Conversely, it makes running an opposition campaign so easy that the opposition won't need to focus on the big issues. The opposition could focus on morality and pay lip-service to neoliberal diversity theatre while simultaneously selling out to corporate interests.
If you're running against Trump in an election, what's the point of drawing the ire of industry (pharma, insurance, military, surveillance, general big-corp) when you can focus on orthogonal issues? You could get more funding by ignoring them and focusing on mostly-irrelevant wedge issues such as abortion (never going anywhere), "decorum", etc. Personally if Trump loses the next election I think we're going to get the biggest corporate-bootlicker democrat we've ever seen
> Conversely, it makes running an opposition campaign so easy that the opposition won't need to focus on the big issues.
Just over 50% disapproval isn't actually that easy to beat; its enough to draw strong candidates of diverse viewpoints into the opposition primary (rather than them sitting out as often happens with a strong incumbent), but not solid enough for opposition complacency. Of course, that number could move strongly either way before candidates are firmly in or out of the primary.
> Personally if Trump loses the next election I think we're going to get the biggest corporate-bootlicker democrat we've ever seen
Personally, I think if the Democrats nominated a candidate like that again, they’ll lose to Trump again, even with his unpopularity.
I don't think being a corporate mouthpiece was the reason Hillary lost; I think it had more to do with her lack of charisma and the many years of media that had engendered a deep feeling of mistrust towards her. Obama was almost as corporate as her, in my opinion, except he was much more well spoken and likable. Biden is along the same lines and it looks like he's gearing up for a run for the presidency.
Also as election season approaches, I think that disapproval will rise simply due to all of the marketing/discussion that will bring back into the public consciousness all of the reasons people disliked Trump in the first place.
> I don't think being a corporate mouthpiece was the reason Hillary lost; I think it had more to do with her lack of charisma
Maybe, but her being a corporate mouthpiece combined with her lack of charisma, combined with her 2016 loss is a big reason a sizable part of the activist base of the party is in open rebellion against the dominance of the neoliberal wing of the party, and why it's been able to force concessions (though not won outright) over internal leadership issues within the party. The 2020 nominee will probably be to the right of Sanders , but the party won't hold together if they are as firmly in the corporate camp as Clinton, much less the “biggest corporate bootlicker Democrat we’ve ever seen”.
Obama at least had the decency to take his corporate pay, i.e. 1/4 million dollar speech engagements, after he left the presidency. Hillary Clinton made over $10 million dollars in 2014 for just giving speeches.
But really, there is not one single overriding reason that she lost the election, but a different combination of reasons in all the millions that voted for Trump/against Clinton.
if Trump is still around in Nov 2020, he's overwhelmingly likely to lose. his opposition is extremely motivated and overflowing with a prurient desire to defeat him, while Trump's remaining voters, who have been repeatedly embarrassed and disappointed, have as much motivation to show up at the polls as a child has to show up at a vaccination clinic.
>while Trump's remaining voters, who have been repeatedly embarrassed and disappointed, have as much motivation to show up at the polls as a child has to show up at a vaccination clinic.
Have they been? In real life? Or was it rather the inverse (all the impeachment fantasies etc, the collusion stories endlessly appearing and fading, the economy that was "sure" to suffer, etc...).
That said, is the Washington Post a representation of the "real life"?
Have they regularly run such stories by embittered union leaders before, when the President was more to their liking?
Or is it just confirmation bias?
Especially with economic indicators going strong (so much for the "disaster" people like Krugman predicted "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never" [1] on those same papers), and many companies, including Apple, announcing plans to bring jobs back to the US.
At worst, the WaPo link you've sent would be "business as usual", the untangling of US manufacturing jobs that has been happening since Reagan, if not earlier. Surely not some unique catastrophe imposed by The Donald.
