission on Immigration. Her recommendations for the immigration system included the following:
The point is to end the hispandering so prevalent in the Democratic Party.
Prosecute some violating employers harshly and say that you will continue to ferret out the money that is attracting immigrants.
Stop turning countries into failed states. Fleeing murderers instead of seeking economic opportunity has become a driver of immigration. Clinton has a very controversial record on this score.
You act as if Hispanics are the only immigrants in the US and that all Hispanics are immigrants. California, Colorado, Arizon, Nevada. New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida were all Spanish colonies obtained by the US in the 19th century. Most Hispanics in those states are descendants of people who were there before the invasion of Americans, especially Southerners seeking large tracts of plantation land to extend the slave economy.
“Hispandering” is about as offensive term as I can think of. Are there many H1-B Hispanics where you are right now?
Closing the barn door 40 years after Barbara Jordan’s recommendations is not now possible without major changes in US foreign policy that run contrary to both parties at the moment.
We are in a punishing foreigners moment in America. Here or there, makes no difference.
Hispandering is the exact policy of the Democratic Party since Prop 187. No Democratic politician today can stand up and say “We need to deport illegal immigrants”, because the Hispanic politicians will pillory them. Pandering is the term for doing reprehensible and inappropriate actions to get votes. That is the specific approach that the Democratic Party has taken – they will be complicit with Hispanic politicians to get their votes in return for not enforcing the law.
But you are again degenerating into terminology bullshit. That makes Trump stronger, trust me.
A million deportations a year, with disruption of families, return of people to situations from which they are actually refugees, and the toleration of abuse of arrested immigrants in the southern tier of the US is not sufficient enforcement for you?
Proposition 187 was state law not federal law.
Any chance to address that issue was blocked by Republican obstruction to any bill on immigration; they wanted the issue not the solution. They even savaged the candidacy of Marco Rubio who offered a co-opting punitive bill.
The law is being unequally enforced with the main enforcement on those who are the supply of labor who are responding to the demand and ignoring the local employers who are creating the demand for the labor. How many Hispanic politicians are Republican? Who are they representing?
Using this as a political football to divert Anglo attention from the poor economic performance of conservative principles is the major pandering that is going on in this election. Not enforcing the law that should prosecute murdering police officers is the pandering that is going on in this election. Being ruthless in his enforcement of deportation is the pandering that President Obama has been doing and President Clinton before him.
Employers want it both ways: cheap labor and no Hispanics and no blacks either. That is, employers want cheap white labor at Third World wages. Trump voters haven’t figured out that in following the Trump revolution they are cutting their own wages and benefits from private employers as well as cutting government entitlements.
I don’t make Trump stronger; my influence is pretty limited. The concern folks pretending to be Democrats make Trump stronger by not providing intervention to their neighbors about how they are being scammed.
What about illegal immigrants from other countries besides Hispanic countries?
Yes. Don’t think it could be encapsulated any better or more succinctly than that.
And ENOUGH with your bullshit about my supposed “Hispanic hit list”. Honestly, you are a FUCKING MORON. I have indicated time and again that ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS NOT HISPANIC-CENTRIC.
I am done with this shit.
dataguy, as long as you continue to write these sorts of things, you will continue to get the responses you get. Angrily telling us that we are wrong will not change that. Nor will it make us support the immigration and visa policies you want. Nor will it make us believe that if we don’t do exactly what you say, a Trump Presidency is inevitable. The orange buffoon’s disapprovals in polls are sky-high among the general electorate, higher than Hillary’s, and his negatives have gone up among independents and Democrats as they have gone down among Republicans.
We’re going to do the work. We’re going to win. We’re going to create a better nation than the one you would like us to live in.
>>Most Hispanics in those states are descendants of people who were there before the invasion of Americans
most? No way. It might be true in NM, i’d bet against it in CA, AZ, NV and FL, which all grew so much in the 20th century.
