Transactional Trumpism

“One answer is what might be called “transactional Trumpism”. This is the idea that a large group of Republicans dislike Trump’s racism and misogyny, but support him because of his success in delivering a traditional Republican agenda.”

Are there any empirical studies on if Trump voters *think* that Trump has had success in delivering a traditional Republican agenda?

If they do think that then that can help support the transactional Trumpism thesis, even if there is in fact no or only little such success.

There is one thing that’s missing in this analysis, and that’s Republicans’ attitudes to the opposition. In a highly polarised political system, to what extent is it possible to focus on one pole only, without taking into account the extent to which the polar relationship is created and sustained by a repulsion against the other side?

If the argument set forth in the OP holds true, and Trump voters do not include large numbers of former Democrats, then it’s worth asking how the D opposition looks to them from their perspective, and whether Trump’s obvious ability to rile up and outright troll that opposition into displays of spluttering indignation, plays a significant role in maintaining his support base. It must be clear to many who voted for Trump that he has not been an effective president in traditional terms. But in culture-war terms—his ability to embody opposition to the other pole—might there be something else to this, another form of transaction based on representation and group identity? As I look at the US from the outside, I simply don’t see how it’s possible to take hatred for the other side out of the equation.

On first glance, this strikes me as partaking of the standard centre-left flaw when analyzing Republicans: assuming that they have ideological stances at all. They do not. They are tribalists, and one should mistake the standard shibboleths as anything but, well, shibboleths.

Anything Repubicans do is good and noble and necessary. Trump is now the leader of the party. Ergo, the things he does are ‘us things’. It matters not one whit how consistent those are with Republican actions past and future, nor even how consistent they are with Trump’s own actions, just so long as Trump furthers tribal identity and tribal warfare. And Trump does this better than any Republican president in our lifetime.

This is very hard for people who value logic and reason and ideological integrity to understand, but it’s vital that they do so, so the left can formulate strategies to counter it. These strategies cannot involve ‘explaining to those other people how wrong they are’ or ‘ showing them the truth’.

All the Nixon era arseholes have come crawling out of the woodwork, along with the new era scumbags from the Clinton impeachment. It’s rrally obvious that they’re deeply misogynist, as are much of his base. That’s enough to explain why the mainstream republicans support him and also don’t shift to Clinton.

I don’t think you can underestimate the racism either. Camp of the saints is banning favorite book and it got glowing reviews from the mainstream republican press in the 1990s. These people are fascists and once you accept that everything else makes sense.

Many of his supporters buy into his anti immigrant rhetoric and adore his allowing Pence to push his Anti-Islam, anti gay, anti abortion, special rights for Christians agenda.

All issues that Trump doesn’t give a damn about.

The answer is racism. The hatred of African-Americans, Spanish-speaking immigrants, Muslims runs deep in his base. My friend Anthony DiMaggio wrote a good analysis here:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/16/93450/

As spoken by TV’s talking heads, “transactionalism” did not originally refer to the voters’ willingness to hold their noses and vote for a turd. It referred to Trump’s personal style of throwing out protocol (and even good manners) in favor of an individualized, egotistical “escalation dominance” when dealing with other human beings. (The phrase comes from outgoing French ambassador Gérard Araud in two remarkable interviews he has just given, printed in the current issues of Foreign Policy and The Atlantic. Highly recommended.)

There are analytical dangers in looking for a singular reason for Trump’s support both before and after the election, and there are dangers in positing a coherence and competency among US citizens. National campaign technologies have the voters analyzed down to a household-by-household basis in order to craft the message. Accordingly, Trump wove together the different strands required to win — the strands of racism, misogyny, Christo-nationalism, calling Hillary a crook, vaunting his personal “transactionalism” (for those against “business as usual” in Washington) …and yes, non-racist economic anxiety to bring over some blue collar Democrats in the “battleground” states. (I know this happened: I live in a rustbelt minipocket, in a small sea of them.)

We now read that Trump’s campaign manager (Manafort) gave campaign data to a Russian spy and specifically discussed the battleground states. Mueller couldn’t find enough evidence to charge “criminal conspiracy” because — why? — the phone messages were encrypted & the spy can’t be interviewed. But it sure looks like they colluded.

Traditional Republicans who didn’t know Trump personally went along with the campaign message because these strands are extensions of raucous rhetoric from the GOP past. Perhaps they figured Trump would straighten up and fly right, if he won. He won but he didn’t straighten up, as people who had dealt with him personally said he would not: He truly is the grifter, liar and shortsighted egotist that he posed himself to be for dramatic laughs on the campaign trail.

There were a very few conservative Republicans who opposed him from the beginning because they already knew who this guy was. Their number has grown very slowly until now because although his real achievement of GOP aims is spotty, and his behavior is boorish, there isn’t an official process to challenge him from the GOP side other than the primaries which look formidable.

One new message that may be getting through to serious conservatives is that Trump is weakening the US’s long-term position in the world, perhaps irrevocably. (Among many other things, yesterday Malaysia — a TPP partner — did a deal with Huawei that will begin to shut US companies out of the 5G market in southeast Asia, and which also poses a big problem for future US military intelligence capabilities in that area. Trump should have stayed in TPP, and modified it — as he should have stayed in the Iran Deal, as he should have expressed more support for NATO, etc. etc. Escalation dominance is a bad way to manage your position in a multilateral world.)

