Join Us
Together we can save our democracy.
Posted on 06/07/2019 3:35:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Let's begin with a thought experiment: What if the Republican leadership in Washington had bothered to learn the lessons of the 2016 election? What if they'd understood, and embraced, the economic nationalism that was at the heart of Donald Trump's presidential campaign? What would the world look like now, 2 1/2 years later? For starters, Republicans in Congress would regularly be saying things like this:
"I'm deeply grateful for the opportunities America has given me. But the giant 'American' corporations who control our economy don't seem to feel the same way. They certainly don't act like it. Sure, these companies wave the flag -- but they have no loyalty or allegiance to America. ... These 'American' companies show only one real loyalty: to the short-term interests of their shareholders, a third of whom are foreign investors. If they can close up an American factory and ship jobs overseas to save a nickel, that's exactly what they will do -- abandoning loyal American workers and hollowing out American cities along the way. ... The result? Millions of good jobs lost overseas and a generation of stagnant wages, growing income inequality, and sluggish economic growth. ... We can navigate the changes ahead if we embrace economic patriotism and make American workers our highest priority, rather than continuing to cater to the interests of companies and people with no allegiance to America."
If you regularly vote Republican, ask yourself: What part of that statement do you disagree with? Here's the depressing part: Nobody you voted for said that or would ever say it.
Instead, the words you just read are from, and brace yourself here, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Yesterday, Warren released what she's calling her "plan for economic patriotism." Amazingly, that's pretty much exactly what it is. There's not a word about identity politics in the document. There are no hysterics about gun control or climate change. There's no lecture about the plight of transgender illegal immigrants. It's just pure old-fashioned economics: how to preserve good-paying American jobs.
Even more remarkable: Many of Warren's policy prescriptions make obvious sense. She says the U.S. government should buy American products when it can. Of course it should. She says we need more workplace apprenticeship programs, as four-year degrees aren't right for everyone. That's true. She says taxpayers ought to benefit from the research and development they fund. And yet, she writes, "We often see American companies take that research and use it to manufacture products overseas, like Apple did with the iPhone. The companies get rich, and American taxpayers have subsidized the creation of low-wage foreign jobs." And so on. She doesn't mention the role that overregulation has played in incentivizing American companies to leave our shores, but besides that, she sounds like Donald Trump at his best.
Who is this Elizabeth Warren, you ask? Not the race-hustling, gun-grabbing, abortion extremist you thought you knew. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Warren is still all of those things, too. And that is exactly the problem -- not just with Warren but with American politics. In Washington, almost nobody speaks for the majority of voters.
There isn't a caucus that represents where most Americans actually are: nationalist on economics, fairly traditional on the social issues. That candidate would be elected in a landslide. Yet that candidate is the opposite of pretty much everyone currently serving in Congress. Our leadership class remains resolutely corporatist: committed to the rhetoric of markets when it serves them, utterly libertine on questions of culture. Republicans will lecture you about how payday loan scams are a critical part of a market economy, and then they'll work to make it easier for your kids to smoke weed because, hey, freedom. Democrats will nod in total agreement. They're all on the same page.
Just last week, the Trump administration announced an innovative new way to protect American workers from the ever-cascading tidal wave of cheap third-world labor flooding this country. Until the Mexican government stops pushing illegal aliens north over our border, we will impose tariffs on all Mexican goods we import. That's the kind of thing you'd do to protect your country if you cared about your people. The Democrats, of course, opposed it. They don't even pretend to care about America anymore. Here's what Republican leader Mitch McConnell said: "I think it's safe to say you've talked to all of our members and we're not fans of tariffs. We're still hoping that this can be avoided."
We're not fans of tariffs either, but after both Republican and Democratic politicians have made virtually no effort to stem the flow of illegal immigration that has harmed low-wage American workers, at least Trump is trying. He's using access to our giant consumer market to persuade another country to stop taking actions that are hurting regular Americans. Why is that such a bad thing?
bfl
Together we can save our democracy.
I counted 13 raised hands.
Is that ALL the shills she has in the audience?
No the people raising their hands are the press. The rest of audience is made up of the people who came out to see Fauxcohantas.
The most dangerous lies are those mixed with some truth. Like a blind squirrel, Elizabeth Warren can find a nut of truth on occasion. When someone like Warren starts with the truth I find it unique and inspiring. Be that as it may, in 15 seconds she will find a way to increase taxes on the working poor, increase government, and ensure that her donors get lucrative government contracts 3 seconds after that.