I’m not trying to get into the immigration argument, but hate seeing made up data.
Might find this interesting…http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist383/Mex_Americans.html
California was a part of Mexico until 1846. As in the rest of the US, the native population was decimated (by the Spanish, then Mexico, and finally by the US) and Anglos came rushing in to grab whatever land, etc. and also decimated the Mexican-American population at that time. The overwhelming portion of migrants to CA in the 19th and 20th centuries weren’t those from Mexico, but they didn’t fill the labor needs of the agricultural sector; so, they were invited here. Of course many were kicked out during the Great Depression. (We’re great about excluding and exiling POC when there’s a surplus of labor.)
Seems to me that all Mexicans were more native to this region that any white, Asian, or AA.
btw — the term Hispanic for people from Central and S. America was constructed under the Nixon administration. Didn’t exist in everyday language for people. Then as now people preferred to be identified by their family’s country of origin if they weren’t allowed to simply be Americans.
You’re wasting your time suggesting to dataguy that “hispandering” is offensive. Or that referring to people as “illegal”–rather than referring to their actions that way–is offensive.
What I don’t quite get about him is that he’s commenting here at all. After all, he states up front that he is an ex-Democrat.
I understand he believes that the Democratic Party doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the working class. What I would ask him–well, everyone–to ponder is whether there’s something about the evolution of the Democratic Party into, say, an advocate for civil rights for all that has made the working class (or at least the white working class) ready to walk into the arms of the GOP. There’s a long, sad history of institutional racism in organized labor. (And yes, I know that dataguy rejects any claims about racism on the part of the working class.)
Someone up-thread noted that the white working class was keen to bash (literally) anti-Vietnam War protesters. (I’m old enough to remember that.) Remember those “America Love It or Leave It” bumper stickers? Another sad chapter in recent history.
Solidarity is a two-way street.
I don’t get any pleasure from noting these issues. I’m a product of the white working class myself. My parents had no education beyond high school. My dad carried a union card (food & commercial workers, I think).
Gitlin’s piece feels off to me. It holds together based on the data points he abstracts for the analogy, but a boatload of other stuff was left on the cutting room floor. Racism (and other isms) was front and center ’64 through ’72. Along with prizing our nationalized and institutionalized violence through the military (the “feel good” component of WWII that a majority of Americans wanted to experience again and again and that the peaceniks were trying the thwart). They were anti-change agents and furious with all those that represented change. At the end of the day (Nov 1968) only 13.5% stuck with “going back” to 1950 and the balance of the country split much as it had in 1960.
Wallace’s racist and pro-war rhetoric wasn’t a substitute for anything. Wallace was like a way-station for those not ready to choose between their ‘isms and pocketbooks. (In ’64 for could choose the language of ‘isms with Goldwater, but without any cost to them because he didn’t have a chance to win and everybody knew that.) It wasn’t so much that Nixon tamed them after ’68 but that he ameliorated their fears by not trampling on the New Deal policies.
Each time the torch of racism has been lit since then it burns a bit less bright and the numbers of those pulled to the light gets a bit smaller. Their angst is inexplicable to themselves because the comfy zone of retaining their ‘isms and wallets with the GOP hasn’t worked out as well as advertised. They have less of both and the country can’t even win a war. And there is no alternative other than to demand from the GOP that they deliver on the promise.
Oh boohoo, this is too hard for us! We need a savior just like tricky Dick.
Oddly this whole approach reminds me of the establishment’s response to rape victims: You are weak and helpless, so just submit, relax and try to enjoy it.
Anyway it’s just showbiz, right? What’s good for CBS is good for America.
On the evidence, CBS (and the rest of the centrist media) still believe that.
Only…what about Trump and Sanders?
Just for starters.
“CBS” and the media in general? They are staffed up and down the line with middle class->upper middle class media workers and are owned lock, stock and barrel by the 1% .
These people must believe that in order to keep their pensions, their savings accounts, their mortgages, their cars and the other perks of middle class through 1% life in good shape.
