How The Loss Of Faith In The Future Is Driving Our Destructive Politics Today
Around 6 months ago, I wrote that both Democrats and Republicans had an interest in making sure any impeachment of Trump wait until 2018. For Democrats, a damaged Trump will help them in 2018. For Republicans, I wrote, “It gives them time and cover to work out the details of rolling back Medicaid and then ram it through without any deliberation, and probably without a CBO score, just like in the House. Once that is accomplished, they will probably take the same approach with the massive tax cuts they want to pass. Having actually passed some legislation, no matter how horrible it may be, actually puts them in a better position to win re-election in 2018.”
That seems to be exactly what Republicans tried to do with the repeal of the ACA and what they actually have done with this horrific tax bill. The guilty plea from Mike Flynn and the corresponding incriminating information about Jared Kushner and other senior members of the transition further add to the already substantial evidence of Trump campaign collusion with the Russians. In addition, it adds to the mountain of evidence of obstruction of justice that now may include not only Trump but also Pence, Sessions, Kushner, Miller, and others. Yesterday, we learned that even this summer, Trump was apparently demanding the end of the Congressional investigations into Russian collusion, shocking even some Republicans in his blatant attempt at obstruction. In addition, Jeff Sessions refused to answer a question from Representative Adam Schiff whether Trump had ever instructed Sessions to do anything that would obstruct justice. Today we learned, via a Trump tweet, that Trump himself apparently knew Flynn had lied to the FBI but kept him on anyway and then asked Comey to drop the investigation.
The evidence against Trump is overwhelming and mounting. And the establishment Republican party needs him less today than they did yesterday, making his situation even more precarious. Today, however, I’m less sure that Republicans will ever move to impeach Trump. Instead, I think there is an existential fear that is gripping what I describe as the two minorities that currently control this government and the country at this time, the Trump base and the plutocratic donor class. And that fear is what will continue to connect the Republican party to the two core elements of its support. Impeaching Trump would break that connection.
First, as I say, there is the Trump base. As conservative political theorist Samuel Goldman describes them, Trump’s base is around 30%-40% of the country and composed of “whites, generally older, generally less educated” who are frustrated by the fact that the neoconservative principles of deregulation and globalization had stopped delivering the goods for this significant group of Americans. That frustration and dissatisfaction found its voice, incredibly, in Trump. The problem for the country is that this group is a minority that has long believed it was a majority. Says Goldman, that group has adopted “a fairly exclusive vision of American nationalism — which sees America not only as a predominantly white country but also as a white Christian country and also as a white Christian provincial country. This is a conception of America that finds its home outside the cities, exurbs and rural areas, in what Sarah Palin called the real America.” In essence, it is “a white Christian provincial party“. Because of its belief in that white Christian nation and yet its status as a large, but essentially a minority, group, as well as its traditional place of privilege, the Trump rump of our country is actually in a very difficult place. According to Goldman, it’s “a very uncomfortable place to be, politically, because smaller groups I think come to appreciate, not immediately but eventually, that they have to compromise and form coalitions. Larger groups can just win. But this group doesn’t seem small enough to compromise or big enough to win. That makes people very angry. I think some of that anger is reflected not just in Trump’s campaign but in the sort of rhetoric you see around the rallies.” However, due to a media with an enormous blind spot for Trump’s abuses and hatred of Hillary Clinton, the inherent bias of the Electoral College, and, most importantly, the interference of James Comey, that white, racist base did win and managed to get Trump elected.
Establishment Republicans are also a similar minority, despite their current control of the government. Their power is sustained by gerrymandering and multiple forms of voter suppression. It is estimated that Democrats could win the vote for all House seats in 2018 by 8% or 9% and still not gain control of that body. We see that all over country, especially in states that are under Republican domination. In 2012 in Wisconsin, Democrats won 53% of the vote but Republicans won 60% of the seats in the Assembly. In that same state, voter suppression arguably swung the state to Trump in the 2016 election. Just last month in Virginia, Democrats won the most votes for the House of Delegates by over a quarter million votes but still may not control that body.
In addition, the Republican establishment is also under attack from that very same Trump base that helped it win the last election. Both Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have become hated figures within the base. Steve Bannon is threatening to primary Republicans around the country in 2018 and the seeming success of Roy Moore in Alabama means that any Republican is potentially under threat from even the most unlikely of challengers.
But the Republican establishment is merely a proxy for the other minority that dominates our politics and economy, the plutocratic donor class. Yet, even with all that power, it is an apparently a remarkably fragile and fearful bunch. Seemingly mild criticism from Obama about causing the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression sent them into a tizzy. But the fear actually runs far deeper than that and reflects a belief that the current world and economic order is not sustainable. It goes beyond the gated, guarded communities they live in or the legion of private security guards that surround them. As one financial industry insider clearly stated, “Anyone who’s in this community knows people who are worried that America is heading toward something like the Russian Revolution.” That feeling became particularly acute in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008. In Silicon Valley, many of the industries top leaders have what’s known as “apocalypse insurance”, either a well-stocked and well guarded bunker somewhere or properties overseas to which they can “escape”.
In addition, the overwhelming problems of the planet feed their doomsday vision. Most of them recognize that climate change is real but feel there is nothing that can be done to mitigate or even reverse it. Others depend on the carbon economy for their entire livelihood. They recognize the potential disruption of the food chain cause by climate change but offer nothing to fix it. Our total reliance on technology is also a source of fear and risk. As one CEO said, “Our food supply is dependent on G.P.S., logistics, and weather forecasting and those systems are generally dependent on the Internet, and the Internet is dependent on D.N.S. Go risk factor by risk factor by risk factor, acknowledging that there are many you don’t even know about, and you ask, ‘What’s the chance of this breaking in the next decade?’ Or invert it: ‘What’s the chance that nothing breaks in fifty years?’”. The answer seems to be what is happening in Puerto Rico today where the lucky ones are the people that have the ways and means to leave the island. The island has become an object lesson of the breakdown they fear.
