Books on Populism

For a year or two I've looked at books on populism that did not go to one or the other side, supporting populists or at least populism as beneficial or then going full anti Trump. This Moffitt book so far has been the only one, even from academia. It only goes to 2016. The tea party movement is well described, birthers and anti Obama feel bubbling under. Trump is not covered, as the book focuses mostly on Europe and Latin America and does not go past 2016. Sarah Palin makes a brief appearance.

Populism is not always active in day to day politics, but occasionally will color the entire year with shades of discontent. This happened with the banking crisis 2008. Somebody was doing terrible things. They have to be held accountable!

A paragraph will explain more on the scope of this book.

It's quite readable, and the first page of text captures quite well the views of the populist right: the elites and unelected bureaucrats are running "our" country, so they are angry. It gives good historical background. The chapter on populism and democracy catalogs the academic views on populism, positive and negative. From the negative side, it is pointed out that in elections the populist parties may be large parties, even larger than the other two or three if we are in Europe. The populist leaders and their followers always seem to subjugate the other parties and any minority groups to their rules.

One thing that got pointed out is that like everything in the world of the Internet and media, even popular movements might not be genuine, but manipulated from the very start.

Other authors seemed to be too happy with populism as a force. This book does describe what happened in recent times, but with not much criticism. The chapter titled Protest in the Age of Populism is worth reading. Covers grass roots activism, which on the right got funded by the Koch brothers.

Anne Applebaum covers Brexit and Europe well but not so much the US. Her examples are from the 1970s.

Protest in the 2020s

The tens of millions of people that voted for Trump and the equally large group that attended his rallies are used to togetherness at events, and even anger. But protest is alien to most of the group. And even expressing what they felt was difficult. When they heard "the election was stolen," that was easy enough to repeat to reporters. Conspiracy phrases were also popular. They would remember phrases from Tucker Carlson as well. In fact Tucker was probably the needed fuel to get Trump going in 2016. He convinced them the "liberal elites" and unelected bureaucrats should not be running the country.

I'm reading some books on the 1968 Chicago convention, Vietnam war and the 70s popular trends.
It struck me how different the protest is from the left and the right. We had the truckers protesting the Covid lock downs, but other than that, the protest from the MAGA folks was at Trump rallies. There were some major events with armed Proud Boys and so on, but the majority of the events were in the safe confines of some building or outdoor event center. There was parking! Vietnam protesters did not need cars or parking.

The same restrained attitude to protest came up with the BLM protests. The black people protesting were all "looters and criminals" according to MAGA.

It's all sanitized to give a safe family type of protest for them. No thought involved, even the signs they held ups were printed by Trump. Jordan Klepper was able to get something more out of the Trump supporters on the grounds of the events, but the issues still tended to fall in the conspiracy theories and the stolen election.

The people in the Trump rallies would discuss the conspiracies, election denial and other Trump claims, but not anything serious as far as politics, mainly things they were taught to be outraged about. If you would ask them about what sort of things government is necessary for, how do we spend tax money, and that sort of thing, they would not have much to say. Or they would come right out and say "government is spending on minorities." Obama tried to explain how most government programs benefit us all. But this benefit of government is quite vague in the minds of MAGA republicans. You could only demonstrate the benefit by cutting it off for a few years. Much of spending is also long term planning and support, so the systems supported might run ten years or more before much deterioration. The Cincinnati bridge is an example.

The political scientists would say that the questions need to be more anonymous. I would say that the majority of Trump voters still believe in "deep state" and the elites running everything. But they only need to hint at this and not say it directly. They are racists, and this includes Jews as a target. Just a few words leak out, like "Jewish space lasers" and the crowd will know who to blame. The establishment.

A Jewish journalist comments: Apparently, according to Greene, “Rothschild Inc” started the fires using a space laser, and its goal was to clear the way for a high-speed rail project.

You can read the entire bonkers tirade on Media Matters. 

The violence did appear but those were basically young men with nothing to do, libertarians, not the white working class that Trump captured.

Separate from the MAGA protests, the anti-abortion movement has always been public.

Puzzling Trends and Minority Rule

Support for Democrats and Republicans fluctuates wildly from president to president. I am always surprised at the number of people going back and forth between elections and midterm results. Both Clinton and Obama lost a lot of votes and the house at the midterm of their first four years. I am led to think that voting is mostly a gut feel thing. Short slogans and TV ads are a big influence. "But her emails." Voters have to like a candidate in some manner, policy never wins an election.

The Republicans have been the minority party for a while, though they occasionally get more votes than Democrats in a mid term election. That may be more to do with who shows up to vote. That is part of their strategy, to control access to voting. And also in general, they have a good number of states under control. The governors may decide future elections, if vote counts are close, and we continue using the Electoral College.

Ballot initiatives even in Republican states like Kansas and Kentucky have provided protection for abortion rights. Of course the state legislatures in red states have moved to block ballot initiatives. You can do this by demanding so many signatures in every county, for example. And other legal tricks.

The general trend over decades, with voters in urban areas, is toward the liberal end. The tolerance view, as opposed to white Christian nationalists. People are influenced by family and may tend to drift toward the views of the parents when they get past forty.

