The only reason I ever support Trump is deportation, and instead of making laws requiring E verify and employer sanctions he stages show arrests which only upset people. I'd be much happier with millions more self deportations that no one notices except with rising incomes and decreasing rents.
If you really believe that “self deportation” will solve the poor state of the American worker, you are sadly wrong. Corporate greed combined with young white men’s addictions have weakened the working class.
And perhaps you forget that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California were part of Mexico. There are millions of native born Mexican Americans who are being told to “go home.”
You were tricked by a known conman who knew you would be dazzled by your dreams of removing those “others” from your life.
and Colorado. And no one is telling any hyphenated Americans to go home, except you maybe. And the way Spaniards acquired territories in North America was nothing to be proud of. We won a war and took land from the ones who took it from others. Cry me a river, all the way to the Rio Grande.
Supply and demand works when they import scabs, it ought to work in reverse too.
No, MAGA is not wholesale telling all with Hispanic surnames in border states to get out. That’s coming from your own personal experiences in a 1970’s small town. I’m sorry that happened to you FIFTY YEARS AGO. Time to forgive and move forward. Pretty much everything has changed since then. Hispanics and Hispanic culture are so integral to Texas now that no one thinks or wants that.
We have moved on but the people who continue to cheer for, and are getting hired by, ICE arresting 5 year old kids and people working the very jobs that our great Americans refuse absolutely to do are also Trump’s loudest and meanest supporters.
I just laugh now when some Trumper complains that they didn’t mean that their family members should be deported.
I laugh out loud when some Midwest farmer cries on YouTube that he’s going bankrupt because all his workers have disappeared and he can harvest his carrot crop all by himself. And he was a three time Trump voter.
Finally, no one has ever heard a word about making Mexico our 51st state. Think about that.
Remember, there is no job an American won't do. The only problem is money. Employers in some jobs can run through people and pay them low, like meat processing or ag. The sorry part is doubling the wage would hardly make the cost of the product go up much, but everyone is competing, and the one with the cheapest labor sells product.
Hispanic Americans are white no matter what color their skin. Hispanic counties in my state voted Trump back in 16. They're cowboys. That race stuff is onlyi to make over educated Karens feel less guilty.
My husband is Mexican American. He was considered “white,” but not is some counties in the state of Texas where we were married in 1971 where there were still laws against Mexicans and white Texans marrying. My Episcopalian priest would not marry us. But a good man and Methodist minister would.
My husband is 31% Native American and 24% Spanish with rest being Portuguese and a surprising 9% Jewish. But if you know Spanish history, you know that the Muslim Moors were far more open minded than the Catholic Spaniards who followed them in 1490.
The place I live had severe problems in the 70s also, they seem otherworldly from today. Demographically three of my six closest neighbors are Hispanic, only one speaks Spanish at all. Now the idea of discriminating against Mexican Americans here seems ludicrous. Who would do the discriminating.
What many of the upper class don't understand is that the immigration thing isn't a race thing, it's economics. It's impossible to dislike Hispanics here, might as well move to Vermont.
There were only a few thousand Spanish settlers stealing land from Indians; Mexico has no more right to claim the land than Russia; France; Spain; England who had explorers; trappers; etc., pass through parts of those territories at some point. Santa Ana wanted a war and was backed by England and France; Polk also wanted a war; Mexico engaged in a skirmish; with orders to seize New Orleans and The Louisiana Purchase territories; Mexico surrenderd unconditionally and The US amazed the world by giving it back half of Mexico and paid it money for some territory.
Which was the worst thing The US did to Mexico; if we had kept it all; Mexico would have The US standard of living and many fewer cartels.
Since the beginning of people living in groups there has been such movements. Our own “settlement” and colonization has been quite different from more ancient historical movements in that very few Native American tribal members were intergrated into the larger European immigrant communities. Unlike Mexico, where even the snobbish Spaniards couldn’t maintain their unique Spanish blood from mixing with the native peoples.
Trump and his millionaire officials/cronies have scapegoated undocumented immigrants, blaming them for everything from house costs to poor working conditions. It’s a con. The big money doesn’t want you to realize how their system is harming you.
I thought it was immigration, and the cost of things. Polling placed immigration at the top for late deciders and vote switchers. Trump is an idiot, but the Democrats hate us and will do anything to make us more poor.
Very important point: the GOP has focused for decades on dominating, and manipulating, the architecture….from state legislatures and governors, to judges at all levels who can feed into SCOTUS, to preventing federal juducial appointments by hardball tactics (McConnell!), to gutting voting rights and ruthlessly distorting congressional districts with legalized partisan gerrymandering….the list goes on. While seemingly somnolent Democratic leaders ignored the long game. Trump was the result. Will techbro dominance of the GOP sustain, or resuscitate, the post-Trump party? Only if the rest of us allow it.
Republicans focused on the long game for sure but Trump is not the result. Trump is the Republican failure. They hate him so bad Koch orgs ran people against him. Remember the 16 primaries? Typically Republicans love low wage illegal immigration, and they love sending factories to other countries. The R party is supposed to be pro corporate. They do not like Tariffs. Trump is an unpredictable kleptocrat, with anti immigrant sympathies, and populism.
All wealthy countries face this fact. We have done so well in such a short time because we’re unique in the world as a state that welcomed immigrants who looked for opportunity, exactly like the millions of “illegal” immigrants who have come in to fill the jobs that we “rich” Americans won’t do now. Several presidents have proposed laws which allowed workers to come for those jobs and then return.
Truman had a great program that allowed companies to sponsor their best workers and their families to move to and begin the process to become citizens. It worked well until stopped our beloved modern versions of the “Know Nothings” who wanted no “southern” immigrants.
But that program allowed my husband’s father to bring his family here. His family all became citizens after 12 years, except for the youngest child who was born after they had moved here. Among the four children there were a teacher, two engineers, and a career Air Force officer and accountant.
And their grandchildren are a chemical engineer, a university administrator, and a bank VP.
People will always be needed to do the “dirty jobs.” But Americans, even now, will not pick tomatoes by hand, or slaughter chickens, or work in dairy farms. I pray this government does not attempt to bring back slavery to force our thousands of prisoners to work those jobs like Russia did with their own citizens in the gulag. That should never be the model we choose.
I take offence at people who denigrate American workers. Who the hell do you think wipes your butt in the hospital. No LPN or RN is an illegal worker but they are paid for doing a tough job.
America had the highest standard of living for all Americans when we had tough immigration laws in the 50s and 60s. People did hard dangerous dirty jobs and got paid for doing so. By 1970 the entire immigrant population was at 4.7%, and the working class was middle class.
I don’t know your situation, but have you read Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy? Those people, his own family, are the working poor here in the South. Perhaps you’re so privileged that you can ignore them, but here finding healthy and willing workers to do physical work, whether on farms or factories, is increasingly difficult. The causes? First, a denigration of education that makes American workers struggle to master more technical work. Second, the Southern insistence of “right to work,” which insures lower pay and fewer or no benefits. There are millions of hard working Americans working two minimum wage jobs in order to rent a shitty house from a local slum lord for $1500 a month and afford a cheap car that they will be paying for long after it ceases to run. And then there’s no possibility of health insurance and you know exactly who’s responsible for that.
In my small town, many of those I’ve described have succumbed to drugs and alcohol out of fear, hopelessness, and desire to escape their situations.
And yes, it is still absolutely possible to rise from nothing in America. Genius is still the best way, with family connections running second. The military has always been the way out of poverty here in the South and it still is. But teaching in our small town’s community college, I have seen that fewer local kids return here after their service. They head to larger cities, or head north or west.
Immigrants work hard, accept sacrifice, know how to live on less, value the possibilities of this country, and have real understanding of how horrible are other countries.
When this country gets universal healthcare, when we truly honor the value of workers, when the majority of Americans’ pay doesn’t go into a few billionaires’ companies, those workers we both care for will finally have a chance to shine.
Yes I read it. Right to work is a policy of corporations, not workers. I've worked with many southerners with no formal education making very high incomes for the time, they were enticed to move and do dangerous hard dirty things for a lot of money. I know that income more than any other factor moves people out of poverty. Poverty is about money, only the privileged think otherwise.
Privileged people, people with degrees, and advanced degrees love immigrants because they work cheap. The PMC professional managerial class make up all kinds of justifications for screwing over their fellow citizens, but in the end it's money. The PMC simply don't want to pay a fair wage.
Williston North Dakota had so many Americans moving there that there were no apartments, people lived in their cars for the $2,000 a week they could make by driving a water truck. People will move to and live virtually anywhere, for money.
I hope you know Vance had a change of heart one day. He was already making money as a VC and at a dinner of high rollers he listened to someone tell him how lazy US workers are and that it's great to bring in desperate people to undermine the wages of US workers. Vance was a Democrat. He decided to change parties.
E verify is only the law under certain circumstances which vary by state. Also because the US allows it, people steal the ID of US citizens and uses them to cheat on E verify. The leadership of both parties love illegal immigration because it provides them personally with cheap servants and it makes the businesses that bribe them legally via campaign contributions, profitable.
So, your friends have all been wrong before, the political pundits have all been wrong, but this time YOU have it nailed—Trump’s political career is over.
Damn. You called it.
So you mean to say that Trump, who can’t run for president again and will be 82 when he leaves office, is done as a President and politician. I mean that is some stellar insight.
Also, you think the Iran war, where we have lost fewer soldiers than in any war in history, where Iran is utterly decimated, and thousands of young people who actually deserve a revolution are waiting to take to the streets and overthrow the last vestiges of this evil radical Islamic regime, and you think that’s what’s going to end Trump as president? The Iran war?
A good article, but it surprizinly overlooks the possibility that JD Vance could take up the mantle of the MAGA movement, correcting Trump's errors and excesses.
I think people who view Vance as a grave threat are exaggerating because he certainly has the cunning, but utterly lacks the charisma.
MAGA is a visceral, carnal movement. It is fed through schadenfreude, cruel mockery of their perceived enemies, spite, vindication, vengeance etc. It is extremely reliant on the visuals and harsh rhetoric of their leader. It's not enough to support what MAGA wants, you have to champion them as a people.
Vance is a wet blanket. He's far less popular than Trump and carries an elitist reputation. The GOP would be taking a very real risk to embrace a candidate that can walk the walk, but can't talk the walk, so to speak. Vance is not effortlessly vindictive; He's not absolutely confident in his rage and convictions. He's a chameleon. He doesn't really know who he is. He's forcing himself to be something he is not. He sucks the air out of the room. He's tied at the hip to Trump whether he likes it or not.
This is why I insist that people should not underestimate the influence of Tucker Carlson. He is the true successor to the MAGA movement. Born from humiliation and leads an entire cult of personality around himself. He's a master in the visual age of media, like Trump. He's charismatic. He's cruel and vindictive. He's a loud mouth. His recent rejection of Trump makes him more dangerous, not less. He has his eyes on the presidency in 2028. No question.
Both Vance and Harris are intelligent people who seem for some reason or other to bring out the dullness in others. Nobody after hearing Vance or Harris speak or reading what they say feels energized.
Exactly. MAGA is a vibe, not an ideology. It’s got no problem contradicting itself when it comes to ideology. If it boils their bases’ blood, it will be said. So if it doesn’t energize their base, it’s a bad idea.
Yes thats exactly the type of person a shrewd president would want for a vp, so its no mystery that the type ends up there. But one thats smart enough to learn, and knows how to ride a wave, can easily get themselves elected, especially if the other side doesnt bring a strong candidate.
Idk if vance is that guy, but i think we're going to find out(call it a hunch, seeing pictures of him at the peace negotiations made me think, we're going to see a lot more of this guy). He'll step up when he smells trumps blood in the water.
It would be wrong to assume someone like vance is as he always will be. He knows how to shift gears and use an advantage. If we've learned anything from trump, certainly its that shit can change quite a bit in ways we would never expect.
There is an old joke about two brothers. The first brother goes to sea and the second brother becomes vice president. Neither one is heard from again. We can hope.
If I may insert my two cents here: Trump may go away (please God) but Peter Thiel isn't going anywhere. JD may be a douche bag but Thiel is a force to be reckoned with.
Vance is a clown who has tied himself to some of the worst failures of the administration. By supporting ICE excesses and enthusiastically shitting on Ukraine at every opportunity Vance is a poster boy for the „empathy is bad“ wing of the GOP. For all Trump‘s nastiness, his voters don’t seem to perceive him as cruel and uncaring, maybe his narcissistic charm and „humor“ disguise that. Vance comes off as nakedly vicious and sadistic. Even most GOP voters find that off putting.
You Americans have taken democracy for granted and stopped defending and cultivating it, the majority preferring consumer bulimia and stupid commercialism.
Wow thats a brilliant analysis, did you come up with it yourself? Ive never heard it before.
We arent so different from other people, and we're certainly not the first victims of decadence. Its not like things can not change over time, so whatever good you think you have right now, know that it will change, eventually for the worse, and thats just how it goes.
What we had here, its as good as anybodies ever had it, and thats not nothing. Ofc, its had its consequences. But these are not the type of things any people have ever been immune to. Had you lived here your whole life you too might have enjoyed some consumer bulimia and stupid commercialism.
In January, the US will return to its normal status of divided government. By 2030, Trump will mostly be forgotten except for the next President blaming the previous administration for everything that's not going well.
You write: “rump’s second term will leave behind an America that is weakened, cheapened, and fractious; but it seems increasingly unlikely that he will leave behind an America shaped in his own image.” Weakened, cheapened, fractious? Those all sound like apt adjectives to describe Trump’s image. Not his self-image, which of course remains glorious, but he is a weak leader, with cheap taste (see, e.g., designs for the ballroom and arch), and a fractious style. You’re right: these things will not disappear with his decline into irrelevancy. Countering them will be the task of a generation (or more).
If Trump is replaced, the antipathy will be fueled less by rationalization and more by emotion. Exhaustion animates the electorate, resulting in the embrace of anyone who articulates the malevolent zeitgeist of exasperation and frustration. The quintessential example can be seen in the meteoric rise and embrace of Graham Platner in Maine’s U. S. Senate race. Even as everything about him disqualifies him from high office, it matters not a whit, for he is simply the coming together of a man and a moment. “Throw the bums out” is the moment. “We will deal with whatever follows, but let us not think about that right now in satisfying our discomfort.”
you're right - & he's backed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren - as I posted, Dems are just fueled by hate, haven't learned anything from the last several elections.
Have to watch NY City & see what happens w/ Mamdani's great experiment.
Dunno. What worries me more than dump is the fact that so many sycophants have gained access to federal judgeships and elected office in most statehouses. Just look at what is happening right now in statehouses in response to a scotus decision that isn even dry ink yet. I hope im dead before the shit truly hits the fan. Going down fighting. And voting.
If the Dems get a trifecta in 2028 they need to spend 2029 implementing a serious agenda of institutional reform. The American constitution has proved insufficiently robust for the needs of the 21st century and their system needs reform. Americans need to get real and learn some lessons from countries whose governance is less shambolic.
I won’t believe it until he’s gone and even then there follows generational damage which this country may never recover from. And most certainly will not recover from in my lifetime. It’s upsetting to me but I’m oddly far more upset that my father has experienced it. He immigrated from England in the late 60s and is ‘the American dream’. He started his own company and retired well off after selling it. ‘This is not the county I came to…’
"Trump’s second term will leave behind an America that is weakened, cheapened, and fractious"
I believe Trump won due to America already being weakened, cheapened & fractious.
And if the Dems come into power again, they won't be wanting to bring the country together. So the country will continue to be weakened, cheapened & fractious. BTW, who do the Dems have in mind to win in 2028? Last I heard Harris (what a joke that would be) is on the platform along w/ Newsom. I can't read anything that leads me to believe the Dems have learned anything from the last election. The hate continues, the pointing fingers continues, the identity politics continues, the superiority continues.
I can't stand Trump's personality at all, nor many of the ways he has done things, but there are some things, a few, that have been fine.
I agree with you that Trump failed to make a convincing case for the Iran intervention. That doesn't mean there wasn't a reasonable case to be made. Any failure to act militarily would have been gross negligence. I tire of watching pundits make a false parallel between Iran an North Korea. There is no equivalence. The closest real world hypothetical we could generate to the Iran Regime, would be if Pakistan experienced a takeover by a political populism motivated by the ideology of ISIS.
Now, I know that the Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad comments are often taken out of context and amplified by the Right, but the fact is the statements remain controversial and religiously apocalyptic enough to justify alarm at a level not seen for any other state with the realistic ambition of becoming a nuclear armed state.
And the JCPOA simply didn't stop Iran's nuclear ambitions. Instead, even if one is being generous, to a veneer-level analysis it simply delayed the inevitability. There were no restrictions based on a distinction between offensive longer range missiles and more defensive territorial missiles, with restrictions on the latter. There was no agreement for Iran to stop arming, funding, and directing terror proxies throughout the region.
And to state that Trump didn't anticipate the potential for Iran to block oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is facile. It's been a possibility which has been of deep concern to the Pentagon during periods when America was far more dependent on somewhat precarious global oil supplies. Those who believe otherwise should look up Operation Preying Mantis and Operation Earnest Will under Reagan.
This exact scenario was anticipated by Marco Rubio 11 years ago in his opposition to the JCPOA agreement. It's up on his YouTube channel for anyone who wants to argue that this scenario couldn't be foreseen. The only difference between this timeline and a counterfactual scenario in which America never abandoned the JCPOA is the timing, and the possibility that Iran might have been able to construct even more formidable resources to prevent and disrupt an entirely necessary American intervention.
On the ICE my take is that the Trump Admin made a major political mistake in not creating a distinction in treatment between the 70% of deportees who are or were serious criminals, and the other 30% who were relatively blameless. It might have created the wrong type of incentive for people to make an inherently dangerous journey in the hopes of entering America legally, but politically the lack of a distinction has been disastrous for the Trump Admin. America might have been willing to tolerate rough treatment for an assortment of drug dealers, violent criminals, rapists, people traffickers, scammers and drunk drivers, but the optics of rough treatment towards the relatively blameless have changed the dynamics of polling.
I do, however, agree with you on one thing. The political repercussions are likely to brutal for the Republicans in the midterms. It's the economy, stupid. America has decisively won the military side of the war, but the fact that Hormuz can easily be disrupted by relatively scant and low tech remnant military resources meant that the political side of a legitimate cassis belli was always going to be a longer term prospect. Most experts probably would have estimated a 12 month timeline to the successful conclusion of a political settlement of all of America's more important demands with regard to nuclear ambitions, Israel, and little to no interference with the Regime of Passage of the Strait of Hormuz.
I also agree with you on Global Trumpism- the populist wave currently sweeping most of the advanced economies in Europe and elsewhere. I think it's very likely that the Centre Left and Centre Right parties will have to incorporate far tougher stances on immigration and asylum seeking, with populism losing steam as new incumbants fail to deliver on promises of miraculous transformation. There is already evidence of this happening in Europe. In America, it's always how populism was defeated in the past, before the populists even took power. Populist demagogues emerged and conventional politicians beat them by adopting restrictionist policies of their own. It usually happens when the foreign-born population reaches 14% and is accompanied by a major economic shock. Niall Ferguson gave a talk on it at Google Zeitgeist 10 years ago entitled 'A Recipe for Populism'. It's also worth noting that America's restrictionist policies in the 1920s were a major contributory factor to the great period of sustained growth in prosperity in American history. It turns out that the flowering of prosperity created by the labour shortages in caused by the Black Death wasn't a one-off. Tight labour markets boost productivity and raise living standards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRBsDcHoWZU&t=1s .
The only reason I ever support Trump is deportation, and instead of making laws requiring E verify and employer sanctions he stages show arrests which only upset people. I'd be much happier with millions more self deportations that no one notices except with rising incomes and decreasing rents.
If you really believe that “self deportation” will solve the poor state of the American worker, you are sadly wrong. Corporate greed combined with young white men’s addictions have weakened the working class.
And perhaps you forget that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California were part of Mexico. There are millions of native born Mexican Americans who are being told to “go home.”
You were tricked by a known conman who knew you would be dazzled by your dreams of removing those “others” from your life.
and Colorado. And no one is telling any hyphenated Americans to go home, except you maybe. And the way Spaniards acquired territories in North America was nothing to be proud of. We won a war and took land from the ones who took it from others. Cry me a river, all the way to the Rio Grande.
Supply and demand works when they import scabs, it ought to work in reverse too.
Excuse me? Every. Single. MAGA. Is telling every brown person with an Hispanic name to “go home!”
I agree the Spaniards led the way trying to conquer and convert the many native peoples of the Americas. And that does not make what they did “good.”
But must we continue the terrible traditions of all our founding fathers?
Why the efforts now to “send them all back”?
Please don’t return to the historic ignorance and cruelty of the Know Nothing Party.
No, MAGA is not wholesale telling all with Hispanic surnames in border states to get out. That’s coming from your own personal experiences in a 1970’s small town. I’m sorry that happened to you FIFTY YEARS AGO. Time to forgive and move forward. Pretty much everything has changed since then. Hispanics and Hispanic culture are so integral to Texas now that no one thinks or wants that.
We have moved on but the people who continue to cheer for, and are getting hired by, ICE arresting 5 year old kids and people working the very jobs that our great Americans refuse absolutely to do are also Trump’s loudest and meanest supporters.
I just laugh now when some Trumper complains that they didn’t mean that their family members should be deported.
I laugh out loud when some Midwest farmer cries on YouTube that he’s going bankrupt because all his workers have disappeared and he can harvest his carrot crop all by himself. And he was a three time Trump voter.
Finally, no one has ever heard a word about making Mexico our 51st state. Think about that.
Remember, there is no job an American won't do. The only problem is money. Employers in some jobs can run through people and pay them low, like meat processing or ag. The sorry part is doubling the wage would hardly make the cost of the product go up much, but everyone is competing, and the one with the cheapest labor sells product.
Hispanic Americans are white no matter what color their skin. Hispanic counties in my state voted Trump back in 16. They're cowboys. That race stuff is onlyi to make over educated Karens feel less guilty.
My husband is Mexican American. He was considered “white,” but not is some counties in the state of Texas where we were married in 1971 where there were still laws against Mexicans and white Texans marrying. My Episcopalian priest would not marry us. But a good man and Methodist minister would.
My husband is 31% Native American and 24% Spanish with rest being Portuguese and a surprising 9% Jewish. But if you know Spanish history, you know that the Muslim Moors were far more open minded than the Catholic Spaniards who followed them in 1490.
The place I live had severe problems in the 70s also, they seem otherworldly from today. Demographically three of my six closest neighbors are Hispanic, only one speaks Spanish at all. Now the idea of discriminating against Mexican Americans here seems ludicrous. Who would do the discriminating.
What many of the upper class don't understand is that the immigration thing isn't a race thing, it's economics. It's impossible to dislike Hispanics here, might as well move to Vermont.
There were only a few thousand Spanish settlers stealing land from Indians; Mexico has no more right to claim the land than Russia; France; Spain; England who had explorers; trappers; etc., pass through parts of those territories at some point. Santa Ana wanted a war and was backed by England and France; Polk also wanted a war; Mexico engaged in a skirmish; with orders to seize New Orleans and The Louisiana Purchase territories; Mexico surrenderd unconditionally and The US amazed the world by giving it back half of Mexico and paid it money for some territory.
Which was the worst thing The US did to Mexico; if we had kept it all; Mexico would have The US standard of living and many fewer cartels.
Since the beginning of people living in groups there has been such movements. Our own “settlement” and colonization has been quite different from more ancient historical movements in that very few Native American tribal members were intergrated into the larger European immigrant communities. Unlike Mexico, where even the snobbish Spaniards couldn’t maintain their unique Spanish blood from mixing with the native peoples.
You are a fucking moron.
Trump and his millionaire officials/cronies have scapegoated undocumented immigrants, blaming them for everything from house costs to poor working conditions. It’s a con. The big money doesn’t want you to realize how their system is harming you.
I think that thing called labor supply is actually an economic term. More supply, lower wages.
And of course higher inflation. Which you’re already seeing.
inflation is great for credit card, car, and mortgage debt. Hurts people with money.
Yes; that disappearing credit card debt is famously why people stumped for the Republican disaster once again in 2024.
I thought it was immigration, and the cost of things. Polling placed immigration at the top for late deciders and vote switchers. Trump is an idiot, but the Democrats hate us and will do anything to make us more poor.
What do you think is driving up the cost of things ? For Trump voters I try and grade on a curve, but… yikes 😬
Bear in mind, most of them are smarter than you. IQ wise anyway.
I hear a lot of people arguing support for trump based on his hard line immigration “policy”.
It’s like voting for Hitler after he announces the holcaust, but also offers free childcare.
The executive branch doesn’t make loss. The legislative branch does.
Very important point: the GOP has focused for decades on dominating, and manipulating, the architecture….from state legislatures and governors, to judges at all levels who can feed into SCOTUS, to preventing federal juducial appointments by hardball tactics (McConnell!), to gutting voting rights and ruthlessly distorting congressional districts with legalized partisan gerrymandering….the list goes on. While seemingly somnolent Democratic leaders ignored the long game. Trump was the result. Will techbro dominance of the GOP sustain, or resuscitate, the post-Trump party? Only if the rest of us allow it.
Republicans focused on the long game for sure but Trump is not the result. Trump is the Republican failure. They hate him so bad Koch orgs ran people against him. Remember the 16 primaries? Typically Republicans love low wage illegal immigration, and they love sending factories to other countries. The R party is supposed to be pro corporate. They do not like Tariffs. Trump is an unpredictable kleptocrat, with anti immigrant sympathies, and populism.
All wealthy countries face this fact. We have done so well in such a short time because we’re unique in the world as a state that welcomed immigrants who looked for opportunity, exactly like the millions of “illegal” immigrants who have come in to fill the jobs that we “rich” Americans won’t do now. Several presidents have proposed laws which allowed workers to come for those jobs and then return.
Truman had a great program that allowed companies to sponsor their best workers and their families to move to and begin the process to become citizens. It worked well until stopped our beloved modern versions of the “Know Nothings” who wanted no “southern” immigrants.
But that program allowed my husband’s father to bring his family here. His family all became citizens after 12 years, except for the youngest child who was born after they had moved here. Among the four children there were a teacher, two engineers, and a career Air Force officer and accountant.
And their grandchildren are a chemical engineer, a university administrator, and a bank VP.
People will always be needed to do the “dirty jobs.” But Americans, even now, will not pick tomatoes by hand, or slaughter chickens, or work in dairy farms. I pray this government does not attempt to bring back slavery to force our thousands of prisoners to work those jobs like Russia did with their own citizens in the gulag. That should never be the model we choose.
I take offence at people who denigrate American workers. Who the hell do you think wipes your butt in the hospital. No LPN or RN is an illegal worker but they are paid for doing a tough job.
America had the highest standard of living for all Americans when we had tough immigration laws in the 50s and 60s. People did hard dangerous dirty jobs and got paid for doing so. By 1970 the entire immigrant population was at 4.7%, and the working class was middle class.
I don’t know your situation, but have you read Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy? Those people, his own family, are the working poor here in the South. Perhaps you’re so privileged that you can ignore them, but here finding healthy and willing workers to do physical work, whether on farms or factories, is increasingly difficult. The causes? First, a denigration of education that makes American workers struggle to master more technical work. Second, the Southern insistence of “right to work,” which insures lower pay and fewer or no benefits. There are millions of hard working Americans working two minimum wage jobs in order to rent a shitty house from a local slum lord for $1500 a month and afford a cheap car that they will be paying for long after it ceases to run. And then there’s no possibility of health insurance and you know exactly who’s responsible for that.
In my small town, many of those I’ve described have succumbed to drugs and alcohol out of fear, hopelessness, and desire to escape their situations.
And yes, it is still absolutely possible to rise from nothing in America. Genius is still the best way, with family connections running second. The military has always been the way out of poverty here in the South and it still is. But teaching in our small town’s community college, I have seen that fewer local kids return here after their service. They head to larger cities, or head north or west.
Immigrants work hard, accept sacrifice, know how to live on less, value the possibilities of this country, and have real understanding of how horrible are other countries.
When this country gets universal healthcare, when we truly honor the value of workers, when the majority of Americans’ pay doesn’t go into a few billionaires’ companies, those workers we both care for will finally have a chance to shine.
Yes I read it. Right to work is a policy of corporations, not workers. I've worked with many southerners with no formal education making very high incomes for the time, they were enticed to move and do dangerous hard dirty things for a lot of money. I know that income more than any other factor moves people out of poverty. Poverty is about money, only the privileged think otherwise.
Privileged people, people with degrees, and advanced degrees love immigrants because they work cheap. The PMC professional managerial class make up all kinds of justifications for screwing over their fellow citizens, but in the end it's money. The PMC simply don't want to pay a fair wage.
Williston North Dakota had so many Americans moving there that there were no apartments, people lived in their cars for the $2,000 a week they could make by driving a water truck. People will move to and live virtually anywhere, for money.
I hope you know Vance had a change of heart one day. He was already making money as a VC and at a dinner of high rollers he listened to someone tell him how lazy US workers are and that it's great to bring in desperate people to undermine the wages of US workers. Vance was a Democrat. He decided to change parties.
E verifying has been the law for YEARS…
It’s the employers who don’t make the attempt and government so bogged down they don’t seem to make the effort. Been that way for 20 yrs.
E verify is only the law under certain circumstances which vary by state. Also because the US allows it, people steal the ID of US citizens and uses them to cheat on E verify. The leadership of both parties love illegal immigration because it provides them personally with cheap servants and it makes the businesses that bribe them legally via campaign contributions, profitable.
So, your friends have all been wrong before, the political pundits have all been wrong, but this time YOU have it nailed—Trump’s political career is over.
Damn. You called it.
So you mean to say that Trump, who can’t run for president again and will be 82 when he leaves office, is done as a President and politician. I mean that is some stellar insight.
Also, you think the Iran war, where we have lost fewer soldiers than in any war in history, where Iran is utterly decimated, and thousands of young people who actually deserve a revolution are waiting to take to the streets and overthrow the last vestiges of this evil radical Islamic regime, and you think that’s what’s going to end Trump as president? The Iran war?
Bro, don’t quit your day job.
silliest review on trump disaster. head in the US soil or sand?
A good article, but it surprizinly overlooks the possibility that JD Vance could take up the mantle of the MAGA movement, correcting Trump's errors and excesses.
I think people who view Vance as a grave threat are exaggerating because he certainly has the cunning, but utterly lacks the charisma.
MAGA is a visceral, carnal movement. It is fed through schadenfreude, cruel mockery of their perceived enemies, spite, vindication, vengeance etc. It is extremely reliant on the visuals and harsh rhetoric of their leader. It's not enough to support what MAGA wants, you have to champion them as a people.
Vance is a wet blanket. He's far less popular than Trump and carries an elitist reputation. The GOP would be taking a very real risk to embrace a candidate that can walk the walk, but can't talk the walk, so to speak. Vance is not effortlessly vindictive; He's not absolutely confident in his rage and convictions. He's a chameleon. He doesn't really know who he is. He's forcing himself to be something he is not. He sucks the air out of the room. He's tied at the hip to Trump whether he likes it or not.
This is why I insist that people should not underestimate the influence of Tucker Carlson. He is the true successor to the MAGA movement. Born from humiliation and leads an entire cult of personality around himself. He's a master in the visual age of media, like Trump. He's charismatic. He's cruel and vindictive. He's a loud mouth. His recent rejection of Trump makes him more dangerous, not less. He has his eyes on the presidency in 2028. No question.
Both Vance and Harris are intelligent people who seem for some reason or other to bring out the dullness in others. Nobody after hearing Vance or Harris speak or reading what they say feels energized.
Exactly. MAGA is a vibe, not an ideology. It’s got no problem contradicting itself when it comes to ideology. If it boils their bases’ blood, it will be said. So if it doesn’t energize their base, it’s a bad idea.
Yes thats exactly the type of person a shrewd president would want for a vp, so its no mystery that the type ends up there. But one thats smart enough to learn, and knows how to ride a wave, can easily get themselves elected, especially if the other side doesnt bring a strong candidate.
Idk if vance is that guy, but i think we're going to find out(call it a hunch, seeing pictures of him at the peace negotiations made me think, we're going to see a lot more of this guy). He'll step up when he smells trumps blood in the water.
It would be wrong to assume someone like vance is as he always will be. He knows how to shift gears and use an advantage. If we've learned anything from trump, certainly its that shit can change quite a bit in ways we would never expect.
There is an old joke about two brothers. The first brother goes to sea and the second brother becomes vice president. Neither one is heard from again. We can hope.
If I may insert my two cents here: Trump may go away (please God) but Peter Thiel isn't going anywhere. JD may be a douche bag but Thiel is a force to be reckoned with.
Vance is a clown who has tied himself to some of the worst failures of the administration. By supporting ICE excesses and enthusiastically shitting on Ukraine at every opportunity Vance is a poster boy for the „empathy is bad“ wing of the GOP. For all Trump‘s nastiness, his voters don’t seem to perceive him as cruel and uncaring, maybe his narcissistic charm and „humor“ disguise that. Vance comes off as nakedly vicious and sadistic. Even most GOP voters find that off putting.
You Americans have taken democracy for granted and stopped defending and cultivating it, the majority preferring consumer bulimia and stupid commercialism.
Wow thats a brilliant analysis, did you come up with it yourself? Ive never heard it before.
We arent so different from other people, and we're certainly not the first victims of decadence. Its not like things can not change over time, so whatever good you think you have right now, know that it will change, eventually for the worse, and thats just how it goes.
What we had here, its as good as anybodies ever had it, and thats not nothing. Ofc, its had its consequences. But these are not the type of things any people have ever been immune to. Had you lived here your whole life you too might have enjoyed some consumer bulimia and stupid commercialism.
Another quote: Brazil is NOT a democracy anymore. The Supreme Court , manipulated by Lula, runs the Country.
In January, the US will return to its normal status of divided government. By 2030, Trump will mostly be forgotten except for the next President blaming the previous administration for everything that's not going well.
Wishful thinking.
You write: “rump’s second term will leave behind an America that is weakened, cheapened, and fractious; but it seems increasingly unlikely that he will leave behind an America shaped in his own image.” Weakened, cheapened, fractious? Those all sound like apt adjectives to describe Trump’s image. Not his self-image, which of course remains glorious, but he is a weak leader, with cheap taste (see, e.g., designs for the ballroom and arch), and a fractious style. You’re right: these things will not disappear with his decline into irrelevancy. Countering them will be the task of a generation (or more).
If Trump is replaced, the antipathy will be fueled less by rationalization and more by emotion. Exhaustion animates the electorate, resulting in the embrace of anyone who articulates the malevolent zeitgeist of exasperation and frustration. The quintessential example can be seen in the meteoric rise and embrace of Graham Platner in Maine’s U. S. Senate race. Even as everything about him disqualifies him from high office, it matters not a whit, for he is simply the coming together of a man and a moment. “Throw the bums out” is the moment. “We will deal with whatever follows, but let us not think about that right now in satisfying our discomfort.”
you're right - & he's backed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren - as I posted, Dems are just fueled by hate, haven't learned anything from the last several elections.
Have to watch NY City & see what happens w/ Mamdani's great experiment.
Dunno. What worries me more than dump is the fact that so many sycophants have gained access to federal judgeships and elected office in most statehouses. Just look at what is happening right now in statehouses in response to a scotus decision that isn even dry ink yet. I hope im dead before the shit truly hits the fan. Going down fighting. And voting.
