Politics is complicated, but there’s no law saying it has to always be done a certain way forever. Politics is not what it was 100 years ago or even 50 years ago. Watergate was the impetus for a lot of changes. Television and the internet have also been a huge influence on the way politics is practiced. I just think we’re reaching a point where things are about to change again, starting with getting rid of those armies of consultants and $100 million ad buys.
I agree. If the gop were running an insurgent who was intelligent and competent and didn’t have trumps baggage the gop would be winning.
The fact that the gop candidate stood on stage speaking out against free trade, calling for a tax on imports says a lot. People on both sides are tired of a government captured by plutocrats.
It’s always fashionable to lash out at the plutocrats, but I don’t think that’s the only thing animating support for insurgent candidates. It’s also politicians treating us as if we’re stupid. The whole trade kabuki goes the same way every election, with protectionist talk during election time and free trade deals once they get into office. I like free trade, but I also understand the anxiety and the very real costs to some communities, and politicians address that with a combination of promising to help in ways that do not guarantee actual jobs, and simply lying about their intentions. A lot of Trump supporters aren’t racists, they are people who are tired of being lied to and treated as idiots for not appreciating how awesome free trade is.
In fact, that’s what the armies of consultants are there for: the voters are stupid and this is how we fool them. I think that’s the fundamental thing that’s starting to change, because while voters may not be well educated about all the issues, they have seen enough of how things work behind the curtain to be pissed at being deceived constantly and how this deception is an industry making a lot of people a lot of money to produce nothing but bullshit.
Did Goldwater count as a “true insurgent”? He won the primary but not the election. It’s pretty rare for an insurgent to be that successful.
Insurgents tend to fail due to lack of money, lack of moderate positions, or both. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich both did well in the 2012 primary despite lacking money and, in Gingrich’s case, structure. If only one of those two had run, maybe we would have seen an insurgent presidential candidate in 2012. Obviously something changed… the GOP autopsy, while popular among educated establishment types, didn’t work well with the base.
Base voters are tired of being lied too or talked down at, but I wonder if their policies would actually improve their lot. (For instance, protectionism, while protecting their jobs, would also raise their prices.)
Trump didn’t match either set of weaknesses, exactly. He had enough money and free media to win the primary, and while he has extreme positions, they’re left, they’re right, they’re mutable… people usually criticize these positions for being unresearched and “crazy” rather than right wing. Trump doesn’t have enough money for a federal election, but is doing reasonably well despite that. (If Gingrich had won the Republican nomination four years ago, I think his structureless campaign would have looked much like Trump’s campaign looks now.)
I wouldn’t say Trump is “winning” the election at the moment, though, but there’s still more than a month left.
It’s an interesting thought, but what possible candidate could do this? Obviously we know that nutbar multi-millionaires can do it for the Republicans. I’m not at all confident that a sane multi-millionaire or billionaire could do so – Trump never could have won the nomination without his birthering, or “Mexicans are rapists!”-ing, etc. A “normal” billionaire wouldn’t say crazy things, and would, at best, get some of the main-stream Republican voters and that’s it.
Who is the Democratic equivalent? Mark Cuban? Bloomberg? Neither of those guys (nor other moderate and socially progressive billionaires) would appeal to the party base (unions, single moms, minorities). Some entertainment figure? Few would take Kanye West or Alec Baldwin or Will Smith seriously (though Baldwin and Smith, among others, might be able to get a Senate term first and then make a serious run, but by that point they’d be “standard” Democrats).
I don’t think there’s another Bernie waiting in the wings, at least not right now. But there may be more Bernie-like Democrats. Based on the changes in the parties over the last few decades, I don’t think the Democratic party is as likely to nominate someone out of left field as the Republicans. The Democrats have had two presidents the party base likes a lot since 1990. The Republicans have none.
How is that different adaher? Politicians talk a good game to get elected, once elected they do whatever the rich and powerful want. Kabuki Theater is just politicians trying to pretend to represent voters long enough to get elected and serve the plutocrats.
The insurgent party will need to address the elephant in the room: Globalization has not benefited everyone equally.
The blue collar lower middle class in America, Japan, and Western Europe have seen wages stagnate and life expectancy drop while being saddled with rising health care costs. Globalization to them means Wall Street rent seeking, factory jobs going overseas, McMansions they’ll never be able to afford, cheap knockoffs pushing out quality goods, and rich foreigners buying up all the property in the towns with good schools. Small wonder that many amongst them wrap themselves in the mantle of victimhood and lash out at minorities and immigrants.
