Populism can be viewed, fundamentally, as a protest vote. Things are bad, I want change, I don't care what it is. Trump is a populist; he did not win the states he won because of what he is but because of what he isn't. Drain the swamp. Make America Great Again. A populist who wishes to be an incumbent must deliver bread and circuses. Build the wall. End Chain Migration. He need not make the country better, but he must give the protesters at least some of what he promised. If he promises to erect a 40-foot statue of a penis on the capitol steps, there'd best be a phallus come election day. The calculus at play is whether or not the populace is happy, and whether or not the populist's coat tails are worth riding. From a cynical standpoint, if you can make a fraction of the MAGA-heads who were all about Trump be less all about Trump, you win. And if you can make the opportunistic quislings that have enabled Trump re-evaluate their costs-benefits analysis, you win. Someone on Twitter longed for the days when all those who had enabled Trump over the past few years realize that they didn't advance their careers, they didn't constrain his impulses, they just provided cover fire for things to get worse and worse while everything Trump touches dies. That's the Republican calculus, anyway. The Democratic calculus is to salve their base by doing the minimum common decent thing. Democrats in congress told Obama that Obamacare was the kind of thing they could lose their jobs over. Obama told them Obamacare was the kind of thing worth losing their jobs over. One party is clearly unprincipled. That makes it easy for the other party to follow suit. But if you wish to retain any of the donors, you have to do your job from time to time.
This comment got the noggin thinkin'. I agree with most of it, but two things: If populism is a protest vote, what exactly were they protesting? The Obama years were marked by economic recovery and bettering of relations with other countries. We could argue about technological unemployment but that's been happening for a while and it's not as if a 2008 recession happened again. Unless a lot of people just think things are going to shit. The people who were pissed off over Obama were ready to throw their support behind any mainstream Republican in the next election. Death panels. Gay marriage. The president is from Kenya. We all remember that crazy rhetoric. So presumably the anger comes from large numbers of people who feel their voice has been completely ignored in politics and here's an opportunity to rearrange the deck. But most of those people were just going to vote Republican anyway. Unless he motivated people who would otherwise not vote (valid argument, saying nasty things about Hispanics does genuinely rile people up) where does the sudden increase in support come from? Who genuinely swings from Democrat to Republican? To the fence sitters that switched, the one thing Hillary Clinton was was boring and Trump was exciting. Justin Trudeau is exciting. There's a strong allure to charisma in politics. Especially in America where it's customary to switch parties in power every 8 years. Obama was not a populist but he did seem like a dude that could lead and get shit done. So there's the desire for change but I'm not sure it came from "things are horrible," unless we characterize gay marriage as being horrible. We had 12 years of Republicans, 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush, 8 years of Obama. Given the continual flip flop I think people are just looking for whatever is fresh. Hillary Clinton was almost certainly not fresh. There are a LOT of people who aren't thinking deeply into the issues or policy proposals. I mean yikes, I had a friend who would appear super left wing but voted for the most conservative mayor I could imagine. Why? Oh, I like him and the left wing person was mean to my mom. Who cares? Policy > your mom. I don't even think he remembered this event correctly. Left-wing party against striking public workers? Since when? It sounds stupid but there are loads of people that think in very bizarre and nonsensical ways. So you're right that people wanted change but I would argue it's more an attraction to novelty than a last ditch attempt to avoid perceived personal and societal destruction. The pundits on CNN were going off on how "people's voices weren't being heard" after the election but I sense people were more bored and wanted to rock the ship. Never underestimate the power of ngaf in large numbers. Democrats absolutely need to retain donors and do their job but I worry they're just going to look weak as Donny's strategy is to just break shit. And johnnyFive raised an important point - what if this impeachment fails and he does something even worse? What if war breaks out? So far this presidency hasn't led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and the bankrupting of the country (better than Bush!) but if actual geopolical strife broke out God knows what could happen.Populism can be viewed, fundamentally, as a protest vote. Things are bad, I want change, I don't care what it is. Trump is a populist; he did not win the states he won because of what he is but because of what he isn't. Drain the swamp. Make America Great Again.
