Josh Marshall admits that he isn’t really writing anything new or original. It’s more of a recap of previous pieces that covered well-trodden ground. It’s worth reading though because Josh does a very nice job with it.
What I want to do here is mainly to open the floor to debate. Josh makes two good points that seem unassailable on their own but are in conflict when taken together. Here’s the first point (the emphasis is mine):
Last spring I said the Trump phenomenon was a product of what I termed ‘nonsense debt‘. Republicans had spent years pumping their voters up on increasingly extreme and nonsensical claims and promises. This worked very well for winning elections. But it had also built up a debt that eventually had to be repaid. Concretely, they were making claims and promises that were either factually ridiculous, politically unviable or unacceptable to a broad swath of the voting public. Eventually, you get elected and need to produce. By definition that’s never really possible: both because the claims and promises are nonsensical and unviable but also because a politics based on reclamation, revenge, and impulse is almost impossible to satisfy through normal legislative politics.
A lot of what Trump in 2016 did was hijack an opening created by this build up of nonsense debt.
Here’s his second point:
A mix of partisan polarization, the built-in electoral advantages enjoyed by rural America, hyper-efficient gerrymandering and the concentration of Democratic voters in urban enclaves all give Republicans and the Trump base power significantly greater than its numbers. In the House and the Senate, Democrats can easily get more votes and remain in the minority. A GOP nominee can lose the popular vote and become President. It’s happened twice in the last five elections. So while I expect 2018 and 2020 will go quite badly for Trump and the Republicans, it is not at all impossible that they will get a minority of votes and retain all power.
That is disastrous for Democrats and the country. But it doesn’t change the essential dynamic of early 21st century conservatism, an infinite loop of inflammatory and engaging promises, claims and demands which are mostly entirely unrealizable, creating a permanent cycle of establishmentism and grassroots’ betrayal which continues spinning forward even as the players in each category change.
Maybe this is a problem of mixed metaphors, but we can’t have both an infinite loop and a build up to some culmination where the debt needs to be repaid. We’re either getting somewhere or we’re not. We could be getting somewhere worse, of course, but all of these things can’t be simultaneously true.
Are we in a fairly closed system where structural advantages keep us locked in a state in which the Republicans can defy every normal law of political accountability, or are we watching an actual come-to-Jesus reckoning on all the past excesses and sins of the conservative movement?
How you answer that question may tell us more about your general disposition towards life (e.g., optimistic vs. fatalistic) than do anything to establish the truth of the matter, but you should at least try to figure out how you feel, and why.
No loop in human affairs is really infinite. Always a question of when, how, consequences, what follows, etc.
The GOP tactic of just blatantly lying won’t go on forever. But there’s nothing that says it won’t go on for 20 or 50 years. And nothing that says we won’t be in a fighting civil war by 2020. That’s what “future” means.
If I had to guess, I’d guess that the GOP succeeds in aligning the US with the global right-wing movement, and that after a terrible terrible conflict the non-right forces will prevail to rule what might well be rubble.
One near-constant is our intense desire to know the future — and we’ll never stop guessing, or get much better at predicting it.
Brilliant comment, Jim. Or at least it’s a summary of what I would have said if you hadn’t beaten me to it.
Obviously, there will eventually be a come-to-Jesus moment for the country/conservative movement. The question is when.
I would guess about 12 more years, at which point, the replacement of older, whiter conservative voters (and cable tv watchers) by younger, less white voters will have changed the dynamic away from this insane “populism,” but no one knows exactly when.
Interesting comment, thanks.
We’ve been here before, at least twice:
*In the 1850s when there was a numerical majority against slavery’s expansion and the “Slave Power” resulting in its expansion – https:/masscommons.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/weve-been-here-before-1850s-edition
*In the 1920s when nativists and Prohibitionists teamed up to prevent Congressional redistricting for nearly an entire decade after the 1920 census – https:/masscommons.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/weve-been-here-before-1920s-edition
One ended in the Civil War; the other in the Great Depresssion…which is not an encouraging precedent.
