Trump is ideologically flexible.
Trump has no principles.
Same thing.
Trump takes care of Number One. That is the limiting factor on Trump. He wants to be popular.
I take a tiny bit of comfort in that.
Watch Trump on the abortion issue. Most Republican politicians either genuinely oppose abortion or feel trapped by their past statements in opposition to it. Republican legislators in red states are banning abortion. Republican counties and states are banning travel for abortions. Ohio banned an abortion desired by a 10-year-old rape victim. Those laws are wildly unpopular, but politicians with fixed principles persevered.
Trump, with Melania's help, is abandoning his anti-abortion supporters. Appointing anti-abortion judges was necessary to solidify support among his tribe. But now anti-abortion court decisions are unpopular, and so are strict state laws forbidding most abortions. If Trump gets back into office he will be more careful filling judicial openings, and he now says he would veto national abortion bans. Trump promoted Trump Steaks for only a couple of months. They didn't sell. He dropped the product. No use tying to sell something people don't want.
When the economy was collapsing in the face of Covid shutdowns Trump worked with Democrats -- especially House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden -- to pass the CARES Act. It was the biggest, most expensive piece of re-distributionist legislation in history. It cost a deficit-busting $1.2 trillion and it was a Scandinavian social welfare dream package. Americans like "free money." Trump was flexible.
Trump opposed TikTok. But a large contributor to Trump's campaign had a multibillion-dollar stake in TikTok's owner, ByteDance. Moreover, TikTok was popular. That one-two punch caused Trump to support TikTok.
Trump is a provocateur. It is popular to communicate outrage over some suspected slight or unfairness against one's team. Yesterday Trump "Truthed" on his Truth Social website that Kamala Harris should concede the election and that CBS-TV should be de-licensed.
A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal. TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE. Election Interference. She is a Moron, and the Fake News Media wants to hide that fact. An UNPRECEDENTED SCANDAL!!! The Dems got them to do this and should be forced to concede the Election? WOW!"
In other contexts Trump complains about censorship, he doesn't threaten it. There is no ideological consistency here. The through-line is what his team wants to hear.
Democrats underestimate Trump. Normal politicians feel a need to be consistent and are tethered to fact-checkable reality. He is not a normal politician. He is a showman doing outrage comedy. He happily invented a straw man villain -- poor, Black, cat-eating Haitian murderers. Trump need not be congruent with reality. He is congruent with popularity. A majority of Americans are put off by the notion of cat-barbecuing murderers living next door.
I think it is entirely likely that Trump will win in November. He may govern like a tyrant, with high-handed flouting of the law and cruelty to people disliked by his MAGA supporters. I expect that. But he may well increase the welfare state. It is popular. He may expand health insurance benefits; his working-class rural supporters need it. If Trump supports an expanded ACA (and changes the name to Trump Care), Republicans in Congress will go along. If tariffs raise prices and tank the economy, he will reverse course. If deportations create hardships for farmers, food processors, and small businesses -- and they will -- then deportations will stop.
The limiting force on Trump won't be the Constitution, expertise, tradition, law, or the simple truth. It will be what is popular. He cannot create a dystopia for his enemies without creating one for his friends.
Trump is no ideologue, committed to a disastrous plan or principle. He isn't Stalin or Hitler. He is a populist demagogue, a Juan Perón. Maybe a Benito Mussolini.
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5 comments:
Fervent Peronism as a Trump analogue resonates for me; Mussolini maybe less so, because he veered into Fascism, including Italy-entitled military empire-building in Africa.
But the apt description here conjures a home-grown populist demagogue, albeit one born without a silver spoon. Huey Long inspired passionate and violent reactions too.
You say, “Democrats underestimate Trump,” and then question his ability to create a widespread dystopia.
Trump is a madman. If he hadn’t been born rich, he’d be the sort of person we might cross the street to avoid, walking down the sidewalk yelling obscenities at people we can’t see. What makes him dangerous are his supporters, people who cheer his violent rhetoric, and the hatemongers he surrounds himself with, like Stephen Miller. Don’t underestimate their commitment to turning the U.S. into a White “Christian” autocracy.
From a computer science point of view, democracy is the attempt to extract high-quality decisions from a large number of low-quality components. Sometimes you get lucky and this works really well; sometimes, not so much. But you always get some version of “the will of the people.“
America is a long and ongoing experiment in what kind of world you get when you govern this way. So far, so good, but with a lot of strange bumps along the way.
This year, I am taking Hunter S Thompson’s advice:
Find a dark corner of the porch, sit down, rip the top off a beer, and watch…
Self-government requires informed citizens – that’s why we have a public school system. Civics has been an integral part of the public school curricula, but its teaching has eroded over the last 50 years while partisan and philosophical polarization in the U.S. has increased. It’s gotten so extreme that Trump, a deranged felon, is running for president. Even educated Republicans try to minimize his criminality and delude themselves into imagining he’s somehow less objectionable than Harris, an honorable, experienced public servant who respects the Constitution and rule of law. But what can you expect? The GOP has degenerated into the White Nationalist Party and she’s a woman of color.
Billing Trump as performer softens the true message of power. The Christian right banning books crushing public education with vouchers for home schooling and white parochial inclaves, Wall Street cutting their tax obligation , Main Street loosing to mailed goodies from companies who contribute no taxes to schools or streets or police forces, and the mass exodus of children of illegals hunted down by vigilante gangs. This will not be performance art. This will be riot material for “burn baby burn.”
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