Of course he isn't doing anything to solve actual problems.
This is where I feel compelled to add the reminder that I've never voted for a Republican for president, mostly vote Democrat down ballot, and while I think a lot of left cultural enthusiasms are bad (primarily due to undermining stated left of center goals!) and personally own a bunch of guns, I otherwise agree with the balance of the Democratic policy agenda. I see little defensible about the current right or Republican party but I also think that standing up to it effectively involves engaging with why they get traction, and not only in a manner that is flattering to our side of the aisle.
Ok cool. I'm going to try to be as succinct as I can on a topic that I feel like could be it's own post.
-Go back to 2012. Slow recovery from 2008 financial crisis. Obama wins re-election handily. However austerity remains the bipartisan consensus. Obama admin under the influence of Larry Summers. GOP because D in White House. Some popular rebellion has occurred on both sides (Occupy Wallstreet, early versions of Tea Party).
-D takeaway: Emerging Democratic majority, demographics is destiny, forgets that numbers assume continued strength with white working class.
-R takeaway: Demographic trends against us. Need to diversify coalition, pitch to hispanics on culture, freedom, religion.
-Both sides retain core neoliberal assumptions about the political consensus. Republicans in particular still focused on on goal of entitlment reform (gutting and/or privatization) and tax cuts for the wealthy.
-2016 GOP Primary: Traditional Republicans follow this playbook. All the same plutocrats, but hey Marco Rubio! Ted Cruz! Those aren't normal Republican names! And did you know Jeb Bush's wife is Mexican? Plus some guy from Ohio pretending to be John McCain. A real maverick.
-Trump enters the chat. Message: you are being screwed by wealthy elites across party lines. They screw you with bad trade deals that send your jobs overseas. They let in illegals to take your jobs, at your expense, and who do terrible things when they get here. They start wars for no reason your kids die in and theirs don't. Don't listen to them about economics, and the trade offs on benefits you earned, it's all just another scam at your expense.
-Trump gets traction. Trump is also a fundamentally mean person, and a mean person who loves adoration. Being a mean person, and playing to the crowd, doubles down on past xenophobic ignorance (see Obama's birth certificate).
-Bashing immigrants more generally, and in cruel ways becomes a mainstay of the schtick, and an unfortunate number of Americans are ready to hear and cheer it. However facts like the refugee crisis playing out mostly in Europe, the long festering failure of immigration reform, inability to secure the border, fentanyl flooding in, all give some grains of truth to what he is saying. Further traction picks up on the nastier corners of the hard right internet, and these too become incorporated into the coalescing MAGA subculture.
-However all that nastiness is really just the gravy on top of the core Trump pitch: you are being screwed by the elites. And IMO to understand why Trump had and still has some currency, you have to understand the foundation. Which is why I framed it the way I did.
-"Trump will defend my interests against those people who want to send my jobs and my security away, and who want to give them to someone else. And yea those people they want to give it all away too are disgusting aren't they.'
- There are about a billion asterisks and nuances to this, but that is how I see what happened.
Do you think during the 2016 election, he moderated his stance on Medicare and Social Security, from Republican orthodoxy? Not whether he meant it. Not how he polled during his time in office. Just whether he moderated on it during the 2016 campaign.
I will 100% unpack how I framed the immigration issue. Free preview: it starts with what the conventional wisdom was about how the GOP should pivot after Romney lost in 2012. But if you're going to deny the reality of the NPR article, the reality of Trump's strategy on a major issue, I don't know that we can have a good exchange.
I don't think he did anything particularly better but he started out less rambling, answers a little more focused then deteriorated as it went on. It was similar to my recollection of his performance in June.
I too am wondering how this comes off for the uncommitted. I wouldn't say Harris is killing it, but I would say she is looking plausible, even as she mostly answers the question she wants instead of the question asked. Trump is.. well Trump. All over the place. Some better jokes this time than last, but also a lot angrier and more dour.
But I'm voting for Harris so could just be my blinders.
It is abundantly obvious that replacing Biden was the right thing to do. By this point in the first debate it was unwatchable. Harris proving major upgrade.
