"The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!"
Trump Tweet, March, 16, 2020
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| Eugene V. Debs |
He wants the US to take an equity position in the airline and hotel companies we help.
Trump is the socialist now, and proud of it.
Classic socialism: the government owns the means of production, things like airlines and hotels and airplane manufacturers.
The virus crisis reverses the planned attack on Joe Biden. The old attack: Joe Biden was a socialist, really not that different from Bernie Sanders or AOC. And Joe Biden was going to be tagged as the big spender, wasting your tax money, throwing it into the economy with no thought of the future. We were already hearing it: we cannot afford Joe Biden.
Forget that.
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| Democratic hype. Risk is low. |
Everything changed about a week ago. Trump realized that his messaging on the coronavirus was not just wrong but spectacularly wrong. He had been dismissive of the virus, saying risks were low, that the media and Democrats were playing it up to bring him down.
On February 24 he tweeted "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA" and moreover the "Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"
Bad market call. The stock market crashed. Investors are raising cash, expecting a recession. Governors were closing schools, restaurants, bars. Assemblies are cancelled. Sporting events cancelled. The country is shutting down. The governors were taking action while he appeared to be sitting back in denial, minimizing, talking up the economy while it crashed. The story circulating was simple: we have a problem and Trump doesn't get it. The Fed gets it. Investors get it. The worried Democrats get it. But Trump and Republicans in their news silos do not.
Trump reversed course, as did Fox, and then Republican officeholders. Trump now talks about spending a trillion dollars. Maybe $1,000 for everybody, or $2,000. Bailouts for hotels and restaurants. Extend the April 15 tax deadline. Free virus tests. Free sick leave. Easy credit. Trump is working to over-write the old image of the virus-denier. The solution is Big Government, and now he is Mr. Big Spender, open to big change in our health care system.
This changes the campaign. Instead of "Socialist Joe," the out of touch big spender in contrast with Prudent Trump, the Trump story will go back to "Sleepy Joe," the guy too addled and incompetent to be a strong, decisive socialist.
Trump is the high drama Big Government candidate now, another FDR willing to think big and bold, and to borrow money with abandon, to attack the problem. Low drama Joe, in contrast, will be positioned as the Mr. Stand Pat while the country is faltering. Trump won't call himself a "socialist" but he will be the candidate open to bold solutions, with attacks on "bureaucrats" as contrasted with "problem solvers," open to socialist solutions. When he is criticized by Rand Paul and a few others, all the better for him. It will suggest he is actually a courageous moderate, getting flack for fighting for the working man.
Will it work? It might. Trump can sell. He generally exudes confidence he is persuasive to people inclined to trust him. Trump has no memory or sense of hypocrisy. Nor does Fox. I predict his supporters will accept the new story: he was on top of this all the time.
The virus has not brought out his best game. Normally he insists on being the center of action ("I alone can fix it.) but with the virus he has passed the buck to nameless others who dismantled the pandemic team, to Governors to locate masks ("The federal government is not a shipping clerk."), and handed the microphone to VP Pence to explain why the administration was ill prepared.
His old tweets and public comments will feed Democratic attacks. I expect them to criticize Trump for not being socialist enough, soon enough. The campaign will come down to who is the more persuasive FDR.
The era of Big Government is back.
Trump reversed course, as did Fox, and then Republican officeholders. Trump now talks about spending a trillion dollars. Maybe $1,000 for everybody, or $2,000. Bailouts for hotels and restaurants. Extend the April 15 tax deadline. Free virus tests. Free sick leave. Easy credit. Trump is working to over-write the old image of the virus-denier. The solution is Big Government, and now he is Mr. Big Spender, open to big change in our health care system.
This changes the campaign. Instead of "Socialist Joe," the out of touch big spender in contrast with Prudent Trump, the Trump story will go back to "Sleepy Joe," the guy too addled and incompetent to be a strong, decisive socialist.
Trump is the high drama Big Government candidate now, another FDR willing to think big and bold, and to borrow money with abandon, to attack the problem. Low drama Joe, in contrast, will be positioned as the Mr. Stand Pat while the country is faltering. Trump won't call himself a "socialist" but he will be the candidate open to bold solutions, with attacks on "bureaucrats" as contrasted with "problem solvers," open to socialist solutions. When he is criticized by Rand Paul and a few others, all the better for him. It will suggest he is actually a courageous moderate, getting flack for fighting for the working man.
Will it work? It might. Trump can sell. He generally exudes confidence he is persuasive to people inclined to trust him. Trump has no memory or sense of hypocrisy. Nor does Fox. I predict his supporters will accept the new story: he was on top of this all the time.
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| Click: Trump has a record. |
His old tweets and public comments will feed Democratic attacks. I expect them to criticize Trump for not being socialist enough, soon enough. The campaign will come down to who is the more persuasive FDR.
The era of Big Government is back.
6 comments:
I can't say anything for sure about this, but it's an interesting thought experiment to consider what a Democratic administration would have looked like at this point. At least Democrats should be asking themselves this question.
Would a Clinton administration have been prepared for the virus?
Would the markets have bubbled had Democrats won? Certainly the a tax giveaway to the wealthy wouldn't have happened, right?
The primary role of government is to promote the well-being of citizens, all of them. Regressive political values are perfectly expressed by Trump's answer to the question of why wealthy athletes are getting tested ahead of others: "That's life".
The "life's not fair" trope is a convenient refuge for those who would justify all manner of hardship and suffering of others, as long as they are comfortable and safe. But what happens when a threat breaks through the bubble? Suddenly, socialism looks pretty good. How else can this be attacked? Unless the society changes its priorities it is vulnerable to an indiscriminate danger.
We can assign blame to Regressives for not being prepared, but those Progressives who have continually compromised their values are certainly complicit, and that's most of us.
At the most simplistic, a national health system could have been better prepared for a pandemic. The for-profit health industry is proving to be inadequate, which is no surprise considering that health care is not it's primary function.
As pointed out by Rob Urie in "The Virus and Capitalism," "four decades of neoliberlism have instantiated the ethos that the role of government is to make rich people richer." The system is set up to save the wealth of the rich with bailouts, make sure corporations can profit from the pandemic and manage human casualties at a "politically acceptable pace." When the latter doesn't happen, our country gets exposed for the fascist oligarchy it is. This bailout, unlike the Wall Street bailout of 2008-9 is not the result of financial malfeasance; it is the result of a social, a health, problem. Neoliberalism's reliance on "natural" laizzes faire free markets failure to address this crisis pulls the curtain from its facade.
The raw Darwinian aspects of neoliberal ideology stands exposed by Senate Intelligent Committee members, who had inside information on the pandemic; Republican Senator Richard Burr, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Republican Senators Jim Inhofe and Kelly Loeffler sold their stocks in February prior to the public being informed.
It is ironic that the ideology called to replace the failed neoliberalism of the last 40 years is championed by the Democratic candidate unlikely to get the nomination and, as a result, likely handing the election to Donald Trump.
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