Sep 25, 2022 (eand.co)
It’s Going to Be a Tough Fight — Because Democrats Still Aren’t Trusted on the Biggest Issue of All
In about 40 days, Americans will vote in the most consequential election of their lifetimes — perhaps the most crucial in history. The midterms are coming up, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. This set of elections will be a turning point for America, one way or another, but an asymmetrical one: a giant leap backwards, further into the abyss of failed states, or another small step forward, climbing out of it.
It’s an all or nothing election. Not many are like that. Most elections represent minor changes to the status quo, increments here and there. This one? It really is life or death for American democracy.
So how are they likely to turn out?
Let’s discuss something that American commenters often don’t. The global picture. If the Republicans win, America joins a group of nations that are plunging backwards in history. Sweden’s second biggest party is now “formerly Neo-Nazi,” which the media has gullibly accepted, asking the rest of us to believe — LOL — Nazis can “reform.” In Italy parties that idolize…Mussolini…are taking full power.
America, of course, was at the leading edge of this wave: Trumpism was the first real neo-fascist movement that came to ascendance in rich nations in the contemporary era. And if Republicans win the midterms, America’s future is incredibly bleak. When I say “incredibly,” I mean it. By now, everyone vaguely knowledgeable should grasp why.
The Jan 6th Committee described the last attempt to overturn the Presidential election as a “sophisticated, multi-part plan.” That idea, that strategy, hasn’t disappeared, though — it’s metastasized. Instead of one coup attempt, the Republicans are now plotting many of them, right out in the open. They hope to repeat what happened in the days and months leading up to Jan 6th, except over and over again, in state after state.
Like what? Like sending false electors or fake slates of electors. Like having officials in charge of elections — governors, secretaries of state — refuse to certify votes. Or like every manner of inane legal challenge alleging “voter fraud,” which is factually statistically nonexistent. Never mind: the Republican plan is to thwart not just “the” election, but every election after this. Gaining control of America’s electoral machinery itself, they hope to turn America into the kind of sham democracy Russia is: the Republicans always win, just like Putin does. And then, just as in a nation like Britain’s new best friend — LOL — Rwanda, the President rules for life, extending his term by twenty years, because hey, that’s what 99% of people want, according to sham democracy.
Down that road, which winds out of the abyss and into the inferno, lies dictatorship. America is still achingly close to it. Lose the midterms to the Republicans, and the likelihood of American democracy collapsing entirely rises high — too high. Becoming a country like Russia or China is on the cards then — whether an explicitly authoritarian state, run by Trumpist dynasties, or a one-party state, in which allegiance is all that counts.
If you think “it can’t happen here!” — if you still think this — then you are wrong. Take it from seasoned observers and scholars of social collapse. We are all warning in unison of the above. Our emphases might differ here and there — but the message remains the same. This election is existential for American democracy.
But I want you to understand this at a deeper level, too. The inner logic of it. Because this election is close — and it shouldn’t be. Nor should countries like Sweden and Italy be falling to Neo-Nazis. Fascism should not be returning to the world. Remember how it ended last time? We should all know that much, and I think we do. What kind of idiot wants their country to end up like 1930s Germany did in the 1940s? So why is all this happening, all over again? Understand this, and you understand what this election is really about — and what every election for the next few decades will hinge on.
Take a look at the chart above. It reveals something pretty horrifying, at least to a thoughtful person, and especially to an economist like me. The Democrats are more trusted than the Republicans on nearly every Big Issue — climate change, which makes sense, but now, even ones like abortion, which is a reversal, and immigration, which is now neck and neck. That’s crucial, a sea change in attitudes.
But the Democrats are less trusted than the Republicans on one Big Issue. The one that matters most. The economy. Which in the chart above has another category, too, inflation, but both are really just “the economy.”
Now. This is precisely the same pattern that has come to hold around the world, more or less. People have begun to trust far right parties more on issues of economics — even if their social preferences on issues like abortion or gay rights are at stark odds with them. And that is a profound reversal. The far right has flipped the working class, and much of the middle class too.
Think about all that for a second. How crazy and backwards it really is. In Britain, precisely the same pattern holds true — voters trust conservatives more on the economy — and yet, Britain’s new Chancellor is such an incompetent that he triggered a currency crisis on the scale of a Latin American country, spooking the markets by borrowing $500 billion for tax cuts or the super rich, which was too far right even for the markets.
Now. Voters trust the far right on the economy, but they shouldn’t, because the results are predictably disastrous every single time. The far right only has one idea, which is essentially fascism — and that’s hardly going to solve anything.
So why do voters around the world keep falling prey to this? Well, for a very simple reason, which is that old consensus, which effectively boiled down to neoliberalism, failed them. It concentrated more than the lion’s share of growth at the very top — not just 50% of an economy’s gains, but in places like America, more than 100%. That meant that the working and middle class had to go into steep debt just to make ends meet. And so from their perspective, it’s eminently rational not to trust anyone but the far right, because the orthodoxy on both sides left them impoverished. They feel betrayed and abandoned — and in a very real sense, they were.
Meanwhile, orthodox parties on both sides, when asked about the problem of stagnation for the working and middle class, shrugged — and said, “but everything’s great!” The far right gained trust through this vacuum — and people came to believe in the far right. What did the far right do? What it always does — pointed the finger at scapegoats. So in Sweden, it was refugees who were blamed, while debt levels went through the roof, in Britain, it was Europeans, as living standards cratered, and in America, of course, Trumpism began with Mexicans — and proceeded to scapegoat all the way down to women and children, for being gay or wanting reproductive healthcare.
