Now we know who to blame for Trump --SPOILER it's Obama!

[smock]

www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/from-obama-to-trump.html

From Obama to Trump

THE spectacle of the Republican Party’s Trumpian meltdown has inspired a mix of glee and fear among liberals — glee over their rivals’ self-immolation, and fear that what arises from the destruction will be worse.

What it hasn’t inspired is much in the way of self-examination, or a recognition of the way that Obama-era trends in liberal politics have helped feed the Trump phenomenon.

Such a recognition wouldn’t require letting the Republican Party off the hook. The Trump uprising is first and foremost a Republican and conservative problem: There would be no Trumpism if George W. Bush’s presidency hadn’t cratered, no Trumpism if the party hadn’t alternated between stoking and ignoring working-class grievances, no Trump as front-runner if the party leadership and his rivals had committed fully to stopping him before now.

But Trumpism is also a creature of the late Obama era, irrupting after eight years when a charismatic liberal president has dominated the cultural landscape and set the agenda for national debates. President Obama didn’t give us Trump in any kind of Machiavellian or deliberate fashion. But it isn’t an accident that this is the way the Obama era ends — with a reality TV demagogue leading a populist, nationalist revolt.

First, the reality TV element in Trump’s campaign is a kind of fun-house-mirror version of the celebrity-saturated Obama effort in 2008. Presidential politics has long had an escalating celebrity component, a cultish side that’s grown ever-more-conspicuous with time. But the first Obama campaign raised the bar. The quasi-religious imagery and rhetoric, the Great Man iconography and pillared sets, the Oprah endorsement and Will.i.am music video and the Hollywood stars pledging allegiance — it was presidential politics as one part Aaron Sorkin-scripted liturgy, one part prestige movie’s Oscar campaign.

And it worked. But because it worked, now we have the nearly-inevitable next step: presidential politics as a season of “Survivor” or, well, “The Apprentice,” with the same celebrity factor as Obama’s ’08 run, but with his campaign’s high-middlebrow pretensions stripped away. If Obama proved that you can run a presidential campaign as an aspirational cult of personality, in which a Sarah Silverman endorsement counts for as much as a governor or congressman’s support, Trump is proving that you don’t need Silverman to shout “the Aristocrats!” and have people eat it up.

He’s also proving, in his bullying, overpromising style, that voters are increasingly habituated to the idea of an ever more imperial presidency — which is also a trend that Obama’s choices have accelerated. Having once campaigned against his predecessor’s power grabs, the current president has expanded executive authority along almost every dimension: launching wars without congressional approval, claiming the power to assassinate American citizens, and using every available end-around to make domestic policy without any support from Congress.

In the process, he’s cut the legs from under principled liberal critiques of executive power, and weakened the American left’s role as a bulwark against Caesarism. Which makes it altogether fitting — if deeply unfortunate — that his reward is the rise of a right-wing Caesarist whose authoritarian style and outrageous promises makes George W. Bush look like Cato the Younger.

And that Caesarist, crucially, is rallying a constituency that once swung between the parties, but that the Obama White House has spent the last eight years slowly writing off. Trump’s strongest supporters aren’t archconservatives; they’re white working-class voters, especially in the Rust Belt and coal country, who traditionally leaned Democratic and still favor a strong welfare state.

These voters had been drifting away from the Democratic Party since the 1970s, but Obama has made moves that effectively slam the door on them: His energy policies, his immigration gambits, his gun control push, his shift to offense on same-sex marriage and abortion. It was possible to be a culturally conservative skeptic of mass immigration in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton. Not so anymore.

Of course this process has been a two-way street, as bigotry inclined some of these voters against Obama from the start, or encouraged them to think the worst of him eventually. And political coalitions shift all the time: There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Obama White House’s decision that a more ethnically diverse and thoroughgoingly liberal coalition held more promise than continued efforts to keep Reagan Democrats in the fold. (Though Democrats in Congress and statehouses might be forgiven for doubting the decision.)

But liberalism still needs to reckon with the consequences. As in Europe, when the left gives up on nationalism and lets part of its old working class base float away, the result is a hard-pressed constituency unmoored from either party, and nursing well-grounded feelings of betrayal.

Hence Marine Le Pen and the nationalist parties of Europe. And hence, now, Donald Trump.

He is the Republican Party’s monster, yes. But what he represents is also part of the Obama legacy — a nemesis for liberal follies as well as conservative corruptions, and a threat to both traditions for many years to come.

[mrsukyankee]

Okay. Sure.

