thebulwark--2020-09-27--What Would the Gipper Do?

What Would the Gipper Do?

I worked for Ronald Reagan for more than a decade and came to know him well .
How anyone who respected what he stood for and how he conducted himself could support Donald Trump is beyond me .
Being loyal to the Republican party is one thing , but at some point—now , for example—loyalty to a party should take second place to loyalty to the country .
And besides , the GOP under Trump bears virtually no resemblance to the party as it existed under Reagan .
The political situation in which—Republicans and especially Reaganites—find ourselves raises an interesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gipper do ?
Obviously we can not know the answer with complete certainty .
And some might say it doesn ’ t matter because Reagan was then and this is now .
Fair enough .
So let ’ s look at now .
Trump likes to compare himself to Reagan .
This is understandable because he knows the political value of basking in Reagan ’ s success and enduring popularity .
And yet , the two men could not be more different .
Reagan was kind .
Trump is mean .
Reagan was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accomplished .
Trump is obsessed with being credited and thanked for his dispensations .
Reagan viewed those who disagreed with him as worthy political opponents .
Trump views anyone who disagrees with him as an enemy .
Reagan revered war heroes who suffered at the hands of a brutal enemy .
Trump has disdain for them unless they support him conspicuously .
Reagan respected the pillars of democracy , especially the free press .
Trump does everything he can to undermine the press ’ credibility .
Reagan built and nourished relationships with allies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Reagan viewed the presidency as an institution belonging to the American people of which he was given temporary custody .
Trump views the presidency as something to which he is entitled and a way to enrich himself and his family .
But of course , for all that , Trump is not running against Reagan .
The contest is between Trump and Joe Biden .
It is true that Regan was a loyal Republican .
He began his political life as a Democrat , but over time , as the Democratic party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ liked to say , “ I didn ’ t leave the Democratic party .
The Democratic party left me.
” And this was true .
But even as a loyal Republican , Reagan never put the interests of the country second to politics .
He was always all about what was best for the country , and only the country .
It would trouble Reagan to have to choose between a man nominated by his beloved Republican party but whose record is so disappointing , refusal to accept science is so dangerous , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , versus a man from the “ opposing ” Party whose views are at odds with traditional Republican positions .
While he might be supportive of some of Trump ’ s policy initiatives—particularly those which reduce government regulations and the Federal bureaucracy—Reagan would not buy into the “ I don ’ t like his style , but I like what he ’ s doing ” excuse that many Republicans use to explain their support of Trump .
Indeed , what would bother Reagan deeply and fundamentally is how Trump behaves .
Reagan expected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of which everyone could be proud , to which parents could point as an example for their children .
And he always conducted himself accordingly .
That is not to suggest Reagan wanted his successors to be carbon copies of himself .
He understood every president had his or her own style .
But Reagan thought whoever was allowed by the people to temporarily live in the White House should always be guided by what was in the best interests of the American people , regardless of how that impacted his or her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to no end that Trump ’ s record in office shows him to be a man who looks at everything through a prism of how it will impact his chances of being reelected .
One of the few things that genuinely angered Reagan was when an aide started to talk about the political consequences of a presidential decision .
He would always shut down such talk immediately .
It ’ s pretty clear that just as the Democratic party of the ‘ 60s left him , Reagan would ask himself whether today ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same .
He would wonder what the party stands for—especially when there is no platform other than loyalty to Trump .
Reagan would question whether the party is still what it was when he decided to join .
He would ask whether different viewpoints are allowed .
Or if the party unambiguously stands up to dictators , pushes strongly for freedom , and welcomes those who suffer at the hands of oppressive regimes .
I suspect the answers would not please him .
It ’ s clear that Reagan would be appalled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be attracted to the candidacy of a life-long Democrat ?
As Reagan himself often said , Well… There are more than a few reasons to suspect he would .
Both men came from very humble beginnings , both switched parties , and both had an unmatched ability to make friends—true , deep friendships—across the aisle .
Reagan would like that Biden does not take himself too seriously .
Toward the end of his presidency , Reagan had the musical comedy troupe Capitol Steps perform at a social event on the South Lawn of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group poked fun at his management style .
Reagan roared with laughter ; Nancy did not .
After the event when the Reagans and a few aides were in the Diplomatic Reception Room Nancy made a point of telling us that she did not think the Capitol Steps ’ parody was funny .
Reagan made a point of telling us he thought it was .
On a key policy matter , Reagan would agree with Biden that individuals do not need military-style automatic assault weapons—which Reagan called “ machine guns ” —for personal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ matter , it would mean a lot to Reagan that the Bidens befriended Sarah and James Brady—Reagan ’ s press secretary who was very seriously wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt .
The Bradys had a home in Delaware and the Bidens reached out to them for no reason other than friendship .
They became so close over the years that Sarah asked Biden to be the keynote speaker at the memorial service for Jim .
That said , it is worth recalling that the crucial and most memorable question of the 1980 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ask themselves when deciding whether to give Jimmy Carter a second term , was this : “ Are you better off today than you were four years ago ?
” That ’ s the famous question that everyone remembers .
But it wasn ’ t the only question Reagan posed during that campaign .
In his election eve address to the nation , Reagan also asked the following : • Is our nation stronger and more capable of leading the world toward peace and freedom , or is it weaker ?
• @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or less ?
• Are you convinced that we have earned the respect of the world and our allies , or has America ’ s position across the globe diminished ?
• Are you personally more secure in your life ?
Is your family more secure ?
• Is America safer in the world ?
I would add one more : Does America under Trump ’ s leadership bring us closer to—or further from—that “ shining city upon a hill ” of which Reagan often spoke ?
He described it thusly : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reagan to vote for a Democrat , he was an American and patriot first .
Nothing was more important to him than the well-being of our country .
So what would the Gipper do ?
Reagan would be ridin ’ with Biden .

I worked for Ronald Reagan for more than a decade and came to know him well.
How anyone who respected what he stood for and how he conducted himself could support Donald Trump is beyond me. Being loyal to the Republican party is one thing, but at some point—now, for example—loyalty to a party should take second place to loyalty to the country. And besides, the GOP under Trump bears virtually no resemblance to the party as it existed under Reagan.
The political situation in which—Republicans and especially Reaganites—find ourselves raises an interesting question. WWGD: What would the Gipper do?
Obviously we cannot know the answer with complete certainty. And some might say it doesn’t matter because Reagan was then and this is now.
Fair enough. So let’s look at now.
Trump likes to compare himself to Reagan. This is understandable because he knows the political value of basking in Reagan’s success and enduring popularity. And yet, the two men could not be more different.
Reagan sought to unite. Trump seeks to divide.
Reagan was humble. Trump is arrogant.
Reagan was kind. Trump is mean.
Reagan was honest. Trump lies.
Reagan inspired. Trump incites.
Reagan was uncomfortable being given credit for what he accomplished. Trump is obsessed with being credited and thanked for his dispensations.
Reagan respected women. Trump is a misogynist.
Reagan viewed those who disagreed with him as worthy political opponents. Trump views anyone who disagrees with him as an enemy.
Reagan revered war heroes who suffered at the hands of a brutal enemy. Trump has disdain for them unless they support him conspicuously.
Reagan respected the pillars of democracy, especially the free press. Trump does everything he can to undermine the press’ credibility.
Reagan built and nourished relationships with allies. Trump routinely dismisses and disrespects them.
Reagan viewed the presidency as an institution belonging to the American people of which he was given temporary custody. Trump views the presidency as something to which he is entitled and a way to enrich himself and his family.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
But of course, for all that, Trump is not running against Reagan. The contest is between Trump and Joe Biden.
It is true that Reagan was a loyal Republican. He began his political life as a Democrat, but over time, as the Democratic party changed, Reagan switched parties. He liked to say, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party. The Democratic party left me.”
And this was true.
But even as a loyal Republican, Reagan never put the interests of the country second to politics. He was always all about what was best for the country, and only the country.
It would trouble Reagan to have to choose between a man nominated by his beloved Republican party but whose record is so disappointing, refusal to accept science is so dangerous, and vulgarity has so disgraced the presidency, versus a man from the “opposing” Party whose views are at odds with traditional Republican positions.
While he might be supportive of some of Trump’s policy initiatives—particularly those which reduce government regulations and the Federal bureaucracy—Reagan would not buy into the “I don’t like his style, but I like what he’s doing” excuse that many Republicans use to explain their support of Trump.
Reagan understood the importance of style.
Indeed, what would bother Reagan deeply and fundamentally is how Trump behaves. Reagan expected a president to act in a way of which everyone could be proud, to which parents could point as an example for their children. And he always conducted himself accordingly.
That is not to suggest Reagan wanted his successors to be carbon copies of himself. He understood every president had his or her own style. But Reagan thought whoever was allowed by the people to temporarily live in the White House should always be guided by what was in the best interests of the American people, regardless of how that impacted his or her political fortunes. It would upset Reagan to no end that Trump’s record in office shows him to be a man who looks at everything through a prism of how it will impact his chances of being reelected.
One of the few things that genuinely angered Reagan was when an aide started to talk about the political consequences of a presidential decision. He would always shut down such talk immediately.
It’s pretty clear that just as the Democratic party of the ‘60s left him, Reagan would ask himself whether today’s Republican party under Trump had done the same. He would wonder what the party stands for—especially when there is no platform other than loyalty to Trump.
Reagan would question whether the party is still what it was when he decided to join. He would ask whether different viewpoints are allowed. Or if the party unambiguously stands up to dictators, pushes strongly for freedom, and welcomes those who suffer at the hands of oppressive regimes. I suspect the answers would not please him.
It’s clear that Reagan would be appalled by Trump. But would the Gipper be attracted to the candidacy of a life-long Democrat? As Reagan himself often said, Well…
There are more than a few reasons to suspect he would. Both men came from very humble beginnings, both switched parties, and both had an unmatched ability to make friends—true, deep friendships—across the aisle.
Reagan would like that Biden does not take himself too seriously. Toward the end of his presidency, Reagan had the musical comedy troupe Capitol Steps perform at a social event on the South Lawn of the White House, at which the group poked fun at his management style. Reagan roared with laughter; Nancy did not. After the event when the Reagans and a few aides were in the Diplomatic Reception Room Nancy made a point of telling us that she did not think the Capitol Steps’ parody was funny. Reagan made a point of telling us he thought it was.
On a key policy matter, Reagan would agree with Biden that individuals do not need military-style automatic assault weapons—which Reagan called “machine guns”—for personal protection.
And on a very personal matter, it would mean a lot to Reagan that the Bidens befriended Sarah and James Brady—Reagan’s press secretary who was very seriously wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt. The Bradys had a home in Delaware and the Bidens reached out to them for no reason other than friendship. They became so close over the years that Sarah asked Biden to be the keynote speaker at the memorial service for Jim.
That said, it is worth recalling that the crucial and most memorable question of the 1980 presidential campaign, which Reagan urged voters to ask themselves when deciding whether to give Jimmy Carter a second term, was this: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
That’s the famous question that everyone remembers. But it wasn’t the only question Reagan posed during that campaign. In his election eve address to the nation, Reagan also asked the following:
Is our nation stronger and more capable of leading the world toward peace and freedom, or is it weaker?
Is there more stability in the world, or less?
Are you convinced that we have earned the respect of the world and our allies, or has America’s position across the globe diminished?
Are you personally more secure in your life? Is your family more secure?
Is America safer in the world?
I would add one more: Does America under Trump’s leadership bring us closer to—or further from—that “shining city upon a hill” of which Reagan often spoke?
He described it thusly:
…a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.
The answers are obvious.
As unappealing as it might be to Reagan to vote for a Democrat, he was an American and patriot first. Nothing was more important to him than the well-being of our country.
So what would the Gipper do? Reagan would be ridin’ with Biden.


