Why Backing The Status Quo Is A Losing Proposition For Everyone Except The Very Rich

Thursday morning's tweet from Ro Khanna (D-CA)-- above-- is a good example of how someone can promote genuine economic populism. The program he, Bernie and virtually all progressives back to make state colleges free again is incredibly popular-- far more popular than Schumer's and Pelosi's recycled Papa John's Pizza slogan. As Robert Reich explained, "Higher education isn’t just a personal investment. It’s a public good that pays off in a more competitive workforce and better-informed and engaged citizens. Every year, we spend nearly $100 billion on corporate welfare, and more than $500 billion on defense spending. Surely ensuring the next generation can compete in the global economy is at least as important as subsidies for big business and military adventures around the globe. In fact, I think we can and must go further-- not just making public higher education tuition-free, but reinventing education in America as we know it."



Trump's in-house populist-- avatar of right-wing populism, Steve Bannon, also has a plan that could prove attractive to ordinary Americans-- albeit, probably not to many Republican leaders or donors-- taxing top earners at a 44% rate. Yes, you read that right. Anna Edgerton has the story which stretches the imagination of what we think of as Republicanism. But she even claims that "Bannon’s plan to raise the top income-tax rate for America’s highest earners could find some support among congressional Republicans as part of a populist message to sell a broader tax overhaul, according to one conservative lawmaker who has heard the proposal."

Bannon supports paying for middle-class tax cuts with a new top rate of 44 percent for those who make more than $5 million a year, according to a person familiar with his thinking. The lawmaker, who asked not to be named because discussions are private, said the rate pitched was 42 percent, which would be acceptable to some conservatives, as long as it’s coupled with a low corporate rate and other changes like repealing the alternative minimum tax. The current top individual rate is 39.6 percent.

The proposal could give President Donald Trump’s administration momentum to drum up popular support to rewrite the tax code, while wealthy individuals would get other tax benefits, such as the repeal of the estate tax, to partially offset the higher rate.

Earlier reports of Bannon’s proposal to create the highest top individual income tax rate in 30 years were initially considered unrealistic since Congress is controlled by the historically anti-tax GOP. Automatic opposition isn’t a given among some GOP members, said the lawmaker who’d heard the proposal-- especially if they’re made to understand how it could help publicly sell a plan that would include other changes in the tax code, the person said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much revenue the new marginal rate could generate. Data from the Internal Revenue Service show that in 2014, only about 0.029 percent of individual income tax returns listed annual income of $5 million or more.

In order to get support among conservatives, the corporate tax rate would have to be low enough to boost economic growth and prevent base erosion. Republican leaders in Congress have proposed a 20 percent rate, and even recently suggested a 22 percent rate before going back to their original proposal, according to the lawmaker. The current top corporate tax rate is 35 percent.

A one-page tax plan presented by White House officials in April suggested a 15 percent rate for corporations and pass-through entities, which would be a better target for policymakers to get support for the higher rate on top earners, the lawmaker said.

There would have to be measures written into the code to prevent high earners from categorizing themselves as pass-through companies merely to get the lower business rate on their income, according to the lawmaker.

It’s unclear whether Trump would support Bannon’s proposal. Trump has said he’s focused on tax changes that would help the middle class, but an analysis this month of the previous White House tax outline shows it would mostly benefit top earners.

Here's the problem for both proposals-- Reich's and Bannon's-- though: the party establishments won't go for either. The DC Republicans aren't about to raise taxes on the rich and the DC Democrats aren't going to agree to really push-- as oppose just pretend to back-- free higher education. And that's why primaries are so important. If you back the DCCC-recruited conservative Democrats-- they now admit they're trying to stock Congress with right-wing Blue Dogs who oppose everything we think the Democratic Party stands for-- you won't be building a coalition to further a progressive agenda for things like free higher education and Medicare-For-All. All you'll get is a slightly left-of-center-- ever so slightly-- blinkered establishment vision of the failed status quo.

I can't speak for Republicans who might back raising taxes on multimillionaires, but the Blue America candidates, all favor proposals similar to Robert Reich's for remaking higher education. And they are all committed to working for a Medicare-For-All healthcare system. The DCCC candidates? Nope... they are primarily status quo candidates. That's what a conservative is-- someone who wants to conserve the status quo. One of the Blue America-endorsed candidates, David Gill, was talking with me yesterday about his vision of progressive politics. Allow me to share it with you:

A progressive is an individual dedicated to improving the lives of all the ordinary men and women who make up the vast majority of our population. A progressive respects all those ordinary people, and sees their well-being as being infinitely more important than the well-being of large corporations and Wall Street banks. In the movie "It's a Wonderful Life", Jimmy Stewart's character, George Bailey, expressed the heart of a progressive in this outburst to slumlord developer Mr. Potter: 

"Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?

At a very fundamental level, progressive George Bailey cared deeply about other individuals. I'm proud to be a caring progressive. That instinct drove me into my career as a physician, and it drives my quest to get to Congress and be a champion in the development of single-payer healthcare here in America. Working in the E.R., I see the "rabble" who have been beaten down by the insurance and drug companies and their cohorts in Congress, and it galls me. I cannot stand by and let such a heartless system persist without fighting back.

You can contribute to David's campaign by clicking on the ActBlue thermometer above. But the statements about progressivism below are from some of the dozen or so candidates Blue America is in the process of vetting for endorsements. All of these candidates are far along in the process. First let's look at the Austin-based progressive Derrick Crowe, who's taking on Lamar Smith in TX-21. "Bannon's support for this tax on top earners," he told us, "reminds me of the fossil fuel industry's 'support' for a carbon tax-- I'll believe it when the House passes it. It opens up the real danger to Democrats, though, from a faux populist Republican attack. If we fail as a party to unite behind a true progressive populist agenda--tuition-free college, a $15/hour minimum wage, single-payer heath care, climate change action-- Trump could seize the opportunity to scoop voters from us with lies and half-measures. We need to offer voters a clear choice and a real path to shared prosperity for the working class. Otherwise, Trump could be the new normal."

Kia Hamadanchy is a progressive running for the seat held by conservative rubber-stamp Mimi Walters in Orange County. He has an interesting take on what it means to be progressive in contemporary politics:

Being a real progressive is about not being afraid to do what's right, even when it could cost you. Howard Dean once said of Tom Harkin that he had always admired that he was almost always reelected by narrow margins, and that was because even though Tom Harkin is from a middle-of-the-road state that is trending Republican he was always willing to stick his neck out for liberal causes, even though he knew he’d pay a price for is on Election Day. That is what being a real progressive is all about. We have real problems in this country and we have to take electoral risks sometimes in terms of getting things done. That's what's really going to inspire people and get them out to vote for you.

I support single payer and I support debt-free college. But its not enough just to say that you support it. Its about being willing to put your neck on the line to get the job done. Because there are worse things in life then losing an election and its not just about how we go about winning but we deserve to. It's about being able to win the argument, about being to move a poll not just read it. Because if we act like our ideas are so bad that they can't survive the light of the day stand and we're constantly running away from, we'll never accomplish anything. Why would we ever expect anyone else to support them?

