Idiocracy
- Thread starter Highlander
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OldTimeHockey
Active member
Bender said:
It was "loonie dress down day" afterall.
Kin
Active member
You know someone today called the Republican Party "the party of the Boss' Son" and it really is funny just how accurate that is. For all the claims of being about self-reliance and individual accomplishment every single GOP Presidential nominee for the last 20 years has been someone born to wealth and privilege with fairly modest accomplishments of their own.
And yet even within that contradiction, there's the further contradiction that for the people who claim to think that "Government should be run like a business" and that business success is a good indicator of personal merit, they went far crazier for people like Trump than they did for Romney.
And yet even within that contradiction, there's the further contradiction that for the people who claim to think that "Government should be run like a business" and that business success is a good indicator of personal merit, they went far crazier for people like Trump than they did for Romney.
They were happier with the image of personal success rather than actual personal success.Nik said:
Anyway I think the writings on the wall for American democracy. I don't think it can survive having such a popular party being a disingenuous actor preying on the worst elements of human shortcomings to maintain power than maintain institutions. As long as there aren't disinterested third party review of elections and conduct they're kind of screwed.
mr grieves
New member
Nik said:
Yep. The claims were always kinda bs weren?t they? Seems to me the US is just sticking to what?s worked for a long time now. Modern Republicans are the party of the equivalent of the modern US?s landed gentry (inheritors of wealth whose ?business success,? at its most impressive, is Bain capital?s bust out scheme), and the Democrats are the party of the modern US?s equivalent northeastern mercantile and banking class (the meritocrats and professionals). Those of us in neither class are voting for the sicko pleasure of having pain inflicted on people not like us or the protection from those who?d inflict more pain on us. Truly a diseased country.
Kin
Active member
mr grieves said:
I suppose so. I still think the majority of the banking class are Republicans and there have been some Republican politicians who were genuinely successful businessmen(Bloomberg, for instance) but that stuff just can't beat the culture war stuff that the conmen will never stop selling and when it gets down to brass tacks, racial resentment and fundamentalist religion will win out over the pocketbook.
I mean, if you brass tacks it you have one party engaging in extreme voter suppression, who will not put country over party and one that by and large isn't doing that. The analogy is nice but but there is a massive false equivalence in your description. I have no doubt that if the GOP lost another closely contested presidential election that they'd fight tooth and nail not to certify it, and who knows what could happen if they control both the House and Senate.mr grieves said:
mr grieves
New member
Nik said:
My point was more about the interests served by the two parties, not where they go for their popular support -- but agreed re where the bankers and advantages the culture warriors enjoy in the GOP. I do think, however, that we should take on board that the successful businessman stuff never really beats the culture war stuff, and the two sides haven't always been opposed. The economic agenda of the Bloombergs and Romneys doesn't hold much appeal in a democracy, as the whole business plan there is to move little bits of money from many people, whether in public services or pensions or wages, to relatively few rich people, whether as tax cuts or management fees or whatever. The political math there is subtraction. It only wins popular approval as long as people believe wealth will trickle down. When people don't -- and, after the last 15 years, I don't think they do -- then the culture war stuff is the only thing Republicans have that offers any sort of popular appeal.
Bender said:
I have no doubt of that either. If they take even just the House, and states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania remain as gerrymandered at the state level as they now are, I think we'll be picking Presidents like they did back in 1824. But just because the GOP is trying to make things infinitely worse doesn't mean it's a democracy that we're at risk of losing. When things with 70-80% support have almost no chance of being enacted by a political system, I don't know how anyone can say that's a democracy. That observation isn't drawing an equivalency between the parties; it's just describing the political system that this country's got.
Kin
Active member
mr grieves said:
I'm not sure that particularly washes when the economic agenda of people like Trump isn't substantially different from someone like Romney, he just brings a louder version of the culture war as well. If people, and by people we mean Republican voters, really had a problem with the economic agenda of someone like Romney, they would have been upset by the tax cuts Trump passed that were no different from any textbook supply side Republican of yore.
But rather than ding up Trump's popularity, that same economic agenda was one of the few areas where the few Republicans who did object to his leadership of the party effectively praised him for governing like a traditional Republican. So the idea that the mercantile/banking classes are better served by Democrats than Republicans doesn't add up and isn't reflected in how those people donate money. It's more like the financial sector knows that with the Republicans they'll get what they want and with the Democrats they'll get 95% of what they want.
mr grieves
New member
Nik said:
There must've been some misunderstanding along the way. And perhaps my analogy wasn't helpful... Today's version of the Hamiltons, as a political constituency, aren't literal bankers or merchants: they're the self-made, educated, innovating professional classes. The 21C finance sector sensibly spreads its money around pretty equally.
