I don't think that's true at all. Which policies do you have in mind here?
His signature issue was immigration, and that's a classic split issue where different people want different things and each party already represented a big a chunk of the voters.
I don't think that's true at all. Which policies do you have in mind here?
His signature issue was immigration, and that's a classic split issue where different people want different things and each party already represented a big a chunk of the voters.
North American trade continues to have enough support, but not the rest. No one votes for Trump because they don't like free trade with Canada. Southern states and the business lobby are too dependent upon free trade with Mexico to ever let it go. If anything, doubling down is underway, in part to reduce China's power.
And there was Trump's true innovation: not trade policy, but China policy. The Dems were quite split on TPP, but both parties were quite pro-China before Trump.
The NAFTA renegotiation didn't really change much, to my Canadian understanding. There was some concern about that when he promised it, but we all relaxed when it turned out that he was more interested in having a "different" deal than in having a deal with meaningful differences.
Trump sank the TPP, but it was already in trouble with the Dems and a Clinton presidency. Trump got out ahead of the trade parade, but he wasn't in on the ground the way he was with China.
FWIW, I find TPP fascinating from a history perspective. It has some similarities to when the provinces of former empire carry on the existing order after the centre has collapsed. Despite its surprising success and ongoing attraction to new entrants, America's allies have not yet drawn an obvious conclusion: the Americans aren't quite as necessary as everyone else assumes. The world just keeps getting more interesting.
I would disagree. His signature issue was blue collar economics. Immigration was sucked into that because illegals compete against low wage earners and drive down wages in that segment.
But was there a party representing the anti-immigration working-class vote? Dems were for immigration on humanitarian grounds, and Reps were for it on low-wage worker grounds. The same reasons both parties were for globalization before that. It's been a long time since either party has supported the welfare of american workers.
Perhaps you should have paid closer attention while it was happening. His entire platform was based on voter input since Trump, famously, has no really strong politics of his own. He was a typical Manhattan oligarch who supported anyone who asked for donations. Bill and Hillary came to one of his weddings, for God's sakes.
All of the pillars of Trump's agenda that the brainless Acela Corridor/PMC journo establishment labeled as insane, dangerous populism came from collecting feedback from purple voters.
Protectionist tariffs - conservatives hate this, Trump didn't care because the voters like it
No more pointless "forever wars" - remember when the left used to support this before Obama was president? Good times. Turns out, most voters are sick of expensive wars we wind up losing. Trump actually listened to them. Wild.
No more open borders - imagine if the United States paid the same attention to who we do and do not allow to enter our country as countries like Japan and Switzerland do?
Wild. I can just smell the racism there. And yet, this is an overwhelmingly popular opinion with a huge majority of American voters.
Trash-talking about immigration issue as "racism" is one of the most important reasons why so many Americans have become highly supportive of restricting immigration, including dramatic ones like mass deportations. If you don't like that, stop doing it.
Americans like governments that follow the law. This includes very large numbers of people with immigrant, and specifically Latino immigrant background. Immigration law represents a deal that has been struck. Follow it, or work with fellow citizens to change it, but don't ignore it. The leftist faction in the Democratic Party has associated itself with the latter, it is obvious, it is promotion of lawlessness, and this is not popular.
Ultimately, you have to recognize that immigration policy is a matter of values. Judging by what you're saying, I'd conclude that you have universalist values. A lot of people have nationalist values. Neither is "right" and your preferred values are not superior. The right policy is whatever we can all agree on (even grudgingly). So give up the fantasy that you stand on the moral high ground. There isn't one.