But…what if they have lost their grip on the culture? On a substantial enough proportion of the culture to make a real difference. “Good” or “bad”, depending on your societal orientation.
Then what?
I think that we are quite likely to find out.
Any month now.
Aaaany month now…
Watch.
AG
Don’t we find it out every time a cop (or a trigger-happy citizen) murders someone with a gun?
Yawn! We might notice when it’s a “special” victim – first-graders, moviegoers, church people and pols being just where they should be.
I’d say we have all lost our grip on the culture. It’s always a good day to die here, getting tired of watching.
The actual counterbalance to Nixon in the 1970s turns out to be in hindsight Jimmy Carter.
Carter’s political career started in earnest with his election to succeed the segregationist Lester Maddox and reached national attention with his inaugural speech in 1970. It was Carter who picked up the pieces of the Democratic Party in 1976 and laid the foundation for good or ill to keep most Southern governors Democratic for another decade and Southern legislatures hanging on until 2010, when North Carolina fell. Among the beneficiaries of this were Lawton Chiles, Bob Graham, Al Gore, Richard Riley, Ann Richards, and others (you get the drift) who would have been easily swamped in the Southern Strategy in the 1970s without the unity to end segregation about Southern Democrats. That memory of failure with Nixon drives the rage of Republicans even now. Carter’s life after the White House continues to drive them nuts and encourage some Democrats in the South that there might be hope for our region. Increasingly New York is looking like Bavaria in the replay of the 1930s and the equivalent of the communities that birthed the hardhats in the Nixon era are the Munich of this drama. Getting distracted by regionalism this time will be a huge mistake. The non-South looks as infected as the South.
Yes it does…
Buckle up. It’s gonna be a rough ride for at least the next 8 months.
Probably much longer.
Sigh…
AG
It did take a Democrat, Carter, to begin disassembling the New Deal, sadly. Nixon never dared.
Southern Democrats survived by being pro-business (which got spun as pro-worker), pro-farmer, and by 1968 pro-change, which allowed for black support. James Clyburn was one of the first beneficiaries of that trend, being a token appointed by Gov. John West in 1971 to “Carterize” his administration and to be the West’s ambassador to a re-emerging bench of black local politicians. I’m not sure how many Southern Democrats understood their centrist positions as “disassembling the New Deal”. Carter’s main contributions were starting the deregulation trend and losing in 1980, in part because the GOP succeeded in politicizing the Southern Baptist Convention, which was a huge part of Carter’s local base and influential among independents in the South who were not part of his base.
Not even the self-consciousness of “Nixon goes to China”, which has become the cliche for talking about these reversals.
Thomas Franks:
“Now, let us stop and smell the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America – one of our two monopoly parties – chose long ago to turn its back on these people’s concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a “creative class” that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps. The working people that the party used to care about, Democrats figured, had nowhere else to go, in the famous Clinton-era expression. The party just didn’t need to listen to them any longer…
[…]
…the most salient supporting fact: when people talk to white, working-class Trump supporters, instead of simply imagining what they might say, they find that what most concerns these people is the economy and their place in it. I am referring to a study just published by Working America, a political-action auxiliary of the AFL-CIO, which interviewed some 1,600 white working-class voters in the suburbs of Cleveland and Pittsburgh in December and January.”
The left party in the United States until the red scares of the 1940s were a variety of socialist parties. The Democratic Party was a populist farmer party led by Bible thumper William Jennings Bryan or an urban ethnic party led by various urban corrupt machines, or Southern segregationists. Even when the party was talking the talk in the 1940s and 1950s, it was slowly walking back the legislation that the labor movement forced into being through a series of historic strikes in the late 1930s up to the early years of World War II.
Working people don’t understand the extent to which even the limited laws and regulations protect them from cutthroat employers.
Trump’s point does not allow of policies that actually will make lives better for working people. And making them ignore this by race-baiting is exactly what is going on.