thebulwark--2020-09-28--They Went Full Malkin. You Never Go Full Malkin.

The Inglenook Hotel is a convenient meeting place for the Waukesha and Wisconsin Republican Party gatherings .
The hotel and waterpark complex located just off the freeway Republicans prefer to mass transit has plenty of conference room space .
The artificial wall dividers have allowed Republicans to hold Election Night victory parties and “ Grazing with the Elephants ” fundraisers for years .
Given Waukesha ’ s role as one of the WOW—Waukesha , Ozaukee and Washington—Counties , which generate the votes to power GOP victories in Wisconsin , the Inglenook has served as the unofficial center of the universe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County Republican Party had Speaker of the House Paul Ryan as the featured speaker at the Lincoln Day Dinner at the Inglenook in 2018 .
Ryan was a popular figure in the Republican Party then , and his district stretched into the southern part of the county .
His remarks included his thoughts on Florida ’ s Stoneman Douglas High School and how authorities failed to prevent a 19-year-old from committing a mass shooting there .
Two years later , Ryan is gone , and the Republican Women of Waukesha County met at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Malkin .
During Malkin ’ s remarks , the Republicans in attendance gave the mother of Kyle Rittenhouse a standing ovation .
The 17-year-old Rittenhouse is currently fighting extradition from Illinois after he allegedly killed two rioters in Kenosha , WI and wounded a third .
His mother drove him to Kenosha from Antioch , IL , so he could join the local “ militia ” group .
Rittenhouse will likely be acquitted , but the celebration of the young shooter as a hero is disgraceful .
Instead of a standing ovation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her son in a position where his poor decisions allegedly led to the deaths of two people and the permanent maiming of a third .
While he may claim self-defense , what was his intention in going to Kenosha except to confront the rioters ?
And what did his mother think would happen ?
Regardless of the embrace of Rittenhouse ’ s mother by Republicans , the more disturbing figure in attendance was Malkin herself .
Malkin was formerly on the roster of speakers for the Young America ’ s Foundation ( YAF @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year after she began speaking at alt-right events defending “ the Groypers ” and their anti-Semitic leader Nick Fuentes .
She encouraged their attacks on “ Conservative , Inc. ” and defended them as their “ mommy.
” She is also a defender of the “ Proud Boys , ” the right ’ s violence-in-the-streets answer to Antifa .
We shouldn ’ t be surprised about Malkin ’ s “ turn ” to the anti-Semitic right .
This is the same Malkin who parachuted into Ryan ’ s district in 2016 to endorse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nehlen restricted his insults to Hispanics during that race , but by 2018 he had embraced anti-Semitism , too , and even Breitbart News had to stop backing him .
In a speech earlier this year , Malkin engaged in a few anti-Semitic musings of her own .
“ It ’ s anti-Semitic to question whatever the precise number is of people who perished in World War II , ” Malkin said .
“ It is anti-Semitic for me , being married to a 100 percent Ashkenazi Jew , to question dual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as agents of a foreign country.
” The decision by YAF to drop Malkin came after the organization announced former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker ( R ) will be the YAF president beginning in 2021 .
Given Malkin ’ s clash with the former elite of the Wisconsin GOP , you would think she would be persona non grata at state Republican events .
Unfortunately , we don ’ t know why the Waukesha Republican Party thought it was okay to make Malkin their featured speaker that evening .
Calls to the county @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Perhaps they thought that since Malkin had the endorsement of President Donald Trump that her brand of racial politics was acceptable .
Or , perhaps it ’ s worth remembering that this is the same local Republican Party unit that thought it was acceptable to have a “ Build the Wall Ball.
” After that , Malkin is just a step away .
The emcee for both events , the Malkin speech and the Build the Wall event , was WISN/WIBA radio rightwing talkshow host Vicki McKenna .
McKenna once bragged about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 .
Not only is McKenna all-in for Trump now , she has gone “ full Malkin ” by supporting the “ militia ” that showed up in Kenosha and calling on others to do the same even after Rittenhouse allegedly killed two people and wounded a third .
Not long after his speech at the Lincoln Day dinner , Ryan announced he would not seek re-election .
It was the end of an era , one in which Wisconsin Republicans like Ryan , Walker , and former White House Chief of Staff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They were Republicans who had embraced the Tea Party movement and the conservative movement to bring fiscal responsibility and common sense to government .
Ryan now serves on the board of Fox News .
Walker went all-in on anti-immigration rhetoric in the presidential campaign of 2016 and failed miserably .
He lost his re-election campaign in 2018 .
Priebus is practically exiled after his disastrous White House stint .
And the Republican Party of Waukesha County , upon which the GOP relied for their success in the state , has sunk into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Malkin-wannabe McKenna .
So far , only one Republican leader in the state has condemned Malkin ’ s appearance , Fond Du Lac County Party Chairman Rohn Bishop .
On the Waukesha County Republican website , it says in the banner at the top of the page , “ Every Contribution Supports Your Values.
” Waukesha County Republican elected officials have to answer whether their contributions to the party are supporting their values , or if they will act honorably and responsibly by resigning their memberships until the party leadership is completely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s appearance .
Will any of them do the honorable thing ?
Or are all of them afraid they ’ ll be shunned by their colleagues and supporters at the next GOP event at the Inglenook ?

