Paul Krugman lays out a great case for why authentic populism is NOT Trumpism. Trumpism as its been practiced in reality, is Reagan era trickle down economics with a far more overtly racist appeal to the base instincts of downscale white voters. This is how Trump has kept together the Republican coalition. Lip service and judges for the religious right, tax cuts to mollify Wall Street, and twitter fights with the woke snowflakes to appease the secular identity rightists in his party and among swing voters.
It is starting to fail and his voters are starting to wake up to it.
First off, while he emulated Viktor Orban in a lot of ways, particularly when it comes to using constitutional mechanisms to accrue unconstitutional powers, he has failed at basic populist economics.
Orban’s success has depended in part on throwing his base at least a few bones. Hungary has instituted a public jobs program for rural areas; offered debt relief, free schoolbooks and lunches; and so on, paid for in part by a significant rise in taxes.
Trump has done none of this. His tax cuts were nakedly partisan giveaways to the 1% and swamp creatures, not to the Main Streets he promised to fight. Infrastructure week is a joke and Bannons Trump New Deal went nowhere. The fact that he scoffs at the popular jobs programs sponsored by the left such as the Green New Deal or a federal jobs guarantee shows he is unserious about middle class jobs.
Voters are starting to wake up:
here’s the thing: White working-class voters seem to have noticed that Trump isn’t working for them. A new Fox News poll finds that only 5 percent of whites without a college degree believe that Trump’s economic policies benefit “people like me,” compared with 45 percent who believe that the benefits go to “people with more money.”
Trump may believe that he can make up for his pro-plutocrat tax and health policies with tariffs, his one significant deviation from G.O.P. orthodoxy. But despite Trump’s insistence that foreigners will pay the tariffs, an overwhelming majority of noncollege whites believe that they will end up paying more for the things they buy.
Kurgman ends with a warning about Democratic complacency:
Whatever the reasons, the simple fact is that Trump isn’t a populist, unless we redefine populism as nothing but a synonym for racism. At least some in the white working class seem to have realized that he’s not on their side. And Democrats would be foolish not to make the most of this opening.
I second this, which is why I am still skeptical that an Obama-Biden restoration/return to normalcy campaign will work in this climate. Not when the same voters who defected from that ticket are again up for grabs and eager for an authentic populism that lifts all boats instead of Trump doubling down on trickle down. Whoever our nominee is, and I believe Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg thus far have been our best messengers on these issues, has to be an ally of every working class voter. This is how we win. Make Trump out to be a racist bully and the Dem nominee a nice guy, and we will lose. Make Trump out to be a rich bully who doesn’t care about ordinary Americans, as we did in the midterms, and we will win.
I agree with you about advancing the message of Elizabeth Warren. That message resonates among both current working-class voters and among eligible men and women who, for whatever reason, have not participated in earlier elections.
Characterizing Mr. Trump as a wanna-be-rich bully (he lies about his wealth just as he lies about everything else) is a winner.
I think we should also hammer on the way that Mr. Trump advances the Russian agenda at every opportunity. The point we should emphasize is that on issue after issue and in statement after statement Mr. Trump embraces Mr. Putin and his agenda, while sacrificing America and the American people.
There is more to patriotism than wearing a red baseball hat.
I’ll also add that not enough attention has been brought to the fact that the Saudis and Emiratis are also buying his foreign policy and pulling his strings. This wouldn’t sit well with the hat wearing crowd.
When are you going to learn?
I once thought the exact same thing about foreign policy with respect to Russia: that it ‘wouldn’t sit well’ with the base…. Well, if the commie-hating, McCarthy supporting, Nixon-voting, Reagan-loving ‘she-is-pink-down-to-her-underwear’ Right can be persuaded to give Trump a pass on his relationship with Russia then all bets are off with respect to his relationship with the Saudis and Emiratis (which word may not even be in their vocabulary…)
Once they have departed from the path of true (or at least, consistent) conservatism, there is no getting them back on the path by reminding them of how far they have strayed. They are lost to rationality. You can’t win them back: if you didn’t lose them on rational grounds then you can’t redeem them on rational grounds either.