Serious questions, why did you omit the sentence of that paragraph where I said the below in italics? And do you think that changes how charitable I was being?
Anyway Trump’s winning formula was moderate on entitlements for the elderly, go harder right on immigration.
Another observation to consider: the Democrats poll only slightly better on immigration than the GOP does on abortion, which is probably the GOP's worst major policy issue. It's worth asking who is and isn't in the mainstream on the subject, and how far over the line Trump's stances really are, at least if we care about how voters feel about the subject. My totally unsupported guess is that the ugliness of his rhetoric may well dampen the potential support for a major crack down and show of force at the border, not because people would be against it but because of how profoundly alienating the messenger is.
I do not want to be overly snippy here. But I'm navigating a comments thread where people are literally telling me that Trump did not actually say things in 2016 that Trump, per provided link, is documented as having said. I'm all for picking nits. What else would we do here? But I am really not sure what people are trying to prove with these responses.
Heh... they're still out there, in meaningful numbers, and probably no less interested in trying to get people to act (their version) of Christian. They just aren't the center of gravity anymore.
There's absolutely an interesting anthropological analysis to be made of what Trump has brought into conservatism, culturally. It's hard for me to imagine the old GOP getting behind something like the 1st Step Act (one of the few good things Trump supported) or his garden of heros thing (goofy but harmless and surprisingly open to diversity in terms of who is celebrated).
Obviously all of that means Jack and sh*t (and Jack left town) when compared to everything else about him, his past presidency, and plans for the future should he be re-elected.
Listen, I'm not going to get into the whole p-word debate with you. It's been done to death here and everywhere else. Suffice to say you have your priors, I have mine, and some random episode with a football player isn't going to convince anyone not already a convert.
Anyway Biden's margin of victory in 2020 is attributable to taking back a sufficient enough chunk of these types of voters in question to rebuild the blue wall, albeit narrowly. Make of it what you will. Or ignore it. I don't care. As long as the campaign understands the situation I am good.
Whatever my dude. I just hope someone in the Harris campaign has the ability to self interrogate better than many of our left of center commenters at OT. Because if they don't it's going to be a long 4 years. Maybe even more.
I just think it goes back to that theory of mind question you've asked before. Now, I think some of the analysis of the anatomy of the Trump voter have gone totally overboard, at least in terms of applying them writ large. Most of the people who vote for him were and are just Republicans. They were Republicans 10-15 or even more years ago. They have voted for more traditional flavors of Republicans but they will vote for Trump too, not because they're all in some state of post industrial left behind-ness, but because they established their loyalties long ago.
However there is a certain type of voter that sees himself (and it's mostly hims) as having paid his dues into the system, harbors a fair amount of distrust across partisan lines, doesn't have a lot of love for the Jesus freaks on the right or the implications that he is somehow more privileged than, say, a wealthy black celebrity by a vocal faction of the left, and just so happens to live in a corner of a pivotal battleground state. Often he doesn't vote, but sometimes, and with the right pitch, he might. No one is required to love this voter. No one is required to overstate the mass appeal of this voter's idiosyncratic politics and perspective, which is quite probably not particularly sophisticated. But what you must, must, must do, is accept that this voter exists, and that for the Democrats to win the presidency they need the votes of around 40% of them, depending on who you ask.
I'd say the stupid person is the one that (a) doesn't acknowledge the article posted where Trump is expressly quoted in 2016 as moderating his message on a 3rd rail issue that has historically been bad for Republicans and (b) seemingly still can't wrap his mind around the fact that our system of electing a president, in the current environment, turns on a small number of people in a handful of localities, who don't see the threat Donald Trump poses as being as clear and obvious as you or I do. No, it isn't a great situation, but it is reality.
I didn't really have any higher principle in mind with my original comment. Depending on the source 2016 seems to have turned on around 40-60k voters across western PA, MI, and WI. Many of them are best understood as low info, low partisan loyalty voters, with views that don't map well onto partisan alignment. I don't think Trump convinced partisan Democrats, or better informed voters of any stripe, but he did convince those people, many of whom had voted for Obama. And when the game is the electoral college, well...
I thought this was a fairly anodyne, well documented observation. I guess I was wrong.
