Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[barmar]

So what was the easy way of diffusing the question? For Biden I would suggest a simple "I'd tell them to wake up!" opening, then after the applause dies down glide effortlessly into his prepared answer about how the economy is not really working for them.

Doesn't that risk the problem I described, it's effectively calling those voters stupid for believing this?

 

Of course, this was the Democractic debate, so he's not actually addressing Trump voters, the audience is Democrats. Giving an answer like that now doesn't mean he would actually say the same thing during the general election campaign, when he actually needs to win over Trump people.

[awm]

It seems likely that if you have a voter who believes all three of:

 

1. The current economy is great, much better than it was under Obama.

2. This is primarily because of things that Trump has done while president.

3. The economy is a primary factor determining who they will vote for.

 

Then it will be extremely difficult for any democratic candidate to get their vote.

 

I think the right response is to hope that the voter in question is not wholly convinced of at least one of the three propositions. So the right response is to:

 

1. Point out that current economic growth is not really any better than it was under Obama. Point out that a lot of people are struggling with costs for education, health care, and housing, and that the current economy hasn't been great for everyone. Point out that while there are a lot of jobs (low unemployment), many of these are the "gig" sort of jobs or jobs that pay a minimum wage that hasn't gone up in a long time.

2. Point out that a lot of things that Trump promised about the economy haven't come true. The big Republican tax cuts didn't really lead to wage growth and instead were invested into stock buybacks. Farmers are struggling because of Trump's trade wars. The coal and steel industries Trump promised to revive aren't doing well and have been closing plants he promised would stay open.

3. Bring things back to the staggering corruption (huge amount of self-dealing by Trump's family and appointees) and cruelty of this administration (children in cages, supporting murderous dictators world-wide, deporting long-time members of communities with no criminal records, etc).

 

Again, there are certainly some voters who will say "I am making more money than I did four years ago so Trump is great" and just ignore all the racism and cruelty and corruption, all the broken promises, etc. And we can argue about whether such voters are racist themselves (because they are willing to overlook racism for a few extra dollars in their bank account) or whether they're just oblivious. But I don't think they are reachable voters in most cases.

 

If you look at Trump's approval ratings through his presidency, you will see that they are extremely stable. He has been pretty much at 42% approve and 52% disapprove for a long time. You might think these numbers would go up and down depending on the news (economic or otherwise) but they really don't. That suggests this will be more of a "turnout" election than a "convince the voters" election -- there are very few voters likely to change their minds at this point. Fortunately for Democrats, Trump is consistently unpopular. The risk is that he might be able to win the electoral college anyway (he was unpopular going into 2016 too and he did lose the popular vote), and Republicans have ramped up the voter suppression efforts in recent years. It will likely come down to ground game, but I think a high-turnout election is likely because Trump is so polarizing (see 2018) and this will probably work to Democrats' advantage.

[hrothgar]

It seems likely that if you have a voter who believes all three of:

 

1. The current economy is great, much better than it was under Obama.

2. This is primarily because of things that Trump has done while president.

3. The economy is a primary factor determining who they will vote for.

 

Then it will be extremely difficult for any democratic candidate to get their vote.

 

I think the right response is to hope that the voter in question is not wholly convinced of at least one of the three propositions. So the right response is to:

 

1. Point out that current economic growth is not really any better than it was under Obama. Point out that a lot of people are struggling with costs for education, health care, and housing, and that the current economy hasn't been great for everyone. Point out that while there are a lot of jobs (low unemployment), many of these are the "gig" sort of jobs or jobs that pay a minimum wage that hasn't gone up in a long time.

2. Point out that a lot of things that Trump promised about the economy haven't come true. The big Republican tax cuts didn't really lead to wage growth and instead were invested into stock buybacks. Farmers are struggling because of Trump's trade wars. The coal and steel industries Trump promised to revive aren't doing well and have been closing plants he promised would stay open.

3. Bring things back to the staggering corruption (huge amount of self-dealing by Trump's family and appointees) and cruelty of this administration (children in cages, supporting murderous dictators world-wide, deporting long-time members of communities with no criminal records, etc).

 

Again, there are certainly some voters who will say "I am making more money than I did four years ago so Trump is great" and just ignore all the racism and cruelty and corruption, all the broken promises, etc. And we can argue about whether such voters are racist themselves (because they are willing to overlook racism for a few extra dollars in their bank account) or whether they're just oblivious. But I don't think they are reachable voters in most cases.

 

If you look at Trump's approval ratings through his presidency, you will see that they are extremely stable. He has been pretty much at 42% approve and 52% disapprove for a long time. You might think these numbers would go up and down depending on the news (economic or otherwise) but they really don't. That suggests this will be more of a "turnout" election than a "convince the voters" election -- there are very few voters likely to change their minds at this point. Fortunately for Democrats, Trump is consistently unpopular. The risk is that he might be able to win the electoral college anyway (he was unpopular going into 2016 too and he did lose the popular vote), and Republicans have ramped up the voter suppression efforts in recent years. It will likely come down to ground game, but I think a high-turnout election is likely because Trump is so polarizing (see 2018) and this will probably work to Democrats' advantage.

