It’s the Institutions, Stupid
A different take on our political realignment.
Millions of gallons of ink and untold pixels have been spilled dissecting the realignment of American politics since Donald Trump descended the golden elevator to throw his hat into the ring nine years ago, so it’s always surprising when someone has a new take. Douglas Ollivant has done just that in a long essay on his Substack titled “Institutions, Politics, and Realignment.”
[Interstitial update: because many commenters seem to have missed it, Ollivant is seeking to understand the realignment, not the core/base of the parties. He’s not trying to explain longtime Republicans who happily vote for Trump but rather folks who voted for Obama but now support Trump—as well as those of us who voted for Romney and have voted for Trump’s three Democratic opponents.]
As a preface, I know Doug a little bit, having interacted with him at various events a few times going back to the aughts. He’s a fellow national security professional, albeit one of greater distinction (retired Army officer, political science PhD, former West Point professor, former NSC senior official, think tanker, etc.). Politically, I’d rate him as center-left, with a long affiliation with the New America Foundation.
His setup begins, interestingly enough, with a reference to the iconic Black Jeopardy sketch from November 2016:
In this hilarious but deeply insightful sketch, Tom Hanks portrays “Doug,” a MAGA-hat wearing (and very white) rural American man. As the sketch progresses, Doug shocks the host and contestants of Black Jeopardy by consistently having the “correct” responses. Doug convincingly illustrates the deep commonalities that he—representing the rural white underclass—has with the contestants from the urban black underclass. Most fundamentally, they share a distrust of institutions—the questions cover violations of privacy, election fixing, suspicion of the government, the informal economy, and a preference for lottery scratch cards, rather than contributing to a 401K.
This sketch prepares us, in a way no essay could, for the realignment we are seeing unfold in American politics. The political class has been in a mad scramble, since November of 2016, to explain what the “Trump phenomenon” means and how it came about. The American body politic is in a major partisan realignment, with both parties trading significant blocks of voters at the ballot box.
Ollivant’s thesis:
I believe the best way to understand this realignment is by observing how Americans—individually and in groups—think about their relationships to major American institutions. While this model has some limitations, and legacy attachments are often relevant, it seems to have great explanatory power.
Simply put, the Democrats have become the party of the institutions. Meanwhile, the Republicans now exist in a realm somewhere between suspicion of, and outright hostility to, the institutions. I believe this simple litmus test is our most salient political divide. That institutions are key is an important nuance. Other observers have nominated education or class, and these are obviously closely correlated with one’s connection to the institutions and can therefore be useful ways to think about the changing political scene. But these variables are proxies for this institutional relationship and fail to explain some phenomena.
Note that by nominating institutions as the most salient litmus test, he’s not denying the importance of race or class. He just believes it explains the realignment more than those or any other single variable.
By “the institutions” I mean the main power centers in American society and its economy. So media and academia are near the top, but followed by the various branches of executive power that have frequent interaction—federal police agencies, the IRS, the NIH, CPS, the intelligence agencies. Large firms also count as “institutions,”—“Big Law”, tech firms, big pharma, big agriculture, finance and banks and the “military industrial complex” (though of course this last still has major Republican ties). The military and law enforcement are the exceptions (though not totally exempt) that prove this rule.
There are two interrelated but clearly distinct questions about the institutions that will drive your partisan alignment. First, are these institutions working for you? Are you benefiting from the operation of these institutions, in a way you can see and feel? And second, do you trust the institutions, independent of whether you are getting a good deal from them?
While I haven’t couched it in terms of institutions before, I’ve contended from the beginning that attributing the rise of the Tea Party mostly to race (Barrack Obama’s election) or astroturfing (the organizing efforts of the Koch Brothers) elides something more fundamental. The elite, bipartisan consensus—began under George W. Bush and continued under Obama—to bail out the financial institutions that created the crisis created genuine outrage that damaged both parties.
Because they were the out party, it was much more obvious with the GOP. While Mitt Romney was able to hold off the crazies for another presidential cycle, we saw a backlash against Establishment Republicans in 2010 and beyond. Obama’s personal popularity held the Democrats together but we saw the Occupy Wall Street movement and the rise of populist leaders like Elizabeth Warren and, especially, Bernie Sanders. There was a sense among blue-collar workers, regardless of race or ideology, that the Establishment simply did not care about them.
Ollivant sees it a bit differently:
[I]f the institutions are benefiting you and you believe in them, you are likely a Democrat. If the institutions are not serving you well, and therefore you have lost faith in them, you are likely a Republican.
If he’s assessed this correctly it is, indeed, quite a realignment:
For those under 40, it is difficult to communicate just how dramatic a shift this is in American Politics. If we were to take 1980, for example, as our start point, virtually all the institutions would be aligned with the Republicans—academia, unions, and the pieces of government Reagan would describe as the “welfare state” notably excepted. But to be part of the elite mainstream social fabric was, for the most part, to be a Republican. It was “morning in America.”
Conversely, to be countercultural, to have distrust of established institutions, was to be of the left, to be a Democrat. After all, it was the left that wanted to “Rage Against the Machine.”
In some ways, this is counterintuitive. Going back to at least the New Deal era, Democrats have been the party of expanded national governmental power and Republicans were in opposition to that. But, yes, conservatives are, almost by definition, trying to preserve the major institutions of society: the Constitution, the military, the police, and the church.
But this is simply not the case anymore and realignment appears to be very visibly underway. Just to do one data point, let us look at Johnson County, Kansas, the county outside of Kansas City that contains the professional elite of eastern Kansas. In 1980, it voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan, 63% for Reagan to only 26.8 for incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. In 2020, however, the county voted for Joe Biden, albeit not overwhelmingly (though perhaps overwhelming for Kansas), but with a clear shift, 52.7% to only 44.5% for Donald Trump. Realignments take time and there are lags. The same voters who were 40 in 1980 and voted for Reagan turned 80 in 2020, and are unlikely to shift partisan alignment at that point in their lives. But their younger counterparts in more junior cohorts, have likely shifted. The 40 year old who holds in 2020 the same job that the Reagan voter did in 1980, was likely a Biden voter. The partisan position of those with loyalty to the institutions has largely reversed itself.
So the professional class—those in the institutions and with loyalty to the institutions—has moved from being a Republican voting demographic to a Democratic one. And empirical data clearly supports this, as above. But the flip side of the movement by the professional class is the equal and opposite reaction from the working classes. Ruy Texiera—a Democratic party strategist—has been warning his fellow partisans for some time now about the dangers of the Democrats becoming “a Brahmin Left party, beloved by the educated but increasingly viewed with suspicion by the working classes of all races.”
