An op-ed piece by Richard North Patterson titled "Donald Trump and the Looming GOP Apocalypse" nicely touches on something that I have often alluded to in my "political" conversations -- that one is foolish to vote Republican if one makes a salary less than the top quintile. I don't say top quintile. I say $250K, a more or less arbitrary number, but it helps make the point. Patterson writes, "the GOP establishment has preached an economic philosophy tilted toward its donor base — tax cuts for the wealthy; free trade; de-regulation; and cutting back entitlement programs, which do nothing for its voting base." Of course, the donor base, as opposed to the voting base, hold differing and incommensurate values that require a somewhat nuanced understanding to unpack. Both at least say that money should be "earned," but "earnings" come quite differently to the donor base than the voting base. For the former, "earnings" are determined by a maximized return on capital, and of course taxes, trade restrictions, and particular regulations compete against a maximized return. They stand against "entitlement" programs, in part because the money for their tax cuts must come from somewhere, and better it comes at the expense of entitlements rather than the military which protects their global economic interests. As a brief aside on the military, the donor class is not engaged in a crusade against radical islamic terror, much less islam itself. It is engaged in a (mostly failing) effort to insure regional stability around more or less friendly to US interests, broadly interpreted as global corporate interests.
For the latter, however, "earnings" come as a result of life sacrificed to labor of one sort or another, and there is a strong sense of ownership in life sacrificed. Taxes are a direct appropriation of their labor. If the tax rate stands at 20% that is one day of their life taken away, and it does beg the question, "for what?" The voting base really doesn't understand or care about trade policy, except insofar as they see its impact on prices at Walmart, but they do understand "deregulation," which they broadly interpret as unnecessary bureaucratic red tape of the DMV variety, and who could be for more unnecessary bureaucratic red tape of the DMV variety? What good does the DMV do after all? Eliminating bureaucratic red tape is a "common sense solution" to an unnecessary irritation. They also stand opposed to "entitlement" programs, particularly direct welfare programs, because people SHOULD earn a living. Who could favor giving away tax money to support "welfare bums?" What benefit do the "takers" provide to those who "make a living?" Eliminating entitlements, again, is a "common sense solution" that will force the impoverished to go forth, get a job and make a living. Insofar as the military is concerned, it is comprised of the voting class, and they are poised to make the "ultimate sacrifice," not to protect the global interests of the donor class, but to protect our country from threats abroad, whether the communism of the past or the radical islam of the present, and so their "service" should be valued and compensated. Altogether, more or less the same language, but values that have no real "logical" connection.
On the second level of incommensurability, consider, for example, the notion of "labor" and sacrifice. In another context, when asked about his "sacrifices" in comparison to a young army captain that had made the "ultimate sacrifice," Donald Trump repeated a donor class shibboleth -- that he created hundreds and hundreds of jobs. He was questioned on the idea that "creating jobs" represented a personal sacrifice, and I doubt that Trump has the capacity (or has not demonstrated the capacity) to articulate how "creating jobs" might be a personal sacrifice, but I must give him a smidgeon of credit. When the donor class "creates" a job, that means, essentially, they are "paying for" labor of one sort or another. On the one hand, for the donor class, labor is an investment. If they pay 10 USD per hour for labor, they expect it to produce a return on their investment in excess of 10 USD. In this respect, the donor class and the voting base exist in a symbiotic relationship, like the lamprey on a shark, and one could say their values are commensurate. On the other hand, for the donor class, labor is also an expense. If they can pay 7.50 USD per hour for labor, and still expect it to produce a return in excess of 10 USD, so much the better. If one can pay nothing for labor, and still expect it to produce a return in excess of 10 USD, that would be ideal. For the donor class, as an expense, the cost of labor represent a diminished return on capital and a "sacrifice" they would prefer, ultimately, not to make. So, yes, Donald Trump has made sacrifices to his personal wealth by creating jobs. Having said that, however, the donor class is NOT in the business of creating jobs. Moreover, they are NOT in the business of paying well for the jobs that they do create. Labor, particularly the sorts of organized labor that have driven up wages and provided benefits, are something to be minimized and entirely avoided if possible. So, as with many in the donor class, a goodly number of the jobs created by Trump have been created outside the sovereign United States, where labor costs can be minimized and the return on labor maximized. For the voting class, having the opportunity for a well paying job is, however, a positive value directly in opposition to the values of the donor class.