But most Trump supporters will never understand the details and they are not going to read the Mueller report (although the televised reiteration of its many facts in the dramatic setting of an impeachment trial could make slight dents in their crania?) They are into tribal groupthink, on the well-known cognitive principle that even false beliefs reduce your short-term risks by attracting fellow commiserators.

When my staunch-Republican (as most of my relatives) nephew said he was considering voting for Hilary instead of Trump, my nice, 80-y0 sister-in-law furrowed her brow in puzzlement. Hilary? The arch-demoness?

In the end he couldn’t do it, and wrote in a friend’s name instead. He is a fairly-reasonable medical doctor who spends two-three weeks in South America every year doing pro-bono medical work, having learned some Spanish for the endeavor, who, like most Republicans, has been told over and over by the books and press that they read and hear, and the pulpit, that the Clintons are evil. I don’t know, but suppose some of my relatives voted for Trump as the lesser evil.

I have to say, the way most main-stream Democrat politicians go along with Republicans (e.g., on Iraq, and caving on a public-option for health insurance in return for zero Republican support) does little to make them seem principled alternatives. Meanwhile one can find many articles in the NY Times, the Wall St Journal, and of course all Fox media, which strengthen the views of life-long Republicans.

If there were principled Democrats whom the mainstream media supported against smear efforts (strongly enough to get through the noise), without any hint of atheism or pro-abortionism, would my evangelical relatives vote for them? I think so.

Of course this is all anecdotal, but then I don’t completely trust polls over lived experience on complex issues. I have stopped answering polls and surveys myself since I rarely feel comfortable that the available range of answers includes my actual position. And I don’t like the feeling they give that whatever positions are the most popular as polled will be the ones they (the Democrat organizations who send me surveys in response to my donations) will then support. I sent one back with just the words DO THE RIGHT THING across it. Which was a waste of time, and I should be more mature.

I think the real question is not whether Trump is successful or not. That question is a red herring in American politics today. The real question is whether or not the Democratic “leadership” can allow nomination of a candidate that the Democrat rank and file want. Bernie Sanders should have won the nomination last time. But the superdelegate system gives a literal handful of mandarins the ability to fake the primary process. (I say that as someone who has significant issues with some of Sanders positions.)

Trump won because Hillary was a horrific candidate. Voters stayed home, disgusted. Trump won because the Obama administration didn’t deliver hope nor change. He delivered a government of the corporate criminal bankers for them. Middle and working class America got screwed. Black people got screwed worst. Trump won because the utter corruption at the heart of the DNC was exposed for all to see in the emails. Trump win because of the Obama administration making a trade deal top secret classified and trying to force a vote through congress. Not seeing any point in voting, Democrats didnt.

All the evidence since shows the DNC leadership didn’t learn anything. They are just as contemptuous of voters, just as manipulative with their window dressing as ever. The Democratic party is the party of endless war even more than the Republicans. It’s a party that stopped every effort by Trump to wind down or end war posture with Russia and North Korea. There’s now 2 parties in Netanyahu’s pocket implementing Likuds insane middle east ideas. Put some solar energy and LGBTQ butter on it with a side of women’s rights bullshit and it’s “Democrat”. But the politicians are just as venal. The legislature just as wildly right wing war mongering.

The 1960’s is long over. The Democratic party hasn’t seen a new idea since and has converted to govern to the right of Nixon. Way to Nixon’s right. The Democratic party is the tool of the Uber-ization of not just America, but the whole world. Flour and break the law to pauperize the working class, and suck money to a few in the SF Bay Area. That’s policy now.

You can see it already. Sanders is ahead. But Buttigieg is being anointed. He’s the perfect candidate. He’s gay! He’s out of the closet! And he’s a corporate tool who can talk smoothly without speaking a clear word. Best of all, he has ZERO foreign policy experience or positions. So he’ll be putty in the hands of the corporations that want endless war for profits. Wall Street wants him. And the street owns the Democratic party. Will he give a flying f*@k about the middle and working class? Will he be anything but another neo-liberal who can be differentiated from a neo-conservative only by mild difference in racism? (Overt vs.covert)

At least Buttigieg isn’t Beto O’Rourke, the most completely empty skin in Congress. There’s that.

All the evidence I see is no. The Democrat “leadership” don’t understand. I predict a Trump win, or else a squeaker election that barely scrapes by with a win.

No matter what, the idiot Democrats won’t get it. Pelosi will do her best to cast the Republicans anti-tax anti-government (federal) government culture war in concrete with balanced budget horse manure. The Democrats will continue to force a new cold war on Russia. They will keep backing companies that steal from the middle and working class. (Yes, Uber and Lyft are massive theft operations. They implemented taxi service without licenses. Those licenses cost a lot of money to those who bought them. They put the public at risk causing multiple deaths and assaults from unlicensed taxi drivers.)

Trump’s appeal is that he at least talks a game of “f*@k you”. Domestically it’s all lies on all sides. He lies to everyone. But at least he doesn’t lie smoothly like the “good Democrat” candidates do.

– So the ”political strategy” will be to promise the American people –
healthcare they can pay –
shelter they can pay –
jobs they like –
with wages they like –
and free education for ”the kids”
and – vacations –
the type of vacation ”them Europeans have” –

– and anybody who promises all of the above – with another YUUUGE promise that the promise will come true will win the next election.