 

I think that Adam is quite right in what he is saying. From my perspective, the big concern should be that a high mobilization election has the potential to go really really wrong if

 

A. It is close

B. One side does not accept the election results

 

Consider what might happen is either

 

A. The Democrats believe that voter suppression in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Florida cost them the election

B. Trump loses but starts claiming that there was massive amounts of voter fraud

 

I'm quite worried that these are likely scenarios

[kenberg]

I can certainly understand that there may be reasonable people like that.

 

I started working full time during the Reagan administration. I was making decent money, and I didn't have much in the way of student loans (my parents paid for everything except the government's guaranteed student loans, which I think were something like $2500/year). So I was able to start investing after a couple of years, and made off pretty well due to Reaganomics. I don't even remember what I thought of his politics in general, I wasn't very politically aware at the time (I remember that Iran Contra was a big scandal, but didn't really understand it). He seemed like a nice enough person, although he was an actor so that could just have been an act. But I was happy with the economy.

 

You have given my day a great start!

 

 

Much of my thinking starts with the idea that politics is not at or even near the top of everyone's To Do list. "I don't even remember what I thought of his politics in general, I wasn't very politically aware at the time". Exactly.

 

I believe most people are some mix of wanting to do right by others and of having their own interests. I keep thinking that I really need to stop buying spring water in plastic bottles, but there it is in the refrigerator.

 

As I have probably mentioned before, my favorite line in The Philadelphia Story is from Kathrine Hepburn as Tracy Lord: "The time to make up your mind abut other people is never". Ok, a one-liner will always have to make room for exceptions, but if we want to win an election we have to start with the idea that some people might, just might, listen a bit and think a bit . That is, they might if they are not preemptively dismissed as hopeless.

 

Anyway, forget Hepburn and movies. I just have to look back over my own life.

 

Speaking of Reagan, he prevented Jimmy Carter from getting a second term. Well, Carter did a pretty good job of preventing himself from getting a second term. But Reagan was a very effective campaigner. This gets me back to how critical it is to have a good candidate in 2020.

 

This has been a busy holiday season for us, a great deal of fun, and perhaps I am feeling too good. I hope the above doesn't sound too naive. But cynicism can also be a form of naivety.

 

My best wishes to Rudolph for guiding the sleigh so well.

[Winstonm]

Rather than nitpick about what candidate "x" said, the bigger picture is this:

 

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wouldn't rule out pardoning Republican operative Roger Stone, describing what happened to his former confidant as "very tough" and criticizing federal prosecutors and investigators as "dirty cops" and "evil people."

 

Trump, talking to reporters following a video teleconference with members of the military at his Mar-a-Lago resort in southern Florida, first said he "hadn't thought of it" when asked if he would pardon Stone, but then lambasted the criminal case against him.

 

"I think it's very tough what they did to Roger Stone, compared to what they do to other people on their side," Trump said.

 

"I've known Roger over the years. He's a nice guy. A lot of people like him, and he got hit very hard, as did Gen. (Michael) Flynn," Trump added, referring to his first national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference into the 2016 election.

 

Trump added that "a lot of other people... got hit very, very hard."

 

“And now they're finding out it was all a big hoax. They're finding out it was a horrible thing," he said.

 

Stop and consider - two of the closest to campaign, Manafort and Stone, were given strong hints by the Trump's attorney that if they kept their mouths shut they would be rewarded with a pardon. Now, Trump is building a false narrative case that the pardons are justified.

 

If Trump gets away with offering pardons for silence and then follows through with those pardons, the rule of law is dead. Without the rule of law, the U.S. is a banana republic.

[johnu]

Meanwhile, back in the real world (AKA twitter) there was this:

 

George Conway Says Foreign Leaders See Donald Trump as a 'Deranged Idiot'

 

Conway replied directly to the president, writing that Trump himself was the only one to blame for his struggles with foreign leaders. "The problem you have with foreign leaders, @realDonaldTrump, is that they think you are a deranged idiot," he wrote. "They see it in your tweets, and they see it on TV."

While I usually find little to disagree with George Conway, he has totally missed the boat on this one. President Impeached is a "deranged idiot"??? Really George? I can't go with anything less than "deranged psychopath". Discussion?

[cherdano]

Discussion?

No thanks, please.

[cherdano]

...

All good points, but the main general election message by Democrats will be healthcare. This is an awkward point for Biden to make in the primary, because he is running against candidates who want to do more to expand coverage than he does. But in the general election he'll be running against a party that for 3.5 years has been making every effort to take healthcare coverage away from millions, and who passed a giant tax cut for millionaires.