Levi Tillemann is the progressive candidate in the race for Denver-area seat held by Republican Mike Coffman. The DCCC has one of their non-progressives running, of course, but Levi told us that "A fundamental part of my philosophy is that we need to prioritize people over profits. That may sound like a slogan, but it's not. It's actually a powerful guiding economic principle-- and a key differentiator between progressives and Republicans (or for that matter, progressives and Blue Dogs). We use policy to make sure that new technologies, our healthcare system, trade, the energy sector and education are all directed toward reducing inequality and building up the kind of society we want to live in."

Like Marie, Hector Morales is taking on an entrenched corrupt conservative Democrat in a primary. TX-29 is held by a career-long servant of Big Oil, Gene Green. Last night Hector told us that "There’s a difference between backing something and being about something-- that’s the distinction between a true progressive and a Blue Dog Democrat who merely backs legislation for a few political points. Take a look at Texas’ Beto O’Rourke and Gene Green. O’Rourke has not backed HR 676-- Medicare for all-- with the excuse that the bill does not ensure that all hospitals accept Medicare. The problem with his remark is that the hospitals who don’t accept Medicare are primarily for those who receive care through the VA. Gene Green only recently backed HR 676 after seeing a myriad of Democrats backing the legislation starting in April. After 24 years in Congress, one would assume that Gene Green co-sponsored Medicare-for-all bills in the past. But assume makes an ass out of you and me. And that’s the problem the Democratic Party faces-- a lack of progressives and a slew of DCCC backed Blue Dogs who are nothing more than corporate shills in safe districts. The Democratic Party doesn’t stand for anything other than being anti-Trump, which doesn’t win elections. Ask Hillary. The very essence of the Democratic Party is about being progressive and representing the people, not wallowing just left of center and whining. This is why progressives need to take back the party and demand that the Democrats not only back, but become about, medicare for all, tuition free education, and renewable energy. Otherwise the DCCC can just burn a pile of millions of dollars-- at least burning them will keep us warm next November."

Jim Thompson is the Berniecrat candidate who ran in Kansas this year and almost won-- after being left high and dry by a DCCC not interested in promoting progressives. Jim is running again now-- and Blue America has endorsed him. Last night he told us that "Progressives strive to move society forward for the betterment of all citizens because a rising tide lifts all boats. We understand 'equality of opportunity' is more than a talking point, but rather is the basis for all that is great about this country and should be available to every person regardless of race, religion, sex, or gender identity. Progressives fight to return political power to the working class people of this country by ending Citizens United and removing dark money from politics. We assert healthcare and education should be considered rights and are part and parcel of 'providing for the general welfare' of the citizenry as required by the Constitution. Progressives battle for policies and laws that will stop the continuing redistribution of wealth to the top 1%, which has been occurring for the past 40 years through tax loopholes for the large corporations and stagnant wages for working class people. In short, as the name suggests, progressives believe in progress for society as a whole rather than the privileged few."

"A progressive to me is someone who wants to learn from the past and move ahead-- to make progress on behalf of everyone. We need to learn that people get excited by a message that they can actually feel, not one that they see repeated ad nauseam that leaves one shaking their head trying to figure out. It’s easy to think like a progressive. It’s not so easy to actually be a progressive."

Both Parties... Are Fumbling Around In The Dark Looking For An Identity

Fareed Zakaria had GOP establishment NY Times columnist David Brooks on his CNN show Sunday to talk about Señor Trumpanzee’s role within the conservative movement. I don’t know who watches Zakaria’s show-- no one I know-- but I bet there was a lot of teeth gnashing from Republicans when Zakaria opened the segment by setting up a comparison between Saint Ronnie and Trumpanzee. “Where does conservatism go from here? Where does the Republican Party go from here?… Is there a new conservatism developing?”

Brooks said he doesn’t think so-- “not in this administration.” In his universe Democrats want to use government to enhance equality and Republicans want to use government to enhance freedom. Most Republicans who want to use government to enhance freedom are thinking about the freedom of the rich and powerful to lord over the rest of us-- it’s like the freedom for everyone to have access to really expensive healthcare… if they have the money to afford it. But what he doesn’t mention is that the Grifter First Family wants to use government to enhance to enhance its own wealth, pure and simple. Is the Russian brand of kleptocracy the new conservatism? Brooks, I’d bet, hopes not.

Trump, Brooks says, opened a new debate-- populism vs statism-- but hasn’t delivered on the promises of his campaign “because there’s not a lot of Trumpians in the world of policy. So he hasn’t exactly helped the people who got him into office. He staffed his administration-- to the extent it is staffed-- with people who basically believed in the Reagan bargain of 1984… cut tax rates, reducegovernmoent regulation… I think he opened the door too a new kind of conservatism but has not fulfilled it. That’s for somebody in the future.” [This vicious little jerk?]

So what about Republican politicians? Do the party’s elected officials want to swing in a more populist direction? Trump, he says, punctured the worn out Reaganism balloon and now conservatives have nothing; they’re in a period of chaos, Trump’s preferred milieu. He sees various paradigms competing within the Republican Party for dominance-- libertarianism, Buchanan-like paleo-conservatism… But, he said, “if I had to bet, I would like an Alexander Hamilton open trade, lot of immigration, lot of economic dynamism… When I look at the polls, there aren’t a lot of people who want what I want. The Steve Bannons of the world, that’s where a lot of the people are; they’re older, they’re economically disadvantaged; they want a national conservatism that will protect them.”

Really? They want-- or will accept-- a snake oil salesman and kleptocrat like Trump, rather than a sensible populist like Bernie? I bet there were an awful lot of Trump voters at Bernie’s Sunday night rally in Charleston, cheering wildly when he called for Medicare-For-All, not exactly a conservative policy goal-- although it is certainly one that “will protect them.” There were over 2,000 in the Charleston Municipal Auditorium for his Protect Our Health Care Rally. Remember, Bernie pulverized Clinton in the West Virginia primary-- 123,860 (51.4%) to 86,354 (35.8%) but Wassermann Schultz had fixed the system so in the end, Bernie got 19 delegates and Clinton got 18. Bernie won every county in the state-- even the counties considered parti of the DC suburbs-- although Kanawha (Charleston) was close-- 48.0% to 45.0%. Bernie and Trump had virtually the same number of votes in Kanawha too.

If the Democratic Party was united, the ideological battlelines would be much clearer, with the Democrats behind a set of policies wildly popular among the American people while the Republicans argued about the benefits of a society with no rules and regulations versus a fascist state. Instead… the conservatives of “moderate” Republicans is competing for dominance of the Democratic Party under the guise of New Dems and Blue Dogs, “pragmatism” and-- the same kind of kleptocratic tendencies run wild under Trump. Last week, Lee Fang, writing for The Intercept helped focus attention on this unfortunate tendency with the Democratic Party elite-- Prominent Democratic Fundraisers Realign to Lobby For Trump’s Agenda. These are the people who call the shots at the DNC and who tell Pelosi and Schumer what’s to be done and not done. Fang points out that many Hillary backers who expected too be part of her administration are now “cashing in as lobbyists-- by working to advance Trump’s agenda.”

This is the Wassermann Schultz, Steny Hoyer, Joe Crowley, Chuck Schumer and Pelosi crowd:

Lobbying records show that some Democratic fundraisers, who raised record amounts of campaign cash for Clinton, are now retained by top telecom interests to help repeal the strong net neutrality protections established during the Obama administration.

Others are working on behalf of for-profit prisons on detention issues, while others still are paid to help corporate interests pushing alongside Trump to weaken financial regulations. At least one prominent Clinton backer is working for a health insurance company on a provision that was included in the House Republican bill to gut the Affordable Care Act.