For sure!

And there is NO better ”political” strategy!

Faustnotes—

Actually, this repulsive tome has been mastubatory fodder for US fascists since the 1970s:

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

Obviously everybody’s motives are mixed. The same guys who are calculating the economic advantages of supporting Trump are likely to be cultural nativists too. That said, I think a lot of the traditional Republicans who have come around to heartfelt Trumpism supported him once he got the nomination for rational (zweckrational) reasons. A moderate Democrat like Clinton might not seem like much of a threat, but the era of triangulation is coming to an end no matter who’s in charge. The imperative problems of the times—drastic inequality, economic stagnation, a train wreck of a health care system, climate change—will have to be faced with measures deeply threatening to the existing order of things, especially since sheer demography is undermining the white Christian base of right-wing politics. Under the circumstances, the only way to defend privilege is to embrace some kind of craziness. The incompetence of the administration and the decline of American power and prestige that goes with it are a trade-off. In any case, though Trump may be worse than necessary, any conservative government will necessarily oversee the debasement of the country in the name of race and religion. As Molly Bloom once murmured, “as well him as another.”

Why were so few traditional Republicans repelled by Trump to the extent that they would vote for Clinton, or else abstain. And why does Trump continue to attract such strong Republican support.

[…]

The standard items on the list are: Supreme Court appointments, tax cuts and deregulation. But
(1) these things are the absolute minimum that would be expected from any Republican president
(2) Trump has made a mess of all them

This post is odd, as is the idea that support for Trump couldn’t have been – let alone still is – transactional. Assuming that Trump being loathed meant that voters would have voted for Clinton instead is bizarre, and seems like a centrist delusion. Clinton was and is hated on the right with such visceral passion that abstention would be the most one could hope for, and even that would look distasteful to many. The traditional Republicans weren’t asked to vote against or abstain from supporting Trump in a vacuum; Clinton and an inflated slate of judicial vacancies loomed large. When Trump captured the split field in the primary, he was what they were stuck with – the alternative was worse. He picked an acceptably traditionalist VP, and gave assurances he’d offer up nominees of acceptable bone fides, so he was not offering a radical departure from the Republican program on fiscal and political measures. Culturally and personally? He had something new, with the former being relatively welcome to many because of how offensive it was to teh libs.

As to his delivery on the three minimums, first off the courts one is misstated. It wasn’t just SCOTUS, nor was it assumed to be. McConnell held open ~100 seats, and Trump has been pushing Federalist Society nominees into them at a breathtaking pace. He absolutely has not made a mess of this; Bart was a trainwreck of a nomination, but he’s seated more judges in his first 2 years than any President in history. The people I personally knew who loathed Trump but voted for him anyway did so very explicitly on this point, and he has delivered exactly what he promised. And this makes sense: Trump might be vile to them, but he’ll be vile for 4-8y and then vanish, while McConnell’s efforts to stack the courts will last for a generation or more.

As for the other two, Trump has made good-faith efforts to deliver on them, and to the degree that he’s been stymied it’s been in a way that blame can be foisted off on Congress, specifically Congressional Democrats. Trump has done well enough – not least because he can act as a figurehead and lightning rod whose job was merely to enable Congress, the Courts, and the Cabinet to do the actual work – and at that point he’s shown his loyalty to the tribe and deserves its protection. Repudiating him would weaken the tribe, and threaten its goals. So he’s good enough to merit closing ranks around, and his glaring flaws can be framed as virtues or endearing shortcomings in culture war terms.

From where I stand, transactional loyalty still seems very plausible.

A note on court packing. It’s a live issue is right (left and every which way)

Maureen Dowd’s NYT’s OpEd gives both sides of Don McGahn—
The closest we get to a hero in the sordid report — as opposed to Kenneth Starr’s lurid report — is the former White House counsel Don McGahn.
She helpfully goes on to remind readers that flushing the Federalist pipeline of far right judges onto upper reaches of the judiciary was his White House assignment. Mission Accomplished.

It should be noted that Wm Barr is a hardcore Federalist Society member (source: Law professor spotted two nights ago in discussion on the Mueller Report). Packing the courts from here to infinity is all you need to know about the risk to Barr’s reputation. . . and would-be legacy.

Here is list of achievements claimed for the Trump administration:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trumps-list-289-accomplishments-in-just-20-months-relentless-promise-keeping

There are some significant differences with what other Republicans would have done. Trump was by far the most critical of illegal immigration (some of the other candidates tried to catch up when they saw it was a popular issue, but Jeb Bush famously excused it as an “act of love”). Many Republicans have talked about moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but it has been mere talk. Similarly, the number of rules and pages published in the Federal Register, a crude gauge of regulation, are lower than they have been since the Reagan presidency. Many other Republican candidates would have talked about doing this, but the experience of the two previous Republican administrations suggests that most would not have done it.

I’m not saying you have to like these policies, but if you want to talk acccurately about them you have to leave your own echo chamber … and venture into the other side’s echo chamber.

‘absolute minimum that would be expected from any Republican president’

Based on observations, most voting Republicans think that the other potential nominees, had they been elected, would have recoiled so strongly from the mud that is being slung, the investigations, etc, that the nominee, once President, wouldn’t have dared to nominate Republican Supreme Court justices. Instead, it would have been a RINO at best, or worse, frankly, just to get the harassment to end. In short, that anyone who wasn’t [almost] pathologically thick-skinned would have been steamrolled.