Given the overlap, the differences between the “institutions” and “class” explanations are subtle.
[T]he data seems to support the thesis that the institutions have become Democratic strongholds. In more or less ranked order, the Biden contributions came from professors, social workers, therapists, lawyers, librarians, deans, scientists, teachers, doctors, pharmacists, designers, bankers, IT professionals, finance professionals, nurses, accountants, engineers, CEOs.
In other words, the members and representatives of the institutions.
Contrast this with the contributors to the Trump campaign. Housewives, the disabled, carpenters, electricians, truckers, mechanics, plumbers, builders, police, drivers, construction and maintenance workers. In the main (the police perhaps being the exception that proves the rule), a group largely outside what we view as mainstream institutions. These are tradesmen/women, manual laborers, and hourly workers.
It would be an oversimplication to define this as the upper middle class versus the lower middle class, but only slightly. If thinking in terms of pure income, then doubtless there are plumbers and electricians whose net earnings exceed those of some therapists, for example. But in the main, we see a group of salaried professionals arrayed against a similar grouping of hourly blue collar workers.
And while it is dangerous to extrapolate from your data, I think it is relatively safe to believe that underneath the group of fairly well-to-do tradesmen who have the funds to contribute to a political campaign exists a camp of more marginalized workers. Those who no longer have disposable income for political campaigns will be the least well-served by the institutions and therefore will be part of this realignment.
Of course, there has always existed a large group of marginalized workers who don’t have the disposable income to donate to political campaigns. And they’ve never been particularly well served by our institutions, aside from maybe labor unions.
There are still a small number of blue-collar professions where a robust middle class lifestyle is possible. At the high end, an offshore oil and gas supervisor making over $200K annually with his home in low cost-of-living Mississippi, Louisiana, or East Texas is definitely living a top 1% lifestyle. While perhaps not at that end, UAW workers at the “Big Three” automakers, union electricians, experienced HVAC repairmen, and other specialized tradesmen may crest $100K annual compensation. But these jobs are far from the average and often hard to acquire. Far more typical is work at a small, family-owned, non-union assembly plant or in services or retail at just above minimum wage. This has meant deep economic insecurity, inability to provide, loss of housing, and a continual sense of living on the edge for many families without the education to enter the middle class. Frontline’s recent episode “Two American Families” powerfully illustrates what this has meant for these laboring classes, black and white.
The industries in which a respectable middle-class salary is achievable has also shrunk considerably. If we look back to 1980 as a starting point, a high-school graduate could support a family on a single salary in a wide variety of industries: timber, steel, family farming, mining, fishing. But the timber wars (with both Canadians and conservationists), the farm crisis, the steel crisis, the collapse of the fisheries, and coal decline left a very narrow range of possibilities for the former blue collar middle class.
So returning to the institutions as the fundamental divide, those in the group moving into the realigning Republican party tend not to be a member of an institution, and is therefore suspicious of the institutions. And in fact, that suspicion may grow to the point where the value and orientation of the institutions itself is questioned. This isn’t irrational. Why should one give trust and loyalty to institutions that do nothing—at least visibly—for you? Or worse yet, distort natural forces and keep you poor and marginalized?
That this group—which is expanding—feels marginalized and poorly served by our institutions is certainly understandable. And, to the extent that they placed their trust in the Democratic Party and feel that it now serves the interests of the management and professional class, it makes sense that they’re shifting to the only other viable American party.
But, of course, that party had long been seen as, well, serving the interests of the management and professional class.
Here the theory starts to explain some otherwise curious facts. Why the new Right questions the media (hint: it’s an institution). Why the new Right questions the utility of the professional government bureaucracy (it’s an institution, and more critically, one filled with Democratic partisans that will resist the policies of the new Right). Why the new Right is hostile to established higher education. Why there is deep suspicion of the financial system. Of the judicial establishment. The new Right that is moving into the Republican party—often displacing long-established demographics—has no tie to these institutions (save perhaps hostile ones—court summons, rejection letters, and bill collectors) and therefore carries deep suspicion of their motives. Further, their elites—while by definition generally well-educated and with financial resources—will tend to be outside the institutions, having made comfortable lives in a relatively independent manner. Think small business owners, heirs of family car dealerships, ranchers (and yes, commercial building developers). And given the data above, demonstrating that those inside the institutions are uniformly opposed to the political interests of those outside the institutions (at least as they understand them), then the suspicion of the institutions is not irrational.
Understanding the role of institutions as a fundamental divide explains otherwise curious happenings. The movement of the Cheneys (both former vice president Dick and daughter/former Congresswoman Liz) from the Republicans to the Democrats is on the surface curious. But when you think of the divide between the institutions, it makes much more sense. The Cheneys are just as much products of the institutions as are (e.g.) the Clintons. So of course they now belong in the same party, differing positions in the 90s and 00s notwithstanding. Likewise other prominent defectors. The closer one’s interests to the major institutions, the more one shares their views, their interests, their priorities. Again, exceptions abound. Politics is not an exact science. But thinking about this division in this way does seem to add clarity to the current political scene. And to loop back to culture for a moment, this helps understand why the folk-rock anthem “Fast Car,” that when first recorded in 1988 was clearly associated with the black urban underclass, would experience a revival in 2023 as a country ballad directed at the white rural underclass. Same isolation and despair; different political refuge.
It also neatly explains why the #NeverTrump movement began among Republican national security professionals who place loyalty to institutional rules and norms above domestic policy goals. Not only were our priorities simply different from the overwhelming mass of the party but we’re more protected from the economic vagaries plaguing the working class. We simply have more to lose in a Trump presidency.
The obvious question this viewpoint raises is the relationship of the trend to the emergence of President Donald Trump as the spokesman for the realigning party. Put simply, how much did President Trump cause this new bifurcation, or how much did this bifurcation cause Trump?
I suspect the answer is somewhere in-between, that President Trump’s harnessing of this divide accelerated it. This political division pre-dates the emergence of the Trump phenomenon, I believe. This is particularly true if you believe 2008 to be the polarizing moment. But President Trump’s genius as a political entrepreneur was to see this emerging divide in a way no other figure did—save perhaps Bernie Sanders, who was less well-positioned to exploit it. President Trump recognized and earned the loyalty—often fanatical loyalty—of this otherwise isolated demographic. Further, he recognized, whether consciously or not, that this demographic was likely to grow in size as a voting block as income inequality accelerated. This looked—and looks—like a long-term winning strategy.
