Election 2020

[David Horn]

(04-18-2019, 08:03 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I think a stumbling block for many of us (me especially) is that, because the Republicans are so obviously biased in favor of the wealthy (the only actual policy they pursue anymore is tax cuts) the Democrats must be for everyone else. Obviously, the rich are very influential and will always demand (and get) a party that looks after their economic interests, so it is understandable that they have the GOP as an advocate for their economic interests. The very fact that some 80% of Americans are not either rich (top 1%), affluent (91-99%tile) or upper middle class (81-90%tile) implies that the other party would then look after the interests of this group (lots of votes there).

But the fact is that the top 1% (rich) are pretty much equally split between the two parties (for example, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two of very richest Americans, are Democrats). And more people with advanced degrees, who mostly fall above the 80th percentile in income, are Democrats. Why on Earth would these rich people be voting Democrat? 

Could if be that the Democrats offer a more moderate version of the economic policy Republicans offer, and that there is NO party that looks out for the economic interests of the bottom 80%? For a brief period between 1935 and 1968 Democrats DID look out for the interests of the bottom 80% of white people (they were considerably less assiduous with black people). When they corrected their racial error, they started to lose some of their bottom 80% (white) support who decided to vote for the Republicans even though they knew they did not look out for their economic interests. It did not happen overnight. Carter was elected with a solid majority in Congress, but with stagflation, high unemployment, flat wages and a white-friendly social message, so-called Reagan Democrats were  willing to vote of Reagan. And when inflation and (eventually) unemployment fell a great many of white middle and working class folks began Republicans.

With the bottom 80% split on racial and class (poor vs everyone else) lines the two parties are balanced and politics is based on the struggle for elite support. Hence the basic post-Reagan economic paradigm is not challenged by any party. The other battlefield that can exists is the social one.

This is all too true, unfortunately, but how we got here has a few more data points.  Let's start with Lucky Reagan, who managed by the grace of Paul Volker, to sit in the ideal spot to show economic success in his first term.  Barring that, his solid second term would have been impossible, and Bush '41 would have never happened.  Equally important is Bill Clinton, and the Third Way DINO policy of sleeping with the enemy -- Wall Street in this case.  After that, the die was cast, and the road back from this huge shift to the right mandates a huge shift left.  It may happen, if things go sour again, but 2020 may be too soon to hold out hope for that.  Add-in the not insignificant conservative bias built into our system, and real change may require a real cataclysm of some sort. 

We know that AGW is not waiting for us to stop dithering.  It will proceed as physics demands, so that may be it -- the cataclysm.  Trump has made enough changes everywhere that a Dem elected in 2020 will be hard pressed just to restore the inadequate Obama climate program.  A second Trump term will assure a climate crisis to some degree.  That's a hell of a way to fix a political problem, but it may come to that.