Has this been disproven?

So, that gets us to a place where voting Republicans were always ‘trumpist’ because they believed they need a champion who will champion them.

Now Cory Booker is run out of town for suggesting … anything less than open warfare. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/20/cory-booker-love-campaign-1282647

This guy proposed reparations. He’s apparently not enough of a fighter?

@20
”I feel like you’re only stating half the story”.

– but I didn’t want to tell any ”story” – as there are plenty of ”stories” around – and as there was this question ”about implications for political strategy – left to commenters – and I think (hopefully?) everybody here wants to see Von Clownstick gone at the next election – I just laid out the ”political” – or should we just say a GREAT strategy to get rid of him.

And now – please – instead of rehashing – and rehashing… ”whatever” – wouldn’t it babe a lot… more CT-wise to help to imply ”the winning strategy”?

Perhaps Trump’s charisma (for some people at least) explains why some people view him a big success. They believe the “man” because they are entranced by his “charisma” and adjust reality, by some strange kind of cognitive dissonance, to view everything he touches to be gold.
There is something religious about their devotion to the “man” that goes beyond and transcends specific policies.
It would take a lot for the lot of them to abandon the “man” and there is sociology behind this.
They would rationalize all his failures and believe all his rationalizations for failure because they are in love with the “man” and that is how charisma works
I’m sorry, he’s not defying gravity, in the sense of doing impossible things. Perhaps the case of Reagan is an instructive contrast, but they’re in love with Trump.
He says and does things they wish they could, and when he shouts “USA! USA!” they know he’s one of them

BenK@32:

This guy proposed reparations. He’s apparently not enough of a fighter?

Well, the first is not equivalent to the second. Sure, issues of racial justice and such are important. But if you believe (as I do) that our Republic is in danger, that the GrOPer party is fascist, that Shitler is a fascist, then there can be no “can’t we all get along”. Because that just means they’ll try again, and next time they’ll know better, for having failed this time [assuming they do fail.] There needs to be sufficient punishment for traitors, that they don’t consider doing it next time.

This is orthogonal to all the economic, social justice, etc issues that unite Democrats: we love our country, and our democracy, and we want to see it protected.

@5 Obviously, traditional Republicans have the option of breaking with Trump and either abstaining or voting against him. If that’s not considered as an option, then my last para applies.

This is not an answer.

You wrote, “One answer is what might be called “transactional Trumpism“. This is the idea that a large group of Republicans dislike Trump’s racism and misogyny, but support him because of his success in delivering a traditional Republican agenda.”

Ok, so we have a concept. And we’re going to ask whether that concept explains what we see in real life. To answer that question you write,

“The problem I have with this explanation is: what success? …The standard items on the list are: Supreme Court appointments, tax cuts and deregulation. But
(1) these things are the absolute minimum that would be expected from any Republican president
(2) Trump has made a mess of all them”

These don’t undercut the transactionalism explanation at all.

1. During the primary (2) was irrelevant because it hadn’t happened yet. (1) was relevant, but Trump was unpopular with policy oriented establishment conservatives, and ultimately won with about 45% of the primary vote. This seems compatible with the existence of a meaningful number of transactional minded Republicans.

2. During the general election (1) was irrelevant because there were no other viable conservative options once the primary ended, and (2) hadn’t happened yet.

3. Once Trump won the election, (1) was irrelevant because there were no other viable conservative options, and while (2) happened, that can’t be expected to move transactional minded Republicans away from Trump without another option being available.

The relevant question you should be asking, if you want to think about transactional political support, is what percentage of Republicans would drop Trump in a heartbeat (or just retroactively disclaim him) if they had another viable option. Unfortunately that’s hard to measure. My instinct is to say that among policy minded conservatives the percentage is incredibly high, because my impression of the conservative movement is that it is an old school union of corporatism and populism, in which the corporatists feed the populists populism to get them to the polls, then provide them only symbolic populist rewards for the trouble while passing meaningful corporatist legislation. That’s straight forwardly transactional. I view Trump as a result of having done this so long that the populists are becoming too numerous to control. But that doesn’t change anything about the transactional perspective of those who empower populists in order to get what they want out of the deal.

Orange Watch correctly identifies the transactional element in play: the federal judiciary. Of course, any Republican would have done the same, and if you’re a savvy politics-knower then you’re probably more likely to attribute this success to Mitch McConnell, but for the rank-and-file, it’s enough to see that the FedSoc clones now occupy a position of real power across an entire branch of government. Even those who don’t like Trump absolutely love this, and they’ll vote for literally anyone who promises them the same.

Based on observations, most voting Republicans think that the other potential nominees, had they been elected, would have recoiled so strongly from the mud that is being slung, the investigations, etc, that the nominee, once President, wouldn’t have dared to nominate Republican Supreme Court justices. Instead, it would have been a RINO at best, or worse, frankly, just to get the harassment to end. In short, that anyone who wasn’t [almost] pathologically thick-skinned would have been steamrolled.

Has this been disproven?

Most voting Republicans have brain worms, so I’m not sure why disproving what they do or do not think is in any way relevant. It’s such an absurd and insane idea that it disproves itself by mere utterance to anyone who knows anything at all about American politics.