Im sorry for this silly narrative you are pushing, but some of us want literally open borders. Fuck both parties on this issue abolish borders flat out. Mainstream democrats are too restrictive on borders I want the abolitionists you guys claim the democrats are
There are many practical problems with this stance, but as I said it's fundamentally a conflict of values. If you want to try to persuade a majority to change their values and change the law, go right ahead. Meantime, the law is what it is. It never envisioned allowing millions of migrants into the country administratively through the back door, and it particularly never envisioned that the government would defy the intent of the law in this way (even if they're not breaking the law enough in your opinion). The consequence is that a shockingly high number of Americans are now in favor of ICE hunting down illegal immigrants on the streets. This is the outcome of imposing widely execrated minority values through administrative fiat. It doesn't help the immigrants at all, but maybe that's not the point: maybe it's just the satisfaction of making an ideological stance that pleases one's self-regard and preens for one's friends.
But for every anti-war statement Trump made, he made a pro-war one. He governed like that, too. And his immigration policy was never actually widely popular. Most Republican voters liked it, most Democratic voters didn't. Which is, well, normal.
It's true that he's got no real opinions beyond greed and maybe some bigotry, but most of his platform isn't actually particularly popular beyond the Republican base.
He was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war or "US police action" overseas. Why? Because mindblowingly, he actually made a lot of effort to adhere to the policy positions he promised. It made him popular with the people who voted for him, which is another thing the Acela Corridor journo establishment couldn't understand ("people don't hate someone they voted for who gave them what they want - must be a racist cult!")
And I'm an actual right wing Republican - Trump isn't popular with the "Republican base" for the same reasons the GOP isn't popular with the rest of America, either. It's because the bulk of America's actual voters aren't conservatives any more than they are Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs. Trump takes positions on abortion, hawkish foreign policy and free trade Republican voters didn't like, and still don't. But you would actually have to be a Republican to know that, right?
Trump broke the brains of the American NPR totebag left in a way that has made them double down on extraordinarily unpopular policy decisions and resort to things like blatant lawfare to try and retain power for power's sake at almost literally any cost.
This is key to one of the points Freddie made - if you are Blue No Matter Who, you are also, simultaneously, Blue No Matter What.
He declared war on Iran, even if Iran decided not to bite. And unlike Biden, he didn't leave Afghanistan.
And if you think Trump's not popular with the Republican base, I have to question your grasp on reality. Sure, he may be unpopular with logically consistent conservatives, but those aren't actually the Republican base.
Presidents can't declare war - have we forgotten that part? And unless I was asleep, we did not go to war with Iran, which is something I was assured was going to happen any second since George W. Bush (remember him? I do) was president.
The hilarious part that gets a lot, and I mean a lot, of Very Online American left wingers mad, from the DSA crowd to the Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs, is noticing that for all intents and purposes, Donald Trump was nothing more than a more vulgar version of Bernie Sanders.
The things that made him so unpalatable to people clutching their NPR totebags, ironically, is also a part of what made him far more popular than Bernie Sanders. In terms of policy? It's almost impossible to imagine how Bernie's actual policy agenda, left to his own devices, would have deviated in any major way from Donald Trump's.
"Donald Trump was nothing more than a more vulgar version of Bernie Sanders."
This absolutely bears repeating.
If you're an old school Democrat the tragedy of Sanders is that blue collar workers are probably finalizing their shift to the Republicans right now because of Trump.
Trump cut taxes on the rich and legislated to help the rich, Bernie would've raised taxes on the rich and legislated to help the poor. That's not a small difference; that's more than half of politics right there.
Also, under Bernie, abortion would still be legal everywhere in America.
As for war, Trump assassinated one of Iran's top people. As clear an act of war as there's ever been.
Pretty sure I didn't do that. I have my issues with the EC, but it's like 40th on the list of things I would want to fix about our democracy. He won the contest the way it was set up, fair and square.
I'm only making the point that you have a heavy lift to argue that the key to Trump was that he was picking super-duper popular policies, but also that his super-duper popular policies didn't even win him the popular vote.
"Build the Wall" became one of his signature rallying cries because his audiences loved it. The idea was just a throwaway line initially. Trump is many awful things, but he is brilliant at recognizing and exploiting mass opinion.
"53% support" is not "very much in love". Actually, I think a 53-46 split is a great example of what I said: "very mixed feelings".
And as the article says, support was actually lower when Trump adopted the policy. Still substantial, but in the 30s and 40s. So this absolutely isn't a case of Trump adopting a universally popular policy that the elite was neglecting; he just took one side of a contentious issue, as is standard.
1) That's one poll. The range I've seen is 53% to 57% and 57% is as close as you're going to get to a decisive mandate in modern politics.
2. Who cares if Trump adopted a universally popular policy? In fact, doesn't it speak to his influence that his positions have grown in time to become the dominant ones?
Apparently you care, because that's the argument you're making. This whole argument started because I objected to the claim that Trump rose to power by adopting ultra-popular policies neglected by established political leaders.
Also, there are plenty of things that poll above 57%. For example, a quick Google search gives 92% - 96% support for requiring background checks for all gun purchases. Still seems very unlikely to actually pass, arguably for good reason - imposing background checks on peer-to-peer sales would be quite a task.
Frankly I have no idea what you wrote prior to the post that I replied to. However no politician can win national office by subscribing to unpopular positions. That's simple political reality.
A border wall is a distraction. The real question vis a vis 2016 is what was the public's position on border security/open borders, That was the essence of Trump's argument, not the wall per se. What percentage of Americans oppose illegal immigration?
I don't think that's true at all. Which policies do you have in mind here?
His signature issue was immigration, and that's a classic split issue where different people want different things and each party already represented a big a chunk of the voters.
North American trade continues to have enough support, but not the rest. No one votes for Trump because they don't like free trade with Canada. Southern states and the business lobby are too dependent upon free trade with Mexico to ever let it go. If anything, doubling down is underway, in part to reduce China's power.
And there was Trump's true innovation: not trade policy, but China policy. The Dems were quite split on TPP, but both parties were quite pro-China before Trump.
The NAFTA renegotiation didn't really change much, to my Canadian understanding. There was some concern about that when he promised it, but we all relaxed when it turned out that he was more interested in having a "different" deal than in having a deal with meaningful differences.
Canada lost a lot of favourable terms from NAFTA when Mexico and the US made their own deal and the US made it a fait accompli via ultimatum.
The difference between the deft skill of the original Canadian delegation in 1987-8 and shambolic team of 2017 could not have been greater.
It was a signal change in geopolitics for Canada, one its (same) government still ignores.
Trump sank the TPP, but it was already in trouble with the Dems and a Clinton presidency. Trump got out ahead of the trade parade, but he wasn't in on the ground the way he was with China.
FWIW, I find TPP fascinating from a history perspective. It has some similarities to when the provinces of former empire carry on the existing order after the centre has collapsed. Despite its surprising success and ongoing attraction to new entrants, America's allies have not yet drawn an obvious conclusion: the Americans aren't quite as necessary as everyone else assumes. The world just keeps getting more interesting.
I would disagree. His signature issue was blue collar economics. Immigration was sucked into that because illegals compete against low wage earners and drive down wages in that segment.
And he played immigration as blue collar economics which it is, more than anything else.
But was there a party representing the anti-immigration working-class vote? Dems were for immigration on humanitarian grounds, and Reps were for it on low-wage worker grounds. The same reasons both parties were for globalization before that. It's been a long time since either party has supported the welfare of american workers.
I mean, for fuck's sakes, Bernie Sanders had the exact same policy stance until the DNC PMC apparatus made him memory hole it.
Perhaps you should have paid closer attention while it was happening. His entire platform was based on voter input since Trump, famously, has no really strong politics of his own. He was a typical Manhattan oligarch who supported anyone who asked for donations. Bill and Hillary came to one of his weddings, for God's sakes.
All of the pillars of Trump's agenda that the brainless Acela Corridor/PMC journo establishment labeled as insane, dangerous populism came from collecting feedback from purple voters.
Protectionist tariffs - conservatives hate this, Trump didn't care because the voters like it
No more pointless "forever wars" - remember when the left used to support this before Obama was president? Good times. Turns out, most voters are sick of expensive wars we wind up losing. Trump actually listened to them. Wild.