But there is now evidence that the millennials do not change to conservatives as they age. They may even have fewer children and continue to be the same liberals they were when they were 20.

So the trend may be toward the Democrats here. However, since Trump packed the court with conservatives, that may be a major factor holding back the millennials for another 20 years. A disturbing trend came up with Title 42 which is essentially a presidential tool to control health hazards and the movement of people in a pandemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_Service_Act

Gorsuch dissented, explaining how it is not even their job.

In a dissenting opinion, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the "current border crisis is not a COVID crisis. And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort."

 

The Supreme Court and the US Constitution

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

While we plough through multiple elections, it will be the Supreme Court that lays out the topics for the next 8-12 years. Most of our government has run smoothly for the last 50 years. The departments that run are not listed in the constitution, but it does allow the president to employ assistants. These have turned into the bureaucratic cabinets. The defense side is rather safe, but many other cabinets are not legal (or at least not required) by the constitution. These two guys...

...will lead the effort. The Tenth Amendment (see top) will be heavily used. Based on this one amendment, the court will go on to strip the government of many powers. We can have federal income tax. But Social Security is rather iffy if you take the 10th amendment word for word.

Republicans in congress will simply allow the social security funds to run out. Then it is a simple matter to scrap the law as well.

There is a brief mention of "the people," but this people is pretty much going to be the people as part of a state. The people nationwide will not be considered having rights.

The abortion...sort of...election

 I was clicking around The Onion when a link from there caught my attention. it was a site called the Root. There was an article on the election with some numbers and a LOT of comments.

THE ROOT: ABORTION

A few screen shots of the comments will give you an idea of the anger.

2022 and 2024 elections

We are all quite anxious about the election. I think it will be a sort of non-event when we are over it. There may be recounts but we are still not in the full Trumpian era, where states reverse results. That will be more in the electoral count system in 2024.

But we will only enjoy our sigh of relief about two weeks. Once all the dust settles we will have the Trump 2024 campaign announcement. And if we get Trump on Twitter, you will get an endless stream of Trump news for two years. And whatever the result of the election...it will not stop Trump. He has one more chance to be relevant, 2024. After 2024...whew...Trump is quickly forgotten.

In 2024, he will lose, as the repeat of the 2016 election is unlikely. His unpopularity will be worse than Biden's as legal cases mount. All we have to do to win is...not run Biden. Democrats should see this and Biden himself needs to do a little something. He can promote someone when we have a likely candidate. And for those politicians, someone has to go first. A few more will then follow. [Added note 2023: this did not happen by 2023. Now it is a bit late for Biden to pull out. Also, name recognition needs more time, so a candidate not Biden has little chance to jump in during 2024]

Sorry folks , that is how it goes.  Find a hobby for two years, travel, start exercising, anything! I am posting a President Niinistö picture. He is the symbol of all of us.

Trump is expected to announce running in 2024 a few days after the election. This is actually sensible, unlike the chaotic Trump camp, in that there is a window here. Waiting to 2023 looks "weak" in trump terminology. He no longer needs to support candidates for revenge, as he did this year. All the money goes to promote himself now. By campaign finance rules. Trump's popularity is 41%. In 2016 Gallup had him at 36% on election day. But he got some 30% of the voters who viewed both Trump and Clinton as unfavorable. So we don't really know anything about 2024 yet.

AND HERE WE GO

TRUMP WILL BURN IT DOWN

Update: The Big Lie has died. This was the end:

My prediction for 2024:

The end of the populist's career: I think that Trump as a whole will not interest a large part of the people in the 2024 election. Democrats and independents don't care how Trump did in 2020, and this is Trump's only theme. That he has suffered injustice. The whole of 2016 was a matter of white old people feeling that they had somehow been marginalized in the 2016 election. Trump ran a campaign against foreigners and people of color. Now the whole campaign is Trump himself. Sympathies ran out in this 2022 election.

Election ads work like Prevagen ads

The main feature is repetition. The main target is seniors. They go to church, they go to vote, out of duty.

When they are at the voting booth they vote mostly from tradition: the same party. But if there are options, then the thing that comes to mind is the TV ad. Name recognition is most important. After that gut feel. If they heard the candidate speak, they mostly made up their mind on how the person spoke. Not what they said, just the personality and the tone of voice. The way you sell mattresses and Prevagen is how you sell candidates.

A minor second point comes into play if there is still some hesitation, such as in a primary election. There you have to get that person watching TV to identify the candidate as part of "us." It does not matter if the candidate is Democrat of republican, they still have to make a bond of sorts with the voter. Trump was good at this, as his thinking is so simplified that he did not need to prove any point with any facts or numbers, just identify voters (white folks) as us and the enemy (foreigners) as the other people who are not us. "They are threatening our way of life!"

Democrats: simplify the message! This is good:

The Trump Florida case before Aileen Cannon

A lot of people do not understand what the legal case is. Trumpsters seem to think Trump is being charged with something and "can't have the papers to look at to see what the charges are." He was never charged. He sued the US to get his documents back. Before he is charged with anything.
Trump's filing:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA WEST PALM BEACH DIVISION CASE NO. 22-CV-81294-CANNON DONALD J. TRUMP, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Defendant.