Now Cory Booker is run out of town for suggesting … anything less than open warfare. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/20/cory-booker-love-campaign-1282647

Good, Cory Booker sucks.

– and about the idea ”that a large group of Republicans dislike Trump’s racism and misogyny, but support him because of his success in delivering a traditional Republican agenda”.
The problem I have with this explanation is:
What does a large group of ”Republicans” see as ”success”?

A large group of ”Republicans” see as success anything what ”Democrats” see as defeat – but that won’t decide the next election – or as another commenter already has stated the economical situation of the people –
(like in the last election – and all of the US election before) will decide the election.

And in the last election too many Americans were very unhappy with their economical situation and even as it (supposedly) has improved a bit – now there are these two… (three?) economical facts who will decide the next election.

1. Too many Americans can’t afford shelter anymore.

2. Too many Americans can’t afford decent Health Care -(without all these crazy deductibles)

3. Too many Americans can’t afford any decent education for their children.
– while some ”very sophisticated” Americans -(and Australians and French and Germans and Japanese) like to discuss on blogs like CT all kind of ”sophisticated political questions” – possibly overlooking ”Whassup” – just like at the last election?

Is President Donald really that much more embarrassing than President Ronald?

There is always an existential threat. Now it’s the nonsense over the border and immigration, but before that it was Islamic terrorism, and before that it was communism. Old fears never go away, but at any given time some are more marketable than others. Anti-semitism is doing well, and the bikinis worn by racism get skimpier every year.

We liberals keep making ourselves a bigger target, trying to save the world and make life better for everyone. Truth to tell, we wouldn’t have fewer enemies if we gave up on teaching evolution, allowing abortion, sanctioning gay marriage, or ending the burning of fossil fuels, or, even worse, offering universal health care. Even raising taxes on the wealthy polls well. It doesn’t matter.

It’s strictly red versus blue, winning or losing.

(UK electoral maps are always confusing, because red=Labor and blue=Tory, the reverse of the current US convention, which is at least consistent with the Civil War blue/gray distinction)

– and after slowly rereading the comments on this threat the first prize goes to –

Tatütata:
Lee A. Arnold’s
”There are analytical dangers in looking for a singular reason for Trump’s support both before and after the election, and there are dangers in positing a coherence and competency among US citizens”.

Mr. Arnold you have won the rest of the Schokoladen Easter Bunny my American-Australian-Chinese guest didn’t eat yesterday and I gladly send it to you if you would release your address?

As the American-Australian-Chinese gusts just yesterday discussed how beautiful simple Americans can be – like (my currently favourite story) – where a so called US President ask’s one of his friends -(an unemployed ”Lebowski”) to go and deliver a message to some
General-lawyer-dude – and to tell him if he doesn’t accept the message the Lebowski dude should tell the ”General-dude” that he is ”fired”.

And all of this is ‘#dictated” BE-cause if it wouldn’t have been dictated it already would have been completely forgotten as at the end of this month WE -(the American people) have a rent or mortgage payment coming up.

And how do we pay that?

Can anybody on here tell ”the people” how they ”transactional” pay that??!

– and the last place goes to:

”Truth to tell, we wouldn’t have fewer enemies if we gave up on teaching evolution, allowing abortion, sanctioning gay marriage, or ending the burning of fossil fuels, or, even worse, offering universal health care”

”WE” would have a lot more enemies if ”we gave up on teaching evolution, allowing abortion, sanctioning gay marriage, or ending the burning of fossil fuels, or offering universal health care.”

But WE are (still) pretty young and mainly hang with ”WE’S” who have seen ”The Grand Lebowski” numerous times and have learned from it – that nobody p… on a rug without consequences.

Geo #19: “Some people derive utility from the discomfort of others, even without any direct personal gain. …there were several middle aged men literally gloating about the fact that their daughters were distraught and no longer speaking to them.”

This is another kink in the conservative psyche to which Trump played, well enough: the idea that all some people need is a good spanking on the bottom.

It is a chime to certain ears and played in many keys. It links into the received wisdom concerning the continuous labor market discipline that makes the world of capitalism go ’round. It links to the lie that progressives want other people to pay for things. It links to “big stick” foreign policy.

Trump’s frequent forays into retributive rhetoric (“knock the crap out of them [protestors]”, “lock her up”, “maybe he [a protestor] should have been roughed up”, “I’d like to punch him in the face”, etc.) composed a ringing antiphon for this conservative fetish ritual.

Happy Charles Krauthammer Day!

In Memoriam, of course. But his brilliant insight (that there were WMDs in Iraq, and all we needed was a little more time to find them) will live on forever…..

Perhaps in the long history of Homo politicus there have been epochs and localities when and where there were reasonably clear connections between at least some politicians and at least some public policy. I don’t know about that. I suspect that if any epoch and locale in history seems to us today to have met that condition, the clarity is mostly retrospective, and that the people there and then were as much in the stew with their politics as we are today with ours.

You can’t really criticize people for failure to realize their transactional goals in supporting one politician vs another, unless we do have some sort of reasonable clarity on the connection between what the politicians say and what they will do in power. Instead of that clarity, what we have is Plato’s Cave. We see the shadows cast by a gemisch of real and unreal objects paraded behind us, cast by an unclear mixture of reflected real light and wholly false lights. Maybe if Plato had lived in the age of Trump, he would have added an extra layer of remove from reality in his description, but that’s probably because we don’t know just how bad Hyperbolus really was.