I’m reminded of Adalai Stevenson’s quip in response to being told “Every thinking person in America” would be voting for him: “I’m afraid that won’t do — I need a majority.”
That a New York property developer would emerge as the spokesman for this disempowered class is at one level bewildering, but at another fully understandable. Peasant revolts are usually led by counter-elites. And while President Trump is of power and money, he is not from an institution and has usually stood in opposition to them. Land developers are often seen as disreputable. Thought of this way, this emergence is very understandable, particularly given the former President’s ability to speak to the masses in their own dialect so to speak, perfected in reality television, but first developed on the margins of professional wrestling and on construction sites throughout New York and New Jersey.
The addition of Robert F Kennedy, Jr, and Tulsi Gabbard into Donald Trump’s orbit fits nearly with this theory (likewise Vivek and Elon). Each of these figures is also defined by opposition to mainstream institutions—food and pharma in the former case, the defense industrial complex and transgenderism in the second—and by their positioning of themselves as change agents.
l think this is right, if only partially. While Trump doubtless won over some significant number of those who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, most of them are still in the Democratic orbit.
But I think this is entirely right:
Accepting this viewpoint also explains diverging opinions in the two parties on the “threat to Democracy.” It has become a trope of those in the institutions that “Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy.” By this they mean, I think, that Trump is a threat to the institutions, which they see as a bulwark of democracy.
However, for the new Right, the threat to democracy comes from the institutions themselves, which are the problem. So President Trump’s defenders would turn his opponent’s rhetoric on its head and reply to Democrats that while Trump is indeed a threat to “their democracy,” the one that serves the interests of Democratic partisans in the institutions, what is in the larger good for democracy is a round of creative destruction of these same institutions. In this view, the institutions that those inside them most value require fundamental reform, from their mid-20th century orientation to one that serves the early 21st. Again, this thought is anathema to those whom the current institutional arrangements are conveniently serving.
In the wee hours of November 9, 2016, when it became clear that Trump had won, I cited Michael Moore’s “The Biggest F- You in Human History” speech. While Trump obviously won a whole lot of “normal” Republican voters, there was also a substantial “burn it all down” contingent. That faction remains with him.
Ollivant shares my rough sense of the origins of the shift but traces the throughline in a useful way:
If we were to identify one moment when the old order really cascaded into the new, the 2008 financial crisis would have to be it. The 2008 financial bailout, which gave out billions of dollars while holding no one responsible, had the approval of not only the sitting President, George W. Bush, but also that of both candidates to succeed him, John McCain and Barrack Obama. In Angelo Codevilla’s telling in his 2010 The Ruling Class, “When this majority [of 80% disapproval of the proposed policy] discovered that virtually no one with a national voice or in a position of power in either party would take their objections seriously…they realized that America’s rulers had become a self-contained, self-referential class.” Finding that those responsible for the pain the 2008 crisis inflicted on the working classes would not only not face criminal charges and prison, but would retain their taxpayer-underwritten bonuses, was—I suspect—a seminal moment for many. Ten million American families lost their homes to foreclosure during the subprime crisis. While now extrapolating, that this anger would drive a movement to look for a party that equally excluded the institutions that backed the Bushes, McCains and Obamas is hardly a huge leap.
Then packed on top of 2008 has come a series of events, or at least gradual reorientations, that have changed the view of the institutions. While the version in most heads is probably not literary, there is an impressive literature from mainstream publishers that has likely “trickled down.” Think of Chris Van Tulleken on the processed food industry, or Chris Leonard on the role of the Federal Reserve in increasing income inequality, or Gretchen Morgenson on the “plunderers” of private equity, or Patrick Radden Keefe on the “Empire of Pain” created by the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma. While ironically these authors (who are mostly institutionalists themselves!) may be perfectly happy with most other institutions, and just pointing out an abuse in one, when taken as a whole, it can be read as a critique of the entire universe of institutions.
Then in the more popular sphere, think of the tarnishing of academia by several rounds of plagiarism scandals among fairly major figures, beginning with the former Harvard President. For the intelligence community, think of the 51 former members who signed a letter, organized by the Biden campaign, claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story “makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role.” On the intersection of Covid and journalism, think of headlines such as “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins,” when the lab-leak theory he was promoting is now generally seen as the most probable explanation (though we will likely never know).
All these incidents, calling deep doubt on the functioning of mainstream institutions are themselves rather, well, mainstream. This is not lizard people, Q-Anon, or a global conspiracy of Satanists or Freemasons or Opus Dei or Jews or the Trilateral Commission or whomever. These are instead fairly straightforward cases that call into question whether there are fundamental issues at the roots of many major institutions. These critiques, taken together, then question the functioning of the larger system of institutions as a whole.
Again, Ollivant is almost certainly, like me, an institutionalist who will vote against Trump a third straight time. But he points to good reasons why there is so much cynicism about our institutions. (And this elides all manner of scandals among elected leaders, the decades-long pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church, the backlash against the Iraq War, and so many other issues.)
Commenters will rightly note that this all elides the efforts by the right-wing infotainment complex to amplify scandals to generate outrage. But it’s fair to point out that they have a lot to work with in that regard.
If we accept this vision of the two parties becoming reoriented around institutions, a few observations emerge. First, this new orientation will create new islands of political homelessness. On the left, what happens to the long-term fraction of the left that is inherently anti-institutional? Think of publications such as Dissent and The Nation. These small outlets often carry powerful critiques of the institutions (see, e.g. The Nation’s recent expose on the collusion of “Big Agriculture” and powerful NGOs to force GMO seeds on the global south). But while these organs have always been minority voices in the Democratic coalition, it is hard to see them not becoming further and further marginalized over time as the counterculture becomes more and more a right-leaning phenomenon.
Similarly, on the right, what happens to those who are fully supportive of the current institutional arrangements? We could call this fraction “Nikki Haley Republicans.” What of those who view themselves as deeply conservative, but are deeply embedded in the institutional structure and doing quite nicely in them, if perhaps having to regularly self-censor. This fraction may contain a sizeable portion of what we might think of as the “professional right,” the think tanks that have generally served as the institutionalized opposition—think of the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Acton Institute. None of these can be plausibly viewed as hostile to current institutional arrangements. Where do they fit along this new political cleavage? (hint: the endorsement of Kamala Harris by many individuals in these institutions is probably a good indicator)
Heritage, in particular, has largely been taken over by the New Right. But AEI and Hoover scholars are, indeed, largely homeless in terms of political party. My guess is that, unless the Republican Party suddenly reverts to its pre-Trump ideology—and it likely won’t, if Ollivant’s analysis is correct—benefactors will dry up, as it makes little sense to Republican foreign policy think tanks whose ideas are ignored by Republican foreign policymakers and whose scholars are won’t staff Republican administrations.