[smock]

[eclaires]

I think, to a degree, this is true. The Democratic party as the world has evolved was always going to lose that group of voters if Republicans were still courting that element. And they are.

I don't really think it's anyone's fault, because it was inevitable with forward progress in this country. I'm sure this will piss some people off, but some of the most bigoted and ignorant people I know are people who, at one point, identified as Democrats and are working class white people.

It's why the parties don't really make any sense. They both have had elements at odds with other parts of their party/platform. I think the Republicans are worse at this point, because they aren't actually even fiscal conservatives or small government. But you have a party that claims they want to stay out of your business, but are all up in people's private lives. It's mind boggling. We need a realignment, I think, but I hope the country doesn't do the worst and elect Trump in the meantime.

[jeaniebueller]

You can't look at the way that Obama has acted during his residency in a vacuum. He had the do nothing Congress to contend with, who made it very clear they had no intentions on negotiating, no intentions on passing a balanced budget, and fully intended on obstructing anything Obama did. And why did they act that way to the President? Gee, I wonder why. Basically, they made it A-ok to disrespect him in every way, even during his state of the union speech, paving the way for the Cruz'z and Trumps and palins.

[CallingAllAngels]

Mar 1, 2016 9:32:29 GMT -5 eclaires said:

I think, to a degree, this is true. The Democratic party as the world has evolved was always going to lose that group of voters if Republicans were still courting that element. And they are.

I don't really think it's anyone's fault, because it was inevitable with forward progress in this country. I'm sure this will piss some people off, but some of the most bigoted and ignorant people I know are people who, at one point, identified as Democrats and are working class white people.

It's why the parties don't really make any sense. They both have had elements at odds with other parts of their party/platform. I think the Republicans are worse at this point, because they aren't actually even fiscal conservatives or small government. But you have a party that claims they want to stay out of your business, but are all up in people's private lives. It's mind boggling. We need a realignment, I think, but I hope the country doesn't do the worst and elect Trump in the meantime.

Nate Silver tweeted this a few days ago, which I thought was interesting: 

If this is true, seems like we are overdue for a shake-up.  

[ESF]

Mar 1, 2016 9:32:29 GMT -5 eclaires said:

I think, to a degree, this is true. The Democratic party as the world has evolved was always going to lose that group of voters if Republicans were still courting that element. And they are.

I don't really think it's anyone's fault, because it was inevitable with forward progress in this country. I'm sure this will piss some people off, but some of the most bigoted and ignorant people I know are people who, at one point, identified as Democrats and are working class white people.

It's why the parties don't really make any sense. They both have had elements at odds with other parts of their party/platform. I think the Republicans are worse at this point, because they aren't actually even fiscal conservatives or small government. But you have a party that claims they want to stay out of your business, but are all up in people's private lives. It's mind boggling. We need a realignment, I think, but I hope the country doesn't do the worst and elect Trump in the meantime.

I think most of the piece is a huge stretch, and offensive at times. But I agree that certain features of the Obama administration the nail in the coffin for the white working class that's been slowly moving out of the Democratic Party. That said, this would have happened even if Obama was never elected, it was merely just a question of time.



As for realignment, yup. The Nate Silver piece is great.

[ESF]

Mar 1, 2016 9:43:47 GMT -5 CallingAllAngels said:

Mar 1, 2016 9:32:29 GMT -5 eclaires said:

I think, to a degree, this is true. The Democratic party as the world has evolved was always going to lose that group of voters if Republicans were still courting that element. And they are.

I don't really think it's anyone's fault, because it was inevitable with forward progress in this country. I'm sure this will piss some people off, but some of the most bigoted and ignorant people I know are people who, at one point, identified as Democrats and are working class white people.

It's why the parties don't really make any sense. They both have had elements at odds with other parts of their party/platform. I think the Republicans are worse at this point, because they aren't actually even fiscal conservatives or small government. But you have a party that claims they want to stay out of your business, but are all up in people's private lives. It's mind boggling. We need a realignment, I think, but I hope the country doesn't do the worst and elect Trump in the meantime.

Nate Silver tweeted this a few days ago, which I thought was interesting: 

If this is true, seems like we are overdue for a shake-up.  

He's got a full article.

fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-assume-conservatives-will-rally-behind-trump/

[ladybug2002]

Mar 1, 2016 9:32:29 GMT -5 eclaires said:

I'm sure this will piss some people off, but some of the most bigoted and ignorant people I know are people who, at one point, identified as Democrats and are working class white people.

This is absolutely true. I am originally from southern Indiana and although a large portion of the people I know from there vote democrat, they are horribly racist and actually probably agree with 99% of the shit that comes of Trump's mouth. I'm pretty sure the only thing that actually keeps them Dem is the fact that they are blue collar union employees.