What did all this solve? Nothing. Nobody’s living standards improved through scapegoating.
And yet voters still haven’t regained trust in the center or left to improve their lives, their economies, their standards of living. Voters trust them on issues like climate change and women’s rights and gay rights and so forth, which are all nice — but they are not as close to home, as motivating, as the issue of survival. Surviving the brutality and wreckage left amidst the ruins of neoliberalism.
This is the central problem center and left parties face. Worldwide. Voters may trust them on many things. But not on the Biggest One. Improving their lives. And that is the single most crucial issue of all — the one tends to motivate the most votes, and override other issues, as well, at least at a societal level.
Now. Why don’t voters trust the center and left to improve their lives? Because the center and left haven’t, and don’t really talk about it nearly enough. In Europe and America both, center became synonymous with neoliberalism, while the left found itself obsessed with issues of identity politics. So today, the left is identified with wokeness, the center with neoliberalism, and neither of those things, the average voter thinks, is going to do a damned thing to improve their material standard of living.
This is a huge problem. And it shouldn’t exist. Because if there’s one thing that the entirety of modern history teaches us, it’s this. Put a right wing party in charge of an economy — and watch it crater. Go ahead, just think about it: look at America’s Red States. Look at America as a whole. Look at Britain under its weird cast of Dickensian villains masquerading as leaders. The words “Texas” and “Kansas” aren’t synonyms for “modern prosperity,” but for “failed states,” and the reason is that hard right economics doesn’t work. It’s a fiction. The wealth doesn’t trickle down, it gets siphoned up. Deregulation and privatization don’t promote competition, they just create mega monopolies. And soon enough, all this makes society a Darwinian place, where everyone battles everyone else for survival. All that’s left is despair, poverty, and ruin.
It doesn’t work. The entire lesson of modern economics can be summed up in one line: the harder right you go, the worse your economy will do, and the more your living standards will fall, until at last, nothing works, no system functions, and everything has crumbled.
So do you see how utterly perverse it is that voters trust the right on the economy more?
Why is that? It’s because nobody is teaching them this lesson. The center and left don’t fight for it anymore — this great lesson which is their own history. Too focused on wokeness, too mired in infighting, they don’t go out there and remind people of the facts. They want better lives? Guess what, right wing economics aren’t the way to get there.
Let me give you a very simple example of what I mean. Joe Biden recently did something pioneering and radical. I mean that, and I’m super critical usually. He said America needs a national strategy, and then he decided that as a nation, it’s going to invest in semiconductor factories. Great idea? Awesome idea. Why? The world’s short of semiconductors, badly — and semiconductor factories are such huge enterprises, employ so many people, create so much work, good work, that just one can revitalize an American state.
Now. How much does a semiconductor factory cost? About $50 billion, to the government — which splits the cost with the private sector. Good deal? Great deal. That $50 billion is easily going to generate $500 billion, within a decade, if not more. That’s how economics really works. We invest, in stuff that benefits us all, that lifts our standards of living, for decades to come. Simple, right? Our side doesn’t say it enough anymore, if it says it at all.
So what happens? The crackpots come along — and take over. Let me keep going with my example. Britain’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer — Treasury Secretary, basically — already has a hilarious new nickname. Kwasi Kwarteng? KamiKwasi. Because his first move in power was to launch a budget so laughable, so extreme, so ridiculous, it made the pound crater, the markets shocked, alarmed, and horrified. A bloodbath. Good job killing your own economy, KamiKwasi. Britain’s a net importer of everything from food to energy, right down to cheese and the CO2 in beer — and what does a crashed currency do to import prices? That’s right, sends them skyrocketing even more, during what’s already an age of inflation.
Now. Why the bloodbath? The markets reacted with maniacal horror-laughter because his budget was to borrow $500 billion…to fund tax cuts…for the richest 1%. Too far even for the markets.
But remember how much a semiconductor factory costs? Britain could have build ten semiconductor factories for that very same price. For the $500 billion KamiKwasi wants to borrow, it could have built ten semiconductor factories — and become the world’s leading supplier of chips, which the entire world is desperate for, for a century to come. The markets would have applauded that, and sent the pound skyrocketing — the pound went into freefall because even the markets know that wasting money isn’t investing it.
Yet voters don’t know that. Because nobody’s teaching them. In Britain, Labour didn’t teach anybody the above. They just kind of looked blankly at this picture which they should have made great political hay with. In America, Biden doesn’t talk nearly enough about his plans to revitalize the American working class — and so Democrats still aren’t trusted on the economy, even though they’re actually beginning to do that very job, in such radical and interesting ways that America’s going to be a world leader again.
If.
If they win.
You see how all that ties up? This election is existential for America. The stakes are life and death. And that is precisely because people have been tricked and conned and hoodwinked — into believing that the fascists and authoritarians and lunatics and nationalist are going to give them better lives. They’re not. They never have, never will, because they can’t. Their way doesn’t work. Their ideas don’t work. That’s the entire lesson of modern history. But the center and left need to start speaking up about just that — and really opposing it, too, with ideas for material progress again.
Until then, my friends, the future? Well, it’s looking pretty fascist.
umair haque
vampire.
