~~ recommended by dreamjoehill2 ~~
If you subscribe to this site, you recognize we are facing an existential election where American democracy, human rights, and global stability are on the ballot.
After ousting Donald Trump in 2020 and surviving an attempt to reinstall him, then beating back a midterm red wave that would have placed election-denying enablers in positions of authority in swing states, we are confronted with a third straight all-or-nothing election, this time to determine if Trump can claim legally what he could not take by force.
While we are justifiably focused on these huge stakes, some on the other side of the political divide are also staring at the end of the world they knew—a world where their interests were favored.
They do not want to accept that it’s ending, so they are pushing back. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.
A fundamental premise of Wolves and Sheep is that we are at a crossroads today because we are on the cusp of a new political alignment. Generational changes years in the making are about to reach fruition, as the Boomers who have shaped our politics and culture for most of our lives are being replaced by two younger generations with different values, priorities, and lived experiences.
And although the transition to a new political era will continue to unfold for many years, we are now at the most critical moment in the process. This is the moment when the receding generation is being eclipsed in size and therefore political power.
If things were proceeding democratically, the one-time center-right majority would accept being relegated by the electorate to the opposition in a new regime alignment inclusive of center-left economic and social priorities, not unlike the way a previous center-left majority had to come to terms with being cast aside by a changing electorate two generations earlier. Republicans would engage in the kind of long-term soul-searching that befell Democrats when the New Deal era came to an end in the 1970s and 80s and look for ways to compete in a different political environment.
Instead, the prospect of losing power has fueled a reaction by those invested in keeping things the way were. Over the past decade they have captured the Republican party, turning it away from its conservative traditions into a reactionary vehicle built to stop change at all costs.
The reactionaries pulled off an Electoral College victory in 2016, but since then they have struggled to win elections. So their leaders warmed up to the idea of holding on to power by decree. The 2021 insurrection touched off an era in which Republicans began openly questioning whether democracy was necessary.
But, really, we have been building up to this for a long time.
It’s what happens when one side is losing the political argument and doesn’t accept the legitimate right of the other side to win.
So we face a decision point that will determine if the generational realignment will be permitted to go forward or if it will be blocked by an intense minority willing to do everything in its power to derail it.
This “refuse to lose” dynamic is freezing our politics in place, holding democracy hostage, and keeping many of us in a state of perpetual anxiety about what the country is going to look like once this era finally ends.
It explains why every election of the past few years has been the most important of our lives.
It explains why we once again face a choice between Trump and Biden even though so many Americans want to move on.
It explains why Trump is running the most stupefyingly impolitic campaign imaginable.
And it explains—although this can get lost in the worry over opinion polls—why Trump’s position is informed by incredible weakness.
This is the first of three posts that explore the inflection point of 2024 from the perspective of the reactionaries. Today, I’d like to look briefly at where we are and how we got here. Next week, I’ll discuss two groups fueling our reactionary moment: wealthy elites (on Monday) and culture warriors (next Wednesday). Each is approaching this election as their one remaining chance to assert control over the country, putting us in maximum peril even as they operate from a place of desperation.
Actually, it puts us at maximum peril precisely because they are coming from a place of desperation.
We have been building up to this for a long time. It’s what happens when one side is losing the political argument and doesn’t accept the legitimate right of the other side to win.
It’s clear from the tactics they’re using that the reactionaries see this as their last stand.
Donald Trump is running more to take power than to earn it. More than in the past two cycles, he is presenting himself as a strongman. He takes deeply unpopular positions and says them out loud, knowing they will work his base to a froth without caring how he sounds to everyone else.
The Republican party is investing more in “election integrity” than efforts to organize the vote. Republicans across the board refuse to say they will unconditionally accept the outcome in November. In that regard, they are desperately echoing Donald Trump.
And Trump is the most desperate one of all. He is running to stay out of prison.
It wasn’t always like this. At least not quite like this.
Republicans always counted reactionary elements among their numbers. But when conservatives could win elections by running as conservatives instead of radicals, they were strategic about keeping their more problematic ideas and sympathizers under wraps. Nixon and Reagan were careful to dog whistle their racially-tinged appeal to southern white voters, speaking in coded terms about “crime” and “drugs”.
Today, Trump just asks his crowds, “Would you rather have the Black president or the white president?”
Similarly, Reagan’s program of cutting taxes and spending that offered obvious benefits to those at the top was positioned as economics for everyone, promising those benefits would trickle down through the economy.
Today, Trump transactionally asks oil executives to make billion-dollar contributions to his campaign in exchange for anti-regulatory policies.
Republican officials do not push back. They now see Trump as their only path to victory.
It’s a dramatic transformation for members of the groups that once formed the engine of a Republican political juggernaut: wealthy elites, who wrote the checks that financed the Reagan revolution, and the culture warriors who supplied the votes.
Once the chosen groups in the Reagan political regime, they are now propping up a party determined to blow up a system that no longer favors them.
It’s quite a change to go from being the prime beneficiaries of a political system to the agents trying to overthrow it from within. When you step back and look at it this way, you can appreciate how Trump’s bravado masks his movement’s weakness.
Thus far, the reactionaries have been successful at holding our politics hostage. If Republicans weren’t prepared to wage a full-throated reactionary challenge to the system, they would not have rallied around Donald Trump. Without Trump posing a threat to democracy, there would be no need for Joe Biden to run as the guarantor of the system, as the only person with a proven record of defeating MAGA. That would pave the way for a younger Democratic presidential nominee able to speak to the generational changes we’re experiencing.
Instead, we remain stuck in 2020.
But the prospect of a new, progressive generation of leadership awaits a future election if the reactionaries fail. And they know it. Which is why they are trying to preempt that future.
MAGA is investing in this election as if it is their last desperate chance to hold back a wave of change that threatens to wash them away. It is their weakness that imperils us all.
Next Monday: The end of Reaganomics
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