There's more to be said about Trump's rise being seeded by more than just the Republican masquerade that was the southern strategy (wink, wink, nudge, nudge for you white voters who were really for small govt the whole time. Sigh. Really?)
Rightly, some blame must be laid at the feet of the Democrats' arms-length engagement with the working class and too too close embrace of "left-of-center" corporatists like Larry Summers and Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner without reading the danger signals. Market efficiencies do not lift all boats and the ham-handed repeal of Glass Steagall didn't help Democrats except in the most ironic of ways: voters blamed Bush and entrusted Obama to repair this Clinton administration-supported mistake.
In the end, Republicans never flocked to the Democrats' corporate-friendly efforts, and progressives--the growing wing of milennials who will be the generation to make less than its parents--will likely not feel any warmth towards the corporatist wing anytime soon (Buttigieg's tragic error, if you ask me).
If Trump did the Democrats one favor--although it's unclear if they'll actually get it--he did demonstrate that you can stomp even on the toes of the monied classes (make no mistake there is many a millionaire-billionaire who hate him), and the voter damage just ain't be all that bad. Citizens United could only change voter feeling only so much. At a certain point it's all diminishing returns. And the immediate collapse of the Schultz, Bloomberg, and Steyer campaigns further illustrate how far money can take you. (Gosh, who'd think one would be defending Citizens United? Of course, I'm not: I'm just pointing out how easy it would be, in fact, to undo it because millionaire-ish opposition would actually have little weight among voters.)
If Democrats would stop being scared of the monied classes, they'd realize they can make the changes they actually do need to lift all those boats. Clinton and Obama never really figured that out. Will Biden? Good question.
While I do think the NYT reporting will help to sway voters on the margin, and even those who support Trump for his 'excellent economy', the vast majority of his base is part of a cult. Cult members are cult members because they refuse to entertain contradictory facts. The world is ending on September 20th...well, the reason the world didn't end is XXX calculation, the new termination date is YYY, ad infinitum. The cult members might stop pointing to 'Trump, the brilliant billionaire businessman', but this central pillar of their cult will soon be replaced by another pillar. The alternative is to face the dire facts of an unrestrained pandemic, a broken democracy, a crumbling national infrastructure, and imminent climate catastrophe. When given a choice between false beliefs that require little effort and hard facts that require massive sacrifice and complex innovation, which do you think Trump supporters will choose?
There's more to be said about Trump's rise being seeded by more than just the Republican masquerade that was the southern strategy (wink, wink, nudge, nudge for you white voters who were really for small govt the whole time. Sigh. Really?)
Rightly, some blame must be laid at the feet of the Democrats' arms-length engagement with the working class and too too close embrace of "left-of-center" corporatists like Larry Summers and Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner without reading the danger signals. Market efficiencies do not lift all boats and the ham-handed repeal of Glass Steagall didn't help Democrats except in the most ironic of ways: voters blamed Bush and entrusted Obama to repair this Clinton administration-supported mistake.
In the end, Republicans never flocked to the Democrats' corporate-friendly efforts, and progressives--the growing wing of milennials who will be the generation to make less than its parents--will likely not feel any warmth towards the corporatist wing anytime soon (Buttigieg's tragic error, if you ask me).
If Trump did the Democrats one favor--although it's unclear if they'll actually get it--he did demonstrate that you can stomp even on the toes of the monied classes (make no mistake there is many a millionaire-billionaire who hate him), and the voter damage just ain't be all that bad. Citizens United could only change voter feeling only so much. At a certain point it's all diminishing returns. And the immediate collapse of the Schultz, Bloomberg, and Steyer campaigns further illustrate how far money can take you. (Gosh, who'd think one would be defending Citizens United? Of course, I'm not: I'm just pointing out how easy it would be, in fact, to undo it because millionaire-ish opposition would actually have little weight among voters.)
If Democrats would stop being scared of the monied classes, they'd realize they can make the changes they actually do need to lift all those boats. Clinton and Obama never really figured that out. Will Biden? Good question.
While I do think the NYT reporting will help to sway voters on the margin, and even those who support Trump for his 'excellent economy', the vast majority of his base is part of a cult. Cult members are cult members because they refuse to entertain contradictory facts. The world is ending on September 20th...well, the reason the world didn't end is XXX calculation, the new termination date is YYY, ad infinitum. The cult members might stop pointing to 'Trump, the brilliant billionaire businessman', but this central pillar of their cult will soon be replaced by another pillar. The alternative is to face the dire facts of an unrestrained pandemic, a broken democracy, a crumbling national infrastructure, and imminent climate catastrophe. When given a choice between false beliefs that require little effort and hard facts that require massive sacrifice and complex innovation, which do you think Trump supporters will choose?