First, I think you're overestimating the reach of the economic recovery. In aggregate things got better, but this was not universal. If you were a 40-year-old man in the midwest with no education past high school, your job prospects did not bounce back the way a 25-year-old with a master's degree's did. But beyond that, it's a mistake to couch this in solely economic terms. There's a lot more going on than that, and I think there are often situations where our broader political language does not have the capability of describing it. I recently re-read this essay on James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. One of the key points is regarding legibility, and what happens when groups within a society simply cannot understand one another. After pointing out some researching showing the remarkably positive effects that a high density of "co-religionists" has on a community, the essay continues: So when you talk about people thinking in "very bizarre and nonsensical ways," I think this is what you're really talking about. It really was people not being heard, but it wasn't that no one was listening, it's that the broader population didn't know how. Because remember, populism doesn't have to look like Trump. Populist parties starting winning elections like crazy all over the western world after the Great Recession. But again, it wasn't just conservatives. For every Trump or Le Pen you also have a Syriza or Podemos.I know this is hard, but imagine actually being a conservative Christian in a dying town. Everything I just described is going away, nothing seems able to replace it, and things are just getting worse. The most noticeable difference by far is going to be “cultural” – what language would you use? “Loss of faith and family” is actually pretty apt. Let’s say that their arguments are identical to mine, just shrouded in local language. Fine – all that means is that In the final analysis, the conservative christian recognizes that they’re being deprived even of the power to complain, which is to say, even of the power to explain their powerlessness.
I concede the point. You and Klein certainly know what's going on. I need to brush up on my reading. So in 10 years social conservatives in rural areas went from already isolating themselves from society (not hanging out with the godless) (creationism in class, fighting gay marriage and abortion) to suddenly seeing a society where gay marriage is legal, there are all-gender washrooms, drugs are legalized, acceptance of non-binary genders happens, etc. All the debate in the mass media over safe spaces and language and whatnot and OH GOD THEY WANT TO NEUTRALIZE THE ANTHEM. Meanwhile it's still a sin to have sex before marriage and you better do it at 18. At that point you'd certainly feel like you're losing your grip on reality. Guy who says let's build the wall? Probably feels like the greatest breath of fresh air there is. But do I feel bad for them? Fuck no. I try to send them love but then I'm at work and the racist jokes start flying and all of a sudden women are alien creatures who can be harassed and teenagers are there to be fucked with and I need to nope the fuck out of there. Fuck you Ken. Fuck you and your motorcycles and your Jesus tattoos and your 3 ugly kids and your dog and the fact the last thing you condescendingly said to me was "how old are you?" before getting fired. Old enough to vote jackass.
Yeah I don't want to defend them as a group by any means. I just think it's worth being conscious of the fact that (1) it's not always because the person is racist and/or stupid, and (2) more broadly, it's always better to have a, well, better handle on a problem before we start trying to solve it. Where these intersect is in, basically, not doing what you're talking about. It's easy for me to say since I don't have to deal with that on a daily basis, but that doesn't make me wrong, either. You get more flies with honey than with vinegar, and it's worth thinking about what our ultimate goals actually are. If we just want the catharsis of OWNING someone we don't think much of, let's not then expect anything to actually change.
I had lunch with a buddy over the summer. He was one of the first guys at Go2Net who took all his earnings and went to become a helicopter pilot. He's a smart guy - one of the smartest I know. And he pointed out that we were paying $17 each for roast beef sandwiches. Which is fine if you're making twice as much money as you were 20 years ago. But we're not. Employer-provided health plans crossed an average yearly cost of $20k this year. Employees typically pay two thirds of that but with a median income in the United States of $59k, families are paying an average of 10% a year as insurance against getting desperately sick. And the system isn't working, particularly among non-college-educated white people. Meanwhile, the nature of jobs has changed - if you were in manufacturing or transportation, you're not anymore. And if you want your kids to have a better life than you, the amount of money you're having to contribute has gone through the roof. The tricky thing about globalism is it's not pithy. It's not something you can easily explain. "We need to spend money overseas to raise the standard of living globally in order to promote cross-border cooperation and interdependency so that conflict declines and international harmony rules the day" is also "you're now competing with Bangladesh with an American cost of living and September 11 and the Iraq War happened anyway." If I had to buy my house now, instead of in 2000, I would spend about 4.5 times as much. If I had to graduate college now, instead of in 2000, I would spend about eight times as much. I mean - I did some time at community college and the quarterly tuition rate was higher than my university was. Meanwhile, the average starting salary out of my degree program has gone from $66k to $76k in twenty years. I think it's a lot easier for an older person to reach for populism because if you're 25? I mean, you know you're fucked but you have no experience of not being fucked. But if you're 55 you can clearly remember back when things weren't fucked. You can remember GM before NAFTA, you can remember retail before Walmart, you can remember the Internet before Facebook and you can remember healthcare before it was double your car payment. And when one party says "we will continue to make things better for all Americans" you know you're not "all Americans" because things aren't better for you. And when the other party says "It's the immigrants!" at least you know that someone is acknowledging the problem.If populism is a protest vote, what exactly were they protesting?