Here is the top of the first page.

The  document contains a lot of complaints, grievances and a claim that the president has a right to some records of his presidency.

The last page ends with:

The claim there is to have all his personal papers back immediately, and also to lock up the entire lot so that the FBI cannot look at it, before the Special Master and the Trump team go through it page by page. By November, as it stands.

Trump has no claim whatsoever to any classified documents. Even if he declassified them (he did not) they are still government property. DOJ response explains this.

The entire procedure is a delaying tactic. The FBI does not normally need to return items in an active case from a crime scene, until the crime has been in court. The Judge Cannon case is not the criminal case. It is a grievance case. Mainly based on presidential powers and the Fourth Amendment.

"The Government Does Not Produce Anything"

 I've looked for books that summarize the hatred of the federal government, without finding exactly what I'm looking for. In the Trump era, populists have been vocal opponents of pretty much everything the government does. Lauren Boebert could not vote for the infrastructure bill because....I don't know. Some amendment she found objectionable.  the bill passed. She goes back to Colorado explaining how she will then direct some of that money to Colorado projects.

We then come to the problem of what does the government do? According to some guy a few years back, running for the senate with cowboy hat on, "the government does not produce anything." He on the other hand produces things. We should not tax him, so he could make more things. Making things is wealth. Taxing and spending is not.

Obama tried to explain it. Mr. Cowboy would not be making ANY things if it were not for government at various levels. The city (as well as the state)  is the most essential. it taxes and builds roads and such.

The only book that I have found to explain the role of government is this:

Of course the Trump  MAGA folk will never read it. They are angry and no book will change their mind. Life changed in the past 40 years. Somebody is to blame. Must be Democrats and the federal government. All those regulations! Soon they will ban gas and oil! Wind power will only work during the day! All that. None of that changed the life of the working poor yet. What changed was wages and the corporate world. Jobs going abroad pushed most of them into service jobs at minimum wage.

It's a ridiculously simplified view of the world. I completely understand the pride people have in doing their own things free of rules and regulations and even support. They want to feel proud of what they do. I did it! No government needed! But you can chop your own firewood, other things are more complicated. You can't make electricity reliably for very long. Only as long as there is gasoline for the generator.

The other major view of MAGA people is that the government providing support for someone else is taking money away from you. Well, it is complicated. But consider a hurricane damaged area such as New Orleans. It is to our benefit that we can provide temporary help in an area. It will come back as the area is restored and people are back to work. This is the world as zero sum game, but they generally do not know the term.

Is this how it is going to be from now on? Well, for a while. But soon you will see a significant portion of the white working class getting jobs from the new energy jobs, from the somewhat badly named IRA bill passed recently. Inflation is something different, and we will always have inflation at some rate. The government does very little to slow it. But jobs are jobs, and unemployment is something the federal government has more effect on.

Lastly, let us look at the seeds of this anti government feel. It was Reagan. The regulations are bad, continue as before. There is no need for government control of our future!

PS: I should have concluded with that. However, I have to point our that some of the things the government does are too complicated. If you are putting up a new mine or a new wind turbine, both end up with years of back and forth documents in the environmental impact statement. The government could help the businesses and outfits doing useful things for us to get through all that. There are costly studies at times. Set up some sort of system where the business and the EPA can sit down and work it out as partners, not as enemies.  Some things need to be done, and soon. Those are slowed down too. Someone has to understand the big picture of the environment in terms of energy, water and all our other needs.

Supreme Courts and Three Legged Cats

 What will the supreme court do with abortion next year? it seems to have taken this right of control of our bodies and thrown it to the states to decide what these freedoms are. 

But, in a year or two, or under a Republican president, they may decide that since this right was not stated in the 14th Amendment in detail, perhaps congress does have some power after all? Let's ban it all over the USA. 

It's a bit like the little girl and the drawing of the cat. Your cat has three legs? we ask.

She says it has four. Where is the fourth? She points to the tail. And where, then, is the tail? She points to the tail. But you said it was the fourth leg. "It was. Now it's the tail."

The work of the Supreme Court seems to be looking at words and punctuation. And looking to see if that word is a "leg" or a "tail."

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Looking at that, the Republicans see arms and rights. Must not restrict any of those. A Democrat justice would look at "right to bear" and see that it's difficult to control. The court may have been correct in the New York case, so let's leave it at that. But times change. We have permits and things for cars. We have federal permits for many other things. You can control even free speech through the FCC as some speech is very dangerous. Let us then control the ARMS part of the amendment. The federal government CAN control the arms! Let us ban hand guns and AR-15s!

The game of the court seems to be somewhat sophisticated as far reading legal language and precedent. But when the final opinion comes out, it is just word play according to your convictions and beliefs.  Several judges are definitely anti big government, anti rules for all of the USA. Throw in a few fancy words like "egregious" and voila, you have a new ruling. Your ruling is now law. Until another court comes along,