On the other hand, the “emerging majorities” of those eras who concentrated on what kind of nation they wanted to create produced the post-Civil War constitutional amendments and the New Deal…when they finally had the opportunity to wield power.
Another Republican genius: Herbert Stein, if something can’t go on forever, it will stop. No, it’s not an infinite loop. 1st law of thermodynamics is in the way.
And, I contend the admin is nonlinear. They’re as likely to break something catastrophically that they cannot fix as they are to encounter a problem that they can’t cure by changing the subject.
On the other hand, there’s John Maynard Keynes: The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. …. and in the long run, we’re all dead.
How do you steer this wreck to a soft landing?
My meta argument always has been that this wreck is multi-tiered and built into the system, and the way you steer it to a soft landing is by voting for Democrats.
The structural advantages of rural American means that constituency will continue to punch above its weight until the rules change, provided it remains united. But the failure of world to be as the Republicans describe it, and their inability to deliver what they say they will even when in power, is leading to increasing conflict between the establishment and the base, and among those seeking to take the reigns of either. The internal conflict is what will break the loop. Hopefully, completely enough that we can see some reform on the structural advantages.
OK, now I read what Josh said and see that he rejects the distinction of base and establishment because the base has become the establishment. But the impossibility of doing what they are committed to doing still sets them up for endless struggles against one another, and we are seeing that play out. It took Trump – an outsider not just from the Party, but from all the conventional political rules – to reunite them, and that barely. Now the wheels are coming off there too.
I’m going with the Infinite Loop. Conservatives will always punch above their weight in any form of Democracy, whether it is our unique brand of it, or the Parliamentary version. They stick together and have their own built-in coalition that will continue to outnumber the vast and various factions in the middle and on the left. Obama won because he built and maintained a coalition. I’m going to guess that is how Justin Trudeau won, too. Charismatic coalition builders seem to be the only way to break free of the spin cycle. Then we, inevitably, get sucked back into the vortex of conservatism.
The trick is to make enough progress when we’re in power to move forward.
We’re seeing the dissolution of the Republican Party. While all the future is not clear, some points of clarity have emerged or are obvious.
1. Gerrymandered districts lead to completely “undemocratic” representatives. This is familiar from history:
With the recent HCA debate, we saw the spectacle of massive GOP ignoring of their constituents’ overwhelming demands. Why would they do that? CO Sen. Gardner explained it: their donor base demanded repeal, come hell or high water. So, repeal it is, regardless of what the people want.
Gerrymanding and the corruption of big money donors makes the average representative less and less responsive to their constituents, or at most a select few of their most fanatical base. This is a huge problem.
2. The Gerrymandering advantage is probably baked in for the foreseeable future, since the S.Ct. is highly partisan and unlikely to rule that it’s illegal. Democrats are going to have to make a BIG issue out of this. I don’t know why every Democrat isn’t talking about the problem of “Rotten Bououghs”. England went through an even more extreme example of our current problems – back during the 18th century prior to the Great Reform Act of 1832. There was a Parliamentary district that physically consisted of several stones in a wall – all that was left of some ancient constituency.
This is a fairness, democracy issue.
3. NOthing that Republicans do can save them from ultimate extinction (in the current incarnation of their party). They are pissing off royally the emerging black and brown majority. There’s simply no way a larger and larger majority of people in this country are going to tolerate forever being totally disenfranchised year after year.
The current Republican effort to suppress all dissent is already causing massive blow-back and this will get more and more intense if they continue in power.
It’s one thing to disenfranchise the minority 10% of the voters. Southern and northern racists managed to do that for 150 years and are still at it.
But, it’s another thing altogether to permanently disenfranchise the majority. That is not a democracy in any sense of the word. And we’re getting more and more unhappy about it.
In other countries situations like that lead to revolution (like Arab Spring), or fascism or totalitarianism.
But, are elites really happy with installing a military dictatorship just to make sure that a bunch of stupid rednecks can feel good about keeping black people from voting? That doesn’t sound very good for business. And in fact, we’re seeing big business turning against Trump.