Second, what is the positive agenda of the new Right? What they are against is obvious—the current institutional arrangements. But what are they for? One can see this question playing out in the coalition surrounding itself around Donald Trump. Aside from much stronger enforcement of borders and immigration policies, what a Trump administration will do is unclear. There are persons with deeply incompatible policies who are equally close to the Trump inner circle. Now granted, this is a post-election question, and it is in no one’s interest to highlight tensions in their coalition before coming to power.
A fair question, indeed. While the criticism that Harris, like Biden before her, campaigns too much on the dangers Trump poses to American democracy and not enough on how she will govern is legitimate, the fact of the matter is that Democrats have a policy agenda they would like to enact. There are large swaths of it that I don’t like, but it’s an agenda nonetheless. Outside of immigration and rolling back transgender rights, there’s not much of a countervailing agenda on the GOP side.
There’s a whole lot more to the essay but the rest is more predictive. I commend it to you, along with the discursive footnotes.
He’s using institutions in a way that’s meaningless. Plenty of educated liberals feel they are being exploited and marginalized by their institutions. Look at academia.
I think what he’s talking about is that Republicans and conservatives are now in thrall to the self-destructive logic of Prosperity Gospel America. What ties in a fake academic at Heritage, Elon Musk, and an HVAC repairman is that their core belief is belief in getting rich as fast as possible. This is not how you build institutions, even those focused on money. The marginalization is self-inflicted here.
@Modulo Myself: It’s perfectly reasonable to disagree with his argument but his definition of “institutions,” quoted in the OP, is substantially richer than you claim.
As to academia, he says this in footnote ii:
James, thanks for highlighting this read. I will dive into the full article.
Couple quick reflections on what you’ve highlighted:
This seems to be the case. It also helps us understand the infamous “No socialized medicine, but don’t you touch my Medicare/Medicaid” phrase. The social safety net is a really critical institution and it’s clear that many Trump voters want to keep it protected (along with social security). This also feels like a major point of tension with Trump’s promise to slash the federal budget and deficit (as so much it is tied to social services).
This is all really insightful. I haven’t payed as much attention to the realignment discussions until recently. As a result, I’ve only recently begun to think about things in terms of the new right being “counterculture.” That formulation helps make so much sense about the new Right’s behaviors (and excesses). It also help understand many of the impulses of the more “online” portions of the New Right (including Vance and Miller) when you realize that they came of age online in toxic communities like 4-chan and 8-chan.
This is so spot on, and I think why many Trump-aligned commenters chose to adopt an anti-anti-Trump position. Instead, they usual go back to (1) Trunp’s rise is the fault of RINOs (an anti-establishment argument), (2) borders/immigration, or (3) the first Trump administration was not as bad as people predicted.
To quote a recent Tweet (Elon’s Mom still calls it Twitter, so I’m with her on this) from Jane Coaston’s take on the WSJ’s tepid endorsement of Trump:
@James Joyner:
In my experience talking with people from my cohort and other folks I’ve known who have gotten through Anthro PhD programs, I really don’t think this is the case any more.
I don’t think many are getting red-pilled in any significant way (in part because people who choose qualitative social sciences are often self-selecting in for apparent values mix)–but I think many, if not all are having really serious talks students who are interested in PhD programs about the reality of the job market (and that most programs are not effectively evolving to train students for some of the non-academic jobs that do exist).
That said that has been a change that has come in the last few years. Prior to that, way too many students were still being encouraged to apply.
I think it’s the case that the emperor’s nakeness just became too apparent to pretend it didn’t exist.
Viewing the political realignment through being pro or anti institutions is a good frame. It is possible to be a liberal that has been treated shabbily by one or more institutions, but still be in general support of the concept of institutionalism. And it should be pointed out that institutional support should be considered the classically conservative view, while conforming to classical liberalism focus on the rule of law and democracy.
Going forward, what are the trumpists for, is the salient question. Historically populists movements have failed because they focus on narrow, unachievable ends and lack a framework to choose future objectives. It should be noted that the first trump administration didn’t deliver on its populist promises and simply pushed money and power toward the all ready wealthy. There is no reason to think that the new philosophy R’s will do any different.
@James Joyner:
What he says about academia is just not true. And why would it be? He made it up without, I’m guessing, having any first-hand experience. And to be honest, looking at his background, why would a guy who went to a Christian college and then the military have any insight about what constitutes an institution which somehow aligns everyone from Dick Cheney to someone with them/them pronouns and an MSW working with homeless people?
He’s trying to point to a type of social capital which explains the rearrangement occurring due to Trump. The problem is that any form of social capital so broad as to link nurses who struggled through nursing school and partners at M&A law firms who went to Andover and Exeter is a red flag. It might be more an effect of another cause, rather than a cause of Trump. Or it might not exist at all, and it’s just an illusion caused by the right-wing/fascist turn in America.
This post is propaganda. That is, it is entirely based on a view of Trump Supporters as they would like to be seen rather than they actually are.
Trump’s biggest fans aren’t who you think
This also explains the actual worldview of Trump supporters, which is not (as Ollivant suggests), based on a belief that institutions have failed them. Trump provides no plans to improve any of those failed institutions. They are certainly anti-institutional, but they are so because they see those institutions protecting people they wish to exploit and want to be freed from that restraint.
@James Joyner: Serendipity. One of my first thoughts on reading Klein’s column was of James Joyner, institutionalist and recent convert to voting Democratic. Also, I just started reading Peter Turchin’s End Times. A thing he stresses is overproduction of elites destabilizing societies. He specifically mentions producing more advanced degree holders that there are slots for them.
Not current, but I’ll mention Corey Robin’s thesis in The Reactionary Mind that “conservatism” is never, throughout history conservative. It is always reactionary. And while supporting elite power, also anti-elite, reacting against the elite’s perceived failure to defend against whatever the current enemy happens to be. Trump is attacking Republican elites as well as liberals. That gets downplayed, but he sure is anti-institutionalist.
I see a lot of stuff lately about the paradigm shifting and a party alignment shifting from traditional left/right. Nobody, including this very good Klein piece, seems to have a good handle on just how. It does seem like the ground is shifting. On the other hand, Trump mostly represents being no longer able to shout “ni-clang, ni-clang, ni-clang”, but he can shout “immigrant, immigrant, immigrant”. Plus ca change.
@Matt Bernius: @Modulo Myself: It’s quite possible that Ollivant, who is just a couple years younger than me, has an outdated view of the current state of the academy.
