One old guys perspective on why we are where we are, by Daniel P

Even prior to 2016, the people who would end up voting for Trump had concluded that the system was rigged against them and the people doing the rigging didn’t give a shit about them. Trump gave voice to those sentiments. From Daniel P at malone.news:

This essay was posted as a comment by “Daniel P” in response to an UnHerd piece titled “The revolt of the Rust Belt Democrats have squandered the white working class”. I was so impressed by Daniel’s alternative historical summary that I thought it worth cross-posting on Substack.

Robert M.[Malone]

If I may, I would like to offer one old guys perspective on why we are where we are and where I think things are gonna go.

The political issues we face today go back to the 1990’s and the end of the Cold War. The republicans were the party of the country club and Chamber of Commerce, the party of the old Wall Street. The democrats were the union, blue collar party, the party of Civil Rights and Women’s rights, the party of the working and middle class. The country was still largely run by the Greatest Generation with the common experiences of the Great Depression and WWII and the Cold War. Both parties were unabashedly patriotic parties that were proud of their country and its role in the world, both confident in our economic and military strength. Both parties were unabashedly religious. The republicans more on the protestant side and the democrats more rooted in the Catholic Church of their working class base. The democrats were more anti-war and the republicans more aggressive in use of military force. We were only 20 yrs from Roe v Wade and 25 or so from the height of the Civil Rights movement. Busing and race riots were still in the consciousness of the nation.
 
But, between 1992 or so and 2015 a lot would happen that would shatter the direction and makeup of both parties, first in a merging of interests and then a shattering of them. 

The root of a lot of our issues go back to Bill Clinton and the 3rd Way Democrats. In my opinion, Bill Clinton sold out the working class and blue collar Joe’s (remember Joe the Plumber?) in order to entice Wall Street and Silicon Valley money to the democratic donor pool. Until then, the republicans had been consistently beating the daylights out of the democrats in fund raising and it cost them. Hence we get NAFTA, over the objections of the unions, and financial reform that killed off the Glass Steagle rules and opened the floodgates to financialization. We now had not one, but TWO parties that were dedicated to neoliberal economics, to catering to the interests of the financial class.

It was a process, but over time the working and middle class lost all representation of their interests. Great deal for the donor class, they now controlled the policy of both political parties. The first leg of the Washington consensus was in place. Nobody was fighting free trade, outsourcing, offshoring, or H1B’s or more cheap labor pouring over the southern border.

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