 

"The economy has been working fine for you? That's great to hear, because it hasn't been working great for everyone. But as president I'll work for everyone. For those who have to work three part time jobs, and for you who is seeing the hard work you put in every day pay off. And I'll make sure that it continues to pay off - you shouldn't have to worry about losing health insurance if your employer suddenly has to downsize. Trump promised to protect health insurance coverage. Instead, every step of the way, they tried to take away health insurance from millions of Americans. First they failed because we worked hard to get some of my Republican friends (McCain, Murkowski) on board to protect Obamacare. They lost in Congress because Americans want to keep their health insurance. But having lost in Congress, Trump's administration and 18 Republican states are trying to get the law taken down in court, with a legal argument that every legal scholar--Democrats, Republicans, moderats, liberals, conservatives--have considered ridiculous. Why? Because they care more about getting tax cuts for their campaign donors and Mar-a-Lago club members than they care about you. How old are you? 55? If you give Repbulicans four more years, do you really trust Medicare will still be there for you when you turn 65?

If you elect me, you can keep doing your work and caring for your family and friends, and stop worrying about politics."

[awm]

All good points, but the main general election message by Democrats will be healthcare.

 

I know a lot of Democrats think this message was the reason they succeeded in 2018, although I'm not convinced this was significant compared to anti-Trump backlash (combination of suburban white women who don't always vote for Democrats doing so because of disgust at Trump, plus high minority turnout).

 

The reason I'd question this, is that the American health care system is extremely good at hiding costs from the majority of citizens. I've talked to a number of people at my work who moved from the US to Switzerland, and a common complaint is the high cost of Swiss health care (which costs roughly half US health care, for better outcomes). The reason for this is that in Switzerland everyone is on an individual (private but highly regulated) market and pays their full monthly premium, whereas in the US the better employers are covering 80-90% of premiums. So even though US health insurance costs a lot more, the monthly bill is higher here.

 

Obviously there are some people who have no insurance in the current US system, or who are on the individual market and see the high prices directly. But this is a relatively small fraction of the population, many of whom tend not to vote. A good number of them also never use the health insurance they have, and might think they are better off with one of the cheap plans (that don't cover much) which Trump has been allowing back into the market.

 

Attempts by Democrats to massively overhaul health insurance again just a decade after the Affordable Care Act aren't necessarily the best look for the party. That said, the "Trump backlash" effect doesn't need Democrats to campaign on it in order to happen, so it makes sense to focus more on helping ordinary Americans. I do wonder if something like a nationwide guarantee of paid vacation or subsidized childcare would be more appealing (as well as easier to implement than another big healthcare reform).

[cherdano]

Attempts by Democrats to massively overhaul health insurance again just a decade after the Affordable Care Act aren't necessarily the best look for the party. That said, the "Trump backlash" effect doesn't need Democrats to campaign on it in order to happen, so it makes sense to focus more on helping ordinary Americans.

But Biden is *not* promising a major overhaul of US health insurance.

[y66]

"The economy has been working fine for you? That's great to hear, because it hasn't been working great for everyone. But as president I'll work for everyone. For those who have to work three part time jobs, and for you who is seeing the hard work you put in every day pay off. And I'll make sure that it continues to pay off - you shouldn't have to worry about losing health insurance if your employer suddenly has to downsize. Trump promised to protect health insurance coverage. Instead, every step of the way, they tried to take away health insurance from millions of Americans. First they failed because we worked hard to get some of my Republican friends (McCain, Murkowski) on board to protect Obamacare. They lost in Congress because Americans want to keep their health insurance. But having lost in Congress, Trump's administration and 18 Republican states are trying to get the law taken down in court, with a legal argument that every legal scholar--Democrats, Republicans, moderats, liberals, conservatives--have considered ridiculous. Why? Because they care more about getting tax cuts for their campaign donors and Mar-a-Lago club members than they care about you. How old are you? 55? If you give Repbulicans four more years, do you really trust Medicare will still be there for you when you turn 65?

 

If you elect me, you can keep doing your work and caring for your family and friends, and stop worrying about politics."

Well put.

[Winstonm]

Instead of border walls and giant tax cuts for the rich, invest in children as our future:

 

 

About 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold, a measurement that has been shown to underestimate the needs of families. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 43% of children live in low-income families.

 

Most of these children have parents who work, but low wages and unstable employment leave their families struggling to make ends meet. Poverty can impede children’s ability to learn and contribute to social, emotional, and behavioral problems. Poverty also can contribute to poor health and mental health. Risks are greatest for children who experience poverty when they are young and/or experience deep and persistent poverty.

 

Research is clear that poverty is the single greatest threat to children’s well-being. But effective public policies – to make work pay for low-income parents and to provide high-quality early care and learning experiences for their children – can make a difference. Investments in the most vulnerable children are also critical

my emphasis

[y66]

From Big Money and America’s Lost Decade by Paul Krugman at NYT:

 

Unemployment in the United States is currently at a historical low, just 3.5 percent — and we’re achieving that low unemployment without any sign of runaway inflation, which tells us that we were capable of this kind of performance all along. Remember when people like Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told us that high unemployment was inevitable because of a “skills gap”? They were wrong.

 

But it took us a very long time to get here, because unemployment receded only slowly from its post-crisis peak. The average unemployment rate over the past decade was 6.3 percent, which translates into millions of person-years of gratuitous joblessness.

 

Why didn’t we recover faster? The most important reason was fiscal austerity — spending cuts, supposedly to reduce the budget deficit, that exerted a steady drag on the economy from 2010 onward. But who was obsessed with budget deficits? Voters in general weren’t — but surveys indicate that even when the unemployment rate was above 8 percent the wealthy considered budget deficits a bigger problem than lack of jobs.

