Maybe America Wasn’t Crazy to Elect Donald Trump

More along the lines of the lesser of two evils. Is the electorate not crazy? And how valid is the comparison with France?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...merica-wasnt-crazy-to-elect-donald-trump.html

/ INTERESTING TIMES
April 28, 2017
7:45 am
Maybe America Wasn’t Crazy to Elect Donald Trump
By Andrew Sullivan
Trump. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
A confession: I’m much less afraid of Trump than I was a year ago. His rhetoric, his unfettered far-right agenda, his love of violence, and his loathing of constitutional limits during the campaign were indeed things to be terrified by. They still are. But those of us who were worried that the Constitution might not hold, and that liberal democracy was teetering on the edge of implosion, have so far, mercifully, been proven wrong.

The Founders turn out to have constructed a system designed to confront exactly this kind of despotic figure — and it has held up well, even with total GOP control of House and Senate, even in this dangerously liquid, hyperdemocratic modern world. The press has done its job of fact-checking, exposing, and opposing those in power (yes, Mr. Bannon, that is one part of its function in a democracy). The courts have resisted strongly. The opposition has seen a dramatic uptick in political and civic engagement. Even Trump’s own congressional party has splintered, impervious to the charisma of their hood ornament. The American public has not been swept up in a nationalist fervor and has tilted against much of Trump’s agenda — on health care and immigration in particular.

Yes, the Trump base remains invested in their antihero. In the poll of polls, he hasn’t dropped below 40 percent for more than a fraction of his time in office. And yes, he still taps into the most powerful currents in the world right now. But his overall popularity is still shockingly low for a newly elected president. And his sad lack of substantive legislative achievements has revealed the talk-radio politics of the far right are incapable of forming a coherent governing agenda.

I keep thinking of how Obama kept predicting during his eight years of frustration that at some point the “fever would break” on the right. It never did. But history is an ironist. It turns out that the only way the fever could ever have broken is if the GOP actually got complete control of the government and … couldn’t do much of anything. The bluff has been extravagantly called. It’s one thing to rail against the “disaster” of Obamacare; it’s quite another, it turns out, to replace it.

All the right’s political power, we can now see, depended on being in permanent opposition, and never having to actually implement something. Their tax cuts for the very wealthy are tone-deaf; their resuscitation of the Laffer curve surreal. They’ve got nothing on health care but a return to the highly unpopular status quo ante. And they are caught between Trump’s desire to borrow even more to finance his tax cuts and the GOP’s resolute insistence throughout the Obama years that the debt was an existential threat. It’s quite amazing to watch this unfold and unravel in real time.

And here’s the thing: My suspicion is that if Clinton had become president, the fever would not have broken at all; it would have intensified. Her incompetence and indecision would have given the GOP even more political oxygen; a Republican House would have stymied her even more effectively than it did Obama; her unfavorables would have gone through the roof; and it could have been an ugly death spiral for the Democrats. (The latest polls showing considerable dissatisfaction with Trump nonetheless show that in a rematch, he would actually do better today against Clinton than he did last November.)

Instead, we have a manifest and brutal exposure of the stark promises Trump made, and of the incoherence and shallowness of so much of the Republican agenda. I still would never have risked putting this menacing clown into the Oval Office. But in the long run, if catastrophe doesn’t strike, it might even be better for the future health of our politics that Clinton is not president. Maybe the American people are not so crazy after all.


The Clinton counterfactual also makes me worry about Emmanuel Macron and France. He’ll almost certainly win — but his victory could well be pyrrhic. Why? Because his persona, background, and agenda are almost designed to polarize France still further, and thereby empower the reactionary right still further. He is not a centrist candidate on the core issues — the EU, immigration, Islamist terror, and national identity. He actually wants to accelerate European integration, he has attacked the notion that mass Muslim immigration is a problem for France, he embraces Angela Merkel’s impulsive invitation to more than a million Syrian refugees to come and live in the EU, he has called Islamist terrorism something to be lived with (even as France remains in a state of emergency), and he favors more Western involvement in tackling the chaos in the Middle East.


He is also a walking stereotype of the very globalist elites that many French have come to see as the enemy. A cute, cosmopolitan former banker who favors continuing many of President Hollande’s policies (but with more emphasis on the free market), he cannot help but be seen as the globalist candidate par excellence in a France increasingly drawn to nationalism. Forty-six percent of the vote in the first round went to candidates who were skeptical of free-market economics and the EU.

So we must fervently hope that Macron is able to have a successful presidency. Because if he fails — and he has no party in the assembly to lean on — Le Pen is waiting again in five years’ time. If the white regional working poor in France see no improvement in their lives, if the idea of traditional France continues to evaporate, and if the economic and social divide between the cognitive elite and the working poor deepens further, then what we are seeing now may be a pale version of the backlash ahead. Maybe I’ve read too much Michel Houellebecq, or maybe I’m too persuaded by the analysis of Christopher Caldwell, but I worry about the growing barometric political pressure in France. A Macron victory may not prevent, but merely postpone the deluge.

 

I found your first five paragraphs reassurring. Not sure about your analysis of Clinton and Macron though. The Le Pens have been lurking around for years. Do you think that it is possible for France to elect someone like Marine? The National Front has bee a threat for a long time, but even the Austrians didn't go that far right and they were expected too.