It’s a little more complicated than that though. Sure, there’s a lot of donor service but the politicians that regard themselves as very intelligent people also want to implement their plans but can’t do it if they actually tell the people honestly what they are going to do and the possible drawbacks.
I think the smart pols know that you can’t cut taxes, raise military spending, and balance the budget. I think they also know that you can’t raise spending significantly without raising taxes on the middle class. I think they know that you can’t address climate change and not impact energy prices. Or address health care without market disruptions. So they just lie and have the confidence in themselves that things will work out and most people will be happy in the end. That kind of hubris usually doesn’t work out for them, or their plans never get implemented when enough other really smart people explain the reality to them(as happened in Vermont with single payer).
And I don’t think an insurgent need come from outside the political class. Anyone who has never run a huge campaign and fallen into using the consultants as a crutch and who has a history of speaking their mind without sounding ignorant could be that candidate. I even have some examples right now:
Mark Warner
Mitch Daniels
Howard Dean
Evan Bayh
Lindsey Graham
Jerry Brown(already tried it in fact, and hell, you’re only as old as you feel)
Paul Ryan
Angus King
John Hoeven
Claire McCaskill
While all of them have used traditional methods at times to get where they are today, they’ve all also had a reputation for straight talk and have been willing to buck political conventions and have never exposed themselves to the Presidential process(at least not in the traditional way, Dean and Brown ran non-traditional campaigns). They know just enough to be able to critique the dark side of politics as usual but have enough credibility to run as serious reformers.
I think there will be a change, but I think it’s already happening and it isn’t going to be in Presidential races but local politics. A real third party isn’t going to come with a charismatic insurgent winning a big political office, it’s going to come when a group actually sits down and comes up with a genuine low-level strategy to capture a lot of local political offices.
The part that’s already happening is that the current Big Two over there do already have these kinds of strategies, but they’re subordinate to the large campaigns. Even when we’re talking about Tea Party-style groups, who have had more local strategies, it’s been about using that to push towards the bigger ones. I don’t know how much it disagrees with what you’ve said here, but I think instead of $100 million ad buys there’s going to be a lot more like 100 $1 million ad buys, more targeted and more specifically focused. Instead of an army of consultants, it’ll be more professional and internet-savvy local campaigns.
Maybe. Change isn’t always easy to predict. We evolved from the patronage machines, which were cheap in terms of money donated by rich people but very expensive in terms of taxpayer money being spent on electioneering. I guess you could call it a twisted early form of public financing. When most effective means of delivering patronage were outlawed or voters just got sick of the corruption, it then became about how much money you could get in donations, which kind of surprised everyone and disgusted even those participating. So I’m not sure where we’re going from here. Hopefully somewhere good.
Interesting that you brought up the third parties and local offices thing. I realize that’s conventional wisdom about third parties but I don’t think it works that way in practice. All American political parties have emerged pretty much fully formed, ready to compete at all levels. The last third party to emerge as a major party, the Republican Party, formed in 1854 and dominated the northern states almost immediately. There probably isn’t any other way to do it than to take advantage of a perfect storm to form a new party that’s ready to go immediately. I could see certain parts of the GOP coalition breaking off and forming a new party if the party as it is now becomes too inhospitable for them. Then one lives and one dies.
But that’s not really what I see happening, I’m thinking that we’re on the cusp of one of the major parties running a game changing candidate, probably the Republicans since they are going through more ferment right now. Find some small state governor or maverick Senator who really does want to do things differently. Or even a businessman or general.
I don’t think I’d put down a bet that you’re wrong (even if I betted, which I don’t), but I think it’s interesting that you’ve got here a thread about how conventional wisdom may well soon be shown up… and then responded to my point about third parties with, well, conventional wisdom and looking to the past. I get what you’re saying, but just as it being over a century since the last big party formation occurred suggests it’s not a common occurrence, that it was over a century ago suggests we might not be able to rely on the lessons learned from it.