 

And the news media echoed these priorities, treating them not as the preferences of one small group of voters but as the only responsible position. As Vox’s Ezra Klein noted at the time, when it came to budget deficits it seemed that “the usual rules of reportorial neutrality” didn’t apply; reporters openly advocated policy views that were at best controversial, not widely shared by the general public and, we now know, substantively wrong.

 

But they were the policy views of the wealthy. And when it comes to treatment of differing policy views, the media often treats some Americans as more equal than others.

 

Which brings me back to the 2020 campaign. You may disagree with progressive ideas coming from Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, which is fine. But the news media owes the public a serious discussion of these ideas, not dismissal shaped by a combination of reflexive “centrist bias” and the conscious or unconscious assumption that any policy rich people dislike must be irresponsible.

 

And when candidates talk about the excessive influence of the wealthy, that subject also deserves serious discussion, not the cheap shots we’ve been seeing lately. I know that this kind of discussion makes many journalists uncomfortable. That’s exactly why we need to have it.

[johnu]

World’s Richest Gain $1.2 Trillion in 2019 as Jeff Bezos Retains Crown

 

And the richer they were at the start of the year, the richer they got. The world’s 500 wealthiest people tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index added $1.2 trillion, boosting their collective net worth 25% to $5.9 trillion.

When you are talking about wealth disparity, and income disparity, there is this. 25% increase in wealth To be fair, much of it is stock market paper profits that could dive in value tomorrow, but much has been converted into real estate, various businesses, intellectual property, cash equivalents, etc.

 

Obviously not all are Americans, but for those that are, they wouldn't even notice a 2% wealth tax when their net wealth would still have increased 23% instead of 25%.

[awm]

When you are talking about wealth disparity, and income disparity, there is this. 25% increase in wealth.

 

If you invested in the S&P500 you would’ve gained about 25% on the year (between rise in the index and the dividends). This was an unusually good year for the market (for contrast, in 2018 you would’ve more or less broken even). Stock market valuations have a lot to do with the wealth of billionaires, but probably aren’t the driving factor behind wealth inequality. Although I’d support a small wealth tax (2% seems okay to me, 6% not so much) the real problem is getting wages to rise in line with productivity for the rest of the work force.

[kenberg]

World's Richest Gain $1.2 Trillion in 2019 as Jeff Bezos Retains Crown

 

 

When you are talking about wealth disparity, and income disparity, there is this. 25% increase in wealth To be fair, much of it is stock market paper profits that could dive in value tomorrow, but much has been converted into real estate, various businesses, intellectual property, cash equivalents, etc.

 

Obviously not all are Americans, but for those that are, they wouldn't even notice a 2% wealth tax when their net wealth would still have increased 23% instead of 25%.

 

This thread continues to be useful to me in unexpected ways.

 

1. I had never heard of Kylie Jenner, of Kylie Cosmetics, or Ulta Beauty. My wife Becky has also never heard of Kylie Cosmetics but she did buy something from Ulta. She does not know if Ulta is the same thing as Ulta Beauty.

 

2. I live in D.C. so I was aware that the Nationals won the World Series. I have never heard Baby Shark ,doo-doo,doo doo, doo doo. I am very grateful for this.

 

 

3. I have no idea what a viral earworm is. Sounds like something that needs medical attention.

 

 

4. I do know who Jeff Bezos is. I have no idea what Blue Origin is. I didn't know that he got a divorce, Sorry about that Jeff. About Amazon. I remeber when Amazon was just getting started and there were all of these financial experts warning against investing any money in this stupid idea.

 

 

5. Etc.

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I will post something with more substance later, don't hold your breath, but right now I am just stunned by the extent to which I have no idea of what's going on. In high school a teacher suggested that I write a term paper on Freud and I asked "Who's Freud?" I seem to be returning to that state.

 

[y66]

From Brad Plumer and Coral Davenport at NYT:

 

WASHINGTON — In just three years, the Trump administration has diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide, marking a transformation of the federal government whose effects, experts say, could reverberate for years.

 

Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus.

 

But the erosion of science reaches well beyond the environment and climate: In San Francisco, a study of the effects of chemicals on pregnant women has stalled after federal funding abruptly ended. In Washington, D.C., a scientific committee that provided expertise in defending against invasive insects has been disbanded. In Kansas City, Mo., the hasty relocation of two agricultural agencies that fund crop science and study the economics of farming has led to an exodus of employees and delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in research.

 

“The disregard for expertise in the federal government is worse than it’s ever been,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, which has tracked more than 200 reports of Trump administration efforts to restrict or misuse science since 2017. “It’s pervasive.”

 

Hundreds of scientists, many of whom say they are dismayed at seeing their work undone, are departing.

 

Among them is Matthew Davis, a biologist whose research on the health risks of mercury to children underpinned the first rules cutting mercury emissions from coal power plants. But last year, with a new baby of his own, he was asked to help support a rollback of those same rules. “I am now part of defending this darker, dirtier future,” he said.