@Modulo Myself: Ollivant has his PhD from Indiana-Bloomington and has been outside the Army and in the DC think tank world for fifteen years now. And he’s not explaining the two parties per se but the direction of the realignment—that is, people like me who left the GOP and vote Democrat and those who long voted Democrat and have shifted to the GOP. I don’t think it’s a complete explanation, by any means, but I think it explains pieces that other explanations don’t.
@Stormy Dragon: Ollivant is not a Trump supporter. Were I to hazard a guess, he was a Republican in the Reagan-Bush days and shifted Democrat well before Trump. He’s been at New America since 2011. But, again, he’s not trying to understand Trump’s most fervent supporters but rather the realignment of our parties—the edge cases that have crossed the aisle rather than the base of the two parties.
Comment posted before I finished. I think the argument and Dr. J’s comment have a can’t see the forest for the trees quality that Stormy’s comment above captures well.
I think Trump supporters are frustrated that so many people they think of as “others” or “minorities” started acting like they were the same as “real Americans”, who in the past twenty years pushed themselves forward rather than just settling for being tolerated better or accepting their place in society.
Trump supporters are thinking: What are blacks so upset about – nobody’s burning crosses on their lawns anymore so what’s the big deal about this DEI bull? Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire, right? So what’s her gripe? And the gays – well, you can’t fire anyone anymore for being gay so what do they do? They send guys dressed up as fish into libraries to read to little kids! I mean, what the H-E-double-hockeysticks is that all about? And they’re all over the media, just never – shutting – up. Geez, give it a rest already with the LQBTABCXYZ stuff.
Meanwhile the Trump supporter is pretty sure he (yes, he) never got a break based on his color or religion or fashion sense – in his opinion. No one interviews him about anything. Thank God Donald Trump came along and said what the Trump supporter really thinks. He’s rich, practically owns NYC and he doesn’t have to take crap from any of these coloreds or fags or dykes or whatever you’re not supposed to call them anymore. He’s the only guy running for anything who’s not a professional politician – or a professional prostitute, same difference really.
If James’ source wants to see that as anti-institution, well I suppose that’s a polite way of putting it. But I think it’s more that the Trump supporters want a hierarchical world like the one they think they remember, when they got a lot of respect in their community because of what they are. Someone’s to blame for the change, and by God they’re going to get a real good beatdown when Trump gets back in. Then we’ll see who’s a real American.
Have the neo-cons taken over the Democratic party? Asks Jonathan Last in this group call bragging on Harris’ Ellipse speech. Things are a-changin’
He lists “housewives” and “the disabled” as number 1 and 2 in his recounting of Trump contributors. Is this right? I thought that Trump doesn’t poll well with women, and aren’t the disabled major beneficiaries, as they properly should be, of government programs?
I am definitely someone who has benefited from governmental institutions. My parents were low skill manual laborers, and I am solidly upper middle class due to education and the credentialing process.
Ezra Klein at NYT has a very similar piece today, citing different sources. I just started reading Peter Turchin’s End Times. @James Joyner: mentions PhDs scraping by as adjuncts. Turchin talks about over-production of elites, one aspect of which is producing more advanced degree holders that there are jobs for them. He sees this as a common feature in cycles of political instability through history.
In The Reactionary Mind Corey Robin says conservatism is never conservative, always reactionary. One of the constants in Corey’s view is anti-elitism based on the elites not having adequately protected against whatever it is “conservatives” are against today. Although it gets downplayed, Trump is (at least rhetorically) opposed to Republican elites as much as others.
I seem to be seeing a lot of speculation lately about a Party realignment along some axis different than traditional left/right, but vague on what that new axis might be. Klein and Ollivant talk anti-institutionalism. But that’s kind of redundant, the revolution is revolutionary. It does feel like the ground is shifting, and has for some years. But. Republicans are still anti-tax, and their anti-institutionalism seems to focus on regulatory agencies. The same agenda as Goldwater. And Trump is mostly recognizing he can’t say, “ni-clang, ni-clang, ni-clang”, but he can say “immigrant, immigrant, immigrant”. Plus ca change. “There’s something happening here, But what it is ain’t exactly clear.”
@Slugger: I haven’t read the whole (and probably won’t*) but my sense on his list is that he’s using “the data show” in a sense similar to “we all know” or “a lot of people are saying.” (Does the text provide a reference for the assertion? The passage as excerpted doesn’t appear to.)
This observation fits so well with the building outrage over the state of NY sending armed agents to seize and then execute beloved internet influencer and his sidekick. Tree rat and trash panda lives matter. RIP Peanut and Fred
It will be amusing to see if this has a measurable impact
@just nutha: *Put not finishing the article in the “good to be old” column for me. He makes an interesting conjecture about the situation, but I’m not interested enough in it to unravel the whole sweater. And not impacted enough by consequences beyond my time.
@gVOR10: @gVOR10: Sorry about the basically redundant comments. I decided to rewrite it and thought I deleted the first version. Commenting is behaving a bit weirdly for me this morning.
There’s a lot to unpack in the essay, but one point I’d like to focus on is the apparent realignment when it comes to foreign policy and national security. If there’s any aspect of the Harris campaign that has given me pause, it’s her aggressive courting of anti-Trump Republicans, including not only campaigning with Liz Cheney (which I understand given Cheney’s commendable and self-sacrificial work on the investigation into Jan. 6) but boasting about the support from Cheney’s dad–as well as a ton of other Republicans from Bushworld.
An argument can be made that this strategy is politically smart. We’ll soon find out. If she loses, I am sure it will invite greater scrutiny. How one feels about it depends, I think, on one’s generation and when one came of age politically. For a lot of people in my age cohort, our political formation was in many ways heavily built on opposition to the Bush Admin’s disastrous War on Terror, its expansion of the national security state, and its assault on civil liberties, of which perhaps the most egregious example was the torture program of Dick Cheney, who in a just world would be in jail.
I understand the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I’m not even stating definitively that I believe what Harris is doing in courting this crowd is wrong. But I get at some level why it turns off a lot of people who once backed candidates like John Kerry and Barack Obama due in large part to their horror at the actions of the Bush Admin. And I’ve noticed that some portions of that crowd–not a majority, but some–have shifted toward Trump. Not that I find their arguments compelling. Most of it is extremely simplistic and slogan-driven, throwing around terms like the “forever wars” and the “military-industrial complex” as well as that stupid mantra that Trump is the first modern president not to have gotten us into a war (a claim that not only ignores the aggressive militarism during his first and hopefully only term, but the fact that the Biden Admin didn’t start any wars and in fact ended one–Afghanistan, where the pullout was ugly, but which was exactly what people opposed to the War on Terror have been calling for for decades). It gets especially ridiculous when people try to equate the unjustified, dishonest invasion of Iraq with the very justified attempts to help Ukraine survive against an invading force.
