The Economic Anxiety Hypothesis has Become Absurd(er)

Robert ,

Trump’s 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry.

Many Trump “angry supporters” in 2016 used to belong to “anybody but Hillary” class (and they included a noticeable percentage of Bernie supporters, who felt betrayed by DNC) .

They are lost for Trump as he now in many aspects represents the “new Hillary” and the slogan “anybody but Trump” is growing in popularity. Even among Republicans: Trump definitely already lost a large part of anti-war Republicans and independents. As well as. most probably, a part of working class as he did very little for them outside of effects of military Keynesianism.

I suspect he also lost a part of military voters, those who supported Tulsi. They will never vote for Trump.

He also lost a part of “technocratic” voters resentful of the rule of financial oligarchy (anti-swampers), as his incompetence is now an undisputable fact.

He also lost Ron Paul’s libertarians, who voted for him in 2016.

How “Coronavirus recession”, if any, might affect 2020 elections is difficult to say, but in any case this is an unfavorable for Trump event.

I don’t pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased inequality.

It is actually very easy to understand: the middle class fared very poorly since 1991. See https://www.cnbc.com/id/44962589 . Now “the chickens come home to roost,” so to speak.

The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1080 with the election of Reagan (aka “the Quiet Coup”) was that “the rising tide lifts all boats.” — the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of lower strata of the population too.

This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which is based on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger is directed against the neoliberal establishment.

The anger toward immigrants is displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80% of the population.

The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures as Lloyd “we are doing God’s” Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and “political establishment” the key figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember “Lock her up” movement in 2016).

Resentment against spending huge amounts of money for wars for sustaining and enlarging the global USA-centered neoliberal empire is another factor. In this sense, impoverishment and shrinking of the middle class in the USA is similar to the same impoverishment during the last days of the British colonial empire.

That’s why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade.

In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the “revolutionary situation” when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn’t govern “as usual” and “the deplorable” do not want to live “as usual”. The situation when according to Hegel, “quantity turns into quality,” or as Marx said that ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses.

In 2016 that resulted in the election of Trump.

Add to this the neoliberal establishment (represented by both parties) now is clearly anti-social (the fact a private equity shark Romney was a presidential candidate and then was elected as senator tells a lot about the level of degradation) and is unwilling to solve burning problems with medical insurance, minimal wage and other “the New Deal” elements of social infrastructure.

Democratic Party platform now is to the right of Eisenhower republicans.

That dooms the party candidates like CIA-democrat Major Pete or “the senator from the credit card companies” Biden, and create an opening for political figures like Sanders (which are passionately hated by DNC)

Oh, and any that uses the term “russiagate” as some sort of put up job knows nothing about russian interference and the complicity of the trump campaign.

Read the Mueller report.

>And the platform this year will be further left than the most liberal platform ever.

While I belong to “Anybody but Trump” camp, I do resent the “Clintonzed” Democratic Party and, especially, its leadership.

The problem is that the distance between the platform and the actions of Democratic Party leaders is in miles. They completely ignore it. In no way, the elected President will be bound by the program. Or the Senator and Representatives.

The party is now the second war party which also is in the pocket of Wall Street. And Clinton wing of the party (soft-neoliberals) still dominates and wants to continue that way, despite some areas of resistance that emerged recently.

I do not see the program as anything close to Eisenhower Administration, which actively supported and enforced the New Deal.

And when people like Schumer (the senator from Wall Street) and Menendez (the corrupt senator from MIC) are called Democrats, the democratic platform does not even worth electrons used to project it on the screen. It’s all fake.

And what is funny it is an Obama-style fake: a lot of nice words, but no real actions are planned (in case of the Nobel Peace Price laureate, his action were quite opposite to promises and expectations ) .

I see no reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, no unconditional right of workers to unionize, no obligatory role of trade unions in negotiation with management, or any other the New Deal principles/regulations destroyed starting with Carter (but mostly by Clinton administration.)

Look at the completely toothless “Reining in Wall Street and Fixing our Financial System” section. All they propose is the re-enactment of Dodd-Frank and call it a day:

We will also vigorously implement, enforce, and build on President Obama’s landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and we will stop dead in its tracks every Republican effort to weaken it. We will
stop Republican efforts to hamstring our regulators through budget cuts, and we will ensure they have the resources and independence to fully enforce the law and hold both individuals and corporations
accountable when they break the rules. We will also continue to protect consumers and defend the CFPB from Republican attacks.