 

This year, after a decade at the Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Davis left.

 

“Regulations come and go, but the thinning out of scientific capacity in the government will take a long time to get back,” said Joel Clement, a former top climate-policy expert at the Interior Department who quit in 2017 after being reassigned to a job collecting oil and gas royalties. He is now at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group.

 

Mr. Trump has consistently said that government regulations have stifled businesses and thwarted some of the administration’s core goals, such as increasing fossil-fuel production. Many of the starkest confrontations with federal scientists have involved issues like environmental oversight and energy extraction — areas where industry groups have argued that regulators have gone too far in the past.

 

“Businesses are finally being freed of Washington’s overreach, and the American economy is flourishing as a result,” a White House statement said last year. Asked about the role of science in policymaking, officials from the White House declined to comment on the record.

 

The administration’s efforts to cut certain research projects also reflect a longstanding conservative position that some scientific work can be performed cost-effectively by the private sector, and taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to foot the bill. “Eliminating wasteful spending, some of which has nothing to do with studying the science at all, is smart management, not an attack on science,” two analysts at the conservative Heritage Foundation wrote in 2017 of the administration’s proposals to eliminate various climate change and clean energy programs.

[johnu]

If you invested in the S&P500 you would’ve gained about 25% on the year (between rise in the index and the dividends). This was an unusually good year for the market (for contrast, in 2018 you would’ve more or less broken even). Stock market valuations have a lot to do with the wealth of billionaires, but probably aren’t the driving factor behind wealth inequality. Although I’d support a small wealth tax (2% seems okay to me, 6% not so much) the real problem is getting wages to rise in line with productivity for the rest of the work force.

For average wealth folks, most of their wealth is tied up in their house (if they even own a house) which may have gone up around 5% on average (some areas may have gone up more, some areas had no increase or even negative growth). Most of their other "wealth", auto/truck, furniture, household goods are depreciating in value. And if they do have stock, a diversified portfolio would include a good percentage of fixed income type of investments that wouldn't come close to 25% increases.

 

Maybe the problem with average people is that they don't manage their money well, not that they need higher wages. Fernando Marcos accumulated maybe 10 billion dollars on an official salary of no more than $13,500 a year. His wife was reported to have had 3000 pairs of shoes which I believe was explained as due to using coupons and buying during sales.

 

A wealth tax seems to be an equitable solution to the fact that the tax code has been perverted so that billionaires pay a smaller overall tax rate than working class people.

[y66]

Although I’d support a small wealth tax (2% seems okay to me, 6% not so much) the real problem is getting wages to rise in line with productivity for the rest of the work force.

According to Noah Smith (Feb 2019) at Bloomberg, wages have largely kept pace with productivity since 2010 which is not to suggest that the gap that opened in the 70s, 80s and early 90s is not a big problem that remains to be solved.

[johnu]

It sounds so reasonable for moderate Democratic politicians to find common ground with right fringe Republicans.

 

‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump

 

But this October morning was “Trumpstock,” a small festival celebrating the president. The speakers included the local Republican congressman, Paul Gosar, and lesser-known conservative personalities. There was a fringe 2020 Senate candidate in Arizona who ran a website that published sexually explicit photos of women without their consent; a pro-Trump rapper whose lyrics include a racist slur aimed at Barack Obama; and a North Carolina activist who once said of Muslims, “I will kill every one of them before they get to me.”

 

“They label us white nationalists, or white supremacists,” volunteered Guy Taiho Decker, who drove from California to attend the event. A right-wing protester, he has previously been arrested on charges of making terrorist threats.

 

“There’s no such thing as a white supremacist, just like there’s no such thing as a unicorn,” Mr. Decker said. “We’re patriots.”

Unfortunately, Democrats are more likely to get cooperation from these fringe groups than most elected Republicans in Congress.

[y66]

From Ross Douthat at NYT:

 

Nothing much happened in America in the 2010s. The unemployment rate declined slowly but steadily; the stock market rose; people’s economic situation gradually improved. There were no terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11, no new land wars to rival Iraq and Vietnam. The country was relatively calm: Violent crime and illegal immigration trended downward, teenage delinquency diminished, teen birthrates fell and the out-of-wedlock birthrate stabilized.

 

In Washington, D.C., only two major pieces of legislation passed Congress, both of them predictable — a health insurance expansion under a Democratic president, a deficit-financed tax cut under a Republican. No enduring majorities were forged; control of government was divided for seven out of the 10 years. There were few bipartisan deals, even as the policy fads that came and went — education reform, deficit hawkishness — left underlying realities more or less the same. Inertia and inaction were the order of the day.

 

If this doesn’t sound like a complete description of the decade — well, it isn’t. It’s a provocation that leaves out a lot of important indicators (the opioid epidemic and the collapsing birthrate above all), that deliberately doesn’t mention populism, the Great Awokening or Donald Trump, and that ignores the feeling of crisis, the paranoia and mistrust and hysteria, that have pervaded our public life throughout the later 2010s.