While Republican lobbyists are more in demand, liberal lobbyists are doing brisk business that has them reaching out to fellow Democrats to endorse-- or at least tamp down vocal opposition to-- Trump agenda items.

“These cases are clear, disturbing examples of the gulf between the interests of many of the Democratic Party’s big-money donors and those of the party’s progressive base and America’s working families,” said Kai Newkirk, co-founder of Democracy Spring, a progressive coalition.

Remember when Hillary mumbled something about being part of the resistance?

A well-known lobbyist who runs in powerful Democratic circles, Heather Podesta, volunteered for Clinton during the New Hampshire primaries. She collected at least $407,000 for the campaign. In recent months, Podesta has tweeted from the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference, an event billed as a platform for the “Resist movement,” and has continued to give cash to congressional Democrats.

Podesta, however, whose New Years Resolution was to “Make Lobbying Great Again,” has adapted to Republican rule by rebranding her lobbying firm from “Heather Podesta + Partners” to “Invariant,” a name change to reflect “an expanding bipartisan team” with ties to the Trump administration.

Records show Podesta has lobbied this year on behalf of financial management and insurance giants Prudential and New York Life on the fiduciary rule, the regulation fought for by the Obama administration that was designed to require financial planning companies to act in the best interests of their clients. Early in his administration, in a decision cheered by the industry, Trump ordered a delay in the implementation of the rule.

Other Democratic lobbyists have found that their corporate clients’ interests align with the Trump administration. Some, like Podesta, are taking financial planning industry cash to work on the fiduciary rule.

Steve Elmendorf, a former senior advisor to Clinton’s 2008 run, maintained a high-profile role with Clinton’s 2016 run, raising $341,000 for the campaign. He is now one of the most prominent corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Records show that Elmendorf, too, lobbied on the fiduciary rule. His client, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a trade group for firms like Prudential, has made delaying the rule a major goal and celebrated Trump’s move to delay implementation.

UnitedHealth, the health insurance giant, is also an Elmendorf client. Filings made to ethics officials on Capitol Hill reveal that Elmendorf is helping UnitedHealth work on issues related to the Affordable Care Act, including the health insurance industry tax, a provision of the ACA that UnitedHealth has made clear it seeks to repeal or delay. Congressional Republicans have said that, if they are successful with their overhaul of the law, the tax will be gone.

A former Democratic National Committee fundraiser from Bill Clinton’s days as president, Richard Sullivan, served as a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s campaign last year. He bundled at least $345,218 for the campaign, according to Federal Elections Commission records. Sullivan is also registered lobbyist for the public relations and lobby firm Capitol Counsel, where he works on behalf of private prison giant Geo Group to convince lawmakers of the “benefits of public-private partnerships in the delivery of secure residential care in correctional and detention facilities.”

The Florida-based Geo Group is particularly close to the Trump administration; it was one of the few firms to donate corporate money to a Trump SuperPAC during the election, finance the inauguration, and openly celebrate Trump’s decision to vastly expand the detention and removal of undocumented immigrants. The firm was among the first private companies to win a contract from the Trump administration for a federal immigrant detention center, a deal worth $110 million.

Lobbyists often use their ability to bundle cash for candidates and party organs as a way of win an audience with lawmakers on behalf of their clients. As The Intercept has reported, lobbyists for Goldman Sachs and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the trade group, raised big money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, using their sway to pressure the party to adopt policies favorable to their industries and to abandon economic populist messaging that targeted the financial sector.

Trump’s election has been called a “bonanza” for Washington lobbyists, as K Street seeks to enrich itself by harnessing the administration’s zeal for rewarding corporate allies. For many Democratic insiders, there is fortune to made even in electoral defeat.

The Intercept spoke to several progressive activists who expressed outrage that leading Democratic Party officials are now advancing the Trump agenda, but were reluctant to comment on the record, for fear of angering powerful Democrats. But a few activists, like Democracy Sping’s Newkirk, decided to speak on the record.

Becky Bond, an activist and former Bernie Sanders adviser who also spoke out, said, “When Democratic insiders team up with Comcast and the private prison industry, they make it pretty difficult to see how the party can rebuild relationships with the voters it needs to bring back into the fold.”

“Destroying the internet and maximizing the profitability of mass incarceration,” she added, “is not what I would call a winning strategy for Democrats who want to take back power in 2018.”

A friend of mine is running a congressional campaign for a progressive candidate and he told me this morning that he’s about to get an endorsement from Howard Dean. I told him to think that through carefully before making a big deal of it. Today, Dean is known to many activists as just another Clinton shill who makes a living as a lobbyist for drug manufacturers and the old Howard Dean who inspired so many people is now just an historical monument unrelated in many people’s minds to the guy running around today being paid to push an ugly and despised agenda.

Has Trump Abandoned That Whole Populism Ploy That Won Him The Nomination And Then The Election?

This morning, David Brooks seemed genuinely surprised-- even shocked-- that the Trump Regime is turning into a standard Republican class warfare operation against working families. And he blamed it on the loss of clout that has befallen poor Steve Bannon. Did Brooks actually believe all the hollow Trump promises to turn things around for the unwashed (white) masses-- let alone the inner cities-- during the campaign? I had dinner the other other night with a close friend who's tight with Bannon. He told me Trump and Bannon plan to rebuild the inner cities entirely and thereby win the allegiance of "the blacks" and "the Hispanics" for for GOP for decades. Did I believe they would do it, he asked me. No, I replied, not a chance in a billion. It was maybe a passing fantasy when they were both high on Trump's Adderall. To begin with, neither of them even cares about the GOP. And it's the GOP (in Congress-- think Paul Ryan and Miss McConnell) who would have to come up with the trillions of dollars to do it. Yeah, that's going to happen-- not even in phase 103.

Brooks opined this morning that Trump's--meaning Bannon's-- "populism is being abandoned. The infrastructure and jobs plan is being put off until next year (which is to say never). Meanwhile, the Trump administration has agreed with Paul Ryan’s crazy plan to do health care first [which has] become a poisonous morass for the entire party, and a complete distraction from the populist project." Ryan is an even more unlikely populist than Trump and his-- and Pence's and Price's-- healthcare planned, dubbed TrumpCare, "punishes," in Brooks' words, "the very people Trump and Bannon had vowed to help. It would raise premiums by as much as 25 percent on people between 50 and 64, one core of the Trump voter base. It would completely hammer working-class voters whose incomes put them just above the Medicaid threshold." When confronted about this by Tucker Carlson on Fox the other day, Trump said everything is "just a negotiation." That phrase will be on his political tombstone. (Listen at around the 7 minute mark.)

[T]he Ryan health care plan punishes the very people Trump and Bannon had vowed to help. It would raise premiums by as much as 25 percent on people between 50 and 64, one core of the Trump voter base. It would completely hammer working-class voters whose incomes put them just above the Medicaid threshold.

The Trump budget is an even more devastating assault on Bannon-style populism. It eliminates or cuts organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative that are important to people from Tennessee and West Virginia up through Ohio and Michigan. It cuts job-training and road-building programs. It does almost nothing to help expand opportunity for the working class and almost everything to serve defense contractors and the national security state.