Things are good right now for Wall Street, and blood in the streets is not good for business, nor are racist anti-immigration measures that prevent them from making more money. Tax cuts are great, but stability is necessary, and leaving the most ignorant, bigoted and angry residue of white trash in charge of the country is NOT good for business. And things that are bad for business tend not to happen for very long in American history.
This leaves the residue of radical right-wing crackpot billionaires like Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers or Trump himself. They are another big problem. But, getting rid of Trump is only the FIRST problem.
Unless the Senate gets rid of the filibuster, it won’t matter who is in charge – nothing can get done by either party in the current political climate. At most the GOP can pass their monster tax cuts for billionaires – but those tax cuts will have to sunset.
For all the reasons Martin has outlined, they’re not going to be successful in passing tax reform based on reconciliation.
Not an infinite loop because in real life (as opposed to computer software) things change in unpredictable ways. Over time, we should see demographic shifts that put an end to the bullshit. But that of course presumes Republicans won’t find ways of compensating first. Thus, the potential for the end of democracy as we know it. Perhaps it’s already ended.
There’s no question the GOP will compensate. But, so far their only “compensation” has been to get more and more extreme and less and less willing to see any solution that involves Democrats actually having a voice in governing.
The only “solution” from that point of view is either a Trump-like election in which they eke out victory despite losing the vote, in the context of increasingly violent and disruptive vote suppression efforts, or else if they can no longer do that then some kind of military coup.
But, it’s difficult to see how they can do that long term and get away with it. Too many very rich important people will lose too much money if the country becomes destabilized and there’s bloody clashes in the streets or they have to declare martial law in numerous cities around the Country.
We know what that scenario looks like from the history of the Shah, as well as many other popular revolutions. But, in 1970s Iran, there would be a massive crackdown, followed by massive funeral processions that turned into spontaneous demonstrations, which were outlawed, so they ended up killing a bunch more people.
This tamped down dissent for a while, but even the Iranian Secret police, using violence difficult to imagine occurring here, couldn’t permanently suppress dissent.
Actually, what is vastly more likely, is that the 1% will not tolerate this kind of wheels coming off the wagon, because the uncertainty and chaos will cut economic growth and make their investments a lot more risky.
There is a reason Democracy is favoured by elites across the Western world. It is MUCH better to control dissent if people generally think they are free, and have a general tolerance for political conditions, even if they don’t like them.
That assumes they’re willing to trade short-term gain for long-term stability. It assumes they’re willing to go along with policies that tax or limit the emission of greenhouse gasses for instance. That they’re willing to accept higher taxes and the expense of regulations that benefit the many over the few.
If people were that wise, Rome would not have fallen. I hope you’re correct that self-interest is enough to stave off the worst excesses. We’ll see.
There’s no question that Democrats (or more properly urban liberals/progressives) face structural disadvantages going all the way back to the Constitution. The Constitution was a compromise meant to ensure that rural Southerners wouldn’t be disadvantaged by the already more populous North even then. Hence, the Electoral College, leaving voting rules for federal elections to the states, the 3/5ths rule for slaves, etc. The impacts of these compromises have become much more exaggerated with the Roberts Court. Citizens United and gutting the VRA have been critical impacts. The formation of ALEC with its model voter suppression laws, and the funding of the Tea Party and a wide range of public and social media by GOP oligarchs have all been disastrous to Democrats and liberals generally.
But it cannot be an “infinite loop” because even politics suffers from entropy, which, as we know is the increasing degree of disorder or randomness in an energy system that makes it increasingly difficult to accomplish anything. The nonsense debt is another way of talking about political entropy. We are seeing this in the inability of the GOP Caucus to get anything significant done. Too much disorder and conflicts between reality and ideology. I am optimistic that the GOP, in its current form will go the way of the Whigs. But, I think this is going to take a long time. Trump is symptomatic of the nonsense debt but is much too inept to be anything other than a noise machine. The other problem the GOP has, in addition to entropy is the one Booman mentions: a platform built entirely on a negative future for anyone except the extremely wealthy in this country. The fact that they have lasted this long is a testament to the gross ignorance of the average American and the efficacy of rightwing media but I don’t see this as a permanent feature of the political landscape.