I don’t see any inconsistency whatsoever in being anti-Bush and anti-Trump–indeed I think Bush in a lot of ways paved the way for Trump, starting with the questionable way he reached the office in the first place. But I sometimes feel stymied in making that case when some of Trump’s most vocal critics include people who were once some of the most vocal defenders of Bush.
@James Joyner:
Well, IMO, his explanation about academics is wrong. Most academics–especially the ones in fields where the job prospects are nil–get into academia because reading theory or doing research is what turned them on. They like the intellectual work, and the institution was simply a way to continue doing that.
To me, this analysis (and about a dozen others re: Trump’s appeal) sounds like how incels understand women and status. It’s literally about people who can’t imagine any kind of candor being meaningful in their lives. It’s all status, all power, and all a closed-loop. No guy ranting about hierarchies and in-groups and signaling will ever be proven wrong. The point of the view is to win. If you take this viewpoint and apply it everywhere, so that nothing is sincere or truthful or based on desire and everything is about hierarchy and in-group/out-group blather, you’re going to end up with where we are in 2024 with Trump.
What’s missing from this post is any sense of accountability. James Joyner seems to have drifted into this schizoid mindset where he can acknowledge the issues powering the rise of Trump and the political realignment of America, but then his brain comes to a dead stop.
For example, no matter how badly our institutions have performed (or how much James Joyner accepts those failures), he constantly defaults to stuff like “While Mitt Romney was able to hold off the crazies for another presidential cycle…” No matter how atrociously people like Romney perform as political/national leaders, James Joyner continues to believe people like Romney have to remain in charge lest the “crazies” take over.
Another, even more ridiculous example is “Outside of immigration and rolling back transgender rights, there’s not much of a countervailing agenda on the GOP side.” Trump ran for President for 1 1/2 years, was President for four years, and has been essentially running for President the last four years. There are scores of Trump policy proposals and suggestions out there along with his actual record in office, and there are even more policy arguments, theories, and ideas being advanced by Trump supporters in and out of office. James Joyner even admits in print it was Trump’s significantly different approach to foreign policy that ignited the NeverTrump movement.
And after all of that, James Joyner still wants to pretend he just doesn’t know what the Trump GOP stands for or wants. Not that he disagrees with it. He won’t even try to engage with it.
It’s not the institutions. It’s the people in those institutions deciding to envelop themselves in impenetrable information bubbles and simply refusing to engage with anyone or anything that doesn’t come with prior approval.
And by the way…how’s that Ukraine war going?
@JKB: ” building outrage”
Uh, yeah. I live in New York, not in some trailer in an Arkansas swamp, and I have never heard a single person mentioning this “outrage.” Somehow I don’t think it’s going to create a red wave here. But feel free to amuse yourself however you can.
Insofar as W. Europe has structurally similar developments should inform understandings, purely navel gazing at USA will continue to lead to blindnesses.
The commonalities of reaction of working class and turning towards reactionary political along with the certain commonalities with a fraction of Left parties becoming heavily infected by the agendas of the bohemian bouregousie – at minimum in terms of language and agenda – are informative (notably the utter blindness to such and/or excuse making as one sees here with a certain dominant commentariat)
This seems rather off (or perhaps it does represent the policy oriented centrist reaction). This does seem to rerpesent Pr. Joyner’s preferred view. I think the more interesting are the critiques that rather focus on too much focus on comm on the concerns and agenda of the dominant fraction of the Democrats – the university educated essentially white-collar bourgeousie who have become cultural Left – with a near utter blindness (if not outright if unprocessed intello snobish disain for) the labouring class cultural express — understandable in values terms but politically not a winner).
Ollivant notes that the difference between an institution/anti-institution realignment and one based on education or class is subtle. I would say so subtle that there isn’t all that much to glean from it.
But, this struck me as really interesting in the context of the recent series from Steven on fascism. Namely, the importance of the Mythic Past and Unreality elements of a fascist approach. Ollivant writes the following:
The Mythic Past comes into play, because the inherent message of MAGA is that the country (as determined by institutions in this framework) doesn’t work for today’s reality, so we must destroy it. This destruction is pretty explicit in the Project 2025 game plan which is very much about reforming institutions. And though it seems counterintuitive, a movement that wants an orientation that serves the early 21st century that harkens to a bygone era like MAGA does can serve the purpose if the Again is packaged as Great while ignoring all that was bad in that Mythic Past.
Unreality comes into play whenever “creative destruction” is offered up as a relatively benign path forward. We’ll get all the “creative” and the “destruction” will be minimal is the fundament pitch of the Trump campaign. Tariffs will work this time because they’ll be used creatively, at a scale we’ve never seen before, leading to only good outcomes for the US (higher revenue, increased domestic production) and no deleterious effects (like inflationary passed on costs and retaliatory tariffs from other countries). Mass deportation will fix what ails the underclass (stressed community services, housing shortages), but don’t you worry about the complexity/cost of rounding up millions of people or the loss of cheap labor.
Bottom line, MAGA can’t happen through incremental institutional reform. “Burn it all down” is necessary, even if Trump and his campaign won’t cop to that in their messaging.
Either I am fundamentally not understanding a key point, or Ollivant is making a mush out of what is and isn’t an institution in order to support his theory.
“Transgenderism” is not an institution. There were a bunch of others, but this one is the most flagrant.
You could make a case that “Transgenderists” are being protected by “the institutions,” but then you would have to get into privilege and the loss thereof, which would be a very different analysis.
Elsewhere he will acknowledge that police (very clearly a part of any definition of “the institutions”) support Trump. He says that this is the exception that proves the rule — I never know whether someone who uses that phrase knows that “proves” there means “tests” or whether they think it means you get one freebie counterfactual.
Except it often is QAnon and other conspiracy theories.
Ollivant’s theory is half-baked, or he’s bad at communicating it.
Sticking just to the people moving between the parties, the people moving Trumpward are those who feel their position in America is declining. Loss of privilege, plain and simple. Those moving away from the increasingly Trumpy Republican Party are mostly just disgusted.
The increasingly pro-fascist police (they were always Republican, but they have shifted) are feeling a loss of power as a result of BLM and people trying (and mostly failing) to make them accountable.
