He discusses many things, but one thing in particular that he touches on is that for anti-Trump conservatives, there is no good outcome to be had in November either way. If Trump wins, he will damage the Republican brand even further (and also continue damaging America’s image abroad); if Biden wins, progressives will be victorious and move the nation left at a time when the progressive wing of the D’s is in strong upswing.
Well, of course. When your party is taken over by a demagogue (or even just a sub-faction that you don’t prefer), there is no good immediate outcome.
The best possible outcome is for the mildest version of your non-favored faction to come to power. Which is pretty much Biden, it seems to me (of the viable candidates - possibly someone like Bullock would be even better). Clearly you would prefer that to a Bernie presidency, right?
It’s not unlike the situation a more centrist Democrat like myself would face if, for example, the Democratic party became a party more aligned with Sanders and was running against a GOP led by Kasich, Romney, or the late John McCain. You take your lumps, hope the country doesn’t swing too hard in a direction you don’t like, and work to nominate and elect candidates for your own party that you can support.
I would take one issue with French’s claim that the country hasn’t moved towards a more progressive policy position. If Trump loses handily, and particularly if the Democrats take back the Senate, it will be a pretty clear sign that the country is ready for more progressive policies at least on climate change and health care, IMO. They would have one the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections, right? The electoral college and the inherent GOP benefits in the way Congress is constituted has papered over the fact that the country is more supportive of Democratic policies than Republican ones, in general.
I rather doubt it will be a clear sign of anything other than Trump sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see more progressive movement on climate change and health care. And I hope we do see progress on those issues regardless of any “mandate” (which I consider sorta mythical anyway). But I suspect this election will primarily be a referendum election on Trump rather than a considered choice on policy differences. A fair number of people might vote against Trump as a shithead who fumbled COVID-19, but not give a crap about (or even mildly oppose) progressive ideals. Another chunk might just stay home and hand the election to Biden because they can’t stomach voting for either.
I usually prefer to think of myself as a realist rather than a cynic. But when it comes to the American body politic I am flat-out cynical and I think the 2016 election is all the proof that I need for that position.
Apparently you haven’t seen Biden’s platform, with economics shaped by Bernie Sanders and Climate Change policy based on the ‘Green New Deal’.
Biden broke the old pattern, which used to be that a politician ran to the base to win the primaries, then ran back to the center to catch the middle in the general election. Biden started off as a centrist in the primaries, and has been moving hard left ever since, probably because he realizes how large and volatile the new ‘base’ is.
Biden’s current platform would have been dead on arrival at any Democratic National Convention since 1968.
Conservatives need to sit down and think about who they are. What principles do they represent beyond winning elections? They need to find those principles and then explain how the country benefits from their implementation.
As an anti-Trump conservative, I strongly disagree. The republic will survive 4 years of Biden, the presidential equivalent of beige. That’s a good outcome. I honestly don’t believe that we can survive 4 more years of Trump.
I haven’t looked into it, but what particular planks are you talking about? I’m sure anything about LGBT rights would be DOA back in 1968, but you mentioned economics. Biden’s proposing to move the top marginal income tax bracket from 37% to 39.6% - but in 1968 the same tax was set at a whopping 70%. Similarly, he’s proposing to increase the top corporate tax rate from 21% back to 35% like it was in 2017 - but in 1968 the same tax rate was 48%. Far from being absurd progressive pipe dreams, I think his tax policies would be non-starters for the opposite reason you imply. They would be considered absurdly, hilariously too favorable to rich people.
That’s the wrong way to look at it. If Biden wins, it gives Republicans a chance to rebrand as something better. And if they can’t get bigots to join the republican party, then maybe it’s time to see if a viable third centrist party can’t be formed.
The proposal to spend $2trillion over 4 years on green energy/climate stuff (even if adjusted for inflation for earlier years) would be DoA in past conventions.
The conservatives are 100% responsible for Trump. They’ve spent the 50 years since Nixon’s Southern Strategy abandoning any sense of ethics or morals. Their economic ideas are utterly destructive. Their bigotry is abhorrent. Their foreign policy is a shambles. Even before Trump, everything they touched died.
But now that their Frankenstein’s monster is up and terrorizing the countryside they consider losing an election to be the problem? I would say they can go straight to hell, but they’ve been there for so long it doesn’t feel warm to them anymore.
Another way to play that is for the traditional Republicans to slide a little towards the center (of the current wacky Overton window) making it clear they’re taking / holding the center-right role and excluding the hard-core rightists by design.
Which leaves an opening for the Trumpists, CTers, Fox-fans, and other alt- or hard- rightists to form a new far-right party. There’s certainly lots of precedent for that maneuver working in Europe e.g. UKIP, Le Pen’s FN / RN, etc. All they need is an opportunistic charismatic leader.
Perhaps they can name themselves the “Reprehensible Party”. Unfortunately, there’s already another party name starting with R so maybe that’s taken.
Back to the OP, the ideal for traditional Rs is if Trump loses convincingly enough there’s not months of unseemly controversy over the true winner. And at the same time by and large the Rs hold onto control of Congress, with the more Trumplike demagogue candidates fairing noticeably poorer than the more traditional R candidates.
They could then frustrate any loonie-left moves by Biden whether in the form of tax policy, judicial appointments, or proposed legislation.
While also regaining control of the Republican media narrative of smart, efficient, but especially small & unambitious government (except for that mongo military-industrial complex). If the electoral lesson is that frothing reactionary RW-ery no longer wins elections even in at least some predominantly red states, that’d be Nirvana for the traditional Republicans.
Not that I think this is what will happen this Fall. But if it did they’d be both very happy, and very well-positioned to make hay from it.
There doesn’t seem much point in the Republican Party repudiating Donald Trump if their goal is only to go back to George W. Bush. They shouldn’t see Trump as just an aberration in an otherwise healthy organization. Their problems go a lot deeper than that.
It’s like an alcoholic hitting bottom after a twenty-drink binge. The realization he needs in his life is that he needs to stop drinking not that he should set himself a limit of nineteen drinks.