If Donald Trump has brought the GOP to the edge of apocalypse, whether unintentionally or with cynicism aforethought, it is because he has uncovered the incommensurability of the donor class values "really" supported by the GOP with the values "rhetorically" supported by the GOP, increasingly the values of the tea party and the more conservative politiphobes. There is a manichean aspect to much of the rhetoric of fox news and talk radio, a political fundamentalism that boils down to a basic conflict between light and dark, good and evil, us and them. Of course "he who is not with me, is against me," and so too the perpetual re-emergence of conspiracy theories where the forces of evil pace to and fro forever plotting against the forces of good. There is plenty of "contentious conflict" within a manichean world view, but little room for the "contentious give-and-take of politics," because any "deal" that is less than ideal, that involves some level of compromise, ultimately represents a "deal with the devil" and puts us on the slippery slope to hell. These comic book narratives are easily disrupted and complicated, the recent controversy surrounding the DNC speech by the parents of the US captain killed in action being a case in point, the white christian forces of good fighting the evil radical islamic terrorists disrupted by the fact that a well respected captain in the US armed forces happened to be a muslim. There followed considerable effort to "realign" the narrative. An informal survey of Trump supporters by Mother Jones had one man claiming "that the outrage ... was just the media 'blowing things up out of proportion' while "another offered a discredited conspiracy theory that Khan was a Muslim Brotherhood operative with 'his own agenda for bashing Trump.'” In the meantime, many of the donor class and the more traditional republicans they support have taken a step further away from Trump.
Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch both make an argument in support of the "elites." For Sullivan, the argument for "elites" is more philosophical. He argues, in effect, that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing -- in particular, that too much democracy can be bad thing.
Direct democracy didn’t just elect Congress and the president anymore; it expanded the notion of who might be qualified for public office. Once, candidates built a career through experience in elected or Cabinet positions or as military commanders; they were effectively selected by peer review. That elitist sorting mechanism has slowly imploded.
Rauch details the demise of the "sorting mechanism." For Rauch it was the "elites" of the party machinery that helped insure more or less moderate candidates were put forward, in part because those candidates were more "acceptable," but the party machinery has been slowly dismantled. The recent controversy around the hack of the DNC party emails is a case in point. It is a scandal, not because the Russians may have hacked a major party's deliberations, but because they reveal the DNC favored Clinton over Sanders. Rauch would likely argue that the DNC was doing precisely what it was supposed to be doing, "rigging" the system to ensure that an acceptable candidate came forward, one who accepted the party platform and was able to work within the system to carry it forward. Had the republicans a less feckless party machinery, one capable of advancing a more acceptable candidate, they would not be saddled with the likes of Trump. He has not only disrupted several of the bed rock conservative shibboleths, enough that his "conservatism" has been brought into question, but he has brought an unwelcome focus on issues of race. From an elite perspective, it is one thing, of course, to dog whistle issues of race and religion to gain the support of the socially conservative voting class, quite another to be blatantly racist. That his attacks on the Kahn family appear to be motivated solely by a xenophobic racism makes him less than "acceptable," not only to those who see him less as the son of Muslim immigrants, more as a patriot, but also to the donor class. Trump towers may NOT want muslim residents, but judging by their recent ads, Apple DOES want muslim consumers and, for that matter, black, gay, latino, female, trans and asian consumers.
As a sidebar note on the republican party, there is some sentiment that the donor class is getting their comeuppance for having dallied too long with the incipient (and sometimes overt) racism of the tea party. Trump's bubba cap slogan, "Make America Great Again," is a direct homage to the tea party cry to "Take Back our Government," but as Eugene Robinson has asked, some time ago, take it back from whom? As he writes, "The first African-American president takes office, and almost immediately we see the birth of a big, passionate national movement -- overwhelmingly white and lavishly funded -- that tries its best to delegitimize that president, seeks to thwart his every initiative, and manages to bring the discredited and moribund opposition party roaring back to life." When Robinson wrote, one had to speculate a bit to draw the conclusion that the tea party was animated by racial resentment. "Underlying all the tea party's issues and complaints, it appears to me, is the entirely legitimate issue of the relationship between the individual and the federal government," and he goes on ask, "But why would this concern about oppressive, intrusive government become so acute now? Why didn't, say, government surveillance of domestic phone calls and e-mails [initiated during the Bush administration] get the constitutional fundamentalists all worked up? -- moreover, worked up enough to swell the ranks of the "sovereign citizens groups," which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, increased more than sixfold in number since Obama was elected in 2008. The conclusion Robinson draws is the obvious one -- "he's black. For whatever reason, I think this makes some people unsettled, anxious, even suspicious -- witness the willingness of so many to believe absurd conspiracy theories about Obama's birthplace, his religion, and even his absent father's supposed Svengali-like influence from the grave." Eight years later, with the rise of Trump, one no longer needs to speculate. The tea party has co-opted the republican party with its racial resentments and an outsized politiphobia ready to go to war with the federal government. They are now the party of white identity.