In this sense, I respect Warren’s program, which contains some concrete steps and action against financial oligarchy, not just good wishes.

What we see in this program is the full support of neoliberal, globalization, the full support of the “Full Spectrum Dominance” doctrine, and foreign wars. What is the difference with Republicans. in those areas is not very clear. How about calling this arrangement a Uniparty, a more sophisticated variety of the system that existed in the USSR.

We support a smart, predictable defense budget that meets the strategic challenges we face, not the arbitrary cuts that the Republican Congress enacted as part of sequestration. We must prioritize military readiness by making sure our Active, Reserve, and National Guard components remain the best trained and equipped in the world. We will seek a more agile and flexible force and rid the military of outdated Cold War-era systems.

The program promotes and institutionalizes a very aggressive, jingoistic stance toward Russia, essentially the position of pro-Hillary and CIA-democrats wings, risking the nuclear confrontation (BTW Putin will be gone soon, so the next Russian leadership probably will be of Trump variety — of “national neoliberalism” variety — and that increased the danger of WWIII ) :

Russia is engaging in destabilizing actions along its borders, violating Ukraine’s sovereignty, and attempting to recreate spheres of influence that undermine American interests. It is also propping up the Assad regime in Syria, which is brutally attacking its own citizens. Donald Trump would overturn more than 50 years of American foreign policy by abandoning NATO partners—countries who help us fight terrorism every day—and embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin instead. We believe in strong alliances and will deter Russian aggression, build European resilience, and protect our NATO allies. We will make it clear to Putin that we are prepared to cooperate with him when it is in our interest—as we did on reducing nuclear stockpiles, ensuring Iran could not obtain a nuclear weapon, sanctioning North Korea, and resupplying our troops in Afghanistan—but we will not hesitate to stand up to Russian aggression. We will also continue to stand by the Russian people and push the government to respect the fundamental
rights of its citizens.

Which means that they fully embraced Russiagate and are in the pocket of intelligence agencies and MIC. I especially like calling the reaction on the USA sponsored coup d’état of far-right nationalists against the legitimate government “violating Ukraine’s sovereignty”

The pot calling the kettle black.

The elite of Neoliberal Democrats is basically playing the part of the aristocracy on the eve of the French Revolution at this point, and they might suffer a similar fate. if they are determined to go forward with brokered convention.

IMHO it is either the days of Clinton wing dominance in Dem Party are numbered, of the days of Dem Party are numbered.

Somebody aptly said that “Trump and Bloomberg are two cheeks on the same ass.” While extremely rude the person did have a point. And that’s the unsolvable problem/dilemma for the Neoliberal Democrats establishment.

“Why 71-year-olds?”

[It is my age cohort, the one that I know best. Our high hopes were shot to death repeatedly from JFK, to MLK to RFK to X. However, I mostly agree with you except that the Republican Party had been operating in stealth mode at the margins from the death of FDR until their great compromiser RR, who united their Rockefeller and Goldwater wing-nuts. It started with Taft Hartley and never stopped until liberalism had been coopted by neoliberalism in the propwash of the conservative juggernaut as it steamed ahead into overt financialized corporatism.

Ike was likely innocent, but swept up rather than an architect of the ruse. McCarthy was a useful idiot propelled to into notoriety by Cold War fears while providing a distraction from the erosion of labor rights and the consolidation of large firms. The capital gains preference differential that resulted from rescinding the dividends tax credit in 1954 resulted in the first two LBOs in 1955, the purchase by McLean Industries, Inc. of Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company in January 1955 and Waterman Steamship Corporation in May 1955. The Republican Party had not controlled both chambers of the US Congress for long, but it proved to be long enough (only 1953 & 1954 in my lifetime until the Clinton Administration). To effectively abuse power it must first be adequately consolidated. Let the mergers and buyouts begin.

When Ronald Reagan ascended the POTUS throne it was to take the victory lap for corporate consolidation and “Release the Kraken” of deregulation, particularly financial deregulation. What is the use of having all that money if one cannot do whatever that they want with it? What unions that had still remained crumbled fast under the pressures of globalization and all that other Reagan/Thatcher BS.

I have been told that Asians have a better understanding of how the long game is played than most Americans. Apparently some people in the corporate wing of conservatism understood it well enough. ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses