Some Democrats--and some liberal media--consider Trump to be unsuccessful.
They are looking at the wrong thing. Trump is winning, big time.
Donald Trump has re-made the conventional thinking of the bipartisan leadership in America. He voiced--and found acceptance-- of revolt against the globalist, internationalist free-trade bipartisan consensus that has been in effect for decades. Bernie Sanders voiced anti-globalist progressivism; Trump voiced anti-globalist nationalism. There was public appetite for both. There appears to be a majority for that position, scattered across the two major parties. There is something about the current system that isn't working for a lot of people. Sanders and Trump spoke to that feeling. Trump won his primary, and therefore the election.
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| Headline in RedState.com, a Republican website |
But now there is an idea floating around that Trump is a miserable failure as president, circulated around water coolers and in both liberal and conservative media. He has estranged his own Congressional party. People seemed shocked. They should not be, given that his campaign was a reversal of their policies, but the result is there is no GOP majority consensus within the congressional GOP caucus, so he has signed no significant legislation. The idea is floating around is that his White House is riven with dissent from within, evidenced by the leaking and the departures.
Some people feel relieved; he is weak after all, and ineffective. Trump won't be that bad. He is a failure.
Some people feel relieved; he is weak after all, and ineffective. Trump won't be that bad. He is a failure.
That is a mistake. The big story is not division, incompetence, and failure. It is that Trump has already made substantial real-world changes in American policy.
A good list of those accomplishments has been presented by another college classmate, Katha Pollitt, who regularly writes for The Nation magazine. She prepared this list as part of the back and forth conversation between the Bernie-left and the Hillary-center left that this blog described previously. It is part of the ongoing effort by people who consider themselves both pragmatic and Democrats to tell the Bernie-left that the failure of progressives to unite behind Hillary had great practical consequences.
Republicans united behind Trump but Democrats did not unite behind Hillary. There were big, big consequences, unpleasant ones for progressives. The election mattered a lot, she wrote. I am quoting extensively from her letter to the college class email forum, doing some light editing of typos and abbreviations. I am preserving her language and tone.
This blog has made the argument that it backfires to remind members of the progressive left that they should vote strategically, for the more progressive electable candidate. The left already had the lesson of Ralph Nader, then this 2016 election, yet a great many remain unmoved. There is a lesson there. If the outcome of those two elections does not make the point then there must be something deeper going on.
A segment of the left insists on a clear break with the establishment consensus. They don't consider Al Gore and Hillary Clinton team-mates. They consider them members of another tribe. They don't want incremental reform brought through people who work with the established institutions and power centers because they consider this a sucker play by the elites to maintain control. The Gores and Clintons aren't making reform; they are making token adjustments to keep the system in place. The only meaningful difference is for a candidate who opposes the elites, not one who works with them. On the left they think that Trump talked it but did not really mean it; Bernie Sanders talked it and meant it.
A segment of the left insists on a clear break with the establishment consensus. They don't consider Al Gore and Hillary Clinton team-mates. They consider them members of another tribe. They don't want incremental reform brought through people who work with the established institutions and power centers because they consider this a sucker play by the elites to maintain control. The Gores and Clintons aren't making reform; they are making token adjustments to keep the system in place. The only meaningful difference is for a candidate who opposes the elites, not one who works with them. On the left they think that Trump talked it but did not really mean it; Bernie Sanders talked it and meant it.
The progressive left remains resistant to arguments like the one Pollitt lays out. This frustrates progressives who consider themselves practical and strategic, and because, to them, the arguments below are well stated, persuasive, and dispositive. Hillary would have been better than Trump, simple as that.
Or, maybe, I am overthinking this. Maybe the problem is that Hillary is a woman and a lot of men--and women-- just cannot see a woman as president. Or maybe it was just something about Hillary's laugh. Maybe the problem is that Hillary just wasn't that appealing for some reason. I watched her speak. I watched the crowds. They liked her but didn't love her.
Or, maybe, I am overthinking this. Maybe the problem is that Hillary is a woman and a lot of men--and women-- just cannot see a woman as president. Or maybe it was just something about Hillary's laugh. Maybe the problem is that Hillary just wasn't that appealing for some reason. I watched her speak. I watched the crowds. They liked her but didn't love her.
The price of Trump's victory, by Katha Pollitt
Achievements by Donald Trump, so far:
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| Katha Pollitt |
1. Appointment of Neal Gorsuch and that crucial next appointment to the Supreme Court (three years is a long time for Ginsberg and swing-vote kennedy, both elderly, to hang on).
3. Voters are being bounced from the rolls, mostly people of color, disproportionately Democrats. The Kobach Commission will accelerate this. In many states it is becoming harder to vote, even if you are register.
4. Cabinet-level departments and federal agencies have been staffed by people who know nothing about the field (Ben Carson at HUD) and who are actively opposed to the agency's mission: Betsy DeVos at Education, Rick Perry at Energy, etc.
5. Women's rights are being rolled back -- I'm surprised some of my classmates are not more disturbed by this. Under Tom Price, Health and Human Services is all anti-choice and anti-contraception now. Big jobs have gone to anti-abortion ideologies who think IUDs cause abortion and birth control causes infertility: Charlene Yoest, Teresa Manning and others.
Trump is greatly expanding the ability of employers to refuse to include birth control in health insurance -- now any vague "moral objection" from a secular employer will be good enough.
Abstinence-only sex ed is back. 200+ million dollars in teen pregnancy promotion grants have been cancelled.
Obama rules protecting and advancing women's rights on the job have been rescinded: for example, companies have to record gender and racial disparities in pay and promotion.
6. Racism and sexism have both gotten a big boost in society at large. Also anti-semitism. Neo-nazis and white supremacists have been emboldened by a president who sympathizes with them and has put them in office. Seriously, do you think Hillary would have put Gorka, Bannon and Miller on his staff?
7. Jeff Sessions is Attorney General. He's very concerned about the civil rights of white men and nobody else.
8. Tremendous ratcheting up of deportations of non-citizens, including people who have been here for decades. DACA may be rescinded, laying stage for sending back to their countries of origin young people who were brought here so young they don't even remember their "home" countries.
9. We have a climate change denier in the White house, who left the Paris agreement and is systematically destroying the scientific community's ability to monitor global warming.
10. The Environmental Protection Agency is being gutted. Trump wants to allow drilling in national parks and to sell off park land. He also wants to cancel Obama's new protected wildernesses.
11. The religious right has a big friend in the white house.
12. Tax cuts are coming that will benefit the super rich and rich and will starve the govt of money.
13. Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio. Trump has told police officers it's okay to rough up suspects. He has re-started selling off military equipment to police depts, although it's been established that that increases police violence.
14. Trump has lifted nepotism to new heights. Jared Kushner is now in charge of middle-east peace negotiations, for god sake.
15. Trump has refused to disentangle his business interests from his political office. He is making money off the White house -- millions in fact, through his hotel, through having the Secret Service rent office space in Trump tower and much more.
16. Russiagate. Whatever that turns out to involve, it does seem likely that there's something fishy there.
And it's only been seven months!
3 comments:
Great companion to the earlier backlash post.
Every item on the list is meeting with growing opposition, and while it will likely take years to undo, most of this will be corrected. Even the Supreme Court will eventually bow to the pace of change we are experiencing, as these policies will be seen for what they are: an attempt to return to a paternalistic caucasian male hegemony.
A fundamental argument drives this movement, utterly false: America's founders intended a white Christian society ad infinitum. Religion and race are at the forefront of the current turmoil, fueled by ignorance and bigotry. Every issue can be boiled down to the divide on these two issues. The founders were far more concerned with power in the absolute sense and property rights. They strained to look forward to envision a future society that maintained the rights and freedoms they were establishing, knowing perhaps intuitively that their "perfect union" was an ideal that would be hard to maintain. Concerned with corruption, they did their best to devise a system that would keep it at bay. It is being tested as never before.
There is a sad pathos in the Democratic narrative that Trump is a failure, and that we will then be returned to power by selling that narrative with angry invective. Peter and Ms. Pollit and others are warning us against our self-delusion.
Haughty Democrats lost the White House, lost both chambers of Congress, lost the Supreme Court and lost about 60% of state governments. We have been in continuous decline since 2010, the only win being Obama's 2012 reelection so he could serve four lame duck years accomplishing virtually nothing other than issuing executive orders and a climate change accord, all dust now. Our party of loss is going to get returned to power by default because of Trump not scoring early legislative wins? A solid bipartisan super majority of Americans loathe our party, have no trust that we have any workable agenda, a disjointed confederacy of narcissistic identity groups demanding respect, cheering antifa violence, ridiculing not just the GOP as "racists" and "white supremecists", but each other over failed purity tests.
So proufoundly feckless and self absorbed is our party that we could not even defeat a reality show hoaxer. The first lady of our party who was a senator and Secretary of State, armed with unlimited cash and two party icon former presidents tirelessly campaigning for her, could not beat a simple sloganeer chanting Make America Great Again.
And here we are, calling him a failure? Three consecutive special election defeats later, there's still plenty more losing for us to claim with our unabated name calling, identity politics and open border hysteria.
We're living the fourth decade of Ronald Reagan's legacy. My son will be living Trump's 30 years from now if we can't revolutionize ourselves with some humane variant of making America great.
Trump is winning in reversing most if not all of the social programs Obama set in motion. I have a longer range view of the reasoning behind Trump's appeal. The Democrats, when they had the majority couldn't get anything done. They controlled both the house and the Senate when Obama was elected. Their failure to advance their programs and institute their laws is the major reason many people I spoke with wanted Change. They figured the Republicans would actually do something.. I don't think the MSNBC or FOXNews helped at all in explaining the problems. It appears to me that all they wanted to do was focus of the election horseraces, period. So after the election, instead of talking about what Obama wanted to accomplish they talked about how the Republicans would run against him. There was a constant snipping at and among the Democrats who wouldn't lineup with the will of the voters. There is where it all came apart.
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