 

But the provocation represents a truth that’s important for interpreting all that paranoia and polarization and mistrust — because even if you believe that the mood of crisis, the feeling that the liberal order might be cracking up, is the defining feature of the departing decade, you still have to reckon with why that feeling has crested so powerfully in a period surprisingly short on world-altering events.

 

Consider, by way of contrast, the prior decade to this one. Between 2000 and 2009, the United States experienced the Florida recount and the dot-com bust, suffered the worst attack on our shores since Pearl Harbor, launched two major foreign invasions, attempted and failed at the transformation of the Middle East and entered the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. Meanwhile disruption was everywhere: Newspapers perished, partisan cable networks ascended, the smartphone took over the world, and the Amazon-Google-Facebook internet consolidated into something like its current shape.

 

Compared to this litany, the 2010s look a little uneventful, don’t they? Even if you declare Obamacare a big [expletive] deal and grant Trump’s election world-historical significance, even if you bring in European dramas like Brexit and the Syrian refugee crisis, even if you pretend self-driving cars are really happening (just as soon as they learn to drive in rain …) … even then, the last decade’s disruptions don’t quite measure up.

 

So why does the psychology of the 2010s, relative to the country’s mental situation in the Bush or Clinton era, feel so disappointed, distrustful, and deranged?

 

Let me suggest, as one possible answer, that we consider American history since the end of the Cold War as a three-act play. The first act, the 1990s, was a period of hubris, when we half-believed that we were entering a new age of domestic dynamism and global power — that our leaders deserved trust again, that the emerging digital age would be a blessing, that our innovators were on the threshold of great discoveries and our military was ready to spread liberty’s blessings round the world.

 

The 2000s, in turn, were an era of nemesis — when the most overstretched expressions of that ’90s hubris, from the Pets.com version of the new economy to the Bush doctrine to the exurban housing boom, all met their grimly-predestined fate. In one bust after another, in failed wars and Wall Street fiascos alike, the confidence of the Nineties collided with unavoidable realities, and Rudyard Kipling’s gods of the copybook headings made their inevitable return.

 

But as the 2000s ended, the revenges of reality had not yet been properly interpreted. The failed administration of George W. Bush was there as a scapegoat, Barack Obama was there to play the savior, and first liberals and then some ideological conservatives insisted that in fact everything would have been fine, the optimism of the 1990s indefinitely extended, if only Bush taken their preferred policy course instead.

 

Bush was, indeed, an unsuccessful president, but this conceit was false, and the gradually-unfolding revelation of its falseness made the 2010s an era of disillusionment, in which the knowledge we gained mattered more than the new events that we experienced. The sense of crisis, alienation and betrayal emerged more from backward glances than new disasters, reflecting newly-awakened — or awokened, if you prefer — readings of our recent history, our entire post-Cold War arc.

 

Thus, for instance, our Afghanistan and Libyan follies weren’t nearly as important or destructive as our Iraq debacle of the prior decade, but they were more revelatory — in the sense of demonstrating that humanitarian interventions and nation-building projects don’t work out any better with liberal technocrats in charge than under Cheneyites, that there wasn’t a simple “good war” waiting to be fought by smarter people once the Bush-era cowboy spirit went away.

 

Or again, the election of Trump probably wasn’t the moment of authoritarianism descending — but it was an important moment of exposure, which revealed things about race relations and class resentments and the rot in the Republican Party and the incompetence of our political class that inclined everybody to a darker view of the American situation than before.

 

Or yet again, what changed in our relationship to Silicon Valley in the 2010s wasn’t some new technology or business model, but our gradual realization of what those technologies and business models were doing to our minds, what they probably weren’t doing for social or economic progress, and how the internet might need to be resisted rather than just happily embraced.

 

Even the apparent trend toward secularization, the decade’s most notable religious shift, partially reflected a pattern in which Americans who had effectively ceased practicing Christianity years earlier finally made that disaffiliation official.

 

Meanwhile, in case after case the 2010s were a decade when cranks were proven right and the establishment wrong about developments from prior decades — about the wisdom of establishing Europe’s common currency, about the economic and political consequences of the turn-of-the-millennium opening to China, about the scale and scope of sexual abuse in elite institutions (not just the Catholic Church, though the cranks were right there, too).

 

In this sense the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was an appropriate capstone for the decade. Epstein’s worst crimes belonged to the 1990s and the 2000s rather than the 2010s, but the full revelations only arrived now, in the age of disillusionment, adding to the retrospective shadow cast across the entire political and journalistic class.

 

And that shadow feels deeper, in a way, because of the stability with which this essay opened. The 2010s were filled with angst and paranoia, they pushed people toward radicalism and reaction — but they didn’t generate very much effective social and political activity, beyond the populist middle finger and the progressive Twitter mob. They exposed the depth of problems without suggesting plausible solutions, and they didn’t produce movements or leaders equipped to translate disillusionment into programmatic action, despair into spiritual renewal, the crisis of institutions into structural reform.