Like Hillary Clinton, Trump has rejected any kind of benefits cut. Unlike Clinton, he's not looking to raise taxes.
"We're going to save Social Security," Trump told supporters at an Iowa campaign rally late last year. "We're not going to raise the age and we're not going to do all the things that everybody else is talking about doing. They're all talking about doing it and you don't have to. We're going to bring our jobs back. We're going to make our economy incredible again."
...
Clinton and Trump agree on some measures, such as trying to rein in the costs of prescription drugs. And both Clinton and Trump reject the idea of gradually converting Medicare to a voucher system in which the government subsidizes private insurance for future retirees. That plan is still an option in the GOP platform, however.
In many ways yes, though I think Trump was actually most effectively contained by the combination of Mitch McConnell and the irreconcilable conflicts his ascension created within the GOP. The Republican trifecta he started with was unable to pass any signature legislation, including things that one would think they had a mandate from their base to do. The exception is what Republicans always do, which is pass a tax cut heavily weighed towards the wealthiest.
But the game for the presidency is the electoral college, and whether by design or accident he moderated in the most effective way a Republican could.
No, but she said a bunch of dumb stuff in 2019 before having her candidacy ended by Tulsi Gabbard of all people, who was (arguably) running even further to Harris' left. As I said above I don't see any of it as insurmountable but she will be confronted with it at some point, probably as soon as tomorrow evening.
I think there is a significant gap between what is perceived and what is actually practiced. And abortion is of course a big exception where the Democrats have a very decisive advantage, especially when they exercise messaging discipline. But fair or not it's still seen as the party of Hollywood and fads from academia and/or elite legacy media and/or Brooklyn. I also think unions are a mixed bag. They're seen as ok when they protect the standard of living of private sector low skilled labor, not good when they protect incompetent public sector workers. We have to be realistic that organized labor is now a lot more likely to be associated with teachers unions or bad service at the DMV than it is with ensuring a fair deal for people on a manufacturing line.
But look, none of this is insurmountable. It's just the situation that needs to be navigated. It's obvious to me that 2008 Obama would be able to, for example.
I think this misses the real place that Trump moderated the GOP message, which was critical to his success in 2016 and that will be critical to him winning again, that being walking away from Paul Ryan type reforms to SS and Medicare (read: massive cuts). Conventional wisdom was that the Republicans needed to moderate on immigration for demographic reasons, and that doing so would allow them to go full steam ahead on major reduction in elderly entitlements as a fig leaf for what is always their primary objective, massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Reality however is that those elusive Obama-Trump voters (aging, white people without college degrees of which there are many in the upper midwest) are a lot more motivated by preserving their benefits than they are in protecting big business' interest in letting huge numbers of foreign nationals come into the country to work illegally. As we're learning, even 1st and 2nd generation hispanic immigrants have, at absolute best, very muddled feelings about and low solidarity with illegal aliens. Anyone who has actually talked to a central American immigrant that is not involved in activism for 5 minutes could have told you this, but we're talking about politicians here, and that's just not done, left or right. Anyway Trump's winning formula was moderate on entitlements for the elderly, go harder right on immigration.
Now, Trump has obviously declined significantly cognitively and in his ability to perform since 2016, but that dynamic is still basically what Harris is up against. Trump negates one of the biggest Democratic advantages by at least saying he will protect those entitlements. Whether he would or not if it came down to it is anyone's guess, but it creates an opening to turn the election into a conversation about cultural grievance where the elite of the Democratic party is weaker, and seen as aligned with all kinds of cultural forces that are out of step with reality. Is that enough to win again, after everyone has already seen Trump season 1 and realized it wasn't all it was cracked up to be? And after there is lots of fatigue with the battles of the teens, that Trump himself is inseparable from? Not sure, but that's how I see the situation with respect to moderation.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Party of the Middle”
Of course he isn't doing anything to solve actual problems.
This is where I feel compelled to add the reminder that I've never voted for a Republican for president, mostly vote Democrat down ballot, and while I think a lot of left cultural enthusiasms are bad (primarily due to undermining stated left of center goals!) and personally own a bunch of guns, I otherwise agree with the balance of the Democratic policy agenda. I see little defensible about the current right or Republican party but I also think that standing up to it effectively involves engaging with why they get traction, and not only in a manner that is flattering to our side of the aisle.