Why is Bannonism being abandoned? One possibility is that there just aren’t enough Trumpians in the world to staff an administration, so Trump and Bannon have filled their apparatus with old guard Republicans who continue to go about their jobs in old guard pseudo-libertarian ways.

The second possibility, raised by Rich Lowry in Politico, is that the Republican sweep of 2016 was won on separate tracks. Trump won on populism, but congressional Republicans won on the standard cut-government script. The congressional Republicans are better prepared, and so their plans are crowding out anything Bannon might have contemplated.

The third possibility is that Donald Trump doesn’t really care about domestic policy; he mostly cares about testosterone.

He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health.

But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs.

Indeed, the Trump budget looks less like a political philosophy and more like a sexual fantasy. It lavishes attention on every aspect of hard power and slashes away at anything that isn’t.

The Trump health care and budget plans will be harsh on the poor, which we expected. But they’ll also be harsh on the working class, which we didn’t.

We’re ending up with the worst of the new guard Trumpian populists and the old guard Republican libertarians. We’re building walls to close off the world while also shifting wealth from the poor to the rich.

When these two plans fail, which seems very likely, there’s going to be a holy war between the White House and Capitol Hill. I don’t have high hopes for what’s going to emerge from that war, but it would be nice if the people who voted for Trump got economic support, not punishment.

Trump thinks Paul Ryan is "on board with my presidency." It's like a mishmash of TV reality shows, like the really aggressively horrible ones: Southern Comfort and Princesses: Long Island (so unwatchable that it was actually cancelled after just one dreadful season) and, of course, Shahs of Sunset. But not as realistic as House of Cards, that's for sure.

Is Trump our Hugo Chávez? If so, what can we do about it (him)?

Andrés Miguel Rondón references this tweet when he writes: "Label ["the bad guys"]: the minorities, the politicians, the businessmen. Caricature them. As vermin, evil masterminds, haters and losers, you name it. Then paint yourself as the savior."

"The recipe for populism is universal. Find a wound common to many, find someone to blame for it, and make up a good story to tell. Mix it all together. Tell the wounded you know how they feel. That you found the bad guys. Label them. . . . Caricature them. . . . Then paint yourself as the savior. . . . [E]nrapture them with a tale. One that starts with anger and ends in vengeance. A vengeance they can participate in.

"That’s how it becomes a movement."

-- Andrés Miguel Rondón, in his Washington Post op-ed piece

by Ken

It's not a question that would ever have occurred to me: Do Venezuelans who botched their dealings with Hugo Chávez have anything to teach us about how to deal with Trump? Not, that is, without prompting from Andrés Miguel Rondón, whose biographical note, accompanying a Washington Post op-ed, reads:

Andrés Miguel Rondón is an economist living in Madrid. He is a Venezuelan citizen who was born and raised there.

The WaPo piece (of which we're told, "A version of this article originally appeared on Caracas Chronicles") is titled, pretty graphically: "In Venezuela, we couldn’t stop Chávez. Don’t make the same mistakes we did." And it's blurbed: "How to let a populist beat you, over and over again."

The Caracas Chronicles version of the piece was timed for Inauguration Day, when Rondón began:

The whole world’s eyes are on Washington today, and not in a good way. As Venezuelans, we’re looking North with more trepidation than most today, even though — in fairness — the panic over Trump-as-northern-Chávez is premature. A politician is to be judged by what it does in office, not by what he says before he gets there. Beating Chávez historic economic demolition of the richest oil country in the world, during the biggest oil bonanza ever, leaving behind an inflation-ridden, bullet-stricken, hungry, ailing country — is quite an ask. But let’s see what happens.

Because in one way, Trump and Chávez are identical: they are masters of Populism.

The recipe is universal. . . .

Rondón begins the WaPo version:

Andrés Miguel Rondón

Donald Trump is an avowed capitalist; Hugo Chávez was a socialist with communist dreams. One builds skyscrapers, the other expropriated them. But politics is only one-half policy: The other, darker half is rhetoric. Sometimes the rhetoric takes over. Such has been our lot in Venezuela for the past two decades — and such is yours now, Americans. Because in one regard, Trump and Chávez are identical. They are both masters of populism.

The recipe for populism is universal. Find a wound common to many, find someone to blame for it, and make up a good story to tell. Mix it all together. Tell the wounded you know how they feel. That you found the bad guys. Label them: the minorities, the politicians, the businessmen. Caricature them. As vermin, evil masterminds, haters and losers, you name it. Then paint yourself as the savior. Capture the people’s imagination. Forget about policies and plans, just enrapture them with a tale. One that starts with anger and ends in vengeance. A vengeance they can participate in.

That’s how it becomes a movement. There’s something soothing in all that anger. Populism is built on the irresistible allure of simplicity. The narcotic of the simple answer to an intractable question. The problem is now made simple.

The problem is you.

"You," of course, meaning us. Rondón goes on to ask, sensibly: "How do I know?" And he answers:

Because I grew up as the “you” Trump is about to turn you into. In Venezuela, the urban middle class I come from was cast as the enemy in the political struggle that followed Chávez’s arrival in 1998. For years, I watched in frustration as the opposition failed to do anything about the catastrophe overtaking our nation. Only later did I realize that this failure was self-inflicted. So now, to my American friends, here is some advice on how to avoid Venezuela’s mistakes.

This notion of us as "the enemy" is crucial to Rondón. He makes it his first piece of advice to us:

• Don’t forget who the enemy is.

Populism can survive only amid polarization. It works through the unending vilification of a cartoonish enemy. Never forget that you’re that enemy. Trump needs you to be the enemy, just like all religions need a demon. A scapegoat. “But facts!” you’ll say, missing the point entirely.

What makes you the enemy? It’s very simple to a populist: If you’re not a victim, you’re a culprit.

The Venezuelan version of this lesson?

During the 2007 student-led protests against the government’s closure of RCTV , then the second-biggest TV channel in Venezuela, Chávez continually went on air to frame us students as “pups of the American Empire,” “supporters of the enemy of the country” — spoiled, unpatriotic babies who only wanted to watch soap operas. Using our socioeconomic background as his main accusation, he sought to frame us as the direct inheritors of the mostly imagined “oligarchs” of our fathers’ generation. The students who supported Chavismo were “children of the homeland,” “sons of the people,” “the future of the country.” Not for one moment did the government’s analysis go beyond such cartoons.

The problem is not the message but the messenger, and if you don’t realize this, you will be wasting your time.

From here the lessons get harder, and from Rondón's standpoint we are probably wildly mishandling Trump, just as he and his fellow Venezuelans so badly mishandled Chávez.

Don’t feed polarization, disarm it. This means leaving the theater of injured decency behind.
That includes rebukes such as the one the “Hamilton” cast gave Vice President-elect Mike Pence shortly after the election. While sincere, it only antagonized Trump; it surely did not convince a single Trump supporter to change his or her mind. Shaming has never been an effective method of persuasion.

The Venezuelan opposition struggled for years to get this. We wouldn’t stop pontificating about how stupid Chavismo was, not only to international friends but also to Chávez’s electoral base. “Really, this guy? Are you nuts? You must be nuts,” we’d say.

The subtext was clear: Look, idiots — he will destroy the country. He’s blatantly siding with the bad guys: Fidel Castro, Vladi­mir Putin, the white supremacists or the guerrillas. He’s not that smart. He’s threatening to destroy the economy. He has no respect for democracy or for the experts who work hard and know how to do business.