The Ingleside Hotel is a convenient meeting place for the Waukesha and Wisconsin Republican Party gatherings. The hotel and waterpark complex located just off the freeway Republicans prefer to mass transit has plenty of conference room space. The artificial wall dividers have allowed Republicans to hold Election Night victory parties and “Grazing with the Elephants” fundraisers for years.
Given Waukesha’s role as one of the WOW—Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington—Counties, which generate the votes to power GOP victories in Wisconsin, the Ingleside has served as the unofficial center of the universe for the state party.
The Waukesha County Republican Party had Speaker of the House Paul Ryan as the featured speaker at the Lincoln Day Dinner at the Ingleside in 2018. Ryan was a popular figure in the Republican Party then, and his district stretched into the southern part of the county. His remarks included his thoughts on Florida’s Stoneman Douglas High School and how authorities failed to prevent a 19-year-old from committing a mass shooting there.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Two years later, Ryan is gone, and the Republican Women of Waukesha County met at the Ingleside to hear alt-right commentator Michelle Malkin. During Malkin’s remarks, the Republicans in attendance gave the mother of Kyle Rittenhouse a standing ovation. The 17-year-old Rittenhouse is currently fighting extradition from Illinois after he allegedly killed two rioters in Kenosha, WI and wounded a third. His mother drove him to Kenosha from Antioch, IL, so he could join the local “militia” group.
Rittenhouse will likely be acquitted, but the celebration of the young shooter as a hero is disgraceful. Instead of a standing ovation, his mother should be condemned for putting her son in a position where his poor decisions allegedly led to the deaths of two people and the permanent maiming of a third. While he may claim self-defense, what was his intention in going to Kenosha except to confront the rioters? And what did his mother think would happen?
Regardless of the embrace of Rittenhouse’s mother by Republicans, the more disturbing figure in attendance was Malkin herself.
Malkin was formerly on the roster of speakers for the Young America’s Foundation (YAF). She was let go last year after she began speaking at alt-right events defending “the Groypers” and their anti-Semitic leader Nick Fuentes. She encouraged their attacks on “Conservative, Inc.” and defended them as their “mommy.” She is also a defender of the “Proud Boys,” the right’s violence-in-the-streets answer to Antifa.
We shouldn’t be surprised about Malkin’s “turn” to the anti-Semitic right. This is the same Malkin who parachuted into Ryan’s district in 2016 to endorse racist Paul Nehlen in the GOP primary. Nehlen restricted his insults to Hispanics during that race, but by 2018 he had embraced anti-Semitism, too, and even Breitbart News had to stop backing him.
In a speech earlier this year, Malkin engaged in a few anti-Semitic musings of her own.
“It’s anti-Semitic to question whatever the precise number is of people who perished in World War II,” Malkin said. “It is anti-Semitic for me, being married to a 100 percent Ashkenazi Jew, to question dual loyalties of people who are working here as agents of a foreign country.”
The decision by YAF to drop Malkin came after the organization announced former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) will be the YAF president beginning in 2021. Given Malkin’s clash with the former elite of the Wisconsin GOP, you would think she would be persona non grata at state Republican events.
Unfortunately, we don’t know why the Waukesha Republican Party thought it was okay to make Malkin their featured speaker that evening. Calls to the county and state party were not returned Saturday.
Perhaps they thought that since Malkin had the endorsement of President Donald Trump that her brand of racial politics was acceptable. Or, perhaps it’s worth remembering that this is the same local Republican Party unit that thought it was acceptable to have a “Build the Wall Ball.” After that, Malkin is just a step away.
The emcee for both events, the Malkin speech and the Build the Wall event, was WISN/WIBA radio rightwing talkshow host Vicki McKenna. McKenna once bragged about being hung up on by Trump in 2016. Not only is McKenna all-in for Trump now, she has gone “full Malkin” by supporting the “militia” that showed up in Kenosha and calling on others to do the same even after Rittenhouse allegedly killed two people and wounded a third.
(The podcasts for McKenna’s WIBA shows that day have disappeared from the Clear Channel websites; no explanation has been provided despite requests for comment.)
McKenna hailed Malkin as a “righteous conservative woman” and a “freedom fighter.”
I had the privilege of introducing this brilliant freedom fighter tonight! ♥ Look up “righteous conservative woman” in the dictionary and you’ll see @michellemalkin’s picture! pic.twitter.com/1Yhh7Cd1l7 — Vicki McKenna (@VickiMcKenna) September 25, 2020
Not long after his speech at the Lincoln Day dinner, Ryan announced he would not seek re-election. It was the end of an era, one in which Wisconsin Republicans like Ryan, Walker, and former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus held the reins of power. They were Republicans who had embraced the Tea Party movement and the conservative movement to bring fiscal responsibility and common sense to government.
Ryan now serves on the board of Fox News. Walker went all-in on anti-immigration rhetoric in the presidential campaign of 2016 and failed miserably. He lost his re-election campaign in 2018. Priebus is practically exiled after his disastrous White House stint.
And the Republican Party of Waukesha County, upon which the GOP relied for their success in the state, has sunk into the sewer of associating itself with Malkin and Malkin-wannabe McKenna. So far, only one Republican leader in the state has condemned Malkin’s appearance, Fond Du Lac County Party Chairman Rohn Bishop.
On the Waukesha County Republican website, it says in the banner at the top of the page, “Every Contribution Supports Your Values.” Waukesha County Republican elected officials have to answer whether their contributions to the party are supporting their values, or if they will act honorably and responsibly by resigning their memberships until the party leadership is completely rid of the crackpots that organized Malkin’s appearance.
Will any of them do the honorable thing? Or are all of them afraid they’ll be shunned by their colleagues and supporters at the next GOP event at the Ingleside?
Correction: This post initially named the Ingleside hotel the “Inglenook” hotel.


thebulwark--2020-09-28--Can We Stop America’s Free Fall?

Can We Stop America’s Free Fall?