"
Ok cool. I'm going to try to be as succinct as I can on a topic that I feel like could be it's own post.
-Go back to 2012. Slow recovery from 2008 financial crisis. Obama wins re-election handily. However austerity remains the bipartisan consensus. Obama admin under the influence of Larry Summers. GOP because D in White House. Some popular rebellion has occurred on both sides (Occupy Wallstreet, early versions of Tea Party).
-D takeaway: Emerging Democratic majority, demographics is destiny, forgets that numbers assume continued strength with white working class.
-R takeaway: Demographic trends against us. Need to diversify coalition, pitch to hispanics on culture, freedom, religion.
-Both sides retain core neoliberal assumptions about the political consensus. Republicans in particular still focused on on goal of entitlment reform (gutting and/or privatization) and tax cuts for the wealthy.
-2016 GOP Primary: Traditional Republicans follow this playbook. All the same plutocrats, but hey Marco Rubio! Ted Cruz! Those aren't normal Republican names! And did you know Jeb Bush's wife is Mexican? Plus some guy from Ohio pretending to be John McCain. A real maverick.
-Trump enters the chat. Message: you are being screwed by wealthy elites across party lines. They screw you with bad trade deals that send your jobs overseas. They let in illegals to take your jobs, at your expense, and who do terrible things when they get here. They start wars for no reason your kids die in and theirs don't. Don't listen to them about economics, and the trade offs on benefits you earned, it's all just another scam at your expense.
-Trump gets traction. Trump is also a fundamentally mean person, and a mean person who loves adoration. Being a mean person, and playing to the crowd, doubles down on past xenophobic ignorance (see Obama's birth certificate).
-Bashing immigrants more generally, and in cruel ways becomes a mainstay of the schtick, and an unfortunate number of Americans are ready to hear and cheer it. However facts like the refugee crisis playing out mostly in Europe, the long festering failure of immigration reform, inability to secure the border, fentanyl flooding in, all give some grains of truth to what he is saying. Further traction picks up on the nastier corners of the hard right internet, and these too become incorporated into the coalescing MAGA subculture.
-However all that nastiness is really just the gravy on top of the core Trump pitch: you are being screwed by the elites. And IMO to understand why Trump had and still has some currency, you have to understand the foundation. Which is why I framed it the way I did.
-"Trump will defend my interests against those people who want to send my jobs and my security away, and who want to give them to someone else. And yea those people they want to give it all away too are disgusting aren't they.'
- There are about a billion asterisks and nuances to this, but that is how I see what happened.
"
Do you think during the 2016 election, he moderated his stance on Medicare and Social Security, from Republican orthodoxy? Not whether he meant it. Not how he polled during his time in office. Just whether he moderated on it during the 2016 campaign.
I will 100% unpack how I framed the immigration issue. Free preview: it starts with what the conventional wisdom was about how the GOP should pivot after Romney lost in 2012. But if you're going to deny the reality of the NPR article, the reality of Trump's strategy on a major issue, I don't know that we can have a good exchange.
On “Watch And React Live: The Harris Trump Debate”
I don't think he did anything particularly better but he started out less rambling, answers a little more focused then deteriorated as it went on. It was similar to my recollection of his performance in June.
"
We are a failing nation in decline people are laughing at us. Wow. That is not how I would have ended this.
"
Huge If it holds.
"
What we really need is the Manning-cast.
"
I too am wondering how this comes off for the uncommitted. I wouldn't say Harris is killing it, but I would say she is looking plausible, even as she mostly answers the question she wants instead of the question asked. Trump is.. well Trump. All over the place. Some better jokes this time than last, but also a lot angrier and more dour.
But I'm voting for Harris so could just be my blinders.
"
Why pay when he's giving it away for free?
"
It is abundantly obvious that replacing Biden was the right thing to do. By this point in the first debate it was unwatchable. Harris proving major upgrade.
"
Do you feel prescient about the reference to the Springfield, OH thing?
