The phenomenon of Trump support

Some seem to support Trump because he perfectly encapsulates their anger. They're angry at immigrants, at Muslims, at leaders who are 'losers,' at Obamacare, at Obama, at George Bush, etc. These supporters love it when Trump insults others. Maybe they are rage addicts, and he's their daily dose.

Then were are others who feel Trump is on their side, at least somewhat, and won't sell them out as so many other politicians have--making promises and not delivering for them and their class. I don't know why they think Trump will be different except that he's already rich, and therefore won't sell them out to become richer. He says he won't do that, but what makes it more believable from him than from countless others?

I don't totally understand the attraction Trump has for the second group, though I grasp it a bit. There is certainly reason to doubt that the GOP will follow through on their promises, especially promises to make the economy better for the little guy. The GOP has provided much more constituent service to business owners who want to keep wages and benefits low. They've done it by opposing more regulation, mandatory health insurance, and by not working toward enforcement of immigration law. The GOP helps businesses on labor issues (with de facto support of immigrant labor) by reneging on implicit promises to and screwing over the little guy wage earner. And the GOP has chosen the business guy again and again.

So I get Trump's popularity. I'm not sure what Trump means for the future of the Republican party. It's not surprising if the GOP business elite is finally losing control. They've let blowhard talk radio jocks be the spokesmen and missionaries, and maybe they're finally going to pay the price for that.

Or possibly they'll just pay a short-term price until things go back to normal:

...it would be better to effectively rent the party to Mr. Trump for four months this fall, through the general election, than risk turning it over to Mr. Cruz for at least four years, as either the president or the next-in-line leader for the 2020 nomination.

What an excellent insight, though it may not be true. Maybe that's a third way Trump is attractive. In a no-win situation, he'll do less harm than the other potential nominees. He'll let those in the mines blow off some steam, and then will fade away as quickly as Mondale did.

Perhaps there's even another way he is attractive, captured by this quote: "I can’t stand Trump, but I love what he’s doing." And what is he doing that is exciting or admirable? Maybe it's calling out all the political hypocrites (except himself, of course). There are lots to be called out, and it's good that someone is doing it. However, that attraction isn't going to last because the seams in his own ideas will begin to fray with all his vigorous denunciations of all the rest of those hypocrites. How will it happen and how soon? Damned if I know. But it'll be exciting to watch.

Image: dailymail.co.uk

Extras. Great reads about Trump: Is Trump disproving the theory that the party decides? If so, how and why is it happening? (From Nate Silver.) The GOP has no intelligence on Trump because they are completely cut off from his supporters. That's a risky position to be in. A sampling of readers of Dreher, many of who are religious, and why even they like the philandering, foul-mouthed gambling czar.

Messy post-mortem of the 2014 election

I was going to call this post "Learn or lose," but I'm not so sure what the lessons are. My first thought is that the Dems actually have to follow through on their sensible rhetoric about sensible budget restraint. They also have to pay attention to developments like the immigration crisis and how it changes public opinion.

Obstruct = Win ??

But perhaps the lesson from the election is that the GOP can obstruct, be irresponsible and uncooperative, not offer any sound alternatives, and they can still win. That's the message from this progressively-biased writer. If it's true that the GOP can get away with such behavior, what exactly can the Dems do about it? They've been messaging about the GOP obstructing non-stop for 6 years. That's an incredibly direct, simple message, backed up by loads of evidence, yet it made no difference in this election.

Incompetence = Lose ??

So pointing out the flaws of the GOP didn't help the Dems. Did the GOP win because it was able to make a coherent attack on the Dems? Perhaps to a certain extent. Obama's popularity has dropped into the low 40's, being especially hurt by the incompetence of the ACA roll-out. Obama hasn't been able to demonstrate strong problem-solving since. Conflicts in foreign countries have ramped up. It's not Obama's fault, but he didn't prevent or solve them. He didn't get to be the hero by quickly dealing with an Ebola outbreak here because we didn't have one. His reaction to the immigration crisis was to 1) ask for money, and 2) punt on his announced "big change" in immigration policy. Just what problem has Obama solved in the last 9 months? It's no wonder his popularity is stuck below neutral.

The Electorate is just plain tired ??

However, the popularity of the GOP in Congress is even lower. So how did they win? It could be that GOP voters were energized and went to the polls, while Dems were demoralized and stayed home. This often happens six years into a presidency. It happened in 2006, less so in 1986 (when Reagan remained popular) or in 1998 (when the electorate punished the GOP for its impeachment follies).

So in the absence of either party looking good, the out-party fared better because people blamed the in-party. Perhaps that's the explanation. Of course some die-hard progressives are again saying the president was too accommodating, and the Democrats will actually do better as a smaller, more ideological congressional caucus.

I disagree. I doubt there's a single shred of evidence that Democrats fare better at the polls when they're more liberal. Most of the evidence shows otherwise, including the long drought between 1968 and 1991 when only one Democrat was elected president.