Twenty years ago—the end of the “ American Century ” —I began arguing that our democracy had embarked on a decline which might prove irreversible .
Friends found this gratuitously gloomy .
But , to me , the millennium bristled with the indicia of failure : A lack of national cohesion and a sense of common citizenship .
An economy wherein a prospering stock market disguised growing economic insecurity .
Our deteriorating infrastructure and public finances .
A widening political polarization .
A corrupt campaign finance system which promoted plutocracy .
An increasingly politicized judiciary .
The burgeoning fundamentalism which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and contempt for science .
The anger and misinformation spawned by talk radio .
An increasingly narcissistic mass culture which cheapened celebrity and displaced true achievement .
All of this , I felt , added up to a dangerous diminution of national virtue .
But our decline over the last two decades has been more comprehensive and precipitous than I foresaw .
Our challenge now is to do what no great power has achieved : reverse the tide of history .
That requires an unsparing reckoning of all that we confront .
1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cohesion .
The heart of our decline is a profound national ennui that no legislation or public policy , of itself , can cure .
Our geographic , cultural , and economic sorting quickens , aggravating our toxic societal fissures .
Lacking any common experience of national service , military or otherwise , which engages those from different backgrounds in the larger enterprise of America , too many of us believe we owe the country and our fellow Americans nothing more than to satisfy ourselves .
Despite its wonders , the Internet has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often Twitter is a wellspring of groundless hysteria .
Facebook not only cheapens the concept of friendship , but channels a tsunami of paranoia , mendacity , and electoral subversion which turns Americans against each other .
So does much of contemporary media , talk radio , and cable news .
As Robin Wright notes , “ When Athens and Sparta went to war .
.
.
the Greek general and historian Thucydides observed , ‘ the Greeks did not understand each other any longer , though they spoke the same language.
’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing is happening among Americans .
Our political discourse has become ‘ civil war by other means—we sound as if we do not really want to continue to be members of one country , ’ [ as ] Richard Kreitner wrote.
” The “ shareholder capitalism ” popularized by Milton Friedman accelerated our atomization .
By reducing the obligations of American corporations to just that of shareholder enrichment , this Darwinian dogma empowered business to gut unions , reduce benefits , suffocate antitrust law , hamstring environmental regulation , and create yawning disparities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the restraining power of government , corporations used the unlimited contributions licensed by Citizens United to co-opt public policy .
The “ free market ” became a synonym for crony capitalism , wherein government insured Wall Street against the consequences of irresponsible speculation that , in 2008 , decimated the finances of ordinary people increasingly bereft of security .
The shared prosperity which followed World War II had become state-sanctioned economic predation .
Central to this erosion of national comity was the moral and intellectual collapse of the Republican party .
Wedded to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the GOP propitiated its base by abandoning its stated principles in favor of stoking racial animus until , inevitably , white identity politics became an addiction .
One manifestation was the race-based unreason of birtherism ; another voter-suppression laws targeting minorities ; still another the overt racism stoked by America ’ s president .
Its companion was a mindless xenophobia which further diminished our global standing .
Especially self-enfeebling was hostility to the legal immigration through which America formerly renewed itself by inviting the enterprising and energetic to become part of our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gifted professionals who have maintained our lead in science , medicine and innovation .
A crippling aversion to government has undermined the ability to address our most urgent problems .
It is perfectly reasonable to fear that government slights ordinary people .
But the GOP ’ s pseudo-populism has diminished government ’ s core competence in a time of converging crises .
Writes George Packer : As 2020 has shown , the combination of societal fissures and governmental paralysis is a superhighway to the Third World .
Packer observes : Here , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation in retreat from science and expertise.
” Over decades the Republican base and/or donor class questioned the teaching of evolution in schools ; claimed vaccination causes autism ( or worse ) ; rejected climate science ; and , confronted with a lethal virus , belittled public health experts .
With respect to both climate change and the pandemic , right-wing blowhards like Rush Limbaugh , Laura Ingraham , and Sean Hannity derided science as a smokescreen for a liberal attack on personal autonomy .
For all these maladies , America paid dearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this has become a nation so vulnerable to rot from within that it needlessly kills its own—200,000 and counting .
Yet too many of the survivors hide from this reality and villainize those who speak it , endangering our communal resolve to follow public health measures needed to protect us going forward .
Little wonder , when their exemplar is America ’ s president .
Little wonder , also , that he blames the catastrophic conflagration in the West solely on deficient forest management .
Following the precedent of his party , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , censored discussion of its causes within the government , and salted key agencies with quacks and hacks who deny the reality of melting icecaps , receding shorelines , proliferating hurricanes , widening droughts , and record infernos conveniently placed in blue states .
No matter that , in the lifetime of Americans now children , climate change is likely to trigger mass migration and economic dislocation .
Trump and his enablers are not serious people , and their sway suggests we are no longer a serious country capable of surmounting the challenges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ widen , and for most of the last decade the federal debt has exceeded 100 percent of the nation ’ s gross domestic product .
But tax cuts for the wealthy sap revenues needed to combat the pandemic , and threaten to saddle future generations with debilitating levels of debt .
In 2017 America ’ s association of civil engineers estimated that it would take $ 4.6 trillion to repair our airports , roads , bridges , railways , power grids , and internet which increasingly evoke the developing world .
Since then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Instead of tackling our real problems , Trump seeks re-election by inflaming the incendiary racial hostility which , at its worst , can explode in violence between those who abuse the cause of racial justice and white vigilantes who imagine themselves action figures in Trump ’ s quasi-fascist alternative theater .
One measure of our decline is that he may succeed .
But the election of 2020 also illuminates flaws in our political architecture which erode democracy itself .
Traditionally , gerrymandering was bipartisan .
But the GOP has perfected the art of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by jamming Democratic voters into the fewest districts possible—creating a surplus of Republican legislators .
Take 2012 : Even though Democrats received over a million more votes , Republicans claimed a 33-seat majority in the House of Representatives .
In Ohio , Republican House candidates got 51 percent of the vote but three quarters of the congressional seats .
In Pennsylvania , which elected a Democratic president and senator statewide , the GOP took 13 of 18 congressional races .
Even in 2018 , the Democrats ’ “ blue wave ” was diminished @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an immense structural advantage .
After the GOP garnered half of the popular vote in North Carolina in 2018 but took 10 of 13 congressional seats , a Republican legislator ruefully observed : “ I do not believe it ’ s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.
” This is democracy as sham .
Worse—because it is enshrined in our Constitution—is the Electoral College .
Forget debating its origins—in a 50-state America riven by demographic sorting , it is terminally dysfunctional .
Twice in the last five elections @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the popular vote .
And because most states are clearly blue or red , roughly six—Wisconsin , Michigan , Pennsylvania , North Carolina , Florida , and Arizona—decide the victor .
The intrinsic damage which the Electoral College inflicts on democracy is , of itself , considerable .
It gives a handful of unrepresentative states disproportionate power .
It slants public policy toward the preferences of swing voters who live there .
It disempowers citizens in non-competitive states .
Moreover the gap between the popular and electoral vote is widening : As Nate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lose the popular vote by two or three percentage points and the race would still be a tossup .
Whatever the Founding Fathers intended in 1787 , in 2020 an autocrat seeking to advantage his party beneath a legal veneer of democracy could hardly do better .
But Republicans have perceived something more : The Electoral College has become a roadmap for rigging elections through aggressive voter suppression .
The six-state hegemony invites Republicans to diminish Democratic voters through strict ID laws , voter purges , and poll closures—all designed to target minorities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ making groundless claims of voter fraud—Trump is laying the predicate for throwing out mail-in ballots received after Election Day .
Indeed the prospect of delayed results has led Trump to openly anticipate enlisting the judiciary to give him an Electoral College victory regardless of the ultimate count .
After all , it ’ s happened before .
5 .
The politicization of the federal judiciary .
In 2000 , a Republican majority on the Supreme Court anointed George W. Bush by stopping the recount in Florida , a decision so contrived that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But in the succeeding 20 years , the GOP ’ s conversion of our presumptively independent judiciary into the avatar of its political interests—no matter how threadbare the pretext—has proceeded apace .
A key actor is the Federalist Society , a group lavishly funded by right-wing donors to assure the political and ideological reliability of Republican appointees to the bench—most recently , Amy Coney Barrett .
As a group of Democratic senators pointedly noted in August 2019 : “ The Society counts over eighty-six percent of Trump administration nominees to the circuit courts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ active members.
” The result is that in cases of political import the Supreme Court often functions less like an independent branch of government than an organ of the Republican party .
The Democratic senators illustrate this partisan subjugation through a comprehensive statistical analysis : Particularly telling , the senators noted , was the Court ’ s intellectual inconsistency in the service of partisan ends : “ The pattern of outcomes is striking ; and so is the frequency with which these 5-4 majorities disregarded ‘ conservative ’ judicial principles like judicial restraint @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even federalism.
” Three examples of this results-oriented jurisprudence suffice—all involving Chief Justice John Roberts .
In Citizens United v. FEC ( 2010 ) , Roberts so assiduously maneuvered to open the floodgates to corporate money in politics that Justice Stevens , himself a Republican appointee , accused Roberts of violating the Court ’ s own procedures .
In Shelby County v. Holder ( 2013 ) , Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act by ignoring the inescapable evidence that the result would be GOP-authored voter ID laws which discriminated against minorities inclined to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assertion that racial progress in America had ameliorated the need to scrutinize such laws .
In Rucho v. Common Cause ( 2019 ) , Roberts ruled that curbing partisan gerrymandering was beyond the capacity of federal courts , arguing that voters should seek redress through the same political process that Republican gerrymandering had corrupted—presumably from the same officials who corrupted it .
The only consistency in these 5-4 decisions is that they advanced the political interests of the GOP .
When Citizens United required judicial activism , Roberts supplied it ; when Shelby @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ; when Rucho required judicial modesty , he supplied it .
Should the November election require the Roberts court to intervene on behalf of the free and fair election Trump plans to subvert , there is little chance that it will .
6 .
The expansion of lawless and autocratic executive power .
The erosion of judicial independence is emblematic of a larger malady : the unbridled expansion of executive power beyond its intended bounds , abetted by partisan legislators who enable a rogue president to eviscerate the rule of law .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s singular invention .
It proceeds from the executive expansionism which marks America ’ s modern history .
Too late , we see the danger in licensing any president to exceed his constitutional writ .
Article I reposes primacy in Congress—including the power to declare war .
But for last seventy years presidents have initiated de facto wars based on , at most , elastic congressional authorizations .
The many thousands of soldiers lost are no less dead for lack of a congressional declaration .
Nor is our problem simply that Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lafayette Square as part of his authoritarian tableau .
Our Constitution grants Congress the power to pass laws , craft budgets , confirm or reject key executive appointments , and remove the chief executive .
Here , again , Trump has built on the abuse of executive orders by prior presidents to comprehensively flout congressional oversight and erase constitutional boundaries .
The blame lies not only with Trump .
As Senator Mike Lee wrote in National Review : “ What Congress wants today is to be weak .
.
.
for fear of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too kind to himself and his fellow Republicans who cower in fear of Trump .
Unconstrained , Trump substitutes presidential fiat for legislation ; reallocates monies appropriated by Congress ; and relies on acting appointees not subject to confirmation .
He purges inspectors general charged with policing his administration ; and subverts government agencies to serve his re-election .
He ignores congressional subpoenas ; bars congressional testimony by government officials ; and commits impeachable offenses with the craven acquiescence of his party .
The principal theoretician of presidential autocracy is Attorney General William @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argued—in a 2018 memo , which helped land him the attorney general appointment—that there is “ no limit on the President ’ s authority to act on matters which concern him or his own conduct.
” Therefore , “ Congress could not make it a crime for the President to exercise supervisory authority over cases in which his own conduct might be at issue.
” In effect Barr asserts that , as president , Trump is above the law—and , further , can protect his enablers from the consequences of their own illegal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to the 2016 campaign—and Trump ’ s fealty to Vladimir Putin ’ s Russia .
7 .
The subordination of American sovereignty to an inimical foreign power .
Barr intervened in Russia-related federal prosecutions to exonerate Michael Flynn after he pleaded guilty to obstruction , and to reduce the post-conviction sentencing of Roger Stone for perjury .
He grossly misrepresented Robert Mueller ’ s report regarding Russian interference on Trump ’ s behalf in the 2016 election .
More recently , he has been pushing a blatantly political investigation of the FBI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s relationship to Trump ’ s campaign established the predicate for Mueller ’ s inquiry .
There are few things more important to American democracy than assuring the integrity of our elections .
But the sole concern of America ’ s chief law enforcement officer is , quite clearly , to protect Trump from exposure of his ties to a malign autocracy which jails and murders its opponents .
Our intelligence agencies unanimously concluded that Russia had intervened to help elect Trump in 2016 as , more recently , did the Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ findings ; embraced Putin ’ s literally incredible denials ; declined to protest Russia ’ s attempted murder of Victor Navalny or its placement of bounties on American troops ; and argued for Russia ’ s readmission to the G-7 despite the unanimous objection of allies .
So strange is Trump ’ s subservience that , Bob Woodward reports , former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats “ continued to harbor the secret belief .
.
.
that Putin had something on Trump.
” Both the FBI and CIA have stated that Russia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden in 2020 .
Trump attacks those assessments , while his new director of national intelligence has cut off oral briefings to Congress on Russia ’ s electoral interference .
In part because of Trump ’ s evasions , we can not know whether Coats is right .
But no self-respecting democracy should countenance a leader who facilitates foreign sabotage of our elections .
Trump also means to help himself .
Like the caudillo of a banana republic , America ’ s president expects our highest Court—including his appointee to succeed Justice Ginsburg—to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mail-in ballots .
“ We ’ re going to have a victory on November 3 , ” he crowed at a rally .
“ Now we ’ re counting on the federal court system to make it so we can actually have an evening where we know who wins , not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later.
” There are numerous scenarios in which Trump and his party could rig the Electoral College .
According to Barton Gellman ’ s blockbuster Atlantic article last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states are discussing how to do just that .
Believe it : Time and again , Trump and his party have demonstrated who they are .
It is quite telling that when Trump talks about throwing out ballots , or refuses to commit to a peaceful transitional power , elected Republicans remain silent .
No doubt they believe , correctly , that their base is more attached to Trump than to democracy .
All the professorial pieties about guardrails holding and the strength of our institutions are increasingly self-delusional .
The Constitution is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of politicians and citizens determined to uphold it , it is simply another piece of paper .
As the institutions of democracy fail , so does the popular understanding of what democracy is—and the means or will to protect it .
Too few Americans venerate the Bill of Rights or understand the separation of powers .
Too many long for a strongman to control the political other .
In modern America , the sensibility of our Founders wanes ; the venomous spirit which brought us Donald Trump waxes .
Any student of history @ @ @ @ @ @ @ knows too well where it ends .
Unless we can reverse it—and soon—we will find ourselves living in a rump democracy until , all at once , it descends to autocracy cum plutocracy .
The indispensable prerequisite for restoration is the defeat of Donald Trump .
Only then can we give ordinary Americans the security that undergirds a stable democracy : quality healthcare ; economic and racial justice ; universal childcare ; decent public schools ; affordable higher education ; internet access ; and fair wages .
Further , we need a lasting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the environment ; renewing our infrastructure ; and crafting an immigration system which reflects our better self .
“ For change to endure , ” George Packer writes , “ for national shame to become pride , we need a radical agenda with a patriotic spirit .
We have to revive the one thing that has ever held together this sprawling , multiplicitous country : democratic faith.
” That requires sweeping reform of our sclerotic institutions , and the popular will to do it .
But a majority of Americans generally believe that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government functions .
Here are some essentials : Protecting voting rights .
Achieving a multistate compact to conform the Electoral College to the popular will .
Establishing term limits for Supreme Court justices .
Abrogating the filibuster .
Instituting bipartisan commissions to design legislative districts .
Curbing money in politics .
Passing strict ethics requirements for public officials .
That is daunting , perhaps impossible , agenda .
But it ’ s the only way our failing democracy can hope to reclaim our collective faith .
Writes Packer : “ The experience of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and justice to Americans left behind by globalization would inject an antivenom into the country ’ s bloodstream.
” For too long , American exceptionalism has been a synonym for smugness and myopia .
But if we can return America to what it can be at its best , defying history , we will have truly proven ourselves exceptional .