No more open borders - imagine if the United States paid the same attention to who we do and do not allow to enter our country as countries like Japan and Switzerland do?
Wild. I can just smell the racism there. And yet, this is an overwhelmingly popular opinion with a huge majority of American voters.
Trash-talking about immigration issue as "racism" is one of the most important reasons why so many Americans have become highly supportive of restricting immigration, including dramatic ones like mass deportations. If you don't like that, stop doing it.
Americans like governments that follow the law. This includes very large numbers of people with immigrant, and specifically Latino immigrant background. Immigration law represents a deal that has been struck. Follow it, or work with fellow citizens to change it, but don't ignore it. The leftist faction in the Democratic Party has associated itself with the latter, it is obvious, it is promotion of lawlessness, and this is not popular.
Ultimately, you have to recognize that immigration policy is a matter of values. Judging by what you're saying, I'd conclude that you have universalist values. A lot of people have nationalist values. Neither is "right" and your preferred values are not superior. The right policy is whatever we can all agree on (even grudgingly). So give up the fantasy that you stand on the moral high ground. There isn't one.
Well stated, Rock.
Im sorry for this silly narrative you are pushing, but some of us want literally open borders. Fuck both parties on this issue abolish borders flat out. Mainstream democrats are too restrictive on borders I want the abolitionists you guys claim the democrats are
There are many practical problems with this stance, but as I said it's fundamentally a conflict of values. If you want to try to persuade a majority to change their values and change the law, go right ahead. Meantime, the law is what it is. It never envisioned allowing millions of migrants into the country administratively through the back door, and it particularly never envisioned that the government would defy the intent of the law in this way (even if they're not breaking the law enough in your opinion). The consequence is that a shockingly high number of Americans are now in favor of ICE hunting down illegal immigrants on the streets. This is the outcome of imposing widely execrated minority values through administrative fiat. It doesn't help the immigrants at all, but maybe that's not the point: maybe it's just the satisfaction of making an ideological stance that pleases one's self-regard and preens for one's friends.
I'll give you protectionist tariffs.
But for every anti-war statement Trump made, he made a pro-war one. He governed like that, too. And his immigration policy was never actually widely popular. Most Republican voters liked it, most Democratic voters didn't. Which is, well, normal.
It's true that he's got no real opinions beyond greed and maybe some bigotry, but most of his platform isn't actually particularly popular beyond the Republican base.
He was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war or "US police action" overseas. Why? Because mindblowingly, he actually made a lot of effort to adhere to the policy positions he promised. It made him popular with the people who voted for him, which is another thing the Acela Corridor journo establishment couldn't understand ("people don't hate someone they voted for who gave them what they want - must be a racist cult!")
And I'm an actual right wing Republican - Trump isn't popular with the "Republican base" for the same reasons the GOP isn't popular with the rest of America, either. It's because the bulk of America's actual voters aren't conservatives any more than they are Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs. Trump takes positions on abortion, hawkish foreign policy and free trade Republican voters didn't like, and still don't. But you would actually have to be a Republican to know that, right?
Trump broke the brains of the American NPR totebag left in a way that has made them double down on extraordinarily unpopular policy decisions and resort to things like blatant lawfare to try and retain power for power's sake at almost literally any cost.
This is key to one of the points Freddie made - if you are Blue No Matter Who, you are also, simultaneously, Blue No Matter What.
He declared war on Iran, even if Iran decided not to bite. And unlike Biden, he didn't leave Afghanistan.
And if you think Trump's not popular with the Republican base, I have to question your grasp on reality. Sure, he may be unpopular with logically consistent conservatives, but those aren't actually the Republican base.
Presidents can't declare war - have we forgotten that part? And unless I was asleep, we did not go to war with Iran, which is something I was assured was going to happen any second since George W. Bush (remember him? I do) was president.