You asked if Trump supporters have been disappointed. I gave you an example of a person who supported and even advocated for Trump, and is disappointed with his presidency. If that isn't what you wanted, you should have asked for something else.
with all of Trump's personal misbehaviors and misstatements, I'm guessing it's hard for them not to feel embarrassed and/or awkward and/or disappointed. in short, they're demotivated:
* fiscal conservatives have had to defend the guy who brought them new tax laws that increase the deficit
* border wall supporters have had to support a man who just signed an omnibus spending bill which included basically no funding for the wall (not to mention the lack of funding from Mexico, which Trump also promised)
* immigration restrictionists have watched the Trump administration feebly defend travel bans that were immediately held up in the courts
* voters who consider themselves well-mannered, civil conservatives have had to defend a president who frequently insults and/or abruptly fires his own allies and team members
* voters who mistrust Wall Street big banks and want the swamp drained have watched as Trump embraced and employed some of these same Wall Street big bankers, including a couple of Goldman Sachs Democrats, who ushered in a huge corporate tax break
* conservative Christians have had to defend a serial adulterer
* manufacturing workers who were promised a significant revival of the manufacturing base have not seen much progress either, because bringing millions of manufacturing jobs back to the US is really really difficult to accomplish. but Trump promised it during his campaign. "You'll get so tired of winning..."
* what's going on with the US trade gap with China? we shall see, but, as Paul Krugman pointed out recently, Trump is not off to a great start. does he even know what he's doing? which brings me to ...
* voters who respect competence, order, a well-oiled machine, etc are not seeing much of it in this administration. at all.
> fiscal conservatives have had to defend the guy who brought them new tax laws that increase the deficit
Advocating for tax cuts and then using the resulting deficit increase to fuel advocacy for spending cuts has been a strategy of fiscal conservatives for decades, so this is just fiscal conservatism as usual, not something that will cause most of them problems.
> fiscal conservatives have had to defend the guy who brought them new tax laws that increase the deficit
On the other hand, non-fiscal conservatives should be jumping with joy.
> border wall supporters have had to support a man who just signed an omnibus spending bill which included basically no funding for the wall (not to mention the lack of funding from Mexico, which Trump also promised)
Well, "border wall supporters" also knew that "Mecico will pay" was BS political strong talk promising. And they see that Trump does indeed moves to restrict immigration, which is what really mattered to them, not whether some physical wall will be built or not.
(And let's not talk about "broken promises" about the Wall, when there's the previous administrations tons of broken promises about progressive politics, all official promises during the campaign of "Hope").
> immigration restrictionists have watched the Trump administration feebly defend travel bans that were immediately held up in the courts
And they can easily just blame the courts for this, while still thinking Trump at least tried
> voters who consider themselves well-mannered, civil conservatives have had to defend a president who frequently insults and/or abruptly fires his own allies and team members
Voters who consider themselves well-mannered, civil conservatives either are hypocritical or felt they have had no place in modern politics ever since at least Nixon.
> voters who mistrust Wall Street big banks and want the swamp drained have watched as Trump embraced and employed some of these same Wall Street big bankers, including a couple of Goldman Sachs Democrats, who ushered in a huge corporate tax break
I'll give you that. Not that they weren't expecting it, short of actually having some kind of revolution.
> conservative Christians have had to defend a serial adulterer
That's no problem for them, Christ himself was all about forgiveness, and besides, most of their TV evangelists are serial adulterers as well.
> manufacturing workers who were promised a significant revival of the manufacturing base have not seen much progress either, because bringing millions of manufacturing jobs back to the US is really really difficult to accomplish. but Trump promised it during his campaign. "You'll get so tired of winning..."
At least they do see some movement in this direction, which is more than one can say for the previous decades.
> what's going on with the US trade gap with China? we shall see, but, as Paul Krugman pointed out recently, Trump is not off to a great start. does he even know what he's doing? which brings me to ...
Well, Krugman had also said in November 2016 that "the economy is never going to recover" (from Trump), based on some temporary disruption in the stock market. Clearly (and perhaps just like Trump) there are no consequences whatsoever as to whether what he prophecies holds up or not.