On “The Party of the Middle”
Serious questions, why did you omit the sentence of that paragraph where I said the below in italics? And do you think that changes how charitable I was being?
Anyway Trump’s winning formula was moderate on entitlements for the elderly, go harder right on immigration.
Another observation to consider: the Democrats poll only slightly better on immigration than the GOP does on abortion, which is probably the GOP's worst major policy issue. It's worth asking who is and isn't in the mainstream on the subject, and how far over the line Trump's stances really are, at least if we care about how voters feel about the subject. My totally unsupported guess is that the ugliness of his rhetoric may well dampen the potential support for a major crack down and show of force at the border, not because people would be against it but because of how profoundly alienating the messenger is.
I do not want to be overly snippy here. But I'm navigating a comments thread where people are literally telling me that Trump did not actually say things in 2016 that Trump, per provided link, is documented as having said. I'm all for picking nits. What else would we do here? But I am really not sure what people are trying to prove with these responses.
"
Heh... they're still out there, in meaningful numbers, and probably no less interested in trying to get people to act (their version) of Christian. They just aren't the center of gravity anymore.
"
There's absolutely an interesting anthropological analysis to be made of what Trump has brought into conservatism, culturally. It's hard for me to imagine the old GOP getting behind something like the 1st Step Act (one of the few good things Trump supported) or his garden of heros thing (goofy but harmless and surprisingly open to diversity in terms of who is celebrated).
Obviously all of that means Jack and sh*t (and Jack left town) when compared to everything else about him, his past presidency, and plans for the future should he be re-elected.
"
Listen, I'm not going to get into the whole p-word debate with you. It's been done to death here and everywhere else. Suffice to say you have your priors, I have mine, and some random episode with a football player isn't going to convince anyone not already a convert.
Anyway Biden's margin of victory in 2020 is attributable to taking back a sufficient enough chunk of these types of voters in question to rebuild the blue wall, albeit narrowly. Make of it what you will. Or ignore it. I don't care. As long as the campaign understands the situation I am good.
"
Whatever my dude. I just hope someone in the Harris campaign has the ability to self interrogate better than many of our left of center commenters at OT. Because if they don't it's going to be a long 4 years. Maybe even more.
"
I just think it goes back to that theory of mind question you've asked before. Now, I think some of the analysis of the anatomy of the Trump voter have gone totally overboard, at least in terms of applying them writ large. Most of the people who vote for him were and are just Republicans. They were Republicans 10-15 or even more years ago. They have voted for more traditional flavors of Republicans but they will vote for Trump too, not because they're all in some state of post industrial left behind-ness, but because they established their loyalties long ago.
However there is a certain type of voter that sees himself (and it's mostly hims) as having paid his dues into the system, harbors a fair amount of distrust across partisan lines, doesn't have a lot of love for the Jesus freaks on the right or the implications that he is somehow more privileged than, say, a wealthy black celebrity by a vocal faction of the left, and just so happens to live in a corner of a pivotal battleground state. Often he doesn't vote, but sometimes, and with the right pitch, he might. No one is required to love this voter. No one is required to overstate the mass appeal of this voter's idiosyncratic politics and perspective, which is quite probably not particularly sophisticated. But what you must, must, must do, is accept that this voter exists, and that for the Democrats to win the presidency they need the votes of around 40% of them, depending on who you ask.
"
I'd say the stupid person is the one that (a) doesn't acknowledge the article posted where Trump is expressly quoted in 2016 as moderating his message on a 3rd rail issue that has historically been bad for Republicans and (b) seemingly still can't wrap his mind around the fact that our system of electing a president, in the current environment, turns on a small number of people in a handful of localities, who don't see the threat Donald Trump poses as being as clear and obvious as you or I do. No, it isn't a great situation, but it is reality.
"
I didn't really have any higher principle in mind with my original comment. Depending on the source 2016 seems to have turned on around 40-60k voters across western PA, MI, and WI. Many of them are best understood as low info, low partisan loyalty voters, with views that don't map well onto partisan alignment. I don't think Trump convinced partisan Democrats, or better informed voters of any stripe, but he did convince those people, many of whom had voted for Obama. And when the game is the electoral college, well...