Twenty years ago—the end of the “American Century”—I began arguing that our democracy had embarked on a decline which might prove irreversible.
Friends found this gratuitously gloomy. But, to me, the millennium bristled with the indicia of failure:
A lack of national cohesion and a sense of common citizenship. An economy wherein a prospering stock market disguised growing economic insecurity. Our deteriorating infrastructure and public finances. A widening political polarization.
A corrupt campaign finance system which promoted plutocracy. An increasingly politicized judiciary. The burgeoning fundamentalism which infused a major party with theocratic tendencies and contempt for science.
The anger and misinformation spawned by talk radio. An increasingly narcissistic mass culture which cheapened celebrity and displaced true achievement. All of this, I felt, added up to a dangerous diminution of national virtue.
But our decline over the last two decades has been more comprehensive and precipitous than I foresaw. Our challenge now is to do what no great power has achieved: reverse the tide of history.
That requires an unsparing reckoning of all that we confront.
1. The deterioration of social and economic cohesion.
The heart of our decline is a profound national ennui that no legislation or public policy, of itself, can cure. Our geographic, cultural, and economic sorting quickens, aggravating our toxic societal fissures. Lacking any common experience of national service, military or otherwise, which engages those from different backgrounds in the larger enterprise of America, too many of us believe we owe the country and our fellow Americans nothing more than to satisfy ourselves.
Despite its wonders, the Internet has become an instrument of self-sabotage. Too often Twitter is a wellspring of groundless hysteria. Facebook not only cheapens the concept of friendship, but channels a tsunami of paranoia, mendacity, and electoral subversion which turns Americans against each other.
So does much of contemporary media, talk radio, and cable news. As Robin Wright notes, “When Athens and Sparta went to war . . . the Greek general and historian Thucydides observed, ‘the Greeks did not understand each other any longer, though they spoke the same language.’ In the twenty-first century, the same thing is happening among Americans. Our political discourse has become ‘civil war by other means—we sound as if we do not really want to continue to be members of one country,’ [as] Richard Kreitner wrote.”
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The “shareholder capitalism” popularized by Milton Friedman accelerated our atomization. By reducing the obligations of American corporations to just that of shareholder enrichment, this Darwinian dogma empowered business to gut unions, reduce benefits, suffocate antitrust law, hamstring environmental regulation, and create yawning disparities of income and wealth.
Free from the restraining power of government, corporations used the unlimited contributions licensed by Citizens United to co-opt public policy. The “free market” became a synonym for crony capitalism, wherein government insured Wall Street against the consequences of irresponsible speculation that, in 2008, decimated the finances of ordinary people increasingly bereft of security. The shared prosperity which followed World War II had become state-sanctioned economic predation.
2. The comprehensive degeneration of a major political party.
Central to this erosion of national comity was the moral and intellectual collapse of the Republican party. Wedded to the economic interests of its donor class, the GOP propitiated its base by abandoning its stated principles in favor of stoking racial animus until, inevitably, white identity politics became an addiction.
One manifestation was the race-based unreason of birtherism; another voter-suppression laws targeting minorities; still another the overt racism stoked by America’s president.
Its companion was a mindless xenophobia which further diminished our global standing. Especially self-enfeebling was hostility to the legal immigration through which America formerly renewed itself by inviting the enterprising and energetic to become part of our national story—from those of humble origins to the gifted professionals who have maintained our lead in science, medicine and innovation.
3. The destruction of governmental competence.
A crippling aversion to government has undermined the ability to address our most urgent problems. It is perfectly reasonable to fear that government slights ordinary people. But the GOP’s pseudo-populism has diminished government’s core competence in a time of converging crises. Writes George Packer:
Trump came to power as the repudiation of the Republican establishment. But the conservative political class and the new leader soon reached an understanding. . . . Republican politicians and donors who wanted government to do as little as possible for the common good could live happily with a regime that barely knew how to govern at all.
As 2020 has shown, the combination of societal fissures and governmental paralysis is a superhighway to the Third World. Packer observes:
This was the American landscape that lay open to the virus: In prosperous cities, a class of globally connected desk workers dependent on a class of precarious and invisible service workers; in the countryside, decaying communities in revolt against the modern world; on social media, mutual hatred and endless vituperation among different camps; in the economy, even with full employment, a large and growing gap between triumphant capital and beleaguered labor; in Washington, an empty government led by a con man and his intellectually bankrupt party; around the country, a mood of cynical exhaustion, with no vision of a shared identity or future.
Here, Packer could have added: “A nation in retreat from science and expertise.” Over decades the Republican base and/or donor class questioned the teaching of evolution in schools; claimed vaccination causes autism (or worse); rejected climate science; and, confronted with a lethal virus, belittled public health experts. With respect to both climate change and the pandemic, right-wing blowhards like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity derided science as a smokescreen for a liberal attack on personal autonomy.
For all these maladies, America paid dearly. Packer observes:
Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state. With no national plan—no coherent instructions at all—families, schools, and offices were left to decide on their own whether to shut down and take shelter. When test kits, masks, gowns, and ventilators were found to be in desperately short supply, governors pleaded for them from the White House, which stalled, then called on private enterprise, which couldn’t deliver. States and cities were forced into bidding wars that left them prey to price gouging and corporate profiteering. . . . Russia, Taiwan, and the United Nations sent humanitarian aid to the world’s richest power—a beggar nation in utter chaos.
Further, as Neera Tanden details:
The reality of the virus has exposed massive economic and racial inequalities in our society—from who can get a test to who is forced to go out to work through the pandemic. It has exposed the moral distortions of a market system that so little values those who provide vital services to us in a crisis—ensuring that we all have access to food, health care, protection. . . . And as the virus has disproportionately killed people of color, we are bearing witness to the devastating impact of the structural inequalities [they] face.
In short, this has become a nation so vulnerable to rot from within that it needlessly kills its own—200,000 and counting. Yet too many of the survivors hide from this reality and villainize those who speak it, endangering our communal resolve to follow public health measures needed to protect us going forward. Little wonder, when their exemplar is America’s president.
Little wonder, also, that he blames the catastrophic conflagration in the West solely on deficient forest management. Following the precedent of his party, he has derided the science of climate change, censored discussion of its causes within the government, and salted key agencies with quacks and hacks who deny the reality of melting icecaps, receding shorelines, proliferating hurricanes, widening droughts, and record infernos conveniently placed in blue states.
No matter that, in the lifetime of Americans now children, climate change is likely to trigger mass migration and economic dislocation. Trump and his enablers are not serious people, and their sway suggests we are no longer a serious country capable of surmounting the challenges that threaten our future.
Our deficits widen, and for most of the last decade the federal debt has exceeded 100 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. But tax cuts for the wealthy sap revenues needed to combat the pandemic, and threaten to saddle future generations with debilitating levels of debt.
In 2017 America’s association of civil engineers estimated that it would take $4.6 trillion to repair our airports, roads, bridges, railways, power grids, and internet which increasingly evoke the developing world. Since then, our government has done nothing.
Instead of tackling our real problems, Trump seeks re-election by inflaming the incendiary racial hostility which, at its worst, can explode in violence between those who abuse the cause of racial justice and white vigilantes who imagine themselves action figures in Trump’s quasi-fascist alternative theater. One measure of our decline is that he may succeed.
4. The systemic distortions of democracy.
But the election of 2020 also illuminates flaws in our political architecture which erode democracy itself.
Traditionally, gerrymandering was bipartisan. But the GOP has perfected the art of rendering voter preferences in legislative districts near-meaningless by jamming Democratic voters into the fewest districts possible—creating a surplus of Republican legislators.
Take 2012: Even though Democrats received over a million more votes, Republicans claimed a 33-seat majority in the House of Representatives. In Ohio, Republican House candidates got 51 percent of the vote but three quarters of the congressional seats. In Pennsylvania, which elected a Democratic president and senator statewide, the GOP took 13 of 18 congressional races.
Even in 2018, the Democrats’ “blue wave” was diminished by gerrymandered districts which gave the GOP an immense structural advantage. After the GOP garnered half of the popular vote in North Carolina in 2018 but took 10 of 13 congressional seats, a Republican legislator ruefully observed: “I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.” This is democracy as sham.
Worse—because it is enshrined in our Constitution—is the Electoral College. Forget debating its origins—in a 50-state America riven by demographic sorting, it is terminally dysfunctional.
Twice in the last five elections it has yielded a president who lost the popular vote. And because most states are clearly blue or red, roughly six—Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona—decide the victor.
The intrinsic damage which the Electoral College inflicts on democracy is, of itself, considerable. It gives a handful of unrepresentative states disproportionate power. It slants public policy toward the preferences of swing voters who live there. It disempowers citizens in non-competitive states.
Moreover the gap between the popular and electoral vote is widening: As Nate Silver notes, in 2020 Trump could lose the popular vote by two or three percentage points and the race would still be a tossup. Whatever the Founding Fathers intended in 1787, in 2020 an autocrat seeking to advantage his party beneath a legal veneer of democracy could hardly do better.
But Republicans have perceived something more: The Electoral College has become a roadmap for rigging elections through aggressive voter suppression. The six-state hegemony invites Republicans to diminish Democratic voters through strict ID laws, voter purges, and poll closures—all designed to target minorities. This year—by slowing the mails and making groundless claims of voter fraud—Trump is laying the predicate for throwing out mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