ETA: there’s also a very growing divide along gender lines, particularly with younger voters. I guess one could claim that The Patriarchy is an institution that is failing or something and not serving men as well, so they are losing faith in it. But that’s making more of a mush of what is and isn’t an institution.
I don’t buy this. Nothing in this framing seems more on-point than any number of other ways to slice and dice the facts. It’s not ‘institutions’ that have failed Trumpies, they’ve sabotaged themselves, but since they are incapable of ever taking responsibility they have to shift blame. Blame the Jews. Sorry, that was another bunch who’d been ‘failed by institutions’.
Nobody forced these people to cling to the most anti-intellectual, fundamentalist and extreme religions. No one forced these people to stay in dying towns waiting for coal or textiles to make a comeback. No one made them spend hundreds and thousands of hours listening to people like their preacher or Limbaugh or Fox News who did nothing but lie to them to stoke their self-pity and resentment. They could have made different choices. They could have stood up on their hind legs, looked at the world as it is, and found a way to adapt.
The institutions failed them? No, they failed themselves. It is not the job of institutions to give meaning to their lives, or to undo their every mistake. And what, pray tell, have they done to encourage institutions to be more responsive? Reagan says, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” is a lie, and they bought that lie, even while they spent their social security and their farm subsidies and could still count to ten on their fingers because of government workplace regulation.
They were sold lies by the Republican Party and Rupert Murdoch and they bought those lies. Now they’re mad because it turns out the world isn’t what they insisted it was. They were told they were marching to victory, and they weren’t.
My father’s wife, a good White Evangelical, living on SS, Medicare, government pensions and cash from her husband’s liberal son, is voting for Trump, who demonizes and despises my daughter, who this woman claims to love. That’s got absolutely fuck-all to do with institutions.
This is an attempt to absolve people of responsibility for their own actions. People have agency. They are responsible for their own actions and beliefs. No one made them embrace a vicious pig of a man who spews lies and hatred and threatens violence.
To me, this completely explains why Trump’s polling support has consistently been at 47%.
These people know that he’s malevolent, brutal, crude, rude, and a grifting con man, but he’s their brutal greaseball (and besides, ‘both sides do it.’) These people have every confidence that he will fight to the bitter end to “burn it all down” and reform the federal government, and perhaps legally rein in the so-called Main Stream Media and other institutions to their liking.
And, they do not believe that any of this will negatively affect them, only the undeserving majority of voters, and voters in Blue States in particular, will feel the brunt of their revolution.
@Michael Reynolds:
Absolutely, people have agency. Especially, so when their beliefs don’t change when they are confronted with the reality the world isn’t what they were told.
But, I hold the liars in much greater contempt. These liars you name – Republicans and Rupert Murdoch (representing the right wing media complex) – are Haves preying on the Have Nots by telling them that other Have Nots are the reason they can’t have the world they believe they are entitled to.
@Gustopher:
It’s a buzzword among those who don’t accept being trans as legitimate, and who try to make the movement for its acceptance sound like an ideology. The term has analogues in the past used to denigrate other civil-rights struggles, like homosexualism and Negroism.
@Scott F.:
They’re parasites. Genuinely contemptible people. Rupert Murdoch is the worst immigrant we’ve ever taken in. No one single man has done more damage to this country.
@Kylopod:
Transgenderism sounds like it’s an ideology where even the trans people who are happy with being trans (which is the majority of trans people) are suspect. They’ve gone from saying that the science was wrong about trans people to the trans people being wrong about how satisfied they are with the science.
It’s a clear tell this guy’s a crank. He also mentions the lab leak theory and how it’s the most likely explanation, which isn’t true.
I agree that Trumpists are motivated by resentment of institutions, but I think the analysis falls apart when it cites objective measures like unemployment or scandals.
The primary pathway to Trumpism is resentment over loss of deserved status- Think of Elon Musk raging over his trans daughter or any of the incel brigades seething over uppity women.
These guys assume the world and its institutions were meant to confer upon them status and power, and when they don’t, they react with rage and “burn it all down” nihilism.
Notice how the one institution that Trumpists have unwavering faith in, is the police? At least, the local police and rural sheriffs, which have a distinctly reactionary slant.
They don’t actually want to burn it “all” down- just the institutions that they don’t control, that don’t automatically gift them with power and status.
@Modulo Myself: oh, “Transgenderism” is a bizarre, fake word. I used it just to quote the guy. And then added the obvious “Transgenderists,” which would either be the trans folks themselves, or the people who provide gender affirming care. The latter might be “Transgenderizers”?
Anyway, the trans community is clearly not part of “the institutions.” They are a tiny, widely persecuted group. But, if you’re making the case that people are moving Republican when they are disappointed with the institutions, and the Republican Party is all about hating trans people, you have to wedge them in somehow, I guess.
I’m going to stick to my belief that it is a fear of loss of status/privilege that pushes people Trumpwards, aided by a right wing infotainment complex that is stoking that fear.
This would also fit with @Mx. Dragon’s* data about how many of Trump’s supporters are people doing better than local average in below average areas. You need to have something to fear losing it. But, I expect those people were Chamber of Commerce Republicans before Trump, so they aren’t a net Republican vote.
Anyway, I generally think that most people are reasonably decent people when not terrified, so the right-wing infotainment has to be constant just to maintain it. Not sure how that belief helps anything…
——
*: I think they are a Mx. I might be getting people mixed up though. (Was this just for the pun? Yes…)
@Gustopher:
I am! And your comment calling me by that title was an unexpected source of joy for today! <3
Yet another dive by an academic into what makes people vote for Trump that tries to sanitize the obvious racist bottom line. There are plenty of institutions Trump publicly professes to love: Police, big oil, border enforcement, the military, his SCOTUS, etc. Look at the demographics. It’s not all non-institutional voters who support him. Women don’t. Minorities don’t. It’s white people, especially white men. If they dislike insitutions its because institutions are trying to be inclusive (finally).
OK but “wokeness” is also a revolt against the institutions. What was Black Lives Matter and #MeToo if not that? Has any group been more let down by institutions than trans people?
Maybe a better frame is that everyone these days is skeptical of institutions, but perhaps different ones for different reasons.
This idea seems convincing on the surface, but falls apart a bit if you think about it.
Come on, Trump’s draw isn’t about anti-institutionalism any more than it’s “economic uncertainty” or “transgenderism” or “The Woke” or whatever boogieman of the week is. It’s just hate. Trump gives small, insecure people the license to hate whomever you want without fear or consequences. Gays? Hate. Brown people? Hate. Intellectuals? Hate. Rich people? Hate (besides the good ones, which also applies to every other group).