Anyway, I've seen this several times in FB comments, that it's Obama's fault Trump is so popular... which I guess it is, only because the Republican Party has been stoking this fire and turning him into something to fear from day one. It makes me sick.

[eclaires]

Mar 1, 2016 10:09:54 GMT -5 ESF said:

Mar 1, 2016 9:32:29 GMT -5 eclaires said:

I think, to a degree, this is true. The Democratic party as the world has evolved was always going to lose that group of voters if Republicans were still courting that element. And they are.

I don't really think it's anyone's fault, because it was inevitable with forward progress in this country. I'm sure this will piss some people off, but some of the most bigoted and ignorant people I know are people who, at one point, identified as Democrats and are working class white people.

It's why the parties don't really make any sense. They both have had elements at odds with other parts of their party/platform. I think the Republicans are worse at this point, because they aren't actually even fiscal conservatives or small government. But you have a party that claims they want to stay out of your business, but are all up in people's private lives. It's mind boggling. We need a realignment, I think, but I hope the country doesn't do the worst and elect Trump in the meantime.

I think most of the piece is a huge stretch, and offensive at times. But I agree that certain features of the Obama administration the nail in the coffin for the white working class that's been slowly moving out of the Democratic Party. That said, this would have happened even if Obama was never elected, it was merely just a question of time.



As for realignment, yup. The Nate Silver piece is great.

It wouldn't have mattered who was elected in 2008, I don't think.  I think the future was set that it would be a D in 2008, and we'd see movement left across the board.  These people would always have been left behind by the D party, no matter what.  Maybe it was quicker than we all expected - I do think some things happened faster than people anticipated, which is good, IMO; however it may have fueled some of the anger we see.  But beyond that, this was inevitable.

[eclaires]

Mar 1, 2016 10:21:21 GMT -5 ladybug2002 said:

Mar 1, 2016 9:32:29 GMT -5 eclaires said:

I'm sure this will piss some people off, but some of the most bigoted and ignorant people I know are people who, at one point, identified as Democrats and are working class white people.

This is absolutely true. I am originally from southern Indiana and although a large portion of the people I know from there vote democrat, they are horribly racist and actually probably agree with 99% of the shit that comes of Trump's mouth. I'm pretty sure the only thing that actually keeps them Dem is the fact that they are blue collar union employees.

Anyway, I've seen this several times in FB comments, that it's Obama's fault Trump is so popular... which I guess it is, only because the Republican Party has been stoking this fire and turning him into something to fear from day one. It makes me sick.

I'm from southern Indiana too, but very near Louisville, so I know a mixture of both - true Dems and Dems who I am like...uh?  Also, Republicans who make me tilt my head.  It's kind of a weird area, really, but I don't think it's that unique, which is probably why Trump is so popular, unfortunately.  My social circle and family there are also all Catholic which also influences some voting behavior (split between those who are pro life and vote that way and those that are very social justice-y liberal).  My generation leans more towards the latter, but there are a few that I am always blown away that we had the same education and influences.  

[ladybug2002]

Mar 1, 2016 10:28:48 GMT -5 eclaires said:

Mar 1, 2016 10:21:21 GMT -5 ladybug2002 said:

This is absolutely true. I am originally from southern Indiana and although a large portion of the people I know from there vote democrat, they are horribly racist and actually probably agree with 99% of the shit that comes of Trump's mouth. I'm pretty sure the only thing that actually keeps them Dem is the fact that they are blue collar union employees.

Anyway, I've seen this several times in FB comments, that it's Obama's fault Trump is so popular... which I guess it is, only because the Republican Party has been stoking this fire and turning him into something to fear from day one. It makes me sick.

I'm from southern Indiana too, but very near Louisville, so I know a mixture of both - true Dems and Dems who I am like...uh?  Also, Republicans who make me tilt my head.  It's kind of a weird area, really, but I don't think it's that unique, which is probably why Trump is so popular, unfortunately.  My social circle and family there are also all Catholic which also influences some voting behavior (split between those who are pro life and vote that way and those that are very social justice-y liberal).  My generation leans more towards the latter, but there are a few that I am always blown away that we had the same education and influences.  

It sounds like we have very similar experiences, though we we were closer to Evansville/Owensboro.... also all Catholic.  It's entertaining to me to watch their Facebook activity, because while one will share some "take back America" meme today, tomorrow it will be a pro-social justice post.  I know at least a few of them are supporting Trump at this point though, which just pisses me off.