Which leads Rondón to a point that will be familiar to those who have been reading Ian Welsh on Trump, in which a central theme has been that, however abhorrent the man may be, far from being stupid he's extremely competent. As Rondón puts it:

[M]y political awakening was set off by the tectonic realization that Chávez, however evil, was not actually stupid.

Neither is Trump: Getting to the highest office in the world requires not only sheer force of will but also great, calculated rhetorical precision. The kind only a few political geniuses are born with and one he flamboyantly brandishes.

Case in point:

 “We are in a rigged system, and a big part of the rigging are these dishonest people in the media,” Trump said late in the campaign, when he was sounding the most like Chávez. “Isn’t it amazing? They don’t even want to look at you folks.” The natural conclusion is all too clear: Turn off the TV, just listen to me. The constant boos at his rallies only confirmed as much. By looking down on Trump’s supporters, you’ve lost the first battle. Instead of fighting polarization, you’ve played into it.

The worst you can do is bundle moderates and extremists together and think that America is divided between racists and liberals. That’s the textbook definition of polarization. We thought our country was split between treacherous oligarchs and Chávez’s uneducated, gullible base. The only one who benefited was Chávez.

THE NEXT LESSON: "DON'T TRY TO FORCE HIM OUT"

Venezuelans, uUnderstandably desperate, tried everything, Rondón says.

Coup d’etat? Check. Ruinous oil strike? Check. Boycotting elections in hopes that international observers would intervene? You guessed it.

"But," he says, "a hissy fit is not a strategy."

The people on the other side — and crucially, independents — will rebel against you if you look like you’re losing your mind. You will have proved yourself to be the very thing you’re claiming to be fighting against: an enemy of democracy. And all the while you’re giving the populist and his followers enough rhetorical fuel to rightly call you a saboteur, an unpatriotic schemer, for years to come. . . .

Attempting to force Trump out, rather than digging in to fight his agenda, would just distract the public from whatever failed policies the administration is making. In Venezuela, the opposition focused on trying to reject the dictator by any means possible — when we should have just kept pointing out how badly Chávez’s rule was hurting the very people he claimed to be serving.

THE LAST LESSON: "FIND A COUNTERARGUMENT.
(NO, NOT THE ONE YOU THINK.)"

"Don’t waste your time trying to prove that this grand idea is better than that one."

Ditch all the big words. The problem, remember, is not the message but the messenger. It’s not that Trump supporters are too stupid to see right from wrong, it’s that you’re more valuable to them as an enemy than as a compatriot. Your challenge is to prove that you belong in the same tribe as them — that you are American in exactly the same way they are.

The Chávez opposition, Rondón says, "fell into this trap in a bad way."

We wrote again and again about principles, about separation of powers, civil liberties, the role of the military in politics, corruption and economic policy. But it took opposition leaders 10 years to figure out that they needed to actually go to the slums and the countryside. Not for a speech or a rally, but for a game of dominoes or to dance salsa — to show they were Venezuelans, too, that they weren’t just dour scolds and could hit a baseball, could tell a joke that landed. That they could break the tribal divide, come down off the billboards and show that they were real. This is not populism by other means. It is the only way of establishing your standing. It’s deciding not to live in an echo chamber. To press pause on the siren song of polarization.

Because if the music keeps going, yes — you will see neighbors deported and friends of different creeds and sexual orientations living in fear and anxiety, your country’s economic inequality deepening along the way. But something worse could happen. In Venezuela, whole generations were split in two. A sense of shared culture was wiped out. Rhetoric took over our history books, our future, our own sense of self. We lost the freedom to be anything larger than cartoons.

This does not have to be your fate. You can be different. Recognize that you’re the enemy Trump requires. Show concern, not contempt, for the wounds of those who brought him to power. By all means, be patient with democracy and struggle relentlessly to free yourself from the shackles of the caricature the populists have drawn of you.

And his final words:

It’s a tall order. But the alternative is worse. Trust me.

#

The Opposite Of FDR's 1933 Inaugural Address About Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

After Trump's acceptance speech Thursday night, Meghan McCain tweeted that the GOP is dead. A few minutes later, Elizabeth Warren was Stephen Colbert's guest on The Late Show (video above) acknowledging that “People are angry, and they have good reasons to be angry. Incomes are flat, expenses are up, young people can’t make it through college without getting crushed by debt, seniors can’t stretch a Social Security check to cover food and rent. Let’s be really, really clear. Donald Trump does not have the answers." She told the CBS audience that she thought the Trump show "was the nastiest, most divisive convention that we've seen in half a century. That speech tonight, he sounded like some two-bit dictator of some country you couldn’t find on a map. He sounded like a dictator of a small country rather than a man who is running for the highest office of the strongest democracy on the face of the earth... What Donald Trump says is, ‘there’s a problem out there and what you have to understand is, it’s all about each other. What you need to be afraid of is every other American.'"

And it wasn't just cutting edge progressive Democrats, like Warren who noticed this. When Eric Cantor was the House Majority Leader, Rory Cooper was his communications director. Judging by his tweet Thursday evening while Trump was screaming, Cooper doesn't seem inspired, uplifted or impressed with the dark, angry speech either.

Unless you spend your days listening to Hate Talk Radio and Fox News, you probably didn't recognize the ugly, dystopian picture of America Trump created in his speech, hailing "himself as an American Caesar, sacrificing a life of private ease to enter the public arena and save a republic sunk in decadence, and betrayed by its corrupt and mendacious elites."

Trump, as a strongman populist, does not traffic in complexity. He described simple reasons for the country’s woes, based on the wickedness or stupidity of officials and liberal politicians, amounting to a government-wide “rollback of criminal enforcement.” As for illegal immigrants, he growled, they are being “released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources.” He named an “innocent young girl” killed by an illegal immigrant who had been released from custody, calling her “one more child to sacrifice on the altar of open borders.”

Repeating a signature policy that opponents call a fantastical lie, and adding new quasi-magical benefits that it would bring, Mr Trump proudly vowed to build: “a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.”

His Caesarism is not modest. He presents himself as a strongman saviour, with the unique combination of wealth, insider knowledge, adamantine toughness and compassion for the common man to sweep aside the rotten status quo, and stop the mighty from oppressing those who cannot defend themselves. “Nobody knows the system better than me,” he said, smirking and mugging at the thought of his corruption he has seen, before delivering the punchline: “Which is why I alone can fix it.”

In unscripted speeches at the rallies that carried him to the presidential nomination, Mr Trump became notorious for playing fast and loose with facts and for offering policies, such as an entry ban on Muslims, that threatened to shred the constitution. This speech in Cleveland was carefully, even at times brilliantly constructed, bearing the hallmark of skilled writers and well-honed legal minds who captured the essence of Trumpism, then buttressed it with cherry-picked statistics, polished anedotes and deft nods to the constraints of law.

...Once the red, white and blue balloons have dropped, and memories of an often chaotic and fractious convention fade, opponents starting with Mrs Clinton will pick over this policy and all the others in Mr Trump’s imperious, sweeping address. They will correctly note that his talk of restoring hope was mere gilding. Underneath this was a speech, and is a presidential campaign, built around thick beams and struts of fear, distrust and grievance. But it was skillful. Mrs Clinton should fear a Donald Trump whose demagoguery is so well-crafted.

