A populist economic message could be key to recapturing some of the estimated six million who voted for Obama in 2012 but Trump in 2016
Democratic leaders are calling their new agenda “A Better Deal,” and it’s heavy on populist economics: a higher minimum wage; more working-class access to government health programs; and expanded broadband for rural areas.
.. six million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 abandoned the Democrats to vote for Mr. Trump in 2016... In these “flip counties” Mrs. Clinton also is personally unpopular; just 30% view her favorably, while 50% have an unfavorable view. Interestingly, though, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who challenged Mrs. Clinton from the left with an antiestablishment populist message, is far more popular there. In the flip counties, 44% have a positive view of Mr. Sanders, while just 29% have a negative view... feelings toward Mrs. Clinton are a net 20-percentage points negative, while they are a net 15-points positive for Mr. Sanders... That suggests Mrs. Clinton, the ultimate representative of the party establishment, was a particularly ill-suited candidate for 2016. It further suggests that a populist economic message of the kind Mr. Sanders brought to the table has resonance in the areas that moved away from the Democrats.
.. A whopping 71% said they aren’t confident their children’s generation will have a better life... they particularly like the suggestion that he is “shaking things up in Washington,” and that he is twisting corporate arms to keep jobs in the U.S. That may be because they are feeling economic strain; 66% say someone in their household has lost a job in the last five years, and 75% say someone in the household has more than $20,000 in student debt... But Mrs. Clinton just as surely lost them because she was seen as part of the political establishment in a year of surging antiestablishment sentiment.. Don’t be surprised if Republicans try to hold on to those voters in next year’s midterm elections by portraying Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a replica of Mrs. Clinton, an out-of-touch embodiment of a hated political establishment.
Jimmy Carter Brilliantly Explains How The Establishment Gave Us Trump
The disparity in income feels that they are getting cheated by government and society.
healthcare
education
political rights:
- particularly after Citizens United
- legal bribery
justice system:
- 1/1000 before under Carter
- 7/1000 now
The Establishment failed people for so long and badly. People were willing to take a chance to try something new.
A Very British Radical
Now, though, in the imminent British election called by an overconfident Theresa May, a different sort of Trumpian figure is closer to victory than anyone expected. This is Jeremy Corbyn, the radical backbencher turned Labour leader, whose campaign was supposed to be a joke but now finds itself, like Trump’s before it, just a “normal-sized polling error” away from a truly shocking upset.
.. the Corbyn-era Labour Party’s tendency to find itself explaining why its members, activists and sometimes politicians are merely anti-Zionist and not actually anti-Semitic, even as their critiques of Israel or global finance blur into old-fashioned anti-Semitic cliché. Especially since the intersection of left-wing anti-Zionism and Islamist Jew-baiting is probably a more substantial threat to Jewish security in Western Europe than what remains of right-wing anti-Semitism.
.. Corbyn’s inner circle has a similar minimizing tendency where the crimes of Stalinism are concerned, plus the equally inevitable far-left affinity for Latin American authoritarianism. If the specter of long-ago Vichy lurked behind Le Penism, the specter of present-day Venezuela lurks not that far in the background of Corbynism.
.. Corbyn’s fellow-traveling with the Irish Republican Army at the height of its bombing campaigns, or his habit (for which he recently offered regrets) of offering comradeship to Hezbollah and Hamas.
.. All’s fair in love and the last week of a campaign, but still it’s a little audacious, since Corbyn clearly has an old revolutionary’s soft spot for a certain kind of terrorist.
.. a Prime Minister Corbyn would probably make Brexit somewhat softer
.. this amounts to saying that it’s O.K. to elect an extremist with anti-Semitic and authoritarian and even terrorist connections if he or she just takes the official European Union line on immigration and monetary policy.
.. The entire populist phenomenon, left and right, is happening because our establishment is in need of serious unsettlement, and that can’t happen unless movements and ideas with extreme or disreputable associations are allowed into the conversation.
.. May’s attempt to reimagine conservative politics along more populist, “Red Tory” lines strikes me as a healthier response to the moment than Corbyn’s unreconstructed socialism.
How Trump’s Candidacy Has Divided Conservative Media
Ann Coulter’s role in inspiring some of Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policy, she tweeted – and I’m not sure if this was after his campaign announcement announcing that he was running – she tweeted (reading) I don’t care if Donald Trump wants to perform abortions in the White House after this immigration policy paper.