One big train wreck. Challenge of US is not to let the destruction of the GOP take the whole nation with it.
Murder-suicide is the GOP ethos. I would not put it past that party’s leaders/base to attempt it if they feel truly cornered.
There is no way this is an Infinite Loop. Nothing in history, or politics, or science, or business, or any other field of human endeavor continues in a recurrent fashion indefinitely.This absolutely will break. The only question is when.
Rather than use “base” and “establishment”, it may make more sense just to talk about the different pieces of the coalition, and I would say that Trump has been unbelievably effective at wedging the GOP grassroots from the moneyed, pro-business base — because he is a spectacular narcissist who doesn’t give half a damn about the party. And now that he’s done that, I don’t think the resulting omelet can ever be reconstituted into its component eggs.
I think that Trump is likely the nadir: he’s going to leave behind a smoking crater where the GOP used to be. I feel the way Marshall does: that both 2018 and 2020 are going to very poorly for the GOP, and they will be crushed as a result.
But then I have no idea what happens after 2020. As you have often mentioned yourself, Martin, the Democrats have really failed to convince a substantial swath of the population that the party has something to offer them. So, in my crystal ball, I foresee a huge hunk of voters who are truly alienated from both parties — one for (in their view) offering nothing they want, and the other for failing to accomplish anything.
This is liable to lead to a very volatile situation in which there will be a huge political vacuum in the country until somebody steps forward to effectively fill the space. At that point the Reagan Regime of politics will officially be over, but I don’t know that anybody can predict what will replace it. But someone and some movement will, and our “cycle” will be broken and replaced with something entirely new.
We live in very interesting times.
I am not a Democrat. I am an anti-Republican. At and for the moment, the Democratic Party is the only viable alternative to the Republican Party. You seem to think that that might soon or easily change. Nothing about today’s environment reduces the familiar structural obstacles to building a new party. You must bear in mind that it is not possible to talk about the party organizations as distinct from their constituencies.
I would be open-minded to any viable alternative to the Republican Party, but that open-mindedness is a hypothetical luxury.
We do not live in interesting times, but rather in totally predictable ones.
It’s infinite as far as “infinite” means “a really long time, far longer than should be allowed, and possibly so long that the country gets destroyed as a result.”
So, Republican voters make demands that are not only impossible to fulfill, but are not based in any kind of reality. The elected play up these impossible demands to get elected and stave off primary challenges, but then when they have to govern, all Republicans see is validating “Democrat” laws. So they successfully primary or scare off incumbents into not running again, and the cycle repeats. Meanwhile this extremist cycle observed here nationally repeats at the state level, where they are more successful and are then allowed to rewrite election rules to keep themselves in power.
The cycle temporarily breaks because Republicans destroy so much shit that their voters are temporarily demoralized or 10% mushy people switch sides. Then Democrats fix some things, but underneath the cycle is still happening.
I don’t know where it ends, but it’s not impossible to see a form of effective apartheid of 30-35% ruling over everyone else. Which is amazing to think about because when my political consciousness first came to being in college, I thought Republicans would be doomed to minority status because they insisted on following the Sarah Palin’s and a majority would surely see how absurd that is. Silly me.
Damn, this exact idea has been in the back of my mind all day, since I saw a blog comment somewhere that triggered it. With the gerrymandering, voter suppression, immigration crackdowns and deportations, and the looming, and almost complete, consolidation of state legislatures by the GOP, I could see this being where our national equilibrium eventually finds itself. This condition seems more likely to me than most all of the other scenarios that I see bandied about. It would not take much more for us to reach this point. The mentality, and the implicit support for something like this as an acceptable way of governing, is already there among most of that 30-35% in this country.
Unlike South Africa, it wouldn’t be solely a racial apartheid, but that would certainly be a significant part of it. The remainder would be all who are politically aligned or sympathetic to those deemed to not have the proper cultural characteristics and loyalties.