There is another version of "Take Back our Government," a politiphobia that resonates with progressives. As Robinson put it, "Americans must fight to take back their government from the lobbyists and big-money special interests that shape our laws to suit their own interests, not for the good of the nation." Robert Reich, for example, wrote "Democracy is not working the way it should because it's being corrupted by big money. That big money is altering the rules of the game to generate even bigger money." There's a syllogism behind this: money is the equivalent of power, power corrupts, therefore money corrupts. I'm not disagreeing with the assertion, or the logic behind the assertion, but the tensions between those who have money and feel an entitlement to power and those who have little money and feel a resentment of power is as old as the federalist papers. Some of the same animus is behind the tea party movement, but is perhaps clearest in the occupy wall street and the Sander's campaign. It also helps explain some of the hatred of Clinton. The right hates her because she is, after all, left leaning and a continuation of the ever-so-slightly socialist policies of Obama. The left hates her because she is, after all, "acceptable" to the donor class. That the likes of Meg Whitman could fundraise for Clinton, as it were, says it all. Although the democratic party is in danger of becoming the party of class resentment with an outraged politiphobia ready for a 60s style revolution, it hasn't quite descended quite as far into the depths. As Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston, put it, “The big story in August is the defection of the Republican establishment from Trump. You are creating Hillary Clinton Republicans. It’s going to be hard for Trump to win with that brain drain. ... It would have to be a complete collapse of the Hillary Clinton campaign for him to win.”
So, we are left with the problem -- "democracy is not working as it should." On the one hand we have a candidate who plays the grade school game of "I'm rubber. You're glue. What you say bounces off me and sticks to you." Jumping on Clinton's comment that she "short circuited" as an euphemism for mis-spoke, Trump said, "she took a short-circuit in the brain. She's got problems," and then went as he once again tore into Clinton as "unstable," "unbalanced" and "totally unhinged," all of which are simply projections of claims made about him. He may be particularly bothered by "little Michael Bloomberg," who urged voters to elect Clinton, saying "Let's elect a sane, competent person," implying of course that Trump was neither sane nor competent, and the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, "The Week They Decided Donald Trump Was Crazy." On the other hand, as Sullivan notes, for those who believe we must take America back from the monied interests, for "those despairing over the influence of Big Money in American politics" one must also "explain the swift, humiliating demise of Jeb Bush and the struggling Establishment campaign of Hillary Clinton. The evidence suggests that direct democracy, far from being throttled, is actually intensifying its grip on American politics." With the rise of Trump and the demise of Sanders, the evidence is contradictory, and we have a candidate that may well be too acceptable to the likes of Meg Whitman and Michael Bloomberg. When one sets aside the evangelical angst over the moral decay represented by transgender toilet use, when one sets aside the pointless all or nothing recalcitrance over gun rights, when one sets aside the white nationalist fears of martial law and an incipient race war -- none of which represent the views of a majority of Americans -- one is left with an economic position that is ever-so-slightly left of center. The donor class knows, or should know, that when push comes to shove, not unlike Obama, she will support the interests of those institutions too big to fail.
When we say "democracy is not working the way it should" we tend to mean that government does not enact policy representing the majority view of most Americans. There have been much hand wringing about why it is not working, Sullivan's and Rauch's arguments being just two of many, and one wonders. The internet was lauded as a form of "democratization," and in some ways it has been. As Sullivan notes, "The rise of the internet — an event so swift and pervasive its political effect is only now beginning to be understood — further democratized every source of information, dramatically expanded each outlet’s readership, and gave everyone a platform." In many ways, however, it may well be too much of a good thing. "Traffic" on the internet can be measured with great accuracy, and what mainly fuels traffic "is precisely what the Founders feared about democratic culture: feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness. Online debates become personal, emotional, and irresolvable almost as soon as they begin. Godwin’s Law — it’s only a matter of time before a comments section brings up Hitler — is a reflection of the collapse of the reasoned deliberation the Founders saw as indispensable to a functioning republic." The internet, among other things, helped create a nation of recalcitrant politiphobes, those who believe there are "obvious common sense solutions" to most of our problems, their own "obvious common sense solutions," and because the increasingly sophisticated algorithms tend to feed our preferences back to us, we live in an echo chamber where those "obvious common sense solutions" are never challenged, repeated endlessly, growing dimmer with each repetition. We are rapidly losing the ability to develop, if not a majority consensus, then at least a plurality. As Andrew Bacevitch writes, " Whether Trump or Clinton ultimately prevails, large numbers of Americans will view the result as further proof of “rigged” and irredeemably corrupt political arrangements. Rather than inducing some semblance of reconciliation, the outcome is likely to deepen divisions." Indeed.
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