 

It is this peculiar cultural predicament — the combination of disillusionment with stability, radicalization with stalemate, discontent and derangement with sterility and apathy — that I keep calling decadence. Whether it will last another 10 years is an open question; a catastrophe or a renaissance might be just around the corner. But as we usher out the 2010s, this decade of distrustful stability and prosperous despair, it has no rival as the presiding spirit of our age.

re: "The sense of crisis, alienation and betrayal emerged more from backward glances than new disasters" -- perhaps I'm overreacting but it feels like the countdown to the end of the world as we knew it before the advent of climate change has started and that the sense of crisis has everything to do with this and the absence of recognition and leadership needed to avoid even worst case scenarios.

[Winstonm]

From Ross Douthat at NYT:

 

 

re: "The sense of crisis, alienation and betrayal emerged more from backward glances than new disasters" -- perhaps I'm overreacting but it feels like the countdown to the end of the world as we knew it before the advent of climate change has started and that the sense of crisis has everything to do with this and the absence of recognition and leadership needed to avoid even worst case scenarios.

 

I get the sense that this feels like Rome would have felt circa 28 B.C.E.

[sharon j]

It sounds so reasonable for moderate Democratic politicians to find common ground with right fringe Republicans.

 

‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump

 

 

Unfortunately, Democrats are more likely to get cooperation from these fringe groups than most elected Republicans in Congress.

 

I Live in the Phoenix area of Arizona. I have driven through the area where "Trumpstock" was held. As I drove through this area, I always wondered "what do these people do? I also wondered "why would you choose to live here?" There is no obvious source of employment nearby. There are no signs of farming (no water I imagine) or livestock (again no water or anything for the animals to graze on, I imagine). I read the wiki and it appears the area was sold in 2.5 acres parcels for $695.00 each, $10.00 down and $10.00 per month. (The wiki doesn't say when this happened) Perhaps they love the President so much because a "threat of Muslim and Latino immigrants" might want to take away their jobs? I don't know. But I would be very surprised if most of them don't need and receive public assistance. The very idea they think Trump cares about them makes me scratch my head and wonder why?

[kenberg]

I Live in the Phoenix area of Arizona. I have driven through the area where "Trumpstock" was held. As I drove through this area, I always wondered "what do these people do? I also wondered "why would you choose to live here?" There is no obvious source of employment nearby. There are no signs of farming (no water I imagine) or livestock (again no water or anything for the animals to graze on, I imagine). I read the wiki and it appears the area was sold in 2.5 acres parcels for $695.00 each, $10.00 down and $10.00 per month. (The wiki doesn't say when this happened) Perhaps they love the President so much because a "threat of Muslim and Latino immigrants" might want to take away their jobs? I don't know. But I would be very surprised if most of them don't need and receive public assistance. The very idea they think Trump cares about them makes me scratch my head and wonder why?

 

I like to think that I have a fair intuitive grasp of people from various backgrounds. I seem to get along with cops and with professors, for example, so there might be something to it. But the location you describe? Small town, isolated, in the desert? Prison industry? It's not me. And at some point I just have to walk away.

 

I once drove from Las Vegas to LA so maybe I drove through it or near it. It was long ago, maybe 50 years ago, but I do recall that a good part of the trip was very barren.

[y66]

From Katherine Stewart and Caroline Fredrickson at NYT:

 

Why would a seemingly respectable, semiretired lion of the Washington establishment undermine the institutions he is sworn to uphold, incinerate his own reputation, and appear to willfully misrepresent the reports of special prosecutors and inspectors general, all to defend one of the most lawless and corrupt presidents in American history? And why has this particular attorney general appeared at this pivotal moment in our Republic?

 

A deeper understanding of William Barr is emerging, and it reveals something profound and disturbing about the evolution of conservatism in 21st-century America.

 

Some people have held that Mr. Barr is simply a partisan hack — willing to do whatever it takes to advance the interests of his own political party and its leadership. This view finds ample support in Mr. Barr’s own words. In a Nov. 15 speech at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington, he accused President Trump’s political opponents of “unprecedented abuse” and said they were “engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.”

 

It is hardly the first time Mr. Barr stepped outside of long-established norms for the behavior of attorneys general. In his earlier stint as attorney general, during the George H.W. Bush presidency, Mr. Barr took on the role of helping to disappear the case against Reagan administration officials involved in the Iran-contra affair. The situation demonstrated that “powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office,” according to Lawrence Walsh, the independent prosecutor in that case. According to some critics, Mr. Barr delivered the partisan goods then, as he is delivering them now.

 

Another view is that Mr. Barr is principally a defender of a certain interpretation of the Constitution that attributes maximum power to the executive. This view, too, finds ample support in Mr. Barr’s own words. In the speech to the Federalist Society, he said, “Since the mid-’60s, there has been a steady grinding down of the executive branch’s authority that accelerated after Watergate.” In July, when President Trump claimed, in remarks to a conservative student group, “I have an Article II where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” it is reasonable to suppose this is his CliffsNotes version of Mr. Barr’s ideology.

 

Both of these views are accurate enough. But at least since Mr. Barr’s infamous speech at the University of Notre Dame Law School, in which he blamed “secularists” for “moral chaos” and “immense suffering, wreckage and misery,” it has become clear that no understanding of William Barr can be complete without taking into account his views on the role of religion in society. For that, it is illuminating to review how Mr. Barr has directed his Justice Department on matters concerning the First Amendment clause forbidding the establishment of a state religion.