More likely a religious apartheid.
The nonsense debt won’t be repaid because it can’t. Because it can’t the loop will continue. But there will be points where the fact that it can’t will cause a blow up. But it won’t change the long-term trajectory.
I say this because whites really ARE losing power, it really IS a zero sum game even if the whole is moving in the direction of “more equal for all.” With Fox News or One America I guess in the age of Trump, they’ll just keep on pushing the crazy and throwing up more crazy.
Not. They do not know how to govern. Lates example is Texas. Houston requested money from the TX rainy day fund, which is 10 billion dollars, and was turned down.
Barack Obama was elected and re-elected.
Democrats held a Congressional majority as recently as 2014.
Etc., etc.
Yes, the Russian interference and the gerrymands and the voter suppression and the rotten media are all placing fingers on the scale against us. But I’ll be damned if I decide, against evidence, that our situation is hopeless. It’s not. It’s just difficult and extremely unpleasant.
Those are good points but there are places in this country – the south and the upper Midwest – where nothing seems to change for a very long time. Call it racism if you like but we have been playing this game for an awful long time and can’t seem to break through. And now, if you want to worry, four states in the Midwest pulled the lever for Trump.
It is incredible to me that the issue of health care, whether you want single payer or Obamacare, seems not to stick anywhere. What is the message we keep losing here?
How is it the republican message gets through against all evidence repeatedly. The evil doers are not the Nazis and white supremacists, it is antifa and BLM to name just one.
Religion, talk radio, and Fox News. Couple all that with the social media echo chamber, and there you go.
Are we in a fairly closed system where structural advantages keep us locked in a state in which the Republicans can defy every normal law of political accountability, or are we watching an actual come-to-Jesus reckoning on all the past excesses and sins of the conservative movement?
I disagree. Gerrymandering is a cop-out. That excuses PA-06, among others. It also excuses Democrats from things like the Florida Senate race.
Marshall is right on both points, and that debt has long since been past due in the eyes of right wing voters. In 2010, they called in that debt, and it resulted in the Tea Party caucus, which although it threw a wrench into the GOP establishment works, thanks to the way the system is structured — electoral college, dem voter concentrations and gerrymandering, they were able to remain in power while the price they paid was an entrenchment of the situation that prevented the possibility of governing even if they wanted to (which they don’t) but only when they may need to, like recently when it came to passing some semblance of a health care plan.
To answer the question, yes we are realizing the effects of a closed system, and the advent of Trump is our come to Jesus moment, this time. Who knows what’s coming next? Given that Roy Moore will likely become a senator, and other far right nut cases will likely follow suit, turning the traditionally more deliberative upper chamber into a version of the House, that loop will continue with more come to Jesuses, each one being worse or uniquely bad then the previous.
That loop of GOP okey-dokeying the hell out of the base with promises based on lies they can’t possibly keep to rile them up to get their votes will one day be broken by right wing voters waking up one day and realizing that they’ve been left without a pot to piss in, and that racism, while it may make them feel good, doesn’t pay the bills or save their lives through provision of health care when they get sick. Or the democrats will become an effective political party and figure out a way to speak to the majority of voters, including those on the right, that prefer democratic solutions except when the messages communicating those solutions are hijacked by the right thanks to continuing political ineptitude on the part of the democrats. But I don’t see the positives in either scenario happening in 2020, since the dems will likely remain politically beholden and inept for some time.
An updated version of the Rove’s GOP majority for a generation and the subsequent Democratic majority for a two generations?
If the GOP weren’t ever so much better at being the opposition party, regardless if they are the majority or minority, than Democrats, it would be more obvious that institutionally both parties cracked up some time ago.
GWB was the first GOP president since Coolidge to hold onto GOP majorities in the House and Senate through two election cycles (and would have been three if Sen Jeffords hadn’t bolted). Jimmy Carter was the last Democratic POTUS to do so (and the Democrats retained the House majority in the 1980 election).