I always vote, and always vote D. Not that the Ds stand for anything in particular, or that I expect them to actually do much of anything, but they do seem less avidly vicious and stupid than the Rs, so there’s that. But they aren’t really even very good at being anti-Rs, so I am at least as foolish transactionally as these Trump-supporting Rs. It may in fact be that supporting a party that has as its sole political strategy always choosing to present itself as stupid-and-vicious-lite, the lesser of two evils, is going to look, in historical retrospect, as the political position that ended up making the epochal catastrophe inevitable. Most Ds seem to have convinced themselves, to take an example, that the US electorate is hopelessly racist, and by our continuing coddling of racism-lite in response, our clumsily obvious attempts to obfuscate the issue by never failing to support “securing our borders”, we have pretty much conceded that, of course, racist immigration policy is the only way to go. Maybe if one party had decided to run some short-term risks by saying that there is an alternative to that view, we wouldn’t be headed to the crisis of ethnic cleansing that we seem headed towards.

We’ll perhaps get our moment of clarity at the catastrophe, if it comes to that, but by then it will be too late to prevent the catastrophe.

@ SusanC “Current politics in both the US and the UK seems to be driven more by questions of identity than pragmatic economics”

well, yes. And who is doing that?

Martin Luther King said “”I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”” That’s a quote that really stands out in todays politics in the UK. We seem to be going full speed in the opposite direction, where an individuals place in society depends first and foremost on their given identity, where governments and large organisations seem happy to announce that they have targets for recruitment based on identities. How on earth did we get from Marin Luther King’s dreams to here?

-@
”There is no way any Democratic candidate would reach this type of person”.

What’s about a Democratic Candidate who proposes to eliminate the student loan debts of millions of daughters of those ”Middle Aged” American Men -(as they know that otherwise they finally will have to help their daughters out of student loan debt?)
And what about a Democratic candidate who suggests
”making all public colleges tuition-free and forgiving $50,000 in student loans for Americans in households earning less than $100,000 a year. That would provide immediate relief to more than 95% of the 45 million Americans with student debt.

AND what’s about an additional “Universal Free College” plan making public college free for everyone, regardless of their finances?
It could ”touch even the younger than middle aged mens lives” –

Men who come up in tears talking about their student loan debt?

Reading the post and comments, I can help but feel the entire agenda is about feeling good about one’s own political fecklessness. The abject moral and economic failures of left-neoliberalism / lesser evilism Democratic Party politics are staring at you. And, you are projecting that outward as if Trump is a failure of the Republican Party and its politics!

I’m broadly in agreement with #4, #6, #11, John’s actual views, etc. With one caveat: if we’re aiming to understand Trump’s base we have to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush. They’re not ideologically identical to one another. And even though the various groups can mostly be seen as different flavours of ‘conservativism’ (or ‘the right’), and we might not have much sympathy for any of them, it’s still inaccurate and (in an analytic context, at least) lazy to pretend they’re all cookie-cutter the same. (By the way, if anyone knows of other studies of this kind, I’d be grateful for citations. I’d be particularly interested in something similar about Brexit voters…)

But let’s explore the notion of a ‘transactional’ Trump voter a little more.

Let’s suppose I’m a relatively well-off white male American of a libertarian bent, although not very interested or engaged in politics. I principally want to be left alone by the State. While I’ve got a significantly above average income, and have a high standarded of living, I percieve myself as struggling a bit. I’ve got a lot of debt, things were a bit tough for me in the economic downturn, etc. It wouldn’t take a lot for my life to become very difficult. The obvious significant outcome that I don’t derive any direct benefit from is tax, so it’s easy to blame them as being too high and seeing them as the thing that’s stopping me from feeling ‘comfortably well off’. On the other hand, I do see myself as kind of succeeding at life (although perhaps not as much as I expected), and I see this as being the result of my hard work and effort.

I don’t really care about Trump personally, I think he’s a bit of an idiot and I sneer at his populism. If a better candidate came along I’d shift the small amount of “at least they don’t ___” kind of alleigance I have to any politician to them in a heartbeat.

But why would I vote for Clinton, or the Democrats? Sure, she might be more competent than Trump, but she seems to be taking a dangerously left-wing turn, with talk of expansion of state-funded education and health care. I hear that and hear “higher taxes, inefficient public service”. And even if I was tempted to hold my nose and vote for Clinton instead of Trump, and risk higher taxes for a more competent administrator with a more civil ‘tone’, there’s clearly more of that kind of thing waiting in the wings, and I just don’t want to get it a toehold.

Even though he hasn’t achieved much, I still get a bit of a tax cut rather than a hike, which is all I really care about. It doesn’t concern me that genuinely rich people got more. I might have had background worries about chaos, but they haven’t eventuated (as far as I’m concerned), but risking some chaos for a presidential term is better than going down the path of long-term public service bloat, poor economic performance, and burdensome taxes.

When I get polled, I say I approve of Trump, not because I have a deep and abiding admiration for the guy, but because I’m basically getting a bit of what I want, and saying otherwise seems like signalling I’d prefer someone else, and of the options available (Pence? Nancy Pelosi?) I really don’t.