There is a thread up at the WaMo blog on Frank’s research and an interesting discussion of ’70-80s party history in the comments section.
His points only work because he doesn’t admit Taft-Hartley into his historical framework for the decline in private sector unions and omits or elides the fact that it was Labor that initiated the hostility towards the anti-Vietnam War faction of Democrats/left and not the other way round. And dismisses the level of corruption among union leaders and that mobsters controlled more unions than the Teamsters. Also doesn’t seem to know about the prevalence of industrialization and unionization in CA at that time. Oil/gas, construction, shipping, and auto and aircraft assembly plants.
Yes, some of that was brought up in the thread’s comments.
My reference to “his points” was the person that seemed to take over the discussion. The responses to that person were weak and I then grew too bored to read much further.
Was not defeated just shamed briefly into silence.
This is much of what I have been saying for, oh, about 3 months. Trump has a point. He is a clown, but he has a point.
If Democrats ignore the real problems with illegal immigration, with high-end job visas, with visa overstays, they will lose in November.
And fuck that “racism” crap. This is about the rule of law. If Democrats want to be identified as the Party of Criminals, that is not long-term viable as party identity. But that is the self-sought party identification now. It doesn’t play well with non-criminal American voters.
Spoken like an IT guy who has seen his salary bargained down by legal H1-B IT immigrants.
The problem is employers and the laws they had their well-financed representatives pass.
If you want to get into increasing criminality, recent studies show that it seems to be rising among middle-age white males. Which party coddles them?
There are a lot of things afflicting middle-aged white/black/brown men/women. If you lose your job as a person of 50+, good luck getting anything like what you had. “Fries with that” is often what you do, or “Welcome to WalMart”.
There are 3 things that are happening:
As to me, I have an excellent job, and I think for 3-4 years, it is stable. I sometimes have my concerns, because I am in an odd position in my organization. I fill a key role, however. What the H-1B thing has done is make me essentially economically out of the market. I see many many jobs out there that I am positioned for, but the surplus of workers leads to me having no mobility in today’s market. I oppose H-1Bs, though, less for myself than for the American IT/STEM worker in general.
You are documenting the consequences of a deliberate economic policy of austerity that has been driven from the Republican and conservative anxiety over balancing the budget and making Obama a failed President. Now they come around and pick up the political falllout as a benefit to them. It is a straightforward scam that has gone on for over seven years.
Those three things now are becoming refuges of white people shoved out of the job market, just as they have been temporary refuges of non-white people for some time. But the Republicans are shutting down those refuges for white people too. Social Security is imperiled by Republicans and by the Democrats who listen to them. And those Republicans and Democrats seek to destroy Social Security in order to either have not retirement security or to make a buck out of “retirement planning and investment”. Too many middle class people have taken the bait from 30 years of 401(k) sales pitches and “planning for your retirement” articles. The fact: Unless you are in the 1%, your retirement funds will not be adequate. If you are not watching the fiduciary responsibility of your retirement fund managers like a hawk, it is private retirement funds that will not be there. Witness the unfolding CalPers scandal. And the scandals of pension funds not being adequately funded.
“Will you have fries with that?” is a comforting possibility for well-educated middle-class workers. Clue: Fast-food restaurants will not hire you because you are “overeducated” and there are legal immigrants that they can hire who will readily work for much less and much less and much less and fewer labor protections and …Middle class educated workers know what labor standards employers should be following. They won’t readily work off the clock or in a dangerous environment, even if they are unemployed. Better just to screen out all educated workers from the very large pool.
This isn’t the 1970s when educated worker could easily pick up temp work cleaning construction sites or doing clerical tasks. Now having that degree automatically screens you out of the pool.
That’s why you have 45-year-old + people going years and years without a job and finally just giving up and depending on relatives or friends or other alternatives.
