March 12 - The Monster has actually advanced as far as Grenoble
The leading Republican candidate for President goes to primary debates talking up single-payer healthcare, talking down globalization, while humiliating Fox News and prominent conservatives through charismatic vulgarity with an assist from Howard fucking Stern.
Revenge of the ‘90s.
…I can see it kinda, but a lot of Goldwater’s success, both in winning the nomination and reorienting the Republican Party was that his supporters captured local party institutions, in world where primary elections were somewhat advisory and nonbinding and party officials had more control over candidate selection (this changed between 1968 and 1972).
Trump’s running in a world where those changes have shaken out and power is held less in the hands of formal party officials and more in the hands of movement activists and the media, and it’s hard to predict what kind of legacy the Trump campaign (be it successful or not at any given stage) will leave - Obama for America was kind of a substitute for a party-based infrastructure and after Obama’s success was absorbed into the official Democratic apparatus, on the other hand on the Republican party independent power bases (most notably the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity) have been making moves to supplant the party structure entirely.
One thing to keep an eye on is how a Trump victory (as GOP) would change the balance of power between executive and legislative wings of the Republican party.
For most of the 20th century political scientists bemoaned the lack of “responsible party government” - ideologically coherent parties such that voting for the “conservative” party would necessarily produce more “conservative” results. For example under the New Deal system that essentially survived in Congress until the 1994 “Republican Revolution”, an urban northerner voting for a liberal Democrat could actually increase the chances of conservative policies, as a congressional majority would put conservative southern Democrats with seniority in charge of the powerful committee chairmanships. Ditto for conservative western Republicans strengthening the hand of northeastern liberal/moderates.
Like I said, 1994 changed a lot of that, completing an alignment along ideological lines for the legislature at least (and giving parties more control over chairmanship assignments in the ensuing reforms). Since then Republicans have relied more on their legislative power - routinizing supermajority requirements in the Senate, conducting the second impeachment in American history and grumbling in favor of a third, with budgetary shutdowns and showdowns essentially trying to bootstrap a Vote of No Confidence into existence.
A Trump win though, or even a nomination that establishes the ability of an independent actor, in alliance with (something that passes for, if possibly in style more than substance) movement conservatism to control the Republicans’ executive apparatus, against the will of formal party figures… honestly I have no goddamn clue how that’d play out, but like I say it’s worth keeping an eye on.
March 11: The Tiger has shown himself at Gap. The Troops are advancing on all sides to arrest his progress. He will conclude his miserable adventure by becoming a wanderer among the mountains.
I honestly think Trump has the best chance of being the next POTUS. (I peg him at 35%, Hillary at 30%, Jeb at 20%)
It’d be a realignment election that pivots the Republicans to a nativist welfarism, which is a realignment they’ll have to make sooner or later - it’s where their base is at already. If he can pull it off - “it” basically being the Sailer Strategy - and swing the Rust Belt red that’d give the GOP an electoral lock until and unless Texas flips (and the threatened Republicans’ inevitable divisionist gambit fails) and/or the next realignment comes. You’d cede bankers, blacks, and professionals with postgraduate degrees, but if you’ll recall so did the New Deal coalition.
Trump and Sanders are both burning up the floor and giving their party establishments heartburn pitching Scando-German native-producerist welfarism to a white audience, whoever can grab that ring first hoo boy. And as that recent Netroots Nation demonstrated, I think any pivot attempt’s going to face more resistance from the Dem base.
(If you look at the aftermath, you realize a lot of white progressives didn’t realize it would even be a pivot, they thought that’s where they’ve been since FDR and don’t seem to have recognized the Great Society/New Democrat thing as a realignment in the first place, largely because it didn’t work for them. Remember, “we will build an invincible coalition by adding minorities, feminists, the young, and the well-educated to our established lock on white producerists” was the Democratic plan in the 1970s. Admittedly, the numbers are better now on the left side of the formula, but the right… and I don’t think anyone has a coalition lined up right to win the actual shooting war they’d have to in order to make a realignment where no one was repping whiteness-as-such.)
Historically, there are two forces in American politics that can only be matched by each other - big capital and nationalism. Nationalism being white nationalism, as “white” is the national identity America constructed to legitimate and unify itself, much as “French” was deployed as France centralized in the early modern period.
The Republicans were doing pretty well since the 1970s because they managed to get both on the same side, but the Democrats have managed to sneak a lot of capital out from under them - notice all the religious freedom opposition, all the Wall Street money, Schumer and Cuomo basically being Rockefeller Democrats.
And some of the most well-known and respected Presidents have come to power in realignments that basically mobilized (white) nationalism against money power - Jackson, Lincoln*, and both Roosevelts. (Money usually comes back through steadier erosion and cooption.)
Everyone realizes that the subtext of Obama’s 2008 electoral appeal was that his victory would represent the integration of black and white as political subjects and finally after all this time relegate racial divides to the history books. And man, isn’t that fucking ironic.
Honestly, I think he tried, I don’t at all see him coming in with the plan for racial rabble-rousing the more ridiculous rightists attribute to him. I think early in his presidency he did the minimum lip service (and little more) necessary to service his coalition and hold it together, and the stuff after the ’14 midterms was him realizing it wasn’t going to work and doing what he could to leave the forces he actually had in the best position going forward.
And if he couldn’t make it work, fuck, man. Fuck.
(What it would really take is a culture hero figure like him coming in just in time to face and triumph over a massive external force - total war, basically - that would essentially allow them to refound the nation on a new mythos.)
* Abraham Lincoln, agent of white nationalism? Yep. Remember first that plantation agriculture was the economic engine of America - slaveholders were Big Business; and second that while people today remember the Republican anti-slavery coalition as driven by New England moralists, a huge component of it was actually midwestern (remember, Lincoln was from Illinois) smallholders (read: petit bourgeois) and mechanics (read: skilled industrial workers) following a “Free Soil/Free Labor” ideology, who hated slavery in the same sense and for the same reasons as their heirs hate illegal immigration.
is he aware of the “trump is dril” meme and just capitalizing on it now
that’s like asking if eagles got the idea for flying from watching humans play starfox
“Donald Trump: Because Charlie Sheen Isn’t Running”
Honestly I think the dude’s got a chance, not even just in the primary but the general. He’s an attention whore but an experienced one, knows how to wield it. (And I wouldn’t be much of a d'Annunzian to dismiss the potential of that.)
And honestly, a realignment around welfarist (white) nationalism has a lot of potential for the GOP - that was the FDR/New Deal brand that worked so well so long for the Democrats, and it could really scramble the electoral map, put PA, the upper Midwest, even OR in play at the risk of what? (correction from SC:) NC and AZ, accepting that VA’s gone, higher margins places they were never going to get? Then lock that in until and unless TX flips.
The barrier’s always been pols not wanting to risk their reputations or fundraising access among the donor class, but a billionaire narcissist’s a silver bullet for that.
One fascinating thing is how damn ‘80s he is. I mean obviously as a person and public figure, but his campaign issues too. Talking about Chinese currency manipulation he’s clearly going by parallel to the Reaganite trade wars with Japan, that thing about Mexico sending us their rapists - he knew phrasing it like that would be catnip to the smelling salts crowd, that’s the point, but the underlying point he was making was that open borders allow South America to dump their problem populations on us JUST LIKE the Open Door policy enabled the Mariel Boatlift…
You know, if you’re Donald Trump, “run for President” seems like a reasonable bucket list entry. The hell else you going to have on there still unchecked?