Philip Bobbitt's Theories of Changes in the Constitutional Order

[David Horn]

(08-24-2022, 10:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-24-2022, 08:44 AM)sbarrera Wrote: I think everyone is right here. The era of globalization/neoliberalism that began with the Reagan revolution was accompanied by massive global economic growth and a rising global middle class. But it also led to a hollowing out of the middle class in the United States, largely due to the all the outsourcing and the fact that capital is much freer to move than labor is. Robb says as much in the quote above: other countries took advantage of US markets and did better than the USA. MAGA is a backlash against this.

And to your point, the rich have done better than the poor in this regime. Inequality has grown as well as overall wealth growing. These aren't contradictory points.

I agree, except MAGA is not really just a backlash against outsourcing, but only partially, and it's totally misdirected toward the resentment against what Robb calls "cultural neoliberalism", but isn't. It's just prejudice and replacement theory. If MAGA were just about global free trade, then its adherents would be pro-labor liberal Democrats and Berniebros. Trump found it much easier to enact already-established neoliberal policies (like tax cuts) and his social conservatism and prejudice (like immigration restriction and welfare cuts) than to do much about economic globalism.

And hollowing out of the American middle class is not "largely due to all the outsourcing" but even more due to the wealthy hogging the wealth here in the USA through tax cuts, deregulation and social spending cuts, which prejudiced rural whites support with their lopsided votes for Republicans and Trump supporters and their gerrymandered districts thanks to the disaster of Nov.2, 2010. Making Trump out to be primarily an anti-globalist populist instead of a neoliberal deceptively whitewashes the Trump regime and its followers.

I'll echo sbarrera: everyone is right here. We're seeing a realignment forming in the shadows. Will it emerge or be suppressed? Until we can answer that with some specificity, it's hard to know whether this 4T will create change or sclerosis.

The election in November should tell us something. Let's hope the message is positive and clear.