Really I think where my viewpoint differs is that I don’t think it’s enough for a politician to claim there’s going to be big changes, because that isn’t what ends up happening. I think a local-focused third party (and inevitable but not necessarily successful copycats) are the future to large extent because they actually have a greater chance to be different. A President, Governor, Senator - they’re limited by the practicalities of big politics in order to get support and get in in the first place. Doing things differently is difficult when the system isn’t in place to support that. But locally, reliance on others isn’t as key to getting things done.
Both parties are going to be all over this going forward, so I’m not sure it qualifies as ‘insurgent’ v just politics evolving. Two aspects though:
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If ‘globalization’ is viewed as the freer international trade/transfer in goods, capital and labor, there’s a big divide between the GOP and Democratic bases about the last of those three, though common ground on the first two. One side says it’s the other’s ‘racism’; the other says it’s their opponents desire to add naturally sympathetic voters to the rolls, if you don’t like the voters, change the electorate. Whoever is right (probably both to some degree) that’s a big way in which skepticism about ‘globalization’ is not a monolithic.
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In their rhetoric politicians have and will speak of ‘trade deals imposing costs on good hardworking folks’ but the reality is that free trade is a lack of imposition, protectionism is the imposition of govt power, and it has a net cost compared to free trade. So it’s one more cost (along with eg. care of the aging population etc) to figure out how to impose and on whom. That reality explains a lot of the ‘elite’ consensus in favor of free trade up to now, not necessarily narrow self interest.
I think here’s the contradiction. What exactly is “insurgent” about this hypothetical candidate?
I don’t know Hoeven, but all the others are just variations on down-the-middle members of their party (except for King, who’s basically a conservative Democrat in independent clothing, but isn’t that far from the mainstream of the Democratic party). They might buck the party line on a few issues, but only a few. I don’t think any of these guys would come close to counting as insurgents (except for King running as an independent for President, though he wouldn’t get more than a sliver). They might not be the favorites, but except for King, they’re closer to “establishment” guys than Obama was in '08 (though not more than he is now, obviously).
The problem as I see it with your thesis is that about 20-30% of the country is just wingnut crazy in terms of politics. That’s the portion that thinks Trump tells it like it is, and that Obama wasn’t born here and is a secret Muslim atheist gay terrorist, and that a border wall will be cheap and effective, and that liberals literally want to take away everyone’s guns by force of law, etc. A wingnut crazy insurgent can appeal to that crowd, but no one else can. And the rest of the population is pretty sober – mostly moderate-to-liberal, some conservatives, but they think Trump is disgusting and unacceptable and can mostly live with establishment types.
(Emphasis mine.)
Thing is, I’m having trouble imagining someone like that who could win the GOP nomination. That’s not snark!
The GOP primary electorate has things it wants in a candidate. Trump checked some boxes on the list this time around that previous candidates haven’t (e.g. trade), and didn’t check some boxes (e.g. social-sexual issues) that previous candidates did. But he made heavier-than-usual marks on yet other boxes (e.g. racially charged ones) to get the nomination, and those chickens seem to be coming home to roost.
In other words, a Trump with a more presidential temperament wouldn’t likely have gotten strong enough support to make it through the primary.
That like Trump, they don’t bother with the spin and consultants and huge ad buys. Trump has built his candidacy mostly on free media and talking directly to the public. While he does have some of the trappings of a conventional candidacy he’s not really listening well to them or using them. Yet he’s close. So why wouldn’t someone more intelligent and mainstream do even better using the same techniques?
Because someone more “intelligent and mainstream” wouldn’t say insane stuff that’s catnip to the insane portion of the electorate. The craziness of Trump is a feature, not a bug, for his supporters. A smarter and less crazy Trump is Steve Forbes.
Or 2000-era John McCain. What I’m thinking about isn’t that complicated, just politicians willing to tell the truth and not use the spin machine as a crutch. Seems like we had better options at the very time when insurgent candidates weren’t in as high demand.
Addressing the OP: I think you’re thinking wishfully here in foreseeing a radical shift. However, there is a gradual shift going on in the relationship between voters and leaders driven by technological changes in media and communication. And it’s likely to continue.
We actually elected an “outsider” in 2008 - sorta. Obama has not governed particularly radically (thanks, Obama!*), and there are plenty of ways his campaign was conventional (issue stances, for example). But there are harbingers in his first campaign of things to come.
Clinton’s likely success is, in many ways, a retreat from outsider politics - sure. That means the next president after Clinton might look like more of a game-changer than they really are.
- Seriously - thanks, Obama.