This was a speech that contained its own pre-emptive strikes against critics, sceptics and fact-checkers. Mr Trump warned his supporters that-- though he and they saw chaos, despair and stupidity in high places with clear eyes-- vested interests in big business, big government and the establishment media would rush to tell them that they were wrong and foolish. Put another way, Mr Trump told his supporters that doubting him makes them dupes of the elites, while believing him uncritically is a mark of sophistication.

The Cleveland speech ended with a nifty, if not wholly truthful flourish. Mr Trump claimed that Mrs Clinton asks her supporters to recite a three-word loyalty pledge: “I’m With Her”. That is nonsense: the phrase is a Clinton campaign slogan found on bumper stickers, not in a blood oath. But Mr Trump offered a clever alternative. His pledge, he told the crowd and millions watching at home, is “I’m with you.” Still more simply, he went on: “I am your voice.”

Republican primary voters have already spoken by choosing Mr Trump as their presidential nominee. If in November a majority of general election voters hear their voice in Mr Trump’s words, it is not just the American republic will be changed forever. The world should fear this man who sells himself as a new Caesar.

Jon Schwarz, writing for The Intercept always pointed out how Trump and his speechwriters used fear to weaponize his dystopian message... and went back even earlier in history than Caesar: "Trump had just one message for Americans: Be afraid. You are under terrible threats from forces inside and outside your country, and he’s the only person who can save us. The scariest part is how Trump subtly but clearly has begun melding together violence against U.S. police and terrorism: 'The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities,' he said, 'threaten our very way of life.' This is the favorite and most dangerous message of demagogues across all space and time. After all, if we know our external enemies are deeply evil, and our internal enemies are somehow their allies, we can feel justified in doing anything at all to our internal enemies. That’s just logic...This use of fear to destroy democracy is so old that it’s described exactly in Plato’s Republic, written in Ancient Greece around 380 B.C. Tyranny, says Socrates in The Republic, is actually 'an outgrowth of democracy.' And would-be tyrants always in every instance claim to be shielding regular people from terrible danger: 'This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.' ... As The Republic explains, leaders like this inevitably end up 'standing up in the chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant absolute.' This is how liberty 'passes into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery.'"

Americans would do well to watch closely what the populist democratically elected in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is doing to his country just as Trump is building his own case. Trump has been constantly compared to Mussolini, Hitler and Putin for the last year. Not many Americans know who Erdogan is, but if they did, they would recognize Trump and Trumpism in full flower.

Yesterday David Brooks was again warning NY Times readers about a Trumpian dystopia, a world without rules-- "a world in which families are mowed down by illegal immigrants, in which cops die in the streets, in which Muslims rampage the innocents and threaten our very way of life, in which the fear of violent death lurks in every human heart. Sometimes in that blood-drenched world a dark knight arises. You don’t have to admire or like this knight. But you need this knight. He is your muscle and your voice in a dark, corrupt and malevolent world. Such has been the argument of nearly every demagogue since the dawn of time. Aaron Burr claimed Spain threatened the U.S in 1806. A. Mitchell Palmer exaggerated the Red Scare in 1919 and Joe McCarthy did it in 1950. And such was Donald Trump’s law-and-order argument in Cleveland on Thursday night. This was a compelling text that turned into more than an hour of humorless shouting. It was a dystopian message that found an audience and then pummeled them to exhaustion."

Brooks concluded with more warning: "This is less a party than a personality cult. Law and order is a strange theme for a candidate who radiates conflict and disorder. Some rich children are careless that way; they break things and other people have to clean up the mess."

How Authoritarianism, Elitism, Nationalism And Populism Are Playing Out In The Campaigns This Cycle

I snagged the above chart from a Washington Post analysis of authoritarianism in the 2016 presidential race by political science professors Wendy Rahn (University of Minnesota) and Eric Oliver (University of Chicago) earlier this month. Their point is that Cruz's supporters are even more enamored of authoritarianism (of a fascist nature) than Trump's fan boys are. Something outside of what the two professors are going on about, however, is what jumped out at me, namely that the only candidate running for president attracting supporters intellectually equipped and emotionally mature enough to make decisions about the race are-- you guessed it-- Bernie's.

Their definition of authoritarianism is standard-- a set of personality traits, as understood by political psychologists, that refers to a desire for order, clarity and stability. Authoritarians have little tolerance for deviance. They’re highly obedient to strong leaders. They scapegoat outsiders and demand conformity to traditional norms." Their childish definition of populism, on the other hand, is problematic and very much influenced by and rooted in a calcified establishment mindset. "Populism," they assert, "is a type of political rhetoric that casts a virtuous 'people' against nefarious elites and strident outsiders. Scholars measure populism in a variety of ways, but we focus on three central elements:

• Belief that a few elites have absconded with the rightful sovereignty of the people;
• Deep mistrust of any group that claims expertise;
• Strong nationalist identity

I pity their students if this kind of intellectual dishonesty is how they push their ideas in their classrooms. Their narrow, cherry-picked and high focussed definition of populism was invented solely to bolster their irrelevant and self-consciously contrarian theory about the origins of Trumpism. "Of course," they half apologize in case anyone with a three-digit IQ reads the Post these days, "authoritarians and populists can overlap and share dark tendencies toward nativism, racism and conspiracism. But they do have profoundly different perceptions of authority. Populists see themselves in opposition to elites of all kinds. Authoritarians see themselves as aligned with those in charge. This difference sets the candidates’ supporters apart."

Bonus chart

Their practically pre-determined conclusions are that "Trump voters are no more authoritarian than supporters of Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio," even less so than Cruz supporters and that "what really differentiates Trump’s voters from the other Republicans is the populism" (or at least their hostile and establishment-shaded definition of it). "Trump voters are the only ones to score consistently high on all three [of the professors'] populist dimensions. Cruz and Rubio’s supporters, for example, don’t express high feelings of anti-elitism. In fact, on this scale, they are strongly anti-populist, identifying with authority rather than rejecting it.

Trump supporters share anti-elitism with only one other group: Sanders’s voters.

But where Trump is a populist, we would argue that Sanders is not. Despite the fact that Sanders often gets called a populist, his voters do not conform to the populist stereotype. They generally trust experts and do not identify strongly as Americans. A better way to describe them would be cosmopolitan socialists. They see the system as corrupted by economic elites. But they don’t trust ordinary Americans and show only light attachment to Americanism as an identity.

Now, back to their chart and a look at how their data defines Bernie supporters in comparison with the 5 conservative candidates. Mindless nationalists will be most attracted to Trump and Rubio but wouldn't feel out of place backing Kasich, Hillary or Cruz. Only Bernie supporters reject the whole idea of mindless nationalism. Followers of Trump, Cruz and Rubio are anti-science freaks and mistrust experts (and education). Kasich supporters and Hillary supports aren't anti-expert but it is only Bernie supporters who strongly value expertise.

As for elitism, supporters of Rubio, Cruz, Kasich and Hillary are enthralled with elites. Bernie followers and, to a lesser extent, Trump followers reject elitism. That is the foundation of Bernie's political revolution as well as an underlying cause of the constant comparison between Bernie supporters and Trump fans. It also helps explain Hillary's hysterical reaction against Bernie's platform-- which combines outright rhetorical theft to twisted assertions of illegitimacy.