And I’ve just been trying to imagine somebody like William F. Buckley or George Will tweeting something like that or ever saying something like that. It’s just inconceivable, like the rhetoric has changed so much within the right-wing media. And…
DRAPER: Well, you’re not the only one who thinks that, Terry. The conservative talk show host – and in a lot of ways intellectual godfather in conservative talk radio Mark Levin tweeted back after Ann Coulter’s tweet, which, indeed, was immediately following Trump’s announcement speech. Levin had said this has to be one of the more pathetic statements that I’ve ever read.
So a lot of people who are horrified, of course, Ann Coulter has made a career out of horrifying people. And she – among her many gifts, understatement is not one of them. She also had said that that speech was the greatest thing written since “Magna Carta.” But, of course, this was self-glorification, too, since Ann Coulter recognized the rhetoric as her own.
.. GROSS: Do you think that the impact of talk radio and cable news is changing in terms of politics in America?
DRAPER: Well, what’s clear is that talk radio could dictate, basically, the tenor of the electorate. And I don’t think that that has taken place in this election cycle. The numbers show that talk radio is still a very healthy phenomenon. Though, it does not own a monopoly on conservative activism the way it did in the 1990s when Rush Limbaugh ruled the roost. Because of social media, because of Breitbart, because of Drudge – they are not the only voices that count.
.. DRAPER: Well, I think that no area of the overall Republican family has had such an awkward time with the Trump candidacy than Fox News. I mean, I think even more than the Republican National Committee. And you can actually see, on the air at Fox News, people who have made a choice to throw themselves utterly behind Trump and others who have been skeptics and others who have been vigorously opposed to him.
.. But it’s notable to me that Trump, while continually denouncing the media, is in his own way accessible to a number of us. He’s been talking to reporters from The New York Times, including myself, constantly for months and months now, where Hillary Clinton, for example, notably has not. And now, I’ve been at rallies where we are confined to this media pen and where Trump makes a big exercise out of pointing out to everyone in the audience that there is the disgusting, dishonest media. Lots of booing ensues. I’ve, you know, been a journalist for several decades so I’ve not ever been concerned that this is going to rise to a level of violence. I hope that I’m not proved wrong on that.
But to me, this is not the civil rights era and being cursed at by people in the crowd is not the same thing as what our colleagues endured 50 years ago going down to the Deep South. But it can be alarming for the uninitiated. And – but my view is that it’s for show.
I mean, Trump very much sees himself as an entertainer whose foremost job is to keep people listening. And he has said as much, that when it looks like he’s losing the crowd he’ll start talking about building the wall and having Mexico pay for it.
.. I’m saying we hoped this a year or a year and a half ago – that this election might actually provide an opportunity to sort of build at least a rickety bridge between both sides that there’d be some healing after the divisiveness of the last really 16 years or some, perhaps longer.
But there’s no end in sight to this. I think that if Trump becomes president and he abuses his authority, there will be articles of impeachment. If Hillary Clinton becomes president, the House Republicans, already lying in wait due to the Benghazi and email server situation. We’ll also be contemplating articles of impeachment. I simply do not see a way in which things become better
.. GROSS: You mentioned that Trump is good at flattering people, and that’s – your implication is that that’s kind of a tool that he uses.
DRAPER: Well, I have personal experience with him, going back to my first encounter with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago when he walked in, saw me and said nobody told me he was such a handsome guy.
(LAUGHTER)
DRAPER: And then throughout what turned out to be about a four-hour evening, Trump, you know, was constantly asking me what I thought about certain members of the media, what I thought about his chances in a particular – the state of Wisconsin, what I thought about particular commercials that other candidates were putting up. And I – as I mentioned, really couldn’t tell whether or not he was acutely interested in my opinions or wanted me to feel like that he was interested in my opinions or if he just wanted to hear my opinion, so he knew where I stood, not so that he would follow my opinions.
But, nonetheless, to be around a guy who is a billionaire and has achieved a lot, I think, you know, would probably – that would be like a momentous thing for someone. I can see how for individuals who have not been asked their opinions before by major political figures that Donald Trump doing so would make them feel like, wow, I’m a Donald Trump consultant. And my my own view is that – and I mentioned this in the story – that lest I would have had any kind of illusions that Trump really valued my insights relating to his prospects that just a few days later, I saw him on the campaign rope-line, you know, asking the very same question to total strangers. So this is just something that Trump does.