Indeed the prospect of delayed results has led Trump to openly anticipate enlisting the judiciary to give him an Electoral College victory regardless of the ultimate count. After all, it’s happened before.
5. The politicization of the federal judiciary.
In 2000, a Republican majority on the Supreme Court anointed George W. Bush by stopping the recount in Florida, a decision so contrived that the Court itself disclaimed it as precedent. But in the succeeding 20 years, the GOP’s conversion of our presumptively independent judiciary into the avatar of its political interests—no matter how threadbare the pretext—has proceeded apace.
A key actor is the Federalist Society, a group lavishly funded by right-wing donors to assure the political and ideological reliability of Republican appointees to the bench—most recently, Amy Coney Barrett. As a group of Democratic senators pointedly noted in August 2019: “The Society counts over eighty-six percent of Trump administration nominees to the circuit courts of appeal and to this Court as active members.”
The result is that in cases of political import the Supreme Court often functions less like an independent branch of government than an organ of the Republican party. The Democratic senators illustrate this partisan subjugation through a comprehensive statistical analysis:
From October Term 2005 through October Term 2017, [the Supreme] Court issued 78 5-4 (or 5-3) opinions in which justices appointed by Republican presidents provided all five votes in the majority. In 73 of these 5-4 decisions, the cases concerned interests important to the big funders, corporate influencers, and political base of the Republican Party. And in each of these 73 cases, those partisan interests prevailed. . . . With bare partisan majorities, the Court has influenced sensitive areas like voting rights, partisan gerrymandering, dark money, union power, regulation of pollution, corporate liability, and access to federal court, particularly regarding civil rights and discrimination in the workplace. Every single time, the corporate and Republican political interests prevailed.
Particularly telling, the senators noted, was the Court’s intellectual inconsistency in the service of partisan ends: “The pattern of outcomes is striking; and so is the frequency with which these 5-4 majorities disregarded ‘conservative’ judicial principles like judicial restraint, originalism, stare decisis, and even federalism.”
Three examples of this results-oriented jurisprudence suffice—all involving Chief Justice John Roberts. In Citizens United v. FEC (2010), Roberts so assiduously maneuvered to open the floodgates to corporate money in politics that Justice Stevens, himself a Republican appointee, accused Roberts of violating the Court’s own procedures.
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act by ignoring the inescapable evidence that the result would be GOP-authored voter ID laws which discriminated against minorities inclined to vote for Democrats, making the disingenuous assertion that racial progress in America had ameliorated the need to scrutinize such laws.
In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), Roberts ruled that curbing partisan gerrymandering was beyond the capacity of federal courts, arguing that voters should seek redress through the same political process that Republican gerrymandering had corrupted—presumably from the same officials who corrupted it.
The only consistency in these 5-4 decisions is that they advanced the political interests of the GOP. When Citizens United required judicial activism, Roberts supplied it; when Shelby County required faux naïveté, he supplied it; when Rucho required judicial modesty, he supplied it. Should the November election require the Roberts court to intervene on behalf of the free and fair election Trump plans to subvert, there is little chance that it will.
6. The expansion of lawless and autocratic executive power.
The erosion of judicial independence is emblematic of a larger malady: the unbridled expansion of executive power beyond its intended bounds, abetted by partisan legislators who enable a rogue president to eviscerate the rule of law.
This arrogation of authority is not Trump’s singular invention. It proceeds from the executive expansionism which marks America’s modern history. Too late, we see the danger in licensing any president to exceed his constitutional writ.
Article I reposes primacy in Congress—including the power to declare war. But for last seventy years presidents have initiated de facto wars based on, at most, elastic congressional authorizations. The many thousands of soldiers lost are no less dead for lack of a congressional declaration.
Nor is our problem simply that Trump abused our military by dispatching it to Lafayette Square as part of his authoritarian tableau. Our Constitution grants Congress the power to pass laws, craft budgets, confirm or reject key executive appointments, and remove the chief executive. Here, again, Trump has built on the abuse of executive orders by prior presidents to comprehensively flout congressional oversight and erase constitutional boundaries.
The blame lies not only with Trump. As Senator Mike Lee wrote in National Review: “What Congress wants today is to be weak . . . for fear of the political consequences.” But Lee is too kind to himself and his fellow Republicans who cower in fear of Trump.
Unconstrained, Trump substitutes presidential fiat for legislation; reallocates monies appropriated by Congress; and relies on acting appointees not subject to confirmation. He purges inspectors general charged with policing his administration; and subverts government agencies to serve his re-election. He ignores congressional subpoenas; bars congressional testimony by government officials; and commits impeachable offenses with the craven acquiescence of his party.
The principal theoretician of presidential autocracy is Attorney General William Barr. Under the Constitution, Barr argued—in a 2018 memo, which helped land him the attorney general appointment—that there is “no limit on the President’s authority to act on matters which concern him or his own conduct.” Therefore, “Congress could not make it a crime for the President to exercise supervisory authority over cases in which his own conduct might be at issue.”
In effect Barr asserts that, as president, Trump is above the law—and, further, can protect his enablers from the consequences of their own illegal actions. This brings us, inexorably, to the 2016 campaign—and Trump’s fealty to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
7. The subordination of American sovereignty to an inimical foreign power.
Barr intervened in Russia-related federal prosecutions to exonerate Michael Flynn after he pleaded guilty to obstruction, and to reduce the post-conviction sentencing of Roger Stone for perjury. He grossly misrepresented Robert Mueller’s report regarding Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election. More recently, he has been pushing a blatantly political investigation of the FBI and CIA officials whose scrutiny of Russia’s relationship to Trump’s campaign established the predicate for Mueller’s inquiry.
There are few things more important to American democracy than assuring the integrity of our elections. But the sole concern of America’s chief law enforcement officer is, quite clearly, to protect Trump from exposure of his ties to a malign autocracy which jails and murders its opponents.
Our intelligence agencies unanimously concluded that Russia had intervened to help elect Trump in 2016 as, more recently, did the Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump has denigrated those findings; embraced Putin’s literally incredible denials; declined to protest Russia’s attempted murder of Victor Navalny or its placement of bounties on American troops; and argued for Russia’s readmission to the G-7 despite the unanimous objection of allies. So strange is Trump’s subservience that, Bob Woodward reports, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats “continued to harbor the secret belief . . . that Putin had something on Trump.”
Both the FBI and CIA have stated that Russia is conducting operations aimed at defeating Joe Biden in 2020. Trump attacks those assessments, while his new director of national intelligence has cut off oral briefings to Congress on Russia’s electoral interference.
In part because of Trump’s evasions, we cannot know whether Coats is right. But no self-respecting democracy should countenance a leader who facilitates foreign sabotage of our elections.
8. The diminishing bipartisan commitment to democratic institutions.
Trump also means to help himself. Like the caudillo of a banana republic, America’s president expects our highest Court—including his appointee to succeed Justice Ginsburg—to short-circuit democracy by terminating the tabulation of mail-in ballots. “We’re going to have a victory on November 3,” he crowed at a rally. “Now we’re counting on the federal court system to make it so we can actually have an evening where we know who wins, not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later.”
There are numerous scenarios in which Trump and his party could rig the Electoral College. According to Barton Gellman’s blockbuster Atlantic article last week, Republican officials in some key states are discussing how to do just that. Believe it: Time and again, Trump and his party have demonstrated who they are.
It is quite telling that when Trump talks about throwing out ballots, or refuses to commit to a peaceful transitional power, elected Republicans remain silent. No doubt they believe, correctly, that their base is more attached to Trump than to democracy.
All the professorial pieties about guardrails holding and the strength of our institutions are increasingly self-delusional. The Constitution is not self-executing; absent a critical mass of politicians and citizens determined to uphold it, it is simply another piece of paper.
As the institutions of democracy fail, so does the popular understanding of what democracy is—and the means or will to protect it. Too few Americans venerate the Bill of Rights or understand the separation of powers. Too many long for a strongman to control the political other.
In modern America, the sensibility of our Founders wanes; the venomous spirit which brought us Donald Trump waxes. Any student of history has seen this trajectory before, and knows too well where it ends. Unless we can reverse it—and soon—we will find ourselves living in a rump democracy until, all at once, it descends to autocracy cum plutocracy.
The daunting path to renewal.
The indispensable prerequisite for restoration is the defeat of Donald Trump. Only then can we give ordinary Americans the security that undergirds a stable democracy: quality healthcare; economic and racial justice; universal childcare; decent public schools; affordable higher education; internet access; and fair wages.
Further, we need a lasting commitment to combating climate change; protecting the environment; renewing our infrastructure; and crafting an immigration system which reflects our better self. “For change to endure,” George Packer writes, “for national shame to become pride, we need a radical agenda with a patriotic spirit. We have to revive the one thing that has ever held together this sprawling, multiplicitous country: democratic faith.”
That requires sweeping reform of our sclerotic institutions, and the popular will to do it. But a majority of Americans generally believe that we need significant changes in how our government functions.
Here are some essentials: Protecting voting rights. Achieving a multistate compact to conform the Electoral College to the popular will. Establishing term limits for Supreme Court justices. Abrogating the filibuster. Instituting bipartisan commissions to design legislative districts. Curbing money in politics. Passing strict ethics requirements for public officials.
That is daunting, perhaps impossible, agenda. But it’s the only way our failing democracy can hope to reclaim our collective faith. Writes Packer: “The experience of a competent, active government bringing opportunity and justice to Americans left behind by globalization would inject an antivenom into the country’s bloodstream.”
For too long, American exceptionalism has been a synonym for smugness and myopia. But if we can return America to what it can be at its best, defying history, we will have truly proven ourselves exceptional.