In fact, the Trump administration itself also feeds into their anxiety. They see the current administration as a continuation and escalation of a long progression in the loss of faith in our most important institutions. That same financial insider says, “The media is under attack now. They wonder, Is the court system next? Do we go from ‘fake news’ to ‘fake evidence’? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death.” A potential nuclear war with North Korea also increases their and everyone else’s anxiety. Globalization and lax regulation have allowed the plutocratic class to engage in massive tax avoidance and to hide their wealth offshore in anticipation of their “great escape”, which they feel will be necessary sooner rather than later. In summary, the titans of American industry have lost faith in America’s future.
All three of these groups feel under existential threat and they are all reacting in a way that ensures their own survival rather than in the best interests of our country. For the white Christian nationalists, that means essentially blowing up the current establishment, engaging in what is close to ethnic cleansing, and restoring the all-encompassing power of the white male. The Republican party is the obvious vehicle for this goal simply because Democrats actually represent the minorities and immigrants that the nationalists want to banish from our country. This is what drove the election of Donald Trump, feeds on the anti-Muslim hysteria, demands a border wall, and will probably deliver the election of a child-molesting theocrat in Alabama.
Due to its reliance on gerrymandered districts and voter suppression, the establishment Republican party has become radicalized, primarily because the only threat to their power comes from the right by getting challenged in a primary. And, as with its current base of white Christian nationalists, the long-term demographics pose an existential threat to its power. The party has become increasingly focused on actions that maintain its position of power, regardless of the damage to the institutions it supposedly honors. From government shutdowns to debt ceiling blackmail to refusing to seat cabinet members or Supreme Court nominees, the party has spent decades destroying the norms of and the rules of governance.
The establishment Republican party is open and honest about its own motivations to remain in power at this point. Republican members in both the House and the Senate have both clearly stated that if they didn’t pass what is probably the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the already rich and powerful in our nation’s history then the money from the plutocratic donor class for re-election in 2018 will simply dry up. Accordingly, the tax bill was written, if you could call it that, in secret from the general public but primarily with the engagement of over 6,000 lobbyists in an orgy of feasting at the federal trough.
The monumental giveaway is openly designed to please a group that currently has an apocalyptic attitude that it is best to take as much as you can now because it won’t last much longer. And perhaps the more resources you can gather today will allow you to buy more protection when the apocalypse comes tomorrow. The plutocrats stand by and watch as Trump and the Republicans destroy the institutions, system, and the country that allowed them to garner the wealth. And their reaction is to make one last money grab before it all goes to hell. As one financial insider said who is less than sympathetic to his peers, “You’re basically seeing that the people who’ve been the best at reading the tea leaves—the ones with the most resources, because that’s how they made their money—are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane.”
The plutocrats, then, have their own escape plan. Establishment Republicans don’t. Having tried to pass an unpopular repeal of healthcare and actually passing an equally unpopular transfer of wealth to the already rich that also includes the seeds of destruction of health care, they can not afford to alienate that Trump base which forms the core of their support. Instead, most establishment Republicans will be forced pivot, just like Ed Gillespie in Virginia, to a racist, xenophobic message that will appeal to the white nationalist base. That is their only path to staying in power. Others, like Jeff Flake, for instance, will be unwilling to go that route and simply retire, opening their safe seats for an even more radicalized white nationalist officeholder.
But the tax bill will skew income inequality even further toward the top, enhancing the power of capital ownership. That group is also primarily older and white and combined with the already extensive power of plutocrats like the Mercers and the Kochs and the Adlesons will make the party even more beholden to and protective of those forces. Having unconstitutionally stacked the Supreme Court, and now the lower courts, with their own cronies, there is seemingly no path to any structural reform that will challenge their economic and political power and the Republican party as a vehicle for that power.
Ever since the Reagan era, the Republican party has managed to placate two relatively competing interests, its socially conservative and increasingly white nationalist base and its increasing reliance on wealthy billionaire donors. The dissonance between the policy outcomes those two groups is not as great as one might think as they are focused on distinct and separate segments of our society. But, in the end, they are eventually in conflict. Even socially conservative voters will tire of getting poorer and poorer as the rich get richer and that is reflected in Bannon’s wish to destroy the establishment. Meanwhile, the majority of the country is left largely unrepresented in our political system. How long can a majority of voters be denied political power before they demand accountability through some other method. Or, as we see with Trump, will we increasingly become ruled in an authoritarian manner in order to impose the will of the two minorities dominating our political life.
Trump’s election may have reflected the last gasp of the white man, a final grab for power before the demographic wave relegates them to a true minority status. For them, the 2016 was the “Flight 93” election. And the plutocrats have used the moment for their last grab at wealth and power before the backlash overwhelms them, before the revolution comes. This is the mindset of both groups.
Paul Krugman tries to envisage a scenario in 2019 after more revelations about Trump’s collusion and coordination with the Russians and an election where even an 8% or 9% win of all the votes for the House will still not give Democrats control. He says, “So in January 2019 we may well be ruled by a fundamentally illegitimate regime: a corrupt Congress retaining power despite public rejection, a president who owes his position to a foreign dictator who retains a hold on him”. And the plutocrats will be counting their money and planning their escape. How long can it last?