Other clarification: I certainly don't think Trump's economic agenda is substantially different from Romney's as far as it pertains to the wealthy... The difference, as you say, is in the messaging: with Trump, there's no pretense of convincing people that the Republican economic plan is in the public good; it's all the cultural war stuff, turned up to 11, and flatly lying about the economic agenda. And that'll get you from a Romney level of support (the typical GOP voters; can't win) to a Trump level (typical GOP voters with its wealthier suburbanites swapped out for new rural and exurban whites; can win). For the party, Trumpism gives them their best odds to get into enough positions of power to enact -- well, at this point fortify -- that standard GOP agenda.
I think for a lot of non-college white voters that 100%-to-95% spread is a factor in the realignment of US politics that we've seen over the last few decades. The 5%-less-in-favor-of-the-wealthy that the Democrats' policies are has effectively isn't worth it when the Republicans are offering considerably more than 5% difference on the cultural stuff. It's a pretty sensible calculation on their part.
Kin
Active member
mr grieves said:
That still strikes me as an oversimplification. I still think Trump tried to sell supply-side economics as broadly in the best interests of working people even while mixing in some very, very light economic populism. Obviously that comes with a ton of culture war stuff(although Trump isn't particularly unique in that, the 2004 campaign was basically the Republicans casting the Democrats as the party of Gay Marriage) but I still think the messaging is largely the same.
I know we like to think of that white, no-college Trump voter as Cletus the Yokel but the truth is it's just as likely to be a guy who opened up a HVAC business and opposes minimum wage increases for his 8 employees.
mr grieves
New member
Nik said:
I mean, instead of trying to justify his administration's major economic policy, he did flatly lie and claim it was a massive tax cut for the middle and working classes, which at least suggests he knows it's not the strongest argument to make in favor of his platform. The light economic populism was the old time tariff religion, and how that factors into supply-side orthodoxy I don't know (we were all free traders when Reaganism took over, weren't we?).
Nik said:
Indeed. I've been beating that drum for a while now. Of course the modern Republican had to nominate Trump. He took what they'd been doing for a good long time, accurately identifying what really juiced the base (was not "fiscal responsibility," turns out!), cranked it up, and added celebrity.
Nik said:
I don't think that way.
That HVAC guy's in the 40% of non-college whites who've been regularly voting for Republicans for a few decades now, right along with the Cletuses. The guys with the HVAC companies, car and skidoo dealerships, and trailer parks are modern US's planter class -- our era's the landed gentry, its rural elite. In addition to that reliable base, they've lately a bunch of blue collar, salt of the earth types. The GOP has got a pretty high floor with the folks! But it's a big, diverse demo -- biggest in US politics -- and 30-40% of them are reliable Democrats.
On the whole, I think the majority of non-college whites who vote Republican, and especially those from that 20-30% that bounces about from election to election, are there because of the cultural factors. The committed 40% who don't have a material interest in a low minimum wage are probably with the GOP because they think of themselves as Christians or Patriots or Rednecks or Gun Owners or (a certain type of) White, and very rarely as anything that that's reflected by the Democrats or benefitted by their policies. And winning share of that swingy 20-30% can move to the GOP when an election is polarized around culture (as in 2016), not so much when it's polarized around economics.
Kin
Active member
mr grieves said:
Again, that strikes me as being pretty common Republican rhetoric when it comes to selling tax cuts.
mr grieves said:
You've lost me a bit with your various percentages and groups but I think you may be underestimating the extent to which the broadly common GOP economic message is a cultural factor as much as it is an actual alignment of economic interests.
mr grieves
New member
Nik said:
The percentages are from some AFL-CIO research, via Thomas Edsall. Link:
And, yes, like everything, economic interests are also cultural and the right-wing does convince some people of its vision of the good world. But the issue here is the margin of victory, and there are very few post-Depression elections that were resolved that way. The pattern, especially recently, seems to be the winning share of this group votes for the GOP when it's a culture war, and they vote for the Democrats either when Republican governance leads to disaster or when things polarize around economics and the GOP is cast as the party of economic elites.
mr grieves
New member
Nik said:
Heroic Shrimp
Active member
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1420847061365403658
Entertaining to read.
Entertaining to read.