While this might not be the plurality Trump supporter, I suspect there are probably quite a lot of people roughly like this (they’d fall under the Free Marketeers of the study I linked, which comprises 25% of Trump’s voters. I’d imagine they’re more likely than other groups to ‘disapprove’ of Trump now, but he didn’t lose 25% of his support, so there must be a lot that still ‘approve’, and I’ve suggested a reason why).

Note that the picture doesn’t require overt bigotry (a certain amount of callousness and ignorance, yes — my motivation isn’t to hurt people, but it’s not that important to me to avoid it), nor a strong motiviation for ‘pwning the libs’ or anything. These kinds of attitudes are also in keeping with the Free Marketeers of the study.

You don’t need to add too much to this picture to turn it into someone who’s less lukewarm. Just a bit of confabulation and doubling-down on past decisions as being right ones, and seeing someone I’ve decided to support in a positive, rather than negative, light (to avoid cognitive dissonance).

What could we add to move such a figure to vote for Clinton? As far as I can see, they’d need to care significantly about something other than their own immediate concerns and the economy at large, and be prepared to make what they perceive to be a massive compromise to promote the former over the later. People in general don’t really like doing that.

(An enlightened self-interested plutocrat, mind, should have probably voted for Clinton and try to turn back the clock on the Republican party: it’s in their long-term interests to have a slightly-tempered capitalism: populism is risky in itself, and the risk of Trumpism discrediting one party and allowing the other party to move as left as it likes (perhaps motivated in part by a backlash) is high)

Dipper, Martin Luther king was American. Why does his dream relate to the uk? Also are you familiar with the chant “the Jews will not replace us”? Can you say which side of politics was singing that song, and who they were singing about?

Really, it’s astounding that people still spout this nonsense.

Glen tomkin presents a vision of wrongness that explains why so much of the American political debate is so distressing to those of us outside your failing and increasingly chaotic country. Apparently politicians never do what they promise and the dems are just republican lite. Those two ideas are themselves responsible for so much stupid and destructive wrong in this world … and yet they seem to be increasingly popular among the American left – or at least, the white men of the American left. It would be hilarious if the entire world weren’t depending on you getting your shit together …

@Bruce Wilder #64:

ISTR that in the past I described your commenting style as “lugubrious” (yeah, I know; who really cares what I think about anything?).

That might have been generous. I am wondering now if you are actually as cynical and despairing as you always sound.

I mean, my Dog, man; I really hope not.

Jay

Trump has done exactly what I hoped he would do; he has shown that our entire election system is rigged by the CIA (obviously not very thoroughly rigged).

If you mean that (as a result of Trump’s election) most people in the US now believe that that your entire election system is rigged by the CIA, then you’re wrong: most people in the US do not believe that your entire election system is rigged by the CIA. On the other hand, you can’t mean that as a result of Trump’s election you now believe that to be true, because (on your own say-so) you already believed it to be true before Trump’s election.

If you mean that as a result of Trump’s election you feel justified in priding yourself on having superior insight to the poor dupes who still believe in the system, then I would believe that’s how you feel; but perhaps that’s not what you mean. I hope that’s not what you mean.

Trump is far better because he is forcing the public to see how corrupt DC is

No, the number of people who did not believe that DC was corrupt before Trump but who have come to believe that it is corrupt because of Trump is so small as to be insignificant.

@Brian 04.21.19 at 2:43 pm ( 18)

First of all think you for your post. You insights are much appreciated. Some comments:

The real question is whether or not the Democratic “leadership” can allow nomination of a candidate that the Democrat rank and file want.

In reality intelligence agencies control the nomination. And Democratic leadership mainly consists of "CIA-democrats"

Trump won because Hillary was a horrific candidate. Voters stayed home, disgusted. Trump won because the Obama administration didn’t deliver hope nor change. He delivered a government of the corporate criminal bankers for them. Middle and working class America got screwed. Black people got screwed worst. Trump won because the utter corruption at the heart of the DNC was exposed for all to see in the emails.

This is a very apt description of reasons for which Trump had won, but anti-war sentiments played also important role and probably should be added to the list. People with neocon foreign policy platform might face hard wing in 2020 as well too. That does not means that voters will not be betrayed again like in case of Trump and Obama, but still…

The Democratic party is the party of endless war even more than the Republicans. It’s a party that stopped every effort by Trump to wind down or end war posture with Russia and North Korea. There’s now 2 parties in Netanyahu’s pocket implementing Likuds insane middle east ideas. Put some solar energy and LGBTQ butter on it with a side of women’s rights bullshit and it’s “Democrat”. But the politicians are just as venal. The legislature just as wildly right wing war mongering.

True. But in 2020 that might be their undoing. That’s why this corrupt gang is more afraid of Tulsi more then of Trump.

In general the level of crisis of neoliberalism will play important role in 2002 elections, especially if the economy slows down in 2020. Wheels might start coming off the neoliberal cart in 2020; that's why Russiagate hysteria serves as an “insurance policy”. It helps to cement the cracks in the neoliberal façade, or at least to attribute them to the chosen scapegoat.

One good thing that Trump has done (beside criminal justice reform) is that he helped to discredit neoliberal media. That effort should be applauded. He really turned the Twitter into a razor to slash neoliberal MSMs.

arcsecond@66:

Let’s suppose I’m a relatively well-off white male American of a libertarian bent, although not very interested or engaged in politics. I principally want to be left alone by the State.
[…]
Even though he hasn’t achieved much, I still get a bit of a tax cut rather than a hike, which is all I really care about.

