columnist op-ed
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AN 7 25
After just six months into his second term, President Donald Trump has already left a significant mark on American society and severely crippled the ability of institutions like Congress and the courts to check him. But some experts say democracy is still far from over and maintain that Trump is still vulnerable.
On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall detailed the various ways Trump has eroded traditional democratic checks and balances, wielded the executive branch's power against his political opponents, fired government employees who aren't fully on board with his agenda and demoralized the opposition. University of Toronto political scientist Lucan Way — along with Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt acknowledged that "the cost of opposing the government" has risen significantly under Trump, meaning that the United States may have very well "crossed the line into authoritarianism" under Trump.
However, one of the various academics and experts Edsall interviewed emphasized that Americans who believe in democracy still have many tools at its disposal.
READ MORE:(Opinion) Stick a fork in him: Trump finally faces the threat of retribution – from MAGA
Harvard professor of government and sociology Theda Skocpol told Edsall that Trump had created a new governing system called "competitive sycophancy," in which various interests attempt to curry favor with the administration through flattery and manipulation. He also described it using the phrase "patrimonial corruption."
"Thanks to the fawning of the GOP and of most elite-run U.S. institutions, he already basically has this system in place," Skocpol said. "One part of it that is a possible route to pure coercive authoritarianism is the new ICE-centered private army run without limits by Stephen Miller — and there will be constant efforts to push that into a centralizing and terrifying threat against all political opposition."
However, Skocpol noted that Trump critics have an adherent advantage due to the "sheer inefficiency and incompetence" of top administration officials. He also stressed that Trump's actions now are likely to harm both him and his party in the long run.
"Trump owns it all now; that is the silver lining in all of this," he said. "Let him get all the blame for the messes that will unfold, let his childish efforts to shift blame look more and more desperate, silly and weak. Weak is the key."
READ MORE:'Good evidence': New data shows the 'surest sign' Trump policies are making inflation rise
Click here to read Edsall's full column in the Times, or by clicking this link (subscription required).
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crit of NYT column white educate trumpistas
https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/nyt-steers-dems-away-from-the-obvious-formula-for-defeating-trump/
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/heres-a-crucial-element-missing-from-the-media-narrative-about-trumps-white-working-class-base
no lnx
Here’s a crucial element missing from the media narrative about Trump’s ‘white working class’ base
Written by Alex Henderson August 28, 2019
Much has been written about President Donald Trump’s appeal among downscale white voters who live in the American Rust Belt. One of the most famous lines of Trump’s 2016 campaign was “I love the poorly educated,” and he continues to enjoy strong support among white males without a college degree.
But New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall stresses that there is one group that the media often overlook when analyzing Trump’s base of support: whites who have a higher income but lack a college degree.
The phrase “downscale whites” has often been used in connection with Trump’s base. But Edsall, analyzing a recent report from political scientists Herbert Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm, stresses that it is quite possible for whites who never went to college to have a higher income — not wealthy, but comfortably middle class.
And those who fit that description are an important part of Trump’s base.
“Perhaps most significant, Kitschelt and Rehm found that the common assumption that the contemporary Republican Party has become crucially dependent on the white working class — defined as whites without college degrees — is overly simplistic,” Edsall explains. “Instead, Kitschelt and Rehm find that the surge of whites into the Republican Party has been led by whites with relatively high incomes.”
And those higher-income whites, Edsall stresses, don’t necessarily have college degrees.
“High-income whites without college degrees were swing voters 60 years ago, pursued by both parties,” Edsall notes. “Now, they are rock-ribbed Republicans.”
In an e-mail, Kitschelt told Edsall, “Unlike much of the current debate, the ‘white working class’ — concentrated in the low-education/low-income sector of the white population — is not the category that has most ardently realigned toward Republicans. It’s higher income/low-education whites who are currently still doing well, but fear that in the Knowledge Society, their life chances are shrinking as high education becomes increasingly the ticket to economic and social success.”
Nonetheless, Edsall notes, low-income whites without college degrees are still an important part of Trump’s base.
“In the 1950s and ‘60s,” Edsall recalls, “low-income whites without degrees formed the base of the Democratic Party. Now, this group leans Republican.”
Meanwhile, Edsall reports, another demographic has become increasingly important to the Democratic Party: whites who are college-educated but low-income. That demographic was almost unheard of 60 or 70 years ago, when a college degree practically guaranteed a decent income.
“Two generations ago, there were almost no low-income whites with college degrees, a group that made up 1.5% of white voters in 1952,” Edsall observes. “These voters were a swing bloc without firm commitment to either party. By 2016, this constituency had grown to form 14.3% of all voters. They have, in turn, become the most loyal white Democratic constituency.”
Looking ahead to 2020, Edsall asserts that the next presidential race “may well prove to be a base-vs.-base election.” But he quickly adds that “the outcome may lie in the hands of the substantial proportion of the electorate that is undecided: 7%, according to Pew.”
Truckers are numerous, conservative, and hurting. And despite their widespread…
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-to-fix-the-conservative-pundit-problem-in-the-age-of-trump
no lnx
How to fix the conservative pundit problem in the age of Trump
Written by David Atkins / The Washington Monthly August 31, 2019
Big media organizations have a Bret Stephens problem.
It could also be called a David Brooks problem. Or a George Will problem. But Bret Stephens’ embarrassing actions in the bedbug controversy over the past few days make him the perfect poster child for a challenge that spans the much of the journalism industry. To recap briefly, a university professor called Stephens a “bedbug” in response to a typically sophomoric column; Stephens responded by trying to get the professor fired in email exchanges; the professor took the issue public; and Stephens escalated with a ludicrous and falsely attributed column comparing the professor’s rhetoric to Nazi dehumanization that should never have made it past the editor’s desk.