thebulwark--2020-09-28--Make It About the Election

Make It About the Election

In a speech delivered in Wilmington on Sunday , Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden attempted to frame Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett ’ s confirmation as part of the longstanding Republican project of overturning the Affordable Care Act .
That misses the point .
Barrett ’ s nomination and the rush to install her ahead of November 3 are all about the election .
Period .
So , why are the Democrats so intent on pretending otherwise ?
President Trump and his top Republican allies in the Senate aren ’ t .
They are brazenly upfront about their belief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any disputes over the 2020 elections in Trump ’ s favor .
“ I think this [ the election ] will end up in the Supreme Court , and I think it ’ s very important that we have nine justices , ” Trump said last Wednesday .
“ I think it ’ s better if you go before the election , because I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling—it ’ s a scam—this scam will be before the United States Supreme Court.
” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham backed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Now , we may have litigation about who won the election , but the Court will decide and if the Republicans lose , we will accept that result.
” Emphasis on how Graham deliberately said , “ the Court will decide.
” Meanwhile , even though the polling suggests that most Americans are on the Democrats ’ side and feeling uneasy about the timing of this confirmation , Democratic strategists bedwetting over leftwing lunatics trying to Handmaidenize Barrett have been advocating that the party turn the confirmation battle into a showcase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Biden , Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer seems to be following their lead .
Senate Democrats have signaled that they will ask Barrett to recuse herself from any cases that could impact the 2020 election .
Election questions shouldn ’ t stop there , though .
Richard Hasen , professor of law and political science at the University of California , Irvine , and the author of Election Meltdown : Dirty Tricks , Distrust , and the Threat to American Democracy , told The Bulwark , “ My general view is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about how a future Justice will vote in cases .
So aside from raising the question of recusal should a Trump v. Biden case make it to the Court connected to the election , the best chance to get some insight is to ask about past cases , especially older cases , related to voting rights.
” How could this be done ?
Election lawyers and experts I contacted offered a range of fair-game questions Barrett could be asked .
For example , “ Do you believe Bush v. Gore is precedent ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ for ?
” Something as straightforward as “ Does the Constitution guarantee a fundamental right to vote ?
” sounds simple enough—until you remember what Bush v. Gore was all about .
Anyone who is familiar with that case knows the big fights didn ’ t happen when votes were cast , but when and how they were counted .
Barrett will surely refuse to speculate on a potential Trump v. Biden case—but what should happen , in accordance with the Constitution , when it comes to resolving election disputes ?
Also , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rights Act ?
Does she believe it is constitutional ?
What does she think about the decision in Shelby County v. Holder , which held that “ preclearance ” provisions that required some state officials to seek federal approval before making changes to the voting process were unconstitutional ?
Questions about gerrymandering are also important .
Last year , the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that claims of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering are not subject to federal court review because they present “ nonjusticiable ” political questions .
Does Judge Barrett agree with the concept @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” as established by the Warren Court ?
Why or why not ?
When do these ( and other ) precedents matter ?
When do they not ?
These are all critical issues regarding states ’ rights and federal power , and are certainly relevant in a substantive confirmation hearing for the highest court in the land .
A Supreme Court justice needs a well-reasoned approach to these matters .
If she were to refuse to talk about them , that would speak well enough for itself .
Of course , anyone who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats don ’ t have the votes to stop her confirmation .
If the Democrats are smart , they will use the next month to make the case that a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate should be installed to act as checks on what is becoming the Trump Court .
Amy Coney Barrett ’ s confirmation is all about the election anyway , stupid .
Why try to make it about anything else ?

In a speech delivered in Wilmington on Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden attempted to frame Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation as part of the longstanding Republican project of overturning the Affordable Care Act. That misses the point.
Barrett’s nomination and the rush to install her ahead of November 3 are all about the election. Period.
So, why are the Democrats so intent on pretending otherwise? President Trump and his top Republican allies in the Senate aren’t. They are brazenly upfront about their belief that Barrett should be confirmed to resolve any disputes over the 2020 elections in Trump’s favor.
“I think this [the election] will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,” Trump said last Wednesday. “I think it’s better if you go before the election, because I think this scam that the Democrats are pulling—it’s a scam—this scam will be before the United States Supreme Court.” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham backed him up on that count, too. “Now, we may have litigation about who won the election, but the Court will decide and if the Republicans lose, we will accept that result.” Emphasis on how Graham deliberately said, “the Court will decide.”
Meanwhile, even though the polling suggests that most Americans are on the Democrats’ side and feeling uneasy about the timing of this confirmation, Democratic strategists bedwetting over leftwing lunatics trying to Handmaidenize Barrett have been advocating that the party turn the confirmation battle into a showcase for abortion and Obamacare. In addition to Biden, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer seems to be following their lead.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Senate Democrats have signaled that they will ask Barrett to recuse herself from any cases that could impact the 2020 election. Election questions shouldn’t stop there, though.
Richard Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy, told The Bulwark, “My general view is that these hearings won’t reveal much about how a future Justice will vote in cases. So aside from raising the question of recusal should a Trump v. Biden case make it to the Court connected to the election, the best chance to get some insight is to ask about past cases, especially older cases, related to voting rights.”
How could this be done? Election lawyers and experts I contacted offered a range of fair-game questions Barrett could be asked. For example, “Do you believe Bush v. Gore is precedent? If so, what does it stand for?”
Something as straightforward as “Does the Constitution guarantee a fundamental right to vote?” sounds simple enough—until you remember what Bush v. Gore was all about. Anyone who is familiar with that case knows the big fights didn’t happen when votes were cast, but when and how they were counted.
Barrett will surely refuse to speculate on a potential Trump v. Biden case—but what should happen, in accordance with the Constitution, when it comes to resolving election disputes?
Also, what are her views on the Voting Rights Act? Does she believe it is constitutional? What does she think about the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which held that “preclearance” provisions that required some state officials to seek federal approval before making changes to the voting process were unconstitutional?
Questions about gerrymandering are also important. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that claims of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering are not subject to federal court review because they present “nonjusticiable” political questions. Does Judge Barrett agree with the concept of “one person, one vote” as established by the Warren Court? Why or why not?
When do these (and other) precedents matter? When do they not?
These are all critical issues regarding states’ rights and federal power, and are certainly relevant in a substantive confirmation hearing for the highest court in the land. A Supreme Court justice needs a well-reasoned approach to these matters. If she were to refuse to talk about them, that would speak well enough for itself.
Of course, anyone who can count to 51 knows that the Democrats don’t have the votes to stop her confirmation. If the Democrats are smart, they will use the next month to make the case that a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate should be installed to act as checks on what is becoming the Trump Court. Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation is all about the election anyway, stupid. Why try to make it about anything else?