If we’re talking about the transactionalism of a hypothetical well-off white American male of a libertarian bent, even an apolitical and not particularly religious one, we still need mention of the courts. The judges Trump has appointed can be relied on to keep the government’s hands off his guns and to keep the government from meddling in the affairs of the captains of industry who carry the economy on their creative, dedicated, burdened shoulders. Even if the hypo-liber himself may not own guns and may be a (skilled) employee rather than management, these still fit very nicely into an apolitical libertarian-leaning mindset. And in this regard, Trump has protected the great American masses from Politicized Courts whose black-robed tyrants legislate from the bench. Because as we all know, that’s what meddlesome liberal judges do; originalists, strict constructionists, and such just want to preserve the Constitution and the glorious rugged individualistic free-market capitalist Republic it was built to protect.

Being able to tell yourself that the courts can and will be apolitical is a key part of being an apolitical market conservative voter just as much as telling yourself Congress is a bunch of ineffectual crooks who are at their absolute best when gridlocked and thus doing no further harm.

BUT on the other hand? –
Isn’t it kind of a ”sad” day – when the CIA looks so… so tremendously reasonable? and even somebody like ”the Great Greenwald” finally goes completely over the cliff?
-(They had put him on a diet already at the Intercept – but now he might be one of the ”saddest symbols” for our self-deconstruction)

Whatever happened to US – as it’s… all in undistinguishable pieces?

Slays Me –
but I probably will eat it anyway -(and Mr. Arnold didn’t want it) BE-cause there is nothing more delicious than Schweizer Schokolade!

Norm MacDonald quote “My theory is this: People hated Hillary Clinton so much that they voted for someone they hated more than Hillary Clinton in order to rub it in.”

bruce wilder:
“Reading the post and comments, I can help but feel the entire agenda is about feeling good about one’s own political fecklessness. The abject moral and economic failures of left-neoliberalism / lesser evilism Democratic Party politics are staring at you. And, you are projecting that outward as if Trump is a failure of the Republican Party and its politics!”

I swear, some people would be breathing in Zyklon B – sorry, ‘Freedom Perfume’, in a GOP concentration camp gas chamber, and their last words would be to curse the Clintons.

> as they know that otherwise they finally will have to help their daughters out of student loan debt?

You are proposing to remove the leverage they have over their daughters, and you think they will _thank_ you?

@
”You are proposing to remove the leverage they have over their daughters”,

As ”they” had said that their daughters didn’t speak to them anymore –
(not unlike every daughter who (still) speaks lovingly to her dad BE-cause he didn’t vote for Trump) – ”they” have very little leverage over their daughters – and ”they” ALWAYS thank you if one saves them money –
for whatever…

@Orange Watch #76

Interesting point. My impression of people who aren’t politically engaged is that they’re also not very interested in the courts, and would rather just avoid the whole subject. But now you mention it “apolitical market conservative voters” (great phrase) can be found railing against ‘activist judges’.

(My personal go-to example doesn’t seem terribly interested in the courts, but was very happy with his tax cut – it was more than he ever got from Obama!)

Ojajh @89

Voters stayed home in the states that mattered in the electoral college (Ohio, Wisconsin etc)

As a comparison point: in the UK enough Tories are repelled by the Brexiters that it’s causing the parties to spilt, in both directions. E.g. Heidi Allen to the Tiggers, Anne Widdecombe to the new Brexit Party. And of course thete’s the famous David Cameron quote where he calls UKIP “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”.

The puzzle of this thread is that the US has not seen a similar level of split between Trumpist and non-Trumpist Republicans.

First past the post voting systems and the “lesser evil argument” have the effect that there’s a really high threshold before people quit the part in disgust, of course.

SusanC: “The puzzle of this thread is that the US has not seen a similar level of split between Trumpist and non-Trumpist Republicans.”

I believe that there is, but that it occurs decades ago. Trump is running 80-90% among Republicans. Non-Trumpist Republicans turned out to be a tiny fringe minority. They didn’t think so, because most Trumpists were not open, hiding behind euphemisms.

An attempt at a Venn diagram of the Republican party should be attempted.
It should show factions such as White Christians, the pro-Netanyahu* whispering gallery, Might-Makes-Right, Asset inflation complements Wage repression, selective free speech* movement, . . . and on it goes
—with completion (Union) in the Republican Party.

*see Greenwald today in The Intercept
(now have a comfort chocolate)

likbez

I am very sorry and sincerely apologize. Please view this as a plausible hypothesis ;-)

I read your comment but fear I failed to extract from it anything of value to me.

– and about –
*see Greenwald today in The Intercept
(now have a comfort chocolate”) and about some… hints that it is some ”Israeli” -(or jewish dudes) who does the controlling…?

I am in Prag right now – and I can tell you guys – you better don’t come to Prag with such funny ideas – as O listened to a group of American tourists today and a dude from Indiana told a woman with a really cute Tirolean hat – that Trump made him in the last 6 month about 240000 dollars – and that’s why he could afford to stay in the Four Seasons -(with the view of the ”Karlsbrücke”) – BUT WE stay in a much much more ”cooler apartment” – (Glenn Greenwald never ever would be allowed to occupy with his… dogs) – and WE vote straight ”US democrats” and take that and I won’t offer YOU chocolate at all!