I watched Democrats for years ‘say’ we should promote American jobs, then buy Honda’s and Toyota. I watched their Unions vote Democrat while they destroyed the steel, coal, and potential wartime production in the United States. I watched them protest for the First Amendment, only to try to rip it from Christians, conservatives, and detractors because of religion and things they didn’t want to hear. I have heard them decry ‘Trickle Down Economics is a terrible thing’ then take power and get into bed with then bankrupt Goldman Sachs and use taxpayer money to bail out the bankers, and call it economic recovery......lol.
Politicians like Elizabeth Warren and some of the establishment Republicans don’t care about Americans. They attack Donald Trump because he can’t be controlled, and like a bull in a china shop, he will indiscriminately break their little worlds to rebuild American and restore the Constitution. The Democrats have no use for the Constitution, unless they suddenly need it to save themselves, and the establishment Republicans have no use for the working American. This is why Donald Trump got elected, this is why SO many from both sides of the isle and the deep state have attacked him so much.
In the end, the author still doesn’t understand why Donald Trump got elected. The author doesn’t understand how so many are tired of the political class non-sense. The author doesn’t understand that Obamas Bank, DNC investment, and DNC donor, and Health Insurance company Bailout economy really didn’t help the average American or put them back to work.
Trump will do a bit better than that at his Orlando rally in ten days.
The price of shills has gone up apparently.
Hillary had everyone beat and so did bill with photo shop
Trump should endorse Fauxcahontas. That’ll take care of her.
I agree with every word of that.
All of us need to be big tariff fans because the world's mercantilism is killing us.
Don’t forget CNN or WP mixing in the crowd shots from Glenn Beck’s Mall event with the lackluster counter to-do a week later to beef up the proggies’ optics.
Money knows no allegiance, only the heart...
Money buys allegiance.
All of that can be laid in the laps of Wall St, Hedge Funds and Conglomerates soaking up and destroying everything in their paths for some profit. Let them eat cake.
She has a writer that is mimicking Trump.
The economic statement is 80%+ Trumpian.
Democrats are learning. Be afraid.
What's going on now in the US is not Democracy... it's hyper-democracy.
Many minority groups individually do not number enough to have it their way... so, they join to create a single group of "I hate America, gimme free stuff, F Trump"...etc. people and then command 24/7 media attention and SUPPORT... AS IF they have articulated a genius, lawful political solution, no one else could have figured out, to the problems they face.
Donald Trump's populism is deep, rational and durable but it is also attached to a shallow and unreliable political party.
Not all the Democrat candidates cast their campaigns in the populist terms that we hear from Pocahontas but, no matter which Democrat candidate emerges, the election will be a referendum, whether explicit or not, on two competing populisms:
The Trump/Banning flavor of populism is attached to the Constitution, to capitalism, to limited government, to national defense, to nationalism, to rational immigration policies and to an ideal of patriotism. The Democrats' version is attached to socialism, open borders, appeasement and the idea that America is unworthy. Trump's political party, although not Trump himself, is attached to K St. and Wall Street no less than the attachment you have identified there to Elizabeth Warren.
The article seems to make the essential gulf between the Elizabeth Warren version and Trump's version to be social issues. No one can doubt that the lurch toward extremism of the Democrat party in which it has stupidly identified itself as the party of transgenderism, infanticide, and deicide will clearly demarcate these ideologies but, typically, elections are decided on pocketbook issues.
If the economy continues to boom as it is perhaps the voters will turn to social issues and on these, clearly, the right has all the better arguments. All the better arguments that is if they can be cogently presented to white suburban women, especially white, educated, single, suburban women. All of the attributes which white men admire in Donald Trump do not necessarily appeal to this group of suburban women who are likely to decide this election. This cycle, Trump will have difficulty elevating his approval numbers to the degree that Obama or George W. Bush managed to do despite his booming economy. He has a genius for decapitating his antagonists with a single phrase and perhaps that will carry the day in 2024 and enable president Trump to bring his opponents down to compensate for his relative inability to elevate his own likability quotient among this important group.
But it would be much better if the populist campaign of Donald Trump can simply identify in the public mind, especially in the suburban mind, the Democrats as the phony, hypocritical elitists they are with all the attributes you point out in your excellent reply.
As an aside, we have been anticipating for some time a realignment of the parties in which the better version of populism will attach to the Republicans, combined with some social issues, and a wholesome conservative reform of chronic crony capitalism to reinvigorate the country in time to contend with China. The Democrats lurch toward socialism tells us what their side of the populist divide will look like and tells us much about the durability of the nation if entrusted to their hands.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.