The hilarious part that gets a lot, and I mean a lot, of Very Online American left wingers mad, from the DSA crowd to the Acela Corridor PMC shitlibs, is noticing that for all intents and purposes, Donald Trump was nothing more than a more vulgar version of Bernie Sanders.
The things that made him so unpalatable to people clutching their NPR totebags, ironically, is also a part of what made him far more popular than Bernie Sanders. In terms of policy? It's almost impossible to imagine how Bernie's actual policy agenda, left to his own devices, would have deviated in any major way from Donald Trump's.
"Donald Trump was nothing more than a more vulgar version of Bernie Sanders."
This absolutely bears repeating.
If you're an old school Democrat the tragedy of Sanders is that blue collar workers are probably finalizing their shift to the Republicans right now because of Trump.
Trump cut taxes on the rich and legislated to help the rich, Bernie would've raised taxes on the rich and legislated to help the poor. That's not a small difference; that's more than half of politics right there.
Also, under Bernie, abortion would still be legal everywhere in America.
As for war, Trump assassinated one of Iran's top people. As clear an act of war as there's ever been.
So your argument is that a candidate who lost the popular vote twice is the one who is appealing to тАЬthe peopleтАЭ?
Are you sure heтАЩs not тАЬappealing to a very specific group that felt disenfranchised but was willing to turn outтАЭ?
Congratulations on arguing why the team who gets the most yards on offense should always win the Super Bowl.
Pretty sure I didn't do that. I have my issues with the EC, but it's like 40th on the list of things I would want to fix about our democracy. He won the contest the way it was set up, fair and square.
I'm only making the point that you have a heavy lift to argue that the key to Trump was that he was picking super-duper popular policies, but also that his super-duper popular policies didn't even win him the popular vote.
Goddammit, this is such a stupid and dishonest response.
"Build the Wall" became one of his signature rallying cries because his audiences loved it. The idea was just a throwaway line initially. Trump is many awful things, but he is brilliant at recognizing and exploiting mass opinion.
Trump is the symptom, not the cause. I think the inability of a lot of people in the halls of power to recognize this is pretty interesting.
I'm a big fan of Martin Gurri on topics like this.
God help the legacy parties if a competent populist, left or right, were to show up.
An incompetent populist has already remade one.
The US appears vulnerable to a competent authoritarian, populist or otherwise.
The public is seething mad with white hot incandescent rage.
And the managers of both legacy parties seem to think that they've got theirs, all is going well.
His audiences loved it, but the general public had very mixed feelings.
Except that the general public is very much in love with it now.
Ain't so.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4489492-majority-of-americans-for-first-time-support-building-border-wall/
"53% support" is not "very much in love". Actually, I think a 53-46 split is a great example of what I said: "very mixed feelings".
And as the article says, support was actually lower when Trump adopted the policy. Still substantial, but in the 30s and 40s. So this absolutely isn't a case of Trump adopting a universally popular policy that the elite was neglecting; he just took one side of a contentious issue, as is standard.
1) That's one poll. The range I've seen is 53% to 57% and 57% is as close as you're going to get to a decisive mandate in modern politics.
2. Who cares if Trump adopted a universally popular policy? In fact, doesn't it speak to his influence that his positions have grown in time to become the dominant ones?
Apparently you care, because that's the argument you're making. This whole argument started because I objected to the claim that Trump rose to power by adopting ultra-popular policies neglected by established political leaders.
Also, there are plenty of things that poll above 57%. For example, a quick Google search gives 92% - 96% support for requiring background checks for all gun purchases. Still seems very unlikely to actually pass, arguably for good reason - imposing background checks on peer-to-peer sales would be quite a task.
Frankly I have no idea what you wrote prior to the post that I replied to. However no politician can win national office by subscribing to unpopular positions. That's simple political reality.
A border wall is a distraction. The real question vis a vis 2016 is what was the public's position on border security/open borders, That was the essence of Trump's argument, not the wall per se. What percentage of Americans oppose illegal immigration?