thebulwark--2020-09-28--Trump Tax Returns Show He’s a Populist Fraud

“ You can ’ t con people , at least not for long .
You can create excitement , you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press , and you can throw in a little hyperbole .
But if you don ’ t deliver the goods , people will eventually catch on.
” —Donald J. Trump , The Art of the Deal Donald Trump ’ s long economic populist con came to a close on Sunday when the New York Times reported that for most of the past 15 years , while he was living a life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dream of , he was racked with massive debts and paying no income tax thanks to business write-offs on flamboyant haircuts , consulting fees paid to his daughter , and a summer retreat where his large adult sons liked to ride ATVs and laugh at the poor suckers who had to mow the lawn .
Trump was not the brilliant businessman skilled at tax write-offs that we had been promised .
He was a fraud who was paying nothing at all .
Literally .
This was not the pitch he made to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump repeatedly claimed that he ’ d impose a new tax regime that would cause him and his wealthy friends to pay significant sums .
The media and his base lapped it up hook , line , and sinker .
Well here ’ s the thing : It wasn ’ t actually true .
( As a general rule , when a liar says something is “ actually true ” that is a tell that it ’ s not actually true . )
Trump paid barely anything in taxes , and there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would ’ ve transformed his zero- and near-zero tax bills into a “ fortune.
” Certainly not the one he proposed .
This was clear to anyone who actually looked at his plan .
As Vox put it in 2017 , “ Trump keeps saying he ’ ll raise taxes on the rich .
He ’ s lying.
” This wasn ’ t just your standard-issue politician-makes-a-promise-that-they-don ’ t-keep deal , though .
It was part and parcel of the broader so-called “ economic populism ” bill of goods that Trump and “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , triplicate-shirted , faux-everyman muse , sold the American people .
They were going to raise taxes on the wealthy , take on Jeb and Ted and Hillary ’ s Wall Street cronies , and finally build a wall on the border , making Mexico pay .
None of this , of course , was true .
There was no economic populist agenda .
The tax bill Trump ended up signing into law was a boon to the wealthy and did nothing to address the “ carried interest ” tax rate he promised @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guys .
Trump gave Goldman Sachs the keys to his cabinet and billed the American people for millions upon millions of their hard-earned tax dollars for copious golf holiday Doonbegdoggles at his own hotels .
Meanwhile Bannon spent most of his time in the White House leaking to Vanity Fair and making immigrants ’ lives as miserable as possible , and then was dispatched to a globetrotting yacht life funded by Chinese billionaires and the forgotten MAGA man whom he allegedly bilked for millions to crowdfund a phony wall .
The reality is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ populist who cares about the forgotten man is more respectable in elite political circles than admitting you are a race hustler .
You can tell it to a journalist or to your friends at the country club and not feel judged .
It almost makes you sound like a good person !
You are fighting for the working man and want to make things more fair .
If anything you are harming your own interests !
These new policies might “ cost me a fortune.
” Sure it will .
A face-saving ruse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was .
A story for the rubes .
The only “ populist ” shift in the Trump era regards the enabling of cultural grievance .
The willingness to use the president ’ s bully pulpit to take those uppity athletes down a peg .
Shutting the door on new immigrants and refugees .
Punishing enemies .
Law and order for protesters but a get-out-of-jail-free card for cronies .
Wanting to use racial slurs without getting “ canceled.
” This is just the same old racist , nativist nonsense wrapped in a phony soak-the-rich @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ Trojan horse ” for the racists and the scam artists .
The Trump/Bannon closing argument in 2016 was a dark ad featuring Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros about how the rich globalist elites are robbing everyday Americans .
This was their pitch .
And it was on the back of this populist message—and an opponent who made it easy—that they won over disaffected white working-class former Democrats and put together a winning coalition .
Many of us knew it was all a lie back then .
But the last four years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They never cared about ensuring that the forgotten man got a bigger slice of the pie .
They never considered running up their own tab to give a hand up to the working stiff .
Trump and Bannon just wanted to be the ones on the inside running the scam .
Making sure they got theirs .
The tax returns are the final reveal that proves the case .
And now Joe Biden has all he needs in the final weeks of the campaign to reveal the con to the “ losers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about .

“You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”
—Donald J. Trump, The Art of the Deal
Donald Trump’s long economic populist con came to a close on Sunday when the New York Times reported that for most of the past 15 years, while he was living a life of luxury that most Americans can only dream of, he was racked with massive debts and paying no income tax thanks to business write-offs on flamboyant haircuts, consulting fees paid to his daughter, and a summer retreat where his large adult sons liked to ride ATVs and laugh at the poor suckers who had to mow the lawn.
Trump was not the brilliant businessman skilled at tax write-offs that we had been promised. He was a fraud who was paying nothing at all. Literally.
This was not the pitch he made to the American people in 2016. Back then, Trump repeatedly claimed that he’d impose a new tax regime that would cause him and his wealthy friends to pay significant sums. The media and his base lapped it up hook, line, and sinker.
Here’s an August 2015 CNN article headlined “Donald Trump: Tax The Rich More”:
“You’ve seen my statements. I do very well. I don’t mind paying a little more in taxes. The middle class is getting clobbered in this country,” he said.
Here’s Politico a month later:
“It’s going to cost me a fortune, which is actually true,” the Republican presidential front-runner candidate told reporters, as he unveiled a bold—and fairly detailed—tax plan.
Well here’s the thing: It wasn’t actually true. (As a general rule, when a liar says something is “actually true” that is a tell that it’s not actually true.)
Trump paid barely anything in taxes, and there was no new GOP tax-cut package that would’ve transformed his zero- and near-zero tax bills into a “fortune.” Certainly not the one he proposed. This was clear to anyone who actually looked at his plan. As Vox put it in 2017, “Trump keeps saying he’ll raise taxes on the rich. He’s lying.”
This wasn’t just your standard-issue politician-makes-a-promise-that-they-don’t-keep deal, though.
It was part and parcel of the broader so-called “economic populism” bill of goods that Trump and “sloppy” Steve Bannon, his pit-stained, triplicate-shirted, faux-everyman muse, sold the American people. They were going to raise taxes on the wealthy, take on Jeb and Ted and Hillary’s Wall Street cronies, and finally build a wall on the border, making Mexico pay.
None of this, of course, was true.
There was no economic populist agenda.
The tax bill Trump ended up signing into law was a boon to the wealthy and did nothing to address the “carried interest” tax rate he promised would ensnare the private equity and hedge-fund guys. Trump gave Goldman Sachs the keys to his cabinet and billed the American people for millions upon millions of their hard-earned tax dollars for copious golf holiday Doonbegdoggles at his own hotels.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Meanwhile Bannon spent most of his time in the White House leaking to Vanity Fair and making immigrants’ lives as miserable as possible, and then was dispatched to a globetrotting yacht life funded by Chinese billionaires and the forgotten MAGA man whom he allegedly bilked for millions to crowdfund a phony wall.
The reality is that saying that you are an economic populist who cares about the forgotten man is more respectable in elite political circles than admitting you are a race hustler. You can tell it to a journalist or to your friends at the country club and not feel judged. It almost makes you sound like a good person! You are fighting for the working man and want to make things more fair. If anything you are harming your own interests! These new policies might “cost me a fortune.” Sure it will.
A face-saving ruse. That’s all it ever was. A story for the rubes.
The only “populist” shift in the Trump era regards the enabling of cultural grievance. The willingness to use the president’s bully pulpit to take those uppity athletes down a peg. Shutting the door on new immigrants and refugees. Punishing enemies. Law and order for protesters but a get-out-of-jail-free card for cronies. Wanting to use racial slurs without getting “canceled.”
This is just the same old racist, nativist nonsense wrapped in a phony soak-the-rich package.
You might even call it a “Trojan horse” for the racists and the scam artists.
The Trump/Bannon closing argument in 2016 was a dark ad featuring Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros about how the rich globalist elites are robbing everyday Americans. This was their pitch.
And it was on the back of this populist message—and an opponent who made it easy—that they won over disaffected white working-class former Democrats and put together a winning coalition.
Many of us knew it was all a lie back then. But the last four years have revealed it time and time again.
They never cared about ensuring that the forgotten man got a bigger slice of the pie. They never considered running up their own tab to give a hand up to the working stiff.
Trump and Bannon just wanted to be the ones on the inside running the scam. Making sure they got theirs.
The tax returns are the final reveal that proves the case. And now Joe Biden has all he needs in the final weeks of the campaign to reveal the con to the “losers and suckers” whom Donald Trump forgot about.