Stephens is the sort of conservative columnist that major newspapers love to hire: anti-Trump, contrarian mediocrities ostensibly concerned with free speech and liberal overreach. He and others like him allow editors and ombudsmen to include “conservative opinion” without actually giving voice to conservatism as it truly exists today. A more genteel version of the provocateur pseudo-intellectualism of a Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson, Bret Stephens and his fellow NeverTrump commentators offer the sort coded antebellum conservatism that even a good book-fair-tote-bag-carrying liberal can love. They provide climate denialism not as an affront to God’s plan or a conspiracy of pointy-headed nerds in it for the grant money or an interference in the workings of glorious libertarian capitalism, but merely as a questioning of consensus tyranny of thought; they offer imperialism as expansion of human freedom rather than jingoistic corporate and militaristic predation; they offer appeals to a patriarchal order of racial hierarchy not as a matter of overt Bible-thumping or white supremacy, but coded appeals to a “culture” of “family” and “respect” that just so happen to resemble a whitewashed Norman Rockwell painting where Father Knows Best.
The problem, of course, is that men like Stephens, Will and Brooks–and they almost uniformly middle-aged or older white men–represent very few people in actual civil society. Notably, very few of their kind wind up in elected office. Somewhere around 85% of Republicans support and approve of Trump; most Republicans think anti-white racism is a bigger problem than anti-black racism. And neither Democrats nor independents are buying in to their perspective. Ostensibly non-prejudiced, anti-Trump conservatism is far overrepresented in the media compared to its actual constituency. Why is this?
While some of the explanation lies in the sort of interpersonal chumminess among select opinion-makers who go to the right parties and went to the right schools as Chris Hayes lays bare in his Twilight of the Elites, it’s also true that big media organizations face an unenviable challenge when it comes to presenting conservative opinion in the Trump era.
On the one hand, editors have an obligation to their readers to present a wide spectrum of opinion–including ones with their core readers may disagree politically. On the other, editors also have a duty to maintain accuracy and social responsibility. Finally, they have both a financial and moral incentive to ensure that the opinions they print be interesting and well-considered, and not just a rehash of partisan talking points. As the conservative movement delves ever further into anti-scientific ignorance, overt bigotry and lockstep loyalty to its current leader, presenting responsible, accurate and interesting conservative opinion can be a challenge.
So let’s say you’re the editor of a major magazine or newspaper, and you want to give voice to the somewhat less than half or so of the country that identifies broadly with conservative perspectives. Do you hire an alt-right figure with openly racist and sexist attitudes who actually represents what modern conservatism truly is and what its voters are, even though it will outrage your readers and provide a dangerous platform for hateful views? Do you hire partisan operatives who will parrot the talking points du jour and defend whatever outlandish pronouncements Donald Trump makes next, at the risk of ruining your brand in much the way CNN has done by inviting commentary from the likes of Jeffrey Lord and Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany? Or do you hire a never-Trump conservative like Bret Stephens who doesn’t actually represent very many people, but won’t unduly offend readers’ sensibilities or actively encourage racist violence (unless, of course, you include stumping for the Iraq War as the racist violence it is)?
Time and again, editors choose the third option as the path of greatest comfort and least resistance, at the cost of actual representation.
For what it’s worth, they do this on the left as well. Despite the strong progressive tilt of the Democratic electorate over the last decade, including but not limited to the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her ideological allies, the resilience of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary, as well as of course Sanders’ own surprisingly strong showing in the 2016 primary, both cable news and major newspapers have a dearth of representation from pundits and opinion writers who might generally be described as falling into the Sanders coalition. They continue to sample opinion from writers much more concerned about preserving the false veneer of past cultural unity and the economic stability of those with six-and-seven-figure mutual fund and real estate portfolios, than the more representative and growing class of people struggling to afford a downpayment on their first mortgage while working two gig economy jobs, paying off exorbitant student loans and stuck in a private insurance hell of making too much for Medicaid, but too little to afford adequate medical care. The opinion-makers are still much more old, white and male than the Democratic electorate at large, and even when younger women and people of color are added to the mix, they rarely espouse the more openly democratic socialist and social democratic positions of those demographics among the actual public.
Solving this problem for left-leaning commentary is simple: including more diverse and more progressive voices won’t endanger or embarrass anyone or damage a media company’s brand, though it may discomfit some centrist traditionalists.
But in terms of conservative commentary, media organizations should look to err more on the side of actual representation. Why risk the ire of readers and do potential harm in order to present contrarian viewpoints that few Americans truly share? There is nothing novel or interesting in the sort of content that George Will, David Brooks and Bret Stephens provide; their takes are as predictable as the rising of the sun and the passing seasons; and it’s not actually instructive as to the opinions of the Americans who continue to empower Republican policymakers.
A better approach would be to hire Trump loyalists willing to defend the president and his actions (as well as those of Senate Leader McConnell and the Roberts Court), while strictly adhering to standards of fact-checking and anti-racism. If a conservative writer could manage to defend modern Republican politics while remaining honest, accurate and without resorting to bigotry, that would be both potentially interesting and skillful enough to deserve publication. It would be more satisfying to conservative readers and more informative for liberal ones.
But the time for providing a special platform for contrarian NeverTrump conservatives should be at an end. It’s both embarrassing and unproductive.
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