 

This is the most...disgusting article I'd ever read in a very LONG time. It's not "fake news", but it's not even news. It might as well say in TLDR form: "Let's celebrate the Downfall of the Republic, because it'll one day put Democrats back in power". That's basically what Mr.Sullivan believes. This quagmired Congress(that I call a National Security threat.) is to him a blessing, because it undermines the President.

The President being forced to executive order is good for the Democratic Party. Making no headway on proper immigration reform, the taxes or health care(which like it or not, DOES need fixing.) To him, this is all good. The country being rendered asunder is GOOD for him, because in his mind, Democrats will return to power.

Well, I have some sorry news for him: If Democrats do return to power, they will inherit a worse country in 2020 then possibly in 2009. And more than half of it, is of their own doing. They too will lack political power, because only Liberals are self-served by its "return to power".

 

There are too many ridiculous points in the OP to refute. For one, the Laffer Curve is real. There is an optimal point where tax rates net the highest amount of revenue. Going above or below that point yields less revenue.

 

Lesser of two evils = still evil

 

Lesser of two evils = still evil

 

Elections are always a matter of choosing the lesser of two weevils.

France is in that boat right now, and in 7 days we will know the answer to their dilemma as well.

 

I doubt Marine will win. Just from what I'm reading it sounds like she has too much ground to make up and not enough time. However, stranger things have happened.

 

Doubt?

She has ZERO chance.

A showing north of 45% would qualify as a miracle.

 

Yea I doubt she will make up the ground, but after this election we just had I'm not ruling anyone out at zero percent

 

The problem is that too many here don't recognize "evil" when they are looking into its orange face.

Hillary sucked big time. No doubt about it. But Trump was elected because Americans are getting dumber by the day. We see it in test scores in schools and our competitiveness in the world. We have been sliding for decades. We have seen one unqualified boob elected [Bush II], and now there is a hardened criminal in the WH.

 

Want the proof - many Americans now believe Fox News or Infowars or Rush Limbaugh, instead of liberal sources like science.

It is now "liberal" to be intelligent.

 

I hear you, for sure.

But, I just don't see LePen pulling off a Brexit/Trump sort of upset.

Way too much ground to make up and an entirely different set of circumstances.

 

It's only 'real' when one ignores entirely several dozen other variables, especially ones that reflect real life data patterns.

 

Heard an i

Heard an interview on NPR earlier today from one of the flacks for her opposition party that her support was more than enough to be taken seriously and her positions have to be addressed or they can lose future elections very easily with just a minor negative event shifting the votes in her Party's favor. She didn't have to win to force concessions.

 

Why do you left wingers think you know something about science? You deny real science, then pervert it, politicize it and reintroduce as liberal science which only fools 40% and we know who they are.

 

The biggest change of circumstance was that Trump is an obvious idiot. Middle-of-the-road voters would look at what happened in the USA and be fearful of a Le Pen win. All Macron has to do is be boring.

 

Macron is fearful that James Comey will pervert the election by claiming, at the last minute, that Anthony Weiner's laptop may contain some dirt on him.

 

You know AJ, after your debacle with your US prediction I would have thought you would learn to express yourself more modestly.

 

You're probably right.

 

What this man doesn't grasp is that the Laffer Curve is simply a mathematical representation that has nothing to do with mapping actual data points, it is simply math superimposed on reality. This has been proven time and again which is why Laffer is considered a dolt by real economists not in the tank for special interests. You cannot plot human behavior nor the tax code like you would the trajectory of an object in flight. One obeys known laws of gravity and physics, the other has nothing to do with reality at all. If you want to understand the statistical reasoning behind my critique, look up "The Black Swan".

 

Now, which political party has the teacher's union in its back pocket? Liberals cannot defend the poor results of poor education and yet ask for a better investment for our children, at the same time! It doesn't work like that. We should be insisting that every child is capable of attending Sidney's friends like Obama's children did. We should be insisting that those high-quality facilities and teachers are there so that kids can really LEARN.

My best teacher wasn't even a part of my K-12 or even College life. It was a course on Game Theory I brought online and I was really into it. The lecturer detailed the lessons thoroughly and it's a different type of education. I'd LOVE to have that kind of lecturing across the entire Nation.

If we broke free from the trenches of failed Public schooling, then we'd have higher education. So, willing to buck your party for better education for ALL Americans?

 

The big difference is that with a Le Pen win, she could move several of her members into their elected political body. Unlike the "Republicans" who may very well be "Republicans" but not aligned with Trump. Trump's more of an invasion into the Republican Party, than an actual Republican.

Which is why the Republican Party will not support Donald Trump. And the Democrats won't for obvious reasons either. But in France's particular politics, Le Pen would have a MUCH easier rule, than Donald Trump.

 

He shouldn't have too much to worry about as long as he didn't use a personal server for govt business.

 

Maybe America wasn't crazy to vote for Donald Trump, but I'm sure a lot of people held their nose while they were voting for him.

I personally don't pay that much attention to Donald Trump's Presidency. The way I see it I would be more aghast if I were following the day to day goings on because he doesn't follow my political positions. I don't look because there's nothing I can do to stop it, and it's just a waiting game until the next election.