> voters who respect competence, order, a well-oiled machine, etc are not seeing much of it in this administration. at all.
Those are fewer and fewer, because many (even people who didn't vote for Trump) feel that the "competence, order, a well-oiled machine" of prior decades has been mostly working against them. What they want is to see some disruption to this well-oiled machine of "business as usual".
yeah, ok. but i still predict a Trump loss in 2020, if he's even in the race.
my overall point is that these issues are enough to keep a reasonable or perhaps substantial fraction of the previous Trump voters at home on Election Day in 2020.
by contrast, we will see a huge fraction of Trump opponents dance into the polling stations on Election Day 2020.
forecasters should not take all of these past Trump voters for granted in 2020. there's just not enough good news to make them enthusiastic.
The fundamental issue, I see, is the polarizing platform. When it comes to modern day discourse you're not looking at a nuanced debate, you're just seeing pro and anti. I don't even need to cite a source, you just need to look at the division in the world around you and wonder why it looks so fucking simple. Nobody is focusing on big issues because everybody is being told to look for an attack or to make a defense.
It's an old book but I recommend reading Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, it gives an incredible insight into how current affairs are spun into particular forms to suit certain agendas. The key motif of the book is that there are more than two sides to every debate but we treat it as gospel that you're either for or against. It's never so easy as that.
Your first paragraph is so spot on IMO, that it frightens me.
We, as free thinking, reasonable people are continuously drawn into hyper-polarized debates, particularly on social media: There is no nuance (as you said), only pro vs anti (as you said II). It also seems fairly systematic, and that we are clearly being kept busy with these "debates" while we are flanked and maneuvered on.
The huge growth of fake news/misinformation and punditry-as-news in the last couple years, which really has been on the rise for decades, seems analogous to trolling. It's very difficult to have a good discussion with nuance and mutual respect when trolls are involved in a thread. Likewise it seems the general public conversation is being disrupted and dumbed down. I see the same effect you do and I think on at least some parts it's intentional.
And it started right after Trump won. Before that night the wisdom was exactly the opposite: that our elections can't be hacked, and we shouldn't believe claims about it.
Then Trump won and created mass hysteria in the political community, then the FUD went full steam ahead about Russia.
Instead of talking of the contents of the leaks, all we now can talk about was that there was a leak – and, oh – it was Russia hacking! (But don't discuss the details in the leaks, though. Instead pivot the discussion to malevolent hacking.)
I'm extremely skeptical Russia and their paltry spending had any effect on the election. Clinton and Trump were well known in this country long before the election anyhow. Clinton had a close relationship with Russia for that matter. And domestically Clinton/Trump and U.S. stakeholders spent billions of dollars to sway public opinion. Russia can't compete with that.
There have been concerns about election security going back many years for different interpretations of "hacked". Election fraud worries (one interpretation of "hacking" an election) go back pretty much as far as you want to go. Foreign influence? The Foreign Agents Registration Act was enacted in 1938. Hacking electronic voting machines was in the news around the 2000 election. "All started right after Trump won"? Let's at least be specific about what we mean when we say "all", for starters.
Obama (in)famously said "The larger point I want to emphasize here is that there is no serious person out there that would suggest that you could even rig America's elections" in response to Donald Trump speaking out about the possibility that the US Presidential election would be rigged. It's unfortunate because the integrity of elections is something we need to value and secure to ensure people have faith in the system, because if the elections are secure, if people doubt them, it undeservedly undermines people's belief in the legitimacy of the elected government. (Similarly, it's important to engage in good faith discussions with people you may not necessarily agree with if you want to cooperate and move forward.)
Note that Obama was speaking specifically about rigging elections, which Trump was on record as saying "I'm afraid the election's going to be rigged. The allegations I've heard† (and a focus of the Mueller investigation) have been of Russian influence in the elections via misinformation, not rigging or hacking election machines.
