A Jewish friend has been telling me for years that while race realism is not a realistic political platform, economic populism is a winner. Donald Trump has taken up its cause and he’s rocketed to the top.
My friend tells me today: Its pretty clear that race realism has such powerful enemies, that it only succeeds underground and at the fringes even though if you look at how people act rather than what they say or write, they do accept it.
But economic populism is a very powerful force. That is the reason that those who suffered as a result of deindustrialization, affirmative action in civil service jobs, illegal immigration suppressing wages and supplanting workers in lower skilled jobs, higher college costs, globalization and the financialization of the economy, have been suppressed for a long time. They have been made to think the problems they have have been their own fault, as if any assembly line worker, can just as easily with the correct training become a software engineer.
I was listening to Rush Limbaugh earlier this week and one of the points he made (and I am paraphrasing) was that we are told that we have to understand what drives the rage, anger and political agendas of out groups. This includes understanding the reasons we were attacked on 9-11, understanding that we are at fault for being Islamaphobic, that we have to understand the roots of the Black Lives Matter Movement and Occupy Movements, feminism and gay and transsexual rights. But there is no corresponding, on the part of the MSM, desire to look at the roots of the tea party movement, or the Trump supporters, instead they are labeled racists or authoritarians.
Ann Althouse also had an interesting observation when after the Nevada caucus results Trump said, We love the low education voters. Althouse said that the persons Trump was referring to do not get any respect or attention from what is conventionally called “the elites” and what Peggy Noonan would refer to as the “protected class.” Since Trump is giving them respect and “love” that is recognizing them, validating their experience on a level that no other candidate has done.
Everyone wants to see how the attacks on Trump at last nights debate play in the Super Tuesday voting. The Conservative Treehouse points out that the number of voters so far in the two caucuses and two primaries, if you take away the Trump votes are similar to 2012 and 2008. What Trump has done, is not cut into the traditional Republican base of evangelicals, social conservatives, neoconservatives and fiscal conservatives, but has brought in new voters who are more economic nationalists and populists, who outnumber the old line Republican voters. If this is true, then his debate performance probably won’t hurt him much in the upcoming primaries. If he is drawing from the traditional Republicans then the attacks may have some impact but probably won’t turn any of his new voters to vote for either Cruz or Rubio.
By the way Chris Christie endorsed Trump which probably doesn’t mean anything in the way people vote, and of course Christie never gained traction because of his embrace of Obama for assistance given by the Federal government in connection with superstorm Sandy, but I would say that it means that Christie is actively campaigning to be Trump’s hatchet man which is the traditional role of the vice presidential pick.