You can pick or choose any angle you want and there’s some truth to it, but the idea that the core basis for any of this is anti-institutional? Nonsense. Trumpers love the institutions they think will make the people they hate pay. ICE? Awesome. The US military bombing abroad? Big fans. The police beating on crowds of liberals and people of color? BACK THE BLUE!!
I mean, I’m all for identifying other core issues here, if they exist, but Occam’s razor would say this isn’t as complicated as “a lack of trust in institutions”. The people susceptible to Trump hate most institutions for the same reason they hate so many things, because they stand for or help the people they hate.
@TheRyGuy:
Specificity is a good thing. Trump supporters make references to these ideas and proposals, but rarely get around to giving examples.
When they do give examples, they are either vague or unrealistic.
You are correct there are actual policy proposals out there. The funny thing is, the regulars around here seem to be more willing to list them and engage them than Trump supporters are. It often seems as if anti-Trump folks are more knowledgeable about such things than his voters.
Moreover, the most comprehensive and detailed policy ideas are found in Project 2025. Once the media started reporting on that document, the Trump administration raced to distance itself.
That is weird. I read most of the front page posts here, and he engages with it almost daily. Either you do not read them, you read them without comprehension, or, perhaps, your definition of engagement is agreement.
I can’t speak for Joyner, but I don’t think he meant #NeverTrump was started by NatSec/FoPo professionals. Rather, I think he was trying to identify institutionalism as the reason it gained such a deep footprint within that community.
Well, almost. If you believe that institutions are not serving you well, and therefore you have lost faith in them, you are likely either a Republican who has been brainwashed by propaganda and disinformation from the well-funded machine that wants you to feel this way, or you are black, and tired of waiting for reality to catch up with liberal promises. I have genuine sympathy for the latter group (though it’s hard to imagine that they will actually gain more from a GOP regime than from continued Democratic lip-service). I can’t see a solution to the former group; the Russia/GOP/Murdoch axis has successfully implemented the Big Lie and there is no countermeasure available.
@TheRyGuy:
Name three.
Seriously — write down for us three actual serious, feasible, legal policy proposals that have come out of Trump’s mouth. “Seal the border” doesn’t count — that’s a fantasy, not a policy proposal. Ditto for the idiotic tariff talk, mass deportations, etc. Give us three examples of Trump proposing to do something that is actually not impossible in this universe. Bonus points if it’s not something that 99% of informed professionals think is a stupid idea.
@DrDaveT: I think the key words here are “serious”, “feasible” and “legal”. Neither Trump nor RyGuy have anything of the sort. It’s all just chaos, “burn it all down” bullshit.
@Jax: I would also ask that it be “consistent”. Like, what is Trump’s abortion policy? Nobody knows because he’s apparently said completely opposite things in just the last couple months. I’m saying ‘apparently’ because he’s incoherent about what he means. He’ll “protect women whether they like it or not” – if you can divine policy meaning out of that, congrats!
And then he rails against EVs, then cozies up to Musk … what’s the actual policy position going to be? Nobody knows, especially Trump himself. Because he’s winging it with the sole purpose of getting elected.
Yeah, Trump’s been running for president for like 10 years now, and we know more about Kamala’s policies after she’s been running for 3 months. She got her shit together fast. What’s Trump’s excuse?
@DrDaveT:
Snapple dapple Dr. Dave!
I have a beef with the history of the Tea Party etc.
Yes, I think it traces to the Great Recession. But no, it does not have much to do with the bailing out of the people responsible. It’s something more than that.
We bailed out the rich guys who made it happen and then did very, very little to help everyone else. Obama went along with it. He embraced “austerity”. He’s a better politician than I am, so maybe that was all that was possible. But somehow, I think he could have aligned himself and Democrats more with “now is not the time for austerity, it is the time to help our fellow Americans”.
So the rich guys got help and everybody else got bupkis, while the politicians pointed fingers and argued about who was to blame.
And of course there was racism in the mix because that always gets trotted out in order to try to change the allocation of resources.
@Slugger: @just nutha: He cites another author’s research, complete with a graph, based on contribution records.
@Kurtz: My awareness of the movement started with the March 2, 2016 “Open Letter on Donald Trump from GOP National Security Leaders” in War on the Rocks. It predates (although just by a few days) the meeting convened by Erick Erickson, cited in Wikipedia as the start of the NeverTrump movement.
@Matt Bernius:
To toot my own horn, I more or less called the content’s of @TheRyGuy’s latest anti-anti-Trump message. I wrote earlier:
RyGuy then delivers as expected:
My man, has anyone ever mention that you have this weird fixation on James?
Beyond that, he get’s back to his usual claim that “There are scores of Trump policy proposals and suggestions out there along with his actual record in office, and there are even more policy arguments, theories, and ideas being advanced by Trump supporters in and out of office”–he once again never mentions any (beyond immigration, which he seems to support).
As a reminder, we have asked TheRyGuy multiple times to share which Trump policies he supports to crickets. Further, when we do critique Trump policies, his lame-ass responses is not to demonstrate how the critiques are wrong, but to whine “why don’t you do the same with Harris’s policies?!”
“Why are you not writing the posts that I want you to write” tells us much more about the person saying it than the people they are critiquing. But when you’re a low-energy, predictable boor, who doesn’t feel confident defending their candidate of choice, I guess your response options are limited.
Institutions didn’t cause Trump’s policies to result in a net export of about 300,000 jobs throughout his term. [Biden’s policies have gained nearly a million so far] Institutions didn’t cause Trump to be a wild warmonger during his term. Institutions didn’t cause Trump to promote both in law and policy execution wild pro-censorship policies during his term [punish flag burning with a year in prison, etc]. Institutions didn’t cause Trump to sue CNN for half a billion for calling election denialism “the big lie.” Institutions didn’t cause Trump to sue Bill Maher for a joke.
Do lower-income people feel marginalized and poorly served by our institutions? Sure! But that is not a reason to vote for a party that will serve them LESS. Pop quiz: What’s the concept of a plan for Republican healthcare? They’ve only had 14 years to come up with one. Put Republicans back in power and those lower-income people will learn real quick about the concept of “pre-existing conditions” that ACA removed from insurance companies…. and those insurance companies have already stated will be put right back in force at approximately minute 3 of a Trump administration.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Institutions didn’t make Republicans whine for the last 40 years about how their desired boogey-man just doesn’t rate with the majority of culture.
From political correctness to cancelled to Musk’s definition of free speech… the one constant is that entitled Republicans constantly demand a safe space when their bad activity is called out and receives its appropriate and expected response from the public.