 

In Maryland, the department rushed to defend taxpayer funding for a religious school that says same-sex marriage is wrong. In Maine, it is defending parents suing over a state law that bans religious schools from obtaining taxpayer funding to promote their own sectarian doctrines. At his Department of Justice, Mr. Barr told law students at Notre Dame, “We keep an eye out for cases or events around the country where states are misapplying the establishment clause in a way that discriminates against people of faith.”

 

In these and other cases, Mr. Barr has embraced wholesale the “religious liberty” rhetoric of today’s Christian nationalist movement. When religious nationalists invoke “religious freedom,” it is typically code for religious privilege. The freedom they have in mind is the freedom of people of certain conservative and authoritarian varieties of religion to discriminate against those of whom they disapprove or over whom they wish to exert power.

 

This form of “religious liberty” seeks to foment the sense of persecution and paranoia of a collection of conservative religious groups that see themselves as on the cusp of losing their rightful position of dominance over American culture. It always singles out groups that can be blamed for society’s ills, and that may be subject to state-sanctioned discrimination and belittlement — L.G.B.T. Americans, secularists and Muslims are the favored targets, but others are available. The purpose of this “religious liberty” rhetoric is not just to secure a place of privilege, but also to justify public funding for the right kind of religion.

 

Mr. Barr has a long history of supporting just this type of “religious liberty.” At Notre Dame, he compared alleged violations of religious liberty with Roman emperors forcing Christian subjects to partake in pagan sacrifices. “The law is being used as a battering ram to break down traditional moral values and to establish moral relativism as a new orthodoxy,” he said.

 

Barr watchers will know that this is nothing new. In a 1995 article he wrote for The Catholic Lawyer, which, as Emily Bazelon recently pointed out, appears to be something of a blueprint for his speech at Notre Dame, he complained that “we live in an increasingly militant, secular age” and expressed his grave concern that the law might force landlords to rent to unmarried couples. He implied that the idea that universities might treat “homosexual activist groups like any other student group” was intolerable.

 

This form of “religious liberty” is not a mere side issue for Mr. Barr, or for the other religious nationalists who have come to dominate the Republican Party. Mr. Barr has made this clear. All the problems of modernity — “the wreckage of the family,” “record levels of depression and mental illness,” “drug addiction” and “senseless violence” — stem from the loss of a strict interpretation of the Christian religion.

 

The great evildoers in the Notre Dame speech are nonbelievers who are apparently out on the streets ransacking everything that is good and holy. The solutions to society’s ills, Mr. Barr declared, come from faith. “Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate utilitarian rules for human conduct,” he said. “Religion helps frame moral culture within society that instills and reinforces moral discipline.” He added, “The fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.”

 

Within this ideological framework, the ends justify the means. In this light, Mr. Barr’s hyperpartisanship is the symptom, not the malady. At Christian nationalist gatherings and strategy meetings, the Democratic Party and its supporters are routinely described as “demonic” and associated with “rulers of the darkness.” If you know that society is under dire existential threat from secularists, and you know that they have all found a home in the other party, every conceivable compromise with principles, every ethical breach, every back-room deal is not only justifiable but imperative. And as the vicious reaction to Christianity Today’s anti-Trump editorial demonstrates, any break with this partisan alignment will be instantly denounced as heresy.

 

It is equally clear that Mr. Barr’s maximalist interpretation of executive power in the Constitution is just an effect, rather than a cause, of his ideological commitments. In fact, it isn’t really an interpretation. It is simply an unfounded assertion that the president has what amount to monarchical powers. “George III would have loved it,” said Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine who once held Mr. Barr’s position as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, of Mr. Barr’s theory. It’s almost beside the point to note, as the conservative lawyers group Checks & Balances recently wrote, that Mr. Barr’s view of history “has no factual basis.”

 

Mr. Barr’s constitutional interpretation is simply window dressing on his commitment to religious authoritarianism. And that, really, gets to the heart of the matter. If you know anything about America’s founders, you know they were passionately opposed to the idea of a religious monarchy. And this is the key to understanding the question, “What does Bill Barr want?”

 

The answer is that America’s conservative movement, having morphed into a religious nationalist movement, is on a collision course with the American constitutional system. Though conservatives have long claimed to be the true champions of the Constitution — remember all that chatter during previous Republican administrations about “originalism” and “judicial restraint” — the movement that now controls the Republican Party is committed to a suite of ideas that are fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution and the Republic that the founders created under its auspices.

 

Mr. Trump’s presidency was not the cause of this anti-democratic movement in American politics. It was the consequence. He is the chosen instrument, not of God, but of today’s Christian nationalists, their political allies and funders, and the movement’s legal apparatus. Mr. Barr did not emerge in order to serve this one particular leader. On the contrary, Mr. Trump serves a movement that will cynically praise the Constitution in order to destroy it, and of which Mr. Barr has made himself a hero.

This guy is way scarier than Trump.