If the Dems get a trifecta in 2028 they need to spend 2029 implementing a serious agenda of institutional reform. The American constitution has proved insufficiently robust for the needs of the 21st century and their system needs reform. Americans need to get real and learn some lessons from countries whose governance is less shambolic.
Not fast enough for me!
I won’t believe it until he’s gone and even then there follows generational damage which this country may never recover from. And most certainly will not recover from in my lifetime. It’s upsetting to me but I’m oddly far more upset that my father has experienced it. He immigrated from England in the late 60s and is ‘the American dream’. He started his own company and retired well off after selling it. ‘This is not the county I came to…’
Praying the Dems go big with reforms when they’re back in power.
“Trumpism may well outcast it's creator”…that is what sane Americans have feared all along.
So is it really Trump’s ability to survive or the electorate’s racism, misogyny and general ignorance?
"Trump’s second term will leave behind an America that is weakened, cheapened, and fractious"
I believe Trump won due to America already being weakened, cheapened & fractious.
And if the Dems come into power again, they won't be wanting to bring the country together. So the country will continue to be weakened, cheapened & fractious. BTW, who do the Dems have in mind to win in 2028? Last I heard Harris (what a joke that would be) is on the platform along w/ Newsom. I can't read anything that leads me to believe the Dems have learned anything from the last election. The hate continues, the pointing fingers continues, the identity politics continues, the superiority continues.
I can't stand Trump's personality at all, nor many of the ways he has done things, but there are some things, a few, that have been fine.
I agree with you that Trump failed to make a convincing case for the Iran intervention. That doesn't mean there wasn't a reasonable case to be made. Any failure to act militarily would have been gross negligence. I tire of watching pundits make a false parallel between Iran an North Korea. There is no equivalence. The closest real world hypothetical we could generate to the Iran Regime, would be if Pakistan experienced a takeover by a political populism motivated by the ideology of ISIS.
Now, I know that the Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad comments are often taken out of context and amplified by the Right, but the fact is the statements remain controversial and religiously apocalyptic enough to justify alarm at a level not seen for any other state with the realistic ambition of becoming a nuclear armed state.
And the JCPOA simply didn't stop Iran's nuclear ambitions. Instead, even if one is being generous, to a veneer-level analysis it simply delayed the inevitability. There were no restrictions based on a distinction between offensive longer range missiles and more defensive territorial missiles, with restrictions on the latter. There was no agreement for Iran to stop arming, funding, and directing terror proxies throughout the region.
And to state that Trump didn't anticipate the potential for Iran to block oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is facile. It's been a possibility which has been of deep concern to the Pentagon during periods when America was far more dependent on somewhat precarious global oil supplies. Those who believe otherwise should look up Operation Preying Mantis and Operation Earnest Will under Reagan.
This exact scenario was anticipated by Marco Rubio 11 years ago in his opposition to the JCPOA agreement. It's up on his YouTube channel for anyone who wants to argue that this scenario couldn't be foreseen. The only difference between this timeline and a counterfactual scenario in which America never abandoned the JCPOA is the timing, and the possibility that Iran might have been able to construct even more formidable resources to prevent and disrupt an entirely necessary American intervention.
On the ICE my take is that the Trump Admin made a major political mistake in not creating a distinction in treatment between the 70% of deportees who are or were serious criminals, and the other 30% who were relatively blameless. It might have created the wrong type of incentive for people to make an inherently dangerous journey in the hopes of entering America legally, but politically the lack of a distinction has been disastrous for the Trump Admin. America might have been willing to tolerate rough treatment for an assortment of drug dealers, violent criminals, rapists, people traffickers, scammers and drunk drivers, but the optics of rough treatment towards the relatively blameless have changed the dynamics of polling.
I do, however, agree with you on one thing. The political repercussions are likely to brutal for the Republicans in the midterms. It's the economy, stupid. America has decisively won the military side of the war, but the fact that Hormuz can easily be disrupted by relatively scant and low tech remnant military resources meant that the political side of a legitimate cassis belli was always going to be a longer term prospect. Most experts probably would have estimated a 12 month timeline to the successful conclusion of a political settlement of all of America's more important demands with regard to nuclear ambitions, Israel, and little to no interference with the Regime of Passage of the Strait of Hormuz.
I also agree with you on Global Trumpism- the populist wave currently sweeping most of the advanced economies in Europe and elsewhere. I think it's very likely that the Centre Left and Centre Right parties will have to incorporate far tougher stances on immigration and asylum seeking, with populism losing steam as new incumbants fail to deliver on promises of miraculous transformation. There is already evidence of this happening in Europe. In America, it's always how populism was defeated in the past, before the populists even took power. Populist demagogues emerged and conventional politicians beat them by adopting restrictionist policies of their own. It usually happens when the foreign-born population reaches 14% and is accompanied by a major economic shock. Niall Ferguson gave a talk on it at Google Zeitgeist 10 years ago entitled 'A Recipe for Populism'. It's also worth noting that America's restrictionist policies in the 1920s were a major contributory factor to the great period of sustained growth in prosperity in American history. It turns out that the flowering of prosperity created by the labour shortages in caused by the Black Death wasn't a one-off. Tight labour markets boost productivity and raise living standards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRBsDcHoWZU&t=1s .