Be very clear. The Republicans and the business-oriented Democrats are who built that and who preserve it. Voting for Trump will not change it. Indeed voting is unlikely to change it at all. It benefits the current incumbents too much. As long as the public falls for the immigrants did it and the frugal government and all the Reagan tropes, this country will continue to circle the drain. Thus AG’s repeated WTFU.
Have I said this year how pessimistic I am about this election. How much I’m hoping for a major bolt of enlightenment to how our divisions are being played? How much the virtue of saving has become our undoing.
Companies have deliberately recruited, “imported,” and hired undocumented workers for a long time because it suits their bottom line. It’s a well-known fact that the meat-packing plants operate in unsafe conditions. The owners go to Central and South America to recruit undocumented workers to work under appalling conditions for very low wages. When ICE comes a-knocking, the workers get deported, usually forfeiting their last paycheck. Absolutely NOTHING, NADA, ZIP, Zero happens to the business owner.
Similar crap has happened all along the border, where Trump wants to build his giant wall. It’s such a joke. AZ – where Trump hobnobbed with the odious former Sheriff Arpaio – is well-known for the hospitality, construction & restaurant businesses to be rife with undocumented workers – knowingly hired by the local business owners. Again, when ICE comes a-knocking, the workers get deported, but the business owners suffer not even a tap on the wrist.
I could go on. What the masses don’t get – because of the insidious and ongoing propaganda to the contrary – is that the 1% and their business owner minions actively support hiring undocumented workers, and there’s that Country Club hand shake along with a nudge nudge wink wink that the business owners won’t have to pay the price for knowingly hiring undocumented workers.
Yes, the lower and middle classes – of whatever skin color/ethnic background – have been gradually and then faster screwed over. But it’s not because of undocumented workers somehow pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. I mean, does anyone have a clue what happens when you’re hired and employed these days (and for the past, like, three decades)??? You are supposed to show at least 2 IDs that prove you are a US citizen. I fail to believe that all of the undocumented workers somehow manage to produce credible, if fake, IDs – or at least not without significant assistance from the business owners.
H1(b) Visas have been used by the white collar industries, especially IT, to lower wages of white collar workers in the USA. Back in the dot.com boom days – when I was much younger and much more eligible – I was told by many that I could get an IT job in seconds flat. Well, hey hey – not true. I was very qualified for a lot of jobs, but I rarely even got interviews, much less job offers. Anyone approaching 40 in those days was given the bum’s rush. It was written about in the nooz papers, even. But nothing changed, other than the St. Steven of the NO JOBS for you Losers whining to Congress about the need for ever more H1(b) visas bc US college students refused to study STEM courses. As if.
Trump is bellowing about undocumented workers and kicking all of them out. Well how nice. Trump is known to hire boatloads of undocumented workers to serve in his various casino/hotel businesses. Trump is also well-known to use a lot of H1(b) visas to hire indentured servants to work for him at Mar el Largo, as well as in his various business enterprises.
Trump supporters are going to be mightily surprised when Trump, like all the other pols, does BUPKISS to address this situation. Trump is no savior. He’s part of the problem, not part of the solution.
The only thing Trump has done is to make it safe to be an out loud racist. That’s about all I can see.
I doubt Trump will win, although I do foresee the so-called Republican “establishment” all lining to kiss his hiney if he wins the nomination.
Sanders is as close as we come as someone who would at least TRY to address some of the bigger issues confronting the “average” US citizen these days. But it’s unlikely he’ll win the nomination. I still hope that he’ll continue campaigning until the end, and I hope that some listen to him, really listen to him, and learn a few things.
DFHs were a lot easier to ID than Drumpfenvolk.
The only thing they have in common is both feel like partisans in an occupied country, both bent on subversion, but only one hell-bent.
Hippies usually didn’t have that much fight in them, except for the Ghandian struggle for justice, peace and the environment.
Trump’s cohorts are like spitting cats compared.
That’s right. He didn’t hijack shyt!
The folks that make up your VOTERS are CHOOSING HIM.