Image: dailymail.co.uk

Extras. Some exit polling numbers and analysis. Most interesting numbers: 45% didn't think the election was a referendum on Obama. A surprising number of people who are neutral or somewhat opposed to the Tea Party voted Republican. The Tea Party wasn't the boogeyman that it had been in 2012. Dems couldn't successfully run against Tea Party as they did in 2012.

Short: Political overreach ... in Egypt

"After Mr. Morsi persuaded the military to yield him full powers last August, he and his Brotherhood allies increasingly operated as though his narrow electoral victory gave them a mandate to override their civilian opposition." -- New York Times article [emphasis added]

Gosh, where have we seen that before?

Short: Why I'm writing more about the GOP

I struggle to write about the Democratic side of the political equation lately. Their positions and proposals are so stale that I just roll my eyes and shut down: sure, more spending on education! Too bad we haven't figured out how to reduce our $800 billion deficit a little bit more before we add on a few wishlist items.

The latest disappointment: Senator Tom Harkin, an unreformed tax-and-spend liberal, is repeating that the government doesn't have "a spending problem." Almost all Dems wisely stopped saying that in August 2011, but some are trotting it back out. With nearly $3T in spending each year, $17T in debt, and a bumper crop of retirees on the way, we absolutely have a spending problem that we better do something about. (By the way, this news item came to my attention via the conservative blogosphere. MSM FAIL, again.) I don't know when I'll hear something realistic from a Democrat again. Maybe when they finally propose a budget that can get 51 votes in the Senate, then they'll return to fiscal reality. Obviously I'm not holding my breath.

The GOP, at least some of them, are grappling with budgets and electoral fallout. They're the ones who acknowledge that the sequester will happen.

It's glaringly obvious that either of the political parties can lose sight of reality and start believing that their spin is truth. The Dems went from triple crown winner in 2008 to half-lame handicapped donkey in 2010. The GOP got punished in 2012. Won't someone learn from these last three years? If you go too far from  sensible, centrist policies, the American electorate is ready to slap you down. Please, dammit, learn this!

Image: epicureanddealmaker.blogspot.com

The consequences of political overreach

In an earlier post, I wrote about how political parties have become aggregates of "intense policy demanders" (an idea that isn't mine originally, but sounds like a good description of the current situation). This post is about a corollary to that thesis. The information also comes from a news outlet, this time NPR.

According to the NPR piece (worth its 11 minutes), the US is in a cycle of political overreach and backlash. This is how it works:

• The electorate becomes distinctly unhappy with the way the government is working.
• They vote one party (the one held less to blame) into power in a wave election.
• The winning party mistakes its election for a mandate. Or maybe it willfully misreads the election as a mandate.
• The newly powerful party listens to its "intense policy demanders" (we can call them screamers) and enacts or tries to enact too extreme a program.
• The electorate becomes distinctly unhappy with that party, and the cycle repeats, but with the former "in" party now out.

The problem is political overreach. The electorate wants moderate, well-functioning government without drama, but the party is pushed by (or full of) screamers. The agenda of these screamers provokes electoral repudiation.

One final point in the report. The swings in election results are speeding up. There was an electoral change favoring Republicans in 1994. The Republicans became stronger through 5 more elections until the pendulum started swinging back in 2006 towards the Democrats. In 2010, just 2 elections later, the pendulum swung again back towards the Republicans. We don't know yet whether the 2012 election will bring greater strength to the Republicans, or another shift in the pendulum.

The pendulum is changing directions so frequently because of obstruction. To remove obstruction, you need undivided government, but that also opens the door to the screamers in the party in power. Until one party or the other figures out how to restrain its screamers, we are trapped in this Catch -22. 

If one of the parties could stake out the middle ground, it could hold onto power for quite a while, unless boredom is part of the reason for the electoral turnovers (and that's a possibility).

Political reboot

Is that what's happening now? Everyone hit the Off button one day after the debt ceiling was passed. Now the political supercomputer is starting back up, but with some strange, unexpected new programming whirring around inside.

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I wrote that last night, and then came across this thesis:

The perception of how Washington handled the debt ceiling negotiation led to an immediate collapse of confidence in government and all the major players, including President Obama and Republicans in Congress....

We are entering a new phase of the American political dialogue that has been irrevocably shifted in a way that will prove difficult to predict.

Historically, though, this type of deep voter anger, unease, and economic pessimism leads to unstable and unpredictable political outcomes.

This is from the report by a Republican pollster. The collapse in confidence is both political and economic, and they have the potential to create a feedback loop that resembles a tornado. It's the secret knowledge that explains the odd behavior of Eric Cantor.

To show how different the political atmosphere is this week, compare it to last week's admittedly thin political news: the Repubs were floating some balloons about letting the 2% Social Security payroll tax cut lapse. Jim DeMint was blaming the nefarious media for the Tea Party's loss in standing. Same old, same old.

Now, Eric Cantor is trying to be cordial and welcoming. Take that as a weather warning, and check frequently for updates.

Photo:extremechasing.com