I thought this was a fairly anodyne, well documented observation. I guess I was wrong.
"
I mean, probably. But it was still a swing at moderating the message.
"
Like Hillary Clinton, Trump has rejected any kind of benefits cut. Unlike Clinton, he's not looking to raise taxes.
"We're going to save Social Security," Trump told supporters at an Iowa campaign rally late last year. "We're not going to raise the age and we're not going to do all the things that everybody else is talking about doing. They're all talking about doing it and you don't have to. We're going to bring our jobs back. We're going to make our economy incredible again."
...
Clinton and Trump agree on some measures, such as trying to rein in the costs of prescription drugs. And both Clinton and Trump reject the idea of gradually converting Medicare to a voucher system in which the government subsidizes private insurance for future retirees. That plan is still an option in the GOP platform, however.
https://www.npr.org/2016/10/06/496067982/the-issues-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump-on-social-security-and-medicare
"
In many ways yes, though I think Trump was actually most effectively contained by the combination of Mitch McConnell and the irreconcilable conflicts his ascension created within the GOP. The Republican trifecta he started with was unable to pass any signature legislation, including things that one would think they had a mandate from their base to do. The exception is what Republicans always do, which is pass a tax cut heavily weighed towards the wealthiest.
But the game for the presidency is the electoral college, and whether by design or accident he moderated in the most effective way a Republican could.
"
No, but she said a bunch of dumb stuff in 2019 before having her candidacy ended by Tulsi Gabbard of all people, who was (arguably) running even further to Harris' left. As I said above I don't see any of it as insurmountable but she will be confronted with it at some point, probably as soon as tomorrow evening.
"
I think there is a significant gap between what is perceived and what is actually practiced. And abortion is of course a big exception where the Democrats have a very decisive advantage, especially when they exercise messaging discipline. But fair or not it's still seen as the party of Hollywood and fads from academia and/or elite legacy media and/or Brooklyn. I also think unions are a mixed bag. They're seen as ok when they protect the standard of living of private sector low skilled labor, not good when they protect incompetent public sector workers. We have to be realistic that organized labor is now a lot more likely to be associated with teachers unions or bad service at the DMV than it is with ensuring a fair deal for people on a manufacturing line.
But look, none of this is insurmountable. It's just the situation that needs to be navigated. It's obvious to me that 2008 Obama would be able to, for example.
"
I think this misses the real place that Trump moderated the GOP message, which was critical to his success in 2016 and that will be critical to him winning again, that being walking away from Paul Ryan type reforms to SS and Medicare (read: massive cuts). Conventional wisdom was that the Republicans needed to moderate on immigration for demographic reasons, and that doing so would allow them to go full steam ahead on major reduction in elderly entitlements as a fig leaf for what is always their primary objective, massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Reality however is that those elusive Obama-Trump voters (aging, white people without college degrees of which there are many in the upper midwest) are a lot more motivated by preserving their benefits than they are in protecting big business' interest in letting huge numbers of foreign nationals come into the country to work illegally. As we're learning, even 1st and 2nd generation hispanic immigrants have, at absolute best, very muddled feelings about and low solidarity with illegal aliens. Anyone who has actually talked to a central American immigrant that is not involved in activism for 5 minutes could have told you this, but we're talking about politicians here, and that's just not done, left or right. Anyway Trump's winning formula was moderate on entitlements for the elderly, go harder right on immigration.
Now, Trump has obviously declined significantly cognitively and in his ability to perform since 2016, but that dynamic is still basically what Harris is up against. Trump negates one of the biggest Democratic advantages by at least saying he will protect those entitlements. Whether he would or not if it came down to it is anyone's guess, but it creates an opening to turn the election into a conversation about cultural grievance where the elite of the Democratic party is weaker, and seen as aligned with all kinds of cultural forces that are out of step with reality. Is that enough to win again, after everyone has already seen Trump season 1 and realized it wasn't all it was cracked up to be? And after there is lots of fatigue with the battles of the teens, that Trump himself is inseparable from? Not sure, but that's how I see the situation with respect to moderation.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.