How can he HIJACK when he’s GETTING THE VOTES?
…………………..
THERE WAS NO REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT AFTER ALL
Can we please retire the notion that Donald Trump is hijacking someone else’s party?
By Frank Rich
… The Republican Elites. The Establishment. The Party Elders. The Donor Class. The Mainstream. The Moderates. Whatever you choose to call them, they, at least, could be counted on to toss the party-crashing bully out.
To say it didn’t turn out that way would be one of the great understatements of American political history. Even now, many Republican elites, hedging their bets and putting any principles in escrow, have yet to meaningfully condemn Trump. McCain says he would support him if he gets his party’s nomination. The Establishment campaign guru who figured the Trump problem would solve itself moved on to anti-Trump advocacy and is now seeking to unify the party behind Trump, waving the same white flag of surrender as Chris Christie. Every major party leader — Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus, Kevin McCarthy — has followed McCain’s example and vowed to line up behind whoever leads the ticket, Trump included. Even after the recurrent violence at Trump rallies boiled over into chaos in Chicago, none of his surviving presidential rivals would disown their own pledges to support him in November. Trump is not Hitler, but those who think he is, from Glenn Beck to Louis C.K., should note that his Vichy regime is already in place in Washington, D.C.
Since last summer, Trump, sometimes in unwitting tandem with Bernie Sanders, has embarrassed almost the entire American political ecosystem — pollsters, pundits, veteran political operatives and the talking heads who parrot their wisdom, focus-group entrepreneurs, super-pac strategists, number-crunching poll analysts at FiveThirtyEight and its imitators. But of all the emperors whom Trump has revealed to have few or no clothes, none have been more conspicuous or consequential than the GOP elites. He has smashed the illusion, one I harbored as much as anyone, that there’s still some center-right GOP Establishment that could restore old-school Republican order if the crazies took over the asylum…
Did the pillars of the Establishment fail to turn back the Trump insurgency because they have no balls? Because they have no credibility? Because they have too little support from voters in their own party? Because they don’t even know who those voters are or how to speak their language? To some degree, all these explanations are true. Though the Republican Establishment is routinely referenced as a potential firewall in almost every media consideration of Trump’s unexpected rise, it increasingly looks like a myth, a rhetorical device, or, at best, a Potemkin village. It has little power to do anything beyond tardily raising stop-Trump money that it spends neither wisely nor well and generating an endless torrent of anti-Trump sermons for publications that most Trump voters don’t read. The Establishment’s prize creation, Marco Rubio — a bot candidate programmed with patriotic Reaganisms, unreconstructed Bush-Cheney foreign-policy truculence, a slick television vibe, and a dash of ethnicity — was the biggest product flop to be marketed by America’s Fortune 500 stratum since New Coke…
For all the Republican talk about “personal responsibility,” the party’s leaders have worked overtime to escape any responsibility for fanning the swamp fevers that produced Trump: They instead blame him on the same bogeymen they blame everything on — Obama and the news media. What GOP elites can’t escape is the sinking feeling that a majority of Republican voters are looking for a president who will repudiate them and, implicitly, their class. Trump refuses to kowtow to the Establishment–and it is precisely that defiance, as articulated in his ridicule of Romney and Jeb Bush and Megyn Kelly and Little Marco, that endears him to Republican voters and some Democrats as well. The so-called battle for the “soul” of the Republican Party is a battle over power, not ideology. Trump has convinced millions of Americans that he will take away the power from the pinheads on high and return it to people below who feel (not wrongly) that they’ve gotten a raw deal. It’s the classic populist pitch, and it will not end well for those who invest their faith in Trump. He cares about no one but himself and would reward his own class with extravagant tax cuts like any Republican president. But the elites, who represent the problem, have lost any standing that might allow them to pretend to be part of the solution…
Very nice to hear from Rich again. I miss him.
though it’s all good.
(since my ratings here never “stick”)