Turning points

"We live during the hinge of history." 

          Derek Parfit, historian

Every election cycle we hear the message that "This is the most important election of our lifetimes." The present is path dependent. Where we go is shaped by where we are. Sometimes turning points are moments. Sometimes they take place over decades or centuries.

The speech by Mitch McConnell on the senate floor after the January 6 riot could have shaped history, but did not. He said:

Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President.

They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he'd lost an election.

Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

McConnell erased its impact by saying shortly afterward that he would support Trump's re-election if he got the GOP nomination. That was a signal. Better an insurrectionist than a Democrat. 

Kevin McCarthy's speech on the floor of the House saying Trump caused this shameful insurrection was another. He gave  permission to other Republican congresspeople to condemn Trump and the insurrection. A snowball might have formed. That direction was foreclosed with his trip to Mar-a-Lago to apologize.

Lindsay Graham saying he was all done with Trump in the moments after January 6 was an act of consequence. More consequential, though, was the moment in the airport following that statement when he was harangued by people chanting "traitor." It snapped Graham back onto a path of defending Trump no matter what. 

Click

Republican leaders had an opportunity to isolate Trump. January 6 was a hinge. They chose otherwise. So now the GOP has an establishment majority of Trump supporters who ignore Trump's criticism of the GOP.  Plus there is also a minority group that is more pro-Trump, and who advance the anti-establishment, anti-GOP elements of the Trump message. Out of office, Trump has been clearer about his condemnation of Trump-skeptical establishment Republicans, whom he calls RINOs. Yesterday Trump posted:

"If Republicans are going to fight, we ought to be fighting Mitch McConnell and his domineering, China loving BOSS, I mean wife, Coco Chow. The harm they have done to the Republican Party is incalculable."

Kevin McCarthy is in the spotlight today. People are piling onto him. He represents ambition, not principle or ideology, and he is getting the predictable consequence. No one trusts him, not the lobbyists who donated lavishly to his PAC, not his GOP colleagues in the House, not Trump. 

But his Speakership problem isn't the hinge of history. It is the result of one. His problem is a chronic, long-term one. The Tea Party movement that emerged in the Obama presidency reflected a populist shock that native-born White Americans were no longer the default leaders of the country. Pro-education, pro-free market establishment Democrats watched while factories had moved offshore. Bernie Sanders complained,  but he mixed it with talk of "socialism," not "Americanism." That makes Americans nervous. "Regular" Democrats believed that workers would transition to higher skilled jobs. That proved wrong. People don't change as fast as technology and market forces. People who got education and 21st Century skills could thrive in coastal cities. The others fell behind. 

Containers at the Port of Shanghai 

Both parties participated in creating that 50-year hinge that shapes our politics today, but Trump understood the frustration  better than did Hillary Clinton and a majority of Democrats. Moreover, Trump was willing to pair it with resentments over race, gender, abortion, and immigration. He blamed elites of all kinds, but he pointed mostly at Democrats and "globalists," which was code for Jews. Paired with cultural resentments, Trump made offshoring and job loss a Republican issue. 

The path that brought us to the mess on the House floor today is apparent in hindsight. American choices built the Chinese middle class to the detriment of the American working class. Two hundred Republicans are content with blaming Democrats. The intransigent 20  Republicans blame Democrats especially, of course, but they blame Republicans and globalist elites, too, McCarthy included. 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to Https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]