From the time GWB and the GOP controlled congress until they began losing it was only two years (’03-’05). And that was with the “he kept us safe” hocus-pocus and DC Democrats falling all over themselves to accommodate GWB’s nutso policy requests for the better part of his first term. As a sitting POTUS, his ’04 re-election win was weak at 50.7% without a significant third party challenge.
While I can see the various electoral playbooks that the GOP has used ’94-’00 and ’09-’16 (in the latter instance without a viable, party elite consensus nominee), Democrats appear to keep using the Clintons’ Washington General’s playbook — dribble when they should pass, pass when they should shoot, etc. When the GOP loses, they get to work on getting even by any and all means possible. When Democrats lose, they either fold up their tent or whine, whine, whine. The past almost eleven months has been the worse ever as far as squandering valuable political time and space. If $100,000 in Putin-Russia FB ads and a clown defeated a billion dollar campaign, it is more evidence that HRC’s and the DP’s campaign was the worst ever.
GOP elites don’t much like their teabagger associates but if it gives them a win, they’ll take it. Dem elites loathe their informed and rational leftie associates and appear to prefer losing than winning with them. Schumer does kind of get it that Clinton out there trashing Sanders and Putin-Russia hysteria isn’t helpful but otherwise he’s not deviating from whatever it is that Democratic pols think they’re doing, not even getting out of the way and letting Trump and the GOP self-implode. Pelosi prefers to believe that Democrats will simply magically win big in ’18 because of something.
You write:
I must admit that it is almost incomprehensible to me that anyone with even half a mind would not by now realize that “…both parties cracked up some time ago.” And…”some time ago” as far as I am concerned goes back to the assassination years, when the deepest forces of our Permanent Government initiated a coup by killing the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X and then several years later continued that coup…continued their increasingly unchallenged control of the government…by getting rid of Richard Nixon.
The last year or two? The institutional crackup of both parties became plain with the presidential election. Neither party could put up a viable candidate, so someone who is hostile to both parties ascended to the presidency.
All of this tiresome blather about Democrats vs. Republicans is the real false news.
Meanwhile, Trump rules by Twitter decree.
Enjoy.
We earned it.
Democrats and Republicans both.
Later…
AG
P.S. Nothing is infinite except infinity. This empire shall also end. And not well. Bet on it. They never do.
AG
Rule by Twitter decree:
Like dat.
AG
No, Josh has it right. They built up, over time, to the moment when the debt was repaid — and that’s the infinite loop.
It’s like Copernican physics: you keep firing the missile at a greater and greater diagonal velocity until eventually it’s falling at the same speed (relative to its forward motion) as the curvature of the earth. Then the projectile’s in a stable orbit and will continue forever, or until it’s knocked down by drag from the outer atmosphere or a collision.
Once the Republican base had decided that it would only vote for candidates who supported impossible or unviable positions that would never become legislation, the perpetal motion machine was running — they get into office, try to do what they said they’d do (or, pretend to do this while desperately passing the buck/cutting deals) until they’re found out and then they’re voted out and replaced by newer crazies who haven’t failed yet. Then they fail and it starts over.
It’s a perfectly workable model. The metaphors don’t conflict.
Not a loop. But this isn’t going to end well. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. Not to mention the pain currently being inflicted by Price, Sessions, ICE, DeVoss and the courts.
You all need to consider the role of war in resolving domestic political issues. And the role of the GOP as part of a broader global coalition of right-wing fascists.
It’s always a bummer to mention it, but I don’t think this ends before we see a conflagration ending millions of lives.
Again.
Politics is one of those things that is often about fairly small things — incrementally adjusting the balance between the haves and the have-nots, refereeing disputes amongst the haves — until it’s life and death. That’s the ‘come to Jesus’ moment that history suggests is almost surely headed our way.
I wish like hell I didn’t agree with you.
Thank you SO much for your downratings, nalbar!!!
A downrating from you and/or your alter(
ed) ego marduk is continued encouragement that I am definitely on the right track.You are proof positive that even parasites have a legitimate function.
Thanks again, and…
Have a nice day.
You’re gonna need one eventually.
Bet on it.
AG