The voters who admire the authoritarian approach leaders flock to Cruz first and foremost, then it Trump and Rubio, less so to Hillary, still less than that to Kasich and the, of course, are on a different planet altogether from Bernie supporters.

One of the problems with electoral analysis this cycle is that the top candidates seem to be competing with each other from who can get away with the most lies and only two-- Bernie and Kasich-- seem old-fashioned enough to consider objective truth before speaking. Trump's rhetorical is unmoored from any sense of reality whatsoever and there is nothing he says than can be taken at face value. Cruz, Rubio and Clinton are professional political deceivers who actively work to mislead the people who listen to their speeches and answers to questions and who are wisely widely distrusted by voters who rate the 3 of them (+ the sociopathic Trump) as overwhelmingly dishonest and untrustworthy. Again, only Bernie and, to a lesser extent, Kasich are seen as honest and truthful. Historically, voters haven't selected presidents based on how they are perceived on a trust scale. I suspect that this year, though, if Hillary and Trump, two bold-faced liars who are believed by no one except their locked-in zombie followers, are the nominees, the final decisions of many voters will be based on which is the less egregious liar. I suspect the Clinton campaign is counting on that.

 

Something To Think About While Iowa Caucuses-- The Establishment Is Our Enemy

Hillary has tried to say she isn't part of the Establishment. That's insane and if you believe it, you should do the country a favor and not vote at all. This should be the year that voters from both parties are disgusted enough with that corrupt, self-serving Establishment to turn it out. Republican voters seem to understand the dynamic better than Democratic voters, even if their fake anti-Establishment candidate is a a degenerate and parasitic New York City billionaire.

Over the weekend, the NY Times published OpEds by Frank Bruni and Ross Douthat examining the spirituality behind the campaigns leading up to today's caucuses in Iowa. Douthat framed it as a revolt against decadence by the supporters of Herr Trumpf and Bernie. He finds voters angry, exhausted, disgusted and cynical with the Bushes and the Clintons and the rest of the blood-sucking establishment. Since most everything is pretty good-- employment, peace, Obamacare, the deficit, inflation, immigration, abortion-- he wonders aloud what's propelling the rise of the two outsider candidacies.

One answer might be that they’re fed up with exactly this-- the politics of “it could be worse,” of stagnation and muddling through. They aren’t revolting against abject failure, or deep and swift decline. They’re rebelling against decadence... [D]on’t just think about the word in moral or aesthetic terms. Think of it as a useful way of describing a society that’s wealthy, powerful, technologically proficient-- and yet seemingly unable to advance in the way that its citizens once took for granted. A society where people have fewer children and hold diminished expectations for the future, where institutions don’t work particularly well but can’t seem to be effectively reformed, where growth is slow and technological progress disappoints. A society that fights to a stalemate in its foreign wars, even as domestic debates repeat themselves without any resolution. A society disillusioned with existing religions and ideologies, but lacking new sources of meaning to take their place.

This is how many Americans, many Westerners, experience their civilization in the early years of the 21st century. And both Trump and Bernie Sanders, in their very different ways, are telling us that we don’t have to settle for it anymore.

With Trump, the message is crude, explicit, deliberately over the top. Make America Great Again. “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with the winning.”

But it resonates because the diagnosis resonates-- especially with older Americans, who grew up amid the post-World War II boom, the vaulting optimism of the space age, the years when big government and big business were seen as effective and patriotic rather than sclerotic and corrupt. Trump is offering nostalgia, but it’s not a true reactionary’s lament. He wants to take us back to a time when the future seemed great, amazing, fantastic.

Likewise Sanders... [who] is telling liberals, younger liberals especially, that the heroic age of liberalism isn’t over yet, that they can have a welfare state that’s far more amazing and fantastic than the one their forefathers constructed...

[B]oth men are promising the implausible or the impossible-- and the fact that Trump is openly contemptuous of our ragged republican norms-- is a reminder that there are worse things than decadence, grimmer possibilities for the future than drift and repetition.

The disappointment and impatience that people feel in a decadent era is legitimate, even admirable. But the envy of more heroic moments, the desire to just do something to prove your society’s vitality-- Invade Iraq to remake the Middle East! Open Germany’s borders! Elect Trump or Sanders president!-- can be a very dangerous sensibility.

There are pathways up from decadence. But there are more roads leading down.

Douthat, of course, is a ridiculous reactionary blockhead, clinging to the fringes of the media establishment himself, and incapable of the imagination it takes to break through the scenario he somehow managed to outline. Bruni, at least has an IQ capable of grappling with abstract and complex ideas as he examined the role of religion in the Iowa GOP campaign, what he painted as "an unsettling holy war," something many observers have been aghast to view in recent weeks. But "righteousness," he points out in regard to Cruz's pandering, "is a tricky business. It has a way of coming back to bite you."

Religion routinely plays a prominent part in political campaigns, especially on the Republican side, and always has an outsize role in Iowa, where evangelical Christians make up an especially large fraction of the Republican electorate.

But there was a particular edge to the discussion this time around. It reflected Trump’s surprising strength among evangelicals and his adversaries’ obvious befuddlement and consternation about that.

Cruz’s whole strategy for capturing the presidency hinges on evangelicals’ support, as Robert Draper details in the Times Magazine.

He rails against abortion rights and same-sex marriage in speeches that sound like sermons, with references to Scripture and invocations of God.

He ended a question-and-answer session with Iowans that I attended in a typical fashion, asking them to use the waning hours until the caucuses to pray.

...A super PAC supporting Mike Huckabee produced an ad for both radio and TV in which two women express doubts about Cruz’s commitment to Christian causes, saying that he speaks in one way to Iowans and in another to New Yorkers whose campaign donations he needs.



... It’s impossible to know the genuineness of someone’s faith. That’s among the reasons we shouldn’t grant it center stage.

Religion was integral to our country’s founding. It’s central to our understanding of the liberty that each of us deserves. But so are the principles that we don’t enshrine any one creed or submit anyone-- including those running for office-- to religious litmus tests.

So why does a Republican race frequently resemble such an exam?

The winner of the Iowa caucuses in 2012 was Rick Santorum, who put his Catholicism at the forefront of his campaign. The winner in 2008 was Mike Huckabee, a former evangelical pastor who never let you forget that.

To emerge victorious in 2016, several candidates are leaning hard on religion, hoping it’s an advantage over Trump.

But just as God is said to work in mysterious ways, religion is working in unexpected ways in this campaign. According to some national polls, more evangelicals back Trump than they do any other candidate.

That’s true although he’s on his third marriage; although he’s boasted of sexual conquests; although he went to the evangelical stronghold of Liberty University in 2012 and, in a rambling speech, mentioned the importance of prenuptial agreements; although he returned to Liberty University just weeks ago and revealed his inexperience in talking about the Bible by citing “two Corinthians” when anyone with any biblical fluency would have pronounced it “Second Corinthians.”

Liberty’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., went so far as to endorse Trump, a development that clearly galled Trump’s rivals and bolstered their resolve to prove that they’re the better Christians.

Jeb Bush questioned Trump’s faith. Marco Rubio kept going out of his way to extol his own.

...[A]t a rally, Rubio visibly brightened when a voter brought up faith and gave him an opportunity to expound on it.

“I pray for wisdom,” he said. “The presidency of the United States is an extraordinary burden and you look at some of the greatest presidents in American history. They were very clear. They were on their knees all the time asking for God, asking God for the wisdom to solve, for the strength to persevere incredible tests.”