I'm all for honest discussion of the topics you raise, which includes being clear specifically on what was said and alleged, as well as what specifically is under discussion.
† You can likely find anyone saying pretty much anything, so let's please except more fringe accusations on all sides.
> Then Trump won and created mass hysteria in the political community, then the FUD went full steam ahead about Russia.
Except in the real world, where the public announcement about Russian interference campaign happened before the election. And the detailed information about penetration of voting system came from the Trump Administration. Neither fits your narrative.
I have no doubt that the “ Russia Collusion” investigation is largely the kind of bare knuckled political tactics used all around by the real political infrastructure. (Though I think think there is far more substance here than the Starr investigation of the Clinton/Monica Lewinsky case.)
It looks like the Russians did try to influence our election, and why wouldn’t they. But I can’t believe any seriously thinks Trump is some kind secret Russian agent.
The heart of the issue is that Trump has worked actively in the shady parts of high finance projects. From what I can tell, his business conduct is shamelessly sleazy, showing little regard for anyone’s interests but his own. At certain level of wealth, entities can start to operate almost above the law. Their wealth protects them through the legal and political systems. It is this kind of conduct that is most disturbing, amongst the “elites” of many countries, including the US.
I’m thinking of the practices of the financial-military-political complex. The connecting thread is the pursuance of wealth and power above all else.
Trump is a bad person, and it always struck me as nearly impossible that he hasn’t engaged in highly illegal conduct. It’s just at his level, before he became president, he was hard to touch.
Ironically, becoming president opened him up to a level of scrutiny that is extreme. His usual legal defense methods likely won’t work. Whatever happens in this case, he has so many enemies, he will not get a rest, as long as he is in power. It takes something like a special prosecutor to go after a president. The authority and power of Mueller is politically based. It’s hard to attach the president on legal grounds, purely, but he remains vulnerable to these political attacks.
For anyone that still thinks the Russian issue is a “nothing burger,”I highly recommend reading this eye popping article on the activities of Paul Manafort. Manafort is a very bad guy, and deserves to be in prison. The level of cynical corruption Manafort engages in is sickening. He is certain very connected with the political and economic power structure in Russia.
"Neoliberalism or neo-liberalism refers primarily to the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism. Those ideas include economic liberalization policies such as privatization, austerity, deregulation, free trade and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980."
A common critique of neoliberalism is that it pays lip service to adding diversity to traditionally high status/class/prestige careers and positions without disassembling the unfair power structures that cause those careers and positions to be so desirable. Hence "neoliberal diversity theatre" is somewhat separate from ostensibly selling out to corporate interests, because diversity theatre's goal is to advance justice along identitarian lines without removing injustice from the system; it's spreading injustice out among races and gender without addressing it as an intrinsic symptom.
Politicians selling out to corporate interests is the main mechanism through which those power structures are maintained and expanded, but the equality-charades are a necessary ingredient to make the main course palatable (for the democrats. Republicans are also neoliberal but use other wedge issues).
Some Democrats and some Republicans are neoliberal; the dominance of the neoliberal faction in the Democratic Party is weakening, and it's even weaker in the Republican Party—Trump is decidedly not a neoliberal.)
True, but I would correct "some" to "most." Neoliberalism is a blanket term that encompasses multiple axes that some might be split on, so many people aren't either 0 or 100% neoliberal, too. Republican rhetoric may not by and large lean neoliberal, but the way they vote often is. Even if neoliberalism is weakening, it's still the dominant economic ideology in the US government.
If you're running against Trump in an election, what's the point of drawing the ire of industry (pharma, insurance, military, surveillance, general big-corp) when you can focus on orthogonal issues? You could get more funding by ignoring them and focusing on mostly-irrelevant wedge issues such as abortion (never going anywhere), "decorum", etc. Personally if Trump loses the next election I think we're going to get the biggest corporate-bootlicker democrat we've ever seen