That same image came up at the Cruz event during which Perry denigrated Trump. One of the speakers expressed joy at the thought of “a president who’s willing to kneel down and ask God for guidance as he’s leading our country.”

Cruz had declared such willingness in Iowa in November at an evangelical conference where a right-wing pastor talked about the death penalty for gay people and the need for candidates to accept Jesus as the “king of the president of the United States.”

“Any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander in chief of this country,” Cruz said then.

I’m less interested in whether a president kneels down than in whether he or she stands up for the important values that many religions teach-- altruism, mercy, sacrifice-- along with the religious pluralism that this country rightly cherishes. And while I agree that Trump is unfit for the Oval Office, Corinthians has nothing to do with it.

John Judis wrote at Vox over the weekend that Beltway elites better wake up and figure out what's motivating the Trumpf and Bernie voters. After pointing out that the 2 candidates differ dramatically on issue after issue, he writes that "both are critical of how wealthy donors and lobbyists dominate the political process, and both favor some form of campaign finance reform. Both decry corporations moving overseas for cheap wages and to avoid American taxes. Both reject trade treaties that favor multinational corporations over workers. And both want government more, rather than less, involved in the economy."

Sanders is a left-wing populist. He wants to defend the "collapsing middle class" against the "billionaire class" that controls the economy and politics. He is not a liberal who wants to reconcile Wall Street and Main Street, or a socialist who wants the working class to abolish capitalism.

Trump is a right-wing populist who wants to defend the American people from rapacious CEOs and from Hispanic illegal immigrants. He is not a conventional business conservative who thinks government is the problem and who blames America’s ills on unions and Social Security.

Both men are foes of what they describe as their party’s establishment. And both campaigns are also fundamentally about rejecting the way economic policy has been talked about in American presidential politics for decades.

...Businesses initially found useful allies in a Republican party that was bringing together local business, rural voters, and white working-class voters disillusioned with the Democrats. But as labor lost members and money, businesses also assumed a larger role in funding Democratic candidates.

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s single biggest bloc of contributions came from the employees of Goldman Sachs. And Clinton didn’t disappoint his funders when he named Goldman Sachs president Robert Rubin as the head of his new National Economic Council and later as Treasury secretary, where he championed bringing China into the World Trade Organization (even as it continued to manipulate its currency and saving rates to achieve trade surpluses) and the deregulation of the financial industry.

Business’s influence was magnified by a series of Supreme Court rulings-- handed down by a court whose members had been nominated by Republican presidents. It began in 1976, when the court’s decision in Buckley v. Valeo threw out the campaign finance reforms of 1971 and 1974, which had established limits on both total contributions and total spending, and has continued through Citizens United and McCutcheon, which repealed, in effect, a century-old restriction on corporate contributions. As a result, businesses and the very wealthy are able to use their financial advantage to sway both Republicans and Democrats on economic legislation that is important to them.



...Sanders, with his New Left pedigree, is a much more predictable foe of market liberalism among Democrats as well as Republicans. Until he ran for president, Sanders was an independent, not a Democrat. He has no endorsements from current senators or governors (even in his home state) and only two endorsements from House members. Some Democrats share some of his political ideas, but as a whole, what Sanders thinks runs counter to the prevailing ideology of the past three Democratic administrations.

Sanders still calls himself a socialist, although he has abandoned the Marxist conception of socialism as public ownership and control of the means of production. He also calls himself a progressive and was a founder of the House Progressive Caucus, but he is not exactly in the tradition of progressives or liberals. Progressives and liberals want to reconcile the competing demands of capital and labor.

Sanders is much more of a left-wing populist who sees a virtuous people arrayed against an establishment. Asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd why he thought he had no Senate endorsements, Sanders replied: "It tells me that we are taking on the political establishment, we're taking on the economic establishment, the financial interest in this country, and we're taking on the corporate establishment."

...Sanders, like Trump, takes positions on specific issues that put him at odds with market liberalism. His proposals, whether or not they are immediately feasible, challenge an approach that prioritizes the private market. He unblushingly favors huge government spending-- $1 trillion worth-- on infrastructure and would pay for that and for free public college tuition by tax hikes on speculation and the wealthy that Clinton, for one, opposes. He wants Medicare for all, which would mean eliminating private health insurers except as they might supplement government programs.

Sanders opposes trade agreements that he believes encourage American companies to invest overseas rather than at home, and wants to close tax loopholes that would allow "corporate deserters" to avoid American taxes. Like Trump, he promises to be tough on China. He wants to break up the biggest banks by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act that the Clinton administration and Congress repealed. And while he favors comprehensive immigration reform, he joins Trump in charging that the H-1B program, cherished by Silicon Valley Democrats, deprives Americans of jobs.

While Trump has financed his own campaign, Sanders, unlike Clinton, has relied on small donors and avoided PACs or Super PACs. He wants public funding of campaigns and promises to make overturning Citizens United a litmus test in a Supreme Court nomination. But the heart of his case against the current political arrangement comes in his call for "political revolution," which he regularly defines as "involving millions and millions of people in the political process today in a way that has never been the case before." Sanders is referring not simply to election turnout, but to the kind of popular presence between elections that could counter the power of the "billionaire class." Sanders’s view, however vague, is a call to reverse the oligarchic tendencies of the past decades. Only an organized movement from below could conceivably do that.

Sanders and Trump appeal to very different constituencies.

According to a January Pew poll, Trump’s voters tend on average (but not exclusively) to be white, male, older, without a college degree, and in the middle or lower-middle income quintile. They are the descendants of the white working-class Reagan Democrats who made possible-- but didn’t constitute the bulk of-- the Republican majorities of the past 35 years. As a new RAND survey has shown, Trump’s supporters are more likely to express resentments toward racial minorities and undocumented immigrants and to favor "progressive economic policies."

Sanders’s voters, on the other hand, tend to be younger, are attending or have graduated from college, and are in the upper-middle income quintile. There are signs of some blue-collar support, but for the most part Sanders’s supporters are more likely to be potential or existing professionals that as a group have played a similar role in Democratic majorities as the white working class in Republican majorities. In surveys, they currently tend to be white and male, but that is largely out of comparison with Hillary Clinton, who enjoys widespread support among women and minorities.

In New Hampshire, I found some voters who said they would support either Trump or Sanders, and some other reporters have come up with additional examples of potential crossover voters, but I don’t think at present the bulk of either candidate's voters would favor the other. The gulf on minorities, immigrants, climate change, and the general attitude toward women is too great. The Sanders and Trump constituencies are parts of a whole that doesn’t yet exist, but if it were to come into being it could potentially shake the foundations of present market liberal politics.

...What is happening to the United States and Western Europe now can be compared to what happened from the 1870s to the beginning of World War II. During this earlier period, capital and a laissez faire view of the economy initially reigned supreme, and, as Thomas Piketty has demonstrated, economic inequality grew apace, as it has over the past 40 years.

There were initial outbursts similar to those that the United States and Western Europe are experiencing now-- the populists and socialists in the United States, the socialist and Labour parties in Europe-- but they didn’t cohere into a powerful challenge until the decades after World War I and the onset of the Great Depression.

When they did come together, however, the challenge took two very different forms. In the United States, the breakdown of the old order led to the triumph of the New Deal on the left. In Europe, it resulted in the rise of fascism.